21/02/2020

(AU Royal Commission) Climate Action Still Key: Ex-Fire Chiefs

Canberra Times - AAP

Former emergency service chiefs say the bushfire royal commission is doomed to fail.
Former emergency service chiefs say Scott Morrison's bushfires royal commission doesn't take the heat off the federal government to take real action on dangerous climate change.
Emergency Leaders for Climate Action say credible measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions are "the only way to keep Australians safe".
"The root cause of this horror summer is climate change, driven by the burning of coal, oil, and gas," former Emergency Management Victoria commissioner Craig Lapsley said in a statement on Thursday.
Mr Lapsley said this season's bushfires were so severe that areas where hazard reduction burns had been carried out - and even mown lawns - were torched.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday announced the long-awaited commission.
He said while it would "acknowledge" climate change the inquiry would focus on practical action to make Australians safer.
"My priority is to ... better protect and equip Australians for living in hotter, drier and longer summers," Mr Morrison said in a statement.
Former Queensland Fire and Emergency Services commissioner Lee Johnson welcomed the prime minister's acknowledgement that climate change contributed to the recent unprecedented bushfires.
"(But) in addition to focusing on adaptation and resilience measures to cope with a worsening climate, the federal government must urgently take measures to bring down emissions and tackle climate change to prevent bushfire danger from increasing further," Mr Johnson said in a statement.
"Credible climate action is the only way to keep Australians safe."
Mr Johnson said Australia wouldn't remain the lucky country if it continued to "delay, distract, and deflect attention away from the core problem we face - which is that climate change is driving worsening extreme weather".
The royal commission is due to report by late August with the federal government keen to receive recommendations ahead of the next fire season.
The inquiry will look at the resourcing of fire services, hazard reduction, land clearing and planning laws.
Former Defence chief Mark Binskin has been picked to lead the commission alongside two assistants.
Thousands of homes were destroyed and 33 people died in horrific blazes that burned across Australia in the 2019-20 bushfire season.

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Every Child On Earth Faces 'Existential Threats' From Climate Change, Report Finds

TIME - Mahita Gajanan

Teenage Climate Crisis activists from various climate activism groups protesting in Westminster during the first UK Students Strike Over Climate Change march of 2020 on February 14, 2020 in London, England. Getty Images—2020 Ollie Millington
Every child on Earth faces an uncertain future due to the effects of climate change and not one country is doing enough to ensure its children’s sustained wellbeing, a new report says.
The findings, compiled by over 40 child and adolescent health experts in a commission convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the medical journal The Lancet, show that the health and future for every child and teen in the world is under threat. Climate change, ecological degradation and advertising practices that push harmful products toward youth are just some factors that have created an uncertain future for children, the report says.
“Despite improvements in child and adolescent health over the past 20 years, progress has stalled, and is set to reverse,” said Helen Clark, co-chair of the Commission and the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, in a UNICEF statement about the report. “It has been estimated that around 250 million children under five years old in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their developmental potential, based on proxy measures of stunting and poverty. But of even greater concern, every child worldwide now faces existential threats from climate change and commercial pressures.”
In the short term, survival rates for children are among the highest they’ve been in history, Stefan Peterson, chief of health at UNICEF and one of the study’s authors, tells TIME. But, he says, rampant inequality and marketing practices have threatened the future of overall developments in nutrition and survival.
“The gains are not shared equally within countries and between the countries of the world,” he says, adding that children are increasingly exposed to marketing tactics for unhealthy foods, drugs and gambling — products that are harmful to health and further drive climate change. “It’s threatening children, and by extension, humanity.”
The report includes an index of 180 countries that compares findings on three measures of child wellbeing: flourishing, sustainability and equity. These three categories include factors like health, education, nutrition, sustainability, greenhouse gas emissions, and income gaps.
“The poorest countries have a long way to go towards supporting their children’s ability to live healthy lives, but wealthier countries threaten the future of all children through carbon pollution, on course to cause runaway climate change and environmental disaster,” the authors write in the report. “Not a single country performed well on all three measures of child flourishing, sustainability, and equity.”
The study ranked Norway, South Korea and the Netherlands as the highest based on these factors. Chad, Somalia, Niger, Mali and the Central African Republic ranked the lowest.
But when the study authors took into account the per capita carbon emissions of the countries and compared it with performance on child flourishing, the countries where children face the some of the worst odds emit less carbon than countries where children have a higher chance of surviving and flourishing. The United States, Australia, Saudi Arabia are among the 10 worst carbon emitters globally. The current level of carbon emissions is pushing the world closer to dangerous levels of climate change.
“There’s a huge global inequity here in that children who benefit least from carbon emissions are the ones paying the biggest price in other parts of the world,” Peterson says.
Peterson and the dozens of other health professionals that worked on the report recommend reframing societal priorities to put children at the center of new policies. This includes a significant financial investment to ensure their health. Beyond monetary investments in healthcare, the authors urge people across all sectors, from housing to energy to transport, to work together to ensure future survival. They also encourage taking children’s voices into account. “Citizen participation and community action, including the voices of children themselves, are powerful forces for change that must be mobilized to reach the [Sustainable Development Goals],” they write.

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UN Ruling Could Be A Game-Changer For Climate Refugees And Climate Action

The Conversation - 

In this October 2011 photo, members of the Royal New Zealand defense force pump sea water into holding tanks ready to be used by the desalination plant in Funafuti, Tuvalu, South Pacific. The atolls of Tuvalu are at grave risk due to rising sea levels and contaminated ground water. AP Photo/Alastair Grant
  
Yvonne Su
PhD, International Development and Political Science, University of Guelph, Canada
The recent ruling by the United Nations that governments cannot return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by climate change is a potential game-changer — not just for climate refugees, but also for global climate action.
The UN Human Rights Committee’s landmark ruling made clear that “without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to violations of their rights … thereby triggering the non-refoulement obligations of sending states.”
The ruling elaborates further to say:
“Given the risk of an entire country becoming submerged under water is such an extreme risk, the conditions of life in such a country may become incompatible with the right to life with dignity before the risk is realized.”
The judgment relates to the case of Ioane Teitiota, a man from the Pacific island of Kiribati.
In 2015, Teitiota applied for protection from New Zealand after arguing his life and his family members’ lives were at risk due to the effects of climate change and sea level rise.
The South Pacific atoll Kiribati is seen in an aerial view. There are fears that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago. AP Photo/Richard Vogel
The Republic of Kiribati is considered one of the countries most at risk of being rendered uninhabitable by rising sea levels. The UN committee ruled, however, that in the time that might happen — 10 to 15 years — there could be “intervening acts by the Republic of Kiribati, with the assistance of the international community, to take affirmative measures to protect and, where necessary, relocate its population.”
As a result, the committee ruled against Teitiota on the basis that his life was not at imminent risk.

Climate refugees acknowledged
Teitiota did not become the world’s first climate refugee, but the committee’s ruling essentially recognized that climate refugees do exist, a first for the UN body. The ruling acknowledges a legal basis for refugee protection for those whose lives are imminently threatened by climate change.
For several decades, academics and policy-makers alike have debated the existence of climate refugees, with many asserting that because migration can be fuelled by many factors, climate change cannot be singled out as the sole driver of any movement.
However, with the acceleration of the climate crisis over the last 10 years, people are increasingly being displaced by disasters, desertification and coastal erosion linked to climate change.
In this October 2015 photo, young children of a family that relocated from a drought area gather at their home in northwestern China. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, confirmed that the recent ruling means those displaced by climate change should be treated like refugees by recipient countries. Grandi noted:
“The ruling says if you have an immediate threat to your life due to climate change, due to the climate emergency, and if you cross the border and go to another country, you should not be sent back because you would be at risk of your life, just like in a war or in a situation of persecution.”
Grandi and some media commentators have predicted the ruling may open the door to surges of legal claims by displaced people globally. But the burden of proof that someone’s life is under imminent threat by climate change remains high.
Teitiota’s case is a good example. Despite his arguments that sea level rise, overpopulation and salt-water intrusion were threatening his life and the lives of his family, the New Zealand court and the UN Human Rights Committee ruled against him, saying he could not prove that his life was in imminent danger.

Floodgates not open yet
And so while this latest UN ruling is a momentous first step in international law, it by no means opens the floodgates to surges of climate refugees.
But it does represent a win for global climate action. It’s not legally binding, but it illustrates to governments around the world that climate change will have an increasing impact on their legal obligations under international law. This is great news for citizens and governments of small island states who have long pushed for climate action but have been met with delays and rejections.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres addresses the Pacific Islands Forum in May 2019 in Suva, Fiji. Fiji Broadcasting via AP
For example, during last year’s Pacific Island Forum that brings together 16 Pacific island nations, as well as Australia and New Zealand, the 16 islands put forward the Tuvalu Declaration to ask for more action on climate change.
But sections of the original declaration were struck down due to reservations from Australia and New Zealand.
Australia reportedly had concerns about emissions reductions, coal use and funding for the UN’s Green Climate Fund, while New Zealand also expressed concern about the fund.
Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama criticized the final declaration, tweeting: “We came together in a nation that risks disappearing to the seas, but unfortunately, we settled for the status quo in our communique.”

In this photo evacuees board a Navy ship that plucked hundreds of people from beaches amid devastating bushfires. Australian Department of Defence via AP
Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga also told Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison:
“You are concerned about saving your economies … I’m concerned about saving my people.”
Ironically, following bushfires that recently raged across Australia and displaced thousands, concerns have arisen that Australia will soon have to deal with its own climate refugees.
The pressure is mounting for world leaders to take serious climate action to aggressively curb greenhouse gas emissions. The latest UN ruling is step towards improving the lives of those most vulnerable and affected by climate change.

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