06/07/2021

(AU SBS) In A Critical Year For Climate Justice, These Torres Strait Islanders Are Leading The Fight

SBS - Abbie O'Brien

Almost three decades since the historic Mabo decision was handed down, a new generation of Torres Strait Islanders are charting unprecedented legal territory in a bid to preserve their right to culture and the land. The group are waging a first-of-its-kind legal battle to force the Australian government to act on climate change.

Yessie Mosby fears his home and culture is at risk of vanishing. Source: Abbie O'Brien/SBS News

Yessie Mosby says the pace at which his home is disappearing is terrifying.

“It's moving very fast," the Kulkalgal man tells SBS News.

"Within four years we’ve seen eight metres get taken away. It is very scary, very scary to see.”

The father of six is standing on a vast sand flat on Masig Island. The marshy, barren area, he says, was once the heartbeat of village life.

Mr Mosby says food sources on Masig are depleting. Abbie O'Brien

“It was full of palm trees. People's houses were here before they moved inland. It used to have roads. People used to come, where we are standing, and all day long and sit [under] the big almond tree, making maps, telling stories.”

“There was no beach here. The beach was like 50 metres that way.”

Here on Masig, and across the Torres Strait Islands, the issue of climate change is one of survival.



The region, off the northern tip of Queensland, is home to a chain of low-lying islands, 18 of which are inhabited by First Nations Australians whose culture is tethered to the land.

Masig is approximately 2.7 kilometres long and only 0.8 kilometres wide. It is home to an estimated 250 people.

Data shows that sea levels in the strait are rising at a rate double the global average. According to the Climate Council, the shallowness of this stretch of ocean exacerbates storm surges, and when they coincide with high tides, extreme sea levels result.


Communities in the Torres Strait Islands are already in peril. Coastal inundation (when seawater rises high enough that it floods infrastructure and buildings or endangers people's safety) is contaminating the water supply and destroying crops. It’s washing away roads, sacred cultural sites and the remains of loved ones.

“We don't know how strong or how big the next inundation or erosion is going to be," Mr Mosby says.

"Every day is a fearful day for us. Every day, something has been taken away from this place.”

Masig is home to an estimated 250 people. Abbie O'Brien
There is mounting concern that if the more extreme projections of sea-level rise come to fruition, islands like Masig will become uninhabitable. "I feel that our people will get moved off this land, then our entire race will die. We will be a lost race of people," Mr Mosby says.

It's also fear held by Herbert Warusam, the Dhoeybaw clan leader on Saibai Island, northwest of Masig.

"The winds, the songs, the traditional language, the traditional gardening, fishing. Land and sea is my connection," he says.

"It's the heart and soul ... all of that is at stake."

"The decision of relocation will be on my children."
I feel that our people will get moved off this land, then our entire race will die. - Yessie Mosby, Masig
Sabai is the second-most northern of the Torres Strait Islands and lies just four kilometres off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The island is, on average, just one metre above sea level and home to roughly 500 people.

Already, Mr Warusam says, the island is experiencing profound change.

“We're witnessing the now impact of climate change. We're going through it in real-time.”

Herbert Warasum is the Dhoeybaw clan leader on Masig Island. Abbie O'Brien
Like Masig, Sabai is “especially at risk" the Climate Council warns. It cautions that even modest sea level rises will threaten the Torres Strait Island communities, with inundation affecting "houses, roads, power stations, sewage and stormwater systems, cultural sites, cemeteries, gardens, community facilities and ecosystems".

Mr Warsasum says saltwater has begun seeping into the freshwater supply.

“Each year, the saltwater, during king tide, it pushes in. I think in 30 to 40 years time, we might see saltwater right up, and the indicators will be in the water wells .”


On Masig, Mr Mosby says food sources are also depleting.

"There will be a particular time that we will eat a certain fish, or we will plant certain plants ... like a yam. You don't see those yams anymore."

"Our major diet is from the sea. Certain fish are not found on a particular reef when they used to be in the abundance. They are not there."


For millennia, Masig and its inhabitants have held out against the sea. It's only the past few decades that the community has faced such unprecedented challenges.

“This thing only happened here … within the last 20 to 30 years or so. As each year passes, it gets worse than the year before,” Mr Mosby says.

Climate change experts warn relocation could be in the offing for Torres Strait Island communities but it's a fate Mr Mosby refuses to accept. To lose the land, he says, is to lose everything.

"There's a lot of elders who say that if we ought to move from this island by force ... that they will remain here and they will go with this island. I feel the same."

Taking their fight to the UN

Mr Mosby is currently among eight Torres Strait Islanders charting unprecedented legal territory in a bid to preserve their right to their culture and the land.

In 2019, the group filed a complaint with the United Nations' Human Rights Committee accusing Australia's federal government of breaching its fundamental right to maintain culture by failing to adequately address the climate emergency unfolding in their island homes.

“My fear for my six kids: I don't want them to be refugees in their own country," Mr Mosby says.

"I want them to live a life of freedom. I want them to practice what I've practiced, what my father and mother [have] practiced and my grandparents, what we've been doing for hundreds of thousands of years.”
My fear for my six kids: I don't want them to be refugees in their own country.
The eight claimants - all Traditional Owners from four different Torres Strait Islands - want the government to take stronger action in reducing emissions and support communities through sustained investment in long-term adaptation measures.

The ruling, set to be handed down within months, comes in a year characterised as “make or break” in the fight against climate change. A UN report describes 2021 as “truly a pivotal year” in steering the planet away from a looming catastrophe.

Saibai is home to an estimated 500 people. Abbie O'Brien
The Mabo legacy looms large in the Torres Strait Islands, almost 30 years since history was made.

Torres Strait Islander Eddie Koiki Mabo's 1992 fight in the High Court saw the overturning of terra nullius - the declaration that Australia was once land belonging to no one. It allowed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have rights to their land.

Iama Island Traditional Owner Ned David is the chair of the Gur A Baradharaw Kod (GBK) Torres Strait Sea and Land Council, the peak native title body for the region.

“I think you have to resort to going to court, you know, as Eddie Mabo did. This is, I guess the same sort of course of action that we have to take,” he says.

Mr David played a key role in getting the UN human rights claim off the ground, describing it as “the next chapter in our story, ensuring our traditional culture survives climate change”.

“We're extremely optimistic,” he says. “[The case] certainly puts a spotlight on what's happening in [this] part of the world.”

Sophie Marjanac, an Australian climate lawyer with environmental legal charity ClientEarth, is representing the eight claimants.

“We are hoping that this decision will confirm that climate change is a serious human rights issue, not only for the Torres Strait, but for people around the world,” she says.

“They're living with the effects of climate change every day," she says of those on the islands.

"And they are seeing the impacts on their cultural rights, their family life, and their homes.”

The UN case is part of a global wave of climate litigation, with vulnerable populations increasingly seeking legal avenues to pressure governments and organisations to take more urgent action to limit global warming.

But this case is like no other, Ms Marjanac says, and could set a global precedent.

“It's the first time a case like this has gone before a United Nations treaty body. It’s the first time that people from low-lying islands have taken a human rights claim against their own government, and it's the first time a human rights complaint was filed against the Australian government on the basis of a violation of the right to culture of minority peoples.”

“The Human Rights Committee is the ultimate arbiter of international human rights law and its decisions apply to other states around the world. So other states will certainly be watching this decision."

In terms of enforcement, Ms Marjanac says the UN could lay out a series of recommendations in which the Australian government could be compelled to fulfil.

“The committee has follow-up procedures it can use to ensure that Australia has complied with its recommendations.”

Completed in 2017, this $25 million seawall is designed to protect Saibai from inundation. Abbie O'Brien
In a statement provided to SBS News, the federal government said it is "confident its climate change policies are consistent with international human rights obligations". Acknowledging the challenges in the region, it said it is "aware of the risks and is helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities build their resilience and prepare for the impacts of climate change, including severe weather events".

Construction of a long-awaited $25 million seawall in Sabai was complete in 2017. The infrastructure, which is more than two kilometres long, was funded by both the federal and Queensland governments and is designed to protect the island from inundation.

“It's really helping the island. It’s a good thing. It’s proved to be a very valuable thing to be done by [the governments]” Mr Warasum says.

The federal government has since invested an additional $25 million for sea walls.

On Masig, they're still waiting for construction to begin.

"That's something we [asked] for years ago. We were told it's going to get built probably next year some time," Mr Mosby says.

But time is running out.

Desperate to stop more of the island from being swallowed by the sea, the community has taken matters into their own hands, building their own sea wall out of pallets, sticks and shrub.

"If you go over and you walk on the road, you'll see how the water still comes in, but it's definitely slowed down the process," Mr Mosby says.

Still, the community and environmental experts agree, sea walls are only delaying the inevitable.

“Building seawalls and raising houses can buy time," the Climate Council has stated, but in the long-term, “some communities may face relocation".

A makeshift sea wall built by the community on Masig Island. Abbie O'Brien
The so-called 'Torres Strait 8' are urging the Australian government to set more ambitious targets in reducing emissions.

“Very clearly from the scientific evidence, [the] impacts will worsen dramatically in the coming decades and we say legally that means the Australian government has a duty in law, now, to help these Islanders adapt," Ms Marjanac says.

"And also, Australia needs to mitigate its emissions to get to net-zero as soon as possible in order to reduce the root cause of climate change.”

In 2019, the same year the UN case was filed, the group urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to visit their islands and see the impacts with his own eyes.

"I want him to see my pain ... listen to our cry," Mr Mosby says.

Mr Morrison is yet to take them up on the offer.

"It's sad. It's very sad. You can go to other countries, but you can't come in [here] and check his backyard. I feel that we are being neglected, that our cries are not being attended to."

Mr Mosby is hopeful the UN case will shine a global spotlight on this little known part of the world.

"We need people to know what we're facing, why we're doing this," he says.

"If we win this fight, the whole of the Pacific, all saltwater people, everybody who is suffering from climate change, whether inland or [on the] coast or out on the islands, their voice will be heard and changes will be happening for them as well."

“We are not only fighting for our children here; we are fighting for all children of this Earth.”

NOTE: NAIDOC Week (4-11 July) celebrates the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This year's theme - Heal Country! – calls for all of us to continue to seek greater protections for our lands, our waters, our sacred sites and our cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction.

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(AU The Conversation) ‘Although We Didn’t Produce These Problems, We Suffer Them’: 3 Ways You Can Help In NAIDOC’s Call To Heal Country

The Conversation - 

Shutterstock

Author
 is Research Associate & PhD Candidate, Australian National University     
NAIDOC week has just begun and, after several tumultuous years of disasters in Australia, the theme this year is Heal Country.

In the last two years, Australia has suffered crippling drought that saw the Darling-Baaka run dry, catastrophic bushfires, and major flooding throughout coastal and inland areas of Australia’s east.

Just two weeks ago, UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre recommended one of our national treasures, the Great Barrier Reef, be listed as in danger.

If these events, and the thought of other inevitable climate change-driven disasters sadden or madden you, consider how it impacts Indigenous peoples.

So with this in mind, and the rest of NAIDOC week ahead of us, let’s take a moment (most likely from lockdown) to explore the theme of Heal Country in more detail.

More than a landscape

For Indigenous people, Country is more than a landscape. We tell, and retell, stories of how our Country was made, and we continue to rely upon its resources — food, water, plants and animals — to sustain our ways of life. Country also holds much of our heritage, including scarred trees, stone arrangements, petroglyphs, rock art, tools and much more.

Indigenous people talk of, and to, Country, as they would another person. As the late eminent ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose famously wrote:
Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the country’ or ‘going up the country’.

Rather, Country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life.
As cultural and spiritual beings, and with deep and ongoing attachments to lands and waters, the impacts of climate change interrupt and make uncertain our unique ways of life. This increasing reality is shared with Indigenous peoples all over the world.

The Torres Strait Islands are under dire threat from climate change. Shutterstock

These sentiments were captured by Tishiko King, a Kulkalaig woman from the island of Masi in the Torres Strait. In her reflections on returning home in December 2020, she explained:
I had to pick up the bones of my Elders because erosion is damaging our burial sites. As First Nations people we know that these are our spirits of our old people, and it’s a sign of disrespect.

It’s desecrating who they are. It’s that heart-wrenching pain in your chest.
This is why the National NAIDOC Committee has sought to draw attention to our struggle.

Why Heal Country?

Through this year’s theme, the National NAIDOC Committee invites the whole nation to embrace “First Nations’ cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia’s national heritage”. This requires understanding the depths of Indigenous peoples’ connections to Country and treasuring our heritage values.

But “understanding” and “treasuring” will only go so far in the face of increased drought, more severe storms or changing seasons and animal behaviours as a result of climate change.

As Bianca McNeair, a Malgana woman from Western Australia and co-chair of the First People’s Gathering on Climate Change, shared with The Guardian:
[Traditional Owners] are talking about how the birds’ movements across country have changed, so that’s changing songlines that they’ve been singing for thousands and thousands of years, and how that’s impacting them as a community and culture.
All Australians have much at stake if radical steps to cut emissions aren’t taken. For Indigenous peoples, the consequences of climate change are much more profound.

Country also holds heritage, including stone arrangements, rock art, tools and more. Shutterstock

Not all disasters are natural

But talking only of climate change doesn’t capture the full reality threatening Indigenous peoples ways of life.

The destruction of Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto in 2020 caused international outrage for the clear disregard for not only Indigenous culture, but human history.

Likewise, the notorious McArthur River mine in the Northern Territory has been damaging the environment and nearby township of Borroloola, from the leaking of potentially harmful contaminants to waste rock that smouldered for months.

These events, as well as others, continue to be examined through the Juukan Gorge Senate inquiry.

Protesters outside the Rio Tinto office in Perth in June 2020, after two ancient rock shelters were destroyed. AAP Image/Richard Wainwright

Heal Country forces us to see these events not in isolation, but in a chain of disasters that continue to impact and threaten Indigenous peoples. It invites people to see the land and water through our eyes and understand that although we didn’t produce these problems, we suffer from them.

Heal Country seeks reflection, for all Australians to ask themselves what they treasure about being from, and living on, this land.

If, like us, you find peace, pride and enjoyment from our natural values — our beaches, mountains, rivers, wetlands, forests, deserts and more — then perhaps it’s time to get off the bench and become an advocate for change.

Three ways you can help

Indigenous people continue to stand up for and protect their Country. But in a nation where their connections, culture and heritage are seen by governments as being of lesser value than minerals, it is often a lonely struggle.

I asked people to consider the impacts on Country, culture and heritage in my article for The Conversation during the 2019-2020 bushfires. Now, I ask that you consider it against the backdrop of an uncertain future.

Far from being powerless to protect Country, there is much an everyday Australian can do. Here are three examples:

1) Make a submission to the Juukan Gorge inquiry.

The Juukan Gorge inquiry is one of the most important in our recent history. The protection and management of Indigenous peoples’ culture and heritage is being thoroughly examined, with recommendations to better balance the protection of these things against future economic growth.

You can lend your voice — or that of your organisation — to express support and solidarity with Indigenous peoples through a submission.

If events like coral bleaching sadden or madden you, consider how it impacts Indigenous peoples. Shutterstock
2) Donate to charities that support Indigenous land and sea management programs.

These organisations are key to advocating on behalf of Indigenous people and offer guidance, advice and support to Indigenous communities seeking to establish their own programs. Two of note include Firesticks Alliance and Country Needs People.

3) Write an email to your local member.

Ask your local member how they’re supporting local Indigenous land and sea management programs, including ranger groups or cultural burning initiatives. If you live in the city, ask how their party supports Indigenous groups in their caring for Country aspirations.

Heal Country invites all Australians to walk with us, to stand beside us, to support us.

But perhaps most importantly, it invites Australians to love, treasure and fight for this land, as we have done, and will do, forever.

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(CNN) Unprecedented Heat, Hundreds Dead And A Town Destroyed. Climate Change Is Frying The Northern Hemisphere

CNN - Angela Dewan



The tiny town of Lytton has come to hold a grim record. On Tuesday, it experienced Canada's highest-ever temperature, in an unprecedented heat wave that has over a week killed hundreds of people and triggered more than 240 wildfires across British Columbia, most of which are still burning.

Lytton hit 49.6 degrees Celsius (121.3 degrees Fahrenheit), astounding for the town of just 250 people nestled in the mountains, where June maximum temperatures are usually around 25 degrees. This past week, however, its nights have been hotter than its days usually are, in a region where air conditioning is rare and homes are designed to retain heat.

Smoke rises from a fire at Long Loch and Derrickson Lake in Central Okanagan in Canada on June 30.

Now fires have turned much of Lytton to ash and forced its people, as well as hundreds around them, to flee.

Scientists have warned for decades that climate change will make heat waves more frequent and more intense. That is a reality now playing out in Canada, but also in many other parts of the northern hemisphere that are increasingly becoming uninhabitable.

Roads melted this week in America's northwest, and residents in New York City were told not to use high-energy appliances, like washers and dryers — and painfully, even their air conditioners — for the sake of the power grid.

In Russia, Moscow reported its highest-ever June temperature of 34.8 degrees on June 23, and Siberian farmers are scrambling to save their crops from dying in an ongoing heat wave.

Even in the Arctic Circle, temperatures soared into the 30s. The World Meteorological Organization is seeking to verify the highest-ever temperature north of the Arctic Circle since records there began, after a weather station in Siberia's Verkhoyansk recorded a 38-degree day on June 20.

Visitors at Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi, India, on a hot day on June 30 amid a heatwave.
In India, tens of millions of people in the northwest were affected by heat waves.

The Indian Meteorological Department on Wednesday classified the capital, New Delhi, and cities in its surrounds as experiencing "severe extreme heat," with temperatures staying consistently in the 40s, more than 7 degrees higher than usual, it said. The heat, along with a late monsoon, is also making life difficult for farmers in areas like the state of Rajasthan.

And in Iraq, authorities announced a public holiday across several provinces for Thursday, including the capital Baghdad, because it was simply too hot to work or study, after temperatures surpassed 50 degrees and its electricity system collapsed.

Experts who spoke with CNN said it was difficult to pinpoint exactly how linked these weather events are, but it's unlikely a coincidence that heat waves are hitting several parts of the northern hemisphere at the same time.

A man stands by fans spraying mist along a street in Iraq's capital, Baghdad, on June 30.
"The high pressure systems we're seeing in Canada and the United States, all of these systems are driven by something called the jet stream — a band of very strong winds that sits way above our heads, at about 30,000 feet where the planes fly around," Liz Bentley, Chief Executive at the UK's Royal Meteorological Society, told CNN.

Bentley explained the configuration of the jet stream is preventing weather systems from moving efficiently along their normal west-to-east path.

"That jet stream has become wavy, and it's got stuck in what we call an Omega block, because it's got the shape of the Greek letter Omega, and when it gets in that, it doesn't move anywhere, it blocks it," Bentley said.

"So the high pressure that's been building just gets stuck for days or weeks on end, and these Omegas appear in different parts of the northern hemisphere."

In the US, the same thing happened in mid-June in the Southwest, breaking records in Mexico and places like Phoenix in Arizona. A couple weeks later, a dome of high pressure built over the Northwest, toppling records in Washington, Oregon and southwest Canada.

"So we've seen these unprecedented temperatures — records being broken not just by a few degrees, being absolutely smashed," Bentley said.

Scientist says this could happen every year by 2100

 There is a growing acceptance among some political leaders that climate change is a driving force behind fueling many extreme weather events, particularly for heat waves and storms.

"Climate change is driving the dangerous confluence of extreme heat and prolonged drought," US President Joe Biden said Wednesday.

"We're seeing wildfires of greater intensity that move with more speed and last well beyond traditional months, traditional months of the fire season."

Hundreds of deaths reported across Canada and the Pacific Northwest amid unrelenting heat wave
Scientists are working on sophisticated tools that can rapidly assess just how much climate change may have contributed to a particular weather event.

"We carried out a quick attribution study to get some fast answers to 'What is the role of climate change?'" said UK Met Office meteorologist, Nikos Christidis, who has been developing simulations to carry out such analysis.

"We found that without human influence, it would be almost impossible to hit a new record and such a hot June in the region," he said, referring to an area including those affected in Canada and the US.

Christidis said in the past, without human-caused climate change, extreme heat in the Northwest US or Southwest Canada would have occurred "once every tens of thousands of years." Presently, it can occur every 15 years or so, Christidis said.

And if greenhouse gas emissions continue? Christidis said as often as every year or two by the turn of the century.

A couple and their dog lie in the shade Monday in Portland, Oregon. Portland had another record-high temperature on Monday: 116 degrees.

Several countries, including the US, United Kingdom and those in the European Union, recently increased their commitments — some by a long way — but many scientists and activists say they still don't go far enough to keep global average temperatures within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

World leaders pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement to aim for this limit in order to stave off the more most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Climate groups have also urged Canada to increase its commitments and wean itself off oil and gas.

"This is literally the deadliest weather on record for the US Pacific Northwest and far southwest Canada region. The losses and the despair as a result of the extreme heat and devastating fires in Canada are a reminder of what's yet come as this climate crisis intensifies," said Eddy Pérez, Climate Action Network Canada's manager for international climate diplomacy.

"Canada is experiencing historic climate-induced losses and damages while at the same time not doing its fair share to combat dangerous climate change. As an oil and gas producer, Canada is still considering the expansion of fossil fuels which is directly attributed to the global temperature rise."

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