(17.06.2009) Under the motto of “Climate Change and Human Rights – Church Positions”, a panel discussion was held yesterday within the framework of the 11th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. During the meeting in the Palais des Nations, the participants emphasized that the special role of the Christian churches was to reveal climate change not only as a common problem of all people, but also as one where the responsibilities are differently distributed.
Dr. Jochen Motte, member of the Management Team of UEM and head of the UEM department “Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation” explains: “Climate change is an issue of justice. This means to choose the option for the poor, to stand up for the victims of the climate change and to help them enforce their rights.”
The participants agreed that it was important to provide for compensation by means of politics based on human rights, to legitimize the claim as a right and to provide appropriate funds. Introducing this approach into the current climate negotiations of the contracting states was said to be difficult enough, especially since even alternative draft treaties prepared by environmental organizations had ignored this issue so far.
However, the matter at issue is not only a better and fairer management. “We cannot proceed as if all was just about the better handling of the problem with a stronger focus on the victims’ point of view, which would be important enough”, stated Dr. Theodor Rathgeber from the Forum Menschenrechte. “We cannot afford any longer an improved ‘business as usual’. It is not the management, but the change of our previous notions of development and life concepts that is required”, Rathgeber summarized.
Meanwhile, some islands in the Pacific region are really faced with the question of relocation and thus the pending loss of cultural identity or even nationality. It is not only the existence of the inhabitants of Pacific atolls that is threatened, but also for instance that of coffee farmers in Uganda who do not have any alternatives to their cultivation and also cannot move to other areas. The coffee plants need a specific climate in a specific altitude. If the global warming increases, the farmers would have to plant the coffee in higher regions which actually do not exist in Uganda.
