MANILA, Philippines — Climate crisis is not only an environmental or political problem but also a human rights issue that threatens people’s rights to life and livelihood, an environmental organization said Thursday
In a forum coinciding with the Human Rights Day, Greenpeace Southeast Asia Executive Director Yeb Saño pointed out that climate crisis poses danger to the realization of human rights.
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“Climate emergency is not just an environmental conservation dilemma. It’s now the single biggest threat to lives, livelihood, human dignity, security. It is absolutely a human rights issue,” Saño said.
“Climate crisis is not an issue about disaster event alone. It is compromising human existence, the fundamental dignities of people, their lives, livelihood, their health, home and all the basics that people need in order to survive,” Rep. Edgar Chatto (Bohol) also said.
The Philippines is an archipelagic country highly vulnerable to the catastrophic impacts of climate change such as sea level rise, increased frequency of extreme weather events and rising temperatures.
“Climate crisis is indeed generational and Filipino communities are at the forefront of the impacts. The Philippines has been facing impacts of climate emergency not only today but from many decades already,” Saño said.
“We cannot anymore keep on telling ourselves we are resilient and through our resiliency, we can rise up and pick up the pieces every time and stand back on our feet. We need to stop romanticizing our resilience,” he added.
The historic Paris climate accord, signed five years ago, called for blocking global warming at well below 2 degrees Celsius and 1.5 degrees Celsius, if possible.
Earth’s surface has already warmed 1.2 degrees Celsius on average, and new study shows that a return to 2019 levels of carbon pollution would likely push the planet past the 1.5 degrees Celsius milestone around 2030.
Climate emergency
Last month, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution declaring a climate and environmental emergency. The declaration urges local government and government agencies to adopt policies to mitigate the effects of climate change, but does not legally compel them to act.
“The House resolution declaring climate and environmental emergency is not just a mere symbolic gesture but it should be an instrument that aims to ensure coherent actions in the executive and legislative agenda of our government,” Chatto, chair of House committee on climate change, said.
Saño said the climate emergency declaration is the start of “big steps” toward addressing concurrent crises.
“This declaration is a call to initiate an urgent whole-of-government and whole-of-society mobilization to respond to the climate emergency,” Saño said.
Better normal
Bill Bontigao, a Bicol-based youth leader, called on the government to set priorities to tackle the climate crisis and hold big polluters accountable for their contribution to the warming of the planet.
He also called on young people like him to act on the crisis to attain a “better normal.”
“I don’t want my nieces and nephews, including the next generations, experience a future where they can’t enjoy the rain nor the warm feeling of the sun because the world has changed so much… I don’t want them to experience a future where their survival is being challenged rampantly,” Bontigao, a survivor of Super Typhoon Rolly (Goni), said.
“I don’t want them to question me and my generations, telling me, ‘Uncle, what did you do when you had the chance to take action? Did you just do TikTok or Facebook? You and your generations failed to make a better world for us.’” — with report from Agence France-Presse