Climate Change Threatens Human Rights of Millions: UN

[babylonsister]

Climate Change Threatens Human Rights of Millions: UN
by Laura MacInnis

GENEVA - Climate change threatens the human rights of millions of people who are at risk of losing access to housing, food and clean water unless governments intervene early to counter its effects, experts said on Tuesday.


At a conference on climate change and migration, United Nations officials said rising sea levels and intense storms, droughts and floods could force scores of people from their homes and off their lands — some permanently.

“Global warming and extreme weather conditions may have calamitous consequences for the human rights of millions of people,” said Kyung-wha Kang, the U.N. deputy high commissioner for human rights.

“Ultimately climate change may affect the very right to life of various individuals,” she said, pointing to threats of hunger, malnutrition, exposure to disease and lost livelihoods, particularly in poor rural areas dependent on fertile soil.

Kang, a South Korean, said countries had an obligation “to prevent and address some of the direst consequences that climate change may reap on human rights.”

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/20/7176/

[GliderGuider]

1. You need to see this:

I just published a quantitative analysis of African food security over the next 35 years. It takes into account the effects of climate change, Peak Oil, rising transportation and fertilizer costs, HIV/AIDS, rising international food prices, declining international food aid and agricultural investment loans, as well as the current African food supply situation and the decline in continental GDP from dwindling energy supplies. The study is called Africa in 2040. There's also a PDF version you can send around.

It's not just human rights that are at stake in Africa, it's human lives. Hundreds of millions of human lives.

Paul Chefurka