Vusumuzi Sifile

Brian Kagoro

MAPUTO, Mozambique: Sept 01 (IPS) – Climate change is no longer just about changing temperatures and rainfall patterns: it is also about human rights.

Until now, climate change has been discussed within the domains of mining; agriculture; the environment; and industry – among others. But the effects climate change has had on people’s human rights have been ignored.

”Climate change is not purely an environmental issue; it is also not purely an agricultural policy issue. It is a much larger issue – it is a human rights issue,” said Brian Kagoro, the Pan African policy manager for Action Aid.

”(This is) partly because there are various human rights that are violated when we deal with climate change. (Among these are) the right to development and the right to a clean and healthy ecology.”

He was speaking during a panel discussion on climate change at the Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) annual conference. Kagoro said people in poor countries were now bearing the brunt of unfair practices by developed nations.

He said it went far beyond effects on the climate to the effects on people. This includes increasing numbers of people getting ill and of governments being unable to provide social services for their people.

”We must view it is a problem of politics, of economics, of development and of morality,” said Kagoro. ”The self evident consequences of this rapid climate variability have been enumerated by our colleagues in the developed world and some emerging economies through their over consumption.”

With the upcoming United Nations conference on climate change taking place in Copenhagen this December, Kagoro said one of the issues should be about the world taking responsibility for climate change.

”It should not be a matter of assisting Africa and the developing worlds (to) adjust to climate change, it should be about the whole world taking responsibility and being accountable. We should not go to Copenhagen as beggars, but as those who were unjustly wronged and continue to be unjustly victimised.”

Kagoro said instead of blaming each other, countries work with affected nations to solve the problem.

”If you look at climate change within the (human) rights context, essentially over consumption in the north and in some emerging economies has resulted in the sort of dastardly consequences that we witness in Africa. The question of responsibility, accountability and liability must re-enter our language.”

But one big challenge remains. The continued lack of political will to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.