December 04, 2012

Former Irish President Mary Robinson: Climate Change the Biggest Human Rights Issue of Our Time

Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland and former U.N. high commissioner for human rights in an excellent interview from Doha by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what is happening here at the U.N. climate summit.

MARY ROBINSON: I wish more was happening here that was real for people outside Doha and who need an urgent and ambitious climate agreement. Unfortunately, there is a lot of position taking. It’s almost like a trade negotiation rather than an urgent meeting about staying below 2 degrees Celsius, getting urgent commitments on emissions, on adaptation, on transfer of technologies and on finance. And it’s really very frustrating for those who come hoping that the negotiators will take their responsibility.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a quote of Todd Stern, the U.S. climate negotiator, last year in Durban, when the U.S. opposed the inclusion of the concept of equity in the Durban mandate, saying it would be used to enforce binding emissions targets on developed countries, the biggest polluters. He said, "If equity is in, we are out." What does "equity" mean?

MARY ROBINSON: Well, equity is in the convention, and so is common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capability. So it can’t be out of these climate negotiations. And equity means fairness, basically. It means that we have to take into account the injustice of the fact that it’s the fossil fuel growth in the United States, Europe and other developed parts of the world, which has contributed to undermining development of very poor people, undermining their livelihoods. I’ve seen it all over Africa and South Asia. To me, as a human rights person, it’s unconscionable that we will not take that seriously and talk about equity.

But equity isn’t a zero-sum game. Equity is not negative. It’s actually potentially very positive. It means that we can get a fair agreement that provides access to clean energy for the 1.3 or 1.4 billion who have no electricity in the 21st century and the 2.6 billion who cook on charcoal and animal dung and coal and ingest fumes that kill two million people a year. So, we can actually change the quality of life for both rich and poor countries in a way that doesn’t undermine happiness and good livelihoods."
...

"There was a good decision made here in Doha, and that was on increasing the participation of women, having gender balance in all the bodies of the UNFCCC and in the delegations, and having gender on the agenda. How did we get it? Because every delegation actually wanted this to happen. And the spirit—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain, because we certainly don’t see that right now—

MARY ROBINSON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: —at the summit, and yet, when you look at environmentalists around the world, so many of them, environmental leaders, are women.

MARY ROBINSON: Yeah, and women are very affected by climate, when it undermines poor livelihoods. So, having a good gender balance will make a difference in the future. But I think it was also an indication that where there is a will to achieve decisions, they can happen here. Why is there not a will to have a climate agreement that is fair and equitable, but that deals with the fact that the World Bank is telling us, "Turn down the heat; a 4-degree world is catastrophic"?"

Read transcript of interview here with link to video segment.

http://www.democracynow.org/  December 4, 2012

See also: "What Women Want from Doha"