Climate Change Ethical Considerations
Climate change presents the human race with profound choices that go beyond the current debate over new technologies, economic and social costs and even concerns over environmental impacts. Increasingly, it is being seen as a matter of ethics and human rights. Different nations have different responsibilities to meet the challenges of climate change and respond to the threats faced by vulnerable regions, countries and peoples whose very existence is threatened. Under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries that have contributed the most greenhouse gas emissions have a responsibility to dramatically cut emissions and to assist the most vulnerable peoples and regions to adapt. At its root, then, climate change is a moral and ethical issue:
”Unless people see that climate change creates ethics and justice concerns, they will not likely be motivated to do what is needed to protect those most vulnerable to climate change who include many of the world’s poorest people and future generations. If citizens look only to what is needed to protect themselves from harm, they are not likely to commit to the huge greenhouse gas reductions needed to protect those who will be the most severely harmed by climate change.” -
ClimateEthics.org (2007)
Many Strong Voices -- its research, adaptation, communications and outreach, and networking efforts -- rests on this demand for equity. MSV supports people in two regions of the world highly vulnerable to climate change and facilitates international dialogue, cooperation and action. The Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed to the “increasing vulnerability of indigenous communities in the Arctic and small island communities….”
[1] These regions produce an infinitesimal amount of the world’s greenhouse gases, yet they are feeling the disproportionate effects of climate change.
In November 2007, countries belonging to the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) signed the
Male' Declaration on the Human Dimensions of Climate Change. The declaration calls on the UNFCCC to assess the human rights implications of climate change and asks the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “to conduct a detailed study into the effects of climate change on the full enjoyment of human rights”.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 along with Al Gore, defends what she calls the Inuit “right to be cold.” In late 2005, Watt-Cloutier and 62 other Inuit from across the Arctic petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, arguing that the United States, as the world’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases, is damaging their environment and way of life and thus infringing on their human rights. The petition argues that “protecting human rights is the most fundamental responsibility of civilized nations.”
[2]
The Arctic and SIDS are barometers of global environmental change and are considered critical testing grounds for the ideas and programmes that will strengthen the adaptive capacities of human societies confronting climate change. Lessons learned through the Many Strong Voices Programme will support policy development at local, regional and international levels, and will provide decision-makers in the two regions with the knowledge to safeguard and strengthen vulnerable social, economic and natural systems.
In this respect, the Arctic and SIDS are also
moral barometers. How the world acts when the barometer is read will say much about the future we envision. MSV partners are working to help shape that future.