Why are the Earthly Scientists so fearful of Climate change?
Because of biodiversity loss, the changing face of a mere planet we have, degrading living standards or simply the loss of human lives and inevitable chaos on this beautiful planet.
What do they project for our destined future?
Several reports, the most prominent and boisterous being the latest Assessment Report or AR6 that talks of uncontrolled Nature’s fury and no significant backdown by humans, in the equidistant run.
Difficult to handle weather, land eating water levels, unyielding but demanding soils, all but early signs of this planet walking towards its own apocalypse.
Human rights have found to be in deep correlation with the Climate Change.
We have been told we are born free, to live, to breathe air fed into our lungs, to drink cleanest and healthiest of waters, to survive and die a humanly death.
But this will all become a privilege when the climate crisis strikes. We are only beginning to witness its precedents.
Our fight for the limited resources on an ailing planet will only increase and in dearth of proper access, we will fall deeper into our vulnerabilities.
We shall remind ourselves then, how people struggling with their lives in challenging countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen etc., are devoid of their basic rights, not because of wars or death game or politics.
It is entirely based on power, the inequality that comes with it and the accumulation of resources in fewer hands.
One can understand Taliban’s game in this field. How does it exploit the best of country’s resources to assert its own meaning of ‘Sacrifice and love for the land’.
If we are to believe United Nations and BBC investigations, Taliban seem to have made an annual income of around $400 million (£290m) since 2011, only to have increased it $1.5 billion a year by 2018.
Apart from discrete financing by foreign groups, most of their money comes from the forceful opium cultivation, that is further harnessed to produce Heroin.
For Afghanistan, opium has become a bigger business estimated to yield annual export value of $1.5-$3bn.
Additionally, 10% cultivation tax is also extracted from Afghan opium farmers, based on the reports by Afghan Officials.
They began imposing taxes on traders for numerous goods- be it fuel or construction material, anything that crosses the territories under their control.
The Taliban controls electric lines and infrastructure, regressively snatching $2m a year from its users, mines and minerals, the best being Lapis Lazuli since the civilizations knew of its kind and what not.
This resource-based competition will only increase with Climate change and this biased fight will not be won by the best of DNAs, as claimed by the Darwin, it will be made to win by those who will have power.
This concept is totally against the concept of equality and therefore, realization of equal human rights. And hence lies the 2021’s Human Right’s Day theme: ‘Equality’
Climate change and Human rights:
Under the Resolution 7/23 adopted by United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), it has been recognized that “Climate change poses an immediate and far-reaching threat to people and communities around the world and has implications for the full enjoyment of human rights.”
The changing Earth impinges on the ability of humans to enjoy a safe, serene, healthy and sustainable environment. The Indian Constitution, one of the best in line, talks highly of this privilege and ensures every meaning of it through its Judiciary.
It will directly endanger the right to life by accentuating hunger and malnutrition across the world, increasing physical as well as mental disorders, climate related morbidities and mortalities apart from the proposed pandemics and calamities.
If a country does not get potable water, its humans are already without their rights. Similarly, if a country or a part of it, breathes in unclean air, its own rights have been violated already.
Human rights cannot be attained without addressing climate change effects and vice-versa.
And hence The Paris Agreement made it clear:
“Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity.”
If humans have been claimed responsible for the advent of Climate change at such a pace that it becomes difficult to adapt, and it’s the Humans who remain at the receiving end of its impacts, the tactics of Climate Science and Climate action has to revolve around these very beings of Nature.
Human Rights Day 2021: Reminiscent of the Past
The last two years have undoubtedly made every life feel the anguish and helplessness, while we witnessed our perfectly planned Healthcare systems falling, lives perishing in gravest of ways.
“Within countries, illness and death from Covid-19 has been higher among people and communities that contend with poverty, unfavorable living and working conditions, discrimination and social exclusion“, explained the UN Secretary General.
Through difficult times, we could see clearly how climate change and human rights violation share the same battlefield, on the same side.
Working on one may help in curbing the other. Equality, inclusive and sustainable development helps in preservation of Human rights while also serving the planet.
While we remind ourselves how climate change began to vanish the most stable of civilizations in history, we can think of this day to also make us believe that Humans can survive by understanding once and for all that “Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”