WUNRN
CLIMATE CHANGE AS A HUMAN
RIGHTS ISSUE - WOMEN - MARY ROBINSON
14 January 2012
Twenty years after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, the promise of sustainable development will be revisited again
at the 2012 Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development next
June.
Joining
heads of state and other stakeholders at the conference aimed at securing a
renewed political commitment for sustainable development will be Mary Robinson, former president of
Robinson was in Washington D.C last week to discuss
issues of climate change, population and sustainability at a forum hosted by
the Aspen Institute. She took some time to talk to AllAfrica's Bunmi Oloruntoba
about climate change, how it affects the lives of the world's most vulnerable
people - especially women, in countries all over Africa - and steps being taken
to make climate change a human rights issue.
How does climate change affect African
women specifically?
I came to the climate change issue not as a scientist or
an environmentalist but as a human rights person, so I really came to it from
the impact it was having on women's lives. I was in
I had been working in the small organization 'Realizing
Rights' and was traveling to different African countries on issues of public
health, women, peace and security. I kept hearing, how [people's] lives are so
much worse now because of the change in seasons, the dramatic flooding, the
long periods of drought.
It was my realization that this was a human rights issue,
because these were communities that were not climate resilient. They didn't
have insurance and they were already poor, so they had been undermined in their
poverty by the impact of global warming, which is the result of the greenhouse
gas emissions from the rich lifestyles elsewhere in the world.
How would you push the developed world to
think about this as a human rights issue and to be accountable?
Staying with a focus on women, we're creating a platform
of woman leaders who are at the table. They were at the table at COP17 [the
climate conference in Durban late last year], and they will be at the table in
Rio, and they're committing to listening to the reality that will come forward,
and to change their priorities in decision making in light of what they are
hearing.
That's
why I will be at the GIMAC (Gender is My Agenda
Campaign)
meeting with my colleagues [next week in
We will be talking to the GIMAC networks that are focused
on women, peace and security, to keep that focus but also to build knowledge to
become more climate-resilient. They must have their voices heard on the climate
agenda - so that there will be more money for adaptation; so that there will be
a perspective that this is real and is affecting the poorest and most
vulnerable that we are supposed to be committed to protecting.
Leading up to RIO+ 20, we want the focus to be not only
on large-scale renewable energy in emerging economies like
Do you think you will get more traction if you tie climate change to security?
It
is actually a security issue. The UN Security Council has addressed climate
change twice. Last year they had a presidential statement - not a very strong
one - so it is beginning to realize the security implications, including the
implications of huge migrations of people.
That
will become increasingly more important, because it will address funding issues
and the concern of defense forces - in the
What about ICT, women and rural issues: how do you
connect those dots, because you are talking about empowering women off the
grid?
I
don't see that as being a problem. I think we will be talking about approaches
that use social safety net systems - and develop ways, through means such as
micro-credit, to have people be able to pay for solar energy in the same way
that they pay for the tiny bit of kerosene. We can reach the day that the cost
of a sudden illness in the family or paying school fees doesn't mean you can't
buy kerosene so you stay in the dark.
Solar
lighting is much, much cheaper than kerosene - I am hearing schemes that say
this is possible. I am not an expert on the energy side, but I am listening to
what is possible and I am saying this would dramatically change the lives of
poor families and in particular women. They wouldn't have to go long distances
for firewood, but children would have light in the home to learn, and they
themselves would have time freed up for their own productive purposes.
Can you address the changing definition of
'sustainability' you have mentioned?
We
must keep three threads: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability
and social sustainability, which are issues also of reproductive health and
family planning. All three have to be part of the