Human Rights 2007 The Year in Review

30 November 2007

The CUB Malthouse, Southbank, Melbourne

'Human Rights and the Environment'

Session 1

Mr Martin Wagner
Managing Attorney, Earthjustice
a Holding Redlich Distinguished Visiting Fellow

‘The right to be cold: Global warming, human rights’

Abstract: The effects of global warming such as rising seas and melting ice are already interfering with the human rights of people in the Arctic and many other parts of the world.  Human responsibility for global warming therefore brings obligations under international human rights.  Mr. Wagner, who represented the Inuit people of the Arctic in the first-ever international human rights petition based on the effects of global warming, will discuss the nexus between global warming and human rights and the international consequences of that connection.

Bio:  Martin Wagner is the director of Earthjustice's International Program, which is based in Oakland, CA. He graduated from Whitman College with a degree in geology and then was a community development volunteer with the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa. He attended the University of Virginia Law School, where he was Executive Editor of the Virginia Journal of International Law and graduated in the top ten percent of his class. Before coming to Earthjustice in 1996, Martin was a law clerk for Judge Robert Beezer of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and spent five years litigating environmental citizen suits in US courts and representing victims of human rights violations in international institutions. His docket at Earthjustice includes using US courts and international institutions to defend the environment from harm arising from unregulated international trade and to promote and protect the human right to a healthy environment. Martin also teaches International Environmental Law and International Trade and the Environment at the Golden Gate University School of Law.

Mr Cam Walker
Campaigns Co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth

‘Climate refugees: The human face of climate change’

Abstract: Mainstream debate about global warming (or climate change) has shifted considerably in the past half decade. Human induced global warming is now both accepted as fact and is a matter of major concern for the Australian public. However, the human rights dimensions of this issue are still on the margins of public debate. As the United Nations Environment Program has noted, it will be the poorest people who will suffer the most from climate change. This raises a range of issues for wealthy nations like Australia. As the world's largest per capita greenhouse gas emitter, it can be argued that Australia has responsibilities to the global poor on three levels: firstly, the need to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to an equitable global level as a matter of urgency; secondly to support affected communities in responding to the changed conditions that will come with climate change (through providing funds for adaptation) and finally, through accepting displaced people as climate refugees. This paper will briefly canvas each of these actions and suggest some of the technical and political issues that will need to be resolved before Australia can recognise climate change refugees as a separate category of displaced people.

Bio: Cam Walker has worked with Friends of the Earth (FoE) Melbourne since 1989. He has been involved in all aspects of running the organisation and campaigned on dozens of issues, from forests to toxics, Indigenous issues, sustainability, and climate change. He has recently finished a book on climate refugees.  During this time he has also represented the organisation at the national level, working with government, industry, unions, Indigenous and community organisations. He spent six years on the Executive Committee of Friends of the Earth International. During this time, he attended many meetings of international conventions and treaties and travelled and worked extensively with NGOs and local communities in Latin America, Europe and, most recently Africa.

Session 2

Ms Rowena Cantley-Smith
Law Faculty, Monash University

'Energy, human rights and the environment: An irreconcilable trinity?’

Abstract: Increased, widespread use and reliance upon fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas has been fundamental to economic development and wealth creation throughout the 20^th Century.  Energy supply and use have clearly contributed to raising living standards in various ways including improved access and standards of food, water, housing, public health and/or education. At the same time, the absence of energy supply has had notable adverse effects on the post WWII affluence and economic growth experienced worldwide. The scarcity of resources brought about by the two oil price shocks of the 1970s exposed the vulnerability of consuming nations and ensured that security of energy supply assumed a status of paramount concern for governments around the world. In the last decade the focus on traditional energy supply security concerns has broadened, shifting towards incorporating a range of geo-political, economic, social, environmental and legal considerations. The development of human rights law and international environmental law, for instance, has resulted in the emergence of a multiplicity of rights and obligations in energy markets which transcend many of the traditional state-centric rubrics which define the historical legal relationship between nations. Relevantly, global environmental concerns such as greenhouse gas emissions and climate change have impacted dramatically upon modern energy policy in many parts of the world.

For the purposes of this presentation and paper, the emerging intersection of international environmental law and human rights law, in particular the human right to a healthy environment, will be reviewed and examined within the broader context of energy markets and security of energy supply.

Bio: Rowena Cantley-Smith was appointed to the Law Faculty, Monash University, in 2003. She is a barrister, an associated with the Institute of Energy and Environmental Law at the University of Leuven, Belgium. She also teaches LLM courses in Environmental and Energy Law each year at the University of Leuven. Ms Cantley-Smith researches and teaches in the areas of Contract Law, Private International Law (Conflict of Laws), Public International Law, International Environmental Law and Australian and International Energy Law, Regulation and Policy. Her current multidisciplinary doctoral research examines the interface between public international law and international economics in traditional energy markets. This research focuses on issues of security of energy supply within the scope of international environmental law, international human rights law, international energy law and international economics. Ms Cantley-Smith has a number of other research projects that focus on legislative, regulatory and policy decision making aspects of Australia's national energy market. The environmental regulation of energy markets, encouraging renewable energies and the rights of consumers in the new energy market regime are of particular interest.

Professor Tony McMichael
National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health, ANU

’The community’s right to a healthy environment: Meaningful? Whose responsibility?’

Abstract: The UN Declaration of Human Rights (post WWII) accorded primacy to the rights of individuals: various freedoms of personal action and belief were specified. What about communities at large – do they have rights? Part of the debate over public health strategy is about tensions between the individual and community (collective) levels: where does responsibility for that attainment of good health lie? Conservative governments argue that individuals should be free to choose whatever foods they like; other parties say that communities should expect their government to manage the social, built and commercial environment in ways that potentiate healthy choices/behaviours. ‘Rights’, whether at individual or community level, may be deemed in-principle to be absolute – non-negotiable. In practice, there are major issues of inequality (of power, opportunity, status) in relation to health-endangering environmental exposures/conditions between subgroups, between populations and between generations. Global climate change – now looming as a major environmental health risk that casts long shadows into the future – brings into focus all these dimensions of scale and of inequality, and their associated implications for the ‘rights’ of various human collectives to a healthy environment. This year’s UN Environment Program report “Global Environmental Outlook, 2007” makes clear that the rights to good health being sought via the UN Millennium Development Goals are now being increasingly jeopardised by the accelerating deterioration of Earth’s larger-scale environmental systems.

Bio: Tony McMichael an NHMRC Australia Fellow, was previously Professor of Environmental Health at Adelaide University (1986-93) and Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1994-2001), has a range of active research interests as an epidemiologist. From 2001-2007 Tony was Director of NCEPH and he has led the development of a program of epidemiological research on the environmental (and genetic) influences on immune disorders, particularly autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Meanwhile he has continued his pioneering research on the health risks of global climate change, developed in conjunction with his leadership of the assessment of health risks for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His work on climate and environmental change, along with longstanding interests in social and cultural influences on patterns of health and disease, also underlie his interests in understanding the determinants of the emergence and spread of infectious diseases in this seemingly 'renaissant' microbial era.

Session 3

Mr Kwame Mfodwo
Law Faculty, Monash University

’Treaty of Waitangi Claims by Iwi and Tangata Whenua - The environmental, economic, cultural and human rights dimension’

Abstract: It is well known that New Zealand's political, environmental and human rights landscape has been progressively transformed by a process of recognition of Maori rights claims since the mid 1980s. These rights, ignored until the 1980s, were guaranteed under the 19th century Treaty of Waitangi - a simple but powerful document - between the English Queen and various Maori tribes. In this talk Kwame Mfodwo provides an analytical account of key developments in the crucial period 1992 to 2002. The speaker, then an academic at the University of Waikato, Hamilton New Zealand was a background participant in the process providing policy advice and training support to a variety of Maori groups as well as Te Puni Kokiri (the Ministry of Maori Development); Maruwhenua (the Maori policy unit of the Ministry for the Environment) and Te Tari Taiwhenua (the Department of Internal Affairs) during this complex and exciting phase in New Zealand's history.  Particular attention is paid to the tension between the original bicultural project for New Zealand (Maori and Pakeha) and the multicultural reality - migration from everywhere around the globe. The emergence of Maori as a key enviromental player and nascent but powerful economic force is also explained.

Bio:   Kwame holds a Masters of International Law degree from the Australian National University (ANU) with a specialisation in fisheries and natural resources law. He also holds an Honours Degree in Law from the University of Ghana. Kwame has taught at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand; the University of Tasmania; the Australian National University; the University of Canberra, the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Ghana. In the 1980s, he assisted the Government of Ghana with the negotiation and renegotiation of major natural resource agreements, including those related to the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) project. In recent years, Kwame has provided training and consultancy advice to a range of government bodies and NGOs including: the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN); the International Cocoa  Initiative (ICI) Geneva; the Pew Charitable Trusts, Philadelphia; the Packard Foundation, California; Social Alert, Brussels; the SeaPower Centre of the Australian Navy; Environment Australia; the National Oceans Office; the South Pacific Forum, Fiji; the Forum Fisheries Agency, Honiara; World Wildlife Fund-US, and World Wildlife Fund-International. He has also undertaken legislative policy development for various New Zealand ministries: the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Ministry for Maori Development and the Department of Internal Affairs. Kwame is widely published in the fields of fisheries law, law of the sea, environmental law and international law.

Professor John Langmore
Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne

‘An environmental and a man-made disaster: The Darfur crisis’

Abstract:  The Sudanese Government’s support for the Janjaweed militias has exacerbated the pre-existing competition for scarce environmental resources in Darfur.

Bio: John Langmore is a Professorial Fellow in the Political Science Department. He has been a Lecturer in Economics and Assistant Director of the National Planning Office in Papua New Guinea; Economic Advisor to the Australian Treasurer; MP for the ACT seat of Fraser in the Australian House of Representatives; Director of the UN Division for Social Policy and Development; and Representative of the International Labour Organisation to the UN. He has published extensively on political, economic, social, strategic and environmental issues relating to Australia, Papua New Guinea and the global context including the United Nations. His book Dealing with America: the UN, the US and Australia was published in 2005 and his most recent book, To Firmer Ground: Restoring Hope in Australia, has just been released and both were published by UNSW Press. He will be teaching Governance of International Institutions again in the first semester of 2008. He is national president of the UN Association of Australia.

'Current Issues'

Session 4

Professor Judy Atkinson
Head of College, Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples, Southern Cross University

‘Cyclone caterpillar: Aboriginal kids, a National Emergency , and the rights of the child’

Abstract: The Town of Everywhere is a small, remote community, which was at the centre of a cyclone last cyclone season.  People from Everywhere talked about the environmental effects of the cyclone as like an army of caterpillars stripping all the leaves off the trees – making bare and raw the landscape, which surrounds Everywhere.  The destruction to the physical environment was clear to see when flying into the community after the cyclone had passed.  People were able to describe how they protected themselves from this natural disaster.  During that year a number of people in the Town of Everywhere committed suicide.  Unlike other towns in Australia, impacted upon by natural disasters and suicide, Everywhere received no counselling support after the events.

Some months after the cyclone passed, a large number of arrests were made of senior men within the community, on child sexual assault charges.  Arrests continue at this very time, including children charged with abusing children.  It is not possible to see the physical damage that this manmade catastrophe has had on the people of Everywhere, let alone the emotional, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual distress. 

While, during the time of the cyclone Australians generally noted the progress and destruction of the cyclone, they did not take much notice.  However the arrests of many men from this small community made national and international headlines, and people from this small Town of Everywhere had no idea that outside of their community, people were talking about them; judging them; without understanding any of the circumstances with which they were living.

And in all this time, the Rights of the Child, in the Town of Everywhere, were not seen to be of relevance, over the generalised and often sensationalised media debate about the so-called ‘national emergency’; the disinterest by the media about the fact that the Australian government voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and a Federal government moving into election mode.  Even within the bureaucratic and legal processes of the arrest of senior men from this community, the Rights of the Child are still not part of the media and intellectual debate of the rights and wrongs in the bureaucratic response to this National Emergency.  This presentation will explore these issues.

Bio: Professor Judy Atkinson introduces herself as coming from the three I’s, Indigenous, Invader and Immigrant.  She identifies as a Jiman / Bundjalung woman who also has Anglo-Celtic, and German heritage.  Judy has a BA from the University of Canberra and a Ph.D. from Queensland University of Technology.  She is presently the Chair of the College of Indigenous Australian Peoples at Southern Cross University.  Her major academic focus, and the extensive work she has conducted within Indigenous communities across Australia, has been in the area of violence and relational trauma, and healing for Indigenous, and indeed all peoples.  She developed the We Al-li / Indigenous Therapies Program designed to address the critical needs of Indigenous communities around violence / trauma / healing needs, and co-authored the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report for the Queensland government. Her book:  Trauma Trails – Recreating Songlines: The transgenerational effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia, provides context to the life stories of people who have moved/been moved from their country in a process that has created trauma trails, and the healing that can occur as people make connections with each other and share their stories of healing.  She developed and teaches in the undergraduate Trauma and Healing degree, and the Masters in Indigenous Studies (wellbeing).  Judy uses the healing power of art (music, painting, writing-story) as re-creation of spirit when she is not working in the academy.

Mr Phil Lynch
Director, Human Rights Law Resource Centre

'Vickie Roach v The Commonwealth: Human Rights and Representative Democracy'
Abstract: In September 2007, in a landmark decision, the High Court held that the system of representative government mandated by the Constitution, when read in conjunction with developments in political theory and comparative and international human rights jurisprudence amounts to a constitutional entrenchment of the right to vote.  This decision returned the right to vote to over 8000 Australian prisoners, of whom around 1/4 are Indigenous.

Bio: The Human Rights Law Resource Centre is Australia's first specialist human rights legal service. The Centre was established in January 2006 to promote and protect human rights in Australia through the practice of law. From 2001 to 2005, Philip was the founding Coordinator of the PILCH Homeless Persons' Legal Clinic which was conferred with the Australian Human Rights Law Award in 2005. Philip has also worked as a commercial lawyer with Allens Arthur Robinson. Philip has practiced and written widely in the areas of human rights, homelessness and corporate social responsibility. He is an Editor of the Alternative Law Journal and a Board member of the Federation of Community Legal Centres.