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Intersection 1: Rights and Responsibilities Amid Climate Change and Environmental Degradation
Health and Human Rights
Health and Human Rights
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n404-1510-2-PB.pdf
Adobe PDF, 144.82 KB
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"The first decade of the 21st century has seen devastating cyclones, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and extreme temperatures. These natural phenomena continue to influence the lives of people around the world, not only through their immediate consequences for population morbidity and mortality, but even more so through displacement, disenfranchisement, and deprivation. The people who suffer most are often those who were most vulnerable to begin with, living in regions of the world with perilous human insecurity.1 At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that the time for equivocation is over. “The science is clear; climate change is happening, the impact is real. The time to act is now,” he said.2 And yet, we have also seen questions raised about the reality of climate change, allowing reluctant states to renege on their commitment to intervene. The overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is that these doubts are unfounded. What is beyond dispute is that environmental change and degradation have a profound and adverse impact on human health. Temperature drifts change the demographic milieu of organisms with which human societies share their habitats, introducing new vector-borne illnesses into unimmunized populations.3 The loss of biodiversity also destroys natural repositories of medicinal substances, limiting the frontiers of discovery in science and medicine. We are rapidly losing many diverse biomes such as rainforests, wetlands, and grasslands, which have intrinsic stabilization capacities and serve as buffers against climate change and environmental insults."(pg 1)
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2011-07
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Creative Commons Copyright (CC 2.5)