What’s Climate Justice Got To Do With It?
08/05/2010
Lauren Gifford of Dartmouth's Climate Justice Research Project on why the global health community should care
Climate change is an urgent concern to public health.
Severe weather patterns, rising sea level, and increasing energy costs are all contributors to global health emergencies, and further the divide between rich and poor.
Climate justice, a movement that seeks equality and social justice within the impacts of climate change and its mitigation, is closely tied to the need for accessible and quality public health.
What does this all mean?
When international policy makers meet in places like Rio de Janeiro, Copenhagen and Cancun to debate semantics of climate change policy, residents of vulnerable communities are pleading with them to consider their immediate needs.
Jerome Esebei Temengil, a United Nations delegate from the South Pacific island of Palau, told the BBC last December that wealthier nations need to understand the plight of small island states. "We're dying here," he said. "Were drowning." Indeed, low-lying islands, and nations like Banglidesh, are facing the urgent need to limit sea level rise and, in some cases, ground water salination.
Coastal erosion and damaging storms, brought on by a rising in the earth's temperature, are spurring the transition and relocation of vulnerable communities. As their homeland sinks, residents of Carteret Island are moving to neighboring islands; they are some of the first climate refugees. (Their story is told in the recent documentary Sun Come Up)
In other regions, drought brings on famine and conflict. Earlier this summer India faced an extended heat wave, which triggered fuel shortages and rumors of water user fees for agriculture and other sectors. Around the same time, drought in China caused severe water shortages, agricultural degradation, and dust storms over Southeast Asia.
But the injustices of climate change aren't just felt in developing regions.
Wealthier areas like North America and Europe will soon face an increase in energy costs, a result of carbon mitigation strategies like carbon trading or a carbon tax. This higher price of gas and electricity translates to higher transportation costs, home heating, etc., which forces lower income people to choose between food, housing and health care.
In more subtle ways, climate change is influencing human health. For example, asthma and other repertory illnesses can be exacerbated by increased pollen and mold exposure due to variation in weather, according to research from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
The people who feel the impacts of each of these situations first, and most severely, are the ones with the fewest resources and the least power - the poor, the marginalized and, very often, communities of color.
Speaking at a recent Washington, D.C. panel on "Climate Change, Human Health and the Well-Being of Vulnerable Communities," NIEHS program analyst Kimberly Thigpen Tart said, "As with almost every other environmental health hazard we face, such changes will likely affect communities with less public health resilience far more than they will the general population, and the consequences will be far direr."
For vulnerable communities, climate change is yet another hurdle in the struggle for equal rights.
Lauren Gifford is with the Climate Justice Research Project at Dartmouth. Image by Piotr Fajfer/Oxfam International.
today i met a man whose has spearheaded a campaign to get electricity to the many hundreds of schools in south africa.definitely a bold task considering many of these pupils do not have electricity at their homes either.however,with this project ,a disturbing thing was mentioned.most of these schools have no running water,sanitation or proper toilets.a pit system is used and when these give problems ,then the only alternative is relieving oneself in the nearby bushes.Pupils(girls and boys 6 years and above)as well as the teachers male and female have to endure this type of embarassment,which goes along with constant fear of attack.
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— haroun timol on 2010-08-14