Climate Refugees (https://www.climate-refugees.org) and The Institute For The Study Of Human Rights At Columbia University Bring Together Experts In Environmental Racism, Indigenous Rights, Climate Science And Racial Justice To Discuss The Two Big Issues Of Our Time: Race And Climate Change.
The climate crisis disproportionately impacts marginalized populations, many of whom may be displaced or forced to migrate, because of years of unequal access to opportunities and gaps in human rights. The COVID-19 pandemic, George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing protests for racial justice – coming on the heels of one another – equally demonstrate the impacts of two very different crises that have disproportionate impacts on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) because of systemic unequal access to opportunities, a link Climate Refugees made in an Op-Ed on race and asylum. Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ report on Climate Change and Poverty, revealed developing countries will bear 75 percent of the financial costs and losses associated with the climate crisis, despite contributing only 10 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, creating a situation in which those in extreme poverty now also live in extreme weather. The report warned of increasing divisions as well, the risk of a ‘climate apartheid’, where the wealthy escape the negative impacts of climate change, leaving impacts to be borne by disproportionate groups ostracized by divisions, including race. In the U.S., people of color are far more likely to live near pollutants, Black communities face higher risks from air pollution, and Black mothers are most affected by pregnancy risks associated with climate change, linking race, even more than poverty, to environmental pollutants, something long stated by environmental justice and indigenous rights activists.
Panelists:
-Professor Philip G. Alston
-Dr. Ingrid Waldron
-Professor Carlton Waterhouse
-Dr. Lucky Tran
Moderated by: Amali Tower, Climate Refugees
For Zoom login information, please register here: http://bit.ly/climatechange_race
Bios:
-Professor Philip Alston is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at NYU, where he co-chairs the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He has a distinguished career in the field of international law and human rights. In human rights he was appointed in 2014 as the UN Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and has visited and reported on Chile, China, Mauritania, Romania, and Saudi Arabia. He was previously UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions from 2004 to 2010 and undertook fact-finding missions to 14 countries. He was a member of the Group of Experts on Darfur appointed in 2007 by the UN Human Rights Council, and was special adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Millennium Development Goals. He chaired the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights for eight years until 1998, and at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights he was elected to chair the first meeting of the Presidents and Chairs of all of the international human rights courts and committees. He was UNICEF's legal adviser throughout the period of the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In 2010-11 he was a member of the Independent International Commission investigating human rights violations in Kyrgzstan. As a UN official, he has worked for several other UN agencies and NGOs, throughout his career, as well as taught international law at several prestigious universities, including Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard School of Law.
-Dr. Ingrid Waldron is a sociologist and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University, Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities & Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project)
