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Friday, 10 October 2008

Giant penguins, sweet potato fudge - but no place for human rights

By Farah Mihlar

It's not nice to have to admit you're wrong, as I was to be apprehensive about my role at the IUCN forum in Barcelona. I should really have been tearing my hair out in panic. This was where hardcore scientists meet polar-bear-saving campaigners, and no place for a human rights activist!

I was also wrong in my expectation that it may be chaotic – it was manic. There were at least six parallel events taking place on separate themes in different rooms every two hours or so – all amidst exhibitions, films, book launches, NGOs lobbying government representatives to take up their issues and candidates canvassing support for positions within the IUCN structures.

My work was mostly limited to communities and climate change and after spending three days there I came out with the feeling that the focus was still very much on the science and animals and less on the human beings. On Thursday as I was entering the forum there was a flurry of cameras outside the venue filming women dressed in penguin outfits carrying placards protesting the threat to penguins of global warming. A few hours later indigenous leaders from every continent sat in a near empty press room to announce a global summit, to be held next year in Alaska, on the impact of climate change on their communities.

Nothing, however, deterred indigenous representatives who were strong, forceful and focused. There were two messages that came out. Firstly, as the show of hands campaign I work on calls for, to be able to input into international level climate change negotiations. Secondly, recognition of the immense contribution century old indigenous traditional knowledge, used within the communities to predict weather patterns and conserve species, can make to the modern science of climate change. Community leaders gave varying examples of how their elders have been noticing and predicting signs and trends of climate change much before scientists came out with their findings.

Kimo, a young activist from Hawaii told me how unfair it is that Pacific Islanders who have contributed the least to climate change will pay the biggest price as some islands are under threat of sinking. As a youth he wants a future in his homeland, he said. Indigenous leaders from the Amazon presented maps across South American countries to show that areas where forests had been conserved were those inhabited by them. It is no coincidence, they said.

These will be some of the arguments indigenous leaders will present as they lobby governments in Poznan, Poland, in December at the penultimate round of negotiations before a climate change deal is agreed on.

As I left Barcelona I realized there were other things I was wrong about. There was no sun in Barcelona - just a horrible drizzle. I did manage to enjoy my tapas but it was not the tastiest food I had there. That award goes to a sweet potato fudge generously served to me by a nice young lady from my home country Sri Lanka. She received an award for pioneering a project amongst village farmers to rediscover native potato species (we apparently have dozens of them).

Sri Lankan sweet potato fudge in Barcelona: as odd as a human rights activist in an conservation forum, but just as good to have around.

Farah Mihlar is MRG’s campaigns and media officer and is working on the Show of Hands campaign

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Comments

Farah is right. The rich spend more money per pet than on human beings especially in the USA

And yet, here we face a catastrophe that is entirely anthropogenic, that has been exacerbated by our bottomless pit of hunger for new gadgets and gizmos and the insatiable greed for greater wealth by corporations, and we are worried about what happens to other humans. It is a travesty of our alleged "civilisation" that we don't give a damn for those indigenous and "underdeveloped" people who will suffer the consequence of our global folly, just as it exposes our inhumanity that so many animal and plant species will die off as a direct result of our lifestyle choices.
The criminals who have promoted this devastation in their pursuit of profits (and Hansen has my complete support in calling these crimes against humanity and nature) should be tried, be stripped of their assets and their profits which will then be ploughed back into mitigation and adaptation efforts. The world needs to be brought back under the control of logic and common sense - did we really believe that we could get away with this for so long without consequence?

How shameful we are ... and how undeserving of this once rich and beautiful world.

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