Sisters on the Planet: Joint Campaign launch by Oxfam and the "Make Poverty History" Coalition
28 February 2009
Brisbane City Councillors,
Queensland State Chairman of the Oxfam Australia Committee, Ms Jessie Wells,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I acknowledge, with respect, the traditional custodians of the land on which we are gathered, the Jagera and Turrbal peoples and their descendants - and welcome the presence here today of representatives of the Brisbane Council of Elders (Aunty Margaret Stanley and Aunty Melita Orcher).
Thank you for the invitation to join you, on this sparkling morning in Brisbane, on the last day of summer, for this important State launch of the campaign "Sisters on the Planet", being promoted globally by Oxfam in conjunction with its larger campaign to ‘Make Poverty History'.
As you will appreciate, as Governor, I receive many invitations to support a highly diverse range of organisations and activities and it is simply not possible to accept them all. Difficult choices have always to be made. All the causes are worthy. In this case, however, the invitation was particularly persuasive because it engages three issues which are dear to my heart and with which I have had extensive professional involvement throughout my working life: the fight against poverty, support for women and climate change. In my 40-year career as a diplomat, I lived and worked in developing countries and saw first-hand - in numerous postings, for example to Mexico and India, Algeria and Mauritania - and in extensive travels through Africa, Asia, Central and Latin America - the terrible reality of poverty. As Australia's Ambassador to the UN in both Geneva and New York, I was involved closely with efforts to defend and promote human rights, particularly the rights of women and the most vulnerable in our society and as Australia's Ambassador for the Environment, climate change was a subject with which I dealt extensively and intensively for many years, leading Australia's delegations to the international negotiations to conclude the first international treaty on climate change - the UNFCC - the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - which spawned the Kyoto Protocol - probably better known publicly than its parent Convention - although the Convention, as its name indicates, remains the fundamental framework for international action on climate change - just as the Millennium Development Goals and Millennium Call to Action against Poverty set the framework for the "Make Poverty History" movement which, in turn, provided the stimulus for this imaginative ‘Sisters on the Planet' campaign.
I say imaginative, because although none of these issues are new - we have been struggling with these challenges of development, poverty, of helping the most vulnerable in society, of protecting the environment, for decades - yet there remains a critical need to raise awareness of all these issues, to promote public debate on them, to galvanise individuals and communities to take action to bring about change.
Change is the key word - how do we persuade people to broaden their outlook and perspectives, change their attitudes and practices?
Often - sadly - it is not until a disaster occurs or something impacts directly on our lives that we feel compelled to take action, that a sense of urgency takes hold.
As we in Australia witness and experience the reality of the increasing incidence of extreme meteorological events that is one of the key indicators of climate change, see and feel first-hand the devastating impacts and consequences of fires, floods and drought - all vividly present in our lives today - then awareness must grow, as should sympathy for others elsewhere similarly exposed and suffering.
So the time is right for this campaign - and I commend all involved for finding a way to draw people's attention to the linkages between the big issues of our times and especially to the link between climate change and poverty.
Its elevation as a major issue has been long overdue. It is salutary to recall the statement made by the International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in 1988, which issued this prescient warning:
"Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war. The earth's atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from human activities, inefficient and wasteful fossil fuel use, and the effects of rapid population growth in many regions. These changes represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe".
Twenty years on, these views have lost none of their veracity and have assumed even greater urgency. It is no exaggeration to say that we are at a defining moment of our habitation of this planet. We are now dealing with the collision of two tectonic issue plates. One is the global population explosion and its growing strain on global resources. The other is the climatic effects of the processing of the resources demanded by the globe's burgeoning population. This is a confrontation, a challenge of a dimension which we, the wardens of the earth, have never faced before.
In Australia - and here in Queensland - that challenge is clear for all to see. We are in the midst of a debate on carbon trading, how the carbon rich Australian economy will fare under such a regime, and just how much we can afford to reduce our C02 emissions. Our communities are absorbed in discussion about renewable energies, green solutions, about sustainability, the impacts of climate change on our coasts, on our precious natural heritage, like the Great Barrier Reef, on our farms and waterways, on our health - as changes in climate leads to the movement of pests and diseases.
In this debate - understandably focussed on our own circumstances, there remains, I suggest, a need to keep the bigger, global picture also in people's minds, consciousness and conscience: the Sisters on the Planet initiative will help address this need - raising awareness of the wider, global implications of climate change. The well-known phrase is to exhort people to "think locally and act globally": my own view is that in the changing circumstances in which we now find ourselves - we have to do more. We must think and act locally, as well as think and act globally. The two are now inextricably linked.
And even though Australia is confronting serious economic challenges, we need to remind ourselves that in relative terms, we are a prosperous country and consider the moral dimension that this entails. It is appropriate, I believe, that we be reminded that in this globalised world many of those countries whose populations appear under the greatest threat from climate change are those which can least afford the cost of mitigation or of adaptation. Some - like the specially vulnerable small island states - also happen to be among the developing countries which have contributed least to the acceleration of climate change.
Since the industrial revolution some two thirds of the increase in C02 in our atmosphere has been produced by the developed word. The emission comparisons between the developed and developing worlds are stark. Bangladesh, which has 2.3% of the world's population, produces less than 0.1% of the global total of C02. The United States produces around 20 times more C02 per capita than India. Our own per capita emissions are high - although our overall contribution to global emissions relatively small. I make this point because having been a negotiator of international agreements, I am very wary of comparisons which present only an aspect of the picture; of figures which can be over-simplified, misrepresented and misunderstood, as countries battle to present their particular national perspectives and to protect or secure their specific interests.
No-one's interests are served by this point scoring, or by countries clinging determinedly to their national positions. Real co-operation - the sort that is required to address these global problems which are beyond the capacity of any one country to solve acting on their own - requires everyone to compromise, everyone to contribute. All countries have a responsibility to address this problem - both developed and developing, including most notably in the latter category, the big emerging economies of China, Brazil and India. However, as recognised in the language of the UNFCC, to which I referred earlier, the international community has previously acknowledged that countries have ‘common but differentiated responsibilities', a phrase which many people translate as meaning the developed world must assume leadership and has the principal responsibility for dealing with the effects of climate change in the developing world.
What these effects are, and are likely to be, make uncomfortable reading. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - the IPCC - estimates climate change will be responsible for a 40-170 million increase in the numbers of undernourished people worldwide. - and among these millions, in many areas, it is on the women that the burden of climate change impacts will fall the most heavily; compounding the difficulties they already face dealing with poverty. We will shortly see some aspects of this in the film: addressing, among others, the issues of displacement to populations caused by rising sea levels and flooding.
This is an issue especially close to Australia, literally and figuratively, with our Pacific Island neighbours some of the most at risk from rising sea levels. In some cases, in the lowest-lying islands, such as Tuvalu, there are concerns about actual inundation and populations being displaced; in others, about island water tables being affected by salinity - perhaps producing the same result, long-term. Should populations be displaced, Australia and New Zealand would be the first and logical point to deal with the problem of ‘environmental refugees'.
In countries like Bangladesh - also featured in the film - there has already been displacement of millions of women and their families through cyclonically driven floods. The evidence that the increased frequency of such cyclones - and the other ‘extreme meteorological events' to which I referred earlier - is linked to global warming is strong and growing.
Another very obvious linkage affecting everyone, but especially women in developing countries, is that between climate change and water supply. Women are usually the carriers of water, so shortages place even heavier burdens on them as they strive to provide basic necessities for their families.
Climate change is causing both increasing and decreasing rainfall. But where it is increasing it is coming in shorter and more violent episodes giving less opportunity for storage and effective use. Ominously, climate models predict high rainfall in the higher latitudes and less in the tropics where so many of the world's developing countries are located.
The seasonal availability of water supply is also changing. More than one sixth of the world's population live in river basins fed by glaciers or snow melt. Glaciers are in effect massive frozen dams of water which release water in the hotter, dryer months. But glacial recession is beginning to alter that well regulated flow. Both China and India stand to be seriously affected by these changes.
The combination of these effects mean that by the 2050's, freshwater availability in Central, South and East and Southeast Asia is projected to decrease. Combined with the effects of drought and desertification, we are now talking about ‘peak water' which globally holds far greater threat to our livelihood than "peak oil'. In Africa alone between 75 and 250 million are likely to be exposed to additional water stress by 2020.
The issue of water supply feeds into the linked - and ultimately the most important of all issues for the developing world - that of food supply. The changes and lessening of water supply are projected to have an uneven effect. But it is some of the world's poorest countries and regions which will suffer most. Some estimates put the fall in yields as a result of climate change in Africa at between 17 and 28%; in Latin America of between 13 and 24 % and in India between 30 and 40%. The IPCC has predicted that in Australia - one of the world's largest grain exporters - crop yields will decline throughout much of the country by 2030.
Falls in yield will of course lead to higher food prices. We have already witnessed last year a sharp, precipitous rise in food commodity prices. Some of those rises were attributed to the indirect effects of an increase in the cultivation of crops for the manufacture of bio-fuels. That reminds us that global resource constraints are already a factor in how we handle climate change.
How we meet these challenges will be the centre of the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference in December this year. And it will be clear from all that I have said, that one of the key issues in these highly charged, highly political and complex negotiations - as it has been from the beginning - will remain the question of equity, responsibility and burden sharing between the developed world and the developing world.
In this political process we should not underestimate the role of public opinion. Climate change is no ordinary issue. The science is complex and couched in terms of probabilities not certainties. Although its impacts are increasingly evident, nevertheless many of the major predicted effects are over the horizon, and far beyond governments' short-term election cycles. It is not surprising, in these circumstances, that bringing about far-reaching change is difficult and that there is much disagreement about the policies and strategies to follow.
What is surprising is that in some quarters, there is still a lingering tendency - (perhaps it is wishful thinking? A little akin to saying ‘stop the world, I want to get off!) - to challenge the science. The fact is, however, that even with continued uncertainty in some areas - and thus the need for ongoing scientific effort - climate change seems at this point to be the world's most thoroughly researched phenomenon, involving 2000 of the world's foremost scientists - and on this basis, one might reasonably suggest that the debate over the relationship between C02 and rising temperatures has been put to rest and that we should get on with the business of the global response.
Certainly, many Australians would appear to want this to happen. Since at least the year 2000, public opinion polls in Australia have been showing strong community concern over climate change and this pressure of public opinion has made climate change an important issue in both State and Federal elections since that time. This will continue, but we need continued effort to ensure we have well-informed, realistic and rational discussions in the community on the subject - and, as one element of this, ongoing advocacy to ensure also that the issues are put in a global perspective. This is the essential meaning surely, of the phrase "See the Bigger Picture and act on Climate Change" that you have adopted as your credo - as the goal of this "Sisters of the Planet" campaign.
It is a thoroughly admirable goal - one which I hope will inspire many supporters - but it will also be a daunting task. There are many claims on our compassion at this time. And apart from the many causes and problems vying for the attention of individuals and governments, there is the additional complication of the global financial crisis and economic downturn. Inevitably, this will have a negative impact, reducing the capacity of many governments to find the necessary resources to meet the climate change challenge. Some commentators have expressed a fear it will dilute the will and the resolve of decision-makers to act. That fear is understandable, but as far as governments the world over are concerned, my own sense, from my position as an obviously detached but informed observer, as someone no longer involved with the negotiations, yet with a keen awareness of the intricacies of those negotiations, is that we will have to wait to see how these matters play out over coming weeks and months in the lead up to the Copenhagen meeting. I do believe that the international will to address the issues is broadly more evident, but am concerned about the capacity to act. And just as I am concerned about the capacity of governments to act, so, too, am I concerned about how we can preserve compassion and generosity of spirit in our communities in these difficult times, to ensure that those peoples in developing countries, those women in your film, remain on our radar, in our hearts and minds and among our priorities. The ‘Sisters of the Planet' initiative, being launched here today in Brisbane provides one answer to my question. It shows unambiguously and reassuringly that there are people in our community who care about the bigger picture, who understand the importance of bringing it the attention of others and who are determined to act to do so. I congratulate and thank Oxfam and everyone involved with this significant campaign and with the production of this imaginative film. I wish you every success with its promotion and hope that it will inspire all who see it to support your efforts to encourage urgent and decisive action to address the many challenges that climate change presents for our planet and its peoples.