 Do you want it on now or later? Are you going to stay to be able to put it on? I can come back whenever you want. Good evening, I'm delighted to introduce Suzy Alegré, who is a human rights barrister and has worked as a human rights lawyer for more than 20 years in various, I guess as a lawyer in practice and for various NGOs including Amnesty, NGOs and international organisations, EU Council of Europe, the UN and I guess mostly related to tonight's talk she has also set up an organisation called Island Rights Initiative and I apologize on the flyer in case any of you saw the flyer the UCL link should not have been there it should have been Island Rights Initiative which is, as far as I understand, an initiative that's relatively new, that's still upcoming which wants to deal with the specific problems that small island states or nations have and one of the issues is particularly climate change which is what we're going to discuss today. Thank you very much for coming. Thanks very much. Thank you and thanks very much for the invitation to talk today. So just to give a bit of background as well about the Island Rights Initiative it is very much, as being said, a start-up so it's something that I started up about a year and a half ago having spent 20 or so years working in the International Human Rights Law but being from a small island in the middle of the IRAC the Isle of Man, I decided and realised doing some work at home that there was a gap and particular issues that small islands face around human rights and governance and also getting their voices heard on human rights issues internationally which is quite unique. And so in the last year and a half I've brought together seven other associates from small islands around the world and I have to say I'm a bit disappointed today that one of my associates, Angelique Pupono who is the real expert on climate change and human rights is currently in Poland at the COP for the OASIS so I'm a bit disappointed that she's not here to be able to field questions but I'm delighted to be able to talk and to talk in an audience of people who I'm sure as well have a lot to say about the issues of human rights and climate change that affect small islands. So last month obviously the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change the IPCC issued their special report on the impacts of global warming at 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and that focus was on strengthening the global response about the threat of climate change and that report when it came out at least was a real wake-up call with global warming likely to reach those levels in just over a decade, 2030 to 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate but the current position that we're looking at with the sum total of states nationally determined contributions puts us on track for about 3 degrees warming so more than the 2 degrees that were agreed in Paris and roughly twice this aspiration of 1.5 degrees. So the IPCC report suggests that sea levels will rise by between a quarter and three-quarters of a metre by the end of the century even with only 1.5 degrees warming and that sea level rise will continue beyond 2,100 with marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and irreversible lots of Greenland ice sheet potentially resulting in multi-metre rises in the next hundreds and thousands of years so looking on a longer term and if you happen to live on a small island close to sea level these figures have a very real meaning and a very real meaning for you and for your children and grandchildren. The report points out that increasing warming amplifies the exposure of small islands and low-lying coastal areas and deltas to the risks associated with sea level rise for human and ecological systems and that includes things like saltwater, intrusion, flooding and damage to infrastructure and crucially what it says is the reduction of 0.1 metres in global sea level rise would mean that up to 10 million fewer people would be exposed to related risks so potentially 10 million fewer people at 1.5 degrees than at 2 degrees but as I said before at the moment we're looking at 3 degrees What that means for small island states like Kiribati, the Maldives, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu which are the four most at risk small island states with a combined population of around half a million people is that 1.5 degrees is already too much So what are the actual impacts of climate change on the human rights of islanders? The scale and complexity of the science and of all the global processes around climate change can sometimes distract from the real impact on the ground making it easier to ignore what it actually means in human terms So what I want to talk about today is the human cost of climate change as it's being felt right now in small islands and particularly small island developing states and the way human rights law is being or could be used to help provide creative and effective solutions that will affect people's lives now and in the future Climate change is an issue for all of us and the human impacts of climate change are already being felt across the world with droughts and extreme weather events causing food insecurity, conflict and forced migration in places as diverse as the Middle East, Latin America and the Arctic but small islands are really on the front line of these issues facing particular risks which require careful thought and really complex solutions on practical and legal level So what are the human rights impacts of climate change look like in practice? So extreme weather events like hurricanes are an example of climate change impacts which have a very clear and direct impact on the right to life of people in small islands So last year alone the estimated death toll from the Atlantic hurricane season was over 3,300 people and many of those were on small Caribbean islands So that's 3,300 people in one year's hurricane season But loss of life isn't the only risk to human rights in these situations The devastation to people's homes to the basic infrastructure to things like hospitals and schools by this kind of disaster has really serious implications for other rights in affected territories and if you look even at relatively affluent places the economic and human cost is enormous So for example the British Virgin Islands hit by Hurricane Irma last year over a third of the island's 7,000 homes were destroyed by the hurricane I mean if you can imagine a third of the homes in your country or your community being destroyed and it's estimated that the cost of the hurricane is $3.6 billion which is over three times the GDP of the British Virgin Islands And if you think of the British Virgin Islands as a relatively affluent place which also has the support potentially of the UK and you apply what that means in a small island developing states or in a place with limited resources you can imagine the impact of a hurricane of that proportion And it's not just the devastation and the physical infrastructure that's a problem but also in the BVI guaranteeing security and preventing looting were a real challenge in the aftermath of the hurricane even things like securing the prison and this again is going to be worse in places with limited resources Issues of providing basic health services ongoing education, food, shelter and security following a devastating event like this are particularly difficult in small island developing states and for vulnerable people like children, the elderly people with disabilities pregnant women or women and girls at risk of sexual exploitation the potential risks to their human rights are even more acute and severe In some cases post-disaster recovery has been used as an excuse to remove the rights of the population So for example, I know there's somebody here who's been working on this in the island of Barbuda all the land had been held communally So in the island of Barbuda all land had been held communally since the emancipation of slaves in 1834 by the British then governed the island and in 2007 this was codified into law So the Barbuda Land Act says that all land in Barbuda shall be owned in common by the people of Barbuda and no land in Barbuda should be sold But following Hurricane Irma which decimated the island the government of Antigua and Barbuda used the disaster as an excuse to evacuate the population and bring in draft legislation removing communal land rights in Barbuda without consultation And such a drastic change in land ownership raises very serious concerns for economic, social and cultural rights as the most vulnerable people in Barbuda at this time of crisis And I think as an example of how the impacts of climate change can be used to affect governance or to remove rights of the people affected But climate change its impacts aren't only limited to drastic dramatic events in some areas it's the gradual and worsening impact of global warming that's already putting lives and other rights at risk For example in the Arctic this contributed to increasing temperatures, earlier snow melts and thinning ice packs For many people in the Arctic crossing frozen bodies of water is an essential part of their daily lives for transportation and subsistence living A study on Alaska published in 2014 looked at falling through ice incidents in Alaska from 1990 to 2010 Those incidents it found there were 307 incidents affecting 449 people and what they particularly noted was that subsistence activities like hunting, fishing and gathering which are critical components of the culture and life of many people living in the Arctic and travel over fresh and saltwater ice which was often essential to those activities FTI as they call it events are an enduring hazard in the Arctic Residents practising subsistence lifestyles face relatively high exposure to water hazards throughout the year and aside from potential injury and death these incidents were also causing equipment loss decreased harvest success and adverse effects on mental health so a really wide range of impacts from an impact of climate change events involve transportation by snow machine and the mortality rates were markedly higher for Alaska native people than they were for all Alaskans and so this study concluded that falling through ice was a climate change related risk to health and life in the Arctic which was particularly critical for vulnerable populations such as Alaska native populations so again it's really particularly vulnerable populations that are at the sharp end of the human rights impacts of climate change for low-lying islands, hurricanes again are not the only threat so looking for example at Kiribati an island nation made up of around 33 coral atolls and reef islands no more than 2 meters above sea level so again going back to the sea level rise as I was talking earlier there are no more than 2 meters above sea level but many areas are significantly lower than that and they're scattered across a wide area in the South Pacific so in 2015 a tidal surge swept over an ocean embankment and smashed through a hospital and maternity ward in Kiribati meaning that terrified pregnant women women who were in the process of going birds were having to be evacuated to a school on a higher ground so they could be properly looked after and a 2013 World Bank study on the potential impact of climate change the Kiribati atoll of Tarawa gives an apocalyptic view of the future decades for the island and it highlights all the ways that climate change potentially would impact Kiribati and particularly this island roads are going to be washed away which has devastating impact potentially on the economy degradation of coral reefs would mean stronger waves hitting the coast increasing erosion disrupting food supply increased risk of salination of the land higher temperatures and rainfall changes would also increase prevalence of diseases so increased risk of diseases like dengue fever and rising sea levels also likely to worsen erosion create ground water shortages and increase the intrusion of salt water into freshwater supplies and agricultural land so aside from the potential risk of low lying islands being completely submerged by rising sea levels the impacts of climate change were already making some islands uninhabitable and this I think is the most acute threat from climate change affecting small island states and one of the most complex and difficult areas from a legal and a political perspective is what happens when an island is no longer habitable these are questions as I said that raise very difficult complex areas in both politics and the law on an international and domestic level and while internal displacement of islanders within a larger state already poses human rights and security challenges particularly for vulnerable populations who are most likely to be affected it's a need for external displacement that poses the most difficult legal challenges the term climate refugee has become a kind of colloquial shorthand to describe those who are obliged to leave their homes because of the impact of climate change but while the numbers of people being forced to move because of food insecurity or other factors arising out of climate change is increasing they're not captured at all by international law definitions which don't recognize this is the category of refugees but increasingly cases are being bought that challenge this situation one of the most well known and well documented cases involved a man who had moved from Kiribati to New Zealand with his family in 2007 and when his visa expired Mr Te Te Ota I'm sorry if there's anybody from Kiribati correct my pronunciation please do claim that he was entitled to be recognized as a refugee on the basis of changes to his environment in the US caused by the sea level rise associated with climate change the immigration and protection tribunal in New Zealand dismissed his appeal but it did note the limited capacity of South Tarawa to carry its population being significantly compromised by the effects of population growth urbanization and limited infrastructure development particularly in relation to sanitation the negative impact of these factors on the carrying capacity of the land on Tarawa at all were being exacerbated by the effects of both sudden onset environmental events like storms and slow onset processes like sea level rise but ultimately it decided that Mr Te Ota had undertaken what may be termed as a voluntary adaptive migration so his migration wasn't forced and therefore he couldn't be considered within the concept of refugee the IPT also looked at the concept of persecution in international refugee law which usually involves the failure of the state either to prevent human rights abuses being carried out by its own agents or preventing human rights abuses being carried out by non-state actors and so it looked at this question of human agency and whether or not that was required in order to classify someone as a refugee but it did note that this requirement of some form of human agency doesn't mean that environmental degradation whether associated with climate change or not can never create pathways into the refugee confection or protected person jurisdiction so it left a pathway open but decided that in this case it wouldn't apply it didn't find that the evidence showed the environmental conditions that Mr Te Ota and his family who returned to Kiribati were so powerless that his life would be placed in jeopardy or that he and his family would not be able to resume their prior subsistence life with dignity so they said that it didn't quite reach a high enough bar and importantly although I think rather controversially it found that the effects of the environmental degradation on his standard of living were being faced by the population generally and it wasn't a suggestion that he was any different from anybody else on Kiribati and they also noted that it hadn't been suggested that the Kiribati government had failed to take adequate steps to protect the affluent from harm so he couldn't be considered again as a refugee for the purposes of the refugee convention how this case would be considered or how a new case would be considered if those circumstances had changed particularly under the new government in Kiribati would be interesting to see the case went all the way to the New Zealand Supreme Court which agreed with the IPT's conclusions but the Supreme Court explicitly underlined the fact that its decision in this case should not be taken as ruling out the possibility of granting refugee status in another appropriate case so they were certainly leaving the door open and recognising the problems and what I think is really important about this case is that while Mr Teitoto was unsuccessful in his challenge last year the New Zealand government announced that it is looking into creating a new visa category specifically designed for Pacific peoples displaced by climate change so he wasn't successful in the courts but his case and others like it are certainly helping to move the political dial in New Zealand and as the reality of displacement due to climate change grows I think there's going to be an increasing need for the international community to open legal avenues to those who can no longer remain in their homelands and how that will operate in the global dynamic around migration more generally remains to be seen potentially an even more fundamental problem for small island states is the risk that their territory could be entirely submerged so international law sets out the key formal characteristics of statehood in the 1933 Montevideo convention on the rights and duties of states and according to that convention the state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications they have to have a permanent population a defined territory a government and the capacity to enter relations with other states the phenomenon of climate change and rising sea levels means that there really needs to be on an international level urgent and careful thought about what that means for states that potentially are entirely submerged or on an even shorter term states which are effectively uninhabitable so it becomes very difficult to maintain that permanent population requirement this type of state death is something international law hasn't yet had to address directly and aside from the very practical questions associated with the resettlement of populations it raises fundamental issues around the right to self-determination enshrined in the UN charter and other international human rights instruments that is the right of all peoples to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic social and cultural development but what happens to a people when their land literally no longer exists so some of the specific islands have already taken steps to address the future and the problems of resettlement so the former president of Kiribati and Ote Tong arranged for the purchase of land in Fiji in 2014 potentially to provide a refuge for the people of Kiribati in anticipation of the gradual submersion of the country and that land at the moment is being used for agriculture which addresses the pressing issue of food security in the meantime so the former government of Kiribati was the first to take this kind of step but others including the Maldives and Tuvalu have also looked into similar solutions but buying land for resettlement doesn't address the underlying questions of sovereignty and self-determination and what the status of a population and or its government is if they are forced to move on to territory in another state and while states may be willing to help with resettlement from neighbouring countries or countries that they've got strong historical or other ties with they're likely to be much less willing to actually cede sovereignty over parts of their own territory government or another group of people and while small island developing states are small in terms of land mass and population they're often very large in terms of ocean area with extremely valuable resources in their exclusive economic zone under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea so what will the legal implications be for those resources when the territory of the EEZ is connected to disappears now as it starts to shrink will resettlement come at the cost of control of those resources which is a fundamental issue for the people coming from those countries at the moment there aren't clear answers to those questions but it's very clear that these sorts of questions raise a much bigger issue and a much wider issue than that which is currently being looked at under the head of loss and damage and the islands use human rights law to help them so since they're the brunt of the effects of climate change despite the fact that they're relatively small contributors to the problem the response to climate change clearly needs to be global but there are ways that small islands are and could use international law including international human rights law to push the international community to take steps to reduce climate change and the most responsible contributing to climate change are also those who must be responsible for providing solutions to the human rights impacts whether those are in practical terms financial terms or whatever this is going to need to include support to deal with climate driven migration and funds to address loss and damage international human rights law crucially requires that human rights have to be real and effective remedies for breaches of human rights but the fact that the cause and effects of climate change don't know boundaries makes it very difficult to think of effective remedies in traditional terms of territorial jurisdiction and right holders and duty bearers and so this means that human rights lawyers working in this area need to and are exploring innovative approaches that break new legal ground and cross legal boundaries and silos the recent judgment in the agenda case in the Netherlands for example looked at the way failures to limit greenhouse emissions could be in breach of a country's obligations to protect the rights of its citizens including the right to private and family life as guaranteed under the ECHR and the people's climate case recently brought suing the European Parliament and Council about the EU climate agenda saying it doesn't go far enough includes families from the European Union as well as from Kenya and Fiji so again people from small islands are at the forefront of taking these innovative challenges and it remains to be seen how those develop in 2011 Micronesia sued the Czech Republic in Czech domestic courts over its plans to develop a coal fired power plant citing the risk of climate change as a trans boundary harm that would threaten the existence of the archipelago even though it was over 12,000 kilometers away and again while that challenge was unsuccessful in stopping the development at the time it did have a political impact in the Czech Republic leading to the resignation of the Czech Environment Minister and opening up new avenues for challenge by affected states under international law so just because that challenge wasn't successful doesn't mean the next one won't be and Micronesia continues to be proactive in seeking international legal solutions to the issue including pushing for the atmosphere to be included in the long term program for the International Law Commission and this year 115 countries express their desire for the legal implication of sea level rise to be placed on the active work program of the International Law Commission which has been captured in the UN's Ocean Omnibus Resolution looking as well at what domestic law in small islands can do after the Cayman Islands were flattened by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 their new constitution in 2009 recognized the importance of the environment of the islands including constitutional protections for the environment which go way beyond the kind of protections you see in the UK law and their constitution says that the government shall in all its decisions have due regard to the need to foster and protect an environment that is not harmful to the health or wellbeing of present and future generations while promoting justifiable economic and social development and I think in a place like the Cayman Islands this is very interesting because while the Cayman Islands recognizes the environment and threats of climate change to the islands itself and therefore makes this constitutional obligation very important as far as I'm aware there's no very clear development of what that actually might mean in practice for governmental obligations across policy areas and given the importance of the financial services sector in Cayman I think it's a very interesting question as to what the human rights obligations and the constitutional obligations are in the Cayman government in terms of developing the financial services sector in a way that protects the environment for now and the future and I think it will be very interesting to see how that develops and how it can be used the increasing recognition of the interplay between the environment and human rights has led to similar provisions being included in many domestic constitutions and in international instruments such as the European Charter for Fundamental Rights which hopefully will help people's climate case that I referred to earlier in the European Court of Justice these developments could open the way to further targeted litigation with a focus on human rights protections in both domestic and international law and whether this is being done through domestic courts or with an international approach for example seeking an advisory opinion from the ICJ it's going to need lawyers and policy makers to look outside of their silos and across their borders and oceans to explore really ingenious and innovative new ways of tackling both the causes and the impacts of climate change last week Ralph Reganvano the Minister for Foreign Affairs for Vanuatu announced that Vanuatu is looking into the possibility of suing fossil fuel companies and industrialised countries for their role in creating climate change that's going to be devastating to similar island states and I think seeing such political declarations from countries like Vanuatu really puts small islands on the front line in terms of action and activism to address climate change as well as finding themselves on the front line in terms of the impacts of climate change but while they may take the lead on the political and legal steps we need to take to address climate change and as a metaphorical canary in the coal mine we need to heed the warning that they are giving climate change is a very serious threat for all of us, it's not just for small islands or for those on the front line and as such we all have a duty to find ways of preventing and mitigating it the answers aren't yet clear and the response to climate change is really going to involve a huge amount of creativity from scientists, from lawyers to policy makers and activists to make sure that we understand the seriousness of the threat we're facing and take the steps we need to address it Mary Robinson, a climate justice activist the former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in her book called Climate Justice focuses on the need for stories to drive change and I think it's very important to recognise that human rights law doesn't live in a vacuum neither does environmental law and it's very much about recognising the realities on the ground some of you might have realised and recognised that the title of my talk is borrowed from a poem by a British poet Stevie Smith which starts with the words nobody heard him the dead man but still he lay moaning I was much further out the new thought and not waving but drowning I'd like to end my talk with the powerful words of two climate change activist poets from Ireland from opposite sides of the world who are acutely affected by climate change really just to drive home that it's important to listen to the voices of the people who are affected and these two poets from the Marshall Islands and Greenland the Marshall Islands poet people might recognise who spoke at the UN in 2014 oh no, I'm not going to get there okay there have probably not been very many kind of poetry expeditions I don't know, sorry, that's the making in the climate sister of ice since no I'm coming to you from the land of my ancestors from atolls sunken volcanoes undersea descent of sleeping giants sister of ocean and sand I welcome you to the land of my ancestors to the land where they sacrifice their lives to make mine possible to the land of survivors I'm coming to you from the land my ancestors chose I am going out Marshall Islands a country more sea than land I welcome you to Greenland the biggest island of earth with me I bring these shells that I picked from the shores of the atoll and runid dome in my hand I hold these rocks picked from the shores of New York the foundation of the land I call my home two sisters frozen in time on the island of Uyai one magically turned to stone the other who chose that life to be rooted by her sister's side to this day the two sisters can be seen by the edge of the reef a lesson in permanence with these rocks I bring a story told countless times a story about Sissuma Allah mother of the sea who lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean this is a story about the guardian of the sea in our hearts the disrespect in our eyes every whale every stream every iceberg of her children when we disrespect them she gives us what we deserve a lesson in respect to we deserve the melting ice the hungry polar bears coming to our islands by the colossal icebergs hidden in these walnuts with rage I ask for solutions from one island to another I ask for your problems let me show you the time coming for us faster than we'd like to admit let me show you airports underwater bulldozed reefs blasted sands and plans to build new atoms forcing land from an ancient rising sea forcing us to imagine turning ourselves to stone can you see a glaciers from the weight of food for solutions through ice and snow I count you now in grief morning landscapes that are always forced to change sister of ocean and sand I offer you these rocks the foundation of my home may the same unshakable foundation connect us make us stronger than these colonizing monsters that still to this day devour our lives the very same beasts that now decide who should die beauty shells and separation we will choose to be rooted to this reef I ask for solutions from these islands we demand that tomorrow will never happen that this is as Miami New York, Shanghai Amsterdam, London Rio de Janeiro and Osaka will try to breathe underwater decades before your home falls beneath years months before you sacrifice us again before you watch for beauty I offer you these rocks as a reminder more than them power each and every one of us has to decide I wanted to end with these women because I think they are examples of incredible activism and they are examples of people from island communities affected across the world who are engaging on the international front and on the human rights front engaging with poetry on human rights on the issue of Barbuda and it's more of an update just so that and one of the lawyers acting for the people of Barbuda in the response to the government's changes to the communal land rights and just to say that as you pointed out the laws were used to to create a well-being a state of emergency was imposed in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane to remove the people from Barbuda which is, you know, the population is just around between 100 people to take them to Antigua on the basis that there was another hurricane coming but by the time they had imposed a state of emergency that the hurricane was no longer in effect they used the law to evacuate the people from the island so that they could start taking steps to change the communal land rights which Suzanne pointed out enshrined the 2007 land rights at enshrined communal land rights people of Barbuda and then what happened in the towards the end of the year and this year was that they eventually passed legislation that has removed communal land rights and it's a subject of litigation but what happens to a people when they are most vulnerable as a result of devastating hurricanes is that, you know, they are displaced they've lost their homes they can't really fight back and it's, you know governments using this for their own economic gain, you know when people are weakest and the other thing that I wanted to highlight in the Barbuda situation which touches on the the other human rights breach it's the right to food and you touched on the vast economic resource of the sea and of course it's a small island so fishing is one of the main economic activities and what the government did was that it closed the fisheries and it imposed this ban on the storing of fish on the island and, you know, when their main export markets is Europe this is next to Martin and they're able to export lobster and stuff to the EU so that again is used, you know as a tool to undermine the economic activity of the people and this is just an example of what happens as a consequence of the economic and how it can actually be used as a weapon against the vulnerable and I think that what's happened on Barbuda could happen on a whole state basis My name is Nasha You said that actually some islands have already been submerged No, well I think there was one just off Japan recently that disappeared so not island states being submerged but I think coastal erosion has meant that in some places or at least that they're uninhabitable so there's been sort of internal displacement It's about people being there if they can keep their nationality or not I guess it's not addressed yet but if, because to have a state you have to have a territory Exactly and so if they're submerged when they go to mainland even if they head a population I'm wondering if they would lose their nationality and become which is Well that's the big question and where I think there needs to be a lot more preparation and work it's not something that you can really wait until it happens to deal with and one of those sort of proposals has been marking out the EEZ already so starting to talk about them instead of being small island states talking about them as large ocean states so sort of marking out their territorial waters but still that doesn't answer what happens in terms of sovereignty if they move and as I was saying people in Fiji or in New Zealand may be happy to sell land to allow people to relocate but if those people then start exercising sovereignty over that land that then becomes quite a different question and if you're talking about a country that's disappeared permanently how long can you maintain this idea of a state or a government in exile but then what happens in terms of the cultural rights of the people when their homeland just doesn't exist anymore and those questions they do require international legal answers they require thinking about in international organisations as I say in a sort of preparation it's too late to start sitting around thinking about it as some distant possibility that's never going to happen there needs to be a preparation Are there already discussions about this or even just starting there are academic discussions but I don't think there's anything concrete unless anybody else is aware or I don't know of any actual sort of political process because again it's something that will be highly contentious but there's a very distinct risk that as with Barbuda the same will happen on a whole state basis that a neighbouring country or the exchange for hosting your people will be you give us all your ocean resources I'd like to point out another problem which I think is the drain drain that happens in small islands when you look at for example small islands close to New Zealand Australia and how the immigration policy works and then they try to attract young islanders to get my trainings or special education to be able to integrate into the other societies and so that's also present for those that are remaining on the islands because they don't have enough like education and then for example to act against or to have enough engagement against like the other countries I think the human resource question is a big question for all small islands to be honest even if you come from a relatively affluent small island like I do with a thriving business community if you don't want to be in that business community then you go away and pretty much everyone has to go away to study and then going back having been away is always quite a challenge Hi, my name is Marie and I just want to offer an observation that comes from kind of a perhaps surprising angle so I currently work in international investment law and there's two I think aspects of the field that have an impact on this kind of question so the first one is there's an increasing number of districts under investment treaties so we wish investors to stay for threatening their investments and one interesting aspect of that is that there are investors soon stays for changing their environmental policies so one famous example is a state like Spain which instituted renewable energy policies and then after the economic crush of 2008 changed its position because it wasn't economically sustainable but a lot of investors had invested renewable energy and there's a raft of investors that brought to the streets just to to sue Spain on the basis that their investments so that's a way in which investors can actually be surprisingly perhaps bring about more protection of environmental rights and then there's another trend that I think is quite interesting in which states that are being sued by investors increasingly use human rights arguments to defend themselves so it's more of a over shield than a sword in that case but it is I think as you mentioned bringing it to the public eye and the critical discourse as well absolutely I think that the field is just a question of making interesting connections across silos that's the way it needs to develop Hello my name is Juliana so you mentioned an example of how like Canada and the government were trying to put pressure on the finance sector but they're not as far as I'm aware but this is in their constitution and I think it's quite interesting that it's in their constitution but I'm not aware of how it's being actually used in practice Okay, no that was one of my questions it seems like to point out how the financial sector have been back around the companies that are responsible for climate change but most of them are located in some islands so if there's any kind of question from the government to their finance sector they are also responsible for the problems Well that's what I mean again about creative opportunities I think there are creative opportunities in those kind of places where if you have this constitutional obligation that goes across all policies then to have whether it's individuals or civil society and whether it's on a sort of political level or on a legal taking cases level but to actually press the government to say okay this is great we've got this constitutional provision so how does that apply in terms of your policies around the financial sector exactly as you say and I think starting to use those kind of things and whether or not that will be a sort of domestic move or whether it's something that is sort of support to local organisations to have creative ideas about how to do things because there is again as you say a resource problem generally in a small jurisdiction but you don't have people who are automatically thinking about international law they're just trying to be a jack of all trades and have a practice in a small jurisdiction which might cover lots of different things but I think there are opportunities there yes I don't know I mean I know that the Marshallese poet who was speaking there who is the daughter of the president of the Marshall Islands I think she is the current president of the Marshall Islands so I think there is a degree of sort of activists who are present and I think that organisations like IOSIS as far as I understand it are very much sort of front and centre being very active how how that results in the outcomes I don't know but I think they are hugely active in these processes and I think I mean choosing a different example in a sort of different international law context Trinidad and a large number of small island states were very proactive in driving the Rome Statute and the establishment of the International Criminal Court and I think it's very interesting in that sort of context to see how powerful they can be and again while they might be small they are large numbers so when you're talking about sort of voting and driving things potentially at the UN level you're looking at actually quite a lot of countries so in those sorts of processes I think they do have quite a drive and certainly when I see the work that Angelique is doing there's a huge kind of youth driven activism which includes both a sort of legal side and taking cases but also particularly on the political side, cultural side whatever it is about awareness raising there's a huge movement I think that's coming out of small island states at the moment in these issues My question is related to how to activate the human rights judicial system because for example there are many islands which belongs to one state for example in America these communities have its own culture they they are now claiming about how the state can identify them as a different culture in their own constitutions but the inter-American human rights system establishes that when a community or a person was related to their human rights they first have to demand that in their own national courts and then go to the international or inter-American system I don't know how to say but the people, this community should demand their own state but these states are developing countries so they are not responsible in the in the IPCC terms of most local initiatives I think it depends and that's the thing why they're using these kind of quite complex and imaginative ways of going particularly in Europe but also in the US places so clearly a lot of small island states are being supported by civil society lawyers, civil society organisations that specialize in this, they're often not going to be able to do it on their own. The exhaustion of domestic remedies, yes it's the same in Europe the case that I mentioned the people's climate case that's going to the European Court of Justice I don't know if anybody here has been following it closely, I'm not aware that they've yet accepted jurisdiction, I think it's still being decided whether or not the case will move forward the European Court of Justice if you're suing the European institutions then you don't need to go through domestic procedures, you can take the institutions on as a whole if you're looking on a domestic level, so if for example with overseas territories if you're talking about Cayman wanting to complain about Britain or somebody in Cayman wanting to complain about Britain well obviously Britain doesn't have a Britain constitution so it makes things nice and clear as to what your roots would be but there is an argument that I suppose you would either challenge through your own courts to say that your own legal system was not doing enough to protect you or if you went through a UK court and tried a judicial review whether it was under the Human Rights Act or whatever and if you failed then you would be in a position to go to Strasbourg so in a sense if there is no obvious domestic remedy then you go straight international, European, human rights just is applied only to the EU members? No, no the European Court of Human Rights applies to Council of Europe members so you have to be a member of the Council of Europe which is bigger than the EU but if you wanted as I say to take a challenge from say British overseas territory about something the UK was doing if you couldn't find or all your legal roots were blocked domestically then you just go straight to Strasbourg and you have to exhaust domestic remedies but if the domestic remedies don't exist then you can go to the court so yeah you have to do everything you can domestically first it's the same and I think that the international approach is going to depend very much on the circumstances of particular territory Hi my name is Anisana Fiu I'm working at the Department of Economics so I'm likely the only non-lawyer who is through I'm glad to come to your talk I learned a lot and I I've heard about things that I have never thought before like this whole story what happens if an island disappears I wanted to add two things to the discussion the first is concerning what was just discussed about what is the initiative of small islands or what can they do in fact small islands I think they are quite clever in a way because they try to cooperate in order to market themselves for small islands the term small island developed in states was in fact coined by smaller islands who tried to market themselves in the United Nations and they benefit from that status even if it's maybe not a bigger status by getting access to specific funds even the common wealth now has a new initiative of a finance hub for small islands so that they can benefit from that as well so this is one thing and then the other thing I would like to make a case for interdisciplinarity when we are talking about small islands so you talk about the need for legal solutions for policy solutions and I think that sometimes there are just there are just ways that things that happen that would prevent these solutions from being realized from an economics perspective for instance when we think of politicians in economics quite often we see them as self-interested actors with very short term horizon I have lived in Russia for several years for instance and because of climate change the drinking water problems that they have there become quite acute now so the solution would be obviously a political one there would be a need for reform reforming the water sector trying to maybe increase tariffs but this is precisely what politicians do not want they have a short term horizon they know that these solutions might exist but these are long term solutions for the next election so I think that if we come together as academics from different parts and we think about these solutions together we might be stronger and come up with solutions that make sense and are feasible and maybe just push forward to achieve this change but it's not really... No I absolutely agree and it's got to be something that's both practical and effective really and that involves economics that involves the law it involves the science it involves the change in global culture I absolutely agree with that Thank you very much I really enjoyed it My next speaker I've spent some time looking at the G the focus on indigenous communities is still very much what we would see as basic human rights and in a lot of the country Is there like the struggle with this do you think it's sort of getting these communities involved with the problems that they do know exist but they're more sort of striving for their lives instead of participating in sort of international human rights environmental law on the future level they see it more as the price issues and obviously they are involved as one of your board members is Pugetian I think Yes although she's in New Zealand So obviously they're involved but long term these countries are involved along with the resentment that they seem to have for countries like the UK contributing to the problem I think getting the countries involved probably not and I know that the Pugetian Premier is somewhere else in London tonight talking on human rights and climate change or specifically on climate change I think there is a problem as you've highlighted about human rights on a kind of basic level and that's in a way mentioning the Barbuda case and also talking about security in BVI that you know we can't forget that these things are part as well of the issue and they're part of the context on the ground so I think if you're talking about civil society and you know they in somewhere like Fiji then yes obviously there's going to be a lot of civil society that is dealing with basic human rights issues on a daily basis as you're saying I think it's a common problem one of the things though that I realised starting to do this work is that in many places they're actually more interested in international support on this issue and in international legal advice or international political support because that kind of gives them an extra boost they may be less interested in having somebody come in and talk to them about right to liberty or human rights and policing or human rights and elections or whatever it is so there can be that sort of tension if that's what you're sort of talking about I think it possibly gets in the way in terms of civil society engagement but as I say it's possible it's possible from a cynical perspective to say that for the governments it's actually having this as the agenda means that you can talk about this and not talk about that and both are very important for the futures of their of their people if you like so it's not necessarily an either or but it doesn't mean that because you're dealing with that there isn't all the other shocking that that makes sense I'm not an economist but I was just wondering if you talked about investing in an island state they would probably invest in health sectors like they cannot what would they specifically invest in maybe adding infrastructure or providing health yes I mean well one of the big things is climate adaptation so I think one of the issues of islands being submerged is discussions about sort of building houses and building towns kind of on stilts if you like so building infrastructure that will be able to overcome that question and so there's a very big discussion around what can be done about adaptation and mitigation and how can you convince a potential investor to invest in something that might be destroyed due to what it changes well that's a very big issue and that's one of the things on the international level is about responsibility and loss and damage and about the polluters having to pay up to help those that can't adapt if you like so they don't necessarily want to that's where I think the international pressure and also legal action potentially comes in another issue is around insurance and a sort of global insurance fund for dealing with that but again insurers aren't going to stick their hands up and say I really want to insure all your property on a low lying island that's about to be submerged unless somebody else is putting money in so that is one of the key problems can I just weigh on this because the bravina example could be used in this assessment because in response to the hurricane we have the UNDP putting in doing a sort of risk assessment of the location in what was a slightly village in the path of the hurricane and so there is a plan to relocate the village on another part of the island that is not in the path of the usual path of the wind and I suspect that this sort of response to hurricanes and possibly the risk of subversion is this sort of economic investment or infrastructure development that is one of the consequences of climate change and hurricanes I just have a direct question about this when I mean this is also connected to I think foreign aid is still being paid to small islands and that I'm wondering just about the issue of sovereignty and small islands in climate negotiations and everywhere else they want to have sovereign voice and they want a strong state sovereignty but that doesn't really go together with a lot of foreign aid or a lot of money that is poured into the countries from donors or somebody who just wants to help them I'm not sure if that undermines kind of their leverage in negotiations or in raising their voice possibly and I think the other issue is that with traditional development funding it's very difficult to necessarily know what development means in a very small sort of in a very small state as opposed to development in a big country where you're talking about industrial development that raises all that load of other questions about climate change impacts so yeah I think it does raise challenges I mean I've referred to the British Overseas Territories one of the things about Brexit is that the territories like Turks and Caicos I think and I'm not sure which one is that one does BVI also get? Yeah no they both are but I'm not sure if BVI was also had some EU funding so they get EU funding particularly around climate change adaptation even though they don't qualify for official development assistance for the UK so the UK funds St Helena, Montserrat and Pitca and that was one of the big issues that came up with the Hurricanes last year was that Anguilla and BVI who were really devastated the UK was stuck sitting there saying well we can't give you money out of this development fund because you don't qualify because of your GDP not yes but we've just been flattened in our overseas territory and that's one of the things as I say related to Brexit is that they will lose an avenue of funding outside of the UK and because they're not independent states they also can't apply for any funding internationally elsewhere so it's a kind of well if they're not eligible for UK funding although they did sort of find a workaround finally after the Hurricanes but if they're not eligible for that funding and they're not eligible for anything else because they're not sovereign nations then they're sort of stuck in the middle Building under my name is Lutata I'm studying out here the context of corporate rights and justice and building on the theme of cooperation I was just wondering if channels of communication have been opened up for example between small island states and other states that might also be affected and change for example the increased risk of desolation or states with territories that are also low linings for example Bangladesh whether that's on the activism level or government level I don't know in great detail I think on the climate change negotiations and on the activism level I mean certainly if you look particularly at the work of Mary Robinson then she's engaging with climate justice activists across the board and I think there is as I say with this video that I was showing it was about the fact that climate justice activists are reaching out across borders and there is a huge amount of support I think for that in civil society to sort of build those bridges because yeah let's say it's not only islands my name is Mike do you believe that ultimately we will be able to solve the problem of the elephant in the room which is the large countries who have major investments in fossil fuels and are doing let us say only a little to try and resolve it even this country by opening up fracking has developed a new way of using fossil fuels is there is there a way other than the moral way and trying to shame such countries when the head of the great free country of the world is in denial about fossil fuel is there a potential that you believe well I'm an optimist I'm a human rights lawyer which means I'm partly yeah I'm partly doom laden and I'm partly an optimist and I think you have to be an optimist and as I sort of said at the beginning this isn't just an issue for small islands although they raise particular issues it's really an issue for all of us but it is something that requires a cultural shift so it's not just about government policy it's also about how people live and how people want to live and how people recognise that they need to live and that then also dictates the governments that they elect at the moment we're clearly on a bit of a challenging trajectory both on climate change and on human rights really but I think one of the things that is inspiring about the cases that have been taken as I said is that even though they haven't been successful they have had political impact and the cases aren't going to sort everything out but if they can just keep chipping away chipping the balance I mean something has to give and there's also no point giving up because what's the point of giving up you have to hope that there will be change but it's not easy maybe that's a very good comment I think and just before you go the last window for the term next week is on BOPAL it's a movie screening and discussion next week is the anniversary of the BOPAL disaster but it's fitting for that if you want to apply and they're here at the same time the second book this is not true this is not true this is not true this is not true this is not true this is not true what if she's having but I'll go maybe I'll go to Homas I'll have her this a year and then grab next I got a lot of her behind me everyone enters they're like she's a lawyer she has a program I'm from Cé surfing from the St 누�res And if you want to see another friend Yeah, yeah, yeah Are you big in Hollywood? Kingston Yeah Thank you Thank you Do you have to give talks to any of the others? Not all of them They can talk to me It's interesting, it's been a while since I've been here Truly academic I didn't know what to expect I haven't been sure if I was done with that Too much Public lecture I don't think it's worth it Because it's not worth anything From the first Yeah Hello Hi Hi Hi Hello Hello Hi Hi Do you have to give talks to any of the others? I keep giving them a better I'm sorry Do you have to give talks to any of the other people? I don't know I was talking to a human rights watch I've tried to give them some awareness They have no meaning No, well, it's... What we've ended up doing is taking the We've brought an emotion to stop the airmore Because what they do is people They study them You're right You're right Yeah I'm around See which way it's still relevant today See which way it's still relevant today Based on the construction of this airport Thank you You know You're thinking maybe it's the event Well, so I don't know I don't know I don't know So that's a procedure So I don't have to explain What happened just because But human rights watch You don't want to do more than this Because they do not know So So I'm not going to So I don't That's a good idea That's a good idea Yeah So Okay Yeah Do you know us? No No She used to be She used to be I don't know So I don't know So Yes I used to have Thank you very much. Thank you.