Category: Europe

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For Persons With Disabilities, Migration and Evacuation Following Calamity Have Seldom Been Possible 

blue and white exit signage mounted on brown brick wall

14 June 2022 – by Willy Phillips

Globally, Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) are two to four times more likely to experience injury or death during natural disasters and war than non-disabled individuals. This silent reality has long accompanied the aftermath of calamity. Places like Ukraine, struck by war, and the Philippines, under the barrage of natural disasters, share the often overlooked necessity of aiding PWDs amidst the chaos.

In response to disasters, many individuals must migrate from their homes. For PWDs, however, the options are limited. Without specialized equipment or proper training, those aiding cannot evacuate this group of individuals safely.

In Ukraine, the Russian invasion has left 2.7 million PWDs in dire situations. The UN Committee on the Rights of PWDs has said in the wake of this conflict, disabled individuals have faced the worst of the war. The reports mention that “many people with disabilities, including children, are trapped or abandoned in their homes, residential care institutions and orphanages, with no access to life-sustaining medications, oxygen supplies, food, water, sanitation, support for daily living and other basic facilities.” Most of the 4.8 million who have fled the country are reportedly able-bodied.

In the Philippines, natural disasters like super typhoon Rai in December 2021 impacted nearly 12 million individuals. As of April 2022, 12,000 individuals are still displaced, and roughly half are housed in temporary evacuation centers. While the damage was immense and the recovery has been grueling, this storm has had a better ending for PWDs. A humanitarian organization called Community and Family Services International (CFSI) has set out to change the statistics for PWDs, especially children. Following the storm, CFSI provided 1,800 families with documented assistance. Each of these families had at least one elderly or disabled household member.

While much work is still required, CFSI sets the example for ensuring that these memebers of our society are accounted for. A paradigm shift toward equality emerges using a UN-backed framework called ‘disability inclusive disaster risk reduction’, or DiDRR. An essential component in the fight for the human rights of all persons, this guideline aims to change the attitudes of states and individuals towards a future of more comprehensive disaster readiness.

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Turkey at High Risk of Water Scarcity

turkey flag hanging on bridge

7 January 2022 – by Deniz Saygi

As a water-stressed country, Turkey has faced severe droughts since the 1980s on account of the combination of overpopulation, unplanned urbanization, industrialisation, climate change and global warming. The water in the dams supplying the major cities of Turkey has been reduced since there is no rainfall.

Istanbul, a prominent centre of trade and commerce of Turkey, is experiencing critically low levels of water. The megacity is at the risk of running out of water in the next few months, according to the report by the UCTEA Chamber Of Chemical Engineers. Consequently, Turkey’s most populous city is experiencing the lowest level of water in 15 years, and this situation raised fears of a persistent drought.

Not only Istanbul, but also Turkey’s major cities are facing water scarcity too: For example, Izmir and Bursa are struggling with dams that are at the risk of scarcity due to the poor rainfall. Moreover, farmers – especially from the Konya plain and Edirne province – are warning of increasing crop failures and food shortages because of the prolonged lack of rainfall by reason of climate change. Ankara, the capital city of Turkey, also has been going through the most severe period of drought in recent years. Citizens of Ankara has been warned about the lack of rainfall could cause a significant water shortage in the near future. 

According to the report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 60 per cent of Turkey’s land area is prone to desertification. The report also underlines the Mediterranean Basin as one of the world’s climate hotspots that occurred due to climate change and global warming. Under these circumstances, the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey will most likely become progressively drier and drastically warmer if necessary measurements are not taken. 

P.S. I would like to thank Mr. Mert Kocal for his contributions to this article.

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Wildfires Burn Across Siberia as Russia Launches Marketplace for Forestry Investors to Earn Carbon Credits

silhouette of trees during sunset

6 October 2021 – by Ben St. Laurent

Wildfires that began earlier than usual within Russia’s Sakha Republic, typically known for its record cold temperatures and permafrost, are responsible for unprecedented levels of carbon emissions. According to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the fires worsened through June and July, and continue to burn across northeastern Siberia later in the season than usual. The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) reported that data from CAMS suggests wildfires in the Sakha Republic have released approximately 800 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by mid August. 

These fires have also been recognised for their indirect impacts on the Earth’s climate by reducing the capability of Russia’s boreal forest to act as a major carbon sink for Russia and the potential for their smoke to settle on arctic sea ice and accelerate its melting process. Considering recent extreme wildfires across the globe, David Bowman, a fire ecologist at the University of Tasmania, expects that “scientists might have to rethink the impact on global climate of extreme blazes.” 

Lax fire laws in Russia permit fire authorities to allow wildfires to burn uncontained where the cost of containment outweighs potential damages. Even though the region is sparsely populated, the wildfires threaten many rural communities in the Sakha Republic. According to Patrick Reevell of ABC News, firefighters working to protect these villages from the blaze “blamed the scale of the fires on authorities’ failure to extinguish the blazes early on, a consequence they said in part of cuts to the federal forestry fire service.” 

A program launching in Russia aimed at attracting private investment into Russian forestry, would allow companies to earn carbon credits if the CO₂ absorption of their plots improves. Although reliance on carbon sinks has been criticised for permitting countries to avoid the necessary emission reductions needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, investment into proper forest management could minimise the impact of wildfires on local communities in the region. 

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Historic Levels of Rainfall Across Europe Lead to Deadly Floods

traffic light sign underwater

16 September 2021 – by Evelyn Workman

In mid-July devastating floods hit several European countries, leading to widespread destruction. Record rainfall in many regions, in particular across Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, caused rivers to burst their banks. There have been at least 229 fatalities as a result of the floods. 

Germany was hit with the most devastating consequences of the flooding. With 184 deaths reported, the floods are the most deadly natural disaster in Germany since the North Sea flood of 1962. The brunt of the destruction was witnessed in the district of Ahrweiler, Rhineland-Palatinate, where heavy rainfall caused the river Ahr to overflow, destroying many buildings and causing at least 110 deaths. It was reported by the German Weather Service that some areas witnessed the heaviest rainfall in a century.

In the Netherlands, the river Maas in the region of Limburg reached its highest summertime level in over 100 years. The town of Valkenburg aan de Geul was one of the worst hit in the region, with damages assessed to be €400 million, and 700 homes rendered uninhabitable. 

Meanwhile, in Belgium, all 200,000 residents of the eastern city of Liège were urged to evacuate on 15th July due to concerns that the river Meuse would burst its banks. Rainfall was most intense in the east of the country, with records hitting almost 3 times the average rainfall for the month of July. 

While many factors contributed to the floods, scientists say that a warming climate makes extreme rainfall more likely. In the aftermath of the flooding, German chancellor Angela Merkel has called for Germany to step up its fight against climate change. Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo declared 20 July a national day of mourning for the lives lost. He said that this disaster “could be the most catastrophic flooding our country has ever seen.”

World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spokesperson, Clare Nullis, has stated that under future climate change scenarios we will continue to witness more extreme weather events such as intense rainfall. Nullis has urged more climate action from all countries, saying: “We need to step up climate action, we need to step up the level of ambition”.

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Thousands Forced to Flee as Wildfires Ravage Turkey and Greece

white smoke coming from a gray clouds

4 September 2021 – by Atoosa Gitiforoz

In recent months, out of control wildfires have brought large-scale blazes across Greece and Turkey, forcing thousands to flee.

According to the European Forest Fire Information system, around 160,000 hectares of forest have burned in Turkey this year, four times the average between 2008-2020. Greece has seen temperatures soar to 45 degrees Celsius – the hottest heat wave in decades. Dozens of villages across both countries have been evacuated, as blazes continue to destroy people’s homes.

Three people have been arrested in suspicion of starting fires, however, officials have been pointing to the wider climate crisis as the underlying catalyst; fires continue to be fed by strong winds and unusually high temperatures.

A report draft recently released by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report, presents some significant findings. The report projects a more accurate Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) estimate: from the previous estimate of 1.5C and 4.5C in 2014, to 2.5C and 4C in 2021, with the best estimate at 3 degrees Celsius. 

The report, written by over 230 leading scientists across the globe, points to areas vulnerable to water stress and wildfires as at high risk of worsening drought. The report makes it clear that in order to avert these outcomes, rapid reductions in CO2 and greenhouse emissions are necessary, or both water shortages and wildfire trends will continue to worsen.

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UK Parliament Considers Joining Independent Expert Panel in Recommending ‘Ecocide’ as New Crime for International Criminal Court

gray and brown train railway near green green moutain

11 August 2021 – by Ben St. Laurent

In a renewed effort to incorporate environmental protection into existing bodies of international criminal law, an expert panel has developed a legal definition for the term ‘ecocide’ — “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” The expert panel included independent criminal and environmental lawyers, jurists, authors, and professors from around the world. The Stop Ecocide Foundation, responsible for convening the commission, is working to amend the Rome Statute to include ecocide within the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction.

According to Guardian legal affairs correspondent Haroon Siddique, this present attempt marks the most recent in a long battle to establish a legal framework for ecocide, including an effort to include ecocide in the 1972 Stockholm Declaration, as well as the 1998 Rome Statute which established the ICC. While it currently lacks explicit jurisdiction over environmental cases, in recent years the ICC has interpreted crimes against humanity to include environmental destruction, with implications for member states as well as corporations operating within their borders. If the Rome Statute is amended to include ecocide, it would join the ranks of international crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. Prof Philippe Sands QC, who co-chaired the committee, told The Guardian that the new definition of Ecocide “catches the most egregious acts”, including major oil spills and deforestation, but excludes daily activities that more broadly contribute to climate change.

Already, an amendment to the 2021 UK Environment Bill has been introduced by Green Party peer and former party leader Natalie Bennett, which would adopt the new legal definition of ecocide into UK law. If retained in its current state after the review process, this amendment would also create a path for domestic criminal recourse against those responsible for committing ecocide in the UK. Another amendment to the Environment Bill (page 85) proposed by Baroness Bennett would require that the UK government support an amendment to the 1998 Rome Statute, which would begin the process of the ICC expanding its jurisdiction to include ecocide. 

Article 121 of the Rome Statute maintains that any of the Court’s 123 state parties may propose an amendment to the treaty, and the ICC would require the support of at least a two-thirds majority of member states to adopt the amendment. If adopted, the amendment would enter into force for all ratifying parties one year after ratification, allowing the court to “exercise its jurisdiction regarding a crime covered by the amendment when committed by that State Party’s nationals or on its territory.” 

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Children Displaced Due to Climate Change: UNICEF UK Call for Action From UK Government

brown wooden bench on mountainside at daytime

4 August 2021 – by Evelyn Workman

A report, Futures at Risk: Protecting the Rights of Children on the Move in a Changing Climate, released by the UK Committee for UNICEF (UNICEF UK), analyses how climate-change related migration impacts children’s access to education and health care. There were 30.1 million new internal displacements caused by extreme weather related events in 2020, 9.8 million of these were of children. The report notes that this equates to 26,900 new weather related child displacements every day. 

Ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), taking place in Glasgow in November, UNICEF UK has called on the UK government to support children who have been forced to leave their homes due to climate change. In the report, they propose the government establish a technical facility, to be launched at COP26, bringing together experts across health, education, migration, and climate sectors to share knowledge and propose solutions to tackle this problem.

The report provides several recommendations for the UK government to better support and protect children displaced by climate-change related events. These include using the UK’s role as an international donor to champion the rights of children affected by climate change-related displacement, and meeting its commitment to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and encouraging other high-income countries to make a similar pledge at COP26.

“The UK Government must use the opportunity of its COP26 Presidency this year to champion the rights of children on the move, galvanising widespread and ambitious action to address the challenges we know are coming,” Joanna Rea, Director of Advocacy at UNICEF UK, said, “If not, the futures of millions of children will be at risk.”

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NGOs File Third Party Interventions to ECHR in Support of Duarte Agostinho’s Climate Case

brown and black floral textile

23 June 2021 – by Ben St. Laurent

A landmark case brought by six young Portuguese citizens in November 2020 against 33 signatory states to the 2015 Paris Agreement continues to gain momentum at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). In early May, the European Commissioner for Human Rights and a number of NGOs filed third party interventions to the Court in support of the applicants’ claim. Duarte Agostinho and Others v. Portugal and Others centers on the alleged violation of the applicants’ right to life (article 2) and right to respect for private and family life (article 8) as well as the prohibition of discrimination (article 14) due to the disproportional effects of climate change on younger generations. Due to the urgency of addressing climate change, the applicants won a legal battle confirming the court’s decision to fast-track the case.

The ECHR has constructed a notable body of case law which acknowledges the direct impact of certain environmental issues on human rights, and requires states to mitigate resulting violations of these rights. The ‘environmental admissibility criteria’ for the ECHR, established in Fadeyeva v Russia (2005), stipulates that interference on an applicant’s private life must be concrete and severe, a requirement which the applicants have already satisfied.

There is scientific and governmental consensus that climate change impacts human life, but a state’s legal obligation to mitigate the risk has yet to be established by the Court. By demonstrating causation between the defendant states’ greenhouse gas emissions and global warming induced heatwaves, the Duarte Agostinho case could set a new precedent for a state’s legal obligations to mitigate the effects of climate change. The third party interventions provide the Court with evidence linking national inaction on climate change to ensuing negative impacts on the applicant’s health and human rights.

The group of NGOs that recently filed supportive third party interventions includes Amnesty International, Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, Germanwatch, Notre Affaire à Tous, and 2Celsius. These organisations have provided evidence supporting the claim that current national contributions will not reduce emissions to a level that will prevent global temperatures from rising above 2°C, in accordance with commitments of the Paris Agreement. According to Wendel Trio, Director of CAN Europe, “Current efforts by our governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are highly insufficient as the world is still heading for a temperature rise around 2.5°C, alarmingly above the objectives of the Paris Agreement.” The court should appreciate the expert knowledge on this subject as it waits for government defenses which are due by May 27th.

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Border Tensions in South-Eastern Europe Will Be Intensified by Climate Change

barb wire

3 June 2021 – by Evelyn Workman

A recent report “Regional Assessment for South-Eastern Europe: Security implications of climate change” calls climate change a “risk multiplier” in South-Eastern Europe. This region, having been afflicted with wars throughout the 1990s, is already prone to border tensions and this new report anticipates that climate change will only amplify these existing tensions. In addition, South-Eastern Europe has been identified as one of the world’s “warming hot spots”. In a business as usual scenario, temperatures could rise by 4°C by 2100, and the number of drought days is forecasted to increase by 20% across the region.

Potential negative consequences of climate change to this region are highlighted by the report. Climate change can change the access to or availability of natural resources, resulting in increased competition both within and across borders. Climate-induced extreme weather events and disasters can aggravate political instability and put livelihoods at risk, which could lead to people being pushed to emigrate from the region or to turn to illegal sources of income.

The report highlighted that two of the region’s main sectors, agriculture and tourism, are “very climate-sensitive and are expected to be negatively affected by climate change, leading to a potential loss of livelihoods and jobs.” The report goes on to predict that “this could contribute to political discontent and pose challenges for political stability. In addition, negative climate change impacts could put pressure on vulnerable groups to migrate or to take up adverse livelihood strategies, including crime.”

Two of the main aims of this report were to identify potential climate-security hotspots in the South-Eastern Europe region, and develop and implement climate change and security risk reduction measures. The report identified a large number of potential transboundary hotspots that are of concern, including shared river basins, shared mountain ecosystems and mining areas. The report also identified two security challenges that are transboundary, but not geographically constrained, and will likely be exacerbated by climate change: mixed movements and emigration, and air pollution. A range of cooperation opportunities for each hotspot was established in the report, including advancing transboundary cooperation around nature protecting or mining hazards, and developing action plans for transboundary water management.

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An Expert Panel in Germany Explores the Idea of Climate Passports

white and red labeled box

2 June 2021 – by Hazal Yilmaz

Recently, a German expert panel discussed the importance of fighting climate change in order to prevent a refugee crisis in Europe. It further stated that Germany should provide support to developing countries which are prone to environmental disasters, as a way of reducing the potential risk of forced migration in the future. Another solution the panel entertained was the concept of “climate passports”, which would ultimately allow refugees from disaster-struck areas to resettle in other countries. The climate passport proposed in the report is predicted to be primarily a legal form of protection for people living in island regions adversely affected by rising sea levels, and may protect 2.2 million people in the Indian and Pacific Ocean.

The report further called on Canada and the U.S. to share the burden on immigration, arguing that wealthy countries should commit to receiving a number of refugees which would make up 0.05% of their population. The Minister of the Interior of Germany also urged that we must all work together in tackling the impending crisis. The final report is planned for publication after the pandemic.