Climate change threatens Australia in many different ways, and can devastate rural and urban communities alike. For Torres Strait Islanders, it is a crisis that is washing away their homes, infrastructure and even cemeteries.

The failure to take action on this crisis has led a group of Torres Strait Islanders to lodge a climate change case with the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the Australian federal government.

It is the first time the Australian government has been taken to the UN for their failure to take action on climate change. And its the first time people living on a low lying island have taken action against any government.

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This case – and other parallel cases – demonstrate that climate change is “fundamentally a human rights issue”, with First Nations most vulnerable to the brunt of a changing climate.

The group of Torres Strait Islanders lodging this appeal argue that the Australian government has failed to take adequate action on climate change. They allege that the re-elected Coalition government has not only steered Australia off track in meeting globally agreed emissions reductions, but has set us on course for climate catastrophe.

In doing so, Torres Strait Islanders argue that the government has failed to uphold human rights obligations and violated their rights to culture, family and life.

The video Our islands, Our Home. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples should be aware that this video may contain the images, voices and names of people who have died. This film was shot on location on the islands of Zenadth Kes (Torres Strait) in Australia. Video: 350 Australia

This case is a show of defiance in the face of Australia’s years of political inertia and turmoil over climate change.

It is the first time people living on a low-lying island – acutely vulnerable in the face of rising sea levels – have brought action against a government. But it may also be a sign of things to come, as more small island nations face impending climate change threats.

Breaching multiple human rights obligations
Driving this case is an alliance of eight Torres Strait Islanders, represented by the Torres Strait land and sea council, Gur A Baradharaw Kod, along with a legal team from ClientEarth and 350.org. They argue that their way of life has come under immediate and irreversible threat.

On this basis, they accuse the Australian government of breaching multiple articles of the UN Human Rights Declaration, including the right to culture, the right to be free from arbitrary interference with privacy, family and home, and the right to life.

In the early 1990s, the Torres Strait Islands were at the centre of struggles to secure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights in Australia.

Securing these rights were made possible through the historic Mabo Decision, and these rights remain central to land and human rights debates today as Torres Strait Islanders’ land and seas are threatened by climate change.

Torres Straight islanders on the frontlines
Some Torres Strait Islands are less than one metre above sea level and are already affected by climate change.

Rising tides have delivered devastating effects for local communities, including flooding homes, land and cultural sites, with dire flooding in 2018 breaking a sea wall built to protect local communities.

Increasing sea temperatures have also affected marine environments, driving coral bleaching and ocean acidification, and disrupting habitat for dugong, salt water crocodiles, and multiple species of turtle.

In the same way settler colonial violence dispossessed First Nations people from their ancestral homelands, climate change presents a real threat of further forced removal of people from their land and seas, alongside destruction of places where deep cultural and spiritual meaning is derived.

Parallel threats across the Pacific
While the Torres Strait appeal to the UN is groundbreaking, the challenges facing Torres Strait Islanders are not unique.

Delegates at the Pacific Islands Forum in Fiji last week described climate change as the “single greatest threat” to the region, with sea level rise occurring up to four times the global average in some countries in the Pacific.

Climate change is already causing migration across parts of the Pacific, including relocation of families from the Carteret Islands to Bougainville with support from local grassroots organisation Tulele Peisa.

The Alliance of Small Island States, an intergovernmental organisation, has demanded that signatories to the Paris Agreement, including through the Green Climate Fund, recognise fundamental loss and damages communities are facing, and compensate those affected.

Growing wave of climate litigation
Across the Torres Strait, the Pacific, and other regions on the frontline of climate change, there are a diversity of responses in defence of land and seas. These are often grounded in local and Indigenous knowledge.

They show the resolve of First Nations and local communities, as captured in a message from the Pacific Climate Warriors:

We are not drowning. We are fighting.

There are parallel appeals to the Torres Strait Islanders’ case. Around the world, First Nations people are calling on the UN to hold national governments to account on human rights obligations, including in the context of mining and other developments that drive greenhouse gas emissions.

In Australia, Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners have submitted multiple appeals, including last year alleging government violations of six international human rights obligations in their effort to advance Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine.

There is an array of other climate litigation underway. This includes citizens suing their governments for failing to take action on climate, such as in the Netherlands, where a judge ordered the government to take hefty action to reduce national emissions.

Similarly, a group of 21 children in the United States are pursuing a lawsuit to demand the right to a safe climate.

Given the parlous state of climate politics in Australia, further litigation can be expected. The significance of the current appeal by a group of Torres Strait Islanders lies in its potential to lay bare the adequacy or otherwise of Australia’s response to climate change as a human rights issue.

First Nations people already have a moral authority in defending their human rights in the era of climate change. Over time, they and others, including children, will also test the grounds on which they might have the legal authority to do so.

• Dr Kristen Lyons is professor of environment and development sociology in the The University of Queensland. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
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Concerns have emerged New Zealand may not meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement if a law on emissions is not enacted and soon.

This is the view of New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, which was revealed in her final report ‘Stepping stones to Paris and beyond: Climate change, progress, and predictability’ released this week.

“There is no direct link between New Zealand climate policy and reaching the Paris target,” she says.

“My chief concern in this report is not the level of our targets, but the lack of a process for achieving them.”

Dr Wright therefore believes the government should take a note out of the UK’s book and implement a climate change act which puts emissions targets in legislation and sets up a process for reaching them.

This is because between 1990 and 2015 New Zealand’s emissions have risen by 64 per cent, while the UK’s have fallen by 38 per cent in the same period.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, New Zealand’s emissions should be 11 per cent below those of 1990 levels by 2030.

Paris target unreachable
But if the concerns raised in Dr Wright’s report are anything to go by, that target may not be reached.

Dr Wright herself acknowledges our 2030 greenhouse gas target may not be “ambitious enough” so charting a pathway to that target and beyond is the “bigger issue”.

So what would such a pathway look like?

Firstly, New Zealand’s emission targets would become law, with “carbon budgets” approximately every five years ensuring these targets are met.

An expert body would also be established to provide successive governments objective analysis and advice about how their targets are tracking and what steps could be taken to improve.

But Dr Wright warns this legislation must transcend the current government.

“Support across political parties is vital. Climate change is the ultimate inter-generational issue, and governments change.”

Climate ‘transcends governments’
As a result, Dr Wright sees the implementation of this act being via a “apolitical long-term approach”, which means businesses largely pick up the baton from government.

“Climate change transcends governments and our approach must do the same,” she says.

However, New Zealand currently has no strong policy on emissions or mitigating and adapting to climate change, Dr Wright says.

“Currently, New Zealand has no climate change target in law.”

This is also something climate change minister Paula Bennet herself has acknowledged.

She told The AM Show: “We’re just not quite there. I don’t think the time is right for us to be doing the legislation.”

New Zealand’s climate change policy is seen by some as ad hoc, so much so that a 26-year-old law student took the government to court in June over its climate policy “failure”.

Government ‘shirked responsibilities’
“So far the New Zealand government has shirked its responsibilities, set unambitious and irrational targets, and justified it all by saying we’re too small to make a difference,” Sarah Thomson told Asia Pacific Report.

“I’m young and I’m terrified of a time when I might have to look my kids in the eye and explain to them how we let this happen.”

Currently, the Emissions Trading Scheme is New Zealand’s main policy for making the much-needed transition to a low carbon-economy.

However, with no restrictions on the number of carbon units New Zealand purchases from other countries, New Zealand’s emissions can appear more rosy than they actually are.

13 years shy of reaching its Paris target, the “clean energy revolution” taking place across the globe does not appear to have reached New Zealand’s shores yet, but it could.

A 2013 report by Greenpeace New Zealand ‘The future is here: New jobs, new prosperity and a new clean economy’ reveals New Zealand could have an economy based entirely on renewables by 2050.

New Zealand is already a world leader in geothermal energy, but if the country invested more in smart electricity and smart transport over 25,000 jobs would be created while New Zealand’s carbon footprint would reduce to 1.8 million tonnes.

Clean, green reputation
Currently, 50 per cent of the country’s jobs rely on New Zealand’s “clean, green reputation” while 70 per cent of its exports rely on that same reputation.

If New Zealand makes the switch and invests more in renewable sources, those percentages are sure to climb.

Already, 70 per cent of New Zealand’s electricity needs are met by renewable sources.

“Only a small proportion of New Zealand’s electricity is generated by burning coal and gas,” Dr Wright acknowledges.

Along with the Asian Development Bank, she has recognised the opportunities for more renewable energy in the region.

“New Zealand is rich in geothermal energy, and with the best wind in the world, we have a great opportunity for decarbonising transport.”

In a July 2017 report, the Asian Development Bank note: “The rapidly decreasing costs of wind and solar power generated clearly indicates that consumption and production of the future could be driven by renewable energy sources.”

Lack of policy
It is, however, difficult to pin down the “when and where” of this transition, they note.

This may be the case for New Zealand due to a lack of government policy, says Amanda Larsson, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace New Zealand.

“We in New Zealand are falling behind due to a lack of government leadership. Not only is our government doing next to nothing to incentivise clean energy, they have sat on their hands while energy companies have extended the life of coal-fired power at Huntly.

“They have stood by while lines companies have introduced unfair charges on solar customers that discourage the uptake of clean solar power. And they continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars inviting the oil industry to look for more oil that we cannot afford to burn.”

If New Zealand continues down its current “business as usual” path, the outlook for the country and its neighbours in the Pacific is bleak.

“The scientific understanding, and our daily experience, is that climate change is happening at a faster rate than was appreciated at the time of the Paris Agreement,” the 13 nations of the Pacific Small Island Development States (PSIDS) said in a joint July statement.

Sea levels around the world are expected to rise between 75cm and 1.5 metres by the end of the century and none are more at risk than the low-lying coral atolls and islands of the Pacific.

Sea swallowing land
Already, the people of Kiribati are expected to relocate 200km away to Fiji by 2020 as stories across the Pacific region have emerged of the sea swallowing land.

In Palau, at its peak, high tide is 30cm higher than when the President of Palau, Tommy Remengesau, built his house in 1989.

In the Torres Strait, the cemetery on Boigu Island faces inundation while roads are being washed into the sea because the seawall is “already failing”.

For the people of Masig Island, there are fears they may have to abandon their ancestral home.

In Vanuatu, the islands of Nguna, Espiritu Santo and Tanna are facing water scarcity, food shortages, and an increase in natural disasters.

As Vilimaina Naqelevuki of the village of Narikoso on Ono Island in the Kadavu Group told the Bearing Witness project: “We’re going to lose our land, we’re going to lose our culture, our identity, if we don’t do anything about climate change at all.”

‘Survival of our people’
There are also concerns that even under the Paris Agreement, in which global warming is limited to 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the Pacific will not survive.

“For Pacific Island countries, because of our vulnerable ecosystems, we can manage up to 1.5°C, but beyond that we’re going to start losing our ecosystems and livelihood, our resources, and then the survival of our people,” Dr Morgan Wairiu, an expert in food security and climate change with the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), told Asia Pacific Report.

Many feel New Zealand’s lack of political leadership on climate change is a “real betrayal” of the Pacific.

“Our Government knows that fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal drive climate change. They know that climate change is threatening to put whole nations underwater.

“Our Pacific neighbours are in the middle of a climate emergency and there is no excuse for pursuing an energy policy that prioritises oil, coal and gas at the expense of clean renewables,” Larsson says.

However, it is important to remember Pacific Island countries are fighting.

As PSIDS themselves note: “Our solemn obligation and responsibility is to ensure that the international community takes immediate and decisive action to address the underlying causes of global climate change.”

Pacific’s ‘solemn obligation’
Perhaps the greatest evidence of this “solemn obligation” is Fiji’s presidency of COP23 in Bonn, Germany, in November this year.

But the importance of clean energy in New Zealand cannot be more clear, both for the country and the Pacific region.

As Dr Wright asks: “What will our responsibility be towards our neighbours who live on low-lying coral atolls?”