1.1 Climate Change and Starvation: From Apocalypse to Integrity
Climate change
is now openly called a crime against humanity, and at least in Europe, it is named as the most basic and important origin of new policies and goals for that continent. Children mount protests almost everywhere, and the originator of the childrenās movements Greta Thunberg even sailed across the Atlantic to bring her message and that of the children in her movements to the White House. The 2019 G7 meetings debated it as well, while attempting to halt the most obvious sign of its presence, that is, the burning of the Amazon forests, and scientists join in signing declarations that proclaim that reality in all its manifestation while clearly indicting the guaranteed further disasters that await the world as a whole.
Yet each separate government, while proclaiming the truth of climate change in front of news cameras, still hesitates to eliminate their mines, whether at home or even abroad through their corporate citizens, and still continue to offer clear support to conservative political candidates, while denying their obligation to the migrants and refugees who, in order to escape the ravages of climate change, are forced to seek asylum, as melting glaciers, raising water levels, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and weather extremes everywhere confirm the presence of the situation state leaders still deny through their actions.
Equally missing from the main concerns of authorities, even those who are prepared to acknowledge climate change at least in principle, is the question of current diets, specifically the meat-intensive diets that the citizens of the affluent Western countries are led to believe are the only acceptable form of nourishment, while those in the poor countries elsewhere are aiming to achieve the same goal. But the question of food choices, as discussed in this Chap. 1, is too basic to be avoided: it will be the central point of this work.
Food production and consumption, as we will argue, is both a major causative agent of climate change and equally causative of many human rights breaches demonstrated by those affected: the obese. The obese, unhealthy people in wealthy countries, affected by multiple diseases, where cancer now has become the number one reason of death, beyond all cardiac problems. The effects of climate change are equally demonstrated by the starving, desperate refugees and migrants who are described erroneously as āattempting to better their economic conditionsā, thus compared erroneously with those judged to be more deserving, as victims of a war situation. We will argue that what moves these people makes them essentially, whether it is from South American countries or countries in North Africa or the Middle Eastā these people are essentially climate refugees, impelled to flee by starvation not the ideal of a future ābetter economic situationā.
In fact the results of Western choices in global governance, especially those related to food choices, are similar to what happens when a country invades another or an internal conflict arises, so the comparison, if not a true identification, with a war is totally appropriate. In addition, the āwarā is waged by the wealthier and the stronger, against the weakest and most defenseless in the world. The means of these attacks may not be bombs, guns or other war implements as, we shall argue, the simple reliance on corporate power, especially that which is related to food production, is sufficient.
Of course the generally acknowledged sources of climate change are real and present, and we will examine them in turn, as we will discuss the retreat of the state in the face of the overwhelming power of corporate persons that control our air, water and the food we eat as well as, ultimately, climate itself. These entities are active globally but are not controlled by state laws as they exceed the state in power, nor are they controlled by international law, as they are not ānationsā, but operate at another level altogether, a level international law has not yet been able to reach.
Hence we can conclude that non-state entities operate without any controls, so the damages they produce, no matter how grave, remain unpunished. This lack of control is particularly evident in the agricultural field, a field that is almost entirely in the hands of major corporations. These non-state entities control or at least direct North American states and extend that control through their monopoly of GMOs; related toxic products, intended to grow fodder; energy substitutes; and all the other products that produce harms from North to South America. Their control is partially extended to Europe, particularly North European countries.
The arguments provided to justify that noxious interference pander to the general ignorance of the public, their trust in their governmentsā commitment to protect them and their (the agricultural corporationsā) continued expressed falsehood: theirs, they say, is the only way to provide food for the worldās population. We have argued that rather than providing nourishment for the masses, as agribusiness asserts, their products deprive them of nourishment, while exposing them to a great number of physical and mental/emotional diseases from childhood and through to old age.1
In fact, the starvation that occurs from South America to North Africa, and which demonstrates their primary and ongoing role in climate change, originates precisely from agribusiness. Science, however, has indicated clearly a number of other sources of climate change, and we will detail each of these below, as they are, one and all, contributing factors; in fact each one has been emphasized in turn as the most significant in recent times. The role played by land and soil and by forests is the main theme discussed in 2019, as it is brought to the public attention by the terrible fires that burn the Amazon region. These forest fires emphasize precisely the main theme of this work: that is the primary role of agribusiness interests as it is the latter that are the main reason for those fires.
Then there is the role of water, equally central to agribusiness and certainly clear in the public eye because most of the obvious effects of climate change involve water, not only as melting glaciers but also as tsunamis, hurricanes and floods. Finally, air that is the basis of climate change is inquinated with constant toxic substances flowing from business operations and visibly changing the temperatures in ways that impose death of the most vulnerable.
In the next chapters, we will start with our personal responsibility defined: do we singly as world citizens and human beings have a real responsibility to work not only against climate change but also against starvation? After all science has been informing us, and knowledge builds first understanding and then responsibility. Science has been speaking clearly about all that is happening in the natural world, not through the authorities and government officials, but through the non-state movements and non-governmental organizations which are not constrained by the political ambitions of state leaders, but are prepared to address clearly the ecological realities on the ground. Lands and forests need to be understood and then respected for their double role, regarding both climate and hunger.
We will also review the issue of water, a basic necessity for agriculture, together with temperature extremes, a clear sign of all the disastrous effects of climate change. These direct climate change effects are combined with the indirect effects that originate from land grabs, which represent a related form of crimes against humanity, an equal contributor to climate change and to starvation as we shall see. It is at this level that the need for global governance is most urgent: our personal responsibility is acknowledged and ongoing, but radical changes in both international and local laws are urgent.
Global governance must acknowledge that the current legal regimes neither understand nor are prepared to approach some of the worst problems faced in almost all continents: the problem of desperate refugees attempting to escape both extreme climactic conditions and the starvation that faces them, as the two conditions are intimately connected. Nevertheless the legal systems, based on faulty understanding of the situation, confuse the means of the escape with the reasons for it. Hence, reacting to the problem with walls on the ground, closed ports on the seashores, rather than with joint national policies of aid and assistance that should transcend the politics of individual countries, is an additional crime in itself.
It is the starvation of these refugees that demands united, responsible and radically new treatment from existing legal regimes, a necessity based upon scientific evidence that is recent and thus exceeds the basis upon which previous legalities were founded. This was recognized by Judge Weeramantry who noted the same occurrences in his 1997 Separate Opinion in the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dispute.2 Judge Weeramantry
argued that as the science in 1997 had showed the environmental dangers involved in the project, decisions reached decades earlier could not stand: the law could not prescribe something that represented an attack on human rights, hence something against the principles of law itself.
Thus, the fact that humanity is one, north to south, east to west, now dictates that the scientific discoveries of recent times make the approach to legality of former times not only obsolete but morally wrong: today too, the law cannot and must not prescribe something that represents a direct attack on human rights. For that reason, on the final chapter, we will return to a principle I proposed twenty-seven years ago and have been clarifying and discussing for that length of time with a group of scholars in varied disciplines, united by a common understanding.
References
- Westra, Laura, 2018, On Hunger, International Press, Irvine, CA
- Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project, IJC Reports 1996, J.C., Weeramantry Separate Opinion 1997
Footnotes
1
Westra, L. 2018, On Hunger, International Press, Irvine, CA.
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2
Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project, IJC Reports 1996, J.C., Weeramantry Separate Opinion 1997.
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