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| SAVE THE WORLD, SPARE THE PLANET - WSP(NZ) |
Rising sea levels has caused communities living on low-lying
islands to become severely threatened. Evacuations began in 2009 to move people
from the Carteret Islands, Papua New Guinea, to the island of Bougainville. Carteret
Islanders are described as the first group of people living on an island who
are facing forced and organised relocation due to climate change and rising sea
levels. The island is believed to be uninhabitable by this year. Tuvalu is
another Pacific island nation that is at risk of being uninhabitable within the
next 30 years.
“Tuvalu and Kiribati have been saying for at least 10 to 15
years to the rest of the world that this is a reality for them. It’s not about
a threat, it’s happening right now,” says Rachael Le Mesurier, executivedirector at Oxfam New Zealand. The organisation, which works with communities
dealing with humanitarian disasters, says the intensity of weather patterns
such as cyclone season is clearly increasing and the impact on the affected
communities is evident. The increasingly intense weather patterns are making it
difficult for agriculturally reliant communities to support themselves. “Tuvalu
and Kiribati are seeing areas that have been agriculturally viable being
damaged. Taro crops are no longer able to grow because the salt is coming up
through the coral and making it impossible for them to grow crops they’ve grown
for ages. The Pacific countries are not the ones that are responsible for
climate change. They have such a small number of proportional emissions.”
Senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace Simon Boxer says
that the Pacific Islands have a small number of emissions into the atmosphere
yet are primarily dealing with the consequences of pollution. According to
Boxer, the aim is to “recognise that the Pacific is on the front line of
climate change and its been caused by polluters like New Zealand and
Australia.” Greenpeace believes New Zealand has a responsibility to allow those
affected by climate change to settle in New Zealand. “Our view is that New
Zealand is part of the problem. We are the polluters. We’re creating this
devastation of Pacific communities. Therefore we have the moral duty to
accommodate those we’re displacing. New Zealand and Australia have to take a
lot more proactive role on allowing climate refugees to come in and not trying
to put as many legal hurdles in the way as possible. There have been attempts
at the United Nations level to have countries like New Zealand be liable for
creating this problem. They should have to pay compensation and be forced to
help countries adapt and take refugees which is part of it.”
A lawyer who defended a Kiribati national seeking asylum in
New Zealand based on climate change says more can be done for Pacific people
whose islands are significantly threatened by rising sea levels.
The two-year long campaign to allow Teitiota and his wife to
stay in New Zealand as “climate change refugees” was denied by the Supreme
Court in July 2015. The ruling was based on a claim that the Kiribati
government is taking steps to ensure the safety of its citizens. The 1951
Refugee Convention says that to claim refugee status, one must face persecution
based on religion, ethnicity or being a member of the social group.
“What’s disappointing about the Supreme Court decision is
that they cannot move from that point where there’s a general system of
persecution to where climate change, droughts, water inundation and pollution is
a general persecution,” says Kidd, who had appealed against an earlier High
Court judgement. “New Zealand has a responsibility towards our Pacific brethren
who are currently drowning.”
Amnesty International’s New Zealand spokesperson says
climate change is the biggest concern in the region and could have huge
implications on the human rights of effected communities. “Not only is climate
change an environmental issue, it is a human rights issue,” says Amanda Brydon,
advocacy manager at Amnesty International. “While Amnesty International doesn’t
currently take a position on climate change, the organisation recognises that
the impact of climate change has serious implications for people’s human
rights. Climate change will increasingly become one of the biggest barriers to
the rights to housing, water, food, health and adequate standard of living.
Communities living in poverty can be especially vulnerable to climate
change-related impacts, in particular those concentrated in unplanned and
unserviced settlements within urban areas,” says Brydon.
The urgency of the warnings from the Pacific Islanders, we
can only hope, will rouse people from lethargy to frenetic activism, rather
than to reduce them to despair and fatalism. The World Socialist Party in New
Zealand recognises the urgent need to tackle global warming and climate change
but amending the categorisation of refugee status under the country’s immigration
laws may in itself be be a worthy charitable gesture, it is, nevertheless, fiddling while the world burns. People have to understand the cause of
global warming. Capitalism is the
impersonal process of the accumulation of capital out of the surplus value
produced by the wage-working class and involves competition to transform this
surplus value into money by selling the products in which it is embodied. This
battle is won by those enterprises that can sell their products at the lowest
price due to their employment of more productive methods. This investment in
new productive methods depends on making enough profits (converting enough
surplus value into money). So, capitalism is the pursuit of profits to
accumulate as more capital. Such “growth” is built into it and cannot be
stopped. If ever it was, the whole system would seize up and there would by
massive worldwide economic crises. What is required to stabilise the rise in
temperature is a global political and social revolution to end capitalism and
put “mankind” in full charge of its interaction with the rest of nature
(production). Which can only be done on the basis of the Earth’s natural and
industrial resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity. To this end, the WSP(NZ) is organised.
1) If we do have
a chance of survival, it is contingent on the establishment of world socialism.
If capitalism continues indefinitely, then sooner or later we are doomed.
2) The sooner we
establish socialism the better. But better late than never.
3) The climatic and environmental threat to
human survival will come to occupy central place among the concerns that
inspire people to work for socialism, overshadowing all else.
WSP(NZ) website:
E-mail: wsp.nz@worldsocialism.org
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