Project
Photo: UNFCCCMonitoring the UN Climate Negotiations
As changes in climate become more extreme, their affects are being hardest felt throughout developing countries. Since 1994, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has laid out actions to limit the increase of global average temperatures and confront the impacts of climate change.
The States that are Parties to the Convention meet every year in the so-called Conference of the Parties (COP) to review their commitments, the progress made in fulfilling them, and pending challenges in the global fight against the climate crisis.
At COP21 in 2015, they adopted the Paris Agreement, which seeks to strengthen the global response to the climate emergency, establishing a common framework for all countries to work on the basis of their capacities and through the presentation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) that will:
- Limit the increase in global temperatures to 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels and continue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C;
- Increase the capacity of countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change; and
- Ensure that financing responds to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Our focus areas
THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The climate crisis, due to its transversal character, has repercussions in various fields, geographies, contexts and people. In this regard, the Preamble to the Paris Agreement states that it is the obligation of States to "respect, promote and fulfill their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, the empowerment of women and intergenerational equity."
AIDA at the COP
COP25: Chile-Madrid 2019
At COP25 in Madrid, Spain, we advocated for the inclusion of the human rights perspective in various agenda items. We promoted the incorporation of broad socio-environmental safeguards in the regulation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which refers to carbon markets. We closely followed the adoption of the Gender Action Plan, as well as the Santiago Network, created "to catalyze technical assistance […] in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse affects of climate change." We also encouraged the inclusion of ambitious and measurable targets for the reduction of short-lived climate pollutants in the climate commitments of States.
Related projects
Environmental Impact Assessments Necessary for Informed Consent
In January 2009, Muriel Mining Corporation moved into the department of Chocó, Colombia to launch Mandé Norte, a project for the exploration and development of copper, gold, molybdenum and other minerals. The US-based company began the project without proper consultation, and without the free, prior and informed consent of the local ethnic groups that would be directly affected by the mines. Consultation with the affected communities did not begin until 2006, a year after the company was awarded the mining contract. What's more, several of the affected communities were not invited to participate in the consultation process, and those that participated were not represented by traditional authorities. Then, despite serious objections raised by Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, the consultation process was concluded in August 2008. This project took place during a difficult period of Colombia’s armed conflict.The Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace, a Colombian human rights group, filed a legal action for protection against the mining project. AIDA contributed to the action by submitting an argument (in Spanish) demonstrating that without an adequate environmental impact assessment to analyze the project's social and environmental impacts, the affected communities would have no basis to give or deny consent, as required by international law. The Colombian Constitutional Court ruled on the case in the T-769 Sentence of 2009 (in Spanish), ordering the suspension of exploration and production activities and the awarding of licenses for the project. It also ordered a new consultation to meet both national and international standards, and required the completion of accurate environmental impact studies. AIDA has prepared a summary sheet (in Spanish) to make it easier to understand the sentence. The ruling in this case set a key precedent by incorporating and recognizing, for the first time, the right of ethnic groups to free, prior and informed consent. It was a breakthrough in the recognition of the rights of ethnic groups in Colombia. Both the Ministry of the Interior and the mining company sought an annulment of the constitutional sentence. But AIDA intervened (in Spanish) to defend the sentence against the annulment requests, as did the Colombian Commission of Jurists (in Spanish), Dejusticia (in Spanish), Harvard and Diego Portales (in Spanish). These efforts paid off. On March 12, 2012, the Constitutional Court upheld its decision (in Spanish) on Mandé Norte. Without this ruling, the mining project would have had serious social and environmental impacts on the biodiverse region of Chocó, damaging crop animals, rivers and the mountain of Caraperro, long considered by indigenous peoples to be a sacred site. The project would have both physically and culturally harmed the local indigenous peoples, and would have caused the deterioration of traditional economies. At AIDA, we work to defend the right to a healthy environment and the protect human rights of communities and ethnic groups against powerful interests. Follow us on Twitter: @AIDAorg "Like" our page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AIDAorg
Read moreLives of no return: Stories behind the construction of Belo Monte
By María José Veramendi Villa, senior attorney, AIDA, @MaJoVeramendi When you start the descent by plane to the city of Altamira in Pará, Brazil, the darkness of the night is interrupted by the bright lights of worksites a few kilometers outside the city where construction of the Belo Monte dam is underway. That’s when things turn bleak. On a recent trip to the area I was able to see how the situation of thousands of residents – the indigenous, riverine and city dwellers of Altamira - continues to deteriorate. Their communities and livelihoods are being irreversibly affected and their human rights systematically violated by the construction of the hydropower plant. When night becomes day From the plane, the lights from the worksites are just momentary flashes. But for the indigenous and riverine communities closest to them, those lights have brought a radical change to their lifestyles. José Alexandre lives with his family in Arroz Cru, a waterfront community located on the left bank of the Volta Grande, or Big Bend, of the Xingu River in the municipality of Vitória do Xingu. The community is in front of the Pimental worksite. His entire life has been spent in the area, where hunting and fishing are major activities. But everything changed when construction of the dam started.
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The link between international environmental law, human rights and large dams
The article is an update and reissue of two chapters of the report Large Dams in the Americas: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease, written by Jacob Kopas and Astrid Puentes Riaño. The article identifies “the main obligations, standards, decisions and international law applicable to large hydropower plants that our governments should use in the planning, implementation, operation and closure of these projects." The article is divided into two parts. Chapter I offers an overview of the main standards, the legal framework of international human rights and environmental law as well as the decisions and international jurisprudence applicable to the cases of large dams. In Chapter II, this framework is applied to the cases of human rights abuses caused by the degradation of the environment through the development of a large dam.
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