Environment and human dignity

Najib Saab
March 2013

Climate change was one of the most important subjects in President Barack Obama's second State of the Union address: "We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations... the path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult, but America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it." Obama also promised to increase the funding for research to develop cheap and secure solar and wind energy technologies, as well as cleaner applications of conventional energy, towards zero-emission target. During his first term, and despite fierce opposition from conservatives in the Congress, Obama managed to enact policies that led to doubling solar and wind energy generation, and the enforcement of measures that require automakers to reduce fuel consumption by nearly half by 2025, to the level of 4.3 liters per 100 kilometers.

Two days after Obama delivered his address, the Guardian published an article revealing that donations amounting to around $120 million had been secretly channeled by rightwing individuals and American corporations to some 100 organizations and think-tanks to fuel climate change skepticism. This followed the failure of the skeptics, in recent years, to defend their arguments in denying climate change altogether. The new defense line was that climate change was actually happening, but due to natural cycles rather than human activities. This approach reminds of how hundreds of millions of dollars had been paid secretly by tobacco companies to support "researchers" and "experts" who maintained their denial of the harmful health effects of smoking, before losing the last fig leaf that covered their false arguments driven by greed. It turned out that the same hired guns who denied harmful effects of smoking are the same who deny climate change today.

Shortly after the revelations in the Guardian, global media highlighted the news of the huge meteor that exploded over the Ural region in Russia, causing severe material damages and leaving thousands of casualties in that remote area. Had the meteor, with power estimated at 30 times that of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb, struck a densely populated region, what would the casualties have been? Some turned to questioning the usefulness of addressing the impact of climate change, on the pretext that natural disasters like this might lead to more severe damage. Such arguments are bizarre, as the difference between the two cases resembles the difference between accidental death and suicide. And it is not morally acceptable that the world should allow a man-made climate disaster that amounts to collective suicide.
Meanwhile, the environment ministers from around the world were preparing for participating in the annual Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GMEF) which was hosted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) at its headquarters in Nairobi. This year's gathering was a historic on, being the first time that all the 193United Nations member states participated in the universal meeting, as stipulated in the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development and endorsed recently by the UN General Assembly. Since its establishment in 1972, UNEP membership was restricted to 58 member states, constituting its governing body and elected by the UN General Assembly.
All were preparing to discuss the new structure and governance of the world's leading body charged with global environmental affairs: should UNEP remain a multi-disciplinary program under the UN Secretariat, with the flexibility to advise on environmental aspects of the work of other UN bodies, or should it be converted into a specialized agency governed by its 193 members?

The "old guard" at UNEP considered that turning its governing council into a universal one, with 193 member states rather than 58, was sufficient to give it more powers. They warned that turning UNEP into an independent specialized agency would deprive it of the allocations it receives from the UN Secretariat, leaving it dependant on voluntary commitments from member states.

Briefings on those topics were in a folder I carried on my way to Beirut Airport, to catch a flight to Nairobi for UNEP Forum. It was a cold, rainy and stormy evening, and I was occupied with choosing one of these topics to be the theme of my March editorial, which I planned to write on the plane. Suddenly, my global dreams were interrupted when the car stopped at a traffic light, and the pale face of a shivering, young man appeared before my window. He stood under the rain with no coat, no hat, and no shoes. He did not ask for money, but for a small piece of bread. I asked: "Who are you and why are you here?" Behind his trembling lips I saw a dry tongue, which revealed that he did not have anything to eat or drink for long. He said: "I am a homeless Arab fleeing my country to avoid killing and destruction."
I realized that this was one of the millions of hungry, displaced and homeless Arabs. Yet, never before had I seen such a touching embodiment of misery.

To whom are we supposed to write about environment, sustainable development and the future? Are our audiences desperate hungry people, who are not sure whether they will find something to eat the next morning, or rulers who brought to their people such levels of despair?

We were still stuck in the Beirut traffic jam, a few minutes before reaching the airport, when the driver turned the radio to the evening news bulletin. It started with a statement by a cleric saying: "Everything that is said and demanded in the name of what is called reform and human rights and democracy is not worth the split blood of an innocent person." The image of the wretched young man at the car window was still hanging on my mind; so I wondered: What are regimes worth if their survival comes at the expense of basic human rights, and what is the meaning of environment apart from human dignity?

At the UNEP ministerial meeting in Nairobi, representatives of some of the most oppressive regimes were indeed among those who shamelessly preached about environment.