Communication to the Committee on the Rights of the Child
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COMMUNICATION TO THE COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD In the case of CHIARA SACCHI (Argentina); CATARINA LORENZO (Brazil); IRIS DUQUESNE (France); RAINA IVANOVA (Germany); RIDHIMA PANDEY (India); DAVID ACKLEY, III, RANTON ANJAIN, AND LITOKNE KABUA (Marshall Islands); DEBORAH ADEGBILE (Nigeria); CARLOS MANUEL (Palau); AYAKHA MELITHAFA (South Africa); GRETA THUNBERG (Sweden); RASLEN JBEILI (Tunisia); & CARL SMITH AND ALEXANDRIA VILLASEÑOR (USA); Petitioners, V. ARGENTINA, BRAZIL, FRANCE, GERMANY & TURKEY, Respondents. Submitted under Article 5 of the Third Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 23 September 2019 Petitioners’ Legal Representatives _________________________ Michael D. Hausfeld Ramin Pejan Richard Lewis Martin Wagner Scott Gilmore Earthjustice Jeanette Bayoumi 50 California Street, Suite 500 Kimberly Fetsick San Francisco, CA 94111 Hausfeld LLP (US) +1 415-217-2000 main 1700 K Street NW, Suite 650 +1 415-217-2040 fax Washington, DC 20006 +1 202-540-7147 main +1 202-540-7201 fax Anthony Maton Ingrid Gubbay Wessen Jazrawi Hausfeld UK 12 Gough Square London EC4A 3DW +44 (0)20 7665 5000 main +44 (0)20 7665 5001 fax TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 II. The Petitioners .......................................................................................................................... 8 III. The Respondents .................................................................................................................... 12 IV. Competence of the Committee on the Rights of the Child ..................................................... 13 V. The climate crisis is already here and harming children ........................................................ 14 A. The climate crisis is approaching a tipping point of irreversible catastrophic effects, threatening the lives and welfare of millions of children. ................................................... 14 1. Climate change is substantially altering our global environment. ............................... 18 2. Climate change is triggering life-threatening, adverse impacts. .................................. 21 3. Children are among the most vulnerable to climate change. ....................................... 24 B. Climate change is already exposing the petitioners to life-threatening dangers, harming their health, and disrupting their cultural traditions. ............................................. 27 1. Extreme heat ................................................................................................................. 28 2. Wildfires ....................................................................................................................... 29 3. Drought......................................................................................................................... 30 4. Dangerous air quality ................................................................................................... 32 5. Storms and flooding ..................................................................................................... 33 6. Sea-level rise ................................................................................................................ 34 7. Warming oceans and threatened marine life ................................................................ 35 8. Increased incidents of malaria, dengue fever, and other diseases ................................ 37 9. Threats to the cultural and subsistence practices of indigenous communities ............. 38 10. Emotional distress Linked to Present and Future Impacts ........................................... 43 VI. The climate crisis triggers human rights obligations informed by environmental law. .......... 45 A. The duty to prevent foreseeable human rights harms caused by climate change. .............. 47 B. The duty to cooperate internationally in the face of a global climate emergency. ............. 50 C. The duty to apply the precautionary principle and prevent life-threatening consequences even in the face of uncertainty. .................................................................... 52 D. The duty to ensure intergenerational equity for children and for posterity. ....................... 53 VII. Each of the respondents is knowingly causing and perpetuating the climate crisis. ............... 54 A. The respondents have all known about the deadly and foreseeable consequences of climate change for decades. ............................................................................................................. 54 B. Despite their decades-long knowledge, each respondent has breached its human rights duties by causing and perpetuating the climate crisis and undermining international cooperation. ......................................................................................................................... 56 i 1. The tragedy of the commons: The pursuit of short-term self-interest is undermining the international cooperation needed to mitigate climate change. .......... 56 2. Each respondent has failed to reduce its emissions at the “highest possible ambition.” ..................................................................................................................... 59 3. Each respondent has failed to protect children from the acts of the major carbon emitters. ............................................................................................................ 66 4. Each respondent’s contributions to climate change has caused and continues to cause the petitioners’ injuries. ...................................................................................... 69 VIII. The petitioners are within each respondent’s jurisdiction as victims of the foreseeable consequences of respondents’ domestic and cross-border contributions to climate change. .. 70 IX. Each respondent’s actions are causing and perpetuating the climate crisis and violate the petitioners’ rights. .................................................................................................................... 76 A. Each respondent is exacerbating the deadly and foreseeable consequences of climate change, violating the petitioners’ right to life (Art. 6). ....................................................... 78 B. Each respondent is exacerbating the deadly and foreseeable consequences of climate change, violating the petitioners’ right to health (Art. 24). ................................................. 82 C. Each respondent’s actions perpetuating the climate crisis are violating the indigenous petitioners’ right to their culture (Art. 30). ......................................................................... 84 D. Each respondent has failed to make the best interests of children a primary consideration in their climate actions (Art. 3). .......................................................................................... 88 X. Admissibility .......................................................................................................................... 90 A. Exception to exhaustion of domestic remedies ................................................................... 90 B. Timeliness ........................................................................................................................... 93 C. Absence of parallel international proceedings .................................................................... 95 XI. Request for Relief ................................................................................................................... 95 XII. Appendices (detailed index located at the conclusion of the Communication) A. Petitioner Narratives* B. Joeri Rogelj, Climate physics consequences of further delay in achieving CO2 emissions reductions and intergenerational fairness, Grantham Institute Science Brief (Sep. 2019). C. Climate Analytics, Scientific Report on Impacts and Drivers of Climate Change (Sep. 10, 2019). D. Additional Country Impacts Reports (Earthjustice) *The public version of the Communication excludes some identifying information for privacy reasons. The full Communication has been filed with the Committee on the Rights of the Child. ii I. Introduction “There may be no greater, growing threat facing the world’s children– and their children – than climate change.”– UNICEF1 1. The science is incontrovertible: global warming is caused by human activities that emit carbon dioxide (“CO2”) and other greenhouse gases (“GHG”)2 into the atmosphere of the planet.3 Each day, the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, industrial processes, and agriculture add hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, where it will remain for centuries. There is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 800,000 years. 2. The Earth is 1.1°C hotter than before the industrial revolution, and it is approaching a tipping point of foreseeable and irreversible catastrophic effects. If the Earth reaches 2°C of heating, the exacerbated air pollution alone is forecast to cause 150 million deaths. If the Earth reaches 3-4°C of heating by 2100—which is the current trajectory if states do not make drastic emissions reductions—the impacts of climate change will threaten the lives and welfare of over 2 billion children. 3. The climate crisis is not an abstract future threat. The 1.1°C rise in global average temperature is presently causing devastating