Greed vs. the Earth: ‘Mosquito’ tactics needed to ensure climate compliance

Last month, the world’s wealthier nations were ordered to cut dangerous greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions more quickly than countries considered to be still developing.

Small island nations, surrounded by the sea, only contribute a fraction of global GhG emissions, but they remain most at risk from the effects of climate change. Wealthier nations produce the highest level of toxic emissions, but aren’t held to account for this.

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) tackled this imbalance in its recent ruling, which assessed states’ obligations under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, an agreement on how the world protects and cares for oceans.

ITLOS, which is based in Hamburg, Germany, issued its advisory opinion in response to a case brought by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law.

Although 196 states signed the Paris Agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in 2015, the accord lacks an enforcement mechanism. Instead, more economically developed countries claim they are at liberty to set their own climate targets, without any legal framework.

But on May 21, ITLOS said the Paris agreement was not enough. It said the law of the sea imposed specific legal obligations on states and there were consequences for those who did not comply. The ruling comes as oceans are warming rapidly, causing greater danger for the planet’s biodiversity and humanity’s survival. How this decision will be enforced, however, remains uncertain.

Dr. Vandana Shiva, a leading environmental activist and the founder of one of India’s first seed banks, speaks to TRT World about the decision from the foothills of the Himalayas. She lives in Dehradun, in north India’s Uttarakhand state.

TRT World: Can you start by explaining why small island communities are most at risk to climate change?

Vandana Shiva: Small Island communities and mountain communities, like those from the Himalayas where I come from, have not contributed to the pollution of the earth. Yet they are the most severely impacted by the pollution of the rich.

These communities are vulnerable, and they don’t have buffers. So they are suffering more. For small island nations, a warmer world directly leads to a rise in sea level, caused by snow melting and the volume of water increasing.

Then there’s also land erosion. Their lives are lived around the coast and beaches, but now entire islands are either getting submerged or like the islands in the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal, they’re being eaten up. It’s just disappearing.

And lastly, because ocean activity is getting so destabilised, hurricanes and cyclones are increasing in frequency and velocity and those are impacting much, much more. One cyclone can totally disrupt your food supply if you become dependent on imported food.

These are some of the many reasons why the small islands are vulnerable and why the small islands (filed their case).

TRT World: Yes, last month they took their case to ITLOS, but was the advisory opinion issued legally binding? And if it’s not, what weight does it actually have to affect change?

Vandana Shiva: OK so the law of the sea is legally binding, and you cannot separate ocean behaviour from atmospheric climate behaviour, right? Because the climate is one element of the entire biosphere.

There’s a way in which we’ve been made to think of the climate as separate and sitting on its own. No, it’s totally linked to the ocean behaviour, to the biosphere, to the land behaviour and therefore in scientific terms and legal terms, the law of the sea is legally binding and even the climate treaty was legally binding till (former US President Barack) Obama killed it in Copenhagen in 2009.

It was here that the legally binding treaty under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) was undermined.

President Obama flew into Copenhagen where the COP was organised, proposed a dismantling of the legal framework and its substitution with voluntary commitments with a small group of countries outside the negotiations, held a press conference and flew away even while the countries were negotiating in the hall. Obama’s press conference announcing the shift from legally binding to voluntary reduction of pollution was flashed on the screens of the negotiating hall.

So it’s now the northern countries that say it’s not a legally binding treaty.

The rich countries killed the legal requirements, and they’re hiding behind that saying therefore even this opinion is not legally binding. But the law of the sea is legally binding and the atmosphere and the ocean is connected.

TRT World: So the outcome of this tribunal, can it now actively enforce change, make these wealthier nations accountable?

Vandana Shiva: If the small island nations stick together as a force and maintain the ecological scientific lead, because everyone in the scientific community is saying the biggest crisis right now is the destabilisation of the ocean system, not just the rising sea levels, but the ocean currents being destabilised.

TRT World: What does that mean for the world, for humanity, if the ocean currents are destabilised?

Vandana Shiva: It means that you might not get rain, which is what’s happening to India. I mean, they’re talking about the temperature increase. No one is talking about the monsoon failure. The monsoon is created by all of this, and entire economies rest on the monsoon. Without the monsoon, India is nothing. Take the monsoon away, India is not an economy.

The advisory opinion is saying the rich countries who are responsible for more than 60 percent of all the pollution in the world now and historically – 100 percent, they have a duty!

Polluter pays was a decision of the Earth Summit in 1992. So if you look at that, and take the evidence of destabilisation, and you take the law of the sea as another agreement, and you take the fact that IPCC originally was a legally binding agreement till Obama killed it, all of these facts say that the way the rich countries have gotten used to constantly behaving in unlawful manners with respect to the planet and with respect to the poorer countries – who are made to suffer because of their actions – that at some point this will have to stop.

And that’s why, even though it’s an opinion, it has to grow into a legal force.

And from my memory, the small island nations were the biggest force in the early days of the climate treaty, and they are still the force now turning to the law of the sea, to put the pressure on.

If they’re creative, if they’re innovative, they connect the many, many factors that are taking place including a very strong climate movement, this can have an impact.

The limitlessness of greed and the lawlessness of greed has to be called out.

TRT World: But how can this actually stop wealthier nations from being the polluters? And how do you actually make them pay and take heed to the advice that they’re being given by these bodies that are calling them to account?

Vandana Shiva: That’s where innovative creative ideas become important.

Rich countries killed the climate treaties legally binding elements and turned it into a voluntary commitment. The small island nations as victims of this whole thing have turned to the law of the sea, which is still legally binding.

It needs a creative alliance. It doesn’t have to be the powerful countries. It has to be a powerful idea.

A powerful idea of climate justice and environmental justice, a powerful idea of economic justice. A powerful idea of ethics.

When the climate treaty was killed in Copenhagen, it took an indigenous president at that time of Bolivia who said “Our objective is to save humanity and not just half of humanity. We are here to save mother earth”. Now just that one action has triggered a whole movement on the rights of nature.

And people are organising in new ways to protect rivers and mountains and you know, call for eco sites, something the poor European Parliament had done last year. But now with the new elections in Europe, I don’t know how far these things will go. But I think if the small island nations in a similar way call a broader coalition and find the way.

Let me give you a simple example. My dear friend Anita Roddick, who founded The Body Shop, always used to say you have to be like a mosquito. The mosquito just comes and irritates you, so that you have to create the buzz, and pull the powerful rich countries out of their space of total immunity. We can do what we want. And you have to find new mosquito tactics.

TRT World: So would you say these mosquito tactics will be coming from the next generation?

Vandana Shiva: Like I said, small island nations combined with young activists and real scientists, because there’s all kinds of scientists in the world today.

TRT World: Sovereign governments, you’ve said, are now more like corporate states, and not functioning as governments but as corporate polluters. So how can these small island nations, with the grassroots movement and ‘real scientists’ compete with these corporate states?

Vandana Shiva: That is why they can compete. Because the rich countries are just the states of the rich, countries are merely big powers, whether it be the chemical powers or the oil powers.

The small island nations, given that they’re small, are totally committed to the ecology, and they’re totally committed to their culture and their citizens.

So they are the true independent sovereign voices of a state representing nature and people. The North is no longer representing nature and people. The north represents greed, so the conflict now is greed versus the Earth.

In this conflict of nature and people on the one side and greed on the other, the states of the North have disappeared into the structures of greed.

The small island states still have some semblance of being the voice of nature and people.

That’s why they can take them off and ultimately you think the voice of nature will have the strength.

The only thing that will determine the outcome of any. Only the voice of nature.

TRT World: So back to the advisory issued – do you see it as a positive step towards climate justice?

Vandana Shiva: It is a very positive step for three reasons.

First, at a time where the bullies of the world are expecting the world to keep quiet, there’s a voice coming from the small island nations. That is a positive step to tell the bullies, there are other people on this planet.

First, at a time where the bullies of the world are expecting the world to keep quiet, there’s a voice coming from the small island nations. That is a positive step to tell the bullies, there are other people on this planet.

The second reason, it’s reminding people that there are many, many legally binding treaties. One is the Law of the Sea.

And the third is they are helping people remember that we live on the only living planet there is, and in this living planet, Gaia. The land, the biosphere, the ocean, that sphere of one interconnected whole that maintains its life and maintains its temperature and maintains the flow of the currents of the seas and in remote mountain areas and the remotest island states, and that’s why we must behave with respect to Gaia.

Crimes against Gaia are crimes against humanity.