IACHR hearing on Extractive Industries, Rights and Climate Change in the Caribbean (Oct. 26, 2021)

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is holding a landmark hearing on extractive industries, rights, and climate change in the Caribbean today at 2 pm EST. The hearing was requested by Malene Alleyne, Jamaican human rights lawyer and Founder of Freedom Imaginaries, and Esther Figueroa, Jamaican environmental filmmaker. Nearly ninety organizations and individuals across the Caribbean have co-signed the request.

The hearing will focus on the impact of the mining and fossil fuels industries on the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of women, Indigenous, Afro-descendent, and rural communities in the Caribbean.

The delegation to the IACHR will be one of the most diverse to appear from the Caribbean, with representatives from five states. In addition to Alleyne and Figueroa from Jamaica, the delegation also includes Immaculata Casimero and Janette Bulkan from Guyana, Samuel Nesner from Haiti, Gary Aboud and Lisa Premchand from Trinidad and Tobago, and Kirk Murray from The Bahamas.

(Petchary's Blog, Stabroek, Repeating Islands) 

COP26 and Climate Justice

• Earlier this month the United Nations Human Rights Council recognised for the first time that having a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right. The Council also increased its focus on the human rights impacts of climate change by establishing a Special Rapporteur dedicated specifically to that issue.
  
  
• Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Climate Action, Selwin Hart from Barbados spearheads a global drive to raise climate ambition now. In this interview, he talks about the critical need for developed countries to finance climate adaptation to save lives and protect livelihoods in countries facing the worst consequences from climate. 
  
  
• COP26 in Glasgow is a truly decisive moment for small islands and countries with low-lying coastlands, writes Sir Ronald Sanders. "This is the last decade the world has to avoid the worst impacts of global warming: unimaginable natural disasters, sea-level rise, decimation of human habitats and drowning of small countries with ancient civilizations as in parts of the Pacific. Small states must speak up, and they should not be cajoled into accepting words as deeds or promises as fulfilment."
  
  
• The COP26 outcomes can have profound impacts on our earth as we know it, and many view it as “the last best chance for political leaders to avert a climate catastrophe, which would be unavoidable if global warming exceeds 1.5°C”. In fact 1.5° does not represent a safe climate for the world or for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). It means “there must be zero tolerance on the net zero emissions, if we want to realise the future we want”, Professor Michael Taylor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) told Caricom ministers this month in preparation for the global conference. (CMC)
  
  
• One of the most hotly debated topics at the COP26 climate conference will be climate finance - essentially, how we distribute the costs of climate change, reports Sky News. New research from the Center for Global Development (CGD) estimates that members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) should commit almost double this amount - $190bn a year - until 2100.
  
  
• The target for climate finance is not simply a question of numbers, for the Caribbean. "It is, perhaps more importantly, a qualitative question, because if finance does not bring tangible benefits to the poorest and the most vulnerable and if it does not empower those who are in the position to facilitate a fair transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient and sustainable economy, we can forget about climate justice," argues Panos Caribbean.
  
  
• An IIED briefing based on research, interviews and dialogues with community representatives and government officials from least developed countries and Small Island Developing States considers practical solutions to the unique challenge of loss and damage that they face.
  
  
• Indigenous leadership is also necessary if climate justice is to be achieved, as is support for advancing transformative and innovative solutions that account for all life, writes Prof Deborah McGregor in Carbon Brief.
  
  
• Youth organizations from around the world are urging governments to prioritize Loss and Damage (L&D) in the upcoming COP26 negotiations and to redirect global public finance to those countries in the Global South and frontline communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts. (Loss and Damage Youth Coalition)

Energy and Just Transitions

• Puerto Rico's ongoing energy crisis is hindering economic development and daily life, provoking citizen protests this month. In June, a private consortium known as LUMA Energy took over the transmission and distribution of electricity. And yet the situation has only worsened, reports the New York Times. (See Oct. 7's Just Caribbean Updates)
  
  
• The two entities in charge of providing electricity to Otero and 3.2 million Puerto Ricans have been pointing fingers at each other over who is responsible for the worsening power crisis. But a new analysis from the Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rico-based nonpartisan think tank, showed they both share a fair portion of the blame. (NBC News)
  
  
• Puerto Rican campaigners say household solar panels and energy storage should be rolled out more widely to tackle the island’s energy crisis and the global climate emergency – both of which are exacerbating racialized health inequalities. After the devastation of Hurricane Maria, a social movement came up with a plan called Queremos Sol – an evidence-based roadmap to make Puerto Rico’s energy system self-sufficient with onsite small solar grids distributed throughout the island. The concept is simple: a localized system that doesn’t require moving electricity from centralized power plants along overhead wires to local substations would be better equipped to withstand and recover from super storms and other natural disasters, reports the Guardian.
  
  
• An unmitigated oil spill at ExxonMobil’s Yellowtail project in Guyana could have far-reaching effects in the area, but there would also be devastating implications for the marine life and ecosystems of neighbors, such as Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, warns Kaieteur News.
  
  
• Prime Minister Mark Phillips sees no contradiction in Guyana being both a fossil-fuel leader and a climate-change mitigator, in an interview with WLRN News.
  
  
• This video by CANARI with contributions from Montserrat fisherfolk and other coastal and marine resource users documents the key impacts of climate change and ideas for solutions to build the resilience of fisherfolk and the small-scale fisheries sector in Montserrat. 

Food Security

• The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) says that the climate crisis poses a severe threat to food security in the Caribbean, as vulnerable communities — a vast majority of whom rely on agriculture, fishing and livestock, who contribute the least to the climate crisis — bear the brunt of the impacts with limited means to cushion the blow.  (CMC)
  
  
• Food insecurity throughout the Caribbean has risen sharply since the onset of the pandemic. According to the Caribbean COVID-19 Food Security and Livelihoods Impact Surveys in February 2021, 2.7 million people out of a regional population of 7.1 million were food insecure, compared to 1.7 million in April 2020. And in the backdrop of COVID-19 have been the growing impacts of climate change, writes Daphne Ewing-Chow in a Forbes column in which she highlights the invaluable role of social protection to Caribbean food security.
  
  
• Tamisha Lee, President of the Jamaica Network of Rural Women Producers and other female farmers from Latin American and Caribbean countries who work day to day to build a better life for themselves and their communities were the leading participants at the commemoration of the International Day of Rural Women organized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
  
  
• Under the theme ‘Building rural women’s resilience in the wake of COVID-19’, the United Nations acknowledged that rural women are “bearing some of the heaviest burdens” of COVID-19, including restrictions on movement, the closure of shops and markets, disruption to their supply chains, and a particularly wide gender digital divide. Jamaica’s rural female farmers, spoke with the Gleaner on how COVID-19 greatly altered their livelihoods, forcing them to do ‘balancing acts’ to survive.

Democratic Governance

• Barbados' lawmakers elected former jurist Sandra Mason to become the country's head-of-state, a symbolic position held until now by Queen Elizabeth II. Mason will be sworn in on Nov. 30, making Barbados a republic on the 55th anniversary of its independence from Britain. Mason has been Barbados' governor general since 2018 when she was appointed by the queen. (New York Times, Axios)
  
  
• “The time has come for us to express the full confidence in ourselves as a people, and to believe that it is possible for one born of this nation to sign off finally and completely," said Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
  
  
• Barbados is not the first Caribbean country to forsake the Queen. Guyana did so in 1970, four years after gaining independence from Britain, and was followed by Trinidad and Tobago in 1976 and, two years later, Dominica. Its decision to become a republic has amplified a long-running debate in Jamaica over whether it should also turn away from the monarchy, reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Yasin Abu Bakr, the leader of the Jamaat Al Muslimeen, who staged an unsuccessful coup against the Trinidadian government in1990, died last week. On July 27, 1990, Abu Bakr and over 100 armed Muslim rebels set off a car bomb that gutted the police station in front of Trinidad and Tobago's Parliament. They then stormed into the legislature and sprayed it with bullets before taking the prime minister and his Cabinet hostage. The rebellion left 24 people dead, and others injured. (CMC, Miami Herald)
  

Public Security

• Haiti is in the midst of an acute fuel crisis linked tu surging insecurity: fuel deliveries have been interrupted for over two weeks by gang blockades and abductions of fuel truck drivers. Drivers responded with a strike last week, protesting insecurity, and angry motorcyclists locked down the capital with fiery barricades. The fuels are widely used to run generators needed to compensate for the country’s unreliable electrical system. (Associated Press,  Miami Herald)
  
  
• The ongoing fuel crisis in Haiti, linked to surging insecurity that has affected petrol deliveries, is likely to lead to a loss of lives if fuel doesn’t arrive at hospitals and health clinics by tomorrow, warned the United Nations. Hospitals over the weekend began refusing admissions and shortening the stay of patients over the lack of fuel, reports the Miami Herald. 
  
  
• Some 165 gang factions operate in Port-au-Prince, the epicenter of Haiti’s crime wave. This year, gangs conducted at least 628 abductions — more than a threefold increase from last year’s total. Today, collusion between armed groups and political elites and the Haitian police's shortfalls have allowed Haiti’s gangs to supplant the state, writes Paul Angelo in a New York Times guest essay.
  
  
• Gangs have become so powerful in Haiti that even simple government acts are now being held hostage by the country’s criminal groups, reports the Miami Herald. Indeed, the gangs have made state authorities irrelevant in many cases, and the groups levy taxes and determine what citizens can and can't do in their territories.
  
  

Regional Relations

• Ex U.S. Envoy Daniel Foote's explosive testimony to Congress accused the U.S. of playing a major role in Haiti's political instability. "For people like me — whose life and work are built on the history of my home country, Haiti — these admissions were shattering and redemptive," writes Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck. "It felt as though one U.S. envoy had restored some measure of honor to decades of shameless American intervention in my country. He spoke words that finally reconcile with Haitian reality."

Migration

• U.N. human rights experts condemned Washington’s expulsions of Haitian migrants and refugees, saying they formed part of a policy of “racialised exclusion” of Black Haitians at U.S. ports of entry. (Reuters)
  

Covid-19

• An Antigua and Barbuda court dismissed a challenge to the government's vaccine mandate policy on a technicality, reports Nation News.
  

Opportunities

• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights invites researchers, students, civil society, and interested persons to submit academic papers, within the framework of its impact observatory, to contribute to the process of reflection, systematization, visibility and evaluation of the impact of the institution in the defense and protection of human rights in the hemisphere.
  
  
• The Commonwealth Foundation open call for grants on projects that lead to meaningful and constructive engagement between civil society and government around policy and decision-making on one or more of three priority themes: a) Health, b) Freedom of expression, and c) Environment and climate change.
  
  
• The Barbados-based Healthy and Environmentally Friendly Youth (HEY) Campaign and UNICEF are hosting Re-Imagine Eco- Cultural Festival Competition which will focus on three challenges of Sustainable Fashion, Photography and Videography -- Children's Environmental Rights Initiative -- reimagineecofestival@gmail.com .
  
  
• Invitation for contribution to the research and report that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is preparing in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 47/24 entitled “Human Rights and Climate Change”.
  

Events

• 24 Oct.  -- The 1884 Hosay/Muharram Massacre of Indians in Trinidad. Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82378528914 , Zoom ID: 82378528914. Facebook live: @indocaribbeanculturalcentre. -- The Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre in association with Iere Theatre Productions Limited and the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies
  
  
• 5 and 6 Nov. Virtual conference on the Jamaican writer and broadcaster, Andrew Salkey (1928-1995). The conference will celebrate his legacy by exploring his various writing projects and contributions to the Caribbean literary community through his involvement with the Caribbean Artists Movement and black publishing in Britain.