On the second day of the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit, keynote speaker and former Irish President Mary Robinson posed a question about a pretty, yellow plant we all know but might not love: the dandelion.

She used the metaphor of the common weed to illustrate—and name—the latest climate justice movement taking root: Project Dandelion, the next phase of climate justice work, led by women. Dandelion seeds spread gently on the wind, and they grow on all continents around the world. To call them resilient is an understatement. 

"Have you ever tried to get rid of the damn thing?” she said to applause in the full Glenn Miller Ballroom at the �鶹ӰԺ.

Robinson was the second keynote in the inaugural Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit.

While she announced Project Dandelion at COP27, her speech focused on the importance of building trust and including all perspectives and voices, and holding governments and corporations accountable for the financial and policy reforms urgently needed now to address climate change. 

One of the world’s most respected advocates for human rights and climate justice, Robinson said she hoped that, like the fast-growing dandelion, this movement would act as a feminist “moonshot” to achieve a more just and carbon-free world as quickly as possible.

“We have decided that what is needed is a women-led global climate justice movement, not women-only, but women-led,” said Robinson.

We have decided that what is needed is a women-led global climate justice movement, not women-only, but women-led.

—Mary Robinson

Climate injustices to address

Robinson cited five climate injustices that Project Dandelion aims to address:

First, that the climate crisis has disproportionately affected the poorest countries and communities, small island states, and Indigenous peoples. Second, the gender injustice within the climate crisis, noting that women and their children must travel further and suffer more in the face of climate change and disasters.

Third, the intergenerational injustices committed by her own generation, which have left younger generations with the possibility of an unlivable world. “We haven’t done what we should do,” said Robinson.

Fourth: the injustice of different development pathways. Developing countries around the world are told they now cannot use gas or oil to better their nations when it is the delay and lack of action on the part of developed countries that has led to this predicament.

Robinson said all nations and all people have to make not only a rapid, but a just transition, or we will not have a livable world.

Finally, the injustice to nature, which is especially important to Indigenous peoples around the world. In her time as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Robinson was coordinator of the Decade of the World’s Indigenous People, which taught her to listen first to Indigenous perspectives on climate issues.

“Yet they're very often not delegates at the table and they find it very difficult to bring that wisdom to decision-making,” she said.

Leadership on climate justice

There are two words Robinson doesn’t use anymore: climate change. Instead, she uses either “climate crisis” or “climate justice.” It’s a purposeful choice to highlight the “deep connection” between the climate crisis and all human rights in her international advocacy and leadership.

During her tenure as president of Ireland (1990-97), Robinsonnever talked about climate change. It wasn’t until after five years as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997–2002) that Robinson realized this critical connection when she saw firsthand how climate change was affecting several African countries and small island nations.

She went on to found the Mary Robinson Foundation (2010–2019), serve as the U.N. Special Envoy on Climate Change from 2014–2015, author the book Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future, and be a founding member and current chair of , an esteemed group of former world leaders with a focus on creating a world where “people live in peace, conscious of their common humanity and their shared responsibilities for each other, for the planet and for future generations.” 

Getting fired up

Robinson was disappointed after COP27 concluded two weeks ago in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. It was touted as a COP of “implementation” but it did not deliver in important ways, she said.

While an agreement was reached to establish a fund for loss and damage and a link was made with reform of the international monetary system, “there was no move to increase ambition at COP27 by governments.”

“I came away from COP27 with a sense of what I can only describe as a terrible paradox,” said Robinson.

While we are on the cusp of a clean energy world, she said, we’re still heading for a catastrophic 2-degrees warming world.

“So what does this mean for the human rights community? I think it means one word, which we know and are familiar with but we have to really rise to: the word ‘accountability.’”

Robinson said she also aims to hold herself accountable, noting in her opening remarks that she traveled all the way from Dublin to be at the summit, and needed to justify her resulting carbon footprint.

She was going to do that, she said, “by making all of you as fired up as I was when I was leaving COP27 in Egypt a short time ago. I was fired up by anger and frustration and frankly, the fierce urgency of now.”  

In closing, Robinson asked the audience: “I want to know, are you fired up?” A sudden, loud round of applause and a standing ovation gave her an answer.

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“The actions we need to take may not be profitable in the short run but if we don't take those actions, human civilization itself is threatened."

—Gillian Marcelle, CEO and founder of Resilience Capital Ventures, LLC

To hold governments and industry accountable for protecting human rights threatened by climate change, youth, women and front-line communities must mobilize. Economists and investors must rethink what success looks like. 

And, as a last resort, litigation must be used, according to speakers at the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit at CU �鶹ӰԺ Saturday.

After an at-times emotional first day of the summit Friday, in which panelists from around the globe made the undeniable case that climate change is a humanitarian crisis, speakers on Day 2 focused on accountability, called for action and suggested that a human rights framing is precisely what’s needed to spark action.

“We are living in an exciting time,” said panelist David Boyd, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, in the session “The Obligations of Governments Arising from the Human Rights Impacts of Climate Change.” “By harnessing the power of human rights and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, we can see a path forward where governments will begin to actually take action.”

Mobilizing from the ground up

In multiple sessions, panelists pointed out that it has been women, Indigenous people and activists from developing countries or the Global South who have pushed forth some of the most critical advancements in fighting climate change. That includes the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to, preferably 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels and the recent establishment at COP 27 of a “loss and damage” fund for nations most vulnerable to the climate crisis.

In a rousing speech before a packed house, many of them CU �鶹ӰԺ students donning orange caps reading “Divest,” former President of Ireland Mary Robinson called for a new women-led global climate justice movement, a feminine version of the male-led “moonshot” of the 1960s, to hold the duty-bearers, including government and industry, to task for protecting the planet.

“They said putting a man on the moon was impossible but it was achieved in eight years,” she said.

During the morning panel with Boyd, moderator Nick Clark, of Al Jazeera, called on governments to protect defenders of human rights and the environment, noting that four environmental activists are murdered every week and their killers often go unpunished.

He pointed to the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean, better known as the Escazú Agreement, as the first human rights treaty in the world to include a provision to protect activists.

Meanwhile, panelist Janine Coye-Felson, of Belize, challenged those with financial resources to support such defenders around the globe.

“That is the big challenge: How exactly can we mobilize when what we have to mobilize is so limited in terms of resources?” Coye-Felson asked.

In a panel on the role of education, representatives from youth-focused organizations stressed the need for teachers to include the human impacts along with the science in their lessons on climate change, in order to inspire a new generation of climate activists.

“People can’t see the human face from these graphs,” said Ili Nadiah Dzulfakar, panelist and chair and program director of the climate justice and feminist organization Klima Action Malaysia (KAMY), led by young people to mobilize a climate emergency declaration in Malaysia. “You can’t see the death.”

Panelist Jono Anzalone, executive director of The Climate Initiative (TCI), a nonpartisan organization that aims to inspire, educate and empower 10 million youth around climate action by 2025, stressed that just getting climate change education into the curriculum is a challenge. While 84% of educators want to teach climate science, only 43% do.

“How do we close that gap?” Anzalone asked.

Think beyond profit

In an afternoon session, “The Responsibility of Business and Industry to Respect Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change,” several panelists suggested that in order for industry to be able to fully respond to the climate change crisis, the global economy, including investors, must rethink the “Milton Friedman mindset” that success is inextricably tied to short-term profit.

“The actions we need to take may not be profitable in the short run but if we don’t take those actions, human civilization itself is threatened,” said Gillian Marcelle, CEO and founder of Resilience Capital Ventures, LLC.

Investors and corporations should also look to benefits outside of profit, including social good and consider the unseen costs, such as environmental degradation.

Other panelists added that profits from transitioning to a renewable economy will come but it will take time so society must shift its timeline for gauging economic success.

And, as economies transition to renewables, they must ensure that the transition is just, enabling countries in the Global South to continue to develop and workers in the Global North to feel they won’t lose their financial security.

“Working people around the world have to feel like they're not going to be left behind,” said Monte Tarbox, executive director of the National Electrical Benefit Fund, which provides pension benefits to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. “So that they have buy-in and back the political initiatives that are needed for this and we don't end up in the situation we’ve been in politically in the United States in the last five, six years.”

Litigate as a last resort

Should citizens sue their governments to force them to do something about climate change?

Many panelists viewed this as a last resort but noted that it has been done, and it can be done again.

For instance, in 2015, in the case of the Urgenda Foundation vs. the State of the Netherlands, the plaintiffs prevailed in their effort to require their government to do more. 

The court in the Hague ordered the Dutch state to limit Greenhouse Gas emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by the end of 2020. The success inspired several other countries to use legal conventions on human rights and climate change to bring cases to demand reduction in fossil fuel emissions.

“It’s a case that’s had a really transformative effect on the way that people litigate climate change against governments,” said panelist Tessa Kahn, in the session “Climate Justice Activism: Litigation and Other Strategies to Hold Governments Accountable in the Context of Climate Change.” “I still don’t think we’ve hit the limit of what can be learned from the decisions that were issued in that case, and how they can inform legal strategies in other countries.”

In a separate panel, Naderev ‘Yeb’ Sano, executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, stressed that economics and law aside, human empathy will be key to achieving real progress: “Litigation can only go so far. The battle will be won or lost in the chambers of people’s hearts.”

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United States
Columnist and Opinion Writer • 

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
The Responsibility of Business and Industry to Respect Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change: Good Practices and What More Needs to be Done

Saturday, December 3, 2022

David Wallace-Wells is a columnist and opinion writer for The New York Times. He is the author of the international best-seller, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, published in 2019, which the Times reviewer called both "brilliant" and "the most terrifying book I have ever read." Since then, he's watched in amazement as a new generation mobilized globally around climate change and the world began—belatedly but aggressively—to decarbonize. "We waited too long to really avoid the dangerous impacts of warming," he said, "but the progress we're making now is nevertheless pretty breathtaking." The Uninhabitable Earth was named one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2019, �Ҳ�’s Best Books of 2019, The New Yorker’s Favorite Books of 2019, and was chosen as one of �վ�����’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2019.  

Wallace-Wells previously served as deputy editor of New York magazine and The Paris Review. He is a former New America national fellow and is a graduate of Brown University. He lives in New York with his wife and two daughters.

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United States

Expertise:
Law & Policy

Partner

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
Climate Justice Activism: Litigation and other strategies to hold governments accountable in the context of climate change

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Marieke Faber is a partner at law firm NautaDutilh. She leads its Dutch Dispute Resolution and ESG Practice in New York. 

On a pro bono basis, Faber was part of the team representing the Urgenda Foundation against the Netherlands before the Dutch Supreme Court. In this landmark ruling, the Netherlands was ordered to reduce emissions by 25% by 2020. She assists corporate and financial institutions navigating environmental, social and governance challenges, with a focus on climate change-related advice and litigation. She advises on climate strategy, climate targets, Scope 3 emission issues and EU regulatory developments (e.g., the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive). Faber is based in New York, where she facilitates an inter-EU/US dialogue on ESG-related developments among peers and industry experts.

Faber frequently speaks and publishes on the topic of climate change-related legal developments. Recent speaking engagements include the IBA Annual Litigation Forum on Climate Litigation and the New York State Bar Association annual meeting. 

In 2020, Faber received a Resilience Award at the Dutch legal awards for setting up a platform providing small-business owners with pro bono legal assistance related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Faber holds an LLB and LLM from the University of Utrecht and a master’s in management from London Business School.

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Qatar
Environment Editor •

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Nick Clark is the environment editor at Al Jazeera English, where he plays a leading role in shaping the channel’s environmental coverage. He has also worked as a network presenter and correspondent and is a Royal Television Society award winner. A 2014 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, Clark studied the impacts of climate change on terrestrial and marine ecosystems. He has traveled to the Arctic several times and reported on the retreating ice sheet in Greenland. In March 2018, he went aboard the ship Arctic Sunrise on a Greenpeace expedition to the Weddell Sea and Antarctic peninsula.

He’s reported on the disappearance of the world’s tropical glaciers in the Andes and the shark fin trade from the Middle East to Hong Kong, plus the efforts to save the Amur tiger in the temperate forests near Vladivostok, Russia. 

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Canada
Senior Editor •

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
The Role of Education in Building a Global Culture of Knowledge and Inquiry �鶹ӰԺ Climate Change, Its Human Rights Impacts and Solutions

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Megan O’Toole is an award-winning investigative and data journalist with a career spanning two decades. She has reported from more than a dozen countries on topics that include the war on ISIS, the Gaza siege, the economic impact of US sanctions on Iran and the refugee crisis along the Mediterranean. 

An editor for Middle East Eye, she has served as a reporter and editor for several outlets, including Al Jazeera and The Globe and Mail. As an international editor, she has managed dozens of journalists throughout the Middle East and North Africa, commissioning and editing stories from across the region. She is also a member of Bellingcat’s Global Authentication Project, contributing to an open-source investigation of potential war crimes in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. 

O’Toole’s work has won a variety of accolades, including two awards from Amnesty International for her coverage of Indigenous land rights and environmental justice. She was part of the largest collaborative investigation in Canadian journalism history, Tainted Water, a prize-winning series that exposed unsafe levels of lead in drinking water and spurred government action from coast to coast. In The Data Journalism Handbook, her project on Israeli home demolitions in East Jerusalem was featured as an exemplar. A Pulitzer Center grantee, O’Toole is also a global mentor with the Coalition for Women in Journalism and has served as a judge for the Online Journalism Awards. 

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South Africa
Climate Justice Activist, Film Maker and Journalist

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Angelo C. Louw is an award-winning documentarian and social justice activist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He uses his formal media training and journalism background to bring awareness to the various issues—environmental, social and economic—that affect marginalized communities the most.

As a journalist, he focuses on shifting perceptions of the climate crisis to be more inclusive of the people and communities it affects most. People of color often bear the brunt of society’s ills, and Louw’s work goes a long way toward educating audiences of all backgrounds about this fact. He has produced a short film highlighting the economic exclusion of South African fishermen, using storytelling to create a space for awareness and education. Louw's latest documentary, which delves into the impact of big oil on South African township communities, is to be released this year.  

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Nigeria & the Ogoni People

Expertise:
Human Rights

Executive Director
Indigenous Centre for Energy and Sustainable Development, ICE-SD

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
Climate Justice Activism: Litigation and other strategies to hold governments accountable in the context of climate change

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Legborsi Saro Pyagbara is executive director of the Indigenous Centre for Energy and Sustainable Development, ICE-SD. He is the former president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, MOSOP, an Ogoni-based nongovernmental, nonpolitical apex organization of the Ogoni ethnic minority people of southeastern Nigeria. MOSOP was founded in 1990 with the mandate to campaign nonviolently to promote democratic awareness; protect the environment of the Ogoni People; seek social, economic and physical development for the region; protect the cultural rights and practices of the Ogoni people; and seek appropriate rights of self-determination for the Ogoni people.

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Cameroon

Expertise:
Law & Policy
Environmental Governance

Chair of Political and Technical Affairs

Day 2: Obligations

Panel:
The Obligations of Governments Arising From the Human Rights Impacts of Climate Change

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Augustine Njamnshi is a lawyer with 26 years of experience in environmental policy and governance advocacy in Cameroon and the Central African subregion. He has extensive experience in legislative and policy drafting in the areas of access to genetic resources and benefit sharing, biosafety, biosecurity, access to environmental information, and public participation in decision-making.

Augustine has held, and continues to hold, several elected positions representing the environmental sector of Africa’s civil society at the international level. He co-founded and led various organizations, including the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance from 2008 to 2012; was the UNEP major groups representative for Africa from 2010 to 2012; and served as the francophone African coordinator of the Access Initiative. He was the African civil society representative on the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility as well as the Carbon Fund. He was co-chair of the African Development Bank CSO committee from 2018 to 2020 and was elected African CSO observer for Climate Investment Funds.

Njamnshi is the coordinator of the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access. He is also executive secretary at Bio-Resources Development and Conservation in Cameroon, and serves as chair of political and technical affairs of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.

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“How then do we fight this battle? We stand up against every kind of injustice.”

—Yeb Saño

For Yeb Saño, the effects of climate change became tragically clearer on Nov. 8, 2013, when Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in Southeast Asia. The tropical cyclone—one of the strongest in recorded history—left a massive trail of destruction, particularly in the Philippines, where it claimed thousands of lives.

At the time of the disaster, Saño’s brother, AG, an environmental and peace activist, was in the family’s hometown of Tacloban and helped gather bodies of the deceased in the aftermath.

“He counted at least 73 dead bodies carried by his own hands. We lost friends, loved ones,” Saño said.

Just a few days later, the tragedy led Saño—then chief climate negotiator for the Philippines in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—to speak on behalf of the lives lost at the hands of Super Typhoon Haiyan at the UN Climate Change Summit in Warsaw, Poland. His heart-wrenching address called for action and was met with a standing ovation. He also fasted for 14 days in solidarity with the victims and all people confronting the impacts of climate change.

“What is heartbreaking is that the people who suffer the most are the ones who contribute the least to the root of the problem: The poor, marginalized and vulnerable groups bearing the brunt of the impacts from the climate emergency contribute the least to the world’s carbon emissions,” he said. “Climate change is one of the biggest injustices in human history.”

Saño’s advocacy for climate justice as chief negotiator for the Philippines captured global attention. In 2016, he was appointed executive director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, where he continues to strive for social and environmental justice.

To prevent future devastation, Saño said the world must hold those responsible for climate change truly accountable and make them stop the harms they’re inflicting. But action requires immense economic and political transformation—including a transition of energy, transport, and food systems. That means abandoning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas; developing renewable energy systems that support sustainable economic development; and shifting narratives promoted by the fossil fuel industry and colluding government agencies.

“[Fossil fuel industries] have robbed humanity of decades to act on climate change by creating a smokescreen around the truth and reality of the crisis,” he said. “They have also cunningly shaped the wrong notion that the responsibility for the climate crisis rests on the shoulders of individuals rather than on their own questionable business practices.”

To unravel what Saño called the root causes of the climate crisis—greed, arrogance and apathy—Saño said we must implement the same solutions that make the world a better place, from empowering the marginalized to combating consumerism.

“How then do we fight this battle?” he said. “We stand up against every kind of injustice.”

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