Mickey Z

Cool Observer

Monday, June 15, 2009

Cultural genocide and the environment

A term like cultural genocide has been typically reserved for discussions of the political science variety. However, with the ever-increasing impact of climate change, all lines are becoming blurred. Neena Bhandari of IPS has written about the frightening connection between global warming and Australia’s Aboriginal communities. Indigenous rights advocates, Bhandari tells is, warn of people being forced out of their traditional lands, their culture destroyed, and their access to water resources dwindling.

Aboriginal people account for only 2.5 percent of Australia’s total population, with an estimated population of 517,200, and they are paying a high price for “progress.” Tom Calma is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. “As coastal and island communities confront rising sea levels, and inland areas become hotter and drier, indigenous people are at risk of further economic marginalization, as well as potential dislocation from and exploitation of their traditional lands, waters and natural resources,” Calma said. “The cruel irony is that indigenous people have the smallest ecological footprint but are being asked to carry the heaviest burden of climate change.”

Article 7 the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples uses the phrase “cultural genocide” and declares that indigenous peoples have the “collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide, including prevention of and redress” for:
(a) Any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities;
(b) Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them of their lands, territories or resources;
(c) Any form of population transfer which has the aim or effect of violating or undermining any of their rights;
(d) Any form of assimilation or integration by other cultures or ways of life imposed on them by legislative, administrative or other measures;
(e) Any form of propaganda directed against them.

It’s gonna take more than recycled toilet paper and energy efficient light bulbs to solve these problems, folks...