Who harmed Mother Nature?
Philippines to hear petition to hold firms accountable for climate damage
MANILA: Veronica Cabe still remembers every minute of the more than 12 hours she and her family spent huddled on the roof of their two-storey home in Manila in 2009, as floodwaters swept past, carrying dead bodies, animal carcasses and coffins.
Typhoon Ketsana, which killed about 500 people, was the most devastating typhoon to hit the Philippine capital in decades.
As the frequency and intensity of storms increased, Cabe began to speak up about holding someone responsible.
In 2015, she became a petitioner in a landmark complaint – soon to be examined by a national inquiry – which accuses global oil, mining and cement companies of human rights violations by playing a role in driving climate change.
Next week, Cabe will be among more than a dozen experts and citizens to testify that the greenhouse gas emissions of some 50 firms infringe on Filipinos’ rights to life, food, water, sanitation and adequate housing, through the growing impacts of global warming.
“We thought we would die on that roof – it was so scary, so traumatic,” said Cabe, a 45-year-old community organiser.
“But it also made me really angry – can we only pray? Should we just accept our fate whenever disaster strikes, or can we hold someone accountable? If the carbon majors are causing damage, then they cannot just carry on,” she said.
The Philippines is ranked as one of the countries most severely hit by wild weather super-charged by climate change.
Now, disaster survivors and about a dozen rights groups led by
Greenpeace South-East Asia are aiming to force companies to declare their plans to prevent and mitigate the impact of emissions from extracting, burning and selling fossil fuels, which scientists say are warming the planet.
The Philippine Commission on Human Rights, an independent body set up by the government, agreed in 2015 to conduct an inquiry, and will hold its first public hearings next week in Manila, followed by additional hearings in London and New York.
Oil giants Chevron and BP, and miner Rio Tinto are among the so-called “carbon majors” cited in the petition.
But at least half a dozen companies submitted responses in 2016 to the commission and organisations backing the complaint, outlining the steps they are taking to curb corporate emissions.
Some firms also argued they were not subject to the commission’s jurisdiction, nor required to submit to its proceedings.
The inquiry is the first time a government agency has accepted, and acted on, a request for investigation of the environmental responsibility of companies that sell or are heavy users of fossil fuels, according to Zelda Soriano, an attorney with Greenpeace South-East Asia.
“It’s the first case to use the human rights framework to take on carbon majors causing climate change,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The commission can only make recommendations to Philippine legislators and the business world, and has no enforcement powers.
But Soriano said the inquiry would set “a precedent”, and the commission’s resolution and proposed measures would add weight “to every existing and future climate change litigation case in any part of the world, no matter the outcome”.
According to a 2014 study commissioned by the Climate Justice Programme and Greenpeace International, companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, have contributed a large share of the carbon dioxide and methane emissions causing climate change.
The Philippine human rights commission will allow companies named in the complaint to present their arguments, and aims to conclude its inquiry this year, Soriano said.
It plans to pass a resolution next year.
If the carbon majors are causing damage, then they cannot just carry on. Veronica Cabe