It's no secret that US policies have caused environmental degradations and contributed to global warming. The devastating impact on Inuit communities -- which are located in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia -- should be a wake-up call to the environmental crisis we face. The Inuit are suffering deaths, injuries, illnesses and losing their culture. The bodies of the Inuit and sea animals are contaminated with toxic chemicals from our pollution while their land, food and water are disappearing. Now, the Inuit are fighting back by seeking to hold the US responsible for violating their human rights based on our role in climate change. Please look at the sweet face of this little girl and tell her that she does not have a human right to a toxic-free environment.
The Inuit recently filed a petition (pdf file) with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is an international body for the protection of human rights, as part of an organ of the Organization of American States.
The petition is based upon the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which is the first international instrument on human rights. International forums have previously ruled that environmental degradations may violate human rights. The petition asks the commission to declare that the US is responsible for the violation of their rights. They also seek remedial recommendations that the US limit greenhouse gas emissions, establish a plan to protect Inuit culture and resources, mitigate any harm caused to the resources and implement a plan to provide assistance for the Inuit to adapt to unavoidable impacts of climate change. While the commission does not have the legal authority to compel the US to take action, "a finding by the group could provide moral and legal ammunition for other countries."
Specific Human Rights Provided By The American Declaration.
(1) The Right To Life & Health.
The American Declaration provides that "every human being has the right to life, liberty and the security of his person" and the right to preservation of health from "sanitary and social measures relating to food, clothing, housing and medical care, to the extent permitted by public and community resources."
Case No. 7615, filed in 1980, concerned a petition filed by the Yanomami Indians against the government of Brazil. Approximately 10,000 to 12,000 Yanomami Indians live in Brazil. The Brazilian government constructed a highway which led to the influx of non-indigenous people with their contagious diseases that spread to the Yanomami, causing disease and death. In the Yanomami case, the Commission determined that environmental quality is linked to the right to life. The Commission found that the government's failure to protect the integrity of their lands violated the Yanomami's rights to life, liberty and personal security. Commission precedent also recognizes that the right to preservation of health extends beyond providing medical care, and includes the right to not have environmental degradation threaten human health.
Climate Change Impacts Violating The Right To Life & Health
Researchers have documented for the first time that "unacceptable levels" of environmental toxins are in the bodies of some of the Inuit. "There is little doubt the toxins originate from the traditional local diet of polar bears, seals and whales, a diet which so far has been considered one of the healthiest on the planet."
The level of contamination in the animals and mothers' breast milk is exponentially higher than that level deemed to be hazardous waste when found in soil:
"According to the Quebec Health Center, a concentration of 1,052 parts per billion of PCBs has been found in Arctic women's milk fat. This compares to a reading of 7,002 in polar bear fat, 1,002 ppb in whale blubber, 527 ppb in seal blubber, and 152 ppb in fish. The United States Environmental Protection Agency safety standard for edible poultry, by contrast, is 3 ppb, and in fish, 2 ppb. At 50 ppb, soil is often considered to be hazardous waste."
Not surprisingly, Inuit babies now have serious health problems, with "strikingly high rates of meningitis, bronchitis, pneumonia and other infections," chronic hearing loss, life-threatening meningitis and dysfunctional immune systems.
The sources of the discharges have been traced back to US, Canada and Mexico, which release pollutants and toxins into our environment, and then the poisons are carried north by sea currents and weather patterns.
Now the Inuit are warned to change from their traditional healthy diet to a diet of store-bought food to avoid reduced fertility, genetic damage and deformities in children. While their traditional diet has protected them from health problems associated with industrialized nations, now the Inuit are becoming ill with heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
In addition to toxic contamination, their life and health is threatened by the degraded Arctic environment. Hunters are drowned or injured after falling through the ice thinned by global warming. Health has also been adversely affected by the movement of new diseases northward, decreased drinking water sources and reduced water quality. Hunters and travelers who are caught in unpredictable storms no longer can rely on the abundance of snow to construct emergency shelters, which has caused more injuries and deaths.
(2) The Right To Subsistence.
The right of indigenous people to their own means of subsistence is a necessary inherent component of their right to property, health, life and culture. The food, shelter and clothing necessary to support Inuit life is all derived from the Arctic environment. Thus, international law provides that "in the context of indigenous peoples, the rights to self-determination and one's own means of subsistence [are] recognized principles of international human rights law."
Climate Change Impacts Violating The Right To Subsistence
Even the US Congress has recognized that environmental degradation has reduced their food supply, leaving the Inuit with "no practical alternative means ... to replace the food supplies and other items gathered from fish and wildlife which supply rural residents dependent on subsistence uses."
Global warming has reduced the thickness of ice, so now they must hunt for smaller whales whose weight may be supported by the thinner ice. However, pulling even smaller whales up onto the thinner ice is so dangerous from whales breaking through the ice that Inuit have been killed, as an Inuk man explains:
"So when we’re drilling through, we’re doing at least two layers, now we’re ... running our rope through just to try and maintain the tensile strength of the ice so that it doesn’t break when we pull on the whale. That’s creating a very dangerous condition for us.... We have lost several people in trying to pull the whale out of the water. I believe we now have lost two or three people, members of our community, because the ice broke, or the rope broke, and, when it swung back, it went faster than a bullet. One lady’s arm was severed. One, her brain was scattered over the ice because she got hit. She never had a chance. And the third one, her jaw and skull was scattered into hundreds of pieces. But she survived. There’s others that have not been so fortunate."
Climate change has melted the ice, which has decreased the populations of food and clothing sources from sea animals, who are dying from hunger as polar bears jump chunks of floating ice searching for food. Even land animals, such as reindeer and caribou, have trouble finding food because the snow is replaced by freezing rain that creates an impenetrable ice layer that prevents the reindeer from pawing through the ice to forage for food.
Potable water resources are becoming scarcer. The combined effects of decreased snowfall, permafrost melt, erosion, rising temperatures and changing wind patterns have impaired water quality. Water levels in rivers and lakes have dropped while some water resources have completely dried up. Erosion and wind deposit dust particles and minerals in waters that have changed from crystal clear to foggy while salinity levels increase in freshwater resources. Lower water levels also damage the fish harvest because fewer migrating fish can reach their spawning beds in the shallower rivers and eggs become exposed or washed ashore.
(3) The Right To Residence, Movement & Inviolability Of The Home.
The American Declaration guarantees "every person has the right to fix his residence within the territory of the state of which he is a national, to move about freely within such territory, and not to leave it except by his own will" and that "every person has the right to the inviolability of his home."
In the Yanomami case, the Commission found a violation of the right to residence and movement when the government's construction of a highway through the territory of the Yanomami Indians "compelled them to abandon their habitat and seek refuge in other places" to avoid the adverse changes caused by the development project.
Climate Change Impacts Violating The Right To Residence, Movement & Inviolability Of The Home
Climate change threatens the ability of the Inuit to maintain homes and communities which depend upon lands of ice which are cracking daily. Most Inuit settlements are located in coastal areas, where storm surges and erosion are destroying the communities. Permafrost is supposed to be a permanent frozen layer at varying depths of the earth and is really the "glue" that binds together unstable underground gravel, but it is melting, causing mudslides, slumping and erosion, which causes building foundations to shift, damaging homes and community structures.
Global warming produces more severe storms which then cause coastal erosion. Climate change also melts sea ice, which had served as a barrier to suppress huge waves. As the sea ice melts, there are increased storm surges, which cause flooding and land erosion. The erosion then exposes more permafrost to warmer air, causing faster melting of permafrost, which then causes more slumping and erosion.
So, coastal communities move inland, where slumping and landslides threaten homes and infrastructure.
(4) The Right Of Culture.
The Commission has a recognized a right of indigenous communities to practice and enjoy their culture. This right is intended to prevent forced assimilation with other cultures in order to survive.
Climate Change Impacts Violate Right To Practice & Enjoy Benefits Of Culture
Inuit culture is so inseparable from their physical surroundings and way of life that environmental degradation may cause the extinction of their culture. Even the US government has recognized the importance of their subsistence way of life to the continued survival of Inuit culture. When granting preferences to subsistence uses of fish and wildlife in Alaska, the Congress noted that "the continuation of the opportunity for subsistence uses ... is essential to Native physical, economic, traditional, and cultural existence."
Every aspect of daily life is part of their culture. The elders are the "keepers of the Inuit culture" and pass the traditional Inuit knowledge on to the community. However, environmental degradation has reduced the value of some elder knowledge because climate changes have made their traditional knowledge about weather, ice, snow, navigation and land conditions no longer accurate.
Bit by bit, their cultural identity is being lost. Tents replace igloos because dense snow required for igloos is harder to find. Permafrost is the traditional natural "ice cellar" for meat storage, but the permafrost is melting, and as game thaws and turns rancid, they must buy chest freezers. Even early spring thaw changes the timing of traditional festivities. As an Inuk man stated: "In the future...[the Inuit way of life] will seem as if it were nothing but a fairytale."
Note: All quotes and citations of prior cases are from the Inuit petition brief unless otherwise attributed. All photos are screen caps.