Addis Ababa — The Government Director of the Environmental Safety Company of Liberia (EPA), Dr. Emmanuel Ok. Urey Yarkpawolo, has referred to as on African leaders, civil society, and worldwide companions to place justice on the core of local weather motion.
By Selma Lomax [email protected]
He made the assertion whereas delivering a keynote deal with on the “Centering Justice in Local weather Motion” session, a aspect occasion held throughout the Second Africa Local weather Summit (ACS2) and arranged by the African Local weather Platform.
Dr. Urey Yarkpawolo emphasised that Africa’s improvement priorities should align with the rights and dignity of its folks. He harassed the pressing want for investments in training, clear water, infrastructure, and first rate employment, warning towards improvement fashions that profit elites whereas displacing communities and harming the setting.
“Improvement that promotes injustice and undermines livelihoods is not any improvement in any respect,” he mentioned.
Describing Africa as being on the coronary heart of worldwide local weather injustice, Dr. Urey Yarkpawolo famous that though the continent contributes lower than 4 % of worldwide greenhouse gasoline emissions, it’s already affected by extreme droughts, coastal erosion, biodiversity loss, declining agricultural productiveness, and inhabitants displacement.
In Liberia, he pointed to the worsening circumstances confronted by farmers, rising dangers for coastal communities, and the nation’s continued wrestle with power poverty amid broader improvement challenges.
He described local weather change as each an environmental disaster and a human rights situation, citing the erosion of core rights comparable to life, well being, meals, water, and dignity — all protected underneath the African Constitution on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Dr. Urey Yarkpawolo criticized the continued marginalization of African voices in world local weather negotiations and referred to as for equitable local weather financing, accountability from polluters, and a simply transition that prioritizes susceptible populations together with ladies, kids, Indigenous peoples, and future generations.
A key component of his remarks was help for the African Local weather Platform’s ongoing push for an advisory opinion from the African Court docket on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The opinion, if issued, would make clear African states’ local weather obligations underneath key regional authorized devices such because the African Constitution, the Maputo Protocol, and the Kampala Conference.
Dr. Urey Yarkpawolo argued that such a transfer may strengthen environmental accountability, defend frontline environmental defenders, and make sure that improvement is pursued in a way that safeguards each folks and ecosystems.
“The Court docket’s opinion generally is a beacon of readability and justice,” he acknowledged. “It may well affirm that Africa won’t be a dumping floor for soiled industries, nor a stage the place wealth is extracted with out accountability.”
He urged African governments and residents to face behind local weather justice, stating that the way forward for the continent is dependent upon it. “Local weather justice is folks’s justice — and Africa’s future is dependent upon it,” he mentioned.
