Torres Strait Islanders Made a Human Rights Complaint over Australia’s Climate Change Policy

A group of Torres Strait Islanders has lodged an official complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee over the Australian government’s inaction on climate change. The eight complainants, who live on low-lying islands off Australia’s northern coast, claim their homes are being threatened by rising sea levels as a result of the Morrison government’s failure to take adequate action to reduce emissions, The Guardian reports. They further assert that this constitutes a breach of the government’s human rights obligations to Torres Strait Islander people.

“When erosion happens, and the lands get taken away by the seas, it’s like a piece of us that gets taken with it… It’s devastating to even imagine that my grandchildren or my great-grandchildren being forced to leave because of the effects that are out of our hands,” said Kabay Tamu, one of the islanders who brought the case to the UN yesterday. “We’re currently seeing the effects of climate change on our islands daily, with rising seas, tidal surges, coastal erosion, and inundation of our communities.”

ClientEarth, the environmental law non-profit handling the case, says that the complaint marks the first climate change litigation brought against Australia based on human rights, according to Reuters. It is also reportedly the first legal action brought by inhabitants of low-lying islands against a nation state anywhere in the world. It’s being alleged that Australia has violated at least three articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: article 27, the right to culture; article 17, the right to be free from arbitrary interference with privacy, family and home; and article 6, the right to life.

“Climate change is fundamentally a human rights issue,” said ClientEarth’s lead lawyer for the case, Sophie Marjanac, in a statement. “The predicted impacts of climate change in the Torres Strait, including the inundation of ancestral homelands, would be catastrophic for its people… [and] Australia’s continued failure to build infrastructure to protect the islands, and to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, constitutes a clear violation of the islanders’ rights to culture, family, and life.”

The Islanders are imploring the UN committee—a body of 18 legal experts based in Geneva—to find that international human rights law means Australia must action several changes to its current climate policy. These include increasing its emission reduction target to at least 65% below 2005 levels by 2030—a much more ambitious target than the one set by the current government and the opposition—going net zero by 2050, and phasing out coal. They also want the Australian government to commit at least $20 million towards protective measures such as seawalls that would help to shield the islands from rising sea levels.

It’s not clear whether the complaint will have bear significant influence in motivating the government to act. The UN Human Rights Committee has previously flagged concerns about Australia’s record in terms of its treatment of Indigenous people with little response— and similarly, environment minister Melissa Price MP had no immediate comment on this case.

Certain lawyers have suggested that these kinds of climate change cases will attract more attention and exert more pressure governments as the issues more prolific. Although Andrew Korbel, a partner at law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, expressed little hope for the complainants in the short-term.

“I think that probably these types of actions will fail initially,” he told Reuters. “But over time the prospect of them succeeding is likely to increase, partly because the science linking climate change and specific climatic events to actions or failure to take action seems to be improving.”

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