IBA 2012: Robinson urges lawyers to join climate fight
The International Bar Association has heeded a call from former Ireland president Mary Robinson (pictured) to join the fight against climate change.
At its conference in Dublin, the organisation confirmed it will set up a taskforce to help fulfil the agreement reached at the UN climate conference in Durban last year to develop by 2015 a legal framework for action by all countries.
Robinson made the plea in a memorial lecture for George Seward, the US lawyer and IBA founding father who died aged 101 earlier this year. ‘Climate change is an issue of justice and human rights,’ said Robinson, also former UN high commissioner for human rights. ‘This creates a concomitant moral imperative for the legal profession to act, by motivating political leaders to act. My challenge is for the IBA to develop a working group on climate justice, or on human rights and climate change, to help shape a new climate justice narrative.’
Robinson founded and leads the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, which supports poor and marginalised people affected by climate change across the world.
‘I fear that our grandchildren will say to us in 10 years’ time, “how could you be so ignorant and stupid that you did nothing”,’ she added. ‘The IBA is a very powerful voice and I challenge you to be with us on this journey.’ Robinson added that too often, progress is stymied because climate conferences are treated by politicians like trade negotiations.
Responding, Michael Reynolds, the incoming IBA president, told Robinson: ‘I am prepared to say we will rise to your challenge; and with our human rights institute and committees, were are uniquely equipped to do so.’
Comments
Proper accreditation for climate change justice
Will we have to get a special accreditation before we can fight for climate justice? It's a complicated area, and I don't want a whole lot of solicitors freshly booted out of magistrates' court work, thinking that they can just move into climate change justice. I suggest that the Bar Council be put in charge of organising the requirements, and of course assessing those who apply. The Law Society can run the courses for the accreditation, monitor diversity, and collect the fees.
Only then will we have properly qualified people to do the job. Anything else is letting the hard working consumer down.
Accreditation
I think that it is hilarious that the SRA wish to protect the public from useless solicitors appearing in court but they let them loose on admission to the roll for the first five years when they are starting to learn their trade (note the word "Trade" and not "profession"!). Are they bonkers?
Another non story
Yet another non-story about a non-event. The Met Office has begrudgingly admitted that there has been no increase in temperatures for the last 16 years.
They based their predictions on flawed data and flawed assumptions and used those to model the computer programmes.
When I first left school and worked for a bank in the sixties we were just beginning to use computers for data processing. The first rule of computing then as now is:
Garbage in = garbage out.
You cannot build the truth on a lie.
Beggars Belief.
"Climate change is an issue of justice and human rights" no it isn't it's a colossal fraud perpetrated by the great, the good, the greedy and the stupid.