Baguio City – “Tensions on poverty, land problems and economic inequality is exacerbated by climate change.” This is what the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNSRRIP) Victoria Tauli-Corpuz said during a forum on climate change at the Azalea Residences on January 11, 2017, participated in by thirty individuals from civil society organizations from all over the Philippines and representatives of the Cordillera office of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.
“Eighty percent of the world’s people own only 6% of the world’s wealth.”
She continued that many foreign investments have taken over government corporations and created situation where national governments do not have much control over foreign investments their countries anymore. “This led to foreign investors becoming owners of government bonds in many countries.”
In the forum, Tauli-Corpuz also raised that peace and human security is becoming more and more a serious threat to development. “Data shows that 60 million people are displaced worldwide so outmigration is increasing. Death from violent extremism rose to five folds while 1 in 3 women have been subjected to physical violence” she lamented.
Elenita Daño, Asia Director of the ETC (Erosion, Technology and Concentration) Philippines added that technology has something to do with the current global situation of inequality.
“There is a need to understand how technology is playing up with development. For a long time, for example, it is a mystery how gross domestic product (GDP) is increasing while unemployment is also escalating. This was a mystery since ideally, GDP should be directly correlated to employment and this is not the trend now.”
She said that this is because more and more companies are being taken over by robots that can perform jobs. As a result, companies are hiring less people and making more robots. “So this situation makes the few rich people become richer and more people become jobless,” Daño asserted.
There has been a long debate over the relationship of development and climate change but recent scientific studies show that the climate crisis is indeed a result of human activities. The forum, convened by Aksyon Klima, a national network of civil society working on various climate change and development issues, aimed to provide national and international context and updates to the climate change discourse.
By Helen Biangalen-Magata