Global green pact supporters launch Paris campaign
Hollywood star turned activist Arnold Schwarzenegger joined politicians and legal experts in Paris Saturday to launch a campaign for a global pact to protect the human right to a clean, healthy environment. "Less talk, more action," urged former French prime minister Francais Laurent Fabius, who also presided over the 2015 Paris COP 21 conference on climate change. Seeking to underline the urgency of the need to act, Fabius borrowed the turn of phrase from ex-California governor-turned climate campaigner Schwarzenegger, who joined the gathering, as did former UN chief Ban Ki-moon. Other participants at the meeting at the Sorbonne university included high court judges from several countries. The legal brains behind the pact worked into the night to put the final touches to the draft which was then to be handed over to their host, French President Emmanuel Macron. The end goal, organisers said midweek, is a legal treaty under which states can be brought to justice for flouting the rights of a group or individual. The initiative comes just weeks after President Donald Trump announced that he would pull the United States out of the 196-nation Paris Agreement on curbing dangerous global warming. The new pact will eventually be put to the United Nations for adoption, and impose legally-binding obligations on signatory states, its drafters say. "We already have two international (human rights) pacts... The idea is to create a third, for a third generation of rights -- environmental rights," Fabius said ahead of chairing Saturday's meeting. The earlier covenants -- one for social, economic and cultural rights, the other for civil and political rights -- were adopted by the UN in 1966. Fabius says the new text should outline rights and duties, provide for reparations to be made in case of a breach, and introduce the "polluter pays" principle, holding them legally responsible or compelling them to adopt green laws. That would be in marked contrast to earlier declarations such as that made following the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio which was not legally binding.
