FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 23, 2019
Geneva – Yesterday, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) raised concerns about the impacts on women and girls of Guyana’s policies on offshore oil and gas extraction and recommended the State review its climate change and energy policies to mitigate those risks.
Guyana, a country in which 76% of the population lives below sea level, hopes to begin large-scale offshore oil and gas production for the first time in the country’s history, putting its people at grave risk from both the direct impacts of oil development and the accelerated impacts of climate change.
CEDAW noted with concern both the acute local negative impacts on women and girls posed by the extractive operations themselves, as well as the disproportionate impacts of climate change that are borne by women and girls. In light of these impacts, CEDAW recommended that the government of Guyana “review its climate change and energy policies, specifically its policies on the extraction of oil and gas, and develop a disaster risk reduction strategy that takes into account the negative impacts of climate change on gender equality on the lives of women and their families, especially those living in areas below sea level.”
“This proposed oil production violates international law and national law including constitutional rights to a healthy environment and inter-generational equity,” says Melinda Janki, attorney-at-law and international lawyer. “Lawbreaking plus climate change, acid oceans, and the destruction of marine life can only harm Guyana, not benefit its citizens.“
ExxonMobil estimates Guyana’s offshore oil fields hold more than 5.5 billion barrels of oil and gas, and plans to begin producing 120,000 barrels per day as early as next year. If burned, this would be the equivalent of 18.8 million metric tons of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions per year—more than nine times the total annual CO2 emissions of Guyana’s entire population. The proposed project would put Guyana in serious violation of the Paris Agreement and jeopardize international efforts to slow down climate change.
The recommendations by the Committee add to the growing consensus among human rights experts that States can no longer ignore the mounting human rights impacts of climate change and of the fossil fuels most responsible for the climate crisis.
“Fossil fuel extraction unavoidably results in further emissions of greenhouse gases, thereby harming the rights of communities and peoples that States have legally pledged to protect,” says Sébastien Duyck, Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). “In a world confronting the urgent realities of the climate crisis, opening new frontiers for oil and gas is fundamentally incompatible with protecting human rights.”
As States are increasingly called upon to uphold their duties to protect human rights in the context of climate change, statements by authoritative UN human rights bodies like CEDAW help States to interpret their legal obligations in a world that has no carbon budget. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has now reached 415 ppm or 65ppm above the safe level of 350ppm.
Guyana’s oil production is already being challenged in court on the grounds that the minister acted unlawfully in granting a production license to ExxonMobil’s local subsidiary and its partners.
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Contact: Sébastien Duyck, CIEL Attorney (Geneva), sduyck@ciel.org, +41786966362
For information about the court case, see: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/fairdealforguyana/