Kakadu Traditional Owners and environment groups call for greenhouse cuts to protect World Heritage sites

Traditional Owners from Kakadu have joined national and international environment groups in an urgent call for major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to help protect key World Heritage sites.

Mt Everest

Thursday 24 September, 2009

Kakadu Traditional Owners and environment groups call for greenhouse cuts to protect World Heritage sites

Traditional Owners from Kakadu have joined national and international environment groups in an urgent call for major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to help protect key World Heritage sites.

The Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, representing the Mirarr Traditional Owners of northeastern Kakadu, have joined the environmental groups and have lodged a submission to the United Nations seeking to ensure that Nations give effect to their obligations under the World Heritage Convention when negotiating emissions reductions in Copenhagen in December.

The United Nations has identified over 120 World Heritage sites threatened by climate change including Kakadu National Park, the Great Barrier Reef and the Himalayan Glaciers.

“Each State Party to the World Heritage Convention has a duty to ensure the protection, conservation and transmission of World Heritage to future generations and the continued release of greenhouse gas emissions is causing serious damage to these globally important places,” said spokesperson Stephen Leonard.

“Even a small temperature increase can have a big impact on these special and sensitive natural ecosystems and cultural places”.

The groups involved in the initiative include Pro Public Nepal, Greenpeace International, the Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth and the Australian Climate Justice Program. Many of these have had a long standing and effective involvement in drawing the threat of climate change on World Heritage to the attention of the United Nations since 2004.

The Groups are calling for the international community to agree:

a.    to stabilize GHG concentrations in the atmosphere well below 350ppm Co2 equivalent and a temperature increase limited to well below 2oC above the pre industrial level; and

b.    to reduce their collective GHG emissions by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and by at least 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

For further information please contact:

Geoffrey Kyle: Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation – 0427 848 368
Stephen Leonard: Australian Climate Justice Program - 0414 284 178.