Event: Scotland's Role in Delivering Climate Justice featuring keynote speech by Environment and Climate Change Minister, Paul Wheelhouse

Amnesty International Scotland, Christian Aid Scotland, WWF Scotland and The University of Edinburgh are hosting a very special event examining Scotland's role in delivering climate justice, featuring Scotland’s Environment and Climate Change Minister, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, as keynote speaker.

Scotland is positioning itself as playing a key international role in helping to deliver climate justice, with the world's first parliamentary debate on the subject and the launch of the Climate Justice Fund earlier this year. Taking place during the Doha Climate Change Conference, this event provides an opportunity for Scotland's Environment Minister to outline how we can take this international role forward; as well as reiterating Scotland's commitment to tackle climate change at a domestic level and the impacts of climate change on the world's most vulnerable communities.

Following the speech there will be a panel discussion featuring the Environment and Climate Change Minister, Dr Richard Dixon, Director of WWF Scotland; Kathy Galloway, Head of Christian Aid Scotland; and Amnesty International.

The event brings together key individuals and organisations working across the inextricably linked areas of human rights, the environment and international development to inform and debate Scotland's role within climate justice.

Event details

Who

• Paul Wheelhouse MSP, Minister for Environment and Climate Change
• Siobhan Reardon, Acting Programme Director, Amnesty International Scotland
• Dr Richard Dixon, Director of WWF Scotland
• Kathy Galloway, Head of Christian Aid Scotland
• Prof. James Smith, Assistant Principal of The University of Edinburgh and Director of The University of Edinburgh Global Development Academy

Where

Godfrey Thomson Hall, Thomson's Land, The University of Edinburgh EH8 8AQ

When

Wednesday 28 November, 7.30pm until 9pm

Media welcome to attend, RSVP to oliver.howe@amnesty.org.uk

Notes

The Doha Climate Change Conference will take place from Monday 26 November to Friday 7 December 2012 at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha, Qatar.

In the first parliamentary debate on the issue worldwide, the Scottish Parliament debated climate justice on 1 May 2012 The debate highlighted the increasing impact of climate change on the world’s poorest – who despite contributing the least to the causes of climate change, in terms of carbon emissions, are worst equipped to respond to it.

First Minister Alex Salmond and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, launched Scotland’s Climate Justice Fund on 31 May 2012 and called for other countries to share Scotland’s ambition on climate change – by both reducing their carbon emissions and implementing climate justice.

Climate justice is a recognition and response to the injustice that it is the world’s poorest communities, who have done the least to cause climate change, who are hardest hit by it. They are suffering from a changing environment causing increasingly erratic weather patterns, desertification, crop failures, water shortages and newly spreading diseases. Climate change impacts on rights to life, livelihoods and the ways of life of many millions of people in the developing world. Climate justice links the impacts of climate change with human rights and development.

The Scottish Government is providing £3 million for the fund – one million per year for the next three years - which will support water projects in Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia – increasing communities’ resilience to the impacts of climate change.

The fund is also supported by the 2020 Climate Group, and the Network of International Development Organisations of Scotland (NIDOS), and has attracted cross-party support from the Scottish Parliament