Mary Robinson, a former Irish president, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and an honorary president of Oxfam International, explains in this article in the UK's 'The Independent' newspaper how climate change will increasingly damage the lives of poor people around the world, impinging on their human rights in the process.

Robinson says 'Those who are already poor and vulnerable are and will continue to be disproportionately affected. Incrementally, land will become too dry to till, crops will wither, rising sea levels will undermine coastal dwellings and spoil freshwater, livelihoods will vanish. Carbon emissions from industrialised countries have human and environmental consequences. As a result, global warming has already begun to affect the fulfillment of human rights, and to the extent that polluting greenhouse gases continue to be released by large industrial countries, the basic human rights of millions of the world's poor to life, security, food, health and shelter will continue to be violated.

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