I know that my hon. Friend takes an interest in Mexico and Latin America as a whole. This issue affects the whole continent. Reforestation would help not only to prevent the risks that I am describing by acting as a natural barrier to flooding but to reduce carbon emissions because the forests are the lungs of the continent. I agree that more could be done not only to increase reforestation, but to halt the process of deforestation, which I will come to in a moment.
In countries such as El Salvador, which are already vulnerable to earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods and landslides, such natural threats turn into full-blown disasters because of the high levels of poverty and
vulnerability, and the lack of infrastructure. We spoke to local farmers and environmental activists about the impact of the significant number of climatic events over the past decade, including Hurricane Mitch, Hurricane Stan and, most recently, tropical depression 12-E, when 1.5 metres of rain fell in 10 days, destroying crops, killing livestock and displacing people from their homes and land.
The region’s climate vulnerability is worsening. The UN report on climate change identified three challenges for central America: to resolve high levels of socio-economic and environmental vulnerability; to promote climate change adaptation; and to move towards sustainable, low carbon economics based on renewable sources.
Now is a critical time in addressing this problem. The world is looking to secure a new climate deal in Paris in December 2015. A new framework of post-2015 sustainable development goals will be agreed next year by the UN to replace the millennium development goals. It is important that climate resilience and disaster risk reduction are included in those goals. Thirdly, the Hyogo framework for action, which is the globally agreed approach to managing disaster risk reduction, will be replaced after 2015 with a new resilience framework which needs to address the challenges posed by disasters, climate change, natural resources management, conflict and poverty in an integrated way. It is not just about mitigation and adaptation—introducing climate-resilient crops, early warning systems, protection from flooding and the other things I have mentioned—but about developing a rights-based approach and about climate justice.
The countries most at risk from man-made climate change are not those responsible for causing it. They have much smaller carbon footprints than developed industrialised countries—countries in which multinational companies, particularly in the extractive and farming industries, exacerbate the problem by displacing people from their land, replacing sustainable agriculture with monocrops, deforestation on a massive scale, and the use of pesticides that infect the water supply and much more.
The UN committee on loss and damage, which is the closest thing to climate justice, will report in 2016. In El Salvador, environmental tribunals have been introduced. Judges are charged with assessing expert scientific evidence, and the burden of proof rests on the polluter to prove their innocence, thereby confronting economic powers that until now have too often had impunity on environmental violations.
Much more is to be done across the world to protect, strengthen and enforce climate rights. We heard disturbing accounts of how the central America free trade agreement has made it difficult for El Salvador to promote native seeds, which is part of the effort to reinstate organic farming, and to ban the import of pesticides. That is surely wrong. As part of the fight against climate change, we must also consider broader issues such as how we can encourage a different, more sustainable model of development in countries benefitting from ODA.