Human Rights in Ireland

The Re-Engineering the Corporation ESRC series based at Queen’s University Belfast, in conjunction with the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, will run a seminar on Human Rights and the Corporation on June 28th and 29th 2011. The seminar will take place at Queen’s University Belfast, hosted by the Institute of Governance in the School of Law.

The seminar will take place to coincide with a special issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (Vol 3:1, March 2012), on corporate environmental responsibilities.

The seminar is organised by Prof. Sally Wheeler, Dr. Anna Grear and Dr. Ciarán O’Kelly.

More information is available here.

If you wish to submit a paper please send an abstract to Dr Ciaran O’Kelly. Expenses will be covered for PhD students and for speakers.

A recent article in the Irish Times described comments by a leading Australian urban geographer, Prof. Brendan Gleeson of NUI Maynooth, that Ireland will become a ‘climate change lifeboat’. The idea is that as climate change causes rising sea levels, displacing vast overpopulated regions of the world, Ireland will be less physically affected leading to our ‘lifeboat’ status for large numbers of people who are effectively ‘climate refugees’. The BBC also reported the story, adding that if global temperatures rise by three or four degrees, as Prof. Gleeson predicts they will, the southern megacities in Africa, the sub-continental states and Asia will be the first to go under, taking with them a substantial proportion of our species. This will generate “enormous migratory shifts, as displaced and stressed populations flee the sea level rise and wildly destructive weather.” Ireland could become one of only a few habitable ‘lifeboat’ regions in the cooler extremes of the earth.

The concept of climate change refugees is a growing area of interest. For example a recent Oscar-nominated documentary film, Sun Come Up, tells the story of the Cateret Islanders of Papua New Guinea, considered the first climate change refugees as their island is predicted to sink. Another documentary, Climate Refugees, portrays “a new phenomenon in the global arena called ‘Climate Refugees’”, according to its blurb. Read Full Post »