The Eagle Interviews Former President Mary Robinson by Rory Anthoney-Hearn

The Eagle Interviews Former President Mary Robinson

By Rory Anthoney-Hearn, SS Law

Mary Robinson is Ireland’s first female president, former United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, and current chair of The Elders, founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007. Robinson has been advocating in more recent years under the auspices of environmental law and climate justice, founding the Mary Robinson Climate Justice Foundation in 2010.

Since then, Robinson has held the position of the United Nations Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Climate Change, incumbent in the position preceding the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016. Her climate justice book entitled Climate Justice: A Man-Made Problem with a Feminist Solution was published in 2018. In February 2021, Robinson chaired Trinity’s Climate Change Panel Discussion which saw the candidates vouching for the upcoming position of Provost tackle questions on how each would implement climate justice initiatives in Trinity during their decade-long tenure as Provost of the college.

You emphasise in your memoir and climate justice book how human rights begin at home. In the move from fossil fuel to renewable energy industries, we must ensure a just transition for persons in developing countries. In Ireland, such fossil fuel industries are often based in economically marginal areas like Bord na Móna bogs. What does a just transition look like for persons working in fossil fuel industries who may lose their jobs?

It is very important that Ireland and Born na Móna have taken seriously the importance of just transition to a new fossil fuel free future. I fully agree that people from areas that were dependent economically on Bord na Móna should be able to continue to live there, which is why the report of the Ombudsman on Just Transition on the potential for both clean energy and nature-based jobs is so significant and needs to be implemented in full.

There is no express article in the Constitution relating to environmental law. However, recent judicial activism saw an unenumerated right concerning environmental law recognised in a 2017 High Court case. Is there more scope for the intersection between constitutional and environmental law to further the climate justice initiative? Or should “normal” policies be followed, i.e. the government’s current environmental plan?

As a former president I don’t want to comment in detail on recent case law. But let me say in general terms that while governments have the primary responsibility to have policies that address the climate crisis and keep us at or below 1.5 degrees warming, litigation such as the Irish case you cited, and the more recent French case against the government there, can ensure that governments are accountable and deliver.

In your recent keynote speech addressed to the IDA in January 2021, you spoke about how financial services coming into Ireland should be aligned with the Paris Agreement. Can you expand on how foreign direct investment coming from the European Union or further afield ought to be more conducive to realising climate goals?

I believe financial services and foreign investment will play a very important role in making sure the private sector assumes its responsibility to commit to having net-zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, and working backwards to explain how to reduce and eliminate fossil fuel to achieve this. Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, now UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and Boris Johnson’s Financial Advisor for COP26, is leading on this. He has been making the case that investing in net-zero climate solutions creates value and rewards. He is keen to see mandatory, not just voluntary, carbon disclosure. He points out that private finance is judging which companies are part of the solution, but private finance, too, is increasingly being judged. Banks, pension funds and asset managers have to show where they are in the transition to net-zero. Blackrock, the world’s biggest investor, has just made clear that oil companies should disclose their carbon emissions and set targets to cut them, or else they will not invest. This is the latest sign of the rapid reassessment of climate risks by an asset manager.

Your climate justice book was published pre Covid-19, but you pre-emptively write about providing better infrastructures for developing countries to properly store vaccines, which is in keeping with a point from your aforementioned IDA address: “Covid has been like a mirror, it has exacerbated all of the inequalities in our world.” The AstraZeneca-Pfizer oligopoly omnipresent in developed countries remains reticent to waiver their Covid-19 vaccine patent rights to allow developing countries to manufacture generic vaccines. This unjust ‘rich-poor divide’ is exacerbated in a climate justice context as well. Can you speak to this point?

I am glad that the need for equitable access to vaccines has now been recognised by the G7, with an overall commitment to the Global Covax Initiative of USD$7.5 billion, of which President Biden has committed USD$4 billion over two years. The new head of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has made it clear that the UK and other countries must not just provide leftover vaccines at the end, but provide vaccines now to developing countries. UNSG Guterres has called the present situation where 130 countries have not received any vaccines at all ‘wildly unfair’.

The USA has only recently returned to the Paris Climate Agreement further to Trump’s 2017 derogation from same, and the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear carbon emissions are not improving as hoped. Given we are attached to our ‘fossil fuel ways’ couched in profit maximisation and capitalism, do you think the political will exists to bona fide coalesce on a multilateral basis behind achieving a carbon free economy and adhering to nationally determined contributions?

It is welcome news that the U.S. has returned to the Paris Agreement, and that President Biden has appointed a very experienced team both internationally and domestically. However, four years were basically lost during the Trump administration and the climate crisis has become more urgent than ever, and requires full multilateral cooperation. Now the U.S. has to announce its required emission-cutting targets which it has promised to do before the summit Biden has called on Earth Day on 22nd April. The U.S. also has to make appropriate contributions to the Green Climate Fund and the commitment of 100 billion USD each year to help developing countries adapt to climate. This will help energise the multilateral approach and commitments leading up to COP26 in Glasgow in November.

Ireland “Tackling the issue of climate change presents us with an inflection point in human history - a climate justice revolution that separates development from fossil fuels, supports people in the most vulnerable situations to adapt, allows all people to take part, and, most importantly, realise their full potential.” -Mary Robinson

“What I have learned from those who inspired me to tell their stories is that we need to take personal responsibility for our families, our communities, and our ecosystems. And we need to do it with empathy and support for those less responsible for the climate problem, who are suffering more.” -Mary Robinson