The Sydney Morning Herald reports
Sea water is washing under their homes, killing crops and dislodging grave sites. Inspired by successful litigation in the Netherlands, two Torres Strait Islander elders are taking the Australian government to court in a bid to force urgent climate action.
“If you take away our homelands, we don’t know who we are.”
“Becoming climate refugees means losing everything: our homes, our culture, our stories and our identity,” says Kabai, shaking his head. “If you take away our homelands, we don’t know who we are.” A stocky man, who often gestures with a pointing finger as he talks – at the blue sky, at the sparkling sea, at his island – Kabai has an endearing habit of slipping his glasses up onto his cap and peering intently at me when he wants to make a point, as if to say this is urgent, listen up. “If we have to relocate, it will be very sad for us. Very sad.”
Kabai and his brother-in-law, the 52-year-old elder Uncle Pabai Pabai, who lives on Boigu, are suing the Australian government. They are seeking orders that require the Commonwealth “take reasonable care” to protect Torres Strait Islanders and their ailan kastom from the harm caused by climate change – in this case by setting emissions reduction targets consistent with the best available science. They’re also seeking damages for the changes they say are already undermining their way of life.
“I left school in 1989 and moved to Cairns. When I came back to Boigu a few years later, everything was the same as when I’d left,” says Pabai. “But by the mid-2000s, I could see that things were starting to change. Our culture is built on knowledge of how everything should be. So if something happens to the seas, or the winds, or the fish, we notice.”
Launched in the Federal Court in October last year, theirs is the first climate class action to be brought on behalf of Australian First Nations people, and the first to claim that the government’s failure to significantly reduce emissions will force them to become refugees. “We have a cultural responsibility to make sure that it doesn’t happen, and to protect our country and our communities,” says Pabai.
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