Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University will co-host the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking, and Climate Change from May 14 to 18, 2018.
The panel of judges of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal will be asked to provide an advisory opinion on four central questions:
- Under what circumstances do fracking and other unconventional oil and gas extraction techniques breach human rights protected by international law as a matter of treaty or custom?
- Under what circumstances do fracking and other unconventional oil and gas extraction techniques warrant the issuance of either provisional measures, a judgment enjoining further activity, remediation relief, or damages for causing environmental harm?
- What is the extent of responsibility and liability of States and non-State actors for violations of human rights and for environmental and climate harm caused by these oil and gas extraction techniques?
- What is the extent of responsibility and liability of States and non-State actors, both legal and moral, for violations of the rights of nature related to environmental and climate harm caused by these unconventional oil and gas extraction techniques?
For the first time this session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal will be hosted completely online. Attorneys and witnesses will convene via Zoom web conferencing software each day to present evidence and testimony to the panel of the judges of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal.
The proceedings will be streamed on the Spring Creek Project Facebook page and in the OSU Student Experience Center. A full schedule of daily Tribunal proceedings will be available soon, on the Spring Creek Project website and on tribunalonfracking.org
The oral presentations will include three main categories of items:
- Preliminary Tribunal Reports;
- Amicus briefs;
- Rights of nature arguments and evidence
A team of human rights attorneys will present witness testimony and reports from preliminary tribunals held in areas where fracking is an increasingly popular means of oil and gas extraction, including Ohio, Virginia, and Australia.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal judges will be asked to consider the rights of nature. Two earth jurisprudence attorneys, Lisa Mead, LL.M., Director of the Earth Law Alliance in Scotland, and Dr. Michelle Maloney, Convenor of the Australian Earth Laws Alliance, will present witness testimony and oral and written arguments addressing the session’s central questions from a rights of nature perspective.
More than a dozen amicus briefs have been submitted by attorneys and others representing non-governmental organizations, including Food and Water Watch, Food and Water Europe, Earthworks, Rogue Climate, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, the Alaska Climate Action Network, the Center for Earth Jurisprudence, the Environmental Defender’s Office (in Australia), the Earth Law Alliance, the Native Village of Nuiqsut, Alaska, the Center for Human Rights and the Environment (in Argentina), and others. Some of these attorneys will present their evidence and arguments orally during the Tribunal.
Info and contacts:
Carly Lettero, Spring Creek Project, Oregon State University
Simona Fraudatario
ppt@permanentpeoplestribunal.org