Fr. Edwin Gariguez, recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize together with the typhoon survivors, advocates and non-governmental organizations, including Greenpeace Southeast Asia have recently filed a petition against the fossil fuel companies in the Philippines.
The complaint was dubbed as the 'first of its kind in the world' was delivered to the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR) on September 22 and demanded an investigation into the top 50 investor-owned fossil fuel companies and their responsibility for climate impacts that endanger people's lives and livelihoods, as well as that of future generations.
"We pray that the CHR heed the demand to recommend to policymakers and legislators to develop and adopt effective accountability mechanisms that victims of climate change can easily access," said Gariguez, who is also the Executive Secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines - National Secretariat for Social Action Justice and Peace (CBCP-NASSA) / Caritas Philippines.
The international acclaimed priest stated that inspired by Pope Francis, the Church will support the Philippine climate change and human rights complaint and will continue to serve as a strong ally in the struggle for a socially just, environmentally sustainable, and spiritually rich world that the Pope and the broader climate movement are fighting for.
The 50 companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips, are a subset of the 90 legal entities that have contributed the lion's share of cumulative global CO2 and methane emissions in the earth's atmosphere, as identified by peer-reviewed research.
Organisations that have provided advice and support to the group submitting the complaint include Amnesty International, Avaaz, Business and Human Rights Resources Centre, Climate Justice Program, the Center for International Environmental Law, EarthRights International, International Trade Union Confederation, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Meanwhile, Attorney Zelda Soriano, legal and political advisor for Greenpeace Southeast Asia cited that people are using legal systems to hold their governments to account and demand climate action from Netherlands to U.S.
"We hope that the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines will take the bold step in being the first in the world to hold big corporate polluters accountable for their contribution to the climate crisis," Soriano said.
According to a statement, the groups submitting the complaint are calling for the investigation to be launched this year -an important building block in establishing the moral and legal 'precedent' that big polluters can be held responsible for current and threatened human rights infringements resulting from fossil fuel products.
Reports added these companies have benefited financially with knowledge of the harms associated with their products. The groups submitting the complaint all agree that now is the time for the big polluters to bear responsibility for preventing climate harm.
