Climate change 'cultural genocide' for Aborigines

Agence France-Presse: Climate change would force Australia's Aborigines off their traditional lands, resulting in "cultural genocide" and environmental degradation, a human rights watchdog warned Monday. Australia's original inhabitants, whose cultures stretch back many thousands of years, Aborigines would be deeply affected by the impact of global warming, the government-funded Human Rights Commission said.

Rising sea levels and soaring temperatures would make their homelands uninhabitable, severing spiritual links and laying waste to the environment, according to the commission's annual Native Title Report. "Problems that indigenous Australians will encounter include people being forced to leave their lands, particularly in coastal areas," the report said.

"Dispossession and a loss of access to traditional lands, waters, and natural resources may be described as cultural genocide; a loss of ancestral, spiritual, totemic and language connections to lands and associated areas." Being robbed of their traditional caretaking role for land and water resources would also result in "environmental degradation and adverse impacts on biodiversity and overall health and well-being," the commission said….

Boulia town in outback Queensland, Australia, shot by GondwanaGirl