Australia's coal and gas exports violate our human rights, group says in new UN case

“It is already killing people and hurting lives, landscapes and communities across Australia,” he said.

“Continuing to allow coal and gas companies to increase pollution, while people face worsening disasters, is a profound failure of responsibility.”

Brendon Donohue has also joined the legal claim, describing how he was trapped in his home for 10 days in 2022 when floods in Brisbane damaged the power supply of his apartment block, meaning the lifts, intercom and exits were not accessible.

“Because I live with blindness and mobility challenges, climate impacts affect me differently and can make everyday life much harder to navigate safely,” he said.

Rebecca Parker

Another case is that of Prof Anne Poelina, an Indigenous woman from the Kimberley region in Western Australia, who describes being displaced from the area around the Fitzroy River, one of the state’s most important waterways, because of catastrophic flooding.

“When the river is healthy, our people are healthy,” she said, and “when the river suffers, our people suffer.”

“What concerns me most is the intergenerational loss of cultural knowledge,” she added as “so much of our knowledge is not written down”, but passed on by being physically present on the land.