privacy, to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to freedom of opinion and expression, to peaceful assembly and to freedom of association.390 Possible Impacts of Climate Change on the Right to Culture The enjoyment of culture, by majority or minority populations within a State, can be threatened by climate change in numerous ways, particularly insofar as the culture is linked to the natural environment. An illustrative example is the well-known 2005 petition presented by the Inuit Circumpolar Conference against the United States of America before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Among other violations, the petitioners alleged that the United States was responsible for the impact of climate change on the right to culture of the Inuit of the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic under Article XIII of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.391 The petitioners’ arguments illustrate in a more general way how drought, ecosystem disruption, the disappearance of snow or ice, and other weather modifications can have important impacts on the enjoyments of the right to culture. The petitioners claimed that the Inuit have been severely prejudiced by climate change in that their livelihood, culture and subsistence rely extensively on climatic conditions. The petition affirms that “All aspects of the Inuit’s lives depend upon their culture, and the continued viability of the culture depends in turn on the Inuit’s reliance on the ice, snow, land and weather conditions in the Arctic.”392 More specifically, the petitioners argued that climate change has altered the arctic environment, and provoked “deteriorating ice conditions, decreasing quantity and quality of snow, unpredictable and unfamiliar weather, and a transfigured landscape.”393 They claim that these phenomena have affected the Inuit’s subsistence harvest, travel, safety, hunting, capacity to process and store food, capacity to process hides, access to clean drinking water, health and diet, education, homes, cultural sites, and communities. As a result, they claim that climate change has undermined the traditional Inuit way of life and permanently damaged their culture.394 On November 16th, 2006 the IACHR, declared the petition impossible to process. It informed the petitioners that “the information provided does not enable [the IACHR] to determine whether the alleged facts would characterize a violation of rights protected by the American Declaration.”395 The IACHR nonetheless granted the petitioners their request to participate in thematic hearings in 2007 on the topic “Global Warming and Human Rights.”396 10.2 Understanding the Right to Culture in the Context of Climate Change Mitigation Policies The protection of cultural rights in mitigation policies is often an issue, in particular when large land use projects (such as REDD-related projects or large hydroelectric projects) affect Indigenous and local communities. For example, hydroelectric projects frequently result in the mass displacement of communities. The dispersal of such communities may negatively impact their enjoyment of the right to culture, particularly in the case of Indigenous peoples, who often have a special cultural and spiritual relationship to their land. 98