A/77/549 Palestinian Territories amount to apartheid, 54 with extreme environmental and human rights consequences for Palestinians. 30. In one submission it was noted that the historical legacy of militarized occupation and neocolonial extraction also plays a key role in the climate vulnerability of States in Central America and the Caribbean. A deadly hi story of intervention, neoliberal coercion and unequal relationships between Latin America and military superpowers, in particular the United States, has rendered this region particularly vulnerable to climate change slow-onset disasters. 55 In the Caribbean, farmers and peasants are confronted with catastrophic changes in the weather that make agricultural labour increasingly difficult and that predominately affect poor farmers and rural women. 56 In Central America, climatic changes have led to violence and climate migration, often through dangerous climate pathways, defined by racialized exclusion, in North America. 57 31. In the Middle East, colonial and neocolonial invasions and military interventions have been motivated in large part by the extensive reserves of fossil fuels in that region. States and transnational corporations of the global North have collaborated with authoritarian elites to extract and exploit the region’s fossil fuels – contributing to climate change and perpetuating human rights viol ations against local communities and racially marginalized migrant labourers. 58 32. Across the African continent, extractive projects and toxic waste dumping have wreaked havoc on natural environments, 59 as African States, with arid ecosystems, struggle to maintain local livelihoods in the midst of climate change. 60 In a submission it was reported that the prevalence of sacrifice zones in Africa, including the example of Kabwe in Zambia, which is among the most polluted places in the world owing in part to abandoned mining residue. According to estimates, more than 95 per cent of children living there have elevated levels of lead in their blood. 61 In another submission highlighted communities’ decades-long battles against transnational corporations for pollution from offshore oil and gas drilling, and everleaking petrol pipelines in Durban, South Africa. 62 33. Small island developing States face extreme risks, as rising sea levels, intensifying natural disasters and the destruction of natural ecologies threaten lives and livelihoods. 63 The multidimensional vulnerability index, a newly developed metric measuring the economic, geographic, financial and environmental vulnerabilities of small island developing States, put the average score of small island developing States 50 to 60 per cent higher than the global average, indicating a starker vulnerability than would be implied by income levels. 64 For small island developing States, the __________________ 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 10/24 See A/HRC/49/87. Submission from Gonzalez. Submissions from the Haitian Civil Society Consultation; and Sealey-Huggins. Submissions from Sabantho Aderi (Lokono-Arawak); and the Global Justice Clinic. Submission from Gonzalez. Amnesty International, “Trafigura: a toxic journey”, 2016. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Working Group II Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Cambridge University Press, 2022). Submission from Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights. Submissions from D’sa and Bond. Michelle Mycoo and others, “Small islands”, in Climate Change 2022 (Cambridge, United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 2022). UNDP, “Towards a multidimensional vulnerability index”, discussion paper, February 2021. 22-24043