After 9 days of negotiations there is no doubt that we saw this movie before. It is the third remake of Copenhagen and Cancun. Same actors. Same script. The documents are produced outside the formal negotiating scenario . In private meetings, dinners which the 193 member states do not attend. The result of these meetings is known only on the last day. In the case of Copenhagen it was at two in the morning after the event should have already ended. In Cancun, the draft decision just appeared at 5 p.m. on the last day and was not opened for negotiation, not even to correct a comma. Bolivia stood firm on both occasions. The reason: the very low emission reduction commitments of industrialized countries that would lead to an increase in average global temperatures of more than 4° Celsius. In Cancun, Bolivia stood alone. I could not do otherwise. How could we accept the same document that was rejected in Copenhagen, knowing that 350,000 people die each year due to natural disasters caused by climate change? To remain silent is to be complicit in genocide and ecocide. To accept a disastrous document in order not to be left alone is cowardly diplomacy. Even more so when one trumpets the “people’s diplomacy” and has pledged to defend the “People’s Agreement” of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia last year.

Durban will be worse than Copenhagen and Cancun. Two days before the close of the meetings, the true text that is being negotiated is not yet known. Everyone knows that the actual 131-page document is just a compilation of proposals that were already on the table in Panama two months ago. The formal negotiations have barely advanced. The real document will appear toward the end of COP17.

But more importantly, the substance of the negotiations remains unchanged from Copenhagen. The emission reduction pledges by developed countries are still 13% to 17% based on 1990 levels. Everyone knows that this is a catastrophe. But instead of becoming outraged, they attempt to sweeten the poison. The wrapper of this package will be the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and a mandate for a new binding agreement. The substance of the package will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: do virtually nothing during this decade in terms of reducing emissions, and get a mandate to negotiate an agreement that will be even weaker than the Kyoto Protocol and that will replace it in 2020. “The Great Escape III” is the name of this movie, and it tells the story of how the governments of rich countries along with transnational corporations are looking to escape their responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of becoming stronger, the fight against climate change is becoming more soft and flexible, with voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. The question is, who will step up this time to denounce the fraud to the end? Or could it be that this time, everyone will accept the remake of Copenhagen and Cancun?

The truth is that beyond the setting and the last scene, the end of this film will be the same as in Copenhagen and Cancun: humanity and mother earth will be the victims of a rise in temperature not seen in 800,000 years.

(*) Pablo Solon is an international analyst and social activist. He was chief negotiator for climate change and United Nations Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia (2009-June 2011).

http://pablosolon.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/cop17-el-gran-escape-iii/#more-115

http://cmpcc.org/2011/12/07/cop17-el-gran-escape-iii/

But civil society groups are worried that carbon offsets in agriculture will threaten African farmers and farming systems. 100+ civil society groups have signed a letter asking African negotiators to reject soil carbon markets.  They point to the collapse of the carbon markets and warn that carbon markets can open the door to land grabs and the establishment of industrial agricultural systems which threaten small-scale farmers’ livelihoods.

“But the World Bank is fighting back,” says Helena Paul of EcoNexus. “It seems determined to massively expand carbon markets by linking agriculture with REDD, using what the Bank calls the ‘landscape approach’, under the guise of so-called ‘Climate Smart Agriculture’. This implies putting all land into the carbon markets. The Bank is also launching new investor initiatives in Durban today.”

Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation adds: “Developed country big guns from the US, Canada, Australia & New Zealand are loudly mouthing empty rhetoric about the need to address agriculture in the negotiations for Africa’s sake. But their claims that they are merely passionate about research into agroforestry, and Africa’s agricultural adaptation needs, are highly suspicious.  The World Bank’s aggressive push for a ‘mitigation programme of work on agriculture’ at the UN climate negotiations echoes the same rhetoric of saving Africa, but is a Trojan horse to bring in carbon offsets based on farmers’ soils.  Soil carbon offsets will promote a new spate of African land grabs, and put farmers under the control of fickle carbon markets.”

Doreen Stabinsky of Institute for Africulture and Trade Policy (IATP) points out that “The World Bank has paid for a series of meetings over the past year, designed to build support for soil carbon markets. They even paid the costs for a meeting of African Agriculture ministers in Johannesburg in September. Observers are left wondering why the Bank is investing so much money merely to get a statement from the COP to create a work programme on agriculture.  The Bank’s agenda is clearly an agenda of a carbon broker and trader — who makes his money on volume, not quality. More carbon for markets — including soil carbon — very simply means more money for the Bank and carbon project developers. This is about neither poverty alleviation, nor development.”

The organisation of the late Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize, have launched a new report to share their experiences piloting a forest carbon project with the World Bank.  Professor Njoroge Karanja , Acting Director of GBM, warns that there are many lessons to be learned for other African projects and local communities considering carbon offsetting.  “Poor communities are greatly disadvantaged as the rules for implementation result in high costs for project development.   The lack of upfront funding, and the need to wait many years before payment for offsets, shuts out almost all the grassroots communities whose involvement is critical to the long-term sustainability of the projects.  If we continue with carbon offsetting – where polluters are able to offset their emissions through buying credits – Africa, Asia and South America will become hewers of wood and drawers of water. We need clear identifiable indicators of reduction of emissions from the major polluters before they can enter the carbon buying market in the south.”

Contact: Teresa Anderson Teresa@gaianet.org  +27 (0) 741 838 955

Francesca de Gasparis francesca@greenbeltmovement.org +27 (0) 73 219 8171

Helena Paul, EcoNexus: h.paul@gn.apc,org +27 (0) 798 106 014

More than 90 signatories from 34 countries warned that carbon credits from coal power offset projects divert scarce climate finance and undermine climate targets while locking-in billions of tons of CO₂ and causing severe human health and ecosystems damage.

 “Coal is the fossil fuel with the highest greenhouse gas emissions and the anathema of “clean development” comments Bas Eickhout, a member of the European Parliament. “While the clock is ticking to get a much needed climate deal done, it is hard to believe that the UNFCCC allows coal power projects to receive climate finance.”

Under the UN’s offsetting scheme multi-billion-dollar coal power projects can receive carbon credits if they show they would have been built less efficient in the absence of the carbon revenue. But building highly efficient coal power plants makes economic and strategic sense because coal prices have been rising rapidly over the past years, and governments are mandating more efficient technologies.

 “Carbon credits from business as usual projects fundamentally undermine already insufficient pledges to reduce emissions” said Eva Filzmoser from CDM Watch, the initiator of the letter “In order to avoid hundreds of millions of carbon credits from unsustainable coal projects that deliver neither emission reductions, nor sustainable development benefits, we call on countries to exclude coal power projects from the CDM here in Durban.”

Last week, the UN’s CDM Executive Board suspended the crediting rules for coal power projects after an investigation found that the flawed rules could lead to over-issuance of millions of carbon credits that do not reflect real and additional emission reductions. An independent study found that it is not feasible to correct the flaws in the rules because they are inherent to this project type.

The emissions reductions pledged by countries so far set the world on a trajectory for a 4.3° C temperature increase by 2100. Emissions must peak by 2015 and sharply decline thereafter in order to reach the 2° C goal agreed in Cancun. The IEA explicitly states that many coal power plants will have to be shut down before the end of their lifetime, if the world is to have a chance to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. 

 “We can’t afford to wait any longer to begin serious mitigation efforts. That means it is time to move the CDM beyond coal,” comments Justin Guay from Sierra Club.

This year is a critical one for the global climate change negotiations. Durban, South Africa will play host to the UN Conference of Parties (COP 17) later this year.

One of the challenges in the run-up to Durban is understanding the politics of climate change arising from the Copenhagen meeting and the subsequent Cancun conference, the outcomes of those meetings, and how these outcomes relate to Durban and, therefore, what civil society demands can and should be.

What happened in Copenhagen and Cancun?

The Copenhagen conference was essentially a train wreck. It ranks as one of the worst international meetings held in the last decade and a half, and may go down in infamy for the Danish government’s handling of it.

The mandate of Copenhagen was to come up with outcomes in two tracks of climate change negotiations under the UN Climate Convention and its Kyoto Protocol (KP). There was a heavy push to involve heads of states. The direct involvement of these leaders complicated the negotiations because once they arrived, the formal negotiations stalled and negotiations went underground.

Essentially, a number of high-level officials from a small group of countries, around 26 or 28 (the actual list has never been made public) disappeared into a backroom at the conference centre. So you had the delegates of around 190 countries negotiating as part of the formal process as they are supposed to while, in parallel, in a backroom, there was a meeting going on that even the chair of the negotiations had not been invited to.

That small group came up with a document that they called the ‘Copenhagen Accord’. This was basically a document that was drafted initially by the Danish government with input, as far as we can tell, from a fairly small group of developed countries.

The negotiations in the backroom continued until after midnight on the final day, while delegates from the remaining 150 countries waited in the plenary room for hours. The Danish prime minister came back and said to the governments assembled that a small group had been working very hard and had come up with a document that they wanted to present as the outcome of the meeting.

For many of the delegates it was the first time they had seen the document or that version of the document, and they were given one hour to go back to their groups and review the document and basically accept the outcome.

And of course the flags of dozens of countries went up in the air: ‘Point of order,’ was decalred. The deputy executive secretary bent over and said to the Danish prime minister that there were some ‘points of order’ but the prime minister lent back and said, ‘There will be no points of order.’ Unbeknown to him, his microphone was switched on and this was communicated to everyone in the room, triggering pandemonium. He stood up and walked off the podium.

Delegates then heard a resounding banging that ricocheted around the room. A delegate from Venezuela had picked up the plastic name tag of her country and was banging it on the table demanding that the Danish prime minister return to the room and the other countries be given the right to participate in the multi-lateral negotiations.

When the Danish prime minister was brought back reluctantly and red-faced to the podium, the delegate raised her bleeding hand and asked: ‘Do I have to bleed to have my country heard in this forum?’ There were other interventions. Tuvalu said they would not sell their future for ‘30 pieces of silver’. Sudan asked whether the document was a suicide pact and whether delegates were being asked to incinerate Africa.

In the ensuing discussions in the plenary, the UK and USA mounted pressure on other countries, basically bribery and pressure, using finance in an attempt to get countries to agree, but ultimately countries led by Bolivia and Nicaragua held firm and the Copenhagen Accord was merely noted, meaning that the UN neither agrees nor disagrees with it; it simply recognises that it exists.

Following Copenhagen, many of those same governments exerted massive pressure on developing countries to sign up to the Accord. Many African countries did so willingly, in part because Ethiopia had been one of the countries that had been in the room and had supported the Copenhagen Accord and had brought it back into the processes of the African Union, but many other African countries stood firm against the Accord.

Between Copenhagen and Cancun there was a strong process to reinstate the Copenhagen Accord as the basis of negotiations and to reintroduce it as one of the formal documents. As negotiations moved to Cancun there were continuing concerns about substantive demands, but also about the process of negotiations – whether countries would genuinely be able to participate and represent the interests of their people.

In Cancun it was recognisable that this was going to be a different type of negotiations: The developed countries were not going to repeat the same mistake that they made in Copenhagen. Instead, there was a much more sophisticated process established that involved a number of things that were extraordinary in the UN process. This included meetings of small groups of countries that were not announced. A new text was developed in a process that no-one quite understands. In subsequent meetings of the Africa group, delegates acknowledge they still have no idea who drafted the document. The document was again tabled with a few hours notice, but this time with a much more sophisticated process and ultimately only Bolivia was really willing to stand up and raise questions about the process.

They enumerated their concerns, including a shift to a pledge-based process; the continuation of market mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, even if there is no second commitment process; questions around the scale of financing; and concerns around technology and intellectual property.

Ultimately, the views of Bolivia were dismissed by the chair, the text was not opened for any negotiation and the chair said that consensus did not mean unanimity. In other words, the fact that a sovereign state opposes a consensus does not prevent the document from being adopted, which is inconsistent with the traditional understanding of consensus, which means that all parties participate.

Basically, what happened in Cancun was that there were a number of undertakings for further work and, in a sense, these are deliverables for the Durban meeting. But there were a number of issues that were left unaddressed because Cancun addressed the easy issues, but left the hard issues that arose in the Bali Action Plan.

CLASH OF PARADIGMS

Underlying these meetings is the clash of paradigms between the science-based, equity-based, rule-of-law-based process that was envisaged in the Bali roadmap and the pledge-and-review approach which the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reveals will lead to between 2.5 and five degrees Celsius of warming and associated impacts that include massive levels of loss and damage, particularly in Africa.

At Cancun, there were two main outcomes: One under the Convention (AWG-LCA) and the other under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). Two key questions arise: What is on the table and what are the key things that need to be addressed in both of these areas?

On the table on the AWG-LCA is a two degree Celsius goal and a review to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050. The position of various countries reflects their underlying material interests: The Annex 1 countries (developed countries) have supported two degrees Celsius while within the African group there is support that has flip-flopped between two degrees Celsius and 1.5 degrees Celsius. The last statement was for 1.5 degrees Celsius.

There are also issues around mitigation, all related to the effort sharing question, because all of them affect how much the developed countries do and how much the developing countries do, and how much reduction need be made in each of a country’s economic sectors.

Obviously the level of cuts in terms of mitigation by the developed countries is important, but also their access to the carbon markets – how much of the effort they can shift back to the developing countries through carbon markets. Also, the use of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) agreement and the proposed forest carbon markets have to be added in to understand the basic effort sharing model to ensure that adequate effort is made by the developed countries and isn’t pushed onto developing countries in a manner that is unjust and unsustainable.

In terms of the general issues, there is a need to protect the current system and also ensure there is an adequate level of emissions reductions by the developed countries. On the table, however, there are a variety of different proposals. The most ambitious is a 50 per cent cut by 2017 put forward by Bolivia and a number of other countries, basically asking the developed countries to change their lifestyles and consumption patterns to halve emissions. The African group has again oscillated between two different demands: A weaker one (40 per cent by 2020) and a stronger one (45 per cent by 2020). African countries need to stick to the stronger end of the demands again to ensure the effort is undertaken by the developed countries and it doesn’t fall to Africa to pick up an unfair share of the burden.

Another issue is the question of markets and loopholes. In other words, do developed countries do what they say they are going to do and how much are they going to achieve through creative accounting, through loopholes. And then there are questions of how the system then accounts for this in terms of measurement and verification.

Via the Cancun agreement, the Annex 1 countries are merely going to take on targets to be implemented by them that are both not legally binding and negotiated. Developing countries have rejected this flawed model.

There also are concerns about the levels of the emissions gaps by Annex 1 countries and the comparability of efforts by the USA and the level of stringency of the reporting requirements of the Annex 1 countries. And so, again in response to that, the demands have been 40-50 per cent by 2017 or 2020, clearly comparable efforts by the USA in terms of their level of ambition, the legal form and their compliance and then maintaining the current system of mitigation pledges.

Attaining these desires may demand a political strategy, engagement by heads of state in Africa with their counterparts in the run-up to Durban, as well as very strong efforts in terms of media and communication and mobilisation by civil society and other actors in the developed countries to apply pressure on their governments.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the big demands are for a second commitment period. If the Africa group’s central demand is a second commitment period, Durban must not be the graveyard of the Kyoto Protocol – this has to be made very clear to the Annex 1 countries. They cannot come to Africa and expect to kill the Kyoto Protocol and fail to honour their legal obligations and fail to respond to the most basic demand of African negotiators. The challenge here, of course, is getting an adequate scale of emissions reduction and then closing the loopholes in the markets to close the emissions gap as well as ensure that Annex 1 countries do their fair share.

Durban is one stepping stone but there is also the danger that developing countries may be forced back into discussions around institutions, and the big picture issues taken off the table.

Developing countries and indeed the world are basically being herded into a fait accompli around the Kyoto Protocol and a fait accompli about the global system for stabilising the Earth’s climate. One that, from UNEP (a very conservative multi-lateral institution) figures, is likely to lead the Earth to between 2.5 degrees Celsius and five degrees Celsius of warming.

There are people and institutions working to block progress on climate change. They are the same people that are undertaking projects in Ogoniland and other parts of Africa. They are the same companies that are undermining climate legislation in the United States Congress and they are the same corporations that are emitting the greenhouse gasses that are causing the problems that the world is saddled with.

Africa, and indeed the larger developing world, needs to put forward alternatives that are inspiring, that will actually lead negotiations to the solutions that are needed to save the Earth and humanity from destruction. So, Durban is a stepping stone and must deliver a bold step on the path to a just climate outcome.

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The climate change talks have been going on for a long time. Since Rio in 1992, when the Climate Convention was adopted, there have been 16 Conference of the Parties (COPs). Then in 2007, a new round of negotiations was launched in Bali.

Many thought Parties were going to arrive at a deal in Copenhagen, COP 15, but that proved a mirage. And then there was Cancun, and now Durban, where it is clear that negotiations will not conclude. What is perhaps unclear is what will happen after Durban.
How are humans going to live with climate change? One response to this is the climate justice response. The challenge here is that climate change impacts everything and everybody. It is a really big challenge, but it is also a huge opportunity. There is an opportunity to promote solutions that are real solutions – people-centered solutions, ecological solutions and socially just solutions.

Climate change is also a justice issue. The rich and corporations are the principal drivers of climate change. And here the culprits are mainly the extractive industries, the fossil fuel industries, mining and oil companies and, of course, consumers of what these companies are extracting from the ground, so it is also a demand-side problem.

But it is really the rich minority in this world that have principally caused the problem of climate change. However, those who did not cause the problem, the poorest, who are the world’s majority, will feel the impacts worst and first. This is a fundamental fact and the basic foundation for the climate justice analysis and the climate justice movement.

The developed countries – forming only 20 per cent of the world’s population – have emitted nearly three-quarters of all the historic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) into the atmosphere, so there is a fundamental imbalance here. This atmosphere is not theirs alone; this atmosphere is shared by all of us and they have polluted the atmosphere that they share with everyone, causing this problem of climate change.

If there is a limit to what can be emitted into the atmosphere, and developed countries have emitted so much, it means that there is little capacity for more. The fact is that these countries have already over-consumed what we might call their fair share. They have already taken away that space from us in developing countries, who arguably need it more to develop.

If this is the case, then we need to talk about how we develop – we need real, sustainable development. We need to de-link our development from emissions pollution. But because we haven’t yet been able to do this successfully – and even developed countries have not been able to show us that they can de-link their development from GHG emissions – we are still facing the struggle of how we are going to do it. At the moment the predominant model is to grow and develop our way out of poverty and that requires emissions.

On actual, historic emissions, since 1850, Annex 1 countries (the developed countries) have used more than three-quarters of available emissions space. This situation should probably be the reverse since the population in developing countries is around 80 per cent of the world’s population. What the developed countries propose in the negotiations is that they still take a very big share of the available emissions space in terms of population, when it should be much less because they have already over-consumed in the past and they have a much smaller population. That’s where the basic problem lies.

One of the key discourses in the climate justice agenda, proposed by Bolivia and backed up by NGOs and civil society, is what they have framed as climate debt: Because the developed countries have already over-used, and propose to continue over-using in the future, their share of the atmospheric capacity (a global commons), they have diminished the Earth’s ability to absorb GHG emissions and this has denied developing countries the fair space needed to further their development. This is an emissions debt to developing countries and has led to climate change and its impacts.

Then there is also an adaptation debt, as now there are adverse effects of climate change, and these impacts are being felt in developing countries. The adaptation debt to developing countries is in terms of loss and damage, the imperative to adapt and for lost development opportunities. Together, the emissions debt and the adaptation debt comprise a climate debt. This is how Bolivia and many climate justice groups have framed it.

Many groups have been calling for the adoption of the climate debt principle so that developed countries would be compelled to repay climate debt through finance and technology transfers. This obliges developed countries to accept full accounting for their historical emissions debt and commit to making the deepest possible emission reductions in the negotiations.

If one actually were to do a full accounting of the emissions debt of developed countries, this would probably show that they would need to cut emissions by minus 300 per cent. You might say that is impossible – we can’t cut it even by 100 per cent, how are we going to go to minus 300 per cent? We do acknowledge that such a cut back might not be technically possible at the moment. However, developed countries need to make the deepest cuts technically possible at this time. So what they need to do and what they can do may differ because there are presently technological and other practical limits. They need, however, to accept their responsibility and do the utmost.

And for what cannot be done, they must transfer finance and technology to developing countries who will have to make emissions cuts or be faced with the impacts that excessive global emissions bring. This is a debt that developed countries owe to developing countries, it isn’t aid. It is an obligation, a right that developing countries have to finance and technology transfers from developed countries.

This framing has allowed for a methodology that developing countries like Bolivia and others have put forward in the negotiations. Using the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities as a basis, Bolivia and other countries have demanded that developed countries reduce their emissions by 50 per cent from 1990 levels without offsetting by 2017, and transfer finance and technology to do likewise in developing countries.

There is a full spectrum of positions at the climate negotiations. There are the ‘usual suspects’ led by the worst of all, the United States. Others such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Japan – basically the industrialised OECD countries – adopt hard-line positions. And then there is the European Union and the other developed countries that are either not in the European Union or are not quite in the developed country bloc, such as Mexico and South Korea, which are OECD countries, but are not Annex 1 countries.

Furthermore, there is the full range of non-Annex 1 countries. The largest bloc is the G77 and China, which comprises nearly all developing countries. Among the G77 and China there is the alliance of small island states, quite a prominent bloc in the negotiations because they represent the small islands who, up until this point, have been the moral voice of the negotiations owing to their focus on sea-level rise and the right to survival. There are the least developed countries, the African group and the ideologically left South American countries: Bolivia is key among them, also Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and others. There is also the BASIC grouping of emerging developing countries, not negotiating as a bloc, yet meeting regularly in an effort to coordinate positions. This group is viewed with suspicion by other developing countries. There is also the Arab group which overlaps with the African group.

What happened after the debacle in Copenhagen was that Bolivia went on to organise a large conference in Cochabamba in 2010. The idea came about as the Copenhagen meeting had failed miserably since the developed countries had tried to force the Copenhagen Accord onto other countries. Countries including Tuvalu, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Sudan basically rejected the Copenhagen Accord and there was no formal decision at that meeting. So Bolivia organised a World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth to bring together governments, civil society, and climate justice and social movements to discuss and address this issue. The idea was that it was supposed to be democratic and open to the peoples of the world to decide on this fundamental issue. There is much we can draw on from this.

The problem is what developed countries are trying to do: They acknowledge that climate change is a problem (some sectors in the US don’t acknowledge it is a problem and that is another problem altogether), however, their approach to solving the problem is incorrect. What they are trying to do, instead of acknowledging that they are the ones responsible for the problem, is to push the burden onto developing countries. This is an injustice.

They are trying to push climate change mitigation onto the BASIC countries in particular with the argument that their emissions are growing considerably hence they are responsible for a lot of the climate problem. Historical responsibility is not considered, as the developed countries argue that they can’t be responsible for the actions of generations before them, and what matters is emissions today. The US is saying that China’s absolute emissions today are bigger than their own, yet on a per capita basis, US emissions are still much greater than China’s. They are also not considering their historical responsibility, and this is fundamentally unfair.

What developed countries are also doing, instead of meeting reductions domestically, is to basically buy them from developing countries. This is possible with market mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol. Instead of effecting domestic emission reductions, developed countries can pay developing countries to mitigate for them. On paper they meet their obligations, but actually the emission reductions are made elsewhere. Developing countries are trying to expand the market mechanisms and introduce new ones.

What developed countries are also trying to do is to use accounting loopholes that will allow them to show on paper that they have reduced emissions, when in reality, they have not made these emissions reductions.

They are also trying to deny finance and technology transfers to developing countries. What of the $100 billion that was first mentioned in the Copenhagen Accord? This is basically re-programmed aid money and it is not a pledge to give $100 billion, it is a pledge to help mobilise $100 billion, and that would include mobilising it from developing countries.

Developed countries have also been trying to push the problem of adaptation back onto developing countries. They are really not going to pass on the finance and technology, but instead leave the problem to developing countries to deal with themselves.

All of this plays out in the climate negotiations and has crystallised into the fight over what kind of emissions reduction system we should adopt. Up until this point we have always had a system of legally binding international commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Countries came together under the UN to say this is what we need to do because the science calls for it and we will negotiate as such and have an international agreement because it is an international problem. There is already a system for accounting, review, reporting and compliance and all of this is agreed and binding internationally.

However, what is happening now is that the US is promoting a system of bottom-up domestic pledges. They are pledging to reduce their emissions by around three per cent based on 1990 levels. They are resisting common accounting, reporting and review rules, and instead talk about “the sunshine of transparency”. They do not envisage a system with international compliance but a reliance on domestic legislation. However, it is clear that they are not going to have any climate legislation in the near future, so they can’t even promise that their pledge will be in domestic legislation, they merely state that this is what they are pledging to do domestically.

What is happening now is that the discussions have shifted. Countries like Canada, Russia and Japan are using the US as an excuse and have said that they will not commit to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Instead, developed countries are pushing for a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, and the new treaty that they want will likely legalise a domestic pledge and review system. This is now the fundamental fight that is playing out in the climate negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol.

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Après Cancun : FSM à Dakar, G8 – G20, Durban, comment construire le mouvement de la justice climatique ? from Alter-Echos on Vimeo.

The thousands of solutions to the climate crisis are in the hands of the people

The members of La Vía Campesina, coming from 29 Mexican states and 36 countries from all over the world, and hundreds of national and international organizations, join our thousands of struggles in Cancun to demand of the United Nations Conference of the Parts on Climate Change, (COP 16), environmental justice and respect for Mother Earth; to denounce the ambitious attempts of governments – principally from the North – to commercialize all elements of life to benefit transnational corporations; and to get to know the thousands of solutions that the people have to cool the planet and stop the environmental devastation that today is seriously threatening humanity.

We denounce that governments continue to be indifferent in the face of the warming of the planet and instead of debating the necessary political changes to cool it, they debate over speculative financial business, the new green economy and the privatization of the commons.

The results of the official meeting, which took place between November 29^th and the early morning of December 11^th, are horrible news for peasant and working families, for all of humanity and for nature. Instead of confronting the climate crisis, the resolutions in Cancun will only worsen it, as they failed to establish binding agreements to reduce greenhouse gases and obligatory goals to reduce emissions; instead they strengthened carbon markets.

• To promote these markets, they pushed forward different instruments such as the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) which we have denounced as false solutions. Through Clean Development Mechanisms, industrialized countries and multinationals can continue contaminating in their places of origin and still fulfill their emissions reduction goals through carbon certificates financing “clean development” projects in other places. CDM projects are also highly polluting and cause great environmental and social devastation, since projects such as large dams, methane recovery from industrial farming, massive dumps and plantations, etc. fall into that category. REDD inserts forests and agricultural land (if we are considering REDD plus) into the carbon market to benefit transnationals, and it poses a threat as the greatest land grab of all time. REDD means the privatization of forests, the expulsion of communities from their land and financial speculation.

• A climate fund was also created, which will be administrated by the World Bank, although no money was promised (“mobilizing resources” is the only thing that has been discussed). This fund will not only be composed of public funds, but will also include private funds from transnational companies and transactions within the carbon markets.

• A technology committee will be formed to facilitate the broad participation of transnationals and industry who will be able to impose their technologies without any type of environmental or social evaluation, and without questioning intellectual property or patents.

To summarize, the text that was agreed upon is a better-revised version of the Copenhagen agreement.

In Cancun, the business and nature speculation agenda triumphed, while they systematically threw out the demands that emerged from the World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, where some 35,000 participants from all over the world attended.

The agenda imposed in Cancun is that of the banks and investment funds, of the major gas, petroleum, carbon, electricity and automotive companies, of the agribusiness corporations and others who, as they propose to speculate on the climate and nature, are leading the whole world to the brink of a great catastrophe with irreversible effects.

The peasants of La Vía Campesina reject and disavow the results of Cancun, and we denounce and regret that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is quickly becoming a platform that legitimizes, broadens and creates the base for a new global economic order: Green Capitalism.

But in Cancun another meeting of social movements came together around the climate and systemic crises, and resistance struggles were strengthened and formed bonds. The mobilizations towards Cancun began in November 28^th as a joint effort with La Vía Campesina and our allies the National Assembly of People Affected by the Environment, the National Liberation Movement and the Mexican Electricians Union, who organized three caravans that left from San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara and Acapulco and passed through some of the territories most emblematic of environmental devastation as well as the struggles and alternatives in these affected communities. Along these routes hundreds of towns and people opened their doors to us with generosity and solidarity. On November 30^th we arrived in Mexico City with our caravans, we celebrated an International Forum and a march accompanied by thousands of people and hundreds of organizations that also struggle for social and environmental justice.

On our journey to Cancun other caravans, one from Chiapas, another from Oaxaca and one from Guatemala, after many long hours of traveling, met us in Merida to celebrate a ceremony at Chichen Itza and finally arrive in Cancun on December 3^rd to install our camp for Life and Social and Environmental Justice, open our Forum and begin our week of struggle in Cancun. We hosted panels and conferences, workshops, assemblies, public demonstrations in city neighborhoods, meetings with our allies and a global action called “the thousands of Cancuns” which echoed across the planet and made it to the very rooms of the Moon Palace where the official meeting of the COP 16 was held. The march on December 7^th united thousands of members of La Vía Campesina with our international and national allied organizations. Beyond manifesting our positions and demonstrating that we peasants are the ones cooling the planet, we backed the Bolivian and Tuvalu governments who are committed to the rights of Mother Earth.

As Vía Campesina we demand:

• Resume the principles of the Peoples’ Accord in Cochabamba.
• Establish a binding agreement to reduce by 50 percent greenhouse gas emissions in industrialized countries by 2017.
• Allocate 6% of developed countries’ GDP to finance actions against the Climate Crisis in countries of the global south.
• Total respect for Human Rights, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Rights of Climate Migrants.
• The formation of an International Tribunal for Climate Justice.
• State policies to promote and strengthen sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty.

From la Vía Campesina we make a call to assume collective responsibility for Mother Earth, proposing for ourselves to change production and consumption patterns that have provoked the crisis on this planet; to defend the commons and stop their privatization; to redouble efforts, to work intensively to inform, educate, organize and articulate to build a social force that can stop the tendency to convert the grave problems of the climate crisis into business opportunities and that can promote the thousands of peoples’ solutions; to revise and construct new spaces for international alliances; to prepare ourselves for the global referendum for the rights of Mother Earth and the real alternatives to the Climate Crisis; to prepare the second World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth; to promote the “thousands of Durban” and to arrive in 2012, at the Rio Summit plus 20, with a growing force.

No more harm to our Mother Earth!

No more destruction of the planet!

No more evictions from our territories!

No more death to the sons and daughters of Mother Earth!

No more criminalization of our struggles!

No to the Copenhagen agreement. Yes to the Cochabamba principles!

EARTH CANNOT BE SOLD, IT IS RECOVERED AND DEFENDED!

PEASANTS ARE COOLING THE PLANET!

GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE, GLOBALIZE THE HOPE!

Climate Justice in South Africa Dec 2011

Durban COP CJ alternatives

We, peoples’ organizations from throughout the global South, representing a diversity of networks in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean, convened in Cancun, Mexico, for the South-South Summit on Climate Justice and Finance, simultaneous to the 16^th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC (COP-16).  From November 26^th to December 4^th, we met in plenary sessions, workshops, group discussions, and common actions that strengthened our unity and deepened our shared vision towards the attainment of climate justice.

Our movements are composed of women and men, farmers and rural communities, fisherfolk and coastal communities, indigenous peoples, formal and informal workers, climate migrants, youth, and urban poor, among others: sectors and grassroots communities who are among the marginalized and most vulnerable due to climate change.

Through our sharing of experience and analysis, we have seen that the current crisis is not just about global warming or the science surrounding it; it is also an economic and social crisis, a political crisis, a food and energy crisis, and an ecological crisis. In sum, a systemic crisis that the peoples of the South, more than anyone else, fully understand is about our lives and futures. It is about our food, health, lands, seeds, rights, and livelihoods. It is about further discrimination and violence against women, in particular, forced migrations, loss of sovereignty over natural resources, the impossibility to continue existing as original communities living in harmony with nature. Above all, it is about justice: climate justice, ecological justice, economic justice, gender justice, historical justice.

Underlying our debates and conclusions is the shared belief that the dominant approaches in the official climate change negotiations are not considering either the urgency of the matter, nor its causes and the overarching reach of its implications. While they are caught up in their endless negotiations, we are worrying about our very survival and that of the planet.  We are particularly troubled that this Northern-controlled, capitalist process will only result in the justification and continuation of their failed “development” paradigms and the emergence of more market-based mechanisms that aim not to solve the problem of global warming but rather to profit from it.

A systemic crisis will only be solved by a systemic approach. It is thus necessary to bring about a fundamental systemic change with real urgency. Neither market-based mechanisms nor their technological fixes can be trusted to deal with these crises because they prioritize profit before the planet and its people. Hence, we strongly reject all false solutions!

At the COP 16 negotiations, the so-called REDD mechanisms have turned into one of the most hotly debated issues because of the profit opportunities for the large transnational corporations and financial interests involved. Like CDM and all carbon credit offset mechanisms, REDD, and its variants, does not tackle the real causes of climate change, which are the capitalist mode of production, accumulation, and consumption, based on the aggressive extraction of fossil fuels and other natural resources. Moreover, REDD presents a menace to food sovereignty and an additional threat: it is intended to usurp territories from indigenous, afro-descendant and peasant’s communities, taking away their sovereign rights over their lands. This neo-colonial invasion process is already in place and in many cases through strong militarization and criminalization. Hence, REDD is not only a false solution for climate change but an immediate menace for traditional communities, and indeed society everywhere.

The commodification of nature and its “free-trading” is at the heart of the false solutions being negotiated in Cancun and imposed in each of our countries. That is why they will only create more problems, not real solutions. What is needed is for the industrialized countries of the North to fulfill their obligations under the Convention by deeply cutting their emissions of greenhouse gases and making the transition to non-capitalist, non-petroleum societies instead of speculating in carbon credits that will allow them to go on destroying nature and usurping atmospheric space while transferring their political and economic responsibilities to the South.

It is now time that those who caused these crises – Northern industrialized countries, international financial institutions, multinational corporations and elites both North and South  – are held accountable for their gross and systematic crimes against humanity and nature and begin urgent reparations of their historical, ecological, climate, and social debts.

In this spirit, many of us took part and we support the agreements that emerged at the Cochabamba Peoples´ Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, as they reflect what we have been fighting for as popular movements.

We demand that reparations for ecological and climate debt include not only immediate measures to stop further harm by detaining and annuling those policies and projects that seek to advance and deepen their control and exploitation of nature, but also to restore to the peoples of the South the financial and technological resources they need to deal with the current and future impacts and consequences of climate change and for building alternative, equitable, and sustainable societies.

Financial reparations for climate debt – climate finance – should not be in the form of loans or other debt creating instruments, nor come with political or economic conditionalities, nor be in the form of private investments. These would be in violation of the principles and purpose of reparations, adding to the oppression of the peoples of the South and the further undermining of our rights and the rights of nature, deepening capitalist exploitation and the colonization of atmospheric space.

Climate finance should be obligatory and additional to other financial reparations. Global and national channels of climate finance should be democratic and accountable, and their governance should be fully transparent and involve democratic representation from peoples of the South especially those most severely affected by the climate crisis.  We also demand that there be equitable and just distribution of climate finance across countries and within countries.

The World Bank, private banks and other financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank should have no role in climate finance. These institutions promote a “development” paradigm that is contrary to the well being of our peoples and the planet and they share a large responsibility for the accumulation of illegitimate debt claims against the countries of the South. They continue even now, as they have for decades, to finance harmful projects including fossil fuel projects, megadams and others that exacerbate climate change. This must be stopped.

Furthermore, we call for the unconditional cancellation and repudiation of all debts claimed of the countries and peoples of the South by the governments of the North, global financial institutions and private banks, among other lenders, many of which have been generated as a result of these ecologically destructive projects and policies. This is a necessary step towards the attainment of climate justice and the reparation of the ecological, historical, and socio-economic debts due to the planet and the peoples of the South.

In order to confront these challenges we call for a deepening of unity among peoples’ and social movements throughout the global South. We must engage in a common effort that is rooted in our most vulnerable communities and that serves to strengthen resistance to the systematic expoliation we suffer.

This resistance must act in many levels, from local to global. Here in Cancun we have agreed to undertake a worldwide campaign to get the World Bank out of climate finance and the financing of climate disaster, denouncing the havoc it sponsors. We will coordinate activities that serve to monitor the financing and development of false solutions as well as the resistence to them and organize specific campaigns in consequence.  We will also promote initiatives such Peoples’ Tribunals on Ecological Debt and Climate Justice and diverse forms of popular consultation in order to promote public understanding and mobilization around the call for climate justice and to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes. We will also push for the continuation of the campaigns against illegitimate financial debts through various forms of struggle, including the call for comprehensive and participatory debt audits in Southern countries and campaigning against new, illegitimate, debt-financing for climate. Finally, we reject the current model of “development” and those that benefit from it while destroying the planet at the expenses of the lives of the vast majority of the world’s population. We reaffirm that real alternatives do exist. Indigenous peoples and popular communities, women and peasants –  who have always taken care of the planet and lived in harmony with nature, provide a number of examples of how to sustain relations that are not based on the notions of infinite growth, profit and resource extraction. Hence, we are here to put pressure on the delegates at the COP-16, but we know that hope really lies outside the conference premises: it belongs to us in the streets, cities, rural areas, and indigenous communities on the global South.   Let’s globalize the struggle! Let’s globalize hope! No more Climate Debt! Reparations Now!

Cancun, Mexico,  December 4, 2010.

SOUTH-SOUTH SUMMIT ON CLIMATE JUSTICE AND FINANCE

Jubilee South  -  Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)  -  Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean -  Convergence of Popular Movements in America (COMPA) – Central American Climate Justice Campaign – World March of Women Latin America and the Caribbean  – Caribbean Peoples’ Assembly – GAIA LA/C – Hemispheric Social Alliance Climate Change Working Group – LDC Watch – NGO Forum on the Asian Development Bank – JS-Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development – Jubilee South/ Américas – Focus on the Global South – Dialogue 2000 (Argentina) – EquityBd and SUPRO (Bangladesh) -  Jubilee South/Brazil – PACS – Brazil Network for Peoples’ Integration (Brazil) – Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center-Solidarity (Cuba) – Ecological Action and Pueblo kichwua de Sarayacu (Ecuador) – Salvadoran National Union of Ecologists (El Salvador) – Guatemalan Popular Movement and Popular Front (Guatemala) – OFRANEH (Honduras) – National Hawker Federation (India) – Institute for Essential Service Reform, Kruha Water Coalition, and Walhi/FOE (Indonesia) – Citizens against Corruption (Kyrgystan) – MUSAS/JS-Mexico – Jagaran Nepal/NGO Federation (Nepal) – Movimiento Social Nicaraguense – Freedom from Debt Coalition (Philippines) – Friends of the Earth (Sri Lanka) – OWTU/FITUN (Trinidad and Tobago)

Coordinadora Internacional/International CoordinatorJUBILEO SUR – JUBILEE SOUTH

Piedras 7301070 Buenos Aires, ArgentinaT/F +5411-43071867

beverly@jubileesouth.org

www.jubileesouth.org

www.jubileosuramericas.org

skype: BeverlyKeene

Real Solutions to the Climate Crisis Will Come From Grassroots Movements

Statement by the Indigenous Environmental Network

We are not fooled by this diplomatic shell game. The Cancun Agreements have no substance. They are yet more hot air. Their only substance is to promote continued talks about climate mitigation strategies motivated by profit. Such strategies have already proved fruitless and have been shown to violate human and Indigenous rights. The agreements implictly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies, and land grabs—anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions.

The Voices of the People Must be Respected

Indigenous Peoples from North to South cannot afford these unjust and false ‘solutions’, because climate change is killing our peoples, cultures and ecosystems. We need real commitments to reduce emissions at the source and to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Because we are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change, we came to COP-16 with an urgent call to address the root causes of the climate crisis, to demand respect for the Rights of Mother Earth, and to fundamentally redefine industrial society’s relationship with the planet. Instead, the Climate COP has shut the doors on our participation and that of other impacted communities, while welcoming business, industry, and speculators with open arms. The U.S., Industrialized nations, big business and unethical companies like Goldman Sachs will profit handsomely from these agreements while our people die.

Women and youth in our communities are disproportionately burdened by climate impacts and rights violations. Real solutions would strengthen our collective rights and land rights while ensuring the protection of women, youth and vulnerable communities. While the Cancun Agreements do contain some language “noting” rights, it is exclusively in the context of market mechanisms, while failing to guarantee safeguards for the rights of peoples and communities.

The failures of the UN talks in Copenhagen have been compounded in Cancun.

From the opening day to the closing moments of the talks, our voices were censored, dissenting opinions silenced and dozens ejected from the conference grounds.  The thousands who rallied outside to reject market mechanisms and demand recognition of human and Indigenous rights were ignored.

The Market Will Not Protect Our Rights

Market-based approaches have failed to stop climate change. They are designed to commodify and profit from the last remaining elements of our Mother Earth and the air. Through its focus on market approaches like carbon trading, the UNFCCC has become the WTO of the Sky.

We are deeply concerned that the Cancun Agreements betray both our future and the rights of peoples, women, youth, and vulnerable populations. While the preamble to the Cancun Agreements note a call for “studies on human rights and climate change,” this is in effect an empty reference, with no content and no standards, that will not protect the collective rights of peoples. The market mechanisms that implicitly dominate both the spirit and the letter of the Cancun Agreements will neither avert climate change nor guarantee human rights, much less the Rights of Mother Earth. Approaches based on carbon offsetting, like REDD, will permit polluters to continue poisoning land, water, air, and our bodies, while doing nothing to stop the climate crisis. Indeed, approaches based on the commodification of biodiversity, CO2, forests, water, and other sacred elements will only encourage the buying and selling of our human and environmental rights.

The Cochabamba People’s Agreement Points the Way Forward

There is another way forward: the Cochabamba People’s Agreement represents the vision of everyday people from all corners of the globe who are creating the solutions to climate change from the ground up, and calling for a global framework that respects human rights and the Rights of Mother Earth.

If any hope emerges from Cancun, it comes from the dramatic demonstrations we saw in the streets and from the deep and powerful alliances that were built among indigenous and social movements. The Indigenous Environmental Network joined thousands of our brothers and sisters to demand real climate solutions based in the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the rights of Mother Earth, and a just transition away from fossil fuels. We will continue to stand with our allies to demand climate justice. The communities on the frontlines of the problem––those who face the daily impacts of the climate crisis––are also on the frontlines of the solutions. Community-based solutions can cool the planet!

The fight for climate justice continues. We are committed to deepening our alliances with indigenous and social movements around the world as we build in our communities and mobilize toward COP-17 in Durban, South Africa. Social movements in South Africa mobilized the world to overthrow Apartheid and create powerful, transformative change. The same mass-based movement building is our only hope to overturn the climate apartheid we now face. We look forward to working with our African brothers and sisters and tribal communities in Durban.

We only have one Mother Earth. As Indigenous Peoples, we will continue our struggle to defend all our Relations and future generations.

Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions. IEN brought 17 indigenous leaders to Cancun as part of the Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice — North America Delegation uniting representatives from fossil fuel impacted communities who are on the frontlines of solving the climate crisis. A complete archive of the delegations statements and activities can be found at http://redroadcancun.org and http://grassrootsclimatesolutions.org