The group of more than 500 activists represent over 40 civil society organisations who fight for equitable access to land, food, water, shelter and clean energy. They travelled from various parts of South Africa: Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown, East London, the Vaal triangle, Johannesburg, Welkom, Soweto and Mpumalanga. They will join thousands of South Africans who will march together on December 3rd to express outrage at the betrayal by the world’s governments at the climate change negotiations.

All 500 are part of a movement to campaign for one million climate jobs. Climate jobs are decent, people- and publicly driven jobs that reduce the causes and impacts of climate change. They are based on three principles: ecological sustainability, social justice and state intervention. Climate jobs:

1. reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses we emit, to make sure that we prevent catastrophic climate change;

2. build our capacity to adapt to the impacts of climate change (e.g. jobs that improve our food security);

3. provide and secure vital services, especially water, energy and sanitation (this includes reducing wasteful over-consumption)

Events to take note of :

International Climate Jobs Conference

4 December 2011, 09h30-17h00

Launch of the One Million Climate Jobs research findings

6 December 2011, 10h00-15h00

At the People’s Space, Howard College, University of KwaZulu-Natal

South Africa must be held accountable for its own contribution to climate change, and must address its high emissions as part of an international strategy to slow down climate change. Although a relatively small economy, South Africa’s emissions are in line with highly industrialised countries such as Britain and Italy, primarily because of its energy-intensive mining and minerals-processing industries, coal-produced electricity and coal-to-liquids plants. It is responsible for about half of Africa’s emissions and is the 12th biggest emitter globally.

Electricity generation is responsible for about 40% of the country’s emissions with about 93 per cent of electricity generated from coal-fired power plants. The industrial sector accounts for over 40% of total energy consumption in the country, and over 50% of electricity. Industrial electricity demand is in turn dominated by key firms in the Energy Intensive User Group, an industry lobby group that together accounts for about 45% of electricity use in the country. Less than a fifth of electricity generated is used in homes, and even within the residential sector there is extreme energy injustice. Two million poor households use about 0.45% of the electricity sold by Eskom, and only 2.4% of residential electricity.

The richest 4% of South Africans are responsible for more carbon pollution than the poorest 80%.

To limit global warming to below 1.5° C, we need to reduce global emissions drastically by 2050, starting now. A fair carbon budget for the world would require South Africa to reduce its annual emissions by 25%. South Africa must plan well and use its fair share of carbon pollution space creatively, to develop new systems and industries that will allow us to make a just transition to a low carbon economy.

Contact :

Brian Ashley

info@climatejobs.org.za

082-0857088

www.climatejobs.org.za

The One Million Climate Jobs Campaign is an alliance of labour, social movements and other civil society organisations in South Africa that recognise the value of a collective approach to the crises of unemployment and climate change. It is based on well-researched solutions for how South Africa can immediately begin a just transition to a low carbon economy.

“Rich countries must meet deep emissions reductions that are science-based in order to prevent catastrophic loss of lives. We demand developed countries to cut domestically their levels of emissions between 40% to 50% by 2017 and 95% by 2050.  This must be done through a renewed and continuous commitment to the internationally legally binding agreement of the Kyoto Protocol which is the only instrument that has the only internationally recognized rules and deals with compliance” said Michele Maynard of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA).

Developed countries are trying to ignore their historical obligations and furthermore they are trying to replace the KP with a very weak “pledge and review” system.

According to the United Nations, current pledges risk global warming of 2. 5° to 5°C within this century.  The IPCC estimates that Africa will warm 1 and ½ times this global level. This means that Africa stands to suffer as high as 7 degrees increase in temperature.

Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth international (FOEI) said “We are already in a planetary emergency,  but the polluting rich industrialized countries are trying to break their existing legal obligations to cut their emissions and seeking instead to direct the talks towards a “new mandate” and a “new treaty.” These are delaying tactics aimed at further preventing drastically needed actions on climate change and passing on the burden for climate action to developing countries.”

Willy D’Costa from Jubilee-South-Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JSAPMDD) said that the groups who came together for today’s action at the Speakers Corner are also calling for a “stop to false solutions.”  “The world’s elites want to continue their excessive emissions and are using governments to promote solutions that do not address the roots of the climate crisis. Instead these false solutions pave the way for private profits to be made from the climate crisis and peoples sufferings” said D’Costa who also represents the Indian Social Action Forum.  “We reject offsets, carbon trading, market-based approaches to forests, soil and water, large-scale geo-engineering and techno-fixes, nuclear energy, agro-fuels, and so called “clean coal.”

The groups urged developing country governments to uphold the welfare and interests of their citizens. “We ask our governments not to sell us out” said Lidy Nacpil of Jubilee-South-Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (JSAPMDD).  “All countries and peoples must contribute to the effort to reduce global GHG emissions. But those responsible for the crisis must bear the greater share, proportional to their historical and continuing responsibility for the climate crisis. There is no time to lose. No more delays, no more deception, no more evasion, no more false solutions.”

 For further inquiry please call Malou Tabios Nuera  0727299228

Peasants and small farmers make up half of the world population and grow at least 70% of the world’s food (pdf). This group includes small-scale farmers, pastoralists, landless people, peasant fishers and indigenous people all around the world.
However, despite the importance of this group, its contribution is far from being recognised. Rural people have very little visibility on the public scene and “peasants”, in most places, are looked down on and often considered “ignorant”, “backward” or “underdeveloped”.

This contempt goes hand in hand with the free market policies in force for more than three decades that have banked (or placed a bet?) on the disappearance of peasants’ agriculture to be replaced by large agribusiness corporations and international trade.

The most recent session of the UN Human Rights Council once again showed that the word “peasant” remains politically sensitive. Under pressure from some European countries, the use of the expression “rights of peasants” was replaced by the less threatening “rights of people working in rural areas”. They seem to fear giving too much political weight to a large number of people whose trade has largely remained outside the capitalist economy.

However, over the last two decades, peasants, landless people and family farmers have organised themselves to reclaim their right to protect their livelihoods, to defend small-scale agriculture and to have their voices heard at international level. The international farmers movement La Via Campesina (pdf) was created in 1993, uniting at global level national organisations and unions that had been active for years in their own country or region.

“One of the most important things that we have learned while building of our movement has been our ability to rebuild our pride of being peasants,” explained Paul Nicholson, a Basque farmer, one of the founders of the movement. “Now we are proud to be recognised by major institutions such as the FAO and the human right councils.”

With the start of the food crisis in 2007 and the increasing number of hungry people in the world, the tide has started to turn. The blind promise that agribusiness would feed the world appeared to be a fiction, and more and more people, governments and institutions are recognising that there will be no solution to the current crisis without the participation of small-scale farmers.

The climate crisis also reveals the limitations of the agro-industrial mode of production, which is extremely fuel hungry and destroys soils and nature. Sustainable agriculture and local food markets, on the other hand, show a remarkably positive impact on climate (pdf).

It is in this context of food and climate crises that thousands of people in hundreds of local groups and organisations around the world celebrated the International Day of Peasants’ Struggles on 17 April. All kinds of activities were organised – land occupations and other direct actions, film screenings and cultural events, conferences, farmers’ markets and public debates.
The event marks the repression of a group of landless farmers in Brazil who were struggling for their right to land. On 17 April 1996, in the Amazonian state of Pará, at Eldorado dos Carajás, state military policemassacred peasants organised in the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST).
Thousands of peasants and those who advocate on their behalf are still oppressed, intimidated, arrested and killed as they struggle for land, food, economic opportunity and human rights – even though they are the very same men and women who are feeding the world.

• Henry Saragih has been the chairperson of the Indonesian Peasant Union since 1998 and was named general co-ordinator of La Via Campesina in 2004

Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI)
Tel. +62 21 7991890 Fax. +62 21 7993426

http://www.spi.or.id

Email: spi@spi.or.id, info@spi.or.id

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The World Bank continues its fossil fuel financing binge, evading environmental standards and worsening poverty and pollution — that’s the conclusion of a new report released today, just before the start of the World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington, D.C.

The report, World Bank, Climate Change and Energy Financing: Something Old. Something New?, was authored by experts at six non-governmental organizations and examines World Bank Group energy financing in a climate-constrained world. Through a series of seven case studies, the report shows how the Bank’s surge in direct and indirect fossil fuel financing and its support for large-scale energy infrastructure projects have poor poverty alleviation outcomes and call into question the institution’s claim that it is providing leadership on climate change in the developing world.

Such considerations are especially pertinent as the World Bank revamps its Energy Sector Strategy for the first time in more than a decade, as President Obama requests more than $117 million in new money for the institution, and as the Bank seeks an influential role in the UN’s new Green Climate Fund.

“The World Bank’s legacy of environmental and social harm, evasion of safeguards and accountability, and questionable track record on reducing poverty continue to cause serious problems. Regrettably, the World Bank’s draft Energy Sector Strategy looks set to maintain the polluting practices we document in this report: carbon-intensive, large-scale financing, with trickle-down benefits for the poor that are hoped for, but not often achieved,” said Sunita Dubey of groundWork/Friends of the Earth South Africa, co-editor of the report.

“In an era of poverty and climate change, clean energy leadership is called for instead of dirty business as usual. The Bank needs to clean up its act before aiming to put itself at the center of efforts to respond to climate change. It must not play any role in designing or managing the new UN green climate fund,” said Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S., co-editor of the report.  “At a time of fiscal austerity and limited resources for international development finance, the World Bank is making a poor case for why Congress should hand it more than $117 million in 2012.”

The report’s conclusions include:
o    Environmental and social safeguards apply to an ever decreasing proportion of the World Bank Group’s financing portfolio;
o    Even for projects where safeguards do apply, the Bank has not incorporated the lessons of past project failings;
o    Deep questions remain about the World Bank’s ability to meet its own sustainable development and poverty alleviation goals;
o    The Bank’s rapidly expanding fossil fuel financing is not alleviating energy poverty for poor communities.

The seven case studies profiled in World Bank, Climate Change, and Energy Financing: Something Old. Something New? examine:
o    World Bank support for fossil fuels through infrastructure lending and financial intermediaries;
o    the Bank’s Carbon Finance Unit (which facilitates international offsetting and carbon trading) and support for the UN Clean Development Mechanism’s Plantar project in Brazil;
o    the role of the Bank in Nigeria’s energy sector;
o    the International Finance Corporation’s loan for a coal plant in India;
o    the World Bank’s loan for the controversial Eskom coal project in South Africa;
o    the legacy of Bank support for large hydropower and the Nam Theun 2 Hydropower Project in Laos; and
o    development policy loans in Brazil and the Belo Monte Dam Complex.

The report is published by by Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale (CRBM, Italy), CDM Watch (Belgium), Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, International Rivers (US), Friends of the Earth U.S., groundWork/Friends of the Earth South Africa, and Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE, India).

It can be found at http://www.foe.org/world-bank-climate-change-and-energy-financing

Karen Orenstein
Friends of the Earth U.S.
www.foe.org
+1-202-222-0717 (direct)
skype: ponizarga

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

Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) denounces and rejects this outcome of the COP on Climate, which nevertheless will be presented to humankind by the big economic interests as the solution to the climate crisis. ATALC supports Bolivia´s statements that the result of the COP is inadequate and does not respond to the climate reality of the Earth, but favors the interests of big transnational corporations and disregards the dramatic situation of many developing countries.

In addition, we consider that the process of negotiations was neither open nor transparent, and was based on infamous practices known as the “green rooms” (bilateral negotiations between groups of countries), that rule out any possibility to have a discussion by all parties. In consequence, ATALC upholds the Peoples´ Agreement of Cochabamba and will continue promoting it since it includes the real solutions to climate change.

The texts presented at the end of the COP include the continuation of negotiations around a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, but they don´t make any reference as to when these negotiations shall be concluded, nor do they ensure a second period. In fact, they leave the door open to dismantle Kyoto, the only binding climate agreement that obliges rich countries to reduce their emissions.

On these reductions, the new texts continue being based on a system of voluntary offers, or “pledges” by each country, without making reference to an exact number that the parties will have to agree as a common target. Even though the texts do not include emission reduction targets, they do ensure flexibility mechanisms for rich countries, so that they can achieve their “pledges”. Carbon trading and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are among these mechanisms.

On long-term cooperative action, the new texts continue seeing forests as mere carbon reservoirs (sinks) and are geared towards emissions trading. Also, they don´t ensure the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. In terms of climate finance, a green fund was created, but the World Bank was invited to have a fundamental role in it. With reference to technology transfer, two new institutions to analyze the issue were created, but nothing was said in terms of where the funds for these institutions will come from.

Ricardo Navarro, member of CESTA-Friends of the Earth El Salvador, said: “Only in a Moon Palace does a legal instrument like the Kyoto Protocol end up benefiting rich countries, the ones responsible for climate change, even if they don´t reduce their emissions. What is being discussed at the Moon does not reflect what happens on Earth”, said Navarro.

Lucia Ortiz, from NAT-Friends of the Earth Brazil said: “We reject an agreement on forests that, instead of aiming to preserve them, is putting a price on them according to the amount of carbon they store, and opens the door to more emissions trading to favor the most powerful and polluting countries”.

Meanwhile, Grace Garcia, member of COECOCEIBA-Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, said: “only a gang of lunatics would think it is a good idea to invite the World Bank to receive climate funds, with their long-standing  track-record of financing the world´s dirtiest projects and imposition of death-sentencing conditionalities on our peoples”.

Finally, Domingo Lechon, from Otros Mundos-Friends of the Earth Mexico, highlighted: “The texts presented in Cancun do not respond at all to the urgency raised by science and will bring an increase of 5°C  to global temperature. Currently, with an increase that doesn´t even exceed 1 degree, the impacts of climate change are already extremely serious. Every year, 300.000 people die due to climate change and the social and natural disasters it causes”.

ATALC denounces that the outcome of Cancun isn´t anything else than the reproduction of the anti-democratic and completely inadequate Copenhagen Accord. “The outcome is a Cancunhagen that we reject”, concluded Ricardo Navarro.

More information:

Ricardo Navarro, CESTA – Friends of the Earth El Salvador: cesta@cesta-foe.org.sv

Lucia Ortiz, NAT – Friends of the Earth Brazil: lucia@natbrasil.org.br

Grace García, COECOCEIBA – Friends of the Earth Costa Rica: graciagarcimunoz@gmail.com

Domingo Lechón, Otros Mundos – Friends of the Earth Mexico: domingolechon@otrosmundoschiapas.org

Press release – Hemispheric Social Alliance

Though there is talk of multilateralism having been rescued as a by-product of this negotiating process, the reality is that final approval was only reached in negotiations that involved small groups, or by means of informal meetings. This methodology proved divisive for the countries most at risk as they were singled out and offered potential financial benefits accruing from future arrangements if they were to change their positions. This process far from being democratic actually reproduced some of the worst aspects of WTO negotiations where the will of a few nations is imposed at the expense of the needs of the world’s peoples.

The content of the Accord reached in Cancun does not take up the challenge of an immediate response to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions that could help reduce the extreme climate events that have been impacting humanity and caused thousands of deaths.

Although there is a mention of a second period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, there is no elaboration on deadlines or mechanisms to ensure that these commitments will be met, and the talk was only focused on the adoption of voluntary commitments. As a result, any adoption of reductions in the level of gas emissions will not be part of a global plan but rather depend on the good will of individual countries. The Cancun talks have laid bare the fact that Northern nations are not willing to significantly reduce their emission levels.

The agreed upon level of an overall increase of 2°C remains the same as what came out of the so called “Copenhagen Accord” and which was widely rejected at the time as being insufficient to guarantee the survival of entire regions of the planet – and yet the 2°C was approved once again. Not only is this target inadequate but it isn’t even backed up by firm commitments, only voluntary offerings that could lead to an increase of 5°C in global warming. This higher level, were it to be reached, would threaten the existence of some island nations, and also threaten the very survival of humanity itself before the end of this century.

The Cancun text mentions the creation of flexible and compensatory mechanisms that would allow countries to meet their reduction targets – this is little more than coded language to open the door to the creation of market mechanisms. These would in fact represent the extension of a logic of financial speculation with regard to the climate crisis, an outcome that experience suggests would lead to profiteering with no real reductions in the level of emissions.

Although the creation of a global fund was approved, there were no guarantees with respect to the resources to be committed to it, where these would come from or how they would be channelled. In addition, the amount being suggested falls well short of what would be required to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis. Although never made explicit in Cancun, countries such as the United States have expressed their preference at other moments for the World Bank to handle this global fund.

It should be noted that this is the same World Bank that has been financing extractive and polluting projects, and whose lending practices has led to greater indebtedness for many Southern nations, not to mention that it is a prime mover of the neo-liberal model worldwide. The World Bank is not to be entrusted with the task of looking for real solutions to climate change.

Despite frequently voiced criticisms of the proposals dealing with forests, the Accord’s text only deals with financial considerations with respect to forest management thus further promoting market mechanism solutions while not recognizing the territorial rights of communities. Forests are thus being commodified and reduced to the status of ´carbon sinks´.

With regard to the transfer of technology, the elimination of intellectual property rights that could allow for the development of sustainable, alternative technologies was left out of the Cancun Accord.

Bolivia presented proposals that took into account discussions held by the social organizations and peoples of many countries, but these proposals were ignored. There was no take-up, for example, on establishing the rights of nature, or on establishing a climate justice tribunal with powers of enforcement. No mechanism exists presently to judge those guilty of worsening the climate change crisis, or of promoting false solutions. A green light has been given to continue the current level of emissions and to promote carbon market mechanisms that would reward emitters, while putting the planet further at risk.

In Cancun the world’s governments were under an obligation to find solutions to the climate crisis and offer answers that could guarantee the survival of humanity – but they were not up to the task. The results from these climate change talks show that the profit motive still trumps life itself and threatens the very survival of the planet.

Cancun. December 11, 2010.

The Hemispheric Social Alliance