The other debt crisis: climate debt

The climate crisis in Bolivia is not a headline or an abstraction – it is playing out in people’s lives in real time.

Melting glaciers are threatening the water supply of the country’s two biggest cities. Increasing droughts and floods are playing havoc with agriculture.

So it is no surprise that in climate negotiations, Bolivia is emerging as a leader in the global south – advancing both radical solutions and analysis that make rich countries distinctly nervous.

On this edition of Fault Lines, Avi Lewis travels to Bolivia to explore the country’s climate crusade from the inside.

It is the story of an emerging movement, based in the global south, raising questions about who owes what to whom in confronting the climate crisis.

And it is playing out in Bolivia’s epic landscape – from the tropical glaciers to the endless salt flats. A landscape that in normal times seems to mock the very idea that human beings can change the course of nature.

This episode of Fault Lines can be seen from Thursday, May 20, 2010 at the following times GMT: Thursday: 0600; Friday: 0030, 0830; Saturday: 2330; Sunday: 0630, 2130; Tuesday: 0530, 1230; Wednesday: 0300

To view the video on a full screen http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/faultlines/2010/05/2010518121127315453.html

Towards a Jubilee South Platform on Climate Change, Ecological Debt and Financial Sovereignty
Jubilee South shares with you the electronic version of a document it has produced on the relation between climate change, finance and ecological debt and false solutions. We invite you to continue reflecting and contributing to this debate. http://www.jubileesouth.org/files/cambioclimatico_en_baja_calidad.pdf

By Patrick Bond

May 5, 2010 — The “climate debt” that the industries and over-consumers of the global North owe Africans and other victims of climate change not responsible for causing the problem has accrued by virtue of the North’s excessive dumping of greenhouse gas emissions into the collective environmental space. Damage is being accounted for, including the more constrained space the South has for emissions. This historical injustice – and “debt” — is now nearly universally acknowledged (aside from Washington holdouts), and reparations plus adaptation finance are being widely demanded.

In Copenhagen, the 2009 United Nations summit on climate change witnessed a great deal of theatre over conceptual problems, including, who should make emissions cuts and to what degree; should markets be the main mechanism; who owes a climate debt; how much is owed; and how the debt should be collected. The willingness of African heads of state to raise the matter publicly beginning in mid-2009 was notable, but their inability to ensure political solidarity led to the imposition of the Copenhagen Accord on December 18, in a manner that sets back the cause.

Read the full article

New report from Focus on the Global South: Carbon Offsets & Climate Finance in India: The Corporate-driven Climate “Solutions” of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank & United Nations

by Konrad Fisher

India is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, yet it has played a central role in a counterproductive global climate agenda pushed by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and large corporations. India now hosts more registered greenhouse gas emission reduction projects – via the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) – than any nation except China. In theory, these CDM “offset” projects – a form of “carbon trading” – supposedly reduce global emissions when developed nations avoid emission reductions at home by funding less expensive emissions reductions in developing nations. In reality, offset projects produce large quantities of greenhouse gases, pollute the local environment, and displace local livelihoods.

The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have become leading proponents of offset projects in India by committing their own resources, and by controlling international funding sources that would otherwise be managed within the more democratic, albeit flawed, United Nations climate framework. Moreover, these two institutions have repackaged their existing corporate-friendly agenda as a solution to the climate crisis, while creating new climate governance programs intended to replace those of the United Nations.

Although it must overcome corporate influence and eliminate existing carbon trading programs, the United Nations – not International Financial Institutions – remains the most viable multilateral body available to manage climate-related finance and international agreements.

To download the pdf copy, click here

“Anyone who still thinks that creating a carbon casino can solve our climate crisis owes it to themselves to read this book. The most convincing and concise challenge to the green profiteers yet.”
Naomi Klein, author, The Shock Doctrine

“The transition to a post-oil model is inevitable but instead of starting this process, it is delayed by barriers and traps such as the carbon market. This book teaches us how this barrier works and what there is behind this new trap of green capitalism. It is obligatory reading for all who fight for a post-oil civilisation.”
Ivonne Yanez, Oilwatch South America

“This book is an invaluable contribution to understanding the pitfalls of relying on the carbon markets to save the world’s poor and the planet.”
Meena Raman, Third World Network

As up to 15,000 people gather in Bolivia to advance grassroots responses to the climate crisis, a new book exposes the failings of global climate policy and lays out numerous ways forward without the carbon market system that lies at its heart.
Carbon Trading: How it works and why it fails provides a devastating critique of both the theory and practice of carbon trading, and exposes its disastrous track record since its adoption as part of the Kyoto Protocol. It shows how the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest carbon market, has consistently failed to ‘cap’ emissions, while the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) routinely favours environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects.
Free download at: http://www.carbontradewatch.org

The book includes original research with compelling case studies of CDM projects in Brazil, Indonesia, India and Thailand that have proved to be fraudulent, based on dispossession and human rights abuses, and led to strong resistance from communities in the Global South.

The book reveals how carbon trading is only a very recent invention by business and political elites that undermines existing environmental legislation and diverts from planning a rapid transition away from current fossil fuel expansion. It points to a plethora of ways forward without carbon trading – from subsidy shifting to regulation – based on local knowledge and political organising if climate change is to be addressed in a just manner.

The authors, Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes, are both researchers with Carbon Trade Watch. The project combines high quality research and integration with social movements worldwide, which has made it a respected commentator on global climate policy and climate justice since 2002.

The Spanish version of the book will be launched at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.

For interviews and comments:
Tamra Gilbertson +34 625 498 083 (tamra@carbontradewatch.org)
Oscar Reyes (in English) +27 791 682 998 (oscar@carbontradewatch.org)
Joanna Cabello +31 681 389 805 (joanna@carbontradewatch.org)
(in Bolivia 16-24 of April. Local number: +591 705 435 49)

To obtain a printed copy, contact Joanna Cabello by email or local number.

Download the book in Spanish: http://www.carbontradewatch.org/downloads/publications/mercado_de_emisiones.pdf
Download the book in English: http://www.carbontradewatch.org/carbon-trading-how-it-works-and-why-it-fails.html
ISBN 9789071007316
132 pages
English version

The book is also available in an English version, published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (www.dhf.uu.se) as part of its Critical Currents series. To obtain a printed copy, contact Tamra Gilbertson (tamra@carbontradewatch.org).

The book can be downloaded for free from: www.carbontradewatch.org/carbon-trading-how-it-works-and-why-it-fails.html

No Rip-Offsets

Offsetting Canada’s Tar Sands with Dammed Rivers and Dead Forests

Published by: Institute for Policy Studies Sustainable Energy
and Economy Network

As Canada begins to exploit the dirtiest fossil fuels in the world, tar sands, there are some Canadians who are proposing that this exploitation be and its climate impacts be “offset” by the protection of forests or the damming of rivers. However, Canada’s forests are vulnerable to infestation by the pine beetle, one consequence of warmer winters due to climate change. And Canada’s rivers and groundwater is being polluted by the exploitation of the tar sands.

Location of one of the largest hydrocarbon deposit ever discovered: Athabasca tar sands¹

Barrels of recoverable bitumen in Athabasca tar sands: 175 to 200 billion²

Estimated barrels of potential bitumen in Canada’s tar sands: 1.75-2 trillion³

Number one exporter of oil to U.S.: Canada⁴

Tons of earth required to produce 1 barrel of oil from tar sands: At least 2⁵

Quantity of water required to produce one barrel of synthetic oil from tar
sands: at least 3 barrels

Quantity of water used per year by Canadian tar sands: approximately 176 million cubic metres of water or about one third of the City of Toronto’s annual consumption in 2008⁶.

Canada’s annual greenhouse gas emissions 2007: 747,041 gigatons⁷

Share of global greenhouse gas emissions that Canada emits: About 2.2%

Amount Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased from 1990-2005: 25%⁸

Primary source of the increase in emissions: Alberta’s tar sands⁹

Share of Earth’s forests found in boreal region: One-third

Share of carbon in the terrestrial biome stored in the boreal region: 30%¹⁰

Percent of boreal forest threatened by climate change: 65%

Quantity of Canada’s boreal forest that the Canadian Boreal Initiative proposes to be set aside to “offset” emissions from the tar sands: 50%

Percent of British Columbia’s mature pine that are infested with pine beetle and expected to be dead by 2013: 83¹¹

Expected temperature rise in boreal region and Northern latitudes: 10 degrees C, 18 degrees F¹²

Oil companies involved in tar sands: Suncor, Syncrude, Imperial Oil, Conoco-Phillips, Canadian Oil Sands Quest Ltd., Petro-Canada, AEC Oil Sands Partnership, Mocal Energy, Murphy Oil, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, Nexen, Statoil, BP and many more.

Number of rivers that are not protected from proposals for privatization, damming, and carbon offsets in Canada: About 600

Total rivers in British Columbia: About 700

Price that oil must reach per barrel in order to make tar sands competitive: Approximately $35

Amount of energy that is required to extract one unit of energy from tar sands: Approximately 1:3

Toward a Proposal for Just Climate Finance

[2] http://www.nffc.net/Issues/Corporate%20Control/USDA%20INC.pdf

[3] http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-1048

[4] Stern Review on climate change

[5]Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] http://www.usda.gov/oce/newsroom/archives/releases/2009files/HR2454.pdf

[8] http://www.usda.gov/oce/newsroom/archives/releases/2009files/HR2454.pdf

[9] http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads10/US-GHG-Inventory-2010-Full-Document.pdf

[10] Ibid.

[11] Personal conversation with US EPA official

[12] Lehmann, J. et al, Biochar Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems: A Review (2006).

[13] http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2362

[14] Ernsting, A. & Smolker, R. Biochar for Climate Change Mitigation: Fact or Fiction? (Biofuelwatch, 2009); http://tiny.cc/biochar

[15] http://www.indianetzone.com/24/land_use_pattern_india.htm

[16] http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0906/full/climate.2009.48.html#B3

By Nicola Bullard, Focus on the Global South

Published in América Latina en Movimiento No 454 abril 2010, “Por un nuevo amanecer para la Madre Tierra”

Perhaps without fully realising either the meaning or the implications, progressive movements have gravitated around the slogan of “climate debt” as a way into the complex world of climate negotiations.

It is easy to understand why: debt is simple concept and in a just world, debts should be paid. But — more that that — the notion of climate debt goes to the heart of climate change politics. It raises the central question of historical responsibility and who owes whom for what. And by redefining “debt” as a systemic issue rather than a financial problem, it turns traditional rich-poor relations upside down. Usually it is the rich who are the creditors, demanding payment from the poor, but climate debt reverses that: it is now the poor and the marginalised – the Global South — who are calling in their debts, not for personal gain but for the future of humanity and Mother Earth.

As such, climate debt is a powerful idea that links issues, constituencies and strategies, with the added attraction of using simple language as a Trojan horse for complex and potentially subversive ideas. But without a clear idea of what “we” mean by climate debt, there is always the risk that the principles and ideas underpinning it will be coopted and diluted. Perhaps there is no definitive definition of climate debt, but as social justice movements and activists, it is useful to have a common vision of what we mean, and what we are asking for.

What is climate debt?

The concept of ecological debt has been around for some years. Ecuador’s Accion Ecologica talks about ecological debt as “the debt accumulated by the Northern industrial countries towards the countries and peoples of the South on account of resource plundering, environmental damages, and the free occupation of environmental space to deposit wastes, such as greenhouse gases.”

In accounting terms, climate debt is just one line item in the much larger balance sheet of ecological debt, but it can be broken down into understandable and measurable parts.

One part of the climate debt relates to the impacts of the excessive emission of greenhouse gases that cause global warming: extreme and frequent climate events, floods, droughts, inundations, storms, loss of arable land and biodiversity, disease, landlessness, migration, poverty, and much more. In UN terms, these very real human impacts are sanitised and lumped together under “adaptation” costs.

A second element of the climate debt is the cost of reorganising societies and economies in such a way that greenhouse gas emissions are radically reduced: this is called mitigation, and it touches almost every aspect of human activity from agriculture, energy and transport through to how cities are organised, consumption patterns and global trade. For the Bolivian government, this is equivalent to a “development debt” which would be compensated by ensuring that all people have access to basic services and that all countries are sufficiently industrialised to ensure their independence.

A third part of the debt is more difficult to calculate – some call it the emissions debt. It refers to the fact that rich countries have used up most of the atmosphere’s capacity to absorb greenhouse gases, leaving no “atmospheric space” for the South to “grow”. Given that there is a very high correlation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions in the current technological context, this means that developing countries are effectively being told that they must limit their economic growth. The only way to compensate this debt is for the rich countries to drastically reduce their own emissions.

The Bolivian government includes two other items in the climate debt calculation. In addition to the adaptation, mitigation and emissions debt, they identify a “migration debt” which would be compensated by dropping restrictive migration practices and treating all humans with dignity, and finally, the debt to Mother Earth.

According to the Bolivian government, this debt is

“impossible to compensate completely, because the atrocities committed by humanity have been too terrible. However, the minimum compensation of this debt consists of recognising the damage done, and adopting a United Nations Declaration on the Mother Earth’s Rights, to ensure that the same abuses will never be repeated in future.”

Considering all these components, the debt owed by the rich to the poor is unmeasurable.

Who is responsible for climate debt?

This question is at the heart of the UNFCCC negotiations, for behind the technical language, it’s all about money and economic interests. That is why the US conjured up the Copenhagen Accord during the COP15 – to redefine who is responsible and thus avoid paying its dues.

The current state of play is that the rich countries – and especially those who have the highest cumulative historical emissions – are simply not willing to pay their debt. Having accumulated wealth and security on the backs of the poor, through the destruction of nature and the extraction of resources, the rich European countries, the US, Japan, Australia and Canada are refusing to pay the bill, both in terms of the actual costs of mitigation and adaptation, but also in terms of changing their own profligate consumption. Not only are they refusing to reduce their own emissions – thus pushing the burden of reduction onto others – they are also trying to shift the blame to developing countries such as China, Brazil and Indian whose current emissions are growing at a rapid rate.

Can the debt be paid?

Although certain aspects of the debt can be counted and calculated – for example, the costs of clean technology, restoring devastated forests, shifting to sustainable agriculture, or building climate ready infrastructure, the real debt cannot be calculated. It is much more than a number or money; climate debt symbolises over 500 years of unequal relations between North and South, between rich and poor, between exploiters and exploited.

Climate debt is also a measure of the complete folly of capitalism – whether it’s free market or state-run – as a model for managing human society and the earth’s ecosystems. Ultimately, the only way that the debt can be repaid is by ensuring that the historic relations of inequality are broken once and for all and that no “new” debt will accumulate.  This requires system change, both in the North and in the South. That’s why climate debt is such a subversive idea.

* Nicola Bullard is a senior associate with Focus on the Global South, n.bullard@focusweb.org

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