March 14 (Sydney Morning Herald) — GREENHOUSE gases have risen to their highest level since modern humans evolved, and Australian temperatures are now about a degree warmer than they were a century ago, a major review by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology has found.

The national climate report, to be released today, said Australia’s current climate “cannot be explained by natural variability alone” and that emissions resulting from human activity were playing an increasingly direct role in shaping temperatures.

Australian researchers were able to identify the “fingerprint” of the carbon dioxide particles in the atmosphere, by testing the isotopes in CO2 particles, and confirm that the increase came from fossil fuels burnt in power stations and cars.

“We saw a dip in carbon dioxide emissions during the global financial crisis, but that period is now over,” said the chief executive of the CSIRO, Megan Clark. “Levels are now rising steadily again, in line with the trend.”

The carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached 390 parts per million in 2011, the highest level in 800,000 years.

The average day and night-time temperatures in Australia are now about a degree higher than they were a century ago, the State of the Climate 2012 report said.

“Multiple lines of evidence show that global warming continues and that human activities are mainly responsible,” it said.

The report gathered observations from thousands of experiments, mapping increases in air and water temperature and plotting rising sea levels.

Data gathered from gauges around the coast showed sea levels continuing to rise off Sydney and much of the NSW coast at a rate of about 5 millimetres per year, while some areas of the tropics, including Darwin, are seeing rises of up to 1 centimetre per year. Most of the rise is attributed to thermal expansion, or warmer water temperatures meaning that H20 molecules take up more space.

“The observed global-average mean sea-level rise since 1990 is near the high end of projections from the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report,” the researchers found.

On average, global sea levels are about 21 centimetres higher today than they were in 1880, when reliable records began to be kept. The report also noted increases in heavy rainfall events across most of eastern Australia, but also more bushfires. The trend for Sydney is towards more monsoonal rains.

“The Mediterranean weather we have become used to seems to be fading,” Dr Clark said.

A CSIRO atmospheric scientist, Paul Fraser, said the world was now on track to pass the 400 parts per million level for CO2 emissions in under five years.

Researchers at an air monitoring station at Cape Grim in Tasmania have been testing the composition of carbon dioxide molecules. The measurements include a form of “carbon dating”, where the amount of carbon-14 particles indicate the age of a particle.

“The only process you can come up with that fits the profile of the CO2 we measure is the combustion of fossil fuels,” Dr Fraser said.

Observations at Cape Grim have been tracking the changing composition of the air for decades. Since 2000, fossil fuel emissions in CO2 samples have been increasing by about 3 per cent a year, but a decline of about 1.2 per cent a year took place as energy demand  slackened during the financial crisis.

Growth in human-induced CO2 emissions has now rebounded back to about 5.9 per cent a year, the report said.

Greenhouse gases are now at 390 parts per million in the atmosphere – the highest level since modern humans evolved.

Australia’s rising temperatures “cannot be explained by natural variability alone”.

Average day and night temperatures are now, on average, 1 degree warmer than a century ago.

March 9 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama is close to issuing the first U.S. greenhouse-gas limits, rules that may preclude the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

Analysts and lawmakers are bracing for rules from the Environmental Protection Agency that would set the emission limits for power plants at the level of a natural-gas plant, which is about half that of a coal-fueled facility. Any new coal plants would need expensive carbon-capture equipment.

A “hard-core stance on new plants is expected,” Christine Tezak, senior policy analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in McLean, Virginia, said in an interview. “It would make it extra difficult for new coal.”

The proposed nationwide standards would be the first issued by the EPA for carbon-dioxide from power plants, the largest source of those emissions in the U.S. Environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation are pressing the Obama administration to issue tight standards in order to head off an increase in global warming that they warn could be catastrophic.

The White House must decide if it will side with its environmental allies on the EPA proposal, or bow to election-year pressure from companies that say the measure would outlaw new coal plants, raising electricity prices. The decision has taken on real and symbolic importance for both sides after Congress failed to pass climate legislation.

“It creates a direction, saying that the best bet is to create a plant that has the least amount of carbon pollution,” Joe Mendelson, director of policy at the National Wildlife Federation’s climate and energy program, said in an interview. “A mild standard for any new plants just would not cut it.”

Battleground States

While the initial impact would be minimal, as utilities are closing coal plants because natural gas prices at ten-year lows, adopting the EPA proposal would add to industry and Republican complaints in coal-dependent states such as Ohio, Colorado and Pennsylvania, where voter loyalty has swung between parties in recent elections.

The EPA’s greenhouse-gas plan “could send thousands of U.S. jobs overseas and raise electricity rates on families and seniors at a time when the nation can least afford it,” Kentucky Republican Ed Whitfield and 220 other lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Office of Management and Budget on Feb. 23.

They said EPA intended to impose a standard that would force new coal plants to have carbon capture, and asked the White House to scrap the rule. By law, the OMB reviews regulations to make sure their benefits are worth the cost.

Ozone Rules

Obama dismissed in September an EPA proposal to tighten ozone rules after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups warned of political fallout from a regulation they said would shut down factories nationwide. Last month, the administration delayed safety standards requiring rearview cameras in cars and light trucks, saying it needed to further study the issue.

Betsaida Alcantara, an EPA spokeswoman, didn’t return telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment. The EPA is past a court deadline for issuing the proposal, which would then be open for comment and finalized late this year.

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club met with White House officials in recent weeks. The environmentalists argue that decade-low natural gas prices make the EPA proposal both affordable and achievable.

“With gas prices where they are, nobody is building new coal plants,” John Thompson, director of the coal transition project at the Clean Air Task Force in Carbondale, Illinois, said in an interview. “The cost of this rule right now will be zero.”

The Clean Air Task Force, founded in 1996, is a foundation-funded non-profit that aims to cut pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

Shutting Coal Plants

The EPA issued two sets of rules last year designed to force coal plants to clean up other pollutants or shut down.

GenOn Energy Inc. and FirstEnergy Corp. announced this year that they will shutter coal-fired plants because they can’t afford to upgrade to meet EPA rules. GenOn, the third-largest U.S. independent power producer by market value, said Feb. 29 that it will shut about 13 percent of its generating capacity by May 2015, with all but one of the eight sites slated close a coal plant.

The average U.S. coal plant emits 2,249 pounds of carbon dioxide for each megawatt hour of power produced, compared to 1,135 pounds for a natural gas plant, according to the EPA.Newer combined-cycle natural gas plants, in which the heat exhaust of a first gas-fueled turbine drives a second generator, are more efficient.

Carbon-Capture

Thompson and other environmental advocates have visited the White House to make the case that new coal plants could also be built if the facilities capture the carbon dioxide emitted and stash it underground. Southern Co. and representatives of other utilities presented officials with materials saying the technology is not ready for sale on a commercial level.

That process “is not considered commercially available technology yet,” Stephanie Kirijan, a spokeswoman for Southern, said in an e-mail. Southern owns three of the ten largest carbon-dioxide emitting power plants in the country. It’s building a carbon-capture coal plant in Mississippi.

Carbon-dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution have led to a warming of the earth’s temperature over the past 50 years, threatening to cause extreme weather, drought and coastal flooding, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Because of falling natural gas prices, the share of coal in electricity generation fell to 42 percent in 2011, compared with 45 percent in 2010 and 50 percent in 2005, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency in Washington.

The administration proposal has risks for utilities, as natural gas prices may spike in the future.

“Power companies are very wary about assuming that natural gas prices will remain this low, and certainly want to retain the option of building coal,” Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer at Bracewell & Giuliani LLP in Washington with energy industry clients, said in an interview.

Twenty years later, governments should have reconvened to review their commitments and progress, but in reality the issue to debate will be the “green economy” led development, propagating the same capitalist model that caused climate chaos and other deep social and environmental crises.

La Vía Campesina will mobilize for this historical moment, representing the voice of the millions of peasants and indigenous globally who are defending the well-being of all by implementing food sovereignty and the protection of natural resources.

20 Years later: a planet in crisis

20 years after the Earth Summit, life has become more difficult for the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. The number of hungry people has increased to almost one billion, which means that one out of six human beings is going hungry, women and small farmers being the most affected. Meanwhile, the environment is depleting fast, biodiversity is being destroyed, water resources are getting scarce and contaminated and the climate is in crisis. This is jeopardizing our very future on Earth while poverty and inequalities are increasing.

The idea of “Sustainable Development” put forward in 1992, which merged “development” and “environment” concerns, did not solve the problem because it did not stop the capitalist system in its race towards profit at the expense of all human and natural resources:

- The food system is increasingly in the grips of large corporations seeking profit, not aimed at feeding the people.

- The Convention on Biodiversiy has created benefit sharing mechanisms but at the end of the day, they legitimize the capitalization of genetic resources by the private sector.

- The UN Convention on Climate Change, instead of forcing countries and corporations to reduce pollution, invented a new profitable and speculative commodity with the carbon trading mechanisms, allowing the polluter to continue polluting and profit from it.

The framework of “sustainable development” continues to see peasant agriculture as backwards and responsible for the deterioration of natural resources and the environment. The same paradigm of development is perpetuated, which is nothing less than the development of capitalism by means of a “green industrialization.”

The “Green Economy” – Final Enclosure?

Today the “greening of the economy” pushed forward in the run-up to Rio+20 is based on the same logic and mechanisms that are destroying the planet and keeping people hungry. For instance, it seeks to incorporate aspects of the failed “green revolution” in a broader manner in order to ensure the needs of the industrial sectors of production, such as promoting the uniformity of seeds, patented seeds by corporation, genetically modified seeds, etc.

The capitalist economy, based on the over-exploitation of natural resources and human beings, will never become “green.” It is based on limitless growth in a planet that has reached its limits and on the commoditization of the remaining natural resources that have until now remained un-priced or in control of the public sector.

In this period of financial crisis, global capitalism seeks new forms of accumulation. It is during these periods of crisis in which capitalism can most accumulate. Today, it is the territories and the commons which are the main target of capital. As such, the green economy is nothing more than a green mask for capitalism. It is also a new mechanism to appropriate our forests, rivers, land… of our territories!

Since last year’s preparatory meetings towards Rio+20, agriculture has been cited as one of the causes of climate change. Yet no distinction is made in the official negotiations between industrial and peasant agriculture, and no explicit difference between their effects on poverty, climate and other social issues we face.

The “green economy” is marketed as a way to implement sustainable development for those countries which continue to experience high and disproportionate levels of poverty, hunger and misery. In reality, what is proposed is another phase of what we identify as “green structural adjustment programs” which seek to align and re-order the national markets and regulations to submit to the fast incoming “green capitalism”.

Investment capital now seeks new markets through the “green economy”; securing the natural resources of the world as primary inputs and commodities for industrial production, as carbon sinks or even for speculation. This is being demonstrated by increasing land grabs globally, for crop production for both export and agrofuels. New proposals such as “climate smart” agriculture, which calls for the “sustainable intensification” of agriculture, also embody the goal of corporations and agri-business to over exploit the earth while labeling it “green”, and making peasants dependent on high-cost seeds and inputs. New generations of polluting permits are issued for the industrial sector, especially those found in developed countries, such as what is expected from programs such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD++) and other environmental services schemes.

The green economy seeks to ensure that the ecological and biological systems of our planet remain at the service of capitalism, by the intense use of various forms of biotechnologies, synthetic technologies and geo-engineering. GMO’s and biotechnology are key parts of the industrial agriculture promoted within the framework of “green economy”.

The promotion of the green economy includes calls for the full implementation of the WTO Doha Round, the elimination of all trade barriers to incoming “green solutions,” the financing and support of financial institutions such as the World Bank and projects such as US-AID programs, and the continued legitimization of the international institutions that serve to perpetuate and promote global capitalism.

Why peasant farmers mobilize

Small-scale farmers, family farmers, landless people, indigenous people, migrants – women and men – are now determined to mobilize to oppose any commodification of life and to propose another way to organize our relationship with nature on earth based on agrarian reform, food sovereignty and peasant based agroecology.

We reject the “Green Economy” as it is pushed now in the Rio+20 process. It is a new mask to hide an ever-present, growing greed of corporations and food imperialism in the world.

• We oppose carbon trading and all market solutions to the environmental crisis including the proposed liberalization of environmental services under the WTO.
• We reject REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) which allows rich countries to avoid cutting their carbon emissions by financing often damaging projects in developing countries.
• We expose and reject the corporate capture of the rio+20 process and all multilateral processes within the United Nations.
• We oppose land grabs, water grabs, seeds grabs, forest grabs – all resources’ grabs!
• We defend the natural resources in our countries as a matter of national and popular sovereignty, to face the offensive and private appropriation of capital;
• We demand public policies from governments for the protection of the interests of the majority of the population, especially the poorest, and landless workers;
• We demand a complete ban on geoengineering projects and experiments; under the guise of ‘green’ or ‘clean’ technology to the benefit of agribusiness. This includes new technologies being proposed for adaptation and mitigation to climate change under the banners of “geo-engineering” and “climate smart agriculture”, including false solutions like transgenic plants supposed to adapt to climate change, and “biochar” purported to replenish the soil with carbon.

• We resolve to protect our native seeds and our right to exchange seeds.

• We demand genuine agrarian reform that distributes and redistributes the land – the main factor in production – especially taking into account women and youth. Land must be a means of production to secure the livelihood of the people and must not be a commodity subject to speculation on international markets. We reject “market assisted land reform”, which is another word for land privatization.
• We struggle for small scale sustainable food production for community and local consumption as opposed to agribusiness, monoculture plantations for export.
• We continue to organize and practice agroecology based production, ensuring food sovereignty for all and implementing collective management of our resources

Call to action

We call for a major world mobilization to be held between 18-26 June in Rio de Janeiro, with a permanent camp, for the Peoples Summit, to counter the summit of governments and capital.

We will be in Rio at the People’s Summit where anti-capitalist struggles of the world will meet and together we will propose real solutions. The People’s Permanent Assembly, between the 18 and 22, will present the daily struggles against the promoters of capitalism y the attacks against our lands. Today, Rio de Janeiro is one of the cities which receive the most contributions from global capital and will host the Soccer World Cup and Olympics. We will unite our symbolic struggles from the urban to the landless movements and fishers.

We also declare the week of June 5th, as a major world week in defense of the environment and against transnational corporations and invite everyone across the world to mobilize:

• Defend sustainable peasant agriculture
• Occupy land for the production of agroecological and non-market dominated food
• Reclaim and exchange native seeds
• Protest against Exchange and Marketing Board offices and call for an end to speculative markets on commodities and land
• Hold local assemblies of People Affected by Capitalism
• Dream of a different world and create it!!

The future that we want is based on Agrarian Reform, Peasant’s based sustainable agriculture and Food Sovereignty!

GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!!

GLOBALIZE HOPE!!!

Geneva, 20 Feb (Meena Raman) – The second meeting of the Technology Executive Committee (TEC) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met in Bonn, Germany from 16-18 February and concluded with agreement on a two-year work plan for 2012 to 2013, the nomination of a six-man evaluation panel for selecting the host of the Climate Technology Centre (CTC) and elaboration of the modalities on linkages with other relevant institutional arrangements under and outside the Convention.

In the elaboration of the work plan, one issue that was controversial among TEC members from developed and developing countries was the issue of addressing intellectual property rights (IPRs) in relation to technology development and transfer.

While the TEC member from Sudan, Mr. Nagmeldin Elhassan, said that the TEC needed to address the IPR issue as to whether it was a barrier to technology transfer in developing countries, the developed country members especially from the United States, Mr. Rick Duke, and Mr. Kunihiko Shimada of Japan, were reluctant to have the matter discussed by the TEC, with Japan insisting that the proper forum was the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

After much wrangling over the matter, TEC members agreed that one of the short-term activities in 2012 would be the holding of a thematic dialogue on “enabling environments and barriers to technology development and transfer” through the engagement with stakeholders.

The controversy over the IPR issue arose following a presentation by Professor Carlos Correa of the South Centre at the TEC meeting on the first day (15 February) at a panel discussion with representatives from some stakeholders.

Correa, in his presentation, raised a number of policy issues that are relevant for the transfer and development of technology in the interests of developing countries on which the TEC should work and produce recommendations.

Among them included the regulation of markets for technology, namely through competition policies that, inter alia, deal with refusals by companies to transfer technology and address restrictive practices; measures relating to IP protection, such as facilitating searches for patented technologies and supporting efforts to improve the quality of patents (mainly in respect of inventive step and sufficiency of disclosure in patent applications); adoption of technical standards in a way that ensures the participation of developing countries’ firms and avoids the use of patents (which are eventually incorporated into such standards) as a means to restrict competition; initiatives based on open innovation schemes to promote the development of technologies as a public good (as in the case of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research [CGIAR] model); and effective implementation of Article 66.2 of the TRIPS Agreement (Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation that deals with the transfer of environmentally sound technologies [ESTs] to Least Developed Countries) with regard to ESTs and establishment of patent pools to facilitate access to technologies on pre-determined conditions.

He also said that “transfer of technology” should not be interpreted as the sale of equipment; the transfer of know-how and know-why are essential for developing countries.

Apart from the South Centre, the TEC also heard presentations on the first day from other stakeholders including the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the World Resources Institute, the Latin American Energy Organisation (OLADE) and representatives from the business community. It also heard statements from observers including the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and Third World Network (TWN).

The TWN representative asked the TEC members to also address the issue of technology assessment, as the issue of the appropriateness of particular technologies to developing countries was an important one and was a gap that had not been addressed.

Some members of the TEC agreed that the technology assessment issue needed to be addressed and this was reflected in the work plan under the medium term activities in 2013 and beyond, through the preparation of inventories of relevant technology briefs, reports and technical papers to provide possible guidance on technologies based on technology assessments.

The TEC meeting was chaired by its Chair, Mr. Gabriel Blanco of Argentina and Mr. Antonio Pfluger of Germany, who is its Vice-chair. The TEC held its first meeting last year in September.

At the 16th COP (Conference of Parties) in Cancun in 2010, Parties agreed to establish the TEC comprised of 20 expert members (with 9 members from Annex 1 countries and 11 members from non-Annex 1 countries). The Cancun decision tasked the TEC to implement the framework for meaningful and effective actions to enhance the implementation of technology transfer in developing countries.

EVALUATION PANEL TO SELECT HOST OF THE CTC

The Durban COP in December last year decided that the selection process for the host of the CTC shall be launched and requested the secretariat to convene an evaluation panel, consisting of three members from Parties included in Annex I (developed countries) and three from non-Annex I Parties (developing countries) to the Convention as nominated by the TEC from within its membership.

The Chair of the TEC on the very first day of the Bonn meeting proposed that the Annex 1 Parties hold informal consultations to nominate three members from among them and that the same be done by members of non-Annex 1 countries.

Discussions on the nominations were held among TEC members in the evening of 16 February, which continued on the final day of the meeting and was closed to observers. It is learnt that the meeting succeeded in convening a six-man panel who are tasked to conduct an assessment of the proposals received for hosting the CTC, with a shortlist ranking up to five proponents, for the consideration by the Parties at the meeting of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) which will be held in May this year.

WORK PLAN

In the discussion over the two-year work plan for the TEC, while some members of the TEC especially from the US and Japan wanted the TEC to mainly focus on stock-taking and information gathering related to technology development and transfer in the first year of its work (while waiting for the CTC and Network to be operationalized next year), other members from developing and developed countries stressed the need for the TEC to show that it is “looking forward”, and “not appear passive” or “start from zero”.

Apart from the controversy of the IPR issue, other areas that saw some tussle among TEC members were over how to deal with technology roadmaps; the preparation and topics for the technical papers; and on recommending guidance on policies and programme priorities related to technology development and transfer.

The TEC finally agreed on a two-year rolling work plan which includes the following:

1. Mandated activities from Durban which were the nomination of TEC members for an evaluation panel to select the host of the CTC (as concluded above); elaborate modalities on linkages with other relevant institutional arrangements (see details below); and elaborate procedures for preparing a joint annual report of the TEC and the CTC.

2. Short-term activities in 2012 which consists of the preparation of an inventory of relevant work of the institutions that are active in the area of technology collaboration with a view to seeking collaboration with them; review of technology needs from various sources; engage stakeholders through thematic dialogues in order to seek cooperation with other relevant technology initiatives, stakeholders and organisations; preparing an inventory of existing technology roadmaps; initiate preparation of technical paper(s); development of an information platform within the Technology Clearinghouse (TT: Clear) for the TEC.

3. Medium term activities (2013 and beyond) consisting of the preparation of inventories of relevant technology briefs, reports and technical papers; review of roadmaps, taking into account the inventory of existing technology roadmaps; engage stakeholders through thematic dialogues on different topics; organise a stakeholder thematic dialogue on research, development and diffusion; produce technical paper(s) on topics agreed by the TEC and recommend guidance as appropriate, on policies and programme priorities related to technology development and transfer.

MODALITIES FOR LINKAGES WITH INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS UNDER THE CONVENTION

On the modalities for linkages with the institutional arrangements under the Convention, the TEC agreed that for performing its functions through close interactions with relevant thematic bodies established under the Convention, including but not limited to the advisory body of the CTC and Network, the Adaptation Committee, the board of the Green Climate Fund, the Registry, the LDC Expert Group, the Consultative Group of Experts on national communications from Parties in non-Annex 1, the Standing Committee (on finance) and the Adaptation Fund Board, the modalities may include the following:

• Cross participation in the meetings of the relevant bodies including workshops and events organized by such bodies, or jointly organized, on issues of common interest;
• Inviting inputs to support the implementation of particular activities as specified in the work plan of TEC;
• Knowledge and information sharing.

MODALITIES FOR LINKAGES WITH OTHER RELEVANT INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS OUTSIDE THE CONVENTION

For performing its functions through linkages with institutional arrangements outside the Convention including, inter alia, public institutions, the business community, academia, international organisations, NGOs, networks and partnerships, the TEC agreed that the modalities include the following:

• Offering participation in the TEC meetings as observers or expert advisors;
• Technical task forces, stakeholder forums and/or consultative groups;
• Bilateral cooperative arrangements;
• Web-based communication channel including through the technology transfer clearinghouse (TT: Clear); and

Participation of the Chair, Vice-Chair and/or any member designated by the TEC in external meetings and reporting back on those meetings.

The members also agreed that the next meeting of the TEC will be held sometime in May, back-to-back with the meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies, with another meeting to be held in September this year.

Geneva, 20 Feb (Martin Khor) – A trade war is looming over the European Union’s move to impose charges on airlines on the basis of the greenhouse gases they emit during the planes’ entire flights into and out of European airports.

Many countries whose airlines are affected, including China, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Brazil and the United States, consider this to be unfair or illegal or both.

Since their protests have not yielded results, officials of 26 countries are meeting in Moscow early this week to discuss retaliatory action against the EU.

The EU’s move, which took effect on 1 January, and the tit-for-tat actions by the offended countries, is the first full-blown international battle over whether countries can or should take unilateral trade measures on the ground of addressing climate change.

Developing countries in particular have been concerned over increasing signs that the developed countries are preparing to take protectionist measures to tax or block the entry of their goods and services on the ground that  greenhouse gases above an acceptable level are emitted in producing the goods or undertaking the service.

Besides the airlines case, several other measures are being planned by the EU or by the United States that will affect the cost of developing countries’ exports.

In fact, trade measures linked to climate change may become the main new sources of protectionism.

The EU’s aviation emissions tax is thus an important test case, and this could explain the furious and coordinated response by the developing countries, which form the majority of the protesting 26 nations meeting in Moscow this week.

The countries are particularly angry that the EU is imposing a charge or tax on emissions from the entire flight of an airline, and not just on the portion of the flights that are in European airspace.

The EU action takes effect by including the aviation sector (and airlines of all countries) in the European Emissions Trading Scheme.

Beyond a certain level of free allowances, the airlines have to buy emission permits depending on the quantity emitted during the flights.  As the free allowances are reduced in future years, the cost to be paid will also jump, thus increasingly raising the price of passenger tickets and the cost of transporting goods, and affecting the profitability or viability of the airlines.

The China Air Transport Association has estimated that Chinese airlines would have to pay 800 million yuan for 2012, the first year of the EU scheme, and that the cost will treble by 2020.

The total cost to all airlines in 2012 is estimated at 505 million euros, at the carbon price of 5.84 euro per tonne last week, according to Reuter Thomsom Carbon Point.

Last September, when the carbon price was 12 euro per tonne, Carbon Point had estimated the cost to be 1.1 billion euro in 2012, rising to 10.4 billion euro in 2020.

While this may generate a lot of resources for Europe, airlines in developing countries will in turn have to pay a lot.

There are many reasons why the concerns of the affected countries are justified, as shown by Indian trade law expert Ms. R.V. Anuradha, in her paper on Unilateral Measures and Climate Change.

Since each country has sovereignty over the airspace above its territory (reaffirmed by the Chicago Convention), the EU tax based on flight portions that are not on European airspace infringes the principle of sovereignty.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s Kyoto Protocol states that Annex I Parties (developed countries) shall pursue actions on emissions arising from aviation through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

Consistent with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, only Annex I countries are mandated to have legally binding targets for greenhouse gases emissions cuts. This UNFCCC principle is violated by the EU requirement affecting airlines from both developed and developing countries.

ICAO members have been discussing but have yet to reach agreement on actions to curb aviation emissions.  Last October, 25 countries issued a paper in ICAO protesting against the EU measure.

While the United States has challenged the EU action in a European court, China has ordered its airlines not to comply with the EU scheme unless the government gives them permission to do. In addition, retaliation measures such as imposing levies on European airlines and reviewing the access and landing rights agreements with European countries are being considered by the 26 countries.

What happens in this aviation case is significant because there are many other unilateral measures linked to climate change being lined up by developed countries.

These include the EU plan to impose charges on emissions from maritime bunker fuel, a US Congress bill that requires charges on energy-intensive imports from developing countries that do not have similar levels of emissions controls as the US, and several schemes involving labels and standards linked to emissions.

If these unilateral measures are implemented, then developing countries will really feel they are being victimised for a problem – climate change — that historically has been largely caused by the developed countries.

Moreover, this will lead to a growing crisis of both the climate change regime and the multilateral trade regime.

They reaffirmed that the process launched at Durban (under the Durban Platform) is not to renegotiate or rewrite the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and that this process and its outcome shall be under the Convention and in full accordance with all its principles and provisions, in particular the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.

The Ministers also recognized that the Durban Platform offers a clear opportunity for an equitable, inclusive, effective and strengthened climate change regime.

(The main outcome of the Durban climate change conference in December last year was the launching of a new round of negotiations known as the Durban Platform aimed at a new regime  [whether a protocol or other legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force] under the UNFCC and involving all countries.)

The countries in BASIC are Brazil, South Africa, India and China.

In the joint-statement, the Ministers welcomed the fact that a compromise was reached at the last minute at Durban to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention.

They also noted that the scope of work of Durban Platform has to be defined in advance of the conclusion of the work of the other two Ad-hoc Working Groups (referring to the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action and the Ad-hoc Working Group under the Kyoto Protocol).

Representing the BASIC countries at the meeting were Ms. Jayanthi Natarajan, Indian Minister of Environment & Forests, Mr. Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman, National Development and Reform Commission of China, Mr. Francisco Gaetani, Brazil’s Deputy Minister of Environment, Mr. Alfred James Wills, Chief Climate Change Negotiator of South Africa and Ambassador Mxakato-Diseko as representative of the President of the 17th Conference of Parties (South Africa).

According to the joint-statement, in line with the ‘BASIC-Plus’ approach, Qatar (as incoming President of COP-18), Swaziland (as Chair of Africa Group of negotiators and as a member of LDCs) and Singapore (as member of Alliance of Small Island States) were invited and participated in the meeting as observers. Algeria (as Chair of G-77 & China) was also invited.

The BASIC Ministers also recognized that the Durban conference represented a significant step forward and helped operationalize several of the Cancun decisions such as Green Climate Fund (GCF), Adaptation Committee, Technology Executive Committee and the Climate Technology Centre and Networks (CTCN), the Standing Committee on Finance and the arrangements for transparency.

The Ministers also welcomed in particular, the agreement on the 2nd commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and stressed that the presentation by May 2012 by Annex-I parties of information on their economy wide quantified emission reduction objectives (QELROs) with a view to adopting an amendment to Annex-B of Kyoto Protocol is an important and necessary first step for the success of the process agreed to at Durban.

They reiterated that the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol would be available to only those Annex-I parties that have established quantified emissions reduction commitments in the 2nd commitment period. Ministers also emphasized that the non-KP Annex-I parties too must undertake comparable commitments under internationally agreed rules of accounting, measurement, reporting, verification and compliance.

The Ministers regretted the announcement by Canada, within a few days after the conclusion of the Durban Conference, withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol.

They observed that the Kyoto Protocol is not only a cornerstone of the international climate regime but a legally binding agreement under the UNFCCC and that any attempts by developed countries to casually set aside their existing legal commitments while calling for a new legally binding agreement seriously questions their credibility and sincerity in responding to the climate crisis.

The Ministers also stressed that unresolved issues such as equity, trade and technology-related intellectual property rights etc. must not fall-off the table and remain part of the negotiations.

They noted that developing countries are fully committed to playing their part in the global fight against climate change and have presented actions which express significant ambition to reduce emissions.

The Ministers stressed that developed countries must rise up to their historical responsibilities and take the lead in the fight against climate change by undertaking robust and ambitious mitigation commitments consistent with science and in accordance with the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities under the Convention.

They stressed that equity is a cornerstone of the international efforts at combating climate change and welcomed the decision at Durban to organize a workshop on ‘Equitable Access to Sustainable Development’. They stressed that equity must remain an essential element of the work moving forward in the UNFCCC process.

The Ministers reiterated the importance of the Review of the implementation of the Convention, in accordance with its principles and provisions. They stressed that the clear mandate provided by the Cancun decision in this regard must be respected.

They also reaffirmed the important role of the findings of the fifth Assessment Report (AR-5) of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in informing the process of implementation of the various decisions of COP-17.

The Ministers welcomed the operationalization of the Green Climate Fund and called for its early capitalization. They urged the developed countries to honour their commitments to provide US$ 30 billion as fast start funding and US$ 100 billion per year by 2020. They also stressed the urgency of securing long-term finance for developing countries including for implementation of Adaptation Framework, national adaptation planning and REDD plus (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries etc).

The Ministers welcomed the setting up of a platform for discussions of long-term finance under the UNFCCC.

The Ministers also noted with deep concern and reiterated their firm opposition to the inclusion of international aviation in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) which violates international law including the principles and provisions of UNFCCC and runs counter to multilateralism.

They noted that the unilateral action by EU in the name of climate change was taken despite strong international opposition and would seriously jeopardize the international efforts to combat climate change.

The Ministers recognized the threat of similar unilateral measures being considered by developed countries in the name of climate change in the area of international shipping and expressed their concern.

The Ministers pledged to continue and deepen their cooperation and coordination in the discussions leading up to COP-18 at Doha. In view of the on-going negotiations for the Rio+20 Conference on sustainable development, Ministers agreed that the BASIC countries should enhance their discussions on Rio+20 issues as well.

They also emphasized that BASIC countries as part of G-77 & China are extremely vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change and therefore share the deep concern of SIDS, LDCs and Africa. The Ministers reaffirmed the need to maintain and strengthen the unity of G-77 & China as the unified voice of developing countries in the climate change negotiations.

They welcomed the offer by South Africa to host the 11th BASIC Ministerial Meeting on climate change in the second quarter of 2012.

Emissions trading, the European Union hoped, would limit the release of harmful greenhouse gases. But it isn’t working. The price for emissions certificates has plunged, a development that is actually making coal more attractive than renewable energy.

In the perfect world of economic liberals, every commodity has its price. Limited supply makes goods more expensive and vice versa. That’s how markets work — at least in theory.

In practice, things often look different, and this is especially true when it comes to emissions trading, a business subject to a very different mechanism: laws dictated by the European Union.

Economists have generally praised the trading scheme as a nearly ideal instrument for reducing harmful carbon dioxide emissions. In this system, businesses purchase pollution permits, with prices determined according to supply and demand, in an efficient and self-regulating process. Companies that invest in environmentally friendly technology need to buy fewer certificates, or may even have some left over to sell.

But for the last half year, prices for CO2 certificates have dropped almost continuously, decreasing by about half, to around €8 ($10.60) per metric ton. Not even the closure of eight German nuclear power plants in 2011, and the resulting increase in demand for coal power, has done much to lastingly reverse the trend.

Michael Kröhnert, an emissions trader in Berlin, refers to the plunging prices as a slaughter. And he fully expects it to continue. “The spiral is spinning downward,” he says.

‘The System Isn’t Working’

Analysts at Swiss bank UBS even go so far as to warn that this creeping decline could escalate into a true crash. “The trading system isn’t working,” is their scathing conclusion. The emissions trading system, once so highly acclaimed, seems to be producing nothing more than hot air.

The EU is alarmed. The European Parliament’s Industry Committee plans to vote later this month on whether Brussels should reduce the number of carbon certificates it provides. A vote in favor would see the EU auctioning off 1.4 billion fewer credits than planned during the next trading period from 2013 to 2020. The cut of roughly 8 percent, it is hoped, will push prices back up.

Yet this type of market intervention reveals the system’s central design flaw: Politicians determine the total amount of CO2 that industry in the EU may emit, a limit that applies years into the future, without any way to know how the economy — and thus the demand for trading certificates — will develop during that period.

Five years ago, when Europe was experiencing an economic boom, Brussels was generous in providing businesses with free certificates for the trading period from 2008 to 2012; companies were forced to buy only a small portion of their emissions credits. But soon afterwards, many businesses were forced to scale down production as the financial crisis, and then the debt crisis, took hold in Europe. Germany consumed less energy — 4.8 percent less in 2011 — and industry as a whole required a lower number of certificates than expected.

Steel company Salzgitter AG, for example, ended up with a surplus of around 7.5 million certificates between 2008 and 2010, according to a study by British environmental organization Sandbag, while ThyssenKrupp’s surplus amounted to about 6 million. Far from being an additional cost factor, say critics, emissions trading has become a source of income for such companies.

Losing Purpose and Incentive

Companies can sell their certificates, or they can stockpile them to be used during the next trading period. The fatal flaw is that this glut of certificates not only depresses prices, it also reduces the incentive to invest in modern energy technology.

With the certificates so cheap, generating power from environmentally harmful fuels becomes even more of a good deal than usual — which explains why brown coal consumption increased by nearly 4 percent in 2011, bucking the general trend.

Even more paradoxical, CO2 prices are so low partly because of the billions Germany spends on renewable energy. This decreases the demand, and with it the price, for emissions certificates. That in turn allows coal, a notorious danger to the climate, to be more competitive. In other words, emissions trading isn’t stopping climate change, but actually speeding it up.

It’s also putting Germany’s finance minister in a tight spot. Wolfgang Schäuble of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) planned to use revenue from the sale of certificates to establish, by 2015, a fund that would finance projects in thermal insulation and other areas. Schäuble’s team assumed a price of €17 per certificate when making their calculations. But with certificates now being traded at €10 below that price, the project could come up short by billions of euros.

Bit by bit, the business of emissions certificates is losing its purpose and incentive. In hindsight, it’s clear that introducing a CO2 tax — another alternative discussed initially — would have been more feasible and more effective. Another option would have been to establish limits and then tighten them every year. A battle raging between the EU and the rest of the world over the decision to require airlines flying to or from Europe to purchase carbon certificates is not exactly generating extra support for emissions trading. For the EU, at this point, it’s become purely a matter of saving its prestigious project.

Shortly before Christmas last year, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee voted to reduce by 1.4 billion the number of certificates sold. If the Industry Committee, the European Parliament as a whole and the Council of the European Union now follow that recommendation, it will serve as a clear signal that something many people have feared for years has come to pass: From now on, Brussels plans to play the role of a central bank, issuing and collecting emissions certificates as it pleases. Should it do so, the EU would run the risk of its timing being perpetually out of step. And the market forces that were originally meant to establish appropriate prices would be on the outside looking in.

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

In early December 2011, Durban, South Africa hosted the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17), otherwise known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The conference was well attended by formal delegates negotiating the future of global climate change policies and programmes, something which was highly publicised. Less publicised in the mainstream media was the attendance and demonstrations of a large contingent of civil society groups and concerned citizens from all over the globe. The officially organised ‘Global Day of Action’ saw thousands of civil society organisations represented. In addition, there were informal demonstrations, which focused on a range of climate change issues, from the autonomy of small-scale farmers to the inequity of emissions between the global north and south.

While civil society had a place at COP17, there was also friction, conflict and tension between authorities and protesters. This reinforced the gap between delegates and civil society organisations. This CAI brief explores the role of the African civil society in the conference.

Background: The African Group at COP17

Africa as a region is the most affected by climate change, yet it is also the least responsible given the impact that major industrialised and developed countries have had on global emissions levels and therefore, the environment. The African Group, a coalition of 54 African countries, acted as a single voice for the continent during the COP17 proceedings. They concentrated on two key areas during the conference. The first priority area was a push for an extension of the Kyoto Protocol (even though the group is not a signatory), with a specific focus on BRIC countries’ culpability in climate change. The second was to encourage nations to follow through with the 2010 commitment made in Cancun for a Green Climate Fund, to help offset costs that developing nations would incur for financing climate change initiatives.(2)

There was a general feeling in Durban, similar to other COP conferences, that developing nations, including many of the African nations involved, had little clout in negotiations. This frustration can be illustrated by a comment from the President of Ethiopia, a spokesperson for the African Group, in the final hours of the conference: “I will even go further and say that the priority that we have is only one: to keep one billion Africans safe as regards the adverse effects of a climate change phenomenon to which they did not contribute.”(3) This provides an important backdrop to the ways in which African civil society felt neglected, unrepresented or unheard during the conference and also frames the main issues that African non-governmental organisations (NGOs) strived to highlight.

Challenges for the continent

The African continent is vulnerable to floods, droughts and other extreme weather conditions, especially because its people rely heavily on precipitation and other natural cycles, as evidenced by the devastating Somalian drought this year. In addition to this vulnerability, most of the continent lacks the technological ability and industrial capacity to cope with these unruly weather patterns. Therefore, although the biggest challenges for Africa are to fight climate change and global warming, a related challenge is to capacity building in many of the poor countries where these problems will become more severe over time. Some point out that the current systems and methods of production need to transform from privileging the comfort of a few elite above the needs of the vast majority.(4) According to many African civil society groups, governments must take decisive action to keep temperatures at safe levels as dictated by the scientific community; to provide resource support for sustainable developments of all countries; and to ensure effective compliance with commitments.(5)

Civil society responses – ‘Climate Justice Now!’ and ‘Occupy COP17’

Just as formal delegates from Africa experienced frustration, so too did the civil society groups from all over the continent who travelled to Durban to be heard and seen during the negotiations. These movements, NGOs and organisations convened both at a ‘speakers’ corner’, a small patch of land opposite the ICC, as well as at other locations outside of the ICC area, such as Howard College at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. Rehana Dada, a representative of the South African Civil Society Committee for COP17, explains that the primary demand coming from civil society is the removal of restrictions from access to proceedings and negotiations and ‘petty’ limitations on protest space.(6)

A multitude of organisations represented civil society space during the conference. Two civil society movements of note are Climate Justice Now! and Occupy COP17. The former is “a network of organisations and movements from across the globe committed to the fight for social, ecological and gender justice.”(7) Their aims are based on taking action by applying pressure on those who have historically caused the lion’s share of environmental degradation: developed industrialised countries.(8) Similarly, Occupy COP17, a movement of NGOs, concerned citizens and students focussed on emulating the global ‘occupy’ trend aimed to put pressure on delegates to make meaningful change by ‘occupying’ space both outside and inside the ICC. Their formal ‘headquarters’ were located at the ‘speakers corner’ opposite the ICC, but participants were actively moving from one protest space to another all over the city.

Global Day of Action

On 3 December 2011, a ‘Global Day of Action’ was held. Reports estimate that anywhere between 7,000-10,0000 people attended a half-day march from central Durban to the ICC to raise awareness of pressing global climate change issues. The march drew from an international and national group of activists from community, labour, women, youth, academic, religious and environmental organisations. While these global days of action against climate change (and at times, against ‘COP’ itself) are traditional during the conference, it was the first time that activists from sub-Saharan Africa had the opportunity to demonstrate their importance in addressing climate change in southern Africa. Notable African activist groups in the march included ‘The Caravan of Hope’ convened by the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), which began in Burundi and gained publicity as it travelled to Durban. The march also included participants from the ‘climate train’, which made its way across South Africa in the days running up to COP17 raising awareness of climate justice issues. These African groups marched alongside international climate organisations such as Greenpeace and ‘350’ to demand action from governments around the world. The march culminated in the handing over of memoranda of understanding to the UNFCCC COP17 President and the UNFCCC Executive Secretary.(9)

‘One Million Climate Jobs’ – A South African movement

South Africa, the host country of COP17, demonstrated its strong traditions of trade unions fighting for social issues through its main civil society movement, ‘One Million Climate Jobs’, at the conference. The movement aimed to highlight the intersections between climate ‘justice’ with other pressing social issues in the country. Their primary focus was the need to address the overwhelming unemployment rate through jobs that support the environment, while simultaneously underpinning issues of extreme poverty, hunger, crime, substance abuse and domestic violence. By addressing these issues, the group says that in turn the health and education systems will be impacted and those who are vulnerable, such as women and children, will see results.(10) The organisation presents five steps to securing ‘one million climate jobs’. These are to: 1) produce electricity from wind and solar power; 2) invest in social infrastructure such as public transport, housing and publicly available waterworks; 3) utilise agro-ecology which is labour intensive, low in carbon emissions and respectful of traditional African practices by protecting biodiversity; 4) protect South Africa’s natural resources from outside influence and corruption to meet the basic needs of all people; and 5) provide basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation to redress the legacies of apartheid and build on the resilience of South Africans to withstand the effects of climate change.(11)

Conflict and controversy

COP17 was not without conflict and controversy, especially from a civil society perspective. Notably, there were alarming interventions by state-sponsored participants in the civil society proceedings. Citizens and climate action groups heavily documented these incidents. During the demonstration on the Global Day of Action, a group of approximately 300 protesters, dressed in green official COP17 volunteer uniforms (allegedly sponsored by the South African ANC government) tore up placards and allegedly physically threatened and attacked activists participating in the march. Shockingly, despite a large police presence there was a dearth of action taken by officials at the march. The disruption did not end there. Volunteers dressed in the same official COP17 tracksuits later tore up placards and physically confronted civil society members attending a seminar for civil society groups at Durban City Hall.(12)

Concluding remarks

At COP17 civil society faced an uphill battle for representation in a UN environment of official accreditation and strict security guidelines. The small space provided by the City of Durban, as well as the relatively remote location of Howard College signifies the separation between ‘official’ delegates and those working on the frontlines of climate change and environmental issues. It was promising to see a strong South African civil society representation that was uniquely tailored to South Africa’s needs through the One Million Climate Jobs campaign. While there was some undemocratic behaviour, for the most part civil society groups peacefully protested and demonstrated their dedication and commitment to climate change issues. As Patrick Bond of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Kwazulu-Natal pointed out about the conference, “because the structure is so much more global and adverse, we have to do a lot more locally and nationally to change that.” With South Africa’s history of social justice movements and the global consensus about climate change, it is possible that the fights against climate change are only beginning.

NOTES:

(1) Contact Katherine Austin-Evelyn through Consultancy Africa Intelligence’s Rights in Focus Unit ( rights.focus@consultanyafrica.com).
(2) Joselow, G., ‘African Group narrows climate focus in Durban’, Voice of America News, 8 December 2011, http://www.voanews.com.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Hormeku, T., ‘Durban must deliver equity’, Pambazuka News 555: Durban climate change conference: Africa demands equity and justice’, 2 December, 2011, http://www.pambazuka.org.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Kachingwe, N., ‘African civil society engagement with COP 17: One step closer to an African climate change and development agenda’, Heinrich Boell Foundation, 11 November 2011, http://www.boell.org.za.
(7) Climate Justice Now website, http://www.climate-justice-now.org.
(8) Ibid.
(9) Civil Society Committee for COP17 Website. http://www.c17.org.za.
(10) One Million Climate Jobs Now! Website, http://www.climate-change-jobs.org.
(11) Ibid.
(12) Loewe, M., ‘COP17 volunteers beat Zuma protestors in rowdy face off’, RDNA, 8 December 2011, http://reportingdna.org.

This year’s UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa, nicknamed “The Durban Disaster,” took the dismal track record of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to new lows. At one point, it appeared that the talks might actually collapse, but a small cabal of 20-30 countries held exclusive closed-door talks over the final days to create the Durban Platform, which carbon analyst Matteo Mazzoni described as “an agreement between parties to arrange another agreement.”

The details of the platform will not be completed until 2015 and will not be implemented until 2020, leading many to charge that the 2010s will be the lost decade in the fight to stop climate catastrophe. Pablo Solón, the former Ambassador to the UN for the Plurinational state of Bolivia, summed up the negotiations this way: “The Climate Change Conference ended two days later than expected, adopting a set of decisions that were known only a few hours before their adoption. Some decisions were not even complete at the moment of their consideration. Paragraphs were missing and some delegations didn’t even have copies of these drafts. The package of decisions was released by the South African presidency with the ultimatum, ‘Take it or leave it’.”

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, similarly condemned the outcomes: “An increase in global temperatures of four degrees Celsius permitted under this plan is a death sentence for Africa, small island states, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apartheid whereby the richest 1 percent of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%percent.”

Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the North America-based Indigenous Environmental Network, went even further, calling the outcome, “climate racism, ecocide, and genocide of an unprecedented scale.”

The UN, on the other hand, trumpeted the success of the conference at “saving tomorrow, today.” One of the great achievements touted by Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, was the renewed commitment to the Kyoto Protocol (KP):  “…countries, citizens, and businesses who have been behind the rising global wave of climate action can now push ahead confidently, knowing that Durban has lit up a broader highway to a low-emission, climate resilient future.”

Nature magazine took direct aim at this assertion: “It takes a certain kind of optimism—or an outbreak of collective Stockholm syndrome—to see the Durban outcome as a significant breakthrough on global warming…. Outside Europe…there will be no obligation for any nation to reduce soaring greenhouse-gas emissions much before the end of the decade. [Durban] is an unqualified disaster. It is clear that the science of climate change and the politics of climate change, now inhabit parallel worlds.”

The Third World Network concluded that the Durban Platform “provides for the ‘great escape’ from the Kyoto Protocol.” In fact, less than 24 hours after the Durban negotiations ended, Canada became the first country to formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. “Kyoto, for Canada, is in the past,” stated Peter Kent, Canada’s Environment Minister. Even while Canada was a signatory to the KP, its climate emissions skyrocketed due to the tar sands giga-project in Alberta.

While “legally binding,” the Kyoto Protocol’s goal of decreasing global climate emissions 5.2 percent below 1990 levels was unscientific and totally insufficient to mitigate climate change. But even these modest goals have gone unmet. Since it went into force in 2005 (eight years after it was ratified), global emissions have steadily increased. But the extension of the Kyoto Protocol for one more year kept alive the carbon markets, which had been on the brink of collapse due to the financial crisis and an oversupply of carbon credits.

On December 12, the Financial Times quoted Abyd Karmali, global head of carbon markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, that extending the dysfunctional Kyoto Protocol was a “Viagra shot for the flailing carbon markets.” Two days later, when the EU carbon market dropped to a record low, Reuters quoted one carbon trader stating, “It’s clear that Durban didn’t help and Canada’s announcement of its Kyoto Protocol withdrawal tells you what little countries think about international agreements.” This sentiment was echoed by the Philippines-based Peoples Movement on Climate Change: “Kyoto is essentially a corpse surviving on life support. With Japan, Russia and Canada joining the US [in rejecting] the Kyoto Protocol, its second round will cover just…15% of global emissions.”

Another significant roadblock to just and effective climate action is the Durban Platform’s text on trade. It ignores the historical responsibility of free market capitalism in causing the climate crisis by requiring climate-related decisions to be compliant with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The text is unequivocal: “the WTO is the competent body for multilateral trade rule-making and Parties which are members of the WTO have the responsibility to respect their WTO obligations when they adopt measures to address climate change…. Measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a…disguised restriction on international trade.”

As with the WTO, the UNFCCC has focused on the free market as a panacea. Their prioritization of voluntary market-based solutions has earned the UNFCCC nicknames like “the WTO of the Sky” and the “World Carbon Trade Organization.” Janet Redman of the Institute for Policy Studies explained the UNFCCC fixation on market-based solutions at a Climate Justice Now! press conference: “Banks that caused the financial crisis are now making bonanza profits speculating on the planet’s future. The financial sector, driven into a corner, is seeking a way out by developing ever newer commodities to prop up a failing system.”

The focus on market-based climate strategies has led to growing outrage and civil society action against the climate COPs. As a result, the UNFCCC is moving their next round of talks from South Korea, where they were originally planned, to Qatar.

 The Greatest Land Grab of All Time

A new scheme developed by the World Bank called “Climate Smart Agriculture” is designed to introduce soils and agriculture into the carbon market as part of the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) package. Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch explains the concept: “Climate smart agriculture will put a dollar value on the carbon in dirt so it can be sold on the market, and polluters can buy dirt offsets that will allow them to continue to pollute. Climate smart agriculture is a resource grab of monumental proportions. For those who can afford it—the financiers, fund managers, speculators and banks— markets in dirt will be a field day…. And if the trade in all that dirt is used as an excuse for ongoing pollution, we shall all soon be toast.”

In a press release, La Via Campesina, the largest global peasant farmer’s movement, denounced this as a scheme by the agro-industrial complex to tap into climate-mitigation profits and stated that: “Peasant agriculture is the way to feed people with healthy food and at the same time to guarantee a balance in the ecosystem and on the farm. The logic of carbon markets and trading should not be allowed to enter into agriculture.”

REDD has been hotly contested since it was first introduced into the climate mitigation package at the 2007 climate talks. Every year since, REDD has been pushed by those who wish to use the world’s forests as carbon offsets and protested by Indigenous Peoples and forest dependent communities that face potential forced relocation if their forest homelands are “protected,” under the REDD scheme.

Those that stand to benefit argue that REDD just needs a few safeguards to make it work, but others like the Indigenous Environmental Network insist that REDD must be rejected. Berenice Sanchez of the MesoAmerican Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network explains, “the supposed safeguards are voluntary, weak, and hidden. REDD-type projects are already violating Indigenous Peoples’ rights throughout the world.” In Durban, the Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Against REDD and for Life issued a press release on December 6 calling for an immediate moratorium on REDD, stating, “REDD threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest dependent communities and could result in the biggest land grab of all time.”

The alliance further warned that if expanded, “REDD [would] promote the privatization and commodification of forests, trees, and air through carbon markets and offsets from forests, soils, agriculture, and could even include the oceans. This could commodify almost the entire surface of Mother Earth.”

But REDD is not a threat only to communities in Southern countries where REDD projects are planned. Because REDD allows industries to purchase carbon offsets, it enables them to continue polluting communities in Northern industrialized countries. For this reason, communities impacted by REDD in both the North and South have joined forces to oppose REDD.

Kandi Mossett, of the Indigenous Environmental Network, explained how REDD impacts her community, “I grew up on a reservation [in the U.S.]. We are watching our people die. Heart attacks, cancers, asthma. Everybody is being affected by the dirty industries on the reservation—industries allowed to continue polluting because of REDD. I can’t tell you what it’s like to keep going to funerals when the coffins are getting smaller and smaller.”

Global Forest Coalition hosted a seminar in Durban on forest conservation and REDD, which released a statement highlighting the findings of recent studies that forest restoration and protection hinges on “recognition of Indigenous territorial rights, autonomy, traditional knowledge and governance systems; land reform, food sovereignty and sustainable alternative livelihood options.”

The People Speak Out

Social movements and peoples’ organizations planned a series of parallel events and protests during the two weeks of the UN climate COP. Occupy COP 17 held daily general assemblies across the street from the Climate Convention. At its opening Assembly on November 28, Occupy COP 17 released a statement: “Here in Durban, where Nelson Mandela cast his first vote and Gandhi held his first public meeting, we’re putting out an invitation to anyone who wishes to have their voice heard: to join a dialogue of how to ensure the present culture of 1 percent of the world’s population does no injustice to the future of the 99 percent.”

On Sunday, December 4, tens of thousands took to the streets. Labor marched side by side with farmers; banners addressed issues from waste incineration to Indigenous Peoples’ rights. The march stopped at the climate convention center where it was addressed by a series of speakers. Virginia Setshedi, a water privatization activist from Soweto, hosted the event and initiated impassioned calls of “Amandla” to which the crowd responded “Ngawethu” (power to the people).

The second week of the negotiations saw increased levels of protest and heightened reactions by UN Security. On Monday, December 5, UN Security tried to obstruct a permitted protest by the Global Alliance of Wastepickers. Security told them they could not display their signs and banners because they had not been pre-approved. The wastepickers held their protest anyway, dumping bags of garbage, then sorting it for recycling to demonstrate how wastepickers around the world eke out a living by salvaging recyclables from the trash to keep them out of landfills or incinerators. The wastepickers were part of a delegation organized by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

On Wednesday, December 7, the first day of the high level negotiations, six members of the Canadian Youth Delegation were “debadged” and ejected for doing an action inside the plenary against Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent. According to the Globe and Mail, “As [Kent] was speaking, six Canadian activists stood up and turned their backs on him in silent protest. They wore T-shirts saying: ‘Turn your back on Canada’ and ‘People before polluters’.” They received a round of applause.

In a statement about their protest, the Canadian youth said, “The actions of this government put the future of our country and our generation in danger. We won’t take that sitting down. As long as Canada is promoting industry over human rights, we will never see the climate agreement the world needs. It’s time to leave Canada behind.”

But it was not only UN security that conspired to suppress protest. On December 9—on what was supposed to be the final day of the negotiations—a contingent of young activists organized by Greenpeace and 350.org held a rally in the foyer of the plenary where negotiations were taking place. The Occupy-inspired rally of several hundred activists lasted for hours. After two hours or so, Will Bates from 350.org explained to the group that he and others had arranged with UN security for the protest to be allowed to leave the building and continue just outside where people could carry on as long as they wished. There was vocal opposition to this suggestion. People could feel the power of being in that hallway and were unhappy with the idea of leaving. But the mostly male leadership refused to cede control. “If you choose to stay,” Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace, warned, “you will lose your access badge and your ability to come back into this climate COP and any future climate COPs.” The question was posed about how many people planned to stay and dozens of hands shot up. The leadership then warned that anyone who refused to leave would be debadged, handed over to South African police, and charged with trespass.

In response a young South African man stood up and spoke out. “I am South African. This is my country. If you want to arrest anyone for trespass, you will start with me.” He then led the group in singing Shosholoza, a traditional South African folk song sung by migrant workers in the South African mines. The hallway resounded with the workers’ anthem.

When the occupation still refused to budge, Naidoo, who seemed determined to control the message of the protest, said, “Okay. I have spoken with security and this what we are going to do. We will remove our badge [he demonstrated this with a grand sweeping gesture] and hand it over to security as we walk out of the building. No one will be able to accuse us of trying to disrupt the negotiations.”

In response, Anne Petermann, co-author of this article said, “I have been attending these COPs since 2004. They are controlled by the 1 percent. I say, occupy the COP.” At that point, Petermann sat down on the floor and was joined by a dozen other people—mostly youth, including Keith Brunner and Lindsey Gillies, two members of the youth delegation and accredited by the Global Justice Ecology Project.

A young woman named Karuna Rana from the small island of Mauritius off the southeast coast of Africa also sat down, saying, “I am the only young person here from Mauritius. These climate COPs have been going for seventeen years. And what have they accomplished? Nothing. My island is literally drowning and so I am sitting down to take action—for my people and for my island. Something must be done.”

At that point, Naidoo told the occupiers, “When security taps you on the shoulder, you have to leave. We are going to be peaceful, we don’t want any confrontation.” He then led a group of protesters down the hall, handing his badge to UN security. Those who remained sitting on the floor were then taken by security, one by one, down the hallway and out of the building. Brunner and Petermann linked arms until security forcibly removed all of the media that remained. A group of reporters, including Amy Goodman and the crew of Democracy Now!, were pushed up the adjacent staircase against their will, out of view of the protest.

“They’re all yours,” said the UN security officers who then left. The South African police then loaded the activists into a police van and dropped them off at the “Speakers’ Corner” across the street, site of the Occupy COP 17 general assemblies.

The contentious negotiations went on until Sunday morning when the Durban Platform was officially adopted over the protests of many Southern countries. For many climate justice activists, this was the last nail in the coffin of the UNFCCC, which had made it abundantly clear that profit trumps survival. The action had been an empowering and inspiring contrast to the lifeless convention center where the most powerful countries of the world played deadly games with the future.

What Comes Next?

The UNFCCC was a product of the first Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This coming June, a new global Earth Summit is planned. This “UN Conference on Sustainable Development,” also to be held in Rio, is being called “Rio+20.” The official agenda is the transition to a global “green economy” and reform of the institutions charged with sustainable development. According to Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, “Far from cooking up a plan to save the Earth, the summit could instead be a deal to surrender the living world to a small cabal of bankers and engineers. Tensions are already rising between northern countries and southern countries [and] suspicion is running high that the ‘green economy’ is more likely to deliver a greenwash economy or the same old, same old ‘greed’ economy.”

The focus on the creation of a new “green economy” is effectively diverting attention from the real root causes of the ecological and social crises we are facing today. It is a rehash of the old argument that capitalism can be reformed and made responsible. But the proponents of the “green economy” take this position to an even greater extreme by claiming that the “services” provided by nature (clean air, pure water, etc) should be given an economic value. This would allow them to be bought, traded, or offset in order to “raise funds for conservation.”

As Thomas points out, however, “Indigenous Peoples and social justice movements who have fought against land displacement brought about by REDD+ are particularly alarmed that the same commodification approach is now being proposed to extend to soils, oceans, and more.”

The expansion of the free market into every corner of the natural world is receiving significant pushback. Organizations from around the world are mobilizing for Rio—some to try to influence the talks from the inside, but even more are focusing on a parallel Peoples’ Summit for Social and Environmental Justice Against the Commodification of Life and Nature in Defense of the Commons. This parallel summit is to be held simultaneously to and in the same city as Río+20. It is calling for the mobilization and coordination of struggles across the planet toward the development of a Permanent People’s Assembly.

According to organizers, this Assembly will “give voice to the women and men, young and old, who are resisting daily the advance of a development model that is by definition unsustainable: a model whose predatory inhumanity is trying to subject every aspect of life to the dictates of the market, always putting the profits of a few ahead of everyone’s buen vivir or well-being, while simultaneously trying to hide behind a green-washed face.”

Regarding how to address climate change effectively, Shannon Biggs of Global Exchange argues for a people’s approach that addresses the big picture: “As long as it was accepted that climate change is the problem, it made a lot of sense to turn to international institutions like the UN as the driver for change. In this sense, the utter failure of Durban can be quite freeing—if we choose it—because it means we can actually address root causes of climate change—our cultural and legal traditions of dominating the Earth for profit.”

“I am feeling very optimistic,” said Wahu Kaara, coordinator of the Kenya Debt Relief Network. “We are the people that sustain life. COP 17 has seen the death of the corporate climate conspiracy. Now we need to begin writing a new history and constructing a new world that values life and that stops the sale of life for profit. They have drawn the line. We can’t continue this way. We have to begin to walk in the direction of life—and the death of the corporate climate conspiracy is the first step in that walk.”

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Anne Petermann is the executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project and the North American Focal Point for Global Forest Coalition. Orin Langelle is the co-director/strategist for the Global Justice Ecology Project and a photojournalist. Photo 1 & 2: Protests at UN Climate Conference; photo by Lagelle/GJEP. Photo 3: Christina Figueres, exec secretary of UNFCCC speaks to crowd at the Day of Action; photo by Langelle/GJEP. Photo 4: Anne Petermann and Keith Brunner just before being removed from the Climate Conference; photo by Langelle/GJEP. Photo 5: Security officer tries to stop photo taking; photo by Jeff Conant/GJEP-GFC. Photo 5: Tom Goldtooth from Indigenous Environmental Network; photo by Langelle/GJEP.

To an audience of approximately 200 participants, the former Bolivian Ambassador to the UN advocated that it is time to change how we relate with nature and restore harmony with nature. We must respect the integrity of our ecosystems. Capitalism is based on a relationship with humans that is similar to our relationship with nature. Over time we humans have expanded rights of humans from landed men to blacks, minorities, women, children, etc.

The UN says don’t speak about rights because it creates conflict between nature and corporations and those who control economics of the world.  It is not only anthropocentric it is “capitalpocentric”. The first dimension of this thinking is that most legal systems preserve private property of the wealthy – corporations and wealthy capitalists who protect private property of 1% of the world.

The second dimension is the concerns of the ecosystems.  We need to change how we relate with nature.  We treat nature as a slave and do whatever we want with nature. When we ask ‘What does the river think about this project?’, it changes how we relate to nature.”

With respect environmental impact, Solon noted that last year the UN declared the human right to water. That took 60 years to achieve because it will affect what Bechtel and others can charge for drinking water.  The next step is the recognition that the river water itself has rights.  Water ecosystems have vital cycles we need to respect. We must change the way we think the way we relate to nature. Snow has memory.  If you want to know what was happening 500 years ago look to the glaciers.

He went on to add, “We all have indigenous roots. Indigenous peoples respect nature.  They ask for permission and forgiveness.   We must reclaim and remember what we have lost.”

At COP we are talking about green economy. Environmental services presents a new model , a new consensus on making profit with environmental services.  Unfortunately, the basis of this new model is the market. Some say let’s have green economy. The challenge we have is we need to come out of Durban with a clear call that we promote a new economy based on the recognition that Nature has Rights and oppose this market based green economy. Rights of Nature does not solve all problems but Rights of Nature says that a new world is possible.

We must fight the appetite against nature.  It is an appetite against science and spirituality.  The appetite against children and old people…the last years are very lonely. We must change the system and provide an alternative of new society.

Durban results will be worst than Copenhagen by 4 times.  The impact on Africa will be the worst.  Nature is suffering ecocide.

The current relation with nature is through the market. You have to buy it. The problem with green economy is that they are saying capitalism has failed because we have not put a price on nature. The logic is that you do not take care of what does not have a price.

We must change the paradigm of how we relate with Mother Earth.  It is not a problem of compensation it is of restoration.  That is true.

The green economy will include insurance so that if your environmental property is damaged you will be compensated.  We need a citizens tribunal for the environment.  We have to mobilize.

The planet can exist without humans but we are part of the system.   Regarding temperature, scientists are saying that this has not happened in the last 800,000 years.  We must preserve the biodiversity of the planet.

Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth is not written for humans … It is written for all life including the mountains, glaciers, everything. Why is it human rights have to be protected and the laws of nature can be ignored? When we speak about rights of Mother Earth we are also talking about human rights. There must be balance. We need a social movement that has a clear vision of both human rights and rights of nature.

The worst thing that could come out of Durban is an agreement with such weak numbers.  We need to come out of Durban with a clear proposal of a new alternative. And we must develop more actions.  Look at the Occupy Wall Street proposal.  Oct 15 Occupy Wall Street made an appeal and so many people responded.  It is very significant.  When we are fighting for employment we must also fight for Mother Earth.