We will save the markets, not the climate. That is how we can summarize the outcome of the 17th Conference of Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC) which took place in Durban, South Africa between 28 November and 10 December 2011. There is a striking contrast between the rapid response by governments and international institutions at the onset of the economic and financial crisis of 2007-08 in bailing out private banks with public money and the complete immobility they demonstrate in response to climate change. Yet this should not surprise us, because in both cases it is the markets and their accomplices in government who come out as winners.

There were two central themes at the Durban summit; first, the future of the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012 and the ability to put in place mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and, secondly, the launch of the Green Climate Fund approved at the previous summit in Cancun (Mexico) with the theoretical aim of supporting the poorest countries to face the consequences of climate change through projects of mitigation and adaptation.

After Durban, we can say that a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol remains empty of content. They postponed any real action until 2020 and ruled out any binding regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was the representatives of the most polluting countries, headed by the United States, who argued for an agreement based on voluntary reductions and opposed any binding mechanism. The Kyoto Protocol was already inadequate, and its strict application would lead to a small slowdown of global warming. But now we are on a path that can only make the situation much worse.

With regard to the Green Climate Fund, as a first step, rich countries pledged to contribute up to $30 billion in 2012 and 100 billion per year until 2020. In the first place these amounts are insufficient. Further, no source of public funds has been identified. Therefore, the doors are wide open to private investment run by the World Bank. As has already been noted by social movements, this is a strategy to “transform the Green Climate Fund into a greedy employers’ fund”. Once again they are making profits from the climate crisis and environmental pollution (investment banks have already developed a range of financial instruments to intervene in what is called the carbon market, emissions, etc.)

Another example of the commodification of the atmosphere was the endorsement by the United Nations of capture and storage of CO2 as a mechanism for so-called clean development, whereas this procedure is not intended to reduce emissions and will help to seriously deepen the environmental crisis, especially in developing countries that are candidates to become cemeteries of CO2 in the future.

The results of the Summit therefore cause an increase in green capitalism. South African activist and intellectual Patrick Bond denounced it like this: “The trend towards commodification of nature has become the dominant philosophical point of view in environmental governance.” In Durban, we repeated the scenario of the previous summits, such as Cancun in 2010 and Copenhagen in 2009, where the interests of large transnational corporations, international financial institutions and the elites of the financial world, both North and South, are given priority over the collective needs of the people and the future of the planet.

In Durban, not only our future was at stake, but also our present. The effects of the ravages of climate change are already being felt; including the release of millions of tons of methane in the Arctic, a gas 20 times more potent than CO2 in terms of atmospheric warming. Then there are the melting glaciers and ice caps which is resulting in a rise in sea level. These effects are already increasing the scale of forced migration. In 1995 there were approximately 25 million climate migrants; that number has doubled now, with 50 million. In 2050, this number could be between 200 million and 1 billion people displaced.

All indicators show that we are moving towards an uncontrolled global warming of more than 2°, which could rise to about 4° at the end of the century. Scientists believe this will most likely trigger unmanageable consequences such as a very significant increase of sea level. We cannot wait until 2020 to start taking action.

But with the lack of political will to tackle climate change, resistance does not, however, dry up. In a movement parallel to Occupy Wall Street and the wave of indignados which has reverberated round Europe and the world, many activists and social movements met in a daily forum a few meters from the official conference centre with their initiative called “Occupy COP17.” Participants ranged from farmers struggling for their rights to representatives of small island states like Seychelles, Grenada and the Republic of Nauru (Oceania, Micronesia) who are threatened by an imminent rise in sea level, to activists against debt who are demanding the repayment of ecological debt from the north to the south.

The movement for Climate Justice shows the need to focus our lives and the planet against the commodification of nature and the commons. Capitalism and its elites are unable to provide a comprehensive response to the socio-climate crisis which has led us to a productivist and predatory system. If we are not to exacerbate the climate crisis with all its consequences we must fundamentally change this system. The well-known environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey said very clearly: “The summit amplified climate apartheid, where the 1% richest in the world decided it was acceptable to sacrifice the remaining 99%.”

Amidst the deepening crisis of climate change and in the context of the COP17 negotiations that were taking place in Durban, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa convened its first International Seminar on Climate Change and Class Struggle on the 4th December 2011.

Climate change cannot be resolved separately from the resolution of the capitalist crisis. Capitalism is currently devouring its own children throughout the world. The crisis is a global class war. We need to link our struggles around climate change with global anti capitalist struggles.

Delegates at the Numsa International Climate Change Seminar called on government to review the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM’s) and other elements of carbon trade that are being championed by global finance institutions and believe that an emerging carbon market could potentially undermine the need for a socially owned Renewable Energy sector. We reject market based solutions to climate change. Negotiations are not delivering so far. There is a need for massive reductions, NOW. Agreement needs to be much faster than 2020, since people are dying now. COSATU must take a policy to block CDM’s and other market based climate change solutions.

We believe Just Transition must be based in worker controlled, democratic social ownership of key means of production and means of subsistence. There is a need for long term collective planning of wealth and production and how needs are met. Collective and democratic planning is needed in order to make far reaching interventions that are on the scale that is needed and at the pace it is needed, and doing so in such a way that workers avoid bearing all the costs of the transition.  Without this struggle over ownership, and the struggle for a socially owned renewable energy sector, Just Transition will become a capitalist concept, building up a capitalist “green economy”.

Within this, the question of ownership of hydrocarbons is central to the struggle against climate change. There is a need for nationalizing them. This will give political control of the industries and ensure that the economic revenue stays in countries where the fossil fuels are located. The example of Bolivia is key, and there is a need to learn from this experience.

There is a need for such nationalizations to be based on a state that is really of the whole people. It involves a political struggle.

The CC noted that, in the ongoing realities of a deepening global crisis of Capitalism, it was totally misplaced to expect any real movement on the Kyoto Protocol on the Environment and any significant agreements and on reductions in capitalist modes of production which pollute the Earth and heat it up.

While the CC welcomes the increasing emphasis being placed on a safer and greener Earth, the CC emphatically noted that the main enemy of the world today is the global system of capitalism which is profit driven and has no regard for the quality of our environment and now is moving fast to turn so-called Green Fields into new sites of private profit accumulation.

“It was very disappointing that our efforts to strengthen the vague Indigenous rights REDD safeguards from the Cancun Agreements evaporated as the Durban UN negotiations went on. It is clear that the focus was not on strong, binding commitments on Indigenous rights and safeguards, nor limiting emissions, but on creating a framework for financing and carbon markets, which they did. Now Indigenous Peoples’ forests may really be up for grabs,” says Alberto Saldamando, legal counsel participating in the Indigenous Environmental Network delegation.

Berenice Sanchez of the Mesoamerica Indigenous Women’s Biodiversity Network says, “Instead of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% like we need, the UN is promoting false solutions to climate change like carbon trading and offsets, through the Clean Development Mechanism and the proposed REDD+ which provide polluters with permits to pollute. The UN climate negotiation is not about saving the climate, it is about privatization of forests, agriculture and the air.”

Tom Goldtooth, Director of Indigenous Environmental Network based in Minnesota, USA does not mince words. “By refusing to take immediate binding action to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions, industrialized countries like the United States and Canada are essentially incinerating Africa and drowning the small island states of the Pacific. The sea ice of the Inupiat, Yupik and Inuit of the Arctic is melting right before their eyes, creating a forced choice to adapt or perish. This constitutes climate racism, ecocide and genocide of an unprecedented scale.”

Of particular concern for indigenous peoples is a forest offset scheme known as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Hyped as a way of saving the climate and paying communities to take care of forests as sponges for Northern pollution, REDD+ is rife with fundamental flaws that make it little more than a green mask for more pollution and the expansion of monoculture tree plantations. The Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD+ and for Life, formed at the Durban UN climate negotiations, call for an immediate moratorium on REDD+-type projects because they fear that REDD+ could result in “the biggest land grab of all time,” thus threatening the very survival of indigenous peoples and local communities.

“At Durban, CDM and REDD carbon and emission offset regimes were prioritized, not emission reductions. All I saw was the UN, World Bank, industrialized countries and private investors marketing solutions to market pollution. This is unacceptable. The solutions for climate change must not be placed in the hands of financiers and corporate polluters. I fear that local communities could increasingly become the victims of carbon cowboys, without adequate and binding mechanisms to ensure that the rights of indigenous peoples and local forested and agricultural communities are respected,” Goldtooth added.

“We call for an immediate moratorium on REDD+-type policies and projects because REDD is a monster that is already violating our rights and destroying our forests,” Monica González of the Kukapa People and Head of Indigenous Issues of the Mexican human rights organization Comision Ciudadana de Derechos Humanos del Noreste.

The President of the Ogiek Council of Elders of the Mau Forest of Kenya, Joseph K. Towett, said “We support the moratorium because anything that hurts our cousins, hurts us all.”

“We will not allow our sacred Amazon rainforest to be turned into a carbon dump. REDD is a hypocrisy that does not stop global warming,” said Marlon Santi, leader of the Kichwa community of Sarayaku, Ecuador and long time participant of UN and climate change meetings.

However, the cracks in the façade are starting to show. Carbon trading and offsetting, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) have failed to cut carbon emission, which reached record high levels in 2010, whilst further impoverishing the worlds poorest people, facilitating the largest land grab in history, destroying biodiversity and trampling the rights of indigenous communities.

In a new video released today, critics of the markets and even the architects and gatekeepers of climate finance admit to its failure.

Martin Hession, Chairman of the CDM Executive Board says: “We have had allegations in respect of a project in Honduras, people have been killed by people associated with the CDM project…. I don’t think the CDM can take on the job of being a human rights commission, I don’t think the CDM can take on the job of resolving every social problem in every country.”

This lack of looking at climate change in the wider context of climate justice is leading to gross human rights violations as well as environmental degradation. Those involved are economists and financiers who are just looking at the numbers and seeing if they create a positive balance in their books.

As Prof Michael Grubb, Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge says: “Having created a market-based mechanism to cut carbon a lot of people seem to expect it to behave in a non-market way and deliver poverty alleviation, deliver sustainable development co-benefits, but fundamentally; you create a market, it’s behaving the way markets do, it chases where are the most cost effective things, where can they make the most profits and I think that anyone who didn’t expect a market instrument to behave in that way didn’t understand what they were doing.”

So why are these carbon market mechanism now dominating the Un climate negotiations? Larry Lohmann, Co-founder, Durban Group for Climate Justice explains: ‘The biggest buyer of carbon pollution rights, these offsets bought in from countries in the Global South today, the biggest buyers are not actually polluting firms in Europe, they’re not actually the steel mills, they’re not actually the electricity generators, although of course they also do buy pollution rights, the biggest buyers are Wall St and the City of London, they’re financial actors. Why are they buying these pollutions rights? Obviously they’re not buying them because they need to offset the huge amounts of smoke coming out of their smoke stacks in the City of London, they’re buying them to speculate with, they’re buying them because profits are to be made in the trading of them. Carbon markets are not a way of solving the climate problem, the impetus for them is not coming from people who are suffering from climate change, the impetus for them is not coming from environmentalists even, the impetus is largely coming from people like Fortis Bank.’

As with all markets, the carbon market is subject to fluctuations and crashes. The price of carbon is already at an all time low, which has lead the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) to oppose the European Energy Efficiency Directive because they claimed it would have a negative effect on the price of carbon.

We now find ourselves in the insane situation where we have schemes designed to cut emissions being blocked by those whose ability to profit from climate change is predicated on emissions continuing and climate change getting worse.

There is no doubt that money is needed to tackle climate change and to help developing countries adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. But the volatility and single-minded nature of the markets is clearly not the way to do it. Developed nations must pay their historical climate debt, and this payment should not be in the form of loans, but rather in reparations. They may claim that there is no money available, but this is patently nonsense when trillions of dollars miraculously materialise when there own economies are in peril, only to vanish into the never-ending coffers of their financial institutions.

We support the People’s Agreement on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, agreed by more than 30,000 people from over 100 countries who took part in the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

We consider inadmissible that current negotiations propose the creation of new mechanisms that extend and promote the carbon market, for existing mechanisms have not resolved the problem of climate change nor led to real and direct actions to reduce greenhouse gases.

For more information please see: www.cop17carbonmarkets.com

Contact for interviews and comments:

Prof. Patrick Bond
Director, Centre for Civil Society, UKZN
+27 (0) 83 425 1401

Prof. Michael Dorsey
Dartmouth College
+27 (0) 79 863 8756

Andrew Butler
Occupy Cop17
+27 (0) 79 032 2347

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Millions of people worldwide make a living from waste picking. They collect, sort and process recyclables, reducing the amount of waste that is sent to landfills and saving valuable natural resources. Today, an increasing number of waste pickers are processing organic waste, diverting it from landfills and therefore reducing methane gas pollution. Waste pickers could further reduce GHG emissions given proper support.

To secure this support, a waste picker delegation has come to COP17 to raise their concerns surrounding current climate financing mechanisms and to advocate for more just alternatives that are directly accessible by waste pickers. Waste pickers from three different continents spoke against disposal technologies that undermine their livelihoods, such as incinerators and waste-to-energy projects.

Harouna Niass, a waste picker from Dakar, Senegal, spoke about the formation of Book Diomm Waste Pickers Association with 800 members, and the threat they face from CDM-backed landfill gas companies competing to extract methane and force the waste pickers off the landfill.

“Waste pickers should be included and given more respect because we take care of our environment,” Niass said.

Simon Mbata, with the South African Waste Pickers’ Association, discussed the importance of supporting waste pickers.

“We demand a Green Climate Fund that is directly accessible to waste pickers and an end of support for CDM projects which compete directly with us,” Mbata said.

Neil Tangri, with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, provided background on CDM-backed projects and the Green Climate Fund. Suman More, a waste picker with SWaCH cooperative in Pune, India, discussed incinerator alternatives.

About the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers:

The Global Alliance of Waste Pickers brings together waste pickers organizations from Africa, Asia and Latin America. To learn more about waste pickers’ experiences and to support fair and just solutions to climate change, visit our blog www.globalrec.org

To arrange interviews with waste pickers or for more information, contact Deia de Brito (+027) 072 388 7852/ info@globalrec.org

Read GAIA’s case studies on CDM projects on Municipal Waste Management:

The CDM incinerator in Chengdu Luo Dai, China: http://www.no-burn.org/downloads/luodai.pdf

The Bisasar landfill in Durban, South Africa: http://www.no-burn.org/downloads/bisasar.pdf

The Usina Incinerator in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil: http://www.no-burn.org/downloads/Rio-de-janeiro.pdf

We, more than hundred civil society organisations from 35 countries across all continents, call on Parties to acknowledge the urgency with which climate change needs to be addressed and to agree to ambitious and immediate emissions reduction targets that are in line with the Cancun Agreement to prevent global warming beyond two degrees Celsius. Kyoto Protocol parties must commit to a second commitment period at Durban. The legal and governance structure of the Kyoto Protocol is crucial to ensuring that mitigation commitments are legally binding and have environmental integrity.

We call on Environment Ministers to establish a mandate to agree to an equitable effort sharing approach between all countries by COP18. This mandate should be consistent with the equity principles of the UNFCCC, the historical responsibility of developed countries, and the right to sustainable development of developing countries. Particularly, developed countries should commit to binding targets of at least 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Moreover, loopholes must be closed so as not to undermine already weak targets. Damage from hot air (surplus AAUs) and non-additional carbon credits from Joint Implementation (JI) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) must be addressed. Double counting for new market and non-market mechanisms must absolutely be avoided and accountability for LULUCF needs to be strengthened.

Any market-based mechanism, including the CDM, must be part of a legal mechanism based on ambitious and binding emission reduction commitments. Without such targets, market-based mechanisms are rendered meaningless.

To address the integrity of carbon markets under the UNFCCC, following important policy changes are needed at COP17:

Human rights: Over the past months, CDM projects related to human rights violations have increased pressure on international policy makers to clarify the mandate to safeguards human rights under the UNFCCC. During Durban, Parties must acknowledge that the United Nations, including all its bodies, are required by the UN Charter to not allow human rights violations, which means that it will investigate any claims or evidence about emission reduction projects linked to human rights violations and that emission reduction projects that violate or risk violating human rights are prevented from earning carbon credits.

Appeals procedure: In Durban, Parties will agree on procedures, mechanisms and institutional arrangements for appeals against decisions of the CDM Executive Board. An appeals procedure in the CDM project approval process presents a critical opportunity to introduce coherence and quality control into the EB decision-making process. The right of stakeholders to appeal must be implemented as broadly as possible to address the rights of peoples and communities affected by CDM projects, and the wider impacts that flawed CDM projects have on global climate change and sustainable development.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in the CDM:  The eligibility of CCS projects in the CDM will be discussed in Durban. CCS in the CDM means exporting unproven and risky technologies to developing countries and allowing oil companies to generate millions of carbon credits from enhanced oil production. CCS must remain ineligible until all of the environmental, legal and safety conditions for CDM inclusion have been properly addressed and resolved.

Industrial gases: In Durban, Parties will again discuss if new HCFC-22 facilities should be eligible under the CDM to destroy their HFC-23. However, the high profits of industrial gases offset projects, such as HFCs have been shown to create perverse incentives in the context of the CDM and JI, and should be addressed through non-market-based mechanisms, such as the Montreal Protocol.  Ultimately, HFC emissions must be quickly and effectively reduced.

New market mechanisms: In Durban, Parties may agree on a framework for new non-market based and market based mechanisms. New market mechanisms must create a net decrease of emissions. Any framework must include a core set of principles that governs the overall interaction of different mechanisms. These include stringent and binding rules to ensure uniform quality criteria and no double counting, as well as strong safeguards that ensure sustainable development, uphold environmental treaties and the Declaration of Human Rights.

CDM reform: Although the future of the CDM should depend on the future of the second commitment period of the KP, Parties will continue their work on reforming the CDM in Durban. Following changes are needed to address serious shortcomings:

• Additionality: Additionality rules must be strengthened to limit the number of free-riders. In particular, large infrastructure CDM projects which are clearly non-additional (e.g. coal power projects and large hydro projects) must be excluded from the CDM.
• Human rights: It must be clarified that CDM projects that violate or risk violating human rights are ineligible for registration or will be suspended. Designated National Authorities must be allowed to withdraw letters of approval in case of violations of any of the UN principles or of national legislation.
• Sustainable development: Sustainable development co-benefit indicators and a ‘do no harm’ assessment must be established for CDM projects to avoid negative impacts of CDM projects.
• Monitoring: The revised reporting and verification standard must include clear criteria to monitor and verify sustainable development claims made in the PDD, to ensure such claims are actually realised.
• Stakeholder consultation: The revised validation and verification standard and project standard must include strong guidelines for improved stakeholder involvement at local and global levels, including rules and guidelines on how stakeholders can raise issues during the implementation of CDM projects.
• Appeals procedure: A strong grievance mechanism must be implemented swiftly to give civil society organisations the possibility to appeal against decisions by the CDM Executive Board.

Sincerely,

105 Civil Society Organisations from 35 countries on all continents:

In the letter, they express concern about “the serious social and environmental problems brought by these projects” and urges the national institution designated to “review the “sustainable” certification criteria for landfills and incinerators under the CDM in order to exclude them immediately and definitively”. They add that these projects “are not only a source of pollution and social exclusion, but also displace more sustainable, more cost-effective options, that promote the work of informal recyclers that collect and separate waste manually in our countries. ”

In each country there are the so-called Designated National Authorities (DNA), which have responsibility for approval of projects seeking certification in the Clean Development Mechanism, which operates under the Kyoto Protocol.

In relation to the landfills, the organizations claim that through CDM projects “the burial of waste that could be recycled or composted is being supported, with serious consequences for the environment and recyclers communities”; a significant increase in methane generation is being artificially promoted; and the approval of laws requiring the capture of methane at these facilities to prevent explosions, fires and poisoning resulting from the accumulation of gases is being inhibited.

With regard to incineration and waste-to-energy derivations, GAIA members expressed that “it is unacceptable that (these facilities) receive financial resources to mitigate climate change”, arguing that “according to the Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), power generation from municipal waste incineration emits more CO2 per unit of energy than from coal fired power, and indeed, much higher than those that occur in a context of reduced waste generation, reuse and recycling of these materials. ”

They add that “the energy that could be generated by burning or similar processes is much lower than which could be conserved through recycling, virtually for all the different materials”, and that its capital and operating costs “are several times higher than for conventional generation technologies such as coal-based thermal and nuclear power.”

For these reasons, the signatories call on their governments to support “a fair climate financing regime, without the predominance of carbon markets, and through a global fund guided by considerations of equity and international responsibility on climate change, without the intervention of international banks and financial institutions. ”

Finally, they claim “available public and climate funds to implement public policies and programs aimed to reducing and separating waste at source, as well as to reuse and recycling; and promoting social inclusion in the activities associated with waste management, particularly the dignity and formalization of urban recyclers, fostering the internalization of positive environmental impacts.”

Contact:

Eduardo Giesen
Latinamerican Coordination GAIA
eduardo@no-burn.org
+56 9 9163.0995

Organizations signing the letter:

Argentina

• 56 organizations of Coalición Ciudadana Anti-incineración (complete list below)
• FUNAM
• Ecositio
• BIOS
• Centro Ecologista Renacer
• Cipoleños Unidos
• Ecos de la Sociedad
• Taller Ecologista

Brazil

• Coleta Seletiva Brasil-Canadá
• Instituto POLIS

Chile

• Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales (OLCA)
• RAP-AL Chile

El Salvador

• CESTA / Amigos de la Tierra El Salvador

Mexico

• Revuelta Verde / Rising Tide México
• Otros Mundos Chiapas / Amigos de la Tierra México
• Crecimiento Ciudadano Organizado CRESCO
• Frente Ciudadano en Defensa de las Áreas Naturales de Tlalpan
• Jubileo Sur México
• Fronteras Comunes
• Centro de Análisis y Acción en Tóxicos y Alternativas (CAATA)

Uruguay

• RAP-AL Uruguay
• REDES / Amigos de la Tierra Uruguay

Members of Coalición Ciudadana Anti-incineración de Argentina:

Asociación Vecinal Moronense (Morón, Buenos Aires), Centro Ecologista Renacer (Villa Constitución, Santa Fe), Taller Ecologista (Rosario, Santa Fe), Greenpeace Argentina (Ciudad de Buenos Aires), FUNAM (Córdoba), BIOS Argentina (Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires), , Centro de Tecnologías Apropiadas de Argentina (Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires), Comisión Permanente de Protección de Nuestro Medio Ambiente, (Zárate, Buenos Aires), Alihuen (Santa Rosa, La Pampa), ONG Nuevo Ambiente (La Plata, Buenos Aires), Verde x Gris, nodo Sta Cruz (Los Antiguos, Santa Cruz), Movimiento Antinuclear de Chubut (Trelew, Chubut), Taller de Comunicación Ambiental (Rosario, Santa Fe), Acción por la Biodiversidad (Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires), Eco Sitio (Villa María, Córdoba), Grupo Ecologista Génesis (Rosario, Santa Fe), Asociación Argentina de los Médicos por el Medio Ambiente (Ciudad de Buenos Aires), Agrupación Cruzada X la Vida (Lanas, Buenos Aires), Asociación Amigos de la Vida (Sunchales, Santa Fe), Fundación por un Mundo Mejor (Formosa, Formosa), Asociación Ecologista de Zavalla “Compromiso” (Zavalla, Santa Fe), PROTEGER (Santa Fe), Asociación Civil Crecer Reconquista (Reconquista, Santa Fe), Agrupación Ambientalista Conciencia (Laguna Paiva, Santa Fe), Reconciliarnos con la Tierra (Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires), Vecinos Autoconvocados de Santo Tomé (Santo Tomé, Santa Fe), Centro de Atención Primaria Ambiental (Marcos Juárez , Córdoba), Fundación Ambiente Total (Resistencia, Chaco), Grupo Ambientalista Coquena de Villa Jardín de Reyes (San Pablo de Reyes, Jujuy), Alejandro Canderoli (Remedios de Escalada, Buenos Aires), Sociedad de Fomento Dock Sud (Avellaneda, Buenos Aires), Silvia Latrubesse/ Juan Carlos Acuña (Salto, Buenos Aires), Multisectorial por la preservación de las Sierras de Tandil (Tandil, Buenos Aires), Ing. Mario Avila (Las Catitas, Mendoza), Horacio Huerta (Salta), Asociación Ecológica de Lanús (Lanús, Buenos Aires), Estela Ambrosetti (Carrodilla, Mendoza), Agrupación Vecinos de Villa Allende contra la cremación e incineración de residuos peligrosos (Villa Allende, Córdoba), Grupo de Investigación sobre Medio Ambiente (Rosario de la Frontera, Salta), Semillas al viento (La Matanza, Buenos Aires), A.R.A. Agrupación Regina Ambiental (Villa Regina, Río Negro), Grupo Ecologista Bogado (Coronel Bogado, Santa Fe), Grupo de vecinos de Fray Luis Beltrán y Capitán Bermúdez (Fray Luis Beltrán, Santa Fe), Asociación Ambientalista Piuké (Bariloche, Río Negro), Sociedad ecológica regional (El Bolsón, Río Negro), M´BIGUÁ, ciudadanía y justicia ambiental (Paraná, Entre Ríos), Norma Azcárate (San Fabián, Santa Fe), AGMER filial Crespo (Crespo, Entre Ríos), Ricardo Barbieri (Tigre, Buenos Aires), Emilce Leone (Tres Arroyos, Buenos Aires), Cipoleños Unidos por el Ambiente (Cipolletti, Río Negro), Mesa Amplia por el Cierre Definitivo de Marcos Martini S.A. (Marcos Paz, Buenos Aires), Vecinos Autoconvocados contra la contaminación de CEAMSE de González Catán (La Matanza, Buenos Aires), Basura Cero Bahía Blanca (Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires), Liliana Tonini (San Pedro Buenos Aires), Ecos de la Sociedad (Puerto General San Martín, Santa Fe)

Despite successive failures related to market based solutions proposed in the last almost 20 years of UNFCCC negotiations, some governments, and Brazil among them, keep insisting on the promotion of market mechanism in the legal framework as a solution to climate crisis, as well as on the road to green economy frame proposed to be discussed at Rio+20 in June next year.

Since its creation in 1992, the objective of the Climate Convention is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that it will not impose any risks on the natural systems of the planet in accordance to UNFCCC text “to achieve a stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. This objective has not been achieved so far. On the contrary, the only legally binding instrument, the Kyoto Protocol, defines that a lowest cut of only 5.2% (related to the year 1990) of emissions from Northern countries, for a period that ends in 2012, is at the risk of not having its second commitment approved.

It was shown, since the creation of Kyoto, that its focus, instead of attending the objective of the Convention, was to institutionalize the carbon markets in the context of United Nations and of the domestic policies in the signatory countries. It is more and more evident that the creation of the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) – as part of the flexibility mechanisms of Kyoto – and its implementation in developing countries has been increasing the local negative impacts where the projects are placed, widening situations of environmental injustice and human rights violations while not contributing effectively to reduce emissions.

The big beneficiaries of the climate crisis and of the policies approved in the multilateral context are then the big corporations and the international financial system, which has been renewed through instruments created by the Convention. This is the case of the World Bank, that gained new breath in the last years from the climate issue and, more recently, from being chosen as the trustee of the Green Fund for the climate of the UNFCCC, even with the opposition presented by some countries and the international civil society. Currently, after the creation of REDD+ mechanism under the COP16 agreement of Cancun, the carbon markets were consolidated as the main bet for financing proposals for REDD+.

Organizations and social movements who are members of the Belem Letter Group are fighting for environmental and climate justice, rejection of REDD+ as a market mechanism and its use to offset emissions from developed countries. Carbon markets and REDD+ are false solutions to the climate crisis. They go in the opposite direction needed of Northen countries to commit to their historical debts and responsibilities towards Southern countries and peoples, and to reduce their emissions. They also transfer the focus of discussion to the forests instead of fossil fuel burning which is the real cause for current climate changes.

While Brazil intends to present to the world an example of transition towards the so called green economy, in the domestic context, we have seen processes that demonstrate exactly the opposite to the presented discourse.

On one hand, we see the dismantlement of the national environmental legislation caused by the flexibility of the Forest Code, the Project Law 195/2011 about REDD+ and the Project Law 792/2007 about contracts of payments for environmental services. These are proposals that go beyond the model of incentives promoted by public policies and go towards the commercialization of biodiversity and of common goods.  They strengthen the carbon markets on the national level through the creation of tittles that are representative of carbon stocks (Certificate of Emission Reductions by Deforestation and Forest Degradation, CREDD, name in Portuguese) or of forest and biodiversity (Quotes of Environmental Reserve, as from the current proposal for the new Forest Code).

On the other hand it is a streamlined process of the carbonization of economy. It is provoked by the increasing emissions from the energy sector due to the growing participation of thermoelectric power plants in national energy and due to the exploration of pre-salt oil reserves, which will produce a threefold increase of the oil and gas production within the next ten years.

The Group questions how Brazil will meet its own voluntary targets presented in Copenhagen during the COP15 and approved in the National Policy of Climate Change Law, with the considerable increase of deforestation in Amazonia and in the Cerrado biome as a result of the pre approved measures of the new Forest Code.

Finally, for these reasons, the Belem Letter Group denounces several of the policies and laws being constructed and awaiting to be finalized by Rio+20, in June next year, without debate within Brazilian society and especially without the participation of grassroots organization and social movements. The construction of a legal/institutional framework in this sense can generate a fait accompli and to make any bargain in the international climate negotiations impossible. It can also undermine any future initiatives of protection of national and peoples sovereignty over the territories, as well as of policies that in fact face the climate change out of the market. 

We reject a forest-centric climate regime!

We want environmental and climate justice!

We defend the protection of the rights of the forests and of the forest peoples!

No to REDD+!

Sign: ABA – Associação Brasileira de Agroecologia; Amigos da Terra Brasil; ANA Amazônia; AS-PTA; Articulação Pacari; CEAPAC – Centro de Apoio a Projetos de Ação Comunitária – PA; CEPEDES – Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas para o Desenvolvimento do Extremo Sul/BA; CIMI – Conselho Indigenista Missionário; FAOR – Fórum da Amazônia Oriental; FAMCOS – Federação das Associações de Moradores e Organizações Comunitárias de Santarém – PA; FASE;FECAP – Federação das Entidades comunitárias do Estado do Amapá – AM; Fetraf Brasil – Federação dos Trabalhadores/as da Agricultura Familiar; Fetraf Sul   ; Fórum Carajás; Fórum Mudanças Climáticas e Justiça Social; Instituto Terramar; INESC – Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos; Instituto Mais Democracia; Jubileu Sul Brasil; Justiça nos Trilhos – MA; MACA – Movimento Anti-capitalista Amazônico ; MMC – Movimento de Mulheres Camponesas; MMM- Marcha Mundial das Mulheres; MPA – Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores; MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra; Organização das Associações Comunitárias da Reserva Extrativista Tapajós-Arapiuns/ Tapajoara – PA; Rede Brasil sobre Instituições Financeiras Multilaterais; RBJA – Rede Brasileira de Justiça Ambiental; STTR Xapuri – AC; Terra de Direitos; Via Campesina Brasil

Barcelona, 21^st November 2011. A new report released today by GAIA – Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, reveals serious flaws in CDM-backed Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) projects. Most of these projects support incineration technology to burn waste and landfill gas systems (LFG) to bury waste, which ultimately increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and displace informal workers communities’ livelihoods, amongst other problems. By buying CDM carbon credits from these projects, the EU is contradicting its own policies on waste management, which prioritize recycling, pollution controls and waste diversion from landfills. The report calls for a EU ban on CDM carbon credits in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS).

The report released today “The European Union’s double standards on waste and climate policy” shows severe contradictions between the European Union (EU) climate and waste policies that needs to be recognized and eliminated without delay. On the one hand, the EU policies on municipal solid waste (MSW) management prioritize waste reduction, reutilisation, and recycling. Furthermore, MSW management in Europe is successfully taking steps towards more organic waste diversion from landfills and increasing recycling rates, in the spirit of increasing the efficient use of natural resources.

On the other hand, EU climate policies are built around the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) to comply with its emission reductions targets. This scheme allows member states to buy carbon credits, known as Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), generated by projects developed under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) — including landfill gas systems (LFG) and waste incinerators, the very disposal methods at the bottom of the Waste Hierarchy.

The report shows that the CDM creates a perverse incentive to landfill as much waste as possible, in contradiction to the Landfill Directive (1999/31/EC). Since the CDM promotes landfill gas capture on a profit-basis, i.e., the more gas one captures, the more profitable the project will be, landfilling of MSW—especially organics—is ultimately encouraged in this counterproductive climate mitigation strategy. In fact, one third of CDM-backed LFG systems are pure waste disposal without resource or energy recovery – those LFG projects that only flare.

“At least 64% of CDM-backed LFG projects scrutinised by GAIA plan to stay open and receiving MSW during their crediting period”, said Mariel Vilella, GAIA’s Climate Policy campaigner. “In this way, the waste keeps being landfilled and it produces the methane emissions that later will be captured, flared, and finally certified as emission reductions by the CDM. Consequently, emissions will actually increase, at the same time as more carbon credits are earned for supposed reductions”, Vilella added.

In its turn, CDM support for incineration provides an incentive to burn recyclable and compostable materials. “This contradicts the waste hierarchy established by the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC and the EU Resource Efficiency Roadmap, which gives priority to waste prevention and reuse of materials before energy recovery or incineration”, said Joan-Marc Simon, GAIA’s Europe Coordinator.

“By buying carbon credits from CDM-backed MSW projects, the EU is actually fostering the generation of toxic emissions, jeopardising current practices of recycling and composting, and filling up the EU ETS with carbon credits that are in reality “non-additional”, said Vilella. “Ultimately, the EU is supporting waste management projects in developing countries that would be illegal on European soil”, concluded Simon.

The continued purchase of CDM carbon credits into the EU creates a double standard on waste and climate policies that needs to be addressed without delay, by excluding such carbon credits from the EU ETS.

 About GAIA:

GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 650 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries whose ultimate vision is a just, toxic-free world without waste incineration or landfill.