PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What role will Environmental Rights Action (ERA) and Friends of the Earth International be playing at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP17) in Durban? What will you be pushing for?

NNIMMO BASSEY: While there is a generally low level of expectation from the Durban Conference of the Parties (COP17), we see it as a great moment to stand with impacted peoples and the environmental justice movement and call for a climate tackling regime that understands the depth of the crises and the fact that the impacts are already manifesting. We will push for polluting countries to cut emissions at source and not through offsets and related market mechanisms that help polluters profit from the damage they do. We will push for legally binding emissions reduction targets to ensure that temperature increase is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. ERA will demand the recognition and payment of the accumulated climate debt due to centuries of exploitation and colonisation of the atmosphere.

Friends of the Earth International will particularly bring to light the negative impacts of carbon markets, dirty energy, dams, agrofuels, plantations/industrial agriculture – all funded or potentially fundable through the carbon markets. We will also highlight land grabs and related issues. Details of our full focus are still being fine-tuned. As you know, we have member groups in 76 countries and each of these is autonomous so we invest time and energy in consultations. You will hear of our detailed plans once they are ready.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Judging from the outcome of the COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico, obtaining a multi-lateral agreement through which those most to blame for causing climate change take responsibility for the damage they are causing to those most affected by climate change, is unlikely to happen at COP17 in Durban, South Africa. But even though this is expected to be the case, why is the Durban event still important for climate justice activists?

NNIMMO BASSEY: You are right to say that we may not expect an equitable outcome from Durban. Nevertheless, Durban will be a great moment to intensify campaigns against the business-as-usual manner [in which] the negotiations have been conducted. Durban has a rich history that will inspire the climate justice movement to get stronger. Remember that Gandhi’s non-violent resistance was more or less birthed in Durban. Some of the most intense organising against apartheid also occurred in Durban. Currently, Durban is the hub of the environmental justice activism in South Africa. This has not occurred accidentally. Durban has some of the most polluted neighbourhoods in the country, with highly polluting refineries and chemical factories located there.

The building rage on the streets of Durban will inspire the Climate Justice movement. For me, the need to resist the planned offshore exploration for crude oil off the coast of Durban, an act that is bound to rub salt in raw injuries, holds an additional pull.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Hypothetically speaking, what in your mind would be the key aspects of a just global climate deal and why?

NNIMMO BASSEY: Getting polluters to accept to cut emissions at source and to the extent required by science to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. A regime of voluntary targets would simply translate to roasting Africa and sinking the small island states.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: At other COP events, activists have rallied against market-based solutions such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). What kind of ‘false solutions’ should we be watching out for in Durban and why?

NNIMMO BASSEY: Durban will likely build on the same discredited CDM. We should expect to see more vicious forms of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) that will intensify the land grabs already troubling Africa, Asia and Latin America. In deed, we should expect the addition of soil carbon capture into the matrix. This will aid speculators to begin a pattern of soil grab that will push small-scale farmers into more or less barren lands, thus ensuring an increase of hunger and malnutrition in vulnerable communities.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The north will be pushing for the ‘green economy’: How far is this ‘green’ the colour of dollar bills, and what should be the components of a real green economy?

NNIMMO BASSEY: This is a rather funny but serious question. The green economy concept being pushed through the Rio+20 (Unite Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) discussions and the climate negotiations is template for green washing. It will help brown sectors such as the petroleum and chemical sectors to claim they are green through embarking on token projects. The ‘green economy’ is a worrisome concept that needs careful interrogation, otherwise what we will have is the ignoring of the intrinsic value of nature and the formulation of fictional exchange values on natural systems for profit and to the detriment of the people.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Can you give any recent examples where you have seen the on-the-ground impact of climate change for Africa? You recently wrote about flooding in Nigeria. What other evidence is emerging and what has been the impact.

NNIMMO BASSEY: The droughts and famine in the Horn of Africa is a very clear example. The tragic consequences are all avoidable if the countries involved had developed and built resilience and coping mechanisms. Rain failure occurred over a period of three years, but the governments and institutions kept blind eyes to that. Analysts saw that due to the warming of the Indian Ocean, rain that ought to fall on the land is now mostly falling on the ocean. This is a clear signal of more disasters to come.

Crop loss and poor harvests are clear evidence already noticed in some areas.

Desertification is impacting at least 13 states in Northern Nigeria and this is expanding. Coastal erosion due to sea level rise is a reality.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The idea of climate debt – that developed countries who have caused the damage to the environment owe developing countries – has been promoted by Bolivia and progressive civil society movements. But at the same time the UK, through the World Bank, is lending money to developing countries for adaptation, locking these countries further into debt. What’s your view of this?

NNIMMO BASSEY: Countries have made the issue of funding adaptation a major point of the climate negotiations, with proposals and designs for climate funding taking huge and unending chunks of time. Climate debt has been a campaign point for environmental and social justice activists for some time now. The promotion of the idea by countries such as Bolivia indicates a possibility of building more points of agreement between states and citizens. Climate debt was also captured as a major demand at the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 2010.

If climate debt is accepted and paid, it will right many historical wrongs, provide funds for adaptation and for building of resilience in vulnerable territories and nations/regions. It would also help exploiters and polluters to seek just ways of doing business and of relating to others. It would require a rethinking of our global accounting books. It would show that the so-called poor countries have credited and subsidised the rich nations and that the ‘rich’ nations are actually the debtor nations. The question of lending money to developing countries for adaptation would not arise as the payment of the debt would suffice and probably leave a surplus.

In fact the whole idea of adaptation without halting the causative factors driving the problem to which nations must adapt is unacceptable. The position seems to be that we cannot do anything about climate change and that all we can do is to adapt to it. The fundamental driver of the argument is business as usual. This has made some see climate change not as a crisis but as a business opportunity.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Bolivia has published a declaration on the rights of Mother Earth and even established a ministry responsible for protection of those rights. What is the likelihood of similar declarations in Africa, and what will it take to make that work?

NNIMMO BASSEY: First of all we must applaud Bolivia for taking these steps. To a lot of people the right of Mother Earth is something idealistic and impractical. Even the concept raises barriers that many cannot cross because of the preponderance of adversarial legal systems in the world. When they hear of the rights of nature or the rights of Mother Earth, they wonder how can Mother Earth demand the protection of her rights. If we see ourselves as being children of the Earth, of belonging to her and not owning her, that argument should not arise. Children can speak for their mother.

Will African nations make similar declarations? My answer to that is a yes. They may be slow to come around, but the recognition of the rights of Mother Earth provides one of the best platforms for the defence of the African environment. It would provide the basis for citizens to fight against destructive actions in their countries. At present even environmental rights are merely national objectives in some national constitutions and are not justiciable. This is the case with Nigeria, for example. The best option for seeking justice has been through the use of the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights ratified and domesticated by many African countries.

Bolivia is equally promoting the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth by the United Nations. If and when this gets to be adopted, African nations will eventually come around to consider and accept this platform. This is an opportunity for socio-political, environmental and other movements on the continent to campaign for the adoption of this important and fundamental right.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Previous climate meetings such as Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancún in 2010 have faced strong criticism for the tendency to silence the voices of Southern countries and civil society organisations. Do you feel that this situation will have improved for Durban, or will it be ‘business as usual’?

NNIMMO BASSEY: The South African government has dubbed COP17 ‘the people’s COP’. We wait to see what will happen. I expect that these voices will be very loud in Durban. Will they be heard? That is another question. In Copenhagen we were muffled. In Cancun we were spatially dispersed. In Durban there may be another structural barrier that the clever neoliberal system is always capable of erecting. We will be pleasantly surprised if the dominant voices will allow others voices to be raised and heard.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: While much of the global South faces the same challenges in relation to climate change, it is often difficult to achieve political unity and speak with one voice. Do you see strong political unions developing between countries around the issue, or are countries likely to push their own positions?

NNIMMO BASSEY: Strong political unions will eventually emerge, but not in Durban. There will still be nations out there with broken drums to ensure that discordant tunes emerge. The game of these truce breakers is that they thrive on crumbs that fall from the tables of powerful countries. It is unfortunate that in place of principled stands for justice and equity, Southern leaders prefer to kowtow to powerful nations, extend empty bowls for crumbs and wear ‘vulnerability’ as a badge of honour. Countries will be glad to be invited into the so-called green rooms and made offers of aid or some other assistance.

Having said that, it must be agreed that efforts have been made by civil society to show the existing negotiating blocks the convergence of their needs and why they should stand together for the sake of the planet. Unfortunately, nations appear to gravitate towards narrow interests that do not even reflect the desires of the mass of their citizens. It appears that strong, united voices will emerge when leaders learn to listen to and hear the led.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: How would you describe the general level of understanding of climate change within government departments tasked with representing their citizens at the COP17?

NNIMMO BASSEY: Unfortunately the level of understanding of climate change within government departments is not based on rigorous interrogation and understanding of the issues. Even where there are excellent technocrats and negotiators within governments, a firewall seems to exist between these and the policymakers. This dissonance erases what may have been gained from the use of available knowledge in such departments. This arises sometimes because the technocrats build knowledge over time. They also build relationship with knowledgeable civil society actors who enrich their resource base over time. The policymakers and ministers on the other hand have less experience on the job, are changed frequently and may represent narrow interests that do not coincide with those of the citizens. This will play out once more at COP17, unfortunately.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: In your view, how successful have African civil society and governments been at communicating the challenges around climate change to wider society across the continent?

NNIMMO BASSEY: Civil society groups through campaigns, mobilisations and community meetings have made good efforts in communicating climate challenges. I am aware of efforts being made with youths and children as well as with women groups. Much more needs to be done by government. People are still being taken by surprise by climate change impacts. The people are not being prepared for the huge challenges rolling down their way. Much more work remains to be done at all levels.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What role will the African Union have in the meeting?

NNIMMO BASSEY: The African Union ought to have a pivotal role in working for the attainment of the aspirations of the peoples of Africa during the meeting. Africa is the least ready to cope with the impacts of climate-induced catastrophes. Yet it is not clear that the AU will be helpful at the meeting. Information that has emerged from sources such as WikiLeaks have shown how compromised some leaders in the AU climate change efforts are. There is no reason for us to be hopeful that the AU will push a strong and principled position that would help the continent. We can look forward to hear pleas for charity rather than clear demands for climate debt to be paid and for the rich nations to stop fuelling conflicts on the continent that further reduce our capacity to stand the climate challenges.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: While media and mainstream discussions around energy consumption in relation to climate change tend to focus on individual use, it is often the activity of corporations which commands a considerable slice of national energy use. What scope will the COP have for debating corporate consumption of energy?

NNIMMO BASSEY: That discussion will be on the outside, in the civil society spaces. These are the spaces where actions for the future will be construction. That is where the fundamental causes of climate change will be dissected and real solutions like pushing for a post fossil civilisation will be made. On the inside of the COP the emphasis will remain on how to give corporations the best conditions for investment. It will be the space for the cheaper access to electricity for corporations. They will seek for and possibly receive the basis for more fossil fuels and related devious subsidies to be guaranteed the corporations through having their ally, the World Bank, playing central roles in climate finance architecture. It will be a platform for the formulation of more carbon offsetting and trading mechanisms to allow corporations intensify their polluting binge while piling up their profits from the ecological and human misery they leave in their wake.

Recently the UN began the process of engaging the eight biggest electricity companies in the world to advice on how to expand access through the Private-Public Partnerships that the UN sees as the solution to the energy poverty in the world. The space will provide the right ‘financial risk-reward atmosphere’ for the companies and help consolidate the position of existing power companies and more to come!

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Much like the threats posed by GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in relation to the global food system, activists are increasingly wary of the corporate backing given to drastic technological solutions such as geoengineering of the sky. Will there be discussion of these risky technologies at the COP?

NNIMMO BASSEY: There will likely be discussions of the risky technologies at the COP especially where they move into discussions on new sorts of REDD. They may not mention geo-engineering by name, but generic discussions will pave the way for carbon credits to be earned through soil carbon storage, for instance. In fact, there are attempts to push genetically engineered crops into the environment in Africa in the guise of supplying climate ready crops that can withstand severe weather events. The false claims of the modern biotechnology continue unabated, driven by huge corporate interests and their shoe-shining governments.

There will be frank and intense debates about these risky technologies at the COP, but, again, these will be mostly on the outside. A big challenge for this and future meeting is on how to build a convergence between the inside and the outside. Indeed, how to make the outside the inside, so that government can be of the people, by the people and for the people.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS AND AFRICAN AGENDA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS AND AFRICAN AGENDA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Patrick Bond

May 5, 2010 — The “climate debt” that the industries and over-consumers of the global North owe Africans and other victims of climate change not responsible for causing the problem has accrued by virtue of the North’s excessive dumping of greenhouse gas emissions into the collective environmental space. Damage is being accounted for, including the more constrained space the South has for emissions. This historical injustice – and “debt” — is now nearly universally acknowledged (aside from Washington holdouts), and reparations plus adaptation finance are being widely demanded.In Copenhagen, the 2009 United Nations summit on climate change witnessed a great deal of theatre over conceptual problems, including, who should make emissions cuts and to what degree; should markets be the main mechanism; who owes a climate debt; how much is owed; and how the debt should be collected. The willingness of African heads of state to raise the matter publicly beginning in mid-2009 was notable, but their inability to ensure political solidarity led to the imposition of the Copenhagen Accord on December 18, in a manner that sets back the cause.

Read the full article

Jubilee South participates in the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth that has already began in Cochabamba to debate and exchange strategies to mobilize for climate justice.

Below is a list of activities in which a delegation from Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean will be participation to present our contributions on the relation between debt, finance and climate change and to disseminate the preparatory document: Towards a Jubilee South Platform on Climate Change, Ecological Debt and Financial Sovereignty.

Panel What is Climate Debt and who is responsible for it?

Wednesday April 21, 8:30 – 10:30

Coliseo Municipal de Tipipaya

Beverly Keene, (Jubilee South) Lidy Nacpil (Jubilee South) Tom Sharman, Matthew Stilwell

Self-organized Activities

Towards a Peoples´ Tribunal on Ecological Debt and Climate Justice

Tuesday April 20, 16:30 – 18:30

Universidad del Valle (UNIVALLE) Auditoria AV, F2, BloF

Conveners: Jubilee South, Friends of the Earth International, Via Campesina, Hemispheric Social Alliance, Southern Peoples´ Ecological Debt Creditors’ Alliance, Oilwatch, Bolivian Platform Against Climate Change, World March of Women, Enlazando Alternativas Birregional Network Europe-Latin America/Caribbean, The Andean Coordination of Indigenous Organizations (CAOI), Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Brazilian Network for People´s Integration (REBRIP)

Principles for Fair Climate Finance: Proposals from the climate justice community for raising, channeling and spending revenue through a Global Climate Fund

Universidad del Valle (UNIVALLE) AV Soc 2

Conveners: Institute for Policy Studies (USA), Campagna per la Riforma de lla Banca Mondiale (Italy), Jubilee South – Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, Jubilee South, Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (global network), ActionAid USA

Social and Environmental Liabilities of Binational Hydroelectric Dams (Itaipú, Yacyretá)

Wednesday April 21, 14:30 a 16:30

Universidad del Valle (UNIVALLE) Salón Informática -Sala de Idiomas

Conveners: Paraguayan Commission of Binational Entities and Jubilee South /America

For more information:

Contact In Cochabamba:+5491155690140

Global Executive Secretary:

+ 5411-43071867

js@jubileesouth.org – www.jubileesouth.org

Comunication: Laura Yanella – laura@jubileesouth.org

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

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

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

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

What is climate debt?

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to the Bolivian government, this debt is

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

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

Who is responsible for climate debt?

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

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

Can the debt be paid?

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

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

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