Mobilization for Climate Justice

Archive for February, 2011

Photo: Langelle/GJEP (2003)

Then:

In 2003 groups such as Conservation International supported the Mexican government’s charge that Indigenous communities were destroying the rainforest in the Monte Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, Mexico.  They were calling for the removal of communities such as Nuevo San Gregorio, that are in the rainforest.

Orin Langelle participated in a delegation of journalists for an investigative report into those allegations.

Small communities in the region were cooperating in an important experiment to demonstrate a more sustainable way of living on the land. In 2003, for eight or more years, they had ceased using slash and burn agriculture and ended the use of harmful chemicals.The Indigenous Peoples of the region rejected the idea that the forced relocation of Indigenous Peoples had anything to do with protecting the ecosystem in question, and believed that it was paving the way for Plan Puebla Panama and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.  (Plan Puebla Panama is now being called the Mesoamerica Project.)

Over flights by the delegation over the region verified that any ecological damage done by these communities in the Montes Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve was minimal, especially in comparison to the extensive damage resulting from roads, cattle ranches, logging, military bases and other commercial uses of the land.

And Now:

California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32, mandates targeted greenhouse gas reductions, to be achieved in part through offset credits. In November, 2010, then Governor Schwarzenegger signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil, for the world’s first subnational Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) carbon offset partnership. The agreement is being touted in its early stage as a model for global warming legislation and subnational REDD programs worldwide. Yet it brings multiple potential concerns, including a deepening crisis of agrarian landgrabs in Mexico.

Human rights organizations are concerned that the massive planned expansion of agrofuel plantations which will be the principle source of carbon offsets under the program may gravely exacerbate the threat of displacement and human rights abuse in Chiapas, the poorest state in Mexico, already gripped by agrarian and territorial conflict. The state government of Chiapas has announced plans to develop up to 400,000 hectares of industrial biofuel feedstock plantations by the end of 2012. This is closely linked to a an effort known as the “Sustainable Rural Cities Project,” supported by the World Bank, that aims to relocate rural Indigenous populations into centralized, pre-fabricated, peri-urban settlements. The state government says that the motive behind this project is to bring economic development to rural Indigenous people, while also freeing up land for “productive conversion” to plantations; human rights and environmental advocates argue that the project will lead to forced displacement, and environmental and cultural degradation.

Global Justice Ecology Project is monitoring the current situation. Stay tuned for further updates.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from the New York Times

Wells for extracting natural gas, like these in Colorado, are a growing source of energy but can also pose hazards. Photo: Kevin Moloney for The New York Times

By IAN URBINA

The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas.

The gas has always been there, of course, trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles, like frozen spills of seltzer water between thin layers of shale rock. But drilling companies have only in recent years developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generating electricity and powering vehicles for up to a hundred years.

So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.

But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.

In other words, there is no way of guaranteeing that the drinking water taken in by all these plants is safe.

That has experts worried.

“We’re burning the furniture to heat the house,” said John H. Quigley, who left last month as secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. “In shifting away from coal and toward natural gas, we’re trying for cleaner air, but we’re producing massive amounts of toxic wastewater with salts and naturally occurring radioactive materials, and it’s not clear we have a plan for properly handling this waste.”

The risks are particularly severe in Pennsylvania, which has seen a sharp increase in drilling, with roughly 71,000 active gas wells, up from about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the wastewater has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. While people clearly do not drink drilling wastewater, the reason to use the drinking-water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in drilling wastewater.

Drillers trucked at least half of this waste to public sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009, according to state officials. Some of it has been sent to other states, including New York and West Virginia.

Yet sewage treatment plant operators say they are far less capable of removing radioactive contaminants than most other toxic substances. Indeed, most of these facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking-water standards before discharging the wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream from drinking-water intake plants.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

This biomass crop insurance program is yet another federal subsidy for corporations.  In this case, if companies invest in new and potentially dangerous agrofuel technologies, and these technologies fail, the government (i.e. taxpayers) will pick up the bill.

This directly links to the campaign to stop genetically engineered trees as trees are being specifically engineered to be manufactured into so-called “second generation” agrofuels.

–The GJEP Team

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today that the USDA will soon be accepting proposals to study the feasibility of providing crop insurance to producers of biofuel feedstocks ranging from corn stover to straw to woody biomass. The feasibility studies will be funded by the Risk Management Agency (RMA) and will be combined with current studies underway for energy cane, switchgrass and camelina.

To read the entire post click here.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from Nordic Family Forestry

Samples of imported hardwood wood chips from North America show signs of insects, which according to The Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute could do great damage in the Norwegian woods.

Wood chip samples were taken from the first boatload of wood chips from Canada, which arrived in BioWood Norway AS pellet plant at Averøya in April 2010. The samples were sent for further analyses.

Analyses also revealed accidental mixing of softwood wood chips, which increases the risk of introducing pine nematode. Authorities are concerned about the new findings.

To read the entire article click here.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note:  Global Justice Ecology Project has worked in the past, and hopefully in the future, with Alfredo Seguel and other members of the Konapewman Mapuche Association.  Some of us from GJEP have witnessed first-hand the social and ecological devastation brought on by the Chilean government to Mapuche territory. GJEP recognizes and supports the Mapuche struggle as a “fight for survival, for rights, dignity, recognition, and the possibility of autonomous development   …stopping the expansion of the forestry sector is also a means of preventing this activity from provoking even greater impoverishment, environmental damage and cultural deterioration for the Mapuche people and vast sectors of society.”

–Orin Langelle for The GJEP Team

______________________________

This article was based on the references cited below, which were sent by Paulina Veloso, Colectivo VientoSur, e-mail: paulina.veloso@gmail.com, and comments by Claudio Donoso Hiriart.Via email from World Rainforest Movement – Monthly Bulletin – Issue 163 – February 2011l. WRM http://www.wrm.org.uy/.  This issue looks at forest certification schemes.

Since 1974, industrial monoculture tree plantations have spread throughout Chile, and are particularly concentrated in the regions of Bío-Bío and Araucanía, although they are also found in the regions of Maule, Los Ríos and Los Lagos.

Decree Law 701, passed by the Pinochet military dictatorship and still in force today, granted state subsidies to private companies as a means of promoting the forestry industry. Large tracts of land and state-owned plantations were privatized and gradually ended up in the hands of powerful economic groups, like the Matte and Angelini Groups, effectively dismantling the advances achieved by Agrarian Reform in the redistribution of land ownership. Of the 10 million hectares of land that had been expropriated, three million were sold at low prices and under highly favourable conditions. (1) Private companies obtained financing for up to 75% of the costs of planting pine and eucalyptus trees on Mapuche indigenous territory for 37 years.

Since then, forestry sector exports have been given high priority by successive Chilean governments, which have continued to support and promote the sector. The drastic expansion of industrial tree plantations has not only infringed on agricultural land and native ecosystems like forests, but also on the traditional territory of the Mapuche people, which provides the material and spiritual support for their very existence.

Throughout this time, territorial conflicts between Mapuche communities and plantation companies, especially Forestal Mininco and the companies grouped under Bosques Arauco, have been a constant occurrence. As explained by Alfredo Seguel of the Konapewman Mapuche Association, “for Mapuche organizations, the conflict with forestry companies is not merely a dispute over land.” According to the forestry commission of the Coordinating Committee of Mapuche Territorial Organizations and Identities, “the territorial conflict with the forestry companies is a fight for survival, for rights, dignity, recognition, and the possibility of autonomous development. For the coordinating committee, stopping the expansion of the forestry sector is also a means of preventing this activity from provoking even greater impoverishment, environmental damage and cultural deterioration for the Mapuche people and vast sectors of society.” (2)

These ongoing conflicts have resulted in a long list of Mapuche people wounded, killed, harassed, arrested, tried and sentenced with the full weight of the law in civilian and military courts, often under laws created during the military dictatorship which remain in force, for their participation in protests in urban and rural areas aimed at recovering their land and halting the further spread of tree plantations.

In the meantime, as revealed by a recent report on independent forestry monitoring of river basins in the Los Ríos region, “the increase in the emigration of the rural population to cities is a consequence of the new land ownership regime in rural areas, with the expansion of tree plantations being a significant factor in this process.” (3)

Another ongoing problem is the growing scarcity of water in rural areas in south-central Chile, where “the vast areas of tree plantations and the methods of harvesting used alter the normal levels and water quality of rivers, which means that the decisions adopted by the forestry companies on the land where their assets are located affect all of the area’s inhabitants.” This is particularly true for the Mapuche people, “who have lived in these territories since time immemorial, and maintained a harmonious interrelation with the water and land until the European invasion.” The companies do not consider the effects of the huge volumes of water consumed by fast-growing tree species in areas where water is scarce, which prevent water from being used for other productive activities, among other impacts. This problem is also ignored by the government policies that promote the spread of tree plantations.” (4)

The water shortages provoked by monoculture plantations of fast-growing exotic tree species have worsened the conditions faced by Mapuche communities, who organized a massive march against the expansion of tree plantations in Araucanía, among other regions, in 2006. The Ñancuichew Association of Lumaco, together with Mapuche communities in Lumaco, Purén, Los Sauces, Traiguén, Victoria and Ercilla, declared that the reason behind the protest march was “the presence of privately owned pine and eucalyptus plantations on their territory, among other problems.” They also described the plantation companies’ actions as “environmental terrorism.” (5)

Recently, the mayor of the commune of Antuco, in the province of Bío-Bío, blamed monoculture pine and eucalyptus plantations for aggravating the drought currently affecting peasant farming communities in the region. The mayor stated that intensive cultivation of these trees is “using up the water sources in rural areas, which is further accentuated in the summer season in the Precordillera region.” (6)

Despite the well-documented impacts of the industrial and intensive cultivation of trees, forestry sector companies are now attempting to obtain the “green label” of FCS certification for their plantations. During a recent visit to a number of communes in Araucanía (Nueva Imperial, Chol Chol, Galvarino, Traiguén, Lumaco, Los Sauces, Purén, Angol and Renaico), Claudio Donoso Hiriart told WRM about the “devastation and desolation” caused by pine and eucalyptus plantations, which “have replaced native forests and highly fertile agriculture land and are finishing off the water and land.” He commented that “the most striking commune is Lumaco, where plantations occupy 52.5% of the total land area of what is the poorest commune in the region (Mininco is the largest landowner).” He also showed us a video of a eucalyptus plantation established on what was once prime agricultural land in the commune of Chol Chol, which is now facing severe water shortages, and where there is a sign posted with the FSC certification label.

Forestal Mininco is currently seeking FSC certification for a total of 666,581 hectares of plantations spread across the regions of El Maule, Bío-Bío, Araucanía, Los Ríos and Los Lagos.

In response, this past January in Temuco, the Mapuche organizations and communities gathered together in the Wallmapu Futa Trawun – an autonomous and self-organized body made up by ancestral community authorities, group leaders, community members, young people and students from throughout the Mapuche nation – addressed the national and international public through a press release in which they declared:

“Today, January 25, we held a meeting with Mr. Freddy Peña, the head of the auditing commission from the United States (FSC) certifying body Smartwood, who is gathering information and background for the certification of the wood produced by the company Forestal Mininco.

“This certification is very important in order for Forestal Mininco to sell its products in vital markets, mainly in Europe, Asia and the United States. The company must fulfil a series of requirements related to the protection of the environment, good relations with local communities, respect for laws, conventions and the culture of indigenous peoples, not infringing directly or indirectly on the resources and land rights of indigenous peoples, respect for sacred places, compensation for damages, respecting traditional knowledge, providing nearby communities with skilled employment and training opportunities, respect for labour legislation in accordance with ILO conventions, etc.

“The Lonko, Machi and Werken participants and Mapuche leaders and community members from different territories wish to express our profound concern to this auditing commission with regard to all of the damage that this company has caused in our territories. The cultural and environmental genocide and criminalization of our social demands which it has carried out against our nation, and all of the suffering caused to thousands of our families. At the same time, we have submitted to them a file of background material gathered by our leadership and professionals, which provides evidence of all the environmental, cultural, social and economic impacts, as well as the criminalization, sentencing, imprisonment and murder of community members fighting to recover their territory, for which Forestal Mininco is responsible.”

The Wallmapu Futa Trawun stresses that the “predatory company Forestal Mininco” should not be certified, and calls on the different Mapuche communities to “be aware and informed of events that have a bearing on our individual rights and the customary rights of the Mapuche nation and the intentions of these companies that destroy our territory, our Itrofilmongén, with all of the life forms that our nation has defended and protected throughout the thousands of years of our history.” (7)

The plantation companies could try to improve the way they carry out their business, but they have no intention of changing their model of production: large-scale, monoculture, expansive and exclusive. This model is uncertifiable, as well as incompatible with a policy of territorial sustainability for Mapuche communities in La Araucanía.

(1)       “Modelo forestal chileno y Movimiento autónomo Mapuche: Las posiciones irreconciliables de un conflicto territorial”, Alfredo Seguel, 2005, http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Chile/modelo_forestal_chileno.html
(2)       “Conflicto público de tierras y Recursos naturales”: Expansión forestal y territorialidad Mapuche (Chile), Alfredo Seguel, Agrupación Mapuche Konapewman, http://www.mapuche.nl/doc/seguel0906.pdf
(3)       “Informe Nacional, Monitoreo Forestal Independiente en Cuencas Hidrográficas Abastecedoras de Agua de la XIV Región de Los Ríos”; ONG-Forestales por el Bosque Nativo.
(4)       “Gran marcha mapuche en contra de expansión forestal en La Araucanía”, Aldea Comunicaciones, http://www.olca.cl/oca/chile/region08/forestales01.htm
(5)       Ibid.
(6)       “Antuco: Alcalde considera que plantaciones de pino y eucaliptos agudizan la sequía”, Bío-Bío La Radio, http://www.radiobiobio.cl/2011/02/01/antuco-alcalde-considera-que-plantaciones-de-pino-y-eucaliptos-agudizan-la-sequia/
(7)       “Declaración de Fvta Xawun Mapuche por certificación de Forestal Mininco”, national and international press release, http://www.observatorio.cl/node/1326

This article was based on the references cited above, which were sent by Paulina Veloso, Colectivo VientoSur, e-mail: paulina.veloso@gmail.com, and comments by Claudio Donoso Hiriart.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

www.rel-uita.org

Centro Humboldt, Fundación del Río y Fundación Luciérnaga presentaron el documental “Los Piratas de El Castillo”. Un documento valioso en el que se evidencian los graves impactos sociales y ambientales provocados por la expansión del monocultivo de palma africana en el municipio de El Castillo, al sur de Nicaragua.

El cultivo de palma africana en Nicaragua comenzó en los años 80. Más de mil hectáreas fueron sembradas con palma por cooperativas que vendían su producción al Estado.

Con la derrota del gobierno sandinista en 1990 y la ola neoliberal que embistió al país, el proyecto de palma africana en el municipio de El Castillo, departamento del Río San Juan, fue privatizado y pasó a manos de la empresa E. Chamorro Industrial (Grupo Pellas) y sucesivamente vendido a Palmares de El Castillo SA (PALCASA).

“El proceso de expansión del cultivo de palma africana está gravemente afectando el modelo productivo sostenible que existía en la zona, sobre todo la producción de cacao orgánico -dijo Amaru Ruiz- miembro de la Fundación del Río.

Se están dando graves afectaciones al medio ambiente, a la biodiversidad y hay una fuerte explotación de la mano de obra local que trabaja en las plantaciones”.

A partir de 2007, PALCASA comenzó a ampliar el área de cultivo en el municipio de El Castillo, una de las tres reservas de biosfera que posee Nicaragua, afectando a otros ocho municipios y la zona de amortiguamiento de la Reserva Indio-Maíz.

A través de la Sociedad Alemana para Inversiones y Desarrollo (DEG), que es parte del Banco Alemán al Desarrollo (KFW), la empresa obtuvo un financiamiento millonario, que le permitió extender a casi 6 mil hectáreas su cultivo de palma, de las cuales sólo 2.400 cuentan con un Estudio de Impacto Ambiental y con un permiso para operar.

Según Maura Madriz, Oficial de Agua del Centro Humboldt, entre las principales afectaciones “evidenciamos una grave pérdida de la biodiversidad, deforestación y la contaminación hídrica por el mal manejo de las aguas residuales y el uso irracional de agrotóxicos.

PALCASA -continuó Madriz- está aplicando Diuron, Paraquat, Glifosato y Kasumin, ese último prohibido por la Unión Europea. Los trabajadores aplican grandes cantidades de esos productos sin ningún tipo de protección. Hay graves afectaciones a su salud y al manto acuífero”.

Además, la oficial de Agua del Centro Humboldt evidenció un preocupante proceso de concentración de tierras y la contaminación atmosférica causada por la ceniza orgánica, que se desprende durante el proceso de generación de energía en base a la quema de los desechos de la palma.

De propietarios a peones

Joaquín Zúniga, miembro de Fundación Luciérnaga y realizador del documental, explicó también la grave situación en que viven los pobladores de la zona.

“La empresa, a través de prestanombres, logró acaparar grandes cantidades de tierra. Los que eran pequeños propietarios ahora son peones que le trabajan a PALCASA en condiciones deplorables.

La mayoría son trabajadores temporales tercerizados que ganan una miseria, sin ningún tipo de prestaciones sociales y sin derecho a conformar sindicatos. No fue fácil encontrar personas dispuestas a hablar, porque hay mucho temor de ser despedidos”, explicó Zúniga.

En los municipios afectados ya es evidente la escasez de alimentos y se está afectando gravemente la seguridad alimentaria. Esta situación está generando un desplazamiento hacia la vecina Costa Rica u otras zonas del país, provocando una expansión de la frontera agrícola.

Ante esta situación, el Consejo Municipal de El Castillo emitió una ordenanza municipal con la que, aplicando el Principio Precautorio, prohibió el incremento del área de los proyectos de monocultivo.

Además, exigió a PALCASA la presentación de la documentación necesaria para operar en la zona. La empresa reaccionó amenazando con una demanda legal en contra de la municipalidad.

“El escenario es muy grave. La Fundación del Río realizó un profundo estudio sobre esta situación y evidenciamos claramente como el cultivo de palma no contribuye de ninguna manera a los proyectos de desarrollo de la zona.

Más bien, está provocando graves afectaciones de tipo ambiental, social y económico. Vamos a impulsar una campaña de incidencia a nivel nacional sobre el tema del cultivo de palma africana y lo que está haciendo esta empresa”, concluyó Amaru Ruiz.

Haga clic en la imagen para ver el vídeo

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note:  Although this is from February 13th, it is extremely relevant.

–The GJEP Team

____________________________

Cross-posted from Montreal Media Co-op

by Stefan Christoff

Audio reports from the World Social Forum 2011 in Dakar, Senegal produced for

Durban South Africa skyline

broadcast on campus/community radio globally.

In this segment of Dispatches from Dakar we hear from Patrick Bond of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Bond speaks on the current mobilization in South Africa and globally against the upcoming UN climate summit to take place in Durban, South Africa between November 28th December 9th. Activists are converging on the UN climate summit after the widely perceived failure of the COP 15 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark‎ to adequately address the roots of global climate crisis. In this interview Bond details the mobilization efforts in South Africa lead-by communities directly impacted by climate change both in Durban and globally.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

For more information on the Durban mobilization visit http://www.groundwork.org.za/

Music featured in this report created by hip-hop artist Makkan J in Senegal.

Dispatches from Dakar interview series is produced for broadcast on campus/community radio by community organizer and journalist Stefan Christoff http://www.twitter.com/spirodon/

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from Earthbeat Radio

Image used courtesy USUncut.

Corporations are using the panic and disorientation of budget crises to crush unions and environmental protections, that’s according to Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein. In a conversation with host Daphne Wysham, Klein tells us how those in Wisconsin and other places are pushing back to catch corporate tax dodgers.

US Uncut actions are occurring across America.

The federal government must pass a budget within days – or all government services will screech to a halt. But Republicans in the US House passed a budget bill that strips the EPA of its power. Anna Aurilio, the DC director of Environment America, says the shortfalls could be filled by stopping the ‘free pass’ oil companies get on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. They’re not paying $5 billion dollars a year on these oil leases.

Climate activist Tim DeChristopher faces federal felony charges for interrupting a federal auction of oil and gas leases – and auction held in the last few days of the Bush Administration in 2008. We’ll hear from Tim was ‘bidder number 70′ – and managed to ‘win’ a number of the leases before the auction was halted. We hear from Tim via the website Solve Climate.

Then, Mark Hertsgaard takes on ‘climate cranks’ in his new book Hot and on YouTube.

Music for this edition of Earthbeat includes Bucky Halker’s songs, Union Fights the Battle of Freedom, and Democratic Blues.

Earthbeat’s new partner is The Real News Network.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

From: Vermont Workers’ Center

When: Saturday, February 26, 12:00pm – 3:00pm

Location: North end of Church St. where Church intersects with Pearl. Burlington, VT

More info: The Vermont Workers’ Center is helping organize a this solidarity rally in support of the workers rights struggle in Wisconsin. It is part of a national say of action being called for by Jobs with Justice, Moveon.org, Democracy for America and many other national organizations.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from Grist

Iconic authors and outdoorsmen David James Duncan and Rick Bass have an important new book that

Activists in Montana and Idaho are fighting back against these monstrosities.

they wrote in response to the notorious “haul” this month of gargantuan machines (“mega-loads”) to Alberta, Canada, constructed in South Korea for use in the tar sands. Besides the tar sands being a debacle and climate justice issue, Bass and Duncan and activists are opposing this effort all along the route from a public safety and aesthetics angle too: The equipment threatens to buckle taxpayer-built roads and bridges, and if swept into the wild river corridor on the trip up Wild and Scenic Highway 12 in Montana or Idaho by an accident or avalanche, it’s unclear how it could be extricated. I caught up with Duncan as he was being featured in an upcoming episode of the PBS program Nature, called Salmon: Running the Gauntlet.

Q. David, your new book The Heart of the Monster is a fascinating and horrifying read. Can you tell me about its genesis?

A. About a year ago I learned that ExxonMobil and Imperial Oil had secretly colluded with regional politicians, and were planning to commandeer 1,100 miles of wilderness-piercing American roads and the Columbia/Snake river corridor that brings salmon and steelhead to the Interior West. One of those roads passes in front of my house and through my hometown, Missoula. Two more skirt four of my favorite wild rivers, the Blackfoot and Dearborn in Montana, and the Lochsa and Clearwater in Idaho. The more I learned, the more bizarrely inappropriate, illegal, culturally offensive, and unworkable the Exxon industrial corridor sounded. A couple in Idaho, living on the Clearwater, Lin Laughy and Borg Hendrikson, mounted a heroic resistance website called Fighting Goliath.org. I followed their postings almost daily. As a lifelong fly fisher and friend of many salmon activists, I also knew a lot about the lower Snake River dams and the monumental scam known as Northwest federal “salmon science.”

David James Duncan in the upcoming PBS Nature documentary on the Columbia/Snake salmon crisis.Photo: Mark Shelley

David James Duncan in the upcoming PBS Nature documentary on the Columbia/Snake salmon crisis.Photo: Mark ShelleyMy blood was already simmering when a small Montana activist group called “All Against The Haul” asked me to write something about the issue. The “bad guys” had a two-year head start. Even working with a magazine like Orion or Outside wouldn’t get the story told fast enough to rouse resistance and possibly stop “the haul.” So I proposed a fast response book, asked for the help of two fine writers, Rick Bass and Steven Hawley, a great photographer, Frederick Ohringer, and a brilliant book designer, Ian Boyden. When the group agreed to my requests we five dove in. This was October 2010. Seven weeks later we had researched, written, edited, illustrated, designed, and self-published a substantial book. As Dylan Thomas once said after eight or so shots of whiskey, “I believe that’s the record.”

Q. What is it about “the haul” that most concerns you?

A. This mega-industrial tentacle, benefiting almost no one but Big Oil, would potentially connect the Alberta Tar Sands — the largest single greenhouse gas-spewing project in world history — to the industrial nations of the Pacific Rim (Korea, Vietnam, China, etc.). It would do so via some of the most beautiful highways, tortuous mountain passes, protected wildernesses, green and recreational economies, and stunning wild and scenic rivers in the world. It would cross the lands of three sovereign Indian tribes against the will of those tribes. It would further endanger the Interior West’s salmon. It would disgrace the Nez Perce “trail of tears” — the path Chief Joseph and his people took, leading to the slaughter at the Big Hole Battlefield. And if the tar sands are fully developed, says NASA climatologist James Hansen, climate chaos will be virtually unavoidable. All this for the benefit of Big Oil. The Idaho and Montana governors invited Exxon to do their own “environmental assessment” and encouraged our departments of transportation to collude with Big Oil. No objective environmental impact statement was done. No study of the profound harm to the culture and economies already in place in this region was done. Democracy is being railroaded.

Worse, as the tar sands are developed, thousands of miles of Enbridge pipelines will cross 32 U.S. states and all 10 Canadian provinces, following or crisscrossing many of the most sensitive rivers, wildlife areas, farmlands, agricultural aquifers, and steelhead and salmon sanctuaries in North America. These pipelines are a very easy terrorist target. And they are an ongoing disaster. Enbridge pipelines have ruptured or leaked 57 times in the last year alone, including an 840,000 gallon spill that decimated biotic life and property values along the Kalamazoo River down to Lake Michigan.

Q. Where are the mega-loads now and how soon will they pass near your neighborhood?

A. Two Conoco-Philips loads, each far larger and heavier than the Statue of Liberty, attempted a trial run through Idaho beginning a few weeks ago. Both have broken traffic laws by causing delays, one scraped against a cliff-face and stalled for an hour, and the multiple delays have threatened lives, including the life of a dear friend of mine on his way to a Lewiston hospital after a cancer surgery had failed. The two behemoths are now stalled, one in Montana just over the border, one in Idaho. In response to this, Exxon — which said on record that their 207 proposed loads could not be reduced in size, and that there is no other route to the tar sands — has begun to reduce the size of 93 of their loads, and also discovered an alternate route to Alberta.

At least 114 Exxon loads are still planning to come through. But that proposal will be seriously contested, both in Idaho and Montana.

Q. How far beyond Idaho and Montana does this issue go?

A. The heavy haul, because it is a tentacle of the tar sands, is a global issue. Big Oil and the Canadian government are destroying 44 million acres of one of the Earth’s two great living “lungs,” the northern boreal forests (tropical rain forest being the other). Tar sands mining stands to slaughter between 6 million and 166 million birds. The ratification of the lower Snake River barging route by Exxon, via dams that each year slaughter endangered salmon smolts by the millions, would make the ESA even more impossible to monitor or enforce.

And that’s just the regional damage. No tar sands booster could visit the vanishing agriculture of glacier-dependent countries like Peru, Nepal, and Northern India, or of drowning island nations like Kiribati, Bangladesh, the Marshall Islands, the Maldives, and claim innocence or ignorance of the effects of their greed and destructiveness. If you know anybody with Exxon, Imperial, or Shell oil stock, tell them to get their head out of their seater-bottomus and support their children’s ability to breathe and feed wild birds.

Q. What does the great title of the book derive from?

A. The Nez Perce people have a geographical birthplace along the lower Clearwater River — an intriguing basalt rubble heap known as “The Heart of the Monster.” There is a myth about this site that is definitely prehistoric, which I also felt could be prophetic. With permission, I reproduced the myth in our book of the same title.

At the end of a previous age of the world, a voracious monster began swallowing all the living creatures on earth — the way mega-corporations are swallowing us now.

In the end, the monster swallowed just about everybody but Old Man Coyote. The wily old boy got lonely. So he cleaned himself up, tried to look sexy and tasty, and sure enough, the monster swallowed him, too. But you know Coyote. He snuck five stone knives and some fire-starting materials into the monster’s gut with him. He then set about heating the monster’s heart, cooking it while he sawed at it. It was hard work. He broke all five blades. But in the end the monster’s heart collapsed and imploded. The basalt formation by the Clearwater, according to the Nez Perce, is that old dead imploded monster heart.

With Big Oil megaloads far larger than the Statue of Liberty passing within a few hundred feet of this ancient site, it wasn’t hard for me to make a connection when I stood by the imploded heart last fall. The mega-corporations are monstrous by definition. It is illegal for them to be moral. Theirs is the devouring appetite of a bottom line divorced from biological and spiritual reality. The Coyote in all of us has no choice: We must heat and saw away at the heart of the new monster, “corporate personhood,” until the effing thing implodes.

Our book is a bit of that heating and sawing operation.

David James Duncan and Rick Bass will be part of a call on Tuesday, March 1 to discuss “the haul,” the tar sands, and the grassroots opposition. Folks are invited to join and ask them their own questions about this issue.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: The Indigenous Environmental Network’s Clayton Thomas-Muller is quoted in the article. Clayton is on the board of Global Justice Ecology Project.
–The GJEP Team

—————————————————-

by dawnpaley on 25/02/2011

Source: Briarpatch Magazine latest edition.

March/April 2011.

When representatives from environmental organizations took the stage last May together with logging industry groups to promote what they billed as a new deal to protect Canada’s boreal forest, the announcement came as a surprise to Indigenous peoples across the country. The 72 million hectares encompassed by the deal, known as the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA), is overwhelmingly treaty and traditional First Nations’ territory, yet Indigenous people were left entirely in the dark throughout the negotiation process. According to one Indigenous organizer, his people were “blindsided” by the agreement.

Industry groups, like the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) touted the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement as an unprecedented agreement to protect caribou habitat across Canada. Although they were never provided the full text of the agreement in the original press release, the mass media lavished praise on the CBFA, with few exceptions.

At the same time, a copy of the full agreement was leaked to the alternative press, revealing that while the agreement claims to suspend logging in 29 million hectares of woodland caribou habitat, industry planned to log only a very small portion of this total area within the three years covered by the agreement. In exchange for “deferring” logging in a patchwork of forest totalling 72,205 hectares, the CBFA provides a green light for FPAC companies to continue to log 684,461 hectares of boreal forest – roughly nine times what is slated to be protected by the agreement in real terms. It also mandates that the environmental groups who have signed on to the agreement – which include Greenpeace, Forest Ethics, the Canadian Boreal Initiative, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and the David Suzuki Foundation, among others – must drop their campaigns against FPAC members and remove evidence of such campaigns from their websites. If you search the Greenpeace website for archival information on the struggle at Grassy Narrows against clearcut logging on traditional Anishinaabeterritory, for example, you’ll find a pop-up ad blocking the content of the website, indicating that all boycott campaigns directed against FPAC members have been suspended in light of the Boreal Forest Agreement.

The CBFA is a new incarnation of an age-old tradition of environmental and corporate deal-making in which Indigenous peoples are the last to learn of agreements and projects in their own territories.

“I’ve always been concerned about environmental groups,” said Russell Diabo, a Mohawk activist and advocate for Indigenous rights over the past 30 years. “I’ve watched environmental organizations from the animal rights movement, the anti-trapping movement and that, totally ignore Indigenous rights, through to in British Columbia where they have tried to take over [Indigenous] campaigns.”

For Diabo and others, the CBFA is just the latest manifestation of this kind of behaviour.

“It’s showing industry how to make Native people the last to know,” said Mel Bazil of the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan nations. “That’s the real issue behind all this for me: make the Native people the last to know and you’ll get what you want eventually.”

Ten months on, backlash against the CBFA has spread across the country. Resistance to the agreement shares a fundamental rejection of backroom decision-making regarding First Nations lands, but varies in character from region to region.

Some groups, including the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), condemned the CBFA immediately after the agreement was announced.
“When the CBFA dropped, the IEN came out highly critical of the agreement, and highly critical of the process,” IEN’s Clayton Thomas-Muller told Briarpatch. “We had a lot of criticisms around transparency, around accountability and around the legality of the actual agreement between the forestry sector and ENGOs.”

Others, like Harry St. Denis from the Wolf Lake Algonquin Nation, wrote that the CBFA is “the best recent example of our rights being ignored.” In September, St. Denis successfully moved a motion at the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador that, among other things, commits member groups to a technical review of the agreement and prevents member nations from attending any national meetings about the CBFA until their review is complete.

Part of the impetus for St. Denis’ intervention against the CBFA may also have to do with his nation’s access to the emerging carbon market. In July, he proposed a draft resolution to the Assembly of First Nations directing the organization to advocate for a First Nations-specific carbon offset fund to help First Nations capitalize on carbon trading mechanisms, including proposed cap-and-trade legislation.

“I know there’s a big debate about whether carbon trading is a wise thing to do in terms of climate change,” said Diabo. “But the position of the Wolf Lake First Nation, who I work for, is that if there is any benefit, it should accrue to them and not to the logging companies as part of their tenure or to the governments.”

While the CBFA doesn’t deal directly with emissions offsets, critics insist that it sets up a framework that can be used as a guide for an offsetting scheme in the boreal forest.

Fallout in the Forest?
Perhaps the most tangible outcome of the CBFA thus far is the division it has created, not only between ENGOs and Indigenous communities, but also among Indigenous groups and organizations across the country.“I think that, if anything, the CBFA has resulted in an immense fracturing, not only in the ENGO sector, but also among First Nations,” said Thomas-Muller. The attempt by a B.C. tribal council to host a national meeting to discuss how First Nations can benefit from a deal like the CBFA is proof of how this has played out since the agreement was announced.

“We got up and started raising the issue of how these agreements can be valid when no organization knocked on any First Nation’s door,” Carrier Sekani Tribal Council (CSTC) Chief David Luggi told Briarpatch. “As a result, Dr. Suzuki came up here in early July and provided us with a written apology for not including us.”

In October, CSTC called for a national meeting of First Nations in Prince George to discuss the future of the deal. “Some have misconstrued that we are wanting to be party to the existing agreement,” said Luggi. “That is not correct. All we wanted to do is open the door here, see what happens, and see what we can do for our people in terms of protection.”

Luggi admits that the meeting failed to attract First Nations on a national level, and was instead a meeting where “several First Nations” discussed the deal. The meeting in Prince George was boycotted by various nations, especially those from Quebec, but included the participation of advocates of the CBFA, including Larry Innes from the controversial Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI), which is playing an increasingly important behind-the-scenes role in environmental circles.

The CBI, together with the Pew Environment Group’s International Boreal Conservation Campaign, were major backers of getting the CBFA off the ground. Neither of these groups exist as legal entities in either Canada or the United States, but are instead front groups of a multi-billion dollar charitable foundation – Pew Charitable Trusts – with a long history of establishing ostensibly environmental organizations to pursue its industry-friendly agenda.

Since the CBI does not exist as a legal entity in Canada, it cannot issue cheques or even run a payroll for its employees. Consequently, funds for the meeting in Prince George were funneled to the CSTC through a donation by Ducks Unlimited to the First Nations Energy and Mining Council of British Columbia.

“We’ve done work with the CBI, with Larry Innes, and it’s just a simple meeting that we kinda helped coordinate with Carrier Sekani Tribal Council,” said Joanna Prince, from the First Nations Energy and Mining Council of British Columbia, who co-hosted the October meeting in Prince George. “So we have a working relationship with him, and he just asked if we could help co-ordinate the meeting.”

In following the money, it is crystal clear that it wasn’t the CTSC alone who had an interest in convening an after-the-fact national meeting of First Nations to discuss the CBFA. Instead, it was Innes and other CBFA signatories who facilitated funding the meeting.

“I think that the proponents of this agreement have been working overtime to try and do damage control on some of these very divisive scenarios that are playing out,” said Thomas-Muller. “There are some very real divisions in terms of the legality of this agreement, and questions about whether it violates existing case law precedents in this country around the duty to consult.”

These divisions may be considered a byproduct of an agreement like the CBFA, but they are also a hallmark of mainstream environmentalism in Canada.

“In a lot of ways, I find the environmental groups are using Indigenous peoples,” Diabo told Briarpatch. “They’re saying, ‘oh these people need capacity building, they’re ignorant, they don’t have any understanding of science, that’s why you need to fund us, so that we can train them, work with them.’ They’re using [Indigenous peoples] to get money from foundations and other sources, based on these arguments, which I find very ethnocentric if not racist.”

Since the CBFA was announced in May, the mainstream press has paid little attention to the fallout among Indigenous communities and grassroots environmental activists. The media has, however, picked up on an openness among tar sands operators to negotiate a similar deal for their sector.

An agreement of this nature cannot be ruled out. In an interview with the Vancouver Media Co-op on the day the CBFA was announced, Steve Kallick, who is the boreal conservation campaigner for the Pew Environment Group, said that his organization would be open to looking to other industries for similar agreements. “They’re not within the four corners of this agreement, but we would love to have similar talks with the oil and gas industry and also with the mining industry as well,” said Kallick.

But according to Diabo, questioning the model of foundation-funded environmentalists is just the first step in moving towards an anti-colonial environmentalism.

“I think complaining about it is not enough. I think we have to organize a campaign of Indigenous peoples and go after these foundations and the sources of funding,” said Diabo. “I think we need to challenge these foundations and say, ‘what are you doing? You’re violating international law here.’”

http://dawnpaley.ca/2011/02/25/fracturing-solidarity-the-canadian-boreal-forest-agreement-in-context/#more-319

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from the New York Times

By LISA FRIEDMAN

Is it worse to be swallowed by the sea or racked by famine?

As climate change tightens its grip on the world, institutions charged with protecting the most vulnerable nations could be faced with just such a question. Because there is no international consensus for ranking the possibilities of future devastation — and because there are limited dollars lined up to help cope with climate change — some countries already are battling over who will be considered most vulnerable.

“This is a major, major topic of discussion and debate at the moment,” said Saleem Huq, head of the climate change group at the U.K.-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

Judging who is most threatened has real-world implications. Those at the top of the list — if ever such a list is developed and agreed upon internationally — could decide who is first in line to tap a multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund.

The trail toward making such a determination, experts say, is strewn with scientific and political land mines. After all, many scientists consider China — susceptible to droughts, typhoons and sea level rise — to be the world’s most threatened nation. But with a gross domestic product of $4.99 trillion, should it be as eligible for aid as poverty-stricken Bangladesh?

Some small island nations like the Seychelles are middle-income countries, yet climate change threatens their very existence. And where in the mix to put a Colombia or Pakistan, which doesn’t fit neatly into any prescribed U.N. category yet suffers catastrophic flooding?

“There is simply no objective, scientific way of categorizing a ranking of 100-plus countries in order of who is more vulnerable than another,” Huq said. “The moment someone comes up with a list, there’s a problem.”

Yet economists are trying. Last year, the British firm Maplecroft developed an extensive ranking that analyzed countries’ exposures to weather extremes, sensitivity to damage tied to poverty, population, internal conflicts, dependence on agriculture, and capacity to adapt (Climatewire, Oct. 21, 2010).

And in January, former World Bank economist David Wheeler published a sweeping study (pdf) quantifying the vulnerability of 233 nations, the risk to people in each of those countries from extreme weather events and agricultural loss, and putting the criteria in multiple dimensions.

‘There’s no one truth’

Wheeler, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said the research is vital in order to sensibly allocate scarce climate change funding in proportion to the problems that countries are facing. He said it’s important to consider not only the weather-related threats facing a country, but also the nation’s ability to cope with crisis — everything from per capita GDP to whether a country has strong governing institutions and control over corruption.

“We have to combine these different aspects. There’s no one truth,” he said. In Wheeler’s assessment of nations rich and poor, China came out as far and away the world’s most vulnerable nation overall, followed closely by India. Bangladesh and Trinidad and Tobago also made the top 10, as did the African nations of Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Sudan and Rwanda. But a different examination limited to just vulnerability to extreme weather risk found new countries on the endangered catalog, like Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, Mozambique and the Philippines.

No rankings, experts agreed, take into account the political calculations that must also come into play when deciding how to prioritize and allocate money. Indeed, national leaders fiercely object to any ranking system that doesn’t have their country at or near the top.

Phillip Muller, the Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the United Nations, said comparing vulnerabilities is a near-impossible task. But one criterion he said should be paramount is a country’s survivability.

“One definition I think we can start off with is to look at countries that would cease to exist if sea levels rise, or if there’s a big hurricane or tsunami,” said Muller, who fears that his own country of archipelagos will someday disappear beneath the waves.

And Farrukh Iqbal Khan, Pakistan’s lead negotiator, who also chairs an adaptation fund board, said he believes countries need to consider the global impact of a catastrophe in a specific country. For example, he said, a struggle over water between Pakistan and India could reverberate worldwide — but so would helping both nations to adapt.

“We must look at the global co-benefit, how to invest in areas that also contribute to addressing global impacts,” Khan said.

Sparring over a dubious achievement

The issue came to a head at a U.N. climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico, last year when the G-77 group of developing nations sparred over who should be included in the definition of “vulnerable.”

The 2009 Copenhagen Accord specifically cited least developed countries, small island developing states and Africa as “particularly vulnerable.” That, negotiators said, caused unhappiness in Latin America, where leaders felt threats to their region were being ignored. But attempts in Cancun to categorize nations ended in a stalemate, and negotiators ultimately stayed vague, declining to elaborate on who should be included in the definition “particularly vulnerable.”

Katherine Sierra, former vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described the debate over vulnerability as “like a third rail” among developing nations.

But, Sierra said, there are models that new bodies like the Green Fund can look to for experience. The World Bank, for example, has an established formula for International Development Association (IDA) funds that go to the poorest countries that combines income level, institutional capacity, governance and other elements. By contrast, grants that the World Bank has doled out specifically for climate resilience were determined by an outside group of experts working with a set of specific criteria.

The Global Environment Facility, which implements an adaptation fund paid for by taxes on clean energy projects through the Kyoto Protocol, still has not finalized a way to prioritize funding, said Marcia Levaggi, manager of the adaptation fund secretariat. That discussion, she said, is still happening among the country representatives who make up the board.

‘We are all in this together’

Heather McGray, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute which also is studying the issue, suggested a sequencing or rotation in which resources are directed to different regions in cycles.

As plans for the Green Fund go forward — a transition board will meet in Bonn, Germany, in March — Sierra said she expects discussions about broad categories of financial eligibility. But, she said, she doubts nations are ready to get specific about prioritizing money. “I think it’s going to be very difficult politically to get this done,” she said.

But for now, some point out, the fight over how to spend the money is almost a moot point. There is no money. The Green Climate Fund established in Cancun, which will manage most of a $100 billion annual pledge that nations have made, is not yet organized. And so far, the financial pledge is unfulfilled. Most countries have not even decided where the money will come from.

Wheeler in his study warned that the world doesn’t have long to make choices. One aspect of the research that came through loud and clear, he said, was that climate change impacts are already being felt and there is little time to waste.

“All states may well be candidates for assistance in the uncertain, undoubtedly-turbulent world that awaits if we continue to dither on controlling carbon emissions,” he wrote in the report. “We are all in this together, and my results indicate that dangerous climate change is already upon us.”

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from Tree Hugger

Yet another heartwarming revelation has emerged from the depths of the ongoing saga of the BP Gulf spill — and yes, that saga is still continuing, even if most folks who don’t live in Louisiana, Alabama, or Mississippi don’t seem to be aware of it. Anyhow, BP’s behavior has been highly questionable at best at numerous points along the way — deterring journalists, failing to provide cleanup workers with safety gear; the list goes on. Perhaps the most infamous bit of sliminess on BP’s behalf was obscuring, excuse me, “misjudging” the true amount of oil that was flooding into the Gulf. In the video interview above, a part of Project Gulf Impact, a scientist hired by BP explains exactly how the oil company tried to trick him and his peers into underestimating the size of the spill.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from IPS News

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Feb 23, 2011 (IPS) – Growth-obsessed markets and governments are pillaging the planet and it must stop, a new U.N. report warns.

The present “brown” economic system driven by fossil fuel energy and the
serial depletion and degradation of natural resources and ecosystems has
no future and must be replaced by a green economy, says the Green
Economy report launched in Nairobi, Kenya this week by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Investing just two percent of the global economy into a few key sectors
will kick-start a transition towards a low- carbon, resource-efficient
economy, the report says. With that relatively small investment, many of
the world’s biggest challenges – climate change, poverty, hunger, jobs,
sanitation, energy, food – could be successfully met within two generations..

“The Green Economy provides a vital part of the answer of how to keep
humanity’s ecological footprint within planetary boundaries,” said Achim
Steiner, UNEP executive director.

“It aims to link the environmental imperatives for changing course to
economic and social outcomes,” Steiner said.

The report documents that a green, low-carbon, resource- efficient
economy will be at least as prosperous as the old brown economy. Better
still, a green economy will not have the inherent risks, shocks,
scarcities and crises of the resource-depleting, high carbon ‘brown’
economy, it says.

“A green economy is not about stifling growth and prosperity, it is
about reconnecting with what is real wealth; re-investing in rather than
just mining natural capital; and favouring the many over the few,” says
Pavan Sukhdev, an economist on secondment from Deutsche Bank and head of
UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative.

The first step on the road to a green economy is to phase out the over
600 billion dollars in global fossil fuel subsidies and “re-direct the
more than 20-billion-dollar subsidies [that] perversely reward those
involved in unsustainable fisheries”, said Sukhdev.

“Misallocation of capital is at the centre of the world’s current
dilemmas and there are fast actions that can be taken starting literally
today,” he said in a statement.

The fact that the world spends between one and two percent of global GDP
subsidising unsustainable resource use puts a lie to the oft-cited claim
that environmental investments come at a cost to economic growth.
Industrial agriculture is another example of a heavily subsidised sector
that contributes up to one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions and has
other massive environmental side effects.

Moreover, industrial agriculture has failed to properly feed up to a
billion people a year for decades, says the International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).

That clear failure and the environmental destruction it has caused is a
clarion call for a shift to agro-ecological practices as recommended by
the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and
Technology for Development (IAASTD). Those practices have been endorsed
by UNEP, the FAO, World Bank and over 50 countries, according to an
IFOAM statement made on behalf of farmer organisations.

Putting agro-eco practices into place will require governments to shift
their subsidies and policies to support small food producers and their
efforts to nurture the majority of the world’s ecosystems and biodiversity.

The “Towards a Green Economy” report acknowledges some jobs in the brown
economy will be lost. However, new jobs will be created, green jobs that
are both better for people and the environment. The report defines the
green economy as “one that results in improved human well-being and
social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and
ecological scarcities”.

“I am pleased to read that UNEP shares with workers around the world the
deep belief that a green economy should work for the people and the
planet, and not just for GDP growth and a few wealthy companies,” said
Sharan Burrow of the International Trade Union Confederation, a labour
organisation representing 176 million workers in 151 countries and
territories.

“The policies being pursued by governments at the moment risk taking us
backwards. Neo-liberal recipes, based on the dictates of the financial
markets, have to be jettisoned,” Burrow said in a statement.

To create a truly green economy requires governments to take back their
responsibilities to regulate banking and finance, and promote policies
which stimulate greening of workplaces and creation of new green jobs,
she said.

Green is the best way for Europe to re-energise its faltering economy,
according to a major new report released in Brussels this week by the
German Environment Ministry. A massive burst of investment in green
technologies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by
2020 will not only be good for the global climate it will bring wide
economic benefits to the 27 countries of the European Union.

“European governments must not ignore evidence that moving to a 30
percent target is in Europe’s own economic interests, when the lives of
millions of poor people, already hit by climate change, are on the
line,” said Tim Gore, Oxfam’s climate change policy spokesman.

Enormous inertia and resistance will have to be overcome to make the
shift from brown to green. Governments will have to become “green
activists” to make it happen, experts acknowledge.

It is up to each country to act, says UNEP spokesperson Nick Nuttall.
Taxation and smart market mechanisms that shift consumer spending and
promote green innovation will be needed. Policies that favour renewable
energy and government spending that stimulates green economic sectors
and limits spending that deplete natural capital will be among the
changes needed.

Relying on markets and investors to power the shift to green economy is
unlikely to work, says Christine von Weizsäcker, representing civil
society at the UNEP meetings in Nairobi where the report was released.
Governments will have to be active in directing the shift by enforcing
rules and practices like the precautionary principle protecting human
rights, said Weizsäcker, a biologist with ECOROPA, a German NGO.

“Stopping perverse subsidies certainly should be one of the core issues
of the green economy,” she said.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-posted from the Huffington Post

By Joanna Zelman

A recent study has found that all of the world’s coral reefs could be gone by 2050. If lost, 500 million people’s livelihoods worldwide would be threatened.

The World Resources Institute report, “Reefs at Risk Revisited,” suggests that by 2030, over 90 percent of coral reefs will be threatened. If action isn’t taken soon, nearly all reefs will be threatened by 2050. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states, “Threats on land, along the coast and in the water are converging in a perfect storm of threats to reefs.”

The AFP suggests that these threats include overfishing, coastal development, pollution, and climate change. Warming sea temperatures lead to coral bleaching, a stress response where corals expose their white skeletons. In 2005, the Caribbean saw the most extensive coral bleaching event ever recorded, often attributed to rising ocean temperatures. CO2 emissions are also making the oceans more acidic. Because of the rising acidity levels, some scientists claim we will see conditions not witnessed since the period of dinosaurs.

Lauretta Burke, one of the report’s lead authors, feels that quick action could help save the reefs. She encourages policymakers to reduce overfishing and cut greenhouse gas emissions. If action is not taken though, millions of people will suffer. Shorelines will lose protection from storms — a Time Magazine post suggests that up to 90 percent of the energy from wind generated waves is absorbed by reef ecosystems. If reefs are lost, coastal communities will lose a source of food security and tourism.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog