Archive for September, 2011
UK’s “most effective environmentalist” barred from entering the US
September 30th, 2011
Environmentalists from across America and Europe are surprised and outraged that John Stewart, voted the UK’s “most effective environmentalist,” was barred from entering the US. Stewart was invited to the US by a coalition of environmental organizations.
Contact:
510-393-7599, anirvan@chatterjee.net
The Aviation Justice Express is a coalition of airport watchdog, climate action, and sustainable transportation groups and activists. Endorsers include350.org, US Citizens Aviation Watch, Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution, Sane Aviation for Everyone, Shut This Airport Nightmare Down, All Aboard Washington, AirportWatch, So We Stand, and Left Field Films. Find out more at http://www.aviationjustice.org/
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
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Cap-and-Trade Proceeds in California
September 30th, 2011
This article about the court decision to allow Cap and Trade in California notes that ‘antipoverty “environmental justice” organizations’ argued that a market-based approach exposes poor and minority communities to higher levels of pollution. In response to the ruling, attorney Alegria De La Cruz of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, says, “This case is far from over.”‘
Especially as we see carbon markets flailing in Europe, and no global agreement in site that would set emissions reduction targets, it is, fact, inevitable that the case is far from over…. — The GJEP team
Cross-posted from SustainableBusiness.com News
California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) can proceed with implementation of the state’s cap-and-trade program, a Supreme Court judge ruled Wednesday.
The program, which was announced in November 2010 after four years of development, has been held up because of a March court ruling that requires CARB to further examine alternatives to cap-and-trade that might be better routes to reducing greenhouse gases.
CARB says it did adequately consider alternatives such as a carbon tax, and is appealing the decision in Superior Court.
This week’s ruling allows CARB to move forward on cap-and-trade before the Superiour Court rules.
Cap-and-trade is a key component of AB32, California’s 2006 landmark climate change legislation, which attempts to fill the yawning gap left by the lack of federal policy. Under the law, California must reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
California’s cap-and-trade program sets industry-wide limits on GHG emissions for the first time in the US. A similar national system has successfully reduced acid rain for decades.
Companies that exceed industry emissions limits can buy carbon allowances from cleaner companies that can meet those limits as well as buy carbon offsets. Industry emission limits become more stringent each year through 2020.
It provides an overall limit on emissions from sources responsible for 85% of California’s GHG emissions.
Carbon trading was scheduled to begin in 2012, until a court put a hold on it pending further analysis.
Wednesday’s court order was issued in the case of California Air Resources Board vs. Association of Irritated Residents, in which antipoverty “environmental justice” organizations, argued a market-based approach exposes poor and minority communities to higher levels of pollution.
In response to the ruling, attorney Alegria De La Cruz of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, says, “This case is far from over.”
CARB counters that the program allows businesses the greatest flexibility for compliance, stimulates clean energy technologies, increases energy security and independence, protects public health and will drive clean energy jobs in California. It’s designed to work in collaboration with other complementary policies that expand energy efficiency programs, reduce vehicle emissions, and encourage innovation.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
GE Tree Company ArborGen Named as Member of the Southeast Partnership for Integrated Biomass Supply Systems
September 30th, 2011
Note: Yet another disaster looming for the beautiful, biodiverse native hardwood, pine and wetland forests of the Southern U.S. While genetically engineered tree (GE tree) company ArborGen argues they will increase the supply of wood per acre of land with their frankentrees, what they neglect to mention is that the massive increase in demand for wood to produce wood-based “biomass” electricity or other wood-based fuels will require the conversion of millions of acres of native forest into biologically sterile industrial timber plantations. If ArborGen gets their way and these plantations contain genetically engineered eucalyptus, poplar and pine trees, ecological chaos will result–from the uncontrollable spread of the GE trees into native forests; from the enormous quantities of toxic agrochemicals these plantations require; from the droughts caused by ArborGen’s water-hogging GE eucalyptus trees and from the firestorms set off by ArborGen’s volatile and highly flammable GE eucalyptus trees.
–The GJEP Team
Please also support the STOP GE Trees Campaign with a donation.
(if you have trouble with the petition, send your sign on to info@globaljusticeecology.org)
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ArborGen joins team led by University of Tennessee to advance woody biomass production as part of $15 million USDA NIFA Grant
SUMMERVILLE, S.C., Sep 29, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — ArborGen, a world leader in the development and commercialization of technologies that improve the productivity of trees for wood, fiber and energy, has been named as a core member of the recently formed Southeast Partnership for Integrated Biomass Supply Systems (IBSS). Created through a $15 million grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to accelerate the supply of bio-based renewable energy, the IBSS partnership will develop sustainable feedstock production systems for dedicated energy crops, specifically purpose grown trees and switchgrass.
The Center for Renewable Carbon, a program of the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, will act as the lead institution for the IBSS, which will include several collaborating institutions throughout the Southeast. Maud Hinchee, Ph.D., chief science officer, and Michael Cunningham, PhD, director of product development, will serve as ArborGen’s representatives to the Southeast IBBS partnership. ArborGen expertise will be critical in meeting one of the IBSS partnership goals of exploring the inherent performance and cost advantages of short-rotation woody crops such as Eucalyptus, Pine and Poplar, matching the economic and environmental performance of each feedstock with a preferred conversion platform.
“ArborGen is excited to play a very active role in advancing the goals of the IBBS partnership funded through the recently awarded USDA grant,” said Hinchee. “Our entire team of scientists, silvicultural and forestry experts work every day to develop new solutions for short-rotation woody feedstocks and biofuels- and bioenergy-related technologies. We will lend our collective expertise toward this effort, which we believe will help meet the Southeast region’s need for biomass and our nation’s growing demand for wood, fiber and energy.”
ArborGen’s focus in the IBSS partnership will be on optimizing wood characteristics for optimal conversion to advanced “drop in” biofuels and on developing sustainable methods for harvesting, transporting and storing purpose grown trees. ArborGen will also work closely with IBSS on ensuring that technology developed at IBSS will benefit rural economies. A key component of the IBSS partnership will be to ensure that information is developed to help land owners, rural communities and the emerging biofuels industry make decisions that promote sustainable development.
About ArborGen
ArborGen is revolutionizing productivity in commercial forestry. ArborGen is the largest global supplier of seedling products to the commercial forestry industry, as well as the leading developer of biotech seedlings. Through innovations in both conventional breeding and biotechnology, ArborGen is developing high-value products that significantly improve the productivity of a given acre of land. These products enable ArborGen’s customers to grow trees that yield more wood per acre with greater consistency and quality in a shorter period of time. ArborGen’s work is improving the sustainability of working forests while helping to meet the world’s growing need for wood, fiber and energy. For more information, please visit www.arborgen.com .
SOURCE: ArborGen
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Victory: “Hold Your Hoses!” – Kink in UK’s ‘Trojan Hose’ geoengineering experiment, as European Parliament signals its opposition to planet-tinkering
September 30th, 2011
Filed under Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Geoengineering, Victory!
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
September Photo of the Month: World Bank-Sponsored “Forest Protection” in Indonesia
September 30th, 2011
Must watch video & commentary: MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on epidemic police brutality in the U.S.
September 30th, 2011
Filed under Climate Change, Media, Videos
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Another Sobering Story on REDD in Indonesia: How Indonesia Managed to Kill its First REDD Project
September 29th, 2011
Singapore. In July 2010, US investor Todd Lemons and Russian energy giant Gazprom believed they were just weeks from winning final approval for a landmark forest preservation project in Indonesia.
Now, the project is close to collapse, a casualty of labyrinthine bureaucracy, opaque laws and a secretive palm oil company.
The Rimba Raya project, on the island of Borneo, is part of a UN-backed scheme designed to reward poorer nations that protect their carbon-rich jungles.
Deep peat in some of the country’s rainforests stores billions of tons of carbon, so preserving those forests is regarded as crucial in the fight against climate change.
By putting a value on the carbon, the 90,000-hectare project would help prove that investors could turn a profit from the world’s jungles in ways that did not involve cutting them down.
After three years of work and more than $2 million in development costs, the project is proof that saving the world’s tropical rainforests will be far more complicated than simply setting up a framework to allow market forces to function.
A Reuters investigation shows the Forestry Ministry is highly skeptical about a market for forest carbon credits, placing it at odds with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who supports pay-and-preserve investments to fight climate change.
Hong Kong-based Lemons, 47, a veteran of environmentally sustainable, and profitable, projects, discovered just how frustrating the ministry can be to projects such as his.
“Success was literally two months around the corner,” he said. “We went through — if there are 12 steps, we went through the first 11 on time over a two-year period. We had some glitches, but by and large we went through the rather lengthy and complicated process in the time expected.”
That’s when the Forestry Ministry decided to slash the project’s area in half, making it unviable, and handing a large chunk of forested deep peatland to a palm oil company instead.
Unlimited Corruption
The dispute has turned a spotlight on the Forestry Ministry, which earns $15 billion a year in land permit fees from investors. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said last month that it would investigate the granting of forest permits and planned to crack down on corruption in the resources sector.
“It’s a source of unlimited corruption,” said Chandra M. Hamzah, deputy at the KPK.
Senior Forestry Ministry officials denied any wrongdoing in the Rimba Raya case and criticized the project’s backers for a deal they made with Russia’s Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, to market the project’s carbon credits.
The case illustrates how growing demand for land, bureaucratic hurdles and powerful vested interests are major obstacles to conservation projects in Indonesia and elsewhere in the developing world.
Showcase Project
The Rimba Raya project was meant to save a large area of carbon-rich peat swamp forest in Central Kalimantan and showcase Jakarta’s efforts to fight climate change.
Much of the area is dense forest that lies atop oozy black peat flooded by tea-colored water. Dozens of threatened or endangered species such as orangutans, proboscis monkeys, otter civets and Borneo bay cats live in the area, which is adjacent to a national park.
Rimba Raya was designed to be part of the UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation program. The idea is simple: every ton of carbon locked away in the peat and soaked up by the trees would earn a steady flow of carbon credits.
Profit from the sale of those credits would go to project investors and partners, local communities and the government. That would allow the project to pay its way and compete with palm oil farmers and loggers who might otherwise destroy it.
Rich countries and big companies can buy the credits to offset their emissions.
By preserving a large area of peat swamp forest, Rimba Raya was projected to cut carbon emissions by nearly 100 million tons over its 30-year life, which would translate into total saleable credits of about $500 million, Gazprom says.
Gold Standard
Rimba Raya got backing from the Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative, which helped pay for some of the early costs. Gazprom invested more than $1 million.
It was the first in the world to meet stringent REDD project rules under the Washington-based Voluntary Carbon Standard, an industry-respected body that issues carbon credits. It was also the first to earn a triple-gold rating under the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance, a separate verifier.
In December 2009, the Forestry Ministry tentatively named the now Indonesian-registered company Rimba Raya Conservation the license holder for nearly 90,000 hectares, contingent on it passing an environmental impact assessment. It did so a few months later.
The ownership of Rimba Raya Conservation is split 70 percent foreign and 30 percent Indonesian, with Lemons and business partner Jim Procanik holding small stakes.
Lemons is the CEO of InfiniteEARTH a Hong Kong-based firm that is the developer and manager of the Rimba Raya project as well as investment fund-raiser. Procanik, 44, is its managing director.
In June last year, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan asked for a map that would set the final boundary of the project, a document seen by Reuters showed. Once the map is issued, usually after a few weeks, a project is eligible for a license to operate.
But by September last year it was clear something was wrong. Despite repeated promises by ministry officials, the final map had not been issued. No explanations were given.
What followed instead was a series of steps by the Forestry Ministry that have undermined the project.
On Dec. 31, 2010, Best, a palm oil firm run by brothers Winarto and Winarno Tjajadi, was granted 6,500 hectares of peat swamp land for palm oil development, next to a smaller parcel of deep peatland granted a year earlier. The land granted in December was part of the original area set aside for Rimba Raya.
The Tjajadi brothers declined several requests to comment.
After months of delay, the Forestry Ministry finally ruled that Rimba Raya was only eligible for 46,000 hectares, cutting out much of the peatland covering nearly half the original project area.
Ombudsman Investigates
The case has now been brought before the office of the Indonesian government’s Ombudsman. Senior Ombudsman Dominikus Fernandes said he believed the Forestry Ministry should issue the license to Rimba Raya.
“If Rimba Raya has already fulfilled the criteria, there should not be a delay in issuing the license,” he said. “This is a model project that should be prioritized. If we don’t give an example on the assurance of investing in Indonesia, that’s not a good thing.”
Officials from the Forestry Ministry said the area was given legally for palm oil development because Best had claims to the land dating back to 2005.
Hadi Daryanto, secretary general of the ministry, stressed the peatland areas originally granted to Rimba Raya were on a type of forest called convertible production forest, which can be used for agriculture but not REDD projects. Handing that nearly 40,000 hectares to Rimba Raya would be against the law, he said.
The law also bans clearing peatland more than three meters deep. An assessment of the Rimba Raya area by a peat expert hired by InfiniteEARTH showed the peat is three to seven meters deep.
For Lemons, the mood has switched from exhilaration to bitter disappointment. “We’ve been here every day pushing like hell from every angle,” he said.
Gazprom is also upset. On June 16 it sent a letter to the Indonesian government, criticizing the failure to issue the license for Rimba Raya and threatening to abandon some $100 million clean-energy projects in Indonesia. The government has yet to respond.
Carbon Dreams?
Hadi said InfiniteEARTH’s deal with Gazprom was made in the absence of any license.
Lemons said the deal was explained in person during a presentation of a 300-page technical proposal submitted to the ministry to prove the project’s financial viability. Hadi was among a ministry panel that approved the proposal.
“One of their biggest concerns was whether REDD could deliver the same revenues to the state as other land-use permits such as palm oil, logging, mining. We were required to show contracts that demonstrated we could pay the fees and annual royalties,” Lemons said.
Gazprom said it had already agreed to long-term sales contracts with buyers at between 7 and 8 euros ($10 and $11.40) per ton — contingent on the license being issued.
“The Ministry of Forestry ought to be doing everything it can to support a program that benefits forestry as opposed to favor a program that’s there to cut it down and turn it into palm oil,” said Dan Barry, Gazprom Marketing Trading’s London-based global director of clean energy.
‘Ahead of its Time’
Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the head of the REDD task force in Indonesia who is also in charge of the president’s government reform unit, said the Rimba Raya case highlighted deep flaws in the bureaucracy and the need for sweeping reforms to underpin the 40 other REDD projects in the country.
“The core concern is the trust in government statements of readiness, and responsibility,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The action of the central government’s ministry and the district government’s action is not conducive for investment, especially in this new kind of venture.
“I can surmise that the case of Rimba Raya is a case of a business idea that is ahead of its time. The government infrastructure is insufficiently ready for it.”
Legal action was one solution to this case, he added.
That is a path Lemons and Procanik may eventually take but for now they have proposed a land swap deal with Best in which the firm gives Rimba Raya 9,000 hectares of peatland in return for a similar-sized piece of non-peatland held by Rimba Raya in the north of the project near other Best landholdings.
Best rejected an earlier offer by Rimba Raya of 9 percent of the credits from the project, Lemons said.
Reuters
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Brazil Judge Suspends Work On Belo Monte Dam Over Risks To Local Fishing
September 29th, 2011
Filed under Biodiversity, Climate Change, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests and Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Water
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Letter from Pablo Solon on the TIPNIS Highway Controversy
September 29th, 2011
GJEP has just received this letter from Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s former Ambassador to the United Nations and chief climate negotiator, regarding the controversy swimming around the TIPNIS highway, and the response of the Morales administration to popular protests.
– the GJEP team
September 28, 2011 (Español debajo)
President and Brother Evo Morales
Since 2006, Bolivia has shown leadership to the world on how to tackle the most profound challenges of our time. We have achieved the approval of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in the United Nations and promoted a vision for society based on Vivir Bien (Living Well) rather than consuming more.
However there must be coherence between what we do and what we say. One cannot speak of defending Mother Earth and at the same time promote the construction of a road that will harm Mother Earth, doesn’t respect indigenous rights and violates human rights in an “unforgiveable” way.
As the country that initiated the International Day of Mother Earth, we have a profound responsibility to be an example on the global stage. We cannot repeat the same recipes of failed “developmentalism” that has already brought the relationship between humanity and Mother Earth to breaking point
It is incomprehensible that we promote a World Conference on Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations in 2014 if we don’t lead the way in applying the principle of “informed, free and prior consent” for indigenous peoples in our own country.
The Eighth Indigenous March has some incoherent and incorrect demands such as those related to hydrocarbons ant the sale of forest carbon credits that look to commodify Mother Earth (known as REDD). However their concern for the impacts of the construction of this road is just.
Thousands of the delegates of five continents who participated in the first World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth are deeply upset by the Bolivian government’s actions.
The conflict in TIPNIS should never have happened. Greater physical integration of the country is necessary, but does not need to go through the “Indigenous Territory and National Park of Isibore Secure” (TIPNIS). Obviously building a road that doesn’t go trough the park would be more expensive, but trying to save $200 million or $300 million dollars at any social and environmental cost goes against the very principles of the “Living Well”.
In order to stop the manipulation of the Right who wish to use this protest to return to the past, we must be even more consistent in defending human rights, indigenous peoples’ rights and the rights of Mother Earth.
It’s not too late to resolve this crisis if we suspend permanently the construction of the road trough the TIPNIS, bring to justice those responsible for the repression to the indigenous march, and open up a broad and participatory national and regional debate to define a new agenda of actions in the framework of the Living Well.
– Pablo Solon
Septiembre 28 del 2011
Presidente y Hermano Evo Morales,
Desde el 2006 Bolivia ha mostrado liderazgo al mundo en entorno a los desafíos mas cruciales de nuestro tiempo. Hemos logrado la aprobación del Derecho Humano al Agua y el Saneamiento en las Naciones Unidas, e impulsado una visión de sociedad basada en el Vivir Bien en vez del consumismo.
No obstante, debe haber coherencia entre lo que decimos y lo que hacemos. No se puede hablar de defensa de la Madre Tierra y al mismo tiempo promover la construcción de una carretera que hiere a la Madre Tierra, no respeta los derechos indígenas y viola de manera “imperdonable” los derechos humanos.
Cómo país impulsor del Día Internacional de la Madre Tierra tenemos la gran responsabilidad de dar el ejemplo a nivel mundial. Nosotros no podemos repetir las recetas del “desarrollismo” fracasado que ha llevado a la relación de la humanidad con la Madre Tierra a un punto de quiebre.
Es incomprensible que promovamos la realización de una Conferencia Mundial de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Pueblos Indígenas para el 2014 si no somos vanguardia en la aplicación de la “consulta previa, libre e informada” a los pueblos indígenas dentro de nuestro propio país.
La Octava Marcha Indígena tiene planteamientos incoherentes e incorrectos en relación a temas como hidrocarburos y la venta de bonos de carbono de los bosques que mercantilizan la Madre Tierra (conocido como REDD). Pero su preocupación por la construcción de la carretera es justa.
Miles de delegados de los cinco continentes que participaron en la Primera Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climático y los derechos de la Madre Tierra están profundamente contrariados por la posición del gobierno de Bolivia.
El conflicto del TIPNIS nunca debió haber existido. La integración caminera es necesaria pero no a través del “Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Secure” (TIPNIS). Es cierto que será mas caro construir una carretera que no va a través del TIPNIS. Pero tratar de ahorrar 200 o 300 millones de dólares sin tomar cuenta los costos socio ambientales es ir en contra de los principios del Vivir Bien.
Para cerrarle el paso a la derecha que quiere instrumentalizar la protesta para retornar al pasado debemos ser mas consecuentes que nunca en la defensa de los derechos humanos, los derechos de los pueblos indígenas y los derechos de la Madre Tierra.
Aun es posible resolver esta crisis si se suspende definitivamente la construcción de la carretera a través del TIPNIS, llevamos a la justicia a los responsables de la represión a la marcha indígena, e iniciamos un amplio proceso participativo de debate nacional para definir una nueva agenda de acciones en el marco del Vivir Bien.
– Pablo Solón
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Leaked World Bank report confirms carbon market collapse
September 29th, 2011
In a recent draft report, the World Bank writes that “The value of transactions in the primary CDM market declined sharply in 2009 and further in 2010 … amid chronic uncertainties about future mitigation targets and market mechanisms after 2012.”
The report, titled, “Mobilizing Climate Finance”, was prepared for the G20 meetings in November 2011. According to John Vidal, writing in The Guardian, the draft “is likely to provide a template for action in the UN climate talks that resume in Panama next week, in preparation for a major meeting of 194 countries in Durban in November.” The report can be downloaded here (pdf file 1.1 MB).
The report is not only about trading carbon, but it does demonstrate two things very clearly. First, the mess that carbon markets are currently in, and second, the World Bank’s obsession with carbon markets.
In his speech at CIFOR’s Forests Indonesia Conference this week, Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s special envoy for climate change, mentioned the report in passing:
“We’ve just done some analysis, and we’ve written a paper, for the G20 finance ministers. If the world decides to do what’s necessary to get on to a two degree path, about US$100 billion will be flowing each year from rich countries to the developing world through carbon offset markets at a price of US$25 to US$50 a ton.”
Here’s the table in the leaked World Bank report for the G20, from which Steer gets his figures:
Steer’s figure of US$100 billion a year hides more than it reveals. In his speech, Steer did not mention that this is the anticipated figure for 2020. In fact, he made it sound as if this might happen considerably sooner. His previous sentence was, “my prediction is that we will find a very robust carbon market four years from today.”
Perhaps the most relevant statement is found in the notes to this table: “The results reflect various assumptions that are spelled out in the report and would vary widely according the scenarios adopted by policy makers. For simplicity the numbers are shown as point estimates but reflect broad ranges spelled out in the text.”
The Bank estimates a carbon price of US$20 to US$25 per ton. A recent research note issued by Deutsche Bank reduces its estimates of the price of carbon up to 2020. Deutsche Bank’s estimate for 2011 is €12/t. The table below illustrates Deutsche Bank’s current estimates compared to its previous estimates:
In phase 3 of the European Trading Scheme, Deutsche Bank anticipates an average price of €24. The estimates are more optimistic the further away they are, presumably based as much on wishful thinking as the accuracy of Deutsche Bank’s crystal ball gazers.
The Bank acknowledges that carbon markets are currently in a terrible mess:
[C]arbon offset markets – and carbon markets as a whole – now face major challenges. The value of transactions in the primary CDM market declined sharply in 2009 and further in 2010 (Table 2), amid chronic uncertainties about future mitigation targets and market mechanisms after 2012. A number of other factors are further constraining the potential of carbon finance, including market fragmentation in the absence of a global agreement, transaction costs associated with complex mechanisms, low capacity in many countries, lack of upfront finance, weaknesses in the current ‘project by project’ approach and non-inclusion of some sectors with significant abatement potential (e.g., agriculture).
As the table shows, the international market in CDM credits collapsed in 2009 and 2010. The value of primary CDM credits traded fell to US$1.5 billion – the lowest figure since the Kyoto Protocol came into force, in 2005.
But the World Bank remains optimistic. “Despite the recent slowdown in market activity, a number of recent developments do show continued interest in advancing carbon market solutions in both developed and developing countries.” With 200 bank staff working on carbon markets, perhaps we should not be surprised that the World Bank promotes carbon markets.
The Bank sees three problems currently with carbon markets (with translations from Bank-speak in italics):
- “demand factors”: without deep emissions targets there is no demand for carbon credits (this problem is, of course, exacerbated by the current economic crisis).
- “supply”: there are not enough carbon credits on the market (to meet the demand for them that does not currently exist).
- “Market rules and institutions”: the World Bank is keen to spend lots more money on “Piloting Innovation, Building Capacity and Raising Awareness for Greater Market Readiness”.
To increase the supply of carbon credits, the Bank proposes a series of measures to encourage “innovation to turn future carbon offset flows into finance”. The Bank is looking for ways that carbon finance can provide upfront investment capital to develop carbon projects. Under a sub-heading “Turning Carbon into Finance”, the Bank discusses “Risk-mitigation tools addressing delivery risks”, the IFC’s “Carbon Delivery Guarantee”, “Frontloading mechanisms”, a “Guaranteed Carbon Sales Contract”, and a “Carbon Mezzanine Debt Facility”.
All which has more than a faint whiff of the sort of financial innovation that brought the world to the economic crisis that it is currently in. The “Carbon Mezzanine Debt Facility”, for example, would “address the need to limit senior debt and achieve greater equity participation in risky projects”.
After looking various ways of hiding the risks involved in carbon projects, the Bank considers “Instruments to address price volatility”, to be funded through a multi-lateral bank. Which smells rather more than faintly like an offer from governments to bail out the markets (again).
To increase the demand for carbon credits, the Bank suggests that rich countries could increase their “supplementarity limits”. By this it means increasing the percentage of the emissions reduction target that can be met by buying carbon offsets from the Global South – increasing the carbon offsets loophole, in other words.
The Bank also has a more innovative way of increasing demand for carbon credits:
Given the heavy toll of a potential market disruption in terms of both capacity and confidence, governments could make innovative uses of climate finance to sustain momentum in the market while new initiatives are being developed. They could, for example, dedicate a fraction of their international climate finance pledges to procure carbon credits for testing and showcasing new approaches, such as country program concepts, new methodologies, CDM reforms and new mechanisms.
The Bank, then, is suggesting diverting money from climate mitigation to bail out the carbon markets. This is a beautiful example of the way the World Bank’s carbon market proponents think. Having realised that there is a massive problem with the carbon market, they look for ways of rescuing it – regardless of the impacts on the climate.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Video on industrial-scale logging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: We Are People Already Sold
September 29th, 2011
Filed under Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Videos
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
An Open Letter About the Current Situation in Bolivia
September 28th, 2011
For supporters of Bolivia’s positions on climate policy, the recent events around the TIPNIS highway — a popular protest march to stop the project, and brutal government repression to stop the march — have been profoundly disconcerting. A number of responses are emerging from different sectors in Bolivia. Among the clearest we have seen is this missive from our friend Jim Schultz, of the Democracy Center, based in Cochabamba. – The GJEP team
An Open Letter to Our Friends
About the Current Situation in Bolivia
Dear Friends,
Over the past few days we have received many emails from friends outside of Bolivia, long-time supporters of the struggle for social justice here, asking for our opinion and analysis about the turbulent events of the past week. In particular, people want to understand what led to the government’s violent repression on Sunday of the indigenous march protesting construction of a highway through the TIPNIS rainforest. As many of you know, a year ago the Democracy Center stopped its ongoing reporting about events in Bolivia and we intend to return to that role. However, given recent events neither can we be silent. Our analysis and views are represented in the article below. Please share it with others who might be interested.
Jim Shultz, The Democracy Center
The Morales Presidency Takes an Ugly Turn
In 2005, Sacha Llorenti, the President of Bolivia’s National Human Rights Assembly, wrote a forward for our Democracy Center report on an incident here two years previously, known as Febrero Negro. The IMF had demanded that Bolivia tighten its economic belt and President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada complied by proposing a new tax on the poor. His action set off a wave of protest and government repression that left 34 people dead. Llorenti wrote of the government’s repression, “Those days refer to an institutional crisis, state violence, and her twin sister, impunity.”
Only months after Llorenti wrote those words, that era in Bolivia’s history seemed swept away in a wave of hope. The nation’s first indigenous President, Evo Morales, rode into power on a voter mandate unmatched in modern Bolivian history. He proclaimed a new Bolivia in which indigenous people would take their rightful place in the nation’s political life, human rights would be respected, and a new constitution would guarantee autonomy for communities ignored by the governments of the past. Overnight the people who had been attacked or ignored by Bolivia’s leaders suddenly became Bolivia’s leaders. Llorenti eventually rose to the most powerful appointed position in the nation, Minister of Government. The rays of optimism that spread out from Tiwanaku and La Paz extended worldwide and Morales become a global symbol of something hopeful.
It is a sad measure of how deeply things have changed that it was Llorenti himself who stepped behind the podium at the Presidential Palace last Monday to defend the Morales government’s violent repression of indigenous protesters on September 25th. Five hundred police armed with guns, batons and tear gas were sent to a remote roadside to break up the six-week-long march of indigenous families protesting Morales’ planned highway through the TIPNIS rainforest. Llorentis declarations echoed the tired justifications heard from so many governments before: “All the actions taken by the police had the objective of preventing conflicts and if cases of abuse have been committed they will be punished.”
Men, women and children marching to defend their lands were attacked with a barrage of tear gas, their leaders were beaten, women had bands of tape forcibly wrapped over their mouths all under orders from a government that had promised to be theirs. How did it come to this?
The Highway Through the Rainforest
The indigenous families that were attacked by police on that Sunday left their lands in the TIPNIS on August 15th to march nearly 400 miles to their nations capital and press their case against the road that would cut through the heart of their lands. President Morales had made it very clear that he was not interested in hearing any more of their arguments against the mainly Brazil-financed highway. In June he declared, Whether you like it or not, we are going to build this road.
Morales argued that the highway was needed for development, creating new economic opportunities in parts of the country long isolated. In the name of those goals he was willing to ignore the requirements of community consultation and autonomy in the new Constitution that he had once championed. He was willing to abandon his own rhetoric to the world about protecting Mother Earth and to ignore studies about the likely destruction of the forest that the new highway would bring. What could have been a moment of authentic and valuable debate in Bolivia about what kind of development the nation really wanted instead became a series of presidential declarations and decrees.
As the march of some 1,000 people crept slowly onward toward La Paz its moral weight seem to grow with each step, drawing growing public attention that Morales couldnt stop. The march became the lead story in the countrys daily papers every morning for weeks. Civic actions in support of the marchers grew in Bolivias major cities. More than sixty international environmental groups, led by Amazon Watch, signed a letter to Morales asking him to respect the marchers demands.
From Morales, however, each day only brought a new set of accusations aimed at stripping the marchers of their legitimacy. First, said the government, the march was the creation of the U.S. Embassy. Then the government declared that the marchers were the pawns of foreign and domestic NGOs. Last week while in New York for his speech to the U.N., the Morales entourage announced that it had evidence that it was former President Sanchez de Lozada who was behind the march. The litany of ever-changing charges began to sound something akin to a schoolboy scrambling to invent reasons for why he didnt have his homework.
When the charges failed to derail the marchers’ support, the government and its supporters decided to try to steer them off their path to La Paz in other ways. They blocked the arrival of urgent donations of water, food, and medicine gathered and sent from throughout the country. But this only added yet again to the moral weight of humble people walking the long road to the capital.
Tear Gas at Dusk
Just after 5pm on Sunday, September 25, five hundred police dressed in full battle gear descended on the encampment (see video) where the marchers had pitched themselves for the night. Running at full speed they began firing canisters of toxic tear gas directly into the terrified groups of men, women, and children. Then the police began forcing them, screaming and crying, onto buses and into the backs of unmarked trucks for unknown destinations. Television footage captured the police knocking women to the ground and binding their mouths shut with tape. Many others ran to escape into the trees and fields so far from their homes. Children were separated from their parents.
Later that night those who had escaped the police began to take refuge in the small church of the town of San Borja. Early Monday morning government planes tried to land on an air strip in the town of Rurrenabaque, where more than 200 captured marchers were to be forcibly put aboard and returned to the villages where they had begun their trek so many weeks and miles before. The people in the community swarmed the runway to keep the planes from landing and were met with another attack of tear gas by the police sent there by the government.
Hours later the country’s young Defense Minister, Cecilia Chacon, announced her resignation. She wrote in a public letter to President Morales, “I can not defend or justify it [Sunday's repression]. There are other alternatives in the framework of dialogue, respect for human rights, nonviolence, and defense of Mother Earth.”
She became the latest in a string of former Morales allies who had dramatically split from the government over the TIPNIS highway and the government’s abuses of the marchers. Morales’ former ambasador to the U.S., Gustavo Guzman, and the President’s former Vice-Minister for Land, Alejandro Almaraz, had not only left the government but also gone to join the marchers.
Over the course of the following Monday public denouncements poured out against the police attack on the marchers from the National Public Ombudsman, the U.N., women’s groups, human rights groups, the Catholic Church, labor unions, and others, including many who had once been fervent Morales supporters.
By that Monday evening, with his public support in freefall, Morales finally spoke to the nation. He began by denying any involvement in Sunday’s police violence, blaming it on unnamed subordinates. But after years of arguing that his predecessors should be prosecuted for the abuses of soldiers and police under their command, it was a defense that convinced no one. Several key government officials told journalists that such an aggressive police action would never have taken place without orders from the government’s highest ranks.
Morales then announced that he would put the highway to a vote by the two Bolivian states, Cochabamba and Beni, through which the project would pass. Almaraz, the former Lands Vice-Minister, and others, quickly pointed out that such a referendum was unconstitutional, a direct violation of the provisions allowing local indigenous communities to decide the fates of their lands.
If Morales thought he had plugged the political leak in his weakened Presidency, it became clear Tuesday morning that the anger against him was only growing. Larger marches filled the streets in the cities of La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz and Sucre. The country’s labor federation (C.O.B) announced a strike. By nightfall the nation’s transportation workers announced that they too would stage a work stoppage Wednesday in opposition to the highway and in support of the marchers.
Just after 7pm Tuesday night Sacha Llorenti appeared at the Presidential Palace podium once again, this time to announce his own resignation. It appeared not so much an act of conscience, in the mold of Ms. Chacon’s the day before, but more a man being tossed overboard in the hope that it might afford the President some political protection.
Then Morales took to the airwaves to add an announcement of his own
the temporary suspension of construction of the disputed road. But by early Wednesday news reports revealed that the Brazilian firm happily bulldozing the highway had received no such order.
A People Rising
Wednesday morning Evo Morales woke to a nation headed for a transit standstill, with new marchers headed to the streets, schools closed and a nation deeply angry with its President. The cheering crowds of his 2006 inaugural had become a distant memory.
What is behind Morales’ devotion to a road through the heart of the TIPNIS? Is he simply a stubborn believer in a vision of economic development filled with highways and factories, in the style of the North? Is it a matter of Presidential ego, of not wanting to make the call to his Brazilian counterpart (Brazil is both the financier and constructor of the road, and eager to gain access to the natural resources it would make accessible), admitting that he can’t deliver on a Presidential promise? Are his deepest supporters, the coca growers, so anxious for a road that will open up new lands for expanding their crop that Morales has been willing to push things this far? Only President Morales knows his true motivations. But what is a certainty is that he has paid an enormous political cost for sticking to them.
The events of the past week represent something new rising in Bolivia. The people who have now listened to many Morales speeches about protecting the Earth and guaranteeing indigenous people control over their lands have risen to defend those principles, even if their President has seemingly abandoned them. Ironically, Morales has now inspired a new environmental movement among the nation’s younger generation, not by his example but in battle with it.
In my interview with Sacha Llorenti for our report on Febrero Negro, he also told me something else. He told me that the 2003 repression was, “the moment in which the crisis of the country was stripped down to the point where you could see its bones. Today in Bolivia a different crisis has laid bare a new set of political bones for all to see.
Evo Morales, in his global pulpit, had been an inspiring voice, especially on climate change and on challenging the excesses of the U.S. In Bolivia on economic matters he has often been true to the world, raising taxes on foreign oil companies and using some of those revenues to give school children a modest annual bonus for staying in the classroom.
But the abuses dealt out by the government against the people of the TIPNIS have knocked ‘Evo the icon’ off his pedestal in a way from which he will never fully recover, in Bolivia and globally. He seems now pretty much like any other politician. What has risen instead is a movement once again of the Bolivian people themselves awake, mobilized, and courageous. The defense of Bolivia’s environment and indigenous people now rests in the hands, not of Presidential power, but people power where real democracy must always reside.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Look North, America
September 28th, 2011
Note: Three words: Un-fucking-believable!
-The GJEP Team
Cross-posted from The New York Times – The Opinion Pages
By MELISSA BERT
Published: September 27, 2011
As American lawmakers struggle to fix the economy, they are missing the elephant in the room — or, more aptly, the polar bear.
America has a vast pool of untapped resources in its backyard. The North American basin, the Alaskan Arctic, holds an estimated 30 billion barrels of oil and more than 220 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as well as rare earth minerals and massive renewable wind, tidal and geothermal energy.
The economic potential is in the trillions of dollars, as with the Siberian and Eurasian Arctic basins. The difference is that other nations, like China and Russia, have responded by building polar icebreakers and ice-strengthened ships, and by investing in resource exploration. The United States has not.
The Arctic is the newest emerging region, and yet the United States has no action plan. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have proclaimed it to be in America’s strategic interest, but Washington has done little to convert words to action. The Pentagon, Coast Guard, National Science Foundation, academics and nonprofit organizations have compiled study after study. It’s time for policymakers to act.
The problem lies partially with the term “Arctic,” which evokes “climate change” and divides decision makers.
The fact is, with or without climate change, the Arctic is now. Not one more shard of ice need melt to make this a reality. Maritime activity is increasing annually, and close calls that place people and the environment in extreme peril have become routine. Lack of resources and attention from policymakers could prove deadly to those who live, tour, work or transit the Arctic’s pristine waters.
This month, the Northern Sea Route above Alaska set a record with the largest ever bulk carrier sailing from Murmansk, Russia. Last winter, Golden Seas, a 783-foot freighter, narrowly missed becoming grounded on the Aleutian chain, skirting an environmental and human tragedy.
Russian and German oil tankers now routinely sail in Arctic waters, with next year’s oil shipping expected to exceed 100 million tons. Going “over the top” is ideal for shipping because it cuts 5,800 miles off the Panama Canal route. We see evidence of the shift north in Prince Rupert, Canada, where containerized shipping was up 33 percent this summer.
Sightseeing is also a growing market in the Arctic. In 2007, the cruise ship Explorer hit an iceberg in the Antarctic and sank within two hours. The passengers only survived by virtue of a nearby ship. Yet memories are short: Explorer was built for both the Antarctic and Arctic voyages, and now Germany and France own several non-ice-hulled luxury liners that specialize in Arctic tourism.
In America, fisheries accounts for $30 billion domestically, $12 billion in exports and more than 100,000 jobs. As fish stocks move north into the melting Arctic, failure to patrol and monitor the region will mean that other countries, and some bad actors, could deplete them in a few seasons.
In the lower 48 states, we Americans rely on the Coast Guard to be on the scene of a maritime disaster in minutes. In the Arctic, where the briefest exposure to frigid waters results in certain death, the closest aircraft or ships may be days away.
This must change. We need rescue aircraft and icebreakers present in the high north, with basic infrastructure, surveillance and communications capacity.
The Arctic matters. If people cannot safely operate off Alaska, whether transiting, fishing, drilling for oil, conducting scientific missions or sightseeing, America will not lead. We will lose out economically and environmentally to nations already there, gaining momentum and market share.
Melissa Bert is a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard and a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on September 28, 2011, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: Look North, America.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Occupy Boston: smart, savvy, and aiming to emulate Wall Street protests (plus videos)
September 28th, 2011
There were socialists, anti-poverty campaigners, students, anarchists, computer hackers, the unemployed, and workers ranging from a vet to an accountant.
And, numbering around 200 and meeting to plot until late in the night, a group of Bostonians have decided to recreate the anti-Wall Street protests that are gripping New York.
Unlike previous attempts, such as a march that fizzled out in Chicago with just 20 people, the people behind Occupy Boston showed a strong dose of media savvy and organisational skill on Monday night, as they drew a committed crowd of volunteers to their cause: to occupy a slice of the city. Local TV crews were in attendance at the evening mass planning meeting, and it had been flagged on the front pages of Boston’s newspapers.
The move raises the first serious prospect of the Wall Street protests spreading beyond New York and comes as other events are also being planned in Los Angeles and Washington.
Organiser Marissa Egerstrom addresses the Boston general assembly
The crowd of Bostonians listened and spoke about their anger at the ills in the capitalist system in general and the financial industry in particular.
Gathering in the centre of Boston Common, in the heart of the city, they heard various speakers promise to copy the New York protests. “Tonight we begin to show the world how to live in freedom and peace. Right here, right now, a new life is starting,” said Marissa Egerstrom, one of the organising forces behind Occupy Boston.
Those were big words to say in front of just 200 people. But Occupy Boston aims to emulate Occupy Wall Street protesters, whose seizure of a downtown Manhattan park was first ignored by most of the media but has now generated headlines around the world, especially after police used pepper spray against peaceful women demonstrators.
Matthew Krawitz explains why he is joining the Boston protest
Many of those gathered on the Common, including nearly all the key organisers, had been to New York to witness the protests. One organiser, Matthew Krawitz, who brought his two daughters to the Common, had been in Manhattan for the first day of the protests there. Now the unemployed IT expert was helping set up something similar in Boston. “I’m here to give them a better future,” he said, referring to his two children.
In style and substance, Occupy Boston closely followed that of Occupy Wall Street, which was itself inspired by recent social movements in Spain and Arab countries. After the speeches different tactical groups were formed – covering everything from legal affairs to food to medical to media outreach – to prepare for the coming occupation.
Potential sites to be occupied included the Common itself and Dewey Square in Boston’s financial district. Potential dates were also picked, with some as soon as this coming weekend. The separate groups operated in a “leaderless” style that dragged on in often circular debates but were impressive for eventually coming to collective agreement.
The meetings lasted for several hours in the park, as crowds listened to rabble-rousing speeches and critiques of capitalism. It promised a striking protest to come, but at times offered an incongruous vision of Boston. Ringing the common where the protesters met are some of the most upmarket streets in the city, lined with million-dollar townhouses. And on the park itself, virtually next door to where scores of people talked of forcefully bringing down American capitalism, fellow Bostonians enjoyed games of tennis on brightly lit late-night courts, seemingly oblivious to what was going on in the darkness just 50 yards away.
But what was never in doubt among the disparate participants was a sense of outrage and injustice at America’s current economic woes. Bob Norkus, 54, had been out of work for a year. He has one simple desire. “Things need to be realigned. It’s 99 percent of us versus one percent of them. This is still a democracy if we care to grab it,” he said.
There were people with jobs in the crowd, too, and they were equally angry. Cynthia Brennan, 41, is a veterinary nurse. She had been inspired to come to the common by watching the popular revolts of the Arab Spring. “I was fascinated by Egypt. I was in front of al-Jazeera all the time. It needs to happen here,” she said.
Local government accountant Tim Larkin, 28, agreed. But he wanted to improve on the New York protests in Boston. “We have to be better than New York and have a stronger set of demands,” he said.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Earth Minute for September 27: World Bank-Supported “Forest Protection” in Indonesia
September 28th, 2011
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the workshop on REDD at the World Bank’s annual meetings in Washington, DC. To listen to the show, click here.
Text from this week’s Earth Minute:
At the annual meetings of the World Bank in Washington, DC, last weekend, I attended a workshop organized by activists from Indonesia about the impacts of World Bank-supported forest conservation projects like REDD. REDD is the scheme to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation that is specifically designed to supposedly “offset” carbon emissions from Industrialized countries like the US by protecting forests in developing countries.
One of the presenters explained that unjust forest conservation projects in Indonesia are leading to violence that rivals the atrocities that occurred under the Suharto dictatorship.
Thousands of forest-based communities are being evicted from their lands by heavily armed forest rangers, paramilitaries and police, who force people to leave at gunpoint while their homes are burned to the ground.
But as one of the speakers pointed out, what is happening in Indonesia is not unique; these strong-arm tactics are happening around the world in the name of “protecting” forests for the purpose of offsetting pollution in Industrialized countries like the US
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog