Mobilization for Climate Justice

Archive for November, 2011

South Durban, South Africa, across the city from the conference center where thousands of UN delegates debate climate change solutions, is home to the second largest petrochemical complex in Africa. Like petrochemical plants around the world, South Durban is a site of daily climate crimes and massive community health problems from toxic releases, explosions, fires and workplace accidents and hazards. The asthma rate among schoolchildren is a staggering 80 percent. Two months before COP17 convened here, a refinery explosion and fire caused 100 children at a nearby school to be hospitalized with burns and acute skin and respiratory issues. Engen, the petrochemical Company responsible, responded by donating 100 new uniforms to the school. A second explosion occurred two days before COP17 began.

As National delegates to the climate conference down the road negotiate, for the seventeenth straight year, over how to “leverage funds” and build “private sector engagement” to make a transition to a “green economy” and “climate friendly development,” here is what a handful of North American Indigenous People and their African allies have to say about the cost of ongoing fossil fuel development, which shows no sign of abating.

For more in-depth note, see the previous post. For the street-level view, watch the short videos below.

- Jeff Conant, for GJEP

Daniel T’seleie, K’asho Got’ine Forst Nation, Fort Good Hope, Canada:

Ben Powless, Mohawk from Canada:

Nnimmo Bassey of Nigeria, Chair of Friends of the Earth International and Director of Environmental Rights Action:

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South Durban, South Africa, across the city from the conference center where thousands of UN delegates debate climate change solutions, is home to the second largest petrochemical complex in Africa. Like petrochemical plants around the world, South Durban is a site of daily climate crimes and massive community health problems from toxic releases, explosions, fires and workplace accidents and hazards. The asthma rate among schoolchildren is a staggering 80 percent. Two months before COP17 convened here, a refinery explosion and fire caused 100 children at a nearby school to be hospitalized with burns and acute skin and respiratory issues. Engen, the petrochemical Company responsible, responded by donating 100 new uniforms to the school. A second explosion occurred two days before COP17 began.

As National delegates to the climate conference down the road negotiate, for the seventeenth straight year, over how to “leverage funds” and build “private sector engagement” to make a transition to a “green economy” and “climate friendly development,” here is what a handful of North American Indigenous People and their African allies have to say about the cost of ongoing fossil fuel development, which shows no sign of abating.

For more in-depth note, see the previous post. For the street-level view, watch the short videos below.

- Jeff Conant, for GJEP

Daniel T’seleie, K’asho Got’ine Forst Nation, Fort Good Hope, Canada:

Ben Powless, Mohawk from Canada:

Nnimmo Bassey of Nigeria, Chair of Friends of the Earth International and Director of Environmental Rights Action:

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

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Filed under Climate Change, Durban/COP-17, Energy, Pollution, UNFCCC

Tagged as Bobby Peek, Climate Change, Climate Justice, durban, earth minute, human rights, KPFK, pollution, south africa, UN Climate talks, UNFCCC

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Filed under Climate Change, Durban/COP-17, Energy, Pollution, UNFCCC

Tagged as Bobby Peek, Climate Change, Climate Justice, durban, earth minute, human rights, KPFK, pollution, south africa, UN Climate talks, UNFCCC

For more updates on events in Durban, South Africa surrounding the UN Climate Conference, please visit the following website:

http://conferenceofpolluters.wordpress.com/

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

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Filed under Actions, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Durban/COP-17

Tagged as activists, Creamy Ewok Baggends, global warming, Occupy COP 17, occupy wall street, protest, UN Climate talks

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-Posted from Inter-Press Service

By Kristin Palitza

Rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil.

Credit:Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

DURBAN, South Africa , Nov 29, 2011 (IPS) – Organisations working with indigenous peoples living in forests say the United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is just another way for big corporates to reap huge profits.

REDD+ has been touted as a global scheme to conserve forests, enhance carbon stocks and support sustainable forest management.

“It is a system where you pour a lot of money into forests that will attract powerful international investors who will make big profits,” warned Simone Lovera, managing director of the Global Forest Coalition, a worldwide network of more than 50 non-governmental organisations and Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She spoke during the U.N. 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17), which is taking place in Durban, South Africa, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9.

Lovera does not contest that deforestation and forest degradation are key climate change culprits. Caused by agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development or destructive logging, they account for nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N., more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.

REDD+ is supposed to turn this around. Since it was started in 2005, the programme enables industrialised countries in the North to reward reductions of carbon emissions to nations in the South. It is basically a system of performance-based payments that are financed through global carbon markets. The U.N. predicts that finance for greenhouse gas emission reductions from REDD+ could reach up to 30 billion dollars per year. The money is supposed to go towards pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity and secure vital ecosystem services.

But indigenous communities say this is not so. It was big, international forestry businesses that ultimately benefited from the carbon deals, not the locals who have lived in and off the forests for many generations. Instead, locals are kicked off their land to make space for large monoculture plantations aimed at offsetting carbon emissions in the north.

Lovera said there are many risks inherent to REDD+ that indigenous communities are unable to address because they lack access to information and education, such as forced, non-transparent contracts and land grabbing. What forest-dependent communities need instead, she argued, are national public policies that support sustainable forest management.

Lovera said the U.N. promise of the scheme generating billions of dollars annually was “a big fairytale”, a way of green washing. “There won’t be big carbon financing for REDD+. Carbon markets are collapsing. It’s a very risky scheme that is creating havoc all over the world,” she cautioned.

Her prediction is likely to be correct. A World Bank draft report, written for a G20 meeting in November and leaked to the Britsh Guardian newspaper in September, confirmed the trouble global carbon markets are in. “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 World Bank stated.

In the meantime, the U.N. continues to pump large amounts of finance into REDD+. Last month, for example, Nigeria’s national REDD+ programme received four million dollars in funding, which the U.N. says brought total funding in 14 countries worldwide to nearly 60 million dollars. The funds are aimed at increasing the capacity of national governments to implement carbon-saving strategies together with local groups, such as indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.

“The U.N.-REDD programme’s support is invaluable because climate change is a global problem and the issues of REDD+, sustainable forest management and sustainable livelihoods cannot be handled by the country alone,” said Salisu Dahiru, national coordinator for REDD+ in Nigeria.

But organisations working with forest-dependent communities say the benefits for local people are minimal.

“We say very clearly ‘no’ to REDD+. Under it, people are being expelled from nature so that big industries can profit from carbon storage,” argued Winnie Overbeek, the international coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement, a non-governmental organisation based in Montevideo, Uruguay.

In Uganda, for example, a case was documented where 22,000 people were violently evicted from the Mubende and Kiboga districts earlier this year to make way for the United Kingdom-based New Forests Company to plant trees, to earn carbon credits and ultimately to sell timber. Similar incidents happened to indigenous peoples all over the world, said Overbeek.

“REDD+ is about making more profit, continuing pollution and disrespecting the rights of forest people all over the world. It’s about land grabbing,” he warned. “It’s time to stop thinking about REDD+ and start protecting local populations and their land rights.”

Marlon Santi, a member of the Quichua indigenous community that lives in the Amazon Region of Ecuador, said he has experienced first-hand how REDD+ took away people’s livelihoods. The scheme has led to mega forestry projects that exist to the detriment of local people.

“Forests have become a negotiating space to make money. They are used as business opportunities. That’s unacceptable to us,” said Santi. “REDD+ projects are hypocritical. We need real political solutions that benefit everyone.”

He hoped the negotiators at this year’s COP 17 will grant an open ear to his people’s needs.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Cross-Posted from Inter-Press Service

By Kristin Palitza

Rainforest cleared by burning in the state of Acre, Brazil.

Credit:Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

DURBAN, South Africa , Nov 29, 2011 (IPS) – Organisations working with indigenous peoples living in forests say the United Nations programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) is just another way for big corporates to reap huge profits.

REDD+ has been touted as a global scheme to conserve forests, enhance carbon stocks and support sustainable forest management.

“It is a system where you pour a lot of money into forests that will attract powerful international investors who will make big profits,” warned Simone Lovera, managing director of the Global Forest Coalition, a worldwide network of more than 50 non-governmental organisations and Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She spoke during the U.N. 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17), which is taking place in Durban, South Africa, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 9.

Lovera does not contest that deforestation and forest degradation are key climate change culprits. Caused by agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development or destructive logging, they account for nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N., more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector.

REDD+ is supposed to turn this around. Since it was started in 2005, the programme enables industrialised countries in the North to reward reductions of carbon emissions to nations in the South. It is basically a system of performance-based payments that are financed through global carbon markets. The U.N. predicts that finance for greenhouse gas emission reductions from REDD+ could reach up to 30 billion dollars per year. The money is supposed to go towards pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity and secure vital ecosystem services.

But indigenous communities say this is not so. It was big, international forestry businesses that ultimately benefited from the carbon deals, not the locals who have lived in and off the forests for many generations. Instead, locals are kicked off their land to make space for large monoculture plantations aimed at offsetting carbon emissions in the north.

Lovera said there are many risks inherent to REDD+ that indigenous communities are unable to address because they lack access to information and education, such as forced, non-transparent contracts and land grabbing. What forest-dependent communities need instead, she argued, are national public policies that support sustainable forest management.

Lovera said the U.N. promise of the scheme generating billions of dollars annually was “a big fairytale”, a way of green washing. “There won’t be big carbon financing for REDD+. Carbon markets are collapsing. It’s a very risky scheme that is creating havoc all over the world,” she cautioned.

Her prediction is likely to be correct. A World Bank draft report, written for a G20 meeting in November and leaked to the Britsh Guardian newspaper in September, confirmed the trouble global carbon markets are in. “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 World Bank stated.

In the meantime, the U.N. continues to pump large amounts of finance into REDD+. Last month, for example, Nigeria’s national REDD+ programme received four million dollars in funding, which the U.N. says brought total funding in 14 countries worldwide to nearly 60 million dollars. The funds are aimed at increasing the capacity of national governments to implement carbon-saving strategies together with local groups, such as indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities.

“The U.N.-REDD programme’s support is invaluable because climate change is a global problem and the issues of REDD+, sustainable forest management and sustainable livelihoods cannot be handled by the country alone,” said Salisu Dahiru, national coordinator for REDD+ in Nigeria.

But organisations working with forest-dependent communities say the benefits for local people are minimal.

“We say very clearly ‘no’ to REDD+. Under it, people are being expelled from nature so that big industries can profit from carbon storage,” argued Winnie Overbeek, the international coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement, a non-governmental organisation based in Montevideo, Uruguay.

In Uganda, for example, a case was documented where 22,000 people were violently evicted from the Mubende and Kiboga districts earlier this year to make way for the United Kingdom-based New Forests Company to plant trees, to earn carbon credits and ultimately to sell timber. Similar incidents happened to indigenous peoples all over the world, said Overbeek.

“REDD+ is about making more profit, continuing pollution and disrespecting the rights of forest people all over the world. It’s about land grabbing,” he warned. “It’s time to stop thinking about REDD+ and start protecting local populations and their land rights.”

Marlon Santi, a member of the Quichua indigenous community that lives in the Amazon Region of Ecuador, said he has experienced first-hand how REDD+ took away people’s livelihoods. The scheme has led to mega forestry projects that exist to the detriment of local people.

“Forests have become a negotiating space to make money. They are used as business opportunities. That’s unacceptable to us,” said Santi. “REDD+ projects are hypocritical. We need real political solutions that benefit everyone.”

He hoped the negotiators at this year’s COP 17 will grant an open ear to his people’s needs.

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By Nina Chestney

Cross-Posted from Reuters

LONDON  - In a sign of the tough times facing the carbon sector, the Carbon Markets and Investors’ Association last month dropped the word “carbon” from its name.

The group, which represents more than 50 firms that finance and invest in emissions reduction, is now the Climate Markets and Investors’ Association (CMIA).

“The new name reflects both the need and potential for the diversification of the role of the private sector in combating climate change,” said Miles Austin, director of the CMIA.

“We need to explore supplementary routes to drive investments.”

The VCS Association, which manages a voluntary carbon offset standard, stopped spelling out the word “carbon” in its name last year.

“We never really thought twice about moving away from the word ‘carbon’,” said VCS Chief Executive David Antonioli.

“Carbon trading in particular does not have the best reputation so if you want to stay in this space but draw less ire from some quarters it would make sense to use climate instead of carbon.”

Tough economic times and soured efforts to set up a U.S. national emissions trading scheme have hurt the sector.

So have scandals in the EU emissions trading scheme, including carbon permit theft, tax fraud, re-use of U.N. carbon credits and internet scams.

Just a few years ago, many investors were betting on a $2 trillion global carbon market by 2020.

Instead, carbon prices in both the EU ETS and a U.N.-backed carbon offset scheme have tumbled, hit by slowed economic growth and over-supply.

That has forced many firms to pull out of emissions trading altogether or scale back investment.

It has also prompted many organizations to reconsider how they communicate on issues related to climate policy.

“(The shift) is mainly related to the negative image that was created around carbon markets in the U.S.,” said Russel Mills, global director of energy and climate change policy at Dow Chemical.

“Energy security, clean energy and jobs from shale gas or efficiency are the only topics one can safely touch in Washington for the time being,” he said.

U.S. public concern about climate change has been steadily falling since 2007, a Nielsen opinion poll showed in August, as people focus on more immediate economic concerns and question the science behind climate change.

The United States, the world’s second largest emitter, is the only industrialized nation not signed up to the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol for curbing emissions.

A U.N. summit in Copenhagen in 2009 failed to deliver a binding pact to succeed Kyoto, while a summit starting next week in South Africa is likely to produce only modest steps toward one.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

29 November 2010

 Durban, South Africa—In preparation for the 17^th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Global Justice Ecology Project has compiled an international list of speakers available for interviews at COP 17.

The list of speakers ranges from former Ambassador to the UN from the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Pablo Solón, to smallholder farmers from La Via Campesina, the world’s largest federation of peasant farmers, to grassroots members of the Wastepickers’ Union and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance to members of Climate Justice Now!, to Indigenous Peoples and youth from six continents .

Expertise Includes: REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation); Carbon Offsets Carbon Trading; Payment for Environmental Services; Forests; Tree Plantations; Indigenous Peoples’ Rights; Forest Dependent Communities and Land Tenure; Land Grabbing; Agrofuels, Bioenergy and Biochar; Geoengineering; Climate Finance; World Bank; Climate Technology; Labor Organizing; Mitigation and Adaptation; Resource Extraction; Energy; Women’s and Gender Issues; Youth Issues; Waste-to-Energy Impacts; Recycling and Wastepicking

 The speakers’ list will be updated on a daily basis and is available by going to the pressroom on Global Justice Ecology Project’s website  and Durban Climate Justice.

To schedule interviews  (unless otherwise indicated in list), and to receive daily press briefings on the issues and organizations above, contact:

Jeff Conant jc@globaljusticeecology.org  +27 (0)73.623.0619 [English and Spanish]

Note: If calling from outside of South Africa, do not dial the (0).

The speakers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Global Justice Ecology Project nor does Global Justice Ecology Project necessarily reflect the opinions of the speakers.

For more background on the concept of climate justice, please visit: http://globaljusticeecology.org/climate_justice.php.

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29 November 2010

 Durban, South Africa—In preparation for the 17^th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Global Justice Ecology Project has compiled an international list of speakers available for interviews at COP 17.

The list of speakers ranges from former Ambassador to the UN from the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Pablo Solón, to smallholder farmers from La Via Campesina, the world’s largest federation of peasant farmers, to grassroots members of the Wastepickers’ Union and the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance to members of Climate Justice Now!, to Indigenous Peoples and youth from six continents .

Expertise Includes: REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation); Carbon Offsets Carbon Trading; Payment for Environmental Services; Forests; Tree Plantations; Indigenous Peoples’ Rights; Forest Dependent Communities and Land Tenure; Land Grabbing; Agrofuels, Bioenergy and Biochar; Geoengineering; Climate Finance; World Bank; Climate Technology; Labor Organizing; Mitigation and Adaptation; Resource Extraction; Energy; Women’s and Gender Issues; Youth Issues; Waste-to-Energy Impacts; Recycling and Wastepicking

 The speakers’ list will be updated on a daily basis and is available by going to the pressroom on Global Justice Ecology Project’s website  and Durban Climate Justice.

To schedule interviews  (unless otherwise indicated in list), and to receive daily press briefings on the issues and organizations above, contact:

Jeff Conant jc@globaljusticeecology.org  +27 (0)73.623.0619 [English and Spanish]

Note: If calling from outside of South Africa, do not dial the (0).

The speakers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Global Justice Ecology Project nor does Global Justice Ecology Project necessarily reflect the opinions of the speakers.

For more background on the concept of climate justice, please visit: http://globaljusticeecology.org/climate_justice.php.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

by Jeff Conant – November 28, 2011

First published in Earth Island Journal

Like the parable of the three blind men coming upon an elephant and determining, each on his own, that this thing before them is a tree trunk, or an enormous boulder, or a thick scaly snake, one’s perspective on the events here at COP17, the UN Climate Summit kicking off today in Durban, South Africa, reflects one’s position and willingness to grope with searching hands in the dark.

But no matter where you come from, if you are actually concerned about the climate crisis, it’s going to be an ugly two weeks.

The science tells us that maintaining global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade – the current best case scenario – will lead to the inundation of coastal areas, loss of glaciers, and a tremendous toll in human lives and species lost, but may – just may – prevent what climatologist James Hansen calls, forebodingly, the “Venus Syndrome.” But given the gridlock in the UN negotiations and the absolute unwillingness of the most polluting nations to reduce their carbon emissions, a mere 2-degree rise is increasingly unlikely.

The politics, by and large, revolves around a tug of war between the wealthiest and most polluting nations ( whose goal is to maintain steady economic growth, though this dooms us to the Venutian future), the so-called emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (whose goal is to grow large enough, fast enough, to gain a hearty middle class, while doing their fair share to contribute to Venus-on-Earth), and the poorer nations (whose struggle, as always, is just to survive). And, finally there is the great, multitudinous, heterogeneous beast we call civil society – those of us who represent neither national interests, nor ‘scientific’ concerns (though climate science forms a strong basis for our positions). Civil society in its bulk is the vast representation of women, Indigenous Peoples, youth, peasant farmers, labor, and ordinary folk who come to be gathered under such technocratic nomenclatures as “the poor,” “the vulnerable,” “the marginalized populations,” and now, in the powerful parlance of the Occupy movement, “the 99 percent.”

For the 99 percent, the climate crisis is neither about settling a scientific debate (the scientists have that pretty well sealed up), nor about safeguarding an already dubious multilateral agenda (if the 16 previous Conferences of Parties haven’t forged a solution, why should we expect one now?) Rather, it is about ethics, about human rights, and specifically the rights that UN parlance calls economic, social and cultural rights (food, water, shelter, health, political participation). For many, in short, the concern in Durban – as in Cancun and Copenhagen previously – is for justice.

The previous climate summits have made it painfully clear that, at the top levels, government ministers, heads of state, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself, is more about form than content. Last year, in Cancun, after the spectacular debacle of the failed talks in 2009 at Copenhagen, the concern among global leaders was less about saving the climate than about saving face.  Those clamoring for justice in Cancun – a delegation of thousands from civil society – were fenced out, and kept literally miles away from the talks. They were the 99 percent.

The Cancun Agreements, as the latest global climate accord is called, sealed in a process that abandoned mandatory global greenhouse gas reduction goals – the essential purpose of the Kyoto Protocol – for a voluntary system with no global goals at all.

Since the first Conference of the Parties, in 1994, annual CO₂ emissions have risen by around 40 percent globally. Part of the blame can be laid on the market-based mechanisms ensconced in the Kyoto Protocol from the beginning, such as pollution offsets, carbon markets, and the Clean Development Mechanism (an arrangement to have ‘clean’ projects in the Global South earn credits they then sell to speculators on the carbon market). Each of these market-based efforts at climate mitigation has proven inadequate at best and counterproductive at worst.

The reality is that to stave off the Venus Syndrome – indeed, to maintain temperature rise to 2°C – the better part of known reserves of fossil fuels must remain untouched in the ground. But to the contrary, while the UN stalls and governments stonewall, corporations and the World Bank continue to invest wildly in expanding the fossil-fuel frontier through deep-sea drilling and exploitation of shale gas and tar sands, scraping the bottom of the oil barrel and locking us into a path of high emissions and a toxic future. Venus, here we come.

In a panel discussion the first afternoon of COP17, Third World Network, a highly regarded body of analysts that provides daily briefings at the UN meetings, called the plans afoot in Durban, “an elite and corporate-led agenda by the 1 percent for the 1 percent” and “a great escape for the rich countries – each country for itself according to its national priorities.”

Lim Li Lin of Third World Network says: “What the rich countries want most of all is the continuation of market mechanisms. This is so that they don’t have to reduce emissions at home but can simply continue shifting the burden to developing countries.”

Since Copenhagen in 2009, it has been increasingly clear that the goal of rich nations, insofar as one can be discerned, is to strip the Kyoto Protocol of its binding emissions reductions to protect the planet and the 99 percent, but to keep the pollution trading market mechanisms, which promise to generate so much profit for the corporate elite. Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, calls it, “throwing out the baby but saving the bathwater.” Given the dire circumstances, I’d go a step further and call it drowning the baby in the bathwater.

A fluff piece in the South African Airlines in-flight magazine calls Durban the planet’s “last, best hope for a climate deal,” but it is lost on no one here that Africa, accompanied by the small island states, is already feeling the heat. Because of the particular geography of the African continent, a 2-degree rise in global temperatures could mean a rise of 4 degrees or more here. Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International calls it “the frying of a continent.”

Mohammad Adow, an African correspondent for Al Jazeera sitting on the Third World Network panel, noted that “the COP is taking place on the continent where humankind was born, which is also the most vulnerable continent, where hundreds of millions of people are already suffering the impacts of climate change through hunger, thirst, and displacement from their lands.”

Adow used a biblical metaphor to describe the power struggle at play: “The developed countries are not only not building the ark to save us from the great flood, they are preventing developing countries from building our own arks, as well.”

While the intransigence of the most polluting states – the US comes immediately to mind – deserves universal condemnation, it should be recognized that the US has no monopoly on stonewalling. South Africa, the setting for the negotiations, is among the most polluting of the emerging economies, with a per-capita carbon footprint higher even than that of the US. The country is a recent recipient of the largest ever World Bank loan ($3.5 billion) to build the third and fourth largest coal-fired power plants on Earth. The companies behind these projects, Sasol and Eskom, both sit on the country’s negotiating team at the COP.

Still, some have faith in the negotiations. The Climate Action Network (CAN), a group of NGOs devoted to building incremental reform through the UN process, posed the question Monday in their first daily briefing: “The science is compelling, the economics makes sense, so why are countries holding back from achieving the progress the world so badly needs?”

The question hangs in the air like a wisp of smoke among the frustrated, hopeful delegates that fill the conference halls here in Durban. But such a question is at best rhetorical, and at worst dangerously naïve, as it blithely ignores the white elephant in the room. Climate Justice Now!, the more radical civil society network that sometimes vies with CAN for space inside the negotiations, has a name for this white elephant that, thanks to the rowdy Occupiers at Wall Street and everywhere, can finally be pronounced in print. The elephant, I daresay, is called “capitalism.”

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by Jeff Conant – November 28, 2011

First published in Earth Island Journal

Like the parable of the three blind men coming upon an elephant and determining, each on his own, that this thing before them is a tree trunk, or an enormous boulder, or a thick scaly snake, one’s perspective on the events here at COP17, the UN Climate Summit kicking off today in Durban, South Africa, reflects one’s position and willingness to grope with searching hands in the dark.

But no matter where you come from, if you are actually concerned about the climate crisis, it’s going to be an ugly two weeks.

The science tells us that maintaining global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade – the current best case scenario – will lead to the inundation of coastal areas, loss of glaciers, and a tremendous toll in human lives and species lost, but may – just may – prevent what climatologist James Hansen calls, forebodingly, the “Venus Syndrome.” But given the gridlock in the UN negotiations and the absolute unwillingness of the most polluting nations to reduce their carbon emissions, a mere 2-degree rise is increasingly unlikely.

The politics, by and large, revolves around a tug of war between the wealthiest and most polluting nations ( whose goal is to maintain steady economic growth, though this dooms us to the Venutian future), the so-called emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (whose goal is to grow large enough, fast enough, to gain a hearty middle class, while doing their fair share to contribute to Venus-on-Earth), and the poorer nations (whose struggle, as always, is just to survive). And, finally there is the great, multitudinous, heterogeneous beast we call civil society – those of us who represent neither national interests, nor ‘scientific’ concerns (though climate science forms a strong basis for our positions). Civil society in its bulk is the vast representation of women, Indigenous Peoples, youth, peasant farmers, labor, and ordinary folk who come to be gathered under such technocratic nomenclatures as “the poor,” “the vulnerable,” “the marginalized populations,” and now, in the powerful parlance of the Occupy movement, “the 99 percent.”

For the 99 percent, the climate crisis is neither about settling a scientific debate (the scientists have that pretty well sealed up), nor about safeguarding an already dubious multilateral agenda (if the 16 previous Conferences of Parties haven’t forged a solution, why should we expect one now?) Rather, it is about ethics, about human rights, and specifically the rights that UN parlance calls economic, social and cultural rights (food, water, shelter, health, political participation). For many, in short, the concern in Durban – as in Cancun and Copenhagen previously – is for justice.

The previous climate summits have made it painfully clear that, at the top levels, government ministers, heads of state, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself, is more about form than content. Last year, in Cancun, after the spectacular debacle of the failed talks in 2009 at Copenhagen, the concern among global leaders was less about saving the climate than about saving face.  Those clamoring for justice in Cancun – a delegation of thousands from civil society – were fenced out, and kept literally miles away from the talks. They were the 99 percent.

The Cancun Agreements, as the latest global climate accord is called, sealed in a process that abandoned mandatory global greenhouse gas reduction goals – the essential purpose of the Kyoto Protocol – for a voluntary system with no global goals at all.

Since the first Conference of the Parties, in 1994, annual CO₂ emissions have risen by around 40 percent globally. Part of the blame can be laid on the market-based mechanisms ensconced in the Kyoto Protocol from the beginning, such as pollution offsets, carbon markets, and the Clean Development Mechanism (an arrangement to have ‘clean’ projects in the Global South earn credits they then sell to speculators on the carbon market). Each of these market-based efforts at climate mitigation has proven inadequate at best and counterproductive at worst.

The reality is that to stave off the Venus Syndrome – indeed, to maintain temperature rise to 2°C – the better part of known reserves of fossil fuels must remain untouched in the ground. But to the contrary, while the UN stalls and governments stonewall, corporations and the World Bank continue to invest wildly in expanding the fossil-fuel frontier through deep-sea drilling and exploitation of shale gas and tar sands, scraping the bottom of the oil barrel and locking us into a path of high emissions and a toxic future. Venus, here we come.

In a panel discussion the first afternoon of COP17, Third World Network, a highly regarded body of analysts that provides daily briefings at the UN meetings, called the plans afoot in Durban, “an elite and corporate-led agenda by the 1 percent for the 1 percent” and “a great escape for the rich countries – each country for itself according to its national priorities.”

Lim Li Lin of Third World Network says: “What the rich countries want most of all is the continuation of market mechanisms. This is so that they don’t have to reduce emissions at home but can simply continue shifting the burden to developing countries.”

Since Copenhagen in 2009, it has been increasingly clear that the goal of rich nations, insofar as one can be discerned, is to strip the Kyoto Protocol of its binding emissions reductions to protect the planet and the 99 percent, but to keep the pollution trading market mechanisms, which promise to generate so much profit for the corporate elite. Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, calls it, “throwing out the baby but saving the bathwater.” Given the dire circumstances, I’d go a step further and call it drowning the baby in the bathwater.

A fluff piece in the South African Airlines in-flight magazine calls Durban the planet’s “last, best hope for a climate deal,” but it is lost on no one here that Africa, accompanied by the small island states, is already feeling the heat. Because of the particular geography of the African continent, a 2-degree rise in global temperatures could mean a rise of 4 degrees or more here. Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International calls it “the frying of a continent.”

Mohammad Adow, an African correspondent for Al Jazeera sitting on the Third World Network panel, noted that “the COP is taking place on the continent where humankind was born, which is also the most vulnerable continent, where hundreds of millions of people are already suffering the impacts of climate change through hunger, thirst, and displacement from their lands.”

Adow used a biblical metaphor to describe the power struggle at play: “The developed countries are not only not building the ark to save us from the great flood, they are preventing developing countries from building our own arks, as well.”

While the intransigence of the most polluting states – the US comes immediately to mind – deserves universal condemnation, it should be recognized that the US has no monopoly on stonewalling. South Africa, the setting for the negotiations, is among the most polluting of the emerging economies, with a per-capita carbon footprint higher even than that of the US. The country is a recent recipient of the largest ever World Bank loan ($3.5 billion) to build the third and fourth largest coal-fired power plants on Earth. The companies behind these projects, Sasol and Eskom, both sit on the country’s negotiating team at the COP.

Still, some have faith in the negotiations. The Climate Action Network (CAN), a group of NGOs devoted to building incremental reform through the UN process, posed the question Monday in their first daily briefing: “The science is compelling, the economics makes sense, so why are countries holding back from achieving the progress the world so badly needs?”

The question hangs in the air like a wisp of smoke among the frustrated, hopeful delegates that fill the conference halls here in Durban. But such a question is at best rhetorical, and at worst dangerously naïve, as it blithely ignores the white elephant in the room. Climate Justice Now!, the more radical civil society network that sometimes vies with CAN for space inside the negotiations, has a name for this white elephant that, thanks to the rowdy Occupiers at Wall Street and everywhere, can finally be pronounced in print. The elephant, I daresay, is called “capitalism.”

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by Jeff Conant – November 28, 2011

First published in Earth Island Journal

Like the parable of the three blind men coming upon an elephant and determining, each on his own, that this thing before them is a tree trunk, or an enormous boulder, or a thick scaly snake, one’s perspective on the events here at COP17, the UN Climate Summit kicking off today in Durban, South Africa, reflects one’s position and willingness to grope with searching hands in the dark.

But no matter where you come from, if you are actually concerned about the climate crisis, it’s going to be an ugly two weeks.

The science tells us that maintaining global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade – the current best case scenario – will lead to the inundation of coastal areas, loss of glaciers, and a tremendous toll in human lives and species lost, but may – just may – prevent what climatologist James Hansen calls, forebodingly, the “Venus Syndrome.” But given the gridlock in the UN negotiations and the absolute unwillingness of the most polluting nations to reduce their carbon emissions, a mere 2-degree rise is increasingly unlikely.

The politics, by and large, revolves around a tug of war between the wealthiest and most polluting nations ( whose goal is to maintain steady economic growth, though this dooms us to the Venutian future), the so-called emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (whose goal is to grow large enough, fast enough, to gain a hearty middle class, while doing their fair share to contribute to Venus-on-Earth), and the poorer nations (whose struggle, as always, is just to survive). And, finally there is the great, multitudinous, heterogeneous beast we call civil society – those of us who represent neither national interests, nor ‘scientific’ concerns (though climate science forms a strong basis for our positions). Civil society in its bulk is the vast representation of women, Indigenous Peoples, youth, peasant farmers, labor, and ordinary folk who come to be gathered under such technocratic nomenclatures as “the poor,” “the vulnerable,” “the marginalized populations,” and now, in the powerful parlance of the Occupy movement, “the 99 percent.”

For the 99 percent, the climate crisis is neither about settling a scientific debate (the scientists have that pretty well sealed up), nor about safeguarding an already dubious multilateral agenda (if the 16 previous Conferences of Parties haven’t forged a solution, why should we expect one now?) Rather, it is about ethics, about human rights, and specifically the rights that UN parlance calls economic, social and cultural rights (food, water, shelter, health, political participation). For many, in short, the concern in Durban – as in Cancun and Copenhagen previously – is for justice.

The previous climate summits have made it painfully clear that, at the top levels, government ministers, heads of state, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself, is more about form than content. Last year, in Cancun, after the spectacular debacle of the failed talks in 2009 at Copenhagen, the concern among global leaders was less about saving the climate than about saving face.  Those clamoring for justice in Cancun – a delegation of thousands from civil society – were fenced out, and kept literally miles away from the talks. They were the 99 percent.

The Cancun Agreements, as the latest global climate accord is called, sealed in a process that abandoned mandatory global greenhouse gas reduction goals – the essential purpose of the Kyoto Protocol – for a voluntary system with no global goals at all.

Since the first Conference of the Parties, in 1994, annual CO₂ emissions have risen by around 40 percent globally. Part of the blame can be laid on the market-based mechanisms ensconced in the Kyoto Protocol from the beginning, such as pollution offsets, carbon markets, and the Clean Development Mechanism (an arrangement to have ‘clean’ projects in the Global South earn credits they then sell to speculators on the carbon market). Each of these market-based efforts at climate mitigation has proven inadequate at best and counterproductive at worst.

The reality is that to stave off the Venus Syndrome – indeed, to maintain temperature rise to 2°C – the better part of known reserves of fossil fuels must remain untouched in the ground. But to the contrary, while the UN stalls and governments stonewall, corporations and the World Bank continue to invest wildly in expanding the fossil-fuel frontier through deep-sea drilling and exploitation of shale gas and tar sands, scraping the bottom of the oil barrel and locking us into a path of high emissions and a toxic future. Venus, here we come.

In a panel discussion the first afternoon of COP17, Third World Network, a highly regarded body of analysts that provides daily briefings at the UN meetings, called the plans afoot in Durban, “an elite and corporate-led agenda by the 1 percent for the 1 percent” and “a great escape for the rich countries – each country for itself according to its national priorities.”

Lim Li Lin of Third World Network says: “What the rich countries want most of all is the continuation of market mechanisms. This is so that they don’t have to reduce emissions at home but can simply continue shifting the burden to developing countries.”

Since Copenhagen in 2009, it has been increasingly clear that the goal of rich nations, insofar as one can be discerned, is to strip the Kyoto Protocol of its binding emissions reductions to protect the planet and the 99 percent, but to keep the pollution trading market mechanisms, which promise to generate so much profit for the corporate elite. Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, calls it, “throwing out the baby but saving the bathwater.” Given the dire circumstances, I’d go a step further and call it drowning the baby in the bathwater.

A fluff piece in the South African Airlines in-flight magazine calls Durban the planet’s “last, best hope for a climate deal,” but it is lost on no one here that Africa, accompanied by the small island states, is already feeling the heat. Because of the particular geography of the African continent, a 2-degree rise in global temperatures could mean a rise of 4 degrees or more here. Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International calls it “the frying of a continent.”

Mohammad Adow, an African correspondent for Al Jazeera sitting on the Third World Network panel, noted that “the COP is taking place on the continent where humankind was born, which is also the most vulnerable continent, where hundreds of millions of people are already suffering the impacts of climate change through hunger, thirst, and displacement from their lands.”

Adow used a biblical metaphor to describe the power struggle at play: “The developed countries are not only not building the ark to save us from the great flood, they are preventing developing countries from building our own arks, as well.”

While the intransigence of the most polluting states – the US comes immediately to mind – deserves universal condemnation, it should be recognized that the US has no monopoly on stonewalling. South Africa, the setting for the negotiations, is among the most polluting of the emerging economies, with a per-capita carbon footprint higher even than that of the US. The country is a recent recipient of the largest ever World Bank loan ($3.5 billion) to build the third and fourth largest coal-fired power plants on Earth. The companies behind these projects, Sasol and Eskom, both sit on the country’s negotiating team at the COP.

Still, some have faith in the negotiations. The Climate Action Network (CAN), a group of NGOs devoted to building incremental reform through the UN process, posed the question Monday in their first daily briefing: “The science is compelling, the economics makes sense, so why are countries holding back from achieving the progress the world so badly needs?”

The question hangs in the air like a wisp of smoke among the frustrated, hopeful delegates that fill the conference halls here in Durban. But such a question is at best rhetorical, and at worst dangerously naïve, as it blithely ignores the white elephant in the room. Climate Justice Now!, the more radical civil society network that sometimes vies with CAN for space inside the negotiations, has a name for this white elephant that, thanks to the rowdy Occupiers at Wall Street and everywhere, can finally be pronounced in print. The elephant, I daresay, is called “capitalism.”

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by Jeff Conant – November 28, 2011

First published in Earth Island Journal

Like the parable of the three blind men coming upon an elephant and determining, each on his own, that this thing before them is a tree trunk, or an enormous boulder, or a thick scaly snake, one’s perspective on the events here at COP17, the UN Climate Summit kicking off today in Durban, South Africa, reflects one’s position and willingness to grope with searching hands in the dark.

But no matter where you come from, if you are actually concerned about the climate crisis, it’s going to be an ugly two weeks.

The science tells us that maintaining global temperature rise to 2 degrees centigrade – the current best case scenario – will lead to the inundation of coastal areas, loss of glaciers, and a tremendous toll in human lives and species lost, but may – just may – prevent what climatologist James Hansen calls, forebodingly, the “Venus Syndrome.” But given the gridlock in the UN negotiations and the absolute unwillingness of the most polluting nations to reduce their carbon emissions, a mere 2-degree rise is increasingly unlikely.

The politics, by and large, revolves around a tug of war between the wealthiest and most polluting nations ( whose goal is to maintain steady economic growth, though this dooms us to the Venutian future), the so-called emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, and South Africa (whose goal is to grow large enough, fast enough, to gain a hearty middle class, while doing their fair share to contribute to Venus-on-Earth), and the poorer nations (whose struggle, as always, is just to survive). And, finally there is the great, multitudinous, heterogeneous beast we call civil society – those of us who represent neither national interests, nor ‘scientific’ concerns (though climate science forms a strong basis for our positions). Civil society in its bulk is the vast representation of women, Indigenous Peoples, youth, peasant farmers, labor, and ordinary folk who come to be gathered under such technocratic nomenclatures as “the poor,” “the vulnerable,” “the marginalized populations,” and now, in the powerful parlance of the Occupy movement, “the 99 percent.”

For the 99 percent, the climate crisis is neither about settling a scientific debate (the scientists have that pretty well sealed up), nor about safeguarding an already dubious multilateral agenda (if the 16 previous Conferences of Parties haven’t forged a solution, why should we expect one now?) Rather, it is about ethics, about human rights, and specifically the rights that UN parlance calls economic, social and cultural rights (food, water, shelter, health, political participation). For many, in short, the concern in Durban – as in Cancun and Copenhagen previously – is for justice.

The previous climate summits have made it painfully clear that, at the top levels, government ministers, heads of state, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself, is more about form than content. Last year, in Cancun, after the spectacular debacle of the failed talks in 2009 at Copenhagen, the concern among global leaders was less about saving the climate than about saving face.  Those clamoring for justice in Cancun – a delegation of thousands from civil society – were fenced out, and kept literally miles away from the talks. They were the 99 percent.

The Cancun Agreements, as the latest global climate accord is called, sealed in a process that abandoned mandatory global greenhouse gas reduction goals – the essential purpose of the Kyoto Protocol – for a voluntary system with no global goals at all.

Since the first Conference of the Parties, in 1994, annual CO₂ emissions have risen by around 40 percent globally. Part of the blame can be laid on the market-based mechanisms ensconced in the Kyoto Protocol from the beginning, such as pollution offsets, carbon markets, and the Clean Development Mechanism (an arrangement to have ‘clean’ projects in the Global South earn credits they then sell to speculators on the carbon market). Each of these market-based efforts at climate mitigation has proven inadequate at best and counterproductive at worst.

The reality is that to stave off the Venus Syndrome – indeed, to maintain temperature rise to 2°C – the better part of known reserves of fossil fuels must remain untouched in the ground. But to the contrary, while the UN stalls and governments stonewall, corporations and the World Bank continue to invest wildly in expanding the fossil-fuel frontier through deep-sea drilling and exploitation of shale gas and tar sands, scraping the bottom of the oil barrel and locking us into a path of high emissions and a toxic future. Venus, here we come.

In a panel discussion the first afternoon of COP17, Third World Network, a highly regarded body of analysts that provides daily briefings at the UN meetings, called the plans afoot in Durban, “an elite and corporate-led agenda by the 1 percent for the 1 percent” and “a great escape for the rich countries – each country for itself according to its national priorities.”

Lim Li Lin of Third World Network says: “What the rich countries want most of all is the continuation of market mechanisms. This is so that they don’t have to reduce emissions at home but can simply continue shifting the burden to developing countries.”

Since Copenhagen in 2009, it has been increasingly clear that the goal of rich nations, insofar as one can be discerned, is to strip the Kyoto Protocol of its binding emissions reductions to protect the planet and the 99 percent, but to keep the pollution trading market mechanisms, which promise to generate so much profit for the corporate elite. Neil Tangri, Climate Change Campaign Director with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, calls it, “throwing out the baby but saving the bathwater.” Given the dire circumstances, I’d go a step further and call it drowning the baby in the bathwater.

A fluff piece in the South African Airlines in-flight magazine calls Durban the planet’s “last, best hope for a climate deal,” but it is lost on no one here that Africa, accompanied by the small island states, is already feeling the heat. Because of the particular geography of the African continent, a 2-degree rise in global temperatures could mean a rise of 4 degrees or more here. Nnimmo Bassey, the Chair of Friends of the Earth International calls it “the frying of a continent.”

Mohammad Adow, an African correspondent for Al Jazeera sitting on the Third World Network panel, noted that “the COP is taking place on the continent where humankind was born, which is also the most vulnerable continent, where hundreds of millions of people are already suffering the impacts of climate change through hunger, thirst, and displacement from their lands.”

Adow used a biblical metaphor to describe the power struggle at play: “The developed countries are not only not building the ark to save us from the great flood, they are preventing developing countries from building our own arks, as well.”

While the intransigence of the most polluting states – the US comes immediately to mind – deserves universal condemnation, it should be recognized that the US has no monopoly on stonewalling. South Africa, the setting for the negotiations, is among the most polluting of the emerging economies, with a per-capita carbon footprint higher even than that of the US. The country is a recent recipient of the largest ever World Bank loan ($3.5 billion) to build the third and fourth largest coal-fired power plants on Earth. The companies behind these projects, Sasol and Eskom, both sit on the country’s negotiating team at the COP.

Still, some have faith in the negotiations. The Climate Action Network (CAN), a group of NGOs devoted to building incremental reform through the UN process, posed the question Monday in their first daily briefing: “The science is compelling, the economics makes sense, so why are countries holding back from achieving the progress the world so badly needs?”

The question hangs in the air like a wisp of smoke among the frustrated, hopeful delegates that fill the conference halls here in Durban. But such a question is at best rhetorical, and at worst dangerously naïve, as it blithely ignores the white elephant in the room. Climate Justice Now!, the more radical civil society network that sometimes vies with CAN for space inside the negotiations, has a name for this white elephant that, thanks to the rowdy Occupiers at Wall Street and everywhere, can finally be pronounced in print. The elephant, I daresay, is called “capitalism.”

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