Contre l’introduction de la compensation “forêts” dans le marché carbone californien

Monsieur le Gouverneur Brown,

Nous vous écrivons pour vous exhorter de ne pas inclure le mécanismes de compensations internationales REDD + (Réduction des émissions dues à la déforestation et à la dégradation des forêts) dans le marché carbone en Californie. Les systèmes de marché carbone n’ont pas réussi à réduire les émissions alors que les projets de compensation ont constamment ignoré les droits des communautés locales et sont intrinsèquement viciés. Les organisations soussignées envoient cette lettre pour alerter contre l’inclusion de crédits REDD + qui ne manqueront pas d’aggraver les conflits environnementaux et sociaux.

Les premières tentatives pour inclure les forêts dans les marchés carbone soutenus par l’ONU ont conduit à d’importants débats techniques. Les crédits forêts internationaux REDD + ont été jusqu’à présent rejetés dans les négociations climatiques de l’ONU et exclus du marché carbone européen de l’Union européenne (EU ETS) pour de bonnes raisons. Des problèmes techniques non résolus, y compris l’additionnalité (qui prouve que la zone forestière n’aurait pas été protégée sans), les ‘fuites’ (les destructeurs de la forêt passant à un autre domaine), la permanence (les arbres ne stockent pas le carbone en permanence), la mesure (très complexe et incertaine car elle repose sur la diversité des variables biologiques) et la temporalité (les émissions et les absorptions peuvent encore survenir plusieurs années après qu’un projet arrive à terme). Outre ces incertitudes techniques, les causes sous-jacentes de la déforestationrestent largement ignorées tandis que la responsabilité de réduire les émissions à la source est édulcorée.

En raison de ces problèmes, introduire les mécanismes internationaux de compensations forêt dans le cadre du marché carbone en Californie augmenterait probablement les émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) relatives aux objectifs AB32 plutôt que de les diminuer, puisque les industries polluantes achètent des droits pour accroître leurs émissions. Cela reviendrait àexposer les communautés à faible revenu qui vivent à proximité des installations industrielles en Californie à des problèmes environnementaux et de santé encore plus importants. Alors que de nombreux peuples autochtones et des communautés tributaires des forêts qui vivent dans le Sud ont très peu de titres officiels sécurisant pour leurs terres, REDD + va alimenter la spéculation, augmenter la pression sur les droits fonciers et déposséder les populations locales. Ces risques sont aggravés par l’inclusion de la monoculture dans la définition standard des Nations Unies de ce que constitue une forêt.

Les forêts riches en biodiversité ont une signification unique pour ceux qui y vivent et en dépendent pour leur subsistance et leur survie culturelle. Les projets REDD+ font peser de graves préoccupations en termes de violations des droits humains et environnementaux et ont conduit à ce que des peuples autochtones et des communautés locales dans le Chiapas (Mexique) et dans la région Acre (Brésil) s’y opposent (ce sont les deux régions où les pollueurs de la Californie achèteraient ces crédits internationaux). Réduire les forêts à de seuls puits de carbone fait courrir d’énormes dangers. Les luttes pour la terre s’intensifient à mesure que les droits sur les terres sont séparés des droits d’accès et d’usage d’autres éléments de la nature.

Le gouvernement du Chiapas au Mexique, promeut par exemple un projet REDD + pilote dans la forêt tropicale Lacandon sur plus de sept réserves naturelles. Afin d’être «prêt pour REDD +», le gouvernement doit prouver que les zones à partir desquelles des certificats de carbone seraient générés sont sous une protection environnementale. A cet effet, la Commission nationale adéjà déplacé plusieurs communautés locales en utilisant des expulsions forcées et des pressions économiques en dépit de fortes résistances.

En outre, l’expansion des monocultures d’agrocarburants est une autre raison de l’empressement du gouvernement du Chiapas. Un programme d’Etat, intitulé “Reconversion productive de l’agriculture», finance les communautés locales de la jungle Lacandon pour planter des palmiers africains et de plants de jatropha pour les agrocarburants qui sont envahissants, qui détruisent les forêts locales et créent des dépendances économiques qui écrasent l’autonomie locale. Le Chiapas est l’État au Mexique avec la plus grande zone de plantation de palmiers, situés sur les bords de zones naturelles protégées, et ces monocultures utilisent de grandes quantités de pesticides qui polluent les sols et l’eau et nuisent gravement à la santé des populations locales. Une fois de plus: les plantations ne sont pas des forêts!

La Californie devrait appliquer des politiques qui s’attaquent aux causes profondes de la déforestation et du changement climatique afin d’entamer une transition vers une ère post-fossile. Les politiques fondées sur la justice sociale et environnementale doivent garantir que les pollueurs soient tenus responsables de leurs émissions de GES et de la destruction de l’environnement, tout en faisant en sorte qu’elles bénéficient aux communautés vulnérables et à faible revenu. Nous vous demandons de maintenir le système international REDD + hors du marché carbone californien. En outre, nous vous recommandons respectueusement de regarder attentivement la façon dont le marché carbone européen a échoué, comme une préfiguration de ce qui pourrait advenir marché carbone en Californie. Commercer les émissions de carbone n’est PAS une solution au changement climatique.

Cordialement,

- Aliança RECOs – Redes de Cooperação Comunitária Sem Fronteiras (Brazil)

- Movimento Mulheres pela P@Z! (Brazil)

- ITEREI

- Friends of the Earth International

- Centro de referência do movimento da cidadania pelas águas florestas e montanhas Iguassu ITEREI

- Plataforma Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Desarrollo (PIDHDD)

- Terræ Organização da Sociedade Civil (Brazil)

- Carbon Trade Watch

- FERN

- Common

- Attac France

- The Corner House

- Centre for Civil Society Environmental Justice Project (Durban, South Africa)

- Earth Peoples

Despite their disruption, can dams help the organisation work towards ending poverty while keeping carbon emissions down?

* Howard Schneider for the Washington Post
* Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 14 May 2013

The World Bank is making a major push to develop large-scale hydropower, something it had all but abandoned a decade ago but now sees as crucial to resolving the tension between economic development and the drive to tame carbon use.

Major hydropower projects in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Nepal and elsewhere  all of a scale dubbed “transformational” to the regions involved  are part of the bank’s fundraising drive among wealthy nations. Bank lending for hydropower has scaled up in recent years, and officials expect the trend to continue.

Such projects were shunned in the 1990s, in part because they can be disruptive to communities and ecosystems. But the World Bank is opening the taps for dams and related infrastructure as its president, Jim Yong Kim, tries to resolve a quandary at the bank’s core: how to eliminate poverty while adding as little as possible to carbon emissions.

“Large hydro is a very big part of the solution for Africa and south Asia and south-east Asia … I fundamentally believe we have to be involved,” said Rachel Kyte, the bank’s vice-president for sustainable development and an influential voice among Kim’s top staff members. The earlier move out of hydro “was the wrong message … That was then. This is now. We are back.”

Indigenous Himba protest against Orokawe dam and human rights violations, 2013 (Photo © Earth Peoples)

It is a controversial stance. The bank backed out of large-scale hydropower because of the steep trade-offs involved. Big dams produce lots of cheap, clean electricity, but they often uproot villages and destroy the livelihoods of the people the institution is supposed to help. A 2009 World Bank review of hydropower noted the “overwhelming environmental and social risks” that had to be addressed but also concluded that Africa and Asia’s vast and largely undeveloped hydropower potential was key to providing dependable electricity to the hundreds of millions of people who remain without it.

“What’s the one issue that’s holding back development in the poorest countries? It’s energy. There’s just no question,” Kim said in an interview.

Advocacy groups remain sceptical, arguing that large projects, such as Congo’s long-debated network of dams around Inga Falls, may be of more benefit to mining companies or industries in neighbouring countries than poor communities.

“It is the old idea of a silver bullet that can modernise whole economies,” said Peter Bosshard, policy director of International Rivers, a group that has organised opposition to the bank’s evolving hydro policy and argued for smaller projects designed around communities rather than mega-dams meant to export power throughout a region.

“Turning back to hydro is being anything but a progressive climate bank,” said Justin Guay, a Sierra Club spokesman on climate and energy issues. “There needs to be a clear shift from large, centralised projects.”

The major nations that support the World Bank, however, have been pushing it to identify such projects  complex undertakings that might happen only if an international organisation is involved in sorting out the financing, overseeing the performance and navigating the politics.

The move toward big hydro comes amid Kim’s stark warning that global warming will leave the next generation with an “unrecognisable planet”. That dire prediction, however, has left him struggling for how best to respond and frustrated by some of the bank’s inherent limitations.

In his speeches, Kim talks passionately about the bank’s ability to “catalyse” and “leverage” the world to action by mobilising money and ideas, and he says he is hunting for ideas “equal to the challenge” of curbing carbon use. He has criticised the “small bore” thinking he says has hobbled progress on the issue.

However, the bank remains in the business of financing traditional fossil-fuel plants, including those that use the dirtiest form of coal, as well as cleaner but carbon-based natural gas infrastructures.

Among the projects likely to cross Kim’s desk in coming months, for example, is a 600-MW power plant in Kosovo that would be fired by lignite coal, the bottom of the barrel when it comes to carbon emissions.

The plant has strong backing from the United States, the World Bank’s major shareholder. It also meshes with one of the bank’s other long-standing imperatives: give countries what they ask for. The institution has 188 members to keep happy and can go only so far in trying to impose its judgment over that of local officials. Kim, who in his younger days demonstrated against World Bank-enforced “orthodoxy” in economic policy, now may be hard-pressed to enforce an energy orthodoxy of his own.

Kosovo’s domestic supplies of lignite are ample enough to free the country from imported fuel. Kim said there is little question Kosovo needs more electricity, and the new plant will allow an older, more polluting facility to be shut down.

“I would just love to never sign a coal project,” Kim said. “We understand it is much, much dirtier, but … we have 188 members … We have to be fair in balancing the needs of poor countries … with this other bigger goal of tackling climate change.”

The bank is working on other ideas. Kim said he is considering how the bank might get involved in creating a more effective world market for carbon, allowing countries that invest in renewable energy or “climate friendly” agriculture to be paid for their carbon savings by industries that need to use fossil fuels. Existing carbon markets have been plagued with volatile pricing  Europe’s cost of carbon has basically collapsed  or rules that prevent carbon trading with developing countries.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to establish a stable price of carbon,” Kim said. “Everybody knows that.”

He has also staked hope for climate progress on developments in agriculture.

Hydropower projects, however, seem notably inside what Kim says is the bank’s sweet spot  complex, high-impact, green and requiring the sort of joint public and private financing Kim says the bank can attract.

The massive hydropower potential of the Congo river, estimated at about 40,000MW, is such a target. Its development is on a list of top world infrastructure priorities prepared by the World Bank and other development agencies for the Group of 20 major economic powers.

Two smaller dams on the river have been plagued by poor performance and are being rehabilitated with World Bank assistance. A third being planned would represent a quantum jump  a 4,800MW, $12bn giant that would move an entire region off carbon-based electricity.

The African Development Bank has begun negotiations over the financing, and the World Bank is ready to step in with tens of millions of dollars in technical-planning help.

“In an ideal world, we start building in 2016. By 2020, we switch on the lights,” said Hela Cheikhrouhou, energy and environment director for the African Development Bank.

It is the sort of project that the World Bank had stayed away from for many years  not least because of instability in the country. But as the country tries to move beyond its civil war and the region intensifies its quest for the power to fuel economic growth, the bank seems ready to move. Kim will visit Congo this month for a discussion about development in fragile and war-torn states.

Kyte, the World Bank vice president, said the Inga project will be high on the agenda.

“People have been looking at the Inga dam for as long as I have been in the development business,” she said. “The question is: Did the stars align? Did you have a government in place? Did people want to do it? Are there investors interested? Do you have the ability to do the technical work? The stars are aligned now. Let’s go.”

BY Katy Migiro

Photo by Survival International

Half a million Kenyans and Ethiopians are likely to be displaced, go hungry and face conflict due to a controversial dam linked to a forcible resettlement programme ‘bankrolled’ by British taxpayers, the lobby group Survival International said on Monday.

The Gibe III hydropower dam, due for completion in 2014, is being built on the Omo River in southern Ethiopia. It will reduce the flow of water to farmers and pastoralists living downstream, including those 600 kilometres to the south in Kenya, where the river flows into Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.

The British government’s Department for International Development (DFID) is one of many international donors funding Ethiopia’s Protection of Basic Services (PBS) programme, which subsidises basic services and local government salaries. This includes areas where people are being relocated to make way for the dam, part of a wider programme to resettle people into designated villages – known as villagisation – begun in 2010.

Survival argues that the forced resettlment of thousands of tribal people could not be carried out without the DFID-funded PBS programme.

“UK money is bankrolling the destruction of some of the best-known pastoralist peoples in Africa,” Stephen Corry, director of Survival said in a statement. “The UK government is renowned for only paying lip service to human rights obligations where tribal peoples are concerned. When it comes to human rights in Ethiopia, DFID’s many commitments are worthless.”

It is not the first time that the PBS programme has come under fire.

Last year, the London-based law firm Leigh Day began legal action against DfID on behalf of an Ethiopian man, known as Mr O, who claims he suffered severe abuse under the villagisation programme.

DFID visited the Lower Omo, where it heard reports of rape and intimidation, but it has not been able to substantiate the claims.

Survival International cites three recent reports by Oxford University, International Rivers and the Africa Resources Working Group to support its case.

The Africa Resources Working Group report warns of “an impending human rights and ecological catastrophe” and a “very real threat of mass starvation and armed conflict in the border region.”

The International Rivers report says that those who lose their homes and livelihoods are “likely to seek out resources on their neighbours’ lands in the Kenya-Ethiopia-Sudan borderlands.”

“Well armed, primed by past grudges and often divided by support from different state and local governments, these conflicts can be expected to be bloody and persistent,” it said.

The Ethiopian government is planning to use the water to develop large-scale irrigation schemes, create jobs and generate huge amounts of electricity to power the region.

Berlin, 21 March by Meena Raman (Third World Network)

The issue of how to mobilise resources for the Green Climate Fund was a source of much disagreement at the recently concluded meeting of its Board.

The third meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board took place in Berlin, Germany, from 13th to 15th March, 2013. Among the several decisions adopted by the Board during the three day meeting included a decision on resource mobilisation which was agreed to on the final day of the meeting. However, there were major disagreements among Board members from developing countries and some developed countries, especially the United States.

Co-chair of the GCF board Zaheer Fakir and chair Ewen McDonald at a short meeting with CSOs and Private Sector (Photo @ Rebecca Sommer)

Co-chair of the GCF board Zaheer Fakir and chair Ewen McDonald at a short meeting with CSOs and Private Sector (Photo @ Rebecca Sommer)

The Board is co-chaired by Ewen McDonald (Australia) and Zaheer Fakir (South Africa).

The Board members were asked to consider a draft decision that approved the scope of work set out in an annex to a document prepared by the interim secretariat on resource mobilisation for the GCF. According to the annex, from March to September 2013, “the interim secretariat will prepare a resource mobilisation strategy document for consideration by the Board at its meeting in September 2013. In doing so, the interim secretariat will operate under the guidance of the co-chairs, and take into consideration the guidance on the Fund’s resource mobilisation provided by the Board during its meeting in March 2013, as well as the guidance provided by the Board on the Fund’s business model framework. The strategy document will lay out key elements and a timeline for organising the initial resource mobilisation for the Fund.”

Further, according to the annex, the “board meeting in September 2013 will consider the resource mobilisation strategy and take decisions on the Fund’s approach to resource mobilisation and key factors determining how the approach will be implemented”.

The US, supported by Japan, was strongly against any timeline for resource mobilisation. The US finally accepted the draft decision proposed after giving its own interpretation on the issue of the timeline and the decision to be taken in September. The US Board member said it was hard to make a compelling case that the GCF was an entity worth putting the money into. It was also opposed to having any burden-sharing arrangements among developed countries for financial contributions and was not ready for any timelines for the mobilisation of resources.

The interim secretariat document also provided three options for the Board to consider as follows: option 1: to follow an ad hoc resource mobilisation process; option 2: to start the Fund with an ad hoc resource mobilisation process, with a goal to transition to a periodic replenishment process; and option 3: to immediately move into a periodic replenishment process.

Dipak Dasgupta (India) said there is need to talk about the scale of the resources required upfront which is predictable significant size and ambition. As regards predictability, there is need for upfront contributions and the GCF was neither a donor programme nor a charity. It is also not a multilateral development bank. It is about contributions to get the actions done in developing countries; these actions cannot be committed to by developing countries unless they know what the actual resources there are. There is need to support policies and investments in the long term. There could not be a voluntary approach to contributions. If one country feels that it wants to make a contribution and others do not, that will make it difficult for everyone to come and board and free-riding needs to be prevented, elaborated Dasgupta further.

Dasgupta said the Board needed to define the scale and process of mobilisation of resources which was significant and ambitious. If it was difficult for some countries to raise resources to the scale needed, the developed countries as a group could go to the bond markets and raise resources collectively. Global bond markets were ready to finance if developed countries wished to go to it. The costs could be covered later by fiscal measures or other steps like national lotteries, he said further. There were plenty of existing instruments and special purpose vehicles to raise the resources needed. Climate change is here and was ahead of the Eurozone and financial crisis, he added.

Hong-Sang Jung (Republic of Korea) said that having periodic replenishment of resources and appropriate burden-sharing sharing arrangements (among developed countries) is most effective for stability and predictability of financial resources.

David Kaluba (Zambia) supported Dasgupta and said that members were familiar with the extent of resources needed for the paradigm shift. Developing countries did not have the luxury to wait and some LDCs are already taking climate action. Kaluba said that predictability of resources is needed to meaningfully respond to challenge; hence a periodic replenishment of resources is needed.

Omar El-Arini (Egypt) said that resource mobilisation for the GCF is in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). He was surprised that document prepared by the interim secretariat on resource mobilisation had not referred to the Convention’s relevant articles or to the decision of the Conference of Parties in Cancun (where the GCF and the mobilisation by developed countries of the USD 100 billion per year by 2020 was agreed to.)

El-Arini also reminded members to be mindful of on-going negotiations for the new agreement under the Durban Platform which is to conclude in 2015. He said that the agreement would be impossible if the Fund was not functioning well and with appropriate scale of resources. He stressed the importance for the Board to agree to an initial capitalisation of the GCF for a stable amount of funding over 3-5 years. Members could discuss how the capitalisation could be funded, he added.

Kjetil Lund (Norway) said that while Norway remained committed to making contributions, it is unable to talk about resource mobilisation without knowing what the business model of the GCF is.

Nicholas Dyer (UK) said that in order to attract resources into the Fund, there is need for objectives and results; pledges to demonstrate performance and to score well based on multilateral aid criteria. He said a periodic replenishment cycle would allow for planning and a more strategic approach, while ad-hoc mobilization which gives flexibly and can be fast. Dyer also supported limited earmarking of funds.

Yoshiki Takeuchi (Japan) said that while resource mobilisation is important, it needed to see the business model of the GCF to view its value addition. He said a unique aspect is the private sector facility. He suggested starting the GCF with a pilot phase approach with resources mobilised on an ad hoc basis. The GCF should not close its door to contributions from developing countries and the private sector. The type of contribution should be open and flexible, he added, referring to the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds, where a wide variety of financial support is provided through grants, loans, guarantees and equities. He also supported earmarking of funds.

Manfred Konukiewitz (Germany) said that ambition is not just to mobilise the GCF but to also get the results, which is to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He preferred periodic replenishment of financial resources that allowed for better predictability and was willing to consider ad hoc pledges for initial funding. Konukiewitz also favoured a transparent and fair burden sharing arrangement (in determining the financial contributions) that should be based on ability to pay and responsibility for the emissions. He said further that it was difficult to explain to the average person that (developing) countries which are wealthier than the EU and which have more emissions per capita should not be requested to pay.

Rod Hilton (Australia) said that there could be no pledging session before the business model framework, standards and safeguards policy and procedures are in place. A key issue for Australia was for resources to be allocated to SIDs and LDCs. Engagement with the private sector was also important, he added. Hilton supported option 2 referred to in the interim secretariat document as regards resource mobilisation.

Derek Gibbs (Barbados) also supported option 2 and said the ad hoc approach should start in 2013, given that a number of donors are ready to contribute to the Fund.

Arnaud Buisse (France) supported option 3 and was open to option 2 for a short period of time since the Fund was just starting. On the financial inputs, he said there must be flexibility. He expressed strong reservations against earmarking of funds

Jan Cedergren (Sweden), referring to the vision of the GCF, said the “animal” needs to be seen before we can put the money in it. He preferred option 3 as this is a periodic replenishment process which can give predictability related to the objectives. He also wanted peer pressure to be exerted (on developed countries to make contributions) and to push free riders. Resources trickling in, in bits and pieces should be avoided he said, and was against earmarking as this would be negative for the Fund.

Per Callesen (Demark) supported option 2 to start with ad hoc resource mobilisation and to move to periodic replenishment later. He also said it would be productive to work out a burden-sharing arrangement. He also had reservations about earmarking the fund

Matthew Kotchen (US) said that while the US was committed to the GCF, it was premature to discuss resource mobilisation as the work on the business model framework was just beginning. He was against moving forward with the draft decision as proposed. He was against having a timeline in organising the initial resource mobilisation for the Fund as there was too much design work (of the GCF) to do and a short timeline would be counter- productive.  It was also a challenge to disburse money through the GCF as there was too much uncertainty, he added. He said it was hard to make a compelling case that it was an entity worth putting the money into. The US was also opposed to the notion of burden-sharing and was not ready for any timelines for the mobilisation of resources.

Anna Fornells de Frutos (Spain) supported an ambitious timeline and was for option 2. Tosi Mpanu Mpanu (Democratic Republic of Congo) said that option 3 is the most attractive and that the prospect for the 2015 deal (under the Durban Platform) was very bleak if there is no clarity on finance.

Responding to the comments by developed countries, Dasgupta (India) suggested the need for a document from developed countries on timelines and processes for resource mobilisation. He said that developing countries too have Parliaments and they were being asked questions.

When McDonald asked members if they had any objections to the draft decision, the US Board member, Matthew Kotchen, reiterated his objection to formulating a specific timeline as it was premature to commit to resource mobilisation before clarity on the business model framework.

Dasgupta (India) in response said that asking the interim secretariat to resolve questions which are political was unfair, as it for developed countries to answer this. He said that all we hear is that developed countries want to see the business model framework and then only address resource mobilisation. This he said, sounded like only one side (of the bargain). He suggested that important financial source countries look at issues of burden sharing, their internal processes, and what guidance is needed from their Parliament which can be made known to members. He wanted to know what developed countries had in their mind between now and the next meeting in June on timelines which address the ambition and scale of resources needed.

Yoshiki Takeuchi (Japan) shared the US view that it was premature to talk about the timeline on resource mobilisation.Nicholas Dyer (UK) said there was no need for more papers. There were options for mobilisation of resources which can be worked on further.

The US once again insisted on deleting any reference to the timeline for organising resource mobilisation. India, in response insisted it would like to see a timeline as there was a close link between the business model framework and resource mobilisation.

At this juncture, McDonald proposed a short break. When the meeting resumed, McDonald once again asked members if they had any objections on the scope for further work on resource mobilisation as contained in the document prepared by the interim secretariat.

Matthew Kotchen (US) said that he did not have an objection but wanted to clarify why he had objected earlier. He said that the draft decision tasked the interim secretariat to lay out a timeline (for organising the initial resource mobilisation for the Fund) for the September meeting and that a decision would be taken in September when the business model framework would be seen for the first time. It wanted to avoid setting specific markers.

The US then said then agreed to the sentence on the timeline if it was interpreted as referring to “a set of possible timelines”.  (The actual language in the document was “The strategy document will lay out key elements and a timeline for organising the initial resource mobilisation for the Fund).

As regards the decision which states that “Board meeting in September 2013: The Board will consider the resource mobilisation strategy and take decision on the Fund’s approach to resource mobilisation and key factors determining how that approach will be implemented,” the US said the word “consider” meant “consider taking decisions and not taking decisions on resource mobilisation.”

The decision was the adopted by the Board. In welcoming the decision, Dasgupta (India) wanted developed countries as a group to address the specifics in relation to the process of responding to: “the scale, predictability, upfront contributions; appropriate sharing of responsibility; relationship to other funds and the GCF; probable timelines, their intentions and processes; and innovative ways by inviting an ‘open’ architecture for contributions by private and public sources.”

During the session, civil society was also invited to give their views.

The Sierra Club representative said that GCF should focus effort on an ambitious paradigm shift so resources could be scaled-up in accordance with Articles 4.3 and 11 of the Convention. Developed countries should put forward an initial pledge as a matter of urgency in 2013 and prepare the way for disbursement, said the representative. He supported the approach in option 2 and wanted rapid mobilising of resources. This did not have to wait for a burden sharing arrangement and should not prejudge the option of burden sharing. The resources needed to be adequate and predictable and could come from public sources and direct contributions from financial transaction taxes, aviation levies etc. The issue was political scarcity and not economic scarcity, he added.

The representative from the Third World Network said that the discussion of the Board members appeared to be a chicken and egg problem. She cautioned that the “chickens had come home to roost” and it was called “climate change”. She stressed that the GCF is about enhancing the implementation of the Convention, which was ratified in 1995 and it was now 2013, and very little money had been channelled under the Convention. It was immoral for developed countries to continue to delay making their commitments to the GCF, as the poor are already paying the price. She also supported the need for appropriate burden sharing arrangements among developed countries. She cautioned against the proposals by some Board members for the GCF to provide loan guarantees and other instruments that would put the GCF at risk. The TWN representative referred to a quote by a great leader who once said that if the climate was a bank, it would have been bailed out!

WatchVIDEO

A animated film about REDD. This film attempts to explain the key issues in a simple to understand way. Seven NGOs were involved in producing the film: Amis de la Terre, Euronatura, FERN, Forest Peoples Programme, Iroko, Pro-Regenwald, Rainforest Foundation UK, ARA and Terra! The film is posted below, with a script and links to sources below that (this is also available as a pdf file).
The video is also available in:
FrenchL’histoire de REDD: Une reelle solution a la deforestation?
SpanishLa historia de REDD.

By Ben Hayes and Nick Buxton

The world’s political leaders couldn’t say they hadn’t been warned. In the run up to the UN climate negotiations in early December in Qatar, it wasn’t just the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, global accounting firm PWC predicting dangerous levels of climate change. Even nature appeared to sound alarm bells with unseasonal hurricanes devastating New York and islands in the Caribbean and the Philippines. Faced with this chorus, you might have expected a response from the world’s governments. Instead the UN summit passed almost unnoticed by the international media and the result was another empty declaration, described by Friends of the Earth as a “sham of a deal” that “fails on every count.”
Confronted with one of the greatest challenges our planet and its peoples have faced, our political leaders have clearly failed us. In stark contrast to the radical coordinated action to bail out banks and prop-up the financial system, governments have instead chosen to step aside, giving a free hand to the markets and the fossil fuel giants, rather than daring a carefully planned conversion of our carbon-based economies.

Their choice is not one of inaction, as is often suggested, but one of actively ensuring dangerous climate change. For every coal plant built in China, oil field mined in the Arctic, or shale gas field fracked in the US locks in carbon into the atmosphere for up to 1000 years and means that even radical steps to decarbonise in future years may not be sufficient to prevent runaway global warming.

The President of the World Bank, Dr Jim Yong Kim said their report’s predicted rise in temperatures of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit before the end of the century would create a world that was “very frightening.”

For the first time, the issue of how to pay for the ‘loss and damage’ that climate change is already causing for the poorest and most vulnerable people worldwide took centre stage at Doha. It is a tragic irony that discussions about stopping or preparing for global climate change (known as mitigation and adaptation in UN language) have now been upstaged by demands for reparations and growing concern, not least in the insurance industry, about who or what is going to pay for the damage inflicted by climate change.

These narratives are deeply distressing and dis-empowering. It is now much easier for people to imagine a dystopian future for their children than a world that has pulled together to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Far from prompting mass action, fear and insecurity is apparently prompting people to turn off and tune out in droves, or to seek solace in conspiracy theories.

Securing what for whom?

This apathy is being exploited by those who welcome – or at the very least are looking to profit from – the politics of insecurity and what the Pentagon has dubbed “the age of consequences.” Across the world and often behind closed doors, securocrats and military strategists are engaging in ‘foresight’ exercises that – unlike their political masters – take climate change for granted and develop options and strategies to adapt to the risks and opportunities it presents.

Only a month before the Doha climate negotiations, the US National Academy of Sciences released a report commissioned by the CIA that sought to “evaluate the evidence on possible connections between climate change and U.S. national security concerns.” The study concluded that it would be “prudent for security analysts to expect climate surprises in the coming decade, including unexpected and potentially disruptive single events as well as conjunctions of events occurring simultaneously or in sequence, and for them to become progressively more serious and more frequent thereafter, most likely at an accelerating rate”.

The military and the intelligence community’s willingness to take climate change seriously has been often uncritically welcomed by some in the environmental community; the agencies themselves say they are just doing their job. The question very few people are asking is: what are the consequences of framing climate change as a security issue rather than a justice or human rights one?

In a world already demeaned by concepts like ‘collateral damage’, participants in these new climate war games need not speak candidly about what they envisage, but the subtext to their discourse is always the same: how can states in the industrialised North – at a time of increasing potential scarcity and, it is assumed, unrest – secure themselves from the ‘threat’ of climate refugees, resource wars and failed states, while maintaining control of key strategic resources and supply chains. In the words of the proposed EU Climate Change and International Security strategy, for example, climate change is “best viewed as a threat multiplier” which carries “political and security risks that directly affect European interests”.

Profiting from fear

The industries that thrive off the ugly realpolitics of international security are also preparing for climate change. In 2011, a defence industry conference suggested that the energy and environmental market was worth at least eight times their own trillion-dollar-a-year trade. “Far from being excluded from this opportunity, the aerospace, defence and security sector is gearing up to address what looks set to become its most significant adjacent market since the strong emergence of the civil/homeland security business almost a decade ago,” it suggested.

Some of these investments may prove welcome and important, but the climate security discourse is also helping fuel the investment boom in high-tech border-control systems, crowd-control technologies, next generation offensive weapons systems (like drones) and less-lethal weapons. It should be inconceivable that democratic states are equipping themselves in this way for a climate-changed world , but every year a few more applications are piloted, and a few more hit the market. Looking at the consolidation of militarised borders across the world over the past decade, you wouldn’t want to be a climate refugee in 2012, never mind 2050.

It is not just the coercive industries that are positioning themselves to profit from fears about the future. The commodities upon which life depends are being woven into new security narratives based on fears about scarcity, overpopulation and inequality. Increasing importance is attached to ‘food security’, ‘energy security’, ‘water security’ and so on, with little analysis of exactly what is being secured for whom, and at whose expense? But when perceived food insecurity in South Korea and Saudi Arabia is fuelling land grabs and exploitation in Africa, and rising food prices are causing widespread social unrest, alarm bells should be ringing.

The climate security discourse takes these outcomes for granted. It is predicated on winners and losers – the secure and the damned – and based on a vision of ‘security’ so warped by the ‘war on terror’ that it essentially envisages disposable people in place of the international solidarity so obviously required to face the future in a just and collaborative way.

The two-pronged struggle against climate change

To confront this ever creeping securitisation of our future, we must of course continue to fight to end our fossil fuel addiction as urgently as possible, joining movements like those fighting tar sands developments in North America and forming broad civic alliances that pressure towns, states and governments to transition their economies to a low-carbon footing. We can not stop climate change – it is already happening – but we can still prevent the worst effects.

However, we must also be prepared to reclaim the climate adaptation agenda from one based on acquisition through dispossession and the self-interested security agendas of the powerful to one based on universal human rights and the dignity of all people. We simply cannot afford to leave our future in the hands of the securocrats and corporations when difficult decisions have to be taken.

The recent experience of Hurricane Sandy, where the Occupy movement put the federal government to shame in their response to the crisis, shows the power of popular movements to respond positively to local disasters.

Yet local responses by themselves will not be enough. We need broader international strategies that check corporate and military power while globalising the tools for resilience. This means putting forward progressive solutions around food, water, energy and coping with extreme weather that provide viable alternatives to the market-based and security-obsessed approaches favoured by our governments.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to start packaging these ideas in positive visions for the future that will empower people to reject dystopia and reclaim a liveable just future for all.

By Ashton for South African Civil Society Information Service

With the conclusion of COP 18 in Doha, another set of climate change negotiations have come and gone with little real progress toward solving the urgent consequences of increased levels of atmospheric CO2. We clearly need to transform our approach to the problem.

A year ago Durban was under virtual siege by government delegations from around the world, at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP 17 meeting. The conference centre was enclosed in a tight police and UN cordon, effectively separating state representatives and negotiators from the citizenry they were meant to represent.

This year the circus moved to Doha, where real public protest is curtailed by a repressive regime. Yes, the first legal protest in the history of Doha was held but it was a strictly curtailed affair. There should have been angry and ugly protest about the record loss of Arctic sea ice this year, of permafrost melt, of the evident acceleration of the impacts of climate change beyond earlier predictions. Instead the Emir of Doha accommodated tame protestors in five star hotels, with a coffee call to protest at 7am. And of course a list of what was permitted.

The reason that climate change negotiators remain so rigorously segregated from the public is because of increasing public anger and frustration at the real failure to ambitiously pursue solutions to this urgent problem. Negotiations remain captive to the interests of fossil fuelled capital, fixated on maintaining the economic status quo.

The science that we are well past the point of no return on the road to climate hell has been diplomatically deflected for two decades now. The failure of Copenhagen was reprised in Durban, which itself was misrepresented as a success in order to fool the uninformed. Now the Doha distraction too has passed, with no real solutions on the table.

It was decided that compromise responses remain postponed, in order that those profiting from emissions can continue business as usual. Expedient dissimulation has replaced substance. If the people really understood what the hell is going on they wouldn’t only be protesting, there would be open revolt. As wicked as the challenge may be, solutions must be found.

Hosting COP 18 in Doha was saturated in a quagmire of irony. Not only is Qatar an oppressive fiefdom, it is the world’s biggest per capita emitter of CO2, double that of Kuwait, the next highest. COP 18 will, despite pathetic cosmetic attempts to temper the impacts, be the most carbon intensive climate conference to date. All available water comes from energy intensive desalination; locals use an average of 400 litres per day, in a desert with less than 80mm of annual rainfall. All food is imported and eaten in climate controlled conditions. Qatar may be the harbinger of our future dystopia.

Yet the faux reality of Doha also underlines the insanity of the impasse that has relegated the urgency of the climate crisis to the fringes of political expediency. While rogue banks are swiftly bailed out, ailing global ecosystem crises are ignored.

Instead of providing finance to deal with the increasing risks of climate change, fossil fuels remain perversely subsidised. For example the UNFCCC requested “fast start” climate mitigation pledges of $100 billion per year by 2020. Less than 20% of this has been pledged, less still committed; only 11% is ‘new’ finance. Yet developed nations provide direct annual subsidies of over $58 billion to the fossil fuel industry – the very source of the problem, while the promises made in Copenhagen, Durban and Doha remain vague and non-binding.

Clearly, the entire existing structure of the global environmental governance regime is profoundly biased against any real commitment or agreement to deal with climate change. One central reason is because the long term planning and commitment required is incompatible with short-term national and regional political cycles.

Furthermore, political cycles are far more susceptible to commercial than public influence. Cosy corporate-media collusion further deceives and confuses the public. The entire “debate” around climate change is founded on false premises; it is a misplaced attempt to provide “balance” where none is required. This cornerstone of reporting is cunningly manipulated by corporate led climate denialists to serve their narrow ends.

More sinister is how vested interests cynically undermine public opinion while lobbying political interests. Exxon, the world’s largest oil company was warned by the Royal Society of London to stop funding climate change misinformation campaigns. The richest men in the world, the Koch brothers, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying, funding and undermining democratic institutions to weaken emission regulations. They and others are linked to dozens of front groups around the world subverting scientific consensus on climate change.

The consequence is that despite several useful interventions such as China’s pledge to take “due responsibility” for its emissions, and some agreement on peripheral issues, little real movement was made at COP 18 on the big question of managing CO2 emissions and the consequences.

As the Venezuelan lead delegate, Claudia Salerno – famous for slashing her hand during the Copenhagen debacle to demonstrate how developing nations bled – stated, rich countries “may as well make their own convention without the developing countries”. Given that the UNFCCC circus has rolled on for 20 years now with no real progress, she may well have a point. Fact is that fossil fuel barons like the Saud’s, Koch’s and others remain far more influential than the global citizenry.

Yet even in the USA, the capital of climate change denialism (although there remain plenty of other whack job denialists around the world; misinformed, stupid, conservative, bloody minded, or all of the above) the majority of people believe climate change is a real threat and that action must be taken, even if it does have costs. This is a bit late, given that 2012 is set to be the hottest year in US history.

The reality is that we have all had enough of being strung along by the rule of kleptocratic oligarchs, governing the world through the diktats of a rapacious corporate-political nexus. This cabal is no less than a criminal conspiracy and should be treated as such. As Bill McKibben says, it is time to hit dirty energy where it hurts. And more.

But Doha is where treaties go to die – the World Trade Organisation met its Waterloo there in 2001 and has never recovered, sputtering from failure to collapse. The UNFCCC fared little better. There was scant urgency to reshape global responses to the increasingly urgent threats of climate change. Why?

For a start, the environment receives far less attention than the economy. When financial crises arise, the problem is dealt with, post haste. Climate change is at least as serious as global economic meltdown, yet is not taken as seriously because of its deferred and more nebulous impacts.

From an economic perspective, most of the opposition to climate change solutions emanates from a cabal of fossilised thinkers who remain convinced the costs of action are too high. The reality is that the cost of inaction is far, far higher.

Even a compromise, along the lines that Richard Heydarian and Walden Bello suggest - where the largest emitters like China and the US arrive at an emissions accord structured along the lines of the SALT treaty - would be preferable to the dismal Doha decisions. However, bilateral agreements may prove counterproductive by their exclusionary nature.

If we do not treat the threat to our climate and the consequent impacts on the global environment – ocean acidity, sea level, atmospheric temperature, Arctic ice cover, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, increased extreme weather events, decline in biodiversity and so on – with the same urgency as we deal with economic perturbations, then we are certainly condemning future generations to a profoundly gloomy future.

Climate change may well be a super wicked problem. Nevertheless we have some potent tools to address the challenges. Inaction no longer remains an option. In the light of the failure and prevarication (yet again dressed up as success) at COP 18 there is an urgent need to revitalise the call to arms, to implement far more focussed collective action than is presently the case. The nations of the world must arrive at final, ambitious and binding agreements which address the problem.

To start with, the UNFCCC should meet continuously in order to break the impasse. International attendance, not just that of the secretariat, must be compulsory and continue until the problem is fully and permanently addressed. This is the only logical way forward. Anything less is a collective capitulation to the gradual death of our planet, accelerating us toward the culmination of the Anthropocene.

DOHA, QATAR, December 8, 2012 - countries again recognized the need for urgent action to respond to climate change, and again failed to take that action, says the Center for International Environmental Law. The last-minute deal lacks meaningful commitments and leaves critical details to be resolved at a later date.

“This outcome represents a failure of ambition and yet another failure of political will—the latest in a long line of pledges to take real action someday, but not today. Governments have now squandered decades that could have been spent averting climate disaster” said Carroll Muffett, the President of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

Nations adopted a new commitment period under the existing Kyoto Protocol. However, Canada, Japan, Russia, and New Zealand backed out of the second commitment period, and the remaining emission reduction targets are weak. Countries completed negotiations under the Bali Action Plan, but most of the work is incomplete and will be carried forward over the next two years. They also agreed on a general work plan for the Durban Platform, which is supposed to lead to a legally binding agreement by 2015 and spur more action in the short-term.

“In an effort to close the negotiations, Parties have stripped the substance from the outcome,” said Niranjali Amerasinghe, CIEL’s Climate Change Program Director. “This was the moment for developed countries, particularly the United States, to show leadership, to fulfill their obligations to lead the fight against climate change. And they have not.”

Results across the board display a serious lack of ambition to address important issues. The process for increasing mitigation commitments is weak. There is no certainty that developed countries will increase public finance to support mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. Decisions that could have been made on efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation, known as REDD+, were pushed to next year. However, countries did agree to discuss the role that forests play in providing benefits beyond carbon reduction, which is essential for effective forest governance.

After contentious negotiations, action on much-needed loss and damage mechanism was stalled by a handful of developed countries, led by the United States. “The international community has failed to deliver what’s needed to protect the rights of affected people through mitigation and adaptation,” said CIEL’s Alyssa Johl. “Now we’re forced to discuss what’s needed to compensate vulnerable countries for loss of lives, livelihoods, property and culture. Today, this decision has been delayed by those countries unwilling to accept responsibility for their historic contributions to this crisis.”

“In the wake of Doha, interest in climate action outside the UNFCCC will continue to rise,” said Muffett. “While leaders may be willing to wait until 2020 to respond to climate change, their people are not. We are seeing more protests, more opposition to dirty energy and a growing body of climate litigation in countries around the world for the simple reason that climate change is the greatest threat facing humankind. The world can no longer wait for governments to catch up to reality in this process.”

COP-18: Pronunciamento de Sônia Guajajara na Coletiva de Imprensa em Doha, no Qatar