On this edition of Fault Lines, Avi Lewis travels to Bolivia to explore the country’s climate crusade from the inside.
It is the story of an emerging movement, based in the global south, raising questions about who owes what to whom in confronting the climate crisis.
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Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen to lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests – and runaway global warming? Why are their staff dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as “unworkable” and “unrealistic”? Why are they clambering into corporate “partnerships” with BP, which is responsible for the worst oil spill in living memory?
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This week (from 17-22 April), the Governors’ Climate and Forests (GCF) Taskforce takes place in Aceh province, Indonesia. Three working groups in the meeting will discuss standards and criteria; project based carbon accounting; and funding. But local groups feel they have been excluded from the discussions and from the REDD-type project at Ulu Masen in Aceh province.
Yesterday, the Acehnese Civil Society Forum for the Sovereignty of Mukim released a press release signed by 51 groups:
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… Changing the system
“System Change - Not Climate Change,” is the title of the final statement from Klimaforum09, signed by some 360 organizations from around the world.
Drafted months ago and discussed over the last week in the Danish capital, this “People’s Declaration” argues that “there are solutions to the climate crisis,” and puts forward six demands.
“What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all people and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to present and future generations,” it states.
The signatory organisations called on governments to take urgent climate action, most importantly the “complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every five-year period.”
They also demanded “an immediate cut in GHG (greenhouse gases) of industrialized countries of at least 40 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020,” and “recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of atmospheric space and adverse effects of climate change on all affected groups and people.”
The statement goes on to reject “purely market-oriented and technology-centred false and dangerous solutions,” such as “nuclear energy, agro-fuels, carbon capture and storage, Clean Development Mechanisms, biochar, genetically ‘climate-readied’ crops, geoengineering, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).”
The “real solutions” are “based on safe, clean, renewable, and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as transitions to food, energy, land, and water sovereignty.”
The signatory organisations also proposed that an “equitable tax on carbon emissions” be established instead of “the regime of tradable emission quotas,” and that multilateral financial bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund “be replaced by democratic and equitable institutions functioning in accordance with the United Nations Charter.”
They also demanded a “mechanism for strict surveillance and control of the operations of TNCs (transnational corporations).”
“Irrespective of the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, there is an urgent need to build a global movement of movements dedicated to the long-term task of promoting a sustainable transition of our societies,” the statement concludes.
JOHN SAUVEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GREENPEACE UK
“The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport. There are no targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty.
“It seems there are too few politicians in this world capable of looking beyond the horizon of their own narrow self-interest, let alone caring much for the millions of people who are facing down the threat of climate change.”
CLICK to PLAY:VITAL SIGNS OF WARMING WORLD
Companies, including your utility company and even some environmental groups are lobbying for a mandatory “cap and trade” system that would penalize heavy polluters and reward companies that invest in clean power. Under the plan companies whose emissions are under their “cap” would get credits that could be sold to producers who go over their limit.
LEARN HOW THE “CAP AND TRADE” SCHEME WORKS -Play along as a company making investment decisions in a simulated market using such a system.
CLICK to PLAY:PAYING TO POLLUTE
CLICK: Don’t Greenwash REDD
December 2009, at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Indigenous participants are increasingly concerned about REDD.
REDD stands for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation”. The idea, as agreed by United Nations climate negotiators in Bali in 2007, is that because preserving forests is good for the climate, governments, companies or forest owners in the South should be rewarded for keeping them standing instead of cutting them down.
However, several Indigenous Peoples representatives say that REDD is bad for people, and bad for climate. They call REDD “CO2lonialism of forests.”
Many human rights and environmental groups say that REDD will inevitably give more control over Indigenous Peoples’ forests to state forest departments, loggers, miners, plantation companies, traders, lawyers, speculators, brokers, Washington conservation organizations and Wall Street, resulting in violations of rights, loss of livelihood – and, ultimately, more forest loss.
