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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High hopes are pinned on an international plan to protect forests. But doubts remain over whether the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation project, known as Redd, will actually reduce deforestation and carbon emissions
• John Vidal explains Redd
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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Side event about the hydroelectric dam BELO MONTE (Brazil, Amazon, Xingu River ) took place April 2010, at the World’s Peoples Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights, in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The goal of the event was to build international solidarity to stop the dams in the amazon, and to raise awareness. The Belo Monte Dam would be one of 258 new dams, that Brazil is planning to build in the Brazilian amazon. Belo Monte would be the 3rd largest dam of the world ! Videos by Rebecca Sommer.
….In a Mar. 9 letter from Goldtooth to Morales, himself indigenous Aymara, the activists states that the fact that the only country in the world with an indigenous head of states is hosting the Noel Kempff climate project - considered a star example - is being used by carbon credit traders to justify and promote REDD…
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A January 7 statement by the Durban Group for Climate Justice coalition also condemned REDD as an “ineffective and unjust solution to climate change”Click to read Article
Nine member organizations of the Global Forest Coalition examined REDD strategies and activities in their countries. The studies result in a palette with different shades of ‘REDD’.
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Red Realities
Realites-du-systeme-REDD
Realidades-REDD”
CLICK: to read Article at IPS TerraViv
Excerpt of story
… 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.
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
