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.”

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

The Gibe III dam will stop the Omo River’s natural flood, on which the tribes depend.

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.

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By MAB

The companies Norte Energia and Belo Monte Constructions succeeded in the Pará State Court to issue an interdiction against the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) and the Movement Xingu Forever Alive (MXVPS). The movements are prohibited from organising any action that would interfere in the process of the construction of the dam. If they ignore, they will be fined 50,000 BRL a day.

By Rebecca Sommer

EARTH PEOPLES - NAMIBIA 23 March, 2013: Growing numbers of semi-nomadic Himba and Zemba people are gathering in Opuwo town in the heart of Himba territory for their third Protest in 2013. The protest will start Monday morning.

The young and old are arriving by foot, in overloaded trucks and on donkey’s from all four directions of Kaokoland (Kunene region), despite prevailing drought conditions due to Climate Change, and their growingly frantic search for grazing and water for their livestock.

Each Himba and Zemba community has sent members which they could spare, while those staying behind will tend to the needs of their goats, sheep and cattle that are increasingly weakened by the drought, upon which the Himba and Zemba depend for their very survival.

The drought has caused already enormous damage for the self-sufficient semi-nomads, with nearly no rain they could not make gardens, thus they have no harvest of maize and other nutritional crops.

The indigenous peoples in the Kunene Region are already calling on government to subsidize fodder for their livestock, and to look into improving the distribution of drought relief food. The community made formal requests to the chairperson of the Kunene Regional Council’s Management Committee, Dudu Murorua, at Opuwo.

But as much as they fear for their livestock and to face soon hunger and thirst, they are also hungry and thirsty for something else: Their human rights. They want to see changes, and they want to be heard by the majority tribe that leads the Government of Namibia. They want to have the right and means to maintain their culture, way of life, language, religion, traditional governance structure and so much more.

The protest is about their continuous human rights grievances, which made headlines in Namibia and the world after being published for the first time in form of two Declarations signed by all the traditional Himba chiefs at the beginning of last year.

On behalf of the Himba and Zemba,  Earth Peoples submitted both Declarations to the United Nations system. Our dear colleagues from Namrights submitted the Declarations to the African Union.

Read: DECLARATION OF THE DIRECTLY AFFECTED OVAHIMBA, OVATWA, OVATJIMBA AND OVAZEMBA AGAINST THE OROKAWE DAM IN THE BAYNES MOUNTAINS (Neckartal Dam project)

Read: DECLARATION OF THE TRADITIONAL HIMBA LEADERS OF KAOKOLAND IN NAMIBIA

Months later, the United Nations Special Rapporteur visited the Himba and Zemba and met them in Opuwo, were Himba read their Declaration and handed him a copy in person.

The UN Special Rapportuer Anaya confirmed in his Statement the human rights violations that the Himba people are facing, which can be read here.

The Himba will draft and sign two additional letters. One will be addressed to the President of Namibia, and the other handed to the Governor of Opuwo on Monday. Both Declarations will be submitted once again to both of them.

“They got our Declarations, the responsible including the President are aware about our situation. But nothing has been done, we continue to be ignored” said community leader D. Muharukua from Opuwo.

Additionally, the Himba are furious about a 22-page report that was handed to three of their representatives that had traveled to Windhoek to seek information and clarification on the proposed hydroelectric dam (Neckartal Dam project) in the Baynes Mountains.

Namibia and Angola are planning to finance and build the Orokawe dam jointly.

“The report falsely states that we Himba have the door open for further negotiations, and that forced resettlement could be therefore avoided” said Mutambo, a leader from the Himba community Omuhonga who was at the meeting in Windhoek. “We are outraged, we said over and over no, and we mean it. There is no negotiation from our side, and there is no consultation, because they do not hear us when we say no. That’s why we protest Monday again, to show our collective objection to the planned Neckartal Dam construction once again. We rather die and throw us into the River, before we allow the destruction and invasion of our land. We explained all that in our Declaration ” He added. (http://earthpeoples.org/blog/?p=1070)

The Himba will also discuss this weekend the idea to propose Solar systems as an alternative to the dam. They plan a trip to Tsumkwe so that they can see a large off-grid system. The Himba Elders and chiefs will also choose about 10 bright young men and women that speak english and can read and write, to learn more about Solar systems these coming weeks.

To hear about Himba’s human rights problems,

click here to WATCH VIDEOS

+++++++++++++++++ PRO AND CONTRA :

Orokawe dam in the Baynes Mountains:

• Will cost a minimum of 22bn N$ if not more

• Will need a complete overhauled stronger power line from the dam site to Omburo

• Will have a surface of 5900ha which evaporates 590000 tones of water per day which is in the region of 20% from the low-season run-off

• Will take minimum 10 years to come online

• Will need a lengthy power contract to be signed with Angola

• Will need to share the power 50/50 with Angola

• Will only be a peaking station because not enough water to run the 600MW turbines 24/7 (Only 1.7 TWh energy for the year vs. 5.0 TWh (if water would be enough)

• Will again not be Namibia’s own power because of the sharing

• Will again mean an investment that puts all eggs in one basket relying on the Kunene

• Will cause forced resettlement

• Will destroy special safety areas for indigenous peoples livestock at drought

• Will destroy sacred sites of indigenous peoples

• Will destroy special medicine plant areas of the Himba and Ovazemba

• Will damage the River

• Would make no sense in a country were Water is so rare

• Will damage fish stock

• Will cause enormous environmental impact

• Will cause large destruction of nature by building road construction grids

• Will violate human rights, UNDRIP, FPIC, ILO Nr 169

• Will harm tourism long-term

Solar Energy

• Take up only 900 ha for the same output (1.7 TWh per year)

• Cost 15 bn without storage for the same output (without storage)

• Storage for Solar becomes more and more available with new technologies and would cost together with solar roughly then the same as Baines

• Solar could be built where the need for power is and not in the most remote corner of the country with all the losses involved

• Solar could start right now and would be built as appropriate installments; no need to pre-finance in one go!!

• Solar would really be NAM’s own indigenous energy solution

• Solar investments will attract all the money in the world, hydro investments for Kaoko will not.

• Solar would means appropriate power for the Himba’s own use for energy and water pumping etc.

• Solar will give the people modern energy AND much more time to adapt!

• Would make Namibia stand out for it’s green, environmental and human rights friendly energy approach

• Would make sense in such a hot, sunny country

• Would get more funds from international sources to implement green energy as well as for Climate Change adaptation and mitigation measures

• Would be longer lasting, as Climate Reports estimate the increasing reduction of waters in Kunene

• Solar would be supported by the worlds’ tourists, the public is aware about the damages of dams

• Could be negotiated with the Himba people, and places for grids could be agreed upon

• Solar would be good for the Climate, Namibia’s Nature, Cunene River, and good for Namibia’s people

What the hydro people at NamPower and the Governments have not yet fully acknowledged: Solar Panels only cost 25% of what they were in 1995 during the Epupa Dam Debate

To watch video CLIMATE CRIMES in german

By Rebecca Sommer

When I first saw the film, I felt that it would be useful to screen it within the “holy walls” of the United Nations, where criminals are paving the way to “green” everything under the overall name “Green Economy” - and to force every negotiating party and sell-out NGO to sit in the room and watch Ulrich Eichelmann’s “Climate Crimes”.

The film doesn’t cover every detail of the multi layered criminal climate change-climate protection measurements that our governments and their international secretariat (the UN) are meddling with to make their “business” ideas to become international law, but Climate Crisis does show powerful images of unique ecosystems and species and people who are living within that nature, and how they are threatened, suffering and negatively affected.

The film makes aware that the supposedly ‘green energies’ such as biodiesel, biogas and hydroelectric dams are neither ecologically sensible nor sustainable, but are in fact crimes against nature.

The film shows us that on all continents our last remaining natural areas are doomed by these false solutions that are aiming to protect the climate, but in fact do the opposite of what we are told.

Climate Crimes reminds us that thousand of species are threatened by monoculture-agriculture everywhere, including in the last remaining natural environments in Germany. (And that many German companies and banks, often with the support of politicians, are involved in environmental crimes in other parts of the globe as well).

It showed really interesting and for our anti-dam movements very important film footages relevant to the Belo Monte dam in Brazil, and as I have been on the ground in the Belo Monte area for years, I can say that he and his camera team explained the horrific environmental issue best (of all films made so far), through extraordinary powerful and truthful images that explain why the Big Bend (Volta Grande) of the Xingu River is unique and so very important to preserve. The Big Bend part of the Xingu River will dry up if the mega dam would be finalized.

The film also covered the Ilisu dam issue at the Tigris River, which would flood Hasankeyf, one of the oldest cities in Anatolia in Turkey. Hasankeyf is renowned for its extensive cave dwellings and historical buildings dating from the fourth century, built on the border between the Eastern Roman and the Sassanid Empire. Climate Crimes shows how the blocking of the water of the Tigris River already has impacted the Mesopotamian Chibayis marshes downstream near Basra in southern Iraq, and even so the area was partly recovered would become a desert again, if the dam in Hasankeyf would be constructed.

The film also encouraged, by showing the local protest against the Ilisu dam, and timely with the films release, the anti-dam movement gained a victory as the Turkish high court ordered this year a halt to the construction of the Ilısu Dam because the Turkish government had not conducted the legally required Environmental Impact Assessment (ÇED).

Sounds all too familiar, the same happened with the Belo Monte dam, dam’s are halted, allowed to continue, halted again and allowed to continue again. Only the long breath of the anti-dam movements and time will tell who will win at the end. Nature, water, animals and people, or greed and destruction.

I applaud Ulrich Eichelmann for the film Climate Crimes, and that he has turned his back to WWF, which belongs to the business - criminals while wearing a “green” suit.

By Pablo Solon, Focus on the Global South

Humanity is running out of time. If there are no deep and real cuts in the next five years the impacts of climate change will lead to a situation ten times worse than what we have seen with hurricane Sandy and other climate change related events in India, Russia, Philippines and Africa in this past year.

That’s what happens with 0.8ºC of global warming, and the current climate negotiations are leading us to a 4ºC to 8ºC scenario.

More than two-thirds of coal, oil and gas should be left under the soil

Different studies say that to limit the increase in temperature to 2ºC, all countries can only emit 565 gigatons of CO2 between 2010 and 2050[1]. At the current rate of 31 gigatons of global CO2 emissions per year, we are going to expend that budget in 15 years.

According to the International Energy Agency, two-thirds of the known reserves of the world’s coal, oil and gas should remain underground to have 50 percent chance of staying below the 2ºC limit.[2] If we want 75 percent chance, we have to leave 80 percent of these reserves under the soil.[3]

To not surpass the limit of 565 gigatons of CO2 until 2050, less than 200 gigatons of CO2 can be sent to the atmosphere from 2010 until 2020. Given this calculation, it is unacceptable and illogical to have a “new” agreement that will only be implemented in 2020, while during this decade, when deep cuts are needed, there will be a “laissez faire” situation in emission reductions with a Kyoto Protocol that is much weaker and has shrunk.

Climate negotiations should agree to leave under the soil more than two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves and negotiate mainly how countries are going to exploit and consume the available reserves taking into account a) their historical emissions and b) their per-capita emission in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibility.

The United States, as the main historical emitter, has to reduce its emissions more than the others. All developed countries called Annex 1 parties should cut, until 2020, between 40 to 50 percent of their emissions based on 1990 levels. These commitments should be translated into concrete targets in coal, oil and gas usage per year.

The right to development must not be used to promote more consumerist and capitalist societies

The right to development should be understood as the obligation of the states to guarantee the basic needs of the population and their right to enjoy a fulfilled and happy life in harmony with nature, and not as free ticket for a capitalist consumer society that only caters to the excesses of the few while causing the critical financial, social and ecological situation that we are facing now.

China, Brazil, South Africa, India and other emerging economies should also have targets for emission reductions because at present they are becoming great emitters of greenhouse gases. These binding targets should be lower than the targets of Annex 1 parties, following the principles of historical and common but differentiated responsibility.

Developed countries must immediately transfer funds and technology to assist developing countries to undertake mitigation action and to adapt to climate change. Their contributions should be assessed according to their historical and current contributions to GHG emissions and represent at least 10 percent of their military budget for 2013. These funds are necessary not only for GHG emission reduction but also for adaptation and for prevention of damages and losses in developing countries permanently suffering from the effects of typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes, floods and droughts.

Stop the false solutions

Ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and limiting fossil fuels use, although key steps and very important, will not be enough. We also need to stop the advancement of all kinds of false solutions that are equally detrimental to humans and nature like: agrofuels, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), Synthetic Biology,deadly nuclear power, and Geo-engineering, land and forest grabs by big business in collusion with governments in the name of forest protection, and carbon credit trading schemes that traders and polluters love.

The corporations behind these inventions are arrogantly and irresponsibly playing with nature and the planet. The goal of Synthetic Biology to create more life forms than those that exist in nature will have catastrophic consequences. The plan of Geo-engineering to pollute the atmosphere with a different gas to counter balance the effect of greenhouse gases will only worsen the situation of the whole Earth System.

No more speculation with carbon markets

Emission cuts have to be real, without loopholes like carbon markets, offsets or hot air. The European Union ETS (Emission Trading System) has demonstrated that the financial sector does not care about climate change. Carbon credits from ETU, CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) or REDD (Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of forests) are in reality permits to pollute that allow those who are actually contaminating our atmosphere to renege on their obligations. The development of new carbon mechanism for forests, soil and coastal vegetation will only worsen the climate crisis and create new financial bubbles. It is unacceptable that rich countries use climate funding to promote carbon markets through REDD and CDM.

Joint social and environmental struggles to change the balance of forces

The climate crisis caused by the capitalist system is going to be amplified now by its current financial/economic crisis. The capitalist system is seeking to get out of this economic crisis through a process of reconfiguration that implies a new process of exploitation of humans and nature through:

a) reduction of social benefits and wages that workers have won through long history of struggles,

b) grabbing by corporations of the remaining material part of nature (land, water, forest, minerals, etc.),

c) financialization and commodification of the processes and functions of nature (payment for environmental services like REDD, compensation for biodiversity loss, and others), and

d) development of technologies to control, patent and profit from biodiversity and ecosystems (e.g. Synthetic Biology and Geo-engineering).

Corporations have captured governments. To confront the interests and power of corporations, our struggle must have as starting point the daily life of the people affected by climate change and not the UNFCCC negotiations.

The right to food and water is key component of this fight. A new, intensifying food and water crisis is being triggered worldwide because of climate change. Corporations are seeking to make more profits through food derivatives, GMOs, agrofuels, public-private partnership arrangements in water and other resources, and through other measures. It is only possible to address the issue of food and water if we join social and environmental struggles.

Grassroots mobilizations against coal plants, fracking, tar sands, big dams, land grabbing, water privatization, agrofuels, GMOs, REDD are already showing the way. We need to strengthen these fights, link them and find connection with the social struggles against austerity plans.

Transforming the unsustainable capitalist system

The big challenge of putting a process in place for collective and gradual transformation from fossil fuel-addicted system of consumption and production towards a low carbon society requires also the transformation of the unsustainable capitalist system. The carbon, oil and gas sector can’t be led by the logic of private profit. The power of fossil fuel corporations has to be dismantled and societies, not the state-bureaucrats, have to take control over these resources and enterprises.

To change the patterns of consumption and production we need to move beyond the all-dominating, profit-driven and unsustainable capitalist system that exploits people and ruin ecosystems. We need to keep a livable planet—this planet!

The alternatives to cool the planet come from below

A “one size fits all” model like neoliberalism or centralized bureaucratic socialism is not the answer. Instead, diversity should be expected and encouraged, as it is in nature.

Social groups around the world have a series of alternatives that can help cool the planet. Alternatives like food sovereignty and agro-ecology instead of agro toxics and agribusiness; public transport instead of unsustainable production of cars; durable goods with less use of energy and natural resources instead of products designed for over consumption; local production and consumption to avoid the waste of energy in global transport; de-globalization for the people instead of globalization for the corporations; new balance between agriculture and industry as well as between countryside and city to reverse massive urban slums of rural refugees; social and not private management of the fundamental services. Many of these living alternatives have already been tested to work, while some need the space to be implemented and prove their superiority over the proposed false solutions.

To reestablish balance in the Earth System, we need to abandon the anthropocentric vision of capitalism and recognize that we are only one component of nature and that in order to live a healthy life we need to respect the vital cycles, the integrity and the interdependence of nature by recognizing and upholding the rights of Mother Earth.

—————————
[1]http://www.wearepowershift.org/blogs/readers-guide-bill-mckibbens-terrifying-new-math-rolling-stone-most-important-thing-ive-writte

[2]International Energy Agency: No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to
2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 °C goal, World Energy Outlook 2012,

[3]The current proven reserves of oil, coal and gas all together have a potential of 2,795 gigatons of CO2, which is five times more than the 565 gigatons budget. This implies that at least 2,230 gigatons of CO2of proven reserves of oil, coal and gas should be kept where they are and not be burned. http://www.carbontracker.org/carbonbubble

By CJN!

United Nations climate negotiations will resume at the United Nations Climate Conference in Doha, Qatar, from the 26 November 2012 until 7 December 2012.

This is the annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP 18) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and its Kyoto Protocol (CMP 8), where “decisions” and “amendments” are agreed in order to set the international legal framework for responding to climate change.
Insiders feel that the conference is the last opportunity to secure agreement on ambitious targets and rules for the period 2012-2020, and that there is widespread concern that the emission targets for developed countries will in fact represent no new action; that climate finance goals will not be set; and that rules governing accounting of emissions will be weakened.

The Climate Justice Now! activists say that the negotiations occur as the latest science indicates that extreme weather events suffered across the world, from Superstorm Sandy in the United States and the Caribbean, floods in the Philippines, to declining in crop yields in the Middle East, can be attributed to climate change that has already occurred (0.8C); and that the world is on track for an uninhabitable 6C of warming by the end of the century.

Key areas requiring action at the UN Climate Change conference and explained further below are:

1. The regulation of climate pollution through targets – including their strength and the rules governing them.
2. The provision of “climate finance” – for transformation of energy and other systems in developing countries and to support the world’s poorest people to cope with climate catastrophes.
3. The guaranteeing of equity and science based principles underlying international climate law.

1. Regulation of climate pollution through emission cuts
The Doha Climate Conference will open with developed countries ‘pledging’ effectively no climate action between now and 2020, if all the potential accounting loopholes are allowed.
The European Union and Australia are both proposing more emissions in 2020 under the Kyoto Protocol than today, and yet claim to be a ‘climate leaders.’ The EU is proposing that its emissions in 2020 will be 4522 megatonnes when its emissions today are 4482. Australia is proposing 637 megatonnes in 2020 in comparison to 575 megatonnes today.
Currently there is a significant “gap” between what is required of rich industrialized countries’ targets (40-50% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020) and what governments are proposing (12-18%); and these numbers do not address the problem of accounting rules.
Contrary to popular wisdom, developing countries are actually proposing to do more total abatement than developed countries by 2020.
In Durban last year, rich industrialised countries that are members of the Kyoto Protocol (all but US and Canada) made a commitment to finalize their targets for a legal “second commitment period” or “Kyoto2” at the Doha conference.
Despite this, developed countries, led by the EU, are seeking a “political” and therefore non-binding “Kyoto2” undermining its value and locking in weak pledges and weak rules.
Under the “LCA track”, the United States and other who have left Kyoto, will try and shut down any discussion of the “comparability of efforts” between countries, despite the fact it was mandated and agreed by all governments including the US (by President Bush) in 2007.
If these positions are accepted, there will be, in effect, no strong international climate pollution regulation between now and 2020, locking in higher levels of warming and horrific impacts.
Please see these more detailed notes on the: “Ambition Gap” and the “Kyoto Protocol”.

2. Climate-finance to face impacts now and start global transformation
The provision of “climate finance” or money to vulnerable communities already suffering the effects of climate change has been an acknowledged responsibility of developed countries since signing the UN Climate Convention in 1992.
This money is also earmarked to help developing countries implement their emission reduction actions, as they do not have the choice of following the same path of economic development, based on cheap-fossil fuels, as used by already industrialized countries.
In Copenhagen in 2009 a pledge was made to mobilize USD 10 billion per year for 2010-2012 and reach a target of USD 100 billion per year by 2020.
In Doha, governments will be forced to focus on the fact that at this stage no new money has been pledged for climate finance in 2013, and that up to 90% of the finance “provided” in 2010-2012 has simply been pre-existing foreign aid repackaged.
The need for a mechanism to address “Loss and Damage”, or current and future impacts to which no adaptation is possible, has also received considerable focus in negotiations this year and could be a part of a limited “outcome” from the Doha conference.
The “long-term cooperative action” track of the negotiations was supposed to have concluded work on finance goals, and on ensuring that finance and technology is provided to developing countries in practice, in order to allow them to undertake policies to reduce climate pollution.
At the most recent session of negotiations (Bangkok in September 2012), developed countries, led by the United States and Australia, tried to block discussion of these outstanding issues and it is expected they will continue to try and exclude them from the agenda in Doha.
Please see these more detailed notes on “International Climate Finance” and “Loss and Damage”.

3. Delivering a principled, rules-based, international system for climate controls
In addition to agreeing to conclude “Kyoto 2”and to resolve the outstanding issues from the Bali Action Plan, the Doha conference will host a new round of negotiations on a post-2020 agreement: the Durban Platform (ADP) which is to finalise its work by 2015.
This work is vitally important to the long-term future of the international climate change regime, but cannot be seen as a replacement for action now. The focus of governments should be on the immediate gap in targets and action for the period from now until 2020.
In furthering the work of the ADP the key areas of contention will be about how to incorporate the issues that are not resolved under the “LCA” and how to ensure the UN Climate Convention’s principles, such as ‘equity’ and ‘historical responsibility’ are reflected.
It is expected that developed countries will attempt to block the “migration” of issues under the LCA (which they will seek to terminate) into the ADP, thereby taking them off the agenda or moving them into non-negotiating forums like the subsidiary bodies.
If the Doha conference is to produce a “roadmap” or “timetable” for the ADP, as suggested by the European Union, this map must include substantive and content elements, such as discussion of equitable ways of sharing emission cuts, the comparability of rich industrialized countries’ targets, and how to more effectively mobilize finance and technology to achieve a global transformation in the near-term.
Please see this more detailed note on “Equity” issues in the climate talks.

Source: International Cry

A group of Indigenous Peoples group of Naso protestors blocked access to the Bonyic Hydroelectric
project in Bocas del Toro province, western Panama. The protestors, who
issued an urgent plea for international solidarity, say that a new road
will cut through an ancient archaeological site, which has already been
damaged by bulldozers. They say the site is extensive and that they have
collected a variety of ceramic shards, implements, huacas (pre-Colombian
ornaments) and a piece of human bone from the area, indicating it was
once perhaps a burial ground.

**************
To watch Rebecca Sommer’s Videos about other human rights issues of the indigenous peoples Naso and Ngobe, with their representatives at the Human Rights hearing in Washington at the OAS:
VIDEO: PART 1
VIDEO: PART 1
VIDEO: PART 3

Background videos:
A group of Naso and Ngobe Indigenous Peoples from Western Panama testified in Washington, D. C.at a hearing at the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) on Wednesday Oct. 29, 2008. The Indigenous representatives gave evidence of the discrimination, abuse, and displacement that they have been suffering from Empresas Publicas de Medellin (Colombia), AES Corporation (United States), and the Government of Panama, who are together constructing four hydroelectric dams on the land of the Indigenous Peoples in the La Amistad Biosphere Reserve.

The representatives from the Naso and Ngobe people say that the construction of these dams will destroy their traditional livelihood and homelands, and that their land rights and informed consent have been denied to them by the Government of Panama.

June 9, 2011:
Amigos.
Despues de largos siete años de lucha para que los gobeinos de turon en Panama dejara de reconocer a Tito Santana, como rey, ayer se logros a firmar acuerdos que pone fin a esta lucha.

Desde el pasado 30 de mayo del 2004, el pueblo Naso separo a Tito Santana del cargo y le asumio la responsablilidad al señor rey Valentin Santana. Desde entonce los gobierno de turno han mantenido el reconocimiento a Tito Santana pese a toda oposicion pero esto solo se entiende que ha sido para lograr firmar convenios, acuerdo fraudulento con la Empresas Publica de Medellin violentando todo derecho del Pueblo Naso.

Desde el mes de abril se intensifico mas la lucha luego de organizarse una vez mas la dirigencia de este pueblo y se aprovo serias acciones lo que permitio que el gobierno firmara un acuerdo con la dirgencia y se estableciera una mesa de dialogo para comenzar a atacar las problematicas de nuestro territorio.

Una de los puntos es la definicion de una nuevas elecciones lo que llevo ya cuatro semana y en las ultimas dos semana Tito Santana abandono la mesa sin firmar acuerdo lo que obligo a la dirigencia decretar nuevas accinones de cierre lo que concluyo ayer con la visita una vez mas del viceministro de Gobierno y justicia.

Ayer siendo la 3:00 pm con la presencia del Gobierno Tito Santana, firmo un acuerdo a peticion del pueblo Naso para realizar una asamblea el 10 de julio del presente año donde se decidira las fechas de las nuevas elecciones y sobre totos bajo el mecanismo tradicional del pueblo Naso.

Siete año de resistencia frente a los azote, tormenta, terremotos, violaciones, robos de territorio, pero hemos prevalecidos por que realmente nuestras RAICES SON PROFUNDAS.

Este es apenas el primer punto en discucion con el gobierno pero ahora el 17 de junio se reactivara la mesa de dialogo con el siguiente punto que es la discucion por la COMARCA NASO, la pregunta sera tendremos que cerrar calles otra vez?, luego vendra otro tema que es cable de alta tension el proyecto de muerte.

Solo les digo el pueblo esta encendido y esta reclamando sus derechos uste tambien puede ser parte solo en seguir apoyandonos para seguir enfrentando esta realidades de hoy dia.

Hasta pronto.

Felix Sanchez.

Fundacion Naso.

Email: fund.naso@gmail.com

Since yesterday, Thursday 21/6/2012, the indigenous peoples affected by the hydroelectric dam Belo Monte occupy an area of the dams construction. They decided for the occupation in order to express their dissatisfaction at the disregard of their rights and the non-compliance with the (construction agreements) conditions, especially those relating to the Indigenous peoples. Organized by themselves and with their own resources, they occupied “Pimental”, and the work-in-progress site that is intended to allow construction. The demonstration is peaceful, and the Indigenous peoples request the presence of government representatives and the Northern Energy corporation.

Yesterday, the Earth’s Indigenous Xikrin Trench-Bacajá and Juruna Paquiçamba came to the cofferdam by river, from its IT, which are downstream of the dam in the region that suffer from drought in the project area called the Low Flow Xingu. Ships also left Altamira, where some Indians arrived by road from the more distant villages, and from where indigenous people reside or remained in the city. Are expected the Arara of the Big Bend of the Xingu and representatives of all indigenous lands in the region, coming from Iriri and Xingu rivers upstream of Altamira, in addition to the townspeople. This morning depart Paracana leaders to meet those who are already camped in the cofferdam.

The Indians are unhappy with the situation, since the conditions that should precede the works are not being adequately met in their lands and Altamira. Besides those that affect us all - as the delay in investing in the infrastructure of the city, health services and education and basic sanitation are increasingly burdened with the population increase already felt throughout the region - the indigenous peoples are concerned with the delay in implementation of the Basic Environmental Plan - indigenous component (PBA), which should establish and implement programs of compensation and mitigation of impacts already felt in the region by the Indians, with the delay in delivery of the Xikrin Complementary Studies River Bacajá , which for now have only been presented in the villages, and would allow a better scaling of impacts on this river and the Xikrin, and guarantee the definition of compensation programs and mitigation of these impacts, especially to predict that the drought will suffer from its river construction of the project, by ignorance of the PBA by the Indians, which is asked more and better performances for all to understand, the delay in defining the situation of indigenous land tenure Land Wanga, Paquiçamba, 17 km from the Juruna and Cachoeira Seca, be vague the transposition system of the dam and the fear that they are isolated from Altamira, a town where the main services that meet them (health, education, offices FUNAI); not authorize the construction of more roads as an alternative to river transport currently used by the Indians and that will be hampered by implementation of the dam and drought (reduced flow) of the riverbed, and the lack of necessary investment and infrastructure prior to work in the affected villages, such as to ensure the abstraction of drinking water in villages in the Volta Grande do Xingu, in which the water of the river, until then consumed by the population, is already muddy and unhealthy due to construction.