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.”

Hola a todos,

La acreditación para la sexta sesión del Mecanismo de Expertos sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas está abierta hasta el 28 de junio de 2013. Por favor, siga las instrucciones en ==<->== Texto en espanol==<->==

Top UN climate change official Christiana Figueres said that it is ‘no longer necessary’ for the World Bank to rely on coal in its energy projects, saying that the organization should now focus on bringing alternative energy sources forward.

Figureres commended World Bank Director Jim Yong Kim on his commitment to climate action and acknowledged that coal has understandably played an important role in past energy development projects. She went on to say, however, that it is time for the World Bank to move on from coal.

Figueres said:
“It is one of the very serious challenges that the World Bank has, and it’s very understandable, because [coal] was a fuel that was critically important to developing countries at a certain stage in their development. So the fact that the bank has a portfolio of investment in coal is understandable from a historical perspective. …it is no longer necessary to do that, because we have many other technologies that can come forward.”

Her remarks come as the World Bank draws criticism for its support of a new coal power plant in Kosovo. Director Jim Yong Kim has defended the project because of unmet energy needs in the area, but many have challenged Kim’s assumption that coal power is a solution – including Kosovars.

Citing the alarming health consequences of coal, Kosovar activists have launched a major public health campaign against the new power plant through ads on national television and social media outlets, as well as a light projection on the World Bank building in Washington D.C. Opponents believe that Kosovo’s energy needs can be met more safely and effectively through greater energy efficiency and modest renewable energy projects.

Figueres, like the Kosovar activists, is highlighting the discrepancy between the World Bank’s commitment to mitigating climate change and its continued support for coal – one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, as well as an enormous burden on public health and the environment.

As an international funding organization, a decision from the World Bank to halt funding for coal would be a powerful statement of its decreasing viability as an energy source.

READ: Where Fossil Fuels Come From?

PROTEST
BACKGROUND

Photo © International Animal Rescue Indonesia IAR

Perched atop the remains of the last tree, an orangutan looks helplessly on what was until recently the forest he was living in but is now only ruins. Armed with chainsaws and bulldozers, workers of Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA), a palm oil company, have completely destroyed the rainforest for miles.

Three other half-starved orangutans – a pregnant female and a mother with her child on her back – were also found crawling around the stumps and tree trunks of the cleared rainforest.

“There are more orangutans in the tiny remaining patches of forest in the plantation, along with other protected species such as proboscis monkeys,” explains Adi Irawan of International Animal Rescue Indonesia (IAR). “All of the animals on the plantation are threatened. The company must therefore stop clearing the rainforest immediately.”

Photo © International Animal Rescue Indonesia IAR

This may seem hard to believe, but the palm oil producer BGA has been a member of the RSPO, the label for sustainable palm oil, since 2007. BGA’s customers include IOI, Wilmar and Sinar Mas, companies that sell the palm oil to European food and consumer goods manufacturers and biodiesel producers. Even the EU has recognized the RSPO as a certification system for sustainably produced biofuels.

Please sign our petition to call for a stop to rainforest destruction and palm oil imports.

Orangutans and biodiversity

The habitat of orangutans and the immense biodiversity of tropical rainforests are being irreparably destroyed for ever-larger palm oil plantations. The animals are not welcome on the plantation clearings, and would not be able to survive there. When summoned, the staff of International Animal Rescue Indonesia (IAR) therefore has no choice but to tranquilize the orangutans, capture them, and take them elsewhere.

Video report of the orangutan rescue by International Animal Rescue

Yet hardly any replacement habitats remain for the animals. Beyond the cleared rainforest, endless oil palm monocultures extend to the horizon. Throughout Indonesia and in neighboringMalaysia, rainforests are being cut down for ever more oil palm plantations.

RSPO – Sustainable Palm Oil

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is an association on nearly 1,200 businesses – plantation companies, palm oil mills and traders, as well as their customers, including European food and consumer products companies such as Nestlé, Unilever and Henkel. A further dozen organizations with close ties to the industry, such as the WWF, serve as a fig leaf for the certification.

The RSPO does not rule out the destruction of rainforest land for new oil palm plantations. Only “high conservation value areas” (HCVAs) may not be cleared.

Rainforest Rescue is calling for the protection of all rainforest areas. The rainforests of Southeast Asia are home not only to orangutans, but to other endangered species such as proboscis monkeys and other primates, big cats such as tigers and clouded leopards, pygmy elephants, Sumatran rhinos, and many more. Many indigenous peoples and small farmers also rely on rainforests for their homes and livelihoods.

Earth Peoples, together with 255 environmental, animal and  human rights organizations from around the world have therefore long rejected the RSPO as fraudulent labeling and greenwashing.

BGA: Bumitama Gunajaya Agro

The Bumitama Gunajaya Agro (BGA) palm oil company is part of the notorious Indonesian Harita Group, a conglomerate with mining (nickel, bauxite, coal), palm oil, tropical timber and cargo shipping interests. The Malaysian palm oil giant IOI, which also operates a major palm oil refinery in Rotterdam (Loders Croklaan) for the European market, holds a one-third stake in BGA.

Photo © International Animal Rescue Indonesia IAR

To date, BGA has established 124,000 hectares of oil palm plantations at the expense of Indonesian rainforests in Borneo (West and Central Kalimantan) and Sumatra (Riau). The company has secured a further 65,000 hectares of land and is currently clearing around 13,000 hectares a year in order to cultivate oil palms.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

SIGN PETITION Borneo: Stop Orangutan Slaughter in Borneo

SIGN PETITION Sumatra: Indonesia Police: Investigate & Prosecute destroyers of Tripa!

SIGN PETITIONIndonesia: Orangutans – victims of “sustainable” palm oil

Environmentalists, tribe sue after feds allow company to proceed despite ban on new mining near Grand Canyon

By Brandon Loomis/The Republic

(Photo Mark Henle/The Republic) Energy Fuels Resources says a federal ban on new uranium mining near Grand Canyon National Park doesn

DOHA, Qatar — Mr. President of the COP, distinguished Heads of State of countries of the world, Ministers, Officials, delegates and representatives of social organizations, indigenous peoples and communities and farmers of the world, receive a greeting from the Plurinational State of Bolivia and our President Evo Morales Ayma.

The planet and humanity are in serious danger of extinction. The forests are in danger, biodiversity is in danger, the rivers and the oceans are in danger, the earth is in danger. This beautiful human community inhabiting our Mother Earth is in danger due to the climate crisis.

The causes of the climate crisis are directly related to the accumulation and concentration of wealth in few countries and in small social groups, excessive and wasteful mass consumption, under the belief that having more is living better, polluting production and disposable goods to enrich wealth increasing the ecological footprint, as well as the excessive and unsustainable use of renewable and non-renewable natural resources at a high environmental cost for extractive activities for production.

A wasteful, consumerist, exclusionary, greedy civilization generating wealth in some hands and poverty everywhere, has produced pollution and climate crisis.

We did not come here to negotiate climate. We did not come here to turn the climate into a business, or to protect businesses of them who want to continue aggravating the climate crisis, destroying Mother Earth. We have come with concrete solutions.

THE CLIMATE IS NOT FOR SALE, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! Mr. President, The withdrawal of some developed countries of the Kyoto protocol and avoiding of their commitments is an attack on the Mother Earth and to life.

The problem of climate crisis will not be solved with political declarations, but with specific commitments. We will not pay the climate debt of developed countries to developing countries.

They, developed countries, must fulfill their responsibility.

While some developed countries do their best to avoid their commitments to solve the climate crisis, developing countries are making greater efforts to reduce emissions, and paying the price of a climate crisis and that everyday leaves droughts, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, etc.

The climate crisis leaves us poorer, deprives us of food, destroys our economy, creates insecurity, and creates migration. Climate change will make the poor poorer.

Poor and developing countries have a great challenge: the eradication of poverty. And we’ll have to face a climate crisis for which we are not guilty. In addition to adapting to climate change we must ensure security, education, health, energy for the population, provision of water and sanitation services, delivery communication and infrastructure services, job creation, provision of housing, reconstruction due to loss and damage caused by extreme weather events, adaptation actions, among others.

Mr. President, We denounce to the whole world the pressure from some countries for the approval of new carbon market mechanisms, although these have shown to be ineffective in the fight against climate change, and that only represent business opportunities.

This is a climate change conference, not a conference for carbon business. We did not come here to do business with the death of Mother Earth betting on the power of markets as a solution. We are here to protect our Mother Earth, we came here to protect the future of humanity.

Yesterday forests were turned into carbon markets businesses, and the same was done with the land, they tried to oceans and, worse, to agriculture. Agriculture is food security, employment, life, and culture. Agriculture is along with the land, mountains and forests, the house and the food of our indigenous and peasant communities.

WE WILL NOT ALLOW THE REPLACEMENT OF THE OBLIGATIONS OF DEVELOPED COUNTRIES WITH CARBON MARKETS. PLANET IS NOT FOR SALE, NOR OUR LIFE.

It is essential that developed countries take the lead with mitigation actions with concrete results and high ambitions and that developing countries do their part within their respective capabilities, and according to financial and technological transfers, solving problems of poverty.

Mr. President, In Bolivia we have the vision of Living Well as a new approach for civilization and cultural alternative to capitalism, and in this context we focus our efforts to create a balance and harmony between society and nature.

Bolivia, presented here concrete proposals to strengthen the global climate system. We have proposed the creation of the Joint Mechanism for Mitigation and Adaptation for integrated and sustainable management of forests, not based on markets, to strengthen community, indigenous and peasant management of our forests, which can promote climate mitigation actions without transferring the responsibilities of developed countries to developing countries.

Also, we promote consistently the creation of an international mechanism to address loss and damage resulting from natural causes and impacts of climate change in developing countries. Our country will not promote carbon market mechanisms such as REDD, and will respect and strengthen community management of forests.

Mr. President, We will not allow the people of the world to pay the bill for the irresponsibility and greed. It’s time to give concrete answers to humanity and Mother Earth. Let´s be careful of the intentions of some developed parties to make us feel resigned in front of this terrible reality, and admit the inertia and inaction of those countries that are historically responsible of global warming, sending us a message that is better to have a “pragmatic” attitude, which of course will condemn to cook planet and the extinction of the humanity.

Mr. President, brothers and sisters of the world, take these words as a commitment to life and Mother Earth. With this conviction we will be guided to meet the challenge we have in this conference, the challenge of saving the planet, and not to negotiate our climate. Thank you Mr. President.

By Plurinational State of Bolivia

Evo Morales, President Bolivia (Photo © Rebecca Sommer)

A decade ago Nobel Prize-winning scientistPaul Crutzen first suggested  that we are moving out of the geological Holocene phase; a 12,000 year old geological phase which has maintained the conditions on Earth to allow life to flourish. We are now entering a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

In thousands of years to come, the shameful tale of the planetary destruction our civilisation is causing will be revealed by the wounded mountains, scarred into the rocks and burnt into the tree rings in ancient forests. Our Earth does not forget, its memory is available to be unveiled for those that investigate and through investigation we have learnt that countless civilisations before us have collapsed due to factors including environmental destruction. Will history repeat itself once more?

Hopi Elder Titus Quomayomptewa (Polaroid Photo © Rebecca Sommer)

The Anthropocene marks a significant turning point in history; either our demise, or the birth of a new era, when humanity takes a giant evolutionary leap and learns to live in harmony with nature.

Already there are many who are living sustainably who provide a shining example for others to follow.

Knowing this can be overwhelming, but we do have a choice which path to take. For the wellbeing of all life on Earth we can chose to make Ecocide a crime. To do this we must all play our part, just like the humming bird in the video as told by Wangari Maathai. People all over the world are already playing their part by calling for Ecocide to be made the fifth Crime Against Peace; lawyers, business leaders and civil society and more are speaking out as momentum grows. Sign and share Wish20 and find more ways to get involved.