Global: Bali climate negotiations - Following false solutions?

Concerns about Climate Change were at the centre of the world's media glare last week, during the UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. After two weeks of negotiations, side events, and protests, things came to a dramatic stand off between the US and the rest of the world. While the EU led the demands for the next agreement (the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end in 2012), to include cuts in Carbon Dioxide emissions to 25-40% of 1990 levels, the US flatly refused to join any agreement that set specific targets or dates.

The EU's demand for all countries to agree to high cuts in emissions was based on the urgent message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global scientific body that has given increasingly stark warnings about the current and future impacts of climate change on the Earth, and the need to dramatically cut carbon dioxide emissions. But even though the US accepted the IPCC report, it did not agree to the recommendations. Negotiations carried on into the night and into the next day after the negotiations were supposed to end.

In the end, in order to bring the US on board, an agreement to cut CO2 emissions had to be watered down, with the targets relegated to a footnote instead of the main text. While the more optimistic celebrated the fact that the US was part of an international agreement for the first time, others lamented that the "Roadmap" was toothless and would lead to little action. All was left was to hope that meetings in 2008 and 2009 would lead to more concrete targets - hopefully once George W Bush has left the White House.

Meanwhile, while the world's media focused on the stand off between the big guys, civil society organisations were working to draw attention towards some of the deeply flawed approaches that exemplify the Kyoto Protocol and the current obsession with market-based approaches. Many of these so-called "solutions" have devastating impacts on the world's ecosystems and the communities that care for them and depend on them. Carbon trading and carbon offsets allow developed countries that are heavy polluters to fund projects in developing countries that supposedly reduce emissions. But research reveals that many of the projects created under this mechanism are in fact deeply suspect, and their contribution to reducing climate change is doubtful. Local communities and indigenous peoples instead tend to suffer significant harm from these projects which are imposed on them, by an ever-growing Carbon business market.

In Bali, a new agreement on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation was celebrated by delegates. The REDD agreement extends the rights to trade carbon in standing forests, as an incentive to governments to not cut them down. But this was criticised by groups who fear that the transfer of funds to governments to "protect" forests will mean that indigenous peoples are forcefully evicted. The lack of official voice for Indigenous Peoples at the UNFCCC was glaring. Unlike other UN conferences such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Indigenous groups are not officially represented, even though they are the ones who are the most affected by climate change and deforestation, and hold the traditional ecological knowledge on protecting the environment and its biodiversity.

This lack of acknowledgement for Indigenous Peoples came to a head when they were forcibly prevented from attending a meeting between the UNFCCC Secretary-General and civil society representatives. Of course, no issue represents the confused and counter-productive thinking behind climate change strategies better than Agrofuels. Joining the new generation of businesses seeking to make as much out of carbon trading as possible, are those promoting biofuels as "green" business opportunities. African civil society joined Asian and Latin American groups in condemning agrofuels as a climate strategy, warning of the disastrous impact that using precious food and forests for fuel will have on climate, biodiversity and livelihoods.

The disturbing direction of these climate discussions led civil society groups to form a coalition to denounce the false solutions to climate change, and for justice to be an integral part of climate solutions. For information from these groups, on the real story behind these false solutions to climate change, see the Alter-Eco newsletters produced during the Bali summit, at http://www.altereconews.org/