Introduction to the special issue

Over twenty years have passed since governments within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began to discuss the impending climate crisis. Year after year, we witness the talks moving further away from identifying the root causes of climate change while the increasing impacts affect even more peoples and regions. Every meeting has given more space for corporate involvement and less to the voices of those directly affected by these climate policies. Despite the promoters' fancy “green” campaigns and videos, the main focus at the climate negotiations continues to be about saving the free-market economy for those who are holding the cards – the biggest transnational corporations and financial institutions. The same corporations that are largely behind the destruction of forests, rivers, diversity, territories – as well as the violation of human and collective rights and so on – are also the main polluters and plunderers of the Earth.

The climate crisis poses a real threat to the current economic model which is based on the continuous extraction and production of fossil fuels, hydrocarbons and “natural resources” such as land, minerals, wood and agriculture. If talks were to seriously address climate change, there would need to be a discussion on the many ways to support the hundreds of thousand of small-scale farmers, fishers, Indigenous Peoples, forest-dwelling communities and others whose territories and livelihoods are at risk from capital expansion, and how to transition to different economic systems where fossil fuels could be kept underground; where the consumption “mantra” would shift towards more local, diverse and collective discourses and practices. However, the hegemonic and colonial powers are once more violently closing doors, creating more “structural adjustments” and, ultimately, harming the people who are the least responsible for current and historical pollution levels suffering the most from the impacts.

The fallacy that we can continue with the same economic model is irremediably flawed, bankrolled by big polluters, and intrinsically linked to land and livelihoods grabbing, especially in the Global South. Nonetheless, mechanisms like carbon markets, which expand the extractivist and free-market logic, continue to be promoted as unilateral, programmatic “solutions” to mitigate climate change and address deforestation and biodiversity loss. From carbon trading to forests and biodiversity offsets, the climate crisis has been turned into a business opportunity, worsening the already felt impacts, especially for those who are the least responsible. Debates over molecules of carbon being accounted for and “moved” or “stored” from one location to the other detracts from the necessary debates on shifting away from extraction, unjust power structures and oppression. While being fully informed of the causes of climate change, international climate negotiations strive to ensure that the hegemonic economic model expands and rewards polluters.

The consequence is that “climate policies” (aka economic policies) finance the most destructive industries and polluters, often destroying genuinely effective actions that support community livelihoods and keep fossil fuels in the ground. Moreover, these policies further the “financialization of nature” process, which presupposes the separation and quantification of the Earth’s cycles and functions – such as carbon, water and biodiversity – in order to turn them into “units” or “titles” that can be sold in financial and speculative markets. With governments establishing legal frameworks to set these markets in place, they also have provided the financial “infrastructure” for negotiating financial “instruments”, by using derivatives, hedge funds and others. While financial markets have a growing influence over economic policies, the “financialization of nature” hands over the management to the financial markets, whose sole concern is to further accumulate capital.

FROM CARBON TRADING TO FINANCIALIZING THE EARTH

The assumption behind carbon trading is that if a price is put on “carbon dioxide” (aka pollution) then it would become (economically) valued and possible to control. All other “values” outside the hegemonic economy are dismissed. Carbon trading provides not only additional finance for polluting industries but creates a new discourse that allows themselves to brand their pollution as “green”, “carbon neutral” or “sustainable”.

From policy-makers looking after the interests of corporate lobbies, to conservationist NGOs and multilateral agencies like the World Bank, the expansion of a financialized free-market logic through the climate talks has generated windfall profits for heavy polluters and financial traders while proving to be inherently ineffective and unjust. Even with the obvious failures, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the biggest “functioning” carbon market, has been used as a model for other carbon trading systems around the world.[1] Since 2013 there have been new carbon markets introduced in California, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Quebec, Korea and China, and they continue to expand.

What is being valued is ultimately what can be turned into money and what is being discussed in the UN climate talks is more about how to placate big business and maintain unjust power relations than addressing the real causes of climate change. This imposes a colonial and neoliberal perspective on how to view the world. A world where each of the Earth’s cycles can be separated from territories and quantified into homogenous “units” to be “re-created”, “replaced”, “moved” or “restored” according to economic and cost-related “values”.

The climate talks at the end of 2015 are slated to sign an agreement that will expand the free-market logic into all cycles and functions of the Earth. This includes the further financialization of the Earth, following the narrative and metrics of a carbon commodity, into forests, soils, biodiversity, water and oceans. This process is advancing rapidly with banks, conservationist NGOs, the World Bank and corporations standing to gain even more.

So what can we do? We can start by recognizing that the climate negotiations are making things worse. We need to think beyond the UNFCCC and to stand in active solidarity with those who are at the frontlines of fighting the climate and environmental criminals while defending their territories. Many communities and groups around the world have been resisting the fossil fuel, paper and pulp, infrastructure and other destructive industries for generations. We need to hear what they have been saying for a long time and in different ways. Building radical solidarity with social movements and communities in resistance may be a way forward. Resistance is happening and has happened for a long time. The question is not how to “build a movement”, but rather how to strengthen political support; build and engage with resistance wherever we are; how to link, collaborate and cooperate with movements; how to learn from successes and failures, and how to stop and listen, really listen, and learn from these struggles!

AT THE EDGE

This booklet is not about the coming climate talks per se, but about years of struggle, passion and commitment for environmental, social and climate justice. It is about reflecting and carrying this into future generations. The writings found in the following pages are contributions from grounded and committed activists, researchers, scholars, feminists and thinkers. These experienced voices work within wide networks of dynamic peoples and groups. They continue to push the limits in the quest towards justice. This booklet attempts to help build an understanding of the root causes of climate change beyond the fallacy of the UNFCCC negotiations and contemporary media hype.

The first section begins with an important reflection from Tom Goldtooth on understanding the Indigenous political starting point, which is based on respecting Mother Earth. The piece outlines how this vision goes directly against the “financialization of nature” and the commodification of the Earth. Next, a Call to Women Who do not Want to Burn from Daniella Meirelles is a critical call to action and a message for all. Ivonne Yanez outlines a powerful history from the International Oilwatch network and following their call for leaving fossil fuels underground, she proposes creating a space where the voices of those who are concretely fighting the causes of climate change, mostly found within Indigenous and local communities are given space and power in the international arena. Savvy reflections on COPs-gone-past are shared by Anne Petermann who is now forbidden from another COP and who calls for direct action as an antidote to despair. Larry Lohmann pushes the edge, once again, in asking how we relate to climate science while calling for other knowledges to be seen and heard. Camila Moreno reflects on how the discourses and practices around the "green economy" are de-politicizing debates, and reducing them to the "management" of carbon molecules. And finally, critical understandings of the “financialization of nature” are the focus of Isaac Rojas and Lucia Ortiz’s article who round out the section with the important point that we are all Nature.

The next section outlines some of the mechanisms discussed and promoted in the UN climate negotiations and that will play a central role in the agreement for post-2020 slated for the Paris talks. Patrick Bond offers a salient critique of carbon trading, linking its complexity and history as obstacles to overcome. Elena Gerebizza explains how oil corporations are getting ready for a climate agreement through the example of 3,500 kilometres of pipelines between Azerbaijan and Italy cloaked in “energy-security”-speak. Following on, CENSAT Colombia denounces the territorial impacts of offset projects on the ground. The World Rainforest Movement team then explains how the definition of forests used by the UN, FAO and other multilateral agencies promotes the expansion of industrial monoculture tree plantations. A key related issue debated in the climate talks is REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), which aims to trade the carbon “stored” in trees. Some key problems with the REDD mechanism are outlined by Wally Menne from his experience with Timberwatch, South Africa, while Soumitra Ghosh describes REDD conflicts in India, problems with the governmental approach and how communities are resisting. Moving further, Rachel Smolker outlines the illusions of a “bioeconomy” and the dangers of an engineered future while Almuth Ernsting clearly lays out the problems with the promotion of the “biofuel” industry, particularly the one based on wood chips to feed coal-fired power plants in Europe. The booklet ends with Sarah Bracking and M. K. Dorsey completing the section with a critique of the inherent flaws in the Green Climate Fund.

Climate justice movements are diverse, but a fundamental principle lies at the heart: the recognition that the threats posed by climate change are a consequence of unequal, colonial, economic and social power relations. Every time we hear about a “climate solution”, we need to ask ourselves the following questions: Who is benefiting and who is harmed? How does this affect the local environment, territories and communities? Where does climate justice play a role? We hope this booklet helps in reflections towards building stronger, more diverse and radical movements, not only fighting against the root causes of climate change, but also fighting against “solutions” being imposed from the top.

END NOTE

[1] See for example the “Scrap the ETS” declaration which was endorsed by over 100 organizations, networks and movements worldwide, http://scrap-the-euets.makenoise.org/KV/declaration-scrap-ets-english/