Africa/Global: Taking climate back to people's hands

SOURCE: W R M B U L L E T I N 91, February 2005
E-Mail: [email protected]
Web page: http://www.wrm.org.uy

Taking climate back to people's hands

The Durban Group is a coalition of NGOs, social and environment activists,
communities, academics, scientists and economists from around the world
concerned about climate change, who call for a global grassroots movement
against climate change. The group denounces the current flawed approach of
international negotiations and claims that it must be met by the active
participation of a global movement of Northern and Southern peoples to
take the climate back into their hands.

Several members of the Durban Group participating in the 5th World Social
Forum held at Porto Alegre, Brazil, gathered there to exchange information
and elaborate strategies for action regarding climate change. One of the
outcomes was an open letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to convey
him "two convictions: first, that another world is possible; second, that
it will not be possible if people do not have a climate they can live in."

The letter was drafted in Porto Alegre and launched on February 15,
coinciding with the Kyoto Protocol's entering into force. The Kyoto
Protocol had been agreed in 1997 in the UN Convention on Climate Change,
allegedly to establish concrete commitments to reduce fossil fuel
emissions from Northern countries. However, the Durban Group claims that
the climate treaty not only fails to cut greenhouse gas emissions enough
to avert climate catastrophe, but also steals from the poor to give to the
rich.

In the letter sent to Kofi Annan, the group expresses disappointment that
international climate negotiations resulting from the Framework Convention
on Climate Change of 1992 did not "effectively address the threats to
life, livelihoods and peace posed both by climate change and the
continuing extraction of fossil fuels that causes it. We had expected the
negotiations to tackle the climate crisis at its root: the transfer of
oil, coal and gas from underground to the surface."

This excessive burning of fossil fuels is now jeopardising Earth's ability
to maintain a liveable climate. However, the group notes that "Instead of
mandating steep reductions in the extraction and burning of coal, oil and
gas, and reducing the capital diverted to oil exploration, the United
Nations, under the influence of the United States, has spent a
disproportionate amount of time and resources on developing a complicated
global climate market."

The Durban Group's letter tells UN Secretary-General that through the new
carbon market, "industrialized countries and their corporations are
acquiring valuable formal rights over the earth's capacity to recycle
fossil fuel emissions while also being encouraged to use land and other
resources in the South to 'mitigate' continued Northern greenhouse gas
emissions." Helping in the latter project has been the World Bank, which,
through its various carbon funds, is backing "carbon-saving" projects
throughout the South.

The Durban Group criticizes the UN for failing "to move toward, or even
encourage debate about, sensible and equitable alternative policies of
regulation, taxation, termination of subsidies for fossil fuel extraction
and use, and support for sustainable local energy. At the same time, a
smokescreen of specialized 'carbon market' jargon has prevented the public
from understanding or exercising control over climate policy."

"The purpose and legitimacy of this carbon market," the letter continues,
"is being questioned by many who see it as biased in favour of the
short-term interests of industrialized countries and their corporations".

The letter was accompanied by a press release noting that "while many are
celebrating the Kyoto Protocol's entering into force this week, others are
finding cause for grave concern" and posing the question "Kyoto: What's to
Celebrate?"

The press release exposes the arguments of members of the Durban Group
regarding the present situation: "We're creating a sort of 'climate
apartheid,' wherein the poorest and darkest-skinned pay the highest price
-- with their health, their land, and, in some cases, with their lives --
for continued carbon profligacy by the rich," said Soumitra Ghosh of the
National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers in India.

"Even in purely economic terms, a market in credits from 'carbon-saving'
projects will fail," said Jutta Kill of Sinkswatch, a British-based
watchdog organization. "You simply can't verify whether a power plant's
emissions can be 'compensated for' by a tree plantation or other project.
Ultimately investors are bound to lose confidence in the credits they buy
from such projects."

Ricardo Carrere of the World Rainforest Movement added that "so-called
carbon sink plantations will result in the further spread of monoculture
tree plantations, which are already having enormous impacts on people and
the environment".

The Kyoto Protocol also allows genetically engineered trees to be used in
carbon-absorbing plantations. "This will open up a Pandora's box of
impacts we can't even guess at," said Anne Petermann of Global Justice
Ecology Project in the US.

Regarding the role of the World Bank as a promoter of the carbon market,
including "carbon-saving" projects in poor nations, Nadia Martinez of the
Sustainable Energy and Environment Network in Washington declared that
"It's ridiculous that the Bank, which has a mission of entrenching the
fossil fuel industry, is now advertising itself as solving the climate
crisis."

"If we are to avert a climate crisis, drastic reductions in fossil fuel
investment and use are inescapable, as is the protection of remaining
native forests," confirmed Heidi Bachram of Carbon Trade Watch.

Global trends of privatization of water and biodiversity have now
encroached on climate too. To tackle the climate crisis, the Durban Group
is calling on Northern and Southern grassroots activists and organizations
to help reinforce a peoples' movement that rise up against those processes
and "take the climate back into our hands."

The open letter can be accessed at
http://www.carbontradewatch.org/durban/letter.html and the full press
release at http://www.carbontradewatch.org/durban/kofi.html.