Tag Archives: anne petermann

Earth Minute on KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio Program

Listen to Global Justice Ecology Project’s most recent Earth Minute which summarizes the words of environmental activist and physicist, Vandana Shiva to stop the war against Mother Earth.

Click here to listen.

Comments Off on Earth Minute on KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio Program

Filed under Earth Minute

Earth Minute on KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio Program

Listen to Global Justice Ecology Project’s most recent Earth Minute and join La Via Campesina‘s call for “Thousands of Cancuns,” the mobilization to end false solutions to climate change at the UN Convention on Climate Change (UN COP-16) in Cancun, Mexico.

Click here to listen!

Comments Off on Earth Minute on KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio Program

Filed under Earth Minute

Update on the Negotiations at COP-10: Will Biodiversity Survive the Process?

Note: A very important intervention by Anne Petermann follows her analysis in her latest dispatch from UN CBD in Japan.

–The GJEP Team

Anne Petermann today (21 October), speaks on behalf of Global Justice Ecology Project, in an intervention on Biofuels and Biodiversity at the UN CBD in Nagoya, Japan. Photo: Simone Lovera/GFC

–Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director and North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition.

Wednesday (yesterday) began the CBD COP-10 Working Group negotiations
directly related to the work of Global Justice Ecology Project.  The first
item on the agenda: Biodiversity and Climate Change, under which fell
topics including geoengineering–on which ETC Group is here leading a
valiant effort for a strong moratorium–and REDD, the Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and forest Degradation scheme.

While several countries spoke in favor of a moratorium on geoengineering,
REDD received extensive support.  With all of the propaganda here in
favor of REDD and other market-based conservation schemes, this outcome is
hardly surprising.

Out of the 6 hours of official negotiating time allotted yesterday, the
agenda item on climate change took approximately 4.5 hours, with countries
running on and on in their interventions and most positions firmly
entrenched.

After sitting in that oppressive lifeless artificial room for so long,
when the item finally concluded at 5:15pm, I fled to find some fresh air
and natural light.  The next item on the agenda was dry lands
biodiversity, and as the negotiations were scheduled to end at 6 pm I
concluded there was no way they would get to the next agenda item–forest
biodiversity–before the end of the day.

At 6:30 pm, however, Simone Lovera–our colleague from Global Forest
Coalition, arrived late to our scheduled side event on REDD and informed
me that not only had they started negotiations on forest biodiversity,
they had actually finished them in less than one hour, with no observer
organizations allowed to speak.

One hour?!  How to protect forest biodiversity is one of the key issues at
this COP.  With REDD coming down the pike, not to mention all the new and
emerging pressures on forests, the discussions around how to protect
forest biodiversity should have been a central focus of the negotiations.
Instead, they were swept under the rug.

And no observer organizations were allowed to speak.  “You can submit your
comments in writing…”  The excuse used to cut off the observers from
speaking was that the translators needed to leave.   I was advised by a
colleague to go back first thing in the morning and request permission
from the Chair of the Working Group to make an intervention before the new
agenda item was started, since there was no time the night before.  This I
did.  “No”—was the answer.  “Sorry, the item is closed.  We have to
stick to our schedule.  Submit your comments in writing.”

Right. Fine. Swell.

Today’s agenda was filled with agricultural biodiversity followed by
biofuels and biodiversity.  On the first item, there were numerous
comments from developing countries cautioning about the impacts of
industrial agriculture, including GMO crops, and especially “climate
ready” GMO crops–Monsanto’s latest scheme to monopolize the food supply,
using climate change as the opportunity.

Following that item came the next big contentious debate–this one on
biofuels–also known as agrofuels.

This item was pretty clearly divided between countries that intend to
benefit from biofuel production (led by Brazil, the global biofuel king)
and those countries whose lands and people are being negatively impacted
by the growing demand for land to grow biofuel crops.  This sector was led
by the African delegation.  In typical fashion, Canada, New Zealand, and
the EU made interventions that largely supported weakening the
precautionary text on the item, and emphasizing the “benefits to
biodiversity” from biofuels.  Short of the escape of GMOs or synthetic
organisms into the environment, which I suppose would technically add new
species into the ecosystem, it is unimaginable to me how biofuels could
increase biodiversity.

Just before the Working Group reconvened after lunch, I overheard one of
the participants say, “REDD is the ultimate intelligence test for
humanity.”

While the speaker meant this to mean that it is imperative to get forests
into the market as the best and only chance to save them and stop climate
change, I interpreted it quite differently.  It is an intelligence test
alright.  Will dominant culture change its ways in the face of full-scale
ecological crisis, or will it not?  If this COP meeting is any indication,
it ain’t lookin’ too good.

Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over
and expecting a different result.”  One could easily apply that logic to
REDD and the attempt to use the market to protect biodiversity.

We’ve seen for centuries how the use of the market on natural resources
has impacted those resources.  We have the climate crisis, the
biodiversity crisis, the ocean crisis, the food crisis, the water
crisis…  Privatizing and marketing natural resources has driven Planet
Earth to the point where, to quote John Trudell, “civilized man may make
survival on Earth for civilized man impossible.”

Miracle of miracles, the Chair of the Working Group decided to allow some
observer organizations to make comments at the tail end of the biofuels
and biodiversity section.  What follows is the intervention that I made on
behalf of Global Justice Ecology Project.  It is a bit short because,
while “Parties” (i.e. countries) were allowed to go on endlessly, observer
organizations were strictly limited to one-minute interventions.  (The
marginalization of social justice and Indigenous Peoples Organizations at
these UN events is quite striking–the climate COPs are even worse.)

Intervention on Biofuels and Biodiversity:

Thank you Madam Chair.  I am speaking on behalf of Global Justice Ecology
Project.

Demand for trees for bioenergy is growing exponentially.  Second
generation biofuels will add to this problem.  Before emissions from
deforestation can be reduced or biodiversity protected, this rapidly
growing demand on forests must be stopped.  You cannot simultaneously
support REDD and promote biofuels and bioenergy.

The UN definition of forests must also be changed so that it is
science-based. As it is, it allows destruction of forests for conversion
into biofuel and bioenergy tree monocultures. Saying a tree monoculture is
a forest is like saying a cornfield is a native grassland. Even socially
and ecologically destructive genetically engineered trees are possible.

Demand for biofuels and bioenergy is also driving GMO tree development.
In the Southern U.S. alone, industry plans to plant half a billion GMO
eucalyptus trees every year just for bioenergy and biofuels.  These
plantations will replace some of the most biologically rich forests in the
world.  GMO eucalyptus should be considered an invasive alien species.
It’s ability to escape and colonize native ecosystems, destroying
biodiversity, is well documented.

In conclusion, demand for wood for fuel production is predicted to lead,
by 2050, to the almost total replacement of forests and grasslands with
biofuel and bioenergy monocultures.  This is an unparalleled threat to
biodiversity and to the land security of Indigenous and Local Communities.

There are no positive impacts on biodiversity from biofuels or bioenergy.
All references to positive impacts should be deleted.  This body must
protect biodiversity by enacting a moratorium on large-scale biofuel and
bioenergy development, and by prohibiting the use of GMO trees or
synthetic organisms in biofuel or bioenergy production.

Thank you.

Comments Off on Update on the Negotiations at COP-10: Will Biodiversity Survive the Process?

Filed under Posts from Anne Petermann

UN CBD COP 10: Business and Biodiversity, Hand in Hand

–Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director and North American Focal Point for the Global Forest Coalition

Nagoya, Japan–Today was the opening day of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s tenth Conference of the Parties (COP-10).  2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity.  It is also the year by which the UN CBD had tasked itself with achieving a set of “Millenium Development Goal” (MDG) targets with regard to staving off biodiversity loss.

As you can probably imagine, these goals came nowhere close to reality.

At this CBD COP, however, the Parties are pledged to create a new 10 year strategic plan.  Over the course of the next two weeks, the details of this plan will be discussed word by painful word.

The Opening Ceremony of the COP-10 took place this morning.  Part pep rally, part hand wringing, the presentations by the Big Wigs went on ad nauseum.  They went on so long in fact, that the environmental groups present–which had spent a couple of days preparing a 3 minute opening statement to the COP–were not allowed to present it.  No time…

But after all this taking “a hard look at” itself, the CBD has decided NOT to look at the root causes of this failure, but rather to commit itself to buddying up with business in order to devise a win-win that will supposedly protect biodiversity while promoting the interests of industry.

The logic of this green capitalist model is fascinating.  I will share with you a few choice quotes from The Little Biodiversity Finance Book (available in great piles here at COP-10):

“The English playwright Oscar Wilde once commented that the cynic knows the price of everthing but the value of nothing.  Today’s cynics are those who claim biodiversity is priceless, yet are not prepared to pay for it…In the UN year of Biodiversity a quiet revolution is occurring.  Whilst the Millennium Development Goals for stemming biodiversity loss may be missed, the financial crisis is forcing a re-think of how products and services are valued. Investors are thinking, ‘if we got it so wrong with one property, what else out there is incorrectly valued?’  There is a growing realization that wealth creation cannot continue based on financial and social capital alone, but must recognize natural capital too–for without this, national accounts, business accounts and consumer accounts–long term, are ultimately built on sand.”

“[Biodiversity financing] is a natural follow on from REDD, which is essentially valuing one such service, namely the carbon cycle…Such a utilitarian view of biodiversity should not be allowed to erode the inestimable value biodiversity has for the human spirit but should secure it for future generations…This new economy could see the emergence of ‘biodiversity superpowers’ rich in natural capital and able to bargain their ecological muscle for aid or trade.”

Whew.  Where to start with logic like that…

Premise One: Biodiversity is priceless, therefore we should put a price on it.

Premise Two: If you disagree with this oxymoronic-logic, you are a “cynic.”

Premise Three: The lesson from the financial crisis is that “property” was valued incorrectly.  [Wow, that is definitely NOT the lesson I took away from the financial crisis…]

Premise Four: Ongoing wealth creation depends on “natural capital.” Well duh.  Isn’t that kind of the essence of “CAPITALism”–transforming natural “resources” into capital?  But what’s that got to do with protecting biodiversity?

Premise Five: A utilitarian view of nature is a good thing as long as we combine it with a reverential view.  [Again with the oxymoronics.]

Premise Six: Valuing biodiversity appropriately will create “biodiversity superpowers” who can hold their biodiversity hostage for aid or trade.  “Give us your money or the forest gets it.”  And this is a good thing?

Of course, this premise also ignores the reality of things like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which have forced so-called “developing” countries into debt for decades by conning them into huge development loans, then using those loans as leverage to force them to sell off their vast natural resources to the lowest bidder–part of the process called “structural adjustment”. Structural adjustment programs are part of what has made the comfortable overconsumptive lifestyles of those of us in the North possible.

But under the premise in this little book, all of a sudden, the rich countries will pay the poor countries in exchange for them protecting their natural wealth.  Hmmm, that sounds familiar.  Debt for nature swaps–oh yeah, that was a smashing success.

Look, let’s face reality, shall we?  One cannot continue to live under a global economy that demands endless growth and simultaneously protect biodiversity.  And one cannot employ the very same economic strategies that have devastated biodiversity to now protect that same biodiversity by merely tweaking them slightly.  Putting a dollar value on nature simply means the rich will be able to control that nature.

And since the author brings up REDD, yes, let’s look at REDD as an example of what to expect from putting a price on biodiversity. Because REDD puts a dollar value on standing forests, it has launched a major global land grab with investors, companies and others buying up forests in the hopes of future profits.  The peoples who live in those forests–and are largely responsible for the fact that they are still standing, I might add–are being displaced.  Kicked out. Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?

Then there was the World Forestry Congress in October 2009.  The World Bank came to this huge gathering of timber industry executives and Big Greens to tell them about all of the profits to be had from forests under REDD.  By the time they were done, the timber executives were practically drooling.  The World Bank explained there would be around $45 billion in profits to be had under REDD, and that REDD would be very “beneficial for forestry.”  Yes, that’s right, the scheme ostensibly designed to protect forests will mean billions in profits for the very industry that thrives on cutting them down.

In exactly the same way that putting a price on carbon has meant billions in profits for the world’s worst polluters.  And so, commodifying biodiversity will in turn mean vast profit-making for the worst destroyers of biodiversity.

That, my friends, is what COP-10 is all about.

Business and Biodiversity, hand in hand at last…

Comments Off on UN CBD COP 10: Business and Biodiversity, Hand in Hand

Filed under Posts from Anne Petermann

Interview with Anne Petermann on Vancouver Co-op Radio

Aired on July 21st, 2010. Anne discusses a variety of topics including GE trees, wood-based bioenergy and false solutions to climate change.

To listen to the interview click here!

Comments Off on Interview with Anne Petermann on Vancouver Co-op Radio

Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, GE Trees, Media

Anne Petermann Reporting from Amsterdam and The Hague

Camila Moreno from Brazil, speaks to the crowd about the dangers of agro-energy in The Hague. Photo: Petermann, GJEP/GFC

By Anne Petermann

(The first section is from Tuesday, May 25th, the second section from earlier today)

Ah, the red eye flight on a standing room only plane.  There’s nothing like it…

Upon emerging from the jam packed metal tube full of people where the other occupants and I had been collectively attempting (mostly futilely) to catch a few hours of sleep, and trudging through the cold hard terminal, I stepped into the cool sunshine of Amsterdam and breathed a sigh of relief.

Into the taxi and straight to the lunch organized for the participants of the annual Board meeting of the Global Forest Coalition at their International office.  Always good to see old friends and colleagues—Camila from Brazil, Fiu from Samoa, Simone from Paraguay, Yolanda from Amsterdam, Estebancio from Panama.  While the board meeting was tacked relatively last minute on to take advantage of so many people from GFC being in the same place, the real purpose of the congregation of people was to take part in a tour designed to inform decision-makers and various organizations around the EU about the dangers of genetically engineered trees (also called GM trees or transgenic trees) and wood-based agro-energy.

My job at the GFC board meeting was to represent the decisions of the GFC Coordinating Group, of which Global Justice Ecology Project is a part, that were made at the annual Monitoring, Evaluation and Planning meeting of GFC in Panama in late-January.  This was where Orin (co-Director/ Strategist of GJEP) and I had last seen many of these friends—on the island of El Porvenir in Kuna Yala, on the Caribbean coast.

Kuna Yala is the independent territory of the Kuna people, won from Panama in the early 1900s.  The ride from the airport in Panama City across Panama and over the mountains that separate Panama from Kuna Yala was simply spectacular.  Tropical forest dotted occasionally by small homesteads as far as the eye can see.

One of the major themes of the Kuna Yala meeting was the issue of REDD (the UN and World Bank scheme to supposedly reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation).  REDD has, of necessity, been a major focus of forest dependent peoples and their allies since it was announced in Bali at the UN Climate summit in 2007.  When  the World Bank held their press conference to announce their Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (their precursor to REDD) it was greeted by loud and raucous protest.Panama has already been experiencing the impacts of the implementation of REDD, and Kuna activists such as Marcial Arias, the Spanish Speaking Focal Point for Indigenous Peoples for GFC, have been very eloquent and passionate in exposing the destructive impacts REDD has had on Indigenous communities in Panama and elsewhere.

Land grabbing, “protection” of forests through the exclusion or eviction of forest dependent communities, expansion of monoculture tree plantations and massive new profits for the timber industry are just a few of the lovely side effects of REDD.

Another little known effect is the promotion of genetically engineered trees under the auspices of REDD.  In 2003, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change decided that GE trees could be used in forestry projects designed to store carbon. In addition, because the UN definition of forests is incomprehensibly unscientific, REDD projects supposedly designed to protect forests (or at least their carbon) can include transgenic trees.  The irony of allowing a forest protection scheme to include trees that will destroy biodiversity and contaminate forests with engineered traits, is yet one more reason why REDD is being rejected by peoples and organizations around the world.

Another nail in the coffin of REDD for me was my experience at the World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires last October.  This conference—which only occurs once every six years—was a revelation.  The doublespeak of the forestry companies, World Bank personnel and their co-conspirators at the big Green groups was amazing.  Their logic revolved around the best ways to profit from the implementation of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation scheme while simultaneously profiting from increased deforestation for the large-scale use of wood to produce energy (electricity, heat and liquid transport fuels)—and how to sell both as solutions to the climate crisis.  It doesn’t get much more opportunistic than that.

It is for this reason that Global Justice Ecology Project joined forces with Global Forest Coalition, BiofuelWatch and Friends of the Earth International for this GE Trees and Agro-energy tour.  Europe is galloping ahead with plans to use biomass (woodchip derived electricity) and agrofuels (large-scale unsustainable liquid biofuels) to meet their target of 20% of their energy being “renewable” by 2020.  This tour is designed to inform European decision-makers and other NGOs that we cannot look to trees to replace fossil fuels.  Projections from industry indicate that use of wood for energy production will double or even triple the demand for wood globally in the coming decades.  Being that the demand for wood is already unsustainable, how can anyone possibly suggest that we can use wood for energy production sustainably—or more ridiculously—as part of climate mitigation?

This is one false solution that must be nipped in the bud.  And that is exactly what this tour is designed to do.

From Wednesday, May 26th

The tour today stopped at The Hague in the Netherlands to speak to a room packed with Dutch Parliamentarians, other environmental and social justice organizations and even a few industry representatives.

Fiu Mataese Elisara from Samoa chaired the meeting and emphasized the importance of getting to the bottom of the concerns about wood-based agro-energy because of the critical need to find real solutions to the climate crisis and to not get bogged down in the false solutions.  Being from Samoa, he knows what he is talking about.  His is from one of the small island nations threatened with total oblivion from rising sea levels due to climate change.  Fiu is a very articulate and passionate representative of the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific.  He is also one of our New Voices on Climate Change speakers.  You can learn more about Fiu by going to his bio on our website.

Camila Moreno did the first presentation of the day, that set the tone for the event.  Camila is Global Justice Ecology Project’s representative in Brazil and also one of our New Voices On Climate Change speakers. Her presentation on the impacts of wood-based agro-energy on Brazil was extremely powerful.  She spoke not only about the impacts of monocultures in Brazil (sugarcane, soy, eucalyptus) for energy and paper, but also about the intense resistance going on in Brazil against the eucalyptus plantations, which they call Green Deserts.  She got a lot of questions from the participants about the outright rejection of certification schemes by Brazilian movements.  But as Camila, and later Deepak Rughani from BiofuelWatch, pointed out, certification legitimizes whatever is being certified.  And for the movements in Brazil, the monocultures cannot be legitimate.

Next came Dorette Corbey, of the Biomass Commission of the Dutch Parliament.  She spoke about the need for sustainability criteria, not only for so-called “renewable” energies like biomass and agrofuels, but also for all energies—including oil, natural gas and coal.  Her presentation following Camila’s set off a strong debate about sustainability criteria and certification schemes and whether or not they can be helpful or are innately harmful.

Unfortunately, following this presentation and debate Camila had to leave to catch a plane to a conference on REDD being put on by the Norwegian government in Oslo.  She and Estebancio Castro, of the Kuna Nation in Kuna Yala are both participating in this event to try to highlight the social and ecological costs of REDD and to encourage the Norwegian government to stop promoting it.  In 2007 the Norwegian government pledged $5 million to the World Bank for their Forest Carbon Partnership Facility during the World Bank’s press conference in Bali—ignoring the passionate cries of the protesters outside that this scheme was going to cause irreparable harm to peoples and ecosystems.

Deepak went next and provided a very detailed and statistics-rich presentation about the future forecasts of the amount of wood that will be needed to meet the projected growing demand for wood-based agro-energy.  It was a frightening presentation.   Think about the demand for wood doubling or tripling from its current level.  We are already losing the last of the primeval biodiversity-rich forests because current demand can’t be sustainably met.  The wood-based bioenergy path is one to certain planetary suicide.

My presentation came next and I focused on the implications of the commercialization of genetically engineered trees specifically designed to provide the products that fossil fuels do today—such as liquid fuels, jet fuel, chemicals, plastics, electricity and heat.  As fossil fuels become scarcer and harder to access—and with backlash from catastrophes like the BP-Haliburton disaster in the Gulf—fuels derived from plants are rising in importance.  But there is no way to engineer trees or anything else to take the place of fossil fuels.  There is simply not enough land to do it.  Craig Venter—the mad scientist who seeks to create new life forms—recently announced that he had succeeded in his mad objective.  He had successfully created the first fully synthetic living organism.  The purpose for these organisms?  To manufacture life forms that create “designer” enzymes that can be used to transform cellulose (from trees or other plants) into plastics, chemicals or fuel.

Of course there have been no risk assessments and this mad science is so new it is basically unregulated. Once again humans are barreling ahead without pausing to consider the possible consequences.  It is the same for GE trees.  Risk assessments have not been done.  What will be the long-term impact of ArborGen’s cold-tolerant eucalyptus trees escaping into native forest ecosystems in the U.S. South?  We do not know.  Decision-makers are not asking that question and scientists are forbidden from seeking the answer—unless they get prior permission from ArborGen.

Which brings me to the day’s last presentation, which was by Mary Lou Malig, the Trade Campaigner for Focus on the Global South who brought the whole wood-based agro-energy question back to the global trade in forest products and who is going to profit from this nightmare.

And at the end of the day, that is what it ultimately comes down to.  Who is going to profit from these potentially disastrous schemes—and who is going to stop them…

Tomorrow:  London

Comments Off on Anne Petermann Reporting from Amsterdam and The Hague

Filed under GE Trees, Posts from Anne Petermann