Tag Archives: Climate Change

by | 2010-06-02 · 22:06

The Promotion of REDD: The Tentacles Spread

UN Climate Convention to Combine Forces with Biodiversity Convention on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation (REDD) Schemes

By Anne Petermann

As the promotion of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) intensifies here at the intercessional UN Climate talks in Bonn, Germany, it is both growing in scope (to incorporate more and more uses of land—including agriculture) and expanding to include the other two conventions that arose out of the 1992 Rio Convention—that is the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.

This merging became clear at the Oslo conference on REDD hosted by the Norwegian government.  Ahmed Djoghlaf, the Executive Secretary of the CBD sent a statement there about the importance of biodiversity in mitigating climate change. And the second meeting of the Oslo body (called the REDD+ Partnership) will be held in Nagoya, Japan this October immediately prior to the UN CBD COP (Conference of the Parties), which itself takes place only a little over one month before the UN Climate COP in Cancun.

The key role of the CBD COP is spelled out quite clearly in the REDD+ Partnership paper promoting the Nagoya “Ministerial Meeting on Forest Conservation Cooperation and Climate Change.”  The paper states, “Partners recognize that forest conservation provides co-benefits of biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, and provides strong political momentum for the success of the CBD COP-10.”

As well, our allies who attended the Subsidiary Body (more UN-speak, sorry) meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, which took place in Nairobi immediately before the Subsidiary Body meeting of the UN Climate Convention here in Bonn, alerted us to some disturbing developments at the CBD.

Two Biodiversity COPs ago, in Curitiba, Brazil in 2006, the CBD COP agreed to start a “Business and Biodiversity” initiative, which was officially launched at the CBD COP in Bonn in 2008.

The CBD has embraced this initiative and is going hog wild with the notion of embracing business and the markets in their policies and initiatives.  In so doing, they are now emulating several of the programs and mechanisms of the UN Climate Conference—especially “offsets” and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Offsets and the CDM are two components of the Climate Negotiations and the Kyoto Protocol climate agreement that are the bane of the climate justice movement.  Both are designed to give polluting countries and companies in the Industrialized North the excuse to go on polluting while claiming to mitigate their emissions.  They do this by funding projects in developing countries that supposedly compensate in some way for the pollution they are releasing.

Ironically, most of the time these projects are usually extremely destructive and very dirty.  They can include, for example, large-scale hydro-electric projects that drown forests and displace thousands, and they can even include new dirty industries like cement plants, as long as those plants are just a little bit cleaner than they would have been if they did not receive funding from the CDM.

Then there are also offset projects that include so-called “green carbon” (good grief) projects like monoculture timber plantations that supposedly store carbon to “offset” that emitted by industry.  The fact that this offset model has no scientific basis in actually addressing climate change is irrelevant.  It sounds nice and makes a lot of money, and that’s all that matters.

Ah, capitalism…

So the UN Convention on Biological Diversity has looked at these bizarre, profit-oriented and ecologically destructive models and said, “yeah baby! Gimme some of that!”

And thus was born the “Green Development Mechanism” or GDM—the UN CBD equivalent of the CDM (yes, I’m afraid its true).  But that’s only the beginning of their complete loss of sanity.

The CBD has also come up with something they like to call (I’m totally serious) BBOP.  Yes, BBOP—as in Elvis Presley.  As in BBOP a-loo-bop.  But what makes this one such a delight is what it stands for—the Business and Biodiversity Offset Program.  ‘Wait,’ you’re thinking.  ‘Biodiversity offsets?  This can’t possibly be for real!’  Ah, but it is.  The CBD seriously intends to start a biodiversity offset program to allow business to continue to destroy biodiversity as long as they offset it with another project somewhere else.

For activists in the U.S. this is not completely new.  There is a similar program there that has been in use for some time.  And isn’t the U.S. just the ideal role model for biodiversity protection?  You betcha!

By way of an example of how this has worked in the U.S., Walmart might be given a permit to build a new store in the middle of a supposedly protected wetland.  But in order to do this, they would have to pay to construct a new wetland somewhere else.  No really, that’s how it works.

So basically the UN has looked at some of the stupidest and worst models in the Capitalist world and incorporated them into their conventions.  REDD, for example: paying some of the world’s biggest destroyers of forests to stop destroying some of them.  Not only is this model completely fucking stupid, it is a clear reflection of the free trade model that took off in the 1990s and sought to force national governments to pay corporations their lost profits if they were prevented from profiting from “trade barriers” such as laws against pollution or violating the rights of workers.  Except this time the forest-destroyers are holding the world hostage by saying, ‘pay us or fry.’

So what this means is that the activists following biodiversity loss and those following Climate will need to come together to create collaborative strategies and plans to both oppose these crazy market-based death schemes and organize alternatives—real alternatives—peoples’ alternatives—non-market alternatives.

That is our challenge.

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by | 2010-06-01 · 20:31

And the Absurdity Continues… Report from the interim UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany

photo: Petermann/GJEP-GFC

By Anne Petermann

Several interesting developments at the Funny Farm today and yesterday.

The Subsidiary Body on Implementation, or SBI (dontcha just love that UN-speak) met yesterday to address the question of “civil society” (their term, not mine) participation.  Sounds reasonable.  Opening the process to increased civil society participation has long been a demand of climate justice groups working in this process—considered the most closed and restricted of the various UN processes.

Yeah, well…

That wasn’t quite the purpose of the agenda item.  The topic was not raised to increase participation, but to try to avoid the “problems” of Copenhagen.  They discussed, among other things, how to prevent unpermitted protest at the Climate COP in Cancun this coming December; how to restrict the participation of civil society groups in the negotiations; and how to ensure that no Parties (participating countries) include civil society groups on their delegations.  The question of corporate representatives being included in Party delegations, however, was not an issue.  Surprise, surprise.  And as the final slap in the face, the civil society representative that had been selected by Climate Justice Now! to present an ‘intervention’ (short statement) regarding civil society’s thoughts on the question of participation was prevented from giving the statement they had been promised.  The Chair of the session simply refused to call on them.

This is a clear signal to those of us comprising so-called “civil society” that we shall have no role, not even a symbolic one, in the “official” process defining the way forward on climate change mitigation.  While the lack of meaningful participation by NGOs and social movements is nothing new, the blatant-ness of the anti-civil society attitude among the FCCC is revealing indeed, and helps set the stage for how we will be able to “participate” during the climate COP in Cancun.

Slap in the Face Number 2: Cochabamba vs Copenhagen

This UN Climate Meeting follows on the heels of the historic Cochabamba Climate Summit that took place in Bolivia in April.  This summit was called by Evo Morales as a response to the dreadful outcomes of the official Copenhagen UN climate summit where Barak Obama waltzed in with his so-called “Copenhagen Accord,” that was negotiated in secret with a small cabal of countries, subverting the many months of negotiations by 190+ countries leading up to Copenhagen.  It was roundly denounced by numerous Southern countries and never adopted by the Conference of the Parties.

The Cochabamba Summit, on the other hand, came out with very strong climate-justice based statements including a condemnation of the unjust and market-based REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) scheme, a call for repayment of climate debt, the establishment of a world tribunal on climate and environmental justice, and many other proposals to move forward with real and meaningful action on climate change.  These consensus agreements were made by 35,000 people over three days in various working groups.  Their outcomes were presented here in Bonn as official submissions to the negotiating text by both Bolivia and Venezuela.

The new draft negotiating text, however, ignores these Cochabamba agreements and instead incorporates ALL of the components of the Copenhagen Accord.

This absurdity was addressed by Climate Justice Now! through an intervention read by Camila Moreno, who represents Global Justice Ecology Project in Brazil with a GJEP desk in the Porto Alegre-based Friends of the Earth office.

Oh yeah, yet another slap in the face—while the Parties are allowed to blather on for 5 or 10 minutes each with essentially unlimited interventions, Climate Justice Now!—an network of some 200 organizations from around the world—was given exactly 60 seconds, and warned that their microphone would be cut off at exactly that.  60 seconds incidentally is about 160 words.

The upcoming Cancun Climate Conference, it seems, is beginning to look more and more like it will be a repeat of the WTO (World Trade Organization) meeting there in September of 2003, where there were massive protests on the outside and disruptions on the inside.  Between the increasing focus of the UN climate talks on trade and market-based mechanisms to “address climate change” [read: make lots of money] and the almost total exclusion of civil society, the UN Climate Convention has truly become the new World Carbon Trade Organization.

Copenhagen was not the climax of the climate justice movement, but rather its launching pad.  Or to paraphrase the motto of Redwood Summer back in 1990: “This decade is going to make the 1960s look like the 1950s.  Wouldn’t that be nice…

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by | 2010-05-31 · 21:29

Adventures in Bonn Or, The Descent into Climate Change Madness at the Maratim Hotel

Blog post 5/31/10

By Anne Petermann

Today is my father’s birthday.  It is the first birthday that he isn’t around to celebrate.  So I will dedicate today’s blog post in his memory.  He would have been 69.

The train ride from Oxford—where Fiu, Camila and I had taken a brief detour from the GE trees and Agroenergy Tour for a meeting to discuss the international campaign against genetically engineered trees—was a long one.  First the Oxford to London train—a slower local train, then the train from London to Brussels, during which—in the middle of the chunnel—the train’s electrical system fried my computer charger, then the leg from Brussels to Cologne (at 300 kilometers per hour), and the final short leg from Cologne (Köln) to Bonn.

We arrived at around 10:30pm finally at the hotel, ravenous—a slightly difficult position on a Sunday night in Germany.  Our hunger had to be put on hold, however, while we had a very frustrating time with the Hotel staff person whose English was about as good as my Spanish.  That is, barely comprehensible.  Of course the hotel used an ancient non-computerized system of reservations that involved giant grids of paper marked with pencil.  AND the reservation was not in our names so our reservations could not be located.  Naturally.  But all was not lost.  I finally located the handwritten name of our colleague in whose name the reservation had been made.  Redemption!

So off Camila and I went (Fiu sensibly retired) to attempt the task of finding an open restaurant.

We indeed found an open restaurant right around the corner—located a table and proceeded to peruse the menu.  When the waitress finally arrived, Camila asked about their delicious-sounding spargel specials—this being prime spargel season.  No, she wagged her head, the kitchen is closed.  After the next similar encounter, we asked if we would be able to find a place that was open.  Yes, was the reply, near the university.  So 10 or 12 blocks later we finally found the elusive hot meal we were so desperately seeking.  We shared a baked gnocchi with mozzarella in red sauce.  Not particulary German, but it worked.

The next day (today) started the descent into hell—that is the Maratim Hotel in Bonn.  We were all too familiar with the particular sulfuric aroma of the Maratim from our previous foray into its bowels in 2008 when we fought the good fight for a global ban on genetically engineered trees at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Conference of the Parties.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.  This time, the fight is to stop the rampaging corporados and their henchmen from shoving false market-based solutions to climate change down the throats of the rest of the world, while the temperature slowly rises…

I escaped the asylum long enough to find a new computer charger (2 doors down from the hotel!) and a new pair of black dress shoes to replace the ones I forgot in London (my hiking shoes just didn’t quite go with my suit).  I also got the new Earth Minute recorded for KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show, which will be aired tomorrow and subsequently posted on this blog.

I did finally return to the Maratim when I could procrastinate no more, and worked on the press release that will accompany Wednesday’s launch of the report on the social and ecological impacts of wood-based agroenergy that was jointly produced by Global Forest Coalition, Global Justice Ecology Project and BiofuelWatch.

I begged out of the official reception that took place after the finish of the day’s negotiations.  Just couldn’t bear the idea of standing around on my sore feet, eating greasy food, and watching megalomaniacal beaurocrats sip wine while the forests burn.  Been there.  Done that.

Stay tuned to this blog for more adventures from Bonn…

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by | 2010-05-11 · 15:44

Earth Minute on KPFK Los Angeles

Global Justice Ecology Project Partners with KPFK Los Angeles’ Sojourner Truth Show: Features Call for Emergency Gulf Oil Spill Actions This Friday 5/14/10

Listen to today’s “Earth Minute” commentary about the call to action:

Earth Minute 5/10/10

Prior to the UN Climate Talks in Copenhagen last year, Global Justice Ecology Project teamed up with Pacifica’s KPFK Radio station in Los Angeles for a series of interviews during the climate talks.  Every day during the two weeks of the climate conference, GJEP’s New Voices on Climate Change program organized daily 15 minute interviews for KPFK’s Sojourner Truth Show, hosted by Margaret Prescod.

We are now collaborating with the Sojourner Truth show for 12 minute interviews every Thursday. We have also recently added a new “Earth Minute” feature.  The Earth Minute is an ecological news commentary written and recorded by Global Justice Ecology Project, that airs every Tuesday.

For more on why taking action is important, listen to last Thursday’s Sojourner Truth show, which focused on the gulf oil spill.

The show includes interviews with Dune Lankard, a member of the Eagle Clan from Alaska’s Copper River Delta and expert on the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill; Glen Smith, a local fisherman from the Gulf; impacted members of the Indigenous Houma Nation of the Gulf coast; an activist who works in African American communities along the Gulf; and analysis from an expert on peak oil.

To listen, click the link below:

http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_100506_070030sojourner.MP3
(after last minutes of Democracy Now!)
http://archive.kpfk.org/parchive/mp3/kpfk_100506_080030uprising.MP3

(conclusion in beginning of this link)

For more information on Rising Tide North America’s call for an emergency “Day of Action, Night of Mourning Against Offshore Drilling” this Friday May 14, go to http://www.actagainstoil.com/
Visit our Website
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by | 2010-02-25 · 17:36

Chiapas Action Alert & Photo of the Month

Elder Indigenous woman takes part in march for world peace in San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico.  The Indigenous Peoples’ march was led by Bishop Felipe Arizmendi on March 14, 2003, days before the U.S. began its “official” bombing of Iraq.
Chiapas, Mexico 2003
Photo:  Langelle/GJEP
This photo is relevant today for many reasons.  Next month is the 7th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and even though that war has slowed down, the attack on Afghanistan intensifies.  This photograph was also taken just after an emergency delegation went to Chiapas regarding forced evictions of Indigenous communities from the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in the Lacandon jungle.  Today in Chiapas, there are violent evictions taking place in the Lacandon jungle–this time to make room for oil palm plantations.
In 2003:

In March 2003 Orin Langelle travelled to Chiapas on an emergency investigative delegation to look into threatened evictions of Indigenous communities from the Lacandon jungle, and to examine the level of ecological destruction there.  Some communities were already relocated. The delegation, including journalists, photographers and organizers, visited threatened communities in the Lacandon, met with organizations working in the region and conducted overflights of the jungle, documenting the ecological damage.
Why the evictions?  Conservation International (CI) teamed up with the Mexican government to declare that Indigenous communities, including Zapatista support base communities living in the Monte Azules Integral Biosphere Reserve were destroying it.  This provided a supposedly ecological pretext–protection of the Monte Azules–as the reason for evicting these communities.
Our delegation proved that most of the communities had been conducting sustainable organic agriculture in the jungle for years.  They outlawed slash and burn farming and practiced regular crop rotation to protect the soil.  In fact, we found that it was the military that was causing massive destruction of the rainforest–which we witnessed on our overflight of the jungle.
This developed during the Mexican government’s thrust to push the Plan Puebla Panama mega-development scheme.  One of the PPP plans calls for the establishment of new timber plantations in the region.
Now in 2010:

México: Violent evictions in Chiapas for establishing oil palm monocultures

from World Rainforest Movement Bulletin, February 2010, http://www.wrm.org.uy
What follows is a communiqué from the Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (RECOMA) reporting on the violent situation that local communities and Indigenous Peoples of the Lacandona forest in Chiapas are presently going through.
Appeal to international solidarity to protect the Lacandona Forest in Chiapas (Mexico), February 2010.

The Latin American Network against Monoculture Tree Plantations (RECOMA) is hereby denouncing the arbitrary treatment suffered by various communities in the Lacandona forest, in the area declared as the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, in the State of Chiapas, Mexico.Last January, the Chiapas State Congress approved funding for the construction of a palm oil processing plant. Shortly afterwards, dozens of families from the Municipality of Ocosingo were evicted from their territory, in order to give way for the expansion of monoculture oil palm plantations.

Dozens of heavily armed police arrived in helicopters and with aggressive violence evicted men, women and children from their homes, which they then burnt down and with no explanation, removed the community to the city of Palenque.

While the government talks about conservation and protection of the zone, it evicts those who have been truly responsible for making this conservation possible. At the same time, it replaces local ecosystems by oil palm monocultures.

Oil palm plantations are being promoted under an “ecological” mask, as if the production of agrofuels based on palm oil could be a solution to climate change. Apart from the falsehood of these affirmations, no mention is made of the serious negative impacts they generate such as violation of the local population and indigenous peoples’ human rights, as is presently the case in Chiapas.

Furthermore, monoculture oil palm plantations are one of the main causes of deforestation and therefore contribute to climate change through the release of carbon stored in the forests, while destroying the means of subsistence and food sovereignty of millions of small farmers, Indigenous and other communities, and generating serious negative environmental impacts. The plantations require agrochemicals that poison the workers and local communities and contaminate soil and water. Monoculture oil palm plantations eliminate biodiversity and deplete fresh water sources.
In sum, monoculture plantations for the production of paper and agrofuels (such as in the case of oil palm) worsen the living conditions and opportunities for survival of the local population and are only beneficial to a small handful of companies that become rich at the expense of social and environmental destruction.
For this reason, we are appealing to the international community to condemn the plans for the expansion of monoculture oil palm plantations in Mexico, denouncing this situation by all means at your disposal.
To Protest these evictions, contact:
The Embassy of Mexico:
1911 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington DC 20006
USA
Telephone: (202) 728-1600
Support the work of Global Justice Ecology Project for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights and Forest Protection

For ongoing updates on the progress of Global Justice Ecology Project, please visit our Website: http://www.globaljusticeecology.org
Climate Connections blog: www.climatevoices.wordpress.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Climatejustice1.

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by | 2010-02-10 · 19:35

Copenhagen Report Back with Anne Petermann

Listen to Executive Director, Anne Petermann, give a 28 minute report-back on Copenhagen in a radio interview with Kellia Ramares from Broadcaster at Large: Challenging the Assumptions We Live By, which is also being broadcast through the Women’s International News Gathering Service (WINGS).

Click here for the website and then Click on “Podcast – Climate Justice” in the menu on the left side of the screen.

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by | 2009-12-18 · 22:49

Climate Agreement Reached (or not…)

Below are my initial impressions upon listening to Barack Obama’s announcement about the so-called agreement reached in Copenhagen.  Tune in tomorrow for a full analysis of the negotiations and the outcomes.

Initial reactions:

* This was a total subversion of the UNFCCC COP process.  The Obama Administration succeeded in throwing aside the legally binding Kyoto Protocol, and the two track process agreed in Bali.

* The agreement reached is not only undemocratic, it is not legally binding, it is voluntary, and its commitments made on a country by country basis.
* Obama made an agreement with “key players” in the game and essentially flipped off the rest–especially the ALBA countries.  The African countries were outraged by the backroom dealings with Ethiopia by Obama and by France–which were carried out in the name of all of Africa without their consent.
Is Global Justice Ecology Project shocked at these developments?  Nope.  It is business as usual, as predicted.  This was the reason we participated in the founding of Climate Justice Action and the organizing of the Reclaim Power action that brought together social movements around the world to begin to discuss what the new world we know we need will look like.
More tomorrow,
Anne Petermann
Executive Director

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by | 2009-12-17 · 17:48

Climate Justice Action Press Release and Video

CLIMATE JUSTICE ACTION

PRESS RELEASE
17th December 2009
Contact international media: +45 50669028
Contact Danish media: +45 41294994
media@climate-justice-action.org

VIDEO RELEASED OF COPENHAGEN OBSERVERS AGGRESSIVELY INTIMIDATED  BY POLICE
Video came to light today of COP15 delegates being aggressively intimidated by police. (1) http://bit.ly/6DOBHe

Many delegates who marched out of the UN talks during Wednesday’s protests were intimidated and threatened with arrest by Danish police, preventing them from joining a People’s Assembly outside the conference.

Danish police were filmed as they surrounded and attacked official delegates who were attempting to join activists and other accredited observers to form a Peoples’ Assembly calling for climate justice.
Kevin Smith from Carbon Trade Watch, who was hit by the police on the bridge, said: “We were trying to reach the point where the Peoples’ Assembly was being held in order to have a discussion about the need for real alternatives to the false solutions being promoted inside the climate talks. It’s hugely shaming for both the UN and the Danish government that they are willing to use batons, pepper spray, police dogs and tear gas to try and stop these critical discussions from taking place.”

Camila Moreno, a representative from Brazil for the Global Justice Ecology Project: “It was a trap. They knew it, they never had any intention of allowing us to get to our friends on the other side of the bridge. It was a combination of the Danish police and the UN.”

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger from the Indigenous Environmental Network said: “They didn’t want information from those on the inside being conveyed to those on the outside, especially by strong voices from the global South.”

Dorothy Guerrero, Focus On The Global South representative from the Philippines, said: “The restriction on our movement hindered the Peoples’ Assembly, which was an alternative space from the official agenda. For many of us from the South we are used to seeing that in our own countries, but for a country that has a reputation like Denmark it is quite shocking. The fact that they are shutting people out is in many ways like shutting out the majority voice.”

ENDS

NOTES
(1) Footage available on youtube http://bit.ly/6DOBHe
Video by Jess Worth from the New Internationalist
For high quality footage, contact Climate Justice Action on +45 50669028

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