Tag Archives: COP 18

by | December 14, 2012 · 11:00 am

REDD at COP18, Doha: At a crossroads or stuck in neoliberalism’s dead end?

By Chris Lang, 14th December 2012.  Source: REDD-Monitor

REDD at COP18, Doha: At a crossroads or stuck in neoliberalism's dead end?

REDD negotiations came to a grinding halt at the end of the first week of COP18 in Doha when Brazil and Norway disagreed over the verification of emission reductions from forests.

There were two tracks of negotiations on REDD in Doha: the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).

The following items were on the agenda in Doha – explained in more detail here:

  • SBSTA: Reference levels; MRV and forest monitoring systems; Safeguards information systems; and Drivers of deforestation and forest degradation.
  • LCA: Finance and REDD.

The dispute over verification took place in the SBSTA negotiations. The Final SBSTA Text (FCCC/SBSTA/2012/L.31) consists of “Draft conclusions proposed by the Chair” – no decisions were made in Doha. The discussions will continue at the next SBSTA meeting, that will take place in June 2013 in Bonn. However, no decision on the SBSTA agenda items will be taken until COP19 at the end of 2013.

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Filed under Biodiversity, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Commodification of Life, Doha/COP-18, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Forests and Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD

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by | November 26, 2012 · 2:30 pm

The link between emissions cuts, right to development and transformation of capitalist system

Note: Like Global Justice Ecology Project, Focus on the Global South did not attend the UN Climate Conference in Qatar this year.  Corporations run the show and it is time to mobilize with the social movements.  Change comes from the bottom up–always has and always will…
–The GJEP Team

Source: Focus on the Global South 

Humanity is running out of time. If there are no deep and real cuts in the next five years the impacts of climate change will lead to a situation ten times worse than what we have seen with hurricane Sandy and other climate change related events in India, Russia, Philippines and Africa in this past year.

That’s what happens with 0.8ºC of global warming, and the current climate negotiations are leading us to a 4ºC to 8ºC scenario.

More than two-thirds of coal, oil and gas should be left under the soil

Different studies say that to limit the increase in temperature to 2ºC, all countries can only emit 565 gigatons of CO2 between 2010 and 2050. At the current rate of 31 gigatons of global CO2 emissions per year, we are going to expend that budget in 15 years.

According to the International Energy Agency, two-thirds of the known reserves of the world’s coal, oil and gas should remain underground to have a 50 percent chance of staying below the 2ºC limit.[2] If we want a 75 percent chance, we have to leave 80 percent of these reserves under the soil.[3]

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Commodification of Life, Corporate Globalization, Doha/COP-18, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Oil, Pollution, UNFCCC

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by | · 11:49 am

UN Climate talks open today: Urgent progress still not in sight

Note: The 18th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-18) opened today in Doha, Qatar.  Below is Friends of the Earth’s take on the negotiations.

–The GJEP Team

23 November 2012. Source: Friends of the Earth

DOHA, QATAR– While delegates from around the world prepare to meet for the annual United Nations climate talks in Doha next week, Friends of the Earth International expressed strong concerns over the continued lack of progress by developed countries which are supposed to take the lead to stop climate devastation and avoid catastrophic climate change [1].

The UN climate talks, ongoing now for 20 years, have made little progress in delivering concrete climate action and are now heading backwards. Most recently they agreed 2015 as the date to launch a new treaty to deal with climate action which probably won’t come into force until 2020 [2].

And many governments look set to attend the talks in Doha to promote a further weakening of the framework for global emissions reductions, while at home they continue to support the expansion of false solutions to the climate crisis.

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by | October 24, 2012 · 9:00 am

Forest Scientists: REDD “is not low hanging fruit” and has potential for “catastrophic” impacts on biodiversity

By Chris Lang, October 24, 2012.  Source:  redd-monitor

Photo: redd-monitor

A Global Forest Expert Panel is currently working on an assessment of the relationship between biodiversity, forest management and REDD. The Panel presented its key findings at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Hyderabad, India last week. A briefing note about the assessment is headlined, “REDD+ May Cut Both Ways”.

The Global Forest Expert Panel is coordinated by the International Union of Forest Research Organization, who released the briefing note. The final report will be released during the UN climate meeting in Doha (COP 18).

Bhaskar Vira, senior lecturer at the department of geography, University of Cambridge, is one of six lead authors on the assessment. He explained the four high level messages from the assessment in an interview with Responding to Climate Change:

“One of them is that synergies are possible but we shouldn’t take them for granted. You have to work hard to achieve them. Increasingly, people who were talking, some years ago, about low-hanging fruit, it’s not low-hanging, it’s tough. You’ve got to climb many ladders to get to REDD to get to that fruit, you’ve got to work really hard and fall down a few times along the way. But done right, there are possibilities that might actually help you to achieve those multiple goals. But we shouldn’t take it for granted that we are going to get it right. And that means that one has to take it really seriously.

“The second big message was that we have to learn from past experience. We’ve done interventions in the forestry sector for decades, there’s a wealth of information which is relevant to REDD+ and we can learn a lot from that. Who’s benefited, who’s lost, how has power been distributed, who are the beneficiaries in terms of the elite groups who might seek to capture benefits, especially when money is involved. And REDD involves potentially a lot of money. That’s the second high level message.
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by | September 19, 2012 · 10:30 am

Breaking News: Bangkok, UN Climate negotiations move towards burning the planet

September 18, 2012.  Source: La Via Campesina

La Via Campesina and Asian social movements call for an end to financial speculation on food and climate as UN Climate negotiations move towards burning the planet.

(JAKARTA) Earlier this month in Bangkok, Thailand, a round of climate talks concluded under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC declared it a success and hailed concrete progress on the road to the 18th Conference of Parties (COP) in Doha, Qatar this December 2012. The progress they boast of is moving towards an agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol and will come into effect by 2020. La Via Campesina, an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, women farmers, indigenous people, rural youth migrants and agricultural workers, believes that this proposed agreement will not only be too late, it will also be too little as it has severely insufficient emission reduction targets and uses market mechanisms that aim to cheat nature not help it.

Official estimates from the UN itself show that even if all countries delivered on their pledges and did not use offset mechanisms and loopholes, this would still lead to a temperature increase of between 2.5 to 5 degrees Celsius before the end of the century. And science has indicated that in order to avoid climate chaos, a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius should not be breachedwhile movements have called for a maximum of 1 degree
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Filed under BREAKING NEWS, Climate Change, Climate Justice, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Green Economy, Indigenous Peoples, Occupy Wall Street, REDD

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