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.
Tag Archives: UNFCCC
Earth Minute on KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio Program
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There is No One Magic Bullet Solution… So Get Over It!
By Anne Petermann
Blog Post June 7th, 2010
Back home to our little cottage on the lake—back to the sanity of being surrounded by native forest instead of megalomaniacal bureaucrats intent on capitalizing off the rape and plunder of the earth under the auspices of climate mitigation.
First, of course, we had one last stop prior to boarding our respective planes and trains back to sanity—a presentation at the European Parliament in Brussels.
This time it was one of the Ministers of Parliament (MEP) responsible for implementing the European Union’s “renewable energy” target of 20% by 2020 that took issue with our analysis.
Once again it was Deepak’s presentation that was most hotly debated—perhaps because it best showed, through graphic photographs, the wholesale devastation of primeval rainforests for woodchips for export—the direct and indirect result of the EU’s desire to fulfill its renewable energy commitment by burning trees for electricity.
The MEP explained that we had limited choices—wood-based fuels (liquid and electric) or even worse options like nuclear power or large-scale hydroelectricity. To me this is a false dichotomy. It is not either burn trees or build nukes or flood rivers. The solution is to transform the way we live on this earth. The solution is to find the small-scale truly sustainable alternatives that make sense for each bioregion. The solutions for Vermont are not going to be the same as the solutions for Belgium. And the big magic bullet solutions do not exist. Forget about it. Technology and the markets are not going to save us from this mess—especially since they have contributed so significantly to it.
The faster we get over the idea of the imaginary single magic solution, the sooner we can dig in to the work at hand.
Here in the United States, the crisis of burning trees for electricity is a little closer to home—especially in those regions that still have some intact forest left—whether primary forest or second growth native forest, these forests are now under the gun. With plans for new biomass electricity plants popping up all over the place, and with the EU demand for trees leading to increased woodchip exports from the U.S., our forests are under threat like they haven’t been since the continent was first invaded by those white folks who’d already trashed their own forests.
And don’t forget the threat from genetically engineered trees! Eucalyptus and poplar trees are being avidly engineered to provide better agrofuels (liquid transport fuels) and faster growing biomass. And it’s the Gulf Coast states where these Franken-eucalyptus plantations are planned to be developed.
So, while it was good to spend time with allies in Europe, and we had many important meetings about international forest policy and GE trees, it was really good to finally get back home to our office in Vermont where we are developing strategies to take on ArborGen and defeat their plans for vast industrial plantations of non-native, invasive, water depleting and flammable eucalyptus trees.
GJEP Co-Director Orin Langelle and I have collectively been working to protect forests and the rights of forest-dependent peoples for close to 50 years. This is one forest fight that we cannot, we will not, lose.
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Markets and Forests and Profits, oh my!
One of the many bizarre and telling displays at the UN Climate Talks in Bonn, Germany. Photo: Petermann/ GJEP-GFC
Climate Negotiations Descend into Lunacy
By Anne Petermann
I’m now on the train from Cologne to Brussels after finally leaving that hellhole of a conference center for the last time last night after our official “side event” presentation on the threats of wood-based bioenergy and GE trees to UN delegates, scientists and other participants. I have to say that stepping out of the building into the fresh cool German air was indeed a relief, and boarding the subway car for the ride back to the hotel felt like a huge weight lifting off.
But before we leave it completely, allow me to entertain you with yet another amazing yet true story of utter lunacy.
The absolutely nonsensical negotiations from Tuesday were—to my amazement—topped on Wednesday evening during our side event by a question from one of the participants following the presentation of Deepak Rughani of BiofuelWatch.
Deepak gave a very compelling powerpoint explaining the impacts that are already being caused to forests and forest peoples globally as a direct and indirect result of the rising demand for wood to fuel bioenergy facilities in the EU. He showed graphs and charts explaining that the EU directive for 20% of their energy to be “renewable” by 2020 was projected to have grave impacts on the world’s forests and forest dependent peoples because caused the vast majority of the ‘renewable energy’ is to be met through the burning of ever greater numbers of trees—almost all of which will have to be imported. He demonstrated the scientific projections that predict that this level of demand will, by the year 2065, require all of the lands currently covered in native forests or grasslands to be converted to bioenergy plantations.
He further explained that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) defines this madness as “carbon neutral” since the trees that will be burned will eventually be replaced by new ones.
The very first question he got after completing his powerpoint was from a member of the IPCC who questioned his citations of IPCC definitions (which Deepak gladly offered to send him, and which are referenced in the report on the topic).
He said (and I am still a bit incredulous about this) that Deepak was wrong in stating that the goal of reducing emissions from deforestation and the goal of increasing demand for wood for biomass are not compatible. He said that, yes, of course we can increase the demand for wood 5 or 6 fold and still reduce our carbon emissions from logging, all we need are sustainability criteria and certification schemes.
Indeed. And if everyone on the planet would only lay down their weapons and hold hands, then the world would be an eden-like paradise where everyone gets along and no one or nothing is ever harmed…
But seriously. Massively increasing the demand for trees means more of them will be cut down. Period. And economics dictates that the so-called “low-hanging fruit” will be plucked (that is, logged) first—that means the forests without proper oversight, without clear land title, without people to defend them.
But that’s not the only contradiction of the reducing emissions from deforestation scheme (REDD). The really twisted thing about REDD is that it has actually been resulting in exactly the opposite of its stated intent.
As Deepak pointed out in his presentation, when the UN and the World Bank started talking about paying countries to stop cutting their forests—with the amount of money paid directly proportional to the amount of logging going on—guess what happened. Countries that had decreased their logging all on their own saw suddenly that they were going to miss out on this new gold rush, and reversed their anti-logging positions, allowing forest destruction to go ahead. And those that were already destroying their forests started to destroy them faster. And because REDD will be based on rates of logging ending in 2012, countries have another year and a half to ramp up those logging rates to be sure they can cash in on the prize.
And while the official UN process has not been able to come to a decisive agreement about REDD, it is moving forward quite nicely outside of the UN process. And as Camila Moreno, our contact in Brazil, explained, the slogan coming out of the Oslo, Norway conference on REDD (which occurred totally outside of the UN climate process), was, “just do it!”
In other words, take the lesson from the US and just go for it. Screw the participatory process. Establish bilateral agreements that circumvent the negotiations. Create WTO (World Trade Organization)-style “green rooms” that are accessible by invitation only to keep out those obnoxious ne’er-do-wells who talk about silly things like rights and justice and biodiversity and such.
It’s time we draw the line in the sand. And what better place than Cancun.
(Tune in Monday for wild and crazy stories from the European Parliament.)
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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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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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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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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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Press Release 12/16/09
PRESS RELEASE
December/15/09
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kevin Smith +45 52 68 53 02
Anne Petermann +45 52 67 95 95
Civil Society Groups at COP15 denounce preemptive arrests of climate justice protestors in Copenhagen
UN COP critics silenced with police action as talks enter final days
Reclaim Power nonviolent civil disobiedience actions step off at 8 AM Wednesday
Copenhagen, Denmark — Dr. Tadzio Mueller of Berlin, an accredited NGO observer at the COP 15 was arrested today without provocation by three plain clothed police outside the Bella Center. His arrest took place shortly after a press conference where he and other representatives of civil society announced nonviolent protests planned for Wednesday in Copenhagen. (Today’s news conference is archived on video here: http://bit.ly/8eXDnI)
Danish police have also raided a Climate Justice Action convergence space today where activists were repairing bicycles to showcase fossil fuel alternatives, and arrested another 20 people outside of the official NGO summit “Klimaforum.” The arrests are continuing at the time of writing.
“The Danish police are clearly taking their cues from the Connie Hedegard and the Annex One posse who are trying to strong arm the world into accepting their agenda and silencing the thousands of people who have come to Copenhagen to demand action for climate justice,” said Dorothy Guerro, Senior Associate with Focus on the Global South, a founding organization of the Climate Justice Now Network. “First they shut the public out of the climate negotiations, then they shut out 80% of NGOs who have been accredited to attend, and now they are jailing people who challenge the undemocratic nature of the climate negotiations, while the future of life on earth literally hangs in the balance.”
“I wish I could say that I was surprised at this outrageous behavior, but I am not,” stated Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, the group that hosted the press conference. “The UN Climate Convention has become increasingly unjust and repressive. The Danish Government, which is hosting the talks, is making back room deals with the U.S. and other Northern countries to sabotage any possibility of an effective and just climate agreement. It stands to reason that they would deploy their security and police forces to crush any dissent–especially if it is designed to build an effective international climate justice movement,” she continued.
“The lives of billions of people are literally on the line here at COP 15, but these negotiations have been focused on propping up the interests of elite countries and corporations rather than addressing the fossil fuel economy that threatens our collective survival,” stated Kevin Smith, of Climate Justice Action. “It is for this reason that we are gathering for the Reclaim Power protest and Peoples Plenary that will happen tomorrow at the UN Climate COP.”
Demonstrators will begin to gather at Tarnby station at 8 am on Wednesday the 16th for the Reclaim Power demonstration. This demonstration will involve 5-10,000 people who are unable to access the COP 15 talks, and who will be approaching the Bella Centre from the outside, as they join a simultaneous march out of the summit. The two marches will form a “Peoples Plenary” to discuss real solutions to the climate crisis and build international solidarity for climate justice.
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