Tag Archives: biomass

by | 2011-12-02 · 10:46

La Via Campesina Invites Allies to Share Perspectives in Durban

La Via Campesina, the largest federation of peasant farmers in the world, has brought a delegation of hundreds from across Africa to gatherings in and around the UNCOP 17 Climate Summit. As a federation of smallholder farmers and fisher groups, La Via Campesina opposes the kinds of top-down, market-driven policies promoted by the World Bank and the UN Climate Regime.

Yesterday we were invited, along with several of our friends and colleagues, to participate in a working session with La Via Campesina at their encampment near a highway overpass miles from the official summit.

Forthcoming, we hope to report on what La Via itself is doing here in Durban. For now, here are some snapshot portraits of GJEP’s allies and what they had to say yesterday. (Reporting: Jeff Conant. Photos Orin Langelle/GJEP)

“The talk now on the table at the COP is to base the Green Climate Fund on private investment. But if there is an investment, they need a return. What does that mean, a return on investment? It means the corporations, the private sector, and the financial industry want to set up the Green Climate Fund in a way that returns money to them. That’s why we call it the Greedy Corporate Fund.”

Lidy Nacpil, Jubilee South

 

“They say we are talking about the transition to a Green Economy – that capitalism has to turn green. This is like saying that a tiger is going to become a vegetarian.”

Lucia Ortiz, Rede, Brazil

 

“Before you trade anything, you have to determine, whose property is it? Before they can trade seeds, they have to determine, ‘who owns that seed?’. Some corporations own that seed. Well, who owns the carbon dioxide in the air? That’s what they are working out in the carbon markets and at these UN climate conventions. That’s why we call the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change the World Trade Organization of the Sky.”

Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network

 

“More than half of the gases that cause global warming come from the industrial food system. They say the industrial food system feeds the world. It’s bad food, it’s toxic food, it’s not very nutritious, but they say, ‘we are feeding the world,’ so we have to live with it. Well guess what? They’re lying. The industrial food system produces 30 percent of the food. The other 2/3 is produced by small farmers and fishers. Now they say they will stop using all the oil. Don’t believe them. They will use every drop of oil. But with that excuse, they say now, they will make green fuels. They will make fuels out of biomass. What is biomass? It is forests, it is fields, it is your harvest. They want to use all of this to make their fuels.”

Sylvia Ribeiro, ETC Group

 

“The FAO and others have reduced agriculture to counting carbon and putting a price on it. The value of the carbon is added to the value of the water and the crops that could be grown on the land, and this makes it appealing to investors, which leads to land grabs. But today, a ton of carbon is worth about 3 euros – less than a pizza. This may explain the somber mood of the talks in Durban.”

Rachel Smolker, BiofuelWatch

 

Renaldo Chingori Joao, Member of the International Coordinating Committee of la Via Campesina, Mozambique

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Geoengineering, Green Economy

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by | 2011-11-26 · 16:15

Youth Statement on Forest Protection at UN Climate Talks in Durban

During the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the CMP7 to the Kyoto Protocol all countries must take real action to protect the world’s forests and to close the logging and bioenergy loopholes.

Forest in Kenya. Photo: Petermann/GJEP-GFC

The protection of the world’s natural forests must be a part of the COP 17 agreement. The world’s intact forests can play a major role in avoiding dangerous climate change, but they need to be protected from deforestation and forest degradation immediately.

The next climate deal must deliver real reductions to ensure the survival of all peoples and countries, it should not include loopholes that allow countries to hide the emissions that result from the logging and burning of natural forests.

The LULUCF logging loophole (Land Use and Land Use Change in Forestry)

Logging releases massive amounts of carbon emissions and drives climate change, yet under the current LULUCF rules countries choose if they elect to account for forest management. This allows countries to avoid accounting for emissions from logging and other forest management activities.

This LULUCF loophole must be closed, the next climate deal must make forest management accounting mandatory.

Developed countries need to make real reductions in emissions, not hide behind false accounting and forward looking baselines that hide the emissions from logging natural forests.

The Bioenergy Loophole

Burning natural forests for electricity is bad for the climate, bad for the forests and bad for forest communities. Huge demand is building for wood-fired electricity generation, driven by policies that indiscriminately promote bioenergy as ‘renewable’. This poses an immediate, extreme and growing threat to natural forests across the globe.

In being perversely promoted as ‘good for climate change’, industrial bioenergy is bad for the climate, bad for the forests and bad for forest communities – and, in many situations, has a bigger carbon footprint than fossil fuels.

Under IPCC guidelines, emissions from burning biomass for ‘bioenergy’ or ‘biopower’ can be accounted for as ‘zero’ in the energy sector by Annex I countries. This accounting rule is based on the unsafe assumption that any negative emissions will be accounted for in the LULUCF sector.  This is unsafe because current LULUCF rules allow country to not account for the emissions that are created during the harvesting and production of biomass. There is no obligation for a country that is responsible for the emissions made from producing biomass to account for its emissions.

This Bioenergy loophole must be closed.  Consumer countries must make sure that all the emissions resulting from bioenergy production and use (its carbon footprint) are not only properly calculated but also fully accounted for – by them at the point and time of their combustion.

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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, REDD, UNFCCC

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by | 2011-10-28 · 10:33

FALSE CLIMATE SOLUTIONS EXPOSED

Earth Grab

Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes

Diana Bronson, Hope Shand, Jim Thomas, Kathy Jo Wetter

Preparations for the Rio+20 meeting that could decide whether humans survive or not are hotting up. 1 November 2011 is the deadline for official contributions to its Zero Draft document but over the next seven months decision-makers and campaigners will need all the facts they can lay their hands on.

‘Earth Grab – Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes‘ – essential, cutting-edge climate science in everyday language – is published this week (27 October 2011). The authors reveal information that the large corporations who profit from climate change do not want the public to know.

‘Earth Grab’  analyses how Northern governments and corporations are cynically using concerns about the ecological and climate crisis to propose geoengineering ‘quick fixes’. These threaten to wreak havoc on ecosystems, with disastrous impacts on the people of the global South. As calls for a ‘greener’ economy mount and oil prices escalate, corporations are seeking to switch from oil-based to plant-based energy.

The authors expose some truths behind the exploitation of biomass, which is far from the solution to environmental problems that many have claimed it to be. A biomass economy based on using gene technologies to reprogramme living organisms to behave as microbial factories will facilitate the liquidation of ecosystems. This constitutes a devastating assault of the peoples and cultures of the South, accelerating the wave of land grabs that are becoming common in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The book shows how the worlds largest agribusiness companies are pouring billions of dollars into, and claiming patents on, what are claimed to be ‘climate-ready crops’. Far from helping farmers adjust to a warming world – something peasant farmers already know how to manage – these crops will allow industrial agriculture to expand plantation monocultures into lands currently cultivated by poor peasant farmers. They are not a solution to growing hunger, they will feed only the corporate shareholders’ profits.

Eminent environmentalist Vandana Shiva, founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, writes in her foreword that this research ‘pulls back the curtain on disturbing technological and corporate trends that are already reshaping our world and that will become crucial battlegrounds for civil society in the years ahead’.

The book has already captured the attention of writer Naomi Klein, who writes that this ‘crucial book reveals … Indispensable research for those with their eyes wide open’. Campaigner George Monbiot adds that its exploration of  ‘three crucial issues which will come to dominate environmental and human rights debates in the coming years make it an essential resource for anyone trying to keep up with the times’.

‘Earth Grab – Geopiracy, the New Biomassters and Capturing Climate Genes‘ is written by ETC Group, renowned for its research into biotechnologies, plant genetics and biological diversity, and for its analysis of the consequences of new technolgies for corporations and humans.

Published by Pambazuka Press, it is available from www.pambazukapress.org and all good bookshops.

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, Geoengineering, Green Economy, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, Rio+20

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by | 2011-09-15 · 13:53

Sustainable Forestry Initiative Conference Protested in Burlington, VT (Op-Ed and Photos)

by Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director

What follows is a series of photos along with an Op-Ed that I wrote for the Burlington Free Press–the Gannett-owned statewide newspaper of Vermont.  The Op-Ed (which has not yet been published) addresses the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) conference that came to Burlington this week, to much rancor from students at the University of Vermont.  The UVM students were mobilized to protest SFI’s bogus forest certification program by Adam Gaya, an organizer with ForestEthics.  They were joined by numerous residents of Vermont, as well as participants from Massachusetts and Maine.  All of the photos below are taken by Anne Petermann, with the exception of two photos which were taken by GJEP Co-Director/Strategist Orin Langelle.

Op-ED: Vermont is the Green Mountain State, not the Brown Mountain State–let’s keep it that way.

Regrown forest in Vermont near Camel's Hump. The SFI wants to certify as sustainable the large-scale logging of native forests to produce electricity. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Vermont is a success story of forest regeneration.  In the mid-1800s, the state had lost about 80% of its forest.  Moose, songbirds and many other wild creatures vanished.  Today, much of that forest has regrown.  The state is now 80% forested and the moose have returned to Vermont once more.

I find it quite ironic, therefore, that the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) chose to bring its phony, timber industry-controlled forest-destroying “certification” conference to Burlington.

Why is it phony?  The SFI was founded by and is funded by the very timber industry it is supposed to watchdog.  It is the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse.  It’s purpose: make the large-scale deforestation activities of the biggest timber companies on the planet appear “green” by certifying them as “sustainable.”

Since 2004, SFI has conducted 543 audits of its “certified” companies to measure their compliance with SFI standards. Not one audit found any problems with the large-scale timber operations and clearcuts.

In one recent instance, two SFI-accredited auditors spent a mere five days assessing more than 46,875 square miles of public forest — an area larger than the entire state of Pennsylvania. Naturally, they reported no violations of SFI standards and found nothing wrong.

If you aren’t looking for problems, you won’t find them, and SFI are masters at not finding problems.  It is for this reason that the SFI certification seal cannot be trusted— whether office paper, envelopes or catalogs—their ‘green’ label is meaningless.

If we want to protect forests, and promote truly sustainable management of forests, then we must view SFI as greenwash, and a threat to forests and the people who depend on them.

SFI certifies hundreds of thousands of acres of forest across our region, and while they would like us to believe that these forests are well cared for, the fact is that they are as vulnerable as ever.  Plum Creek, one of the biggest participants in SFI’s certification scheme, owns nearly one million acres of timberland across Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire – and uses large-scale clearcutting and other destructive industrial logging practices.  Yet this rampant devastation is certified as ‘green’ by the SFI.  And guess what?  Plum Creek’s CEO sits on SFI’s board.

SFI protest in front of the Hilton where the SFI conference was occurring. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

SFI’s weak standards also allow other industrial logging practices that have resulted in landslides, widespread toxic chemical use and dangerous impacts to sensitive species.  In the future, SFI would even like to certify trees that have been genetically engineered–despite the fact that the public is overwhelming opposed to these dangerous Franken-trees.  If genetically engineered tree plantations are developed, the escape of pollen and/or seeds from them into native forests would be inevitable, irreversible and cause tremendous damage to forests.  To SFI and their corporate sponsors, however, GE trees mean enhanced profits and should therefore be certified.  Fortunately, we do not yet have GE tree plantations, so there is still time to stop this disaster.

For these and many other reasons, twenty environmental groups recently sent a letter to SFI demanding that the organization stop certifying destruction of forests as “sustainable.”  There are also several major U.S. companies – including Sprint, Allstate and Office Depot – that are disassociating themselves from the SFI.

Protester agrees to be "greenwashed" at the SFI protest. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Meanwhile, the SFI continues to greenwash the products of forest destruction in order to intentionally confuse people who are truly concerned about the environment and want to make the right choices.

We Vermonters love our Green Mountains and want them to stay green–not blotched with clearcuts certified by SFI–which also is important as forests play a key role in stabilizing the climate.  And as we have seen with so much severe weather in Vermont this year, stabilizing the climate is more important than ever.

So, say no to SFI-certified greenwash products.  Say yes to truly sustainable, local, small-scale forestry.  Our forests are a treasure.

Let’s keep them that way.

Following are some additional photos from the protest:

Adam Gaya of ForestEthics speaks in front of the Hilton. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Kate Kroll of the University of Vermont recites the crimes of the SFI. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Brian Tokar, who teaches at the University of Vermont,riles up the crowd. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project denounces the forest criminals meeting in the Hilton. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

SFI conference participant heckles the protest but is drowned out by loud chants. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Protesters raise the volume. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

The SFI is seeking ways to make genetically engineered trees certifiable as "sustainable." Photo: Petermann/GJEP

Another victim of "greenwashing." Photo: Petermann/GJEP

As delegates begin to emerge from the conference, protesters get rowdy. Photo: Petermann/GJEP

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Posts from Anne Petermann

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by | 2011-08-11 · 11:41

Forest Cover: The Official Newsletter of Global Forest Coalition

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE (Download the 10 Page PDF by clicking here)

From standing trees to boiled, bleached pulp in one day. Photo: Petermann/GJEP-GFC

Rio+20 must Recognize the Role of Civil Society

by Fiu Mataese Elisara/ Chair of the Board, Global Forest Coalition

REDD and the Feeling of Standing Barefoot in a Peatswamp By Simone Lovera, Sobrevivencia, Paraguay

San Mariano Biofuel Project Should be Rejected as CDM Project By Feny Cosico, Advocates of Science and Technology for the People (AGHAM), the Philippines

Genetically Engineered Tree Developments: GE Cold Tolerant Eucalyptus in the US By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project; North American Focal Point, Global Forest Coalition

African Faith Leaders get Organized for Durban COP17 By Nigel Crawhall, Director of the Secretariat of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) and member of the Western Cape Provincial Religious Leaders Forum

Calendar of Forest-related meetings

About Forest Cover

Welcome to the thirty-eighth issue of Forest Cover, newsletter of the Global Forest Coalition (GFC). GFC is a world- wide coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Indigenous Peoples Organizations (IPOs). GFC promotes rights-based, socially just and effective forest policies at international and national level, including through building the capacity of NGOs and IPOs in all regions to influence global forest policy.

Forest Cover is published four times a year. It features reports on important intergovernmental meetings by different NGOs and IPOs and a calendar of future meetings. The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views of

the Global Forest Coalition, its donors or the editors.

For free subscriptions, please contact Yolanda Sikking at: Yolanda.sikking@globalforestcoalition.org

Global Justice Ecology Project is the North American Focal Point of the Global Forest Coalition

 

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Filed under Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Latin America-Caribbean, REDD, UNFCCC

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by | 2011-07-29 · 14:04

KPFK Radio Earth Segment This Week on the EPA’s Ruling on Biomass Burning

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles each week for an Earth Segment on Thursdays.  This week, Sojourner Truth host Margaret Prescod interviews Dogwood Alliance’s Scot Quaranda about the recent decision of the EPA not to regulate emissions from the burning of wood to make electricity.

Listen to the segment by clicking here and going to minute 21:10.

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by | 2011-07-25 · 11:02

Radio Interview: The Myth of the Industrial Forest

Listen to Daphne Wysham’s Interview with Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Petermann on the threat of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees, for the EarthBeat Radio Segment, The Myth of the Industrial Forest which played on EcoShock Radio.

Go to: http://209.217.209.33/~esnet/downloads/ES_110713_Show_LoFi.mp3

and forward to minute 26:45.

Also on that episode is an interview with Dr. Rachel Smolker of Biofuelwatch on the myth of biochar; and an interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott about the nuclear power threat.

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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, False Solutions to Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Posts from Anne Petermann, REDD, UNFCCC

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by | 2011-06-09 · 12:05

REDD and Bioenergy: Impressions from the Bonn Climate Talks

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project is the North American Focal Point for Global Forest Coalition and teams with GFC on programs on GE trees and wood-based bioenergy, and to protect forests and defend the rights of Indigenous and forest dependent communities.
Photo: GFC meeting in Namanga, Kenya, 2006 by Petermann/GJEP-GFC
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by Simone Lovera, Executive Director, Global Forest Coalition
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A quick first impression from the ongoing climate talks in Bonn as far as bioenergy is concerned: It is too early to say a lot about REDD as they have not started discussing it yet. The Ad Hoc Working Group on LCA will have its first REDD-discussions tomorrow (probably these will be open to observers), and the SBSTA only adopted its agenda this morning, which is typifying for the atmosphere of mistrust and confrontation here in Bonn.
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In general, talks are going very slow and are unlikely to lead to any concrete outcomes on anything. As it seems like there will not be any other negotiation rounds before the next conference of the parties in Durban in December (at least, this is what is being said now, it could change), hopes for any agreement on anything are very minimal. In this light it is important to note that the suggestion that REDD+ could be financed through mandatory carbon markets seems more and more a fairy tale as skepticism about existing (CDM) and new carbon markets seems to be growing, especially in the absence of clarity on the future of the Kyoto Protocol or any other binding emission reduction targets. Many countries rightfully reject trade without caps. And a growing number of countries is particularly hesitant about financing REDD+ through markets. But this debate is flowing.
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Meanwhile, there have been some fascinating side events related to bioenergy.
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Most remarkable was the presentation of the full report on renewable energies of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Well, “presentation”; the actual report is not published yet as it seems the discussions between the different scientists were a bit overheated and they could not easily reach consensus, so the publication of the full report was delayed until the 14th and perhaps later. At a presentation during the climate talks on June 7 it became clear why: There was no consensus about the impact of bioenergy on sustainable development, food security and land use change.
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The summary for policy makers that was launched a month ago stated quite bluntly that ” most” biofuel has a positive impact on climate change mitigation, and hardly mentioned impacts on food security or land use. This was considered to be very disappointing in the eyes of many bioenergy campaigners. Meanwhile the IPCC presentation of the full report included a clear admittance that bioenergy has a range of direct and indirect land use change impacts that might nullify any positive impacts bioenergy has on climate change mitigation.
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The presentations on basis of the full report mentioned clearly that there were a lot of direct and indirect land-use issues to be addressed, that biomass smoke caused more deaths than malaria or tuberculosis, and that there were serious concerns about potential impacts on food security. On the latter, they openly admitted the different authors had a big dispute over this, but that they sort of agreed that impacts on food security depended on the level of optimism about potential intensification of agricultural production. And even this “consensus” was disputed, one day later, by Frances Seymour, exective director of the Centre for International Forestry Research, who stated during another side event that governance and land use planning have a more important role to play, and that agricultural intensification might also have negative impacts on land use.
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When asked why the summary report for policy makers was so much more positive on bioenergy than the full report, and whether this was not a form of misrepresentation, the rather eye-opening response was that the summary for policy makers is ” a negotiated document” (sic).
More critique on bioenergy was exposed at another CIFOR-sponsored side event on Wedneday night, where the Joanneum Institute presented research on the carbon debt of bioenergy and how many years one has to produce bioenergy on the same piece of land to compensate for the carbon emissions caused by converting natural vegetation in feedstock plantations. Figures were astonishing: from some 20 – 30 years for soy to up to 74 years for Jatropha, which scored almost as bad as oilpalm on peatland! Needless to say “permanence” is a major issue in this scenario, it is quite unrealistic to assume farmers will commit themselves to producing the same feedstock for up to 74 years.
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Regretfully, the report itself is not yet online, but The upfront carbon debt of bioenergy which was published last year includes quite some useful information on this.
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More later, as the talks continue (and/or continue to be stalled…..)
–
Simone

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