Note: Just in from the streets of Durban. Thousands protest Conference of Polluters. These photos are just a sample. Feature photo essay will be posted soon. Stay tuned. Below photos: Langelle/GJEP.
-The GJEP Team
Tag Archives: UN Climate talks
Preview: Photo Essay Feature–Global Day of Action in Durban
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, UNFCCC
Today: ACTION IN FRONT OF THE U.S. CONSULATE: “THE U.S. MUST STOP OBSTRUCTING CLIMATE JUSTICE FOR THE 99%”
A festive and peaceful action in front of the U.S. Consulate in Durban, as part of the 1000 Durbans Global Day of Action for Climate Justice. The action will feature speakers who will testify to the impacts of U.S. government and corporate pollution on their communities and land. Speakers will also share recommendations to the U.S. government and speak out against the positions that Jonathan Pershing and the State Department have taken thus far. The action will also feature powerful visuals for photographers and the broadcast media.
People from impacted communities within the U.S. and the Global South. Organized by the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) www.ggjalliance.org, a multi-sector alliance of U.S.-based community organizing groups building an international movement for peace, democracy and a sustainable world. Speakers Include:
Ahmina Maxey, Zero Waste and the East Michigan Environmental Action Coalition (Detroit) Francisca Porchas, Labor Community Strategy Center and the Bus Riders Union (Los Angeles) Chavanne Jean-Baptiste, Peasant Movement of Papaye and La Via Campesina (Haiti) Francois Paulette, Smith’s Landing Treaty 8 Dene First Nation, Indigenous Environmental Network (Alberta, Canada)
“We won’t let the U.S. off the hook,” says Ahmina Maxey of the East Michigan Environmental Action Coalition, a lead organization of GGJ. “As members of communities disproportionately affected by U.S. pollution and land grabs, we will be holding dirty U.S. corporations and the State Department accountable for the global mess they have made,”
“The U.S. government and associated corporations are the 1% responsible for the majority of pollution affecting the 99% of the world, including the 99% in Los Angeles,” says Francisca Porchas of the LA-based Labor Community Strategy Center, another lead organization of GGJ. “We will be taking action to demand that the U.S. immediately reduce carbon emissions to 50% of current levels by 2017, and to stop obstructing progress towards paying climate debt and forging an internationally binding deal.”
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Pollution, UNFCCC
Stay Tuned for Updates: Thousands to Protest at COP 17 in Durban: Demanding Action to Save the Planet
ECOTERRA International • Society for Threatened Peoples International • EARTHPEOPLES
CLIMATE CHANGE
Thousands to Protest at COP 17 in Durban Demanding Action to Save the Planet
DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA, 3 December 2011 – The people demand that governments have to radically change their behavior at the UNFCCC negotiations, if the world is to have a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.
Today is the GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION. Thousands of ordinary people from across Africa and the World are coming together to make sure their voices are heard. Some of those most affected by the impacts of changing climate will be taking part in the march including indigenous peoples, peasant farmers from across the continent and hundreds of women from South African rural communities.
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C17 Global Day of Action committee convenor Desmond D’sa: “World leaders are discussing the fate of our planet but they are far from reaching a solution to climate change. If they fail to make progress we will see drought and hunger blight our country and continent even further.”
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The first period of emission cuts agreed under the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. A new round of emission cuts must be agreed in Durban to avoid gaps between the first and second periods.
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But developed nations are trying to shift their responsibilities for drastic emissions cuts onto developing countries that have done the least to cause the problem, while developing countries, joined by the European Union, try to kill the Kyoto Protocol, and call for a “new mandate” for the UN climate negotiation, trying to escape their responsibilities for climate action.
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It would be disastrous if the internationally binding emission reduction commitments would lapse or end altogether in Durban.
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The US is leading the rich countries demand for a replacement of the Kyoto Protocol with a totally inadequate voluntary pledge where countries would decide their own emissions cuts on a national basis.
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It seems that only the Africa Group of countries are united in their demand to hold industrialised countries accountable to their previous commitments, while rich industrialized countries are busy trying to carve out new business opportunities for multinational corporations and their financial elites.
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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Pollution, UNFCCC
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
Durban UN climate “news”–Expo brews up plenty of interest
Note: If there is any hope of preventing climate catastrophe, it surely isn’t at this dog and pony show. As the Conference of Polluters nears the end of the first week, we thought we’d share a little bit of the absurdity coming from the exposition center located in the UN controlled compound.
-The GJEP Team
Cross-posted from Times Live Sapa | 02 December, 2011
An environmental activist paints a banner during a demonstration outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties meeting (COP17) in Durban. Image by: MIKE HUTCHINGS / REUTERS
At the Climate Change Response Expo in Durban you can drink a Whistling Weasel or watch a man whip up a tornado at the flick of a switch.
You can also talk to scientists about Gizmo, the new South-African-developed pencil buoy used to study water quality, while clutching a replica of the collar bone of an ancient Australopithecine.
The expo, next to the Durban Convention Centre (the COP17 climate change summit’s venue) was bustling yesterday morning, despite oppressively hot weather.
“This is like February,” said Karen Owen, who managed a stall serving beer and wine in the expo’s food court.
The beer – brewed up-province at Nottingham Road – is good, but the names on the bottles are better. You can order a Whistling Weasel pale ale, a Tiddly Toad light lager, a Pye-Eyed Possum Pilsener or a Pickled Pig porter.
Nearby, Alex Kofer spoke to whoever would listen about his “Wizzard” worms. He had 20000 of them, in a snooker table-sized tray.
Despite their numbers, the worms were difficult to see. They were hidden under a mound of soggy newspaper, cardboard and lettuce leaves, which Kofer fed them to encourage them to produce more compost.
“They can eat their own body weight in a day,” he said, hauling out a wriggler for inspection.
Kofer said the worms ate kitchen waste and wet cardboard, and took about four months to produce a tray of compost.
Elsewhere at the expo, SA Weather Service meteorologist Hugh van Niekerk demonstrated how to make a tornado in a glass chamber the size of a fridge.
By creating water vapour and blowing in air to simulate wind while switching on an extractor fan in the chamber ceiling, he created a mini tornado.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research’s stand boasted a glass case containing a section from the trunk of a 1200-year-old baobab . It was found in the Pafuri area near in the Kruger National Park.
According to an attached notice, isotopes in its growth rings have been analysed and the data used by scientists to gain an insight into the climate change that happened during the tree’s growth span.
A woman at the international conservation organisation WWF’s stall handed out pencils made from newspaper, each bearing the iconic panda logo.
“Have one – they show there is a future for the newspaper industry,” the former journalist said.
The expo will run until next Friday.
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Filed under Climate Change, UNFCCC
Land conflicts, carbon piracy and violations of indigenous peoples’ rights: New report by Amazonian indigenous peoples exposes the reality of REDD+ in Peru and proposes solutions
A new report published today by Peruvian indigenous organisations, AIDESEP, FENAMAD and CARE, and international human rights organisation the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), reveals the impact that REDD projects and programmes are already having on the lives of indigenous peoples. The reality of REDD+ in Peru: Between theory and practice – Indigenous Amazonian Peoples’ analyses and alternatives finds that REDD pilot projects run by some NGOs and companies are already undermining the rights of indigenous peoples, and are leading to carbon piracy and conflicts over land and resources. Persistent advocacy efforts by indigenous peoples’ organisations to secure respect for the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples have resulted in some government commitments to modify national REDD programmes financed by the World Bank. Nevertheless, solid guarantees for respect of these rights are yet to materialise.
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Roberto Espinoza Llanos, coordinator of AIDESEP’s Climate Change Programme and one of the lead authors of the report, explains, “The commitments made by the previous government in 2011 were not made lightly, they were assumed by the State and approved in a global meeting of the World Bank’s FCPF [Forest Carbon Partnership Facility]. We hope that the present government and international entities like the World Bank will deliver on their promises to respect land and territorial rights. Continual monitoring will be necessary to make sure they keep their word.”
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Carbon piracy
The AIDESEP-FPP report highlights how, without any form of regulation, carbon piracy is already rife in Peru. Project developers are roaming the jungle attempting to convince indigenous peoples and local communities to enter in to REDD deals with promises of millions of dollars in return for signing away their rights to control their land and forest carbon to third parties. Many deals are being conducted using strict confidentiality clauses and with no independent oversight or legal support for vulnerable communities. Some of these peoples are not yet fully literate in Spanish, but are being asked to sign complex commercial contracts in English that are subject to English law. Many communities have already come to regret some early deals made with carbon traders and NGOs, and are now attempting to extricate themselves. One leader from the community of Bélgica in South East Peru explained,
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“…We were presented with a trust fund in which the community is obliged to hand over the administration of communal territory and be subject to the decisions of the developer for 30 years….this will not allow us to make decisions about our territory or plan for the future of our children.”
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Land grabs
Many other communities have no secure land rights, as an estimated 20 million hectares of indigenous peoples’ customary territories in the Peruvian Amazon still possess no legal recognition (including those of isolated or ‘autonomous’ indigenous peoples). This is in violation of Peru’s international obligation to recognise and secure indigenous peoples’ traditional possession of their forest lands. At the same time, hundreds of formal requests for ‘conservation concessions’ (with the intention of establishing REDD projects) have been submitted to the government by private individuals and environmental NGOs. Many of these ‘would be concessions’ directly overlie indigenous peoples’ territories still awaiting legal recognition, thereby setting the stage for a state-backed land grab.
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Conrad Feather, Project Officer for FPP and the report’s other lead author said, “REDD is not just a policy instrument being negotiated at the UN; unregulated REDD developments are already turning Peru into a centre of international carbon piracy and the site for a potential land grab of indigenous peoples’ territories on a massive scale. Urgent measures are needed to protect the lands and livelihoods of indigenous peoples.”
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Indigenous alternatives to REDD+
Indigenous peoples’ organisations, however, are not only ringing alarm bells, they are also proposing alternatives. They are urging the new Peruvian government to re-think the forest and climate plans developed by their predecessors and use REDD funds to secure indigenous peoples’ forest territories and support community-based solutions to tackle climate change.
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The report concludes that instead of squandering the money on unproven and unstable carbon markets, more modest and selective funding could be targeted to secure the land and territorial rights of indigenous peoples and support sustainable community forest management. These community and rights-based approaches are cost-effective and proven to protect forests. Community-based alternatives will not only reduce emissions from deforestation and keep forests standing but will also lead to poverty reduction, increased livelihood security and biodiversity conservation. In the words of Alberto Pizango Chota, President of AIDESEP, “Only in this way can REDD truly become an opportunity for indigenous peoples instead of a threat.”
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The reality of REDD+ in Peru: Between Theory and Practice: Indigenous Amazonian Peoples’ analyses and alternatives is available for free download at: http://www.forestpeoples.org/the-reality-of-redd-plus-in-peru-indigenous-amazonian-peoples-analyses-and-alternatives
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Filed under Carbon Trading, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, REDD, UNFCCC
KPFK Earth Segment Interview with Nnimmo Bassey: Nigerian activist and winner of 2010 Right Livelihood Award
Note: Today’s Earth Segment on the Sojourner Truth show will not be aired due to a severe wind storm that knocked out KPFK’s transmission. Climate Chaos strikes again!
–The GJEP Team
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute and weekly interviews with activists on key environmental and ecological justice issues. In addition, during major events such as the UN Climate Conference we are attending right now in Durban, South Africa, we organize daily interviews Tuesday through Thursday.
The interview we organized for Wednesday, 30 November featured Nigerian activist and Right Livelihood Award winner (the alternative Nobel prize), Nnimmo Bassey. To listen to the interview, click the link below and scroll to minute 34:30.
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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Pollution, UNFCCC, Water
Indigenous and Community-led Forest Initiatives Offer Solutions to Today’s Problems–Local Communities Need Rights and Respect, Not REDD
Studies show that the best guardians of forest lands are the people who live there. Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent peoples agree. Yet, all over the world, they are increasingly beset by policies and incentive schemes imposed by governments and outside agencies that degrade their forests, their cultures, their livelihoods, and their life ways.
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“It’s a pity that indigenous peoples have to submit to these limited approaches to ‘development’ when we know, from centuries of experience, that our own biocultural values may very well provide the solutions for the problems of today,” said Fiu Mataese Elisara of Samoa, Board Chair of Global Forest Coalition. “They might be considered ‘primitive’ in the eyes of the world, but our methods are not only sacred, holistic, and appropriate to our cultures, they have served us for generations. And they continue to work.”
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In a seminar held this week at the University of Kwazulu Natal, representatives of indigenous peoples, peasant movements, women’s movements, and local communities shared their perspectives on the most appropriate, equitable and effective forms of support for their forest conservation and climate change mitigation initiatives.
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Across the board, participants in the seminar agreed that what is needed to aid their forest restoration efforts is recognition of Indigenous territorial rights, autonomy, traditional knowledge and governance systems; land reform, food sovereignty and sustainable alternative livelihood options; and a definitive end to destructive activities like logging, mining, large tree plantations and land grabbing.
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The seminar also discussed the impacts of schemes to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks (REDD+).
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“REDD+ and other projects that convince communities to sign misleading Payment for Enviromental Services agreements create conflicts and undermine livelihoods,” the participants agreed, in a collective statement. “Top-down programs undermine rights, spiritual value systems, and governance, ignore women’s rights and needs, impose economically unviable or otherwise senseless alternative livelihoods on Indigenous Peoples and local communities; and trigger land privatization and the commodification of nature.”
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Simone Lovera, director of the Global Forest Coalition, cited studies from research institutions like the Centre for International Forestry Research, showing that forests are better protected in Indigenous and community conserved territories than in official protected areas.[1]
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“These territories need legal and political recognition,” said Lovera, “not top-down Payment for Environmental services schemes that undermine local authority and enable carbon cowboys to trick community leaders into false carbon offset deals.”
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Notes:
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[1] The seminar ” The ‘do’s and don’ts’ of supporting forest conservation and restoration initiatives by local communities and indigenous peoples” was organized by the Global Forest Coalition, the Task Force on REDD and Communities of the Theme on Governance, Equity and Rights of the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy and the International Consortium on Indigenous Conserved Territories and Community Conserved Areas
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[2] See for example: http://www.cifor.org/publications/pdf_files/articles/AGuariguata1101.pdf
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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, REDD, UNFCCC
