Tag Archives: UNFCCC

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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by | · 15:07

Earth Minute: Daily Live Interviews from the UN Climate Talks in Durban, South Africa

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.

This week’s Earth Minute discusses the connection between the financial crisis and the climate crisis, and the emergence of a call to occupy the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa.  GJEP will be teaming with KPFK Los Angeles’ Sojourner Truth show to bring daily live 15 minute interviews from the UN Climate Conference from November 28 through December 9.

To listen to this week’s Earth Minute, click on the link below and scroll to minute 4:04:

Earth Minute 11/22/11

Text from this week’s Earth Minute:

As the power of the Occupy Movement continues to grow around the world, the UN climate convention is scheduled to begin next Monday in Durban, South Africa. The UN Climate Convention–the global body charged with addressing climate change–is also controlled by the 1%.

Indeed, the 1% who crashed the economy are the same ones who’ve trashed the atmosphere–clogging it with pollution that threatens all life on earth. So an Occupy movement is building there too.

We the 99% stand at a crossroads.  The Earth is fast approaching a tipping point.  Forests are falling faster than ever, oceans are poisoned, species are lost every day.  The web of life is literally falling apart.  But the power to transform this unjust and suicidal system lies with all of us.

Global Justice Ecology Project is once again partnering with The Sojourner Truth show to highlight community voices who have solutions at the UN climate convention in Durban, with daily live interviews for two weeks starting next Monday.

Please join us.

For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.

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by | · 05:22

Strong New Indigenous Statement Against REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation scheme)

DECLARATION OF MEMBERS OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ BIOCULTURAL CLIMATE CHANGE ASSESSMENT (IPCCA) INITIATIVE

Durban, South Africa, November 26th

The participants of the workshop on REDD and Biocultural Protocols organized by the Indigenous Peoples Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA), from Ecuador, Panama, India, Nicaragua, Peru and Samoa met on 24 and 25 November 2011 in Durban, South Africa to share emergent findings and analyse how REDD is affecting our territories in order to respond through our assessments. We discussed strategies for addressing climate justice.

We, the Indigenous Peoples denounce the serious situation we are facing; the harmonious relationship between humans and Mother Earth has been broken. The life of people and Pachamama has become a business. Life, for Indigenous Peoples, is sacred, and we therefore consider REDD+ and the carbon market a hypocrisy which will not impact global warming.  For us, everything is life, and life cannot be negotiated or sold on a stock market, this is a huge risk and will not resolve the environmental crisis.

Through our discussions and dialogue we identified the following inherent risks and negative impacts of REDD+, which we alert the world to:

1.    REDD+ is a neo-liberal, market-driven approach that leads to the commodification of life and undermines holistic community values and governance. It is a neo-liberal approach driven by economic processes such as trade liberalization and privatization and by actors like the World Bank whom have been responsible for the destruction of forests and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples all over the world. The concept of “Green Economy” is a vehicle for promoting trends of commodification of nature. It is a vehicle to impose neo-liberal environmental strategies on developing countries, which undermines traditional communal land tenure systems. Indigenous Peoples have well-performing and self-sufficient economies, but these economies are ignored. Indigenous Peoples have used their wisdom for thousands of years to manage forests in a way that cannot be quantified and is priceless. Meanwhile, Northern countries and their economic policies have destroyed the climate and planet and, therefore, have a significant ecological debt to pay.

2.    REDD+ policies and projects are directly targeting Indigenous Peoples and their territories, as this is where the remaining forests are found. Corporations, conservation organizations and powerful state agencies will capture the benefits by grabbing forest land and reaching unfair and manipulated agreements with forest-dwelling indigenous peoples. REDD+ is triggering conflicts, corruption, evictions and other human rights violations. Calculating how much carbon is stored in forests (monitoring, reporting and verification) is a very complicated and expensive process, and indigenous knowledge is being ignored within it. As a result, the overwhelming majority of REDD+ funding will end up in the hands of consultants, NGOs and carbon brokers like the World Bank.

3.    Indigenous Peoples and local communities use their own governance systems, which include laws, rules, institutions and practices, to manage their forests and territories, many of which are implicit and part of oral or otherwise unwritten traditions. REDD+ policies and projects are undermining and violating indigenous governance systems. Through developing REDD+ readiness programs national Governments are creating new institutions, which will further concentrate control over forests into the hands of State institutions, and violate the rights and autonomy of Indigenous Peoples. These new institutions, however, fail to address the drivers of forest loss.

4.    REDD+ locks up forests, blocking access and customary use of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to their forests. This impacts negatively on traditional forest-related knowledge, food sovereignty and food security, and traditional health care systems, which are lost as communities are manipulated or forced to sell their rights to access and use of their forests.

5.    The drivers of forest loss and forestland grabbing will not be addressed by REDD+. Governments that are elaborating REDD+ policies are also promoting economic sectors such as cattle ranching, bio-energy, mining, oil exploration and agro-industrial monocultures that, ironically, are the main drivers of forest loss. In countries like Ecuador, governments are promoting massive oil exploration schemes in forest-protected areas.

6.    The focus on carbon in REDD+ policies promotes the establishment of monoculture tree plantations, including genetically modified trees, and ignores the social and cultural values of forests. Institutions like the Forest Stewardship Council legitimize this trend by certifying plantation establishment as ‘sustainable forest management’. Corporations take over lands that, within shifting cultivation systems, are fallow, and destroy them through tree plantation establishment. In a country like India, REDD+ is becoming a tree plantation expansion program that triggers land grabbing on a massive scale, undermining the Forest Rights Act.

7.    National biodiversity and carbon-offset schemes, especially in large countries like India and Brazil are a vehicle for implementing REDD+. Large polluting corporations, such as mining and dam companies, are allowed to compensate the environmental damage they cause by planting trees. Indigenous Peoples and local communities suffer two-fold;they suffer from the environmental damage caused by their pollution, as well as from the negative impacts of projects that compensate them. Furthermore, conservation organizations profit from such compensation projects, and will thus be tempted to turn a blind eye on the negative impacts of such industries.

8.    Due to problems with reference levels, leakage, permanence, monitoring, reporting and verification, problems which policy makers are not inclined and unable to solve, REDD+ is undermining the climate regime. REDD+ violates the principle of common but differentiated responsibility. It creates major inequities and grants the right to pollute to developed countries and their industries. Climate change is today one of the biggest threats to the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, and for that reason, false solutions such as REDD+ form a direct threat to the survival of Indigenous Peoples.

REDD+ threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples. We emphasize that the inherent risks and negative impacts cannot be addressed through safeguards or other remedial measures. We insist that all actors involved in REDD+ fully respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples, in particular, the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). We caution, however, that adherence to the principle of FPIC is not a means to solve these negative impacts and this principle should not be used to justify REDD+. The right of self-determination of Indigenous Peoples should not be used to justify the destruction of our territories. Indigenous peoples should not commit themselves to a process that does not respect them. We denounce the hypocrisy of REDD+ and the many false financial promises that have been made. REDD+ is a market-based approach through which outside actors try to commodify what is sacred to Indigenous peoples: the heritage of our ancestors and the guarantee of life for future generations, not just Indigenous Peoples, but for all of humanity. Many Indigenous Peoples and communities are not aware of the threats and impacts of REDD+, which is a political trap, and will lead to enhancing climate change. We call upon these communities to maintain their integrity in this respect.

We call upon all people committed to climate justice to support life, and we implore the global community to take responsibility for reducing emission of green house gases at the source and to reject REDD+ as a false solution that breads a new form of climate racism.

Gloria Ishigua, President

Ashiñwaka – Association of  Sápara Women

Ecuador

 

Marlon Santi

Sarayaku Runa

Ecuador

 

Jesus Smith, President

Fundacion para la Promocion del Conocimiento Indigena

Panama

 

Kaylena Bray

Seneca Interational

USA

 

Jose Proaño

Land is Life

Ecuador

 

Alejandro Argumedo, Coordinator

Indigenous Peoples’ Bioucltural Climate Change Assessment initiative

Asociacion ANDES

Peru

 

Kunjam Pandu Dora

Adivasi Aikya Vedika

India

 

Nadempalli Madhusudhan

Anthra – Yakshi

India

 

Jadder Mendoza

Universidad de las Regiones Autonomas de la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua

Nicaragua

 

Fiu Mataese Elisara

O’le Siosiomaga Society Inc.

S’amoa

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by | 2011-11-24 · 15:41

RADICAL NEW AGENDA NEEDED TO ACHIEVE CLIMATE JUSTICE

Call for “System Change not Climate Change” Unites Global Movement

Note:  The first post is the  Poznan statement from the Climate Justice Now! alliance from 12 December 2008 after the UN climate talks that year.  The second was published by CJN immediately following the Copenhagen UN climate talks in 2009.  More than ever, we believe it’s time for the 1% who control the UN climate talks to do something for the climate–like get out of the way so that people and social movements can counter their false solutions to climate change with real grassroots solutions in order to avert climate catastrophe.  The Earth can’t wait.

Follow our blogs from the Durban UN climate circus from 28 Nov – 10 Dec on Climate Connections.

-The GJEP Team

RADICAL NEW AGENDA NEEDED TO ACHIEVE CLIMATE JUSTICE

Poznan statement from the Climate Justice Now! alliance

12 December 2008

Members of Climate Justice Now! – a worldwide alliance of more than 160 organisations — have been in Poznan for the past two weeks closely following developments in the UN climate negotiations.

This statement is our assessment of the Conference of Parties (COP) 14, and articulates our principles for achieving climate justice.

THE URGENCY OF CLIMATE JUSTICE

On the streets of Poznan, Poland 2008. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC

We will not be able to stop climate change if we don’t change the neo-liberal and corporate-based economy which stops us from achieving sustainable societies. Corporate globalisation must be stopped.

The historical responsibility for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions lies with the industrialised countries of the North. Even though the primary responsibility of the North to reduce emissions has been recognised in the Convention, their production and consumption habits continue to threaten the survival of humanity and biodiversity. It is imperative that the North urgently shifts to a low carbon economy. At the same time in order to avoid the damaging carbon intensive model of industrialisation, the South is entitled to resources and technology to make this transition.

We believe that any ´shared vision´ on addressing the climate crisis must start with climate justice and with a radical re-thinking of the dominant development model.

Indigenous Peoples, peasant communities, fisherfolk, and especially women in these communities, have been living harmoniously and sustainably with the Earth for millennia. They are not only the most affected by climate change, but also its false solutions, such as agrofuels, mega-dams, genetic modification, tree plantations and carbon offset schemes. Instead of market led schemes, their sustainable practices should be seen as offering the real solutions to climate change.

UNFCCC IN CRISIS

Governments and international institutions have to recognise that the Kyoto mechanisms have failed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – common but differentiated responsibilities, inter-generational equity, and polluter pays — have been undermined in favour of market mechanisms. The three main pillars of the Kyoto agreement –the clean development mechanism, joint implementation and emissions trading schemes — have been completely ineffective in reducing emissions, yet they continue to be at the center of the negotiations.

Kyoto is based on carbon-trading mechanisms which allow Northern countries to continue business as usual by paying for “clean development” projects in developing and transition countries. This is a scheme designed deliberately to allow polluters to avoid reducing emissions domestically. Clean development mechanism projects, which are supposed to support “sustainable development”, include infrastructure projects such as big dams and coal-fired power plants, and monoculture tree plantations. Not only do these projects fail to reduce carbon emissions, they accelerate the privatisation and corporate take-over of the natural world, at the expense of local communities and Indigenous Peoples.

Proposals on the table in Poznan are heading in the same direction.

In the current negotiations, industrialised countries continue to act on the basis of self-interest, using all their negotiating tactics to avoid their obligations to reduce carbon emissions, to finance adaptation and mitigation and transfer technology to the South.

In their pursuit of growth at any cost, many Southern governments at the talks are trading away the rights of their peoples and resources. We remind them that a climate agreement is not a trade agreement.

The main protagonists for climate stability – Indigenous Peoples, women, peasant and family farmers, fisherfolk, forest dependent communities, youth, and marginalised and affected communities in the global South and North, are systematically excluded. Despite repeated demands, Indigenous Peoples are not recognised as an official party to the negotiations. Neither are women’s voices and gender considerations recognised and included in the process.

At the same time, private investors are circling the talks like vultures, swooping in on every opportunity for creating new profits. Business and corporate lobbyists expanded their influence and monopolized conference space at Poznan. At least 1500 industry lobbyists were present either as NGOs or as members of government delegations.

The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) scheme could create the climate regime’s largest ever loophole, giving Northern polluters yet another opportunity to buy their way out of emissions reductions. With no mention of biodiversity or Indigenous Peoples’ rights, this scheme might give a huge incentive for countries to sell off their forests, expel Indigenous and peasant communities, and transform forests into tree plantations under corporate-control. Plantations are not forests. Privatisation and dispossession through REDD or any other mechanisms must be stopped.

The World Bank is attempting to carve a niche in the international climate change regime. This is unacceptable as the Bank continues to fund polluting industries and drive deforestation by promoting industrial logging and agrofuels. The Bank’s recently launched Climate Investment Funds goes against government initiatives at the UN and promotes dirty industries such as coal, while forcing developing countries into the fundamentally unequal aid framework of donor and recipient. The World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility aiming to finance REDD through a forest carbon mechanism serves the interest of private companies and opens the path for commodification of forests.

These developments are to be expected. Market ideology has totally infiltrated the climate talks, and the UNFCCC negotiations are now like trade fairs hawking investment opportunities.

THE REAL SOLUTIONS

Solutions to the climate crisis will not come from industrialised countries and big business. Effective and enduring solutions will come from those who have protected the environment – Indigenous Peoples, women, peasant and family farmers, fisherfolk, forest dependent communities, youth and marginalised and affected communities in the global South and North. These include:

  • Achieving low carbon economies, without resorting to offsetting and false solutions such as nuclear energy and “clean coal”, while protecting the rights of those affected by the transition, especially workers.
  • Keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
  • Implementing people’s food and energy sovereignty.
  • Guaranteeing community control of natural resources.
  • Re-localisation of production and consumption, prioritising local markets
  • Full recognition of Indigenous Peoples, peasant and local community rights,
  • Democratically controlled clean renewable energy.
  • Rights based resource conservation that enforces indigenous land rights and promotes peoples sovereignty and public ownership over energy, forests, seeds, land and water
  • Ending deforestation and its underlying causes.
  • Ending excessive consumption by elites in the North and in the South.
  • Massive investment in public transport
  • Ensuring gender justice by recognising existing gender injustices and involving women in decision making.
  • Cancelling illegitimate debts claimed by northern governments and IFIs. The illegitimacy of these debts is underscored by the much greater historical, social and ecological debts owed to people of the South.

We stand at the crossroads. We call for a radical change in direction to put climate justice and people’s rights at the centre of these negotiations.

In the lead-up to the 2009 COP 15 at Copenhagen and beyond, the Climate Justice Now! alliance will continue to monitor governments and to mobilise social forces from the south and the north to achieve climate justice.

 

 ___________________________________________________

Call for “System Change not Climate Change” Unites Global Movement

 

Corrupt Copenhagen ‘accord’ exposes gulf between peoples demands and elite political interests

The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment.  The “agreement” was not adopted.  Instead, it was “noted” in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement “We have a deal.”

The UN conference was unable to deliver solutions to the climate crisis, or even minimal progress toward them.  Instead, the talks were a complete betrayal of impoverished nations and island states, producing nothing but embarrassment for the United Nations and the Danish government.  In a conference designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions there was very little talk of emission reductions.  Rich, developed countries continued to delay any talk of drastic reductions, instead shifting the burden to less developed countries and showing no willingness to make reparations for the damage they have caused.

The Climate Justice Now! coalition, alongside other networks, was united here at COP15 in the call for System Change, Not Climate Change.  In contrast, the Copenhagen climate conference itself demonstrated that real solutions, as opposed to false, market-based solutions, will not be adopted until we overcome the existing unjust political and economic system.

Government and corporate elites here in Copenhagen made no attempt to satisfy the expectations of the world.  False solutions and corporations completely co-opted the United Nations process.  The global elite would like to privatize the atmosphere through carbon markets; carve up the remaining forests, bushes and grasslands of the world through the abandonment of indigenous rights and land-grabbing; convert real forests into monoculture tree plantations and agricultural soils into carbon sinks; and complete the capitalist enclosure of commons.  Virtually every proposal discussed in Copenhagen was based on a desire to create opportunities for profit rather than to reduce emissions.

The only discussions of real solutions in Copenhagen took place in social movements. Climate Justice Now!, Climate Justice Action and Klimaforum09 articulated many creative ideas and attempted to deliver those ideas to the UN Climate Change Conference through the Klimaforum09 People’s Declaration and the Reclaim Power People’s Assembly.  Among nations, the ALBA countries, many African nations and AOSIS often echoed the messages of the climate justice movement, speaking of the need to repay climate debt, create mitigation and adaptation funds outside of neoliberal institutions like the World Bank and IMF, and keep global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees.

The UN and the Danish government served the interests of the rich, industrialized countries, excluding our voices and the voices of the least powerful throughout the world, and attempting to silence our demands to talk about real solutions.  Nevertheles, our voices grew stronger and more united day by day during the two-week conference.  As we grew stronger, the mechanisms implemented by the UN and the Danish for the inclusion of civil society grew more dysfunctional, repressive and undemocratic, very much like the WTO and Davos.  Social movement participation was limited throughout the conference, drastically curtailed in week two, and several civil society organizations even had their admission credentials revoked midway through the second week.  At the same time, corporations continued lobbying inside the Bella Center.

Outside the conference, the Danish police extended the repressive framework, launching a massive clampdown on the right to free expression and arresting and beating thousands, including civil society delegates to the climate conference.  Our movement overcame this repression to raise our voices in protest over and over again.  Our demonstrations mobilized more than 100,000 people in Denmark to press for climate justice, while social movements around the world mobilized hundreds of thousands more in local climate justice demonstrations.  In spite of repression by the Danish government and exclusion by the United Nations, the movement for system change not climate change is now stronger than when we arrived in Denmark.

While Copenhagen has been a disaster for climate solutions, it has been an inspiring watershed moment in the battle for climate justice.  The governments of the elite have no solutions to offer, but the climate justice movement has provided strong vision and clear alternatives.  Copenhagen will be remembered as an historic event for global social movements.  It will be remembered, along with Seattle and Cancun, as a critical moment when the diverse agendas of many social movements coalesced and became stronger, asking in one voice for system change, not climate change.

The Climate Justice Now! coalition calls for social movements around the world to mobilize in support of climate justice.

We will take our struggle forward not just in climate talks, but on the ground and in the streets, to promote genuine solutions that include:

– leaving fossil fuels in the ground and investing instead in appropriate energy-efficiency and safe, clean and community-led renewable energy

– radically reducing wasteful consumption, first and foremost in the North, but also by Southern elites.

– huge financial transfers from North to South, based on the repayment of climate debts and subject to democratic control. The costs of adaptation and mitigation should be paid for by redirecting military budgets, progressive and innovative taxes and debt cancellation.

– rights-based resource conservation that enforces Indigenous land rights and promotes peoples’ sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water.

sustainable family farming and fishing, and peoples’ food sovereignty.

We are committed to building a diverse movement – locally and globally – for a better world.

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by | 2011-11-23 · 08:05

On the Ground Coverage of the UN Climate Conference in Durban Starts Next Week

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project’s Climate Connections blog carries hard-to-find  news from around the world on the impacts of, and peoples’ resistance to social and ecological injustice.

We will be blogging daily from the UN Climate Conference and alternative movement activities in Durban, South Africa from 28 November through 10 December 2011.  For the latest from the inside negotiations and the outside 99% opposition to the commodification of life, please stay tuned to climate-connections.org.

Additionally for the third year, we are  partnering with Margaret Prescod’s “The Sojourner Truth” show on KPFK’s Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, CA with a fifteen minute update (approximate) with people in Durban, Monday through Friday (28 Nov – 10 December).  Live at 7 am Pacific (-8 GMT) or listen to the archives.  From the halls of injustice to dissent in the streets.

-The GJEP Team

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by | 2011-11-22 · 12:41

Time to “Occupy Durban”?

Note: Climate Connections will be blogging daily from the UN Climate Conference and alternative movement activities in Durban, South Africa from 28 November through 10 December 2011.  For the latest from the inside negotiations and the outside resistance to the commodification of life, please stay tuned to climate-connections.org. The great graphic at the end of Patrick’s article is not from The Mercury or Daily Kos.-The GJEP Team

By Patrick Bond

The Mercury Eye on Society column, 22 November 2011

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

There they fell during 2011, one after the other in past-their-prime domino descent: Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from Tunis, Hosni Mubarak from Cairo, Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Muammar Gaddafi from Tripoli, Georgios Papandreou from Athens, Silvio Berlusconi from Rome, US football guru and sex-crime cover-upper Joe Paterno from Penn State University – with media baron Rupert Murdoch, soccer supremo Sepp Blatter, Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad and Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh looking decidedly shaky, too.

However, let’s be frank: in many cases the courageous push by the 99% against these 1% personalities only dislodged the venal creatures, not the system, so replacements crawled right back in.

Egyptian generals are just as vicious, as illustrated at Tahrir Square last week, and many Libyan ‘rebels’ are racist thugs worthy of CIA support. The new IMF managing director, French conservative Christine Lagarde, is being investigated by the Court of Justice of the Republic for abuse of authority as finance minister when she gave a $580 million payout to an Adidas shoes tycoon close to the ruling party. Greek’s new ruler, Loukas Papademos, was formerly vice-president of the European Central Bank, the institution that joins the IMF as tormentors of poor and working-class Europeans. In Italy the same job was given to Mario Monti, a former EU Commissioner with a brutal banker mentality.

On the other hand, Arab Spring political democrats and Occupy economic democrats won’t let up the pressure. I visited Occupy Dublin’s Dame Street next to the Irish central bank late last month; and Occupy Washington two weeks ago; and the next day, Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s financial district, just prior to the New York police force’s illegal eviction of non-violent tent-residents.

In each case, the spirit reminded me of anti-apartheid movement determination, heart-felt principles and strategic clarity: no half-baked reforms like tricameral parliaments to polish apartheid’s chains will satisfy the Occupiers, who are demanding fundamental system change, and who enjoy huge popular support.

Surprisingly perhaps, the argument to extend Occupy to Durban is advanced by a former manager of the Davos World Economic Forum and president of Costa Rica, José María Figueres, who is the brother of Christiana, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He was asked by OneWorld tv last week at the Climate Vulnerable Forum in Bangladesh, “You’ve expressed your sympathies with the Occupy Wall Street Movement and called for an Occupy Durban. What would that look like and what could it achieve?”

Figueres replied, “The riots of London, and the indignados of Madrid and the now growing global Occupy Wall Street movement is a sign of the frustration felt by many given that we are not addressing their economic needs. So with respect to climate maybe we need an Occupy Durban.”

Figueres wants to see “A sit in, by the delegations of those countries that are most affected by climate change, that are going from one COP to the next COP to the next COP without getting positive and concrete responses on the issues that they want dealt with.”

And outside Durban’s International Convention Centre, in the broader society, is there a potential for a Climate Spring like the Arab Spring? “The history of humanity shows us that it has always been a big crisis that has made us move,” he responded.

That crisis is surely upon us, with more than 300,000 people dying annually because of climate change, according to demographers. Might the UNFCCC live up to global-governance potential – last realised in the 1987 Montreal Protocol that banned CFCs to save the ozone hole – or instead will Durban be known as the Conference of Polluters, the place the Kyoto Protocol’s mechanism for binding emissions-cut commitments died, while carbon trading remained the vehicle the 1% chooses for its climate gambling?

Even though Zurich’s UBS bank last week predicted a total collapse of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme in coming months, it looks like we will suffer the latter when COP17 closes on December 9.

So in order to save the planet and people, the 99% should challenge the UNFCCC’s for-profit mentality. An interesting email hit my inbox on November 10: “The Occupy movement that is sweeping the globe shines a light on the unjust systems which benefit a small group of elite individuals and corporations, consolidating wealth and power for the few to the extreme detriment to the majority of the world’s inhabitants and the planet as a whole.”

The COP17 will, according to the email, “do nothing to address this imbalance of power and resources and instead would give those same people and institutions who have caused economic ruin control of our land, water and atmosphere to trade as nothing more than money-making commodities.”

One response, wrote the anonymous emailer, is to “Occupy COP17”, and a website (www.occupycop17.com), Facebook page (www.facebook.com/occupyCOP17) and Twitter feed (www.twitter.com/OccupyCOP17 and #occupycop17) are already operational. The Occupy movement considers the UNFCCC to be “United Nations Fools, Clowns and Carbon Criminals” and it’s hard to argue against that based on 16 past performances.

There are many South Africans with genuine grievances who will be part of the anti-COP17 protest scene, in part because of Eskom’s mismanagement of energy (more coal-fired power plants as Greenpeace dramatised by blocking Eskom construction at Kusile last week) and electricity (high-priced for the masses, low-priced for Anglo American and BHP Billiton).

Others will show up just to make a fuss: Business Day last week headlined on the front page, “Malema supporters to ‘disrupt climate conference’” in the wake of the thrashing the African National Congress disciplinary committee gave the Youth League leadership.

For those serous about climate justice, some of the most interesting reflections of 99% thinking and practical alternatives will be at the People’s Space, which was recently moved to the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Howard College campus, starting with the Conference of the Youth (no relation to Juju) on 25-27 November, and then open to the public from 28 November until 9 December. A nightly teach-in from 7:30pm at our Centre for Civil Society adds academic rigour to activist passions. Delegates include hundreds from the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and the Rural Women’s Assembly, and a myriad of events can be perused at http://www.c17.org.za

All it takes to join People’s Space, Occupy Durban and the Global Day of Action march on December 3 is a healthy degree of skepticism for what the 1% are cooking up inside the UNFCCC’s smoke-filled ICC rooms, and a genuine respect for the People’s Power that again and again rises in the least expected places.

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by | 2011-11-21 · 09:54

OCCUPY COP 17! [in Durban, South Africa]

Note: COP-17 refers to the 17th Conference of the Parties of the UN Climate Convention, which this year will be held from November 28 through December 9, 2011.  Global Justice Ecology Project will be in Durban and blogging daily from both the official UN events on the inside of the conference and from the alternative activities–such as Occupy COP 17–on the outside.

–The GJEP Team

Cross-Posted from Watts Up With That on November 1, 2011

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Anyone concerned about the huge influence of Wall Street on our lives should definitely be protesting the influence of Wall Street on the upcoming climate conference in Durban, South Africa. Durban is the latest incarnation of the occasional IPCC celebration. I’m not sure what it celebrates, perhaps they are celebrating being given prepaid tickets and receiving a salary plus a per diem to fly halfway round the world to a lovely remote spot to listen to people talk about wasting fossil fuel.

I know I’d celebrate if some one paid me to do that. In any case, the last party was in Cancun, and the party before that in Copenhagen. The hard life of the climate bureaucrat. The web site for the party is here, so you can see what your taxes are paying for.

This image illustrates the change in climate that the participants in the Durban COP 17–CMP 7 will be forced to endure. The “17″ means that this is the seventeenth time they’ve had this party, or as they call it, this “Conference of Parties”. Seventeen. Parties. The majority of the participants will be moving from late fall/early winter to late spring/early summer in Durban. I doubt that there will be many complaints about the warming involved in that change of seasons, despite the fact that it will be more than the dreaded 2°C tipping point of warming..

So what is Wall Street’s take on the Durban CO2 conference? What do the bankers say about the proposed extension of Kyoto? Here’s one man’s take, from Reuters  :

“Parties must take the opportunity in Durban to send strong signals to the carbon market regarding their commitment to its continuation and future development,” said Jose Tumkaya, chief operating officer at UKemissions-reduction project developer Ecosecurities, a JP Morgan-owned firm. SOURCE

So we have a carbon offset project developer. Said carbon reduction person makes money from reducing carbon. Banks like money. They bought up the carbon offset project development firm. It is now owned by JP Morgan.

And now, being owned by JP Morgan, and thus being Very Important People (ex officio), they get interviewed by the media to give us their impartial view of the situation:

“Negotiators should be concerned about the historic low carbon prices as they do reflect, to some degree, a lack of confidence in the long-term commitment to existing emission reduction targets, as well as continued uncertainty with regards to a future international agreement,” he said.

Be concerned, be very, very concerned …

Ah, well. The bankers are pleading for the negotiators to come up with something, anything, to keep their Rumplestiltskin machine spinning carbon into money.

So we’ve got the banks against us … gonna be a long fight. This is Wall Street at its worst, looking to keep the carbon hype afloat and pushing to keep those sweet carbon bucks rolling in.

Where are the OCCUPY! folks when we need them? I say bring on the tents and the undercooked bulgur wheat, let’s OCCUPY COP 17–CMP 7!

w.

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by | 2011-11-18 · 14:30

Video: Patrick Bond, Raises Concerns About Upcoming COP 17 Conference in Durban, South Africa

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project will be blogging daily from the UN Climate Conference (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa from November 28th through December 10th.

Patrick Bond, co-author of Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society, has already expressed skepticism about COP 17, a climate change “cop out”, pretending to be a climate “change” conference when in fact its main use is to serve and protect the interests of carbon traders and those who profit from exploiting the environment. The conference is set to take place in Durban between November 28th & December 9th.

In the following video, Bond argues that these conferences are really just a way for big business to negotiate on the price it will cost for them to pollute the environment. The interest in the conference has more to do with commodifying nature, and less to do with protecting its resources.

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