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For persons in the Artic watching permafrost and polar ice melt; in small island states watching the sea levels rise around them; in drought-filled regions watching another year’s crop fail; or in the path of yet another destructive hurricane watching their homes and livelihood get destroyed, the fact that climate change is happening is not news story they have to read about to comprehend. It is their new reality that they must face everyday.
G. C. S. Erion & Dr M. K. Dorsey ~ STWR
What is news, ironically, is that climate change seems
on the verge of permeating the collective conscience of everyone else.
In a cover story on climate change released just a few weeks after
Katrina and Rita’s destruction, Newsweek magazine cited a poll where
67% of Americans thought global warming was to blame for the increased
frequency and strength of hurricanes. The question remaining therefore
is no longer when are states or firms going to wake up to the realities
of climate change, but how committed are key actors and institutions to
do what’s necessary to avoid the oncoming chaos?
A good
indication of this is underway with 10,000 delegates from 198 countries
gathering in Montreal for the Eleventh Conference of the Parties
(COP11) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC.) The significance of this meeting is twofold: it is the first
COP since the Kyoto Protocol came into force and thus will finalize all
of the rules around the Protocol, including the controversial Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM.) Secondly, as mandated by the Kyoto
Protocol, this meeting will begin the discussion on the next commitment
period as Kyoto is set to expire in 2012.
The CDM
Back in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated, the
Brazilian delegation came forward with the idea of a Clean Development
Fund whereby developed countries (called Annex 1 in the Protocol) would
face heavy fines for missing their reductions targets, which would be
put towards north-south clean technology transfer. However, the
American delegation rejected this proposal in favour of a Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) that rejected fines and substituted
emissions trading. Similar to their acid rain trading program, this
scheme would allow Annex 1 (developed) countries to get credits against
their own targets by investing in emissions reductions or sequestration
projects in developing countries. The scheme effectively avoided
forcing transnational polluters to pay for carbon pollution. When
introduced the CDM proposal was rejected by the EU, the G77, and the
vast majority of environmental organizations (ENGOs) as they worried it
would fail to deliver real benefits in developing countries or any real
reductions in developed countries. Yet the Americans made it very clear
that they would not sign Kyoto without the CDM and so everyone finally
agreed to it.
Now eight years later, the Americans of course
have refused to ratify Kyoto, the Europeans have gotten over their
initial opposition to trading and launched the EU Emissions Trading
System (EUETS) in early 2004, and many ENGOs – such as the Climate
Action Network (CAN) – now support trading. Yet the empirical evidence
around all the flaws of the CDM keeps building up. In April 2005, the
World Bank – a major supporter of the CDM through their Prototype
Carbon Fund with its thirty-six projects and US$165 million budget –
released their 2005 Carbon Market Trends study that affirmed the worse
fears opponents to the CDM had back in Kyoto. Much like foreign
domestic investment or FDI patterns, the CDM is heavily concentrated in
medium income countries, notably India, Brazil, and Chile. Emerging
countries in the carbon market are China and Mexico. By contrast poorer
countries, especially in Africa, have attracted very little investment,
which even for the Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) raises “deep concerns
about the overall equity of the distribution of the CDM market.”
Secondly, for those countries who are getting the investments, the vast
majority of emissions credits approved to date are concentrated around
projects that capture and/or destroy other greenhouse gases like
hydroflorocarbons or methane, which provide little benefits to local
communities, but enormous returns on investments for project
developers. Thus traditional energy efficiency and renewable energy
projects, which were initially expected to represent the bulk of the
CDM, now account for less than 5% of the overall CDM portfolio.
In recognizing the current state of the carbon market Stephane Dion –
Canada’s Minister of the Environment and the current President of the
COP as the host, pledged to “streamline” the process in order to bring
more projects to the market more quickly and cheaply. This represents
self-interest more than altruism as Canada’s GHG emissions are now 26%
above 1990 levels rather than 6% below them as committed in Kyoto,
meaning they will be purchasing huge amounts of CDM credits abroad. Yet
rather than discuss ways to strengthen the very weak sustainable
development provisions that countries set for their own projects, the
“streamlining” process effectively weakens monitoring and oversight
mechanisms (i.e. shorter approval timelines/public comment periods) and
undermines the “additionality” requirement. One requirement for a
project to be approved– leaving aside the issues of environmental
injustice, toxic hotspots, and the privatization of the air through the
very act of trading property rights to pollute it – project developers
must show that the project is additional to the status quo. In other
words, if a project would occur anyway, there is no real reduction if a
country or firm purchases those credits to maintain or increase its own
pollution. Should this requirement be weakened, there would be no
reason to believe this market could have even the most marginal impact
on reducing global emissions. Yet there would be plenty of reasons to
believe that those small set of countries and firms causing climate
change will continue their profligate use of the atmosphere while many
vulnerable communities continue to pay a heavy price.
Post-2012
Respecting the difficulties rich countries like Canada are having
meeting even the most modest reductions targets under Kyoto, the
sobering reality according to the scientific consensus is that the
planet’s overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be reduced by
60-80% by 2050 in order to have a chance to avoid catastrophic and
irreversible damage to the climate. Yet early indications are that the
next treaty to cover the commitment period post-2012 could be even
weaker Kyoto. The United States and Australia have already stated their
refusal to discuss binding targets post-2012, and other heavy polluters
like China and India still reject any firm targets as they claim such
targets undermine their right to develop. In an overt attempt to weaken
Kyoto’s legitimacy and undermine the post-2012 process, these
countries, along with Japan and Korea in July 2005 launched a “New
Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.” At its best
this six-nation pact is little more than an energy trade agreement with
no binding targets or emissions reductions of any kind. At its worst
some analysts have argued that the Partnership is only an amalgamation
of old projects, under a new name. Disturbingly, the “voluntary” nature
of the Partnership is being shamelessly peddled as the model for
Kyoto’s successor. Even previous Kyoto allies like Britain’s Tony Blair
are now indicating their support for this approach and Paul Martin
recently expressed his interest in joining the six-nation pact while in
South Korea for the APEC Summit.
On the one hand some
mainstream ENGOs have roundly rejected this voluntary approach in the
next commitment period and have called for a binding 20-30% reduction
below 1990 levels for developed countries. On the other hand some of
the largest ENGOs, like Conservancy International and the Nature
Conservancy openly support voluntarism as necessary tool and actively
collaborate with some of the worst carbon polluters. The logic behind
the collaborationist approach is that eventually the United States will
set up its own GHG emissions trading scheme – as Senators John McCain
and Joe Lieberman have attempted in the past – and the only way to get
the Americans to join the next climate treaty is to create ways they
can merge their carbon market with a global one. Although this may be
possible, based on the experience thus far with emissions trading,
there is little reason to believe that its future use will ensure
climate health and justice. Few ENGOs have broken rank to speak out
against the market approach. A look around the conference halls
provides at least one insight as to why. Of the hundreds of venue
presenters not a single one so much as raises a probing question or
even mentions the shortcomings of market based approaches. Further on,
many of the ENGOs, multilateral agencies, and transnational firms
presenters on hand are showcasing a bevy of neoliberal inspired,
voluntary collaborations that span the gambit from encouraging students
to support nuclear power and work in the nuclear industry (i.e., The
North American Young Generation in Nuclear Group) to spreading the CDM
gospel that “India is the destination for CDM projects” (i.e., the
German development agency GTZ) to the International Petroleum Industry
Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) call to inject carbon
into deep earth wells. Yet no one is monitoring the plethora of
voluntary, market inspired projects—such is the nature of voluntarism,
and as a consequence no one has any clue how the multitude of
neoliberal projects will help collectively tackle the unfolding climate
crisis or not.
Grassroots Strategies and Resistance
In light of the sobering state of affairs at the climate talks, it is
not surprising that the collective bar for successful conference
outcomes have already been watered down to an agreement to keep
negotiations open on the post-2012 framework. Ideally this will take
place without US involvement so they won’t have an opportunity to
derail the talks as has been their objective in the past. Even without
the Americans at the table no one seems to think that a market-free
approach will be up for debate, especially with previous opponents to
it such as Europe and mainstream ENGOs are now on board the trading
express.
Thus space for critical debate is now both
figuratively and literally at the margins of this conference. A Climate
Justice Convergence Centre has been set up about four blocks from the
UN conference centre where activists, community leader, and youth
groups have created their own space complete with a photo exhibit, film
series, and training workshops. Topics include climate change and
forestry, impacts of oil extraction, the role of the World Bank, and an
alternative people’s forum. The other key initiative underway in is a
global march for climate change taking place in over forty countries on
Saturday, December 3rd. The goal of the march, which will be largest in
Montreal itself through a Toronto march is also planned, is to put
grassroots pressure on states to let them know their citizens demand a
comprehensive and ambitious long-term framework to fight climate
change.
While much of the discourse inside the UN climate
talks leave much to be desired in the fight to prevent catastrophic
climate change, one can still take much faith in the grassroots efforts
and solidarity between affected communities to address this crisis.
G. C. S. Erion & Dr M. K. Dorsey are member of
Dartmouth College's Faculty of Science. Michael's work covers a wide
variety of international and environmental policy concerns.
Resources :
www.climatejustice.blogspot.org
www.carbontradewatch.org
www.3Dec2005.org
www.itsgettinghotinhere.org
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