[E-rundbrief] Info 631 - UN-Klimakonferenz - Kritik

Matthias Reichl info at begegnungszentrum.at
Mo Dez 17 20:43:32 CET 2007


E-Rundbrief - Info 631 - Coalition "Climate Justice Now!": What's 
missing from the climate talks? Justice!; Walden Bello (Focus on Global 
South, Thailand): The Day After.... (Reviews on the UN climate summit in 
Bali);

Bad Ischl, 17.12.2007

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

================================================

What's missing from the climate talks? Justice!

Friday, 14 December 2007

BALI (INDONESIA), 14 December 2007 - Peoples from social organizations 
and movements from across the globe brought the fight for social, 
ecological and gender justice into the negotiating rooms and onto the 
streets during the UN climate summit in Bali. [1]

Inside and outside the convention centre, activists demanded alternative 
policies and practices that protect livelihoods and the environment.

In dozens of side events, reports, impromptu protests and press 
conferences, the false solutions to climate change - such as carbon 
offsetting, carbon trading for forests, agrofuels, trade liberalization and

privatization pushed by governments, financial institutions and 
multinational corporations - have been exposed.

Affected communities, Indigenous Peoples, women and peasant farmers 
called for real solutions to the climate crisis, solutions which have 
failed to capture the attention of political leaders. These genuine 
solutions include:

*     reduced consumption.

*     huge financial transfers from North to South based on historical 
responsibility and ecological debt for adaptation and mitigation costs 
paid for by redirecting military budgets, innovative taxes and debt 
cancellation.

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

*       rights based resource conservation that enforces Indigenous land 
rights and promotes peoples' sovereignty over energy, forests, land and 
water.

*       sustainable family farming and peoples' food sovereignty.

Inside the negotiations, the rich industrialized countries have put 
unjustifiable pressure on Southern governments to commit to emissions' 
reductions. At the same time, they have refused to live up to their own 
legal and moral obligations to radically cut emissions and support 
developing countries' efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to climate 
impacts. Once again, the majority world is being forced to pay for the 
excesses of the minority.


Compared to the outcomes of the official negotiations, the major success 
of Bali is the momentum that has been built towards creating a diverse, 
global movement for climate justice.


We will take our struggle forward not just in the talks, but on the 
ground and in the streets - Climate Justice Now!

Notes

[1] Many social movements and groups that came together in Bali have 
agreed to establish a coalition called Climate Justice Now! in order to 
enhance exchange of information and cooperation among themselves and 
with other groups with the aim of intensifying actions to prevent and 
respond to climate change. Justice must be at the heart of tackling 
climate change, and must in no way be sacrificed.

Members of this coalition include:

Carbon Trade Watch, Transnational Institute; Center for Environmental 
Concerns; Focus on the Global South; Freedom from Debt Coalition, 
Philippines; Friends of the Earth: International; Gendercc -  Women for 
Climate Justice, Global Forest Coalition; Global Justice Ecology 
Project; International Forum on Globalization; Kalikasan-Peoples Network 
for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE); La Via Campesina; Members of the 
Durban Group for Climate Justice; Oilwatch; Pacific Indigenous Peoples 
Environment Coalition, Aotearoa/New Zealand; Sustainable Energy and 
Economy Network; The Indigenous Environmental Network; Third World 
Network; WALHI/ Friends of the Earth Indonesia; World Rainforest Movement

www.focusweb.org/whats-missing-from-the-climate-talks-justice.html?Itemid=1


-----------------------------------------------


The Day After....

By Walden Bello*

Monday, 17 December 2007

(Bali, Dec. 16). A day after the dramatic ending of the Bali climate 
talks, many are wondering if the result was indeed best outcome possible 
given the circumstances.

The US was brought back to the fold, but at the cost of excising from 
the final document--the so-called Bali Roadmap--any reference to the 
need for a 25 to 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 
1990 levels by 2020 to keep the mean global temperature increase to 2.0 
to 2.4 degrees Celsius in the 21st century.


Reference to quantitative figures was reduced to a footnote referring 
readers to some pages in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
(IPCC) 2007 Report which simply enumerates several climate stabilization 
scenarios. The alternative scenarios ranged from a 2.0 to 2.4 degree 
rise in temperature to a 4.9 to 6.1 degree increase. This prompted one 
civil society participant to remark that "The Bali roadmap is a roadmap 
to anywhere."

Would it have been better to have simply let the US walk out, allowing 
the rest of the world to forge a strong agreement containing deep 
mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on the part of the developed 
countries? With a new US president with a new policy on climate change 
expected at the beginning of 2009, the US would have rejoined a process 
that would already be moving along with strong binding targets. As it is 
now, having been part of the Bali consensus, Bush administration 
negotiators, say skeptics, will be able to continue their obstructionist 
tactics to further water down global action throughout the negotiations 
in 2008.

One wonders what would have happened had Washington remained true to its 
ideological propensities and decided to stomp out of the room when the 
delegate from Papua New Guinea, releasing the conference's pent up 
collective frustration, issued his now historic challenge: "We ask for 
your leadership and we seek your leadership. If you are not willing to 
lead, please get out of the way." As everyone now knows, after 
last-minute consultations with Washington, the American negotiator 
backed down from the US's hard-line position on an Indian amendment 
seeking the conference's understanding for the different capacities of 
developing countries to deal with climate change and said Washington 
"will go forward and join the consensus."


   The single-minded focus on getting Washington on board resulted in 
the dearth of hard obligations agreed upon at the meeting except for the 
deadline for the negotiating body, the "Ad Hoc Working Group on 
Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention," to have its work 
ready for adoption at the Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in 2009 
(COP 15).


Many delegates also felt ambivalent about the institutional arrangements 
that were agreed upon after over a week of hard North-South negotiations.


     * An Adaptation Fund was set up, but it was put under the 
administration of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) of the 
US-dominated World Bank. Moreover, the seed funds from the developed 
countries are expected to come to only between $18.6 million to US$37.2 
million--sums which are deemed severely inadequate to support the 
emergency efforts to address the ongoing ravages of climate change in 
the small island states and others on the "frontlines" of climate 
change. Oxfam estimates that a minimum of US$50 billion a year will be 
needed to assist all developing countries adapt to climate change.


     * A "strategic program" for technology development and transfer was 
also approved, again with troubling compromises. The developing 
countries had initially held out for the mechanism to be a designated a 
"facility" but finally had to agree to the watered-down characterization 
of the initiative as a "program" on account of US intransigence. 
Moreover, the program was also placed under the GEF with no firm levels 
of funding stated for an enterprise that is expected to cost hundreds of 
billions of dollars.


     * The REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) 
initiative pushed by host Indonesia and several other developing 
countries with large forests that are being cut down rapidly was 
adopted. The idea is to get the developed world to channel money to 
these countries, via aid or market mechanisms, to maintain these forests 
as carbon sinks. However, many climate activists fear that indigenous 
communities will lose be victimized by predatory private interests that 
will position themselves to become the main recipients of the funds raised.

Still, many felt that the meager and mixed results were better than nothing.

Perhaps the best indication on whether the conference was right to bend 
over backward almost 180 degrees to accommodate the US will come next 
month in Honolulu during the Major Economies Meeting, a 
Washington-initiated conference that was originally designed to subvert 
the United Nations process. The question on everyone's lips is: Will the 
Bush adminstration revert to form and use the conference to launch a 
separate process to derail the Bali Roadmap?


*Walden Bello is senior analyst at Focus on the Global South and 
professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. He was an 
NGO participant at the Bali Conference on Climate Change.

www.focusweb.org/the-day-after.html?Itemid=156

(Siehe auch Info 613)

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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