[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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