If the World were a village of 100 people -- by Donella Meadows

Copied from miniature-earth.com

The text that originated The Miniature Earth was first published on May 29, 1990 with the title "State of the Village Report", written by Donella Meadows. Nowadays Sustainability Institute, through Donella's Foundation, carries on her ideas and projects. The text used here has been modified. The statistics have been updated based on specialized publications and mainly reports on the world's population provided by The UN, PRB and others. See Wikipedia: Donella Meadows' career as an ecological thinker.

UNFCCC climate negotiations at Bonn

The following key points are made by Bolivia in its climate blog and supported by poor nations -- those of the G77 who have not been bribed or beaten into supporting the Copenhagen Accord:

Photo: International Land Coalition

1. REDD+ is dangerous because while it allows polluters to buy cheap carbon credits and continue polluting, it does little to save ecosystems. In many cases, REDD loans will simply add to poor nations' debt, shifting the burden from rich to poor. Loopholes in REDD and LULUCF allow for so-called "sustainable" logging, GMO plantations, dubious IBI biochar megaprojects, etc. The BBC reported in 2009 that only 30% of offsets went to the projects, the rest went to bank and broker fees and profits. Consultation with local people/indigenes and prior consent are pious hopes rather than requirements. FOE and Greenpeace warn that REDD could lead to a "subprime carbon casino" bubble and bust. Other proposed "market mechanisms" remain vague but could have similar results. (e.g. BBC report on banks' latest REDD proposals 18 May 2011)

2. The $30 million "fast start" money should not be spent on economic experts' TEEB-style calculations to commodify the commons for carbon markets, but to save ecosystems now. The funding should be new aid, not loans, not re-labeled from previous commitments. Most of the Accord's "fast start" pledges are not new money.

3. UN negotiations and national actions should aim at preserving ecosystems. Present emission trends and targets take us to a disastrous 4C climate change by 2100. Climate change already kills 300,000 a year (Kofi Annan's thinktank, the Global Humanitarian Forum) -- and additional suffering is due to recurrent food crises (Lester Brown of EPI). We should be looking closely at the spiritual, ethical and legal implications of Rights of Mother Earth aka Rights of Nature.

4. The FTT (Financial Transaction Tax, aka Tobin tax, Robin Hood tax, UN Global tax) could fully finance climate action and MDGs while slowing speculative surges. It is bitterly opposed by the US Treasury, Wall St and its allies. Before Cancun, Britain and France, Stiglitz and Sachs supported the FTT -- with little heard since from the politicos*. This reminds me of Paul Hawken's history of the UN corporate social responsibility initiative, "closed down altogether" just after the 1992 Rio Summit, under pressure from the misnamed Business Council for Sustainable Development (forerunner of the WBCSD) and its G8 allies (Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce, p.168).

*However, this year FTT has won support in studies by the Catholic CIDSE, International Tax Review, Europeans For Financial Reform (EFFR), Neil McCulloch of IDS, and was to be discussed by EU Finance Ministers on 14 June. A report from the European Commission is to be published soon.

Brazilian NGOs protest against REDD+

Ministry of External Relations (Itamaraty), Brasilia

Brasilia and Bonn, June 09th 2011
(English translation of the original)
To: Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado
Minister of External Relations André Corrêa do Lago

Dear Sirs,
We, organizations and social movements that fight for climate justice and are members of the Belem Letter group, have followed the national policies on climate change and the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.       

We were very worried about the outcome of the decisions of Cancún that were not enough to take concrete steps to confront the climate crisis, nor showed an effective way to reduce emissions in countries of origin and the creation of mechanisms to support the populations that are already vulnerable and will be impacted by climate change.

We reiterate our demand for the Brazilian government to reject the use of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) as a carbon market mechanism and that it would not be accepted as an offsetting to emissions from the North, under any conditionality.

We reaffirm our rejection of market mechanisms as instruments to reduce carbon emissions, based on the firm conviction that the market is not the space capable of taking responsibility for life on the planet. The latest COPs, particularly Copenhagen and Cancun, and its aftermath have shown that governments are not willing to undertake commitments consistent public and thus transfer the responsibility of practice greetings to private goals, while domestic policies, as in the case of Brazil, also have been appropriate to market interests. This makes public investment and control over the achievement of goals legitimize the global CO2 market, which appears as a new form of investment and speculative financial capital and survival to a model of production and consumption bankrupt.

We urge the Brazilian government to reaffirm the [Kyoto] principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, to ensure that decisions on the offsetting mechanisms and new forms of carbon market are not adopted, both for REDD+ as under general sources of funding for the second period commitment for the Kyoto Protocol or in new sector policies.

We believe that the offsetting mechanism will not lead to emission reductions required in developed countries and only divert the focus of negotiations which should converge towards an agreement at COP 17. This agreement must be guided by emission reduction targets for developed countries and higher than 40% compared to 1990, for the period 2013-2017, based on science and to consider the historical responsibility and climate debt.

We realize from the projects already underway, that a deregulated market for offsets can also have serious consequences for communities and local populations in the South, both in relation to the management and violation of rights to land and territories and on their ways of life associated with the forest management and conservation.

Brazil has seen in recent weeks the massive increase in deforestation in the Amazon and impending relaxation of the most important landmark environmental development, the Forestry Code, with an increase of 540% between March and April this year in the state of Mato Grosso alone, according to data from IBAMA. The current attempt to deregulate the national environmental regime could have serious implications for achieving the international targets assumed in both the Climate Convention and the Convention on Biological Diversity, putting Brazil in the position of serious contradictions between its foreign policy and domestic initiatives.

For all these reasons, the undersigned organizations argue that international negotiations on climate cannot be focused on the shift to achieve emissions reductions, by market mechanisms such as REDD+. Brazil, one of the most biodiverse countries of the world, has undertaken the challenge of a real transition to a new model of production, distribution and consumption, sponsored by the State. This model should be based on proposals already underway from the matrix of agroecology, solidarity economics, land and urban reform, democratization of the use and occupation of land in the territories,  and community management of a diverse and decentralized energy model, which guarantee the right to an ecologically balanced environment and food security and sovereignty.

Signed:
Actionaid Brazil
Amigos da Terra Brasil- Friends of the Earth Brazil
ANA - Articulação Nacional de Agroecologia
APTA - Associação de Programas em Tecnologias Alternativas – ES
Associação Global de Desenvolvimento Sustentado
CEAPAC - Centro de Apoio a Projetos de Ação Comunitária
CEPEDES – Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas para o Desenvolvimento do Extremo Sul da Bahia
CIMI – Conselho Indigenista Missionário
ESPLAR- Centro de Pesquisa e Assessoria
FASE – Solidariedade e Educação
Fórum Carajás 
Fórum Mudanças Climáticas e Justiça Social
GAMBA – Grupo Ambientalista da Bahia
GIAS – Grupo de Intercâmbio em Agricultura Sustentável – Mato Grosso
INESC – Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos
Jubileu Sul Brasil - Jubilee South Brazil
Plataforma DHESCA Brazil
Rede Alerta contra o Deserto Verde
Rede Brasil sobre Instituições Financeiras Multilaterais
Terra de Direitos
Via Campesina Brazil