Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails -- by Oscar Reyes and Tamra Gilbertson

Carbon trading lies at the centre of global climate policy and is projected to become one of the world’s largest commodities markets, yet it has a disastrous track record since its adoption as part of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) administered by the UN.

Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails (2009), by Oscar Reyes and Tamra Gilbertson, in Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation's Critical Currents series, shows the limitations of climate action within the assumptions of neoliberal economics. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest carbon market, has failed to 'cap' emissions, while the Kyoto CDM routinely favours environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects. Examples are given from CDM projects in Brazil, Indonesia, India and Thailand.

Cancún, the UN "green economy" and Rio+20 campaign, all propose ways of expanding the trading experiment -- with Copenhagen Accord pledges, REDD+, and PES. This report says it should be abandoned. There are many ways forward without carbon trading – subsidy shifting, energy efficiency, regulation and an FTT tax on financial speculation -- but there are no "market" short-cuts if climate change is to be addressed in a just and fair manner.

"Anyone who still thinks that creating a carbon casino can solve our climate crisis owes it to themselves to read this book. The most convincing and concise challenge to the green profiteers yet."Naomi Klein, author, The Shock Doctrine.

"Carbon markets are less about reducing emissions than making carbon cuts as cheap as possible for large corporations." – Maud Barlow, Blue Planet Project.

"The Copenhagen Accord effectively kills Kyoto, replacing it with voluntary commitments –- ineffective and dangerous. The Cancún text systematically excludes Cochabamba proposals of the World Peoples' Conference on Climate Change: full recognition of indigenous rights, rights for nature, an appeal tribunal. It gives a green light to REDD, rewarding those responsible for deforestation while dispossessing indigenous and forest dwellers." – Nick Buxton, Transnational Institute (TNI)

 ***

See also Asian NGOs' 27-point Platform for Climate Justice (2009),  and the Biodiversity justice declaration (Oct 2010).

The great carbon credit con -- by Nadene Ghouri

Excerpts from Nadene Ghouri's investigation for UK Daily Mail Live Magazine 1 Jun 09. Photos: Ash Sweeting. Gujarat Fluorochemicals (GFL) website boasts that it exports to 75 countries, and has a branch plant in China. With World Bank approval, foreign investors have poured $12 billion into Gujarat's 175-mile chemical corridor between Mehsana and Vapi, one of the world's 10 worst-polluted places. Political pull has spared prosecution of polluters. Gujarat's chief minister says carbon credits are "a good business opportunity".

*****

In the fields around this giant chemicals factory in Gujarat, the barren soil smells of paint stripper and the water from the well makes you gag. Radha, a tough, sinewy widow and the only female farmer here, says that the well, which draws from deep groundwater, used to adequately supply the village and surrounding farms. ‘We have plenty of water – but water is the problem,’ she says. As the bucket returns to the top, we can make out a white, almost oily-looking film on the surface of the liquid, which has formed little snowflake shapes.

She scoops up some water and asks us to smell it. It has an odour so acrid it catches in the back of our throats, making us cough. ‘We can’t irrigate our crops with it,’ she says. ‘It’s the water of death. It kills most crops we put it on. A few years ago, I grew spinach, potatoes, lots of different crops. Now… look at my plants. Weak, useless.’

We’re in a field of cotton that should be ready to harvest. But there’s nothing to reap – just a few little tufts that blow mockingly in the breeze. Radha picks up a handful of soil. The surface has a faintly visible white crust, as if talcum powder has been sprinkled over it. Hold it close and it has the same caustic smell as the water, a bit like paint stripper.

Overlooking the fields like a hulking metal skeleton is the factory the villagers claim has polluted their water and land. The plant, owned by Gujarat Fluorochemicals (GFL), produces refrigerant gases for air-conditioning units and fridges. A by-product is a greenhouse gas [one of the worst] called HFC23.... one ton of it is equivalent to 11,700 tons of carbon. Under the UN Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), GFL installed new technology to capture and recycle HFC23.

The technology was provided in 2005 by the UK’s largest chemical and oil corporation, Ineos, formerly part of ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries]. Both GFL and Ineos benefited handsomely. By installing the technology, GFL made €27 million in the last quarter of 2006 – triple its total earnings for the same period the year before due to carbon credits. Ineos was also given a substantial number of credits for helping a company in the developing world cut its emissions, [to "offset" Ineos emissions exceeding] UK government limits....

polluted well in Ranjitnagar

GFL is part of a worldwide carbon-trading scheme, centred in London, which is supposed to be helping to save the planet from global warming. On paper the scheme, which was ratified under the Kyoto agreement and supervised by the UN, looks like an efficient way to cut global carbon emissions. However, a Live investigation has exposed a series of major failings and loopholes in the scheme.

The great carbon credits merry-go-round
-- Daily Mail (click on image to see details)

As you dig below the surface it would appear that the UN programme – with backing and finance from Britain – is as polluted as the questionable companies it chooses so generously to reward. In the middle of the City of London is a large anonymous-looking building, home to the European Climate Exchange (ECX). About 98 per cent of the carbon-emissions trading in Europe is done in this office, with more than 25 million tons of carbon traded daily. Last year this market was worth £80 billion worldwide, and it’s set to grow to £97 billion this year, despite the recession. Here traders sell our planet’s future in the form of carbon credits... each credit represents a ton of CO2. Chief executive Patrick Birley meets us in the glass-panelled reception. He points out where climate protestors camped on the doorstep during the G20 protests in March. ‘I care just as passionately about saving the planet as they do,’ he says. ‘But the difference is that I believe environmentalism and capitalism can converge.’

Companies that cut their emissions gain credits. If, on the other hand, they exceed their [pollution cap] quotas, they have to acquire credits... trading involves Europe’s biggest banks, including RBS and Barclays. Until the global slowdown, carbon was one of the most profitable ‘commodities’, nearly doubling in value between 2007 and 2008.

But concerns are now being raised about this market approach to controlling emissions, with heavily polluting companies seemingly being financially rewarded. The hulk looming above Radha’s fields was the first factory in the world to profit from the UN scheme, and is something of a flagship project. Yet for the villagers, the scheme is rewarding the very factory that’s brought them misery.

Narendra Modi

We arrive in Gandhinagar, the state capital, to meet Gujarat’s controversial right-wing chief minister, Narendra Modi. ‘You can have big industry and be green' ... but he admits carbon credits can be a ‘good business opportunity’. ‘It’s a typical Western capitalist system, cash- and profit-based. In the East we think differently; caring for nature and the environment is something that comes naturally to us. But of course we’ll take the carbon-credits money if it is offered to us. Why wouldn’t we?’

8 year old Nita, born without an elbow joint

In a village near GFL, scores are sick with joint aches, bone pains, unexplained swellings, throat and nerve problems and temporary paralysis. The farmers can’t put any names to their illnesses and, as low-caste dalits (or untouchables), most of them are too poor to access proper medical services.

Dr Alison Doig, senior climate-change advisor at Christian Aid, says, ‘Live’s investigation highlights exactly what’s wrong with this flawed system, which is focused only on exchanging carbon credits globally, with no accounting for other environmental or social damage. All carbon credits are doing is making some companies rich, while doing nothing to prevent global pollution. It needs either abolition or total reform.’

‘The carbon-credits business operates rather like the financial-services industry did,’ says Kevin Smith of campaigning watchdog Carbon Trade Watch. ‘Insufficient scrutiny and transparency, dodgy projects getting money when they shouldn’t be. And we all know the consequences of what happened in financial services. But this is potentially much more serious, because unlike the Government, nature doesn’t do bailouts.’

*****

This report is quoted in a new study by United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS) Climate Justice for a Changing Planet: A Primer for Policy Makers and NGOs (Dec 2009), fourth in a Climate Justice series: Nick Dearden and Tim Jones, Developing Nations Unite Around Justice In Barcelona Talks; Richard Sherman, Climate and Development Goals: Is there need for a post-Copenhagen Framework?; Natalia Cardona, Placing the Right to Development and Justice at the Heart of the Response to Climate Change.
See also World's Most Polluted Places 2009; Enron's toxic coverup in India by corrupt officials -- Enron was the biggest US corporate lobbyist for carbon-trading; the infamous Summers Memo of 1991 by the World Bank's chief economist, who now heads the US Board of Economic Advisers; criticism of CDM credits for HFC23 by Carbon-Finance Online 15 Feb 07.

Selling indulgences: go and sin some more / ..... Un pas en avant, deux pas en arrière / ............ Un gran salto hacia atrás

The mediaeval church selling indulgences
There is increasing evidence that carbon trading schemes for climate mitigation are being turned into a bonanza for speculators.

Voluntary "carbon offset" funds (1) sold by private finance companies have long met with scathing criticism: they harm indigenous peoples, encourage monocultures of alien species, and destroy local ecology.

State-sponsored "carbon credits" (2) were created under the 1989 Kyoto agreement, called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI). Polluters could invest in cheap green projects in the Third World, rather than cut emissions at home -- in theory, this means that worldwide greenhouse gases are reduced. Under the 'additionality' criterion, such projects must not have been possible without the CDM, and must result in emissions lower than a Business as Usual (BAU) baseline. Eco-critics have attacked promoters and their so-called "independent" consultants for manipulating additionality data to justify a number of projects that would almost certainly have been done anyway, and that have severe ecological impacts: huge hydro dams, biomass sinks such as monoculture plantations whose scientific viability is unproven, and perverse subsidies that actually encouraged the production of greenhouse chemicals. The JI, like many other export credit schemes, has been used by the developed nations to finance overseas expansion of nuclear corporations and "clean coal" -- a misnomer dear to industry lobbyists (3) -- and is tied aid, a subsidy to big national and multinational companies, rather than a genuine transfer of technology to the poor nations.

Cap-and-trade -- the setting of overall emission targets, with reductions over time, thus raising the market price of carbon credits -- is urged by many respectable environmentalists. But watchdogs must stop governments and lobbyists from rigging the system. The European Union's Emission Trading System (4) set emissions higher than BAU, over-allocating credits to big polluters, thus actually encouraging them to expand fossil fuel use rather than invest in renewables. Due to over-allocation, the traded prices of carbon credits fell sharply over two years, further reducing effectiveness of ETS. Cap-and-trade must involve a series of reductions (aka step-downs or wedges) to raise the traded prices, but European reduction targets are still a vague and highly politicized promise. Nor is it clear that the standards for "credits" are stricter in Phase II of the ETS. Environmental organizations have set up a ‘Gold Standard' (5) for offsets, carbon credits and sequestration, which more than 90% of current projects fail to meet.

New scams are on the way: unproven "carbon capture" funds constitute a massive subsidy to coal and oil corporations. REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries, aka avoided deforestation) purports to pay poor nations to protect old growth forests, but at the UN, indigenous leaders from around the world have been protesting against it and similar "market mechanisms" that will

increase the violation of our rights to our lands, territories and resources; cause forced evictions; prevent access and threaten indigenous agriculture practices; destroy biodiversity, cultural diversity, traditional livelihoods and knowledge systems; and cause social conflicts. Under REDD, states and carbon traders will take more control over our forests.(6)

Now the World Bank is proposing no less than 14 new climate change funds. A European think-tank (7) warns that the World Bank scheme encourages rich-world domination, deliberately underrates the effectiveness of existing multilateral plans, has no 'additionality' criterion, and undercuts the United Nations plan.(8) The report accuses the WB of colluding with unnamed "political" interests (9) and "seeking to maximize... [its] institutional position" rather than global climate action. And a US think-tank calls the WB's restructured Clean Technology Fund "a cash cow for coal".(10) By no coincidence, the Bush administration, ever solicitous of its friends in the fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies, has pledged 2/5 of the $5 billion for the CTF.(11)
******
(1) Larry Lohmann's 2006 book and later articles on carbon trading; Carbon Trade Watch, The Carbon Neutral Myth - Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins (2006).
(2) Wikipedia on CDM.
(3) Wikipedia on the oxymoronic "clean coal". Among its environmental effects are massive water pollution, toxics, leakage, habitat destruction, and net increase in CO2. The Pew Foundation, the coal lobby and the Bush administration have been pushing China and India to adopt these techniques: a huge subsidy to the US' worst polluters, which is unlikely to improve the global climate situation. See USA Today 28 Oct 07 "World's coal addiction grows" and previous posts tagged coal.
(4) Wikipedia on the EU ETS.
(5) Wikipedia on the Gold Standard; see also WWF 's description.
(6) On 2 May 08 at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UN PFII). For critical analysis of REDD. aka World Bank FCPF, see the Bretton Woods Project thinktank's updates 57 and 60.
(7) New Finance for Climate Change and the Environment by the Heinrich Boll Foundation and WWF for the UK's Overseas Development Institute. See comments on this report by Eurodad and the US-based Bretton Woods Project.
(8) The post-Kyoto framework UNFCCC has been planning to expand the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), set up in 1991 with a Adaptation Fund. The US, UK and Japan in their aptly-named Major Emitters Meeting are trying to replace it with one they control. The MEM has just been renamed, but the game is the same: Greenpeace brief July 2008.
(9) From the context, we can deduce they are pointing the finger at the Washington consensus; compare its opposite, the misleadingly-named Beijing consensus of developing-country interests, proposed by an ex-editor of Time magazine. See Chandran Nair's article in India Business Law Journal Apr 2008.
(10) CGD 29 April 2008: "World Bank Clean Technology Fund Would Be Cash Cow for Coal". See also Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Feb 2008, "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back".
(11) See the Bretton Woods Project and our previous post on the nuclear lobby.
*****
Un pas en avant, deux pas en arrière
(extrait d'une traduction de "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" note 10. Voir texte complet en français.)

Un pas en avant
Le Fonds pour l’adaptation repose sur une taxe sur le Mécanisme pour un développement propre (MDP), créé en 1997 en vertu du Protocole de Kyoto. Toutefois, les négociations relatives au fonctionnement et à la gestion de ce fonds ont dû attendre la première session de l’instance dirigeante du Protocole de Kyoto (CMP), qui s’est tenue à Montréal, après l’entrée en vigueur du Protocole de Kyoto en 2005. Dans l’intervalle, deux autres fonds avaient été créés (2000) dans le cadre du mécanisme de financement de la Convention Cadre des Nations Unies sur les Changements Climatiques, dépendant tous deux du Fonds pour l’environnement mondial (FEM), situé à Washington puisqu’à l’origine, il avait été « créé au sein de la Banque internationale pour la reconstruction et le développement (BIRD, ou Banque mondiale) en tant que programme pilote destiné à contribuer à la protection de l’environnement mondial ».

A Montréal, nombre de pays (notamment industrialisés) pensaient que le candidat le plus logique pour diriger le FA serait une fois encore le FEM, étant donné son bilan et par souci de ne pas multiplier les entités organisationnelles. Et pourtant, c’est justement à cause de ce bilan, jugé insatisfaisant par de nombreux pays en développement, notamment en ce qui concerne les deux fonds de la Convention, que le débat sur l’opérationnalisation du FA est devenu un débat sur les mérites et les torts du FEM et de sa structure de gouvernance.

De nombreux pays en développement avaient le sentiment d’un contrôle très limité, voire inexistant, sur le FEM, qui leur semblait dominé par les préoccupations des bailleurs et indifférent aux conseils émanant de la Conférence des Parties à la CCNUCC (CdP). Cette insatisfaction a conduit, en premier lieu, lors de la deuxième réunion de la CMP à Nairobi, à la révision plutôt inhabituelle d’une décision venant d’être adoptée à la précédente session de Montréal. Il s’agissait de l’ajout explicite de la nécessité pour le FA d’être sous « l’autorité » de la CMP, en plus de la mention traditionnelle « sous l’égide de et responsable devant ». La décision de Nairobi a également adopté la règle d’ « un pays, un vote » et une représentation
majoritaire des pays en développement au sein de l’instance dirigeante. C’était là un changement radical par rapport aux modalités antérieures des fonds pour les changements climatiques, selon lesquelles les bailleurs, du fait du système de vote mixte du FEM, possédaient un droit de veto implicite.

Lors de la dernière session de la CMP, à Bali, en Indonésie (novembre 2007), cette insatisfaction s’est de nouveau trouvée confirmée, entre autres dans une déclaration faite par Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, ministre de l’Environnement et du Tourisme de l’Afrique du Sud, chargé des négociations du FA au nom du G77+ Chine :

“Le mandat de notre cabinet portait sur la création d’un système de gouvernance transparent et juste dans le cadre d’un Comité du Fonds pour l’adaptation […] Notre objectif était également d’assurer que ce fonds serait dispensé des procédures décisionnelles du FEM, afin de donner aux pays en développement voix au chapitre plus directement et équitablement en ce qui concerne la manière d’orienter et d’allouer les ressources. La possibilité pour les parties remplissant les conditions requises d’accéder directement au Fonds pour l’adaptation était primordiale pour le Groupe des 77. Les membres du G77 ne voulaient plus d’un processus les obligeant à avoir recours à des organismes d’exécution. Après s’être mis d’accord sur l’ajout de critères relatifs à la responsabilité financière et à la capacité à exécuter les projets, il a été décidé que les pays remplissant les conditions requises auraient directement accès au Fonds. La nomination d’un secrétariat et d’un administrateur constituait l’un des aspects les plus litigieux de la décision, étant donné l’expérience négative de la plupart des pays en développement en matière d’interactions avec le FEM et la Banque mondiale eu égard au financement de projets liés au climat."

Finalement, à Bali, la CMP a effectivement décidé de créer un organe de mise en oeuvre entièrement nouveau, s’ajoutant au FEM, appelé le Comité du Fonds pour l’adaptation (CFA). Il se compose d’une majorité de membres/suppléants émanant de pays en développement et de représentants désignés provenant des deux principaux groupes d’intérêts bénéficiaires : le Groupe des pays les moins avancés et l’Alliance des petits Etats insulaires. En outre, il a été décidé que les Parties auraient un accès direct, le rôle du FEM et de la Banque mondiale dans la gestion du FA se limitant à assumer, de manière intérimaire, les fonctions de secrétariat et d’administrateur, respectivement. En effet, pour éviter toute confusion possible avec l’autre organe de mise en oeuvre des mécanismes financiers des Nations Unies pour les changements climatiques, il a également été décidé que le CFA se réunirait au siège du Secrétariat de la CCNUCC, à Bonn, en Allemagne.

En conséquence, l’évaluation de la Décision de Bali concernant le Fonds pour l’adaptation faite par M. Van Schalkwyk n’est donc pas surprenante : « La décision constitue une victoire déterminante pour le monde en développement, avec l’instauration d’un nouveau système de gouvernance pour le financement d’activités d’adaptation.» Ce qui est surprenant, c’est que la nouvelle ne semble pas avoir atteint le 1818 H Street, à Washington (siège de la Banque mondiale comme du FEM).

… deux pas en arrière?
L’un des problèmes, si ce n’est le problème-clé, en ce qui concerne le plan d’action actuel relatif au Fonds d’investissement pour le climat de la Banque mondiale (et pas seulement du point de vue des pays en développement), concerne la structure de gouvernance proposée, à côté de laquelle celle du FEM semble indéniablement progressiste. En effet, comparée à celle du Fonds pour l’adaptation, elle constitue un énorme pas en arrière. D’après la version du plan d’action du 22 janvier, chaque fonds d’investissement serait doté d’une structure de gouvernance indépendante jouissant d’un contrôle final sur ce fonds [§6]. La gouvernance de chaque fonds serait exercée par le biais d’un Comité du fonds fiduciaire (CFF), composé de bailleurs de ce même fonds, choisissant leurs représentants [§§6, 17]. Le § 17 énonce aussi le principe d’une contribution minimale, dont le niveau « doit être défini », ce qui signifie que les petits pays donateurs pourraient bien se voir tenus à l’écart de la gouvernance du fonds.

L’interaction envisagée entre les bénéficiaires et les intéressés est présentée [§11] comme la possibilité pour les « bailleurs de tous les fonds de convoquer un vaste forum annuel pour rassembler les bailleurs, les bénéficiaires et les intéressés. Ce grand forum permettrait d’échanger des points de vue sur les questions de politique influant sur le fonds d’investissement et sur d’autres activités. » En d’autres termes, les pays en développement et les ONG, avec un peu de chance, pourraient se voir invités une fois par an pour savoir ce qui se passe.

Les autres articles concernant la manière dont ces FIC seraient dirigés/gérés commencent par une proposition selon laquelle la Banque mondiale hébergerait le secrétariat de ces fonds [§12] et ferait office d’administrateur [§13]. La prise de décision se ferait essentiellement par consensus [§18], les CFF « se réunissant au niveau supérieur une ou deux fois par an, en fonction des besoins” [§20]. Vers la fin, le plan d’action aborde la rétribution du Secrétariat et de l’Administrateur (devant « reposer sur le coût plutôt que sur un pourcentage des ressources détenues par le fonds » [§28], avant de passer aux « questions nécessitant une élaboration approfondie» [§29]. La troisième question énumérée, immédiatement après « (ii) qui devrait présider les réunions du Comité du fonds fiduciaire? » est la suivante “(iii) qui serait invité en tant qu’observateur auprès du Comité du fonds fiduciaire? Voix des pays bénéficiaires dans la structure de gouvernance?”

Il devrait sembler encourageant que la question d’accorder une voix aux pays bénéficiaires dans la structure de gouvernance de ces nouveaux fonds de la Banque mondiale soit toujours considérée comme une question nécessitant une élaboration approfondie, même s’il semble malheureusement peu probable qu’elle se voit accorder l’importance nécessaire pour assurer le succès de cette initiative.

La Banque mondiale, ou plutôt les bailleurs-clés consultés jusqu’ici (Japon, Royaume-Uni, et Etats-Unis) seront-ils capables et accepteront-ils d’aller de l’avant dans leur proposition de gouvernance des fonds envisagés en incluant des pays en développement en tant que partenaires égaux, dans l’esprit de la Déclaration de Paris de l’OCDE ?

Nous ne demandons pas à la Banque mondiale ni aux autres bailleurs de cette initiative potentiellement prometteuse de réaliser un « gigantesque pas en avant » ; tout ce que nous espérons c’est qu’il soit encore temps d’éviter un pas dans la mauvaise direction, ce qui ne serait vraiment dans l’intérêt de personne.

Après tout, il va sans dire que le financement qui transitera par ces fonds, notamment par le Fonds pour des technologies propres, profitera à leurs propres industries au moins autant qu’il profitera aux pays en développement participants.

Plus spécifiquement, le Royaume-Uni et le Japon, voire les Etats-Unis après le changement de gouvernement, seront-ils capables d’adhérer au partenariat établi dans le Fonds pour l’adaptation du Protocole de Kyoto ? D’une part, ce qui justifie globalement le Fonds pilote pour l’adaptation du FIC proposé, à savoir l’intégration de l’adaptation en tant qu’« élément à part entière des programmes de développement nationaux et sectoriels », n’est pas incompatible avec les attributions du Fonds pour l’adaptation, mais pourrait facilement être intégré en tant que « Programme pour l’adaptation des politiques », notamment si les bailleurs se montrent prêts à financer ce type d’activités. En tant que tel, il complèterait les activités menées dans le cadre de projets du Fonds pour l’adaptation et financées par le biais de la taxe du MDP, ce qui lui donnerait vraiment une vision de l’adaptation à 360°.

La question est donc de savoir si la communauté des bailleurs est prête à fournir les ressources de démarrage pour un tel programme dans le cadre du Fonds pour l’adaptation ? Ou bien choisiront-ils d’entamer encore la confiance en contribuant à une prolifération inutile de fonds à la structure de gouvernance totalement inacceptable pour la grande majorité des pays du monde ?
******
Los fondos climáticos del Banco Mundial: "Un gran salto hacia atrás"
(ver texto completo del Proyecto Bretton Woods)

Los propuestos fondos de inversión para contrarrestar los rigores climáticos a ser administrados por el Banco Mundial son criticados debido al gobierno poco democrático y al socavamiento del marco de trabajo de la Convención Marco de la ONU sobre Cambio Climático (UNFCCC -United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Al mismo tiempo aumenta el apoyo del Banco Mundial a la generación de la electricidad con base en el carbón.

El portafolio inicial del Banco consistirá de tres fondos:

El Fondo para la Tecnología Limpia asistirá en la transformación hacia economías con bajas emisiones de carbono, en la mitigación de las emisiones del gas invernadero y en la cooperación internacional sobre el cambio climático. Su meta son $5 - 10 mil millones.

El Fondo de la Facilitación de la Inversión Forestal "proveerá incentivos financieros para reducir las emisiones de la deforestación y la degradación. Apoyará a los países para que utilicen la Facilidad de Carbono Forestal (Forest Carbon Partnership Facility). Su meta son $1 mil millones.

El Fondo Piloto de Adaptación "pilotará las formas de integrar el riesgo y la resistencia al cambio climático en la planeación esencial de desarrollo." También influenciará el diseño del Fondo de Adaptación recientemente convenido en la UNFCCC, y que se enfocará inicialmente en cinco a diez países de bajos ingresos o en países vulnerables al clima. También busca recaudar $1 mil millones.

El Fondo para la Tecnología Limpia ha fue públicamente por las/los Ministros de Finanzas de Estados Unidos, el Reino Unido y Japón en una declaración conjunta publicada en el Financial Times el 7 de febrero del 2008. Estos países hicieron "grandes promesas" a los varios fondos y urgieron a los otros países a seguir su ejemplo. Estados Unidos prometió $2 mil millones durante los próximos tres años y el Reino Unido canalizará sus $1,6 mil millones para el Fondo de Transformación Ambiental a través de los fondos. Japón contribuirá con $10 mil millones, a pesar de que no está claro cómo estos serán canalizados hacia el Banco. Hasta el momento ningún otro donante ha prometido apoyo.... Se fijará una contribución mínima por parte de los miembros del secretariado del fideicomiso de fondos, cuyo nivel aún está por decidirse, y con ello se eleva la preocupación de que los países más pequeños sean excluidos del gobierno de los fondos.

En una reunión de los Ministros de Energía y Medio Ambiente de los G20 en Japón, a mediados de marzo del 2008, Marthinus Schalkwyk, Ministro del Ambiente de Sur África, señaló que los países en desarrollo solo habían sido consultados en las últimas semanas. Él dijo "el Banco Mundial debe mantener su distancia de las charlas sobre el cambio climático [y] no debería convertirse en uno de los actores de las negociaciones porque eso cargaría los dados en contra de los países en desarrollo."

En el informe '¿Un paso hacia adelante y dos pasos hacia atrás?' Benito Mueller, del Instituto de Estudios de Energía de Oxford (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies), y Harald Winkler de la Universidad del Cabo señalan que el Banco Mundial está empujando hacia delante con "total desconocimiento" de los principios de asociación y propiedad conjunta de la Declaración de París sobre la Eficacia de la Ayuda.

El Fondo Piloto de Adaptación propuesto por el Banco es visto por muchos de los países en desarrollo como una seria amenaza al nuevo Fondo de Adaptación convenido en Bali, cuya junta tendrá una mayoría de miembros de países en desarrollo y el cual designó la representación de los países menos desarrollados y de los estados de pequeñas islas y se reunirá en Bon, la sede del Secretariado de la UNFCCC. El Banco Mundial solo tendrá una mínima participación en su manejo. En comparación, Mueller y Winkler afirman que el Fondo Piloto del Banco es un "enorme salto hacia atrás.".... [aquí el texto original muestre otras evidencías - Ed.]

Climate Change (book review)

by Melanie Jarman, (Pluto Press 2007) from the Oxfam series Small Guides to Big Issues. Reviewed by Anne Adams.

I have read a lot on climate change, but this book depressed and angered me more than any other. Its subject is the effect on developing countries of climate change and it is extremely hard-hitting in its conclusions. It is illustrated by clear graphs and tables, and includes quotations from a range of authorities. The author has done a great deal of research, and provides a long list of resources and references. The general conclusions are:
• Climate change will affect developing countries a great deal more than it will affect those which are rich and industrialised
• The latter group has the power and the responsibility to take urgent action
• Actions being taken are slow, weak, inadequate and sometimes counterproductive. Every one of the eight ‘Millennium Development Goals’ laid down by the UN in 2000 is adversely affected by climate change and they are already at risk of not being met. They include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, improving health services, ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development.

The book describes some of the efforts by richer countries to help the poorer, such as the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM). This enables rich countries which cannot meet their emissions targets to gain emission credits by funding projects aimed at reducing emissions in developing countries. These credits are based on the difference between the emissions which would have been produced if the developing country hosting the project had followed a more traditional path and the amount generated when the country follows the low emissions path enabled by the funding. This scheme is fraught with problems:

• It has conflicting goals—to allow industrialised countries to emit more and to increase
sustainability
• The regulations make setting up small projects almost prohibitive
• It is extremely difficult to assess the amount of emissions saved by the project
• Many of the projects that have been undertaken are actually detrimental to people and the environment.
• Countries benefiting from these projects are mostly larger rapidly developing countries such as China, Brazil, Chile, India and Mexico. Bolivia, Cambodia, Jamaica, Nicaragua and
Uganda have very few.
• Planting trees is popular with rich countries, but can result in clearing natural vegetation in favour of eucalyptus or palm oil and depriving the original inhabitants of their livelihood.

‘Carbon colonisation’ is a new term coined for this type of emissions trading.

The chapter on the World Bank upset me most. The World Bank has enormous power and could be a very influential body in reducing climate change. In fact its Extractive Industries Review, commissioned by the Bank in 2000, recommended that it should phase out all investments in oil production by 2008 and concentrate on investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency and similar projects that delink energy use from greenhouse gas emissions. However the management totally ignored this, deciding that more of the same was needed, resulting in funding of fossil fuel extraction and transport. An example is tremendous pressure put on Bangladesh by the World Bank to develop its gas reserves for export, to help repay its debts, thereby adding to the emissions which will cause rise in sea level and potential disaster for Bangladesh.

A table in the book compares the finance for CDMs with that for fossil fuel projects by the World Bank. There is simply no comparison, the vast amounts from the World Bank for fossil fuel projects dwarfing the pathetic sums for the CDM. There is a chapter on the suggestions by other bodies for meeting the challenge, including Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Contraction and Convergence is described as a just and practical possibility. This requires developed countries to adjust their economies accordingly, but political agreement would be difficult to get. If implemented it would include individual carbon rationing, such as domestic tradable quotas. Another suggestion is the Greenhouse Development Rights, which takes account of the fact the already industrialised countries have more capacity to adapt than those still developing.

A table giving projections for amounts of global renewable energy up to 2050 shows how much could be produced (over 7 million megawatts compared with 815,000 in 2003) if the will was there — wind, PV and hydro being the greatest resources. There is a short piece near the end about individual action, pointing out that though it may make little difference on its own, the combination of cutting down one’s own emissions, campaigning, writing letters and joining with others can have a wider influence. Emotional involvement is key, and the work of Joanna Macy is mentioned. It is our grandchildren who will bear the cost of our apathy and selfishness.

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from Earthquaker Feb 2008 newsletter of Living Witness UK

Women for Climate Justice (WCJ)

photo: Peter Ward. The good Barong and monkey companion

by Gotelind Alber, Sustainable Energy and Climate Policy, Berlin, Germany
Excerpt. Full text is in Harvard's Forum on Religion and Ecology Newsletter, Jan 2008.
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In Bali, you never know how things are going to turn out. The traditional battle between the evil witch Rangda and the monster Barong who is striving for the good, is performed as a dance theatre accompanied by Gamelan music, and its end is always open. In most cases, the Barong prevails, but sometimes it may happen that the evil forces come out on top, at least temporarily.

At UN Climate Conferences, the positive forces have regularly lost to skeptics, procrastinators and impeders. ...eventually, everybody will realize the necessity of drastic climate protection measures. In the meantime, the temporary victory of the evil forces is leading to calamity.

[WCJ's presentation at Bali showed] that not only the impacts of climate change, but also activities to mitigate climate change can be a calamity, in particular for women. [In the Kyoto accord's] market-based Clean Development Mechanism ... industrialized countries generate emission credits through climate protection projects in developing countries. The benefit of the projects realized so far for women in developing countries is very limited, since the bulk of investments went to large-scale power generation or industrial projects, rather than into energy efficiency in the domestic sector, small scale renewable energy projects for rural communities or schemes to improve public transport systems. A number of projects are even harmful to local communities, e.g. large-scale monoculture plantations or landfill gas utilization projects which led to continuing the landfills instead of closing them down.

One of the core questions of COP13 was how to halt the rapid destruction of forests in tropical countries, contributing some 20% of greenhouse gas emissions. Proposals ranged from direct aid requested by poor countries, to market-based emission credits for "avoided deforestation" aka REDD. REDD would primarily benefit the companies who are currently pushing deforestation, while forest people would go away empty-handed, particularly the women as the poorest group....

WCJ highlighted that forestry is not only about trees and their carbon content, but also about the ecosystem in a broader sense, and the people who live in and from the forest. Since the social issues are, to a large extent, gender issues, [we] advocated their inclusion in the debate, rather than only focusing on technical and methodological issues... causes of deforestation [also include] over-consumption, agro-fuel expansion, fossil fuel extraction, the replacement of natural forests by monoculture tree plantations, and the lack of respect for indigenous peoples’ rights.

At Bali, the Japanese government proposed to include nuclear energy in the Clean Development Mechanism. As an eligible technology, nuclear power would then receive financial incentives. Whereas large parts of the NGO community remained silent, the women’s group vehemently protested against this revival of nukes, pointing out that climate change should not be combated with technologies involving uncontrollable risks....

Women for Climate Justice is a new network of women and gender experts from all parts of the world. [Founded by Genanet and Energia at COP 9 in 2003, we now fund participation of women from all over the world at such Conferences of Parties to the UNFCCC.] ... However, to really influence the negotiations there needs to be much more work done between sessions such as attending UNFCCC events and submitting positions on specific items under consideration, expansion of the network, and the means to plan and implement adaptation and mitigation case studies on the ground...

For more information see Genanet in English, Deutsch
IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletin
CarbonTrading -- in Delicious, in the righthand column