The Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) backed by 23 ecojustice NGOs on 19 March 2014 launched this Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (click here for the interactive map) of 1000+ environmental conflicts, a tool for faith-based and lay activists.
With it you can search and filter with 100 fields or browse by commodity, company, resisters, country and type of conflict. Click on any point for maps, photos, videos, descriptions of the actors, outcome and sources. Search results can be shared on your webpage or Facebook.
The OECD's just-published Effective Carbon Prices synthesises a number of case studies in selected countries and sectors and finds clear differences in effective carbon prices:
within a given sector, across the countries covered;
across the different sectors, within each country;
across the different instrument types, across all the countries covered
See the review of the OECD study below; sorry, the ads are required for free cross-posting.
tarsands plant, Fort McMurray AB -- photo credit: Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty. from Postmedia
See also Wikipedia's summary of climate negotiations 1992-2012 and NGO reactions to COP-18. Third World Network Doha bulletins, esp. number 23. Canadian NGOs' report.
Veteran observer Michael Dorsey's 8 Dec 2012 email from Doha says, "They're calling it an "EU Bridge"... it's a bridge, for sure, but over the river Styx!
An
extraordinarily weak cock up on climate finance, failing to put money
on the table or to ensure a pathway to the $100 billion a year by 2020
target.
An
eight year second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol with
loopholes that allow carry-over, use and trading of hot air.. [to save the EU ETS carbon market, with its built-in licenses to pollute - Ed.].
A
call – though not an official ambition ratchet mechanism - for Kyoto
Protocol countries to review their emissions reduction target inline
with the 25-40% range by 2014 at the latest.
The only hopeful element, ever so slightly:
An
agreed work program on loss and damage to help victims of climate
change will start immediately and a decision “to establish institutional
arrangement, such as an international mechanism , at COP19”.[I suspect this is the New Market Mechanism. See my NMM compilation - Ed] Also Financial Times, Doha talks agree to climate compensation and Reuters Point Carbon, Key decisions at Doha.
["Hot air" credits in the EU-ETS (shown in yellow in the graph below) were assigned to former Soviet bloc countries that fell below their BAU curve due to political and economic collapse in the 1990s. A boondoggle for carbon brokers and corrupt elites. They do not represent any real emission cuts. -- Ed.]
In this 20 minute TED video, Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Program, explains why in a world with enough food for everyone, it is used as a weapon of war; and a billion people (1 out of 7) are starving. She proposes a total transformation of food aid -- into food sovereignty.
Nutrition is crucial in the first 1000 days of a child's life. It will never recover from the neural and physical damage due to lack of food. And breastfeeding (by properly fed mothers) could save a baby's life every 22 seconds.
Sheeran talks about WFP's programs, shifting to improved local food supply rather than imported stocks. Food for Humanity: better nutrition can transform life chances and national earning. School feeding (less than 25 cents day) attracts girls, lowers birthrates and is the "poor man's safety net" -- with local foods. Warehouses for Hope are locally-provided storehouses, assuring food sovereignty and school meals: 500 in Cameroon alone. Digital Food solves the problem of famine amid plenty, by giving penniless people vouchers to buy local food. Purchasing for Progress creates a guaranteed market for small farmers and peasant women; one example, which she urges the G20 to adopt, is Brazil's Zero Hunger Program costing about 5% of GDP. The long term antipoverty benefits far exceed the costs. She hopes there we can soon say, "There was a time when 1/3 of the world's children grew up with brains and bodies stunted. No more. That's history."
***
See also her biography; Wikipedia on the World Food Program; UN ReliefWeb humanitarian news and needs, e.g. the current Horn of Africa famine; World Bank's Food Crisis Open Forum (Apr 2011) videos and transcripts; independent NGOs' IPC Food Sovereignty proposals. An analysis in plain language: ETCgroup, Who Will Feed Us? Questions for the Food and Climate Crises (free download, 2009) raises questions about the failure of MDGs, financial speculators, corperate agriculture and distribution, the impact of agrofuels and climate change, and technofixes proposed by Gates, Rockefeller, and Monsanto.
Thanks to Lyn Adamson for suggesting this book, Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril (Trinity University, 2010).
It is a collection of reflections and eco-visions by over 100 thinkers. Since then, the Moral Ground website has added 14 bonus articles, as well as excerpts from the original book.
Like so many others in the ecojustice movement, the editors Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson feel that scientific data and government regulation are insufficient for the social and personal transformation that true earthcare requires. “What is missing is the moral imperative, the conviction that assuring our own comfort at terrible cost to the future is not worthy of us as moral beings.”
In a May 2011 survey, Climate Change in the American Mind, 82 out of 100 admitted they have made no changes in their lifestyle despite the gathering evidence of man-made pollution. Though climatologist James Hansen, biologist E.O Wilson, preachers like Bill McKibben, University researchers and UN agencies report we are rapidly reaching climate chaos, with 300,000 human lives lost annually as a result of global change, species die-offs exceeding 100 times normal rates, planetary limits exceeded -- the majority of us do nothing.
How can we learn collective responsibility? How can we act out of concern for our grandchildren, and compassion for everything that lives, rather than individual greed, comfort, and convenience? That is the challenge of this book. MG's mission statement invites us to town hall meetings, study groups and actions, to start "a national conversation concerning our individual and collective responsibilities to the future."
Yes, it’s wrong to leave behind a ransacked and dangerously unstable world.
Yes, our lives must be an expression of what we most deeply value.
Yes, we can and must make conscience-driven choices about how we spend our money and time.
Yes, we must provide a safe and thriving future for our children.
Yes, tending to the Earth and reversing climate destruction are a moral, spiritual and religious imperative.
On Earth Day, April 22, the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature launches an international campaign for the Rights of Nature to be recognized at the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.
By Natalia Greene and Bill Twist, co-founders of Pachamama Alliance in Ecuador
On the first days of September 2010, conscious individuals and organizations, with the background of having worked to promote the recognition and guarantee of Rights for Nature, met in Patate, Ecuador, in Hacienda Manteles, at the foot of the Tungurahua Volcano and gave rise to the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.
Recognizing that exploitation, abuse, and contamination have caused the destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth (1), putting all life at risk through phenomena such as climate change; the Global Alliance [warns of] a multi-dimensional crisis and collapse of an unsustainable system based on accumulation and disrespect for nature.
The Global Alliance, convinced that we are an interdependent living community, and recognizing that ancient native communities have always defended Mother Earth’s rights because those rights are innate to their cosmovision (2), recognize that nature is not an object or commodity, but a subject of inalienable rights to exist, maintain and integrally regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes.
Its objective is to encourage the recognition and effective implementation (3) of the Rights of Nature through the creation of a world network of individuals and organizations that through active cooperation, collective action and legal tools, based on Rights of Nature as an idea whose time has come, can change the wrong direction towards which humanity is taking our Planet.
In 2008, Ecuador became the first country in the world to include this recognition in its National Constitution. In the United States, more than 100 communities have included this recognition in their local ordinances. In April, 2010, Bolivia hosted the first Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba. The Global Alliance… encourages the UN adoption of the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth Rights….
The Global Alliance, aims at becoming a platform to share the experience and expertise of its
By driving Rights for Nature into law and creating global, national and local jurisdiction and cases that guarantee these Rights, will serve as a starting point to reproduce this concept virally though the world, invading systems of thought and juridical systems. The world could be a different place if crimes against Nature could be dealt internationally in an International Rights of Nature Court, if humans understood that they we are part of nature and whatever we do to the planet we do to each other.
The Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature calls upon all organizations and people of the Earth to join in the Rights of Nature as an idea whose time has come. Mother Earth (3) and we, her children, are in extreme peril; we must unite and ACT NOW!
references to aboriginal traditions:
1 Pachamama: (Kichwa) Mother Earth, only broader, i.e. Mother Cosmos
2 Cosmovision: world view, philosophy of life
3 Minka: (Kichwa) collective community work for the betterment of all
Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth
at April 22, 2010 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia
Preamble
We, the peoples and nations of Earth:
considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny;
gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well;
recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation, abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change;
convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth;
affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so;
conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth;
proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt it, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching, education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms, national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance among all peoples and States in the world.
Article 1. Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth is a living being.
(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.
(3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth.
(4) The inherent rights of Mother Earth are inalienable in that they arise from the same source as existence.
(5) Mother Earth and all beings are entitled to all the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as may be made between organic and inorganic beings, species, origin, use to human beings, or any other status.
(6) Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the communities within which they exist.
(7) The rights of each being are limited by the rights of other beings and any conflict between their rights must be resolved in a way that maintains the integrity, balance and health of Mother Earth.
Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent rights:
(a) the right to life and to exist;
(b) the right to be respected;
(c) the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions;
(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and interrelated being;
(e) the right to water as a source of life;
(f) the right to clean air;
(g) the right to integral health;
(h) the right to be free from contamination, pollution and toxic or radioactive waste;
(i) the right to not have its genetic structure modified or disrupted in a manner that threatens it integrity or vital and healthy functioning;
(j) the right to full and prompt restoration the violation of the rights recognized in this Declaration caused by human activities;
(2) Each being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her harmonious functioning.
(3) Every being has the right to wellbeing and to live free from torture or cruel treatment by human beings.
Article 3. Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth
(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth.
(2) Human beings, all States, and all public and private institutions must:
(a) act in accordance with the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;
(b) recognize and promote the full implementation and enforcement of the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration;
(c) promote and participate in learning, analysis, interpretation and communication about how to live in harmony with Mother Earth in accordance with this Declaration;
(d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth, now and in the future;
(e) establish and apply effective norms and laws for the defence, protection and conservation of the rights of Mother Earth;
(f) respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth;
(g) guarantee that the damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration are rectified and that those responsible are held accountable for restoring the integrity and health of Mother Earth;
(h) empower human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings;
(i) establish precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles;
(j) guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons;
(k) promote and support practices of respect for Mother Earth and all beings, in accordance with their own cultures, traditions and customs;
(l) promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth and in accordance with the rights recognized in this Declaration.
Article 4. Definitions
(1) The term “being” includes ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth.
(2) Nothing in this Declaration restricts the recognition of other inherent rights of all beings or specified beings.
Gus Speth, retired dean of environmental studies at Yale, is a founder of the Natural Resources Defence Council, World Resources Institute, and author including the recent Bridge at the End of the World (2008). His article is reprinted from Robert Costanza's Solutions Journal 28 May 2010; it was originally a 2010 lecture (recorded on video) to the The New Green Economy conference of the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE).
Dawn of a new era -- by Richard Morin
If America’s present system of political economy were performing well, there would be little need to question it or seek fundamental change. But that is not the case. Asked what the key goals of economic life should be, many would reply, “to enhance social well-being while sustaining democratic prospects and environmental quality.” Judged by this standard, today’s political economy is failing. It is a failure that reaches many spheres of national life—economic, social, political, and environmental. Indeed, America can be said to be in crisis in each of these four areas.1, 2
The economic crisis of the Great Recession brought on by Wall Street financial excesses has stripped tens of millions of middle class Americans of their jobs, homes, and retirement assets and plunged many into poverty and despair.
A social crisis of extreme and growing inequality has been unraveling America’s social fabric for several decades. A tiny minority has experienced soaring incomes and accumulated grand fortunes, while wages for working people have stagnated despite rising productivity gains and poverty has risen to a near 30-year high. Social mobility has declined, record numbers of people lack health insurance, schools are failing, prison populations are swelling, employment security is a thing of the past, and American workers put in more hours than workers in other high-income countries.3
An environmental crisis, driven by excessive human consumption and waste and a spate of terrible technologies, is disrupting Earth’s climate, reducing Earth’s capacity to support life, and creating large-scale human displacement that further fuels social breakdown.
And a political crisis is reflected in governmental paralysis and a democracy that is weak, shallow, and corrupted—the best democracy that money can buy.4-7
The case for fundamental change is underscored especially by the urgency of environmental conditions.1 Here is one measure of that problem: All that human societies have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and biota and leave a ruined world to future generations is to keep doing exactly what is being done today, with no growth in the human population or the world economy. Just continue to release greenhouse gases at current rates, just continue to impoverish ecosystems and release toxic chemicals at current rates, and the world in the latter part of this century won’t be fit to live in. But, of course, human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating dramatically. It took all of history to build the $7 trillion world economy of 1950; recently, economic activity has grown by that amount every decade. At typical rates of growth, the world economy will now double in size in less than 20 years. We are thus facing the possibility of an enormous increase in environmental deterioration, just when we need to move strongly in the opposite direction.
Accelerating environmental deterioration is most starkly revealed in the global trends—trends in which the U.S. economy and U.S. politics are deeply complicit. About half the world’s wetlands and a third of the mangroves are gone. An estimated 90 percent of the large predatory fish are gone, and 75 percent of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity. Twenty percent of the corals are gone, and another 20 percent severely threatened. Half the world’s temperate and tropical forests are gone. The rate of deforestation in the tropics continues at about one acre per second. Species are disappearing at rates about 1,000 times faster than normal. The planet has not seen such a spasm of extinction in 65 million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared. Over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration and desertification. Persistent toxic chemicals can now be found by the dozens in essentially each and every one of us.
Human impacts are now large relative to natural systems. The Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer was severely depleted before the change was discovered. Most importantly, human activities have pushed up atmospheric carbon dioxide by more than a third and increased other greenhouse gases as well, with the result that we have started, in earnest, the dangerous process of warming the planet and disrupting the climate. Everywhere, Earth’s ice fields are melting. Industrial processes are fixing nitrogen, making it biologically active, at the same rate that nature is; one consequence is the development of hundreds of dead zones in the oceans due to over-fertilization. Each year, human actions already consume or destroy about 40 percent of nature’s photosynthetic output, leaving too little for other species.
Freshwater withdrawals doubled globally between 1960 and 2000 and now represent over half of accessible runoff. The Colorado, Yellow, Ganges, and Nile Rivers, among others, no longer reach the oceans in the dry season.
planetary boundaries: Tällberg Foundation
To seek something new and better, a good place to begin is to ask why today’s system of political economy is failing so broadly. Environmentally, the answer is that key features of the system work together to produce a reality that is highly destructive. An unquestioning society-wide commitment to economic growth at almost any cost; powerful corporate interests whose overriding objective is to grow by generating profit, including profit from avoiding the environmental costs they create and from replicating technologies designed with little regard for the environment; markets that systematically fail to recognize environmental costs unless corrected by government; government that is subservient to corporate interests and the growth imperative; rampant consumerism spurred by an addiction to novelty and by sophisticated advertising; economic activity now so large in scale that its impacts alter the fundamental biophysical operations of the planet—all combine to deliver an ever-growing world economy that is undermining the ability of the planet to sustain life.1
This environmental reality is linked powerfully with growing social inequality and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control. Only a powerful democratic reality can guide and regulate the economy for environmental and social ends, and only a society that is cohesive and fair is likely to rise fully to shared challenges like the environment. Unfortunately, Americans today live and work in a system of political economy that cares profoundly about profits and growth and that cares about society and the natural world mainly to the extent it is required to do so. It is thus up to us as citizens to inject values of fairness, solidarity, and sustainability into this system, and government is the primary vehicle we have for accomplishing this. But typically, we fail at this assignment because our politics is too enfeebled and government is excessively under the thumb of powerful corporations and concentrations of great wealth. Consider the similarity between the recent financial collapse and the ongoing environmental deterioration. Both result from a system in which those with economic power are propelled, and not restrained by government, to take dangerous risks for the sake of great profit.
The prioritization of economic growth and economic values is at the root of the systemic failures and resulting crises America is now experiencing. Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. Productivity, wages, profits, the stock market, employment, and consumption must all go up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It can undermine families, jobs, communities, the environment, and a sense of place and continuity because it is confidently asserted and widely believed that growth is worth the price that must be paid for it. Growth is measured by tallying GDP at the national level and sales and profits at the company level, and pursuit of GDP and profit is the overwhelming priority of national economic and political life.
But an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again.8-18 Economic growth may be the world’s secular religion, but for much of the world it is a god that is failing—underperforming for most of the world’s people and, for those in affluent societies, now creating more problems than it is solving. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy undermines communities and the environment. It fuels a ruthless international search for energy and other resources; it fails at generating the needed jobs; and it rests on a manufactured consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs. Americans are substituting growth and consumption for dealing with the real issues—for doing things that would truly make the country better off. Psychologists have pointed out, for example, that while economic output per person in the United States has risen sharply in recent decades, there has been no increase in life satisfaction, and levels of distrust and depression have increased substantially.1,19,20
Writing in Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, psychologist David Myers sees this pattern of soaring wealth and shrinking spirit as “the American paradox.” He observes that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Americans found themselves “with big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger. These facts of life lead us to a startling conclusion: Our becoming better off materially has not made us better off psychologically.”21,22
Before it is too late, America should begin to move to a post-growth society where working life, the natural environment, our communities, and the public sector are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth; where the illusory promises of continuous growth no longer provide an excuse for neglecting to deal generously with compelling social needs; and where citizen democracy is no longer held hostage to the growth imperative.
For the most part, advocates for change have worked within the current system of political economy, but in the end, this approach will not succeed when what is needed is transformative change in the system itself. The case for immediate action on issues like health care and climate change is compelling, but the social and environmental challenges just reviewed will not yield to problem-solving incrementalism. Environmentalists and other progressives have gone down the path of incremental reform for decades, and the results of that experiment are in. The roots of our environmental and social problems are deeply systemic and thus require transformational change—the shift to a new, sustaining economy ushered in by a new politics. George Bernard Shaw famously said that all progress depends on not being reasonable. It’s time for a large amount of civic unreasonableness.
What circumstances might make transformational change and the birth of a sustaining economy possible? A decline in legitimacy as the system fails to deliver social and environmental well-being, together with a mounting sense of crisis and loss—both occurring at a time of wise leadership and accompanied by the articulation of a new American narrative or story and by the appearance across the landscape of new and appropriate models—were all these to come together, real change would be possible. Most of all, what is needed is a new politics and a new social movement, powerful and inclusive. The best hope for such a new political dynamic is a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, and political democracy into one progressive force. They all have a shared fate because they face the same reality: a political economy that does not prioritize sustaining human and natural communities.
.
Policies for a New Economy.
Americans are told routinely that the priority must be a strong economy. Yet many now appreciate that of equal or higher importance are a strong society, strong nature, and a strong democracy. Today’s economy offers little help in these regards. We must move beyond it. We need to reinvent the economy, not merely restore it.
Americans now face a great imperative to build a new economy—a sustaining economy. Sustaining people, communities, and nature must henceforth be seen as the core goals of economic activity, not hoped-for byproducts of market success, growth for its own sake, and modest regulation. The watchword of the sustaining economy is caring: caring for each other, for the natural world, and for the future.23-25
America’s open-ended commitment to aggregate economic growth is consuming environmental and social capital, both now severely diminished. That said, it is also clear that even in a post-growth America, many things do indeed need to grow: growth in good jobs and in the incomes of the poor; growth in the availability of health care and the efficiency of its delivery; growth in education, research, and training; growth in security against the risks of illness, job displacement, old age, and disability; growth in investment in public infrastructure and in environmental protection and amenity; growth in the deployment of climate-friendly and other green technologies; growth in the restoration of both ecosystems and local communities; growth in non-military government spending at the expense of military; and growth in international assistance for sustainable, people-centered development for the half of humanity that lives in poverty, to mention some prominent needs.
Jobs and meaningful work top this list because they are so important and unemployment is so devastating. Likely future rates of economic growth, even with further federal stimulus, are only mildly associated with declining unemployment. The availability of jobs, the well-being of people, and the health of communities should not be forced to await the day when overall economic growth might deliver them. It is time to shed the view that government mainly provides safety nets and occasional Keynesian stimuli. Instead, government should have an affirmative responsibility to ensure that those seeking decent jobs find them. And the surest and most cost-effective way to that end is direct government spending, investments and incentives targeted at creating jobs in areas where there is high social benefit. Creating new jobs in areas of democratically determined priority is certainly better than trying to create jobs by pump priming aggregate economic growth, especially in an era when the macho thing to do in much of business is to shed jobs, not create them.
Of particular importance for the new economy are government policies that will temper growth while simultaneously improving social and environmental well-being, policies such as shorter work weeks and longer vacations, with more time for children and families; greater labor protections, job security, and benefits, including generous parental leaves; guarantees to part-time workers; restrictions on advertising; a new design for the twenty-first-century corporation, one that embraces re-chartering, new ownership patterns, and stakeholder, rather than shareholder, primacy; incentives for local production and consumption; strong social and environmental provisions in trade agreements; rigorous environmental, health, and consumer protection, including full incorporation of environmental and social costs in prices; greater economic and social equality, with genuinely progressive taxation of the rich and greater income support for the poor; heavy spending on public services; and initiatives to address population growth at home and abroad. Taken together, these policies would undoubtedly slow GDP growth, but our well-being and quality of life would improve.
If the market is going to work for the betterment of society, environmental and social costs should be incorporated into prices, and wrong-headed government subsidies, a vast empire today, should be eliminated. Honest prices will ensure that people take into account the environmental and social impacts of their purchases, whether they are environmentally conscious or just minding their pocketbooks. High prices are a problem not so much because they are high but because people don’t have the money to pay them and alternatives (such as truly fuel-efficient vehicles) are not readily available. Honest prices would be higher prices for many things, but that does not mean Exxon should pocket the difference or that equity issues should remain unaddressed.
Responsibly high energy prices—driven, for example, by a declining cap on carbon dioxide emissions—will help protect the Earth’s climate, increase demand for efficient vehicles and public transportation, spur new renewable energy industries, decrease the supply vulnerabilities and international entanglements of imported oil, strengthen local communities, and encourage localization rather than globalization. But honest energy prices must be accompanied by measures that make them affordable for those on whom they would otherwise impose a serious hardship. Challenging America’s growth fetish and consumerism will not go far when so many barely get by and are desperate for jobs and greater income security.26 Clearly, addressing social and environmental needs must go hand in hand.
Conventional wisdom on the clash of economy and environment is that we can have it both ways, thanks to new technology and innovation. We do indeed need a revolution in energy, transportation, construction, and agriculture technologies. This ecological modernization can be driven by quantitative restrictions that ensure extractions from the environment do not exceed its regenerative capacities and discharges to the environment do not exceed its assimilative capacities. But the rate of technological change required to deal with environmental challenges in the face of rapid economic growth is extremely high and rarely achieved. If pollution from an industrial facility is cut in half but growth spawns another, similar plant, there is no net gain. Housing, appliances, and transportation can become more energy efficient, but the improvements will be overwhelmed if there are more cars, larger houses, and more new appliances – and there are. There’s a limit to how fast and far new technology can take us; technological change alone is not enough.
Americans are struggling today with the combined impacts of lost financial assets, underwater mortgages, and layoffs. These problems are associated with a slowdown in GDP growth, but they were not caused by a failure of growth, and they will not necessarily be cured by more growth. We have had jobless growth before. As is now appreciated, the current Great Recession and its consequences are the result of government failing to intervene appropriately in the marketplace—in financial markets, in housing markets, in labor markets, and elsewhere. Today we are feeling the effects of misguided policies, including massive deregulation, that have led to deep structural maladies. One lesson is clear: Today’s markets do not function well without strong and effective government intervention.
The economic crisis should also teach us to live more simply and focus more locally. It is time to move beyond consumerism and hyperventilating lifestyles. There has been too little focus on consumption and the mounting environmental and social costs of American “affluenza,” extravagance, and wastefulness. Being less focused on getting and spending (initially, in part, because there is less to spend) can help society rediscover that the truly important things in life are not at the mall nor, indeed, for sale anywhere.
Psychological studies show that materialism is toxic to happiness and that more income and more possessions do not lead to a lasting sense of well-being or satisfaction with life. What makes people happy is warm personal relationships and giving rather than getting, things that are possible at a human scale.1,27-29
The good news is that more and more people sense that there’s a great misdirection of life’s energy. In one survey, 83 percent of Americans said society is not focused on the right priorities, 81 percent said America is too focused on shopping and spending, 88 percent said American society is too materialistic, and 84 percent want to spend more time with family and friends.30
These numbers, even if half right, suggest that there is a powerful base on which we can build. Indeed, new signposts are emerging: Confront consumption. Practice sufficiency. Create social environments where overconsumption is viewed as silly, wasteful, ostentatious. Establish commercial-free zones. Buy local. Revitalize local economies. Eat slow food. Downshift. Public policy should support these directions, and it should also devise new measures to track improvements in social welfare, a purpose for which GDP is a miserable failure.31,32
Beyond policy change, another hopeful path into a sustainable and just future is to seed the landscape with innovative models. One of the most remarkable and yet under-noticed things going on in the United States today is the proliferation of innovative models of “local living” economies, sustainable communities and transition towns, and for-benefit businesses that prioritize community and environment over profit and growth. The community-owned Evergreen Cooperative in Cleveland is a wonderful case in point. An impressive array of new-economy businesses has been brought together in the American Sustainable Business Council and the B-Corporation program, and a new Fourth Sector is emerging, bringing together the best of the private sector, the not-for-profit NGOs, and government.33-41 .
A New Politics
The transformation of today’s economy requires far-reaching and effective government action. How else can the market be made to work for the environment rather than against it? How else can corporate behavior be altered or programs built to meet real human and social needs? Government is the principal means available to citizens to collectively exercise their stewardship responsibility to leave the world a better place. Inevitably, then, the drive for transformative change leads to the political arena, where a vital, muscular democracy, steered by an informed and engaged citizenry, is needed.
Yet, merely to state the matter this way suggests the enormity of the challenge. The ascendancy of market fundamentalism and anti-regulation, anti-government ideology has been particularly frightening, but even the passing of these extreme ideas would leave deeper, more long-term deficiencies. It is unimaginable that today’s American politics will deliver the transformative changes needed.
There are many reasons why government in Washington today is too often more problem than solution. It is hooked on GDP growth—for its revenues, for its constituencies, and for its influence abroad. Government has been captured by the very corporations and concentration of wealth it should be seeking to regulate and revamp. And it is hobbled by an array of dysfunctional institutional arrangements, beginning with the way presidents are elected.
Building the strength needed for change requires, first of all, a unified agenda among progressives. As mentioned, the best hope for a new political dynamic is a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, and political democracy into one progressive force. A unified agenda would embrace a profound commitment to social justice and environmental protection, a sustained challenge to consumerism and commercialism and the lifestyles they offer, a healthy skepticism of growth-mania and a new look at what society should be striving to grow, a challenge to corporate dominance and a redefinition of the corporation and its goals, and a commitment to an array of major pro-democracy reforms.
The new agenda should also incorporate advocacy of human rights as a central concern. For example, though environmental justice has gained a foothold in American environmentalism, it is not yet the priority it should be. Many established environmental issues should be seen as human rights issues—the right to water and sanitation, the right to sustainable development, the right to cultural survival, freedom from climatic disruption and ruin, freedom to live in a non-toxic environment, and the rights of future generations.
The new politics must turn major attention to the urgent need for political reforms in campaign finance, elections, the regulation of lobbying, and much more. In their book Off Center, political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have developed an important and innovative agenda for political reform, including the revitalization of large-scale membership organizations that give citizens more leverage in the political process and measures that could increase voter turnout, open primaries, pursue nonpartisan redistricting, guarantee a minimum free TV and radio time for all federal candidates meeting basic requirements, reduce the perks of incumbency, and bring back the Fairness Doctrine requiring equal air time for competing political views.42 Meanwhile, Common Cause, Americans for Campaign Reform, and others have developed a powerful case for clean and fair elections through public financing, a case now even stronger due to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.43-45
Successful political reform will also depend on addressing issues of social justice. In his book On Political Equality, America’s senior political scientist Robert Dahl concludes it is “highly plausible” that “powerful international and domestic forces [could] push us toward an irreversible level of political inequality that so greatly impairs our present democratic institutions as to render the ideals of democracy and political equality virtually irrelevant.”46 The authors brought together by political analysts Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol in Inequality and American Democracy document the emergence of a vicious cycle: Income disparities shift political access and influence to wealthy constituencies and businesses, which further imperils the potential of the democratic process to correct the growing income disparities.47
If the first watchword of the new politics is “broaden the agenda,” the second is “get political.” Lawyering and lobbying are important, but what the new politics must build now is a mighty force in electoral politics. Building the necessary muscle will require major efforts at grassroots organizing; strengthening groups working at the state and community levels; and developing messages, appeals, and stories that inspire and motivate because they speak in a language people can understand, resonating with what is best in both the American tradition and the public’s values and presenting compelling visions of a future worth having for families and children.
Our environmental discourse has been dominated thus far by lawyers, scientists, and economists. It has been too wonkish, out of touch with Main Street. Now, we need to hear a lot more from the poets, preachers, philosophers, and psychologists. And indeed, we are. The world’s religions are coming alive to their environmental roles—entering their ecological phase, in the words of religious leader Mary Evelyn Tucker. And just last year, the American Psychological Association devoted its annual gathering to environmental issues. The Earth Charter text and movement are providing a powerful base for a revitalization of the ethical and spiritual grounds of environmental efforts.
The final watchword of the new politics is “build the movement.” Efforts to build strength in America’s electoral process and to bring together a wider array of constituencies embracing a broader agenda should contribute to the emergence of a powerful citizens’ movement for change. The new politics must be broadly inclusive, reaching out to embrace union members and working families, minorities and people of color, religious organizations, environmentalists, the women’s movement, and other communities of complementary interest and shared fate. It is unfortunate, but true, that stronger alliances are still needed to overcome the “silo effect” that separates progressive communities, including those working on environment, domestic political reforms, the liberal social agenda, human rights, international peace, consumer issues, world health and population concerns, and world poverty and underdevelopment.
.
An Agenda for Analysis and Action
Building a new economy and a new politics must be an ecumenical endeavor open to many progressive perspectives and ideas. Progress requires concerted efforts from many communities in at least three areas: challenging the current order of things, envisioning a new order and identifying the initiatives needed to realize it, and building capacity to promote change.
Challenging the current order. A great many Americans remain enthralled by a reigning mythology now deeply embedded in the national consciousness: GDP growth is an unalloyed good. Government regulation and other interference in the economy must meet the test of economic benefit. America is a land of economic opportunity and consumer sovereignty. The poor are poor because they deserve to be. We are well on our way to solving our environmental problems. America is the most democratic nation on Earth, and also the most generous, with the best health care.
The reality, of course, is far from these propositions. It is important that this mythology be dethroned and that accurate information about actual conditions and trends be brought to an ever wider audience. Real life in America too often sharply conflicts with the country’s best values and highest aspirations.
Envisioning a new order. Envisioning the new economy and a new politics involves three linked projects:
The Values Project. What are the core values to be prioritized and harmonized?
The Transformations Project. What transformations are needed in order to realize core values? What measures would best characterize and carry forward these transitions? It is not difficult to identify areas where transformative change is essential:
The market: from laissez-faire to regulation and governance in the public interest;
The corporation: from shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy, from one ownership and motivation model to many;
Social conditions: from economic insecurity to security, from vast inequities to fundamental fairness;
Economic growth: from growth fetish to post-growth society, from mere GDP growth to growth in human welfare and democratically determined priorities;
Indicators: from GDP to accurate measures of social and environmental health and quality of life;
Consumerism: from consumerism and “affluenza” to sufficiency and mindful consumption;
Communities: from ruthless runaway enterprise to vital local economies, from rootlessness to rootedness and solidarity;
Dominant cultural values: from having to being, from getting to giving, from richer to better, from separate to connected, from apart from nature to part of nature, from transcendent to interdependent, from now to forever;
Politics: from weak democracy to strong, from corporatocracy to true popular sovereignty;
Global vision: from economic globalization to planetary civilization worthy of the name, from invidious division to global citizenship;
Foreign policy and the military: from exceptionalism to interdependence, from hard power to soft, from war economy to peace economy.
The Synthesis Project. Presenting a positive, integrated vision of life in a world transformed is a powerful motivator of change. Narrative is important—telling a new American story and forging a new American dream.
Building capacity to promote change. Much needs to be done to strengthen capacities for transformative change. Areas needing attention include:
“Progressive fusion” in politics: overcoming silos, forging a common progressive agenda, and uniting unexpected allies with shared values;
Social movements: building a powerful movement for transformative change;
Community actions: seeding the landscape with innovative “new economy” models;
Key institutions: engaging religions, local governments, youth, colleges and universities, and others;
International solidarity: building ties to those abroad with common concerns;
Crisis anticipation: getting ready for crises that will surely come;
Ideas, research, and writing: building think-tank capacities and linking ideas to action.
An important initial step is to identify and elaborate on early initiatives and objectives that are plausible and not seemingly utopian, but that create momentum towards long-term goals and shape future paths.
.
Conclusion
Historian Richard Hofstadter made the following interesting observation in The American Political Tradition:48 “Although it has been said repeatedly that we need a new conception of the world to replace the ideology of self-help, free enterprise, competition, and beneficent cupidity upon which Americans have been nourished since the foundation of the Republic, no new conceptions of comparable strength have taken root and no statesman with a great mass following has arisen to propound them...."
"Almost the entire span of American history under the present Constitution has coincided with the rise and spread of modern industrial capitalism. In material power and productivity the United States has been a flourishing success. Societies that are in such good working order have a kind of mute organic consistency. They do not foster ideas that are hostile to their fundamental working arrangements. Such ideas may appear, but they are slowly and persistently insulated, as an oyster deposits nacre around an irritant. They are confined to small groups of dissenters and alienated intellectuals, and except in revolutionary times they do not circulate among practical politicians.”
Times change. It is now clear that American society is no longer in “good working order.” It is time to foster ideas that challenge the “fundamental working arrangements.”
Speth, JG. The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability 1–78, 126–164 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009).
Hamilton, C. Growth Fetish (Pluto Press, London, 2004).
Korten, D. Agenda for a New Economy (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2009).
Simms, A et al. Growth Isn’t Possible: Why We Need a New Economic Direction (New Economics Foundation, London, 2010).
Costanza, R. Stewardship for a “full” world. Current History 107, 30–35 (2008).
Beddoe, R et al. Overcoming systemic roadblocks to sustainability: the evolutionary redesign of worldviews, institutions and technologies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 2483–2489 (2009).
de Graaf, J & Batker, D. What’s the Economy for, Anyway? [online]. www.bullfrogfilms.com[5].
Barber, BR. Consumed (W.W. Norton, New York, 2007).
The Worldwatch Institute. State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures, From Consumerism to Sustainability (W.W. Norton, New York, 2010).
Myers, DG. What is the good life? Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures 15 (2004).
Myers, DG. The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000).
Eisler, R. The Real Wealth of Nations (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2007).
Ehrenreich, B. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (Henry Holt, New York, 2001).
Kasser, T & Kanner, AD, eds. Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World (American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2004).
Diener, E & Seligman, MEP. Beyond money: toward an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (2004).
Layard, R. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science (Penguin, New York, 2005).
Nous entendons régulièrement parler de privatisation, particulièrement depuis le printemps 2003 alors que le parti libéral du Québec, sous la direction de M. Jean Charest, accédait au pouvoir. Privatisation par-ci, privatisation par-là, il semble que l’air du temps est saturé de ce parfum à la mode… Oui, mais à la mode pour qui? Qui profite vraiment des transferts de services traditionnellement offerts par l’État à l’entreprise privée? Qui a intérêt à voir se démanteler ce qui relève du Bien commun et non de l’intérêt particulier? Au nom de quoi s’entête-t-on à emprunter la route des privatisations?
Bien sûr, le gouvernement parle plutôt de partenariat public-privé, mais la logique à l’œuvre est essentiellement celle des privatisations. Dans cette perspective, il n’est pas innocent de savoir que cette dynamique s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’idéologie néolibérale qui peut se
comprendre autour des trois axes fondamentaux suivants : la libéralisation; la déréglementation et la privatisation. À cet égard, dans son livre Le bien commun: Éloge de la solidarité, Riccardo Petrella parle alors de la « Sainte-Trinité » du dieu marché. Pourquoi faire appel à un langage de type religieux lorsqu’il est question d’économie? À mon point de vue, il est non seulement possible, mais éclairant de faire une lecture religiologique de la réalité économique actuelle.
Disons d’abord que l’être humain a une propension évidente à se fabriquer des dieux. C’est-à-dire qu’il va absolutiser un aspect ou l’autre de la réalité et s’y soumettre aveuglément sans distance critique. Ça peut être le pouvoir, l’argent, la sécurité nationale, le corps,l’individualisme, le sexe, mais aussi le marché. Une fois absolutisé, l’aspect de la réalité transformée en chose sacré, c’est-à-dire en un dieu, devient un intouchable qu’on ne peutpas remettre en question ni critiquer sans passer pour gauchiste et ennemis du progrès. C’est ainsi que Petrella va parler du dieu marché. Une fois transformé en absolu on a attribué au nouveau dieu marché des fantasmes d’autorégulation comme s’il se suffisait à lui-même et que personne ne contribue à son fonctionnement. Ainsi, l’adhésion aux prétendues vertus du marché devient un acte de foi de type religieux et les convertis se transforment en dépositaire de vérités révélées par le dieu marché. Il devient alors particulièrement difficile de pouvoir entrer en dialogue avec les disciples du dieu marché, qui, du fait qu’ils connaissent la vérité, sont convaincus de posséder une lucidité d’esprit qui disqualifie les personnes qui ne pensent pas comme eux. En fait, il s’agit plutôt d’une soumission aveugle au dieu.
Puisque la logique de privatisation découle de l’enseignement idéologique du dieu marché, elle passe pour incontournable et inéluctable. D’où la nécessité de déconstruire la logique néolibérale pour en dévoiler les véritables rouages et éveiller l’esprit critique. Seule une intelligence libre, si elle peut véritablement l’être, peut oser remettre en question les enseignements du dieu, ce qui s’impose comme la norme et apparaît, de ce fait, incontestable. D’où aussi l’importance de poser des questions comme celles que j’ai formulées au premier paragraphe de ce texte.
Nicholas Poussin, l'Adoration du veau d'or (ca 1634)
voir Exode 32, Quran 20:83.
Avant tout, l’entreprise privée vise essentiellement le profit. Dans la perspective néolibérale, nous devons plutôt parler de maximisation des profits. Dans cette foulée, le privé à tout intérêt à voir se transformer en marchandise des secteurs qui jusque-là ne lui étaient pas dévolus. La santé, l’éducation, l’eau constituent une manne potentielle de profits mirobolants pour le secteur privé. Les grandes Corporations salivent d'emblée et pressent les gouvernements d’assurer l’accès à cette manne. Ainsi, au nom de la libre entreprise, de la compétitivité, de la croissance économique, c’est-à-dire au nom du dieu marché, nous voyons nos dirigeants mettre la hache dans l’appareil étatique en sabrant dans les programmes sociaux, dans les mesures de protection environnementales et en dilapidant ce qui relève du Bien commun au profit du secteur privé. Comment le Bien de tous et de toutes peut-il être remis entre les mains de quelques-uns qui se préoccupent avant tout de leur profit? C’est pourquoi il nous faut dénoncer, résister à cette logique qui nous dépossède et nous appauvrit tous et toutes. Il faut dire non à la soumission à dieu pour pouvoir dire un jour : soumission adieu.
Patrick Bond is a South African ecojustice activist, director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His publications here. This TED video was recorded 24 May 2010.
Below is a reprint of his article in Pambazuka News14 Oct 2010, to be included in his forthcoming The Politics of Climate Justice.
Patrick Bond: Let us accept Pat Mooney’s six theses about damaging new world trends: Loss of diversity; the threat of shock-therapy bio-engineering; the profusion of state-subsidised technological fixes (mainly unworkable); the disempowerment of those promoting ecologically- and socially-preferable alternatives; amplified state-corporate control over body politics and individual bodies implied by many of these fixes; and ‘corporatist’ politics at global and national scales directly linking state resources to crony-capitalist private profit.
Accepting these premises and turning our attention to Africa, the questions posed in this article are: How do such zany schemes get funded by global capital and multilateral financial institutions? Can we derail the techie agenda with a defunding strategy, by cutting off the financial lifeblood? And following logically: If lack of finance is a barrier to achieving alternative visions, how then might we break that barrier? The most challenging case, in which the money will flow fastest and most inappropriately – and where the need for an alternative, fair and just financing arrangement is most acute – is the climate crisis.
Financing ebbs and flows
Setting aside hard-to-predict Chinese flows or the purchase of vast swathes of African land by other countries (India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia), it does seem that elites lack solid commitments for external financing to make possible both private sector speculative projects and public sector infrastructural investment in Africa. In some periods there is an overflow of such finance, such as the mid/late-1970s, mid/late-1990s and late 2000s, when bubbly Northern markets pushed credit into the pockets – and often the overseas bank accounts – of Africa’s venal rulers, to be repaid by the impoverished masses mainly through intensified mineral and cash crop exports, with structural adjustment programmes as the banker’s squeezing technique.
Then came the 2008-09 economic meltdown, when within a six-month period, half the value on the world’s stock markets disappeared. Credit for even profitable firms became hard to get in the North, much less Africa. Other factors that dried up African financing included the mid-2008 commodity price crash (still nowhere near recovery), ongoing military strife in key sites, and worsening austerity conditions in the many rich donor countries which are cutting bilateral aid. While South Africa has received large financial inflows through emerging-market speculative funds, few private investors would put money into the rest of the continent.
Soon, however, a surplus of official multilateral credit became available, albeit with tight strings attached. Led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose member states granted the institution more than US$750 billion in new lending capacity in 2009, the multilateral banks were financially re-empowered by the crisis. This was highly inappropriate, for their liberalising ideology was a central cause of the contagion, especially the 1990s command to drop capital controls and trade restrictions.
The World Bank, too, has a surplus of monies for investment, hence found it acceptable in April 2010 to dump US$3.75 billion into the largest coal-fired power station on the continent, the Medupi project in South Africa, in spite of myriad problems. But does new-found Bretton Woods Institution wealth translate into African credit-worthiness? The multilateral financiers would like us to accept their affirmative answer, yet the evidence is mixed.
"Africa is growing again"
Judging by a raft of reports in 2009-10, as well as some offhanded comments by the World Bank’s leading economist for Africa, Shanta Devarajan, the neoliberal bloc is promoting a curious argument: Africa’s ‘growth has accelerated since the 1990s’ because ‘these countries adopted exactly the Washington Consensus policies in the mid-1990s… out of their own accord, out of domestic political consensus, rather than imposed from Washington or Paris or London. And I think that’s the point that people are not recognizing, that the actual policies that are generating the growth, are actually very similar to what was criticized in the structural adjustment era’. It is easy to argue with Devarajan – because the ‘growth’ is mythical, since GDP does not record the extraction of non-renewable resources. Once one makes this correction, as even the World Bank did in 2006, the net wealth associated with most African countries’ economies is negative (see Bond vs Devarajan 2010, Devarajan vs Bond 2010).
It is also easy to rebut the hubristic argument that in Africa the Washington Consensus ideology was adopted by ‘domestic political consensus’. And it’s easy to show how ‘growth’ has been so distorted in Africa – accompanied by rising inequality and macroeconomic imbalances – as to be untenable for anything more than building neocolonial rail lines, roads, ports and energy systems aimed solely at extracting more minerals, petroleum and cash crops. Backward-forward linkages and indigenous manufacturing were generally not on any financier’s agenda, and few if any African elites (aside from SA industry minister Rob Davies) have made efforts to balance their economies in a sensible way. As an ideology and political bloc stretching from Washington to the technocrats and politicians who manage every African capital, neoliberalism has simply been impervious to its own recent and soon-to-reappear crises.
Africa's environmental credits
For most foreign investors, Africa has always been a compliant site for not only mineral / petroleum extraction, but also abuse of the continent’s ‘ecological space’. Being on-grid for resource extraction and environmental exploitation in this manner is a curse. The looting of Africa’s environmental resources, the lack of industrial development and the role of the great central African rainforest as a prolific sink for the North’s CO2 emissions, together give rise to the argument that the industrialised powers owe Africa – and many other South sites – a formal debt for using too much ecological space, and for ripping out non-renewable resources in an unsustainable manner.
According to the Ecuador-based advocacy group Accion Ecologica (2000): ‘ecological debt is the debt accumulated by Northern, industrial countries toward Third World countries on account of resource plundering, environmental damages, and the free occupation of environmental space to deposit wastes, such as greenhouse gases, from the industrial countries.’
The leading scientist in the field, Autonomous University of Barcelona’s Joan Martinez-Alier (2003), calculates ecological debt in many forms: ‘nutrients in exports including virtual water, the oil and minerals no longer available, the biodiversity destroyed, sulphur dioxide emitted by copper smelters, the mine tailings, the harms to health from flower exports, the pollution of water by mining, the commercial use of information and knowledge on genetic resources, when they have been appropriated gratis (‘biopiracy’), and agricultural genetic resources.’ As for the North’s ‘lack of payment for environmental services or for the disproportionate use of environmental space,’ Martinez-Alier criticises ‘imports of solid or liquid toxic waste, and free disposal of gas residues (carbon dioxide, CFCs, etc).’
How should this debt be repaid? Simply through forgiving financial debt? More than a quarter century ago, debt-for-nature swaps were pioneered in Latin America as a way local elites could maintain contractual obligations to global finance (thus not losing out on credit ratings and international standing) while *several rather unprincipled international environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) could tap into new donor pools to acquire ‘new enclosures’ for conservation purposes. [*see group 3 in EnvNet -- Ed.]
Kenya violence against indigenes: Intercontinental Cry and Madre.org Many organisations of indigenous people have been outraged, and today formally oppose the latest version of enclosures, the REDD programme ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries’(Evo Morales 29 Sep 2010).
Instead of such schemes, whose effects are to permit Northern polluters to continue business as usual and Northern financiers and ENGOs to gain greater control, those responsible for taking advantage of Africa’s natural resources should pay their ecological debt, according to the principle of polluters pay. This is an especially compelling argument, now that there is near-universal awareness of the damage being done by rising greenhouse gas emissions, and by the ongoing stubborn refusal by the rich to cut back.
However, demands by Jubilee South and others for no-strings eco-debt repayment plus dramatic cuts in Northern greenhouse gas emissions – to allow Africa its fair share of future industrial development – are the opposite of the elites’ strategy. Instead of repaying climate credits, the Northern capitalists have drawn African rulers into a financing game they much prefer: Carbon trading.
Carbon credits, not climate debt
In 1997 at the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, the Global North offered to assist Africa financially through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, in a context of declining overseas development aid associated with the end of the Cold War. Many African elites agreed, along with once reluctant environmental groups. Popular movements were unaware and uninvolved, and expert opinion was mixed about the efficacy and moral implications. The proponents of carbon trading argued that this would be the least painful – and least resisted – means of capping greenhouse gas emissions and allowing economies to adapt to new carbon constraints.
Market mechanisms – especially carbon trading and offsets – allow corporations and governments generating greenhouse gases to seemingly reduce their net emissions. They can do this, thanks to the Kyoto Protocol, by trading for others’ certified emissions reductions (e.g. CDM projects in the Third World) or emissions rights (e.g. Eastern Europe’s ‘hot air’ that followed the 1990s economic collapse).
The pro-trading rationale is that once property rights are granted to polluters for these emissions, even if given not auctioned (hence granting a generous giveaway), a ‘cap’ can be put on a country’s or the world’s total emissions. It will then be progressively lowered, if there is political will. So as to minimise adverse economic impact, corporations can stay within the cap even by emitting way above it, by buying others’ rights to pollute.
Crashing carbon capitalism
Although in 1997, this theory may been plausible, by 2010 it was clear that the main pilots had failed. CDMs fit within the broader carbon markets: roughly 6.5 per cent of the US$125 billion in 2008 trades, a ratio that fell substantially in 2009. For those Africans who bought into carbon trading, there were howls of protest about an obvious injustice: The share of CDM financing to Africa continued to be disproportionately low, around 3 per cent of all CDM projects. Most credits emanated from South Africa, with its huge emissions and large cadre of environmental technical specialists. Per capita CO2 emissions for Africa (green) and developed countries (red) 2002. Libya and South Africa are leading emitters. Click on graph to see details. source: UNEP GRID-Arendal
Given the controversies already evident in myriad European Union Emissions Trading Scheme credibility crises, corruption cases and price volatility problems – with the 2008-09 ‘value’ of a tonne of CO2 falling from €30 at peak to less than €9, before adjusting to around €15 during 2010 – the question emerged whether CDMs were not fundamentally flawed as a strategy for climate financing (Lohmann 2006, 2010). The apparent demise of carbon trading in the 2009-10 legislative session of the US Senate made this strategy a losing proposition not only for Africa but also at the global scale. [see US ACES aka Kerry-Boxer -- Ed.]
Even without the expected Washington gridlock, mainly as a result of sabotage by powerful fossil fuel interests, carbon trading had crashed on its own terms by early 2010. ‘The concept is in wide disrepute’, reported the New York Times (25 March 2010), with US Senator Maria Cantwell explaining that ‘cap and trade’ (the US description) was ‘discredited by the Wall Street crisis, the Enron scandal and the rocky start to a carbon credits trading system in Europe that has been subject to dizzying price fluctuations and widespread fraud.’
But it is to left-wing critics of emissions trading that we turn for a more rounded critique, especially the Durban Group for Climate Justice, founded in 2004 in South Africa. Most in the climate justice movement argue that the carbon market is not working:
The idea of inventing a property right to pollute is effectively the ‘privatization of the air’, a moral problem given the vast and growing differentials in wealth inequalities
Greenhouse gases are complex and their rising production creates a non-linear impact which cannot be reduced to a commodity exchange relationship (a tonne of CO2 produced in one place accommodated by reducing a tonne in another, as is the premise of the emissions trade)
The corporations most guilty of pollution and the World Bank – which is most responsible for fossil fuel financing – are the driving forces behind the market, and can be expected to engage in systemic corruption to attract money into the market even if this prevents genuine emissions reductions
Many of the offsetting projects – such as monocultural timber plantations, forest ‘protection’ and landfill methane-electricity projects – have devastating impacts on local communities and ecologies, and have been hotly contested in part because the carbon sequestered is far more temporary (since trees die) than the carbon emitted
The price of carbon determined in these markets is haywire, making mockery of the idea that there will be an effective market mechanism to make renewable energy a cost-effective investment
There is a serious potential for carbon markets to become an out-of-control, multi-trillion dollar speculative bubble, similar to exotic financial instruments associated with Enron’s 2002 collapse (indeed, many Enron employees populate the carbon markets)
As a ‘false solution’ to climate change, carbon trading encourages merely small, incremental shifts, and thus distracts us from a wide range of radical changes we need to make in materials extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal; and
The idea of market solutions to market failure (‘externalities’) is an ideology that rarely makes sense, and especially not following the world’s worst-ever financial market failure, and especially not when the very idea of derivatives – a financial asset whose underlying value is several degrees removed and also subject to extreme variability – was thrown into question.
African advocates of carbon trading
Notwithstanding the chaos and corruption, there are prominent supporters of environment and development – including at least three leading Africans – who continue promoting the emissions trade. For some, this can be attributed to substantial conflicts of interest, which arose in joint roles as climate cooling advocates and carbon traders. According to Michael Dorsey, professor of political ecology at Dartmouth College, ‘After more than a decade of failed politicking [on behalf of carbon trading], many NGO types... are only partially jumping off the sinking ship – so as to work for industries driving the problem. Unfortunately, many continue to influence NGO policy from their current positions, while failing to admit to or even understand obvious conflicts of interest’ (cited in Bond 2009).
In the highest-profile African case, Wangari Maathai, the former Kenyan deputy environment minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, such conflicts were not a factor. But there were certainly self-interested reasons for Valli Moosa, South Africa’s former environment minister (1999-2004), to promote carbon trading as minister at the critical 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. In the latter half of the 2000s, Moosa went on to preside over the IUCN and chaired the board of the continent’s largest energy company and CO2 emitter, Eskom, and became actively involved in the trade as a sideline. Then in March 2010, he was implicated, as a member of the African National Congress (ANC) financing committee, in unethically channelling tens of millions of rands in earnings to the ruling party by signing Eskom purchase orders for Medupi’s new boilers in a way that directly benefited the ANC, which in turn was financed by the controversial World Bank loan.
Moosa’s successor as minister of environment, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, was an apartheid-era youth spy for the white regime during the 1980s, who took control of the National Party in the late 1990s and then dissolved it into the ANC in exchange for the ministerial position (although in 2009 he was demoted to tourism minister). Van Schalkwyk (cited in Bond, Dada and Erion, 2009) argued in 2006 that ‘The 17 CDM projects in the pipeline in Sub-Sahara Africa account for only 1.7 per cent of the total of 990 projects worldwide. To build faith in the carbon market and to ensure that everyone shares in its benefits, we must address the obstacles that African countries face.’ At the International Emissions Trading Association Forum in Washington a year later, he insisted, ‘An all-encompassing global carbon market regime which includes all developed countries is the first and ultimate aim.’ Van Schalkwyk was nominated by South Africa to replace Yvo de Boer as UN climate negotiations director in early 2010, but his candidacy barely failed (to Costa Rican carbon trader Christiana Figueres).
Maathai, too, promoted carbon trading through her own Greenbelt Movement in the expectation that CDMs and emerging proposals for REDD would reward tree-planting in both her indigenous strategy as well as monocultural timber plantations. She was also the leading proponent of the document ‘Africa speaks up on Climate Change’, which fed into the African Climate Appeal’, a statement which insists upon more CDM finance with fewer strings attached, especially for afforestation: ‘African governments should ensure that there is equity in geographical distribution of CDM projects and that this is entrenched in the international policy process. They should negotiate for the requirement of up front funding of CDM projects to be waived for many African countries who cannot afford it. The appeal calls upon African countries to embark on the development of CDM capacities and projects including capacity building and development of centers of incubation for CDM projects. African governments should explore possibilities of accessing grants to provide upfront funding for CDM projects and also project development and financing through bilateral arrangements’ (Matthai, 2009, p. 4). [no longer available on the Böll Foundation website -- Ed.]
Maathai criticised three existing funds – the Special Climate Change Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Bali Adaptation Fund – because these funds have not been able to address concerns of African countries on adaptation, namely:
‘[A]ccess, adequacy and equitable geographical distribution. The funds are largely inadequate and inappropriately structured; currently relying on a 2 percent levy on CDM projects. Access to the funds has been made difficult, among others, by bureaucratic bottlenecks of the Global Environmental Fund and the World Bank.’ (Matthai, 2009, p. 4).
Demanding debt repayment by the North
Instead of requesting more CDM carbon trading funds, many more civil society groups instead insisted on raising climate debt as the optimal financing route. In August 2008, African chapters of Jubilee South converged in Nairobi to debunk limited ‘debt relief’ by Northern powers and to plan the next stage of financial campaigning. Nairobi-based Africa Jubilee South co-coordinator Njoki Njehu concluded, ‘Africa and the rest of the Global South are owed a huge historical and ecological debt for slavery, colonialism, and centuries of exploitation’ (cited in Bond and Brutus, 2008, p. 1).
Behind African elite considerations is the threat to repeat their performance in Seattle in 1999 and Cancun in 2003, when denial of consent in World Trade Organisation negotiations was the proximate cause of the summits’ collapse on both occasions. On 3 September 2009, Meles Zenawi issued a strong threat from Addis Ababa about the upcoming Copenhagen conference: ‘If need be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threatens to be another rape of our continent’ (cited in Ashine 2009). To gather that power, Zenawi established the Conference of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change: chairpersons of the AU and the AU Commission, representatives of Ethiopia, Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Chairpersons of the African Ministerial Conference on Environment and Technical Negotiators on climate change from all member states. They met at the AU Summit in Sirte, Libya in July 2009, agreeing that Africa would have a sole delegation to Copenhagen with a united front and demands for compensation.
The most important African negotiator – and largest CO2 emitter (responsible for more than 40 per cent of the continent’s CO2) – is South Africa (Bond, Dada and Erion, 2009). Long seen as a vehicle for Western interests in Africa, Pretoria’s negotiators have two conflicting agendas: Increasing Northern payments to Africa (a longstanding objective of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, which requested US$64 billion per annum in aid and investment concessions during the early 2000s); and increasing CO2 outputs through around 2050, when the Long-Term Mitigation Scenario – South Africa’s official climate cap – would come into effect and emissions declines are offered as a scenario. In the meantime, Pretoria has earmarked more than US$100 billion for emissions-intensive coal and nuclear fired electricity generation plants due to be constructed during 2010-15, which would amplify Africa’s climate crisis, requiring more resources from the North for adaptation.
But the current South African environment minister, Buyelwa Sonjica, made a demand in September 2009: ‘We expect money. We need money to be made available... we need money as of yesterday for adaptation and mitigation’ (Engineering News 2009). What Sonjica didn’t comprehend is that any just calculation of financing responsibilities for climate debt would identify South Africa as a debtor not creditor country.
Copenhagen showdown
The effect of the Africans’ rhetoric appeared to entail some immediate concessions. In September 2009, the European Union announced it would begin paying its climate debt, but only up to US$22 billion annually to fund adaptation, roughly one seventh of what EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas observed would be required by 2020 (US$145b). Some of that would be subtracted from existing aid. The EU damage estimates were considered far too conservative, as China’s mitigation and adaptation costs alone would be US$438 billion annually by 2030, according to Beijing. According to one report, the EU view is thatemissions trading should be the basis of ‘much of the shortfall’: ‘The international carbon market, if designed properly, will create an increasing financial flow to developing countries and could potentially deliver as much as €38bn per year in 2020’ (Chaffin and Crooks 2009: 24).
Because this offer was widely judged as inadequate, Zenawi carried out a trial run of his walk-out threat just prior to Copenhagen, in November 2009 at a Barcelona UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) meeting. Sufficient concessions were not on the table, so his technical negotiators registered a protest. But at the crucial moment in Copenhagen, during the final week when heads of state would arrive to negotiate a new protocol, Zenawi diverted his own flight from Addis Ababa via Paris, where he met French premier Nicolas Sarkozy. Shortly thereafter, he announced the halving of Africa’s climate debt demands (Vidal in Guardian 4 Nov 2009).
According to Mithika Mwenda of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), this act had the effect of ‘undermining the bold positions of our negotiators and ministers represented here, and threatening the very future of Africa… Meles wants to sell out the lives and hopes of Africans for a pittance. Every other African country has committed to policy based on the science’ (cited in Reddy, Climate Chronicle 18 Dec 2009, p. 2).
Then on 17 December, US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton offered what appeared to be a major concession (US State Dept. 2009):
‘… in the context of a strong accord in which all major economies stand behind meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to their implementation, the United States is prepared to work with other countries toward a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries. We expect this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.’
Yet there was no firm line-item in the US budget to this end, just a promise (the US had regularly broken similar aid promises in the past, and at the same time the US President Barack Obama was cutting back AIDS medicines funding to Africa). The private sources of finances alone could easily exceed US$100 billion, with CDMs at the time in excess of 6 per cent of the US$125 billion emissions markets. If, as predicted, the size of the 2020 carbon market reached US$3 trillion, it would take just 3.3 per cent dedicated to CDMs to reach the US$100 billion target. So given the private sourcing and likelihood of loans not grants, Clinton’s offer could readily be rejected as meaningless.
However, several countries had insisted on climate debt as a negotiating framework even before Copenhagen, including Venezuela, Paraguay, Malaysia and Sri Lanka. But in Copenhagen, only Sudan stood out, partly because its UN Ambassador, Lumumba di-Aping, had such a visible role as G77 chief negotiator. At one point, when briefing civil society a week before the fatal Copenhagen Accord deal, he ‘sat silently, tears rolling down his face,’ according to a report, and then said, simply, ‘We have been asked to sign a suicide pact.’ For much of the continent, said Di-Aping, 2 degrees C globally meant 3.5 degrees C: ‘certain death for Africa’, a type of ‘climate fascism’ imposed on Africa by polluters, in exchange for which the Third World would get a measly US$10 billion per year in ‘fast track’ funding, although ‘US$10 billion is not enough to buy us coffins’. Agreeing with leading US climate scientist James Hansen, the Copenhagen deal on offer was ‘worse than no deal’, said Di-Aping, concluding, ‘I would rather die with my dignity than sign a deal that will channel my people into a furnace.’ As for the main negotiator, he had this prophesy: ‘What is Obama going to tell his daughters? That their [Kenyan] relatives’ lives are not worth anything? It is unfortunate that after 500 years-plus of interaction with the West we [Africans] are still considered “disposables”’ (cited in Welz 2009).
Continuing climate justice advocacy
After this debacle, it was up to the Bolivian government to pick up the baton. In Cochabamba April 2010, the World Conference of Peoples on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth (PWCCC) issued demands for a formal compensation mechanism for climate debt. The conference’s Working Group on Climate Debt (2010, p. 1) argued as follows:
‘Climate debt is an obligation of compensation that is generated because of the damage done to Mother Earth by the irrational emissions of greenhouse gases. The primary responsible for these irrational emissions are the so-called ‘developed countries ‘, inhabited by only 20% of the world population, and which emitted 75% of historical emissions of greenhouse gases.
‘These states, which stimulated the capitalist development model, are responsible for climate debt, but we shouldn’t forget that within these states, there live poor and indigenous peoples which are also affected by this debt…‘The responsibility for the climate debt of each developed country is established in relation to the level of emissions, taking into account the historically emitted amount of tons of carbon per capita.’
The Working Group (2010, p. 2) made suggestions for payment as follows:
The re-absorption [of emissions] and cleaning the atmosphere by developed countries
Payment in technology (eliminating patents) and in knowledge according to our worldview for both clean development and for adaptation to developing countries
Financing
Changes in immigration laws that allow us to offer a new home for all climate migrants
The adoption of the Declaration on the Mother Earth’s Rights.
The Working Group also called for funding to be routed through the UNFCCC, ‘replacing the Global Environment Facility and its intermediaries such as the World Bank and the Regional Development Banks.’ A further suggestion was that ‘The financial mechanism must respect the sovereign control of each country to determine the definition, design, implementation of policy and programmatic approaches to climate change.’ As for timing, ‘The financial mechanism shall be defined and approved at COP16, and be made operational at COP17.’ These documents were based upon visionary civil society demands that had emerged over the prior months and years. Some earlier, very ambitious demands – such as the end of apartheid or access to AIDS medicines – were only won after years of struggle, after initially appearing equally audacious and unrealistic.
From the standpoint of civil society forces that have lost confidence in states, multilateral agencies, donors, corporations and ENGOs, how might debt repayments in the form of financing be best distributed? It became clear to many civil society groups in recent decades that postcolonial African governments were too easily corrupted, just as were United Nations and aid (and even international NGO) bureaucracies. One solution to the payment distribution problem appeared in 2009: The idea of simply passing along a monthly grant – universal in amount and access, with no means-testing or other qualifications – to each African citizen via an individual ‘Basic Income Program’ payment. According to Der Spiegel, the village of Otjivero, Namibia is an exceptionally successful pilot for this form of income redistribution (Krahe 2009). First priority would be to supply a Basic Income Program to Africans who live in areas most adversely affected by droughts, floods or other extreme weather events. Logistically, the use of Post Office Savings Banks or rapidly-introduced Automated Teller Machines would be sensible, although currency distortions, security and other such challenges would differ from place to place. The Namibian case has much to recommend it, in part because it amongst the driest sites in Africa.
Such a strategy would be just an emergency salve on a burning problem:
How to ensure that the greenhouse gas ‘polluters pay’ in a manner that first, compensates their climate change victims;
that permits transformation of African energy, transport, extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal systems;
and that in the process assures the ‘right to development’ for Africa in a future world economy constrained by emissions caps.
Extremely radical changes will be required in all these activities in order not only to ensure the safety of the species and planet, but also that Africans are at the front of the queue for long-overdue ecological and economic compensation, given the North’s direct role in Africa’s environmental damage. The contemporary argument for climate debt to be paid is simply the first step in a long process, akin to decolonisation, in which the master – the polluting Global North – must know that not only is it time to halt the reliance on fossil fuels, but having ‘broken’ the climate, it is his responsibility to foot the clean-up bill.
Conclusion: changing the financing power balance
In contrast to financing for techie fixes via carbon trading – and similar strategies associated with other fields of bio-engineering – there is an alternative approach to financing based upon climate justice and an awareness of historic responsibility.
To get climate justice higher on the agenda will require higher levels of eco-social protest. So far the grassroots, NGO and labour components of various climate justice movements have developed extremely unevenly across space, with mainly Northern radical environmentalists only fusing with Southern economic justice advocates outside the 2007 Bali Conference of the Parties. The fusion of red and green influences was called the Climate Justice Now! network, and after the elites’ Copenhagen summit fiasco in December 2009, gained momentum in an April 2010 ‘World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth’ in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
As for intergovernmental cooperation, it appears hopeless going into the Cancun Conference of the Parties 16. The Latin American left leadership will be squashed by the US and most of the United Nations, and although before Copenhagen the African elites engaged in rhetorical challenges to climate apartheid, their role was ultimately to polish the chains, not break them. Most African elites will follow the path of Moosa, van Schalkwyk and Maathai, and will have similar levels of success: Negligible or even negative.
Mooney’s theses about the false technological solutions rely upon flows of money to support the flows of bad ideas. But like many dysfunctional, malevolent or incompetent development projects over the ages, these flows can be halted if the balance of forces improves. Fortunately, when dealing with environmental financing, elites – especially in the World Bank, the United Nations and donor agencies – invariably choose unsustainable schemes, though unfortunately they never pay the price, leaving the damage to be carried by social and environmental victims.
Still, the elites’ record of financing climate change strategies does suggest a growing awareness of how impossible it is to commodify nature, turn environmental credits into derivatives, sell these in the global financial markets, dress them up with multilateral pseudo-credibility, and expect the inverted pyramid to stay aloft. The record of the carbon market’s demise in 2009-10 (below)
should encourage critics to include financing handles in their campaigning against technological eco-fixes. To move from demands for climate debt payment – now explicitly on the world agenda – to a broader agenda of ecological debt advocacy, is just the next step in connecting the dots between these related issues, and building African-led alliances that can ultimately prevail.
