Players
and Plays in the Bali Climate Drama
By Walden
Bello*
With 48 hrs to go before the
Bali climate conference comes to a close, it is now universally expected
that the COP (Conference of Parties) 13 will produced a watered-down
"Bali Roadmap" that reflects countries bending over backward
again to seduce the United States to join a post-Kyoto multilateral
process to bring down greenhouse gas emissions.
The expected declaration is supposed
to get the parties to agree to hammer out the details of a negotiating
framework by COP 14 in Poland in 2008 and to come out with a final
agreement by COP 15 in Denmark in 2009. It is also expected to contain
a reference to a
25 to 40 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels
by 2020, though Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) was quick to disavow
that this was "not a target".
Australia Rejoins the
Fold
The opening of the "high-level
segment" of the meeting, which has been going on for nearly 10
days, was marked by a dramatic appearance by Australia's Prime Minister
of 10 days Kevin Rudd, who personally delivered his country's instrument
of ratification of the
Kyoto Protocol to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Under
the previous government of John Howard, Australia had allied itself
with the United States in not ratifying the protocol. As if making
up for the sins of his predecessor, Rudd voiced his support for a
new multilateral agreement with binding emission targets and promised
a 60 per cent GHG (greenhouse gas) reduction by 2050 from 1990 levels
for his country. "There is no Plan B," he told the participants.
"There is no escaping to another planet."
Some climate activists, however,
have not been swept away by Rudd, complaining that his words still
have to be reflected in the behavior of Australia's negotiators in
Bali, who are said to be imprisoned in the obstructionist paradigm
of the Howard regime.
Obstructionists Inc.
The repeated urging by speaker
after speaker for binding targets contrasted with the background realities
of continued absence of a positive attitude on the part of the US,
obstructionism on the part of Canada, which has replaced Australia
as George W.
Bush?s closest ideological ally, and Japan's ill-concealed backtracking
from mandatory emission cuts owing to strong pressure from Japanese
industry. On the other hand, China and the Group of 77 have struck
some longtime observers of the Kyoto process as projecting an attitude
of being willing to do their share if the developed world was ready
to decree meaningful GHG cuts and finance the development and transfer
of technology to assist the developing countries to achieve the transition
to a low-carbon economy.
North-South
North-South tensions have been
high, and on Tuesday, Dec 11, talks broke down on three issues, one
of them being on the key problem of transfer of technology to assist
countries of the South cope with global warming. The transfer of technology
talks broke down over
whether to use the term "facilitate" as the developing countries
wanted, or "program", the preferred word of the North, according
to Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram, chairman of the Group of 77 and
China bloc. According to one developing country deputy environmental
minister who did not wish to be identified, "the US has sent
dinosaurs
to these negotiations, and that's why we?re stalemated on 80 per cent
of the issues". Washington is the bete noire in Bali, and none
are more frustrated than US climate change activists who constantly
apologize for the Bush administration's intransigence.
Intra-Group of 77 differences,
while much less visible, have not been absent. Malaysia, for instance,
surprised developing country delegates at the beginning of the negotiations
when its representative appeared to hew to the US line that it wanted
an institutional outcome
to the negotiations that was "flexible" and "non-binding".
At a side-event sponsored by the government of India on Wednesday,
Dec. 12, one speaker suggested that commitments to GHG emission cuts
would depend on whether a country belonged to the OECD or rich-country
bloc, to the developing world, or to a third category made up of "one
big
country". This was obviously a reference to China, whose presence
in the Group of 77 bloc has made many--especially the smaller island
countries that are clamoring for emergency aid to meet the sea-level
rise that is already drowning them--uncomfortable since they see their
interests as being entangled in the dynamics of the negotiations between
the North and China. The rich countries want China, which is on track
to surpass the United States as the biggest GHG emitter and is experiencing
record but environmentally destabilizing economic growth, to be eventually
included in a regime of mandatory emission reductions. The same demand
has been made, though not as strongly, with respect to India and Brazil.
Big Business Roars in
Bali will probably be remembered
as the conference where big business came to climate change in big
way. A significant number of the side events have focused on market
solutions to the GHG problem such as emissions trading arrangements.
Under such schemes, GHG intensive countries can ?offset? their emissions
by paying non-GHG
intensive countries to forego pollution-intensive activities, with
the market serving as the mediator. Shell and other big-time polluters
have been making the rounds touting the market as the prime solution
to the climate crisis, a position that articulates well with the US
position against mandatory emission cuts set by government. UN officials
justify the greater private sector presence by saying that 84 per
cent of the $50 billion needed to combat climate change in the next
few years will need to come from the private sector and the
latter needs to be "incentivized."
Climate change activists have
been appalled and stunned by the business takeover of the climate
change discourse. One Indian activist walked out of a session on "linking
emissions trading markets" muttering, "I can't believe it.
These guys have their own
specialized jargon. I did not understand one word of what they were
saying."
According to Kevin Smith of the
Durban Network on Climate Justice, "The carbon market was originally
a very minor part of the architecture of climate architecture, one
that climate activists agreed to in order to get the US on board the
Kyoto express. Well, the US did not get on board, and we are now stuck
with carbon markets driving the process since the corporations have
found that there is money to be made from climate change." Smith
and others claim that the carbon market as a solution is a panacea
that will merely allow polluters in the North to keep on polluting
while allowing private interests in the South to displace smallholders
so they can set up unmonitored and unregulated tree plantations that
are supposed to absorb carbon dioxide.
World Bank Provokes Protests
The World Bank has had a major
presence at the conference. This has not been to the liking of many
parties. For over a week, negotiators haggled over the mechanism to
manage funds that would go towards assisting countries that were on
the frontline of the climate crisis. The developed countries wanted
the World Bank to act as trustee for the funds and the Bank-managed
Global Environmental Facility (GEF) to serve as the administrator
for the funds. This did not please the developing country governments,
which have had many negative experiences with Bank control of the
GEF. The impasse was
resolved only when the negotiating parties agreed to establish an
"Adaptation Fund Board", composed mainly of developing states,
that would oversee the administration of the funds by the GEF.
An even bigger reaction greeted
the Bank?s launching of its $160 million Forest Carbon Partnership
Facility, which is designed to use market mechanisms to compensate
developing countries with large tracts of forest, including host country
Indonesia, for not cutting them down. Some 100 activists staged a
one-hour-long lightning demonstration at the Grand Hyatt Hotel that
put Bank President Robert Zoellick on the defensive. The protestors,
which included members of the Indonesian Civil Society Forum, Friends
of the Earth International, World Rainforest Movement, Global Forest
Coalition, Jubilee South, the Durban Group on Climate Justice, and
Focus on the Global South, warned that incorporating forests into
the carbon market would simply guarantee their passing into the hands
of big private interests.
Of special concern to the protestors
was the fate of indigenous communities. The proposed Bank facility,
they warned in a statement, "could trigger further displacement,
conflict, and violence. As forests themselves increase in value, they
[would be] declared "off
limits " to communities that live in them or depend on them for
their livelihoods".
Global Civil Society
Erupts into the Scene
The mass action against Zoellick
within the conference site underlined another reason Bali will be
remembered. It marked the entry of the global justice movement into
the climate change negotiations. The meeting was attended not only
by civil society organizations working on trade and development like
Oxfam and the World Development Movement but also by mass movement
networks like Via Campesina and Jubilee South. A venue called Solidarity
Village for a Cool Planet less than a kilometer from the conference
site was
organized by the Indonesian Civil Society Forum to serve as a site
for a parallel conference that drew hundreds of participants. Representatives
of environmental refugees from the Pacific Islands, indigenous peoples
threatened by forest carbon trading schemes, and
farmers from Via Campesina were among those who participated in the
week-long gathering.
The eruption into the scene of
trade justice and development activists brought a conflictive World
Trade Organization ministerial-like atmosphere to the negotiations
that had formerly been marked by a civil if not chummy relationship
between government negotiators and climate lobbyists. "This opening
up of the process to folks who are bringing new issues like trade
and justice and people's empowerment into the equation has been a
bit disconcerting to the traditional climate NGOs," said Emma
Brindal of Friends of the
Earth-Australia.
"Climate Justice" was
the call that united the groups at the Solidarity Village. In a statement
issued at the end of the meeting, the participants stated: "By
climate justice, we understand that countries and sectors that have
contributed the most to the climate crisis -- the rich countries and
transnational corporations of the North -- must pay the cost of ensuring
that all peoples and future generations can live in a healthy and
just world, respecting the
ecological limits of the planet. In Bali, we took another step towards
building a global movement for climate justice."
*Walden Bello is senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research
and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor of
sociology at the University of the Philippines. He is also the president
of the Freedom from Debt Coalition of the Philippines.
