The
13th round of the climate game in Bali
In
1992, governments acknowledged that climate change was real and
that something needed to be done to avoid a major catastrophe.
As a result, they signed and ratified the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Fifteen years have passed
and the Convention’s Conference of the Parties will meet for its
13th time in Bali, Indonesia, from 3-14 December 2007.
How much has this
convention achieved to counter the problem it was created to address?
Have the main emitters reduced their emissions? The press release
prepared for this event by the Convention’s secretariat gives
a clear answer to both questions, when it says:
“According to data
submitted to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the total greenhouse gas emissions
of 40 industrialized countries rose to an all-time high in 2005,
continuing the upward trend of the year before.”
This means that the
countries that bear most of the responsibility for destroying
the Earth’s climate are continuing to do so. In spite of that,
they will again attend the Climate Change Convention and will
put forward new proposals … for continuing business as usual.
Business: this is
the best way to describe this Convention. It’s all about saving
and making money. Paraphrasing former president Clinton, during
his 1992 presidential campaign, it’s not the climate: it’s the
economy, stupid!
Again the Convention
secretariat’s press release provides evidence on the above by
saying that “The Kyoto Protocol has spawned international emissions
trading worth 30 billion dollars in 2006, with the bulk of emissions
trading taking place within the European Union’s emissions trading
scheme (EU ETS). The EU ETS will be linked to trading under the
Kyoto Protocol next year. The Protocol’s CDM is already enjoying
rapid growth.”
It is access to those
billions of dollars –and not climate– that matters. New clever
schemes are being invented all the time, hidden under obscure
acronyms that the general public is unable to decipher: CDM, JI,
PCF and many others. In Bali there will now be discussions on
two new acronyms –RED and REDD– which stand for “Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation”, and for “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation
and forest Degradation”.
The RED/REDD game
is about to start in Bali. Southern government players, actively
destroying forests in their countries –and thereby releasing enormous
amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere– will declare that
they need to be “compensated” in order to conserve forests and
the carbon stored therein. Northern government players, actively
contributing to the destruction of those same forests through
investments and trade will declare that they are willing to pay
if their own releases of enormous amounts of carbon dioxide to
the atmosphere are “compensated” through carbon trading.
Of course those forests
need to be conserved, but not simply because of their carbon storage
capacity. Among many other reasons, because they help to regulate
the water cycle and contain most of terrestrial biodiversity.
Even more importantly, because they are home to countless peoples
and cultures that depend on them. In that respect, Southern governments
need to be reminded that forest conservation is an obligation
towards their own peoples and not a negotiable market commodity.
For their part, Northern governments need to be reminded –by the
world at large– that their fossil fuel-related emissions are destroying
the planet’s climate and cannot be “compensated” by paying for
forest conservation or by buying carbon credits from others.
The question is:
can we expect something positive from the Bali meeting? The sad
answer is that we very much doubt it. To make matters worse, the
World Bank will use the opportunity to try to sell its more recent
invention –the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility– while carbon
brokers, nuclear energy companies, agrofuel proponents, hydroelectric
corporations, biotechnology firms, assorted consultants, will
all try to sell their goods and services in what has become something
more akin to a market than to a UN Convention.
Of course NGO participants
in Bali will be able to do some damage control regarding some
of the more damaging proposals put forward by governments, but
their main responsibility will be to later inform people about
what their governments are NOT doing to address climate change.
It is people –and particularly the more vulnerable groups such
as poor women, men and children– who will suffer the most and
who therefore need to be well informed, because only informed
peoples will be able to force governments into real action before
it is too late. It’s not the economy: it’s humanity, stupid!
