latest press release

On Thursday, December 1, 2005 the Durban Coalition held a press briefing at the Palais des congrès, at which experts condemned the growing prominence of the World Bank and carbon trading. Click here to read the press release in full. [pdf]

Key quotes:

"We reject the notion that carbon trading will halt the climate crisis. This crisis has been caused more than anything else by the excessive consumption of fossil fuels and by deforestation. Carbon trading gives the illusion of action, while countenancing continuing massive public investment in fossil fuels and deforestation," said Jutta Kill coordinator of the EU forest campaign group Fern.

“People in India are being thrown off their land to make way for massive tree plantations. Individual activists, and even groups of villages who resist are threatened, arrested, forcibly thrown off lands they have inhabited for generations, labeled as terrorists or shot dead: adults, women and children alike. We cannot ignore these social injustices instigated by carbon trading added to the social injustices of climate change if we are to succeed in reversing climate instability,” said Anastasia Pinto Director of the Indian NGO CORE, an Indigenous Peoples research organization from India.

"The World Bank is developing a monopoly position, profiting from carbon trading while investing heavily in fossil fuels. This is made worse by the G8 suggesting they should lead the way in a 'new framework' on climate change," said SEEN co-director Daphne Wysham.

"These negotiations are all about making money off the climate crisis, not about bringing about a change in the current system of heavy subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The truth of the global environmental crisis is beyond economic perspectives," said Arief Wicaksono of OilWatch International, headquartered in Ecuador.

previous press releases

KYOTO: WHAT'S TO CELEBRATE? Activists Put Kofi Annan on Notice
16/02/05

On Human Rights Day, groups demand justice in climate convention
10/12/04

coverage

Kyoto Protocol comes into force
by Staff Correspondent, published in The Hindu (India) 16/02/05

Outside View: Letter to Kofi Annan
by Durban Group, published in the Washington Times (USA) 15/02/05

Reach Kyoto targets through domestic measures
by Graham Erion, published in the Toronto Star (Canada) 14/02/05

Environmental Emergency Looms as Governments Fail to Address Global Warming. A Report from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil
by Clare Davidson, published by the Baltimore Chronicle 10/02/05