Our work is centred around addressing climate change from a climate justice perspective. The neo-colonial agenda has brought carbon trading to the forefront as a way to continue business-as-usual and uses trading rights to pollute as a vicious ‘solution’ to climate change. The neo-liberal agenda is rife with ‘quick fix’ solutions to climate change while failing to address the root causes and even more alarmingly ignore the growing voices against these northern benefiting ‘alternatives’.
Through this window we have built up a body of researcher together with some of the most outspoken and critical voices resisting climate injustice today.
The ten hottest years on record have all happened since 1990. In 2001 extreme weather events killed more than 25,000 people and displaced millions. In 2002 natural disasters cost $55 billion according to the insurance industry. Dangerous climate change has become a reality.
what is climate change?
Climate change is caused by the abnormal heating of the planet through the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is a part of the normal cycles of the planet. In a normal cycle, greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere and keep the planet warm enough for life. The heat we don't need is then usually safely reflected back out into space. The problems come when the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rise and too much heat is therefore being trapped and not let out into space. There are many greenhouse gases but six main gases are focused on by the international community.
the impacts
The richest countries in the world are those most responsible for climate change. However the poorest countries will be on the frontline of the impacts and have the least ability to adapt to the changes. Melting glaciers from small temperature increases will cause sea levels to rise and low-lying islands and coastlines to be overwhelmed by the sea. Islands in the South Pacific are already threatened and the island of Tuvalu is making arrangements for evacuation.
Weather patterns will change unpredictably with increases and decreases in rainfall which will create droughts and floods. Air and water borne diseases will explode and mosquitos will be found in unusual places, increasing malaria worldwide. Storms, cyclones, hurricanes and natural disasters will increase as weather patterns become more disrupted. Conflict over water will be the main cause of war and environmental refugees from climate change will be the major source of movements of peoples across the world.
the sources
Three quarters of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), generated from human activities, comes from burning fossil fuels. These fuels are oil, gas and coal. The rest comes from deforestation. There are imbalances in the sources of the burning of fossil fuels as the world's richest countries consume over the levels of their population. For instance the USA produces 24% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions yet has only 4.5% of the world's population. Conversely India has 16.7% of the world's population yet only produces 4% of the carbon dioxide emissions.
Under the Kyoto Protocol the 'polluters' are countries that have agreed to targets for reducing their emissions of gases in a pre-defined time period. The polluters are then given a number of ‘emissions credits’ equivalent to their 1990 levels of emissions minus their reduction commitment. These credits are measured in units of greenhouse gases, so one ton of CO2 would equal one credit. The credits are licences to pollute up to the limits set by the commitment to achieve the average reduction of 5.2 per cent agreed in Kyoto. The countries then allocate their quota of credits on a nation-wide basis, most commonly by ‘grandfathering,’ so that the most polluting industries will receive the biggest allocation of credits. In this system it pays to pollute.
Several possibilities then exist:
1. The polluter does not use its whole allowance and can either save the remaining credits for the next time period (bank them), or sell the credits to another polluter on the open market.
2. The polluter uses up its whole allowance in the allotted time period, but still pollutes more. In order to remain in compliance, spare credits must be bought from another polluter that has not used up its full allowance.
3. The polluter can invest in pollution reduction schemes in other countries or regions and in this way ‘earn’ credits that can then be sold, or banked, or used to make up shortfalls in its original allowance.
Credit-earning projects that take place in a country with no reduction target (mostly in the ‘developing’ world) come under the contentious rubric of the 'Clean Development Mechanism' (CDM). There have already been signs that traditional Overseas Development Aid (ODA) given by developed countries will be used to fund CDM projects. Instead of building wells, rich countries can now plant trees to ‘offset’ their own pollution. Projects which take place in countries with reduction targets come under Joint Implementation (JI). For example, an energy efficiency program in Poland funded by a UK company could qualify. It appears that JI projects will mainly take place in Eastern Europe and Russia, where equivalent reductions can be made more cheaply as costs and regulatory standards are lower.
Both CDM and JI projects can be of different kinds: monoculture tree plantations, which theoretically absorb carbon from the atmosphere ('carbon sinks'); renewable energy projects such as solar or wind projects; improvements to existing energy generation; etc. The amount of credits earned by each project is calculated as the difference between the level of emissions with the project and the level of emissions that would occur in an imagined alternative future without the project. With such an imagined alternative future in mind, a corporate polluter can conjure up huge estimates of the emissions that would be supposedly produced without the company’s CDM or JI project. This stratagem allows for a high (almost limitless) number of pollution credits that can be earned for each project. It allows the company to pollute more at other sites, to sell its credits to other polluters, or to engage in a combination of these lucrative tactics. Its long-term consequences are (1) increased greenhouse gas emissions and (2) increased corporate profit obtained from their production.
There is yet another provision in emissions trading that introduces increasing levels of complexity and confusion: the pollutants are interchangeable. In effect, a reduction in the emission of one greenhouse gas (e.g. carbon dioxide) enables a polluter to claim reductions in another gas (e.g. methane). Thus, progress in “cleaning up” the atmosphere might appear to be going forward, while closer scrutiny reveals that no actual improvement is taking place.
The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement signed by 137 countries to reduce greenhouse gases. However countries have to ratify the agreement before it becomes binding. For instance the USA has signed the Kyoto Protocol but has not ratified and is therefore under no obligation to comply with their reduction target. Each country has their own targets to reduce greenhouse gases with the average target being 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol is the product of ten years of negotiations and comes out of the process that was started by the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This original framework was agreed upon at the first Earth Summit in 1992. The Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997 in Japan. Not only does the Protocol set out committments to reductions but also the methods by which they can be achieved. Since 1997 most of the negotiations have centred around these methods, defined as the 'Flexible Mechanisms'. These are the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Joint Implementation (JI) and Emissions Trading (ET).
Sinks refers to the use of trees, soils and oceans to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While the science of sinks is still uncertain, there is a broad consensus that any potential storage of carbon is temporary as trees naturally live out their life cycles or are felled and the resultant carbon is ultimately
returned to the atmosphere. Many environmentalists and indigenous communities around the world fear that use of sinks will have a negligible impact on reducing global warming while having an enormous impact on people worldwide as poor countries, desperate to earn money to pay back debts, look to selling their lands and forests for the carbon markets.
Projects in countries such as Uganda and Ecuador have already led to thousands of local communities dependant on forest areas being forced off their land as private Northern corporations backed by their governments, engage in a worldwide land-grab at wholesale prices. The logic of these carbon‘offsets’ ensure that Northern countries can continue to emit disproportionate amounts of greenhouse gases. This corporate offset culture magnifies inequalities between the haves and have-nots as the South becomes the carbon dump for the over-consuming North. The threat to indigenous peoples and peasant communities is especially severe, as destruction and/or loss of access to forests for many peoples would destroy their livelihood. The First International Forum Of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change stated “sinks in the CDM would constitute a worldwide strategy for expropriating our lands."
Historically marginalised communities have suffered disproportionately from environmental hazards such as waste dumps and polluting industries, In the US African-Americans are twice as likely to live next door to a polluting industry than their white counterparts. In the UK Friends of the Earth found that 90% of London 's polluting industries were located in low-income neighbourhoods and in England and Wales , the poorest families are twice as likely to have a polluting
factory close by. Perversely, the international negotiations on climate change have globalised traditionally regional environmental justice issues in that Southern countries will now become a huge 'carbon dump' for wealthy industrialised nations.
Environmental justice in the USA The civil rights movement of the 1960s in the United States empowered people of colour, especially African-Americans, to use civil disobedience in their struggles. In 1982 the connection between environmental justice and racial justice became a movement. In Warren County, North Carolina a landfill site was created to dispose of PCB contaminated soil. Warren County is predominantly an African-American low income community. Many local civil rights and environmental rights activists began demonstrating, leading to the arrests of over 500 people and sparking dissent around what was soon called the Environmental Justice Movement in the US.
Studies followed including one by the US General Accounting Office showing that three out of four hazardous waste landfills were situated in 'minority' communities. The study also showed that African-Americans were the predominant population in areas with the highest number of toxic waste sites. Soon after this study took place, the National Law
Journal found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took 20% longer to prioritise abandoned sites in minority communities for clean-up, as compared to the time it took the EPA to prioritise sites in white communities. It was also noted that polluters of such communities paid fines 54% lower than polluters of white communities.
Environmental justice is also a major issue on and near Indigenous Lands which are consistently exploited for uranium mining, deforestation and toxic dumping. However, environmental justice goes far beyond the movements that began in the 1980s in the USA and more deeply into the inequalities borne from imperialism and
colonialism. The issue itself is a global phenomenon. This is no longer seen as an experience in only specific racist dumping grounds but globally in the form of climate change driven by the similar roots of colonialism.
2011 Carbon Trade Watch
