Campaigners fear a new surge of forest destruction as a result of both the reactionary Copenhagen Accord and a new European Union bio-fuels directive.
It seems that EU member states will be forced to accept palm oil grown in plantations planted on cleared forest – whether they like it or not.
The EU is committed to a target of 10% of all road transport fuel being based on renewable energy by 2020, and a new directive claims that palm oil plantations can be classified as forest, and meet so-called “sustainable standards”.
According to Rainforest Rescue, razing rainforest to plant oil palm would not count as a change in land use under the new directive, which also says that “member states may not set additional criteria of their own. They may not exclude biofuels/bioliquids on sustainability grounds where these meet the sustainability criteria laid down in the Directive”.
This is entirely in line with the Copenhagen Accord, the wrecking agreement forced through by powerful nations at last year’s climate conference.
Without a successor to Kyoto the controls on carbon off-setting (weak as they were) will become non-existent. It will lead to large-scale destruction of eco-systems and unprecedented land grabs, as spurious projects are classified as carbon offsets. There will even be carbon credits for tree and crop monocultures and GM soya, planted on cleared rainforest.
Stella Semino from Grupo de Reflexion Rural (Argentina) states: “If these new proposals are agreed upon we will see a massive boost for crop and tree plantations alike which, in the name of ‘climate change mitigation’, will speed up the destruction of forests and other vital ecosystems, the spread of industrial agriculture, and land grabbing against small-farmers, indigenous peoples and forest communities. Industrial monocultures are already a major cause of climate change and their expansion will make it worse.”
The problem is even bigger than palm oil – the whole concept of bio-fuels replacing oil is flawed because of the nature of the capitalist system and the system of private land ownership. An example is the development of new oil plants that will grow on so-called “marginal land”.
The Jatropha plant is being grown by Kijani Energy of Canada in Mozambique on land classified as marginal. This very experimental process, with an incredibly toxic plant which can harm farmers as they harvest and crush it, is already being claimed as a biol-fuel breakthrough.
It is reported that Kijani has now purchased 200,000 acres of land in the Thar province of Pakistan for Jatropha cultivation. Local people say that far from being unused land, this area belongs to them, and their centuries old livestock grazing rights are being violated.
In our Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions we reject the idea of mitigation and adaptation to climate change, within the existing capitalist economic structures. It is damaging the poorest and most powerless in society, not protecting them from the effects of climate change – and it is doing it without making any significant reductions in emissions. An alternative system of energy production and land ownership is urgently needed.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Copenhagen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Copenhagen. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Japan's crisis goes from bad to worse
Today is the 20th anniversary of the bursting of Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s. The culmination of attempting to deal with the relentless impact of two decades of precipitous decline has destroyed the health of two finance ministers in less than a year and the prospects for their successor are not bright.
The fate of these two individuals stands as a cipher for the interaction of economics and politics which threatened the lives of the six billion of the world’s rising population before Copenhagen’s failed talks, and threatens them even more as every day passes.
The latest casualty, Hirohisa Fujii will spend the New Year holidays in hospital, recovering from apparent exhaustion after weeks of intense work on next year's record trillion dollar budget, according to reports.
Fujii, Minister in the three-month old Democratic Party-led government, took on the job after Shoichi Nakagawa was found dead in the bedroom of his Tokyo home in September. In February he appeared to be drunk at a news conference during the Group of Seven financial leaders’ meeting in Rome in February.
Fujii’s budget is a renewed attempt to return the Japanese capitalist economy to profitable growth using the same measures which have consistently failed there, and are failing now throughout the world in the wake of the global meltdown of the last 30 months.
Trying to pump prime the global economy to “return to growth” is exactly the worst possible medicine to deal with climate change, but they all keep on trying because they have nothing else to offer.
Since December 30th, 1989 Japan’s stock market has lost three quarters of its value, dropping to the second largest in the world, behind the US, measured by the proportion of global capital registered there, and its fate remains of immense importance.
Until the global crisis shattered the global bubble in 2007, corporate profits in Japan had increased by 62% at the expense of continuously falling wages, but now the economy is in a deep slump with prices dropping. Despite loudly trumpeted signs of recovery the rest of the world is set to follow Japan’s downward trajectory.
As Tony Roberts, a fund manager at Invesco Perpetual, puts it: “Over time large, global companies have grown profits more quickly than domestic ones and so we are investing less and less in the Japanese domestic economy as each year passes.” Capital follows its own logic and capitalist governments have no choice but to bow to its needs, whatever controls people like Russia’s government under prime minister Putin may want to impose.
Even if the faint hopes of increased exports to China materialise, Japan’s gross public debt is budgeted to increase to 200%. This means that government debt equivalent to double the value of the country’s projected production of goods and services - way beyond the worst nightmares of Western countries – will be required to keep the capitalist economy afloat.
The UK’s economy is following Japan’s over the cliff. Since 1989, the value of the UK’s stock market has fallen from third to fourth behind China, and in the first decade of the new millennium the UK recorded its lowest growth of the post-war period and the worst returns for stock-market investors since the 1930s. Its manufacturing output actually contracted over the decade by 1.2 per cent annually.
The billions of individuals who make up the world’s population can no longer leave their fate to the insane logic of capital accumulation which has now turned into its self-destructive opposite. Help us with the project to draft a Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions with the aim of challenging capitalist power, economically and politically.
Gerry Gold
Economics editor
Friday, December 11, 2009
World 'leaders' in short supply
We are told by the media that the world’s leaders are gathering in Copenhagen. But what does the term “leader” mean in this context?
An event organised by A World to Win at the Whitechapel Gallery in London looked at the lessons of the revolutions of 1989 that brought down the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. One key point made, was that without the leadership offered by Mikhail Gorbachev and the group around him, events could not have happened in the way that they did.
Maintaining the status quo of bureaucratic power and the one-party state was not their priority; nor did they believe it was the only route open to them. The hopeless war in Afghanistan, the crisis in the economy and the civil corruption represented by the Chernobyl disaster were straws in the wind that Gorbachev understood. As a result, he created a break in the Stalinist wall, through which the masses of Eastern Europe poured.
Is this the type of leader that is present in Copenhagen where, it has been suggested, the future of the planet is being decided? Clearly not. The maintenance of the capitalist status quo is their be-all and end-all. They have watched it descend into economic chaos, on a global scale, and yet they are determined to carry on.
Their sole commitment is not to democracy, or “the people” or the earth’s environment, but to the global corporations and the fossilised perspective that they represent the only possible economic form available to humanity.
Capitalism - by its nature - must eventually process the whole substance of the eco-system, into profit. It is an anti-evolutionary system, dragging nature backwards from abundant, evolving life to the brink of no-life, as the latest update of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species shows.
The list reveals that 21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds and 32% of all known gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) are threatened with extinction. Sea shellfish and molluscs are threatened by the increased acidification of the seas, with serious impacts higher up the marine food chain. Data from the conservation organisation BirdLife shows that over 400 bird species have already suffered climate-driven impacts.
“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity. The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met. It’s time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it’s high on their agendas for next year, as we’re rapidly running out of time.”
Outside the official conference in Copenhagen there are many people who recognise these realities. One the emerging figures of the Conference is Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who said: "We will not walk out of the talks at this late hour, because we will not allow the failure of Copenhagen. But we will not sign an inequitable deal; we will not accept a deal that condemns 80% of the world population to further suffering and injustice."
Let’s see if he means it, if any of these leaders – including those for whose countries climate change represents a threat to their very existence – have the courage to walk away from a dirty political deal, as these African delegates and campaigners demanded.
Is there is any chance of a break down of the “business-as-usual” consensus inside the conference, which would greatly help those of us trying to break the status quo outside? We shall see. But with it, or without it, we must seek answers to climate change outside of the existing capitalist structures because they are the problem and not the solution.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
An event organised by A World to Win at the Whitechapel Gallery in London looked at the lessons of the revolutions of 1989 that brought down the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe. One key point made, was that without the leadership offered by Mikhail Gorbachev and the group around him, events could not have happened in the way that they did.
Maintaining the status quo of bureaucratic power and the one-party state was not their priority; nor did they believe it was the only route open to them. The hopeless war in Afghanistan, the crisis in the economy and the civil corruption represented by the Chernobyl disaster were straws in the wind that Gorbachev understood. As a result, he created a break in the Stalinist wall, through which the masses of Eastern Europe poured.
Is this the type of leader that is present in Copenhagen where, it has been suggested, the future of the planet is being decided? Clearly not. The maintenance of the capitalist status quo is their be-all and end-all. They have watched it descend into economic chaos, on a global scale, and yet they are determined to carry on.
Their sole commitment is not to democracy, or “the people” or the earth’s environment, but to the global corporations and the fossilised perspective that they represent the only possible economic form available to humanity.
Capitalism - by its nature - must eventually process the whole substance of the eco-system, into profit. It is an anti-evolutionary system, dragging nature backwards from abundant, evolving life to the brink of no-life, as the latest update of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species shows.
The list reveals that 21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds and 32% of all known gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) are threatened with extinction. Sea shellfish and molluscs are threatened by the increased acidification of the seas, with serious impacts higher up the marine food chain. Data from the conservation organisation BirdLife shows that over 400 bird species have already suffered climate-driven impacts.
“The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting,” says Jane Smart, Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group. “January sees the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity. The latest analysis of the IUCN Red List shows the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss will not be met. It’s time for governments to start getting serious about saving species and make sure it’s high on their agendas for next year, as we’re rapidly running out of time.”
Outside the official conference in Copenhagen there are many people who recognise these realities. One the emerging figures of the Conference is Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who said: "We will not walk out of the talks at this late hour, because we will not allow the failure of Copenhagen. But we will not sign an inequitable deal; we will not accept a deal that condemns 80% of the world population to further suffering and injustice."
Let’s see if he means it, if any of these leaders – including those for whose countries climate change represents a threat to their very existence – have the courage to walk away from a dirty political deal, as these African delegates and campaigners demanded.
Is there is any chance of a break down of the “business-as-usual” consensus inside the conference, which would greatly help those of us trying to break the status quo outside? We shall see. But with it, or without it, we must seek answers to climate change outside of the existing capitalist structures because they are the problem and not the solution.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Climate change a systemic crisis
On land and sea the impacts of climate change intensify. But the UN’s leading climate change official, Yves de Boer, has admitted that the Copenhagen summit will not deliver a binding treaty to follow on from Kyoto.
Host nation Denmark is already preparing a compromise text to be introduced if all else fails; Plan B will contain pious words and promises of further talks but no commitment to emissions reductions.
We saw this failure in microcosm this week when it emerged that the most crucial clause has been dropped from the draft REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) agreement, one of the documents on the table at Copenhagen.
The clause would stop countries from felling ancient forests and replacing them with palm oil plantations, while still claiming subsidies for carbon emissions reductions. African governments objected – they want the right to do what South East Asia and South America are already doing – exploiting virgin forest for massive profit.
And it emerged that it was British officials who pushed for the deal to go ahead without this crucial caveat.
Allowing more rain forest destruction, then subsidising environmentally damaging palm oil monoculture – that’s capitalist business as usual. As Simon Counsell, of the Rainforest Foundation, said: "If this is not changed, the agreement will be part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Deforestation currently contributes 20% of carbon emissions, more than global transport. Without a reduction in felling, it will be impossible to achieve the reductions needed to halt climate change.
Meanwhile, a new assessment of the world’s “blue forests” shows they too are suffering a dramatic deterioration.
Satellite monitoring over 25 years shows that the rise in water surface temperature in the world’s large marine ecosystems (LME’s – the coastal waters adjacent to continents) is 2-3 times higher than the estimates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was working with.
A report presented to the International Waters Conference meeting in Australia, said 70% of global fish stocks within LMEs are overexploited. This is reducing the availability of fish for food, and is especially critical off the coasts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where fish is a major protein source.
An unprecedented volume of nitrogen pollution is causing a greater frequency and extent of harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion events and dead zones. The nitrogen build-up comes from artificial fertilizer washed into the sea.
And the same nitrates are partly responsible for another phenomenon documented by the conference organisers.
The Global Environment Facility reports that about 2 billion hectares of land globally – almost a quarter of all the landscape used by humans – is badly degraded. Reduced soil fertility, the loss of forest cover, and the erosion of prairies, is reducing the global potential to grow food and maintain ecosystems.
About two-thirds of agricultural land has been degraded to some extent during the last 50 years, and up to 40% of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded.
Land, sea and forest – all threatened with reckless destruction. This can only be understood as a systemic problem with its root cause the drive for profit at any cost.
A systemic problem needs a systemic answer. We need to move into a new era of stewardship and husbandry – concepts alien to capitalism. Only a not-for-profit future can save the forests – both blue and green.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Host nation Denmark is already preparing a compromise text to be introduced if all else fails; Plan B will contain pious words and promises of further talks but no commitment to emissions reductions.
We saw this failure in microcosm this week when it emerged that the most crucial clause has been dropped from the draft REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) agreement, one of the documents on the table at Copenhagen.
The clause would stop countries from felling ancient forests and replacing them with palm oil plantations, while still claiming subsidies for carbon emissions reductions. African governments objected – they want the right to do what South East Asia and South America are already doing – exploiting virgin forest for massive profit.
And it emerged that it was British officials who pushed for the deal to go ahead without this crucial caveat.
Allowing more rain forest destruction, then subsidising environmentally damaging palm oil monoculture – that’s capitalist business as usual. As Simon Counsell, of the Rainforest Foundation, said: "If this is not changed, the agreement will be part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Deforestation currently contributes 20% of carbon emissions, more than global transport. Without a reduction in felling, it will be impossible to achieve the reductions needed to halt climate change.
Meanwhile, a new assessment of the world’s “blue forests” shows they too are suffering a dramatic deterioration.
Satellite monitoring over 25 years shows that the rise in water surface temperature in the world’s large marine ecosystems (LME’s – the coastal waters adjacent to continents) is 2-3 times higher than the estimates the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was working with.
A report presented to the International Waters Conference meeting in Australia, said 70% of global fish stocks within LMEs are overexploited. This is reducing the availability of fish for food, and is especially critical off the coasts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, where fish is a major protein source.
An unprecedented volume of nitrogen pollution is causing a greater frequency and extent of harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion events and dead zones. The nitrogen build-up comes from artificial fertilizer washed into the sea.
And the same nitrates are partly responsible for another phenomenon documented by the conference organisers.
The Global Environment Facility reports that about 2 billion hectares of land globally – almost a quarter of all the landscape used by humans – is badly degraded. Reduced soil fertility, the loss of forest cover, and the erosion of prairies, is reducing the global potential to grow food and maintain ecosystems.
About two-thirds of agricultural land has been degraded to some extent during the last 50 years, and up to 40% of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded.
Land, sea and forest – all threatened with reckless destruction. This can only be understood as a systemic problem with its root cause the drive for profit at any cost.
A systemic problem needs a systemic answer. We need to move into a new era of stewardship and husbandry – concepts alien to capitalism. Only a not-for-profit future can save the forests – both blue and green.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Climate scientists say time is running out
Scientists have moved into the front line of the battle against climate change, giving politicians a clear message that failure to agree urgent action when they meet in Copenhagen in December, will lead to social and climate chaos.
Speaking at an emergency meeting of 2,500 climate scientists from 80 countries, Gordon Brown’s former climate adviser Sir Nicholas Stern dramatically increased his estimate of the economic cost of failing to tackle climate change. His 2006 report estimated that “business as usual” would cost 20% of the world’s economic output. Now he says it could rise higher than 50%.
Stern joined other scientists in warning that failure to agree strong carbon reductions will result in abrupt and irreversible shifts in climate which society would be unable to cope with. Their six key messages, backed by extensive research, are:
1. The worst-case scenario is getting worse
Worst-case projections from the International Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report are happening already. Without immediate action the situation could accelerate even beyond that.
2. Social disruption
Societies are vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change. Temperature rises above 2C will be very difficult for countries to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century.
3. Long-term strategy
Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid dangerous climate change, regardless of how it is defined. Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of crossing tipping points and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation.
4. Inequality
The worst effects will be on the poorest people in every country, and on the poorest countries and regions. Mitigation strategies must protect the most vulnerable first, and provide safety nets for devastated areas.
5. Inaction is inexcusable
The economic, technological, behavioural and management tools needed to deal with climate change already exist. Benefits can flow from acting on climate change including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalisation of ecosystem services.
6. Meeting the challenge
Constraints must be overcome and opportunities seized to reduce inertia in social and economic systems by:
• building on growing public desire for governments to act
• removing implicit and explicit subsidies
• reducing the influence of vested interests
• enabling shifts from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society
• engaging society in the transition to norms and practices that foster sustainability.
What the scientists are saying to politicians is, this is your last chance. But we need to ask, can the symbiotic capitalist state/corporate monster that currently rules our lives to make these changes? As the answer is a resounding NO, then we have a very short window of opportunity to replace the economic and political elites who are actually the problem rather than the solution.
How to do this, people ask? The answer can only be through mass mobilisation, civil resistance to government actions and the formation of local, regional and national Councils of Action that will begin to plan for change – and will more truly represent the will of the people.
With the People’s Charter for Democracy, A World to Win proposes a framework around which people from any background, or any group in society, can organise in such Councils of Action. Taking the initiative and the power, to tackle the twin climate/economic crisis fairly and democratically – that is the challenge of the age.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
Speaking at an emergency meeting of 2,500 climate scientists from 80 countries, Gordon Brown’s former climate adviser Sir Nicholas Stern dramatically increased his estimate of the economic cost of failing to tackle climate change. His 2006 report estimated that “business as usual” would cost 20% of the world’s economic output. Now he says it could rise higher than 50%.
Stern joined other scientists in warning that failure to agree strong carbon reductions will result in abrupt and irreversible shifts in climate which society would be unable to cope with. Their six key messages, backed by extensive research, are:
1. The worst-case scenario is getting worse
Worst-case projections from the International Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report are happening already. Without immediate action the situation could accelerate even beyond that.
2. Social disruption
Societies are vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change. Temperature rises above 2C will be very difficult for countries to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption through the rest of the century.
3. Long-term strategy
Rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid dangerous climate change, regardless of how it is defined. Weaker targets for 2020 increase the risk of crossing tipping points and make the task of meeting 2050 targets more difficult. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation.
4. Inequality
The worst effects will be on the poorest people in every country, and on the poorest countries and regions. Mitigation strategies must protect the most vulnerable first, and provide safety nets for devastated areas.
5. Inaction is inexcusable
The economic, technological, behavioural and management tools needed to deal with climate change already exist. Benefits can flow from acting on climate change including sustainable energy job growth, reductions in the health and economic costs of climate change, and the restoration of ecosystems and revitalisation of ecosystem services.
6. Meeting the challenge
Constraints must be overcome and opportunities seized to reduce inertia in social and economic systems by:
• building on growing public desire for governments to act
• removing implicit and explicit subsidies
• reducing the influence of vested interests
• enabling shifts from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society
• engaging society in the transition to norms and practices that foster sustainability.
What the scientists are saying to politicians is, this is your last chance. But we need to ask, can the symbiotic capitalist state/corporate monster that currently rules our lives to make these changes? As the answer is a resounding NO, then we have a very short window of opportunity to replace the economic and political elites who are actually the problem rather than the solution.
How to do this, people ask? The answer can only be through mass mobilisation, civil resistance to government actions and the formation of local, regional and national Councils of Action that will begin to plan for change – and will more truly represent the will of the people.
With the People’s Charter for Democracy, A World to Win proposes a framework around which people from any background, or any group in society, can organise in such Councils of Action. Taking the initiative and the power, to tackle the twin climate/economic crisis fairly and democratically – that is the challenge of the age.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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