Friday, December 31, 2010
Seeing REDD on climate change - Features - Al Jazeera English
Seeing REDD on climate change - Features - Al Jazeera English
As climate change negotiations come to a close in Cancun, Birginia Suarez-Pinlac is seeing red. The environmental lawyer from the Philippines is worried that a plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) constitutes a land grab, transferring natural wealth from the poor to the rich under the auspices of saving the planet.
Last year, she says, an Australian coal company tried to forge an agreement with an indigenous tribe on Mindanao Island in the Philippines, a poverty stricken area known for its high mountains and lush green rainforest. "The company offered poor tribes people money in exchange for their atmospheric space. They don't want to cut their own emissions domestically. They want to find a way to profit from the carbon they produce."
Forests help take climate changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing global warming - a human induced process linked to wild weather patterns including this year's deadly flooding in Pakistan and crop destroying wild fires in Russia.
Green-washing
The world is losing about six million hectares of forests each year - an area roughly the size of Greece - due to human activities like logging. REDD is supposed to be designed to allow companies to buy clean air credits from people who live in forests to encourage them to protect the trees. But some environmentalists say that when companies buy credits abroad through what is now a voluntary scheme, they feel entitled to pollute back at home.
"The biggest buyers of REDD credits are the worst polluters - big oil and big coal," says Bill Barclay, the research director for the Rainforest Action Network in California. "They are looking for a cheap 'get out of jail free card' - it's basically green-washing."
As climate change negotiations come to a close in Cancun, Birginia Suarez-Pinlac is seeing red. The environmental lawyer from the Philippines is worried that a plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) constitutes a land grab, transferring natural wealth from the poor to the rich under the auspices of saving the planet.
Last year, she says, an Australian coal company tried to forge an agreement with an indigenous tribe on Mindanao Island in the Philippines, a poverty stricken area known for its high mountains and lush green rainforest. "The company offered poor tribes people money in exchange for their atmospheric space. They don't want to cut their own emissions domestically. They want to find a way to profit from the carbon they produce."
Forests help take climate changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing global warming - a human induced process linked to wild weather patterns including this year's deadly flooding in Pakistan and crop destroying wild fires in Russia.
Green-washing
The world is losing about six million hectares of forests each year - an area roughly the size of Greece - due to human activities like logging. REDD is supposed to be designed to allow companies to buy clean air credits from people who live in forests to encourage them to protect the trees. But some environmentalists say that when companies buy credits abroad through what is now a voluntary scheme, they feel entitled to pollute back at home.
"The biggest buyers of REDD credits are the worst polluters - big oil and big coal," says Bill Barclay, the research director for the Rainforest Action Network in California. "They are looking for a cheap 'get out of jail free card' - it's basically green-washing."
FINA-NAFI - Triumvirat 2007
FINA-NAFI - Triumvirat 2007
The North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) is inviting you to the fourth edition of the Triumvirate which will take place in the Montreal City Hall, from the 25th to the 30th of May 2008. The Triumvirate will bring together for five days a hundred university students, from Canada, Mexico and the United States, to participate in an international negotiation exercise in which they will simulate a parliamentary meeting between North American political actors. Participants will be assigned one of the three following roles: legislator (representing a country other than their own), journalist or lobbyist. Four themes of a political, economic and environmental nature will be the object of intense debates during this innovative and formative event. This year's themes are: 1- Fostering Renewable Electricity Markets (in English), 2- Countering North American corporate outsourcing (in French), 3- Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (in English), 4- NAFTA’s Chapter 11 on investments (in English).
Description of the event 2008 is available
The North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) is inviting you to the fourth edition of the Triumvirate which will take place in the Montreal City Hall, from the 25th to the 30th of May 2008. The Triumvirate will bring together for five days a hundred university students, from Canada, Mexico and the United States, to participate in an international negotiation exercise in which they will simulate a parliamentary meeting between North American political actors. Participants will be assigned one of the three following roles: legislator (representing a country other than their own), journalist or lobbyist. Four themes of a political, economic and environmental nature will be the object of intense debates during this innovative and formative event. This year's themes are: 1- Fostering Renewable Electricity Markets (in English), 2- Countering North American corporate outsourcing (in French), 3- Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (in English), 4- NAFTA’s Chapter 11 on investments (in English).
Description of the event 2008 is available
So, in our last post we gave the starting point of the negotiations. It would take some masterful negotiator, a combination of Mohandas Gandhi and KKR’s Henry Kravis, to reach any meaningful denouement. Such a master appeared in the unlikely guise of the President of the host country.
"If the average American used only as much energy per year as the average European, America would be exporting oil, not importing it. Only our insistence on clinging to the dysfunctional lifestyles of an age that is passing away keeps such an obviously constructive goal off the table." — John Michael Greer
"If the average American used only as much energy per year as the average European, America would be exporting oil, not importing it. Only our insistence on clinging to the dysfunctional lifestyles of an age that is passing away keeps such an obviously constructive goal off the table." — John Michael Greer
The Biochar Solution
The Biochar Solution
While conventional agriculture leads to deserts, blowing parched dirt across the globe and melting ice caps, this other, older style, brings fertile soils, plant and animal diversity, and birdsong. While the agriculture we use has been shifting Earth’s carbon balance from soil and living vegetation to atmosphere and ocean, the agriculture that was nearly lost moves carbon from sky to soil and crops.
The needed shift, once embarked upon, can be profound and immediate. We could once more become a garden planet, with deep black earths and forests of fruit and nuts where deserts now stand. We can heal our atmosphere and oceans. by Albert Bates
While conventional agriculture leads to deserts, blowing parched dirt across the globe and melting ice caps, this other, older style, brings fertile soils, plant and animal diversity, and birdsong. While the agriculture we use has been shifting Earth’s carbon balance from soil and living vegetation to atmosphere and ocean, the agriculture that was nearly lost moves carbon from sky to soil and crops.
The needed shift, once embarked upon, can be profound and immediate. We could once more become a garden planet, with deep black earths and forests of fruit and nuts where deserts now stand. We can heal our atmosphere and oceans. by Albert Bates
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Hello Jenna,
It is a good thing that you people in Ottawa,like Andrew Bevan and cohorts get the financial income to pay for high registration fees at the Regina Infrastructure Meet $500.
and $895.00 for Victoria Meet in February.
I realise that it must be only me who does NOT make the big bucks, because...??? Because I do not work for the Municipal Government??
Could I volunteer at the Registration to offset the cost of Registration Fees??
Just wondering....
Warm regards,
Gina
Winnipeg,Manitoba
ginar@mts.net
It is a good thing that you people in Ottawa,like Andrew Bevan and cohorts get the financial income to pay for high registration fees at the Regina Infrastructure Meet $500.
and $895.00 for Victoria Meet in February.
I realise that it must be only me who does NOT make the big bucks, because...??? Because I do not work for the Municipal Government??
Could I volunteer at the Registration to offset the cost of Registration Fees??
Just wondering....
Warm regards,
Gina
Winnipeg,Manitoba
ginar@mts.net
About ICO2N | ICO2N
About ICO2N | ICO2N
ICO2N is the Integrated CO2 Network, a group of Canadian companies representing multiple industries, including coal and the oil sands. All ICO2N member companies have a strong interest in and a commitment to develop Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in Canada.
For five years the group has been working to accelerate CCS deployment as a means of reducing CO2 emissions, and fundamentally transforming the way Canada can develop and use its fossil fuel energy resources in a sustainable way.
ICO2N has completed extensive technical, economic and policy analysis on CCS, and developed its own unique economic model of large-scale CCS in Canada.
ICO2N works with multiple levels of governments, industry partners, academia and environmental organizations to advance CCS as a tool to ensure a clean and secure energy future, and is an advocate for the development of integrated CCS infrastructure.
ICO2N is the Integrated CO2 Network, a group of Canadian companies representing multiple industries, including coal and the oil sands. All ICO2N member companies have a strong interest in and a commitment to develop Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in Canada.
For five years the group has been working to accelerate CCS deployment as a means of reducing CO2 emissions, and fundamentally transforming the way Canada can develop and use its fossil fuel energy resources in a sustainable way.
ICO2N has completed extensive technical, economic and policy analysis on CCS, and developed its own unique economic model of large-scale CCS in Canada.
ICO2N works with multiple levels of governments, industry partners, academia and environmental organizations to advance CCS as a tool to ensure a clean and secure energy future, and is an advocate for the development of integrated CCS infrastructure.
Bio char and Agriculture
Biochar is charcoal created by pyrolysis of biomass, and differs from charcoal only in the sense that its primary use is not for fuel, but for biosequestration or atmospheric carbon capture and storage.[1] Charcoal is a stable solid rich in carbon content, and thus, can be used to lock carbon in the soil. Biochar is of increasing interest because of concerns about climate change caused by emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG). Carbon dioxide capture also ties up large amounts of oxygen and requires energy for injection (as via carbon capture and storage), whereas the biochar process breaks into the carbon dioxide cycle[clarification needed], thus releasing oxygen as did coal formation hundreds of millions of years ago.
BITs ,NAFTA, ECT
There are currently about 2,600 bilateral investment treaties (BIT's)in force,(see
last checked 26 November 2010.
plus a number of multilateral treaties that include investment chapters such as NAFTA or the Energy Chater Treaty (ECT)(1994)- all of which resort under the common denominator "International Investment Agreements"(IIAs)
last checked 26 November 2010.
plus a number of multilateral treaties that include investment chapters such as NAFTA or the Energy Chater Treaty (ECT)(1994)- all of which resort under the common denominator "International Investment Agreements"(IIAs)
Legal Aspects of Sustainable Water Management
Legal Aspects of Sustainable Water Management
CISDL Legal Research Fellow Anna Russell co-authored a legal working paper on access to water and integrated water resource management, forming the basis for a very well-subscribed course for delegates to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in 2005, New York, and Panel Event. UN Water has invited the CISDL to develop a ‘Guidance Note’ for countries seeking to draft and implement new laws on water management, and there is potential for a collaborative seminar and special issue on these questions with the Revue quebecoise de droit international. In 2006-2007, the CISDL developed a working paper for CIDA on Canada’s legal obligations in the area of international policy on water. This working paper led to the recommendation to organize a workshop to further investigate several key issues, such as obligations to act in accordance with regional agreements on water when conducting development work in developing countries, and international customary principles related to water, and a proposal is being submitted to CIDA to carry out this work.
CISDL Legal Research Fellow Anna Russell co-authored a legal working paper on access to water and integrated water resource management, forming the basis for a very well-subscribed course for delegates to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in 2005, New York, and Panel Event. UN Water has invited the CISDL to develop a ‘Guidance Note’ for countries seeking to draft and implement new laws on water management, and there is potential for a collaborative seminar and special issue on these questions with the Revue quebecoise de droit international. In 2006-2007, the CISDL developed a working paper for CIDA on Canada’s legal obligations in the area of international policy on water. This working paper led to the recommendation to organize a workshop to further investigate several key issues, such as obligations to act in accordance with regional agreements on water when conducting development work in developing countries, and international customary principles related to water, and a proposal is being submitted to CIDA to carry out this work.
Carbon Trading for Sustainable Development
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger and Markus Gehring, Trade and Investment Implication of Carbon Trading for Sustainable Development
Foreign Investment Law and Legal Conflicts Arising from Implementing the Kyoto Protocol through Private Investmen
Freya Baetens, Foreign Investment Law and Climate Change: Legal Conflicts Arising from Implementing the Kyoto Protocol through Private Investment.
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