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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)