Before the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or COP16 Cancun began on November 29th, Climate Justice Action (CJA) sent out a newsletter supporting La Via Campesina’s callout for 1000 Cancuns. We also requested information from groups, individuals, and organizations who may be planning for 1000 Cancuns, OR who will be and are in Cancun attending the conference. The following is a series of report backs on actions, events and projects you have told us about from your home, city, or directly from the ground in Cancun Mexico.
The report backs are separated into two series. The first was sent out last week and is now posted on the Climate Justice Action website (http://www.climate-justice-action.org/). It was a reflection on the days of November 29 to December 4th - the official first week of COP16- plus some 1000 Cancuns actions and report backs that occurred a few days before the conference began. This is the second series of report backs that looks back on days of December 5th-12th. If you are interested in writing a report back or sending us information on your 1000 Cancuns action, or if you participated in a Climate Justice event in Cancun please send an email to info@climate-justice-action.org.
In solidarity with our friends and allies towards building system change not climate change.
- Climate Justice Action
4 DECEMBER
A “Counter-summit” in Cancon, France
French global justice organizations Attac, Confédération paysanne, les Amis de la Terre, and BIZI! organised a Counter-summit in the city of Cancon, located in the South West of France. Their objectives were to point out local struggles and experiences that fight against environmental and climate crisis in the areas of transportation, energy, construction and finance. It has been an opportunity to build up the movement for environmental justice, anchor it in concrete practices, and start mobilizing in view of upcoming deadlines, such as the G20 Summit planned in Nice (France) in November 2011.
More then 1,000 activists gathered in the small city of Cancon. Despite the snow and ice, participants shared thoughts, experiences, and methods of actions. Nine round tables were organized, discussing alternatives that are very concrete and achievable solutions to the causes of global warming. Solutions exist but what is missing today is the political will to implement them. The message was “we should not build electric cars or trucks running on biofuels but massively reduce their numbers through the radical development of public transportation. We should stop wasting money on suicidal projects, such as the new Notre Dame des Landes airport in Nantes.”
The fight for Climate Justice is unique in the sense that it unites global activists from the North and the South in the same crucial battles. It also allows us to share the same Climate Justice strategies. The meetings of Cancon and Cancun were a great symbol of this reality. The Cancon counter summit lasted about 8 hours, and 600 people filled the conference room remaining energetic and passionate until the end.
For more information go to: http://blog.cancon2010.org
4 DECEMBER- 9 DECEMBER
Cross Canada Peoples’ Assemblies on Climate Justice
People’s Assemblies on Climate Justice were held all across Canada between December 4th and December 9th. “People’s Assemblies on Climate Justice are movement-building and organizing events. A gathering of people that will transform awareness into action through climate justice actions in your community.” Cities that took part in this cross country event were Calagary, Charlottetown, Brockville, Edmonton, Halifax, London Ontario, Peterborough, Regina, Saint John, Toronto, Saskatoon, Vancouver an regions of Delta, Richmond, Surrey, White Rock, Langley and Burnaby.
Check out all the details here: http://www.canadians.org/energy/issues/climatejustice/assembly.html
5 DECEMBER
Klimaforum 10
Into the second week of COP16, tensions have heightened between the people inside and outside of the Moon Palace- the hosting venue of the COP16. Grassroots movements and actions within the proximity of the negotiations have been shut down and activists literally bussed out of the surrounding area. Moreover, a number of prominent Climate Justice voices have had their COP16 access passes suspended such as prominent Indigenous activist Tom Goldtooth. Just as we saw at COP15 last year, COP16 is once again excluding the voices of real climate crisis solutions from the inner walls of the conference.
On the other hand, Klimaforum 10 has been a space of inclusion and democratic representation for all Climate Justice voices from the very start. It is an alternative conference that keeps track of the diplomatic negotiating processes, and in turn discusses alternatives to the extreme shortfalls of them.
Discussions have ranged from degrowth to implementing real solutions to climate change, while drum circles and meditation have also been part of the Klimaforum experience this year. HansHenrick Samuelsen, organizer of the first Klimaforum held last year at COP15 explains, “a lot of people are here without accreditation, who want to find out what climate change is all about. We really need these open spaces so people can explain what’s actually going on with the planet.”
7 DECEMBER
La Via Campesina’s “Global Day of Action for Climate Justice”
7 December, Cancun- Over 1,000 activists and farmers from far and wide gathered for La Via Campesina’s “Global Day of Action for Climate Justice” in Cancun. The protest focused on messages such as resisting the false solutions put forth by transnational corporations and states. Carbon trading, political loopholes that ignore reductions in carbon emissions, and the weak reinforcement of faulty global free markets are the cause of the climate crisis. The focus was on the people who are directly experiencing the effects of catastrophic climate change right now. Journalist Mike Burke was on scene with Democracy Now and interviewed Rogelio Alquisiras Burgos, a member of the National Union of Regional Autonomous Peasant Communities. Burgos explained that “the villagers of the world are the ones most affected by global warming. We are the most affected by the loss of our harvests. We have to deal with the effects of hurricanes, floods, droughts and with the changing climate.” Anti REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) signs, chants, and slogans were also a major focus of the demonstration. Clayton Thomas-Muller, an Indigenous Cree First Nations person and prominent Indigenous activist, stated “REDD is nothing more than a market scheme aimed at privatizing the lands of Indigenous peoples in the Global South and turning them into commodities to be bought and sold on the International Forest Carbon facility. This type of market-based mechanism will enable industrialized nations of the North, investors in the World Bank, to continue to expand the fossil fuel regime and prop up the fossil fuel based economy.
On their way to the Moon Palace, the protestors were stopped by a massive barricade that looked much more like a heavy steel wall with heavy police force behind it. However, the day of action was still a major success. Over 1,000 protestors made their voices heard, and one of Cancun’s busiest highways was shut down and occupied by a serious Climate Justice presence shouting for change.
The December 7th day of action in Cancun was part of a number of actions in response to La Via Campesina’s “1000 Cancuns Global Day of Action for Climate Justice.” Please read our next post, which will highlight the 1000 Cancuns’ actions that occurred outside of Cancun.
For the full report and video check out: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/8/thousands_march_in_cancn_at_la
7 DECEMBER
1000 Cancuns: Global Climate Justice Actions Come Together
7 December, All Around the World- Climate Justice actions were worldwide in solidarity with La Via Campesina’s “Global Day of Action for Climate Justice” in resistance to COP16 in Cancun. Protests, events, and directs actions took place in locations all around the world, against false climate crisis solutions and the unfounded legitimacy of COP16 processes.
The global solidarity was strong and loud. Events included Climate Justice assemblies, conferences and seminars, alternative summits and people’s negotiating processes. Actions ranged from demonstrations, rallies and occupying spaces and busy roads to direct actions of entering buildings, spraying Climate Justice slogans and banner dropping.
The updated number of 1000 Cancuns actions is rising quickly. Actions took place Montevideo in Uruguay. Buenos Aires, Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo in Argentina. San Salvador in El Salvador. Mexico City, Chispas, Cancun, and Techamac in Mexico. Tegucigalpa in Honduras. Province RI, Albuquerque NM, Bay Area CA, Mari Rose CA, San Antonio TX, Los Angles CA, New York NY, Chicago IL, Louisville KY, Washinton DC, Florida, Boston M Michigan in the United States of America. Toronto, Cam Victoria, London ON, Calgary, Charlottetown, Brockville, Edmonton, Halifax, Peterborough, Regina, Saint John, Saskatoon, Victoria, Windsor, Langley, Burnaby, and Vancouver in Canada. Delhi, Bangalore, and Delhi in India. Jakarta in Indonesia. Brussels in Belgium. Barcelona in Spain. Cancon and Saone in France. Samsun and Gerze in Turkey. Estocolmo, Uppsala, and Osterfarnebo in Sweden. Hasatil and Dili in Timor Leste. Seoul in Korea. Bangkok in Thailand. Quezon City in the Philippines. Hsin-Chu in Northern Taiwan. Caracas and Barquismento in Venezuela. Quito in Ecuador. Brixton in South London England. Berlin and Bonn in Germany. Nampula in Mozamique. Johannesburg in South Africa. Other countries that held an event or action were Chile, Costa Rica, and Nepal.
For a list of the updated actions and descriptions please go to: http://www.viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=971:list-of-events-organized-for-thousand-of-cancuns-around-the-world&catid=50:thousands-of-cancun-for-climate-justice&Itemid=195
8 DECEMBER
Remembering our Enormous Successes while Building the Climate Justice Movement
To no ones surprise, anti democratic methods are being used to silence the voices of civil society at this year’s COP16 in Cancun. Prominent representatives of Climate Justice organizations have been locked out from the conference, while videos have surfaced of activists being physically removed from open protest zones, and photographers being brutally handled and beaten by official UN guards.
After the extreme failure of the COP15, COP16 was expected to be a conference where nothing could be solved. Even though at times the battle seems bigger than us, we must pay attention to the progress we have made and what we have achieved. The Climate Justice comrades who did decide to go to Cancun have fought hard to have their voices heard. Other communities have organized and mobilized at home as a symbol of people’s change without the negotiating processes of the UNFCC.
In the fight for Climate Justice we have succeeded in starting to change the way we think about our climate today. The discussion of systematic change and the rights of Mother Earth are now part of the foundation of real Climate Justice discourse. We are engaging in a continual flow of direct actions on a global level. Just in the last three months we have seen 40-50 Rising Tides activists in Australia successfully shut down the largest coal plant in the world. In November 4000 anti nuclear activists attached themselves to train tracks delaying a nuclear train from getting to it’s destination in Germany. The action raised important global awareness about the event and danger of nuclear waste. In Dannenberg 50 000 partook in a largest peaceful protest against nuclear shipments. Over 42 direct actions were held around the world for Oct12th-Oct16th the “Global Week of Action for Climate Justice.” Direct actions ranged from “stopping Total” oil factory in Le Havre France, to blockades in the Philippines by the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice Movement (PMCJ). In the last two weeks we have seen high levels of resistance to the false solutions of COP16 in Cancun, and a strong global response to Le Via Campensina’s December 7th “Global Day of Action for Climate Justice.” These are just a few examples from the last few months, and this level of mobilising for Climate Justice has been happening for much longer.
In times of crisis it is easy to forgot about our achievements. The organisation and information website Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice North America calls La Via Campesina’s 1000 Cancuns, “Growing the Roots of Climate Justice.” This quotation can help us remember that Climate Justice mobilisations are in the process of building a strong foundation to a growing and powerful movement. A movement that empowers and unites us under the banner of “system change not climate change.” Recently Nnimmo Bassey received a Right Livelihood Award for his work in the flight for the climate justice. The closing lines of his speech went as follows:
“ I salute the courage of all those who toe this path for the resolution of conflicts. I salute the suffering
communities and peoples resisting destructive extraction. It is their courage that sustains our
struggle. In solidarity we march ahead and will not give up.”
12 DECEMBER
‘Climate capitalism’ won at Cancun – everyone else loses
It will be a challenge to maintain pressure against REDD and the carbon markets, but by November 2011 it should be clear that neither will deliver the goods. Hence, as versed by Friends of the Earth International chair and Niger Delta activist Nnimmo Bassey, a winner of the Right Livelihood Award this year:
The outside will be the right side in Durban
What has been left undone
Will properly be done
Peoples’ sovereignty
Mass movement convergence
Something to look forward to!
By Patrick Bond
Cross-posted from LINKS
December 12, 2010 – http://links.org.au/node/2041 The December 11 closure of the 16th Conference of the Parties – COP16 global climate summit – in balmy Cancun was portrayed by most participants and mainstream journalists as a victory, a “step forward”. Bragged US State Department lead negotiator Todd Stern, “Ideas that were first of all, skeletal last year, and not approved, are now approved and elaborated.”
After elite despondency when the Copenhagen Accord was signed December 18, 2009, by five governments behind the scenes, resulting in universal criticism, there is now a modicum of optimism for the next meeting of heads of state and ministers, in a steamy Durban summer a year from now. But this hope relies upon a revival of market-based climate strategies that, in reality, are failing everywhere they have been tried.
The elites’ positive spin is based on reaching an international consensus (though Bolivia dissented) and establishing instruments to manage the climate crisis using capitalist techniques. Cancun’s defenders argue that the last-hours agreements include acknowledgements that emissions cuts must keep world temperature increases below 2°C, with consideration to be given to lowering the target to 1.5°C.
Negotiators also endorsed greater transparency about emissions, a Green Climate Fund led by the World Bank, introduction of forest-related investments, transfers of technology for renewable energy, capacity building and a strategy for reaching legally binding protocols in future. According to UN climate official Christiana Figueres, formerly a leading carbon trader, “Cancun has done its job. Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause.”
Status quo or step back?
But look soberly at what was needed to reverse current warming and what was actually delivered. Negotiators in Cancun’s luxury Moon Palace hotel complex failed by any reasonable measure. As Bolivia’s President Evo Morales complained, “It’s easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide who lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger. People here in Cancun have no idea what it is like to be a victim of climate change.”
For Bolivia’s UN ambassador Pablo Solon, Cancun “does not represent a step forward, it is a step backwards”, because the non-binding commitments made to reduce emissions by around 15 per cent by 2020 simply cannot stabilise temperature at the “level which is sustainable for human life and the life of the planet”.
Even greater anger was expressed by civil society activists, including by Meena Raman of the Malaysia-based Third World Network: “The mitigation paradigm has changed from one which is legally binding – the Kyoto Protocol with an aggregate target which is system based, science based – to one which is voluntary, a pledge-and-review system.”
As El Salvadoran Friends of the Earth leader Ricardo Navarro lamented, “What is being discussed at the Moon does not reflect what happens on Earth. The outcome is a Cancunhagen that we reject.”
Most specialists agree that even if the unambitious Copenhagen and Cancun promises are kept (a big if), the result will be a cataclysmic 4-5°C rise in world temperature over this century, and if they are not, 7°C is likely. Even with a rise of 2°C, scientists generally agree that small islands will sink, Andean and Himalayan glaciers will melt, coastal areas – such as much of Bangladesh and many port cities – will drown and Africa will dry out – or in some places flood – so much that nine of ten peasants will not survive.
The politicians and officials have been warned of this often enough by climate scientists, but are beholden to powerful business interests that have lined up to either promote climate denialism, or to generate national-versus-national negotiating blocs destined to fail in their race to gain most emission rights. As a result, in spite of a band-aid set of agreements, the distance between negotiators and the masses of people and the planet grew larger not smaller over the last two weeks.
Wikileaking climate bribery
To illustrate, smaller governments were “bullied, hustled around, lured with petty bribes, called names and coerced into accepting the games of the rich and emerging-rich nations”, says Soumya Dutta of the South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy. “Many debt-ridden small African nations are seeing the money that they might get through the scheming designs of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), and have capitulated under the attack of this REDD brigade. It’s a win-win situation, both for the rich nations, as well as for the rich of the poor nations. The real poor are a burden in any case, to be kept at arms length – if not further.”
Bribing those Third World governments which in 2009 were the most vocal critics of Northern climate posturing at Copenhagen became common knowledge thanks to Wikileaks disclosures of US State Department cables from February 2010. On February 11, for example, European Union climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard told Washington that the Alliance of Small Island States “‘could be our best allies’, given their need for financing”.
A few months earlier the Maldives had helped lead the campaign against low emissions targets such as those set in the Copenhagen Accord. But its leaders reversed course, apparently because of a US$50 million aid package arranged by US deputy climate change envoy Jonathan Pershing. According to a February 23 cable, Pershing met the Maldives’ US ambassador, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, who told him that if “tangible assistance” were given to his country, then other affected countries would realise “the advantages to be gained by compliance” with Washington’s climate agenda.
The promised money is, however, in doubt. Hedegaard also noted with concern that some of the $30 billion in pledged North-South climate-related aid from 2010-2012 – for example from Tokyo and London, she said – would come in the form of loan guarantees, not grants. Pershing was not opposed to this practice, because “donors have to balance the political need to provide real financing with the practical constraints of tight budgets”.
Even while observing Washington’s tendency to break financial promises, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, the leading African head of state on climate, was also unveiled by WikiLeaks as a convert to the Copenhagen Accord. This appeared to be the outcome of pressure applied by the US State Department, according to a February 2 cable, with Zenawi asking for more North-South resources in return.
REDD as wedge
Besides Bolivia’s leadership, the world’s best hope for contestation of these power relationships rests with civil society activism. Along with La Via Campesina network of peasant organisations, which attracted a Mexico-wide caravan and staged a militant march that nearly reached the airport access road on the morning of December 7 as heads of state flew into Cancun, the most visible poor peoples’ representatives were from the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN). On December 8, IEN spokesperson Tom Goldtooth was denied entry to the UN forum due to his high-profile role in non-violent protests.
According to Goldtooth, Cancun’s “betrayal” is “the consequence of an ongoing US diplomatic offensive of backroom deals, arm twisting and bribery that targeted nations in opposition to the Copenhagen Accord”. For Goldtooth, an ardent opponent of REDD, “such strategies have already proved fruitless and have been shown to violate human and Indigenous rights. The agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies, and land grabs – anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions. Language ‘noting’ rights is exclusively in the context of market mechanisms, while failing to guarantee safeguards for the rights of peoples and communities, women and youth.”
The founder of watchdog NGO REDD-Monitor, Chris Lang, argues that attempts to reform the system failed because, first, “protecting intact natural forest and restoring degraded natural forest is not a ‘core objective’ of the REDD deal agreed in Cancun. We still don’t have a sensible definition of forests that would exclude industrial tree plantations, to give the most obvious example of how protecting intact natural forest isn’t in there – also ‘sustainable management of forests’ is in there, which translates as logging.”
Second, says Lang, “The rights and interests of indigenous peoples and forest communities are not protected in the Cancun REDD deal – they are demoted to an annex, with a note that ‘safeguards’ should be ‘promoted and supported’. That could mean anything governments want it to mean.”
During the Cancun negotiations, positioning on REDD came to signal whether climate activists were pro- or anti-capitalist, although a difficult in-between area was staked out by Greenpeace and the International Forum on Globalisation, both, confusingly, advocated a non-market REDD arrangement (as if the balance of forces would allow such). But they and their allies lost, and as Friends of the Earth chapters in Latin America and the Caribbean explained, “The new texts continue seeing forests as mere carbon reservoirs (sinks) and are geared towards emissions trading.”
In the same way, the Green Fund was promoted by World Bank president Robert Zoellick, whose highest-profile speech to a side conference promised to extend the REDD commodification principle to broader sectors of agriculture and even charismatic animals like tigers, in alliance with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. On December 8, protests demanded that the World Bank be evicted from climate financing, in part because under Zoellick the institution’s annual fossil fuel investments rose from $1.6 billion to $6.3 billion, and in part because the World Bank promotes export-led growth, resource extraction, energy privatisation and carbon markets with unshaken neoliberal dogma.
According to Grace Garcia from Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, “Only a gang of lunatics would think it is a good idea to invite the World Bank to receive climate funds, with their longstanding track record of financing the world’s dirtiest projects and imposition of death-sentencing conditionalities on our peoples.”
Unfortunately, however, some Indigenous people’s groups and Third World NGOs do buy into REDD, and well-funded Northern allies such as the market-oriented Environmental Defense Fund have been using divide-and-conquer tactics to widen the gaps. The danger this presents is extreme, because the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) strategy set in place by Al Gore in 1997 – when he mistakenly (and self-interestedly) promised that the US would endorse the Kyoto Protocol if carbon trading was central to the deal – may well continue to fracture climate advocacy.
REDD is one of several blackmail tactics from the global North, by which small sums are paid for projects such as tree planting or forest conservation management. In some cases, as well as through CDMs such as methane extraction from landfills, these projects result in displacement of local residents or, in the case of Durban’s main CDM, the ongoing operation of a vast, environmentally racist dump in the black neighbourhood of Bisasar Road, instead of its closure. Then the Northern corporations that buy the emissions credits can continue business as usual without making the major changes needed to solve the crisis.
Climate debt and command and control
Many critics of REDD and other CDMs, including Evo Morales, put the idea of climate debt at the core of a replacement financing framework. They therefore demand that the carbon markets be decommissioned, because their fatal flaws include rising levels of corruption, periodic chaotic volatility and extremely low prices that are inadequate to attract investment capital into renewable energy and more efficient transport. Such investments minimally would cost the equivalent of €50/tonne of carbon, but the European Union’s emissions trading scheme fell from €30/tonne in 2008 to less than €10/tonne last year, and now hovers around €15/tonne. This makes it much cheaper for business to keep polluting than to restructure.
Having spent an afternoon at Cancun debating these points with the world’s leading carbon traders, I’m more convinced that the markets need to be closed so we can advance much more effective, efficient command-and-control systems. Rebutting, Henry Derwent, head of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), claimed that markets ended acid rain damage by sulfur dioxide emissions. Yet in Europe during the early 1990s, state regulation was much more effective. Likewise, command and control worked well in the ozone hole emergency, when CFCs were banned by the Montreal Protocol starting in 1996.
The US Environmental Protection Agency now has command-and-control power over Greenhouse gas emissions, and its top administrator, Lisa Jackson, can alert around 10,000 major CO2 point sources that they must start cutting back immediately. But without more protest against the agency, as pioneered by West Virginians demanding a halt to mountain-top coal removal, Jackson has said that she will only begin this process in 2013 (after US President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign). On the bright side, IETA’s lead Washington official, David Hunter, confirmed to me that the US carbon markets were in the doldrums because of the Senate’s failure to pass cap-and-trade legislation this year. Thank goodness for Washington gridlock.
However, Washington’s big green groups have admitted that they pumped $300 million of foundation money into advocacy for congressional carbon trading, in spite of Climate Justice Now! members’ campaigning against this approach. Critiques have included the film The story of cap and trade(www.storyofstuff.org), which over the past year has had three quarters of a million views. The vast waste of money corresponded to a resource drought at the base.
In October, three well-resourced environmental groups – 350.org, Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace – concluded that more direct action would be needed. It’s happening already, of course. Two dozen US groups, including IEN, Grassroots Global Justice and Movement Generation, argued in an October 23 open letter that “Frontline communities, using grassroots, network-based and actions-led strategies around the country have had considerable success fighting climate-polluting industries in recent years, with far less resources than the large environmental groups in Washington, D.C. These initiatives have prevented a massive amount of new industrial carbon from coming on board.”
Climate Justice instead of climate capitalism
But by all accounts, one reason the climate-capitalist fantasy moved ahead at Cancun so decisively was the fragmented nature of this kind of resistance. Crucial ideological and geographical divides were evident within Mexico’s progressive forces, a problem which must be avoided in the coming period as the healing of divisions over market-related strategies proceeds. Grassroots activists are unimpressed by Cancun’s last-gasp attempt at climate-capitalist revivalism.
Indeed, the limited prospects for elite environmental management of this crisis confirm how badly a coherent alternative is needed.
Fortunately, the Peoples’ Agreement of Cochabamba emerged in April from a consultative meeting that drew 35,000 mainly civil society activists. The Cochabamba conference call includes:
· 50 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2017;
· stabilising temperature rises to 1°C and 300 parts per million;
· acknowledging the climate debt owed by developed countries;
· full respect for human rights and the inherent rights of Indigenous people;
· a universal declaration of rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony with nature;
· establishment of an International Court of Climate Justice;
· rejection of carbon markets and commodification of nature and forests through REDD;
· promotion of measures that change the consumption patterns of developed countries;
· end of intellectual property rights for technologies useful for mitigating climate change; and
· payment of 6 per cent of developed countries’ GDP to addressing climate change.
The analysis behind these demands has been worked out over the past few years. But now the challenge for Climate Justice movements across the world is to not only continue – and dramatically ratchet up – vibrant grassroots activism against major fossil fuel emissions and extraction sites, ranging from Alberta’s tar sands to the Ecuadoran Amazon, to San Francisco refineries to the Niger Delta, to West Virginia mountains to the Australian and South African coalfields. In addition, if Cancun revives financial markets for the purposes of Northern manipulation of the climate debate, then Goldtooth’s warning is more urgent: “Industrialised nations, big business and unethical companies like Goldman Sachs will profit handsomely from the Cancun Agreements while our people die.”
Durban will offer the next big showdown between unworkable capitalist strategies on the one hand, and the interests of the masses of people and the planet’s environment. The latter have witnessed long histories of eco-social mobilisation, such as the 2001 World Conference Against Racism which attracted a protest of 15,000 against Zionism and the UN’s failure to put reparations for slavery, colonialism and apartheid on the agenda.
It will be a challenge to maintain pressure against REDD and the carbon markets, but by November 2011 it should be clear that neither will deliver the goods. Hence, as versed by Friends of the Earth International chair and Niger Delta activist Nnimmo Bassey, a winner of the Right Livelihood Award this year:
The outside will be the right side in Durban
What has been left undone
Will properly be done
Peoples’ sovereignty
Mass movement convergence
Something to look forward to!
[Patrick Bond is based at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal – http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za – and is on sabbatical at Cal-Berkeley Department of Geography. He co-edited the 2009 book Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society, published by UKZN Press.]
