I think today must go down in history as the moment when humanity collectively failed to secure its own future. It also has to be seen as one of the greatest crimes of the rich and powerful of the world against the vast majority of humanity that has ever been committed. Although I won't hear the full skinny on final negotiations inside the COP17 conference until later in the day, it's already clear that the news is not going to be good. Here's what former Bolivian ambassador to the UN Pablo Solon had to say in a hasty email sent out while negotiators sprinted towards the finish line last night: A few moments ago we found out the decisions...>>
Climate Justice
COP17 - the 17th annual Conference of Parties, aka the Conference of Polluters - began on Monday in Durban, South Africa. The Kyoto Protocol, to which most attendee nations (but not the U.S.) are signatories, is widely acknowledged to be in its death throes. As in previous U.N. climate conferences, civil society organizations are mounting a counter-summit, a step that is particularly important given the significant reduction in the number of NGOs allowed to register for the conference. But will global civil society be able to exert any influence on the powerful nations of the world? How much traction can a radical anti-capitalist critique of over-development gain under current conditions of global economic crisis? Will rising inter-imperial competition between nations such as the U.S., China, and Brazil spell the end of the Kyoto Protocol and a complete abandonment of all attempts to regulate the world's increasingly chaotic environment? Ashley Dawson addresses these and other questions as he blogs from the conference.
This is the final session in a two-day workshop organized by the Transnational Institute, a group that bills itself as "a worldwide fellowship of scholar activists." The overarching theme of the workshop was Defying Dystopia: Struggle Against Climate Change, Security States, and Disaster Industries. Hilary Wainwright, "Climate Justice, Climate Capitalism, and Social Movements" This paper is inspired by the work of Ruth First, an exemplary scholar-activist and committed journalist. All the social movements are challenging the logic of capital today, but there's something specific about labor in that confrontation. This paper explores the emergence of networks of solidarity between labor and environmental activists, focusing in particular on the million climate jobs campaign. What I and Jacky are interested in exploring...>>
Rosa Gonzalez of Green For All in Oakland was the facilitator of this session. She began by talking about the talks. They're very challenging. On the way into Joburg, she got into a conversation with a cabbie that underlined people's lack of faith in any possible solutions. We need to build a movement that is inclusive and capable of forging viable alternatives. Our movement in the US has been focused on green jobs. We see that growing here in South Africa as well. What are grassroots strategies that are getting at issues around climate change that speak to ordinary people. Let's go around in a circle and introduce ourselves: who are you, what do you do, and what main question...>>
Monday, December 5 This afternoon I attended a panel about the Rights of Nature with some of the foremost international proponents of the notion: Cormac Cullinan (lawyer and author of Wild Nature)Shannon Biggs (lawyer and director of Community Rights Program at Global Exchange)Tom Goldtooth (member of the Indigenous Environmental Network)Natalia Greene (Ecuadorian activist and Political Program Coordinator at Fundacion Pachamam). Cormac Cullinan: We have been so brought up to think that only people can have rights that the first thing we need to do is to "think the unthinkable" (Christopher Stone). Either we humans think of ourselves as separate and superior, or we understand that we are part of Mother Earth and that our imaginations and all other aspects of...>>
Sunday, December 4To put some perspective on the passionate calls for systemic change that I've been detailing in this blog, an article just ran in the New York Times announcing that "global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery." According to the article, this increase of 5.9% is the largest absolute increase in any year since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. To underscore the gravity of this situation, various scientific bodies have released reports emphasizing that the world has only a few years left to make significant cuts to prevent run-away climate change. As a...>>
Sunday, December 4Winnie Overbeck, Coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement, begins this presentation on Fake Forests. He was introduced by Wally Menne of Timberwatch. Winnie, he told us, is going to explain why we oppose industrial tree monocultures. My organization was founded 25 years ago by a group of organizations concerned about policies for "forest preservation" established by World Bank. In the 1980s, the WB sponsored reforestation plans using eucalyptus trees on community lands. Communities began complaining that these plantations were causing many problems for them. Since then, we've been researching these issues with the aim of helping communities and forest-dependent people to secure their livelihoods against different threats, including plantations, mining, roads, and industrial agriculture. In 1999, we launch...>>
Saturday, December 3 Today was the Global Day of Action against the UN COP17. Here in Durban, a large and very spirited crowd wound through the city towards the site of COP17 negotiations. Here are photos of the day, all of them mine except the first two, which are by Maxim Combes. I hope that these photos convey the jubilant atmosphere of the march. What made it particularly special for me was the animation introduced by South African resistance traditions. As the photos show, large groups of young people danced the famous anti-apartheid toyi-toyi dance and sang acapella resistance songs as we marched towards the Durban convention center. The jubilant air of resistance I felt throughout the march needs...>>
Friday, December 2REDD stands for the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. The idea is that forest-dwelling peoples around the world will be paid not to cut down their habitats. Where will this money come from? There's the rub. In most cases it will come in the form of "offsets" from polluting industries in the global North. The resemblance to the medieval Catholic system of pardons is striking: you sin, and then you pay to have your sin forgiven. But in this case the scenario is infinitely more corrupt, since these environmental pardons also often involve preventing forest-dwelling peoples continuing to access their land. It's essentially one of the most vast...>>
Friday, December 2The day's activities began with a Climate Justice Tribunal. The model here, of course, is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which became a model for conciliatory justice after hearings in the transition to democracy during the mid-1990s in South Africa. Panelists, who will listen to testimony and then write up a report: Ivonne Yanis (of Accion Ecologica in Ecuador), Jacklyn Cock (Professor of Sociology at Witz University), Lidy Nacpil (Jubilee South), Rebecca Sommer (Climate Justice Now Movement). Vishwas Satgar introduces the importance of the CJ Tribunal. We wanted to have this platform for 4 broad reasons: 1) Consequences. Climate change is a global issue with global consequences. Coming into COP17, the IFCC published a report about emerging extreme...>>
Friday, December 2Kamoji Wachiira (Kenyan-born senior fellow with the Canadian International Development Agency) presented this evening on contemporary land grabs. According to Wachiira, it is estimated that an area the size of Europe has now been grabbed in Africa by external countries or corporations. This trend is accelerating rapidly, driven not just by donor agencies but hedge funds, which are treating land as a possible derivative salable in the future on commodity markets, as well as to sit idly and speculate on. The unfairness of this land grab is transparent. People are simply displaced from their land, with no consultation. Issues of food security are a clear result, with possible famine in these lands because all the production being done...>>
Thursday, December 1Today the Democratic Left Front, a new formation in South African politics, organized a conference on Ecosocialism. The conference began with a youth delegation arriving on the wings of rousing anti-apartheid choral singing: There was some difficulty getting the conference going because the singers kept their kinetic chants wheeling round. Makes sense. To sit down and listen is to give up a kind of agency, often to speakers who are older, wealthier, and whiter than they. Sitting here at the beginning of this program, I wonder to what extent the organizers have erred in not including more space for these young people in the conference. But perhaps there will be opportunity for dialogue of some kind during Q&A....>>
Thursday, December 1This session was organized by groundWork, a South African environmental justice and service organization. The panel began with a presentation by Mithica, a worker with the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, a coalition of African civil society groups working to mobilize communities around climate justice. According to him, CJ cannot move unless we involve farmers, pastoralists, and others who are impacted by Climate Change. That is why we organized a caravan across Africa. We know that COP17 will not deliver an agreement responsive to the conditions we in Africa face. But we need to meet with other groups in order to learn how to collaborate successfully. It takes time for people to realize that solutions proposed by global elites...>>
Thursday, December 1It's pouring down rain with a tropical vengeance at the moment after several days of clear skies and fierce heat. This rain reminds me that it's important to remember what climate change means for the 99% here in Durban and in many parts of the global South. Last Sunday, the day before the UN climate conference here began, violent storms caused flooding that killed six people. The photograph of a woman's body, from an article in a local newspaper about the impact of the floods, dramatizes in the most concrete terms what we mean when we talk about climate change in this part of the world. Her body lies unmourned in the midst of the swirling waters unleashed...>>
Wednesday, November 30What is Climate Finance? The idea behind this is that the wealthy, polluting nations of the world need to pay poorer, less polluting countries - which also happen to be the ones getting it in the neck because of climate change - so that the latter can adapt to the impact of climate change. Not so surprisingly, climate financing doesn't exactly live up to what it's billed to do. This panel picked up on a discussion begun in the morning, but focused on climate finance in Africa more specifically. The panel began with a rousing choral anthem, in which members of COSATU (the South African Conference of Trade Unions) sang in stirring counterpoint with one another, ending with...>>
Wednesday, November 30Just came from an amazing event of the South African rural women's movements. There were nominal speakers, but the real focus of the event were the groups of women who trooped in, dressed in traditional clothing, singing and dancing songs from the anti-apartheid struggle. After reading about and watching films of these struggles for so many years, it was really spine chilling to have these women standing right in front of me chanting. So much electric energy and passion. If only these women could get into the COP proceedings, they could totally shut it down. After this, I went back up the hill to the University of Kwazulu-Natal where the People's Space is located to hear a teach-in...>>
Wednesday, November 17COP17 - the 17th annual Conference of Parties, aka the Conference of Polluters - began on Monday in Durban, South Africa. The Kyoto Protocol, to which most attendee nations (but not the U.S.) are signatories, is widely acknowledged to be in its death throes.As in previous U.N. climate conferences, civil society organizations are mounting a counter-summit, a step that is particularly important given the significant reduction in the number of NGOs allowed to register for the conference. But will global civil society be able to exert any influence on the powerful nations of the world? How much traction can a radical anti-capitalist critique of over-development gain under current conditions of global economic crisis? Will rising inter-imperial competition between...>>
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