THE OTHER IMAGES on CLIMATE CHANGE

The Other Images of Climate Change
Presentation By John DSouza,
at the Panel Discussion on Global Warming
on 15th July, 2010
at IBS Mumbai

Click here to download ppt

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY: Essential Resources from the Carnegie Council

To mark Earth Day, the Carnegie Council presents this selection of Carnegie Council resources. They address ways to cope with the alarming changes brought about by climate change and the increasing degradation of our environment.

In all likelihood, some island nations and endangered species are already doomed. Yet the contributors believe that it's still not too late for the planet as a whole. From discussions at the international level to local projects, some progress has been made, and there are plenty of good ideas.  But time is running out.

The Solutions Are Waiting 2008 ’: Animation Video on Climate Change

Can the issue of climate change be explained effectively in about 4 minutes?
Yes, it can.
Noé21, a Geneva based NGO, has successfully done this and more, through their short animation feature on climate change.
Named 'The Solutions Are Waiting', the film conveys how easy it would be to fight climate change, if only we started to ACT with what we can. The run time of the movie is 4:37 minutes and it is available in English and French languages.
Noé21 is dedicated to assessing and promoting solutions to climate change. To know more about this organisation, CLICK HERE.

Climate Justice For All!

15 Minutes, Eng. DVD

Public Hearings on the Climate Change and the National Action Plan on Climate Change (Nov 11-13, 2009)

The Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change and Equitable Development and Centre for media and Cultural Studies, Tata institute of Social Science

ASrIA Carbon Disclosure Gateway

Your Gateway to the Carbon Disclosure Project and Carbon Reporting in Asia

Climate change, sustainable development and India: Global and national concerns
Sathaye, Jayant, Shukla, P R and Ravindranath, N H, Current Science, February 2006 [R.E31d. 49]

Climate change is a fast emerging science involving physical, biological and social sciences. There has been an explosion of literature on climate science and policy. There are three broad categories of scientific assessment. The science of climate change. Impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. Mitigation and policies. India is a large developing country with nearly two-thirds of the population depending directly on the climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture, fisheries and forests This requires improved scientific understanding, capacity building, networking and broad consultation processes.

Global Warming in an Unequal World - A Case of Environmental Colonialism

Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, October 2003 [R. E31d. 32]

Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science

Greenpeace International, Amsterdam, 2010

A Brief History of Attacks on Climate Science, Climate Scientists and the IPCC.

This report describes 20 years of organised attacks on climate science, scientists and the IPCC. It sets out some of the key moments in this campaign of denial started by the fossil fuel industry, and traces them to their sources.

The tobacco industry’s misinformation and PR campaign against regulation reached a peak just as laws controlling it were about to be introduced. Similarly, the campaign against climate science has intensified as global action on climate change has become more likely. This time, though, there is a difference. In recent years the corporate PR campaign has gone viral, spawning a denial movement that is distributed, decentralised and largely immune to reasoned response.

Alternative Perspectives on the Science
from Climate Change Resource Centre

The broad consensus in the scientific community is that the climate is warming at an abnormal rate and that most of the changes are due to human activity. This is the opinion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate, which has access to most of the world's leading experts on climate change science. The "Links [external link]" section of this website profiles a number of the world's most respected scientific agencies who support and/or contribute to the consensus reflected in the IPCC reports.

IPCC Errors: Facts and Spin
from Real Climate, 15 February 2010
Do the above issues suggest “politicized science”, deliberate deceptions or a tendency towards alarmism on the part of IPCC? We do not think there is any factual basis for such allegations. To the contrary, large groups of (inherently cautious) scientists attempting to reach a consensus in a societally important collaborative document is a prescription for reaching generally “conservative” conclusions. And indeed, before the recent media flash broke out, the real discussion amongst experts was about the AR4 having underestimated, not exaggerated, certain aspects of climate change.

On the Himalayan Glaciers Controversy,
Nagraj Adve, Economic & Political Weekly, 6 February 2010

To question the credibility of the science of the global warming, supported as it is by a wealth of empirical evidence, or to question IPCC's work, as is happening in some quarters, is a gross exaggeration and sometimes driven by dubious and mala fide intentions. The ongoing debate ignores four key issues. One, that glacial melting, happening extensively in many regions and altitudes of the Himalayas, is already having an impact on people's lives in the Indian Himalayan states. Two, science ignores people's own perceptions of their reality and their context. Three, the critics have not properly placed the issue in the overall context and fragility of glaciers globally. Four, the situation is going to worsen, thereby deepening an unfolding crisis of access to water.

Climate change: Enough science, now for the politics

by Mike Hulme, Science and Development Network, 3 September 2009

Science can prove global climate change is happening, but it won't tell us what to do about it

The idea that humans are changing the global climate system was first developed, elaborated and demonstrated by natural scientists. The scientific evidence backing this basic idea is now overwhelming, even if scientific predictions of future climate changes are still shrouded in uncertainty.

But although science is very good at revealing how things are, and suggesting what physical manifestations might follow a particular course of action, it has limited relevance and reach when deciding what should be done in the face of complex dilemmas - such as climate change.

Climate Change and the Urban Poor: Risk and resilience in 15 of the worlds most vulnerable cities, The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, 2009 [R. E31d. 76]

This report outlines lessons learnt regarding the principal effects of Climate Change on 15 cities in low-income countries, and what makes them vulnerable to these effects.

Climate Justice for All ! Public Hearing on Climate Change in Delhi on 11th Nov 2009, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, November 2009 [L. E31d. V179/VC62]

Climate Change in Orissa

by Toppo, Biju and Meghnath, ODAF, 2009 [L.E31d.V197]

The film shows how adivasis who contribute least to climate change are worst victims of it. Because of the big dams and factories like Hindustan Aeronautical Ltd weather pattern is changing.

Hawaman Badal Aani Kinarpattiwaril Wasti
‘Climate Change and India's coastal communities’ in  Marathi compiled by John D’Souza and Walter Mendoza,
Centre for Education and Documentation and INECC,October 2009, [ R.E31d.71]

The city calling / I am the drum that will be heard (DVD), November 2009

[L E31d. V200/VC50]

Two Trigger Films prepared for Public Hearings on the Climate Crisis. New Delhi, Nov 11-13. 2009. The city calling Dur:6'35". I am the drum that will be heard Dur: 5'27" The key issues raised were: The marginalized communities rooted in different eco-systems have a very low carbon footprint. They, most than others, beat the burden of climate related disasters. We need to work for an Alternative Paradigm of Development, where the right of local communities to 'develop' at their own pace, with their own aspirations is assured. We need to recognise their capacities in decentralized low- carbon energy production and in the management of water resources and agriculture in particular.

Eco Debt Default Deceit, February 2010 [L. E31. V195]

The film is about an Eco Debt audit on National Alluminium Company, Orissa. How many villages have been displaced and destroyed

Gaon Chhodab Nahin

by Sasi, K.P., AKHRA, February 2010 [L. E23d. V193]

We will not leave our lands! Music Video on Advisee Struggles in India Directed by : K.P. Sassier cry that echoes through forests and mountains in India today as advisees, the original or indigenous dwellers, face massive displacement due to developmental projects, destroying the roots of their survival base...GAO chhodab nahin! A voice of assertion that echoes throughout this music video that captures the marginalisation of adivasis all over India and forces us to ask: In whose favour does the God of Development work, and whom does it curse?

Uail Go Back

by Angad Bhalla, February 2010 [L. E23d. V192]

A documentary film that examines why a tribal and low-caste community in Kashipur India has been resisting a proposed mineral development project backed in part by ALCAN for over 8 years. Residents live entirely off of the land that would be severely impacted by the proposed mine and refinery plant. They have refused to accept government promises that the development will save them. They see the future in a similar aluminum project already established in the neighboring district. As of now the project has only exposed villagers to the brutality of corporate globalization.

Pollution Elephant Menance Forest Protection Displacement [L. E31. V191]

A documentary film about nature and captivity, about working people resisting an onslaught on their livelihoods, about democracy, profit and the sound of the rain. From the British colonial empire to the globalisation of today, from the anti-mining tribal resistance in Kashipur and Gandhmardhan in Orissa, the mass movements in Chattisgarh to the coastal communities in their struggle against big ports and industrial parks in Kutch and Umbergaon – the film documents and presents insights into many different peoples struggles in India.

From Kalinga to Kashipur

by Biju Toppo and Meghnath, AKHRA, Jharkhand, February 2010 [L. E23d. V189]

It is a film. For the last 13 years, tens of thousands of indigenous and low-caste peoples from the Kashipur region of Orissa in east India have been fighting to prevent another massive industrial disaster. A consortium of multinational corporations, including Alcan Inc. of Montreal, are proposing to build a massive bauxite mine and alumina refinery. This project would displace between 20 000 and 40 000 people from their homes, destroying their economy and livelihoods, contaminating their food and water source, and denying their rights to self-determination and sustainment of their culture.

If It rains again

by Sasi, K.P., Oxfam International, February 2010 [L. Y00. V187]

‘If it rains again’ is documentary bringing out the agony of the life in shelters in Tamil Nadu. Two years after tsunami, most of the tsunami survivors still remain in temporary shelters. A large population still continue to live without the basic amenities with constant treat of fire and rain.

Climate Change and India's coastal communities - Bio-regional notes on climate change,

compiled by John D’Souza and Walter Mendoza, Centre for Education and Documentation and INECC, October 2009, [R. E31d. 70]

As we take a look closer at the coastal regions, one realizes that it is the marginalised populations that are directly affected by sea-level, storm surges, environmental damage and diminishing marine bio-resources. It is then that the ethical implications of the choices of the paths of development (and consequent climate change) become clear.

Towards Sustainable Communities - Alternatives in a Low Carban Path

by Mendoza, Walter (Ed), Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC), Visakhapatnam, November 2009

[B. E31d. M1]

It is not possible to integrate the development needs of the poor with a reduction of levels of emissions in the atmosphere, unless India adopts a low-carbon path to development, which takes into consideration the carrying capacity of the Earth. This can only happen if the perspective of marginalised communities makes an impact on the Government of India, and it is coerced: to take bold, innovative and equitable action through public policy; and to translate the rhetoric of equity and inclusion of marginalised communities into concrete time bound programmes through the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

Declaration of the Consultation on Peoples’ Voices in the Domestic and International Climate Change Agenda, Eco-Ethic November 2008

Public Hearings on the Climate Crisis and the National Action Plan on Climate Change, Eco-Ethic November 2009

Regional Dialogues for Local Action: Climate Change and Marginalized Communities – Round Tables on Climate Change – Creating Space for Dialogue on climate Change; its impacts on the Region; and India’s role in the Global Context, Eco-Ethic september 2008

Mean Sea Level
Centre for Science and Environment, , 2009 [L.E31d.V164]

7,500 km from the climate secretariat in Bonn, islands at the southern tip of the Indo-Gangetic Delta are their own testimony to climate change. 'Mean Sea Level' is the story of those who live here, on edge.

Why new coal
by Vinay Jaju and Ekta Kothari, 2009, [L. E31d. V157]

Questioning India’s growing dependence on fossil fuels, and provides alternatives for development - Why New Coal is a film by young environmentalist Vinay Jaju and filmmaker Ekta Kothari. The film highlights the misconception we hold about our extractable coal availability, unravels the social and economic costs of coal – and puts forward key questions about who this coalis benefiting – in times of a climate emergency, food and water crisis.

Eco-ethic: October-December 2000 – A Report on the National Workshop on ”Climate Change and Sustainable Tribal Living”

Indian Network on ethics and Climate Change - Case study on Climate Change and Communities in the glacial margins, Academy for Mountain Environics, Dehradun, 1996 [R. E31d. 82]

Communities in high, mountain glaciers inhibit the northern margin of India. The thin glacial belt with inhabitations all along the Himalaya makes them a minority in each of the Geo-political regions. This very same region has also been the subject of boundary dispute and there has been considerable change over the years affecting their tradition livelihood patterns. Among these communities are a sizable number who are "trans-human", migrating over 60 km and over 6000 m of altitude. The easing of tensions across the Himalayan neighbors can provide anew7 lease of sustenance for some among the community.

Livelihoods and Climate Change
International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada, 2003 [R. E31d. 65]

Combining disaster risk reduction, natural resource management and climate change adaption in a new approach to the reduction of vulnerability and poverty.

Guide on Climate Change & Indigenous Peoples
Tebtebba Foundation, Philippines, 2008, [R. E31d. 63]
Unfortunately, we have been excluded from the negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol and even in the discussions and implementation of these at the national level. It is in this light that Tebtebba prepared this “Guide on Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change.” The aim of this publication is to enhance our knowledge on climate change so that we will be better equipped to participate more effectively in shaping relevant policies and actions taken to address this issue.

No Place Like Home/ Climate Refugees: What next for Climate Refugees
A report by Environmental Justice Foundation, London, 2009 Climate change is set to create millions of environmental refugees – people forced from their homes and land – by rising temperatures, sea-level change and extreme weather events. Many will be among our planet’s poorest and most vulnerable people. These will be the first victims of our failure to prevent climate change. People, who without international help and new binding agreements on assistance, will have nowhere to go and no means to survive.

This report is s dedicated to arguing their case. Puttingthe call to governments and our poli?cal leaders for a new agreement on environmental refugees, guaranteeing them rights and assistance and a fair claim to our shared world.

Climate Change and the Responsibility of Civil Society: Some Biblico-Theological Aspects of the Global Warming Debate
 by E. Calvin Beisner

Paper presented at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace Vatican City, 2007

This paper focuses some Biblico-theological considerations that should guide our understanding, and the impact of climate policy on the most vulnerable people among us.

Blue Alert: Climate Migrants in South Asia: Estimates and Solutions,
by Rajan, Chella Sudhir Greenpeace, 2008  [R. E31d. 60]

This study shows that if global temperatures rise by about 4-5°C in the course of the century, as they are projected to under business-as-usual growth in greenhouse gas emissions, the South Asian region could face a wave of migrants displaced by the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and drought associated with shrinking water supplies and monsoon variability. In the three South Asian countries sharing a coast line—Bangladesh, Pakistan and India—nearly 130 million people currently live in what is known as the Low Elevation Coastal Zone (LECZ), which comprises the coastal region that is less than 10 metres above average sea level. About 125 million migrants, comprising about 75 million from Bangladesh and the remaining from densely populated coastal regions as well as other vulnerable parts of India could be rendered homeless by the end of this century. The bulk of the people from Bangladesh are very likely to immigrate to India. To put in perspective the scale of human migration one is talking of it is equivalent to the partition ten times over, or displacing as many as 375* times the number of persons needing rehabilitation from the Sardar Sarovar project!

In Search of Shelter-Mapping the effects of Climate Change on Human Migration & Displacement,
Care, CIESIN, UNHCR, United Nations University, Social Dimen, 2009, [R. E31d. 59]

One of the most important tasks will be to improve our understanding of how environmental change affects human mobility. In any given location, migration could be an adaptation strategy. But forced migration and displacement may well be indicators of woefully inadequate adaptive capacity.. What appears to be different this time is that one species, humans, is contributing to the change, and that climate change is impacting the ecosystems on which it depends. Environmentally-induced migration and displacement has the potential to become an unprecedented phenomenon—both in terms of scale and scope. Migration—whether permanent or temporary, internal or international—has always been a possible adaptation strategy for people facing environmental changes.

There is Little Hope here-India's National Action Plan on Climate Change
by Thakkar Himanshu, South Asia Network on Dam, Rivers & People,,  New Delhi, 2009 [R.E31d. 54]

India is more vulnerable to climate change impacts than the US, the Europe or even China. Within India it is the rural and urban poor, Dalits and Adivasis, those who depend on access to natural resources for their fragile livelihoods that are the most vulnerable. This is the cruel irony of climate change. Those who have contributed least towards causing it, will suffer the most because of it. More crucial still, they are the ones who have been entirely left out of the process of finding a solution. The National Action Plan of Climate Change is being offered as The policy document on how the Indian Government plans to tackle the problem. Those who are directly affected have been completely left out of the process, planning and indeed the vision of the NAPCC and the missions like the National Water Mission. Rather than challenge or even critique the destructive model of development that has already jeopardized the livelihood of millions of people and continues to do so, the NAPCC endorses it and makes it clear that sustaining the GDP growth ought to remain top priority. These are some of the key issues this report examines.

Indigenous and Traditional Peoples and Climate Change: Issues
Paper by Mirjam Macchi , IUCN, March, 2008
Many indigenous and traditional peoples who have been pushed to the least fertile and most fragile lands as a consequence of historical, social, political and economic exclusion are among those who are at greatest risk. On the other hand, people living in marginal lands have long been exposed to many kinds of environmental changes and have developed strategies for coping with these phenomena. They have valuable knowledge about adapting to climate change, but the magnitude of future hazards may exceed their adaptive capacity, especially given their current conditions of marginalization. The potential impacts of climate change on the livelihoods and cultures of indigenous and traditional communities remain poorly known Through this report, IUCN offers some elements that will facilitate integration of socio-cultural considerations in programmes and actions to address climate change impacts.

Global Warming accelerating while the U.S. Backpedals

by Shamus Cooke, 19 October 2009

The International Institute for Environment and Development has studied the possible effects of rising ocean levels, and concluded that one eighth of the world’s urban population would become “climate refugees,” creating the largest displacement of people in world history. The most vulnerable countries are China (144 million displaced), India (63 million) and Bangladesh (62 million), while lower on the list are Japan (30 million) and the United States (23 million).

Not only will massive amounts of people become homeless, but the changing climate is expected to create other environmental and social crises internationally. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

In Africa, “…between 75 million and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change.” And: “…access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change.”

The reality of climate injustice

by Ashish Kothari , The Hindu, 18 Nov 2007

While average emissions per Indian citizen are way below the global average, some Indians — the richest — are already nearing this average. Worse, they are already well above levels considered sustainable. But this is camouflaged by the fact that the vast majority of Indians — the poor — are way below the average. In effect, poor Indians are subsidising the rich, allowing them a much greater share of the atmosphere than should be rightfully theirs.

Millets: future of food and farming

Deccan Development Society

Millets need very little water for their production. Compared to irrigated commodity crops currently
promoted by policy measures, millets and require just around 25% of the rainfall
regime demanded by crops such as sugarcane and banana. Thus, they do not burden the state with
demands for irrigation or power.

China drought highlights future climate threats

by Jane Qiu ,11 May 2010

Yunnan's worst drought for many years has been exacerbated by destruction of forest cover and a history of poor water management.Yunnan's worst drought for many years has been exacerbated by destruction of forest cover and a history of poor water management.

Cool Farming: Climate Impacts of Agriculture and Mitigation Potential
by Bellarby, Jessica, Foereid, Bente, Hastings, Astley and Smith, Pete. Green Peace International, Netherlands. 2007. [R.E31d.40

Agriculture and the challenge of Climate Change

The worst affected areas are predicted to be the double or triple cropping areas, where two to three crops are produced in a year. To offset this loss, an effort must be made to convert single cropping areas into two crop zones. This can be done by efficient rain water harvesting and developing micro watersheds and water bodies so that in rain fed areas where one crop is being harvested today, water can be made available for a second crop.

The real stumbling block is perhaps the mind set fixated on intensive, agrochemical based agriculture as the only option and the lack of political will to introduce the fundamental changes that are necessary to make agriculture sustainable and high yielding. A well articulated and focused advocacy position and an effective campaign is needed to bring about the required policy changes.

Making agriculture sustainable and reducing emissions

Practices in agriculture will need to shift from intensive, mechanized, water demanding agriculture to more sustainable, conservationist methods that give higher crop yields using less water. ‘More crop per drop of water’ is the strategy recommended to tackle drought. The same approach is applicable in a wider sense when addressing the challenges posed by climate change.

Sustainable practices like conservation agriculture can keep carbon fixed. Conservation agriculture is a system of farming that conserves, improves and makes more efficient use of natural resources through integrated management of available soil water and biological resources. The reduced till agriculture advocated by conservative agriculture means more carbon can remain trapped in the soil instead of being released when the soil is ploughed extensively before each planting. Important interventions include proper land preparation to minimize soil erosion, making contours and water channels to maximize water use, keeping overall water use low. Micro irrigation and drip irrigation are effective but expensive. Other helpful actions are planting trees and fodder crops on contours and watersheds, agro forestry and reforestation, crop rotations, green manure crops and intercropping as well as mulching and keeping a cover of crop residues on the surface.

Agriculture and the challenge of Climate Change

The worst affected areas are predicted to be the double or triple cropping areas, where two to three crops are produced in a year. To offset this loss, an effort must be made to convert single cropping areas into two crop zones. This can be done by efficient rain water harvesting and developing micro watersheds and water bodies so that in rain fed areas where one crop is being harvested today, water can be made available for a second crop.

The real stumbling block is perhaps the mind set fixated on intensive, agrochemical based agriculture as the only option and the lack of political will to introduce the fundamental changes that are necessary to make agriculture sustainable and high yielding. A well articulated and focused advocacy position and an effective campaign is needed to bring about the required policy changes.

Making agriculture sustainable and reducing emissions

Practices in agriculture will need to shift from intensive, mechanized, water demanding agriculture to more sustainable, conservationist methods that give higher crop yields using less water. ‘More crop per drop of water’ is the strategy recommended to tackle drought. The same approach is applicable in a wider sense when addressing the challenges posed by climate change.

Sustainable practices like conservation agriculture can keep carbon fixed. Conservation agriculture is a system of farming that conserves, improves and makes more efficient use of natural resources through integrated management of available soil water and biological resources. The reduced till agriculture advocated by conservative agriculture means more carbon can remain trapped in the soil instead of being released when the soil is ploughed extensively before each planting. Important interventions include proper land preparation to minimize soil erosion, making contours and water channels to maximize water use, keeping overall water use low. Micro irrigation and drip irrigation are effective but expensive. Other helpful actions are planting trees and fodder crops on contours and watersheds, agro forestry and reforestation, crop rotations, green manure crops and intercropping as well as mulching and keeping a cover of crop residues on the surface.

Forget about carbon markets, geo-engineering and all the other false solutions.
- By using agroecological practices to rebuild the organic matter in soils lost from industrial agriculture, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 20-35%
- By decentralising livestock farming and integrating it with crop production, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 5-9%
- By distributing food mainly through local markets instead of transnational food chains, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 10-12%
- By stopping land clearing and deforestation for plantations, total GHG emissions can be reduced by 15-18%

These straightforward measures would lead to a reduction of 1/2 to 3/4 of current global GHG emissions.

Climate Change is already a reality for Indian Foramers.

Existing mainstream models of farming are CHG inducing and are not conducie to adaptation.

The fertilizer threadmill has not ony affected teh soild and farmers, but has cecome a major burden on the national exchequer.

Sustainable Agriculture holds immediate mitigation & adaptation potential.

These are the main conclusions of  National Worshop on

Climate Change & Sustainable Agriculture, held on 3rd and 4th November, 2008. For copies of the reports write to csa@csa-india.org

How global warming goes against the grain

by Martin Mittelstaedt, Saturday's Globe and Mail, Feb. 23, 2007

The place where most of the world's people could first begin to feel the consequences of global warming may come as a surprise: in the stomach, via the supper plate. That's the view of a small but influential group of agricultural experts who are increasingly worried that global warming will trigger food shortages long before it causes better known but more distant threats, such as rising sea levels that flood coastal cities.

Cool Farming: Climate Impacts of Agriculture and Mitigation Potential

by, Jessica, Foereid, Bente, Hastings, Astley and Smith, Pete, Green Peace International, Netherlands, 2007 [R.E31d. 40]

Some historic anomalies in the atmospheric GHG concentrations can be attributed to early changes in farming practices such as the development of wet rice cultivation several thousands of years ago. In the last century, there have been even more substantial changes in agriculture, with the uptake of synthetic fertilisers, development of new crop varieties (“Green Revolution”) and the adoption of large-scale farming systems. The sustainability of modern “industrial” agriculture has been questioned. The solution to the environmental problems caused by today’s agricultural methods lies in a shift to farming practices which could provide large-scale carbon sinks, and offer options for mitigation of climate change: improved cropland management (such as avoiding bare fallow, and appropriate fertiliser use), grazing-land management, and restoration of organic soils as carbon sinks.

National Workshop on “Climate Change & Sustainable Agriculture” – 3-4th November 2008
[R.E31d.73]

Climate Crisis – Special Issue of ‘Seedling’
Grain, Spain, October 2009, [R. E31d. 69]

In this issue we examine the role of the world’s farming and food systems both in causing the climate crisis and potentially in helping to resolve it.

Sustaining Agriculture in the era of Climate Change in India (Civil Society position paper)

by G V Ramanjaneyulu & Kavitha Kuruganti, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Oxfam India, Jatan, 2009 [R.E31d.74]

This position paper, while agreeing in principle with India's international stand in climate negotiations that agriculture-related Green House Gas emission cannot be equated in any manner with lifestyle-related GHG emissions and appreciates the common but differentiated action demand, takes a stand that if sustainable agriculture is promoted and established even for adaptation reasons, it will result in mitigation of GHGs too. Sustainable Agriculture practices in farming are therefore a win-win option where mitigation cannot be interpreted as coming in the way of equitable and just growth of the nation.

The agribusiness lobby arrives in Copenhagen
from Seedling, October, 2009

Until now, agriculture has been largely excluded from global carbon markets, but this is set to change in December 2009 at the Copenhagen conference.Agribusiness companies are lobbying hard to make a range of farming activities eligible for future funding under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). As a result, billions of dollars will almost certainly be invested in agriculture, mainly livestock production and plantations. What makes this prospect so alarming is that this huge investment, carried out in the name of mitigating the climate crisis, will be channelled largely to big agribusiness. And it is precisely their approach to farming and food production that has created so many of the problems we face today.

Indian women farmers coping with climate change

Manisha Prakash, 26 October 2009, OneWorld South Asia

At a recent public hearing, Indian women farmers voiced theirhelplessness in dealing with the ramifications of global warming. While men are increasingly migrating to towns in search of employment, women are left to struggle against erratic weather patterns, rising temperatures and decreasing groundwater levels to support their families.

Patna: Neelam Devi, 35, and Israwati Devi, 45, from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, respectively, are women farmers struggling to make ends meet, as unpredictable rain patterns, rising temperatures and falling groundwater levels ruin crops and devastate the well-being of their families.

Far removed from the jargon of climate change these women, along with several other ordinary farmers, shared their experience of coping with climate change at a public hearing on ‘Climate Change and Livelihoods in

Flood Prone Areas’ held in Patna, recently.

The hearing is part of a nationwide series organised by Oxfam International to provide a platform for climate-affected people at the grassroots, so that they can catch the ear of policy makers and administrators.

The longer it takes to reach and implement global agreements on reducing emissions, the more adaptation will be needed for expected climate change, and the greater the number of cities (and other areas) for which protection will be impossible or too expensive. The vulnerability of cities Urban centres contain a large proportion of the people most at risk from the effects of climate change. Many urban dwellers face life-threatening risks from the increased intensity of storms, flooding and landslides that climate change is bringing. These and other impacts will also bring the threat of damage to their livelihoods, property, environmental quality and future prosperity.

Climate change and cities, id21 insihts, 1st Jan 2008, [C.eldoc1/e31d/01jan08id21insights4.pdf]

The impact of climate change takes place in cities, towns and villages. They in turn have the greatest impact on climate change. As our climate changes things are getting worse, threatening more extreme weather. If sea levels rise by just one metre, many major coastal cities will be under threat: Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Los Angeles, New York, Lagos, and Cairo Karachi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Dhaka, Shanghai, Osaka-Kobe, and Tokyo.

Climate change and cities, UN Habitat, 03 Oct 2009, [C.eldoc1/e31d/climate-change-cities.html]

The world has seen a dramatic shift to urban living. In 1900, only 10 per cent of the global population were urban dwellers; now it's more than 50 per cent. More than 95 per cent of the net increase in global population will be in cities in the developing world.

Megacity impact, Down to Earth, Ma??r 15 2008, [C.eldoc1/j50_/15mar08dte1.pdf]

According to the world urbanization prospects report of the United Nations revised in 2005 the 20th century was the century of "rapid urbanization of the world’s population", as the proportion of urban population in the global population rose from 13% in 1900, to 29% in 1950, to 49% in 2005. Today more than fifty percent of the global population lives in cities as compared to ten percent in 1900. The same report has predicted that by 2030 urban population will account for around 60% of world's total population. And this rapid urbanisation has not been without serious environmental consequences. The havoc wrought by urbanisation, particularly the megacities (the cities with a 10 million plus population), has been studied in detail by the Arizona State University ecologist Nancy Grimm and her colleagues. They have published their findings in an article, “Global Change and the Ecology of Cities,” in the journal Science on February 8, 2008.

Errbanisation impact, Vipin Kumar, Sahara Time, 30th Apr 2008, [C.eldoc1/j50_/30mar08sah1.html]

India is a country of conflicting realities. Nothing illustrates this better than the confusing results of various surveys undertaken recently on the liveability of Indian cities. In its Worldwide Quality of Living survey, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, a firm advising companies on the placement of their personnel, anointed New Delhi as the best city to live in, so far as India is concerned. It surveyed 215 countries on the basis of 39 criteria that included social, economic and environmental factors. Dominant among these were considerations of pollution, public health, access to hospitals and spread of infectious diseases.

Living on the edge, Chirosree Basu, The Telegraph, 1st May 2007, [ C.eldoc1/j50_/01may07tel1.html]

According to the report, rate of natural growth in urban areas is much higher in comparison to rural areas. In 2004, the rate of growth in urban area was estimated to be 1.77 per cent against 1.38 per cent in villages. In India, Tamil Nadu tops the list of the major States with 43.9 per cent of the total population living in the urban areas followed by Maharashtra (42.4 per cent) and Gujarat (37.4 per cent), according to the report.

Climate change to hit New Delhi hard, Legal News and Views, 1st Aug 2007, [ C.eldoc1/j50_/010807LNV35.pdf]

As the global trend of increasing urban population lends urgency to the task of making cities greener, the Ministry of Environment and Forests draws up plans to address urban environmental concerns.

As Klaus Toepfer, Director-General of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), points out in his message for the World Environment Day, too many of today's cities are breeding grounds of pollution, poverty, disease and despair and, with careful planning, they can be turned into flagships of sustainable development. The theme for the occasion is thus both a warning and a declaration of faith in the ability of nations to turn the expansion of urban centres into an effort that would benefit all.

Towards green cities, Frontline, 22 Apr. 2005, [ C.eldoc/j00_/22apr05frn1.pdf]

A 12-bedroom guest house with beautiful views of the North Sea, a lighthouse and sandy beaches would normally be considered prime property in Britain, a nation where real estate prices are booming. But Cliff House is nearly worthless. The offshore wooden barrier that once protected the sand and clay cliffs where the house sits in this quaint village has broken apart, and the government has decided not to replace it.

Warming threatens coastal cities, The Times of India, 09 Feb 2009,  [ C.eldoc1/e31d/09feb07toi1.pdf]

APOCALYPSE NOW?

What's up with the weather? As things get mercurial above us, Sunday Times does a Met check on which way the barometer's heading - today, tomorrow and the day after...

The Day After Tomorrow may not be that far away after all. If the movie's eye-popping special effects and terrifying tale of what happens when the climate changes abruptly didn't send a chill down your spine, this will. Global warming is with us. Canada's Inuit see it in disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost, Europeans and Australians see it in forest fires and searing heatwaves, the Americans see it in deadlier hurricanes. And we see it in hotter summers, colder winters, early springs and ever-changing monsoon patterns. A child born some years from now may not know what a polar bear or penguin is, his map may have no Sunderbans or even a Maldives and his Chennai could have the famous vegetable bhajis but no Marina beach. As the evidence of global warming mounts and gets harder to ignore, even sceptics admit that things, they are a-changing.

by Neelam Raaj & Sujanta Dattta Sachdeva, Times of India, 15 Jan 2006, [ C.eldoc1/e31d/15jan06toi1.pdf]

Economics of climate change

Climate change could cost the global economy almost $7 trillion by 2050 equal to a 20% fall in growth - if no action is taken on greenhouse gas emissions. Yet according to the study by economist Sir Nicholas Stern, taking action now could cost just 1% - $350 billion - of global GDP

The Hindu, 03 November 2006, [ C.eldoc1/e31d/03nov06h2.pdf]

Coastal cities like Mumbai bear brunt of global warming

by Pratim Putatunda, 16 September, Asian Age

Major coastal cities like Mumbai are certainly feeling the effects of global warming, with the phenomenon now seen as a cause of floods and droughts across the world. This is the consensus in the global scientific community backed by various-UN environmental impact studies about the phenomenon which is caused by the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Economic impact of climate change on Mumbai, India

Rakesh Kumar, Parag Jawale, and Shalini Tondon
Regional Health Forum - Volume 12, Number 1, 2008

Mumbai: The Day after tomorrow

by Ashley D'mello, Times of India, 16 Feb 2006

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, weather may combine with a rise in sea levels

The Future's Here

Global average temperatures are already .6 degree Celsius above pre-industrial era levels. A rise of just .4 degree Celsius more could see coral reefs wiped out, flooding in the Himalayas and millions of people facing hunger.

The effects of change are already becoming visible, with more extreme weather events and people in the coastal areas at risk from rising sea levels because of melting ice-caps.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up under the auspices of the United Nations, projects an increase of 18 cm in sea level by 2030 as a best-case scenario.

Nice jeans.

Too bad they cost the planet 2,866 gallons of precious H₂O.

-Mother Jones

Fixing Planet Earth: A Not-So-Modest Proposal
by Michael N. Nagler
posted Jun 03, 2010

Only a nonviolent revolution, like the one led by Gandhi, can meet the
challenge of the climate crisis.

To make climate the number one priority doesn’t necessarily mean dropping
whatever else we’re doing. It means understanding how what we’re doing
relates to that core project.

The CDM workshop for NGOs Activists and Citizens held at India International Centre, New Delhi, CED and others [R.E31d.72]

Climate Change: Issues and Perceptions - Report on Climate Change Round Table 30-Oct 08, Bhubanewsar

by Stanley, William, FCFC, INECC, ODAF & DHARA, Bhubeneswar, October 2008 [R. E31d. 612/57]

Perception of the climate change: 1 Prolonged heat wave phenomena (difficulty in doing summer cultivation) 2. Winter temperature is gradually increasing, rainfall fluctuation 3. Longer span of dry days 4. Longer span of summer has resulted in type and intensity of insects/pests 5. Rise in temperature, air temperature rising at many urban areas due to industrial growth.

Decentralized Energy Options for Sustainable Development - A cluster approach in the tribal context to combat climate change by LAYA, Visakhapatnam, June 2008 [R.C33 48]

The issue then is how to integrate the development needs of the poor with a reduction of levels of emissions in the atmosphere? This implies that unless we adopt a model of development that takes into consideration the carrying capacity of the Earth we will not be able to address the climate issue. Laya has been working with forest dependent communities in the northern parts of Andhra Pradesh since 1985. Laya in collaboration with the Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC) has embarked on addressing the climate change issue in the tribal areas of Andhra Pradesh.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an issue of ‘Eco-Ethic’, INECC, November 2007 [R.E31d. 43]

Training of Trainers Workshop on Climate Change

by INECC, ICOR & JPC, Mumbai, 2007 [R. E31d. 608]

INECC, ICOR and JPC have organised the workshop on climate change to bring together faith groups to discuss and explore areas of potential consensus regarding:

Develop perspectives to understand the phenomenon of abrupt large changes in the climate system and its rapid and widespread effects.

To look at the impacts of Climate Change in general and on the marginalised in specific.

Discuss, share and explore dimensions of the climate change issues within locations of influence for climate sustainability.

Consultation on the UN System and Civil Society Initiatives

by Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC), Mumbai, 23 February 2005 [R. E31d. 86]

The commodification of natural resources and the profit-driven process of development have lead to large-scale destruction of the ecosystems creating undue pressure on societies that are dependent on natural resources for their sustenance. The voice of civil society has been suppressed and in some cases even silenced. The UN has served as a platform for addressing a wide range of global concerns. Nearly every state in the world is a member of the UN. It is imperative therefore that civil society recognizes, creates and utilizes spaces available for discussion of issues and possible solutions within the context of the UN framework.

The Call of the Communities - Subaltern Voices in Delhi at The Conference of Parties (COP) - 8, Climate Change October 23 - November 1 2002

by Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC), Visakhapatnam, October 2002 [R. E31d. 85]

Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC) has been involved in the issue of Climate Change (CC) for more than seven years. We have been relating to marginalised communities in different eco-zones in the country - coastal, mountainous, forest, arid / semi-arid, and urban. CC has a different impact on each of these ecological spheres. Our focus has been to bring the science of CC to the marginalised communities of various eco-regions that our network members are involved in, and to facilitate an articulation of the ethical dimensions of CC and sustainable development that is relevant in their own context. What is common to all these areas is that the impact is greatest on these communities. These communities, whether traditional - as is the case in most of the rural areas in all the zones, or urban, their lifestyles and livelihood practices are what sustains the climate balance in spite of the extreme pressures put on the atmosphere by the current dominant development paradigm.

Climate Change and Tribal Sustainable Living : Responses from North East

By Fernandez, Walter and D'souza, Nafisa Goga, North Eastern Social Research Guwahati and INECC 6Sept 2001, [B. E31d. F2/F61]

The warning to the rapidly industrializing West about where it was heading did come very early and there was enough time to act upon it with corrective steps. The smoke and fumes from the mushrooming factories were trapped in a sky over which there was almost always an overhand of clouds except during unusually bright summers. This inevitably led to the stifling atmospheric inversion from spewing out of more and more carbon dioxide.

Indian Network of Ethics and Climate Change: 1997-2001 [R. E31d. 29]

INECC is a network of individuals and organization. Believes that Climate Change is a part of a larger environmental crisis and addresses the basic issue of ecologically destructive development processes that have been globally pursued. The issue of Climate Change raised basic questions of social justice and has a direct bearing on development alternatives for the future.

Initiative Towards Sustainable Urban Communities by Justice & Peace Commission & INECC JPC and INECC, Mumbai, April 2001 [R.E31d. 83]

1) To bring international concerns of climate change into public debate as well as to provide an input from specific local contexts to policy action.

2) To sensitize various social groups and potential victims of climate change about its impacts on their livelihood.

3) To disseminate information about causes, responses and other dimensions about climate change.

4) To focus on environmental ethics for individual and social action. That is the reason why during the last two years INECC held several workshops that focussed on regional and pectoral concerns.

Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change - Activities Report -1993-1997 INECC c/o LAYA, Visakhapatnam, October 1997 [R. E31d. 84]

The activities of the Visakhapatnam based Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC) began in September 1993 when a consultation workshop on "Global Warming and the Role of NGO's" was organized in Bombay. This consultation was convened by the South Asian Theological Research Institute, SATHRI, on behalf of the Network's Core Group. It was attended by 27 participants from varied backgrounds from India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The objective of the workshop was to work out strategies for action in urban as well as rural areas to combat global warming and climate change. Subsequently the workshop report including major papers and deliberations were published in a book entitled "Global Warming: Implications to South Asia and the Role of Churches". The repeated concerns expressed on the issue of global climate change by various church bodies as well as the World Council of Churches (WCC) served as a catalyst to the initiation of the consultation in Bombay. The focus, however, was to discuss and disseminate information on the global environmental risk of climate change in the Indian context and to deliberate upon strategies to tackle the problem at the grassroots level as well as at the policy level.

NGOs Regroup Around Climate Change After Bali
 by Marwaan Macan-Markar, InterPress Service, Bali, 18 December 2007
“We are here because of the broadening character of the climate change crisis and the solutions being proposed at the Bali meeting,’’ ''It is no more about techno-fixes. It has become a global emergency for which issues such as trade, justice, equity and democracy have to be factored in. And that is where our strengths lie.”

It was a view echoed by other non-governmental groups and think tanks known for their work in development, poverty alleviation and humanitarian assistance, such as the Third World Network, Action Aid, Oxfam and Via Campasina. They were prominent in the meetings on the consequences of climate change policy for the world's poor that took place on the sidelines of the main Bali event, which had attracted ministers and government leaders from nearly 190 countries.

According to Bello, there were at least 100 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who have an interest in trade and justice issues out of the nearly 350 NGOs that participated in the UNCCC. ''Now there are more players in the arena, because we need to stop powerful governments and corporations trying to profit from the economic issues at stake,'' he added. ''These are areas where the traditional climate change groups have not paid much attention.''

Seeing ‘REDD’? Forests, climate change mitigation and the rights of indigenous peoples
by Tom Griffiths and Francesco Martone, Forest Peoples Programme, May 2009

The report stresses that many initial REDD concepts fail to acknowledge forest governance problems, do not propose forest tenure reform and too often unjustly identify ‘shifting cultivators’ as a primary driver of deforestation – without scientific or legal justification.

It is concluded that a ‘business as usual’ approach to forest policies and governance must not be an

option for REDD. Government negotiators working to reach an agreement in Copenhagen and

beyond must take on board the constructive proposals that indigenous peoples and civil society have placed on the table. They must also ensure that indigenous peoples and civil society have a seat at the negotiating table in the international climate negotiations as well as at REDD negotiations at the national and local levels.

A Copenhagen Climate Treaty - Version 1.0, A Proposal for a Copenhagen Agreement by Members of the NGO Community

International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change: Policy Paper on Climate Change, 27 September 2009

Mother Earth is no longer in a period of climate change, but in climate crisis. .Indigenous Peoples have a vital role in defending and healing Mother Earth. We uphold that the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples ... must be fully respected in all decision-making processes and activities related to climate change.

We have intrinsic contributions towards addressing the climate crisis, and renewing the relationships between humans and nature. For generations, we have managed ecosystems nurturing its integrity and complexity in sustainable and culturally diverse ways. Our customary resource management systems have proven to be ecologically sustainable, low carbon economies.

Climate Change and Global Equity
by Anju Sharma, Centre for Science and Environment, 31 March 2000
If the climate convention does not accept the principle that all human beings have equal rights to the atmosphere and lay down exactly what these rights are, what is to prevent industrialised countries from using more than their share? This fact has escaped civil society groups, who have become partners to a form of modern-day eco-imperialism, giving equity concerns in the UNFCCC low priority simply because the us Senate will not hear of it.Many Northern NGOS have fallen victim to the web of scientific complexities spun by industrialised countries unwilling to take on reduction commitments, and lost sight of their original goal in a maze of baselines, percentage cuts, sinks, trading and a whole lot of other creative diversions.

Debates around REDD, indigenous rights and control over funding
from Down to Earth No.76-77, May 2008
There are many strands to the ongoing international climate change debate. Here, we focus on three issues that have been particularly prominent in the exchanges between civil society and governments and between North and South: avoided deforestation or Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD); indigenous rights; and control over international climate change funding.

A "Passive Revolution" in Global Climate Politics: The Changing Dynamics of ENGO/Oil Company Relations
by Simone Pulver Brown, University Watson Institute for International Studies Center for Environmental Studies, January 2005

Most social movements scholars identify a split in a counter-movement elite as a political opportunity for a social movement. Drawing on a case study of environmental NGO advocacy in the international climate debates, I challenge this consensus. I demonstrate that the split in the oil industry in the context of the UN climate change negotiations both undermined the parallel efforts of various climate advocacy NGOs, by bringing to the fore pre-existing tensions between groups, and undercut the movement's ability to sustain the kinds of public mobilization that led to the split in the oil industry in the first place. The paper contributes three arguments to the social movements literature. First, split elites are as likely to generate a political liability as a political opportunity. Second, the source of the liability is not the cooptation of individual NGOs but conflict between different branches of the movement community. Finally, the balance between opportunity and liability depends on communication across movement groups.

Power to People: The Putsil way, IRDWSI / WIDA, Orissa, 2004 [R. Q46. 70]

The Integrated Rural Development of Weaker Sections in India, popularly known as WIDA, has been in operation in the Southern part of Orissa for over twenty years now. The phenomenal success of activating the people of nearly 100 villages of all sections of the community, men, women, youth and children, has no parallel in history of development in this country. The entire operation was conceived scientifically and subjected to periodic evaluation by both the implementers as well as the beneficiaries. The focus has been on participatory development. The Team of WIDA have given the best of their life from youth to middle age in serving and developing the people of these villages in most innovative and enthusiastic ways. The story of WIDA, is so vast and varied that it cannot be comprised in an introduction to this book "Power to People-The Putsil Way" which is the climax of people's participation in development. This introduction therefore will confine itself to "The Putsil Way"

The Future NRMs - saga of initiatives of Adivasi women of Koraput, Orissa, India. IRDWSI / WIDA, Orissa, 2004 [R.Q46.69/635]

Under the circumstance it is not enough to live amidst natural resources; we have to take responsibility to safeguard its relevance to our livelihood; its management; its sustenance. In this document, we try to capture the continued process of learning, action for alternatives and dissemination at all levels.

Natural Dyes - Means to Sustainable Livelihood, IRDWSI/WIDA, Orrisa [R.G73. 14]

This is a film. Indiscriminate and excessive utilization of natural resources, particularly during the 20th century, led to the destruction of habitats rich in biodiversity and the inhabitants to enormous difficulties to earn their livelihood. The hilly, forest regions of Orissa as well as other parts of the country, despite degradation, are still rich in biodiversity and local wisdom relating to diverse and sustainable ways of utilization of natural resources. Though, both of them are trapped in the trend of degradation, they still present great potential for restoration.

People, Power, Putsil - Power for Change - The story of the Micro Hydel Power Plant. [L.C30a.V151/VC20]

A power plant built through community initiative.

When Women Manage Their Land, Water, Forest, Forest

by Toppo, Biju and Meghnath, AKHRA, February 2010 [L. A31. V188]

The film is about WIDA's work in Koraput, Orissa. How they have started Deomali Mahila federation and Self-Help Group so that women can manage their resources well

Mini Hydro-Putsil by WIDA, Orissa, February 2010 [L G73.V194]

Often, there is an increasing need for power supply in rural areas, partly to supply industries, and partly to provide illumination at night. Mostly, energy scarcity is not viewed as a problem by the target groups because there are more serious and impending issues that need to be tackled first. For that reason it may be useful to explore energy that can generate income at some level, or contribute towards augmenting the productivity of household work. Often mini-hydro power project is the most dependable and efficient means to meet the requirements. This film shows that though they are small, comparatively they are effective. They are used in remote areas where the power grid does not extend.

Painting the village
 by Jaideep Hardikar, Daily News and Analysis, 20 December 2009

Even as climate change negotiators squabble over the final draft of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), Mendha, a village in Gadchiroli district, is demonstrating on a daily basis that the best way to conserve forests is to give its management to local tribal communities.

The enlightened adivasi population of this village can consensually achieve what the world leaders can’t putting nature first.

Just a Lot of Hot Air? A Close Look at the Climate Change Convention

The Panos Institute U K , 2000 [R. E31d. 25/613]

Global warming may be the greatest environmental threat of the 21st century. Rising sea levels, violent floods, droughts and cyclones and changing agricultural conditions will threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. And although the industrialized countries are mainly responsible, it is the developing world that will suffer most. Most people agree that greenhouse gases, caused largely by fossil fuels, are one of the main sources of global warming. But fossil fuels are seen to be at the heart of wealth and development. Agreeing joint action on reducing heir use may be one of the most difficult diplomatic challenges the world's nations have ever faced together. The 1992 UN Climate Change Convention was a first step, but a major meeting of the signatory countries in November 2000 in the Hague, the Netherlands, may be decisive in agreeing real action, soon, to slow global warming.

Carbon colonialism
by Jim Green, Green Left Weekly issue #445 25 April 2001

The best excuse that Western corporate polluters and their political allies have devised to justify their efforts to wreck the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions is that it does not mandate reductions in the countries of the Third World.

President George W Bush, in a recent letter to a United States senator, said, “I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80% of the world”. The same argument has been made repeatedly by the Australian government.

Avoiding Deforestation and Degradation: Walking the tightrope to success
 by Richard Wainwright. FERN, London, 2008

Since the meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, December 2007, discussions about the importance of including forests in any climate agreement have been moving at an accelerated pace. The pressure to do something is considerable, but whilst any scheme to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation has the real possibility of leaving forests standing for both the benefit of the people who directly depend on them and the climate, it could also lead to the world’s last great land grab, more deforestation and a further reduction of indigenous peoples’ rights.

Players and Plays in the Bali Climate Drama
by Walden Bello World Rainforest Movement

A significant number of the side events have focused on market solutions to the GHG problem such as emissions trading arrangements. Under such schemes, GHG intensive countries can ?offset? their emissions by paying non-GHG intensive countries to forego pollution-intensive activities, with the market serving as the mediator. Shell and other big-time polluters have been making the rounds touting the market as the prime solution to the climate crisis, a position that articulates well with the US position against mandatory emission cuts set by government. UN officials justify the greater private sector presence by saying that 84 per cent of the $50 billion needed to combat climate change in the next few years will need to come from the private sector and the latter needs to be "incentivized."

Offsets Under Kyoto: A Dirty Deal for the South

by Kevin Smith, Transnational Institute. 5 December, 2008

Despite driving poor communities off their land and patently failing to deliver carbon emissions reductions, lobbyists for big industries and institutions such as the World Bank were active in Poznan climate negotiations pushing for further deregulation and expansion of the market-based Clean Development Mechanism. CDM financing has entrenched dirty development by acting as a financial subsidy for big industrial polluters such as chemical factories, coal fired power stations and pulp and paper mills. The CDM has been promoted at the expense of an existing adaptation fund and the truly clean technology transfer that is so urgently needed.

What lies beneath: The politics of climate change negotiations

by Aditi Sen InfoChange News & Features, August 2005

In many ways, the debate over climate change reflects the larger debate about global equity and justice, and the struggle between the rich and the poor. Developing countries opposed the plans by blaming the problem of global warming on the practices of wealthier, developed nations. India and China, in particular, argued the case for the developing countries, refusing to commit to any proposals that could limit their industrial development. So where does that leave us?

Forests of global contention

by Anil Agarwal & Sunita Naraian, Down to Earth, July, 1992

The forest initiative had all the political elements that could have turned the Rio conference in favour of the US. It could easily have diverted the attention of the summit away from the North"s environmental problems to the South"s forests. The initiative failed only because of the crudeness of the US position, which totally disregarded southern concerns. In terms of the benefits that the initiative would bring, the White House had only talked of protection of biodiversity, maintenance of carbon sinks and reservoirs, functions like soil erosion control, and economic benefits like plants which can be used to manufacture modern medicines. There was no mention of the fact that forests play a crucial role as a habitat for millions of tribal people across the world.

Summit Games: Bush Busts UNCED

by Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor, July 1992

It was the U.S. government against the world at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Having earlier scuttled the climate change treaty by insisting that it contain no emission reduction targets.The U.S. belligerence was so extreme that it threw all other players at the conference - other Northern countries, the Third World and the massive number of nongovernmental organization (NGO) observers - into a loose coalition, opposed to the United States.

Warming up to kill

Deaths, diseases to increase with rising temperatures: WHO

1. 140,000 excess deaths due to global warming in 2004
2. 70,000 excess deaths recorded in Europe in the heat wave of summer 2003. Extreme high temperatures can cause deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, particularly among the elderly
3. 1.2 million deaths every year is caused by urban air pollution. High temperatures also raise levels of ozone and other pollutants in the air that exacerbate cardiovascular and respiratory diseases
4. 300 million people are affected by asthma. This number is likely to increase as pollen and allergens that trigger it increase during extreme heat
5. 60,000: Number of people who die every year in weather-related natural disasters, mainly in developing countries. This is thrice the number of such deaths in the 1960s
6. 50 per cent: Likely decrease in production of staple foods due to rising temperatures and changing rainfall pattern in some African countries
7. 2 billion more people would be exposed to dengue by 2080 due to climate change
8. 2.2 million people die of communicable diseases like diarrhoea every year. Their numbers will increase with increase in migration caused by climate change. More than half the world's population lives within 60 km of the sea and may have to migrate

Source: World Health Organization

Climate and climate change - A Special Issue of 'Aktuel Naturvidenskab', Aktuel Naturvidenskab, Denmark, 2009 [R. E31d. 77]

Build up from social movements a proposal fostering the precepts of Climate Change - An Issue of the Newsletter of the Solon

by Tunupa, The Solon Foundation, Bolivia, 2009,[R. E31d. 75]

"Climate Change cannot be restricted to a discussion about quotas of gas emissions or be derived into false solutions such as carbon markets or bio-fuels, which do not solve the in-depth problem; on the contrary: They aggravate it. Being a civilizing crisis closely linked to the survival of the planet, human communities and a variety of species living on it, this problem demands the adoption of measures and prompt actions addressed to change radically rooted causes of such a crisis. It should start by recovering and developing more fair and sustainable ways of life; paying the historical debt developed countries have with the countries of the South; changing the bases of the contemporary model, its production and consumption matrix; its financial mechanisms and destructive commercial regulations"

Presentation by Sarat Chandra Lele (Bangalore Platform), Presentation and talk on Climate Change at Bangalore CED (Unedited Video) [L. E31d. V175]

50 Simple steps to save the earth from Global Warming

by Steinman, David, Jaico Publication House, Mumbai, 2009 [B. E31d. S2]

If you, like so many others, are eager to alter the course of climate change, let 50 Simple Steps be your road map! This practical and approachable guide to protecting our planet from global warming will inspire and empower you to begin making changes for a greener lifestyle today. 50 Simple Steps will: — Show you how something as simple as drinking fair trade coffee can help fight global warming — Teach you how a sustainable lifestyle benefits other pressing issues including national security and the future of our economy — Create awareness, enthusiasm, and support for your green lifestyle — Offer new ideas even if you are already environmentally savvy — Improve your quality of life by saving you money and improving your health — Change the way you think and shop Sample Steps Include: — Buy Green Energy — Buy Locally Grown Foods — Check Your Tire Pressure — Plant a Rooftop Garden — Recycle Your Shoes — Invest in the Solution

Energy Efficiency and Climate Change - Conserving Power for a Sustainable Future

by Reddy, B. Sudhakara & others, Sage Publication Ltd., New Delhi, 2009 [B. E31d. R2]

This book deals with a gamut of issues related to energy efficiency, development and environment with a view to provide a systematic framework for the efficient utilization of energy. While analyzing the barriers and drivers for energy-efficiency investments, it focuses on mobilization of private capital and the commercialization of energy-efficiency technologies. It also links the issue with the climate debate in terms of its causes, outcomes, policy initiatives, mitigation and adaptation methodologies. Energy Efficiency and Climate Change: Conserving Power for a Sustainable Future discusses the development of policy instruments to promote energy-efficiency investments that can bridge the gap between energy-efficiency potential and practice. It directly addresses the 'Energy Efficiency Gap' that every country has faced in the form of opposition to energy reform policies. A discussion on implications of international laws on climate change is followed by proposing the commercialization of energy-efficient technologies, with special focus on the role of multilateral institutions in promoting the adoption of energy-efficiency measures.

Eco Debt the earth speaks, World Council of Churches, Geneva, August 2009, {[L. E31d. V196]

The film is about how one percent of the entire populations of the earth is consuming eighty percent of the resources.

Hamari Aawaz: Mumbai ka Badalta Tapman: Video Magazine
by YUVA, October 2009 [L. E31d. V171]

Age of Stupid, The
[L E31d.V170/VC54]

'The Age of Stupid' is the new cinema documentary from the Director of 'McLibel' and the Producer of the Oscar-winning 'One Day in September'. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching 'archive' footage from 2008 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?

Report of the Capacity Building Programme on Climate Change

by SCINDeA, Tamilnadu, October 2009 [R. E31d. 87]

Climate change has become an issue of major concern for the world today. Scientific data clearly shows the impact of human action on climate change. Some regions of the world are already experiencing the effects of climate change. It has become a human development challenge of the 21st century. If we do not respond to the challenge now, then all our efforts to reduce poverty will be reversed. The most vulnerable sections of society which include women, children and the elderly in developing countries will suffer the most even though they have contributed least to the problem. In the future no country no matter how wealthy or powerful it is will be immune to the impact of global warming. Increased exposure to droughts, floods & storms are already destroying every gained development opportunity and reinforcing inequality.

CDM for Sustainable Development? - A People's perspective - Money for Nothing!!! LAYA Resource Center, Visakhapatnam, December 2009 [R. E31d. 88]

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment (called Annex 1 countries) to invest in projects that reduce emissions in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries. Apart from helping Annex 1 countries to comply with their emission reduction commitments, the purpose of the CDM, is that it must assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development, while also contributing to stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. Hence, CDM has the twin objectives: to achieve Sustainable Development (SD) in host countries, and assist Annex-1 countries in achieving their emission reduction targets in an environment friendly and cost-efficient manner.

A D 2048: The Greenhouse Effect
by Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi, [L E31d.V162]

Set in the fictional future of the year 2048, this two -films series (along with The Ozone Alarm), focuses on the damage human activity and man made chemicals inflict on the environment and, looks at what the world may be like if ozone depletion and global warming continue unchecked.

Money for Nothing? A Peoples perspective

[L. E31d. V199]

This DVD Contains 3 films, namely

1)Money for Nothing - it is about ITC company in a village in Andhra Pradesh. How they are not fulfilling their promise to the villages.

2)Diamonds and Rust - It is by LAYA. How Kohinur Steel Company is polluting the resources of villages.

3)Kulei - It is a village in Orissa. It shows how an industry is causing pollution in a village and how villages are not getting any kind of benefits.

AD 2048: The Ozone Alarm
Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi [L.E31d.V163]

A D 2048: The Ozone Alarm Set in the fictional future of the year 2048, this film is a part of a two-part series with The Greenhouse Effect, the film focuses on news bulletins in 2048 which shows an appalling litany of disaster stories: epidemics of 'supertyphus' spread by rats, plagues of grasshoppers devouring food crops and famine relief camps in Europe.

Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC)

by Padhi, Ajita Tiwari, Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change, Vishakhapatna, February 2009 [R. E31d. 611/56]

India - Pressure to mitigate emissions, pressure to develop! There is worldwide concern about the rising emissions of India. Although the current contribution of India to Green House Gases (GHGs) is well below that of countries like the US and China, and its per capita consumption is one of the lowest in the world, there is an urgent need to minimize India's emissions because its energy consumption is increasing rapidly. India's per capita energy is low because 70% of India's population still live in rural areas and slums

Energy Efficiency Future Conservation
British Council, [L.E31d.V165]

Conservationl Climate change is an important energy security issue and these films document low carbon technologies that help ensure energy security and reduce emissions'. The topics range from Geothermal Energy to Biofuels, Solar/Wind Energy and Energy Efficient Buildings.

Global Warming In an Unequal World
Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, 2003, [R. E31d. 67]

The idea that developing countries like India and China must share the blame for heating up the earth and destabilising its climate, as espoused in a recent study published in the United States by the World Resources Institute in collaboration with the United Nations, is an excellent example of enviromental colonialism. The report of the World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington- based private research group, is based less on science and more on politically motivated and mathematical jugglery .Its main intention seems to be to blame developing countries for global warming and perpetuate the current global inequality in the use of the earth's environment and its resources.

Solving the Climate Crisis Environment Climate Energy
De-deutshland, Germany October 2009, [R. E31d. 68]

Let us make it clear yet again: scientists believe that climate-damaging greenhouse gases must be reduced worldwide by 25 to 40% by the year 2020 and at least 50% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels if we want to limit average global warming by the end of the century. Otherwise entire regions will be threatened by extreme drought or flooding. However, the negotiations on the new climate agreement are currently turning into a highly complex game of political poker.

Climate Change in South Asia, Emerging Challenges & Responses
South Asian Network for Social & Agricultural Development, New Delhi, 2009 [R.E31d. 66]

Climate change as an issue has been there since last 50 years but this issue gained momentum and came to the forefront in last five years or so once the European Countries and the United States of America (the developed world) started to feel the heat of the climatic change in the form of large scale floods in the United States, the wholesale destruction of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina, the heat waves over Europe among other such uncharacteristic climatic behaviours.

Climate Change, Internationalism and India in the 21st Century
by Nicholas Stern, London School of Economics, 2009 [R.E31d. 64]

Mountain Biodiversity and Climate Change
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development [R. E31d. 62]

Blown away - Wind energy projects in Satara, Maharashtra
 chapter from the book Carbon Trading: How it works and why it fails by Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes Critical Currents, No.7, November, 2009, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Uppsala, 2009
It is often argued that renewable energy projects within the CDM are inherently 'good' projects designed to reduce emissions and promote local sustainability. Yet renewable energy ventures are not fundamentally different in nature from other CDM projects. They often contribute to land grabs and exacerbate local conflicts and pollution, while continuing to benefit the dirty industries that buy pollution credits from them.

The following case studies conducted in the Satara and Supa districts of Maharashra on the Sahyadri Valleys, Western Ghat, India serve as a warning of how not to proceed with renewable energy. There are many ways to build truly sustainable, small-scale, renewable energy. However, if projects are embedded within an institutionalised development framework they tend to inhibit rather than advance a future of truly 'sustainable' renewable energy.

Roots of Global Warming, The: Are we on the brink of an eco-catastrophe?
Delhi Platform & Hyderabad Platform, Delhi, December 2008 [E31d.610/55]

Though one can not link every aberration in weather to global warming, irregular rainfall patterns are very much among its predicted impacts.

Climate change and displacement
by Couldrey Marion and Herson, Maurice, Forced Migration Review, UK, October 2008 [R. E31d. 52]

In response to growing pressures on landscapes and livelihoods, people are moving, communities are adapting. We debate the numbers, the definitions and the modalities - and the tension between the need for research and the need to act.

Human Development Report 2007/2008 - Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a divided world
United Nations Development Programme, 2008 [R. E31d 50]

The Human Development Report 2007/2008 shows that climate change is not just a future scenario. Increased exposure to droughts, floods and storms is already destroying opportunity and reinforcing inequality. Meanwhile, there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that the world is moving towards the point at which irreversible ecological catastrophe becomes unavoidable. Business-as-usual climate change points in a clear direction: unprecedented reversal in human development in our lifetime, and acute risks for our children and their grandchildren.

Bad Deal for the Planet - Why Carbon Offsets Aren't Working ...and how to Create a Fair Global Climate Accord,
Dams, Rivers and People, International Rivers, USA [R. E31d. 47]

The City Dialogues...on Climate Change
Centre for Social Markets, Kolkatta [L.E31d.V145/VC05]

The first effort of its type in India, Climate Challenge India, started in early 2007 as a multi-year programme of activities. It seeks to build a new climate of hope and opportunity on climate change, as the global community begins to face up to the enormity of the challenge.

India and Climate Change - Challenges and Solutions - An Issue of  'Green Energy'
World Institute of Sustainable Energy, Pune - March-April 2008 [R. E31d. 46]

An Inconvenient Truth
by Al Gore [L.E31d. V136]

34 Ways to Stop Global Warming
by Isomaki, Risto, South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy, New Delhi, December 20076 ([R E31d. 41]

Climate Change Conundrum – An Issue of ‘Seminar’

Seminar, Delhi February 20101, [R. E31d. 38]

Pathways to 2050 - Energy and Climate Change

World Business Council for Sustainable Development, August 2006 [R. E31d. 34]

Changing Currents: Tell Tale Signs

by Centre for Science and Environment, Television Trust For The Environment [L.E31d.V922/180]

Climate change and its impact on the availability of water is the subject of Tell Tale Signs. Orissa in India and Mozambique in Africa.The film puts forth a strong case for communities and official agencies to work together to adapt to changing climate.

Our Simmering Planet - What to do about Global Warming?

by Gupta, Joyeeta, Zed Books, London, 2001 [B. E31d. G1]

Our Simmering Planet makes clear for the general reader what is at stake; the difficulties of concerted action; the conflicting concerns of countries North and South; and the urgent necessity for all of us to press our politicians to take climate change seriously.

Democracy or Carbocracy? Intellectual Corruption and the Future of the Climate Debate,

Briefing 24,The Corner House, UK [R. E31d. 28]

Contrary to popular impression, most climate negotiators no longer bother discussing how to make deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions. Nor do they talk seriously about how to share the world’s limited carbon cycling capacity. Nor do they scrutinize the underlying causes of global warming. Nor do they support the most important existing efforts to adapt to it.

Instead, they squabble over calculations they should know are unscientific-such as how much fossil fuel emissions they might claim that trees are “neutralizing” through photosynthesis. They argue over who is to receive the spoils of “climate mitigation” activities whose fraudulence is well established-such as subsidies for tree plantations or coal-fired power plants.

Global Warming and The Third World  - an issue of ‘Tiempo’

International Institute for Environment & Development, London, UK [R. E31d. 27]

Coming Clean: How clean is Nuclear Energy?

Groen Links in the European Union Netherlands, 2000 [R. E31d. 24]

In this brochure, the claims made by the atomic energy industry are held up to the light. What is the truth about the claim that nuclear energy can be used as an effective weapon in the struggle to prevent climate change?

Profiles in Carbon: An Update on Population, Consumption and Carbon Dioxide Emissions

by Engelman, Robert, Population Action International, Washington, 1998 [[R. E31d. 21]

Protecting Life on Earth: Steps to Save the Ozone Layer

by Shea, Cynthia Pollock, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, 1988 [R. E31d. 13]

Slowing Global Warming: A Worldwide Strategy

by Flavin, Christopher, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, 1989 [R. E31d. 12]

Climate of Hope: New Strategies for Stabilizing the World's Atmosphere

by Flavin, Christopher & Tunali, Odil, World Watch Institute, Washington, 1996 [R. E31d. 11]

This paper describes the path to a low carbon energy system that would protect the atmosphere from dangerous disruption. The authors offer a vision embraced by a new coalition that favours stabilizing the atmosphere. This coalition includes island states threatened by rising seas, insurance companies suffering from record storm related enquiries & business groups that believe slowing climate.

Gender equality and climate change - Cool Down -Need for gender perspectives in the Climate Debate, NIKK- Nordic Gender Institute, Oslo, Norway, 2009 [R. A31. 22]

The top politicians who will gather in Copenhagen in December 2009 are faced with great expectations. Crucial decisions need to be taken in order to handle and reduce climate changes which threaten to cause much suffering for large parts of the world's population. The focus in encountering climate change has often been on technical development and research within the sciences. This is undoubtedly necessary, but yet not enough. More research and focus are also needed on both how people are affected by climate change and how they can contribute to stopping it. Since the first UN Climate Change Conference, women's movement activists have pointed to the fact that climate changes are not gender blind. Slightly simplified, it can be claimed that men to a larger degree than women contribute to climate change, which, however, affects women to a larger degree than men. Men drive cars and fly more than women, who tend to use public transport. Men eat more meat than women, which, as we know, affects the climate to the same extent as transport does. Poor women in developing countries are those hardest hit by climate change.

Who's Who in Climate Change in India

Centre for Social Market, Kolkata, 2008.[B. E60. C1]

Hoodwinked in the Hothouse: The G8, Climate Change and Free Market Environmentalism

By Carbon Trade Watch, Transational Institute briefing series No 2005/3

The report argues that the ‘win-win’ rhetoric pervading the climate discourse is both an attempt to confound and marginalise those seeking more meaningful and effective action on climate change, as well as contributing to increased corporate power and further commodification of natural resources such as the earth's carbon-cycling capacity.

The neoliberal ethic embodied in power blocs such as the G8, themselves highly dependent on the fossil fuel economy, is ultimately what drives this agenda forward. Free-market environmentalism and increased trade and investment liberalisation in the area of ‘environmental goods’ and ‘ecosystem services’ is ultimately a false promise. For activists seeking to engender meaningful social and environmental change in the climate arena, these trends must be challenged outright.

The shaping of a discourse
by Sunjoy Joshi, Seminar 606, February 2010

THE current terms of debate on climate change are basically defined by the extremely complex interplay of two narratives, one on development and the other on sustainability, both of which even today are altering and shaping the world we live in on a day to day basis.

Climate change, drawing upon these two discourses, once again casts them as the unfortunate 'victims' in imminent danger of having their lands submerged, crops ravaged by droughts and floods, and populations diminished by tropical diseases. Note that just as the concept of 'development' itself was repeatedly depoliticized, even as all its associated practices become inevitable instruments of power at the international level, the scientific accoutrements to thediscourse on climate change too essentially seek to do the same, i.e. depoliticize the discourse around the instruments governing the flow of power, finance and technology.

Toward a Progressive Indian and Global Climate Politics
 by Navroz K. Dubash, Centre for Policy Research, September 2009

While there is growing understanding and acceptance of climate science, few in India

believe the global negotiation process can deliver an outcome that is both climate

effective and fair. This lack of faith is informed by three views. First, India is being

unfairly labelled a “major emitter”. Second, given the unfinished development agenda

in India, discussing constraints on India are premature. Third, there is insufficient

recognition that India is moving in the right direction on climate mitigation, and is

starting from a low base. Since these are well known views, I will only briefly

elaborate each theme, stressing what I believe to be debated or under-appreciated

aspects of each statement.

Initial Assessment of India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC)
 by the Climate Change India, 3 July 2008

Carbon Trading – How it works and Why it fails,
by Tamra Gilbertson and Oscar Reyes Critical Currents – occasional Paper Series No 7 , November 2009

Carbon off set projects tends to follow prepackaged designs that do not deal with the real complexities and intricacies of communities and livelihoods. They use up enormous resources in terms of land, water and the time and energy of the residents.

Instead of reexamining the fundamentals of an economic change, carbon trading adjusts the problem of climate change to fi t these structures. This wholesale re-defi nition can be found at every stage of the process – from cap-setting to trading, off setting and speculation.

Biochar, for Climate Change Mitigation: Fact or Fiction?
 by Almuth Ernsting and Rachel Smolker, February 2009

As we face the catastrophic impacts of climate change, efforts to “engineer” the climate are proliferating. Among these is a proposal to use soils as a medium for addressing climate change by scaling up the use of biochar. Unfortunately, like other such schemes to engineer biological systems, it is based on a dangerously reductionist view of the natural world, which fails to recognize and accommodate ecological complexity and variation.

Thus far there has been little public awareness or debate over the large-scale application of biochar. The speed with which lobbying efforts are moving forward at national and international levels is alarmingly similar to the situation observed with agrofuels several years ago; poorly considered, based on unsubstantiated claims and accompanied by an effective “greenwash”, the industry grew very rapidly and secured policy and financial support measures which even the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has proclaimed a mistake. It is imperative that we do not repeat the errors by embracing yet another technology that is poorly understood, inherently risky and will likely encourage further land conversion and expansion of industrial monocultures.

There is little hope here
by Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People, Delhi

The climate change provides a unique opportunity to make India’s development path people and environment friendly, but the NAPCC completely misses that opportunity.
It is the cruel irony that those who are the most immediately, most directly affected have been completely left out of the process, planning and indeed the vision of the NAPCC and the missions like the National Water Mission of NAPCC. Nor has the government consulted the people while formulating the plan or the mission documents. Rather than challenge the destructive model of development that has already jeopardized the livelihood of millions & continues to do so & which has also contributed to the climate change, the NAPCC endorses it & says that sustaining the GDP growth on the same old path is top priority.

Devastating effects of climate change
 by Patricia Mukhim, The Statesman, Calcutta, 27 Apr 2009

One of the most dangerous consequences of reckless deforestation along the lower reaches of the Himalayas is drastic climate change. Unprecedented floods due to unpredictable cloudbursts, rising temperatures, delayed rainfall and changes in cropping patterns are all creating havoc in nature. We are far from understanding social and environmental justice. While forest dwellers are often accused of denuding forests, no one ever asks how the rich timber merchants in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, etc, have made their money through this crude exploitation of natural resources.

It's not about the Carbon
by Jim Miles, Atlantic Express, 12 October 2007
It is now recognized that global warming is happening, that it is happening faster than expected, that in order to reduce carbon output we need to make changes to our usage of carbon consuming compounds. I have argued here that carbon is not the cause, it is simply the scapegoat. The real cause, the real culprit is you and I, those of us within the huge consumptive and unsustainable free market economy that obsessively quests for growth in a finite world. The changes that need to be made need to occur at all levels of society, from personal actions broadening out to civic, federal and international actions that create a radically less consumptive world with significantly more freedom and societal health for all humanity.

Environmental crises and the ambiguous post neo liberalising of nature
by Ulrich Brand,development dialogue, january 2009 | postneoliberalism – a beginning debate

At the beginning, the environmental crisis was dealt with symbolically and by more or less technocratic state policies. After the mid- 1980s some 'solutions' became more and more obvious. After the Rio Conference on sustainable development in 1992, the road towards institutional innovations seemed to be opened and ways of dealing with the most fundamental environmental problems established: new international institutions like the Framework Convention on Climate Change, private companies which understood the profound and innovative changes that were necessary - certain sectors such as the automobile and chemical industries promoted their strategies under the label of sustainability - and an increasing public awareness.

Toward Climate Justice: Can we turn back from the abyss?
By Brian Tokar 19 August 2009

Corporate “solutions” to global warming often expand commodification and privatization, whether of land, waterways, or the atmosphere itself, largely at the expense of the same affected communities The emerging discourse of climate justice reflects a growing understanding that those most affected by accelerating climate-related disasters around the world are usually the least responsible for causing disruptions in the climate. Thus any movement seeking an adequate response to global climate changes needs to clearly face this discrepancy and prioritize the voices of the most affected communities.

Carbon Trading: A Brief Introduction

by Oscar Reyes, Carbon Trade Watch, 7 September 2009

Rather than reducing emissions, carbon trading avoids the fundamental changes needed to mitigate climate change. Alternatives must be developed together with local communities to prevent a repeat of the dispossession and social injustice caused by offsetting schemes.

Alternatives then need to be developed that are properly consulted and developed together with local communities to prevent a repeat of the dispossession and social injustice caused by offsetting schemes

Kyoto Protocol: Too Little, Too Bad

by Achin Vanaik The Asian Age, 23 March 2005

Though there is a scientific consensus that carbon stored above ground (in trees) is not equal to carbon stored below ground (unmined/unused fossil fuels). This has not stopped the crusaders for emissions trading to claim "carbon neutrality" and "carbon offsetting" through tree planting and other means. Indeed, a new and profitable industry of "carbon neutral" products has developed with producers targeting environment conscious consumers through claims that their products are made from, say, "carbon offsetting" plantation wood. “Carbon sinks” such as forests and oceans, etc., can only qualify for emission credits if their management is "officially" done. Old growth rainforests where indigenous peoples have lived for centuries do not qualify though corporate run tree plantations do. What is going on here?

International Climate Policy Development and Implementation

In Climatic Impacts Centre Annual Report 1993 North Ryde, NSW, Australia

Greenhouse-induced climate change has been referred to as the only common problem of humanity. This is a debatable assertion but certainly the threat of climatic change does have serious ecological, social, economic, cultural, political and technological ramifications and it has become a major international environmental issue.

Although some international policy negotiation with respect to the greenhouse problem has taken place, the regime formation process is still in its infancy. Most importantly, targets and timetables for limiting emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialized countries have not been agreed.

Before the Deluge - Coping with Floods in a Changing Climate

International Rivers Network, USA, 2007 [R.Y01. 13/614]
Floods are the most destructive, most frequent and most costly natural disasters on earth. While harmful floods have happened throughout human history, flood damages have soared in recent decades, despite he expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars on flood control structures. This is partly because global warming is causing more severe storms, and partly because of growing populations and economic activity on floodplains. It is also because flood control technologies and approaches often prove counterproductive. Improving our ability to cope with floods under the current, and future, climates requires adopting a more sophisticated set of techniques - the "soft path" of flood risk management, which aims to understand, adapt to and work with the forces of nature.

Forests and Climate Change

from Facts Against Myths Newsletter, Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, Mumbai. 01 Feb 2007

“There can surely be no harm in planting trees!?"

But it is pertinent to point out the distinctions! Planting and maintaining an orchard or community woodland, creating village forest belts, planting trees along highways, planting saplings into a garden, is one thing. The global project of carbon "offset" forestry is quite another. The trend it represents is not only harmless. It is dangerous - dangerous for equity, for democratic politics, for soil, for trees, for forests, for climatic habitability itself.

Climate Policy Assessment for India - Applications of Asia-Pacific Integrated Model (AIM)

by Shukla, P R and others, University Press India Pvt.Ltd, Hyderabad, 2004) [B.E31c.S2]

When it rains, it pours: Why we should be concerned about climate change

by Aditi Sen, InfoChange News & Features, August 2005

Though floods, droughts, storms and other extreme weather events have always been a reality, they have been rare occurrences interrupting long periods of calm -- sudden outbursts marring nature’s largely gentle rhythm. Now, because of human-induced climate change, that gentle rhythm is breaking up. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that climate change is real – the world is warming up and climate systems are changing

The Discovery of Climate Change

by Spencer Weart, American Institute of Physics, 2003

The scientists who labored to understand the Earth's climate discovered that many factors influence it. Everything from volcanoes to factories shape our winds and rains. The scientific research itself was shaped by many influences, from popular misconceptions to government funding, all happening at once.

American farms have changed drastically in the last three generations, from family-based small businesses dependent on human energy to large-scale factory farms.

Modern farming uses more petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the country’s totally energy supply. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the United States.

India’s national action plan is remarkably devoid of detail. New Delhi has adopted the negotiating position that it will not accept emissions targets, because that might derail its poverty-alleviation efforts. It is true that by the standards of the developed world, most Indians suffer significant energy deprivation. But the problem is that the national development path continues to be carbon-intensive, with its rising total emissions causing global concern. It is time India abandoned its stance as a climate laggard. It must prioritise areas such as energy efficiency in lighting, transport, and power generation and reduce the energy-intensity of industrial production. Cutting duties on fuel-guzzling sports utility vehicles, as the 2009-10 budget has proposed, is certainly not the way forward. Funding equitable, efficient public transport is. Only strong and convincing actions at home can win India support for its proposals at Copenhagen.

Act on climate, now, The Hindu, 11th Jul 2009

TWN Submissions to the United Nations Climate Talks — Ideas and Proposals on the Elements Contained in Paragraph 1 of the Bali Action Plan, Third World Network, Malaysia, 2009 [B. E31d. T1]

At the 13th meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 13) held in Bali, Indonesia on 3-15 December 2007 the Bali Action Plan was adopted. It launched "a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention through long-term cooperative action, now, up to and beyond 2012, in order to reach an agreed outcome and adopt a decision" at COP 15 in Copenhagen in December 2009.

India's Position on Climate Change from Rio to Kyoto: A Policy Analysis, CDR Working Paper 98.11. November 1998
This paper is a policy-making analysis of the actors, structures, interests and powers behind the Indian government’s national position on CC. The national position could be said to have three layers to it: 1) the formal national position put forward in international negotiations; 2) the position in the minds of Indian diplomats; 3) the position of other domestic actors

System change – not climate change, A People’s Declaration from Klimaforum09 .
There are solutions to the climate crisis. What people and the planet need is a just and sustainable transition of our societies to a form that will ensure the rights of life and dignity of all peoples and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to future generations.

We, participating peoples, communities, and all organizations at the Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, call upon every person, organization, government, and institution, including the United Nations (UN), to contribute to this necessary transition. It will be a challenging task. The crisis of today has economic, social, environmental, geopolitical, and ideological aspects interacting with and reinforcing each other as well as the climate crisis.

Blind spots in India's new National Action Plan on Climate Change
by Rahul Goswami, InfoChange News & Features, September 2008

Instead of having a strongly articulated, clearly thought through vision, India's new National Action Plan on Climate Change has a basket of eight 'missions' and no durable plan that will include the poorest and most vulnerable.

A policy that deals with a new set of circumstances and factors needs necessarily to think differently. Climate change is not population control, not poverty, not rural unemployment. It needs to learn differently from the experiences of contemporary Indians. India's new National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), framed and presented by the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, displays little intent to learn different.

National Action Plan on Climate Change
by Government of India, Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change [R. E31d. 48]

Adaptation Policy Frameworks for Climate Change

United Nations Development Programme, [L.E31d.  S052/S695]

National Adaptation Programmes of Action - Climate and Development

International Institute for Environment and Development, UK, October 2007 [R. E31d. 39]

Corporate Action Plan on Climate Change: White paper TERI & BCSD, Mumbai, 2009

This document, which has been drawn up by corporate members of TERI-BCSD India, facilitated by TERI staff, is a remarkable effort to put the stamp of corporate intentions and plans on India’s NAPCC. This corporate effort also spells out actions that the government may need to take to ensure effectiveness of efforts by business. It, therefore, marks a remarkable initiative by business and industry to address national imperatives and priorities.

Climate Change: The anatomy of a silent crisis
 Global Humanitarian Forum, Geneva, 2009
This report documents the full impact of climate change on human society worldwide today. It covers in specific detail the most critical areas of the global impact of climate change, namely on food, health, poverty, water, human displacement, and security. The third section of this report highlights the massive socio-economic implications of those impacts, in particular, that the worst affected are the world’s poorest groups, who cannot be held responsible for the problem. The final section examines how sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals are in serious danger, the pressures this will exert on humanitarian assistance, and the great need to integrate efforts in adapting to climate change

THE COPENHAGEN CLIMATE SUMMIT
A CLIMATE GROUP ASSESSMENT
JANUARY 2010

The 15th UN Climate Conference concluded with the ambiguous adoption, or ‘noting’, of a ‘Copenhagen Accord’. This political document was delivered at the end of two weeks of tense and often confusing negotiations. Its exact legal status – and hence its implications - remain the subject of debate and it leaves unanswered many of the difficult questions that have bedeviled climate negotiations for much of the past two year

The remainder of this paper is divided into the following four short sections:

•  A summary of the key events during the two week summit

•  A brief overview of the core elements of the Copenhagen Accord

• Our assessment of the Accord

• Our assessment of the impacts and implications for the US, China, the EU and India.

Clikk here for pdf file

Globally Agricultural practices contributed to approximately 17% of emissions between 1990 and 2005. When this figure is added to the emissions caused by deforestation, land use change (for agricultural production), transport, processing, refrigeration and other aspects of the food system, the figure is 32% and probably even higher.

This food system is boiling the Earth – it is a system driven and encouraged by the same forces which push for trade liberalisation, speculation and resource exploitation – and which dominate the UNFCCC process.

In the south, rainforests are cut down and peasants are cleared from their lands, so vast monocultures – “green deserts” - can be planted in order to produce soy, maize and palm to feed European livestock. In factory farms in Europe, overfed animals produce methane and waste, using huge amounts of energy and water.

We need to change not just the food system but our whole attitude to food – especially meat consumption – and agriculture. Sustainable farming and food production can produce real, healthy food while acting as a beneficial force for the environment. - www.aseed.net

TISS Workshop Statement

We, the participants to the Workshop, agree that despite some appropriate elements, India's current climate change policies are inadequate and do not present, as yet, a pro-active, global leadership stance on the issue. While the developed nations, particularly the United States, have repeatedly stalled any meaningful progress towards mitigating global warming , India’s current global negotiation stance is also unsatisfactory, treating climate change more as a foreign policy and diplomatic issue rather than a core developmental concern. India has fallen short of emphasizing an appropriate and effective global climate regime, even while correctly focusing on safeguarding national interests and equity considerations. : Statement of TISS/AIPSN Workshop on “Breaking the Deadlock in Climate Change Negotiations”, Mumbai, July 31 – August 1, 2009

Click here for slide show explaining the impact of different commitments by TISS

Let's try understand CLIMATE CHANGE

CLIMATE CHANGE is NOT about day to day weather

It is about
CHANGES IN THE AVERAGE GLOBAL WEATHER
ie. increase in average long term temperature & it's consequences

Livelihoods and Climate Change
A Conceptual Framework Paper Prepared by the Task Force on Climate Change,

Vulnerable Communities and Adaptation

- International Institute for Sustainable Development, March 2003,

Why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustave & other articles follow the link; http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/04/hurricanes-are-getting-stronger-thanks-to-global-warming/

Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use
Even at a relatively low price for mitigating carbon emissions, improved land management could offset a quarter of global emissions from fossil fuel use in a year. In contrast, solutions for reducing emissions by carbon capture in the energy sector are unlikely to be widely utilized for decades and do not remove the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.

Five major strategies for reducing and sequestering terrestrial greenhouse gas emissions are:
*Enriching soil carbon*.
*Farming with perennials*.
*Climate-friendly livestock production
**Protecting natural habitat*.
*Restoring degraded watersheds and rangelands*

Report of the Commission on Climate Change and Development
Closing the Gaps
The case for a low carbon global economy is argued quite well here and so to issues of food production, energy etc.

by the Commission on Climate Change and Development, 2009,

India’s Expectation with Regard to the Copenhagen Outcome
India expect that the Copenhagen outcome not only provides us with the space we require for accelerated social and economic development, in order to eradicate widespread poverty, but also create a global regime which is supportive of our national endeavors for ecologically sustainable development.

We expect that Copenhagen will result in an ambitious outcome, representing a cooperative global response to the challenge of Climate Change, but an outcome which is also fair and equitable. It must be in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, a principle that the entire international community has, by consensus, enshrined in the UNFCCC, concluded in 1992 at the historic Rio Summit.

A guide to climate change for indigenous peoples
- preservation of their rights to maintain traditional use of plants and animals while deepening their understanding of climate change so as to implement effective mitigation and adaptation measures
- better documentation and sharing of good practice in these measures
- participation in climate change fora and the formulation of national policies as well as sustained advocacy work with the above mentioned UNFCCC
Authors:* R. de Chavez; V. Tauli-Corpuz; E. Baldo-Soriano; et al.
Publisher:* Tebtebba Foundation, Phillippines, 2008
Full text of document:

http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/manuals-and-toolkits&id=43515&type=Document

Mountain Biodiversity and Climate Change
a question and answer format with illustrations to introduce a selection of the ideas from the eight countries of the Hindu Kush-Himalayas region.

highlights >the need for cooperation in research and data collection to help address the impacts of climate change on this mountain system which includes parts of four global biodiversity hotspots.

Proceedings of the International Mountain Biodiversity Conference by Eklabya Sharma, ICIMOD, 16, Nov 2008,

India can further its climate resilience, says World Bank
by Aarti Dhar, The Hindu, May 27, 2009

NEW DELHI: A new World Bank report has said India can further its climate resilience through a combination of measures and right incentives aimed at multiple levels of government — local, State and national. 
The report “Climate Change Impacts in Drought and Flood-Affected Areas: Case Studies in India”(link to URL) looks at options to tackle the problem of adaptation to climate change in selected climate hotspots.
The regional focus is on two drought-prone regions of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and flood-prone Orissa. Making a strong case for a shift in agricultural systems in order to overcome future climate change pressures,
the report points out that water management remains a formidable challenge.

Budget 2010- how climate friendly was it?

http://www.climatechallengeindia.org/India-Climate-Watch-February-2010

India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, announced the Union Budget for 2010-2011 in Delhi on 26 February 2010. With global attention on climate change and India having announced its own voluntary commitment to reduce emissions intensity by 20-25 per cent by 2020, the question many were asking was: is the government going to put its money where its mouth is? The Minister's speech signaled the government's intention to transform India’s energy mix and meet the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. The Budget 2010 did contain some important announcements and initiatives - perhaps the most significant of which was the National Clean Energy Fund and the energy cess on coal (domestic and imported).

Here's a look at some of the key measures:

Direct Funding

1. To establish a National Clean Energy Fund for funding research and innovative projects in clean energy technologies and harnessing renewable energy sources to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

2. A doubling of the budget for the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) - largely to fund the Government's flagship Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. (The Solar Mission has an ambitious target of reaching 20,000 MW of solar power by the year 2022, effectively making India a leading player in solar energy in years to come.) MNRE's budget rose by 61 percent - from Rs 620 crore in 2009-10 to Rs.1000 crore in 2010-11.

3. An allocation of Rs 200 crore for launching the Climate Resilient Agriculture Initiative. This seeks to sustain gains made in the green revolution but strengthen conservation farming, which involves soil health, water conservation and biodiversity preservation.

Tax Proposals

1. Clean energy cess on coal produced in India at a rate of Rs.50 per tonne. The cess will also apply to imported coal to build the corpus of the National Clean Energy Fund.

2. Concessional customs duty of 5 per cent on machinery, instruments, equipment and appliances etc. required for the initial setting up of photovoltaic and solar thermal power generating units and also exempt from Central Excise duty. Ground source heat pumps used to tap geothermal energy would be exempt from basic customs duty and special additional duty.

3. Exempt a few more specified inputs (some were already exempt in last year's budget) required for the manufacture of rotor blades for wind energy generators from Central Excise duty.

4. Halve Central Excise duty on LED lights from 8 per cent to 4 per cent. This now places LEDs on par with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs).

5. Provide concessional excise duty of 4 per cent to CSIR-developed ‘Soleckshaw’ - the solar version of a hand-pulled cycle rickshaw which runs on solar-powered batteries. The Soleckshaw's key parts and components would also be exempt from customs duty.

National Clean Energy Fund and cess on coal

The National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF), a provisional title for this initiative, and the cess on coal are arguably the most interesting innovations in the budget. The former is intended to provide a source of investment for entrepreneurial ventures and research into clean energy technologies. The bulk of the funds for the NCEF are to be raised through a clean energy cess on coal produced in India as well as imported coal at a rate of Rs 50 per tonne. This cess on coal is not the first such 'green tax' to be applied in the India. The water cess has been levied and collected by the State Pollution Control Boards for prevention and control of water pollution for some time.

How large is the fund likely to be? The estimated demand for coal in India in the Budget period is likely to be 440 million tonnes (2010-11) and 518 million tonnes (2011-12) respectively. An extrapolation from this suggests that the size of the NCEF could be anything in the range of INR 22,000 million to INR 25,900 million respectively for FY 2010-11 and 2011-12. This will increase as India's appetite for coal increases, but the revenues generated could build a core funding base for the Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

By making the tax environment less friendly for fossil fuel firms and by providing fiscal relief for companies in the renewable energy sector, the government has provided a helping hand. This is to be welcomed but will need to be built on aggressively if the scale of the 'greening India' challenge is to be met effectively. For now, though there is at least something for those in the renewable energy industry to capitalise on.

Looking across the Budget, it can be seen that energy security concerns and environment have been further embedded with some fiscal incentives and budgetary support for green measures. An allocation has been made for the Solar Mission but the remaining seven Missions of the NAPCC are still left stranded, and the mitigation and adaptation challenge faced by the country has been inadequately addressed. The Government has not made good on its promises to put budgets next to programmes.

For example, the National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency (NMEEE) was supposed to be one of the two priority Missions in the NAPCC. The NMEEE is supposed to be implemented from April 1 2010. The Government says that it is aiming at building a market worth Rs 74,000 crore for energy efficient products and accrue avoided capacity addition of over 19,000 MW, however, no budget has been announced for this. One can only surmise that as the Ministry of Power will be overseeing the MNEEE, and as the Ministry of Power's budget allocation has more than doubled from Rs 2,230 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 5,130 crore in 2010- 11, that we will see baseline funds for the MNEEE. But in the absence of clarity from the Government, this remains speculation.

More worryingly, the status of the six other missions of the NAPCC continues to be in limbo. The table below provides an update of where things are presently at. (Budgetary updates 2010-11 have been indicated in square brackets.)

Status of NAPCC Eight Missions (February 2010)

1. Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission - Approved by Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change (PMCCC); to be coordinated by M/o New & Renewable Energy. [Funds approved in Budget 2010-11]

2. National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency - Approved by PMCCC and to be implemented from 1 April 2010; to be coordinated by M/o Power.

3. National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem - Draft dated 26 October 2009 approved by PMCCC in principle.

4. National Mission on Strategic Knowledge on Climate Change - Final draft (15 October 2009) considered by PMCCC but decision unknown.

5. National Mission on Sustainable Habitat - Final Draft Mission document prepared by M/o Urban Development, under consideration by PMCCC.

6. National Water Mission - Mission document prepared by M/o Water Resources, under consideration by PMCCC.

7. National Mission for Green India - Mission document prepared by M/o Environment & Forests, under consideration by PMCCC.

8. National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture - Mission document prepared by M/o Agriculture, under consideration by PMCCC.

Our planet in crisis: Search for eco-friendly and equitable society

Workshop: 12-14 Mar.  Part of the XXXIII Indian Social Science Congress www.braou.ac.in/braou_scc.html

Contact: Radhika at: ccworkshop2009@gmail.com

The Himalayan Controversy
Rebuttal of Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain, Senior Fellow, The Energy & Resources Institute
I have not given any date or year on the likely disappearance of Himalayan glaciers.  Whatever got published in New Scientist (‘Flooded Out’, 05 June 1999, by Fred Pearce) was a journalistic assumption interpolated by the interviewer, over which I had no control. During the interview I presented the outcome of the findings on the basis of 20 years of my research till 1999.

President Barack Obama announced $2.3 billion in tax credits Friday for projects to manufacture “clean” energy components.

“The United States, the nation that pioneered the use of clean energy, is being outpaced by nations around the world,” Obama said, noting that, for instance, the manufacturing of batteries to make hybrid vehicles is concentrated in Asia.

Overall, the tax credits, which cover up to 30 percent of a project’s cost, support 183 projects in 43 states and will leverage more than $5 billion in private capital, according to the White House.The tax credits are being awarded to companies of various sizes, and about a third are small businesses.

Examples include $27 million worth of credits for a new Dow Corning facility in Michigan to manufacture monosilane, a component of thin-film solar panels; $63 million for Alstom Inc. to manufacture turbines in Tennessee used in nuclear and hydro plants; and several awards to General Electric, including nearly $12 million to re-equip a Kentucky facility to make highly efficient dishwashers.

US climate envoy Todd Stern said it will become evident in the next few weeks whether or not Copenhagen really acheived anything meaningful, as countries are expected to sign on to the final document and list their respective commitments by Jan. 31. "The accord is lumbering down the runway," Stern concluded. "We need to get enough speed for it to take off.": http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/01/stern-copenhagen-neared-complete-collapse

The current food system is responsible for over 32% of the greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time the practices of agri-businesses make millions of small farmers loose their land and livelihood. It is unfair to use the benefits that small farmers provide to the environment as an excuse to keep polluting as usual

World watches India’s rural surgeons

Rina Mukherji, Leh (Ladakh), Civil Society, Dec 2009

CLIMATE change is leaving Ladakhis rather confused. This cold desert perched on the roof of the world is now warmer. There is more rain. Ladakhis are seeing these changes as a mixed blessing.

Till some years ago Ladakh received merely 35 mm of rain. No farmer or household counted on rainfall for crops or for drinking water. Ladakhis relied on fresh water from the precipitation which precedes snowfall. Ladakh, a big region with a sparse population, depended only on this rainfall.

Hurricanes ARE getting Stronger — Thanks to Global Warming!

Why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustave & other articles follow the link

Copenhagen climate change conference: 'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

The Hindu, Monday 7 December 2009

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Farmers voice their concern over impact of climate change

The Hindu, Nov 05, 2009

JAIPUR: Farmers, peasants, labourers and civil society representatives from 12 rain-fed States attending a regional public hearing on climate change here on Wednesday called for taking long-term “ameliorative measures” for dealing with the consequences of global warming which could destabilise the economies and shatter the lives of people in these regions.

The sixth regional public hearing was organised here in the run-up to a national consultation to provide inputs to the country’s leadership for the Copenhagen Climate Summit to be held in December. All the public hearings have recorded the grassroots voices and testimonies from different agro-climatic zones.

Redundant chargers are actually a big problem.

Every time we replace a phone, we get a new charger. An estimated 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide in 2008, and the UN's International Telecommunication Union estimates that between 50 and 80 percent of those were replacements.

If the goverment legislates a universal charger. Or enough manufacturers adopt a universal charger, we could save half the chargers—thus reducing greenhouse gases from manufacturing and transporting replacement chargers by as much as 15 to 24 million tons a year. - Mother Jones

How about a universal charger for laptops, walkmans, digital cameras etc.. - Ed

Climate change to impact India's farm yields: WB
Published on 5/26/2009

New Delhi:* Dryland farmers in Andhra Pradesh may see their incomes decline by 20 per cent, the sugarcane yield in Maharashtra may go down 30 per cent, and there may be much more flooding in the Orissa coast, says a new World Bank report. Pointing out that this will have a serious impact in a country where 57 percent of the people are directly dependent on agriculture, the report, says the country can improve its resilience to climate change through a combination of measures and right incentives aimed at multiple levels of government. The report, Climate Change Impacts in Drought-and Flood-Affected Areas: Case Studies in India, was released on Monday, reports IANS.

WE HAVE 10 YEARS LEFT TO PREVENT THE
DELICATE BALANCE HOLDING ALL LIFE TOGETHER, FROM GOING AWRY.   

HOME is a documentary film by Yann Arthus-Bernard, and was premiered on 05
Jun 09 - World Environment Day.

For more info about the film go to...
http://www.home-2009.com/us/index.html 

Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, 19 May 2008

NEW VISION OF CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH GOOGLE EARTH

Millions of Google Earth users around the world will be able to see how climate change could affect the planet and its people over the next century, along with viewing the loss of Antarctic ice shelves over the last 50 years, thanks to a new project launched today.The project, Climate Change in Our World, is the product of a collaboration between Google, the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey to provide two new 'layers', or animations, available to all users of Google Earth. It was launched by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist conference today.

[ C.eldoc1/KICS/080519zzz1B.html]

The Meaning of Resistance in Peru

While climate jargon-fuelled meetings happen at the global level, examples of local resistance can remind us what dealing with climate change is really about. The indigenous peoples' struggle in Peru against the colonisation of their lands by polluting industries is one such example.

For over two months, Peru's indigenous peoples have been holding an indefinite strike demanding the abolition of legislative decrees that threatened to undermine their land and water rights. The Peruvian government introduced these laws in line with the free trade agreement it had signed with the United States. It was done
without prior consultation with the indigenous communities, as required by the 169 International Labour Organisation Convention, to which Peru is a signatory. The new laws mean opening more rainforest to private
corporations, a move which the government has said was in the 'national interest'. Such labelling was an excuse for its violent military reaction against the indigenous protestors in the past weeks. The government,
however, did not count on the strength of the resistance of the indigenous peoples.

When people think of the Amazon, they think of Brazil, but more than half of Peru's territory is covered by the
Amazon rainforest --home to 65 ethnic groups, 14 linguistic families and diverse ways of living. The Amazon boasts the greatest biological diversity in the world. It generates an estimated 20 per cent of the world's fresh
water. It is crucial for maintaining the climate as it regulates atmospheric gases and stabilises rainfall, it protects against desertification and serves numerous other ecological functions.

And yet, in the last four years, the area designated for oil and gas concessions has increased from about 15
percent to 70 per cent . In April 2009, PeruPetro, the country's national oil-licensing agency, signed contracts with international oil companies for 15 Amazonian 'blocks' of land.

Peru is just one of many countries now in conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Different
parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America are also experiencing intensified conflicts over land rights
and access to natural resources - which may mark the Rubincon for a model of unsustainable extractive capitalism for the benefit of few.

Ironically, the global climate negotiations are threatening the indigenous peoples' way of life, by seeking to
expand the carbon market and to make the rainforest part of this market-based scheme. The fact that many
indigenous peoples have no titles to the land they have lived on for centuries, makes them an easy target and
vulnerable to displacement. This not only threatens their rights and the Amazon itself, but also means that the
last vestiges of an ancient way of living in harmony with nature is being destroyed.

It is worth defending not least for helping the world understand what is inv lved in moving to a non-carbon
economy. - A fight to save the Amazon rainforest, Joanna Cabello,

TNI, 19 June 2009

Towards a post Industrial Stone Age?

With the use of fossil fuels since 500 years, energy use has increasing asymptotically, and with it eMergy appropriation and accumulation. Our primary commercial energy use today is onesixth of the energy produced by photosynthesis, and has a 30-year doubling time. Consequently, we are currently consuming 1.4 times earth's bio-capacity, thus liquidating earth's natural capital. We face two tipping points today, each with the potential to pose grave risk to human society as we know it. The first is the rapid exhaustion of our primary energy sources-oil and gas, with no technoeconomically viable alternative source-nuclear, green, geotectonic-available as a replacement. A steep energy price rise and a consequent deep global recession are predicted to happen in the near future. The second is global warming, which is expected to drastically impact the environment, human health and livelihoods within this century The classic response to these issues has been to suggest technical, legal and economic fixes-alternate energy sources, Kyoto Protocol, supply side management of energy. None of these will work as the global economy is based on greed, and has permitted energy accumulation on a massive scale in the hands of a few. Its consequencespeak oil and climate changehave interfered with the Carbon cycle to such an extent, and in such a fundamental way, that many believe that we have already crossed the point of no return, or have a very narrow window of a couple of decades to rectify the situation.

Development as understood- growth, equity and social justice-has failed. Economic growth will slow down and even become negative with rapidly rising energy prices and climate change impacts setting in. Trickle-down theory has failed and inequity has only grown in the last 150 years. Mass poverty and massive global inequities between nations and economic classes can no longer be reduced by the "economic growth" mantra. With the
failure of equity, social justice cannot happen. By going against the laws of nature, capitalism has become  self-limiting. Sustainable development has become an oxymoron. Development must therefore be re-defined as: Carbon Footprint A carbon footprint is "the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product" The smaller the carbon footprint, the more environment-friendly is the organisation. Once we have accurately determined the current carbon footprint, we will need to identify the hotspots of energy consumption, optimise energy efficiency, and identify solutions to neutralise the CO2 emissions that cannot be reduced by any energy saving measures. That being said, relying entirely on one indicator can sometimes be misleading. One example could be biofuels, for which a low carbon footprint could give the impression of a truly eco-friendly product, despite its negative land use impacts, ultimately increasing the pressure on rainforests and other rich habitats. - Carbon footprint, The Hindu, Chennai, 09 Nov 2008 * Powering down energy and natural resource throughputs in society. As long as energy throughputs remain at current levels, conservation of natural resources is impossible.

* Conservation of natural capital is vital for the survival of human society and can only be done along with addressing issues related to equity, and vice versa.

* Ensuring that all people have equal: i) access to energy and other natural resources,  ii) consumption levels of energy and other natural resources, iii) participation levels in decision making over all issues related to energy and natural resources, in such a manner that the eco-footprint for earth as a whole, and its various geographic regions, do not exceed their bio-capacities. This perforce people recovering their control over their stolen environments. GDP/GNP can no longer be used as a development milestone and a suitable development milestone will have to be fashioned out and accepted. The above can only be achieved if global thinking shifts from "gain maximization for a few people" to "risk minimization for all of life". Implicit within the latter is the acceptance of three equities: a) between people, b)between generations, c) between species. If equity between species is accepted, it challenges the very definition of "economic value" as we understand it today. The currently anthropocentric political and sociological structures must also become bio-centric.

The roadmap to do all this is yet uncharted. There isn't adequate public will or time left to make the shift before catastrophic events predicted to happen with peak oil and climate change tear apart the fabric of society as we know it. Some are already talking of survival strategies in a post-industrial stone age. Sagar Dhara. Cerena Foundation sagdhara@yahoo.comi

Carbon Footprint
A carbon footprint is "the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product" The smaller the carbon footprint, the more environment-friendly is the organisation. Once we have accurately determined the current carbon footprint, we will need to identify the hotspots of energy consumption, optimise energy efficiency, and identify solutions to neutralise the CO₂ emissions that cannot be reduced by any energy saving measures. That being said, relying entirely on one indicator can sometimes be misleading. One example could be biofuels, for which a low carbon footprint could give the impression of a truly eco-friendly product, despite its negative land use impacts, ultimately increasing the pressure on rainforests and other rich habitats.

- Carbon footprint, The Hindu, Chennai, 09 Nov 2008

An Alternative Understanding

It was not by chance that the socio-economic and political crisis of the post-war mode of development went hand in hand with the politicisation of the environmental crisis The crisis became obvious in the 1970s when public debate and social movements put the problems of societal appropriation of nature on the political agenda.

At the beginning, the environmental crisis was dealt with symbolically and by more or less technocratic state policies. After the mid- 1980s some 'solutions' became more and more obvious. After the Rio Conference
on sustainable development in 1992, the road towards institutional innovations seemed to be opened and ways of dealing with the most fundamental environmental problems established: new international institutions like the Framework Convention on Climate Change, private companies which understood the profound and innovative changes that were necessary - certain sectors such as the automobile and chemical industries promoted their strategies under the label of sustainability - and an increasing public awareness.

In the course of the 1990s, the Rio Conventions on Climate Change and Biodiversity were themselves articulated through neoliberal politics - that is, they became one institutional dimension of the neoliberalising of nature. We can also observe a strong institutional selectivity towards market-based instruments in the very constitution of international climate and biodiversity politics. But more generally, a neoliberalising of nature took place: its privatisation, marketisation, de-regulation but also re-regulation (that is, state policies in order to facilitate privatisation and marketisation), market proxies in the residual public sector and respective flanking mechanisms in civil society.

At the 'Rio +10' conference in Johannesburg in 2002 it became clear that the strategies of the corporations consisted much more of a 'greenwashing' than real changes and that the public awareness reached among the global elites and middle classes was only translated into institutional changes as long as their own production
and consumption norms were not questioned.

Policies were and are in the interest of the owners of assets and of the global middle classes including the middle classes in economically emerging countries such as China, India or Brazil. The Western way of life still promotes its attractiveness worldwide. Human wellbeing and social security are still equated with economic
growth and this means the resource-intensive growth of car production, of airports, of industrialised farming,
projects of ocean fertilisation, and so on. It is therefore possible to speak of an imperial way of living in Northern/Western countries and also in the nations of the Global South with their growing middle class. That means that quite a large portion of the world's population lives by exploiting nature and exploiting other people(s); this is also one crucial element that despite the obvious crisis in the dominant relationships with nature remains largely uncontested. Governments and business intend to create in this situation a win-winwin- win situation through dominant political and economic institu tions: the proposed sustainable strategies are considered to be good for business, good for consumers, good for society as a whole and good for nature -
and, therefore, justify state and intergovernmental policies.

In the context of the above, We need to ask whether the highly politicised topic of the environmental crisis and especially of climate change can open up a way for more transformative thinking and action. Socio-ecological conflicts reveal that much more is at stake than symbolic policies to slow down climate change through global resource management: questions of democracy and decision making, power over social knowledge remain. The political challenge is not just to of production, distribution and consumption. The forms of access to the material means of social and individual reproduction, and the power-mediated framing of environmental problems or 'the' ecological crisis, are both at stake.

It might be useful to develop radical demands and proposals through debates and the exchange of views and experiences. These should be articulated in relation to specific problems and alter the ways in which they are interpreted, thus offering possibilities for action. One major debate was initiated by Walden Bello's quest for
'deglobalisation' of the international political economy (2002): he argues, among other things, for a need to reject Western consumerism and a focus on resources from outside via foreign direct investment and proposes the promotion of environmentally sound and local technologies, distributional justice, self-determination and an
important role for the democratic state Therefore, it is not enough to bargain over emissions targets; a broad and - since different interests prevail - conflictive learning process has to take place in order to promote alternative but attractive ways of living, producing and consuming, based on a relationship with 'nature' that goes beyond one of domination.

Emancipatory politics seeks to strengthen alternative strategies and forms of living through cooperative learning
processes and where necessary through conflict. But in contrast to the 1970s, in most countries there seem to be no relevant social forces that might be capable of changing the overall dynamics and orientation towards
the exploitation of nature. However, the terrain is full of contingencies and this might give critical thinking and
emancipatory action a chance. Therefore, we need a reflection of different strategies to maintain and shape societal relationships with nature. (Extracted from: Environmental crises and the ambiguous postneoliberalising of nature, Ulrich Brand,

Development Ddialogue January 2009

A way out ?

It is rapidly becoming clear that the dominant paradigm of economic growth is one of the most significant obstacles to a serious global effort todeal with climate change.

The central problem, it is becoming increasingly clear, is a mode of production whose main dynamic is the transformation of living nature into dead commodities, creating tremendous waste in the process.

It has been the generalization of this mode of production in the North and its spread from the North to the South over the last 300 years that has caused the accelerated burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil and rapid deforestation, two of the key man-made processes behind global warming.

Thus, for the South, the implications of an effective global response to global warming include not just the inclusion of some countries in a regime of mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, although this is critical: in the current round of climate negotiations, for instance, China, can no longer opt out of a mandatory regime on the grounds that it is a developing country.

Nor can the challenge to most of the other developing countries be limited to that of getting the North to transfer technology to mitigate global warming and provide funds to assist them in adapting to it, as many of them appeared to think during the Bali negotiations.

These steps are important, but they should be seen as but the initial steps in a broader, global reorientation of the paradigm for achieving economic wellbeing In this regard, climate change is both a threat and an opportunity to bring about the long postponed social and economic reforms that had been derailed or sabotaged in previous eras by the elite seeking to preserve or increase their privileges.

The difference is that today the very existence of humanity and the planet depend on the institutionalization of economic systems based not on feudal rent extraction or capital accumulation or class exploitation, but on justice and equality Anju Sharma,

Centre for Science and Environment March 31st, 2000

Climate Justice Now!

No to neoliberal illusions, yes to people's solutions!

For centuries, productivism and industrial capitalism have been destroying our cultures, exploiting our labour and poisoning our environment.

Now, with the climate crisis, the Earth is saying "enough", "ya basta"!

Once again, the people who created the problem are telling us that they also have the solutions: carbon trading, so-called "clean coal", more nuclear power , agrofuels, even a "green new deal". But these are not real solutions, they are neoliberal illusions. It is time to move beyond these illusions.

Real solutions to the climate crisis are being built by those who have always protected the Earth and by those who fight every day to defend their environment and living conditions. We need to globalise these solutions.

For us, the struggles for climate justice and social justice are one and the same. It is the struggle for territories, land, forests and water, for agrarian and urban reform, food and energy sovereignty, for women's and worker's rights. It is the fight for equality and justice for indigenous peoples, for peoples of the global South, for the redistribution of wealth and for the recognition of the historical ecological debt owed by the North.

Against the disembodied, market-driven interests of the global elite and the dominant development model based on never-ending growth and consumption, the climate justice movement will reclaim the commons, and put social and economic realities at the heart of our struggle against climate change.

We call on everyone -workers, farmers, fisherfolk, students, youth, women, indigenous peoples, and all
concerned humans from the South and the North - to join in this common struggle to build the real solutions to the climate crisis for the future of our planet, our societies, and our cultures. All together, we are building a
movement for climate justice.

We support the mobilizations against the G20 summit and on the global crisis from 28 march to 4 April, and the 17 April 2009 mobilisation of La Via Campesina.
We support the call for an International Day of Action in Defense of Mother Earth and Indigenous Rights on 12 October 2009.

We call for mobilisations and diverse forms of actions everywhere, in the lead up to, during and beyond the UN
climate talks in Copenhagen, especially on the Global Day of Action on 12 December 2009.

In all of our work, we will expose the false solutions, raise the voices of the South, defend human rights, and strengthen our solidarity in the fight for climate justice. If we make the right choices, we can build a better world for everyone.

Climate justice Assembly Declaration, Bélém,

Brazil, 1 February 2009

Toward a Movement for Climate Justice

At various venues around the world, activists have been meeting for over a year to plan a concerted grassroots response to the upcoming UN climate summit.

Anticipating that the forthcoming Copenhagen agreement is likely to fall far short of what the world needs to prevent unprecedented climate disruptions, their focus from the outset was to highlight the limits of business-as-usual and the need for direct action against the root causes of climate change, while demonstrating just and sustainable alternatives. At a meeting of the emerging Climate Justice Action network, participants from more than 20 countries, including several from the global South, agreed on an ambitious
alternative agenda to the business-dominated deal-making at the UN level.

"We cannot trust the market with our future, nor put our faith in unsafe, unproven and unsustainable technologies," the meeting's declaration reads. "Contrary to those who put their faith in 'green capitalism,' we know that it is impossible to have infinite growth on a finite planet." The statement calls for leaving fossil fuels in the ground, popular and community control over production, reducing the North's overconsumption, respecting indigenous and forest peoples' rights and, notably, reparations for the ecological and climate debts owed by the richest countries to those who are most affected by resource extraction and climate-related disasters.

The emerging discourse of climate justice reflects a growing understanding that those most affected by accelerating climate-related disasters around the world are usually the least responsible for causing disruptions in the climate. Thus any movement seeking an adequate response to global climate changes needs to clearly face this discrepancy and prioritize the voices of the most affected communities. Many people around the world are simultaneously impacted by climate disruptions and by the emerging false solutions to climate change, including carbon trading and offsets, the destruction of forests to create biofuel (agrofuel) plantations, largescale hydroelectric developments, and nuclear power. Corporate "solutions" to global warming often expand commodification and privatization, whether of land, waterways, or the atmosphere itself, largely at the expense of the same affected communities. This outlook was first widely articulated following a meeting in Durban, South Africa in the fall of 2004. Representatives from groups (including social movements and indigenous peoples organizations) based in Brazil, India, Samoa, the US, and UK, as well as South Africa, drafted the Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading, which has since gained over 300 signatories from around the world. The Durban Group has helped bring people to the sites of various UN meetings to represent those affected by increased resource extraction over the past several decades, as well as the accelerating conversion of forests to monoculture plantations that is partly justified by the North's desire for carbon offsets.

Internationally, people from Pacific Island nations, in some cases already losing land and groundwater to rising seas, have been in the forefront of calls for immediate action. The worldwide confederation of peasant movements, Vía Campesina, with affiliated groups in more than 80 countries, has joined the call for actions in Copenhagen, challenging the status of carbon as a newly privatized commodity and arguing that the UN climate convention "has failed to radically question the current models of consumption and production based on the illusion of continuous growth."

The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has clearly hit a nerve among people of many walks of life, all around the world. While the outcome of Copenhagen remains highly uncertain, it is clear that such a flowering of creative and determined popular responses is precisely what is needed to reverse decades of willful inaction
by the world's elites and reach beyond the limits of politics- as-usual. Toward Climate Justice: Can we turn back from the abyss? By Brian Tokar August 19, 2009,

For Z Magazine, September 2009

A Coalition of the Willing?

As the clock ticks to Copenhagen, how low is the world prepared to prostrate to get climate-renegade US on
board? Is a bad deal in Copenhagen better than no deal?

The global consensus is industrialised countries need to cut at least 40 per cent over 1990 levels, to avert a 2°C rise in temperature. But the US, after much fanfare on its Nobelawarded president, has proposed a puny target of 20 per cent of 2005 levels by 2020. Now, this country's greenhouse gas emissions have increased
by 20 per cent between 1990 and 2005. Thus, it is saying it plans to do nothing but stabilise by 2020. It does nothing to cut its gargantuan emission share-with some 5 per cent of the world's population, it currently emits 18 per cent of global emissions. This single country is responsible for 30 per cent of the global stock of emissions in the atmosphere - this is criminal, when you think of the impact of climate change on the poor of the world.

Finally, it has made it amply clear it will do this little bit only if China, India and other 'polluting' nations are with it in this grand cop-out plan.

In other words, the world now needs a second coalition of the willing - this time for President Barack Obama. This time, not to go to war with Iraq, but to blow up the chance of an effective agreement in Copenhagen.

The generals are putting together the coalition, building block by building block.

But if we want to be part of the coalition, we must agree to their proposal. It is here we must spot the similarities between the 'leaked' letter of the minister of environment and forests to the prime minister, which asks for domestic legislation, international scrutiny on our mitigation actions, which we have to do for our own good and support for the Australian proposal. If we accept this proposition, we will be the deal-makers. We will break ranks with the G-77/China bloc and join the gang of the powerful polluters.Will this 'pragmatic' approach
to bring the world's most renegade nation to the table be effective for climate change? Unequivocally, no. It
will dismantle a multilateral agreement based on setting global targets to reduce emissions, equitable burden-sharing and strong mechanisms for the most powerful to comply.

This coalition of the willing has many powerful takers. In the days to come, the chorus will grow. Watch and wait. Hear and listen. The world is moving towards climate-disaster, and no Nobel Peace prize can cover that up.

In all possibility, Copenhagen may well witness mass mobilisations of CSO on lines of Seattle. “A network of radical green groups is planning to disrupt the international climate change meeting in Copenhagen in December by invading the conference centre and occupying it for a day, it has emerged. The anti-globalisation group Climate Justice Action has said it hopes to mobilise up to 15,000 protesters to storm the climate summit and a large carbon dioxide emitter nearby, while negotiators try to thrash out a replacement for the Kyoto protocol. “We want to take over the summit space to set the global agenda away from false, market-based
solutions, towards an agenda of social justice,” said Tadzio Müller, a 32-year-old German activist who is part of the group organising the protest. “Real emission cuts will not be achieved by initiatives like carbon trading...It is (the pursuit of) economic growth that is driving us into climate chaos.”

Business Standard, Oct 28, 2009

Change in Position?

In a confidential letter which Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has written to the PM, suggesting that India should opt out of the Kyoto Protocol, jettison the 131 G77 developing countries (and China), and voluntarily accept cuts in emissions without the slightest guarantee of any funding or technology from industrial nations in return. Simply and baldly stated, this goes against each and every principle which India -during the epoch-making UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and nearly two decades since - has in fact articulated on behalf of all developing countries.

There is only one moral to be drawn from this sordid drama.

A section of India's decision- making elite - both in the political-bureaucratic system on the one hand and business interests on the other -- clearly believes that it is in India's interests now to align itself with the US in its foreign policy. President Obama has made no secret of the fact that climate is one of the cornerstones of US international policy. This is of a piece with India signing the nuclear deal with the US, even at the risk of destabilising its own coalition, on the specious plea that this would boost India's energy supply.

It is another matter that if and when the entire Indo-US nuclear energy deal goes through, it will supply just 7% of the total energy, which is hardly substantial, leaving aside the serious objections to nuclear energy itself.

Who will take a bow when the curtain falls in Copenhagen? By all accounts, India and China are waiting in the wings, to flank the US and EU who are the main dramatis personae, with Japan and Australia in between.

India's climate volte face: Tragedy or farce?, Darryl D'Monte, Infochange,

News & Features. October 2009

The US and Climate Change

In July 1997, The US Senate voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones. Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The common refrain was"we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate".

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the US act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces. First, the role of the corporate media - particularly in the US - in downplaying the threat of climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it.

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because its members are bought and bound by the companies that stand to lose. When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by two things.

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector - mostly coal, oil, gas, logging and agribusiness - has given $418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given $355m. The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans,
but most of them also fund Democrats.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on Bush, but they also gave Gore
$142,000, while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

So don't believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out. Until the American people confront their political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

- Counter Currents.Org, 18 Dec 2007

How the different countries stand on climate change

Europe
Views itself as the world leader and wants to limit climate change to 2C above pre-industrial levels. Has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, and to raise this to 30% if there is agreement at Copenhagen

US
The Bush administration regularly stalled on climate targets. Barack Obama's team has yet to make its position clear, but has promised "vigorous engagement" at Copenhagen. Will want greater effort from developing countries, China in particular

China
More aware of climate change than often given credit for. Likely to resist binding targets, but some pledge of future action will be needed to appease US. Has requested that rich countries pay 0.7% of GDP to poorer ones to help them adapt to the effects of global warming.

India
Has taken a hard line so far and voiced its opposition to legally binding targets. Has indicated it would be willing to work to keep its growing per capita emissions below those of industrialised countries

Russia
One of the great unknowns. Russia's crucial gas resources have made it more bullish at climate talks, and the Kremlin resents being ranked alongside countries such as Argentina, Mexico and South Africa in the negotiations.

- Energy Information Administration, The Guardian, 08 December 2008?

India's Position
In terms of India's position in the negotiations, the country has consistently maintained that it needs the "ecological space to grow," and that it cannot afford to take on mandatory emission cuts at this stage in its development. India's stand is a valid and well-reasoned one, but as is often the case with domestic policymaking in India we adopt the ostrich approach of burying our head in the sand. It is time India looked up and seriously confronted the dangers of climate change at home, moving beyond deal-making and bargaining. India needs to begin exploring options for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and adaptation to climate
change and variability. Given the sub-continent's extreme vulnerability to climate change, this is a battle that will ultimately be fought in our own backyards. So we had better gear up for it.

Source: InfoChange News & Features, August 2005

The mean world of climate change

Let us also be clear that international negotiations on climate change stink. The mood is downright belligerent and selfish. The club of rich countries, that once agreed to 'common but differentiated responsibilities' (meaning countries would act based on their responsibility in creating the problem), are learning hard lessons. In the past 15 years, their emissions have increased, not decreased. Now, they want to find any which way to please their green constituency, but also balance their economic growth imperatives and ensure their industry remains competitive.

Their strategy has many parts and players. First, the most climate-renegade nation, the US, is allowed to point a finger at China, India and other emerging countries. The US is constantly allowed to get away by saying if these countries do not take action, it will not. Even if this means ignoring that US emissions, already one-fourth of the global total, have increased, and accepting what the US says: that its emissions will peak after 2025, or 10 years after what scientists say is the least risky target for global emissions to peak and then decline. Second, this
strategy lets the guru of energy efficiency, Japan, provide an alternative road-map that is merely a win-win solution for its industry. Third, the greenczar, the European Union (EU) can use tough words, then cave in at strategic moments, for the sake of pragmatism in global action's.

The stage is now set for the last act of this deadly climate-play. Down To Earth Magazine, 16 Jul 2008
Sunita Narain

Enough science, now for the politics

But although science is very good at revealing how things are, and suggesting what physical manifestations might follow a particular course of action, it has limited relevance and reach when deciding what should be done in the face of complex dilemmas - such as climate change.

But exactly what action is it that the science demands? And action by whom and by when? These are questions for politics to decide, not for science to dictate.

The underlying reasons for human-induced climate change open up questions that are even more intractable to science. The idea of climate change has re-animated many long-standing debates around power, justice and development in a colonising and colonised world.

Anil Agrawal and Sunita Narain captured this vividly in their famous depiction of luxury versus survival emissions: those associated with non-essential lifestyle choices like international tourism or garden hot tubs versus those from essentials activities such as cooking, heating and lighting. Ethicallycharged discussions about individual, political and historical responsibilities and about the nature of human well-being are now firmly embedded in climate change discourse.

The idea of climate change that science has so powerfully revealed is in turn unmasking the many reasons why we so often disagree in our crowded, troubled and divided world.

It may indeed be clear from the science that 'urgent action' is needed. But does this mean radical changes in consumption practices or radical decarbonisation of energy technologies? And who is to take this action: politicians, business leaders, entrepreneurs, the rich of the West or the rich of the world? And by when are such actions demanded? Through the haze of emission reductions goals for 2050 or through more prosaic and modest short-term goals for the next five years? These are the questions in dispute. Simply 'letting the science speak' is far from enough.

As we enter another round of negotiations in Copenhagen it is vital that we understand the many valid reasons for disagreeing about climate change. We must recognise that they are rooted in different political, national, organisational, religious and intellectual cultures - in different ways of 'seeing the world'.

Climate change: Enough science, now for the politics Mike Hulme

Science and Development Network 3 September 2009

COPENHAGEN AND BEYOND

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses.

Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called . . . leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

George Monbiot

Climate Justice Now! The Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading

As representatives of people's movements and independent organisations, we reject the claim that carbon
trading will halt the climate crisis. This crisis has been caused more than anything else by the mining of fossil
fuels and the release of their carbon to the oceans, air, soil and living things. This excessive burning of fossil
fuels is now jeopardising Earth's ability to maintain a liveable climate.

Governments, export credit agencies, corporations and international financial institutions continue to support
and finance fossil fuel exploration, extraction and other activities that worsen global warming, such as forest degradation and destruction on a massive scale, while dedicating only token sums to renewable energy. It is particularly disturbing that the World Bank has recently defied the recommendation of its own Extractive Industries Review which calls for the phasing out of World Bank financing for coal, oil and gas extraction.

We denounce the further delays in ending fossil fuel extraction that are being caused by corporate, government and United Nations' attempts to construct a "carbon market", including a market trading in "carbon sinks".

History has seen attempts to commodify land, food, labour, forests, water, genes and ideas. Carbon trading
follows in the footsteps of this history and turns the earth's carbon-cycling capacity into property to be bought
or sold in a global market. Through this process of creating a new commodity - carbon - the Earth's ability and
capacity to support a climate conducive to life and human societies is now passing into the same corporate
hands that are destroying the climate.

People around the world need to be made aware of this commodification and privatization and actively intervene to ensure the protection of the Earth's climate. Carbon trading will not contribute to achieving this protection of the Earth's climate. It is a false solution which entrenches and magnifies social inequalities in many ways:

• The carbon market creates transferable rights to dump carbon in the air, oceans, soil and vegetation far in excess of the capacity of these systems to hold it. Billions of dollars worth of these rights are to be awarded free of charge to the biggest corporate emitters of greenhouse gases in the electric power, iron and steel, cement, pulp and paper, and other sectors in industrialised nations who have caused the climate crisis and already exploit these systems the most. Costs of future reductions in fossil fuel use are likely to fall disproportionately on the public sector, communities, indigenous peoples and individual taxpayers.

The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), as well as many private sector trading schemes, encourage industrialised countries and their corporations to finance or create cheap carbon dumps such as large-scale tree plantations in the South as a lucrative alternative to reducing emissions in the North. Other CDM projects, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC) -reduction schemes, focus on end-of pipe technologies and thus do nothing to reduce the impact of fossil fuel industries' impacts on local communities. In addition, these projects dwarf the tiny volume of renewable energy projects which constitute the CDM's sustainable
development window-dressing.

Impacts from fossil-fuel industries and other greenhouse-gas producing industries such as displacement,
pollution, or climate change, are already disproportionately felt by small island states, coastal peoples, indigenous peoples, local communities, fisherfolk, women, youth, poor people, elderly and marginalized communities. CDM projects intensify these impacts in several ways. First, they sanction continued exploration for, and extraction, refining and burning of fossil fuels. Second, by providing finance for private sector projects such as industrial tree plantations, they appropriate land, water and air already supporting the lives and livelihoods of local communities for new carbon dumps for Northern industries.

The refusal to phase out the use of coal, oil and gas, which is further entrenched by carbon trading, is also
causing more and more military conflicts around the world, magnifying social and environmental injustice. This
in turn diverts vast resources to military budgets which could otherwise be utilized to support economies based
on renewable energies and energy efficiency.

In addition to these injustices, the internal weaknesses and contradictions of carbon trading are in fact likely to make global warming worse rather than "mitigate" it. CDM projects, for instance, cannot be verified to be "neutralizing" any given quantity of fossil fuel extraction and burning. Their claim to be able to do so is increasingly dangerous because it creates the illusion that consumption and production patterns, particularly in the North, can be maintained without harming the climate.

In addition, because of the verification problem, as well as a lack of credible regulation, no one in the CDM
market is likely to be sure what they are buying. Without a viable commodity to trade, the CDM market and
similar private sector trading schemes are a total waste of time when the world has a critical climate crisis to
address. In an absurd contradiction the World Bank facilitates these false, market-based approaches to climate
change through its Prototype Carbon Fund, the BioCarbon Fund and the Community Development Carbon Fund at the same time it is promoting, on a far greater scale, the continued exploration for, and extraction and
burning of fossil fuels - many of which are to ensure increased emissions of the North. In conclusion, 'giving carbon a price' will not prove to be any more effective, democratic, or conducive to human welfare, than giving genes, forests, biodiversity or clean rivers a price.

We reaffirm that drastic reductions in emissions from fossil fuel use are a pre-requisite if we are to avert the climate crisis. We affirm our responsibility to coming generations to seek real solutions that are viable and truly sustainable and that do not sacrifice marginalized communities.

We therefore commit ourselves to help build a global grassroots movement for climate justice, mobilize
communities around the world and pledge our solidarity with people opposing carbon trading on the ground.

(Signed 10 October 2004 Glenmore Centre, Durban)

Deforestation is Cheaper!

So it was that, at the Poznan conference, rich countries aggressively pushed a new climate-tack. They cannot reduce at home, so they have decided to find every way to (1) 'offset' their fossil fuel emissions by buying emission reduction certificates in developing countries; or (2) pay to protect emission-absorbing forests; or (3) simply pump their carbon deep into the ground. Indeed, every dirty way not to cut, but to pay, bribe and cajole others to cut will do. Then if all this fails there is the easy fallback: use China and India as punching bags as well as excuses for not taking on hard reductions at home.

In Poznan the effort was to devise a mechanism to pay developing countries to 'avoid' deforestation. Why? Because the Nick Stern report said 20 per cent of the world's emissions were from deforestation in the developing world. Now, this has become a quick-fix solution: stop deforestation and take a 20 per cent advantage in our carbon balance sheet, without doing anything at home.

As a result the mechanism, in negotiators' parlance called redd or 'reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation' naturally, in developing countries is being built with absolutely no understanding that forests here are not mere carbon sticks to beat the world's conscience with, or sinks for garbage carbon, but habitats of millions of people.

There is no comprehension of the role forests play in a developing country's economy or in people's lives. Instead, the intent is misbegotten and singleminded: pay as cheaply as possible to buy rights over forests in the developing world and build as many accounting and certification procedures as possible to make sure there are no 'leakages' in the transaction. It is clearly a great business for the crashed and failed consultancy companies of the western world creative carbon accounting, this time in the forests of the poor.

So, this opportunity, which could have enjoined the interests of foresteconomies and its people to plant, protect and manage forests so that the world would in addition get the benefit of reducing emissions, is being lost to the self-interest of greedy polluters.

(2009 is full of promise, Down To Earth, Magazine, 01 Jan 2009)

So what are the alternatives?

If the obesession with economic growth is set aside, it becomes easier to see how tackling climate change and maintaining a sustainable and enjoyable life are far from contradictory goals.

Carbon markets should be dismantled, starting with offsets. A clear intention to discontinue carbon markets can fatally undermine them even in advance of legislative action. Alternatives then need to be developed that are properly consulted and developed together with local communities to prevent a repeat of the dispossession and social injustice caused by offsetting schemes.

A range of different approaches will be needed but may include:

- Recognition of existing climate solutions. The vast range of solutions that already exist - which tend to be distinguished by their sensitivity to the local contexts in which they operate, are overlooked in favour of the accumulation of largescale "technological fixes" or market-based schemes.

- Leave fossil fuels in the ground. Proposals to halt new coal power plants and the exploration of new and often "uncoventional" sources of oil extraction are at the frontline of the struggle for climate justice - and should form part of a rapid transition to a postfossil fuel economy.

- Rediscovering environmental protection. There are a broad range of environmental policy instruments that have proven to be more effective than market-based approaches - ranging from efficiency standards for electrical appliances and buildings to feed-in tariffs for renewables. The rediscovery of such measures could form part of a solution.

- New revenues: tax and or end currency and fuel speculation. Rather than a regressive carbon tax, revenue can be generated by a tax on currency speculation. A heavy tax or an end to speculation on fossil fuel prices would also help as a transitional measure. This should be accompanied by pro-active policy measures to tackle fuel poverty, such as a ban on pre-pay metering.

- Renewable energy should be supported but not uncritically - with the involvement of local populations and not as basis for sustaining expansions in fossil use or support of unsustainable model of industrial expansion.

- Public energy research. Private research on energy alternatives and use favours "least cost" false solutions (eg. agrofuels, hydroelectric dams, nuclear power) rather than environmentally effective alternatives, so is less effective than public research. However, this would need to be allied with the democratic transformation of the institutions of "environmental governance," the agenda for which currently tends to be set by transnational corporations.

- Re-estimating energy demand. Current models presume limitless growth and overstate future energy demand, which has encouraged oversupply and kept prices low - which is, in turn a key structural driver of over-consumption.

- The Transition Towns movement is going some way towards re-estimating demand with its "Energy Descent Action Plans", but lacks a structural analysis of heavy industry use (or capitalist accumulation) and is often divorced from organising for more equitable distribution of energy.

- Changing economic calculations. Cost-benefit accounting either fails to take account of environmental or social costs, or is grossly reductionist in its assumptions.

- Challenging the "growth" fetish. GDP is a very poor indicator of human- well being, so is not a condition for social improvement or a good life.

Oscar Reyes Red Pepper magazine. http://www.stwr.org

Challenge to Kyoto Carbon Trading

The market for trading rights to spew carbon dioxide, created by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming, is under attack by developing countries and environmentalists as negotiators hammer out a sequel treaty.

Investors who trade pollution permits are fighting proposals to limit or kill a United Nations program that lets European companies offset requirements to cut emissions by bankrolling low-carbon projects in emerging economies. The process creates credits that the World Bank says accounted for 26 percent of the $126 billion of allowances that traded in the carbon market in 2008.

China and Mexico want wealthier governments to subsidize clean-up projects directly, with the Chinese saying investments from Western companies should "not be used to offset" their own cuts. Greenpeace International says the UN system delays rich nations' response to greenhouse gasses. Their approaches would reduce the private sector's role in, and potential profits from, the global-warming fight. Ending offsets would limit trading to permits that European Union governments issue under a related regime that makes up 73 percent of the market.

"There is a growing fear that the whole low-carbon investment scene is being positioned toward the public sector," said Henry Derwent, president of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association. "The public sector has no more than a tiny percentage of the money needed to solve the climate problem," said Derwent, Tony Blair's climate adviser when he was U.K. prime minister.

by Mathew Carr, Bloomberg, June 19, 2007

For transparent carbon trading

Global carbon trading has gained momentum. The Worldwatch Institute, drawing from various studies, places the total value of the trade in 2007 at $59.2 billion, an 80 per cent increase over 2006. As the 2012 deadline for reducing emission levels approaches, the volume of carbon trading will be enormous. Asian countries are the biggest sellers and western countries the biggest buyers. A World Bank report on the 2007 carbon market shows that China has a market share of 61 pe r cent and India 12 per cent. The Government of India, as a part of its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, set up in 2003 a National Clean Development Mechanism Authority, which has been reviewing proposals for carbon credits. However, the final credits are issued by the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism at the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC). India has garnered 35 million of the 102 million Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) issued up to January 2008.

This augurs well for the country and its entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, a few issues surface time and again to remind us how the system can be improved. The pricing of CERs has become a major issue. Studies by groups such as the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi and by the New Zealand government on CER pricing have highlighted the lack of transparency. This hinders the just distribution of benefits and paves the way for manipulation. The data available indicate that the price of CERs ranges from $11 to $22 and naturally such wide variation raises troubling questions. Arguments for lower prices emphasise scale, risk, and delay in delivery of CERs as determining factors. However, the sellers who bear the burden of investment and delivery should be able to reap the benefits of better prices where they exist. Information on prevailing prices should be easily and freely available. This becomes important in the context of calls for including community projects in the carbon trade. Whether transparency can be imposed through a regulatory authority or by an alternative method needs to be discussed and quickly settled. Reducing emissions at source is the best option but until that is achieved a regulated carbon market is a necessity. For India, there is yet another issue. To their credit, private entrepreneurs predominate in the list of projects approved by UNFCCC. Government projects and the public sector, which have not shown any serious interest in accumulating CERs, need to be prodded to follow their example.

The Hindu, Chennai, 13 Feb 2008

The lobby -- which includes Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Barclays Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 168 other firms -- argues that climate change can't be solved without a profit-driven market. The organization and its members haven't disclosed how much they earned from trading carbon permits. While the total amount of CO2 permits traded doubled last year, the market remains tiny compared with worldwide oil futures, where as much money changes hands in less than two days. New Carbon Finance, a London-based investment adviser that tracks the market, predicts the CO2 market will reach $3 trillion by 2020. The Paris-based International Energy Agency says the world faces flooding, droughts and food shortages unless it spends at least an additional $4.2 trillion by 2030 to reduce power-plant emissions and boost energy efficiency. For carbon investors, the "worst case scenario" would be richer nations making direct payments to poorer countries and industry-based emissions trading in developing nations being largely controlled by national governments rather than a single regulator, said Dirk Forrister, who helped advise former U.S. President Bill Clinton on climate change. Trading of emerging-market credits "needs to be built on a private-sector model," said Forrister, now managing director of Natsource LLC, a New York company that makes money creating, buying and selling pollution rights.

Civil Society and Carbon Trading

Carbon trading itself is no corporate conspiracy, but rather a joint invention of civil society, business and the state. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been nearly as prominent in Sits development as private corporations. Although pollution trading derived from the theories of economists working in universities and think tanks, it was written into the 1990 US Clean Air Act Amendments by Environmental Defence, a corporate-friendly NGO that subsequently pushed for it to be included both in the Kyoto Protocol The Washington-based NGO World Resources Institute (partly bankrolled by government and UN agencies, international fi nancial institutions and corporations such as Monsanto, TotalFinaElf, Shell, BP, and Cargill Dow) tirelessly lobbied for carbon trading alongside the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and other corporate pressure groups. The

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an organisation with an annual budget 3.5 times that of the World Trade Organisation. WWF also helped develop an eco-label for the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism projects.

Greenpeace, for its part, has moved from being critical of corporate lobby groups and carbon trading to complete acceptance. As forest conservation NGOs such as the Nature Conservancy and Conservation International move in to mop up corporate and World Bank fi nance being off ered for 'carbon sinks', other NGOs confine themselves to trying to reform or 'contain the damage' done by trading programmes such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Most Northern members of the largest NGO grouping on climate change, the Climate Action Network, have thrown their support behind the carbon market, often demoting themselves to the role of advisers to governments on such matters as national emissions allocations. Critical NGOs are being continually urged 'to unite behind an entirely bizarre, incomprehensible, and totally corruptible system of carbon trading'.

Development Dialogue March 2007

So what's wrong with cap and trade?

In practice, carbon offset projects have most of the times resulted in land grabs, local environmental and social conflicts, the displacement of Indigenous Peoples´ from their territories, as well as the repression of local communities and movements.

There are fundamental theoretical flaws in the whole cap and trade scheme even before you look at the actual record of its implementation. This is because the scheme was never set up to directly tackle the key task of a rapid transition away from fossil fuel extraction, over-production and overconsumption, but sought instead to quantifying existing pollution as a means to create a new tradable commodity. Within this framework, traders invariably opt for the cheapest credits available at the time, but what is cheap in the shortterm is not the same as what is environmentally effective or socially just.

Some of the key problems with the cap and trade approach are:

- The "trade" component does not reduce any emissions. It simply allows companies to choose between cutting their own emissions or buying cheaper "carbon credits," which are supposed to represent reductions elsewhere.

- The "cap" has too many holes and sometimes caps nothing. The cap is only as tight as the least stringent part of the whole system. This is because credits are sold by those with a surplus, and the cheapest way to produce a surplus is to be given too many credits in the first place ("hot air" credits as a result of caps being set too high). The aim of trading is to find the cheapest solution for polluting industry, and it is consistently cheaper to buy "hot air" credits than to actually reduce emissions.

Cap setting is a political process that is highly susceptible to corporate lobbying which means that there is invariable over-allocation of pollution permits. In fact, lobbying is encouraged through extensive industry "stakeholder" involvement.

- Offsets loosen the cap. While cap and trade in theory limits the availability of pollution permits, "offset" projects are a licence to print new ones. When the two systems are brought together, they tend to undermine each other - since one applies a cap and the other lifts it. An offset is essentially a permit to pollute beyond the cap.

So who profited from carbon trading?

Companies receive most carbon credits for free. This is equivalent to a subsidy - and with allocations made  n the basis of historical emissions, the largest subsidy goes to the dirtiest industry (especially coal-fired power plants).

Windfall profits also arise from an accounting trick around "opportunity costs." Power companies choose to do the cheapest thing to meet their ETS target - which is usually buying Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits - but passing on costs as if they were doing the most expensive - actually reducing emissions. Even power companies receiving free credits from the ETS have nevertheless passed on the cost of these credits to consumers. Research by market- analysts Point Carbon and WWF calculated that the likely "windfall" profits made by power companies in phase II could be between •23 and •71 billion, and that these profits were concentrated in the countries with the highest level of emissions.

Carbon offsets have serious negative social and local environmental impacts

The use of "development" rhetoric masks the fundamental injustice of offsetting, which hands a new revenue stream to some of the most highly polluting industries in the South, while simultaneously offering companies and governments in the North a means to delay changing their own industrial practices and energy usage.

Oscar Reyes Red Pepper magazine. http://www.stwr.org

REDD: Reduced Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries

REDD initiatives, as they are currently being discussed within international climate negotiations, propose to pay developing countries for the carbon value of their forests. It is believed that these payments could shift the balance away from the economic incentives currently favoring deforestation, thus making sustainable forest management a more profitable alternative. However, issues surrounding the design and implementation of such a mechanism are complicated and contentious. Among several outstanding questions is how to pay for REDD, since it will undoubtedly require substantial resources to be transferred to developing countries if it is to generate meaningful emissions reductions.

The global carbon market established under the Kyoto Protocol--now valued at over $30 billion worldwide--has recently generated excitement as a potential payment mechanism. A 2005 proposal by the countries of Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica formalized interest in a system known as "Compensated Reduction" (CR), whereby developing countries are awarded credits, tradable on the international carbon market, for reducing national deforestation rates below a baseline level. Proponents of CR, including many developing countries and several major environmental organizations, see a market-based REDD regime as the greatest potential ource of funding for forest conservation and the best way to capitalize on the cost-effectiveness of lowering global emissions through reduced deforestation.

In December of 2007, the World Bank launched the $250 million Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), meant to build capacity for REDD in developing countries while providing a pilot program to test Compensated Reduction. Carbon credits earned through reduced deforestation are currently not eligible for trading within the international carbon market established under the Kyoto Protocol, so FCPF credits are expected to be traded on the voluntary market.

Design and Implementation Challenges for REDD
A carbon market-based funding mechanism, such as Compensated Reduction, is the current forerunner among various REDD proposals, but numerous technical issues pose significant obstacles to design and implementation If they are not fully resolved, a marketbased REDD could fail to achieve positive outcomes, or even increase global emissions if developing countries are allowed to sell carbon offsets from reduced deforestation that do not correspond to actual emissions eductions.

For these reasons, nonmarket options for funding REDD must also be considered, such as using existing development assistance, creating a new dedicated fund, or even redirecting revenues from a carbon tax or national cap and trade programs. But even if outstanding issues can be resolved, there is a real possibility that neither a marketbased nor a non-market REDD program will yield desired outcomes when it comes to mitigating climate change or protecting forest services and communities, meaning that other policy alternatives must also be considered.

Its role as part of an international agreement on combating climate change will be decided in December 2009 at Copenhagen. http://earthtrends.wri.org

The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) scheme could create the climate regime's largest ever loophole, giving Northern polluters yet another opportunity to buy their way out of emissions reductions. With no mention of biodiversity or Indigenous Peoples' rights, this scheme might give a huge incentive for countries to sell off their forests, expel Indigenous and peasant communities, and transform forests into tree plantations under corporate-control. Plantations are not forests. Privatisation and dispossession through REDD or any other mechanisms must be stopped. The World Bank is attempting to carve a niche in the international climate change regime. This is unacceptable as the Bank continues to fund polluting industries and drive deforestation by promoting industrial logging and agrofuels. The Bank's recently launched Climate Investment Funds goes against government initiatives at the UN and promotes dirty industries such as coal, while forcing developing countries into the fundamentally unequal aid framework of donor and ecipient. The World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility aiming to finance REDD through a forest carbon mechanism serves the interest of private companies and opens the path for commodification of forests. These developments are to be expected. Market ideology has totally infiltrated the climate talks, and the UNFCCC negotiations are now like trade fairs hawking investment opportunities

The CDM Fraud

The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. In fact, evidence is accumulating that it is increasing greenhouse gas emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. The misguided mechanism is handing out billions of dollars to chemical, coal and oil corporations and the developers of destructive dams - in many cases for projects they would have built anyway.

Any type of technology other than nuclear power can apply for credits. Even new coal plants, if these can be shown to be even a marginal improvement upon existing plants, can receive offset income. A massive 4,000MW coal plant on the coast of Gujarat, India, is expected soon to apply for CERs. The plant will spew into the atmosphere 26m tonnes of CO2 per year for at least 25 years. It will be India's third - and the world's 16th - largest source of CO2 emissions.

Off-the-record, industry insiders will admit that deceitful claims in CDM applications are standard practice. The carbon trading industry lobby group, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), has stated that proving the intent of developers applying for the CDM "is an almost impossible task". Industry representatives have complained that "good storytellers" can get a project approved, "while bad storytellers may fail even if the project is really additional".

One glaring signal that many of the projects being approved by the CDM's executive board are non-additional is that almost three-quarters of projects were already complete at the time of approval. It would seem clear that a project that is already built cannot need extra income in order to be built.

A rapidly growing industry of carbon brokers and consultants is lobbying for the CDM to be expanded and its rules to be weakened further.

Discredited strategy by Patrick McCully, The Guardian, 21 May 2008

Winners and Losers

The CDM has largely been rewarding big industrial polluters in the global South that contribute nothing towards sustainable development.

There is a widespread crisis of confidence in the CDM. All but the most dogmatically market oriented NGOs are no longer willing to entertain it as being any part of the solution. The US Government Accountability Office, the "audit, evaluation and investigative arm of Congress," recently released a detailed report that questions the credibility of the scheme. A statement from the International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change to the UN climate talks in Bali testified that CDM projects were being carried out "without the free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples."

The Kyoto Protocol outlines the three purposes for the CDM: assist in the achievement of sustainable development, contribute to attaining the environmental goals of the broader climate change treaty, and assist Northern countries in complying with their emissions reduction commitments.

A result for Northern companies The first two objectives have been abysmal failures. The third has been a resounding success, but paradoxically so. Meanwhile numerous studies have cast profound doubt on the ability of the CDM to bring climate benefits. A recent study from Stanford's Energy and Sustainability Program suggested that up to two thirds of CDM projects didn't bring about any emissions cuts.

The CDM has provided a means for Northern governments and companies to 'outsource' their responsibility for taking necessary steps towards a low-carbon economy. This aspect of the CDM's 'success' highlights the climate injustice underpinning the system. The winners are energy intensive companies, whose profit margins have benefited enormously in the short term through the lucrative trade in the credits themselves.

Because of fundamental flaws in the design of the CDM, industry has been able to buy cheap carbon credits to meet their emissions commitments and avoid the cost of shifting to low carbon technologies. Add these savings to potential windfalls from new trading options in derivatives and other exotic financial services and its no surprise there is such a 'gold rush' for this lucrative market.

Conversely, Southern countries have lost out enormously. Many projects, such as the waste incinerator in India, have been imposed on communities without their prior, informed consent.

CDM financing has entrenched dirty development by acting as a financial subsidy for big industrial polluters such as chemical  factories, coal fired power stations and pulp and paper mills. The CDM has been promoted at the expense of an existing adaptation fund and the truly clean technology transfer that is so urgently needed.

Offsets Under Kyoto: a dirty deal for the South Kevin Smith 5 December 2008, tni.org

CC and Profits

Indian companies view climate change more as an opportunity than a risk because they see themselves earning revenue from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), according to a new study.

The study is the first India report of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) on the action undertaken by companies to mitigate the adverse impact of climate

According to the report, 79% of Indian companies surveyed saw several commercial risks arising from climate change. These included following emissionreduction norms, dealing with shrinking resources such as water, and those related to changing consumer preferences for environmentally responsible companies and products.

The report said that 85% of the Indian companies saw an opportunity in the global move to combat global warming. India has hogged the major share in carbon projects under the Kyoto Protocol.

Almost half the companies surveyed said they were looking at emission trading opportunities and 21% already have CDM projects in the pipeline.

Climate change is an opportunity, not a threat, http://www.livemint.com/2007/11/22232930/

POLITICS IN THE POST-KYOTO WORLD

The Kyoto protocol is increasingly being understood not as an environmental agreement but a trading agreement. Speakers at a recently organised symposium by the World Trade Organisation noted that the Protocol could well be the most significant trading agreement of the century.

Klaus Topfer, the new executive director of UNEP said at the same meeting in WTO, that the Kyoto Protocol was about the creation of a new property rights regime for a global resource - the atmosphere. But he also went on to say that in his experience, establishing these rights was an issue fraught with tension and conflict. That may be so. But it is vital that these rights be established. The developing countries that are being asked to "assist" in meeting carbon reduction targets of the industrialised world, must do so, with their full entitlements over the atmosphere, a common property of humankind. What is needed instead is a framework built on the concept of "equal per capita entitlements".

They must insist that this "commodification" of the atmosphere - without an appropriate framework of rights - is like the appropriation of the West by the colonisers. This is clearly immoral. And unacceptable.

One of the most environmentally unfriendly decisions of Kyoto was to agree to set a reduction target of 5 per cent by Annex I countries on their 1990 levels. This has set a precedent in target-manipulation that will only lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. In hindsight, Kyoto was a massive exercise in juggling books of rich countries climate accounts. And what is most unfortunate is that it will now force each country to fiddle its own carbon budget.

What was agreed at Kyoto was to set a target of reduction of "at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008- 2012." The operative word is 1990 - as it essentially means that the country has to reduce its emissions by 5 per cent below what it emitted in that year.

Take the case of Australia. In 1990, as much as 30 per cent of the country's emissions were from deforestation. Emissions which are still present in the atmosphere and are causing global warming. But instead of being penalised for creating the problem in the first place, Australia has been able to use its high emissions to its advantage by winning the right to count any improvement from this position as its national credit. And, as its deforestation rate is already controlled, Australia can actually increase its emissions above and beyond that figure by 8 per cent.

What then is the implication of the 'baseline' for the future? If this innovative climate accountancy is accepted as the method of calculating a nation's targets then it would serve developing countries to actually increase its emissions as fast as possible.

This precedent being set by the emission-profligate North is going to destroy, not save, the worlds climate system.

POLITICS IN THE POST-KYOTO WORLD,CSE Briefing Paper 2, 2005

Limitations of Kyoto Protocol

At the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the world's governments signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention (UNFCCC). The Convention contains two important principles :

*  the precautionary principle - the convention recognises that despite unavoidable scientific uncertainties about climate change and its impacts it is imperative to take a precautionary approach and to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent or more as soon as possible.

*  the equity principle - the convention recognises that there needs to be a convergence of national emissions levels based on the principle of equal rights. That is, everyone must have the same right to use energy, or to produce greenhouse gases, or to use the pollutionabsorbing capacity of the natural environment. Emissions Targets - Inadequate and Unjust

*  The Kyoto Protocol has set emissions reduction targets for industrialised countries (the main producers of a carbon dioxide) at a mere 5.2 percent, on average from 1990 levels by 2012. This is widely recognised as inadequate to prevent dangerous climate change. According to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions (the main greenhouse gas) is necessary to bring levels in the atmosphere down to even twice pre-industrialised levels.

*  The Kyoto Protocol makes no attempt at convergence or even to recognise the principle of equal rights. Instead of being based on equal shares or rights for each individual, greenhouse gas entitlements have been based on national 'current emissions'. By setting industrial countries targets based on their 1990 emissions levels the Protocol effectively gives the right to that level of emissions, at least until 2012. Meanwhile it fails to acknowledge or set any emissions rights for developing countries. In other words, it enshrines the current  inequitable and unjust level of emissions. It allows industrialised countries to continue to produce greenhouse gases beyond their fair share and by setting no equitable per capita entitlements to use of the atmosphere, it risks denying present and future generations of developing countries the use of their fair share. The Kyoto Protocol and the proposed' flexible mechanisms' discussed in The Hague fail to fulfil either of these principles. They come nowhere near the precautionary target set by the FCCC and they ignore the principle of equal rights. That is, they will be ineffective and they are unjust.

Eco-Ethic Newsletter, 01 Jul 2002

Developed Vs Developing

The Kyoto Protocol is officially the first global legally binding contract aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A hundred and forty-one parties have now ratified the agreement. If any of the participating countries exceed their proposed 2012 target, they will have to make the promised reductions from the 2012 target, and an additional 30% more during the next period. The EU and Japan have already promised to reduce pollution by 8% from their respective 1990 levels.

However, Kyoto still lacks teeth because the United States, the world's largest greenhouse gas polluter, says signing up would ruin the US economy, and that the pact wrongly disregards developing countries. He was also concerned about the pressure on "industrialised" countries to cut back on emissions while developing countries weren't expected to cut theirs back as well. In many ways, the debate over climate change reflects the larger debate about global equity and justice, and the struggle between the rich and the poor. Developing
countries opposed the plans by blaming the problem of global warming on the practices of wealthier, developed nations. India and China, in particular, argued the case for the developing  countries, refusing to commit to any proposals that could limit their industrial development.

So where does that leave us? Emissions in America continue to rise and are now 11% higher than they were in 1990. Most countries that have signed up to Kyoto also admit that meeting their Kyoto targets will be difficult; nations are already falling behind.

One of the things that people are excited about as a possible solution and a potential win-win situation for both developed and developing countries is the clean development mechanism (CDM). This is one of the "flexibility mechanisms" authorised in the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM is a form of joint implementation between industrialised nations and developing countries. The mechanism is designed to allow industrialised nations to meet their commitments in a flexible manner, and, at the same time, allows developing countries not bound by
the protocol to participate in the process of global greenhouse gases (GHG) mitigation.

The CDM is supposed to be a market-based way to combat climate change. Through it, developed countries may invest in bankable projects in developing countries by paying the extra cost of upgrading to cleaner technology. In turn, they get credits for the amount of emissions reduced.

But many developing nations contend that these rights should eventually be allocated on a per capita basis, since that is the fairest and most democratic way of sharing an overall global limit to greenhouse gas emissions among the world's people. Northern industrialised countries have always argued for a 'rights-by-income (GDP)' approach, since larger economies, by virtue of their output, would naturally emit more GHGs than smaller economies. Developing countries have challenged this status quo, arguing for a 'rights-percapita' approach. Each person on the planet, they believe, should have equal atmospheric property rights and therefore equal GHG consumption rights. Another flaw in the carbon-trading regime is that industrial nations are currently permitted to buy as many low-cost reductions in developing nations as they can -- and they can bank those reductions as far into the future as they choose. That means that when poor nations are obliged to begin cutting their own emissions, during a later phase of the protocol, they will be left with only the most expensive options as the cheapest ones will have been bought up by the industrial nations. by Aditi Sen, InfoChange News & Features, August 2005

However it took seven years for the protocol to finally become international law. For it to come fully into force, the pact had to be ratified by countries accounting for at least 55% of 1990 carbon dioxide emissions. With countries like the US and Australia unwilling to come on board, the key to ratification came when Russia, which accounted for 17% of 1990 emissions, signed up to the agreement on November 5, 2004.

Privatising Forests

A particularly popular Western technique is promoting monoculture plantations in the South to "sequester" or "eliminate" CO2 although the science of such sequestering is still very uncertain.

Though there is a scientific consensus that carbon stored above ground (in trees) is not equal to carbon stored below ground (unmined/unused fossil fuels).

This has not stopped the crusaders for emissions trading to claim "carbon neutrality" and "carbon offsetting" through tree planting and other means. Indeed, a new and profitable industry of "carbon neutral" products has developed with producers targeting environment conscious consumers through claims that their products are made from, say, "carbon offsetting" plantation wood.

“Carbon sinks” such as forests and oceans, etc., can only qualify for emission credits if their management is "officially" done. Old growth rainforests where indigenous peoples have lived for centuries do not qualify though corporaterun tree plantations do.

What is going on here? It is not at all difficult to understand. The approach to tackling the issue of global warming is of a piece with the general approach of the WTO and of the new neoliberal economic dogma: private ownership and control plus market allocation is the key to everything. That is to say, it is about privatising water, education, health, social security, etc., emissions trading is based on the principle that the best way to tackle environmental problems (and promote profitable "green capitalism") is to move towards privatising the global commons and resources, i.e., promote the institutionalisation of a property rights regime for the atmosphere itself. And since emissions trading is the key mechanism for tackling environmental problems, it is hardly surprising that there is growing pressure for the rules of such trading to conform to the general rules for governing trade as embodied in the WTO system.

Not only does this make corporate polluters and neoliberal economists (whose very discipline treats the environment with theoretical contempt as "natural capital") happy, but will also most likely lead to further reducing regulation of emissions trading so as to avoid trade conflicts.

Too Little, Too Bad, Achin Vanaik, The Asian Age, 23 March 2005

UNFCC as a Process..

Overall the Climate Change Convention should be seen as an evolutionary document. The ultimate effectiveness of the Convention now lies in the strength of the protocols yet to be formulated.

A process-oriented text for the convention, as had been advocated by the US, was finally agreed.

This was notwithstanding the fact that most developed nations were unhappy with the text not containing detailed commitments, targets or timetables to cut CO2 emissions.

Ultimately, however, they agreed to the processoriented text with the compromise that developed nations be required to prepare national emission inventories and to report periodically on their programmes to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

One delegate said "I don't think we could have gotten any better--because the commitment to specific commitments was just not in the United States interest, and without them, there is no point in having a convention'. Developed nations and the small island states were not prepared to go ahead with a convention that the US would not sign.

The Convention's ultimate objective as stated in Article 2 is to achieve: ...stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. [emphasis not in original]

This is extremely important in its ecological intent as well as being significant as sustainable development is advocated as a goal. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 3 also state sustainable development principles.

The Parties have a right to, and should, promote sustainable development. Policies and measures to protect the climate system against human-induced change should be appropriate for the specific conditions of each Party and should be integrated with national development programmes, taking into account that economic development is essential for adopting measures to address climate change.

The Parties should cooperate to promote a supportive and open international economic system that would lead to sustainable economic growth and development in all Parties, particularly developing country Parties, thus enabling them better to address the problems of climate change. Measures taken to combat climate change, including unilateral ones, should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade. Inclusion of the precautionary principle as stated in Article 3.3 is also very significant in that it is an important environmental management guide in a situation of scientific uncertainty. The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost.

Also, the reporting process subparagraphs of Article 4.2, which are a compromise which was sought from the US, although weak legally are politically interesting in that they signal that developed countries must make commitments to stabilise emissions by the end of the century aiming at 1990 levels and have these commitments reviewed by the Conference of the Parties periodically.

(International Climate Policy Development and Implementation, Climatic Impacts Centre Annual Report 1993. North Ryde, NSW, Australia: Macquarie University)

Forests and Climate Change

MYTH: A most effective way in reducing C02 emissions is for the South and other countries to invest in forests
plantation to suck up carbon dioxide and to install nuclear power plants.
FACT: This falsehood is based on the so called Dyson Effect (A British physicist Freeman Dyson's brainwave: to soak up the excess carbon dioxide by planting huge areas of trees) At face value this is a plausible option. However, it is a harebrained approach and even reinforces fantasy! By 1998, international climate negotiators had agreed that putting money into large-scale tree planting was an effective way that the South could "assist" the North in "achieving compliance with their quantified emissions limitation and reduction objectives".

Thus, in little more than two decades, in short, a farfetched, arrogant scheme hatched by a single intellectual
has virtually become received wisdom! (No doubt it has been helped along not only by institutional and corporate politics but also by being associated with the common-sense view that says "there can surely be no harm in planting trees!?"

Everybody wants to believe. But it is pertinent to point out the distinctions! Planting and maintaining an orchard or community woodland, creating village forest belts, planting trees along highways, planting saplings into a garden, is one thing. The global project of carbon "offset" forestry is quite another. The trend it represents is not only not harmless. It is dangerous - dangerous for equity, for democratic politics, for soil, for trees, for forests, for climatic habitability itself.

The belief is on the plausibility through a natural confusion between two sets of propositions:

1. Trees are vitally important for climate. So is practising low tillage agriculture, improving energy efficiency, etc. Besides, it is important not only to cut emissions, but also, where emissions must increase, for them to increase as little as possible. Finally, cutting emissions is important wherever it takes place on the earth's surface given that the atmosphere circulates so rapidly;

2. Conserving forest, planting trees, practising low-tillage agriculture, improvements in energy efficiency, etc., can be trade for emissions cuts in a way that makes the emissions "climate neutral". Actual emissions can be trade for hypothetical emissions reduction below "business as usual" in a away which renders the emissions "climate neutral". An activity in one social context which results in a short term emissions cut can be traded for an activity in another social context which results in an identical short-term emissions cut. For the casual or uninitiated observes point 2 follows from those of point 1. For example, "If you know that saving the Amazon is better for the atmosphere than keeping one car off the road, then you ought to be able to calculate how many cars are equivalent to saving the Amazon. The calculations may be difficult, but don's see why the problems should be insurmountable. But in fact while the propositions of point #1 are common sense, those of #2 are nonsense. Saving something is important and saying it can be quantified and incorporated into an accounting system are two different things.

Trees and soil are highly relevant to climate and to the cycling of fossil fuel emissions, but the relation among the three cannot be quantified in the way a climate market would require. Needless to say, forests are an important part of the planet's carbon cycle. Seasonal cycles the growth of the forests of the Northern hemisphere show up in a seasonal cycle of C02 levels in the atmosphere. So it is easy to see that any major impact of climate on the world's forests could feed back into further changes in climate - especially if the world's forests began to die.

However, trees will soak up more of the atmosphere's carbon in future, because the extra C02 in the atmosphere will make photosynthesis - the process by which all plants grow - happen faster. Moreover, the extra C02 will also speed up the decomposition of leaves. A combination of more forest fires, more pests, more stress caused by changing climate, plus faster decomposition, may in the end cause a reduction in the amount of carbon stored in forests. As the forests released the C02, they would accelerate global warming. Further , using trees even to try to compensate" for current emissions would require impossible continent-sized plantations!

According to scientists writing in the journal, Science, concluded: "prospects of retrieving anthropogenic C02 from the atmosphere by enhancing natural sinks are small... There is no natural 'saviour' waiting to assimilate all the anthropgenically produced C02 in the coming century.

- Facts Against Myths Newsletter, 01 Feb 2007, Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, Mumbai.

Why blame the South?

A year before the Rio Summit, the World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington based private research group in collaboration with the United Nations, published a report titled, `World Resources 1990-91:A Guide to the Golobal Environment ',(Oxford University Press, New York). The principle contention of the report was to
blame developing countries for global.

However, the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi after examining the WRI report came to the conclusion that, "A detailed look at the data presented by WRI itself leads to the conclusion that India and China cannot be held responsible even for a single kg of carbondioxide or methane that is accumulating in the earth's atmosphere.

The accumulation in the earth's atmosphere of these gases is mainly the result of the gargantuan consumption of the developed countries, particularly the United States". What the WRI report did was, " Heavy emphasis has been placed on carbondioxide production due to deforestation and methane production from rice fields and livestock as compared to carbondioxide production from the use of fossil fuels like oil and coal.

Since developing countries are more responsible for the former, the heavy emphasis on deforestation and methane generation tends to overplay their contribution while underplaying that of the developed countries."

(Global Warming in an Unequal World: A case for Environmental Colonialism, Anil Agarwal & Sunita Naraian, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, 1996.)

Forests of global contention

The underlying theme of the proposed convention, which Bush wanted to take home as his prize from the Earth Summit is as follows.

First, that the tropical forests are in a state of crisis. Second, that the crisis has grown in urgency because of the need to fix carbon dioxide through forests. Third, that national governments in tropical countries are incapable of managing their forests and, hence, the need for global intervention. But just intervention through money is not enough. So, fourth, principles for sustainable forestry must be defined at a global level so that management practices can be regulated.

Fifth, that these forestry practices are best defined by supranational agencies. Sixth, that trade embargoes and codes of conduct can be used as a means to reform forestry management in the tropics. And, seventh, that this proposed system can be enforced through a legal convention which will ensure compliance. A system
of policing the world's forests would, thus, be in place.

The idea of a convention raises many vital issues that the people of the South must take note of. There can be no doubt that there is an urgent need for forest protection and regeneration. But it is important to ask whether it is really possible to manage the world's forests by setting in place a super-centralised system of global decision-making and governance.

Every law gives rise to a bureaucracy. And, in this case, the bureaucracy would be the FAO in Rome and the World Bank in Washington DC. But can a community of multinational bureaucrats and technocrats set practices for sustainable forest management across such a wide range of socio-ecological diversity?

On his insistence, the world has had to agree to a weak climate treaty. The US administration had to take an initiative on something to gain its leadership role and that something, which the US President had in mind, was forests.

On June 1, the White House put out a press release announcing a "Forests for the Future Initiative", which hoped to create "market-type incentives" for forest conservation as countries interested in this money would have to bid and compete for it. The press release also stated that the new initiative would "accelerate progress" towards a Global Forest Agreement . The forest initiative had all the political elements that could have turned the Rio conference in favour of the US. It could easily have diverted the attention of the summit away from the North"s environmental problems to the South"s forests.

The initiative failed only because of the crudeness of the US position, which totally disregarded southern concerns. In terms of the benefits that the initiative would bring, the White House had only talked of protection of biodiversity, maintenance of carbon sinks and reservoirs, functions like soil erosion control, and economic benefits like plants which can be used to manufacture modern medicines. There was no mention of the fact that forests play a crucial role as a habitat for millions of tribal people across the world.

by Anil Agarwal & Sunita Narain, Forests of global contention, , Down to earth, June, 1992

Bush Ambushes UNCED

It was the U.S. governmentagainst the world at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio from June 3 to June 14, 1992. Having earlier scuttled the climate change treaty by insisting that it contain no specific greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. The U.S. belligerence was so extreme that it threw all other players at the conference - other Northern countries,  the Third World and the massive number of nongovernmental organization (NGO) observers - into a loose coalition, opposed to
the United States.

The United States resisted bold initiatives, expressing concerns about the ways that measures to protect the environment might interfere with the workings of the free market or slow economic growth.

The Climate Change Convention negotiations offer the best example of how the United States succeeded in controlling the Earth Summit's terms of debate. With the United States sticking to its hard line position in negotiations prior to UNCED and George Bush threatening not to attend the conference, the rest of the world's nations backed down from their plan to establish specific emission reduction targets in the climate change treaty. The final agreement called on countries to make their best effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but did not set a goal of achieving 1990 levels by the year 2000 - a standard around which all countries but the United States had achieved consensus.

The Bush administration received a diplomatic slap for its stand on global warming-related issues from the European Community, which announced during the Earth Summit that its 12 members had reached an internal
agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

Most UNCED participants, while stating that they had wanted the Climate Change Convention to contain specific targets, hailed the agreement as an important first step in addressing what many consider the world's foremost environmental problem.

To counter its isolation at the conference, the Bush administration worked hard to achieve a set of "Forest Principles" - downgraded from an initially hoped-for Forest Convention - and announced a "Forests for the Future Initiative." The initiative proposes to double worldwide international forest conservation assistance to $2.7 billion. As a "down payment" on the initiative, the administration announced that the United States will increase bilateral forestry assistance by $150 million each year.

The Bush administration's focus on forests did indeed offend may developing countries. In emphasizing forests' function as carbon sinkholes, Bush clearly hoped to divert attention from the U.S. role in sabotaging the climate change treaty. This drew the ire of Third World countries, which demanded that the United States limit its world- leading contribution to the greenhouse effect before calling on poorer countries which are less responsible for global warming to undertake efforts to combat the problem.

When the time came for Rio+10 at Johannesburg last August, the US saw to it that Climate Change wasn't even an agenda item and scuttled targets that the European Union and other countries were pushing for the growth of renewable energy

by Robert Weissman, Summit Games: Bush Busts UNCED

LOOKING BACK AT RIO

It all began at the Earth Summit at Rio or perhaps a little earlier, when the World Resource Institute put out a report that put the blame on developing countries of the south for global warming. Then came. George Bush (the senior) with his proposal to impose international ownership on the global forests as the solution to global warming. He left in a huff, his forest proposal shot down by the conference, complaining, ' that measures to protect the environment might interfere with the workings of the free market or slow economic growth'.

The international community agreed on a toothless climate change convention, without any binding commitments
to reduce green house gas emissions. The US did not sign the Convention.

The worst is yet to come....
The International Institute for Environment and Development has studied the possible effects of rising ocean levels, and concluded that one eighth of the world's urban population would become "climate refugees," creating the largest displacement of people in world history. The most vulnerable countries are China (144 million displaced), India (63 million) and Bangladesh (62 million), while lower on the list are Japan (30 million) and the United States (23 million).

Not only will massive amounts of people become homeless, but the changing climate is expected to create other environmental and social crises internationally. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

In Africa, "...between 75 million and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change." And: "...access to food, in many African countries and regions is projected to be severely compromised by climate variability and change."

In Latin America: "Changes in precipitation patterns and the disappearance of glaciers are projected to significantly affect water availability for human consumption, agriculture, and energy generation."

http://www.countercurrents.org/cooke191009.htm

Urban Rural Divide

A study by the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research found that, in 1989-90, the per capita carbon emission of the top 10% of the urban population in India was 13 times that of the bottom half of the rural population. It is the povertystricken Dalit woman who fetches head loads of shrub from long distances for the day's kitchen fire and her children who pore over their books in kerosene lamp glow, that have saved and continue to save this planet from a worse disaster than it faces now. If the excluded and oppressed sections of third world countries demand their rightful share of equitably distributed CDM funds for their own development, that could lead to a different social dynamic than what these societies are used to

The Rich and not so Clean

The Indian poor are subsidising the rich, allowing them a much greater share of the atmosphere than should be rightfully theirs. Some people are more responsible than others for the warming of the earth's atmosphere that is triggering catastrophic climate change. The biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are today's industrialised countries, the United States topping the list. Countries like India are rapidly increasing their share; but each Indian citizen, on average, still emits a fraction of what each American and European does.

While average emissions per Indian citizen are way below the global average, some Indians - the richest - are already nearing this average. Worse, they are already well above levels considered sustainable. But this is camouflaged by the fact that the vast majority of Indians - the poor - are way below the average.

Greenpeace surveyed 819 households across several income classes, and calculated their carbon emissions based on energy consumption from household appliances and transportation. India's average per capita carbon emission is 1.67 tonnes (compared to the global average of 5.03). But Greenpeace found that the emission of the richest class (those with income above Rs. 30,000 a month) is 4.97, just a fraction below the world average. In contrast, the emission of the poorest class (income below Rs. 3000 a month, almost half of India's population) is only 1.11 tonnes. The richest in India produce 4.5 times more carbon emissions than the poorest. Greenpeace's fingers point unwaveringly at India's rich for cornering much more of the atmospheric space that all citizens should have equal right to. It warns that the rich are denying development possibilities for the poor. (The Reality of Climate Injustice, by Ashish Kothari, The Hindu, 18th November, 2007)

200 million at risk by 2050?

The place where most of the world's people could first begin to feel the consequences of global warming may come as a surprise: in the stomach, via the supper plate.

That's the view of a small but influential group of agricultural experts who are increasingly worried that global
warming will trigger food shortages long before it causes better known but more distant threats, such as rising sea levels that flood coastal cities.

The scale of agriculture's vulnerability to global warming was highlighted late last year when the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an aumbrella organization representing 15 of the world's top crop research centres, issued an astounding estimate of the impact of climate change on a single crop, wheat, in one of the world's major breadbaskets.

Researchers using computer models to simulate the weather patterns likely to exist around 2050 found that the best wheat-growing land in the wide arc of fertile farmland stretching from Pakistan through Northern India and Nepal to Bangladesh would be decimated. Much of the area would become too hot and dry for the crop, placing the food supply of 200 million people at risk.

"The impacts on agriculture in developing countries, and particularly on countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture, are likely to be devastating," says Dr. Louis Verchot, principal ecologist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

In a cruel twist of fate, most of the hunger resulting from global warming is likely to be felt by those who haven't caused the problem: the people in developing countries. At the same time, it may be a boon to agriculture in richer northern countries more responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate instability.

Smaller grain harvests will translate into sharply higher food prices. Soaring prices, and "could lead to urban food riots in scores of countries around the world, and those food riots could lead to political instability and that political instability could begin to undermine global economic progress."

Martin Staedt, Saturday's Globe and Mail, Mar. 31, 2009 www.theglobeandmail.com/

Road to Copenhagen

The climate change convention is a so-called framework convention. This means that it does not represent the last word on the fight against climate change. It is stated in the treaty that it is to be revised and expanded over time. Neither does it set any binding targets, but aims to get member countries to reduce their emissions in order to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the Earth's climate system. The target was for emissions of greenhouse gases in 2000 to stabilize with those in 1990.

* The new process may lead to a new "comprehensive" agreement Or the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol will be retained and the focus will be on strengthening the implementation of decisions already adopted but not implemented

* Developed countries - want to radically change or replace the Kyoto Protocol and even parts of
the Convention.

* Developing countries (G77 and China) - supports the UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol.

During the 1990s it soon became clear that the UNFCCC convention in itself would not change developments towards growing emissions of greenhouse gases. In 1997 the convention was therefore expanded to include the so-called Kyoto Protocol, which for the first time sets binding targets for how much the industrialised countries should reduce their emissions by 2012. The protocol sets binding targets for the greenhouse gas emissions of 37 industrialised countries.

A group of countries that have ratified the UNFCCC have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol and are therefore not covered by the Kyoto Protocol. The most prominent of these is the USA.

At the 13th annual conference of member countries (COP13) in Bali it was decided to work towards a new agreement for the subsequent years. The plan - which is called the Bali Action Plan - aims towards a new agreement which is to be negotiated at the 15th annual conference - COP15 - in Copenhagen in 2009.

Source: http://en.cop15.dk/climate+facts/process/from+rio+to+kyoto

Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol (KP) was adopted during the 3rd Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP3) in Kyoto, Japan on 11 December 1997. It entered into force on 16 February 2005.

It sets targets for industrialized countries (Annex 1 countries) to reduce their pollution and gives them flexibility as to how they can reach these targets.

The KP is an international agreement that is linked to the existing UNFCCC, but standing on its own. It has the same objectives and institutions as the UNFCCC except for the distinction where the Convention encouraged developed countries to stabilize GHG emissions but the Protocol commits them to do so.

As of December 12, 2007, 176 countries and one regional economic integration organization (the EEC) have deposited
instruments of ratifications, accessions, approvals or acceptances. The US remains to be the only country that has not ratified the global treaty.

What is the world doing about climate change? Which multilateral organizations are mainly dealing with it?

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
In 1988 the WMO and the UNEP co-established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an ad hoc, open-ended intergovernmental mechanism composed of scientists from all over the world, tasked to provide scientific assessments of climate change. It is recognized as the most authoritative scientific and technical voice on climate change, and its assessments influence the negotiators of the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol. It provides governments with scientific, technical and socioeconomic information which evaluate the risks and develops a response to global climate change.
The IPCC is organized into three working groups plus a task force on national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories:

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

* The first assessment report of the IPCC served as the basis for negotiating the UNFCCC, the guiding framework by which countries base their responses to climate change.

* The UNFCCC is a Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) which was adopted during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or the Earth Summit which was held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil in l992. It entered into force in 1994. The UNFCCC sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. It recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can beaffected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The Convention enjoys near universal membership, with 192 countries having ratified and acceded to it.

* Its main goal is the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic humaninduced interference with the climate system.”

* The main decisionmaking body is the Conference of the Parties (COP), which is composed of 180 states that have ratified or acceded to the agreement. The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) provides the COP with timely information and advice on scientific and technological matters relating to
the Convention. The Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) helps with the assessment and review of the Convention’s implementation.

* However, with the realization that GHG emissions continued to rise around the world, Parties of the UNFCCC began negotiations to come up with a “firm and binding commitment by developed countries to reduce emissions.” The result of these negotiations was the Kyoto Protocol.

- Guide on Climate Change & Indigenous Peoples, www.tebtebba.org

What to expect......

Climate change is set to inflict damage in every continent, hitting poor countries hardestand threatening nearly a third of the world's species with extinction. Global warming will affect much of life on earth this
century.

Greenhouse gases will change rainfall patterns, punch up the powerof storms and boost the risk of drought, flooding and stress on water supplies. Asia faces a heightened risk of flooding, severe w ter shortages, infectious disease and hunger from global warming this century. The region is confronted by a 90- per cent likelihood that more than a billion of its people will be "adversely affected" by the impacts of global warming by the 2050s.

* 120 million to 1.2 billion people in Asia will experience increased water stress by 2020, and 185 to 981 million by 2050.

* Cereal yields in South Asia could drop in some areas by up to 30 per cent by 2050.

* Even modest rises in sea levels will cause flooding and economic disruption in densely-populated megadeltas, such as the mouths the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in low-lying Bangladesh.

* Cholera and malaria could increase, thanks to flooding and a wider habitat range for mosquitoes.

* In the Himalayas, glaciers less than four kilometres long will disappear entirely if average global temperatures rise by 3° Celsius. This will initially cause increased flooding and mudslides followed by an eventual decrease in flow in rivers that are glacier-fed.
* Per capita water availability in India will drop from around 1,900 cubic metre currently to 1,000 cu. metres by 2025.

-The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

What are greenhouse gases and what is the “greenhouse effect”? How are these related to global warming?

Greenhouse gases (GHGs)1 are chemical compounds such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide found in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is the main GHG and its emissions mainly come from burning fossil fuels.

* These greenhouse gases absorb some of the infrared radiation (heat) which reflects back heat that gets trapped by the greenhouse gases inside our atmosphere. This is necessary to make the earth warm, otherwise, it will be too cold. The atmosphere acts like the glass walls of a greenhouse, which allows the sun’s rays to enter but keeps the heat in.

* This natural process is called the greenhouse effect. As humans emit more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect becomes stronger and global warming occurs.

* Global warming is the noted average increase of the earth’s surface temperature and oceans as compared to previous centuries. This is a result of the con-increased by about 25% since large-scale industrialization began around 150 years ago.

* A brochure made by the US Department of Energy says “The U.S. produces about 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels; primarily because our economy is the largest in the world and we meet 85% of our energy needs through burning fossil fuels.” It further states “..In the U.S., our greenhouse gas emissions come mostly from energy use. These are driven largely by economic growth, fuel used for electricity generation, and weather patterns affecting heating and cooling needs. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from petroleum and natural gas, represent 82% of total U.S. human-made greenhouse gas emissions”

- Guide on Climate Change & Indigenous Peoples, www.tebtebba.org

What is Climate Change ?

Climate is usually defined as “the average weather.” It is measured by observing patterns in temperature, precipitation (such as rain or snow), wind and the days of sunlight as well as other variables that might be measured at any given site.
* The climate is the manifestation of a highly complex system consisting of five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), cryosphere (frozen part of the earth), the land surface, and the biosphere (part of the earth where life exists).

* Climate change refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity (anthropogenic causes). Climate change can result from the interaction of the atmosphere and oceans. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) puts more emphasis on human activities which cause climate change.

* Changes in the world’s climate are not new. In fact, this is one factor which has influenced the course of human history and human evolution. Historically, humans have been able to cope and adapt to these changes.

* Previously, it was the climate that changed humans. Now, we’re changing the climate, and we’re changing it too fast.

* The climate change we are experiencing now is brought by humanity’s massive dependence on fuels, particularly carbon-based fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These fuels bring about greenhouse gas emissions.

- Guide on Climate Change & Indigenous Peoples, www.tebtebba.org

WHEN IT RAINS IT POURS

It rained all day. It rained like it had never rained before. Trains stopped, cars were submerged, several died, and hundreds and thousands of people waded through the streets of Mumbai. The city that never stands still came to a grinding halt. It almost sounds like a scene from a sci-fi film, but in fact it is scarily real. Mumbai witnessed the strongest rains ever recorded in India in July 2005. Such catastrophic weather phenomena are often seen as acts of God, and they might well be, but the increasing occurrence of extreme weather in India and around the world points towards a dangerous threat - climate change.
Though floods, droughts, storms and other extreme weather events have always been a reality, they have
been rare occurrences interrupting long periods of calm - - sudden outbursts marring nature's largely gentle rhythm. Now, because of human-induced climate change, that gentle rhythm is breaking up. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that climate change is real - the world is warming up and climate systems are changing

Throughout the 10,000-year history of human civilisation, weather patterns have remained relatively constant, but the frequency of extreme weather events has increased steadily over the 20th century. The number of weatherrelated disasters during the 1990s was four times that of the 1950s, and cost 14 times as much in economic losses. These trends confirm the predictions of computer models: as the atmosphere warms, the climate will not only become hotter but much more unstable. Extreme events are likely to increase, and droughts and floods will become more common in many regions.

Climate change is an issue that threatens the entire globe. However, it disproportionately affects developing
countries like India and it will be most disruptive to the poorest of the poor - those who have the least resources and the least capacity to cope. With its huge and growing population, a long, densely populated and low-lying coastline, and an economy that is closely tied to its natural resource base, climate change could have potentially devastating impacts on India .

The science of climate change is not a hundred percent accurate and different models and simulations suggest
different scenarios. But there are certain facts that all scientists are unanimous about - the earth is getting warmer and climate systems are changing, and the impact of climate change is something that we are already
contending with. What is also clear is that human activity has been responsible for this. It is unfortunate and, perhaps, unfair that globally the impact of climate change will disproportionately harm developing nations such as India despite the fact that we have contributed relatively little to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. But we can't afford to sit around and cry foul. If the recent flooding in Mumbai and other parts of India are anything to go by, we need to get our act together fast. Because with climate change -- when it rains, it pours.

- Aditi Sen, Info Change News & Features, August 2005