Imagen del libro "A Vulnerabilidade do Ser", cortesía de Claudia Andujar

Por Marina Barbosa *

COPENHAGUE (Tierramérica) En la mitología de los baniwas, yanomamis y  desanas, etnias que habitan el noroeste del estado brasileño de Amazonas fronterizo con Colombia y Venezuela, se encuentran explicaciones y advertencias sobre el cambio climático.

Según André  Baniwa, viceintendente del municipio de São Gabriel da Cachoeira, los efectos del clima ya fueron previstos por hombres de grandes poderes.

Esos fenómenos ya ocurrieron en épocas remotas de la humanidad, cuando se dio la ruptura de la convivencia armónica entre los humanos, los animales y la naturaleza.

Baniwa nació en la comunidad de Tucumã-Rupitã, en el Alto Río Içana y fue entre 2005 y 2009 vicepresidente de la Federación de las Organizaciones Indígenas del Río Negro (FOIRN).

El mito de la creación, que también se refiere al fin del mundo para los yanomamis, menciona la “caída del cielo”, momento en el que los humanos, sumergidos en el agua del diluvio, guerreaban con los seres mágicos. Esa imagen constituye su mayor miedo, según la premiada fotógrafa suiza Claudia Andujar, que trabaja con ese grupo hace 30 años.
Para los yanomamis, eso puede ocurrir, si la humanidad no revierte el proceso de destrucción actual, así como dicen también los baniwas.

José María Lana, habitante desana del alto río Negro y miembro de la dirección actual de la FOIRN, afirma que los indicios de lo advertido por los mitos ya son perceptibles.

El sol hoy quema de manera distinta. El período de floración ha cambiado. Las lluvias, que caían en los meses de abril y mayo, ahora se concentran en julio y agosto. La “piracema” –desove de los peces– ocurre en un sitio diferente.

Todo eso interfiere en la reproducción de las especies animales y vegetales, alterando los ciclos de alimentación de los pueblos de la floresta e interfiriendo en sus rituales tradicionales, que están íntimamente ligados a los ciclos naturales.

David Yanomami sostiene que el humo producido por la acción humana es el causante de ese gran daño. Este chamán y líder de su etnia, premiado internacionalmente, vive en Watoriki, en el norteño estado de Roraima, en la frontera con Venezuela.

Proveniente de las industrias, las bombas, la combustión del petróleo y también del veneno invisible que sale de la tierra en la extracción de minerales, la contaminación es la causa de las enfermedades, dice Yanomami. Muchas de ellas son hoy desconocidas para los chamanes, que hasta hace poco tiempo disponían de métodos para manejar las principales dolencias que asolaban a esos grupos.

Esos alertas son lanzados por estos líderes desde hace décadas, pero aún no existe capacidad plena para oírlos, quizás por la dificultad para comprender la visión  tradicional de esos grupos, cargada de simbologías y de lenguajes asociativos.

Aún más conscientes que los ciudadanos de las urbes de la dependencia humana con la naturaleza y las selvas, los indígenas tienen mucho para enseñar y pueden conducir una reflexión sobre el modelo de desarrollo adoptado hasta ahora.

En septiembre, representantes de esos grupos se reunieran en la norteña ciudad de Manaus para elaborar la carta de los pueblos indígenas de la Amazonia brasileña sobre el cambio climático, que forma parte del documento de la delegación de este país en la conferencia de cambio climático que se celebra en Copenhague sobre la iniciativa Reducción de Emisiones de Carbono causadas por la Deforestación y Degradación de los Bosques (REDD).

La carta expresa la posición de estos grupos sobre el tema y reúne propuestas de acciones de mitigación, sobre todo en lo que se refiere a la preservación de la Amazonia y la contribución del conocimiento tradicional a las nuevas estrategias frente a las alteraciones del clima.

Está comprobado que las tierras indígenas son más eficientes para evitar la deforestación y retener carbono. Los líderes reivindican el derecho a la restitución integral de sus territorios y a ser beneficiarios de los pagos por servicios ambientales y por la comercialización de créditos de carbono, en el marco de la REDD, que podría ser uno de los pocos logros de la COP-15.

Además, solicitan que los fondos destinados a contener la tala sean reglamentados de manera adecuada a las particularidades socioculturales de las diferentes etnias y que se destinen a fortalecer sus organizaciones y a apoyar sus programas y proyectos de preservación de la biodiversidad y del conocimiento tradicional.

Para esas poblaciones, la selva posee lugares sagrados, habitados por seres “superiores” que tienen la capacidad de “curar el planeta” y de equilibrar los efectos del calentamiento, las alteraciones climáticas y las enfermedades. André Baniwa afirma que la tecnología y el dinero nos engañan. El valor está en la armonía entre los humanos y entre éstos y la naturaleza.

Es de esperar que las acciones de la COP-15 consideren lo que esas etnias dicen hace tanto tiempo.

* Marina Barbosa, maestra en antropología por la Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo y especialista en desarrollo. Integra la delegación de Brasil en la COP-15. Este artículo es publicado por la red de diarios de Tierramérica.

Laura Tuck

By Laura Tuck*

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) What happens at the global summit this week in Copenhagen is of utmost importance for Latin America and the Caribbean.

While expectations are that binding agreements on emission targets will probably not be signed until next year in Mexico City, there are many decisions – such as compensation for avoiding deforestation, technology transfers, financing of greenhouse gas reductions and adaptation to climate change – in play. The region has a stake in all of these and can play a critical role in reaching agreement on each.

Many Latin American and Caribbean countries have already made commitments to reduce their carbon footprints. The region’s two largest economies have led on climate policies, with Brazil focused on reducing deforestation, and Mexico on implementing its “Special Climate Change Program”, a comprehensive low-carbon development model.

Costa Rica, which has pledged to become the first carbon-neutral country in the world, is a global pioneer in paying landowners – from a gasoline tax fund – for forest conservation. Argentina’s renewable energy programs in rural areas provide electricity at low cost, while making a positive contribution to productivity and job creation.

These countries have taken steps to reduce emissions despite the fact that the region produces only 6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, or 13 percent, when deforestation and agriculture are included. Latin America’s relatively low emissions are due in large part to a greater dependence on hydroelectricity over coal-fired plants.

The region’s power sector generates 40 percent less CO2 emissions per unit of energy – known as carbon intensity – than the world as a whole. Considering that these emissions are 74 percent less than those of China and India, and 50 percent less than the average for developing countries, the region is already at the forefront of low-carbon growth.

Yet, this situation is projected to change over the next 25 years, especially as its transport and industrial sectors grow. Taking actions now to move to even greater dependence on renewable energy will ensure its place among the world’s most climate-friendly regions.

As one of the world’s richest regions in biodiversity, and home to one-third of the world’s forest biomass, The Latin America and Caribbean region takes its responsibility for preserving and protecting the natural resources that help capture carbon and protect watersheds.

Last month, the Brazilian government announced that deforestation in the Amazon had hit its lowest point since monitoring began 21 years ago, with destruction slowing 45 percent compared to the year before.

One of the most likely outcomes of Copenhagen is a decision on how to compensate and encourage forest protection. For this region, it is a critical issue, considering that deforestation accounts for a large percentage of regional emissions, and countries such as Brazil and Guyana are key negotiators on these issues.

Studies across the region have identified many low carbon options, such as specific energy-efficiency and renewable energy technologies and urban transport or forestry programs, which can be undertaken at low or even no additional costs. In Mexico, for instance, local experts, with assistance from World Bank economists, have identified some 40 measures, such as the development of wind resources and improved vehicle inspections, which can deliver the greatest environmental bang for the economic buck.

The second major topic on the Copenhagen agenda is how the developed world will help developing countries finance the costs of adapting to the impacts of climate change. World Bank studies show that these costs could run between $16 and $19 billion per year by 2020.

Latin America and the Caribbean are already experiencing significant effects from climate change. In the Andes, for instance, tropical glaciers are melting at such a pace that some could simply be gone in 10 to 20 years. Aside from the impact on biodiversity – the eastern slopes of the Andes are the single most biologically diverse area in the world – glacier disappearance will have a tremendous economic impact on some of the region’s poorest residents.

The World Bank is supporting Latin America’s environmental efforts with loans totaling US$3.7 billion for the 2008-2009 period. But much more will be needed, to scale up adaptation efforts and also to finance the acquisition of technologies to curb emissions.

There is much on the line for Latin America in Copenhagen. Significant progress achieved there will go a long way toward the adoption of a legally binding treaty at the next global gathering, in Mexico in 2010. Such an outcome would be a major advance for the world and a tremendous symbol of the leadership shown by the region.

* Laura Tuck is World Bank Sector Director for Sustainable Development in the Latin America and Caribbean region.
(END/2009)

Please act and stop talking. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Saleemul Huq*

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) I have been working on climate change for many years, first as a researcher in my native Bangladesh and later as head of the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, and as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

I have seen first-hand the threats climate change poses in places such as the drylands of Africa, the mountains of the Himalayas and the vast low-lying deltas of Asia. I have observed years of inaction at UN climate change summits that have failed to deliver the response needed because negotiators have chosen to protect narrow national and economic interests instead of rising to the challenge of protecting future generations.

I have jousted verbally with climate-change deniers who have strong links to polluting industries and who have never set foot in the vulnerable villages and urban communities where climate change is already having impacts. If they did they would realise the damage their ideology does to the people who have contributed least to this global threat.

And now, in Copenhagen in December 2009, I believe we have reached a tipping point. I truly believe that Copenhagen will be remembered in years to come, not for what happens on 18 December when world leaders meet here, but for what just happened on 12 December.

This marked the day that people from all walks of life all over the world seized the initiative from our so-called leaders. Regardless of the words these presidents and prime ministers decide in a “protocol” or “agreement” next week, it is the people of the world who have put the writing on the wall!

The leaders who choose to read those words will take us forward. Those who ignore them will be swept away by the tide of history.

Yesterday marked the point when a large part of the world rose up as one to tackle a truly global challenge. Although there may be temporary setbacks (like a less-than-ambitious deal next week) the tide has already turned. It cannot be turned back.

Regardless of how much we achieve next week – and I remain optimistic in spite of the political manoeuvrings last week – we are set on a new and inexorable path. The leaders who understand that may come from the most unexpected of quarters. Keep your eye, for instance, on President Mohamed Nasheed of tiny Maldives.

In a few months I shall be moving back to Bangladesh to fight real climate change, as opposed to fighting against bad (or inadequate) climate change policies. My ambition over the coming years is to help the people of one of the poorest and most vulnerable – and yet resilient and innovative – countries transform itself from being the world’s iconic “vulnerable” country to being recognised as perhaps its most “adaptive” country.

I am going home to set up a new International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) where we aim to ramp up the capacity of governments, civil society organisations, researchers, academics, journalists and many others from developing countries to respond to the challenges that climate change poses.

The new centre will provide training and share knowledge on how to survive (and indeed even thrive) in a globally warmed world. It will focus primarily on adaptation to climate change in the least developed nations but will not stop there.

Indeed we are planning to provide capacity building for industrialised countries on how to face adverse climatic impacts. Ironically, unlike most of the world’s poorest countries, the rich world that has caused this problem has not done detailed planning on how to adapt.

I am returning to the front line of climate change where the real fight is already underway. I go there knowing that millions of people around the world share my hopes and my optimism that humanity can unite to tackle the challenge that now defines our life on Earth.

* Saleemul Huq, Senior fellow, International Institute for Environment and Development.

(END/2009)

Hopenhagen. Credit: Servaas van den Bosch

By Ignacio Ramonet, from Paris *

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) If Earth were the size of a football, the thickness of the atmosphere would be about two millimetres. We have forgotten the incredible thinness of this layer, which we tend to believe can absorb an unlimited quantity of toxic gases. As a result, we have created around our planet a filthy gaseous blanket that captures heat and literally functions as a greenhouse.

Global warming is an unmistakeable reality that has been confirmed by some 2,500 international scientists, members of the Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change.

Since the Climate Change Convention was issued at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997, CO2 emissions have increased faster than in preceding decades.

If urgent measures are not taken, the average temperature of the planet will rise by at least four degrees. If this happens, the face of the planet will be transformed: the poles and glaciers will melt, the sea level will rise, deltas and coastal cities will be inundated, entire archipelagos will be erased from the map, droughts will grow more severe, deforestation will spread, the number of hurricanes and typhoons will increase, and hundreds of species of animals will disappear.

The primary victims of this tragedy will be the already vulnerable populations subsaharan Africa, south and southeast Asia, Latin America, and islands around the equator. In certain regions, harvests may shrink by half and shortages of drinking water may grow more severe. This will lead to an explosion of “climate refugees” who are seeking asylum in less affected areas, and subsequently the proliferation of “climate wars”.

To avoid this ominous cascade of disasters, the collective international scientific community recommends an urgent 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. This is the only way of keeping the situation from spiralling out of control.

With this in mind, there are three central themes that must be tackled in Copenhagen:

1: determining the historic responsibility of each country for the current environmental degradation, with the knowledge that 80 percent of CO2 emissions are produced by the most developed countries (which account for only 20 percent of the world population), and that the poor countries, least responsible for the climate crisis, are those suffering the brunt of the consequences.

2: assessing, in the name of climate justice, a financial compensation such that the countries that have inflicted the greatest damage on the environment will contribute a significant amount of aid to the countries of the South that will enable them to mitigate the effects of the climate catastrophe. This is one of the major areas of disagreement: the rich countries are proposing too little aid, while the poor countries are demanding a higher, and just, compensation.

3: defining a politically and legally-binding timeline that will require all parties -developed countries as well as other powers (China, Russia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil) to progressively reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Neither the United States nor China (the main polluters) accepts this idea.

Beyond these specific issues, there is a phantom that haunts the discussion tables in Copenhagen: the need to change the dominant global economic model. There exists today a fundamental contradiction between the logic of capitalism (uninterrupted growth, greed for profits, and unrestricted competition) and the new austerity necessary to avoid a climatic cataclysm.

The Soviet system imploded because of, among other factors, a method of production that valued most the political benefit of companies (they created workers) without concern for the economic cost. Similarly the current capitalist system values only the economic benefit of production without taking into account its environmental costs.

Thus, for today’s system, hungry for profit alone, it doesn’t matter whether a given product must travel thousands of kilometres -and causing the release of tonnes of CO2- before reaching the consumer, despite the fact that this approach is endangering humanity itself.

On the other hand, the current system is colossally wasteful of natural resources. At present, the earth is incapable of regenerating 30 percent of that which is consumed each year by its inhabitants, the number of which continues to grow steadily.

Thus the urgency of adopting measures to block our rush over the edge of the cliff. Thus too, given the cynicism of many world leaders, the fury of the thousands of ecological militants from all over the planet converging on Copenhagen streets and bellowing two slogans: “Change the system, not the climate!” and “If the climate were a bank, you would have saved it!”

Ten years have passed since the massive protests of the “Battle of Seattle”, which gave birth to the “another world is possible” movement. In Copenhagen a new generation of activists and protesters are initiating a new cycle of social battles in the name of environmental justice. A huge number of people has mobilised. It will be a great struggle. The survival of humanity is at stake.

(*) Ignacio Ramonet is the editor of Le Monde Diplomatique in
Spanish. (Copyright IPS)

Credit: Claudius

By Ashok Khosla *

COPENHAGUE (IPS/TerraViva) Systemic failures, such as sudden changes in climate, accelerated loss of biodiversity and rapid growth of poverty and population, can only be solved by systemic solutions that address the deeper, underlying causes of these failures.

Moreover, since many of these problems are inter-related, they generally have to be solved together – where possible – to get maximum all-round benefits at least cost; when necessary, to minimize the likelihood of ameliorating one while worsening the others.Climate change is but one of the dozen or so major crises facing humankind today. Others include massive extinction of species, destruction of land and water resources, peaking of oil and gas production, acidification of the oceans and disruption of biogeochemical cycles through large-scale extraction of mineral resources – all of which are inexorably leading to growing food insecurity.

No less important are the non-environmental threats to human societies in the form of widespread poverty and hunger, alienation, violence and terrorism – and, not least, increasingly frequent, ever more serious and far-reaching financial and economic breakdowns – further intensifying human insecurity.

Over the nearly 40 years that have elapsed since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment took place in Stockholm in 1972, numerous global summits and major conferences have taken place, each trying to find technical, financial and political solutions to such issues, as new ones seem to mushroom out on the international community year by year.

It is to the credit of national governments that they have made some attempt to address these issues in successive negotiating processes.  However, the lack of success, overall, suggests that there are some basic flaws in these processes.

From the vantage point of systems science, one basic flaw seems to be the strategy adopted in almost all international negotiations, of dealing with a single issue at a time. Clearly, this is a simpler device with which governments are much more comfortable and their specialized advisors are at much greater ease.

But looking at the history of environmental negotiations, one is struck by the constancy of this approach, even when it is demonstrably not capable of delivering the results needed. Could it be that this myopic stance is a result of the “salami tactics” adopted by the dominant participants who guide the definition of the problem, set the agenda, specify the rules of debate, work out the plans of action – all the while restricting all discussion strictly to the one issue at hand?

The systems view is entirely alien to the current negotiations – it is in fact discouraged by the dominant players, who have played the single-issue, focus and compartmentalize game (a sophisticated version of the “divide and rule” approach of erstwhile colonial empires) on all environmental issues, ever since Stockholm.

Indeed, precisely the same approach has been extensively used throughout the 60 years since the UN and Bretton Woods institutions were set up in areas as diverse as global economic and financial issues, trade, commodities, etc. Does this consistent pattern of suppressing discussion of meaningful potential solutions amount to a conflict of interest on a worldwide scale; could it be a tactic by powerful players to bias the rules of the international game in their own favour at the expense of the global good?

At this event, we hope to gather leaders from the fields of environment, conservation and development to take a systems view in exploring the interlinkages between climate change, biodiversity, hunger and poverty. Specifically, we will explore how large-scale efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect biodiversity, manage energy and water resources and alleviate poverty can be designed to mutually reinforce each other.

More generally, we will look at why the primary focus is always on technology and efficiency.  Why are solutions based on reviving nature, changing consumption patterns and, perhaps most important, accelerating the demographic transition through more rapid and equitable development not considered as legitimate?

* Ashok Khosla, Chairman, Development Alternatives and President, IUCN and The Club of Rome.

Danish children planting trees. Credit: Ana Libisch/IPS

By Mohan Munasinghe*

COPENHAGUE (IPS/TerraViva) The climate is changing faster than forecast only two years ago: 2,700 experts at the IARU Climate Congress in March 2009 warned that the IPCC predictions made in 2007 are already out of date, for example 3 degrees C global temperature rise by 2100. The latest information indicates more severe warming exceeding 4-5 C.

Rising temperatures are already penalising the poor most, who ironically contributed least to the problem. Global warming is impacting global food and water supplies, raising sea levels, melting ice sheets and increasing the number and intensity of severe weather events.

The increase now predicted exceeds what scientists and the EU have identified as the upper limit of warming the world can afford in order to avert catastrophic climate change – i.e., a maximum of 2 degrees C temperature rise and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations of 400-450 parts per million (ppm).

Humanity already faces multiple threats that will destabilize the global system, like the ongoing economic collapse, persistent poverty and inequity, emerging resource shortages (including energy, food and water), conflicts and social polarisation, environmental damage, pandemics.

Climate change would become the ultimate risk multiplier that will worsen existing problems and trigger catastrophic outcomes. All these problems can and must be addressed together – piecemeal solutions have proved ineffective.

Given the underlying trends that science has revealed, shying away from an effective agreement in Copenhagen will be a major setback. And yet, the international climate negotiations are being carried out on the basis of what is politically viable as opposed to what nature requires and what new science informs.

The most effective method of tackling climate change is to incorporate adaptation and mitigation responses into an overall sustainable development strategy. The Sustainomics Framework shows how this can be achieved today, through empowerment and action based on existing knowledge that will make development more sustainable.

The three critical elements of sustainable development, economic, social and environmental must be given balanced consideration. Civil society and business must work together with governments to solve the problems.

We need to teach our young new ways of thinking, and give up unsustainable values of the past, such as greed. Finally, full life cycle analysis using integrated tools will help to make production and consumption more sustainable.

For example, re-examining the entire value chain from raw material extraction to consumer end use and disposal, identify areas where innovation can improve production sustainability and encourage sustainable consumption patterns among the 1.3 billion people who constitute the highest 20th percentile by income and account for over 80 percent of consumption.

The outlines of an agreement that reconciles both development rights and climate concerns, should include four key points:

•    Industrial countries (already exceeding safe per capita emission limits) should mitigate and restructure their development patterns to delink carbon emissions and economic growth, thereby making their continuing development more sustainable without undermining the quality of life.

•    The poorest countries and poorest groups who will suffer the worst impacts must be provided an adaptation safety net, to reduce their vulnerability to climate change impacts.

•    Intermediate countries could adopt innovative policies to “tunnel” through sustainability to prosperity, using technological and behavioural leapfrogging that learns from past experiences of the industrialized world.

•    Developing countries should be encouraged (with technical and financial assistance) to continue to make their development more sustainable, by following a growth path that not only addresses urgent development issues like poverty and hunger, but also is less carbon-intensive and reduces vulnerability to climate change impacts.

The key challenge now is ensure that the ever widening gulf between science and politics is bridged decisively. What politics simply does not understand is that weaker targets increase the risk of crossing irreversible tipping points that will lead to global instability.

Copenhagen must produce a global survival pact that maintains atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses at safe levels. To get the ball rolling, the rich (Annex 1) countries need to cut back emissions 40 percent or more by 2020 the latest, but their best offers so far are falling well short.

We are facing a planetary emergency that now threatens the survival of our civilisation and the habitability of the Earth. All human beings are stakeholders when it comes to sustainable development and climate change.

Everyone must strive to make development more sustainable -economically, socially and environmentally. By acting together now, we will make the planet a better and safer place for our children and grandchildren.

* Mohan Munasinghe is Chairman of the Munasinghe Institute of Development, Colombo, Director General of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at the University of Manchester, and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace 2007, as vice-chair of IPCC-AR4.

Credit: Claudius

By Kerry Kennedy, from Lago Agrio, Ecuador *

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador (IPS/TerraViva) Traces of paradise are still visible. From the air, the rainforest region in northern Ecuador – known as the Oriente – appears as silvery mist and swaths of verdant green.

But beneath the cloud cover and canopy, the jungle is a tangle of oil slicks, festering sludge, and rusted pipeline. Smokestacks sprout from the ground, spewing throat-burning fumes into the air. Wastewater from unlined pits seeps into the groundwater and flows into the rivers and streams.

This nightmarish landscape is the legacy of Texaco. Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco (which was acquired by Chevron in 2001) drilled roughly 350 wells across 2,700 square miles of Amazon rainforest. It extracted some $30 billion in profits while deliberately dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic soup, known as production water ­ a mixture of oil, sulphuric acid, and other carcinogens ­ into the streams and rivers where people collect drinking water, fish, bathe and swim.

In the process, Texaco constructed over 900 oil sludge pits, many the size of Olympic swimming pools. Unlike swimming pools, these pits were unlined punctures in the earth. With no concrete to protect the surrounding soil, poison seeped into the ground water.

I had head about what has been called “Chevron’s Chernobyl in the Amazon” for years.  But nothing could prepare me for the horror I witnessed during my three-day visit to Ecuador.

I held a dragonfly covered in oil in my hands, desperately and hopelessly trying to flutter its wings. I saw pig footprints in the mud next to the oily gunk, where it had eaten contaminated grass, and will soon be contaminating the children, women, and men, who in turn feed on Chevron’s waste.

I met a man who told me his two children died after swimming in contaminated water.  One died within 24 hours.  The other writhed in agony for six months before his poor body gave way.

I met another man whose home is just a few hundred yards from one of the pits. He has 10 children. All of them have become sick, some covered with sores. His chickens and pigs have died.  Nothing grows near his home.

I saw a poisonous pit abandoned by Texaco in 1974 and never used by any other company. The pipes leading from that pit have clear liquid running from them. When I put the liquid to my nose, it smelled like gasoline. It runs directly into an adjoining stream, which is the main source of drinking water for people who live along its banks.

We heard terrifying stories of mistreatment by Texaco workers: women raped; shamans taken by helicopter to far mountain ranges to see if they could find their way back; Indians told that rubbing oil on their bald scalps would make their hair grow long and thick; and Texaco trucks that dumped oil waste on roads where people walked and suffered the burns of sticky tar in the hot sun.

This is not a matter of misty-eyed nostalgia.  This is an issue of human rights ­ clear violations of the indigenous Ecuadoreans’ rights to life, security, and self-determination.

When Texaco oilmen descended from helicopters into the jungle in the early 1960s, they gifted the locals with bread, cheese, plates, and spoons.  To this day, this is the only compensation any of the indigenous groups have ever received.

Never were they asked for their permission before Texaco executives negotiated a contract with Ecuadorean government officials.

Texaco knew people would die because of what they were doing, and they ignored it.  At last count, 1,400 children, women, and men have died of illnesses directly attributed to Texaco’s contamination.  Cancer rates in communities affected by oil activity are 30 times higher than anywhere else in the country. Other medical teams have documented elevated rates of birth defects, miscarriages, skin disease, and nerve damage.

Two nomadic groups that once inhabited the region, the Tetetes and the Sansahuari, have been wiped out. What Texaco did arguably amounts to criminally negligent homicide.

Now, the remaining indigenous peoples of the Oriente ­ the Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani people ­ have taken the fight to Chevron.  Organized by a grassroots organization called the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia ­ the Amazon Defense Coalition – they are simply demanding through an unprecedented class action lawsuit that Chevron clean up its mess.

The case is now in its 16th year. Chevron (whose human rights statement reads, “We value and respect the cultures and traditions of the many communities in which we work”) has tossed up one delay after another.

Yet, the evidence of Texaco’s wrongdoing is plain for all to see.  Last year, an unnamed Chevron lobbyist was quoted as saying the lesson of Ecuador is that “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this ­ companies that have made big investments around the world.”

But as an American, I am appalled that a corporation from our country would treat innocent people with such disdain. We ­ consumers, investors, elected officials, journalists, activists, and citizens ­ must hold Chevron accountable for its actions, and see that justice is done.

Here in the Oriente, 45 years after Texaco first bore into the ground ­ 16 years after the Ecuadoreans began their fight for justice ­ traces of paradise are still visible.  We must not allow them to vanish. (END/2009)

* Kerry Kennedy is the author of “Speak Truth to Power” and the founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights.

Riccardo Petrella

LOUVAIN (IPS/TerraViva) – Excluding water problems as such from the negotiations of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) has been a serious historic error at a scientific, politic and social level. The same holds true for the exclusion of biodiversity.

Why an error? First of all, we mustn’t forget that the main greenhouse effect gas is steam (H2O), accounting for 75 percent of global warming. Carbon dioxide (CO2), the second greenhouse gas by importance, contributes 15 to 20 percent.

But most of all it is an error because it’s not possible to discuss a world treaty destined to influence the future of humankind and of life on our planet, without focussing on water, the essential and irreplaceable element for every form of life.

The mistake can be corrected, the future is not finished. That’s what we are asking for: to introduce water in the current negotiations.

This means including three goals among the priorities of global policy for sustainable and lasting development over the next decades: the universal human right to water; the protection and safeguarding of the planet’s water resources as a common good, human heritage and element essential to the functioning of ecosystems (prevention policies, water saving policies, fight against excessive and unjustified withdrawals, etc); and a public global water authority (to avoid the control of world water policies by private industrial and financial global groups) .

The inclusion of water would bring many advantages. It would promote the role of world common goods at the top of the agenda of strategies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The conception behind the “still-to-be-written” new post-Kyoto treaty would be inspired by a vision of the future of life on Earth based on solidarity and public political responsibility, no more left only to the interests of private finance and the mechanisms of competitive world markets. Our societies would be guided by the principles of shared world security, greater economic justice and effective welfare for all.

On this basis, the World Political Forum is attending the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to submit to the attention of the participants the Memorandum for a World Water Protocol drawn up by the “Peace with Water” international conference held at the European Parliament in Brussels on Feb. 12-13, co-chaired by WPF President Mikhail Gorbachev.

We are demanding in Copenhagen:

- The inclusion of the water issue on the agenda of the current climate negotiations. The most important ongoing global negotiations on the future of humankind cannot be exclusively devoted to energy problems. To more than three billion people, the most critical problems are food, access to water and health. A new world treaty on climate, the environment and the development agenda must include water as a key item.

- The decision to launch a multilateral UN-based process for the 2010-2012 period aiming at drafting and approving a World Protocol on Water. The international community has the needed political, economic, social, scientific and technical knowledge and expertise for the approval of such a Protocol. The problem is neither knowledge nor finance, but a question of changing priorities.

-  Recognition by the Parties of the urgent need for a global pact on water, the outcome of which would be the World Protocol on Water. To this end the Conference should endorse the creation of a global participative instrument for cooperation in the field of water such as a “United Nations Water Authority” (UNWA), the main task of which would be to prevent and settle international disputes on the property and use of water through common monitoring systems and collaborative transnational management, projects and institutions.

* Riccardo Petrella, Founder of the International Committee for the World Water Contract, Prof. Emeritus of Globalisation at the Catholic University of Louvain and member of the WPF’s Scientific Committee, Italy.
(END/2009)

Nnimmo Bassey. Credit: Courtesy FOEI

By Nnimmo Bassey

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) – The Copenhagen climate talks could become a milestone towards ‘Climate Justice’.

Unfortunately, the chances of achieving a just and effective UN agreement in Copenhagen are very slim, mainly because the leaders of rich, developed countries are not addressing the climate crisis with the holistic, rights-based approach known as Climate Justice.

Scientists tell us that we are at the start of a climate crisis. This crisis is about people and about justice, not just polar bears.Undoubtedly, our world is out of balance, not just economically but also environmentally.

My own country, Nigeria, is a typical example of climate injustice: while the oil and gas from the Niger Delta is profiting foreign corporations and a few politicians, the local people are sentenced to live in poverty and in massively polluted environments.

In the oil-rich Niger Delta, many don’t have access to electricity, and gas flares still pump into the atmosphere tonnes of greenhouse gases, damaging the local and global environment.

Unfortunately, climate injustice is in fact the norm all over the planet.

On the one hand we see rich, developed countries – with less than one fifth of the world’s population- responsible for almost three quarters of all historical greenhouse gas emissions.

The European Union and the USA alone are responsible for more than half of the carbon emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere, but they only have a tenth of the world’s population.

The imbalance is glaring: The poorest 10 percent of the world’s population have contributed less than 1 percent of these emissions. Developing countries have contributed least to the causes of climate change, yet they are most affected.

This injustice must be addressed in Copenhagen. Developed countries have a ‘historical responsibility’ towards the developing world and they need to repay their climate debt, in addition to immediately phasing out non renewable energy sources like fossil fuels.

It is up to countries like the US (per capita carbon emissions in 2005: 19.6 tons per person) to commit to binding emission reductions. It is not up to countries like China (3.9 tons) or India (1.1 tons).

People from all over the world are demanding Climate Justice. In Copenhagen Friends of the Earth campaigners are delivering a petition signed by more than thirty thousand people urging world leaders to do the right thing. This means at the very least:

- Commit industrialised countries to at least 40 percent cuts in emissions domestically by 2020, by using green energy, sustainable transport and farming, and cutting energy demand.

- Not allow cuts to be achieved by buying carbon credits from developing countries or by buying forest in developing countries to ‘offset’ ongoing emissions in the industrialised world.

- Commit industrialised countries to providing additional money for developing countries to grow in a clean way, and to cope with the floods, droughts and famines caused by climate change while ensuring that this money is distributed fairly and transparently.

We hope that the leaders of the richest nations will wake up, listen to the people of the world, curb emissions at the source and stop dancing to the tune of those who seek to profit from the crisis with ineffective schemes such as carbon offsetting.

But if developed countries fail to live up to their historical responsibility and lack the political will to respect their UN obligations then nobody should put the blame on China, India or other developing countries.

An international agreement in which wealthy countries shift the burden to developing nations would be unjust and inequitable.

The Climate Justice movement counts millions of people and is getting stronger by the day. More and more people are calling for Climate Justice not only outside but also inside the official UN negotiations.

The real question is: will the leaders of the rich world, and first of all President Obama, listen to the Climate Justice movement?

In other words: will Copenhagen be the start of a just and effective UN agreement, or will it be remembered as a face-saving, greenwash deal?

* Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth Nigeria and currently Chair of Friends of the Earth International. (END/2009)

As governments wrangle over how to cap carbon and other pollutants, how much it will cost, and who should pay, private investors in North America, Europe, China, India, Japan, and Brazil have been quietly investing in the solution: shifting to low-carbon, cleaner, renewable energy and smarter, more efficient infrastructure and transportation.

The Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard, a service of the Climate Prosperity Alliance and Ethical Markets Media, estimates that since 2007, almost USD 1 trillion has already been privately invested in solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, ocean power, more efficient buildings, batteries, energy storage, smart electrical grids, and urban redesign.

Now, the big pension funds and endowments are joining this climate prosperity investing. The Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (with USD 13 trillion) announced in September 2009 that it will lead in shifting its assets toward the real solution to climate change: growing the green economy worldwide.

Their “triple bottom line” accounting for environmental, social, and economic performance enables trustees of these assets to see the longer-term advantage of avoiding obsolete fossilised sectors. Their ethical principles also steer them away from the old formulas maximising short-term returns and using the now-failed ideas of market fundamentalists.

The climate prosperity strategy is the “win-win” that all countries attending the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference can agree on. The wrangling between the North’s industrial countries, whose many decades of burning fossil fuels has caused the climate warming, and the newly developing countries of the South now can be bypassed.

As the private investors have shown, shifting from the Fossil Fuel Age to the information-rich, green economies of the Solar Age is the greatest opportunity for all countries and all humanity. Billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr says, “we are talking about nothing less than the re-industrialisation of the whole planet”.

There is no shortage of money to finance the global green economy. The only shortage is time, and we have all the technology needed for this transition. Re-deploying just 10 percent of pension and endowment funds away from fossilised sectors, hedge funds, oil and commodities, derivatives, and speculation on interest-rates can add over USD 10 trillion to the USD 1 trillion already invested.

Cutting wasteful subsidies to fossil fuels and nuclear power would release additional trillions (see www.globalsubsidies.org). McKinsey & Company’s July 2009 Report on energy efficiency shows that investments of USD 520 billion can yield USD 1.2 trillion by 2020, reducing US energy demand by 23 percent.

And, if the US, Britain, and other EU countries stop spending their taxpayers’ money on bailing out zombie banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, and other failed financial speculators and re-direct stimulus funds to small businesses and local economies, additional trillions can be saved.

Meanwhile the big Wall Street bailout recipients, rather than lending to Main Street, are still speculating in derivatives, proprietary trading, and betting taxpayers’ funds in the global casino, reaping huge profits and paying executives even bigger bonuses.

Since politicians in the US, Britain, and Europe are too close and beholden to their financial sectors, independent private sector investors are now leading the way. As new funds continue to pour into building the green economy, governments may be shamed into following at least with guarantees.

As a recent report from Deutsche Bank shows, the leading countries for green investors are China, India, France, Germany, and Brazil, while the US and Britain’s political inertia make them less attractive. UNEP-FI’s 2009 Report on Catalyzing Low Carbon Growth shows how USD 1 of public investment can leverage between USD 3 and USD 15 of private investment.

Those governments that do not oppose their financial, fossil fuel, and nuclear lobbies will lose the race for climate prosperity, wasting billions on futile R&D for “clean” coal carbon sequestration and other un-needed technologies.

As David Martin, patent expert, of the innovation firm M-CAM points out, we have already invented all the technologies necessary for the transition to the Solar Age. Martin has launched the Global Innovation Commons and inventoried all the needed technologies that are now freely in the public domain.

While on the Advisory Council of the US Office of Technology Assessment, I learned how many of these technologies were captured and patented by big fossil fuel and financial companies in order to keep them off the market, as General Motors did with its early electric car.

I have long held that it is unethical to speculate in oil, food, and other vital commodities, as well as forests and land, merely as “asset classes” for big monetary returns. No pension fund or foundation or university endowment should speculate in such vital resources.

What better way for such funds to provide for their beneficiaries than to re-deploy their assets into directly stabilising our climate and growing the cleaner, greener global economy for our common human future. Copenhagen may yet see a victory for the planet, people, and common sense. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

* Hazel Henderson, president of Ethical Markets Media (http://www.ethicalmarkets.com), is the author of “The Politics of the Solar Age” (1981), “Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy” (2006), and the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators (http://www.calvert-henderson.com).