Civil society march in Copenhagen. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

By Raúl Pierri and Daniela Estrada

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva)  COP15 proved to be a “spectacular failure even according to its own terms,” but civil society had “some successes,” such as the inclusion of certain issues on the climate agenda, and making the voice of the South heard loud and clear.

That was how activists assessed their efforts at COP15 as the climate change talks came to an agonising end Saturday in Copenhagen.

Barred from the Bella Center, the official venue, and treated harshly by security forces at some of the massive demonstrations held throughout the two weeks of the conference, representatives of civil society – gathered simultaneously in the Danish capital at their own people’s climate summit, Klimaforum09 – highlighted a series of victories achieved.

“Despite the lack of transparency, civil society organisations have given visibility to positions that are more in line with climate justice, which we see as the only way to move towards a sustainable planet,” Eduardo Giesen, Latin American and Caribbean coordinator for Friends of the Earth International’s Climate Justice and Energy Programme, told TerraViva.

“We focused our efforts on supporting developing countries so they could present a united front against the demands of the industrialised world, and not give in to pressures that in some cases bordered on colonialism,” he added.

Klimaforum09 closed its two weeks of activities with a concert and a ceremony where this year’s organisers transferred organisational duties to representatives of Mexico and Latin America, where the next parallel summit will be held in 2010.

“The general sensation is that what wasn’t achieved at the Bella Center was achieved at Klimaforum” in terms of content consensus and forging of alliances, Giesen said.

For her part, Canadian journalist and researcher Naomi Klein called on activists to not give up hope. “I think it’s really important to make sure that we don’t leave this gathering feeling discouraged,” she said.

According to Klein, the fact that negotiators at the Bella Center were unable to reach an agreement even within their own conception of how to address climate change is proof that it is a failed model.

“That’s why it is very important to go forward and tell a different story of what happened here in Copenhagen. That story must be that their model reveals itself to be a spectacular failure even according to its own terms,” she said.

“And because their model failed, it’s our turn now. So don’t allow yourselves to get depressed,” she added.

In Klein’s view, the model has failed because of its emphasis on the carbon market and other market-based mechanisms.

“Discourse about climate change has been really taken over by technocrats, (it’s become) very bureaucratised, and has been extremely exclusive. This is actually similar to the discussion on trade a decade ago, where it was all acronyms, all incredible impenetrable long talks,” she said.

“And many people felt: I can’t be part of the discussion, I don’t have an advanced degree on economics, I can’t participate,” she added.

Klein underlined the need to reject “the model” in which negotiations are conducted under the Convention.

“We need to reject any measure that allows the countries that created the problem to evade their responsibility, (which is) that they need to cut their emissions,” she stressed.

For his part, Giesen condemned international NGOs that “toe the line” of industrialised countries and back counterproductive mechanisms.

“Our NGOs work with communities to achieve environmental justice. We haven’t turned into consultancy firms seeking to finance their activities by any means, like certain multinational NGOs who have found in the carbon market a way to make a lot of money. They’ve bought into capitalism,” he said.

Klein, meanwhile, highlighted what she saw as the “successes” of the last two weeks. “The rich world can no longer claim not to know (what) failing to act (entails). The voices of the South, the cost of millions of lives, the disappearance of countries and cultures – all that has landed on the agenda,” she said.

Changing the system

“System Change – Not Climate Change,” is the title of the final statement from Klimaforum09, signed by some 360 organizations from around the world.

Drafted months ago and discussed over the last week in the Danish capital, this “People’s Declaration” argues that “there are solutions to the climate crisis,” and puts forward six demands.

“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 people and deliver a more fertile planet and more fulfilling lives to present and future generations,” it states.

The signatory organisations called on governments to take urgent climate action, most importantly the “complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years, which must include specific milestones for every five-year period.”

They also demanded “an immediate cut in GHG (greenhouse gases) of industrialized countries of at least 40 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020,” and “recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt for the overconsumption of atmospheric space and adverse effects of climate change on all affected groups and people.”

The statement goes on to reject “purely market-oriented and technology-centred false and dangerous solutions,” such as “nuclear energy, agro-fuels, carbon capture and storage, Clean Development Mechanisms, biochar, genetically ‘climate-readied’ crops, geoengineering, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).”

The “real solutions” are “based on safe, clean, renewable, and sustainable use of natural resources, as well as transitions to food, energy, land, and water sovereignty.”

The signatory organisations also proposed that an “equitable tax on carbon emissions” be established instead of “the regime of tradable emission quotas,” and that multilateral financial bodies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund “be replaced by democratic and equitable institutions functioning in accordance with the United Nations Charter.”

They also demanded a “mechanism for strict surveillance and control of the operations of TNCs (transnational corporations).”

“Irrespective of the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, there is an urgent need to build a global movement of movements dedicated to the long-term task of promoting a sustainable transition of our societies,” the statement concludes.
(END/2009)

Activistas arrestados por la policía danesa antimotines. Crédito: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Por Stephen Leahy

COPENHAGUE (IPS/TerraViva) No se hizo historia en Copenhague. Tampoco se selló ningún pacto contra el cambio climático. Tras dos años de intensas negociaciones entre 193 países, rompe los ojos la división entre el mundo rico y el pobre.

Los países pobres quieren reducciones drásticas de las emisiones causantes del recalentamiento por parte del mundo industrial, y éste sigue resistiéndose a cortes sustantivos y metas obligatorias.

Pese a las enormes presiones, las grandes esperanzas y los esfuerzos de último minuto de gobernantes de 128 países, todo concluyó en un vago texto titulado Acuerdo de Copenhague. La promesa de “sellar un pacto” climático fue pospuesta al menos un año más.

Y hablando de divisiones, la mayor parte de la sociedad civil considera que la reunión de Copenhague fue un amargo desastre. Es un fracaso que “condena a millones de personas del mundo pobre al hambre, al sufrimiento y a la pérdida de vidas”, dijo el nigeriano Nnimmo Bassey, presidente de Amigos de la Tierra Internacional.

En el lado opuesto, el presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, sostuvo que se había logrado un “avance significativo y sin precedentes”, al hablar en una conferencia de prensa poco antes de la medianoche del viernes en el Bella Center, sede oficial de la 15 Conferencia de las Partes de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas para el Cambio Climático (COP-15).

“Todas las grandes economías se han unido para aceptar su responsabilidad en las acciones necesarias para afrontar el peligro del cambio climático”, añadió Obama.

Parece evidente que los gobernantes no han prestado mucha atención a los anteriores 15 años de negociaciones climáticas.

“Los jefes de Estado ahora están realmente comprometidos”, opinó Robert Orr, secretario general adjunto de las Naciones Unidas para Coordinación de Políticas y Planeación Estratégica. “En Copenhague fue la primera vez que emplearon vocabulario climático”, dijo.

“Esto pone al clima en el mapa de los gobernantes y a estos en el mapa del clima”, añadió Orr. También aventuró que la brecha entre la política y la ciencia está finalmente empezando a cerrarse.

Es un poco tarde para despertar a la realidad del cambio climático. Dos nuevos estudios indican que la retroalimentación climática hará imposible que el aumento de la temperatura media del planeta no supere los dos grados en el transcurso de este siglo.

Para conseguirlo, no solo el mundo deberá dejar de emitir dióxido de carbono en las próximas décadas, sino que además habrá que retirar grandes cantidades de ese gas de la atmósfera para reducir su concentración de las actuales 389 partes por millón (ppm) a 350 ppm.

Fue a última hora del viernes cuando el mandatario estadounidense anunció que su país junto con India, Sudáfrica, Brasil y China habían acordado un texto a puertas cerradas, llamado Acuerdo de Copenhague.

Pero, como sólo participaron cinco de los 193 países que pasaron dos semanas discutiendo en Copenhague, algunos delegados se mostraron visiblemente enojados por no haber sido consultados, y las conversaciones continuaron toda la noche.

Para la tarde de este sábado, persistía la confusión sobre el estatuto legal del Acuerdo de Copenhague, y un puñado de naciones, entre ellas Arabia Saudita, Bolivia y Pakistán, se negaban a aceptarlo.

En definitiva, el Acuerdo no tiene carácter legal bajo los términos de la Convención de Cambio Climático, y los países que son parte de ella apenas “tomaron nota” de su existencia y expresaron, o no, su apoyo al mismo.

El viernes por la noche, Obama reconoció que se trataba sólo de un paso en un largo camino para alcanzar las metas indicadas por la ciencia. El mandatario insistió en su importancia, puesto que los países aceptaron drásticas reducciones de emisiones a largo plazo, con el fin de evitar que la temperatura media del planeta se eleve más de dos grados por encima de las marcas de la era preindustrial.

Según el texto, las naciones en desarrollo también aceptaron adoptar medidas voluntarias para reducir la cantidad de gases de efecto invernadero que arrojan a la atmósfera y aumentar esas medidas si se les suministra apoyo financiero.

Y hubo acuerdo en que los países ricos entreguen 100.000 millones de dólares por año para 2020 destinados a asistir a los países en desarrollo en la protección de sus bosques, la adaptación al cambio climático y la reducción de sus propias emisiones.

Se aceptó asimismo trabajar hacia un acuerdo legalmente vinculante que pueda ser adoptado el año que viene en la COP-16 que se celebrará en México.

“Estados Unidos no está legalmente obligado por nada de lo que se hizo aquí en Copenhague”, advirtió Obama.

Estados Unidos está internamente dividido sobre este asunto y debe recorrer aún un largo camino para adoptar obligaciones en la materia.

No había transcurrido una hora desde que Obama efectuó su discurso inaugural en la sesión matinal de la COP-15 cuando varios legisladores estadounidenses del Partido Republicano celebraron una conferencia de prensa en el Bella Center para negar que el cambio climático fuera causado por emisiones de combustibles fósiles, o sea del petróleo, el carbón y el gas natural.

Las conclusiones del Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) y de decenas de academias científicas de todo el mundo son sospechosas, agregaron los legisladores, ninguno de ellos científicos y todos procedentes de estados con poderosos intereses en el sector automotor o de combustibles fósiles.

“Hemos perdido muchas cosas en el camino”, manifestó Dessima Williams, de Granada, y portavoz de la Alianza de Pequeños Estados Insulares (AOSIS, por su sigla en inglés), integrada por 43 países.

“Hemos perdido el compromiso vigoroso para estabilizar (el aumento de) la temperatura mundial en 1,5 grados”, agregó. “Creemos que esto es fundamental para la supervivencia de nuestros estados miembros”, destacó Williams en la sesión final de la COP 15, este sábado.

Las activistas esperaban que un texto sensible al género reconociera la realidad de que las mujeres son por lejos las más perjudicadas por el cambio climático, señaló Ana Rojas, de Energía, una red internacional de género y sustentabilidad con sede en Holanda.

Sólo un tercio de los delegados que asistieron a la COP 15 este año son mujeres, lo cual dificulta la igualdad en la representación de las opiniones de mujeres y hombres en relación con el cambio climático.

“Necesitamos una visión compartida del género en el acuerdo final. Y no sólo con respecto a la adaptación, sino también a la mitigación y el financiamiento” de las medidas contra el cambio climático, dijo Rojas.

Aunque reconoció algunos avances, está lejos de ser el “acuerdo justo, ambicioso y legalmente vinculante” que la sociedad civil defendía.

Afuera de las sesiones en el Centro Bella, 1.800 manifestantes y periodistas fueron arrestados bajo la sospecha de que pudieran cometer ilegalidades, en lo que la sociedad civil consideró un intento del gobierno danés de reprimir la oposición legítima y la libertad de expresión.

El uso de “gases lacrimógenos, spray pimienta, tácticas de dispersión de multitudes y arrestos colectivos preventivos fija un precedente peligroso, no sólo para Dinamarca, sino para el futuro del mundo”, advirtió Tadzio Müller, de Climate Justice Action, una organización ecologista internacional.

“El planeta enfrenta una crisis trágica de liderazgo” sobre el cambio climático, declaró el director ejecutivo de Greenpeace Internacional, Kumi Naidoo.

El Acuerdo representa “una importante concesión a las industrias que contaminan el clima, especialmente del sector de los combustibles fósiles”, dijo Naidoo.

“La posibilidad de impedir el caos climático acaba de hacerse mucho más difícil”, concluyó.

Climate activists arrested by the Danish police. Credit: Claudia Ciobanu/TerraViva

By Stephen Leahy

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) There is no Copenhagen climate treaty. History was not made here and no deal was sealed.

After two years of intense negotiations by 194 countries, what is abundantly clear is the enormous divide between the rich and poor countries. Poor countries want deep cuts in emissions by the industrialised world, and the latter continue to resist significant cuts and legally binding targets.

Despite the enormous pressures, high expectations and last minute efforts by 128 heads of state, all that emerged is a vague agreement of sorts called the “Copenhagen Accord”.

“Sealing the deal” on a new climate treaty has been postponed for at least a year.

Speaking of divides, civil society largely calls Copenhagen an utter disaster. It is a failure that “condemned millions of the world’s poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life”, said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.

On the other hand, U.S. President Barack Obama argued that a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” had been made at press conference in the Bella Centre just before midnight Friday. “All major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change,” he said.

Evidently, world leaders hadn’t been paying much attention to the previous 15 years of climate treaty negotiations.

“Heads of state are now fully engaged,” agreed Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for policy planning, speaking at a press conference. “Copenhagen was the first time leaders were using the climate vocabulary.”

“This has put climate on the map for leaders and leaders on the map for climate,” he said.

Orr also said the gap between politics and science is finally beginning to close.

The hour is late for waking up to the reality of climate change. Two new scientific studies suggest that climate feedbacks will make the two-degree C target unlikely to be achieved without “going negative” – meaning not only does the world have to go carbon-free in the coming decades, carbon will need to be removed from the atmosphere to lower concentrations to perhaps 350 ppm from today’s 389 ppm.

It was late last night in the final hours of the meeting when the U.S. president announced that India, South Africa, China and Brazil had agreed to a backroom agreement called the Copenhagen Accord.

However, since it only involved five out of the 193 countries whose officials had spent a long two weeks in Copenhagen, some delegates were visibly upset they’d not been involved previously and the meeting continued all night. By Saturday afternoon, confusion remained over the accord’s legal status, and half a dozen nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bolivia, declined to support it.

In the end, the accord has no legal standing under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and participating countries merely “note” its existence and express their support or not.

Friday night, Obama acknowledged that this was just one step on a long road to meet the apolitical targets of climate science. He insisted the Copenhagen Accord is an important first step because countries agreed to deep long-term cuts in emissions with the goal of holding the increase in global temperatures below two degrees C.

Developing countries also agreed to take both voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase those actions if financial support was provided. And there was agreement that rich countries must mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries protect their forests, adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions.

They also agreed to work towards a legally binding treaty to be concluded by the end of next year in Mexico.

“The U.S. is not legally bound by anything that took place here in Copenhagen,” Obama was careful to point out.

Domestically, the United States is a divided country, and a long way from making binding commitments on climate.

Not an hour after Obama’s opening speech to the plenary Friday morning, several Republican members of Congress and the Senate held a press conference in the Bella Centre denying climate change was caused by emissions of fossil fuels and saying the science of the International Panel on Climate Change and dozens of scientific academies around the world was suspect.

None of the U.S. politicians are scientists and all hail from regions with powerful fossil fuel or automotive interests.

“We have lost many things along the way,” said Dessima Williams of Grenada, spokesperson for the 43-member Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), regarding their reluctant acceptance of the accord. “We have lost a vigourous commitment to stabilising global temperatures at 1.5 C.”

“We believe this is critical to the survival of our member states,” Williams said in a final plenary session Saturday.

Women were also hoping for gender-sensitive text to acknowledge the reality that women are by far the most impacted by climate change, said Ana Rojas of Energia, an International Network of Gender and Sustainability based in the Netherlands.

Only a third of the delegates attending the conference this year are women, which can make it more difficult for equal representation of women and men’s views in relation to climate change.

“We need a shared vision of gender in a final agreement. And not just concerning adaptation but also mitigation and financing,” Rojas told TerraViva.

While acknowledging that the accord represents some progress, it fell far short of the “fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement” that civil society had advocated. Outside the meetings, 1,800 protesters and media spokespersons were arrested on the suspicion they might do something illegal, in what civil society called attempts by the Danish government to suppress legitimate opposition and free speech.

The use of “tear gas, pepper spray, mass cages, baton charges and mass preemptive arrests sets a precedent dangerous not only for Denmark, but for the future of the world,” said Tadzio Müller of  Climate Justice Action, an international network of environmental and social justice groups.

“The world is facing tragic crises of leadership [on climate change],” said Greenpeace’s international executive director, Kumi Naidoo.

The accord represents a “major concession to climate polluting industries, especially in the fossil fuel sector”, Naidoo said. “Averting climate chaos has just gotten a whole lot harder.”

Marcha de la sociedad civil en Copenhague. Crédito: Claudia Ciobanu/IPS

Por Raúl Pierri y Daniela Estrada

COPENHAGUE (IPS/TerraViva)  La COP-15 demostró ser un “espectacular fracaso en sus propios términos”, pero la sociedad civil tuvo algunos “éxitos”, como imponer temas en la agenda climática y hacer oír más fuerte la voz el Sur.

Así evaluaron activistas sus esfuerzos al cierre de la COP-15 (15 Conferencia de las Partes de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático), que todavía sesionaba agónicamente el sábado.

Excluidos del Bella Center, sede de las conversaciones oficiales, y soportando la represión contra algunas de las numerosas manifestaciones en la capital danesa, representantes de la sociedad civil, reunidos en forma paralela en Copenhague en el Klimaforum, destacaron victorias en estas dos semanas.

“A pesar de la falta de transparencia, el movimiento social ha permitido hacer visible las posturas más consistentes con la justicia climática, que nosotros la concebimos como la única forma de transitar hacia un mundo sustentable”, dijo a TerraViva Eduardo Geisen, coordinador para América Latina y el Caribe del Programa de Justicia Climática y Energía de Amigos de la Tierra Internacional.

Además,“hemos dado un vital apoyo para que los países en desarrollo se hayan mantenido unidos frente a las exigencias del mundo industrializado y no hayan cedido a las presiones que en algunos casos rayaron en lo colonialista”, añadió.

Las dos semanas de actividades en el Klimaforum fueron selladas el viernes con un espectáculo artístico y el traspaso de la organización de la próxima cumbre paralela, en 2010, a representantes de México y América Latina.

“El sentimiento generalizado es que lo que no se logró en el Bella Center se logró en el Klimaforum”, en términos de sintonía de contenidos y construcción de alianzas, resumió Giesen.

Por su parte, la periodista e investigadora canadiense Naomi Klein llamó a los activistas a no desanimarse.

“Es realmente importante asegurarnos de que no nos vayamos de esta reunión desalentados”, afirmó.

El hecho de que los negociadores en el Bella Center no logren un acuerdo dentro de sus propias concepciones de cómo resolver el problema demuestra que se trata de un modelo fallido, sostuvo.

“Es muy importante contar una historia diferente de lo que ocurrió en Copenhague. La historia debe ser que su modelo demuestra ser un espectacular fracaso incluso en sus propios términos”, afirmó.

“Y porque su modelo fracasó, ahora es nuestro turno. Por tanto, no se permitan deprimirse”, añadió.

Para Klein, todo el proceso está fallido por su énfasis en el mercado de carbono y otros mecanismos de carácter económico.

“El discurso sobre cambio climático ha sido asaltado por tecnócratas… y se ha vuelto extremadamente exclusivo. Esto es de hecho muy similar a las discusiones sobre comercio hace una década, donde todo eran acrónimos, todo eran conversaciones increíblemente largas e impenetrables”, dijo.

“Mucha gente pensaba: no puedo ser parte de la discusión, no tengo un título en economía”, agregó.

La canadiense subrayó la necesidad de rechazar “el modelo” en que se manejan las negociaciones en el marco de la Convención.

“Debemos rechazar cualquier medida que permita a los países que crearon el problema evadir su responsabilidad: deben recortar sus emisiones”, enfatizó.

Por su parte, Giesen repudió a organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) internacionales que “siguen el discurso” de los países del Norte, y apoyan mecanismos que tienen efectos contraproducentes.

“Nosotros somos ONG que trabajamos con las comunidades por la justicia ambiental. No nos hemos convertido en empresas consultoras que buscamos financiarnos de cualquier modo, como lo están haciendo algunas ONG multinacionales, que han visto en el mercado de carbono una forma de adquirir mucho dinero. Han entrado en el orden del capitalismo”, afirmó.

Mientras, Klein destacó los “éxitos” de las últimas dos semanas.

“El mundo rico ya no puede argüir no saber lo que implica dejar de actuar. Las voces del Sur, el costo de millones de vidas, la desaparición de países y culturas… todo eso ha aterrizado en la agenda”, indicó.

Cambiando el sistema

“Cambiemos el sistema, no el clima”, es el título de la declaración final del Klimaforum, firmada por unas 360 organizaciones de todo el mundo.

Preparado desde hace meses y discutido durante la semana pasada en la capital danesa, el documento de seis puntos plantea que “hay soluciones a la crisis del clima”.

“Lo que necesitan los pueblos y el planeta es una transición justa y sostenible de nuestras sociedades a un modelo que garantice el derecho a la vida y la dignidad de todas las personas, y entregue un planeta más fértil y vidas más plenas a las generaciones presentes y futuras”, señala.

Los firmantes llamaron a los gobiernos a abandonar los combustibles fósiles en los próximos 30 años, con metas específicas para cada período quinquenal.

También exigieron una reducción inmediata de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero de los países industrializados de 40 por ciento respecto de 1990 para 2020, así como el reconocimiento y pago de la deuda generada por el consumo excesivo del espacio atmosférico y los efectos sobre las poblaciones afectadas.

El texto rechaza las “falsas y peligrosas soluciones orientadas al mercado”, como la energía nuclear, los agrocombustibles, la captura y almacenamiento de carbono, los Mecanismos de Desarrollo Limpio, el carbón vegetal, los transgénicos denominados “climate ready” y la iniciativa REDD (Reducción de Emisiones de Carbono causadas por la Deforestación y la Degradación de los Bosques).

Las “soluciones reales” estarían basadas en el “uso seguro, limpio, renovable y sostenible de los recursos naturales, y la transición a la soberanía alimentaria, energética, sobre la tierra y las aguas”.

También propusieron un impuesto equitativo a las emisiones de dióxido de carbono, en lugar del régimen de cuotas comerciables, y el reemplazo de los organismos financieros multilaterales, como el Banco Mundial y el Fondo Monetario Internacional, por instituciones “equitativas y democráticas”.

Asimismo, buscan la creación de un mecanismo que controlelas operaciones de las empresas trasnacionales.

“Independientemente de los resultados de la Cumbre de Copenhague sobre el Cambio Climático, hay una necesidad urgente de construir un movimiento mundial de movimientos que trabajen a largo plazo a favor de una transición sostenible para nuestras sociedades”, concluyeron.

Fabricio Vanden Broeck

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO (IPS/TerraViva) – “In a year’s time, the Japanese archipelago will be completely under water.” This official announcement was made following a violent eruption of Mt. Fuji, as a series of devastating earthquakes shook the country, forcing the world to face the challenge of taking in 110 million refuges within a very short time.

After a brutal diplomatic battle, the Japanese government managed to secure frail support from its fellow nations and evacuate 65 million people. Twenty million sank with the islands, many of them voluntarily, out of love for their country or to give younger people a better chance of fleeing. The rest are believed to have died before the islands sank, victims of the quakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters.

This account is part of a futuristic book published in Japan in 1973, and translated into English as “Japan Sinks”. The author, Japanese novelist Komatsu Sakyo, imagines this catastrophe based on potential natural phenomena, such as the intensification and alteration of tectonic plate shifts under the Pacific Ocean.

But outside the world of fiction, the planet today is being hit by increasingly frequent floods, and many small island states and coastal cities face the real possibility of sinking in the near future. And all of this is a result of human actions.

The threat in real life is coming from above rather than below, but the consequences are equally tragic, even if they appear less catastrophic because they are more spread out in time and space.

A huge cataclysm like the one depicted by Sakyo may be what the world needs to reach an effective agreement that will steer it away from the suicidal path of global warming.

Certain changes, especially those wrought against the economic tide, are only possible after exceptional tragedies or social turmoil. Last year’s global financial crisis, for example, was not dramatic enough to bring about structural changes.

The magnitude of Sakyo’s fictional disaster does not lie merely in the number of victims, but in the fact that it completely wipes out a rich nation like Japan, a country that many in the 1970s saw as challenging the economic power of the United States. The novel is also critical of the arrogance displayed by Japan in the post-war reconstruction period.

The fact that tropical countries, especially small, impoverished nations, will suffer the worst effects of global warming fails to prompt cooperation that should be natural in our present circumstances, as it is a threat that affects the entire world.

The current climate crisis highlights the multiple dimensions of the inequalities among nations, which hinder negotiations. The leading issues – such as legally-binding targets for emissions and funding for programs to address climate change – divide the world, with wealthy countries on one side and the rest of the world on the other, and a middle group of emerging nations whose intention to continue to be counted within the ranks of the poor nations (in terms of emissions cuts, etc) is rejected by the rich.

This inequality is a spoke in the wheel of any multilateral talks, in both market, financial, patent or health matters.

These are all opportunities for developing countries to close the gap that separates them from the rich and obtain more aid for their own development, now with the irrefutable argument that the industrialised world is responsible for the historic accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But when it comes to climate change, the blocs formed in other forums fall apart. Brazil, for example, is persistently under pressure from environmentalists to break away from the G77 group of 130 developing nations so that it can contribute to reaching an agreement and regaining the leadership role it had in the negotiations for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

Because it has specific and feasible means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – by curbing deforestation and increasing its already vastly developed clean energy production -, environmental activists argue that it would be to Brazil’s own advantage to commit to ambitious targets.

China, which is associated with the G77, alienated itself from the coalition by moving closer to the United States in volume of greenhouse gases emitted, building one coal-fired electric power plant a week, and holding more than two trillion dollars in reserves.

It’s frightening to think of 1.3 billion Chinese speeding forward towards what is now recognised as an unsustainable process of industrialisation and consumption.

The position of countries that are rich in fossil fuels differs radically from that of those dependent on imported oil. Latitudes and altitudes, the abundance or lack of forests, the threat of desertification, or the dependence on glaciers are some of the many aspects that mark the differences in how climate change impacts each country.

Numerous small island states are already fighting for survival, so they have joined forces with those African nations that are severely affected by desertification and major crop losses to demand that 1.5 degrees C be set as the limit for the rise in temperature in this century. Exceeding that threshold will condemn entire nations to almost certain death or displacement.

But, what power do these countries have to counter the two-degree limit adopted?

This is not about rich countries imposing their will on poor countries, or of a class struggle between states. The goals that must be met are being dictated by scientific studies and assessments. Climate change has crowned a new absolute power: the power of science, whose findings are now determining the very existence of the world’s entire population.

Thousands of scientists who participated in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed that a temperature rise of two degrees C by 2100 is a feasible and tolerable limit. Above that, chaos will ensue.

Climate sceptics don’t count. They’re a tiny minority and, in many cases, have lost credibility because they are thought to defend the interests of the fossil fuel industry, or to act out because they feel attacked by attempts to prevent the great climate disaster.

Voices have already been raised against the verdict issued by climate experts, voices that demand that society be included in decision-making, with suggestions of holding referendums. But this is a field where the premises lay outside the dynamics of “democracy.” Climate change is a fact, not an issue.

Politics can only decide on how to handle the phenomenon. Questioning it or determining any variations in the facts is the exclusive domain of science.

This new dimension of what many refer to as the “age of knowledge” will dictate the rules that govern many activities, demanding energy efficiency, and forcing people to change their patterns of consumption and their habits, as has already been achieved, for example, with tobacco in the field of health.
(END/2009)

Activists meeting at Klimaforum. Credit: Daniela Estrada/IPS

Daniela Estrada

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) Before the outcome of COP 15 has even emerged, Latin American social organisations are already discussing their strategies for the next climate summit, to be held in a year’s time in Mexico.

The primary challenge is to broaden and strengthen the links between the different civil society movements and networks in the region, the international coordinator of Jubilee South, Beverly Keene, told TerraViva.

Jubilee South is a network of social movements and people’s organisations in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, formed in 1999 to fight for “freedom from debt and domination” in developing countries.

Keene spoke at a session of Klimaforum09 – the civil society meeting held parallel to the climate change summit in Copenhagen – focused on what directions to take on the road to COP 16, in December 2010 in the Mexican capital.

“Frankly, I do not expect anything (from COP 15). We have stated very clearly that no agreement at all is better than one which only reinforces the false solutions we have been fighting,” Camila Moreno of Brazil, a member of Friends of the Earth International, told TerraViva at another Klimaforum session.

Activists concur that the international movement for climate justice has grown stronger over the past year.

One of its main achievements was the first hearing of the International Court of Climate Justice, celebrated in October in the eastern Bolivian city of Cochabamba by NGOs from all over the world. Seven cases, claiming environmental harm contributing to climate change, were presented by Latin American communities and civil society organisations.

A people’s tribunal independent of formal justice systems, the aim of the Court is to pass ethical and moral judgment on transnational corporations and complicit states in order to raise the visibility of environmental crimes and the changes needed to coexist in balance with nature.

“The invitation is to begin the journey toward Mexico 2010. This time COP is coming to our house (Latin America), and we must start mobilising,” said Lyda Fernanda Forero, of the secretariat of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA), an umbrella group for over 60 social networks in the Americas.

Nicola Bullard, of Climate Justice Now (CJN), a global network of organisations and movements, said climate change provided an opportunity to forge stronger links between the struggles of civil society against the World Trade Organisation and other multilateral institutions.

The destruction of the environment goes hand-in-hand with social inequality, she said, at the session that was also addressed by Keene.

The issue of climate change must become a political problem, one that challenges the capitalist model of development, and that does not allow governments and transnational corporations to take a short cut to “green capitalism,” with low greenhouse gas emissions but the same financial architecture, activists argue.

Amparo Miciano, of the World March of Women, highlighted the fact that during the two weeks’ duration of COP 15 and Klimaforum, people from the industrialised North and the developing South joined together to confront the climate crisis.

“I have experienced big civil society mobilisations. I’m from Porto Alegre (in southern Brazil), where the World Social Forum (WSF, an annual global gathering held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum) came into being, and what is happening here reminds me a lot of the first WSF there. It’s like a huge public education event,” Moreno said.

“Copenhagen will be a watershed,” said the Brazilian activist.

In the view of CJN’s Bullard, world public opinion is on the side of the concept of “climate justice,” and this support must be utilised.

For his part, Diego Azzi, a Brazilian labour activist responsible for regional integration for the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), said that Latin American trade unionists will have a greater presence at COP 16 in Mexico.

“We are trying to raise awareness among Latin American trade unionists about these environmental issues, through what we call ‘auto-reforma sindical’ (internal reforms of labour unions), which is linked to the trade union perspective on models of development, production and consumption,” he told IPS/TerraViva.

The NGOs are planning a timetable of actions for 2010, but some priorities are already clear: working at grassroots level, raising public awareness and putting pressure on those in government.

One of the most concrete proposals so far is to hold many more sessions and hearings before Courts of Climate Justice, and present the cases dealt with in Mexico.
(END/2009)

Civil society's message to the leaders meeting in Copenhagen. Credit:Ana Libisch/IPS

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) Heads of state and government are working fervently to complete an agreement in Copenhagen, but texts coming out of their midst so far lack details on emissions cuts and long-term funding.

Negotiations – resumed after U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech failed to deliver any tangible targets – are likely to continue into tomorrow.

“While the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now, and it hangs in the balance,” Obama observed.

The latest draft Copenhagen accord suggests extending the mandate of the LCA and KP working groups to continue discussions, but so far major sticking points between developed and developing countries are not being worked out.

In the latest text the door is left open for a long-term goal of a maximum 1.5 degree rise in global warming to be adopted after 2016 when the agreement is reviewed. Till then, the leaders stick to the two degree temperature threshold spelled out by the IPCC.

No agreement has been reached yet on the amount by which overall emissions should be reduced before 2020, but an overall 50 percent cut by 2050 was adopted. Annex I countries will talk measures to reduce cuts by 80 percent by 2050.

Both developing and developed countries underline the need for emissions to peak ‘as soon as possible’, stressing that this will take more time in developing nations, where poverty eradication and economic growth are the first priorities.

The agreement highlights the need to measure carbon emissions per capita, mentioning “the right to equitable access to atmospheric space”. This point was very important for countries like China and India with large populations.

Other than a $30 billion start-up fund for the period 2010-2012, there are no hard commitments to funding for adaptation and mitigation.

An amount of $100 billion per year by 2020 is proposed for this, but it is unclear how the money will be gathered. On Thursday Friends of the Earth said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of this figure was “inadequate.”

“We are not sure where the money is coming from; is it public, private, is it self-financing by the developing countries, is it from WB and IMF as well? We should have truly public finance coming from the U.S. as well as other Annex 1 countries, no strings attached.”

Developing countries’ demands for the creation of a new multilateral fund to administer and disperse funding under the Convention has been met with the establishment of the ‘Copenhagen Climate Fund’. Governance of the fund will be shared equally among developing and industrial countries. A Technology Mechanism will be started to accelerate development and transfer of technology.

Mitigation actions by developing countries are required, but not spelled out, and a REDD Plus mechanism is endorsed. There is no mention of women’s rights, or the rights of indigenous peoples, nor is there clarity about the controversial issue of intellectual property rights. The U.S. and China still disagree on the issue of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), while the other parties have agreed this should be ‘rigorous, robust and transparent’.

The draft of the ‘Copenhagen Accord’ was supposed to be submitted for discussion in the plenary at 6:00 PM on Friday, but this deadline passed as discussions continued.

Civil society organisations were still speaking of a “failure” in Copenhagen. “I’m not surprised that Copenhagen failed. It was the U.S. goal to obstruct any forward progress here. There is little changed from the Bush to the Obama administrations,” Anne Petermann, co-director of the U.S.-based Global Justice Ecology Project, told TerraViva.

Negotiators from developing countries remained critical about the lack of detail on funding.

“The amount of funding that will be provided to developing countries, especially the most vulnerable, to adapt to climate change as well as to adopt mitigation methods, still needs to be worked out,” said Sri Lankan U.N. ambassador Palitha Kohona. “You can’t expect to provide a pittance and also require them to make the changes, it just won’t work. We’ll need to have adequate sums so that these countries can make the changes necessary.”

“Ten billion dollars a year is a joke,” fumed Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. “The military expenditure of the U.S. is 700 billion dollars per year,” he told the plenary session. “If the climate were a bank it would have been saved already.”

* Claudia Ciobanu and Rajiv Fernando contributed to this report.
(END/2009)

President Barack Obama meets with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during a bilateral at the COP15 on Dec. 18. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) Tempers flared after U.S. President Barack Obama dropped a bombshell before making a quick exit from an informal meeting of heads of state and government at COP15 Friday.

“Obama said something very ridiculous this morning before going out through that small door,” fumed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez also accused western countries of conniving to prepare “a secret document which they will try to push under the door. We’ll not accept that.”

This was after Obama had left the gathering and was reportedly in a secret meeting with other heads of state from developed nations.

Annoyed by Obama’s proposal of a fast-starting fund that will accumulate to 10 billion dollars in 2012 and 100 billion by 2020, Chávez also slammed the U.S. leader’s 17 percent reduction by 2020 and 80 percent reduction by 2050.

Although admitting that developed countries are responsible for the emissions and that other developing countries feel industrialised nations should pay the price, Obama also acknowledged that there are those northern states who feel developing countries cannot absorb this assistance and that the world’s growing emitters should bear the greater burden.

“This would not be a perfect agreement (the one yet to be signed by heads of state) and no country would get everything it wants,” said Obama.

This might have touched a raw nerve.

“Developed nations are very selfish,” Chávez hit back. “Obama is now the world’s greatest frustration, yet in the beginning everybody, even outside the United States, believed in him.”

The public spat confirmed the standoff between industrialised countries and poor nations that include the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

On Thursday, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives also criticized the United States’ early proposals, which Obama confirmed Friday. He said temperature rises above 1.5 degrees would submerge his country, turn oceans acidic and destabilize the planet’s climate. Obama, in his proposal Friday, did not offer any solution to this problem.

“The United States says it opposes the 350 (ppm) target because the technologies do not exist to make it a reality,” said Nasheed. “But I know there is no limit to American ingenuity.”

He said this is the country that first announced it would send a man to the moon, and then worked round the clock to build the Apollo spacecraft.

“Get the politics right, and the technology will follow,” he said.

World leaders are not the only ones disappointed in the U.S. president – civil society organisations are also worried Obama’s stance means no solution to climate change.

“The world was waiting for the spirit of ‘yes we can’ but all we got was ‘my way or the highway’,” said Phil Radford, the executive director of Greenpeace USA.

By offering no further commitments on greenhouse gas emissions cuts by the U.S., Obama showed his disregard for the science and the victims of climate change in the United States and abroad, said Radford.

“Obama now risks being branded as the man who killed Copenhagen,” he said.

At the time of writing, rumours were circulating that the climate negotiations might continue beyond Dec. 18, as no consensus had been reached.

All the long hours, financial resources and demonstrations in the cold seem to have gone to waste in Copenhagen.
(END/2009)

Members of Friends of the Earth not allowed into the Bella Center. Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu* COPENHAGEN (IPS/TerraViva) World leaders speaking in Copenhagen on Friday, the last day of negotiations for a deal on climate change, retreated into their national positions.

US President Barack Obama and his peers could not have been further from the call to “cooperate internationally to ensure respect for human rights everywhere in the world” contained in the People’s Declaration issued by NGOs working at the KlimaForum09 alternative summit.

While leaders of a group of several hundred NGOs were trying to submit a People’s Declaration to the UN in the Bella Center – the site of negotiations during COP15 – world leaders speaking inside the conference venue showed one more time why a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty cannot be agreed on today.

Leaders of the two major polluters, China and the US, both insisted that their countries will go on working on meeting their announced commitments, regardless of whether an international agreement is reached here in Copenhagen or not.

“We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say,” said Obama. The president reiterated the pledge made yesterday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the US would contribute to a global fund of 100 billion dollars by 2020 to help developing countries deal with climate change.

But he insisted that the US would contribute this money “if and only if it is a part of a broader accord that includes mitigation and transparency.”

Developing countries have repeatedly asked for unconditional aid for adaptation to climate change.

Obama’s speech showed that the US took no heed of this call. And the insistence on transparency was a direct reference to one of the major bones of contention here in Copenhagen – the US demand that China’s emission reduction efforts are monitored internationally.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, in his turn, similarly said that his country would stick to its announced commitments regardless of whether a deal is reached in Copenhagen or not. Jiabao said that China would reduce its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reminded, in a similar vein, that his country has adopted and started to implement a national action plan “relying on our own resources” and that the country would reduce energy intensity by 20 percent by 2020 on 2005 levels “regardless of the outcome of this conference.”

Singh added that committing to a document that means reduced expectations “would be wrong.” His statement echoed the warning issued by Friends of the Earth at the outset of the summit that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

One of the few voices to bring some emotion into the series of official speeches was Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva, who started his speech by saying that he was feeling frustrated and that the negotiations in Copenhagen reminded him of his times when he was fighting business leaders as a trade unionist.

Lula bitterly commented on the inappropriateness of leaving the Copenhagen talks to the last minute discussions of heads of state. “I am not sure if such an angel or wise man will come down to this plenary and put in our minds the intelligence that we lacked,” he said.

Early in the afternoon on Friday, the choice seemed to be more and more one between a weak political agreement and no deal at all.

From the perspective of Friday’s country positions, the demands of civil society groups present here in Copenhagen to push for a fair deal on climate change seem catapulted from the moon.

The People’s Declaration, issued by participants in KlimaForum calls for “a complete abandonment of fossil fuels within the next 30 years; recognition, payment and compensation of climate debt by developed to developing countries; a rejection of purely market-oriented and technology-centered false and dangerous solutions (such as nuclear energy, agro-fuels and carbon-capture and storage); and real solutions to the climate crisis based on safe, clean and renewable energy and the transition to food, energy, land and water sovereignty.”

World leaders speaking Friday in Copenhagen were far from one another and far from the calls of citizen groups. The national mitigation plans of developed and large developing countries, that leaders promised to implement no matter what the outcome in Copenhagen is, are certainly market and technology oriented.

Speaking on Thursday in Copenhagen, US Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey (who give their names to the climate legislation recently passed by the US Congress) anticipated a “green technology revolution” that would help the world keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, even if a treaty sets the target only at a 2 degree rise. They insisted that competition between countries would ensure that better technology is developed and that mitigation efforts are thus increasingly successful.

Yet Copenhagen was not supposed to set the stage for competition. It was supposed to be based on international collaboration among all countries, which face the common threat of climate change.

In the corridors of the Bella Center, nothing is left of the enthusiasm of the first days. The NGOs have been excluded from the center ever since the high-level representatives started coming in on Tuesday. The People’s Declaration will never be submitted to world leaders, who will rush off to their planes and head home this evening.

The only people hanging around the corridors are journalists and lower-ranking members of the delegations, all reduced to listening to the speeches of the heads of state. There is nothing left to do in Copenhagen.

But, as Caetano Juanca, a peasant from Peru, said the other day: “We will continue to fight until they listen to us. Our struggle does not end here.”

*Stephen Leahy contributed to this report.
(END/2009)

COPENHAGEN  (IPS/TerraViva) – People living in the Himalayan region are increasingly confronted by rising temperatures and glaciers melting at an unprecedented rate, threatening their very survival. This much the world already knows.

Yet, experts say, there is still no accurate and reliable data on the Himalayan glaciers and many aspects of its ecosystem, which should facilitate determining mitigation measures addressing current and future impacts of climate change on the Himalayas.

Nepal Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal acknowledged this when, speaking briefly at a side event organised during the United Nations climate change summit on Wednesday, he made a passionate case for the Himalayan countries to jointly determine the effects of climate change on what is sometimes termed “the third pole.”

The U.N. climate talks, which opened on Dec. 7 in this Danish capital, will conclude Friday, Dec. 18.

The Himalayan region straddles six countries, namely, China, Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Pakistan. Considered a climate change hotspot, it divides India from the Tibetan Plateau. Its river basins supply water to some 1.3 billion people. Thus the potential disappearance of the glaciers threatens the survival of the people.

Erik Solheim, Norway’s environment minister, cited three reasons for studying the Himalayas. One was its pristine beauty; second, climate change impacted more people in the region than anywhere else in the world; and finally, the region was also rife with political tension and conflicts.

Glaciers in the 33,000-kilometre-long Himalayas cover an area of 100,000 square km and store a staggering 12,000 cubic km of water. Rapid glacial melting has been attributed to rising temperatures.

“The average temperature in Nepal’s highlands has gone up. There are 20 new lakes formed as a result of glaciers melting, which can break up any time, causing catastrophe. No country in the region is immune to climate change.”

Although Nepal contributes only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to its Prime Minister, it is a frontline nation for climate impact. Nepal now chairs the group of 49 Least Developed Countries in the climate negotiations.

Early this month his government held a cabinet meeting 5,541 metres above sea level at the base camp of Mount Everest, the highest mountain peak in the Himalayan range and located at the Nepal-China border.

“We want to protect Mount Everest from global warming,” he said on the sidelines of the summit. “We announced a ten-point programme, which includes clean energy, increasing forest cover in the region to 40 percent and raising the amount of land in sanctuaries from 20 percent to 25 percent. We want to save our common heritage.”

Dr Arshad Muhammd Khan, executive director of the Global Change Impact Studies Centre in Islamabad, said Pakistan is the most vulnerable in the region. It has the largest irrigation network in the world. The Indus, one of the Himalayan rivers, is the South Asian state’s lifeline: it depends on Himalayan glaciers for 80 percent of its inflows.

“The glaciers are melting faster than elsewhere; several may disappear by 2035 (as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts),” Dr Khan observed. “There are fears of glacial lake outbursts. Coastal areas near Karachi are witnessing the ingress of salinity.”

Asked whether political problems intervened to prevent Pakistan and India from sharing data and working together to monitor change in the Himalayas, Dr Khan told IPS, “We can sort it out.”

His colleague, Dr Qamar-Uz-Zaman Chaudhry, director-general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, was more sanguine. “We are very close,” he said. “We exchange real-time data on tropical meteorology, like cyclones. On mountains, we need to cooperate on data.”

He added: “There is a bilateral agreement on hydro-meteorological data under the Indus Water Treaty.” This treaty, brokered by the World Bank in 1960, has not been abrogated despite several wars and ongoing hostility between the two countries.

The event was convened by Dr Andreas Schild, director general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu. “The Himalayas are a hot spot for climate change,” he asserted. “They are the source of ten major river basins, and 1.3 billion in the region depend on them,” said Dr Andreas Schild.

ICIMOD has already conducted a vulnerability assessment of some areas in the Brahmaputra river valley in the Himalayan range.

Dr Pal Prestrud, director general of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, drew a parallel between research on the Himalayas and that on the Arctic between 2000 and 2004. This could “provide insights into the Himalayas, which are in many ways, the same,” he said.

Information on the Himalayas was scattered and it was necessary for scientific associations to “bring it all together, synthesise and focus it,” said Prestrud.

Expressing optimism, Norway’s Solheim said, “There will be an increase in catastrophes, but these can also have the positive effect of bringing people together, as it did after the Asian tsunami in Aceh in Indonesia five years ago.  It has been completely rebuilt.”

Nepal’s Prime Minister has offered to set up a network of mountain countries from all over the word, which, he said, would form a strong lobby. Prof Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a top Indian glaciologist now working with The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, told IPS that the Arctic Council, which former U.S. vice-president and 2007 Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore had referred to in Copenhagen, could provide a platform for Himalayan researchers too.

“Otherwise, these countries are fighting each other,” Prof Hasnain observed. There were similarities between the two regions when it came to climate change. “The Arctic also has traces of black carbon.”