Forest in Sierra de Manantlán biosphere reserve in western Mexico.Credit: Comisión Nacional de Áreas Protegidas

Issues related to the ownership of forest carbon and to prior consultation mechanisms threaten to derail plans for the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation of Forests (REDD+) in some countries of Latin America, according to experts.

The problems are hindering the design of Mexico’s plan in the framework of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD). In Panama, they have prompted the country’s indigenous peoples to withdraw from the programme.

“The previous government let slip the opportunity of concluding the process for fear of social activism, especially on the part of indigenous people and campesino communities,” Gustavo Sánchez, head of the Mexican Network of Campesino Forestry Organisations (Red MOCAF), told IPS.

The administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, whose six-year term began in December, has not said “whether or not it will adopt the current draft” of the national plan, he said.

“When it comes to the plan, Mexico is the second most advanced country in the Mesoamerican region (southern Mexico and Central America), because Costa Rica is already engaged in consultations, after reaching an agreement between native peoples and the government,” Sánchez said.

REDD+ is a climate change mitigation action plan that currently finances national programmes in 16 countries of the developing South in a quest to combat deforestation, reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and promote access by participating countries to technical and financial support.

The initiative was launched in 2008 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), with the goal of promoting conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

In Latin America the participating countries are Bolivia, Ecuador, Panama and Paraguay, while associate members that have not so far received financing are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Peru. A total of 46 countries in the developing South are participating.

Mexico’s forested area covers 65 million hectares in the territories of some 2,300 communities, of which 600 manage forestry enterprises, according to the Mexican Civil Council for Sustainable Forestry (CCMSS).

This country of nearly 117 million people emits 748 million tonnes a year of CO2, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Close to 16 percent arises from livestock farming, deforestation and other soil uses.

The authorities estimate that 150,000 hectares of forest are lost every year, but environmental organisations put deforestation at over 500,000 hectares a year.

In February, Panamanian indigenous groups withdrew from the pilot programme in their country, saying that the process was disrespecting their right to free, prior and informed consent and their collective right to traditional lands, as well as violating the 2007 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“The state has marginalised us. The first thing the programme must guarantee is safeguards for indigenous people. Continuing in the programme makes no sense,” said Héctor Huertas of the National Union of Indigenous Lawyers of Panama (UNAIPA), which represents the National Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples in Panama (COONAPIP).

Huertas told IPS that COONAPIP, a confederation of the seven native peoples in this Central American country, will be bringing a lawsuit in an administrative court against the Panamanian National Environmental Authority in a bid to halt REDD+.

Panama, a country of 3.5 million people, is home to some 417,000 indigenous people, according to the 2010 census, living on 16,634 square kilometres, equivalent to 29 percent of the national territory. Indigenous lands are regarded under the constitution as collectively-owned property that cannot be sold.

The crisis of the plan in Panama has fed suspicion in dozens of NGOs and academic institutes around the world that REDD+ does not represent a viable solution for environmental problems.

But it may serve as a lesson for the countries involved in designing the REDD+ programmes.

The study “Legal analysis of cross-cutting issues for REDD+ implementation: Lessons learned from Mexico, Viet Nam and Zambia”, says that “Mexico’s laws do not specify who owns carbon, but we can presume that forest owners and rights holders will be the direct beneficiaries.

“The clarification of land tenure rights is a crucial component of forest-based approaches to combating climate change and defining related carbon rights,” says the study, published May 2 by UN-REDD.

Another report, “Putting the Pieces Together for Good Governance of REDD+: An Analysis of 32 REDD+ Country Readiness Proposals”, published in March, concludes that few countries involved in the initiative “consider specific design options or challenges related to REDD+ benefit sharing, conflict resolution, or revenue management systems.”

However, the report makes the positive point that “most include plans to address these issues as readiness activities move forward.”

The publication, by Lauren Goers Williams of the U.S.-based World Resources Institute, says: “Relatively few readiness proposals identify specific next steps to address land tenure challenges or establish mechanisms to coordinate with local institutions during REDD+ planning and implementation.”

Although six REDD+ pilot projects, known as early actions, are under way in Mexico, it is unlikely that the national strategy will be completed this year.

“It is worrying to see the progress made with the early actions, because there is no national core concept, which should have come first,” Sánchez complained. ”Less importance is being given to tenure and rights, and more to measuring, reporting and verifying carbon. More progress is being made on the technical side, but there is no criterion for sustainability.”

NGOs involved in the process will ask the National Forestry Commission for clarity with respect to negotiation of the national strategy, for the settling of critical issues.

In the case of Panama, Huertas said that indigenous people “were demanding that indigenous experts be included on the programme, and that consultations be channelled through COONAPIP. Now we want a suspension of REDD+ based on the precautionary principle, because fundamental rights are being violated.”

The precautionary principle states that when potential adverse effects are not fully understood, the activities in question should not proceed.

The withdrawal of the native communities is being discussed at the 12th session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, being held in New York May 20-31.

UN-REDD is currently carrying out an external evaluation of the Panama national programme.

The UN-REDD study says: “To ensure the successful and equitable distribution of REDD+ benefits, legislation on REDD+ should incorporate clear and harmonised legal procedures and rules, allowing for open participation among actors at subnational and national levels.”

CFBC Professor Dr. Leighton Naraine in the plant research facility at the college. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

As Caribbean communities grapple with the entwined challenges of climate change and food security, modern technologies offer hope that the region’s stagnating agricultural sector can be made more profitable.

For the past six years, the University of Central Florida (UCF) has teamed up with the St. Kitts-based Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College (CFBC) to implement a climate change education project for sustainable development in the region.

The institutions are reporting “tremendous success” using hydroponics, organoponics and hybrid-ponics, techniques that they insist are far more cost-effective.

“Climate change affects us all and one of the areas that we are most vulnerable is in the field of food security, namely agriculture. So my task as part of this team was to develop models to test various scenarios to see which one would be the most significant,” Stuart La Place, a lecturer at CFBC told IPS.

“Strawberries don’t usually grow in these climates but we have managed to grow them successfully and we are still growing them at the moment,” he said.

Hydroponics is a technique used to grow plants without soil, instead using mineral nutrient solutions in water.

The organoponics technique involves using a single layer of soil, sand, manure and potting soil for planting vegetables. La Place noted “this is being implemented in St. Kitts on a large scale at the moment.”

Hybridponics, he explained, “is a scenario we created at the college that lends itself to starting the initial growing techniques in hydro and then transplanting into the organo beds and we have had significant results.”

Former CFBC student Candace Richards agrees these methods are more cost-effective and profitable than traditional agriculture.

Noting that for a 20 by 20-foot plot, the hydroponic system costs 2,000 dollars to set up and the organoponics system 3,703 dollars, she said it’s “a worthy investment” since the estimated annual profits are in the region of 66,660 dollars after all costs are deducted. In comparison, a plot of the same size devoted to traditional agriculture produces approximately 740 dollars per month profit.

“This is better than traditional agriculture that requires more land space, is more labour intensive and presents challenges that can yield fewer crops,” Richards told IPS, pointing to the added advantage of having crops all year round rather than on a seasonal basis under traditional agriculture.

Using the organoponics method, it takes 45 days to get lettuce from seed to maturity, using 9.1 gallons of water; while with hydroponics, from a seed the lettuce takes 25 days to mature and uses significantly less water because it’s in a circulation system. The water keeps moving around and the only way out of that system is through the plant.

Growing lettuce the traditional way – planting in the ground – the growth cycle from a seed to maturity is 55 days and uses 11.3 gallons of water for a single plant from a dripper that delivers 50 milliletres per minute.

Each summer a group of UCF students visit St. Kitts and Nevis through the President’s Scholars programme at UCF to work with students at faculty at CFBC.

Charlene Kormondy was among 11 UCF students who travelled to St. Kitts and Nevis in 2012 under the programme.

“I was part of the agro technology team and our product was to build a shade house now known as the CFBC plant research facility,” she told IPS.

“When we got to St. Kitts we worked alongside students from St. Kitts and Nevis, CFBC professors and members of the local community to construct the shade house.

“It’s an example of action learning, implanting something that is a solution to a problem in the community and also generating knowledge about how to build these shade house systems and how to make agriculture more sustainable in the face of climate change, which you know could have temperature and precipitation impacts which could adversely affect crop production,” she said.

Now that the facility is up and running, Kormondy said it provides many tangible benefits to the community, including health benefits because the plants and vegetables grown there are substitutes for less healthy foods.

She said it can also lead to greater independence from foreign imports, and even gender equality.

“Women and children are the ones who are most vulnerable to climate-related disasters and socio-economic impacts, and this kind of agricultural system allows women to participate in agriculture but also have enough energy to devote to their role as primary caregivers and that’s because the growth of these plants are more efficient,” Kormondy said.

Another UCF student, Jessica Gottsleben, noted that a rise in tourism has led the economy and lucrative jobs to be less focused on agriculture, and food imports now exceed exports by a factor of four to one.

“Food supply is vulnerable from these climate-related disruptions,” she noted, adding that in future years the programme will seek to create local leaders from the youth being brought into the agricultural and business communities to increase self-sufficiency and resilience.

“The partnership has the potential to create jobs in existing sectors of agriculture and also create innovation in fostering jobs in areas such as agro tourism, agro processing, marketing, collecting evidence-based social data,” Gottsleben told IPS.

Sixteen CFBC students are currently registered in the programme and are trained in building the hydroponic system.

But UCF Professor Dr. Kevin Meehan said they are getting the wider community involved through what’s known as ‘The Take Five Programme’ that was implemented in February last year.

“We used a publicity campaign in print and electronic media to invite the general public as well as CFBC faculty to come to the campus to bring five containers (hence the name take five) and we would drill drainage holes in the containers, fill them with nutrient rich potting soil and then put in seedlings and then they would take those home to cultivate those buckets.”

Some 52 participants showed up over the course of three days at the CFBC campus.

“A second round of ‘Take Five’ was driven by the students and they adapted it as an outreach competition to the primary schools throughout the Federation,” Meehan said.

With funding from the Organisation of American States under the Special Multilateral Fund of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development, Dr. Meehan said they are now getting ready to implement the programme in Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana and at two separate locations in Haiti.

The UCF and CFBC representatives participated in a two-day UNESCO Sub-Regional Meeting on the environment and climate in Nevis on May 15 and 16.

It was organised by UNESCO in collaboration with the St. Kitts and Nevis National Commission on UNESCO and the Nevis Island Administration to support national adaptation policies to climate change in the Small Island Developing States of the Caribbean.

“Nowadays finance is an end in itself, to make money out of money, while it should be a tool to serve the economy and the people,” says Andrea Baranes, president of Fondazione Culturale Responsabilità Etica (the Cultural Foundation for Ethical Responsibility).

Andrea Baranes, president of Fondazione Culturale Responsabilità Etica. Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

“Finance lost its social role,” Baranes explains. “We need measures to change this route.”

The Cultural Foundation for Ethical Responsibility (FCRE, in Italian) is part of the Ethics Network Bank, a network of organisations that promote financial services and cultural, environmental and human protection.

FCRE is of the main partners of Terra Futura (Future Earth), a annual three-day forum and exhibition held in Florence where associations, institutions and citizens meet to exchange ideas and experiences on good practises in social, economic and environmental sustainability.

IPS correspondent Silvia Giannelli interviewed Baranes on the opening day of the forum about the purpose of the forum and the alterative models it can offer to alleviate Europe’s economic crisis.

Q: As this is the tenth edition of Terra Futura, how do you evaluate this experience?

A: It was definitely a positive one. Over the years, the public, exhibitors and local institutions have become more aware of the importance of networking.

It does not make sense to reflect on the environment, jobs, rights and so on, as separate things, the way it does not make sense to talk about ethical finance without considering responsible tourism, fair trade and solidarity based purchasing groups.

But when you put all these things together, creating a network that deals with consumption, production, living and eating habits, you can build a truly alternative economic model that has been shown to work better than the traditional one, not only from social and environmental perspectives but from an economic one too.

Q: This year Terra Futura is dedicated to the economic crisis and the effort to overcome it. In what direction is the European Union headed?

A: Unfortunately Europe nowadays means almost exclusively austerity, sacrifices and the like. Even worse, we see a Europe of the common currency, of the common markets, of the free movement of capital, but there is no social Europe.

From one side, we have the European Central Bank, with its monetary policies, but on the other there is no parliament, because the European Parliament has no regulatory authority.

Q: What are solutions can Terra Futura offer to these issues?

A: What we say here is that we need to act in two directions. One is top-down, by means of regulations, in order to close what we call “casinò finance” and to block tax havens.

We also need to act from the bottom-up, to promote virtuous models in the way we use our money. I truly believe that by putting together theoretical analysis and practise we can find real solutions.

Q: What are the priorities of the Ethics Network Bank in this economic phase?

A: Before the Italian elections, the Ethics Network Bank launched proposals under the name of “Let’s change finance to change Italy”. In these proposals we asked to reduce financial derivatives and increase transparency, close tax havens, and introduce a tax on financial transactions.

We also proposed measures to enhance ethical finance, like the revision of the Basel Accords, an international regulatory framework for banks, in order to prevent ethical banks and cooperatives from being penalised and to facilitate the service sector’s access to credit.

Q: Do other European countries have organisations similar to Ethics Network Bank?

A: There are many examples of ethical finance in Europe and in the world. The differences depend on the social context of the country.

The Netherlands, for instance, being a low-lying country, is concerned with climate change, and therefore to them ethical finance means investing in renewable energies and energy conservation.

In France, where trade unions are very strong, ethical finance corresponds to job creation. In Italy, it all started thanks to the initiative of grassroots associations and civil society, so Banca Etica has always been the bank of non-profits and social cooperatives.

They come from different models, and they are different organisations with different functions, but they all have essential elements in common: the importance of real economy, the attention towards social and environmental impacts and the rejection of speculation.

Q: On Saturday you will present the campaign “Con i miei soldi” (“With my money”). What is this campaign about?

A: Last year we launched “Non con i miei soldi” (“Not with my money”), which wanted to show how we often are not only victims but also accomplices of this crisis. The money in our bank accounts risks ending up in tax havens, in weapons or other polluting activities.

This year we wanted to be proactive and explain to people how, through ethical finance, their money can boost biological agriculture, fair trade, energy conservation, etc. That way, our little savings can eventually influence the choices made in the business world.

Q: Are you optimistic about the chances of Ethics Network Bank’s reflections and proposals being heard?

A: I have one main reason to be optimistic, which at the same time makes me angry. There are no technical challenges preventing the enforcement of our proposals. We know perfectly what needs to be done and how to do it.

What is missing is the political will. But we can change this, through campaigns and grassroots actions, just what we are trying to do here at Terra Futura.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presents plants to schoolchildren as part of the campaign "Gardens of Hope". Credit: Silvia Giannelli/IPS

As the global agricultural sector is faced with ever-greater challenges, the question of how to reform and improve the sector is a controversial and difficult one. So Terra Futura, a three-day exhibition and conference on agricultural good practises held annually in Florence, brought the debate back to its roots: seeds.

Terra Futura (Future Earth) has been held for ten years as a network for institutions, associations and civil society, which gather in Florence and exchange ideas and experiences for alternative and sustainable environmental, economical and social development.

Vandana Shiva, a scientist and environmental activist, presented a series of initiatives to defend the survival of local and traditional seeds. The initiatives connected land, food sovereignty, biodiversity and environment.

Shiva presented the “law of the seed”, a campaign targeting intellectual property and patents claimed by agribusiness giants. The project aims to reaffirm the centrality of biological and natural rules against the logic of the agribusiness sector, which relies on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), monocultures and intensive agriculture.

“What we intend to achieve is to overturn the logic behind the criminalisation of ordinary seeds and protect the right of farmers to breed their own seeds,” Shiva told IPS.

Yet the current trend seems to be running in the opposite direction, with multinational companies trying to impose the use of patented, genetically modified seeds, with disastrous consequences for local farmers, especially in the third world.

“We have already seen what the entry of Monsanto [a multinational company in agricultural biotechnology and leader of genetically engineered seeds], has done to the cotton sector in India,” Shiva explained.

She added that “95 percent of cotton seed is currently owned and controlled by Monsanto, causing farmers to get into deep dept to pay the royalties”.

Staving off GMOs

According to Beppe Croce, the head of the non-food agriculture section of Legambiente, Italy’s biggest environmental organisation, Europe has managed so far to keep the cultivation of GMOs outside its borders. “From a legislative point of view, the local production is protected,” he said.

The problem lies instead in what European countries import from abroad, as Croce explained to IPS. “Most of our animal feed is integrated with imported products, such as soy and maize. More than half of the total maize cultivated in the world is transgenic,” he said. “This is why we need to strengthen and uniform the tracking system of imported products throughout Europe.”

Giovanni Fabris, national coordinator of Altragricoltura, a national farmers’ movement for food sovereignty, is similarly critical of Europe’s importation policies. During a workshop on access to land in Italian agriculture, he noted, “Europe is focusing on guaranteeing its citizens with the cheapest food possible, regardless of where it comes from.”

According to Fabris, this policy is undermining the production system of countries like Italy, which “have to face the competition of agroindustrial systems outside Europe that are obviously cheaper than ours”.

Under such circumstances, the odds of GMO cultivation not entering Europe seem all but impossible.

“The argument is always the same: the population is growing and we need GMOs to meet the future food demand,” Croce pointed out. “The truth is that production cannot be boosted indiscriminately everywhere, and most of all, it does not need to be done via GM techniques.”

But the lobbying efforts of agribusiness companies are finding new ways of breaking through. On May 6, the European Commission drafted legislation that prevents farmers from producing their own seeds.

“This draft is an example of criminalising the alternative to GMO,” Shiva told IPS. “They would like only patented seeds, all royalties flowing, farmers having no freedom to choose what to grow and consumers having no freedom to choose what to eat.”

People power

But citizens are rediscovering the value of good food, as demonstrated by phenomena and movements such as Slow Food, solidarity-based purchasing groups, and urban gardens. After a half-century of industry control, “people are experimenting [with] new solutions to have more control [over] what they eat,” Shiva said.

Another initiative, “Seeds of Future, Gardens of Hope”, is moving in the same direction. It is being promoted by Shiva’s non-profit organisation, Navdanya International. Through it, children in Florence’s primary schools are given plants of local species to grow in their gardens.

“We are not just talking about education. We are talking about them being the custodian,” Shiva told IPS.

“But everyone is a child in this matter,” she added. “Farmers have been made into children in the sense that they have been made to forget they are savers and breeders of seeds. Consumers have been made to forget that food begins with seed. So, in a way, this it is education for all, education for life.”

Capannori, a rural town in the Italian province of Lucca, in Tuscany, boasts a proud history. Six years ago, it became a trendsetter and leader, not just in Italy but throughout all of Europe, as the continent’s first Zero Waste town.

Today, about 3.5 million Italian citizens carefully separate their waste into coloured bags before leaving them on their doorsteps for collection. The movement has spread further, too, to other European countries.

Giorgio del Ghingaro, the mayor of Capannori (population 46,000), defines this trend as a “cultural revolution” that began with rubbish and in time went much further. Since 2007, residents of Capannori have reduced their urban waste by 30 percent as part of a Zero Waste strategy, which calls for the elimination of all superfluous waste – anything that can be recycled – by 2020.

In Capannori, they are determined to meet this deadline. “Zero waste by 2020 is no utopia,” Del Ghingaro told IPS. “It is a concrete goal that we intend to achieve”.

Initially, the project looked quite ambitious. Its model was that of San Francisco, California, which differs from the Tuscan town in size and conformation. Nevertheless, Capannori’s midterm goal of recycling 75 percent of waste by 2015 was met long in advance; the town currently recycles 82 percent.

After Capannori tested door-to-door collection methods in one part of the town, successfully increasing waste recycling from 30 to 70 percent, “we decided to embark in the zero waste adventure”, Del Ghingaro said.

Locals leading the charge

Since then, Capannori’s waste management has become a model for all of Europe. Joan Marc Simon, executive director of Zero Waste Europe and European coordinator of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, confirms that the Zero Waste strategy came to Spain through the Italian experience.

“When it comes to waste, Italy has given the best and worst examples. But if you look at the good practices…Italy, and Capannori in particular, was definitely the model to follow,” Simon said.

Since 2008, one hundred cities in Spain, all concentrated in Catalonia and the Basque Country, have adopted the strategy. “Southern Europe is giving a lesson on how things can and should be done in a more sustainable way,” Simon stressed.

Rossano Ercolini, Capannori resident, primary school teacher and environmental activist who is the winner of the Goldman Prize for the environment, knows well how local experience can serve the rest of Europe. After all, he is the man who introduced the Zero Waste strategy to Italy – and Europe.

It all started in 1997, when construction plans for an incinerator near the town encountered firm opposition. Ercolini, who is also president of Zero Waste Europe and of Ambiente e Futuro (Environment and Future), a local environmental movement, was part of it.

“Ambiente e Futuro engaged in a strong fight against this proposal,” he explained. Key to the movement’s success was “informing the population about the risks of incineration and offering them a viable alternative. Without the citizens’ commitment, none of this would be possible.”

In introducing the alternative method of separate collection, “we held assemblies…to explain the new system and to hear people’s doubts and concerns,” Ercolini recounted. “We worked together to find solutions.”

Luigi, 67, has lived in Capannori for over 40 years. “People always find a reason to complain,” he said of the door-to-door collection system. “But honestly, I find the system quite easy.” Residents are given different rubbish bins and coloured bags, along with an informational flyer. “If you get it wrong, they just leave a note explaining why they could not collect your bag”.

Indeed, the town decided to avoid fines, so as not to penalise residents for mistakes, and to reward residents instead. Beginning in January, they introduced something called an R-feed waste system.

“Every family has been given a fixed number of gray bags… for non-recyclable waste, with a code on it. The garbage collector has a reader which stores the data so that every family will pay waste tax according to how much non-recyclable rubbish they produced throughout the year,” Del Ghingaro explained.

Targeting the source

Zero Waste does not mean just door-to-door separate collection. It also requires a series of parallel actions aimed at reducing the production of avoidable waste. “We strongly focused on water,” Del Ghingaro told IPS. “Buying water at the supermarket means also buying a lot of plastic. Therefore we made a strong campaign in order to enhance the use of public water.”

Fifteen public water springs were restored and purified, and plastic bottles have been banned from all schools and public buildings, which now use only public water.

For now, Ercolini’s task is to analyse the 18 percent of rubbish that still requires traditional waste management and find a solution. The results so far show that the main problem lies at the roots of the production chain. “Companies need to take responsibility for what they put on the market and redesign their products in order to make them sustainable,” he says.

Following a letter of concern that the Capannori Municipality wrote to the coffee giant Lavazza, the company started a pilot project to substitute standard non-recyclable coffee capsules for espresso machines with new, reusable ones. “We are also studying a way to use the coffee grounds to grow mushrooms,” Ercolini added.

Zero Waste Europe’s Simon told IPS that he is optimistic and convinced that the Zero Waste strategy could become the standard for waste management. Indeed the EU, through the Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Strategy, has already established that by 2020 all European countries must stop using incinerators to burn anything that can be recycled.

“Our movement is nothing but the vanguard of what…needs to become the norm,” Simon concluded.

US Army Corps of Engineers tours flooded areas in Burlington, North Dakota in 2011. Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Patrick Moes

Seven in 10 U.S. citizens believe climate change is real and happening now. Yet most have never even contacted a government official about the issue, let alone volunteered with an environmental organisation or taken other action.

These findings are part of an exploration of Climate Change in the American Mind issued  by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.

“They think it’s about polar bears or developing countries, not the United States… not my community, not my friends and family,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project, told IPS.

Researchers divided the U.S. population into “six Americas” that share similar beliefs about climate change. Seventy percent belong to three major “Americas” that believe, to a more or less strong degree, that climate change is happening, is harmful and is caused by humans.

After falling between 2008 and 2010, public awareness on the topic here has been rising again, probably because of the number and severity of extreme weather events in the last two years. The trend was confirmed by an opinion poll released in April by the Gallup Institute.

The latest dire warning came just this week, when the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, announced that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had passed the critical threshold of 400 parts per million.

To put this number in perspective, the last time the Earth had a similar concentration of CO2 was three million years ago during the Pliocene era, when sea levels were up to 80 feet higher.

“The main way people know about this issue is through media reporting,” Leiserowitz explained. “And when the media don’t report it, it’s literally out of sight and out of mind.”

Bringing climate change down to earth

Television weather forecasters seem ideally suited to become climate change educators: they speak to thousands or even millions of people every day, often three to four times a day, and they are already trusted by their audiences.

The Yale Project is providing them with tools and training to discuss climate change, connecting them with the climate science community and organising debates with meteorologists who hold varying opinions of climate change to foster dialogue.

The idea of making information more accessible also inspired Climate Commons, an online interactive map of the United States, launched on Apr. 22 by the organisation Internews, as part of its Earth Journalism Network (EJN).

Data on climate change indicators – such as temperature, weather events and emissions – and related news stories are visualised on the map, tracking the impact of global warming and the presence, or absence, of media coverage.

“We are hoping that journalists and other communicators, as well as the general public, can all use this visualisation and can understand better what’s going on,” James Fahn, global director of EJN, told IPS.

“Eventually we do definitely want this map to become a source for bottom-up news and information and then observations and news from the public,” he said.

Because while a “good understanding of the problem … is necessary, it’s not sufficient,” he said, adding that more spaces are needed for citizen participation in actual policy making.

Shaping environmental democracy

“Ultimately, how we protect our environment is a fundamental question of how we … exercise our democracy,” Michael Marx, director of the Beyond Oil Campaign at Sierra Club, the largest grassroots environmental organisation in the U.S., told IPS.

David Eisenhauer of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) agreed, telling IPS that “providing an opportunity for citizen input is foundational to our democracy”.

In March, the USFWS released its “Climate Adaptation Strategy” outlining nationwide strategies for the next five to 10 years to protect species and resources in a changing climate. Written in response to a 2010 call by the U.S. Congress and produced in collaboration with federal, state and tribal agencies, the strategy benefited during its draft stage from nearly 55,000 comments from individuals and organisations.

The range of actions that can be taken by ordinary citizens to address climate change is broad, and can be as simple as keeping the thermostat in one’s home on a lower setting, as one commenter suggested.

“The combination of personal behaviour choices and civic engagement and activism is a potent tool that has global scale consequences,” said Marx.

According to Leiserowitz, changing individual lifestyles in the United States could cut emissions by 10 percent. “The other 90 percent really has to come from a systemic change,” he said.

That means that public demands for change in the U.S need to be more systematic and urgent, said Leiserowitz.

On Feb. 17, the Sierra Club participated in a Forward on Climate Rally that drew an estimated 40,000 people in Washington D.C.

“We do not see the diversity and occasional conflict within the climate movement as a bad thing,” Marx said. “We accept that a democratic approach – as divisive and chaotic as it can appear – is also the most resilient and strongest [one].”

Fears of “big government”

Climate change is not only an environmental issue, Leiserowitz pointed out. It cuts across multiple aspects of society, including the economy, national security, and cultural and religious beliefs.

Some opponents of actions like mandatory emissions cuts fear they could be a pretext to usher in more intrusive government, as has been seen in other hot-button debates over issues like gun control and health care.

“They’re so afraid of the policy response that they suddenly become very sceptical of the problem itself,” said Leiserowitz.

“This is about something much deeper. It’s about identity, about values, it’s about emotions, and if you don’t know that that’s what you’re dealing with, you will eternally be frustrated when you provide them with more and more facts and they don’t respond the way you think they are going to.”

Kawerau geothermal centre in New Zealand. Credit: Courtesy of New Zealand Trade & Enterprise

Chile is one of the countries with the greatest potential for geothermal energy development in Latin America, but a lack of incentives for investment in the sector has kept it from moving past the exploratory phase. A strategic partnership with New Zealand aims to change that situation.

Geothermal energy is the heat energy from deep inside the Earth, which is brought to the near surface by thermal conduction and in some areas rises to the surface in natural streams of hot water or steam. This steam can be harnessed to power a turbine and generate electricity.

This long, narrow South American country stretches 4,270 kilometres along the slopes of the Andes Mountains, the world’s longest volcanic chain, according to the Andean Geothermal Centre of Excellence at the University of Chile.

Ten percent of all of the world’s volcanoes are found in Chile, “which represents significant potential in geological terms,” Gonzalo Salgado of the Chilean Geothermal Energy Association (ACHEGEO) told Tierramérica.

Chile forms part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of volcanoes and earthquake epicentres that in the Americas also encompasses Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, Mexico and parts of Argentina, Bolivia, the United States and Canada. This belt contains numerous virgin territories for thermal energy exploration, said Salgado.

Geothermal energy offers a means of achieving greater energy self-sufficiency in Chile, which currently depends on imports for 70 percent of its energy needs.

“The solutions (for energy dependency) are numerous: we need to talk about energy efficiency and many other things, but obviously, geothermal power is one of the inputs that could help to solve this problem,” Salgado added.

According to a report from the Renewable Energies Centre of the Ministry of Energy, in 2012 non-conventional renewable energy sources represented five percent of the country’s total installed capacity for electricity production.

By comparison, renewable energy sources accounted for 77 percent of the electrical power supply in New Zealand in 2011.

The Chilean government currently aims to reach a 10 percent renewable energy share by 2024, although a bill is currently under discussion in Congress that would raise this target to 15 or 20 percent.

Chile was a pioneer in studying its geothermal potential. The first exploration was conducted in 1907 in El Tatio, a geyser field in the north of the country, and two wells were drilled in the area in 1931.

In the late 1960s, with the support of international financing, the government embarked on more systematic exploration in El Tatio, but these activities were eventually suspended.

In 2008, the Geotérmica del Norte consortium launched exploration activities in the Zoquete ravine, a few kilometres from El Tatio.

In September of the following year, a 60-metre plume of steam erupted from one of the wells drilled by the consortium to extract and re-inject geothermal fluids in order to evaluate the area’s potential for energy generation. This anomaly, which continued for more than three weeks, led the government to revoke the permit for these operations.

Despite the alarm that this incident caused among the public, which had begun to show interest in geothermal energy, Salgado maintains that it “did not affect the development” of this energy source in Chile.

Luis Mariano Rendón, director of Acción Ecológica, an environmental organisation, told Tierramérica that while all power generation has harmful effects, “geothermal energy is a relatively low-impact source of power generation” that Chile should pursue. The most pertinent factor would be the availability of water, which could limit its use in arid regions of the country, he noted.

Studies by the University of Chile estimate that the country could generate 16,000 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power, while the installed capacity for electricity production is 16,970 MW and the maximum demand is around 9,000 MW, according to official figures from February 2012.

A total of 76 concessions have been granted for geothermal exploration throughout the country, while another 42 are currently being processed and 24 are under study. However, as of now, not a single megawatt of power is produced from this source in Chile.

This situation spurred ACHEGEO to organise its 2nd International Congress on Geothermal Energy, held Apr. 11 and 12. The subjects discussed included legislation, the electricity market, environmental issues, and the need for risk insurance for geothermal drilling failure in Chile.

“What is needed is deep exploration drilling,” for which this type of insurance is crucial, as it would serve as a “concrete and tangible” incentive for the investment required, said Salgado.

To boost its geothermal development, Chile announced a strategic partnership with New Zealand, where 15 percent of electricity is produced from this source.

The Wairakei power station, built in 1957 in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island, was the world’s first wet steam power station and is still in operation today.

“In the last seven years, seven projects have been developed in New Zealand that add up to 550 MW. Thanks to these projects, all of them successful, we have been able to accumulate a good deal of knowledge and experience,” said Bernard Hill, the president of Geothermal New Zealand, an international geothermal consulting and promotion agency.

According to Hill, Chile is the country with the second greatest geothermal potential after Indonesia.

“The international geothermal industry is small, so the people involved know each other. Chile is seen as an important place for geothermal energy and this is reflected in the number of companies that are studying the possibility of investing here,” said Andrea Blair, the geothermal business development manager at GNS Science, another New Zealand-based consultancy firm in the sector.

Companies in New Zealand are seeking the development of mutual support, which would include the transfer of technological know-how with Chile, Blair told Tierramérica.

“Nobody knows Chile better than the Chileans themselves, and we know quite a lot about geothermal development, and so by working together we can ensure that our projects are successful,” she said.

In addition to its scientific and technological expertise, New Zealand can also offer its own experience in relations with indigenous communities when it comes to planning a project.

“There has to be a genuine commitment to the communities and to trying to understand the other side’s point of view, to know what they need, what they want, by maintaining a transparent discussion at all times,” said Blair.

“In New Zealand, the Maoris are part of the project and often they share in the profits as well,” she added.

The scenario she describes contrasts sharply with the situation in Chile, where numerous plans have been halted by the courts due to the opposition of indigenous communities who demand their right to prior consultation, in accordance with Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization.

In New Zealand, on the other hand, “before developing a project, the company has to go and speak with the owners of the land, who are almost always indigenous, and if they do not agree, the project doesn’t go forward,” said Blair.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Participants in CBA-7 taking part in a brainstorming session. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Adaptation and mitigation. Identified by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and by scientists as the two major responses to address the problem, these were also the twin preoccupations of a climate change conference held recently in Dhaka.

Some 200 environmentalists, scientists, policymakers, academics, government and non-government officials as well as international development partners converged on the capital city of Bangladesh to discuss ways community-based adaptation (CBA) could be made more holistic, incorporating sectors such as food, water, education, health, energy, livelihood opportunities, poverty reduction and social mobilisation.

A joint initiative of the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) – a research, policy and implementation organisation in Dhaka – and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a UK-based think-tank which works in partnership with fellow organisations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Dhaka plenary was the seventh edition of the CBA conference or CBA-7.

“As time goes by, climate change impacts will only get more severe,” Atiq Rahman, executive director of BCAS and co-chair of the Climate Action Network South Asia, told IPS. “If the industrialised nations do not take their roles seriously, then it could lead to catastrophic consequences.”

Speaker after speaker underlined the urgency of addressing the needs of communities vulnerable to climate change. There was not a moment to be lost, they emphasised: the time to act was now.

“It is a race against time,” said Tracy Kajumba, a capacity-building and advocacy coordinator for the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) in Uganda.

“The earlier we get into action, the better it will be. Otherwise, the cost of adaptation will only become higher, leading to population displacement, conflict and increased poverty, and hence huge global tensions,” she commented to IPS.

World leaders also needed to invest more, both in terms of commitment and funds, the experts agreed.

“The world leaders had promised to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century,” Rahman said. “Unfortunately, that has already been
superseded.”

“Honestly speaking,” Susan Nanduddu of the Development Network of Indigenous Voluntary Associations in Uganda remarked to IPS, “the rich nations do not have the will to respond to the damages made by climate change.”

Neither the will, nor the money, it seems. Simon Anderson, head of the IIED climate change group, told IPS, “Many countries affected by climate change have not yet received the proportion or scale of global climate funds to respond to the needs of adaptation strategies. This is a global failure.”

“There is a huge investment gap,” Rahman agreed, “and until that is met, there will be serious political tensions which will lead to conflicts.”

Global efforts – and funds – needed to be channelled mainly in two directions, the experts felt: adaptation strategies to reduce the vulnerability of communities, and the scaling up of mitigation efforts to combat the ever-growing threat of global warming.

“I am afraid the world leaders are not doing enough to focus on the need for adaptation strategies,” Saskia Daggett, ACCRA international coordinator, told IPS. “The funds are the biggest challenge here, and there are huge gaps.”

Kajumba too urged world leaders to make sure adaptation and mitigation interventions were uppermost in all their funding and programme priorities.

But until the funds started coming in, there was something else that could be done, Nanduddu proposed. “Every year you have negotiations for funds to address climate change but the trickledown result is insignificant. So communities have to wake up and do something on their own.”

This means scaling up CBA activities to involve more and more affected communities, in order to build capacity and reduce climate change-induced risks, she said.

“We are not making the most of our opportunities,” Nanduddu stated. “This platform is a real chance to recognise voices and make everything fairer and accessible to those who suffer the most.”

Such scaling up would involve the restructuring and modification of successful adaptation programmes, for them to be implemented in similar environments. These could be areas of saline water intrusion, extreme drought, severe cyclones, water-logging and devastating floods or riverbank erosion.

However, developing the design, demonstration and implementation of all CBA programmes in an organised way would require massive coordination and mobilisation. Hence, the need for a multi-pronged strategy.

For one, it could involve local government agencies entering into more serious interactions with communities and taking lessons from their adaptation initiatives.

The knowledge generated could then be integrated and intensified with CBA initiatives. In turn, these could be used as approaches to reducing climate change risks and enhancing resilience, the speakers noted.

Similarly, they observed, central and local government agencies could integrate this horizontally in all their agencies.

“Adaptation plans have to be long term,” said Nanduddu, “and integrating the adaptation strategies into national development plans is the main challenge here.”

“What we are trying to do here,” Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, told IPS, “is to narrow the gaps between the top-down approach of national governments and the bottom-up approach of communities and civil society.”

Highlighting another aspect, Tianna Scozzaro of the Washington-based research and advocacy group Population Action International said, “We are looking at what the impact of migration and urbanisation due to climate change means to urban communities and hence, in a broader sense, looking at population growth and women’s empowerment.

“We want to mobilise resources to meet the unmet needs of women’s reproductive health and how they can adapt to change in such extreme weather,” she told IPS.

Cutting trees in Nicaragua. Deforestation is inherent to the predatory economy, whether for the exploitation of the timber itself, the soil beneath the trees, or resources in the subsoil. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

More than two dozen environmental organisations are urging California Governor Jerry Brown to disregard recommendations from a United Nations task force to include so-called forest “offsets” in the state’s new emissions-trading scheme.

The offsets would serve as a mechanism by which emissions-producing companies in California could continue to pollute if they compensate foreign governments for the protection of their own forests.

But critics say the consequences of such a policy would have repercussions that extend far beyond the environment.

“Independent investigations into the promotion of international forest offsets have raised serious concerns related to human rights violations and there is major opposition from indigenous peoples and local communities in both Chiapas, Mexico and in Acre, Brazil,” the groups said in an open letter sent this weekend.

Environmental groups say the move would simply shift the pollution from one country to another, rather than addressing the root causes of deforestation and climate pollution. The scheme would also create another set of economic and social problems for the communities in the regions paid to preserve their forests.

“Offsets are problematic in a number of ways,” Jeff Conant, director of the International Forests Programme at the U.S. office of Friends of the Earth, an activist network, told IPS. “First, they don’t actually reduce emissions. They just misplace emissions.”

The recommendations to include the offsets in new climate change-related legislation in California (known as AB-32) came from the REDD Offset Working Group (ROW), formed to implement a collaborative effort designed by the United Nations called REDD (which stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

As described by the U.N., REDD is “a mechanism to create an incentive for developing countries to protect, better manage and wisely use their forest resources, contributing to the global fight against climate change.”

Although California’s AB-32 already has a domestic offset exchange programme, the move to expand it globally prompted a vehement response last week from groups in Mexico worried about the possibility of “land-grabbing”.

The REDD programme “allows Northern polluters to purchase forest carbon offset credits from the global South,” the 15 groups, from Chiapas, Mexico, wrote in late April.

“This Agreement is underpinned by the logic of capitalist accumulation: it enables the purchase of carbon credits that will legally allow the continuation of the predatory and consumerist model.”

The response recommends instead that the “consumerist countries of the North … implement urgent mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without substitutions or offsets, and with a focus on the reduction goals of their own countries”.

‘Gaming, corruption, error’

“In Chiapas, you have customary titles and [land] rights that haven’t been fully resolved,” Bill Barclay, climate policy advisor at Rainforest Action Network, and advocacy group based here, told IPS.

“It’s a very complicated situation, and when you bring in someone who might come in and impose that and do it quickly and cheaply, it elevates social conflict.”

These critics are also wary of the potential pitfalls that could accompany payments to countries with little oversight and government accountability.

“Once you involve international entities – especially the most impoverished states in the hemisphere – you’re getting to a state … with a lot of gaming, corruption, fraud and error,” Jeff Conant says.

Activists say these problems shine a light on the broader complications that tend to lurk in a system as complicated as emissions trading or “carbon markets”.

“This is about the most complicated way you could come up with to try to bring money into the market to reduce emissions and generate innovations,” Conant says.

“There’s an ideology that says that allowing the markets to fix the climate problem is the most efficient way to go… Unfortunately, [the market] does not work in the favour of the most marginalised communities that are on the front lines.”

In fact, carbon offsets have critics even among pro-market economists. The new letter references the findings of a 2011 report that examined REDD from a “market perspective”, using the authors’ “experience in derivatives trading and systems architecture”.

Known as the Munden Report, it found that “using carbon markets to finance REDD… is likely to be a drain of resources, both in terms of money and time, away from the very serious problems REDD seeks to address.”

The letter from environmental groups also comes just as new reports have emerged on collapsing carbon prices in Europe, where the world’s first and most established carbon market is floundering.

Although the European system decided not to rely on forest offsets, many are still suggesting that the collapse of the E.U. carbon prices could have ripple effects for similar markets worldwide, particularly as advocates push for interlinking these systems down the road.

Both the price collapse in Europe and the social consequences of an international carbon offset exchange have bolstered support for the more direct carbon tax. Although this has been the preferred mechanism by environmental groups, it continues to be thought politically unviable in the U.S., at least for the time being.

“I think there is going to be a greater shift to carbon fees and away from carbon markets,” Barclay of the Rainforest Action Network told IPS.

“The carbon market is just proving to be extremely complicated, and not benefiting people at all. There’s just too much gaming and speculation, and it’s been too poorly regulated.”

Women ragpickers in Delhi scavenging through a pile of refuse for recyclable material. Credit: Dharmendra Yadav/IPS.

India’s planners worry about ‘jobless growth’, but perhaps nothing illustrates this phenomenon better than a policy of handing over the collection and disposal of the capital’s refuse to large private corporations, leaving close to 50,000 ragpickers unemployed.

For decades ragpickers provided a service to this city, scavenging waste for recyclable plastic, aluminium, glass and other materials, and earning a livelihood by selling their pickings to contractors with equipment to process the waste into useful items like fibre-reinforced roofing sheets.

“We could easily make 300 rupees (5.50 dollars)  between us on a good day,” says Nafeesa, who lives in a slum on the edge of the Tughlaqabad landfill with her three children. Now with the new waste disposal policy in place, Nafeesa says she is left with no choice but to return to an uncertain future in her village in Badayun district, Uttar Pradesh state.

Last year, defying Supreme Court strictures against incineration technologies, the Delhi government opened its first waste-to-energy (WTE) plant at Okhla under a public-private partnership (PPP). Two more are coming up fast on the same PPP basis.

“A 16 megawatt (MW) WTE plant has been commissioned at Okhla, utilising about 1,950 tons of municipal solid waste daily. Work on another WTE plant at Ghazipur of 10 MW, utilising 1,300 tons of waste per day is in progress, and a third plant with 24 MW capacity, utilising 3,000 tons of waste, has been approved for Narela,” Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dixit informed the Delhi state assembly in March.

The Okhla plant is registered as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto protocol on the grounds that the power it generates can be offset against carbon that might otherwise have been produced by burning coal, gas or other fossil fuels.

But this claim has been challenged as fraudulent by environmental activists who say that the plant has departed from its original design and uses technology that is not approved for residential and ecologically sensitive areas such as Okhla.

According to Gopal Krishna of Toxics Watch, an environmental NGO, the plant violates a Supreme Court ruling which restricts waste processing to non-incineration technologies. “The plant is also sited within the eco-sensitive zone of the Okhla Bird Sanctuary and the Asola Wildlife Park, which are protected by court orders,” Krishna told IPS.

Okhla’s residents are concerned about what the CDM does not take into account – carcinogenic dioxins, furans and heavy metals that are byproducts of incinerating municipal waste. The residents are fighting to get the plant closed down through a petition that is currently being heard at the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

Nafeesa hopes that that the NGT will shut the plant down for reasons that are more dire. Its continued operation means that she and her fellow ragpickers will remain jobless. “Ragpicking is hard labour, but it does not require any special skill,” explains Nafeesa.

The Okhla incinerator has already finished off hundreds of jobs, according to surveys conducted by the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group (CERAG) that has been working to improve the lives of ragpickers who efficiently took care of the bulk of the 10,000 tons of garbage generated by the city’s 17 million residents.

“While the ragpickers segregated up to 60 percent of waste for recycling, the large corporations which have been awarded concessions to process waste are required to recycle only 20 percent of the refuse they collect,” says Bharati Chaturvedi of CERAG.

Studies conducted by CERAG at Ghazipur and Tughlaqabad show that waste processing at the landfills is the only income-generating activity for most of the inhabitants.

“Most families have at least one member working as a waste picker or supplement their earnings by sorting waste part-time,” says a CERAG study published in 2011. “It is common for children who attend school to spend one or two hours in the evening sorting metal waste, and this provides many families with an important source of supplemental income.”

With the Ghazipur WTE plant nearing completion, the ragpicker families in the nearby slum clusters have begun to move to areas of Delhi that are still out of the reach of the new waste management corporations. Others, like Nafeesa in Tughlaqabad, are planning to return to their distant villages.

“Corporatisation of waste management has been at an environmental cost and has had a hugely negative social fallout,” Dharmendra Yadav, general secretary of Lok Adhikar (People’s Right), a major non-governmental organisation that is working to rehabilitate younger ragpickers by getting them into schools.

“We need urgently to get children formerly employed as ragpickers into schools,” Mahabal Mishra, who represents the West Delhi constituency in Parliament tells IPS. “We are already trying to set up permanent homes for ragpickers.”

But, according to Krishna, the problems created by handing over the management of waste to large corporations are far more complex than building a few shelters and schools. “It is not only depriving people of jobs but bringing in technologies that are costly, unsustainable and dangerously polluting in a thickly populated city like Delhi.

“WTE plants depend on waste with a high calorific value such as paper, cartons, plastics and multi-layered packaging and, in a city like Delhi, all these are taken out  to be reprocessed, leaving nothing that will burn,” said Krishna. “According to existing laws it is illegal to incinerate plastics which have high calorific value.”

In fact, the website of the Delhi government’s environment department reads: “Delhi had one municipal waste incinerator, but it never worked because Indian waste has low calorific value and is unsuitable for incineration.”

Yadav says that one way to help the ragpickers is to formalise their activity and pay them to undertake door-to-door refuse collection along with efforts at rehabilitation. “This could easily be factored into the costs of building expensive WTE plants, but who is listening?”