A famous saying goes: To whom much is given, much is expected. This is the message that the African Development Bank (AfDB) is carrying and delivering for, and on behalf of Africa at the global conference on climate change, COP21, which opened Monday, 30th November.

“All fingers are not equal. Those who pollute more should do more in saving our planet,” said AfDB President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, who is leading his bank’s team at the climate change conference in Paris.

Adesina, a former Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria, knows what climate change has done and what its implications are for Africa’s agricultural development if nothing is done to halt global warming.

“The danger that Africa will not be able to feed itself is a real one. And if we don’t have resources to adapt to climate change, Africa will not be able to unlock potential in agriculture,” said Adesina, highlighting the implications of climate change variability on Africa’s agricultural transformation agenda.

He says the bank’s message at the COP 21 was clear: a new climate deal that does not work for Africa is no deal at all.

According to Dr. Adesina, the major and historic polluters must take a fair share of responsibility not only to cut their emissions but also help the suffering adapt to climate impacts.

The AfDB’s stance resonates with a long standing position of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN)which has been pushing for a common but differentiated principle demanding historic emitters to cut emissions to keep warming below 1.5 degrees celsius and provide funding for adaptation for vulnerable countries, most of which are in Africa.

With impacts ranging from droughts and floods affecting agricultural production and water availability in the southern and Sahel regions of Africa, to shrinking rivers, a classic example being Lake Chad, African countries are hoping for a climate deal that would address these challenges both in the short and long term.

“Adaptation as you know is key for Africa but this time we are demanding a high level of adaptation equal to mitigation because we know that the two are closely linked,” Chair of the African Group of Negotiators Nagmeldin Elhassan told a high level panel discussion at the on-going climate talks in Paris.

Nagmeldin said African heads of state are expecting nothing short of a fair and just deal for the continent, a victim of circumstances it never caused.

He said adaptation would be a key issue at the COP 21 negotiating table for Africa as over the years, the African Group of Negotiators has been seeking for parity between mitigation, adaptation and provisions for enhancing means of implementation, noting the increased burden for adaptation in developing countries.

“When we speak adaptation, we link it to means of implementation as a way of getting developed countries involved to provide support,” the AGN chair said.

And the African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, Rhoda Peace Tumutsime puts it categorically that, “Unless we get a good deal here, that will help with the right technology, we will not be able to modernize and transform agriculture.”

The question of means of implementation is a critical component of this year’s COP. According the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa-(UNECA), climate change could stimulate developing economies into adapting sustainable development paths, through entrepreneurial opportunities, and spaces for policy makers to address equity concerns in gender and youth policies.

Dr. Carlos Lopez of UNECA argues Africa’s possible positive outcome from danger. “Despite all the negative news that is reported about Africa, there are opportunities that we can take advantage of. It is very important to get the perceptions right about Africa’s challenges and available opportunities. In all the bad news are potential areas for growth,” he said.

Dr Lopez said Africa has a massive advantage to develop differently by embracing the opportunities that climate change offers to develop sustainably.

“It is also important for us to realize that we are not going to make it using the same carbon intensive model…let’s take for example, under the 2063 agenda we have to create 122 million jobs. Following the carbon path, we will only create 54 million jobs, but what about the deficit?” he asked.

Citing various examples of opportunities among which is renewable energy owing to Africa’s natural potential of solar, the UNECA Chief is more than convinced that the continent should be part of the solution and “achieve industrialization which is cleaner, greener, without following the carbon model.”

However, the question of resources still remains. Will the climate deal offer Africa this opportunity? The next week or so will decide what and which way forward.

(End)

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
ROME, Dec 3 2015 (IPS)

Investing in a low carbon infrastructure, particularly renewable energy, is key to addressing climate change. The really big investment challenges are in the developing world where access to modern energy services is far below what is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals; indeed, almost two billion people still lack access to electricity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAO

Raising income levels in poorer countries will require closing these massive energy gaps. The big challenge is to do this cleanly.

The threshold for energy sufficiency can be established at around 100kwh per capita per day. Up to this level, there is a very strong correlation between increased energy consumption and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. At current prices, between 10 and 20 dollars per day are needed to buy the requisite energy services. But spending 10 dollars per day on energy services would exhaust the average incomes of even middle income countries such as Angola, Ecuador and Macedonia. This takes the challenge well beyond the ‘bottom billion’ or less living below the World Bank’s recently revised $1.90 per capita per day poverty line.

Today, coal and some large hydroelectric dams are the only sources that generate energy at sufficiently low cost. Consequently, while the only way to achieve sustainable development in the face of accelerating climate change is with an energy infrastructure built around renewable energy (of which the most significant are probably solar power, wind and biofuels) as well as carbon capture and storage, these are currently still unaffordable options. Without subsidies, modern energy would remain beyond the reach of poor families and communities for generations to come.

Currently much touted market-based solutions run the risk, particularly if insufficiently regulated, of actually working against sustainable development objectives because they seek to raise energy prices to make renewable energy more attractive to private investors. Instead, what is needed is a strategy that will significantly reduce the cost of renewable energy services.

The most promising option is a massive public investment push, coupled with appropriate subsidies to offset high initial prices in the short term. If targeted at the most promising technology options (e.g., solar and wind), such a strategy would trigger an early cost write down through innovation and scale economies, giving the private sector clear and credible signals, and encouraging energy efficiency.

The main constraint to such a big push is access to predictable and affordable finance, particularly where domestic markets are small. As their carbon-fueled economic prosperity has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe, the onus is on rich country governments to fund the big push into clean energy sources in the developing world. So far, they have not risen to the challenge; despite commitments made at Kyoto, before Copenhagen in 2009 and elsewhere since, the resources for climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries remain paltry.

Supporting a big push into clean energy services in the developing world will, almost certainly, exceed the Marshall Plan which committed one per cent of US annual GDP to finance European reconstruction after World War Two, equivalent to well over 150 billion dollars today. This time, the onus should not fall on one country alone, and a broader mix of additional financing sources will be needed to fund the required public investment programmes in energy efficiency, renewables and forest management.

A range of financing instruments is now on the table, from green bonds to international taxes on financial transactions and air travel. But scaling-up multilateral support will require an overhaul of international finance, particularly when the energy challenge facing developing countries is combined with the need for adaptation investments to limit the growing damage they face due to rising global temperatures.

Establishing a viable new ‘framework for climate finance’ remains a pressing challenge despite the establishment of the Climate Fund at the Durban Conference of Parties (CoP). The scale of the challenge to avoid catastrophic climate change means that addressing it cannot be delayed and short-changed anymore, as it has been so far. It will be key to restoring trust to ensure that the deal to be struck in Paris later this year will take us closer to sustainable development and climate justice.

(End)

Excerpt:

By Hazel Henderson
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

Millions in the New York City area are excited about Pope Francis’ visit on Sep. 25 to address the U.N. General Assembly as worldwide consensus grows on the need to shift global investments from fossil fuels to clean, efficient, renewable energy in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) scheduled to replace the expiring Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

Private investments worldwide in the clean energy transition now total 6.22 trillion dollars while successful U.S. students’ divestment networks have forced over 30 college endowments to divest.  Over 200 institutions have divested worldwide, including the U.S. cities of Minneapolis and Seattle, Oxford in the United Kingdom and Dunedin in New Zealand.

Hazel Henderson

The Episcopal Church and the Church of England, in a faith-based consortium, are calling on Pope Francis to urge divestment for all religious and civic groups.  Islamic Climate Change Symposium leaders cited the Quran earlier this month in calling 1.6 billion Muslims to act in phasing out fossil fuels by 2050.

Backlash from traditional Wall Streeters has joined some U.S. Catholic organisations with millions still invested in fossil energy, fracking and oil sands.  The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has guidelines against investing in abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco and war but is silent on energy stocks.

Reuters reports that Catholic dioceses in Boston, Baltimore, Toledo and much of Minnesota in the United States have millions of dollars in oil and gas stocks, making up between 5-10 percent of their holdings.  It has been reported that Chicago’s Archbishop Blasé Cupich, appointed by Pope Francis, will re-examine over 100 million dollars in fossil fuel investments.

Wall Street is also re-examining its positions on fossil fuels.  A survey of asset managers in Institutional Investor, July 2015, found that 77 percent expected the carbon-divestiture movement to continue and gain momentum.  Yet, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson has claimed that the models on climate change “aren’t that good” and has no plans to invest in renewable energy.

Recently, many large companies have been calling for and budgeting for carbon pricing – favoured by most economists.  Britain’s BG Group, BP, Italy’s ENI, Shell, Norway’s Statoil and France’s Total sent an open letter to world governments and the United Nations in June asking them to accelerate carbon pricing schemes.The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has guidelines against investing in abortion, contraception, pornography, tobacco and war but is silent on energy stocks

The ethical investing movement now accounts for one-sixth of all holdings on Wall Street and the U.N. Principles of Responsible Investing counts signatory institutions with 59 trillion dollars in assets under management.

Hybrid approaches include venture philanthropy and “impact” investing, while a recent CFA Institute survey found almost three quarters of investment professionals use environmental, social and governance information in their investment decisions.

Against this backdrop, Timothy Smith, pioneer founder of the Interfaith Council on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and now Senior Vice-President of Walden Asset Management, says that the “visit of the Pope in the wake of his prophetic Encyclical on climate is a clarion call – to ramp up our efforts to combat climate change with concrete actions,” adding that “it’s not the Pope’s job to present a specific game plan for Americans.  That is our job.”

Through ICCR, religious investors have worked for two decades on these issues.  Firms like Walden, Ceres and others have joined up to combat climate change, promoting efficiency and renewable resources.  All this new activity within the climate debate provides the greatest challenge yet to business-as-usual capitalism.

Many financiers in the global casino still see themselves as “masters of the universe” because they control capital flows, most investments, pension funds, influence monetary policies, capture politicians and regulators, while funding friendly academics and think tanks.

The recent jitters of stock markets have again revealed their fragility and the increasing turbulence and volatility caused by computerized algorithms accounting for over half of all activity.  High-frequency trading (HFT), “flash crashes”, are continuing with little regulation.  Foundations are crumbling from these many new challenges as small investors flee. 

Crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, local and cryptocurrencies, credit unions and cooperative enterprises are flowering along with hybrid start-ups in the “shareconomy” – AirBnB, Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit and the growth of farmers markets, swap sites for tools, clothes and second-hand exchanges.

Many reformers of capitalism try to change its culture, of short term gain and speculative trading.  The U.N. Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System will release its report to the General Assembly on Sep. 25, with global research on current practices and potential reforms.

A promising new effort to mobilise U.S. public opinion is JUSTCapital, founded by luminaries Deepak Chopra, Arianna Huffington and hedge fund philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones.  CEO Martin Whittaker says: “We are addressing some of the core questions affecting capitalism and corporations in the 21^st century.  We are applying policy, research and surveys to define ‘just business behaviour’ in the eye of the public, using this definition to evaluate and rank the performance of the largest publicly traded American companies.”

While such caring financiers are quietly exploring reforms, the biggest threat is the fragility of global market structures from automation, algorithms, HFT and artificial intelligence which financiers still believe they can control.

Yet these same computers can now run markets more efficiently than humans.  Matching and trading buy and sell orders in transparent computerised black boxes makes human traders redundant, as well as reducing insider trading, speculating, front-running, naked short-selling, fixing interest rates and today’s widespread greed and corruption.

Capitalism’s greatest challenge is its reliance on rollercoaster national money systems and currencies.  Central bankers and governments’ tools fail along with economic theories as social movements are now aware of money-printing and the politics of money creation and credit-allocation, revealed in all its favouritism and inequalities.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Rain forest in Zimbabwe, where the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding, and comes down to the question of land and whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land. Credit: By Ninara/CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Aug 14 2015 (IPS)

The efficacy of attempts to sustainably manage forests and conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks in Zimbabwe is increasingly coming under scrutiny as new research warns that the politics of access and control over forests and their carbon is challenging conventional understanding.

It all comes down to the question of land and of whether local rural communities can benefit if they are not the owners of land.

Even where they do “own” land, say researchers, these communities often find themselves competing with other players driven by different economic considerations, nullifying the very ideals being pushed under the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

“Carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected … multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers” – Ian Scones
Despite the country’s agrarian reform programme, under which land was redistributed to millions of landless local communities, the state remains the biggest landowner, raising questions about community empowerment and the ownership of forests.

With researchers pointing to a spike in the demand for land based not only on rural population growth but also on people reportedly moving to rural areas, there is no doubt that any increase in the rural population brings with it increased demand for natural resources.

“The demand on natural resources for land is growing year on year at a rate which is not sustainable,” says Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, and this will mean reforestation in the millions, with these trees being planted on plots that do not belong to local communities at a time when some farmers are decimating forest cover by using firewood to cure their tobacco.

The promise held out by REDD+ was that through reforestation and by reducing emissions, communities would then have access to or earn certified emission reduction credits to be sold to or traded with the worst polluters to meet their own emission reduction targets, yet it is clear that like any economic transaction, those who owns the means of production profit most.

Land is still owned either by the state or big business, with little cascading to the “bottom billion” as some economists have called the world’s poor, and landowners and the rich industrialised countries benefit at the expense of rural communities.

According to Ian Scoones, co-editor with Melissa Leach of a recently published book titled Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa, “carbon forestry projects – as previous interventions in forest use, ownership and management – have not been the panacea some had expected.”

Scoones says that “multiple conflicts have emerged between landowners, forest users and project developers. Achieving a neat market-based solution to climate mitigation through forest carbon projects is not straightforward.”

On Zimbabwe’s REDD+ project, which has covered 1.4 million hectares under Carbon Green Africa, Scoones says that “as notional ‘traditional’ and ‘administrative’ owners of the land, they [rural communities] should have the authority. But they are pitched against powerful forces with other ideas about resource and economic priorities.”

Civil society organisations (CSOs) here argue that this explains why rural communities get the shorter end of the stick.

Meanwhile, a recent brief from Zimbabwe’s climate ministry noted that “rich countries have barely kept the promise” of meeting their pledges, casting doubts on whether rural communities will in fact trade any anticipated carbon credits for cash.

The rural poor could well be saying “show us the money” by 2020, the year targeted in Cancun, Mexico, for emission reduction pledges.

Climate and environment ministry officials agree that land ownership under REDD+ has remained a sticking point in its dialogue with CSOs on how local communities may derive premium dividend from forest carbon projects.

“CSOs represent the interests of local communities and lack of safeguards has made this issue an area of divergence between governments and CSOs,” says Veronica Gundu, acting deputy director in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

“They (CSOs) are pushing for clarity on land ownership and the benefits to the local communities because they view the current regime of implementation to be beneficial only to the project implementers and leaving out the locals,” Gundu told IPS.

However, Wentzel of Carbon Green Africa which is implementing Zimbabwe’s sole REDD+ project in the Zambezi valley, told IPS: “As it stands the people of these districts are the rightful beneficiaries of revenue generated from their natural resources even if they are not titled land owners.”

Edited by Phil Harris 

These Zimbabwean farmers with their harvested sorghum are at the mercy of climate change, while the government struggles with meagre financing and tall ambitions to take adequate action. Credit: UNDP-ALM

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe , Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

With the U.N. Climate Change conference later this year in Paris fast approaching, Zimbabwe’s climate change commitments face the slow progress on an issue that continues to stalk other developing countries – climate finance.

As it prepares for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21), Zimbabwe – like many others in the global South – is grappling with radical climate shifts that have seen devastating exchanges of floods and droughts every year, and still awaits green bailout funds from developed nations, with officials here telling IPS, “this support should come in the forms of technology.”

The country’s halting progress on the climate front is being blamed by local climate researchers on the country’s failure to invest in state-of-the-art climate monitoring technology. More still needs to be done as the country heads to Paris, says Sherpard Zvigadza, Programmes Manager, Climate Change and Energy, for the Harare-based ZERO Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO)."The country [Zimbabwe] needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies" – Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa

“Zimbabwe should strengthen systematic observation, ensuring improved real-time observations and availability of meteorological data for research,” Zvigadza told IPS.

These concerns arise from what is seen here as repeated failure by the poorly-funded Meteorological Services Department to adequately monitor climate patterns and put in place effective early warning systems for disaster preparedness.

However, these constraints have not stopped Zimbabwe, which for the past two decades has seen a wilting of international financial support for crafting ambitious climate change interventions.

Recurrent climate-induced disasters have shown that this not the time to treat anything as “business as usual”, says Elisha Moyo, principal climate change researcher in the Climate Change Management Department of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate.

And these efforts have brought together civic society organisations (CSOs), farmers and ordinary Zimbabweans in what is expected to shape the country’s negotiations in Paris.

CSOs point to the fact that Zimbabwe has been identified by GLOBE International, which brings together legislators from all over the world, as having on the most comprehensive environmental laws in southern Africa, and say that this should be a stimulus for helping the country make greater strides in climate governance.

According to a climate ministry brief issued last month, Zimbabwe’s climate policy seeks, among others, weather and climate modelling, vulnerability and adaptation assessments, mitigation and low carbon development.

However, as tall as these ambitions sound, the climate ministry has acknowledged that in the absence of adequate financing the country could still be far from meeting its United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) commitments.

“There is a need to expand current projects as well as develop new projects throughout the country for the country to position itself to be able to raise funding for these developments,” said Steve Wentzel, director of Carbon Green Africa, a Zimbabwe-based company established to facilitate the generation of carbon credits through validating Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects.

“The country needs to partner with those in the private sector who are making an effort to develop projects or reduce their footprint, and implement a reward-based strategy so that both individuals and corporates are encouraged to support the government’s policies,” Wentzel told IPS.

“If the country is serious about moving away from business as usual, awareness raising is key for all stakeholders, including the general population as well as industry,” Zvigadza told IPS. “A vigorous campaign is needed across the country. More importantly, Zimbabwe’s national climate change response strategy has to be operationalised so that the challenges are addressed according to different local circumstances.”

Yet, by the climate ministry’s own admission, progress has remained slow due to the continuing problem of lack of funds, which Moyo believes should be tapped from the richer nations.

“As Africa, and supported by other developing countries from other regions, we believe the rich countries have not yet shouldered a fair share of the burden and should lead by example, in terms of cutting emissions and also providing financial support to poorer nations as stated in the Climate Change Convention,” Moyo told IPS.

And Zimbabwe certainly does need the money. The climate ministry is already wallowing in reduced state funding after the Finance Ministry slashed its national budget from 93 million dollars in 2014 to 52 million this year.

Meanwhile, domestic economic considerations are one of the obstacles to implementation of the country’s troubled climate change policy. Despite seeking to promote clean energy, power generation is still largely fossil fuel-based, where instead of cutting emissions, relatively cheaper coal feeds power generation.

The climate ministry policy brief says the country needs to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy production transmission and use”, but economic hardships have made this a tall order where millions also rely on highly-polluting firewood for fuel.

“We are compiling the “intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) and have been conducting consultations and data collection around the country especially with reference to the energy sector, which has a high potential of emission reductions through adoption of
renewable energy wherever possible,” Moyo told IPS.

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at COP21 in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September.

For its climate change ambitions to succeed, Zimbabwe must go back to the grassroots, says Wentzel, but unfortunately “there is a lack of knowledge of climate changes issues,” he told IPS.

As Washington Zhakata, Zimbabwe’s lead climate change negotiator put it: “The road to the Paris summit remains unclear with many stumbling blocks on the road.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Arnot coal-fired power station in Middelburg, South Africa. Climate activists are pushing for a much greater rollout of renewable energy as the key to shifting the carbon-intensive energy sector towards a sustainable low carbon future. Photo credit: Gerhard Roux/CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0

By Munyaradzi Makoni
CAPE TOWN, Jul 28 2015 (IPS)

Anti-nuclear energy activists are up in arms, and have taken to vigils outside South Africa’s parliament in Cape Town to protest against President Jacob Zuma’s push for nuclear development.

The protest has been building since September 2014 when Zuma struck a deal with Russia’s Rossatom to build up to eight nuclear power stations in South Africa. The stations would cost the country around 1 trillion South African rands (84 billion dollars).

As the protests mount, the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), an interdenominational faith-based environment initiative led by Bishop Geoff Davies, has said the government’s nuclear policy is not only foolish but immoral.“SAFCEI does not believe that nuclear energy is an answer to climate change but is a distraction likely to bankrupt the country [South Africa] and lead to further energy impoverishment” – Liziwe McDaid, energy advisor for the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute

SAFCEI is demanding that the government take a fresh look at its drive for nuclear energy, and the call has found resonance among clean energy civil society organisations (CSOs) in South Africa.

Although CSOs and government agree in the need to tackle climate change urgently, they differ on core issues as South Africa prepares for the U.N. Climate Conference (COP21) in Paris in December.

“We believe that adaptation needs to be given greater emphasis,” says Liziwe McDaid, SAFCEI’s energy advisor. “Building the capacity of affected and vulnerable communities to respond to climate change must be a priority,” she adds.

For mitigation, argues McDaid, a much greater rollout of renewable energy is the key to shifting the carbon-intensive energy sector towards a sustainable low carbon future.

As a participant in the country’s National Climate Change dialogues, she says that SAFCEI shares the aspiration for responsible climate change and “we are in agreement with government on many of the priorities as outlined in the White Paper.”

South Africa’s White Paper seeks to prioritise climate change responses that have huge adaptation benefits, imply significant economic growth and job creation, and are responsive to public health and risk management.

However, stresses McDaid, when it comes to nuclear energy, “SAFCEI does not believe that nuclear energy is an answer to climate change but is a distraction likely to bankrupt the country and lead to further energy impoverishment.”

Dissenting voices

Meanwhile, David Hallowes researcher and editor of Slow Poison for groundWork, another climate change pressure group, feels there is no consensus between the government and the CSOs ahead of the crucial Paris meeting.

South Africa is not doing enough on adaptation, said Hallowes. “Government is still allowing mining and industry to poison water and land in key catchments and agricultural areas,” he told IPS, adding that the result is that climate impacts will be amplified.

The same plants and developments that are driving climate change are poisoning and killing people, animals and plants that are in the path of pollution, “so the people’s struggles for an environment not harmful to their health and wellbeing are also climate struggles.”

According to Hallowes, “there are different views on what can be achieved with renewable energy. We (groundWork) do not think it can power infinite economic growth and hence we do not believe it can sustain a capitalist economy. In the short term, we think we should be looking for a reduction in energy consumption. The question is who gets it for what.”

Referring to South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) programme, which some say proves the benefits of privatisation, he also pointed to differences over nationalisation or privatisation.

“We think we should have a programme that creates democratic ownership and control of renewable energy at different levels from community or settlement, to municipality to national. We call it energy sovereignty.  The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa calls it social ownership. It’s the same thing.”

The groundWork researcher said that CSOs want to see an end to new coal developments, such as new mines or power stations. “I think everyone agrees but don’t necessarily mean the same thing. For some, it’s just a matter of jobs. We think it means the transformation of the economy towards equality and freedom that is democratic control rather than plutocratic control.”

Muna Lakhani, founder and national coordinator of the Institute for Zero Waste in Africa (IZWA), is equally concerned that government is not doing enough to fight climate change.

“Our government sees too much of ‘business as usual’ and is very lax in implementing even the minimal legislation, such as air quality permits, carbon taxes and the like,” he says.

According to Lakhani, CSOs are mostly united on key issues, such as the call for no more fossil fuel, a bigger push for renewables, and promoting local resilience especially of poorer communities and the generally disadvantaged.

Government role

Leluma Matooane, director of Earth Systems Science at Department of Science and Technology (DST) says the Department of Environmental Affairs has the responsibility to implement the country’s National Climate Change Response Policy but that the DST has taken a leadership and coordinating role in climate change research and in ensuring that the country’s responses to climate change are informed by robust science.

Under DST’s 10-Year Innovation Plan, argues Matooane, more focus is being placed on improving the scientific understanding of the drivers, impacts and risks of climate change, as well as on technological innovations the country may need to allow vulnerable sectors of the economy and society at large to adapt.

While views may differ on how to deal with climate change, notes the DST official, government has allowed the setting up of a multi-stakeholder grouping in which government has been joined by the private sector and civil society to discuss solutions.

Discussions in this grouping, he adds, influence and shape the country’s position in international debates and there is a deliberate attempt to have South Africa’s representatives deliver the similar position and messages at different platforms.

Edited by Phil Harris   

A geothermal drilling rig at the Menengai site in Kenya's Rift Valley to exploit energy which is more sustainable than that produced from fossil fuels. A Climate Change Bill now before the Kenyan parliament seeks to provide the legal and institutional framework for mitigation and adaption to the effects of climate change. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Jul 27 2015 (IPS)

Alexander Muyekhi, a construction worker from Ebubayi village in the heart of Vihiga County in Western Kenya, and his school-going children can now enjoy a tiny solar kit supplied by the British-based Azuri Technologies to light their house and play their small FM radio.

This has saved the family from use of kerosene tin-lamps, which are dim and produce unfriendly smoke, but many other residents in the village – and elsewhere in the country – are not so lucky because they cannot afford the 1000 shillings (10 dollars) deposit for the kit, and 80 weekly instalments of 120 shillings (1.2 dollars).

“Such climate-friendly kits are very important, particularly for the rural poor,” said Philip Kilonzo, Technical Advisor for Natural Resources & Livelihoods at ActionAid International Kenya. “But for families who survive on less than a dollar per day, it becomes a tall order for them to pay the required deposit, as well as the weekly instalments.”“Once it [Climate Change Bill] becomes law, we will deliberately use it as a legal instrument to reduce or exempt taxes on such climate-friendly gadgets and on projects that are geared towards low carbon growth” - Dr Wilbur Ottichilo, Kenyan MP

It was due to such bottlenecks that Dr Wilbur Ottichilo, a member of parliament for Emuhaya constituency in Western Kenya, and chair of the Parliamentary Network on Renewable Energy and Climate Change, moved a motion in parliament to enact a Climate Change Bill, which has already been discussed, and is now being subjected to public scrutiny before becoming law.

“Once it becomes law, we will deliberately use it as a legal instrument to reduce or exempt taxes on such climate-friendly gadgets and on projects that are geared towards low carbon growth,” said Ottichilo.

While Kenya makes a low net contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the country’s Draft National Climate Change Framework Policy notes that a significant number of priority development initiatives will impact on the country’s levels of emissions.

In collaboration with development partners, the country is already investing in increased geothermal electricity in the energy sector to counter this situation, switching movement of freight from road to rail in the transport sector, reforestation in the forestry sector, and agroforestry in the agricultural sector.

“With a legal framework in place, it will be possible to increase such projects that are geared towards mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change,” said Ottichilo.

The Climate Change Bill seeks to provide the legal and institutional framework for mitigation and adaption to the effects of climate change, to facilitate and enhance response to climate change and to provide guidance and measures for achieving low carbon climate-resilient development.

“We received the Bill from the National Assembly towards the end of March, we studied it for possible amendments, and we subjected it to public scrutiny as required by the constitution before it was read in the senate for the second time on Jul. 22, 2015,” Ekwee Ethuro, Speaker of the Senate, told IPS.

“After this, we are going to return it to the National Assembly so that it can be forwarded to the president for signing it into law.”

The same bill was first rejected by former President Mwai Kibaki on the grounds that there had been a lack of public involvement in its creation. “We are very careful this time not to repeat the same mistake,” said Ethuro.

Under the law, a National Climate Change Council is to be set up which, among others, will coordinate the formulation of national and county climate change action plans, strategies and policies, and make them available to the public.

“This law is a very important tool for civil society and all other players because it will give us an opportunity to manage and even fund-raise for climate change adaptation and mitigation projects,” said, John Kioli, chair of the Kenya Climate Change Working Group (KCCWG).

Evidence of climate change in Kenya is based on statistical analysis of trends in historical records of temperature, rainfall, sea level rise, mountain glacier coverage, and climate extremes.

Temperature and rainfall records from the Kenya Meteorological Department over the last 50 years provide clear evidence of climate change in Kenya, with temperatures generally showing increasing trends in many parts of the country starting from the early 1960s. This has also been confirmed by data in the State of the Environment reports published by the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).

As a result, the country now experiences prolonged droughts, unreliable rainfall patterns, floods, landslides and many more effects of climate change, which experts say will worsen with time.

Furthermore, 83 percent of Kenya’s landmass is either arid or semi-arid, making the country even more vulnerable to climate change, whose impacts cut across diverse aspects of society, economy, health and the environment.

“We seek to embrace climate-friendly food production systems such as use of greenhouses, we need to minimise post-harvest losses and food wastages, and we need to adapt to new climate friendly technologies,” said Ottichilo. “All these will work very well for us once we have a supporting legal environment.”

Edited by Phil Harris

Renewable energy is at the forefront of the changes sweeping Africa, and a “triple win” is within the region’s grasp to increase agricultural productivity, improve resilience to climate change, and contribute to long-term reductions in dangerous carbon emissions.

This is the message of a new report by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel, titled Power, People, Planet: Seizing Africa’s Energy and Climate Opportunities.

The report calls for a ten-fold increase in power generation to provide all Africans with access to electricity by 2030, saying that this would reduce poverty and inequality, boost growth and provide the climate leadership that is sorely missing at the international level.

It also urges African governments, investors, and international financial institutions to scale up investment in energy significantly in order to unlock Africa’s potential as a global low-carbon superpower. “We categorically reject the idea that Africa has to choose between growth and low-carbon development. Africa needs to utilise all of its energy assets in the short term, while building the foundations for a competitive, low-carbon energy infrastructure” – Kofi Annan

“We categorically reject the idea that Africa has to choose between growth and low-carbon development,” said Annan. “Africa needs to utilise all of its energy assets in the short term, while building the foundations for a competitive, low-carbon energy infrastructure.”

Over 62 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity – and this number is rising.

The report notes that, excluding South Africa, which generates half the region’s electricity, sub-Saharan Africa uses less electricity than Spain. It would take the average Tanzanian eight years to use as much electricity as an average American consumes in a single month. And over the course of one year someone boiling a kettle twice a day in the United Kingdom uses five times more electricity than an Ethiopian consumes over the same year.

Power shortages are estimated to diminish the region’s growth by 2-4 percent a year, holding back efforts to create jobs and reduce poverty.

Despite a decade of growth, the power generation gap between Africa and other regions is widening. Nigeria, for example, is a petroleum exporting superpower, but 95 million of the country’s citizens rely on wood, charcoal and straw for energy.

The report reveals that households living on less than 2.50 dollars a day collectively spend 10 billion dollars every year on energy-related products, such as charcoal, kerosene, candles and torches.

Measured on a per unit basis, Africa’s poorest households are spending around 10 dollars/kWh on lighting – 20 times more than Africa’s richest households. By comparison, the national average cost for electricity in the United States is 0.12 dollars/kWh and in the United Kingdom 0.15 dollars/kWh.

The report says Africa’s leaders must start an energy revolution that connects the unconnected, and meets the demands of consumers, businesses and investors for affordable and reliable electricity.

It urges African governments to:

• Use the region’s natural gas to provide domestic energy as well as exports, while harnessing Africa’s vast untapped renewable energy potential.

• Cut corruption, make utility governance more transparent, strengthen regulations and increase public spending on energy infrastructure.

• Redirect the 21 billion dollars spent on subsidies for loss-making utilities and electricity consumption – which benefit mainly the rich – towards connection subsidies and renewable energy investments that deliver energy to the poor.

The report also calls for strengthened international cooperation to close Africa’s energy sector financing gap, estimated to be 55 billion dollars annually to 2030, which includes 35 billion dollars for investments in plant, transmission and distribution, and 20 billion dollars for the costs of universal access.

A global connectivity fund with a target of reaching an additional 600 million Africans by 2030 is said to be needed to drive investment in on- and off-grid energy provision, with aid donors and financial institutions doing more to unlock private investment through risk guarantees and mitigation finance.

Time to end ‘climate negotiating poker’

The report also challenges African governments and their international partners to raise the level of ambition for the crucial climate summit in Paris in December, and calls for wholesale reform of the fragmented, under-resourced and ineffective climate financing system.

G20 countries are called on set a timetable for phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, with a ban on exploration and production subsidies by 2018.  “Many rich country governments tell us they want a climate deal. But at the same time billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money are subsidising the discovery of new coal, oil and gas reserves,” said Annan. “They should be pricing carbon out of the market through taxation, not subsiding a climate catastrophe.”

While recognising recent improvements in the negotiating positions of the European Union, the United States and China, the report says that current proposals still fall far short of a credible deal for limiting global warming to no more than 2˚C above pre-industrial levels.

The former U.N. Secretary-General said that “by hedging their bets and waiting for others to move first, some governments are playing poker with the planet and future generations’ lives. This is not a moment for prevarication, short-term self-interest and constrained ambition, but for bold global leadership and decisive action.”

“Countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa,” he added, “are emerging as front-runners in the global transition to low carbon energy. Africa is well positioned to expand the power generation needed to drive growth, deliver energy for all and play a leadership role in the crucial climate change negotiations.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Is the G7 commitment to an energy transition that aims to gradually phase out fossil fuel emissions this century to avoid the worst of climate change just hot air? Credit: CC BY-SA 2.5

By Lucy Cadena
LONDON, Jun 11 2015 (IPS)

One of the promises made by the leaders of the world’s seven richest nations when they met at Schloss Elmau in Germany earlier this week was an energy transition over the next decades, aiming to gradually phase out fossil fuel emissions this century to avoid the worst of climate change.

Let us be clear: a target of zero fossil fuels by 2100 puts us on track for warming on an unmanageable scale. The only commitment made by the G7 this week was a commitment to climate chaos.

Putting our faith in as-yet-underdeveloped technology fixes such as ‘carbon capture and storage’ and ‘geo-engineering’ to save us in the next 85 years, while the solutions to the climate crisis – renewable technology and community energy systems – exist here and now, is senseless.“The only way to avoid the worst of climate change is to act now, with urgency and ambition. Not by 2100, nor 2050. We need real commitment to real solutions – and the best place the G7 can start is by taking its money – public money – out of dirty energy”

The only way to avoid the worst of climate change is to act now, with urgency and ambition. Not by 2100, nor 2050. We need real commitment to real solutions – and the best place the G7 can start is by taking its money – public money – out of dirty energy.

While the G7 gathered on Jun. 7 and 8, this was the message from people from around the world, who are calling for a ban on all new dirty energy projects and an end to the financing of dirty energy.

The G7’s role in upholding the current dirty energy system is not limited to the subsidies they pour into fossil fuels daily.

G7 countries also directly finance – and profit from – dirty energy projects, particularly in the global South, and in regions where poverty and limited energy access devastate families.

These include projects affecting communities deeply reliant on clean air, water, and land that is polluted and stolen from them, projects among populations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and projects where people face harassment and human rights violations for speaking out.

France

Last week, France, host of the 30 November-11 December 2015 Paris climate summit – the U.N. gathering to set the agenda for global climate commitments in the next decades – announced that two of the summit’s key sponsors will be EDF and ENGIE (formerly GDF-Suez).

The French state holds 84 percent and 33.3 percent of shares in these companies respectively. Both are involved in the construction of several very controversial, polluting projects across the world.

EDF is currently planning the destructive Mphanda Nkuwa mega-dam on the Zambezi River in Mozambique, in the face of fierce opposition from local communities and environmental organisations.

A letter from civil society reminds French President François Hollande that these and other projects place EDF and ENGIE among the top 50 companies that contribute the most to global climate change.

With 46 coal-fired power plants between them, EDF and ENGIE are responsible for emitting 151 million tonnes of CO₂ a year – which amounts to about half the total of France’s overall emissions.

Italy

The Italian state owns a considerable number of shares – almost one-third – in oil and gas company ENI. According to a recent report by Amnesty International, last year alone ENI reported 349 oil spills in the Niger Delta from its own operations.

The figure is remarkable – almost unbelievable. Each spill triggers a human and ecological crisis. The scale of the devastation and ENI’s failure to safeguard communities and ecosystems begs the question: is this sheer incompetence, recklessness, or simply utter indifference to the welfare of local communities?

Japan

Japan, the next offender on the G7 list, is the number one public financier of coal plants globally among the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

Japan has 24 coal-powered projects either under construction or planned, many of them in Indonesia, Vietnam and India, where the more vulnerable local populations live under the cloud of plants’ toxic emissions.

Emissions of deadly sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from coal plants are currently highest in Indonesia, where the planned Batang coal power plant is set to become the largest ever Japanese-financed plant in Southeast Asia.

United States

A report by Oil Change International indicates that the United States government alone provides 5.1 billion dollars in national subsidies to fossil fuel exploration each year – that’s 5.1 billion dollars into seeking out new sources of civilisation-destroying energy sources.

Canada

Likewise, Canada’s expanding oil sector (caused by the growth in dirty tar sands production, known as ‘the biggest industrial project on Earth’) continues to reap the benefits of massive national subsidies.

United Kingdom

The U.K. government spent 300 times more supporting dirty energy overseas than it contributed towards renewable energy projects during its last term.

The 2012-2013 annual report of UK Export Finance, the country’s export credit agency, announced spending on projects such as a 147 million pounds (228 million dollars) guarantee to support oil and gas exploration by Petrobras in Brazil and 15 million pounds (23 million dollars) in guarantees to a loan for a gas power project in the Philippines.

Domestically, the government is prioritising drilling for new oil and gas, which will require huge subsidies. Hailing carbon-emitting gas as a ‘bridge fuel’ towards a cleaner energy system, the government is delaying investment in renewables to push fracking onto a population that vehemently opposes the dash for gas.

Germany

Meanwhile, Germany – the host of the G7 meeting – has been much lauded for its ‘Energiewende’ (‘Energy Revolution’), with a rapidly increasing use of renewable energy compensating for its nuclear phase-out in recent years.

However, German euros still make their way into the dirty energy machine – through sizeable tax exemptions afforded to fossil fuel producers’ exploration activities – allowing such companies to go further and dig deeper to uncover more carbon that needs to stay in the ground.

G7 Must Catch Up

The G7 countries have done the most to cause climate change. According to the Climate Equity Reference Calculator, they are responsible for 70 percent of historical carbon emissions, while hosting only 10 percent of the global population.

A commitment to a phase-out of fossil fuels in eight decades’ time is not a commitment. It is an easy promise for a politician, who probably will not even be in power in the next decade, to make. It is an easy promise for a rich nation, whose citizens are not the most vulnerable, to make.

G7 societies have grown rich by exploiting the human and natural world. They owe an enormous ‘climate debt’ to developing nations – yet they can barely scrape together the money they promised to the developing world via the Green Climate Fund.

Whether it’s an oil spill in Nigeria, a mega-dam in Mozambique or a coal plant in Java, the sources of our publicly-owned dirty energy are always sites of ecological and social devastation.

Access to energy is a right, but it should not come at the cost of other people’s rights – to clean air and drinking water, to land and food sovereignty, and to sustainable societies.

The international movement for climate justice is building, and will keep up pressure on governments to take money out of dirty energy and reinvest it in democratic renewable solutions that benefit everyone.

The global shift towards a just energy transformation has long been under way. Now, it’s snowballing. People from around the world are showing the way and implementing community-owned renewable energy solutions.

There is a hunger for change, despite continued inaction from governments. G7 leaders, take note: you are trailing far behind and have a lot of catching up to do!

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Dja Abdullah, just one victim of the gathering pace of climate change fuelled by coal-fired power stations, has walked 300 km with his cattle in search of fresh pasture in the Sahel region of Mauritania. Credit: Pablo Tosco/Oxfam

By Sean Buchanan
LONDON, Jun 6 2015 (IPS)

As heads of state and government of the G7 states prepare for their Jun. 7-8 summit in Germany, Oxfam has released a new report titled Let Them Eat Coal which they may find hard to digest.

According to the report, coal plants in the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – are on track to cost the world 450 billion dollars a year by the end of the century and reduce crops by millions of tonnes as they fuel the gathering pace of climate change.“Coal-fired power stations … increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events” – Professor Olivier de Schutter, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

Launching the report, which has been endorsed by business leaders, academics and climate experts, Oxfam warns that coal is the biggest driver of climate change, which is already hitting the world’s poorest people hardest and making the fight to end hunger tougher.

Noting that the G7 countries remain major consumers of coal, Oxfam is calling on the G7 leaders meeting in Germany to shift from coal to renewable energy sources which offer a safer and cost effective alternative and the prospect of millions of new jobs around the world.

This, it says, would also be a giant step towards those countries not only meeting current emissions targets but moving closer to what is urgently needed.

The international agency reports that Africa, for example, faces costs of 84 billion a year by the end of the century due to the damage caused by G7 coal emissions. This is 60 times the amount Africa currently receives from the G7 in aid to support agriculture and food production.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that Africa’s food production systems are highly vulnerable to climate change, with declines likely in cereal crops across the continent of up to 35 percent by mid-century. Oxfam warns that seven million tonnes of staple crops could be lost annually by the 2080s because of G7 coal emissions.

Celine Charveriat, Oxfam International’s Director of Advocacy and Campaigns, said: “The G7 leaders must stop using emissions growth in developing countries as an excuse for inaction and begin leading the world away from fossil fuels by starting with their own addiction to coal.

“The G7’s coal habit is racking up costs for Africa and other developing regions. It’s time G7 leaders woke up to the hunger their own energy systems are causing to the world’s poorest people on the frontline of climate change.

Referring to the U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled for December in Paris, Charveriat said: “Ahead of a new climate deal due to be struck at the end of this year, G7 leaders can give the global fight against climate change the momentum it needs by shifting away from coal. This will make significant additional cuts in their emissions, create jobs and be a major step towards a safer, sustainable and prosperous future for us all.”

Globally, coal is responsible for almost three-quarters (72 percent) of power sector emissions, and while more than half of today’s coal consumption is in developing countries, the scale of G7 coal burning is considerable – if G7 coal plants were a country, noted Oxfam, it would be the fifth biggest emitter in the world.

G7 coal plants emit double the fossil fuel emissions of Africa and ten times as much as the 48 least developed countries.

At the 2009 Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, all countries agreed to prevent warming of more than 2°C to avoid runaway climate change. Since then, said Oxfam, five of the G7 countries – France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom – have been burning more coal, and the world is now heading for an increase in global warming by 4°C.

Climate experts, business leaders and development specialists who are backing the Let Them Eat Coal report include Professor Olivier de Schutter (former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), Nick Molho (Chief Executive of the Aldersgate Group of business, political and civil society leaders), Sharon Burrow (General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation) and Dessima Williams (former Ambassador of Grenada to the United Nations and former Chair of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States).

According to de Schutter, “climate disruptions are already affecting many poor communities in the global South, and coal-fired power stations are contributing, every day, to make this worse. They increasingly look like weapons of destruction aimed at those who suffer the impacts of changing rainfall patterns as well as of extreme weather events.”

Oxfam says that the G7 countries must lead the way because they are most responsible for climate change, and because they have the most resources to decarbonise their economies and fund both emissions cuts and adaptation so that developing countries can protect themselves from climate change and develop in a low-carbon way.

Oxfam is also calling on the G7 to stand by existing commitments to jointly mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, and to make visible progress in both raising public finance over the next five years and increasing the proportion of funding for adaptation to climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Demonstrators protesting at the Business & Climate Summit in Paris, May 20. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 21 2015 (IPS)

When it comes to climate change, business as usual is simply “not an option”.

That was the view of Eldar Saetre, CEO of Norwegian multinational Statoil, as international industry leaders met in Paris for a two-day Business & Climate Summit, six months ahead of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21 ) that will also be held in the French capital.

Subtitled “Working together to build a better economy”, the May 20-21 summit brought together some 2,000 representatives of some of the world’s largest retail and energy concerns, including  companies that NGOs have criticized as being among the worst environmental offenders.

At the end, business leaders proclaimed that they wanted “a global climate deal that achieves net zero emissions” and that they wanted to see this happen at COP 21.

Throughout the conference, participants stressed that businesses will have to change, not only to protect the environment, but for their own survival. “Taking climate action simply makes good business sense. However, business solutions on climate are not being scaled up fast enough,” declared the summit organizers.

They pledged to lead the “global transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient economy.”

Saetre, for example, said his company wanted to achieve “low-carbon oil and gas production” and that it had embarked on renewables in the form of offshore wind energy. But he said that fossil fuels would still be needed in the future, alongside the various forms of renewable energy.

Acknowledging the widespread scepticism about multinational companies’ commitment, business leaders said that they could not “go it alone”, and called for support from governments as well as consumers.

Mike Barry, Director of Sustainable Business at British retailer Marks & Spencer, told IPS in an interview that global commitment was important in the drive to transform industry to have more environmentally friendly practices.

“Collective action can bring about real change,” he said. “We’re here today because we believe that climate change is happening and it’s going to have a significant impact on our business in the future and our success.

“Our customers would expect us to take the lead on this, and we want governments to take this seriously as well in the run-up to COP 21 [the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11].”

He said that Marks & Spencer and other companies in a network called the Consumer Goods Forum wanted to “stand shoulder to shoulder with government to say ‘this matters and we’re here to help’.”

But government consensus on how to address climate change has proved difficult, and even French President Francois Hollande, who opened the summit, conceded that it would require a miracle for a real agreement to be reached at COP 21.

“We must have a consensus. It’s already not easy in our own countries, so with 196 countries, a miracle is needed,” he said at the Business & Climate Summit, expressing the conviction, however, that agreement will be reached through negotiation and “responsibility”.

Hollande and other officials said the involvement of businesses was essential, and France, with its huge oil and electricity companies, evidently has a big role to play.

However, demonstrators outside the summit, held at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), slammed big business.

“These multinationals (and the banks that finance their activities) are in fact directly at the origin of climate change,” read a statement from organisations including Les Amis de la Terre (Friends of the Earth, France) and the civil disobedience group J.E.D.I. for Climate.

Saying that it was ironic to have fossil-fuel companies represented at the summit, the groups asked: “Can one imagine for a second that the tobacco industry would be associated with policies to combat smoking aimed at ending the production of cigarettes? No, that would be the best way to ensure that the world continued to chain-smoke.”

The protesters added that if Hollande and his ministers wanted to show a real commitment to the environment, they should make it clear that “the climate is not a business”.

“The fight against climate change is not the business of fossil-fuel multinationals: they belong to our past,” the groups said in a joint release, handed out on the street.

At the summit, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said that businesses should not be “demonised” and she called for collaboration rather than confrontation.

“We all start with a carbon footprint,” she said. “It is not a question of demonising anyone but realizing that we’re all here … This is not about confrontation. This is about collaboration. If you’re thinking about confrontation, forget it. Because we’re not going to get there.”

The summit – co-hosted by Entreprises Pour l’Environnement, an association of some 40 French and large international companies, and UN Global Compact France, a policy initiative for businesses – also addressed the vulnerability of island states in the face of climate change.

Tony de Brum, the Marshall Islands’ Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that island states in the Pacific and elsewhere had an interest in keeping pressure on carbon emitters because their populations’ survival was at stake.

Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), also highlighted the threat to vulnerable countries, saying that for them, climate change is not about protecting the environment for future generations, but “it’s about how long the water will take to overcome the land.”

Gurría said that greater reductions in carbon emissions were required than has so far been proposed by states, and he stressed that countries over time needed to “develop a pathway to net zero emissions globally” by the second half of the century.

“Governments at COP 21 need to send a clear directional signal that will drive action for decades to come,” he said. “We are on a collision course with nature, and unless we seize this opportunity, we face an increasing risk of severe, pervasive and irreversible climate impact.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Vattenfall’s lignite-fired power plant in Jaenschwalde, Germany, is Europe’s fourth biggest CO2 emitter. Credit: ©Paul Langrock/Zenit/Greenpeace

By Hanna Leghammar
STOCKHOLM, Apr 30 2015 (IPS)

The Swedish government is in the process of pondering an important decision — whether to sell the vast lignite reserves of the state-owned Vattenfall energy giant or ensure that they stay in the ground. The decision will define Sweden’s commitment to tackling climate change.

Just a few days ago, on Apr. 27, Vattenfall stockholders gathered for their Annual General Meeting where the issue of selling the company was high on the agenda, according to Swedish radio station Ekot.“States have a responsibility to start leaving their fossil fuel reserves in the ground. What people all over Sweden and Europe are demanding is not only an end to expansion, but also the action of leaving them untouched” – Annika Jacobson, Greenpeace Sweden

“We are in the middle of a process to sell,” Vattenfall’s executive director Magnus Hall, who hopes to reach a deal already this year, was reported as saying. According to Hall, the Swedish government has given a clear mandate and support to Vattenfall in its plan to sell its ‘dirty’ operations.

‘Vattenfall’ translates into ‘waterfall’ and the company’s logo is an image of a sun and beautiful waves. While it plays on this imagery to build its brand, Vattenfall is emitting huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere every day.

The company’s lignite mines and power plants in Germany – including the Jänschwalde coal power plant which is Europe’s fourth biggest CO2 emitter – are responsible for twice the amount of Sweden’s total annual carbon emissions.

The Swedish government is committed to keeping the rise in global temperature below 2℃ which, at global level, requires leaving 82 percent of fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Through Vattenfall, the Swedish state is the owner of more than one billion tonnes of carbon.

Now is the time for Sweden to assume responsibility and ensure that emissions from these unburnable reserves are never released.

Over recent years, Sweden’s actions have shown that it has the potential to play a leading role in transforming our economies to power the renewable future we need. But Vattenfall’s conduct – clinging on to an outdated business model – taints this picture.

Aerial view of Vattenfall’s brown coal (lignite) open pit mine in Jaenschwalde, Germany. Credit: ©Greenpeace/J Henry Fair

When Germany decided to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Vattenfall faced a major loss of potential profits and sued the German state. The company’s coal operations across Europe are also taking a financial hit as the coal industry worldwide has entered a huge slump. More than half of Vattenfall’s coal power stations are old and particularly polluting.

In the run-up to the Swedish general elections last year, the parties that now make up Sweden’s ruling coalition committed themselves to stop the lignite expansion of Vattenfall, thanks to pressure from Greenpeace and Swedish environmental groups.

“States have a responsibility to start leaving their fossil fuel reserves in the ground,” says Annika Jacobson from Greenpeace Sweden, who has just launched a Europe-wide petition to that effect with partners at 350.org and Skiftet [Democracy in Motion]. “What people all over Sweden and Europe are demanding is not only an end to expansion, but also the action of leaving them untouched.”

In this crucial year for climate action – with the next U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled in Paris in December – Sweden has the opportunity to raise its head and translate ambition into action by stranding its dirty coal assets.

Not selling Vattenfall and focusing on achieving a just transition to renewable energy would be a bold and unprecedented move by a nation state which has built up its own wealth and climate resilience on a fossil-fuelled economy. This would pose a challenge to other states, considering the impending deflation of the carbon bubble.

If, as Ekot reported, Vattenfall is about to be sold, this would be flying in the face of the overwhelming majority of Swedish people who want strong climate leadership from their government, giving the country the opportunity to act on its moral responsibility to keep fossil fuels underground.

A majority of Germans also want coal to be phased out – and there is fierce resistance to Vattenfall’s lignite mining and power plants in Germany’s Lusatia region.

“The earlier promise by Sweden not to expand lignite mining in Lusatia has given hope to a community of around 3,500 people that faced forced relocations as their villages stood to be destroyed,” says Falk Hermenau, a grassroots activist from Cottbus, the largest town in the region.

“By committing now to keep its coal in the ground, Sweden has the opportunity to be a driving force for a coal phase out in Germany and inject new momentum for climate action across the world,” he argues

The rapidly growing movement against fossil fuel extraction and climate disruption – and a steady flow of news reports indicating the end of the fossil fuel era – have injected a momentum that can change the dynamics in the months before the U.N. climate talks in December.

Any meaningful deal in Paris will need to require all nations to leave fossil fuel reserves in the ground – and people from all over the world are demanding this kind of leadership. Sweden can and must lead the way by committing itself not to sell Vattenfall’s lignite operations and rather #keepitintheground.

Edited by Phil Harris    

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

The future of the Amazon rainforest is “dangling by a thread”. Photo credit: By lubasi (Catedral Verde - Floresta Amazonica)/CC BY-SA 2.0

By Kwame Buist
ROME, Apr 2 2015 (IPS)

A global civil society petition to save the Amazon is circulating on the internet and its promoters say that once one million signatures have been collected indigenous leaders will deliver it directly to the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.

Launched by ”Avaaz” (“voice” in Persian), a global civic organisation set up in January 2007 to promote activism on issues such as climate change and human rights, citizens around the world the petition invites citizens around the world to voice support for an ambitious project to create the largest environmental reserve in the world, protecting 135 million hectares of Amazon forest, an area more than twice of France.“The fate of the Amazon rainforest is dangling by a thread” – Avaaz

Avaaz says that the project will not happen “unless Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela’s leaders know the public wants it.” The organisation, which operates in 15 languages and claims over thirty million members in 194 countries, says that it works to “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.”

Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos announced Feb. 13 that Colombia proposes collaboration with Brazil and Venezuela to create the world’s largest ecological corridor to mitigate the effects of climate change and preserve biodiversity.

“This would become the world’s largest ecological (corridor) and would be a great contribution to (the) fight of all humanity to preserve our environment, and in Colombia’s case, to preserve our biodiversity,” Santos said.

The Colombian president added that his foreign minister, Maria Angela Holguin, had been asked to “establish all the mechanisms of communication with Brazil and Venezuela” in order to be able to present a joint “concrete, realistic proposal that conveys to the world the enormous contribution the corridor would make towards preserving humanity and mitigating climate change.”

According to Avaaz, “if we create a huge global push to save the Amazon and combine it with national polls in all three countries, we can give the Colombian president the support he needs to convince Brazil and Venezuela.”

“All three leaders are looking for opportunities to shine at the next U.N. climate summit [in Paris in December],” said Avaaz. “Let’s give it to them.”

The Amazon is widely recognised as being vital to life on earth – 10 percent of all known species live there, and its trees help slow down climate change by storing billions of tonnes of carbon that would otherwise be released into in the atmosphere.

Avaaz says that “the fate of the Amazon rainforest is dangling by a thread.” After declining for a few years, deforestation rates started rising again last year, and shot up in Brazil by 190 percent in August and September.

Current laws and enforcement strategies are failing to stop loggers, miners and ranchers, and according to Avaaz, “the best way to regenerate the forest is by creating large reserves, and this ecological corridor would go a long way to help save the fragile wilderness of the Amazon.”

Countering possible criticism of those who argue that reserves hold back economic development and others who say that they are often implemented without consulting the indigenous communities, Avaaz says that “those behind this proposal have committed to full engagement and collaboration with the indigenous tribes. Eighty percent of the territory in this plan is already protected – all that this ground-breaking proposal really requires is regional coordination and enforcement.”

According to the petition’s promoters, “this is an opportunity to win a tangible and vital project that could help guarantee all of our futures. If it works, this could be replicated in all the world’s most important forests. Together, this could plant a seed that helps look after the whole world.”

Edited by Phil Harris

“Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it”. Photo credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

By Dipti Bhatnagar and Susann Scherbarth
BRUSSELS/MAPUTO, Apr 1 2015 (IPS)

World governments expect to agree to a new global treaty to combat climate change in Paris in December. As the catastrophic impacts of climate change become more evident, so too escalates the urgency to act.

Mar. 31 should have marked a major milestone on the road to Paris, yet only a handful of countries acted on it. Unfortunately, the few plans that were announced before that date show that our leaders lack the ambition to do what it takes to tackle the climate crisis.

National plans for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will most likely form the basis of the Paris agreement. These plans – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – are meant to indicate a government’s self-stated commitment to solve the global climate crisis through domestic emission reductions as well as through support for the poorest and most vulnerable countries.“People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture”

This architecture will result in an agreement that is weaker than each country being legally mandated to reduce emissions based on their fair share, determined through science and equity.

Yet, even with this architecture, the idea was that national governments would declare these plans by the end of March so that they could then be scrutinised.

Only six pledges had been received by the United Nations by the deadline – from the European Union, the United States, Norway, Mexico, Russia and Switzerland. These nations, with the notable exception of Mexico, are among the worst historical carbon emitters, yet these pledges do not reflect that immense historical responsibility and do not show any real willingness to address the scale of the climate crisis.

The commitments are well below what science and climate justice principles tell us is urgently needed to avoid hitting climate tipping points. The European Union announced target to cut emissions by ”at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030” is merely re-hashed from last year’s announcement.

The United States has cobbled together a plan for a meagre reduction of 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels, by 2025. If these insignificant pledges are an indication of what is to come, we are on track to a world which will be 4-6°C warmer on average. To put this into context, the climate impacts we are facing today are the consequence of a planet which is only 0.8°C warmer than it was.

So far, none of these countries’ announcements would contribute their ‘fair share’ according to science and equity. All parties are capable of much greater ambition, and it is high time to bring it to the table.

The deadlines that matter most are not set by governments, but by our planet and its natural boundaries, which have already been stretched considerably by the impacts of the climate crisis, for instance by the lethal and extreme weather events from Vanuatu to the Balkans to the Sahel.

Climate change is already happening now, bringing more floods, storms, droughts, rising seas and more devastating typhoons and hurricanes.

The mockery made of this latest Mar. 31 deadline is just another revelation of our governments’ inaction – under the influence of powerful polluting corporations – in the face of impending disaster.

People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture.

Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it.

We need a just and drastic transformation of our societies, our energy and food systems, and our economies. Proven and workable alternatives exist and are already being implemented.

Key decisions about our energy systems are made regularly, and will of course be made long after the Paris summit. Take for instance U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring planet-wrecking tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

A decision is expected soon and a rejection of the pipeline project would send a strong signal that our long-term future is not founded on the exploitation and burning of more and more fossil fuels.

European Union governments announced their INDCs back in February with their new ‘Energy Union’ vision for meeting the region’s energy needs. The bloc has recognised the need to reduce energy consumption and help citizens take control of clean, local renewable sources. But these moves towards the good must not be negated with new investments in the bad – new gas pipelines are also on the menu.

Throughout 2015, Friends of the Earth International and others will be bringing more and more people together to fight against the power of the polluters and make sure politicians hear the voices of the voiceless and take real action.

In the run-up to Paris, and along the road beyond, we, together with thousands of others, will be promoting the wealth of real solutions and proven ideas that are already delivering transformation around the world.

We will be on the streets throughout 2015, in 2016, and as long as it takes to realise community-owned renewable energy solutions that benefit ordinary people, not multinational corporations.

The Paris deadline will come and go, like others before. But the energy transformation is under way and, whatever our governments will pledge or not pledge at the climate summit in Paris, the transformation will not be stopped.

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* Dipti Bhatnagar is Climate Justice & Energy Co-coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, based in Maputo.

* Susann Scherbarth is Climate Justice & Energy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, based in Brussels.

Excerpt:

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Mar 16 2015 (IPS)

It is now clear that we are not going to reach the goal of controlling climate change.

It is worth recalling that the goal of not exceeding a 2 degree centigrade rise in global warming before 2020 was adopted at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009 as a formula for consensus. Many in the scientific community had been clamouring for immediate action – and at most for a 1 degree rise – but bowed to political realism, and accepted an easier target.

Roberto Savio

The agreement was to block the rise in global temperature before 2020, and start a process for gradually reverting the climate to safe levels, to be concluded before 2050.

Well, in the last four years, we have already witnessed an increase in temperature by 1 degree, and there is only another 1 degree left before 2020.

The European Environment Agency (EEA), which publishes a report every five years, states that Europe needs “much more ambitious goals” if it wants to reach its declared targets and for 2050, European Union leaders have endorsed the objective of reducing Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95 percent compared with 1990 levels.

However, Germany increased its carbon emissions by 20 million tons in 2012-13, instead of reducing them. This means that, in order to reach its targets, Germany should now reduce emissions by 3.5 percent a year over the next six years, which is a difficult, if not impossible, target to achieve.

It will increase energy costs and probably lead to a reaction to block measures which can hurt the economy. By the way, this is the official position of the Republicans in the U.S. Congress, who will fight any climate proposal.Climate change dissenters are clearly unconcerned that the very future of our planet is at stake or, like the governmental system, have fallen prey to the ‘ostrich syndrome’

By now, the effects of climate change have become visible, and not just to the climatologists. Last year the total number of people displaced by climatic disasters (such as hurricanes, landslides, drought, floods and forest fires) reached the staggering figure of 11 million people.

Last month, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a think-tank based in New Delhi, issued a study report citing data compiled by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, which maintains a global database of natural disasters dating back over 100 years.

The study found a 10-fold increase to 525 natural disasters in 2002 from around 50 in 1975.

By 2011, the cost of natural disasters had ballooned to 350 billion dollars. In the 110 years between 1900 and 2009, hydro-meteorological disasters increased from 25 to 3,526. Together, extreme hydro-meteorological, geological and biological events increased from 72 to 11,571 during that same period.

There is no doubt that the activities of man are having a dramatic impact on the climate and the planet, affecting people’s lives, but – as usual – the world is moving on two levels, which are unrelated and opposed.

One of the main issues among countries at climate negotiations has been how much to invest in combating climate change but here the signs are very discouraging, to say the least. Take the Green Climate Fund, for example, which was intended to be the centrepiece of efforts to raise  100 billion dollars a year by 2020 but, as of December last year, only 10 billion dollars had been pledged to the fund.

This is the track for reducing fossil emissions. Let us now look to the other track: what the rich countries are spending to keep them.

According to a report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Oil Change International (OCI), G20 governments are actually subsidising fossil fuel exploration with 88 billion dollars every year.

The report notes that “with rising costs for hard-to-reach reserves, and falling coal and oil prices, generous public subsidies are propping up fossil fuel exploration which would otherwise be deemed uneconomic.” In fact, G20 governments spend more than twice what the top 20 private companies are spending on finding new reserves of oil, gas and coal, and are doing so with public money.

So, on one hand, the system makes the right declarations of principle and, on the other, does the very opposite.

Meanwhile, there are some signs that the campaign against the need for doing something about climate change is losing credibility.

It is known that some members of the Republican Party in the United States are financed by energy giants, and it goes without saying that they will do whatever they can to boycott any deal on climate change that U.S. President Barack Obama may try to agree to at the next climate conference in Paris in December.

It is also known that a number of scientists dissent from the thinking of the more than 2,000 scientists whose work has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in presenting the link between human activity and deterioration of the climate. Of course, the dissenting voices have received a disproportionate echo in conservative media.

However, last month, the Washington Post reported that one of the leading dissenters and guru of climate change deniers, Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, had been receiving funds from the fossil fuel industry.

The report cited documents that Greenpeace obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act showing that Soon had been receiving funding from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company and the American Petroleum Institute, among others.

Climate change dissenters are clearly unconcerned that the very future of our planet is at stake or, like the governmental system, have fallen prey to the ‘ostrich syndrome’. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Every living thing from bacteria to President Barack Obama is made of carbon from exploding stars.

Billions of years ago, motes of carbon and other stardust formed the Earth. Carbon is the basis of all life but most vanished deep inside the planet, researchers now believe. And surprisingly, life thrives inside the rocky layers kilometres below our feet.

“Microbes survive by eating rock at those depths,” said Robert Hazen, executive director of the Deep Carbon Observatory, a decade-long, global collaboration investigating the inner workings of the planet.The deep subsurface may have acted as a natural laboratory for the origin of life, in which multiple 'experiments' could have been carried out in tandem.

“Life is very different under those tremendous pressures and temperatures,” Hazen told IPS.

The variety of bacterial life at extreme high-pressure depths worldwide constitutes a subterranean “Galapagos”, he said. There may be as much as half of all life in the ground deep below us, according to one estimate, although Hazen thinks that might be too high.

“Drill a hole one or two kilometres deep just about anywhere and you will find a sparse but hardy microbial community,” said Isabelle Daniel of l’Université Claude Bernard in Lyon, France.

“These deep microbes, which live in the tiniest cracks and fissures in rocks, survive on the chemical energy of minerals,” said Daniel, who is one hundreds of scientists involved in the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO).

DNA analysis reveals a diversity of microorganisms, mainly single-celled. However, deep below the ocean floor live fungi-like organisms with complex cell structures. Researchers estimate that these are extraordinarily long-living organisms, conceivably living for millions of years.

“There are also a huge numbers of viruses, their DNA carefully inserted into living cells,” said Hazen.

These deep earth viruses don’t kill their hosts. Rather, they stay dormant for hundreds of thousands of years waiting until a cell has enough food to reproduce and then they become active.

Life may have even first begun kilometres below ground, researchers speculate.

“The deep subsurface may have acted as a natural laboratory for the origin of life, in which multiple ‘experiments’ could have been carried out in tandem,” said John Baross of the Seattle-based University of Washington who co-edited “Carbon in Earth”, a book summarising the first three years of DCO research.

The book was launched at an International Science Meeting Mar. 3-5 at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC.

“The DCO may find totally new kinds of life as we reach greater depths, higher temperatures and pressures. And quite possibly Earth’s deepest life doesn’t use DNA and proteins the way normal cells do,” Baross said in a statement.

Carbon is the Earth’s most important element. Not only is all life made of carbon, virtually all materials that humanity relies on are made from carbon, such as plastics, oil, drugs, dyes and building materials, said Hazen.

“No other element contributes so centrally to the well-being and sustainability of life on Earth, including our human species,” he said.

The carbon cycle at the surface is well understood. Animals inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, while plants “inhale” carbon dioxide and “exhale” (respire) oxygen. But there is another very long-term carbon cycle that takes enormous volumes of carbon from the depths of the planet and brings it to the surface by way of volcanoes and upwellings at oceanic ridges.

Carbon is removed from the Earth’s surface in subduction zones where the ocean floor sinks and continental plates slip under each other, said Rajdeep Dasgupta of Rice University in Houston, Texas.

“In tectonic (earthquake) zones, surface carbon dives back into the Earth’s mantle,” Dasgupta told IPS.

This is a form of carbon sequestration and is of keen interest given the skyrocketing increase of human emissions of carbon into the atmospheric that is causing climate change, he said. Oil, coal and gas are mainly carbon from plant matter that has been pushed and held underground for millions of years. Burning these fuels releases this ancient carbon.

Over geologic time frames (millions of years) the planet modulates the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by burying it deep below ground, said Dasgupta.

One of the objectives of the DCO which completes its work in 2020 is to determine how much carbon is being “exhaled” and buried by this deep, long-term carbon cycle.

“Carbon is amazing, fascinating and fundamental to our well being. We need to know as much as we can about it,” said Hazen.

A soybean harvest in the state of Michigan. Between 2006 and 2011, U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields. Credit: public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

The rush for biofuels in the United States has seen farmers converting the United States’ prairie lands to farms at rates comparable with deforestation levels in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia – rates not seen here since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

A new study finds that, between 2006 and 2011, U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields. Driven by high crop prices, biofuel subsidies and a confluence of other factors, states like Iowa and South Dakota have been turning some five percent of prairie into cropland each year, according to the report’s authors, Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University.

The researchers suggest that farmers are growing crops on increasingly marginal land, in part because the federal government offers subsidised crop insurance in case of failure. In Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, for instance, corn and soy are planted in areas that are especially vulnerable to drought.

Numerous incentives have encouraged the ploughing of grasslands. The federal system of financial payments to grain farmers has long encouraged conversion of grasslands to farms, but in recent years new subsidies for corn ethanol and other biofuel production have significantly stepped up this inducement.

The resulting increase in crop prices encourages the owners of livestock to plough prairieland in order to grow crops in favour of using that land for grazing. This has lead to the growth of industrial farms and industrial confinement methods for meat production, while genetically modified seeds now allow corn and soy production in semiarid regions that before were suitable only for ranching.

According to the new research, farmers are increasingly willing to take that risk because corn and soy have become so lucrative. Further, the study finds evidence that many farmers are no longer enticed by federal conservation programmes that pay for grassland cover.

“The big drivers that are often overlooked are the federally subsidised crop insurance and commodity support programmes in play,” Greg Fogel, policy associate at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“If a lot of farmers didn’t have this support, they wouldn’t choose to produce on this land, because it is quite marginal and risky for them. But when they’re getting a 65 to 80 percent subsidy on their crop insurance premium, the risk is dramatically reduced because it has already a built-in revenue guarantee subsidised by the American taxpayer.”

While recent years have subsequently seen a shifting of risk from producer to taxpayer, Fogel warns that the latter will end up being forced to pay twice, “when we later have to pay for a conservation programme to rehabilitate and protect the destruction done to the environment on the back end.”

The loss of pasture itself could also have significant environmental impacts. According to conservationists in the Midwest, the United States’ prairie lands should be seen as a vast “carbon ocean”, with an enormous capacity to reduce climate change by sequestering heat-trapping carbon from the atmosphere.

“Native grasses are a stable repository of carbon, creating organic carbon below ground, much as trees create it above,” said John Davidson, a professor emeritus of law at the University of South Dakota.

“Grasses store carbon quickly, providing an immediate mitigation against global warming, and the carbon is stored safely underground, secure it from catastrophic events such as fire. However, ploughing releases that carbon, adding significantly to greenhouse gas concentrations while eliminating habitat used by hundreds of species.”

Indeed, an area covering the five northern states of the Midwest contains thousands of shallow wetlands and is one of the continent’s largest breeding grounds for ducks and other ground-nesting birds and waterfowl. But cornfields are now encroaching on this habitat, with wetlands disappearing and bird populations dropping.

Davidson is urging a public discussion on whether it makes sense to spend large amounts of money on attempts to control the release of carbon from coal-fired power plants and the cutting of tropical forests “while simultaneously releasing an immeasurable ocean of carbon by ploughing up our prairie”.

Further, a 2008 paper in the journal Science argued that fuels like corn ethanol and soy biodiesel lose a portion of their carbon advantage over gasoline if farmers are simply digging up virgin grassland to grow the crops.

Sodsaving

Environmental groups and policymakers are currently pushing initiatives to ensure that federal farm and crop insurance subsidies do not exacerbate the loss of these vital natural resources. A bipartisan group of members of the House of Representatives recently introduced legislation that would create a nationwide “sodsaver” law that would slash subsidies that contribute to the destruction of native grassland and prairie.

This would dramatically lower the amount of money the government provides for native grasslands that have been recently ploughed. This doesn’t mean that farmers can’t keep farming, just that they won’t have as much of an incentive to convert prairieland to agricultural land.

The Protect Our Prairies Act, a provision of the 2013 Farm Bill, which was passed by the Senate in June 2012, would prohibit federal payments and reduce crop insurance premium subsidies by 50 percent on newly broken native sod. The bill would also close loopholes by requiring that newly converted prairieland be isolated from other crop acres when calculating insurable yields.

Proponents say these two provisions are crucial to removing the federally subsidised incentive to move agricultural operations into native grasslands. The bill would also save an estimated 200 million dollars over a decade, while ensuring that taxpayer dollars do not continue to facilitate the destruction of prairielands.

Further, proponents say doing so would result in more ranching opportunities, stronger ecosystems, increased hunting opportunities, less soil erosion and net economic gains for rural communities.

“As the House of Representatives begins developing its version of the Farm Bill, we will work to ensure that chamber does not make the same deep cuts to conservation,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement.

“And we will fight to make sure the House also requires farmers who receive subsidies to take appropriate measures to protect our lands, water and wildlife, as the Senate has done. We simply must find a way to provide a crop insurance safety net for farmers that doesn’t also encourage the widespread destruction of wetlands, forests, grasslands and America’s waters.”

By 2020, countries that are signatory to the Kyoto protocol will have accumulated more than 17 billion tonnes of surplus emission reduction permits, a new study shows. This enormous surplus not only drives the carbon price close to zero, but also jeapordises the chances of reaching a new global climate deal.

All eyes are now on the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18) in Doha which will start Nov. 26. World leaders are expected to come up with ways to save the coal market and to uphold the Kyoto protocol’s environmental integrity.

Under the Kyoto protocol, signatory countries are allowed to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. If a country does not reach its emission limit, it is permitted to sell its surplus capacity under the form of Assigned Amount Units (AAUs). The AAU is an allowance to emit greenhouse gases comprising one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalents and can be bought and sold on the carbon market.

A new study by Thomson Reuters Point Carbon published Thursday showed that signatory countries will have accumulated more than 17 billion tonnes of surplus reduction permits by 2020. According to the report, the total surplus from the first Kyoto commitment period (2008-2012) already consists of 13.1 billion tonnes.

Russia, Ukraine and Poland are the largest surplus holders, followed by Romania, the UK and Germany.

The study also estimates that under the current rules, signatory countries will accumulate a surplus of 3.6 billion tonnes by 2020. If Australia and New Zealand then decide not to join the second Kyoto commitment period (2012-2016), the combined surplus would be as high as 17.2 billion tonnes.

“That is more than Europe would emit over the course of five years and more than double what China annually emits. The number is astronomically high,” says Tomas Wyns, director of the Centre for Clean Air Policy Europe (CCAP Europe).

“This is partly because Kyoto uses 1990 as the reference year to which the level of emissions must be reduced. But just after 1990, economies in Central and Eastern Europe collapsed, which led to a downfall in industrial activity and emissions. This allowed these countries to stay under their emission limits and build up a surplus.

“At this moment the same thing is happening: we are in the midst of an economic crisis which again leads to lower emissions all around the world.”

According to the report by the European Environmental Agency that was published a week ago, EU emissions in 2011 fell to 17.5 percent below the 1990 level. “That is only 2.5 percent away from our final 2020 Kyoto goal,” Tomas Wyns tells IPS. “And given the economic projections we will probably reach the same percentage this year.”

Although emissions are dropping worldwide, the build-up of surpluses is an enormous threat to the environmental integrity of the Kyoto protocol. “Of course dropping emissions is good news, but not in this case,” says Wyns.

“The current development shows the Kyoto objectives for 2020 have not been ambitious enough. We need a structural reduction of emissions, based on climate policy. An economic crisis is not a policy measure.”

According to the study by Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, the 3.6 billion surplus projection by 2020 would be realised under business-as-usual conditions without the government taking any measures to reduce emissions. But most importantly, the enormous amount of surpluses causes the price of allowances to drop close to zero. At this moment, the price has already dropped to less than one euro per tonne.

“The supply is three magnitudes bigger than the demand,” Anja Kollmuss, carbon market expert at the Brussels-based CDM Watch tells IPS. “When prices go that close to zero it could lead to a collapse of the market. The allowances are useless to the countries that own them because there is no one willing to buy them. The trade will come to a halt. It’s hard to see how there could possibly be a market under these conditions.”

During the preparatory climate negotiations in Bangkok last week, it became clear that the surplus owned by developed countries is one of the key issues to be resolved before countries can agree on a second commitment period for the Kyoto protocol.

At the meeting, the coalition of developing nations, the G-77 and China presented a proposal on how to restrict the gigantic surplus and save the market. They aligned themselves with the African Group, stating that this proposal reflected the view of 100 countries and over a billion people most vulnerable to climate change.

“The G-77 proposal states all countries can hold on to their emission allowances in the second period, but under the condition that they only be used to fulfill their own commitments,” Anja Kollmuss tells IPS. “Countries with a surplus would not be able to sell them on the market any more, that would effectively stabilise the market.”

The G-77 proposal goes further. “The developing nations asked all developing nations whose total emissions in 2012 will be lower than their 2020 goal to commit to stricter emission objectives in the second period,” Tomas Wyns says. “They also proposed to delete all surplus allowances after 2020. That’s the only way to safeguard the Kyoto protocol and the market.”

At the final plenary in Bangkok on Sep. 5, only Russia remained in opposition to the proposal. The EU reacted with no position due to internal disagreement.

“Poland is disagreeing because they hold the largest surplus in the EU,” Anja Kollmuss tells IPS. “The country thinks all allowances should be carried over, they are still hoping to sell them on the market. But most countries are realising that something needs to be done not just to save the market, but also to maintain a meaningful climate commitment.”

The EU is expected to work out a common position next month. Negotiations between countries are now ongoing.