Commodifying nature in an age of climate change
For about two
weeks, starting from next Monday, the world will be locked into another
session of negotiations on how to tackle climate change. The
conference, to be held in Cancun, Mexico, has drawn less excitement
than its predecessor held in Copenhagen, Denmark, a year ago.
The excitement of
Copenhagen was partly driven by the false information that circulated
that the Kyoto Protocol was ending at that meeting. Though there were
serious, but failed efforts, made at that conference to lay the
protocol to rest, its first period actually ends in 2012, while a
second commitment period will be entered into as soon as the first
period elapses.
But why would
anyone want to kill the protocol and why should it be sustained? The
Kyoto Protocol is seen by some as the only legally binding instrument
to which the industrialised and highly polluting nations can be made to
commit to cutting emissions at source. From this perspective, when
countries fight to abolish the protocol, they are simply trying to
avoid making any real commitment to tackling climate change.
One problem with
the workings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) and the ongoing negotiations is that it bases a chunk
of its reasoning and framings on the market logic. This follows the
path created by the mindset that has built a vicious paradigm of
disaster capitalism, in which tragedy is seen as opportunity for
profit. What do we mean by this?
Rather than take
steps to curtail emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global
warming, some people are busy devising ways of making every item of
nature a commodity placed at the altar of the market. Through this,
everything is being assigned a value and many others are privatised in
addition.
What makes this
offensive is firstly that you cannot place a price on nature, on life.
Secondly, speculators are hyping the utility of the carbon market as a
means of fighting climate change. Some of the ways this manifests is
through the carbon offsetting projects by which polluters in the
industrialised countries continue to pollute, on the calculation that
their emissions are being compensated for elsewhere.
As Friends of the
Earth International stated in a recent media advisory, “Carbon trading
does not lead to real emissions reductions. It is a dangerous
distraction from real action to address the structural causes of
climate change, such as over-consumption. Developed countries should
radically cut their carbon emissions through real change at home, not
by buying offsets from other countries. Carbon offsetting has no
benefits for the climate or for developing countries – it only benefits
developed countries, private investors, and major polluters who want to
continue business as usual.”
Cancun will
obviously be crawling with carbon speculators and traders, as was the
case in Copenhagen. And they have good reasons to be there. They will
be there because policy makers on both sides of the divide see benefits
in the schemes, even though the so-called benefits are pecuniary and
are actually harmful to Mother Earth. But as far as the money enters
the pockets of some poor countries, the rich countries can go on
polluting, having paid their “penance.”
Not just money alone
The world appears
deaf to the need for real actions to curb climate change, and the focus
remains on money. In fact, while many of the items of the Cancun agenda
have stalled, with regard to reduction of carbon emissions in the
industralised nations, there is no shortage of proposals on how carbon
markets can be brought in to give appearance of action.
Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is one of such schemes in the
scheme. Quick progress is being made on REDD and already, talks are
advancing on other variants of the scheme. Indigenous and forest
community people are opposed to REDD and object to its implementation,
as attention is being focused on forests merely as carbon stocks for
mercantile purposes. Significantly, many see REDD as not seeking to
stop deforestation, but merely to reduce it.
It is also argued
that that any reduced deforestation may not be sustained, as
deforesters may just shift to another forest or zone to continue with
their activities. In other words, REDD is a pretty fiction that may
pump money into the pockets of some countries and corporations, but
will marginalise forest peoples and will not help to fight climate
change. The attraction, as critics have said, is that if this mechanism
is linked to the carbon market, it will allow developed countries pay
money to REDD-projects that preserve forests in developing countries,
and in return receive carbon credits – buying the right to pollute.
There will also be
strident rejection of any role at all for the World Bank in the climate
finance architecture that may be devised in Cancun.
The atmosphere is
set for a somber, winding series of negotiations. However, social
movements and other civil society groups are set to push up the voices
of the people, as already broadly articulated in the Peoples Agreement,
reached at the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the
Rights of Mother Earth held in April 2010 at Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The environmental
justice movement that took first serious steps in Copenhagen is sure to
take firmer steps on the streets of Cancun and in thousands of Cancuns
being planned for a multitude of locations around the world.
The message in
Cancun, if we must expect motions towards real actions to tackle
climate change, is that governments must pay attention to what the
people are saying, to the real challenges faced by vulnerable peoples
around the world, and not lend their ears to carbon speculators.
