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TechnoratiCarbon Trading Blasted by Indigenous Groups
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations is facing scathing criticism from the world's indigenous communities for its attempts to promote carbon trading as a tool to address climate change concerns.
"The UN is allowing companies who are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to continue to pollute," said Tom Goldtooth of the U.S.-based Indigenous Environment Network (IEN).
Last week, at the end of a two-week international gathering, a UN body said the World Bank funding for carbon trading had set "good examples" for partnership with indigenous peoples.
The term "carbon trading" refers to commercial approaches to promoting environmental responsibility. Under carbon trading programs, energy companies and others that release greenhouse gases can either agree to reduce their carbon emissions or buy the right to keep polluting.
The United Nations describes carbon markets as an an efficient system that can guide investments toward the cuts that are the cheapest.
But indigenous leaders and independent experts on climate change dispute this notion on various grounds.
"It's a new way to make money," said IEN's Jihan Gearon. "It has nothing to do with environmental concerns or indigenous peoples' rights."
Janet Redman, lead author of a new study released by the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) last month, tends to agree, especially with respect to the World Bank's role in facilitating carbon trading programs.
"It is making money off of causing the climate crisis and then turning around and claiming to solve it," she said of the Bank in a recent interview with OneWorld. "It's dangerously counterproductive."
Both Gearon and Redman think carbon markets will not only violate indigenous peoples' rights, but also further aggravate the threat of pollution and climate change.
IPS' 79-page report, entitled "World Bank: Climate Profiteer," shows that instead of encouraging clean energy investors, the Bank is lending much of its financial support to the fossil fuel industry.
"It's playing both sides of the climate crisis," said Redman, who notes that in just the past two years the Bank loaned no less than $1.5 billion to companies investing in fossil fuels.
For its part, the Bank claims to be an "honest broker" of carbon deals. "We have carried out global consultations with indigenous peoples on climate change," Navin Rai told the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues last week.
Critics say such claims are highly questionable because the Bank, like many governments, is still reluctant to accept that indigenous peoples must give their prior and informed consent before any development projects are initiated on their lands.
Scientists say drastic cuts in the use of oil, gas, and coal are needed to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change. The World Bank does not deny this, but still it's doling out a lot of money to energy corporations involved in fossil fuel businesses.
Out of its $2 billion carbon finance portfolio, the Bank has directed nearly 80 percent to projects involving polluting industries.
In her research, Redman tried to explain at length how the Bank's policy on carbon credits is affecting indigenous communities who have no say in projects aimed at reforestation.
In her view, trading forest carbon credits "has become a burgeoning business" for the Bank, which is "encouraging" a land-use shift from subsistence agricultural cultivation to agroindustrial forestry.
This is clearly not the approach most indigenous groups would support, had they been given a choice.
The Bank admits that indigenous peoples, who manage 11 percent of the world's forests and lands, have "a small carbon footprint and that their contribution to global warming is minimal."
Indigenous leaders say that carbon markets will not effectively address the issue of climate change because, ultimately, those markets are driven by the economic concerns of profit-seekers.
"Our vision of environmental issues is based upon spiritual thinking," said Marcos Terena, an indigenous activist from the Amazon region in Brazil, in an interview with OneWorld.
"We respect Mother Earth," he said. "It's the governments and corporations that are responsible for environmental destruction."
Terena and other indigenous leaders told OneWorld that they were planning to take their case to Bonn, Germany, where the United Nations is due to hold an international meeting on issues concerning the loss of biodiversity later this month.
The international treaty on biodiversity considers the world's 370 million indigenous peoples' perspectives as an essential part of the struggle to preserve the millions of species of life on the planet.
© 2008 One World
13 Comments so far
Show AllCarbon trading is not good for any species. I do not understand why anyone would think that benefits whites. We all rely on the earth's gifts.
Some are mistaking white for wealthy and the two are not synonomous. In fact BS approaches to the earth are not good for the wealthy either, since ultimately all their money will not shield them from the destruction of our earth's systems. Carbon trading does not fool mother nature.
Here we all must thank the Indigenous Peoples for their understanding and leadership in ecology.
It is a simple token economy making pollution a trading value. The same thing could be said of heroin.
Carbon trading is just another way for the white race to keep making money at the expense of anyone else. Too bad this ingenouity isn't put to use to come up with ways to stop polluting and making use of free energy sources: solar, wind, tidal, etc.
No way! carbon trading is just a way to earn money and make people think that it is helping fight climate change.
(sarcasm)
Since when do indigenous people have rights?
this is unfortunate. it's quite similar to Hilary and McCain's tax-free oil proposal: pretending to help the environment and people but truly hurting both and benefiting corporations that have too much money already.
sadly enough, if the demand does not decrease, carbon trading and global warming will continue. I think corporations are not fully accountable for pollution and human rights abuses. we've got to remember who wants the products: us. that's right, I'm sitting in the middle of this hypocrisy. guilt is tugging at my heartstrings to stop driving, but I don't. and sadly that is what keeps this going. if the demand goes down far enough the corporations will become bankrupt, but that won't happen if we continue to drive our cars daily when we know that is counterproductive. and it is harder than it seems...cars are just so convenient. I don't want to get up earlier to catch my bus for sure. but I know that is the solution. it's ironic, but push factors like high gas prices are probably going to be good for global warming, it's certainly encouraging me to use public transportation more. I just need to take that initiative...
Wow, what a surprise that this turns out to be just another battle where the world bank is working both sides. If you would like to see both sides of the story visit
www.climatedebatedaily.com There is a side by side list of papers on both sides of the story. I particularly like the one which says that CO2 is not even a little bad, the effects are completely beneficial and should be considered a gift from the industrialized countries to the developing countries. Check it out if you dare.
Take a look at the cycles of ice ages on the IPCC icecore data chart---one every 110ky. Indigineous peoples are the only ones left whose cultural memories (spiritual values) contain even a few hints of how to survive a climate shift. Humans have been around in viable groups for what,10 million years? What we call indiginous tribes are the last vestiges of those who made it through the last Temperature/CO2 reversal, maybe we should listen...
In carbon trading, the money is supposed to be transferred from the carbon sources to the carbon sinks. What they fail to tell us is - what percent of the investment stream into carbon sources is being diverted into carbon sinks? If the percent is small, the impact on excess carbon emission is small, and perhaps not enough to reign in the rapid logarithmic growth of emissions toward catastrophic tipping points. What is the amount of diversion needed to reign in this emissions growth?
Progressives want all of investments in carbon sources diverted to sinks because we know that sources are unnecessary and highly destructive in other ways beyond global warming. And we don't like to compromise with the concentrators of wealth and power. There is also limited availability of beneficial carbon sinks, and a huge risk of fraud sinks. Much better to divert the investments to carbon neutral industries and even to pay chimps to stop some of their relentless production of garbage such as junk mail, etc.
But carbon trading is ultimately just a capitalist racket that encroaches further more upon the people's self-determination. Better still to simply cap emissions and let the "invisible hand" shift allocations to serve the better interests of the society, or even better provide the people with incentives to make such demands in the markets.
Monsanto and the other corporate monopolies are seeing massive nearly exponential profit growth. The violence of the process is not just in CO2 scam - but has a profound and immediate price in lives and indigenous rights.
Because of the scope of activity in SA, any conversation re: carbon trading would seem to need to hold this dimension in the balance. This is a link to recently released report on violence against indigenous peoples in Brazil. A series of related reports are also available through the link and updated regularly:
http://www.cimi.org.br/?system=news&action=read&id=3174&eid=275
A carbon tax seems like a better way to go than carbon trading. It is too easy to game that scheme. It also has the residue of pay to pollute wrapped around it. If I can not do what I should, then I just write a check. Smarmy stuff no matter which way you slice it.
Emissions trading is simply a contrived game where companies trade the "right" to be be a bad citizen (the right to pollute). It is a foolish system dreamt up by economists that only works in theory.
The way to stop emissions is to make them illegal and then enforce the law. This can be phased in over several years and achieve the same result that emissions trading is supposed to deliver, but won't.
I never knew where the money goes when companies buy the right to keep polluting (aka carbon credits). It goes to the World Bank who then invests 80% of it in polluting industries? Bizarre.
Indigenous Peoples have treaty rights that require their approval of any development on their own land. Those rights have been violated with Christian impunity, better known as genocide. The question is, does Hell have enough room for all the (good) Christians?