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Australia Disregards Pacific Islands States on Climate Crisis
Aug 16, 2019
18 leaders from the Pacific region met for 12 hours at the 50th Pacific Islands Forum Meeting with Australia holding out on language that duly recognises the climate crisis. Despite two very strong diplomatic declarations, the Nadi Bay Declaration on the Pacific Islands Climate Change Crisis and the Tuvalu Declaration on Climate Change for the Survival of Pacific Small Islands Developing States, being made by Pacific Island states within two weeks of each other, the Australian government has turned a blind eye to its closest neighbours' plea for an end to the coal industry.
Australia's coal policy and its use of carry over credits to fulfill its obligations under the Paris Agreement have come under fire and been major points of contention at this year's 50th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Meeting in Tuvalu. Both Declarations strongly call for Australia to commit to urgent climate action, as the effects of the climate crisis become more apparent on a daily basis.
In response to Pacific Island states, who have considered Australia as the 'big brother,' Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced that it will provide $500m over five years in climate resilience and adaptation funding for the region.
"Australia is supposed to be an ally for the Pacific, and their inaction in a time of dire need is appalling," said Fenton Lutunatabua, 350 Pacific Managing Director.
"This funding support is being marketed as a solution, but in fact is a diversion of funding that was already allocated for supporting the Pacific Island states."
Australia's ploy to use aid as a means of negotiating in the Pacific is failing, with Pacific Island leaders literally stating that they do not care about the money anymore.
The Prime Minister of Tuvalu and Chair of the Pacific Island Forum stated during the PIF Meeting on Tuesday that channeling aid money to the Pacific was in no way a compromise to open new coalmines and continue with unregulated emissions.
"Pacific Island leaders have stepped up their game significantly because for us it is a matter of survival and they have committed to holding industrialised, coal-producing nations to account. The appalling fact in all this is that Australia is granted a seat at the same PIF Meeting table as nations literally struggling to protect the lives and cultural integrity of their people. Australia bullies its way through negotiations, attempting to mask the gravity of the climate crisis on paper - when the visible proof in our lives shows otherwise." Patricia Mallam, Senior Communications Specialist for the Pacific said.
Pacific Island leaders have paved the way for polluting countries to take more concrete steps towards recognizing that the climate crisis is real. The fact that Australia continues to disregard the science that proves this, and carry on with allowing the coal industry to prosper is a slap in the face of its family in the Pacific.
"We share the same part of the planet, in close proximity to each other, so taking action to save the Pacific pretty much means saving your own people. A person of authority in a position to make a difference, who compromises the wellbeing of their very own people is not worthy of being considered a leader," added Mallam.
Sterling examples of leadership across the Pacific, ingrained in responding to the needs of the people have risen. The Marshall Islands became the first country in the world to update and strengthen its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement.
The Republic of Fiji held the presidency of COP23 through 2017-2018 and have recently announced that it will introduce a Climate Change Act, one of the world's most ambitious legislative programs which includes tighter restrictions on the use of plastics, a framework for Fiji to reduce its emissions to net-zero by 2050, the introduction of a carbon credits scheme and the establishment of procedures for the relocation of communities at risk from the adverse effects of the climate crisis.
Tokelau has just announced the launch of its Fakaofo Wind Turbine Project, situated on the southernmost island of Tokelau. Tokelau is trialing the viability of this innovation in its efforts to take urgent climate action.
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Local Efforts Noble, But Study Shows Scale of Climate Threat Demands 'Heavy Lifting' of National Governments
"The actions of cities, companies, and states aren't insignificant but they can't do it by themselves."
Aug 30, 2018
Since President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris climate agreement in 2017, a number of local governments have taken it upon themselves to meet the deal's requirements to the extent that they can--but a new study finds that while those efforts are admirable and significant for individual states and communities, they are no match for the climate crisis fast accelerating by increased carbon emissions around the world.
Local leaders should continue doing what they can to combat the climate crisis, researchers at Data-Driven Yale found in their study. But until the United States--the world's largest driver of greenhouse gas emissions--is led by a government that prioritize a sharp reduction of carbon emissions and a shift to renewable energy, individual cities' and states' ability to slow the climate crisis will be minimal.
\u201cAlthough cities and businesses are working together to fight climate change, the responsibility to cut emissions still lies with national governments https://t.co/0eXdhNRk8L\u201d— Unearthed (@Unearthed) 1535623206
\u201cAn analysis of climate change pledges made by nearly 6,000 cities, regions and states, has found that \u201ctheir emissions reductions are relatively small\u201d and that they \u201cdon\u2019t fully compensate\u201d for an uncooperative US under president Trump. | @guardian https://t.co/4vWgEeG3Jm\u201d— Carbon Brief (@Carbon Brief) 1535617176
Examining the efforts of nearly 6,000 cities and states and 2,000 businesses--like California's advancement on Tuesday of a 100 percent renewable energy bill--found that those initiatives will only reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 1.5 billion to 2.2 billion metric tons by 2030.
In contrast, the United States' carbon output last just last year was 5.14 billion metric tons.
"When we look at the individual pledges the impact isn't that large, so we absolutely need national governments to pull through and do a lot of the heavy lifting," Dr. Angel Hsu, director of Data-Driven Yale, told The Guardian. "The actions of cities, companies, and states aren't insignificant but they can't do it by themselves. This shows everyone can be doing more. The current reductions are woefully inadequate and hopefully the actions of other entities will give national governments the confidence to be more ambitious."
The individual actions of forward-thinking governors and mayors, the study suggests, is no match for an administration which refuses to even acknowledge the consensus of 97 percent of climate scientists that human activity is contributing to the climate crisis, and which announced last week a plan under which states would be able to regulate their emissions from coal plants.
"The idea we just tighten our belt a bit isn't going to solve the problem. We need to stop using the atmosphere as a dumping ground, abandon fossil fuels, find other sources of energy and deal with the carbon debt we already have," Klaus Lackner, the director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, told The Guardian.
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What Standing Rock Gave the World
Americans saw the Indigenous struggle—the violence, stolen resources, colluding corporations and governments—that goes hand in hand with protecting the Earth.
Mar 18, 2018
At the height of the movement at Standing Rock, Indigenous teens half a world away in Norway were tattooing their young bodies with an image of a black snake. Derived from Lakota prophecy, the creature had come to represent the controversial Dakota Access pipeline for the thousands of water protectors determined to try to stop it.
"This Indigenous-led disruption, the awakening resolve that was cultivated at Standing Rock, did not dissolve after February. Rather, it spread in so many different directions that we may never fully realize its reach."
It was a show of international solidarity between the Indigenous Sami and the Lakota. "They got tattoos because of the Norwegian money invested in the pipeline," said Jan Rune Maso, editor of the Sami news division of Norway's largest media company, NRK.
Rune Maso said the story about the tattoos was just one of about a hundred that his team of journalists covered over the course of the months-long pipeline battle in North Dakota. One of them, "The War on the Black Snake," was awarded top honors at a journalism conference held in Tromso in November. That story revealed large investments Norwegian banks had made to advance the $3.8 billion energy project, spurring a divestment campaign by the Sami Parliament.
The backstory can be told simply. As early as April 2016, Indigenous activists protested the pipeline's threat to the Standing Rock Sioux's primary water supply, the Missouri River. While battles were fought in federal courts, representatives of hundreds of Indigenous groups from around the world--the Maori, the Sami, and the Sarayaku, to name a few--arrived. Temporary communities of thousands were created on the reservation borderlands in nonviolent resistance against the crude oil project. Police arrested more than 800 people, and many water protectors faced attack dogs, concussion grenades, rubber bullets, and, once, a water cannon on a freezing night in November. Last February, armored vehicles and police in riot gear cleared the last of the encampments. Recently, investigative journalism by The Intercept has documented that the paramilitary security firm TigerSwan was hired by DAPL parent Energy Transfer Partners to guide North Dakota law enforcement in treating the movement as a "national security threat."
Oil now flows through the pipeline under the Missouri.
But this Indigenous-led disruption, the awakening resolve that was cultivated at Standing Rock, did not dissolve after February. Rather, it spread in so many different directions that we may never fully realize its reach. The spirit of resistance can easily be found in the half-dozen or so other pipeline battles across the United States. Beyond that, the movement amplified the greater struggle worldwide: treaty rights, sacred sites, and the overall stand to protect Indigenous land and life.
To be sure, post-colonization has always demanded acknowledgment of Indigenous autonomy. It's what spurred months of international advocacy when Haudenosaunee Chief Deskaheh attempted to speak before the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1923. He wanted to remind the world that European colonizers had honored Iroquois Confederacy nationhood upon entering treaty agreements under the two row wampum.
The stand at Standing Rock, then, was not anything new--just more modern.
Google the words "the next Standing Rock" and you get a smattering of circumstances, mostly posed in the form of a question: Bears Ears, Line 3, Yucca Mountain. "The Next Standing Rock?" the headlines ask.
The story of White Clay, Nebraska, is indicative. When the last tipis came down at Standing Rock, Clarence Matthew III, a middle-aged Sicangu Lakota man better known by his camp nickname, Curly, spared little time migrating to the South Dakota-Nebraska border. There, another fight for justice was mounting, for families living on the neighboring Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This one focused on a decades-long dispute over beer sales targeted at Native American customers mostly prone to alcohol addiction.
Demands turned to broader issues: investigation of dozens of unsolved crimes in White Clay against Native Americans. "Once we got down there, they started telling us about the problems they've had, more than just alcohol, the murders, the rapes, and everything that was on the bad side of that alcohol problem," Matthew said. "It just broke my heart to hear all that."
Matthew had been caretaker of one of the main communities at Standing Rock, and he settled right in at Camp Justice at the edge of Pine Ridge. He was there with his "water protector family," others who have adopted camping as an active form of protest.
For all the momentum that the resistance at Standing Rock brought, the Indigenous rights movement in the 21st century faces increasing challenges. Tribal nations tread cautiously under the administration of Donald Trump. Internationally, the militarized protection of extractive energy projects and theft of land persist, despite glaring media attention paid to the rising number of Indigenous peoples killed or jailed for their activism in the face of it.
In a final push for re-election last fall, Standing Rock's Dave Archambault II gave what would be his last interview as chairman to tribal radio station KLND. Archambault used the airtime to speak matter-of-factly about how the movement had shifted the tribe's potent public image away from the reservation. "It used to be cool to be Indian; now it's cool to be from Standing Rock.
"This movement was significant, not just for Standing Rock, but for all of Indian Country and around the world. We made some noise and now we're starting to see other Indigenous communities rise up and say, Let us all speak now, and it's pretty powerful and moving," he said.
Less than a week later and on the same day that the state of North Dakota accepted a $15 million gift from Energy Transfer Partners, Archambault was unseated by former council member Mike Faith, who has said publicly that he believes the overall movement hurt Standing Rock's economy and neglected daily life for tribal members.
The difference of opinion between the two leaders is a conflict that often lies at the heart of tribal community: protecting the Earth or protecting the Indigenous peoples.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 2017, when the Keystone pipeline ruptured and spilled 210,000 gallons of oil in neighboring South Dakota, the newly elected Faith remained notably silent while water protectors responded with outrage, most loudly, closest to home.
"Ironically, this week most Americans will be sitting down and giving thanks when last year at this time my people were being shot, gassed, and beaten for trying to keep this very thing from happening," Chairman Harold Frazier from the neighboring Cheyenne River Sioux tribe said in a statement. Like Archambault and other tribal leaders, Frazier was arrested for participating in the Standing Rock occupation.
Leadership in the Indigenous world is not only a difficult balance, but also dangerous.
In Honduras, activist Bertha Zuniga Caceres is fighting for Indigenous rights in one of the most militarized regions in the world. She is the daughter of Berta Caceres, the Indigenous Lenca woman who was assassinated after leading a successful campaign to halt construction of the Agua Zarca Dam. Now she is seeking justice for her mother's death.
The 26-year-old Caceres is also campaigning to suspend all U.S. military aid to Honduras. In July, she survived an attack by a group of assailants wielding machetes. Just weeks earlier she had been named the new leader of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, the nonprofit organization formerly led by her mother.
"Many organizations, many NGOs, many Indigenous groups are struggling in how to sustain the work that they are doing in the face of these attacks," said Katharina Rall, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Last year, after the military-style assaults on the camps at Standing Rock, Human Rights Watch expanded its agenda to include a program focused on the environment as a human right. "The fact that we now have an environment and human rights program at our organization is a reflection of this reality that a lot of people face," Rall said.
Meantime, the organization Global Witness reports that it has never been deadlier to take a stand against companies that steal land and destroy the Earth. In 2016, the watchdog group found that nearly four activists a week are murdered fighting against mining, logging, and other extractive resource development.
As disturbing as this reality is, it is unsurprising then to recall the military-style violence at Standing Rock: the rows of riot police pointing their guns at unarmed activists standing in the river; tanks shooting water in freezing temperatures at a crowd of people gathered on a bridge. In this one regard, Standing Rock was not unique in the world. It had become crucially important. Americans saw the global struggle faced by the estimated 370 million Indigenous people--the violence, stolen resources, colluding corporations and governments that go hand in hand with protecting the Earth.
Sustaining this awakening is the next great task.
Climate change poses one of the most serious reminders of why the sacred fires ignited at Standing Rock must continue to burn: Indigenous peoples and their knowledge and value systems matter.
"Climate change poses one of the most serious reminders of why the sacred fires ignited at Standing Rock must continue to burn: Indigenous peoples and their knowledge and value systems matter."
At November's COP23 climate conference in Bonn, Germany, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim was dressed in traditional Mbororo regalia when she stood in a conference hall demanding that Indigenous knowledge systems be properly acknowledged in Paris Agreement negotiations. The girl who once tended cattle in the region of Chad bordering northeastern Nigeria has now become a bridge for her people and government officials making decisions impacting the fragile ecosystem of Lake Chad, the lifeline for the Mbororo.
"Traditional knowledge has kept us from century to century to be in harmony with Mother Earth," Ibrahim said. "These knowledges will make for all the difference, but we cannot wait years and years, because climate is changing, and it's impacting the Earth."
Other members of the Indigenous Caucus at Bonn say inserting traditional knowledge into the climate talks doesn't go far enough. Jannie Staffansson, a representative of the Saami Council, wants what Chief Deskaheh had petitioned to the League of Nations nearly a century earlier: sovereign recognition for Indigenous Peoples on an international scale. It would allow equity at the negotiating table--a level playing field to fairly deal with the consequences of a warming planet in the face of land grabs and natural resource extraction.
"Why is it always that Indigenous peoples need to pay for other people's wealth?" said Staffansson. She paused to check the Snapchat account she had been using to engage with a young Sami audience while at COP, a demographic similar to the teens who got tattoos of the black snake.
"I had friends that went to Standing Rock," said the 27-year-old. "I was envious of their trip to support self-determination. Self-determination and a just transition is what we have to take into account."
"We need climate justice in everything we do."
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