"Now is not the time to
offer an escape route to polluting Northern country governments and big
oil."
Monday, December 02, 2019
As the United Nations climate
summit COP 25 kicked off in Madrid, Spain on Monday, environmental advocacy
groups warned that market-driven approaches to tackling the global emergency
are an obstacle to real solutions to rein in emissions and making those most
responsible for the crisis pay.
At issue are international
carbon markets, which, as a DW headline put
it, will "take center stage."
"Big polluters must be
rubbing their hands in glee that carbon market mechanisms, which further dilute
the already weak and inadequate Paris emissions targets, are back on the
agenda," said Dipti Bhatnagar, Climate Justice and Energy Program coordinator
for Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), in a statement.
As Nature explained Monday,
At last year's conference,
nations agreed on a set of rules for tracking and reporting greenhouse-gas
emissions and for reviewing collective progress. However, they failed to
establish clear rules around carbon markets through which emissions made in one
country can be offset by investing in low-carbon technologies elsewhere.
Although it is unclear whether negotiators will be able to reach agreement this
time around, Article 6 of the Paris agreement—which aims to promote voluntary
international cooperation between nations—is a central point on the agenda, and
offsetting will almost certainly be discussed.
Climate groups have treated
with suspicion carbon markets, whether they take the form of "cap and
trade"—where one polluter can trade its surplus units of allowable carbon
emissions to another polluter—or carbon offsetting—in which some activity is
done to "offset" the carbon created a polluter.
In briefing
paper last month, Friends of the Earth and other climate groups said
that not only do carbon markets not work to adequately limit emissions, the
market approaches can unleash harmful consequences for local and indigenous
communities.
"Carbon markets operate
on the false and unscientific assumption that offsetting emissions and selling
permits to pollute will reduce global warming," the groups said.
The briefing paper details a
number of problems with the scheme, including that carbon prices are too low,
the markets do nothing to remedy local impacts of fossil fuel projects,
"offsetting" projects can lead to evictions of forest dwellers, and
trading can allow fossil fuel companies—whose voices are uplifted over those of
communities—a decade or more of time to continue planet-warming projects.
Global Justice Ecology Project
and Biofuelwatch also addressed carbon markets in a statement on
Monday, saying the approach was being pushed by Chile at this year's climate
conference.
The groups condemned the
scheme as "commodification of the Earth" that enables
"climate-destroying business as usual under the pretense of climate
action."
"The climate crisis is
already devastating lives," said FOEI's Bhatnagar in her statement.
"Emissions are still rising. Now is not the time to offer an escape route
to polluting Northern country governments and big oil."
"Carbon markets fail to
deliver emissions reductions or adequate climate action and impact horrifically
on Indigenous Peoples and local communities," Bhatnagar continued.
"They only serve to strengthen corporate power and impunity, deflect
responsibility from rich historical polluters, and prevent urgent and equitable
action on climate change."
Speaking to reporters in
Madrid Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres laid
out what's at stake at the climate conference in stark terms.
"We are confronted now
with a global climate crisis," Guterres said. "The point of no return
is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us."
That threat drew young
people to the streets on Friday for another global climate strike ahead of COP
25.
Youth climate leaders Greta
Thunberg of Sweden, Luisa Neubauer of Germany, and Angela Valenzuela of Chile
wrote Friday in an op-ed for Project Syndicate that "Striking is
not a choice we relish; we do it because we see no other options."
"We have watched a string
of United Nations climate conferences unfold," they continued.
"Countless negotiations have produced much-hyped but ultimately empty
commitments from the world's governments—the same governments that allow
fossil-fuel companies to drill for ever-more oil and gas, and burn away our
futures for their profit."
The youths' message to those
at the COP 25 "is simple: the eyes of all future generations are upon you.
Act accordingly."
