Klimaatverandering 123

'Hoodwinked in Bali on Carbon Credits
By Daphne Wysham
The Nation

Nusa Dua, Bali - It's the second week of the UN Climate Change Conference and the air is heavy with humidity, but despite being the rainy season, it hasn't rained heavily in weeks. The rooms in the conference facilities where people are clustered around computers feel like saunas, an appropriate thing, I suppose - reminding us not only of where we are, in tropical Bali, but also of why we're here. The world has a fever, and we're here to begin to bring the temperature down before it's too late. The question is, will the 15,000 or so government and nongovernment actors here deliver the goods, or have events been set in motion to make such a breakthrough impossible?
The UN website for the Climate Convention puts an upbeat spin on the meetings here. However, behind the public relations efforts divisions are apparent - not just between North and South, or between the United States and most of the rest of the world, but also between and among NGOs.
When money is on the table, there can be plenty to fight about. And right now there is a hefty wad of cash being dangled before governments and NGOs that comes with a catch: accept carbon trading as the deal or get nothing at all. Even so-called adaptation funding, arguably the largest piece of the pie, if done correctly, is being proffered to cash-poor countries - but only as a percentage of the carbon-trading budget. The message: accept carbon trading or your poor will starve.
Not surprisingly, many governments are jumping on board with this offer. Too many developing countries are still suffering the legacy of indebtedness and poverty to Northern institutions like the World Bank and IMF, staggering debt set in motion by the high oil prices of the 1970s, to have much of a choice in the matter. If it means pledging to protect their forests and treat them as carbon offsets to allow the North to continue to pollute, so be it.
And then there is the issue of bribery. While no one can be certain how much money has infected the political process here, there are indications that agreements that are being structured around Indonesia's forests involve insider dealing with carbon traders, deals that place millions if not billions of dollars on the table. Surely, once the deals are sealed, there's enough to share with a few choice decision makers.
The World Bank's cocktail party reception for its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility December 11 in Bali was met with organized protests from indigenous peoples and their allies, and chants of "Hands off, World Bank!" The reason: the forests where indigenous peoples make their home are now up for auction as "carbon sinks." Yet in an age-old pattern of marginalization, no one bothered to consult the indigenous peoples.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly to long-term observers of the climate debate, this enthusiasm for carbon trading has spread to many NGOs as well. Some conservation groups are eager for more cash to help them protect a rainforest here or save an endangered species there. And organizations that work on hunger or disaster relief are equally eager to get more revenue for a problem that only promises to grow worse.
Those who are skeptical of the conditions placed on this cash are largely outside the NGO circles that have dominated the process thus far. To be fair, those working on this issue for years have seen proposed regulatory measures shot down in favor of market mechanisms, in order to get the largest emitter, the United States, on board. Now they are merely trying to get the United States to stop obstructing whatever deals can be struck in the final days.
With time running short, they feel there is no time to go back and rethink the whole concept; they are wedded to a process, one made in America, and having pushed their governments this far, they are reluctant to reconsider. Perhaps because so few alternatives are making it to the table, they continue, full steam ahead, ignoring the concrete results that signal failure, corruption and, worst of all, an increase in greenhouse gases under various carbon-trading schemes.
But here's the deal: carbon trading is not some innocuous attempt at climate stability. It is the neoliberal agenda writ large. Countries that are already on the treadmill of debt will become even more beholden to the institutions that have so successfully advanced the corporate agenda via the World Bank, the WTO and other agents of hegemony.
What, then, is to be done? I suggest there are at least six critical components in a strategy that might actually turn the tables on this dominant "solution" to the climate crisis. But they will not come from the environmental groups, at least not from most of those that are represented here at the climate negotiations, nor from the governments themselves.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121307N.shtml