Further to my post below, about the Bali 'roadmap' toward serious action on dangerous climate change: Looking more closely at the small print, some serious problems emerge. The adaptation-to-dangerous-climate-change fund is generally good, and the call for "deep cuts" in emissions is genuinely groundbreaking -- though the numbers to be put back in, to turn the call for "deep cuts" into concrete and sufficient targets. But the measures to deal with deforestation, an urgent and pressing problem, turn out to be deeply inadequate.
Here is what leading Environmental Consultant Deepak Rughani has to say about these:
"Ten years after the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the Bali roadmap ensures that...carbon trading schemes will be expanded which will further harm the climate, accelerate rainforest destruction, and undermine the human rights and land rights of indigenous peoples and other communities in the global South. ...[S]ome of the agreements reached will push us further towards runaway global warming by speeding up the destruction of tropical forests, on which all of us depend for a stable climate and thus for our survival. Under the 'Clean Development Mechanism' funding for industrial tree plantations will be massively expanded. Tree plantations are routinely established at the expense of natural forests and other biodiverse ecosystems, and at the expense of indigenous peoples and other communities who, in many cases, have been evicted from their land. They are also linked to the use of toxic agro-chemicals and to groundwater depletion. This summer, much of the plantation area in South Africa and Swaziland went up in smoke, proving how disastrous it is to class monocultures as ‘carbon sinks’. Forest campaigners and indigenous peoples representatives have warned that under the Bali plans for reducing deforestation, control and rights over forest land will be taken from indigenous and other communities that have actively protected forests and handed over to governments and carbon traders, whilst logging and plantation companies are expecting compensation for any part of the forest they do not destroy. This will speed up the destruction of the world’s remaining old growth forests and thus make climate collapse ever more likely. It is time for a radical re-thinking of the UNFCCC process and for real solutions – which reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than simply making profits for carbon traders and other companies."
Here is what leading Environmental Consultant Deepak Rughani has to say about these:
"Ten years after the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the Bali roadmap ensures that...carbon trading schemes will be expanded which will further harm the climate, accelerate rainforest destruction, and undermine the human rights and land rights of indigenous peoples and other communities in the global South. ...[S]ome of the agreements reached will push us further towards runaway global warming by speeding up the destruction of tropical forests, on which all of us depend for a stable climate and thus for our survival. Under the 'Clean Development Mechanism' funding for industrial tree plantations will be massively expanded. Tree plantations are routinely established at the expense of natural forests and other biodiverse ecosystems, and at the expense of indigenous peoples and other communities who, in many cases, have been evicted from their land. They are also linked to the use of toxic agro-chemicals and to groundwater depletion. This summer, much of the plantation area in South Africa and Swaziland went up in smoke, proving how disastrous it is to class monocultures as ‘carbon sinks’. Forest campaigners and indigenous peoples representatives have warned that under the Bali plans for reducing deforestation, control and rights over forest land will be taken from indigenous and other communities that have actively protected forests and handed over to governments and carbon traders, whilst logging and plantation companies are expecting compensation for any part of the forest they do not destroy. This will speed up the destruction of the world’s remaining old growth forests and thus make climate collapse ever more likely. It is time for a radical re-thinking of the UNFCCC process and for real solutions – which reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than simply making profits for carbon traders and other companies."
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