Policy team member, climate justice advocate and direct actionist, Jessie updates us on the latest climate justice news and gives us an insight into the crazy world of climate negotiations.

Reposted from an internal NZYD email, but we wanted to share it with you :)

“Hey Gang,

I have been receiving some really interesting articles from all sorts of climate justice sites and I wanted to share a few! Go grab a cup of tea and have a read (if ya feel like it). :P

Here is a link to an article by George Monbiot on whats wrong with biochar

Climate Justice Rally Kicks Off:
Over a thousand people are about to depart from Guadalajara, northern Mexico, in the La Via Campesina caravan rally going through Mexico City and being joined by caravans in Oaxaca and Chiapas and all convening in Cancun. Its a protest against the dominance of the wealthy countries’ ‘solutions’ being proposed at COP. ‘They will denounce the widespread apathy in the face of the current socio-environmental scandals, as well as the Mexican government’s maneuvering to implement mega-projects for “Clean Development Mechanisms (MDL)” which in fact devastate communities and the environment. This is the case of the large industrial pig farms such as Smithfield, the production of agrofuels for airplanes, the ”semi- remediation” of open air garbage dumps, large hydro-dams and new GMO extensions.’

Biodiversity: The commodification of nature:
This past week the 10th Conference of the Parties on Biodiversity has been going on in Japan. This is for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, but a lot of the issues, like the role of business in conserving biodiversity, are things that have a direct effect on UNFCCC talks. The really big issue here, and what has been critised by a lot of NGOs, is the commodification and privatisation of nature that is being discussed here.
Heres a prediction of what could happen if programmes like the ones being promoted here go ahead (like REDD):

Natural ecosystems will be assigned a dollar value. The economic law of
supply and demand says that as more natural ecosystems are destroyed by
unsustainable global consumption (which is not being addressed by TEEB),
those ecosystems will go up in value. Investors, being the profit-savvy
bunch they are, will figure this out pretty quickly.

Therefore, TEEB will cause the already frightening global land grab to
accelerate–perhaps even exponentially. The Indigenous Peoples and the
world’s poor who live in these ecosystems often do not have clear title to
their lands. TEEB will likely result in them being marginalized even
further, and even displaced from their lands. And this displacement will
be justified by blaming these rural poor communities for biodiversity
loss. The World Bank, for example, blames poverty for 40% of global
forest destruction. How can you protect biodiversity unless you kick out
the humans?

Under TEEB, the “captor” of an ecosystem will have the right to demand
compensation for leaving that biodiversity intact. And if TEEB follows
the REDD model, the amount of money demanded for NOT destroying
biodiversity will have to be equal to the profit that COULD have been made
from doing so. Where exactly will all of this money come from? And what
if nobody pays? Then the captor would be free to sell that ecosystem to
the highest bidder. For logs, for pharmaceuticals, for monocultures, for
soy fields, whatever will make the biggest profit.

This is, after all, the essence of Capitalism and why it is so dangerous
and stupid to put nature into the market. Capitalism is about maximizing
profits. Investors will get their financial return one way or the other,
regardless of the consequences. If there is any lesson that we can draw
from the financial crisis, that is it.

Some smart people from Berkeley tell us why carbon trading is whack, y’all This article is pretty interesting- about how the Clean Development Mechanism is getting ripped off by China. The big problem which has been proven to already be happening on a huge scale is ADDITIONALITY. China is getting huge amounts of credits for its big hydro plants and what not- yet its been proven that these would have happened anyway. SO these credits mean they get to go use the carbon elsewhere and not pay for it….

NASA scientist James Hansen gets arrested; inspires peeps to become activists.

This guy has balls. Even these science big-wigs are getting activist involved. He also said last year (article here) that Copenhagen should fail because the whole process is broken and we need to step back and re-assess. I like him and his shiney bald head.

“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track”

Heres an interesting article about Tea Party climate deniers being funded by BP- no big surprise i guess

Besos

Jess