climate change: launch of ambitious roadmap needed in bali
MEDIA ADVISORY
Friends of the Earth International
November 26, 2007
CLIMATE CHANGE: LAUNCH OF AMBITIOUS ROADMAP NEEDED IN BALI
On
3-14 December, the thirteenth annual negotiating conference for
members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
will take place on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Friends of
the Earth International will be lobbying for the launch of an
ambitious roadmap at the negotiations that will lead to real changes
that are urgently needed in order to address the climate crisis.
Friends of the Earth International Climate Campaign
Coordinator Joseph Zacune said:
“Industrialised nations
must commit to stringent targets and timetables that ensure steep
emissions’ reductions after peaking by 2015. Those countries with
the greatest responsibility for historical and continuing greenhouse
gas emissions have sufficient wealth to act and must do so. The
inequitable consumption of resources by the North and exploitation of
resources from the South has led to ecological debt that must be
repaid. A comprehensive package of mitigation and adaptation efforts
is required and false solutions such as agrofuels, nuclear power and
carbon offset projects including monoculture tree plantations must be
resolutely excluded.”
Friends of the Earth Indonesia /
WALHI Deputy Director Farah Sofa said:
“Indonesia, the host
of these climate talks, has been used as a testing ground for a
major, false solution to climate change – agrofuels. The
destruction of tropical forests in Indonesia, including the draining
and burning of peatland to clear land for plantation crops such as
palm oil releases so many tons of carbon that Indonesia ranks in
third place behind the US and China as the top emitters of greenhouse
gases.”
Friends of the Earth International Climate Campaign
Coordinator Stephanie Long said:
“Current commitments from
the industrialised world to fund mitigation and adaptation programs
in the global South are grossly inadequate and based on voluntary
'charity' rather than real assessments of needs and attribution of
responsibility. Clearly, the industrialised world has profited
significantly from over a century of producing greenhouse gas
emissions that perversely will provide protection from climate change
impacts. Globally, billions of dollars are spent annually on military
defense and repayment of odious debts with undeniable environmental
and social costs. Such quantities of funds must be redirected to
adaptation programs that provide relief for the vulnerable
communities and build resilience to climate change impacts.”
Friends of the Earth International Climate Campaign
Coordinator Hildebrando Velez said:
“Governments need to
promote measures that allow us to achieve sustainable societies by,
for example, supporting community-level decision-making over energy
sources and consumption patterns, the phasing out of fossil fuel
subsidies and shifting investment to clean renewable energy and
energy efficiency. These measures must be urgently carried out
without false solutions such as agrofuels and carbon offseting that
are being promoted to shirk responsibilities.”
In Indonesia it is estimated that 100 million people, of which 40
million are indigenous peoples, depend mainly on forests and natural
resource goods and services. [1] Large areas of forest lands
traditionally used by indigenous peoples have already been
expropriated for monoculture plantations, particularly for palm oil.
The promotion of biofuels – more accurately known as agrofuels –
is causing massive environmental and social damage from Colombia and
Brazil to Indonesia and Malaysia. Forests are being cut down and
indigenous people driven off their land around the world to make way
for corporate-run plantations that expropriate land and water
resources. Agrofuels are being perversely promoted as a solution to
climate change while the draining of peat lands and cutting down of
tropical forests for their cultivation is releasing huge amounts of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Recent studies are highlighting
the social and environmental damage that agrofuels are causing around
the world. [2] Friends of the Earth Indonesia / WALHI Deputy Director
Farah Sofa added: “The agrofuels boom – which is being fuelled by
unsustainable consumption demands in industrialised countries – is
making this terrible situation much worse by fuelling deforestation,
the expropriation of ancestral lands and violations of indigenous
peoples’ land rights. Following the EU’s announcement this year
of increased agrofuels for its transport needs, the Indonesian
government has signed agreements worth billion of dollars to develop
agrofuels. Forests are being cut down, indigenous peoples and forest
communities driven off their land – simply to fuel cars,” she
added. Reducing emissions from deforestation (RED) is a key issue on
the agenda for the post 2012 period. Friends of the Earth
International believes forest protection programs must uphold
community rights and land rights of indigenous peoples and other
local communities, prohibiting any actions that seek to exclude
indigenous peoples and forest dependent communities from
'conservation' areas. Failure to prohibit such action is an
endorsement of environmental racism and threatens the continuation of
sophisticated cultural practices of conservation. Financial
mechanisms for reducing deforestation cannot include trading of
'certificates' or credits which will create a global offset for the
failure to reduce emissions in industrial and transport sectors –
weakening the environmental integrity of the post 2012 agreement, the
environmental campaign group said. The proposed inclusion of ‘sinks’
in carbon trading -through deforestation reduction schemes- also
carries huge risks for forests and those that are dependent upon them
by allowing countries and corporations to buy up forest lands to
allow continued pollution at home.
Adaptation should be
designed to help the world’s poorest people, and should protect
ecosystems, livelihoods and human security, according to FoEI.
Community-based adaptation provides the best opportunity to ensure
that adaptation projects are culturally, technically and socially
appropriate, and that they increase resilience to the impacts of
climate change.
According to Kermal Dervis, head of the
United Nations Development Programme, donors will need to provide 50
to 100 per cent more finance over and above current aid –
equivalent to $50–100 billion annually – to cover the impacts of
climate change. [3]
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Joseph
Zacune, Friends of the Earth International climate coordinator: UK
mobile number +44-7967 877 593 or Friends of the Earth press
office in London +44-20 7566 1649
Stephanie Long, Friends of
the Earth International climate coordinator:
Australian mobile
number + 61-414 136 461
Farah Sofa, WALHI/ Friends of the
Earth Indonesia Deputy Director:
Indonesian mobile number +62
811194773
Hildebrando Velez, Friends of the Earth
International Climate Campaign
Coordinator: Colombian mobile
number + 57 3103090866
NOTES TO EDITORS
[1]
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Sixth session, “Oil Palm and
Other Commercial Tree Plantations, Monocropping: Impacts on
Indigenous Peoples’ Land Tenure and Resource Management Systems and
Livelihoods.” May 2007
In the developing world, greenhouse
gases emissions are mainly originated from agriculture and land use
changes such as deforestation. For example, a recent report titled
“Indonesia and Climate Change” and published by the World Bank
and the British government, shows that deforestation puts Indonesia
as the world’s third largest emitter after the US and China.
World
Bank news release, “Carbon dioxide emissions on the rise”, May
2007
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDATASTA/64199955-1178226923002/21326741/FINALPressReleaseLGDB2007.pdf
[2] Two key reports among the most recent reports are:
OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development: “Biofuels: Is
the cure worse
than the disease.” September 2007
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/9/3/39411732.pdf
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean
Ziegler, stated that it is a crime against humanity to divert arable
land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.
Ziegler demanded an international five-year ban on producing biofuels
to combat soaring food prices. Grant Ferrett, Biofuels ‘crime
against humanity’. BBC Online, 27 October 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7065061.stm
[3]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/43af1a4a-c817-11db-b0dc-000b5df10621.html
Furthermore, article 4.3 of the UNFCCC commits Annex II countries
to “provide new and additional resources to meet the agreed full
incremental cost of implementing measures…” including “preparing
for the adaptation to climate change.” In addition Article 4.4
states that Annex II countries “shall also assist the developing
country Parties that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse
effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation to those
adverse effects.”
