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Brave New UNFCCC? Spatial Fixes, Environmental Fantasia, and the New Governmentality of International Climate Politics

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This NASA image shows the temperature anomaly (change) between the average of 2005-2009 and a base period of 1951-1980. Dark red represents a change of 2 degree Celsius Image from Climatesafety: http://bit.ly/fajvJ5 Used under creative commons licencing
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On the ‘Successes’ of COP16

This past December, the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) took place in Cancun, Mexico. Like every other COP convened over the past two decades, the international community met to continue negotiations on the Convention on Climate Change, and evaluate how the world is fairing with respect to the greatest environmental challenge of our time. At the end of COP16, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, declared that the negotiations were a ‘success’, because countries had agreed to avoid a gap in the first commitment period and to continue negotiating up to 2012. The complete political failure of the COP process to achieve any meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade and a half could not be better exemplified by this current barometer of ‘success’, in which the continuation of negotiations themselves is viewed as a victory.

While the Cancun Accords may have saved the international climate negotiation process from total collapse, and this agreement recognizes that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, the world should not be celebrating. In the Cancun Accords achieved at COP16, the parties agreed to: maintain a global temperature rise of 2°C, offered agreement on low-carbon technology transfer for developing countries, and declared that adaptation action and investment for developing countries should increase. The Accords also suggested that the controversial Carbon Capture and Storage scheme should be considered a Clean Development Mechanism, and also agreed that the World Bank should administer an annual $100 million USD Green Fund for mitigation and adaptation actions in developing countries. While on the surface, this may seem like reasonable progress for one round of negotiations, what is particularly striking is that none of these agreements achieve, or set out to achieve, the central multilateral commitment that is necessary to halt climate change: a legally binding commitment to emissions reduction between countries.

The ‘success’ of Cancun is grim in light of the calls from scientists, environmental NGOs, and civil society for dramatic global emissions reductions in order to avoid catastrophic warming. Overall, the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions has continued to rise ever since the establishment of the UNFCCC in 1992 and the establishment of the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. A recent report by the International Energy Association summarized that greenhouse gas emissions reached 32 billion tons in 2010, only one ton below the 33 billion ton pessimistic scenario imagined by the IPCC in its 2000 assessment. If the failure of COP16 to address this overwhelming evidence through a binding accord could be chalked up to political loggerheads at the bargaining table, as has been frequently been suggested, then these failures might be more understandable. Unfortunately, the failure (or success!) of COP16 is better understood as a much more deeply entrenched problem within the UNFCCC itself concerning its democratic deficit and desire to re-legitimate itself in the face of that deficit.

It is often assumed that the UNFCCC and its annual COP represent a multilateral, democratic, diplomatic, and cooperative international process where states negotiate until climate agreements can be made. Unlike most UN processes, the COP offers members of civil society the opportunity to participate and lobby for the representation of their interests in international climate policies. In practice however, the COP is far less then an ideal space of democratic pluralism. Instead, it is well established that throughout the years, the uneven power of non-state actors as well as the uneven power between states have impacted the outcomes of the negotiations, often for the worst.

Historically, corporations have continued to yield a disproportionate influence on the negotiations leading to climate solutions that allow for business-as-usual. This influence was most evident in the establishment of market-mechanisms for emission reduction in the Kyoto Protocol and since then corporate interest groups have continued to hold meetings with negotiators. The corporate lobby includes, but is not limited to, the American Petroleum Institute (API) (representing petroleum interests), the Round Table on Responsible Soy (representing agri-food interests and specifically Monsanto), the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the International Civil Aviation Organization, and recently the ICT industry’s Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) (representing 30 ICT corporations such as Cisco, Microsoft, and Ericsson). In addition, the uneven power of states results in divided perspectives at the negotiations regarding the responsibility of historic emitters for emissions reductions, the climate debt owed to developing regions, and the uneven impacts of climate change on developing regions. This divide is typically framed as a split between the developed, emerging, and underdeveloped economies. At COP15 in Copenhagen, these power differentials reached a point of crisis. Not only did COP15 fail to achieve the binding accord that the world was hoping for, but the accord it offered came from a handful of states (the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa) that negotiated behind closed doors well outside of the UN process.

Moreover, at COP15 the UNFCCC locked out 30,000 NGO delegates from the official process, leaving many stranded in the cold for days. Infuriated with the lock out of civil society, many delegates took to the streets alongside climate justice activists, and they were met by 9,000 Danish police officers who used brutal force, mass arrests, and revocation of delegate status, in order to contain any delegate that failed to tote the UN line. The symptomatic problems of power inside the UNFCCC and the COP process that surfaced violently at COP15 did not disappear at COP16, but instead, took on a radically different form. Instead, at COP16 the UNFCCC used a soft-power approach to contain civil society whilst also making up for the public relations disaster of COP15 in an effort to smooth over the contradictions it could not contain in Copenhagen. To this end, the UNFCCC used the geography of Cancun to contain civil society and remove it from the official negotiation process while also turning Cancun into an environmental fantasyland. This two prong strategy aided the UNFCCC in re-establishing its legitimacy as a protector of the environment among states, corporate participants, and its liberal environmental allies, while also keeping non-delegate civil society on the margins and out of the purview of the negotiations.

Spatial Fixes and Civil Society at COP16

At COP15 the UNFCCC learned an important lesson concerning the willingness and motivation of civil society to mobilize in large numbers to democratically express their discontent with the current process. Unfortunately, the radical deafness of the UN to the substantive part of this critique led them to understand the protests at Copenhagen as a ‘logistical problem’ that could be solved through better organization of the conference space itself. The first means of solving this logistical problem was the relocation of COP16 from its original site in Mexico City, to the resort town of Cancun. Situated far away from major population centers on the Yucatan Peninsula, Cancun provided a strategic spatial fix for the UNFCCC, insofar as the protests that did inevitably occur in Mexico City had no key location to converge on. Secondly, for the first time in its history, the UNFCCC decided to physically separate NGOs from the official negotiation space of the conference. Previously, participants shared the same venue and at COP15 the alternative civil society forum took place within walking distance of the official venue. However, this year the conference was dispersed over 6 locations in Cancun. The official UNFCCC spaces included the Moon Palace where official negotiations took place, the Media Center, Cancunmesse, and Climate Village. These venues were roughly 30 minutes apart from each other by car or bus or nearly 2 hours walk by foot. Similarly, the spaces for non-designated civil society were also massive distances apart, with Klimaforum and Diálogo Climático situated about a 6 hour walk apart or a 1 hour drive apart. Overall, the conference zone was so large, that it would have taken 7 hours to traverse the entire zone by foot and just over 2 hours to traverse the zone by car or bus, a calculation that does not even include the delays caused by military checkpoints put up along the way. Alarmingly, civil society that was not pre-approved by the UNFCCC was no where to be seen in the official COP zone. Unlike COP15, where the negotiations were only a quick train ride or reasonable walk away for civil society actors attending the people’s climate summit, this year grassroots venues such as Klimaforum10 and Diálogo Climático were placed far away from the official process to ensure that civil society kept their distance from the official conference.

As a consequence, unlike COP15 in Copenhagen where an active civil society was present every day either outside or inside of the conference protesting and contesting the actions of the negotiators, this year the conference venue and the streets outside were absolutely empty. There were no protestors around the conference, no staged protests inside the venues, no sit-ins, no coalitions walking out of negotiations, and almost no media circulating the NGO center. From what we could gather on the ground, most NGOs argued that they were so dispersed across Cancun and the southerly town of Puerto Morales that there was no one center for civil society to congregate on effectively. Moreover, the strategic positioning of military checkpoints, in and out of the peninsula and conference zone, ensured that anyone not designated by the UNFCCC to be in the COP zone was limited from accessing the roads hassle free. The cumulative effect of this spatial reconfiguration was that civil society and climate justice concerns disappeared from the purview of the climate negotiations. The spatial reconfiguration of the COP enabled the UNFCCC to effectively remove the dissenting voices of civil society it could barely contain in the previous year. At COP15, 45,000 delegates found themselves in logistical nightmare where NGOs were denied accreditation, locked out, and subjected to police altercations. According to the UNFCCC, the geography of Cancun was expected to simplify the organization of the conference and remove these ‘logistical problems’. And so it did. The ease and efficiency of the new UNFCCC was praised by national and corporate delegates. The ‘success’ of COP16 has led the UNFCCC to believe that the use similar spatial configurations is the best solution for dealing with civil society at future negotiations. However, the consequence of this fix was that people, at the international level, were denied the right to voice their discontent with the decisions of elected representatives with respect to climate change. We should be alarmed at this new tactic to discourage and remove civil society at the UNFCCC if we believe that democratic politics have a role to play in future international climate negotiations.

Environmental Fantasia and Re-legitimating the COP

In addition to offering a strategic spatial fix, the location of the conference in Cancun also offered the UNFCCC an opportunity to place COP16 in an idyllic location for the eco-vacation of a lifetime. To this end, the Government of Mexico and the UNFCCC made COP16 ‘sustainable’. Delegates were offered a chance to purchase carbon offsets to ensure their flight to Cancun was carbon neutral. As well, the conference venues used alternative energy sources and low efficiency light bulbs. To get to the various venues delegates moved along the road in brand new air conditioned Chiapas bio-fuel buses. In addition, all of the official COP16 hotels were stamped with a sustainability certificate. Guests were provided with all-you-can-eat vegan and vegetarian meal options daily. Moreover, all ‘official COP’ accommodations had compost and recycling facilities, while also using alternative energy, low efficiency lights, and water efficient technology. The properties selected as ‘official COP’ hotels had to demonstrate commitment to conservation by establishing programs such as sea turtle release programs, biodiversity gardens, and/or protected forest areas. According to the manager at the Ocean Turquesa, the ‘official’ hotels at COP16 were selected because of their sustainability plans, and were offered financial incentives to implement these plans by the Government of Mexico and the UNFCCC. Finally, the eco-tourism industry was there at every turn to offer delegates a chance to enjoy the natural beauty of Mexico. The various daily activities for delegates included snorkelling in constructed reefs were tourists could dive with captive sea turtles, or swimming with dolphins in contained water parks, or visiting bio-fuel plantations, or taking a hike through a conservation area, or watching a bull fight (the author is uncertain how this qualified as an eco-friendly activity). And, if delegates forgot where they were, the COP16 logo was omnipresent with its idyllic image of a butterfly fluttering around a lush tree.

The net impact of these efforts was the creation of a massive environmental fantasyland, where you could wake up in the morning to the view of the hotel’s ‘conservation’ forest and perfect white sandy beach. You could have a water efficient shower and reuse your towel and then walk through the ‘conservation’ area listening to the sounds of pre-recorded birds (yes, pre-recorded birds!). You would then find yourself at breakfast with a vegan meal before dashing off on a Chiapas bio-fuel bus to Cancunmesse where you could listen to delegates discuss how the market and technology will save us all from catastrophic climate change. And in the afternoon you could ‘get back to nature’ by taking an eco-trip to swim with endangered sea turtles who live in an enclosed water park. Finally, you could end your day with an all-you-can eat vegetarian meal by the sea to the light of an energy efficient lamp and then catch the late night show of local residents, in indigenous Mayan costumes, dancing for the tourists.

Surprisingly, rather then finding environmental NGOs up in arms about this offensive misinterpretation of ’nature’, delegates were enthralled. Major environmental NGOs, like the World Wildlife Fund, lapped up the sweetness of this new found environmental utopia in Cancun. The consequence was that the UNFCCC in partnership with the Government of Mexico had achieved one of its most important goals at COP16: for the institution to re-establish the faith of NGO delegates in the UNFCCC and its processes. The same NGOs, who only a year early, were turned away at the gates of COP15, and who marched in protest to the UNFCCC and its political exclusion, were now praising the UNFCCC for its commitment to sustainability, low-carbon consumption, and the provision of an eco-friendly space for NGO interaction.

Those who worshiped at the feet of false environmental fantasies were unable to see the stark social and environmental contradictions that underwrote this fantasia. Upon further investigation we found that the Chiapas bio-fuels running the COP16 buses were grown by violently evicting local farmers off of their land to accommodate for the growth of monoculture fuel crops instead of food crops. As well, in the rush to build the alternative energy infrastructure of COP16, local news reports claim that in order to build the wind turbines a forest was cleared without an environmental impact assessment. Furthermore, local environmental lawyers claimed that the carbon offset certificates sold by the Government of Mexico to delegates were forged. And last but not least, is the completely man-made construction of a ‘pristine nature’ throughout the tourist area. Before the conference, the government dredged up sand from the bottom of the ocean to pack the beaches in order to simulate the perfect white sandy beaches that Cancun is known for. The conservation areas for eco-tourism included sea turtles, dolphins, tropical birds, tropical fish, and tropical flora held in place for human entertainment value. As well, the ‘conservation forest’ at our official COP16 hotel had imported most of the flora, and the fauna was non-existent. Instead the animals were audible through the elaborate stereo system that laced throughout the forest to create a feeling of ‘conservation’. The mangrove swamps had to be drained and filled with cement, the thorny sprawling plant-life uprooted, and the undesirable species (especially insects) needed to be evicted, all in an effort to construct the idealized ‘nature’ that is worth saving in the view of the privileged professionals who descended upon COP16.

These contradictions only scratch the surface of the problems with Cancun’s environmental utopia. They do not even begin to address the labour relations of Cancun’s tourism industry, where long work hours, low wages, and worker migration, place many labourers in precarious employment positions. Overall, the environmental fantasia of COP16 was the ultimate metaphor of how the international climate governance community understands nature as an idyllic Xanadu existing solely for the aesthetic and recreational delight of those who can afford to access it. ‘Nature’ is to be constructed and contained in ways that ensure that those in power can benefit and profit from its subjugation regardless of the implications of this relationship for all living beings.

Brave New UNFCCC

Reflecting upon these new processes of the UNFCCC, it appears that the institution has turned over a new leaf. It will use less physical force against dissenting voices and instead it will simply make sure that civil society is physically removed from the spaces of power in climate politics. The UNFCCC will provide UN approved NGOs their own space in which to discuss climate change amongst themselves, but it will not provide them with the access to government officials or the corporate interests at the negotiating table. However, to ensure that the all delegates enjoy the COP and to ease their eco-conscience, the UNFCCC is now committed to a form of on-the-ground sustainability, where its long standing liberal environmental allies enjoy their soma on the beach. In a world where sustainability is advocated as the solution to the world’s ‘environmental problems’, and after visiting the UNFCCC’s environmental fantasia for one full week, it is clearer then ever that another alternative is necessary if humanity intends to truly transform its relation to nature and find a real solution to climate change.

Jacqueline Medalye is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at York University. She is the Climate Justice Research Fellow at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability and was the Head of the York Delegation to COP16 in Cancun, Mexico.

Jacqueline Medalye. "Brave New UNFCCC? Spatial Fixes, Environmental Fantasia, and the New Governmentality of International Climate Politics". CanadianDimension.com. 9th Feb. 2011<http://canadiandimension.com/articles/3707/>

 

Student Speak

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Concerned? Opinionated? Hopeful? Is there an issue, event, an innovation, or a movement that has caught your interest?  If so... BLOG about it!

IRIS has created a space on its website for students to write about issues and events that interests, frustrates or intrigues them. As a sustainable, interdisciplinary research center, IRIS is seeking out pieces which address  topics related to the economic, social, and/or natural environment. The piece should be focused on one or more of these three environmental spheres.

In terms of guidelines, the following should be considered:

  • The blog should be related to sustainability
  • There is no word limit, but you should aim for no more than 400 words
  • The subject is not limited to York University
  • The blog must respect the guidelines set out in York University’s Student Code of Conduct and Hate Propaganda Guidelines

There are very few restrictions on this blog space- so feel free to get creative! For some blogging tips, you can visit this website for some helpful ideas. You can also check out the current pieces students have contributed.

To learn more about how to contribute, or to send in a blog please e-mail us at irisatyork@gmail.com.

The YU Free Press

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In the spirit of change, I thought I would take this opportunity to write a positive blog by expressing my appreciation for the YU Free Press, our Yorku alternative newspaper. It is run purely by volunteers at the undergraduate and graduate level whose mission is to, “challenge the mainstream corporate media model and to provide a space for critical analysis and commentary of the news around us – both on and off campus – to a community of students, faculty, and staff alike.” They maintain a strong standard of anti-oppressive practices, striving for a vision of social justice by publishing labour, union and activist-positive material.

One of the strengths of the newspaper is that one does not have to be a member of the collective to publish. It is run completely by volunteers and functions solely through the support of the Yorku community. One can express their opinions without as many restrictions since they are not affiliated with the Yorku administration. In essence, if you are pissed off at the university, the Free Press is the place to publish it.

There are also no restrictions on writing about something you are involved in. The Excalibur considers this a conflict of interest, banning it from publication. The YU Free Press is a space where you can express what you are passionate about even if you are involved in the organizations that are a part of the story you are covering. This is intuitive because if you are interested in a story, you usually have a connection to it.

The paper is currently looking for new volunteers and contributors for their next issue. The next issue will follow the theme, Indigenous Sovereignty but it is not limited to Aboriginal issues. You can find the YU Free Press across campus in newsstands or download the material online.

The YU Free Press is a critical and self-reflexive view on what is happening on our campus. For an informed and alternative voice to the events that affect the York community be sure to pick up the next issue this January!

Sick of Appletree Medical

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I don’t usually read the Excalibur, but last semester I grabbed an issue off of the racks and was fairly impressed by the editorial piece by the managing editor, Brent Rose. The article was concerning the health care services at York, specifically Appletree Medical in York Lanes.

Rose cites numerous cases where profit was chosen over York students’ wellbeing at Appletree Medical. The registered nurse that was working at Appletree was replaced by a ‘medical assistant’ that is able to do a fraction of what a registered nurse could do at the clinic. International students had to start paying $15 for every visit, even though they are covered by the York health care plan, and pay for it yearly. One of the doctors has left because he became disgruntled by the lack of concern for student’s health. Lastly, they fired the only chiropractor in the area because it was not an ‘essential service.’ The worst part is that no chiropractors can open up a practice in York Lanes since Appletree has exclusive rights to provide health care at York.

Natalie Livshitz photo from Excalibur article

On November 30th, Appletree Medical posted an update stating that soon there will be an Appletree Wait Timer program to download on your Iphone which will notify you of how long you will have to wait before seeing a doctor. This application is absolutely pointless. One of the many issues at Appletree is not being unsure of how long we have to wait rather it is the long wait time itself. Last week I sat in Appletree for two hours with a friend who needed an appointment that should have taken five minutes. After two hours of waiting, and no reassurance from the staff, we left without her seeing a doctor.

The Excalibur article concludes by voicing a concern for the rampant apathy surrounding how healthcare is offered at this campus. My only hope is that I will still be at Yorku when Appletree’s choice to disregard student’s health needs in the pursuit of profit is no longer ignored.

The Waste Revolution

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On January 11, 2011 IRIS released a comprehensive report on its 2010 annual survey on waste. This was celebrated with the screening of the documentary: Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home by Andrew Nisker, a York University graduate. Nisker’s film has been shown to more than 1,000 communities worldwide, at more than 200 schools and has been selected for various film festivals.

The inspiration for this film came from the 2002 garbage strike in Toronto. In order to deal with the abundance of garbage, people were throwing their waste into Nisker’s neighbourhood park. This led him to inquire: what happens to our garbage when we leave it on the curb, and what impact does this have on our environment?

Nisker, who suffers with asthma, became particularly interested in the effect that pollution has on our emotional and physical health. “Garbage is a common theme around the world,” said Nisker. This documentary explores the average family’s creation of waste and offers commentary from experts on the impacts that commonly used chemicals have on our bodies and the environment. The documentary focuses on family of five, who according to Nisker, have drastically changed their consumption patterns since the documentary. The family has sold their SUV and purchased a smaller car and eliminated their bottled water consumption.

Following the film, Meagan Heath Waste Management Supervisor at York University’s Waste Management Services, spoke about some of the waste initiatives that are being taken at York. For Heath’s PowerPoint presentation, please click here.

Are you too concerned about the environment, your waste and a sustainable future? For some great tips on how to ‘go green’ this year, read Dawn Bazely’s latest blog: Happy New Year... How to make good intentions sustainable.

Happy New Year… how to make good intentions sustainable

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Dr. Johnson is often miscredited with first writing that good intentions pave the way to Hell. Having said that, I am very fond of making lists of goals and New Year's resolutions. "Blog more frequently", is usually on my list, but my attempts usually follow the pattern of starting a diet or exercise regime - they start strong and trail off.

BUT, I think I finally came up with a way to sustain a year of regular blogging.Tracy Tanentzap, our IRIS Research at York Undergraduate Student gave me one of my favourite Christmas gifts: a 2011 365-day calendar with advice on how to Go Green. My only issue with the calendar, is that the tips are very much at the Introductory Level. I am doing nearly all of them already (I looked ahead).

So, what better inducement to blog regularly, than to provide the GOING GREEN 101 tip for you, plus a suggestion for how to upgrade it to a GOING GREEN level 201, 301 or 401 tip. The good folk at www.pappintl.com are very welcome to incorporate my ideas into their future calendars:

Jan 1: Make a New Year's resolution to 'go green'. If this is the Introductory course on Going Green, then the higher level course would be: GOING GREEN - UP YOUR GAME.

Jan 2: Get fit by jogging, running, biking, walking or skating outdoors. Time spent outdoors builds an appreciation for nature and the environment. Upgrade: Take the stairs at the office, not the elevator. OR, in my case - if you are working 60-70 hour weeks and your failed intentions to exercise  are paving the way to overweight hell, then call a personal trainer and support the local economy.

Jan 3: Wash your clothes in cold water. Upgrade: Wash fuller loads - combine clothes and reduce the total number of weekly loads.

Jan 4: Darn your socks, repair your clothes. Upgrade: Start a knitting or sewing club - for any age - as a social activity.

Jan 5: Drink tapwater, not bottled water. Lot's of good reasons to do this. Upgrade: We all have our own water  bottle, but if you are like me and forget to take it, then make sure that you have 3-4 bottles stashed in different strategic locations.

Jan 6: Use baking soda instead of chemical cleaners for the tub and toilet. Upgrade: Buy the book, Clean: The Humble Art of Zen-Cleansing by Michael de Jong. In fact, buy 10 and give them as gifts along with a Zen Cleaning Kit - lemon, white vinegar, baking soda, borax and salt.

Jan 7: Compost your kitchen and yard waste. Upgrade: Make your composter RAT-PROOF. Yes - your composter is an ideal home for Rattus norvegicus. Food rains down on their heads and they are very happy. We now have a rolling compost bin (available at Lee Valley Tools)  plus a raised metal bin on bricks with holes punched in the side and a huge, heavy lid. As much as I respect rats, I really do not want them living in my compost bin.

Jan 8: Buy local food produce, and buy organic (check out my blog on buying organic). Upgrade: Learn how to preserve and put up food. It has gotten easier to learn how to do.

Jan 9: When printing documents, use recycled, non-bleached paper. Upgrade: Set your printer to 2-sided printing. You will need to change the printer settings in your computer printer driver.

Jan 10: Use biodegradable detergents for your dishes and laundry. Upgrade: Learn about the Phosphorus run-off situation and the phosphorus by-laws in your region. It's actually more of an issue than you may think it is. I was surprised by what I found out.

Ok - so that's it for now. Let's see if I can keep the tips and the upgrades coming.

Happy New Year,

Dawn R. Bazely

Sustainability & Business Do Mix

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On November 9th, I attended Bob Willard’s book launch of The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook: How to Transform Your Company (New Society Publishers, 2009). Prior to the launch, I had never heard of this author’s work, but, Willard’s presentation couldn’t have been more relevant to my life and what I am currently learning in school. Coming from a business background and listening to the importance of sustainability was somewhat predictable. However, what truly caught my attention was the “how to” get prominent business leaders to listen to and implement changes that positively affect the environment. Bob Willard’s solution to getting business leaders (CEO’s) to listen and implement sustainable practices in their companies is to use business terminology. As simple as that may sound, it works! Think about it…business-minded individuals are primarily concerned about one thing, and one thing only, money. Thus, talking to them in terms of profit is the ideal solution. Instead of calling it “sustainability” and “corporate social responsibility,” Willard proposes calling it “asset management.” Furthermore, Willard suggests that the three components of asset management should be renamed “financial capital,” “natural capital” and “human/social capital.” His presentation on making sustainability a part of our lives truly impacted my life as a business student. To learn more about this event, please visit http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?Article=15969

Annihilating Accountability

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Image from ThoughtBubble.org

Last month, Stephen Harper annihilated the Climate Change Accountability Act (Bill C-311) even though it was defeated in Parliament 43-32, without a debate. This has not happened in eighty years. This blatant, insulting attack on democracy is, to say the least, concerning.

A link on the IRIS facebook page lead to me to the David Suzuki Foundation’s website, where I was able to send an e-mail to Mr. Harper about eliminating the bill right before UN Climate negotiations began.

I wish I could say that I was surprised by Stephen Harper responding and apologizing for his undemocratic hissy-fit. Instead, I was surprised by responses from politicians who were cc'd. I received an e-mail from Elizabeth May touting green party rhetoric, reminding me that she has been a supporter of the bill since its inception.  I also received an e-mail from Mr. Ignatieff, which summarized the issue as well as had a similar underlying message. Surely Canadians know why they are sending the e-mail in the first place. I did not choose to use the David Suzuki Foundation as a channel so that I could get spammed by the opposition.

This aside, I am disappointed by the lack of response and am unsure of how to proceed. The Green Party suggests a letter writing campaign. Thus far, this has only resulted in getting spammed.

So, I am opening this up to anyone reading this post. Any suggestions on how to move forward?

COP is Dead, Long live the COP

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The Conference of the Parties, as the pluralistic democratic space for halting climate change, is dead. Long live the new Conference of the Parties, in which the autocratic, top-down institutions we are all so familiar with, will instruct us on how climate change is a reality to be adapted to and if we get on board, profited from.

We have been in Cancun since Saturday navigating the spaces for NGO-Governmental cross-communication and the halls are empty. At any given moment it feels like 100 people are in the space of Cancunmesse. Information booths are abandoned with only the occasional lone NGO delegate standing on duty. Side events have been cancelled throughout the daily schedule at Cancunmesse. There have been no internal protests by official NGOs, no sit ins, no coalitions walking out of negotiations in protest, and almost no media circulating the NGO center. It seems as though the delegates who remain at Cancunmesse are only doing so because they were unfortunate enough to get stuck at the kiddie table while the adults have caught the no. 9 biofueled bus to the Moon Palace. From what we can gather on the ground, most NGOs here are so dispersed across Cancun and the southerly town of Puerto Morales that there is no one center for civil society to congregate on. This would have been critical to fostering the important dialogue between critical and mainstream NGOs, as well as dialogue between these actors and national delegates. Reports from Democracy Now! suggest that the Moon Palace media center is also empty. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reported on Monday that they were shocked to find only 3 reporters in the media center and only one person to interview (another reporter). No one seems to be in the common spaces of the Moon Palace either. Only national delegates are to be found running in and out of the negotiations which are locked behind closed doors. Rumors inside Cancunmesse suggest that the Climate Village has also been poorly attended and is also totally dead, except at night time when locals come for the free government sponsored concerts. The dispersion of COP16 over 5 massive segregated spaces has left us, appropriately, with an oceanic feeling of drift. Unlike COP15, where it felt as if the world had descended on the Bella Center, this year it feels like no one bothered to show up.

Can this emptiness and lack of dialogue be explained simply by the spatial reconstruction we wrote of in our last post? We wish it was that simple. This would mean that the failure to achieve critical mass here in Cancun was simply a function of organization. We (hypothetically) could do better next time. Unfortunately, the issue is related to a much deeper problem rooted in the negotiations themselves. Put simply, without any real chance of deal to halt climate change, the new metric for success at COP has been downgraded to anything but the complete implosion of the process itself. But what is left of this process? What we find in the news bulletins is a continued tension between developed and developing countries. Suspicions that developed countries will not commit to new targets in post-Kyoto period, and that the Kyoto Protocol may be abandoned altogether, have emerged throughout the co-corridors of COP16. NGOs are confined to watching presentations in which we find developed countries are emphasizing low carbon development for developing countries. It is argued that low carbon growth for developing nations can be made through a new climate fund- the Green Fund. Negotiations of the text around a Green Fund are continuing throughout the week. The Fund is expected to provide mitigation and adaptation finance for developing countries. Developed countries are advocating that the World Bank act as the trustee of this fund. Developing countries are concerned not only about the World Bank’s role in this fund, but also in the amount of funds, and the allocation of funds towards mitigation instead of adaptation. The limit of NGO engagement and comment on this has been confined to a statement by Oxfam and a petition signed by 210 other civil society actors. Likewise, today the World Bank announced a plan to extend climate mitigation markets to select emerging economies including India, Mexico, and Brazil. Meanwhile, the environmental ministers from various developing countries throughout the weekend and early part of this week have stressed that they are already impacted by climate change and that they need funding to adapt. Various exhibits showcase the plans of national governments for adaptation in the hopes of gaining international funding and support for these plans through multilateral donors, traditional development agencies, and private partners.

In other words, the failure at Copenhagen last year to come to a global agreement on how to halt climate change has left us with an intractable situation between developed and developing countries who will now squabble over how best to deal with a reality that no one seems able to come to grips with. And the means for resolving this squabble will be the COP, but a COP process which is designed to remove official NGOs, civil society, and any dissenting voices from the negotiation spaces.

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Climate Refugees?

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Last month IRIS released a report from the 2009 Ecojustice Conference which stated that the Global South is disproportionately affected by climate change. Although Northern countries are the main causes of climate change, it is our Southern counterparts that are dealing with the consequences. Climate change is resulting in droughts, floods, atypical weather events as well as other natural repercussions that are creating mass migrations that are certainly not by choice. This being said, these disasters are never solely natural; they are a combination of political, cultural and social interactions that affect communities like the South Pacific island of Tuvalu which will soon be under water.

The international community has not adequately prepared for the consequences of climate change. What will happen to the people of Tuvalu when they are forced to migrate? Currently the term climate refugees is contested. Many reject the word ‘refugee’ for victims of climate change because they do not fit into the rigid and strict 1951 United Nations Convention definition. Because these populations have not been persecuted in the traditional, political sense they do not fall under the jurisdiction of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which is the UN agency that handles all refugees with the exception of those originating in Palestine. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) is a separate, specialized UN agency.

The international community needs to begin questioning and deciding what they are going to do with this mass influx of communities that are forced to migrate. Are they climate refugees? Stateless people? Simply migrants? Where are these people going to migrate to?

What Northern countries should really be asking themselves is: when are we going to take responsibility for our actions?

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