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UNFCCC

U.N. Unveils its Carbon Footprint

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The U.N. has made public its own carbon emissions for a second year in a row. In a new report, the U.N. found that its carbon emissions for 2009 were 1.7 million tonnes CO2eq in total, and 8.3 tonnes CO2eq per staff capita. It reports that more than 50% of the GHGs emitted by the U.N. are from air travel alone. Alarmingly, the U.N.'s goal is to reduce its GHG emissions by a mere 3% per year from 2009-2012. The UNFCCC accounted for 1,363 tonnes of CO2eq, most of which was also from air travel. This is concerning, given the fact that, despite COP after COP, and one round of international negotiations after another, the UNFCCC still has no serious plan of action to actually reduce GHG levels and avoid a temperature rise of the earth's surface. The report recommends that in order for the U.N. to achieve 'carbon neutrality', it should budget to purchase offsets and carbon credits  under the Kyoto Protocol. In addition, sustainable procurement practices are recommend. These recommendations are unlikely to lead to its goal of carbon neutrality. The system of carbon credits and offsetting is in a dire state, with concerns over verification, fraudulent practices, and ongoing issues regarding the social injustices related to afforestation schemes, technology transfers, and land enclosures.  In addition to these problems with offsetting, is the broader problem of addressing climate change via ecological modernist solutions that ignore the underlying social relations that cause GHG emissions in the first place.

For more, please read the U.N report.

 

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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The Spatial Reconfiguration of the UNFCCC

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We have arrived in Cancun and at COP16. It is surprisingly quiet here. You would have never known the UNFCCC negotiations were taking place in this tourist mecca, apart from the well armed military checkpoints and COP related adverstising along the well-manicured tropical highway bordering the hotel zone. Former delegates of COP15 at COP16 this year will be surprised to find the amazing ease of access for accredited NGOs to the UNFCCC in Cancun. Unlike Copenhagen last December, COP16/Cancun is a well oiled machine, operating at maximum efficiency and offering international delegates hassle free access to the UN process. The only catch is that you need to be staying at an ‘official COP16 hotel’. If you are privileged enough to be staying at one of these accommodations, the UNFCCC offers you unlimited transportation on a biofueled bus to the COP from your kingly all-inclusive accommodation by the seaside. However, which part of the COP process you access is strictly determined by your status within the UNFCCC.  In a conscious attempt to avoid the ‘disruptions’ of COP 15, the United Nations, in cooperation with the Mexican Government, have deliberately reconfigured the space in which the COP takes place by separating those of higher and lower status by massive distances. The zone of the conference would take 7 hours to traverse by foot and about 2 hours by car or bus. Within this COP zone are the Moon Place, Cancunmesse and Klimaforum10. Each is a separate venue, with separate access to the political process and negotiations on climate change. Unlike the Bella Center in Copenhagen, where National Delegates, NGOs, INGOs, and the Media, were free to move between spaces, one now has to pass through a series of pre-approval processes which vet the individual on their likelihood of dissenting against the official process.

Firstly, the Government of Mexico has constructed the Moon Palace, a venue capable of housing and holding up to 28,000 governmental delegates and media officials. Constructed specifically for this international event, the Moon Palace is locked between a navy patrolled ocean on the one side and a thick Yucatan forest on the other. It has one road access point which is safely guarded by the military of Mexico, federal police, UN police, and regional enforcements. Without accreditation as a media official, representative of a national government or ‘special NGO’ access to this elite confine of climate negotiations is strictly forbidden and off-limits. If you want to reach this venue, you need to be on a special bus, for which you need documents just to get to the gates. Moreover, within this venue, the media center is about a 10 minute car ride away from the official negotiations, making quick coverage of events logistically challenging.

Secondly, the UNFCCC in conjunction with the Government of Mexico have created an entirely separate NGO forum, at the Cancunmesse. Here you will find side events and exhibits for NGOs and INGOs.  Like the Moon Palace, the Cancunmesse is guarded by a well armed platoon of military and federal police who have piled up a stack of heavy wrought iron barricades on the side of the road to be used in the event of protest. If you want to reach this venue hassle free, you need to be on an ‘official hotel’ bus, for which you need documents just to get to on for a ride. Once inside Cancunmesse the process is relatively smooth, but highly controlled and monitored. The only civil society actors to be found here are those deemed appropriate and relevant by the UNFCCC. National delegates and the media have access to this part of the COP, but for the most part, it consists of ‘accredited NGOs’ communicating with each other.

Alarmingly, civil society has not been pre-approved by the UNFCCC is no where to be seen here in Cancun. Not on the streets, not in the advertizing, not protesting outside the gates of the Moon Palace, or Cancunmesse. Where are all of the climate justice protestors and all of the people unrepresented by the UNFCCC accreditation process? Last year in Copenhagen the streets were full of civil society activity from art, to marches, to street speeches, to demonstrations, to ad busting, to a free access People’s Climate Summit. Unlike COP15, where movement between the People’s Climate Summit, Klimarforum, and the negotiations was only a quick train ride or reasonable walk away for civil actors, this year ‘the People’ have been placed a 6 hour walk or expensive 40 minute taxi ride away from the official process, if they could afford to come at all. The cumulative effect of this spatial reconfiguration is that unrepresented civil society and climate justice have disappeared from the purview of the UN, while official delegates have been treated to a vacation at ‘sustainable’ and ‘eco-friendly’ resorts. Making power invisible for the UN has thus meant a process of denying accessibility on the one hand, while plying the NGO community with a fantasia of pleasurable efficiency. This new efficiency of the UNFCCC has come at the expense of engagement with the people most affected by climate change, at the expense of freedom to protest by the climate justice movement, and at the expense of the freedom to speak out against the corporate agenda of the political elites that circle the space of international power. In sum, the new UNFCCC approach to the COP ensures that no voice but the voice of power can be heard. It will remain to be seen if the voices the of tens of thousands of climate justice protestors will take up the challenge of that 6 hour walk on Tuesday, when they have pledged to be heard.

Jacqueline Medalye and Ryan Foster, December 4, 2010

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