Story Published: Dec 31, 2010
CANCUN, Mexico – Delegates negotiating a new
international climate deal to cut carbon emissions and address
mitigation and adaptation emerged from a marathon session at the
United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change 16th
Conference of the Parties Dec. 11, tired but pleased.
The “Cancún
Agreements” that resulted will require that both developed and
developing countries reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and
register their actions for international verification. Under the
Kyoto Protocol, set to expire in 2012, developing countries had
no such commitments.
The UNFCCC called it a balanced package that “restores faith in the
multilateral process.” But its adoption wasn’t unanimous.
Bolivia’s plurinational state vetoed the agreement, saying it wanted
deeper cuts in GHG emissions by rich nations, who they accused of
genocidal policies “that take 30,000 lives a year.”
To avert catastrophic global warming developed countries would have
to cut their emissions 25 to 40 percent compared with 1990 levels in
the next decade. Instead, they’ve committed to 16 percent in the new
Agreements.
Despite Bolivia’s dissent, COP President Patricia Espinosa adopted
the text, saying the absence of an agreement would not prevent the
effects of climate change and no one country should have the right
of veto.
Journalist Rina Saeed Khan from Pakistan and part of the Climate
Change Media Partnership interviewed delegates from India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh and the African countries. “They all said they agreed in
principle with Bolivia, but said the U.S. had exerted pressure on
their governments to water down the agreements,” Kahn said.
Bolivia decried what it’s calling a “Copenhagen
Accord II,” and said a “so-called victory for multi-lateralism
is really a victory for the rich nations who bullied and cajoled
other nations into accepting a deal on their terms. An accord where
only the powerful win is not a negotiation, it is
an imposition.”
The Indigenous
Environmental Network also condemned the Agreements. IEN said
the Cochabamba People’s Agreement represents “everyday people from
all corners of the globe creating solutions to the problems of
climate change from the ground up, and which calls for a global
framework that respects human rights and the rights of Mother
Earth,” and is the best way to proceed.
The “Cochabamba
People’s Agreement, Honoring the Rights of Nature” document was
the result of a landmark gathering of social movements last April in
Bolivia. The UNFCCC merged the document into the climate negotiating
text but when released to delegates at COP 16 all references to the
Cochabamba document were removed.
“I went through the documents and found the
U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples referenced
twice,” said Robert Gruenig, senior policy analyst for the
National Tribal
Environmental Council. “The final text is a step forward but
what we should be concerned with is that as we get closer to the
final version that will come out, it may be more difficult to get
indigenous language in.”
The final day of the COP, Joan Carling of the Philippines reiterated
the four demands of the
International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change on any
climate processes:
The recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples consistent with
the UNDRIP; the right to free prior and informed consent in all
actions related to climate change that affects them; recognition and
protection of their traditional knowledge; and ensuring their
participation in all climate change processes.
“As indigenous peoples, we have been engaging in the climate
negotiations for many years to express our great concern over the
current and future impacts of changes in the climate on our peoples,
our cultures and our rights,” Carling said.
The UNFCCC agreed on a new framework for
REDD+
(Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and
enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries).
REDD-plus is a carbon trading scheme meant to enhance market-based
forest stocks, in which developing countries will be compensated for
keeping their forests intact.
Because tropical forests store more than half the world’s carbon and
hold two-thirds of the world’s biodiversity, REDD+ was a critical
component of this year’s talks. To hold global temperature increases
to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels deforestation must
be cut to half by 2020, according to the U.S.-based
Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests.
Some indigenous nations and communities have signed on to the
UN-REDD Programme.
UN-REDD said the new agreement will increase the flow of market
funding to support REDD+ readiness and invigorate donor pledges that
are now close to $5 billion for early actions until 2012.
But not all.
In order to mitigate climate change and save the forests, Carling
said indigenous peoples must have a voice. “We are not just stake
holders and we have the right to participate in these negotiations.
It’s a matter of life and death if they come out with wrong
solutions.”
“REDD threatens our human rights, including our right to free prior
and informed consent among many others,” the IIPFCC’s Indigenous
Caucus said in an opening statement Nov. 29. “Our land and
territories, food sovereignty, biodiversity, cultural practices and
traditional lifeways are being placed in further jeopardy, and we
reject these false solutions.”
Ben Powless of Canada said IEN rejected REDD+ and the carbon market
because it proposes to commercialize nature to the detriment of
indigenous peoples and biodiversity. “We demand a strong system of
monitoring and compliance of states on safeguards related to REDD to
ensure the protection of our rights.”
Gruenig discussed the safeguards in the REDD+ program with the U.S.
delegation, taking into account the obligations under the UNDRIP.
Gruenig said the U.S. seemed to be okay with the language used in
those safeguards, “which is interesting because the U.S. has not
signed onto the UNDRIP, but they are okay with this.” (Note: The
U.S. signed onto the UNDRIP when?).
The new agreements also committed to a pledge made in last year’s
Copenhagen Accord to raise a fund of $30 billion within 2010-2012,
called the “Green Climate Fund.”
The
International Indian Treaty Council said the Indigenous Caucus’
hard work resulted in greater recognition for the rights of
indigenous peoples, and human rights in general, in the final
document, and provided an important basis for their future work to
have the rights of indigenous peoples as contained in UNDRIP fully
included and implemented in the text.
IITC Executive Director Andrea Carmen said the most disappointing
and unfortunate aspects of the outcome was the lack of political
will by states to agree to any real, binding or significant
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the activities that
produce them.
“Indigenous peoples’ ways of life and homelands all over the world
are threatened and impacted by climate change as well as false
solutions based on carbon trading and market based schemes. Until
industrial states like the U.S. take responsibility for drastically
reducing the emissions they produce, and call a halt to oil, gas and
coal extraction and processing that are primarily responsible for
climate change, we remain under dire threat. The climate crisis will
only continue to worsen and indigenous peoples, and all of our
future generations, will be at risk.”
Gruenig said there are several important issues that will need to be
addressed at next year’s climate summit in Durban, South Africa.
Four alternative climate summits took place alongside the official
proceedings. A summit of non-governmental organizations; one run by
the Mexican government;
Klima Forum,
first held in Copenhagen in 2009; and
La Via
Campesina (the International Peasants’ Movement), an
organization of
more than 148 organizations that advocate family-farm-based
sustainable agriculture that drew thousands – farmers, landless,
indigenous peoples and activists from all sectors during the summit
proposing solutions to confront
climate change.
To view the Cancun Agreements visit
http://unfccc.int/2860.php.
Indian Country Today is grateful to the
Earth
Journalism Network for its
U.S. 2010 Climate Media Fellowship that sent
environmental reporter Terri Hansen to Cancun, Mexico Nov. 29 – Dec.
10 to cover the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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