Nusa Dua, Bali — Activists from the Civil Society
Forum or CSF are calling for a fairer world in order
to overcome the impact of climate change. Without
resolving global injustices first, climate change
will only increase the burden on billions of poor
around the world.
This demand was raised during a meeting of non-
government organisations (NGOs) on Saturday and
Sunday (December 1-2) in the lead up to the Climate
Change Conference that is to be held in Nusa Dua,
Bali. The meeting, which was initiated by the
Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), was
attended by some 60 NGOs and some 100 people form
local support groups.
Walhi Executive Director Chalid Muhammad said that
up until now the advanced countries in the North
have been applying double standards in their models
of global development, that is on the one side they
promote the issue of preserving the environment, but
on the other hand they insist on maintaining the
supply of cheep raw materials that destroy important
social and ecological sectors in the Southern
countries.
For the Southern countries, this model of global
development further contributes to poverty. The
people in the South are trapped in a cycle of social
and ecological crisis, environmental damage, social
disintegration and the loss of access to their
sources of livelihood. Hunger, malnutrition, natural
disasters and poverty are the daily fare for the
people of the South, while the governments of the
Southern countries are busy filling the consumption
needs of the Northern countries and paying off
foreign debt, while providing their citizens with
the crumbs of development.
According to Chalid, the patterns of energy
consumption by the northern countries that are
wasteful and polluting, is historically the primary
cause of global warming.
Carbon trading
In an Indonesian Civil Society Position Paper
written by the CSF, it said that efforts to overcome
the impact of global warming have been led astray by
economic and political interests that fail to
address the reality being suffered by the world’s
citizens. In spite of being put forward voluntarily
though bilateral agreements, the solutions being
offered in schemes by the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are still
essentially within a business framework.
These negotiators are convinced that solutions in
the form of technology transfer and rearranging
forest areas will be able to address global warming
and climate change. Moreover they believe the market
is the primary mechanism to take action to overcome
climate change. "This demonstrates that the signals
of climate change have not been enough to change the
views of world leaders in managing the planet," said
Chalid.
During yesterdays meeting, which was attended by at
least eight international NGOs including Oil Watch,
Friends of the Earth International and Jubilee 2000,
intervention models were formulated to counter-
balance the mainstream models that focus on carbon
trading schemes.
Subsidised by local people
Hendri Saparini, an economic observer from the
Advisory Group in Economics, Industry and Trade
(Econit, a private think tank) said that the carbon-
trading scheme represents a subsidy forced on local
people to maintain the lifestyles of those in the
advanced countries.
"These negotiations appear to only look at the value
of carbon, which on paper is very high, but don’t
consider the fate of local people who will come
under more pressure because of these mechanisms", he
said.
Saparini said that limiting energy use for
development in the developing countries is also a
part of this scheme as a whole. "We are forced to
undertake energy conversion and all sorts of other
things to protect consumption in the advanced
countries", he added. (AIK/MH/OKI/ANS/AYS/ONG)