The expected declaration is supposed to get the parties to agree
to hammer out the details of a negotiating framework by COP 14 in Poland in
2008 and to come out with a final agreement by COP 15 in Denmark in 2009.
It is also expected to contain a reference to a 25 to 40 per cent cut in
greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, though Yvo de Boer,
executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCC) was quick to disavow that this was “not a target.”
Australia Rejoins the Fold
The opening of the “high-level segment” of the meeting, which
has been going on for nearly 10 days, was marked by a dramatic appearance by Australia¹s Prime Minister of 10 days Kevin Rudd, who personally delivered
his country¹s instrument of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to United
Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Under the previous government of
John Howard, Australia had allied itself with the United States in not
ratifying the protocol. As if making up for the sins of his predecessor,
Rudd voiced his support for a new multilateral agreement with binding
emission targets and promised a 60 per cent GHG (greenhouse gas) reduction
by 2050 from 1990 levels for his country. “There is no Plan B,” he told the
participants. “There is no escaping to another planet.”
Some climate activists, however, have not been swept away by
Rudd, complaining that his words still have to be reflected in the behavior
of Australia’s negotiators in Bali, who are said to be imprisoned in the
obstructionist paradigm of the Howard regime.
Obstructionists Inc.
The repeated urging by speaker after speaker for binding targets
contrasted with the background realities of continued absence of a positive
attitude on the part of the US, obstructionism on the part of Canada, which
has replaced Australia as George W. Bush’s closest ideological ally, and
Japan’s ill-concealed backtracking from mandatory emission cuts owing to
strong pressure from Japanese industry. On the other hand, China and the
Group of 77 have struck some longtime observers of the Kyoto process as
projecting an attitude of being willing to do their share if the developed
world was ready to decree meaningful GHG cuts and finance the development
and transfer of technology to assist the developing countries to achieve the
transition to a low-carbon economy.
North-South
North-South tensions have been high, and on Tuesday, Dec 11, talks broke
down on three issues, one of them being on the key problem of transfer of
technology to assist countries of the South cope with global warming. The
transfer of technology talks broke down over whether to use the term
“facilitate” as the developing countries wanted, or “program,” the preferred
word of the North, according to Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram, chairman
of the Group of 77 and China bloc. According to one developing country
deputy environmental minister who did not wish to be identified, "the US has
sent dinosaurs to these negotiations, and that¹s why we’re stalemated on 80
per cent of the issues." Washington is the bete noire in Bali, and none are
more frustrated than US climate change activists who constantly apologize
for the Bush administration’s intransigence.
Intra-Group of 77 differences, while much less visible, have not been
absent. Malaysia, for instance, surprised developing country delegates at
the beginning of the negotiations when its representative appeared to hew to
the US line that it wanted an institutional outcome to the negotiations that
was “flexible” and “non-binding.” At a side-event sponsored by the
government of India on Wednesday, Dec. 12, one speaker suggested that
commitments to GHG emission cuts would depend on whether a country belonged
to the OECD or rich-country bloc, to the developing world, or to a third
category made up of “one big country.” This was obviously a reference to
China, whose presence in the Group of 77 bloc has made many—especially the
smaller island countries that are clamoring for emergency aid to meet the
sea-level rise that is already drowning them—uncomfortable since they see
their interests as being entangled in the dynamics of the negotiations
between the North and China. The rich countries want China, which is on
track to surpass the United States as the biggest GHG emitter and is
experiencing record but environmentally destabilizing economic growth, to be
eventually included in a regime of mandatory emission reductions. The same
demand has been made, though not as strongly, with respect to India and
Brazil.
Big Business Roars in
Bali will probably be remembered as the conference where big business came
to climate change in big way. A significant number of the side events have
focused on market solutions to the GHG problem such as emissions trading
arrangements. Under such schemes, GHG intensive countries can “offset”
their emissions by paying non-GHG intensive countries to forego
pollution-intensive activities, with the market serving as the mediator.
Shell and other big-time polluters have been making the rounds touting the
market as the prime solution to the climate crisis, a position that
articulates well with the US position against mandatory emission cuts set by
government. UN officials justify the greater private sector presence by
saying that 84 per cent of the $50 billion needed to combat climate change
in the next few years will need to come from the private sector and the
latter needs to be “incentivized.”
Climate change activists have been appalled and stunned by the business
takeover of the climate change discourse. One Indian activist walked out of
a session on “linking emissions trading markets” muttering, "I can’t believe
it. These guys have their own specialized jargon. I did not understand one
word of what they were saying.“According to Kevin Smith of the Durban Network on Climate Justice,”The
carbon market was originally a very minor part of the architecture of
climate architecture, one that climate activists agreed to in order to get
the US on board the Kyoto express. Well, the US did not get on board, and
we are now stuck with carbon markets driving the process since the
corporations have found that there is money to be made from climate change."
Smith and others claim that the carbon market as a solution is a panacea
that will merely allow polluters in the North to keep on polluting while
allowing private interests in the South to displace smallholders so they can
set up unmonitored and unregulated tree plantations that are supposed to
absorb carbon dioxide.
World Bank Provokes Protests
The World Bank has had a major presence at the conference. This has not
been to the liking of many parties. For over a week, negotiators haggled
over the mechanism to manage funds that would go towards assisting countries
that were on the frontline of the climate crisis. The developed countries
wanted the World Bank to act as trustee for the funds and the Bank-managed
Global Environmental Facility (GEF) to serve as the administrator for the
funds. This did not please the developing country governments, which have
had many negative experiences with Bank control of the GEF. The impasse was
resolved only when the negotiating parties agreed to establish an
“Adaptation Fund Board,” composed mainly of developing states, that would
oversee the administration of the funds by the GEF.
An even bigger reaction greeted the Bank’s launching of its $160 million
Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, which is designed to use market
mechanisms to compensate developing countries with large tracts of forest,
including host country Indonesia, for not cutting them down. Some 100
activists staged a one-hour-long lightning demonstration at the Grand Hyatt
Hotel that put Bank President Robert Zoellick on the defensive. The
protestors, which included members of the Indonesian Civil Society Forum,
Friends of the Earth International, World Rainforest Movement, Global Forest
Coalition, Jubilee South, the Durban Group on Climate Justice, and Focus on
the Global South, warned that incorporating forests into the carbon market
would simply guarantee their passing into the hands of big private
interests.
Of special concern to the protestors was the fate of indigenous communities.
The proposed Bank facility, they warned in a statement, "could trigger
further displacement, conflict, and violence. As forests themselves
increase in value, they [would be] declared Œoff limits’ to communities that
live in them or depend on them for their livelihoods."
Global Civil Society Erupts into the Scene
The mass action against Zoellick within the conference site underlined
another reason Bali will be remembered. It marked the entry of the global
justice movement into the climate change negotiations. The meeting was
attended not only by civil society organizations working on trade and
development like Oxfam and the World Development Movement but also by mass
movement networks like Via Campesina and Jubilee South. A venue called
Solidarity Village for a Cool Planet less than a kilometer from the
conference site was organized by Gerak Lawan or The Indonesian People’s
Movement Against Neo-colonialism and Imperialism, together with a number of
regional and international social movements and organizations, to serve as a
site for a parallel conference that drew hundreds of participants.
Representatives of environmental refugees from the Pacific Islands,
indigenous peoples threatened by forest carbon trading schemes, and farmers
from Via Campesina were among those who participated in the week-long
gathering.
The eruption into the scene of trade justice and development activists
brought a conflictive World Trade Organization ministerial-like atmosphere
to the negotiations that had formerly been marked by a civil if not chummy
relationship between government negotiators and climate lobbyists. "This
opening up of the process to folks who are bringing new issues like trade
and justice and people’s empowerment into the equation has been a bit
disconcerting to the traditional climate NGOs," said Emma Brindal of Friends
of the Earth-Australia.
“Climate Justice” was the call that united the groups at the Solidarity
Village. In a statement issued at the end of the meeting, the participants
stated: "By climate justice, we understand that countries and sectors that
have contributed the most to the climate crisis — the rich countries and
transnational corporations of the North — must pay the cost of ensuring
that all peoples and future generations can live in a healthy and just
world, respecting the ecological limits of the planet. In Bali, we took
another step towards building a global movement for climate justice."