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Finance for biodiversity is a “new face for capitalism”: Sign on letter to CBD from Acción Ecológica
“Conserving the planet’s species and habitats is central to sustainable developmentyet the global decline in biodiversity is accelerating,” says UN Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon. “The United Nations decade on biodiversity is an opportunity to reverse this trend, under the theme living in harmony with nature.”
At the beginning of the UN climate negotiations in Durban (COP17), FERN published a short report looking at carbon markets as a means of financing REDD. The briefing, which was signed on to by 28 organisations explains why carbon markets will not deliver for southern governments, forests and people.
“The Endless Algebra of Climate Markets”, is the title of a recent paper by Larry Lohmann of the UK-based NGO the Corner House. That’s him on the left holding up an “I love emissions trading”, T-shirt that Fortis Bank (now part of BNP Paribas) was handing out at a UN climate conference.
In March 2011, a consulting firm called The Munden Project put out a report about forest carbon markets. The report concluded that carbon trading is “unworkable as currently constructed”.
The agreement that came out of the Conference of Polluters (COP-17) in Durban included no new commitments to reduce emissions. “What we got instead was a clear signal that we might get another clear signal in 2015,” as Jonathan Grant, director of carbon markets and climate policy at PricewaterhouseCoopers told the Financial Times.
The UN climate talks in Durban finished late on Saturday night, almost 36 hours late. Negotiators agreed little more than to start talks next year on a new deal. These talks are supposed to end by 2015 and are to come into effect by 2020.
Yesterday, ABN interviewed the Chair of the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board, Martin Hession. The interview included a very interesting question, which is very relevant to REDD and whether REDD is to be financed by carbon trading.
The UNFCCC has been discussing REDD in two fora at its meetings in Durban: the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (LCA).
Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, was asked in June 2011 what he thought would make the upcoming UN climate meeting in Durban a success? His response provides a fascinating glimpse into how the world is utterly failing to deal with the coming climate catastrophe.
Here, as promised on Friday, is my presentation from last month’s meeting in Bangkok about carbon markets in Southeast Asia. My presentation contrasts the way the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative and others still promote carbon trading despite the fact that the carbon markets have been in the doldrums for well over two years.
Last month, I took part in a meeting in Bangkok about carbon markets in Southeast Asia. Much of the discussion during the meeting involved the complexities and details of the Clean Development Mechansim, but the two points in the headline came across clearly.
“It has long been a fact: Norway is saving rainforest with one hand and destroying the rainforest with the other,” wrote Lars Løvold of Rainforest Foundation Norway recently. The problem is that while Norway has promised billions to save the rainforest, the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) is investing in companies that are destroying the rainforests.
In this series of articles, published in the newsletter of the Commonwealth Forestry Association, Janette Bulkan looks at the issue of governance and illegal logging in the forest sector in Guyana, in the context of the REDD agreement with Norway.
The “ultimate goal is to jump-start a forest carbon market”, the World Bank announced in 2007, at the launch of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facitily. A “jump-start” is a way of starting a car with a flat battery. After four years of trying, perhaps it’s time to accept the fact that there’s no point jump-starting the forest carbon car when the wheels have fallen off.
“Carbon will be the world’s biggest commodity market, and it could become the world’s biggest market over all,” Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital, told the New York Times in July 2007. |
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