Re: The Long Ecological Revolution
Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:42 pm
COP15 president: Post-2020 biodiversity framework taking shape
By Erik Nilsson, Wang Jianfen and Liu Ming | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-12-02 06:40
Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu talks with Erik Nilsson in his office in Beijing. JIANG DONG/CHINA DAILY
Editor's note: The highly anticipated second phase of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will soon start in Montreal, Canada. What should you expect? And what's China's role in the COP15 presidency?
Erik Nilsson, a senior reporter of China Daily, talked with Huang Runqiu, COP15 president and China's minister of ecology and environment, about the upcoming conference and more.
Women catch fish amid blooming water lilies in a lake at a village in Morigaon district of India's northeastern state of Assam on Nov 6, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q1: This year marks the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. In your view, why is biodiversity important? And what challenges does the world face in this respect?
A1: As a Chinese saying goes, "All beings flourish when they live in harmony and receive nourishment from nature." Biodiversity lays the foundation for human survival and development.
Our clothing, food, shelter, means of travel - every aspect of our material and cultural lives - are closely related to biodiversity. Biodiversity provides us with rich food, fresh air, clean water and the necessities for production and life such as clothing, lumber and raw materials for medicine and industry. It makes the Earth full of vigor and vitality, fertilizes the Earth like water and roots (nourish a plant) and lays the foundation for sustainable economic development.
Data show that about half of global GDP is related to biodiversity. Over 3 billion people's livelihoods depend on marine and coastal biodiversity. Over 1.6 billion people's livelihoods depend on forests and non-lumber forest products. And about 70 percent of people living in poverty depend on activities like agriculture, fishing and forestry. As for healthcare, 70 percent of cancer drugs are natural products or originate from chemical compounds found in natural products.
Swans on the Qingshui River in Beijing's Miyun district on Nov 15, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
In addition, biodiversity plays an important role in maintaining the natural ecological balance, for instance, by fostering water sources, purifying the environment, conserving water and soil, preventing or mediating natural disasters, safeguarding food security and protecting human health.
Over the years, the international community has become fully aware that biodiversity is of utmost importance and has acted to protect it.
However, the deterioration of biodiversity has undergone no fundamental changes.
In May 2019, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services published a report. It shows that due to human activity, 75 percent of the Earth's terrestrial environment and 66 percent of its marine environment have been significantly altered, more than 85 percent of wetlands have been lost, and about one-fourth of species face the threat of extinction.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a 2020 report that 41 percent of amphibians, 26 percent of mammals and 14 percent of birds are threatened with extinction. The global biodiversity crisis is worsening.
In the face of global biodiversity loss, we humans live in a community of a shared future and no country or organization or individual can remain immune.
In 2021, President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the leaders' summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity. He said that the international community must enhance cooperation, build consensus and pool strength to build a community of all life on Earth.
Therefore, the international community should join hands to advance biodiversity protection, champion the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, respect, adapt to and protect nature, promote global cooperation in biodiversity protection, and uphold multilateralism and the principle of equal consultation. Only in this way can it pool strength to protect biodiversity, realize win-win results and jointly build a better home.
A Yangtze finless porpoise jumps out of the water in the lower reaches of the Gezhouba Dam in Yichang, Hubei province, on Nov 9, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q2: Global biodiversity loss is accelerating. And this is a challenge for all humankind. What achievements has China made in recent years in this respect?
A2: The Chinese government has always attached great importance to biodiversity protection and has made it a key part of the country's efforts to build an ecological civilization. In recent years, with the scientific guiding principle of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, we have continuously enhanced the top-level designs for biodiversity conservation, such as improvements of systems, mechanisms and regulations, and we have rolled out of a series of measures. We have made clear progress in conserving biodiversity and have earned international acclaim.
For instance, the population of wild giant pandas has increased from 1,114 to 1,864. Their classification has been downgraded from "endangered" to "vulnerable". Last year, before the convening of COP15 in Yunnan province, a group of wandering wild elephants ventured northward in the province before returning to their original habitat.
The Yangtze finless porpoises, which are known in China as the "smiling angels" because they appear to grin, have frequently appeared in different sections of the Yangtze River. Snow leopards have been frequently spotted in the Sanjiangyuan National Park. Marbled cats, which had not been seen for more than 30 years, have reappeared in the Gaoligong Mountains in Yunnan province. The population of wild Hainan black-crested gibbons has increased from fewer than 10 in two groups 40 years ago to 36 in five groups.
In recent years, news about China's biodiversity protection has frequently made headlines. In our view, this progress can be attributed to several factors.
First, we have improved the top-level biodiversity-protection designs. We have elevated the biodiversity protection to a national strategy in China. We have drafted or revised a series of relevant laws and regulations, have included biodiversity conservation in development plans for governments at the central and local levels and have actively pushed to mainstream such protections.
Over the past decade, China has drafted and revised more than 20 laws and regulations pertinent to biodiversity conservation, including laws on forestry, grasslands, fisheries, wild animals, the environment, seeds, wetlands, the Yangtze River and biosecurity. We also rolled out the Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection of Biological Diversity and implemented the China National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan (2011-30). Relevant departments also drew up regulations on the management of invasive species and issued lists of these species, improving prevention and control with good results.
Shiwuli River in Hefei, Anhui province, on April 28, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
Second, we have established a system of protected areas with a focus on national parks. To date, China has built its first five national parks, nearly 200 botanical gardens and 250 wildlife rehabilitation and breeding centers. China has established nearly 10,000 protected areas of all types and at all levels, accounting for about 18 percent of its total land area. In this respect, we fulfilled the 17 percent Aichi Target ahead of time.
We have placed 74 percent of our key State-protected wildlife species under effective protection and have gradually rehabilitated the wild population of some rare and endangered species. In addition to the giant pandas and Hainan black-crested gibbons I mentioned just now, the crested ibis population has increased from only seven in 1981 to over 5,000 and the population of Tibetan antelopes has grown from 70,000 during the 1980s-1990s to more than 300,000. If you visit the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, you can see the magnificent view of tens of thousands of antelopes galloping together. It's really spectacular.
China has also set up a relatively complete ex-situ conservation system, including botanical gardens, germplasm-resource centers, gene banks and wildlife rehabilitation and breeding centers. Over 23,000 species of plants have been conserved, 112 species of rare and endangered wild plants native to China have been restored to their natural habitats and over 60 types of rare and endangered wild animals have been successfully bred.
Environmental protection volunteers patrol Huaxi National Wetland Park in Guiyang, Guizhou province on Nov 4, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Third, we have strengthened the conservation and restoration of natural ecological spaces. We have taken the initiative to draw up ecological conservation red lines nationwide, which is an innovation, globally. The red lines cover zones that are critical to environmental function or are ecologically sensitive and stringent protection is enforced in those areas.
They account for 31.7 percent of China's total land area and protect nearly 40 percent of the water-source conservation and flood-regulation functions, 32 percent of functions to fend off sandstorms and 45 percent of the carbon-storage function.
We have also continuously launched major projects in biodiversity conservation and have pushed for the integrated conservation and systematic restoration of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts with annual investments of tens of billions of yuan. Our forest coverage and forest reserves have both maintained growth over the last 30 years. China's forest coverage reached 24.02 percent in 2021 and the country has realized the largest growth in forest resources among all countries in the world. Its ecological system has undergone steady improvements in its diversity, stability and sustainability.
Fourth, we have continuously raised public awareness and encouraged social participation. We encourage the involvement of various parties, facilitate channels for their participation and improve incentive mechanisms.
On important occasions, such as the International Day for Biological Diversity and World Environment Day, events are held to promote public awareness about biodiversity. Public awareness of, and participation in, biodiversity conservation are continuing to grow and an atmosphere in which everyone in society works to promote biodiversity conservation is gradually taking shape.
Workers at the Baihua Mountain Nature Reserve fasten an infrared camera for wildlife monitoring in Beijing on Nov 9, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q3: What is China doing to implement its plans?
A3: The world is undergoing changes of a scale unseen in a century and the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind has won broad support. Faced with the crises and challenges posed by biodiversity loss, we must firmly seize the important opportunity provided by COP15 to continue in the right direction of green and sustainable development, speed up the mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation and push for the start of a new chapter of biodiversity protection. To that end, China plans to make efforts in multiple fields.
The first is to improve policies and regulations on biodiversity. We will conduct further research on policies and regulations related to conservation and cement the legal foundation for it.
We will update the China National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan (2011-30) and improve the policy and system guarantees. We will actively study and plan for special legislation on biodiversity and make the legal system for biodiversity conservation more systematic and complete. We will enact solution-based laws in such areas as nature reserves and access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their utilization and we will improve corresponding supervisory systems. We will also strictly implement the Biosecurity Law, strengthen the environmental safety management of biotechnologies and continue to improve the prevention and control of invasive species.
Second, we will continue to optimize the biodiversity conservation network and promote the systematic restoration of ecological spaces. We will continue to implement major projects for biodiversity conservation, step up the construction of a system of protected areas with national parks as the mainstay, strengthen the protection and supervision of key areas, such as the "red lines" for ecological conservation and priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and improve the ex-situ conservation system for rare and endangered animals and plants.
We will coordinate and promote the holistic conservation and systematic restoration of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts and strengthen the ecological restoration of polluted water bodies, degraded ecosystems, abandoned mines and ecologically damaged areas.
We will also focus on building a complete biodiversity-protection monitoring system, continuously carry out biodiversity background surveys, observation and evaluations, improve the technical standard system related to biodiversity surveying and monitoring and explore ways to establish technical systems for biodiversity evaluation, protection effectiveness assessment, etc.
Children play a bird-related puzzle game during an event promoting biodiversity protection in Shanghai's Century Park on Nov 20, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Third, we will strengthen the sustainable use of biodiversity. Without good and sustainable utilization, it is difficult to achieve effective conservation. Therefore, we will build a whole-process, whole-chain and regular biodiversity protection and supervision mechanism and crack down on the illegal use of biological resources. We will strengthen technical research on the development and sustainable use of biological resources, guide and regulate biodiversity-friendly business activities, promote the development of green industries and franchising and build a high-quality and diversified ecological product system.
Fourth, we will also deepen international cooperation and exchanges. We will incorporate the topic of biodiversity conservation into high-level international exchanges, promote international cooperation on the issue at high levels, actively participate in global biodiversity governance, honor the CBD and other international conventions, strengthen communication, enhance partnership recognition and promote global multilateral environmental governance according to the concept of building a shared future for all life on Earth.
Last but not least, we will encourage public involvement. We need to innovate upon the means of popularization and education and enhance public awareness of and attention to biodiversity through the promotion of knowledge and concepts about biodiversity. We should set up more diversified participation channels, increase public participation, actively mobilize and encourage enterprises and social organizations to take part in biodiversity conservation and create an atmosphere in which everyone in society works to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use.
In the future, we will also integrate the concept of biodiversity conservation into the whole process of building an ecological civilization, actively participate in global biodiversity governance and turn the Earth into a beautiful place for all creatures to live in harmony.
Participants attend an event for UN Biodiversity Day at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov 16, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q4: The second phase of COP15, to be held in Montreal of Canada, will define and adopt the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Could you describe the consultation process, the results so far and the positive role that China has played during its presidency?
A4: The main task of COP15's second phase is to draw upon past experiences in the development and implementation of previous global targets on biodiversity to formulate the post-2020 GBF. The aim is to put global biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030, that is, to end the current situation of biodiversity loss.
It can be said that the framework is a guiding political document for global biodiversity governance. There are also high hopes for the framework's adoption during the second phase of the meeting.
At present, positive progress has been made in the framework's formation after negotiations and consultations during four rounds of working-group meetings. All parties have been seeking common ground while reserving differences and working in the same direction. There were sufficient exchanges and understandings about the issues and very comprehensive communication on the existing differences and suggestions.
Currently, the structure and core content of the post-2020 GBF has been agreed upon, laying a solid foundation for finalizing a solution that is acceptable to all relevant parties.
The CBD has 196 contracting parties and involves many international organizations and stakeholders. The consultations on, and negotiations of, the framework document involve all parties. So it is natural that the process is not all smooth and easy.
There are still different requirements, even big differences, on some specific issues. For instance, the Convention has three main objectives: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their utilization. We need to make more efforts to ensure the three objectives can be implemented in a comprehensive and balanced manner within the framework instead of overemphasizing one of them. And we have to work harder to narrow differences.
There is also much work to be done to ensure the targets set by the framework are realistic yet ambitious, and practical and balanced and that they can help promote the sustainable recovery of biodiversity.
In addition, the framework's realization ultimately depends on its implementation mechanism. For developing countries, the biggest concern is the mobilization of funds. Funding is obviously very important for the framework's application. It's an important and difficult part of the negotiations.
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY
Since assuming the COP15 presidency, China has actively exercised leadership and coordination in its efforts to advance negotiations of the post-2020 GBF. So far, China has convened a total of 37 COP15 meetings of the presidium. It has also presided over four meetings of the open-ended working group on the post-2020 GBF in such places as Geneva and Nairobi in collaboration with the CBD secretariat.
China has made significant efforts to advance framework negotiations. The frequency of the meetings, especially the frequency of the presidium meetings, is quite rare in the process of multilateral environmental negotiations.
Moreover, China has been using all sorts of occasions, such as the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, the G20 Joint Environment and Climate Ministerial Meeting, the high-level week of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly and COP27 as opportunities to organize exchange activities on key COP15 issues in various forms, including high-level roundtables and briefings.
We have also held frequent bilateral consultations with many other contracting parties to expand consensus. These efforts have both effectively maintained the political momentum of COP15 and facilitated the bridging of differences among contracting parties to achieve greater consensus.
All parties recognized the great efforts made by China in the COP15 presidency in coordinating the positions of all parties and expressed their willingness to work with China to push for the adoption of an ambitious, practical and balanced post-2020 GBF.
Although there are still many difficulties and demands in the consultations, all parties have expressed their firm political support and confidence in the negotiation process and China's role in the COP15 presidency.
I am confident the international community will respond positively to the spirit of community embodied in the theme of the upcoming conference "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth" and demonstrate the wisdom and courage to overcome these difficulties and differences.
During the second phase of COP15, China will continue to play its presidency role well. With the support of the CBD secretariat, the presidium and the host country, China will work with fellow contracting parties, international organizations and stakeholders to spare no effort to advance the negotiation process, build the broadest possible consensus in the international community, promote the adoption of the framework and ensure the second phase of COP15 in Montreal is successful.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202212/0 ... 33f_2.html
Let China lead!
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COP27 and Imperialism: Weaving a Crown of Thorns for the Global South
29 Nov
Alexia Alkadi-Barbaro and Zeyad el Nabolsy
Compared to the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year, the COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh has been distinguished by greater inclusion of voices from the Global South, as evidenced by the acceptance of a proposal to create a ‘loss and damage’ fund for developing countries that are suffering from climate disasters. However, it remains to be seen how the mechanisms for the implementation of this fund will be worked out. Western developed countries were vocal in their opposition to the fund throughout the summit, and it was only due to relentless pressures by developing countries that they eventually relented. If past events are anything to go by, then it is highly unlikely that the most vulnerable countries will get to have a substantial say in how the climate fund is operated. In fact, the Western developed countries are already trying to use this as an opportunity to drive a wedge between developing countries and China, whose lending and investment policy presents a favourable alternative to ‘strings-attached’ IMF funding. This is precisely one of the hallmarks of ‘climate colonialism’: a concept that refers to the deployment of justifications ostensibly related to the need to bring the causes of anthropogenic climate change under control, but which in fact serve to legitimize the domination of weaker, poorer states in the periphery of the world-system by stronger wealthier states in the core. What this means is that those who are most responsible for the impending catastrophe will get to dictate the terms of the response (even if ineffective) in a manner that would ensure they can externalize the costs to those who are least culpable. It is well known that poorer countries in warmer climates will be the most severely affected as the plant continues to warm.
Any socialist response, even at the level of mere rhetoric, which discounts the significance of imperialism to debates about how best to respond to climate change is functionally equivalent to acquiescence to a world where a starving mass of racialised people in the Global South will be left to suffer while Europe and America are transformed into gated continents; ‘fortress Europe’ and ‘fortress America’ respectively. We currently have around 270 million people who are faced with hunger due to political conditions to which climate-shocks have been causally relevant. And by 2050, 143 million people in the Global South will become climate refugees – people who have contributed the least to anthropogenic climate change will be left to suffer and die as the West fortifies its borders against a perceived racial contagion. In the worst-case scenario, such conflicts will take on the form of racially inflected wars. There will not just be ‘water wars’ for instance, but also ‘race wars over water’. This is the future which awaits us if a global ‘Green New Deal’ which neglects the past and actuality of imperialism is allowed to garner support and to pass for a ‘socialist solution’ to the climate crisis.
Despite the concessions made by developed countries at the COP27, it is unlikely that they will be followed up with substantial action. The $100 billion per year which wealthy countries committed to at the COP15 in 2009 in Copenhagen as an ‘adaptation fund’ to assist countries in the periphery in their transition to ‘greener’ development paths has not materialized and seems unlikely to ever do so. Moreover, what has been contributed so far has been mostly in the form of loans (as opposed to grants), with all the perpetuation of ties of dependency and systematic value-drain from the South to the North that this form of ‘aid’ habitually entails. Note also that this amount is not even close to the 6% of Global North GNP ($2.3 trillion per year) which is outlined as necessary for a just transition in the historic Cochabamba People’s Agreement.
As things stand now, the agenda seems to be more land grabbing in the Global South in the name of carbon offsets, and the pursuit of ‘net-zero’ through mono-cultural tree planting on land which has been cleansed of its indigenous people. As Max Ajl notes, Biden’s discourse of ‘net-zero’ is primarily aimed at placating Western oil and gas companies, by making it clear that they will not be required to reduce production and that their assets will not be devalued. What is apparent is that the ruling classes in the Global North seek to confuse their constituents through illegitimate abstractions, ‘net-zero’ being a prime example of this strategy. These ruses obfuscate the social and political terrain upon which different solutions to the climate crisis should be contested.
Representatives of the ruling class in the Global North seek to hide the fact that it has been overwhelmingly responsible for anthropogenic climate change, as in Biden’s statement last year that ‘We can keep the goal of limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius within our reach if we come together, if we commit to doing our part of each of our nations [sic] with determination and with ambition. That’s what COP26 is all about.’ At the COP27, Biden maintained the same stance, emphasising that the U.S. was working towards it goals. The problem, however, is that the U.S. defines its goals unilaterally and presents an ahistorical framing of the crisis and of who is responsible for it. Between 1850 and 2011, Europe and America were responsible for 52% of global cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases. What this implies is that an equitable solution would distribute burdens in a manner that would cost the Global North more than it would cost the Global South.
To have a 50% chance of reaching the goal of ensuring that global temperatures do not increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, the number of gigatons of Carbon emitted after the beginning of 2020 cannot exceed 500.Because the U.S. has the highest per capita rate of emissions among the world’s large emitters of carbon (excepting Saudi Arabia and Australia) at 16 tons per person, to stay within the global emissions threshold it is necessary to demand that the U.S. reduce its emissions per capita at a faster rate than countries with much lower rates of emissions per capita. The U.S. would require an annual reduction of around 20% in its carbon dioxide emissions to stay within the global carbon budget (relativised to per capita emissions), whereas, for example, China would only need a 10% annual reduction, and Brazil would require only 3.4%. As John Ross observes, the dominant U.S. discourse calls for a 50% reduction in its emissions by 2030, which would enable the U.S. to remain a privileged state able to have per capita emissions which are 42% higher than China’s are today. Moreover, the demand for a uniform percentage reduction without discrimination is likely to hinder the development of countries which have hardly contributed anything to global greenhouse gas emissions, e.g., most African countries. Yet Biden still maintained the 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 line at COP27. The aforementioned points were conveniently ignored.
Another imperialist ruse that the U.S. and its allies have succeeded in pulling concerns their efforts to render military related emissions invisible on carbon budgets. Despite the fact that the U.S. military has a larger carbon footprint than most countries in the world, military related emissions have been only partially reported. The U.S. military budget, geared towards the development and procurement of weapons which guzzle up oil-derived fuels such as the F-35 fighter jet (which burns 5,600 liters of fuel per hour), constitutes 40% of the world’s military spending. Thus, demilitarisation must be at the top of the climate agenda. A topic which representatives of the U.S. ruling class were keen to keep off it entirely.
Another manner in which imperialist relations are left unchallenged by the climate action discourse of the COP27 is that emissions tend to be calculated on a production-basis rather than on a consumption basis. Emissions which are counted as the product of developing or poorer countries, but which express the systematic drain of value from the South to the North – for example, outsourced manufacturing activities of Western-based multinationals exploiting cheap Southern labour, based on global prices differences (differences which persist even when one adjusts for productivity levels) for products of the same value, i.e., products with value x, measured based on socially necessary labour time, produced in some Global South country may be priced far lower than products with value x produced in some Global North country – should be counted as emissions for which the developed countries with their conspicuous consumption are responsible. Clarifying the two different modes of calculation is important because it also makes it clear that although a country like China would be seen as the largest polluter in the world on the basis of production-based emission calculations, this would not be the case if we adopt a consumption-based framework.
The climate action plan that is being proposed by the ruling class in the Global North and which externalizes the costs to the Global South is part of a prolonged attack on the gains of anti-colonial movements in the aftermath of the retreat of the Bandung-era project(s) in the 1970s. Anthropogenic climate change threatens to roll back nearly all of the social, health, and economic gains which have been achieved in the aftermath of independence.
The climate action plan presented at COP27 also signals the continuation of a policy of ignorance of and contempt towards popular anti-imperial movements, and demands made from poor, working class peoples from nations within the Global South , as well environmental movements led by Black and indigenous peoples in the Global North. It is worth illustrating how movements for global consciousness and demands for environmental protection from industries, policies, and economic adjustment programs have long demanded localised environmental practices and knowledge to be central in determining green technologies and economic policies around questions of environmental preservation.
The connection between local environmental movements and anticolonial movements illustrates how people within the Global South have long demanded setting an environmental agenda that is antiracist, anticapitalist, abolishes the afterlives of the colonial international hierarchical order and is both future oriented while taking into account the environmental harms of the past. While many of the popular led environmental movements that took off in the 1960s and rose to prominence throughout the three decades that followed were localised in form – that is, confined to national contexts and thus dealing with local issues pertaining to immediate ecological surroundings – growing consciousness of the unequally inherited effects of environmental degradation among historically racialised nations within the Global South led to convergences between local and global consciousness.[1]
Popular narratives about the rise of environmental degradation usually find their origin stories in the early 1970s, when the United Nations’ Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm resulted in the declaration to focus on “underdevelopment” and “overpopulation” as factors central to environmental degradation. By 1973, with the reverberations of the first oil-shock felt on a global scale, shifts in the types of energy being used (oil versus nuclear) became a predominant issue especially within the United States and across Western Europe. Spurred by the outbreak of grassroots movement actors in the United States and across the Global North, eco-friendly development initiatives were introduced to transnational corporations headquartered in the U.S. and Europe and operating in resource rich nations within the Global South. However, by the mid-1970s, with economic and political pressures for recently decolonised nations to rapidly industrialise, elites at the state level in the Global North and Global South did not succeed in embracing or requiring environmentally conscious policies around economic development. Meanwhile, amidst the backdrop of elite-driven political discourse and technocratic planning over what should be, and what could be done while still promoting the common good of the international economy, grassroots movements that resulted in the establishment of transnational NGOs like Greenpeace International or Friends of the Earth provided a platform for progressive environmental agendas premised on taking seriously (at least by their own account) popular environmental movements across the globe.[2] But between each of these major historical moments was the often unacknowledged work on behalf of anticolonial activists within the Global South or their diasporas in the U.S. organising to ensure that the gains made during and after movements for decolonisation would not be rolled back in the grip of neo-imperial politics.
The intersection between anticolonial movements and environmental consciousness can be traced, in part, to the organising work of a handful of transnational activists influenced by the rise of Pan-Africanism. Figures such as Trinidadian activist and ecological engineer Pauluu Kamarakafego, Australian-Indigenous environmental activist and poet Jack Davis, Black American activist and educator Thais Aubry, for example, all overlapped in their various forms of activism around land rights for African, Black American, Aboriginal and Indigenous people of the Pacific and North America in the mid-20th century. Historian Quito Swan has recently illustrated how Kamarakafego’s transnational travels from the 1960s onward helped to forefront Black environmental consciousness within both elite-driven and grassroots movements agendas in the United States, Ghana, Trinidad, Bermuda, Cuba, Australia, and Fiji.[3]
Kamarakafego’s environmental agenda focused on how movements for self-determination could center solutions for moving beyond ecologically extractivist practices. Along with contemporaries such as Walter Rodney and Kwame Nkrumah, Kamarakafego rightly predicted that ecological extractivism would be paramount to the continuation of economic domination set in place through colonisation, and solidified during the neoliberal counterrevolution on behalf of Western Europe and the United States. His activism centered on fostering and bringing to the forefront of international policy localised, indigenous knowledge of how best to care for and produce raw materials. In each place that Kamarakafego travelled, he would meet with local activists who were often farmworkers, hear about the issues they faced with massive agricultural farmlands owned and run by European or American private corporations, and help to strategise ways to build a transnational consciousness about these problems. In effect, Kamarakafego, along with other activists of his time, sought to sow consciousness about how localised environmental issues stemmed from the racialised economic policies coming out of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, peddled by elite-actors within the Global North.
Like Kamarakafego, Jack Davis and Thais Aubry spent years organising and helping to raise local and transnational knowledge about the shared environmental struggles that African, Black and Indigenous communities faced, and the need for a collective, transnational grassroots movement that sought to put Indigenous land knowledge at the forefront of international agendas. Inspired by the Pan-African movement for self-determination, Davis travelled to the United States to work alongside Black organisers such as Queen Mother Moore and to build alliances with Indigenous people around land rights and environmental self-determination. His work was influential in mobilizing Aboriginal self-determination movements in Australia. Thais Aubry organized around environmental land rights for Pacific Islanders from the 1960s through to the 1970s. Her consistent involvement in the Women Speak Out! A Report of the Pacific Women’s Conference helped to build a transnational Black and Aboriginal feminist environmental consciousness about the way in which economic policies and environmental technologies from the Global North together not only posed a problem for non-Western forms of self-determination, but for Black and Aboriginal women’s liberation.
All three of these figures came of age during the rise of mass rural farmworker uprisings across the Black Atlantic in the mid-twentieth century. Chief among these uprisings were those spurred in Ghana between 1945 and 1951. In large part brought on by increasing discontent among Ghanian farmers with British colonial control over cocoa crops, extractivist policies, and the environmentally degrading effects of mass agricultural farm lots, farmworkers movements quickly spread, colliding with broader movement politics in the Global South to secure land rights among Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples. Farmworker movements that sought to center the environment and the demand for overcoming economic domination spanned from the Caribbean, West Africa, and the United States. These were, in part, early attempts to make anticolonial environmentalism a part of the international human rights agenda at the United Nations. At the end of his life, Kamarakafego himself worked as a consultant on rural development and renewable energy resources. He helped build the International Network of Small Island Developing States of NGOs and Indigenous People, and served on the executive and steering committees on the UN Commission on Sustainable Development reporting on the demands of farmworkers movements across the Black and Indigenous diaspora.
Kamarakafego, Davis, and Aubry are just a few representative examples of many environmental activists who followed after them and sought to build transnational agendas for environmental racial justice. In the late 1970s, on the Southside of Chicago, Black environmental justice activists and their white allies came together to form People for Community Recovery (PCR) which, while initially focused on the overdue repair work in Altgeld Gardens, would become best known for its work calling attention to and demonstrating against urban environmental pollution once it became known that the Southside of Chicago had a higher rate of cancer than in any other part of the city. PCR activists argued that, due to the heavy concentration of industrial pollution, residential communities in the area were exposed to exorbitantly higher rates of toxic chemicals compared to other communities across Chicago. By the 1980s, PCR activists were travelling to Brazil, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, South Africa and Indigenous communities within the United States. They would end up collaborating with Greenpeace to halt the transnational actions of ChemWaste which operated in several nations and in the Southside of Chicago. Hazel Johnson, the founder of PCR, and the activists involved would again highlight that local issues required a transnational response rooted in popular movement demands.[4] As of today, race in the United States continues to be the largest contributor to whether one lives next to a toxic waste dump or not.
Aware of the unequally inherited effects of climate change on people within the Global South, especially food security and forced migration, these early activists influenced by the global anticolonial moment foreshadowed a strand of environmental consciousness that is necessary for combating the possibility of neo-imperial climate strategies, strategies that continue to put unfettered capitalist economic profit over the livelihood of the people. Their activism prefigured the organising necessary to attend to the environmental catastrophes we and they have inherited today. To undo the continuation of neo-imperial ‘green technology transfers’ and elite-decision making power, a space must be opened up on an international scale that takes seriously the demands of the people in the Global South slated to bear the brunt of climate disaster. Their claims have long been articulated, the question is if we choose to listen, and how we choose to respond.
References
[1] For more on this, see: David Naguib Pellow. Resisting global toxics: Transnational movements for environmental justice (MIT Press, 2007).
[2] Paul F.Steinberg and Stacy D. VanDeveer, eds. Comparative environmental politics: theory, practice, and prospects (MIT 2012).
[3] Quiot J. Swan. Pauulu's Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (University Press of Florida, 2020).
[4] Pellow, Ibid.
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/cop ... mperialism
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11 568 KM2 of Forest Lost in the Brazilian Amazon in 12 Months
The highest rate of deforestation (27 700km2) in the Brazilian Amazon was recorded in 2014, according to the Legal Amazon Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project. Nov. 30, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@GracielaMariani
Published 30 November 2022
Between August 2021 and July 2022, the deforested area of the Amazon region reached 11 568 square kilometers, said the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
According to INPE data released on Wednesday, the figure indicates a decrease of 11.27 percent compared to the period from August 2020 to July 202, when 13 038 square kilometers of forest were lost.
The Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon Project (Prodes), considered the most accurate for measuring annual deforestation rates, provided the above figures.
In 2004, the country recorded the highest rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with 27 700 square kilometers of forest lost.
In contrast, 2012 was the year with the least devastation in the Amazon, when 4 500 square kilometers were lost, according to Prodes. Three years later, the situation was reversed.
Four years of the Bolsonaro government, 45 thousand km2 of forest have been totally cut down. The worst: a new frontier of land grabbing has been consolidated, in Acre, BR-319, around the Transamazonia (west of PA and south of AM). High risk for Amazonia (follow the thread) +
Under the government of incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, rainforest loss increased by 59.5 percent, said the Climate Observatory.
The entity's executive secretary, Marcio Astrini, said after the release of the INPE data that "Bolsonaro received the country with a rate of 7 500 square kilometers of deforestation in the Amazon and is handing it over with 11 500 kilometers."
President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will take office on January 1, 2003, has pledged to put Brazil back on the environmental stage and diplomacy.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/11- ... -0021.html.
By Erik Nilsson, Wang Jianfen and Liu Ming | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2022-12-02 06:40
Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu talks with Erik Nilsson in his office in Beijing. JIANG DONG/CHINA DAILY
Editor's note: The highly anticipated second phase of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will soon start in Montreal, Canada. What should you expect? And what's China's role in the COP15 presidency?
Erik Nilsson, a senior reporter of China Daily, talked with Huang Runqiu, COP15 president and China's minister of ecology and environment, about the upcoming conference and more.
Women catch fish amid blooming water lilies in a lake at a village in Morigaon district of India's northeastern state of Assam on Nov 6, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q1: This year marks the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. In your view, why is biodiversity important? And what challenges does the world face in this respect?
A1: As a Chinese saying goes, "All beings flourish when they live in harmony and receive nourishment from nature." Biodiversity lays the foundation for human survival and development.
Our clothing, food, shelter, means of travel - every aspect of our material and cultural lives - are closely related to biodiversity. Biodiversity provides us with rich food, fresh air, clean water and the necessities for production and life such as clothing, lumber and raw materials for medicine and industry. It makes the Earth full of vigor and vitality, fertilizes the Earth like water and roots (nourish a plant) and lays the foundation for sustainable economic development.
Data show that about half of global GDP is related to biodiversity. Over 3 billion people's livelihoods depend on marine and coastal biodiversity. Over 1.6 billion people's livelihoods depend on forests and non-lumber forest products. And about 70 percent of people living in poverty depend on activities like agriculture, fishing and forestry. As for healthcare, 70 percent of cancer drugs are natural products or originate from chemical compounds found in natural products.
Swans on the Qingshui River in Beijing's Miyun district on Nov 15, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
In addition, biodiversity plays an important role in maintaining the natural ecological balance, for instance, by fostering water sources, purifying the environment, conserving water and soil, preventing or mediating natural disasters, safeguarding food security and protecting human health.
Over the years, the international community has become fully aware that biodiversity is of utmost importance and has acted to protect it.
However, the deterioration of biodiversity has undergone no fundamental changes.
In May 2019, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services published a report. It shows that due to human activity, 75 percent of the Earth's terrestrial environment and 66 percent of its marine environment have been significantly altered, more than 85 percent of wetlands have been lost, and about one-fourth of species face the threat of extinction.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said in a 2020 report that 41 percent of amphibians, 26 percent of mammals and 14 percent of birds are threatened with extinction. The global biodiversity crisis is worsening.
In the face of global biodiversity loss, we humans live in a community of a shared future and no country or organization or individual can remain immune.
In 2021, President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the leaders' summit of the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity. He said that the international community must enhance cooperation, build consensus and pool strength to build a community of all life on Earth.
Therefore, the international community should join hands to advance biodiversity protection, champion the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, respect, adapt to and protect nature, promote global cooperation in biodiversity protection, and uphold multilateralism and the principle of equal consultation. Only in this way can it pool strength to protect biodiversity, realize win-win results and jointly build a better home.
A Yangtze finless porpoise jumps out of the water in the lower reaches of the Gezhouba Dam in Yichang, Hubei province, on Nov 9, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q2: Global biodiversity loss is accelerating. And this is a challenge for all humankind. What achievements has China made in recent years in this respect?
A2: The Chinese government has always attached great importance to biodiversity protection and has made it a key part of the country's efforts to build an ecological civilization. In recent years, with the scientific guiding principle of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, we have continuously enhanced the top-level designs for biodiversity conservation, such as improvements of systems, mechanisms and regulations, and we have rolled out of a series of measures. We have made clear progress in conserving biodiversity and have earned international acclaim.
For instance, the population of wild giant pandas has increased from 1,114 to 1,864. Their classification has been downgraded from "endangered" to "vulnerable". Last year, before the convening of COP15 in Yunnan province, a group of wandering wild elephants ventured northward in the province before returning to their original habitat.
The Yangtze finless porpoises, which are known in China as the "smiling angels" because they appear to grin, have frequently appeared in different sections of the Yangtze River. Snow leopards have been frequently spotted in the Sanjiangyuan National Park. Marbled cats, which had not been seen for more than 30 years, have reappeared in the Gaoligong Mountains in Yunnan province. The population of wild Hainan black-crested gibbons has increased from fewer than 10 in two groups 40 years ago to 36 in five groups.
In recent years, news about China's biodiversity protection has frequently made headlines. In our view, this progress can be attributed to several factors.
First, we have improved the top-level biodiversity-protection designs. We have elevated the biodiversity protection to a national strategy in China. We have drafted or revised a series of relevant laws and regulations, have included biodiversity conservation in development plans for governments at the central and local levels and have actively pushed to mainstream such protections.
Over the past decade, China has drafted and revised more than 20 laws and regulations pertinent to biodiversity conservation, including laws on forestry, grasslands, fisheries, wild animals, the environment, seeds, wetlands, the Yangtze River and biosecurity. We also rolled out the Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection of Biological Diversity and implemented the China National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan (2011-30). Relevant departments also drew up regulations on the management of invasive species and issued lists of these species, improving prevention and control with good results.
Shiwuli River in Hefei, Anhui province, on April 28, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
Second, we have established a system of protected areas with a focus on national parks. To date, China has built its first five national parks, nearly 200 botanical gardens and 250 wildlife rehabilitation and breeding centers. China has established nearly 10,000 protected areas of all types and at all levels, accounting for about 18 percent of its total land area. In this respect, we fulfilled the 17 percent Aichi Target ahead of time.
We have placed 74 percent of our key State-protected wildlife species under effective protection and have gradually rehabilitated the wild population of some rare and endangered species. In addition to the giant pandas and Hainan black-crested gibbons I mentioned just now, the crested ibis population has increased from only seven in 1981 to over 5,000 and the population of Tibetan antelopes has grown from 70,000 during the 1980s-1990s to more than 300,000. If you visit the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, you can see the magnificent view of tens of thousands of antelopes galloping together. It's really spectacular.
China has also set up a relatively complete ex-situ conservation system, including botanical gardens, germplasm-resource centers, gene banks and wildlife rehabilitation and breeding centers. Over 23,000 species of plants have been conserved, 112 species of rare and endangered wild plants native to China have been restored to their natural habitats and over 60 types of rare and endangered wild animals have been successfully bred.
Environmental protection volunteers patrol Huaxi National Wetland Park in Guiyang, Guizhou province on Nov 4, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Third, we have strengthened the conservation and restoration of natural ecological spaces. We have taken the initiative to draw up ecological conservation red lines nationwide, which is an innovation, globally. The red lines cover zones that are critical to environmental function or are ecologically sensitive and stringent protection is enforced in those areas.
They account for 31.7 percent of China's total land area and protect nearly 40 percent of the water-source conservation and flood-regulation functions, 32 percent of functions to fend off sandstorms and 45 percent of the carbon-storage function.
We have also continuously launched major projects in biodiversity conservation and have pushed for the integrated conservation and systematic restoration of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts with annual investments of tens of billions of yuan. Our forest coverage and forest reserves have both maintained growth over the last 30 years. China's forest coverage reached 24.02 percent in 2021 and the country has realized the largest growth in forest resources among all countries in the world. Its ecological system has undergone steady improvements in its diversity, stability and sustainability.
Fourth, we have continuously raised public awareness and encouraged social participation. We encourage the involvement of various parties, facilitate channels for their participation and improve incentive mechanisms.
On important occasions, such as the International Day for Biological Diversity and World Environment Day, events are held to promote public awareness about biodiversity. Public awareness of, and participation in, biodiversity conservation are continuing to grow and an atmosphere in which everyone in society works to promote biodiversity conservation is gradually taking shape.
Workers at the Baihua Mountain Nature Reserve fasten an infrared camera for wildlife monitoring in Beijing on Nov 9, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q3: What is China doing to implement its plans?
A3: The world is undergoing changes of a scale unseen in a century and the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind has won broad support. Faced with the crises and challenges posed by biodiversity loss, we must firmly seize the important opportunity provided by COP15 to continue in the right direction of green and sustainable development, speed up the mainstreaming of biodiversity conservation and push for the start of a new chapter of biodiversity protection. To that end, China plans to make efforts in multiple fields.
The first is to improve policies and regulations on biodiversity. We will conduct further research on policies and regulations related to conservation and cement the legal foundation for it.
We will update the China National Biodiversity Conservation Strategy and Action Plan (2011-30) and improve the policy and system guarantees. We will actively study and plan for special legislation on biodiversity and make the legal system for biodiversity conservation more systematic and complete. We will enact solution-based laws in such areas as nature reserves and access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their utilization and we will improve corresponding supervisory systems. We will also strictly implement the Biosecurity Law, strengthen the environmental safety management of biotechnologies and continue to improve the prevention and control of invasive species.
Second, we will continue to optimize the biodiversity conservation network and promote the systematic restoration of ecological spaces. We will continue to implement major projects for biodiversity conservation, step up the construction of a system of protected areas with national parks as the mainstay, strengthen the protection and supervision of key areas, such as the "red lines" for ecological conservation and priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and improve the ex-situ conservation system for rare and endangered animals and plants.
We will coordinate and promote the holistic conservation and systematic restoration of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands and deserts and strengthen the ecological restoration of polluted water bodies, degraded ecosystems, abandoned mines and ecologically damaged areas.
We will also focus on building a complete biodiversity-protection monitoring system, continuously carry out biodiversity background surveys, observation and evaluations, improve the technical standard system related to biodiversity surveying and monitoring and explore ways to establish technical systems for biodiversity evaluation, protection effectiveness assessment, etc.
Children play a bird-related puzzle game during an event promoting biodiversity protection in Shanghai's Century Park on Nov 20, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Third, we will strengthen the sustainable use of biodiversity. Without good and sustainable utilization, it is difficult to achieve effective conservation. Therefore, we will build a whole-process, whole-chain and regular biodiversity protection and supervision mechanism and crack down on the illegal use of biological resources. We will strengthen technical research on the development and sustainable use of biological resources, guide and regulate biodiversity-friendly business activities, promote the development of green industries and franchising and build a high-quality and diversified ecological product system.
Fourth, we will also deepen international cooperation and exchanges. We will incorporate the topic of biodiversity conservation into high-level international exchanges, promote international cooperation on the issue at high levels, actively participate in global biodiversity governance, honor the CBD and other international conventions, strengthen communication, enhance partnership recognition and promote global multilateral environmental governance according to the concept of building a shared future for all life on Earth.
Last but not least, we will encourage public involvement. We need to innovate upon the means of popularization and education and enhance public awareness of and attention to biodiversity through the promotion of knowledge and concepts about biodiversity. We should set up more diversified participation channels, increase public participation, actively mobilize and encourage enterprises and social organizations to take part in biodiversity conservation and create an atmosphere in which everyone in society works to promote biodiversity conservation and sustainable use.
In the future, we will also integrate the concept of biodiversity conservation into the whole process of building an ecological civilization, actively participate in global biodiversity governance and turn the Earth into a beautiful place for all creatures to live in harmony.
Participants attend an event for UN Biodiversity Day at the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov 16, 2022. [Photo/Xinhua]
Q4: The second phase of COP15, to be held in Montreal of Canada, will define and adopt the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Could you describe the consultation process, the results so far and the positive role that China has played during its presidency?
A4: The main task of COP15's second phase is to draw upon past experiences in the development and implementation of previous global targets on biodiversity to formulate the post-2020 GBF. The aim is to put global biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030, that is, to end the current situation of biodiversity loss.
It can be said that the framework is a guiding political document for global biodiversity governance. There are also high hopes for the framework's adoption during the second phase of the meeting.
At present, positive progress has been made in the framework's formation after negotiations and consultations during four rounds of working-group meetings. All parties have been seeking common ground while reserving differences and working in the same direction. There were sufficient exchanges and understandings about the issues and very comprehensive communication on the existing differences and suggestions.
Currently, the structure and core content of the post-2020 GBF has been agreed upon, laying a solid foundation for finalizing a solution that is acceptable to all relevant parties.
The CBD has 196 contracting parties and involves many international organizations and stakeholders. The consultations on, and negotiations of, the framework document involve all parties. So it is natural that the process is not all smooth and easy.
There are still different requirements, even big differences, on some specific issues. For instance, the Convention has three main objectives: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their utilization. We need to make more efforts to ensure the three objectives can be implemented in a comprehensive and balanced manner within the framework instead of overemphasizing one of them. And we have to work harder to narrow differences.
There is also much work to be done to ensure the targets set by the framework are realistic yet ambitious, and practical and balanced and that they can help promote the sustainable recovery of biodiversity.
In addition, the framework's realization ultimately depends on its implementation mechanism. For developing countries, the biggest concern is the mobilization of funds. Funding is obviously very important for the framework's application. It's an important and difficult part of the negotiations.
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY
Since assuming the COP15 presidency, China has actively exercised leadership and coordination in its efforts to advance negotiations of the post-2020 GBF. So far, China has convened a total of 37 COP15 meetings of the presidium. It has also presided over four meetings of the open-ended working group on the post-2020 GBF in such places as Geneva and Nairobi in collaboration with the CBD secretariat.
China has made significant efforts to advance framework negotiations. The frequency of the meetings, especially the frequency of the presidium meetings, is quite rare in the process of multilateral environmental negotiations.
Moreover, China has been using all sorts of occasions, such as the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, the G20 Joint Environment and Climate Ministerial Meeting, the high-level week of the 77th session of the UN General Assembly and COP27 as opportunities to organize exchange activities on key COP15 issues in various forms, including high-level roundtables and briefings.
We have also held frequent bilateral consultations with many other contracting parties to expand consensus. These efforts have both effectively maintained the political momentum of COP15 and facilitated the bridging of differences among contracting parties to achieve greater consensus.
All parties recognized the great efforts made by China in the COP15 presidency in coordinating the positions of all parties and expressed their willingness to work with China to push for the adoption of an ambitious, practical and balanced post-2020 GBF.
Although there are still many difficulties and demands in the consultations, all parties have expressed their firm political support and confidence in the negotiation process and China's role in the COP15 presidency.
I am confident the international community will respond positively to the spirit of community embodied in the theme of the upcoming conference "Ecological Civilization: Building a Shared Future for All Life on Earth" and demonstrate the wisdom and courage to overcome these difficulties and differences.
During the second phase of COP15, China will continue to play its presidency role well. With the support of the CBD secretariat, the presidium and the host country, China will work with fellow contracting parties, international organizations and stakeholders to spare no effort to advance the negotiation process, build the broadest possible consensus in the international community, promote the adoption of the framework and ensure the second phase of COP15 in Montreal is successful.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202212/0 ... 33f_2.html
Let China lead!
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COP27 and Imperialism: Weaving a Crown of Thorns for the Global South
29 Nov
Alexia Alkadi-Barbaro and Zeyad el Nabolsy
Compared to the COP26 summit in Glasgow last year, the COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh has been distinguished by greater inclusion of voices from the Global South, as evidenced by the acceptance of a proposal to create a ‘loss and damage’ fund for developing countries that are suffering from climate disasters. However, it remains to be seen how the mechanisms for the implementation of this fund will be worked out. Western developed countries were vocal in their opposition to the fund throughout the summit, and it was only due to relentless pressures by developing countries that they eventually relented. If past events are anything to go by, then it is highly unlikely that the most vulnerable countries will get to have a substantial say in how the climate fund is operated. In fact, the Western developed countries are already trying to use this as an opportunity to drive a wedge between developing countries and China, whose lending and investment policy presents a favourable alternative to ‘strings-attached’ IMF funding. This is precisely one of the hallmarks of ‘climate colonialism’: a concept that refers to the deployment of justifications ostensibly related to the need to bring the causes of anthropogenic climate change under control, but which in fact serve to legitimize the domination of weaker, poorer states in the periphery of the world-system by stronger wealthier states in the core. What this means is that those who are most responsible for the impending catastrophe will get to dictate the terms of the response (even if ineffective) in a manner that would ensure they can externalize the costs to those who are least culpable. It is well known that poorer countries in warmer climates will be the most severely affected as the plant continues to warm.
Any socialist response, even at the level of mere rhetoric, which discounts the significance of imperialism to debates about how best to respond to climate change is functionally equivalent to acquiescence to a world where a starving mass of racialised people in the Global South will be left to suffer while Europe and America are transformed into gated continents; ‘fortress Europe’ and ‘fortress America’ respectively. We currently have around 270 million people who are faced with hunger due to political conditions to which climate-shocks have been causally relevant. And by 2050, 143 million people in the Global South will become climate refugees – people who have contributed the least to anthropogenic climate change will be left to suffer and die as the West fortifies its borders against a perceived racial contagion. In the worst-case scenario, such conflicts will take on the form of racially inflected wars. There will not just be ‘water wars’ for instance, but also ‘race wars over water’. This is the future which awaits us if a global ‘Green New Deal’ which neglects the past and actuality of imperialism is allowed to garner support and to pass for a ‘socialist solution’ to the climate crisis.
Despite the concessions made by developed countries at the COP27, it is unlikely that they will be followed up with substantial action. The $100 billion per year which wealthy countries committed to at the COP15 in 2009 in Copenhagen as an ‘adaptation fund’ to assist countries in the periphery in their transition to ‘greener’ development paths has not materialized and seems unlikely to ever do so. Moreover, what has been contributed so far has been mostly in the form of loans (as opposed to grants), with all the perpetuation of ties of dependency and systematic value-drain from the South to the North that this form of ‘aid’ habitually entails. Note also that this amount is not even close to the 6% of Global North GNP ($2.3 trillion per year) which is outlined as necessary for a just transition in the historic Cochabamba People’s Agreement.
As things stand now, the agenda seems to be more land grabbing in the Global South in the name of carbon offsets, and the pursuit of ‘net-zero’ through mono-cultural tree planting on land which has been cleansed of its indigenous people. As Max Ajl notes, Biden’s discourse of ‘net-zero’ is primarily aimed at placating Western oil and gas companies, by making it clear that they will not be required to reduce production and that their assets will not be devalued. What is apparent is that the ruling classes in the Global North seek to confuse their constituents through illegitimate abstractions, ‘net-zero’ being a prime example of this strategy. These ruses obfuscate the social and political terrain upon which different solutions to the climate crisis should be contested.
Representatives of the ruling class in the Global North seek to hide the fact that it has been overwhelmingly responsible for anthropogenic climate change, as in Biden’s statement last year that ‘We can keep the goal of limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius within our reach if we come together, if we commit to doing our part of each of our nations [sic] with determination and with ambition. That’s what COP26 is all about.’ At the COP27, Biden maintained the same stance, emphasising that the U.S. was working towards it goals. The problem, however, is that the U.S. defines its goals unilaterally and presents an ahistorical framing of the crisis and of who is responsible for it. Between 1850 and 2011, Europe and America were responsible for 52% of global cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases. What this implies is that an equitable solution would distribute burdens in a manner that would cost the Global North more than it would cost the Global South.
To have a 50% chance of reaching the goal of ensuring that global temperatures do not increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, the number of gigatons of Carbon emitted after the beginning of 2020 cannot exceed 500.Because the U.S. has the highest per capita rate of emissions among the world’s large emitters of carbon (excepting Saudi Arabia and Australia) at 16 tons per person, to stay within the global emissions threshold it is necessary to demand that the U.S. reduce its emissions per capita at a faster rate than countries with much lower rates of emissions per capita. The U.S. would require an annual reduction of around 20% in its carbon dioxide emissions to stay within the global carbon budget (relativised to per capita emissions), whereas, for example, China would only need a 10% annual reduction, and Brazil would require only 3.4%. As John Ross observes, the dominant U.S. discourse calls for a 50% reduction in its emissions by 2030, which would enable the U.S. to remain a privileged state able to have per capita emissions which are 42% higher than China’s are today. Moreover, the demand for a uniform percentage reduction without discrimination is likely to hinder the development of countries which have hardly contributed anything to global greenhouse gas emissions, e.g., most African countries. Yet Biden still maintained the 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 line at COP27. The aforementioned points were conveniently ignored.
Another imperialist ruse that the U.S. and its allies have succeeded in pulling concerns their efforts to render military related emissions invisible on carbon budgets. Despite the fact that the U.S. military has a larger carbon footprint than most countries in the world, military related emissions have been only partially reported. The U.S. military budget, geared towards the development and procurement of weapons which guzzle up oil-derived fuels such as the F-35 fighter jet (which burns 5,600 liters of fuel per hour), constitutes 40% of the world’s military spending. Thus, demilitarisation must be at the top of the climate agenda. A topic which representatives of the U.S. ruling class were keen to keep off it entirely.
Another manner in which imperialist relations are left unchallenged by the climate action discourse of the COP27 is that emissions tend to be calculated on a production-basis rather than on a consumption basis. Emissions which are counted as the product of developing or poorer countries, but which express the systematic drain of value from the South to the North – for example, outsourced manufacturing activities of Western-based multinationals exploiting cheap Southern labour, based on global prices differences (differences which persist even when one adjusts for productivity levels) for products of the same value, i.e., products with value x, measured based on socially necessary labour time, produced in some Global South country may be priced far lower than products with value x produced in some Global North country – should be counted as emissions for which the developed countries with their conspicuous consumption are responsible. Clarifying the two different modes of calculation is important because it also makes it clear that although a country like China would be seen as the largest polluter in the world on the basis of production-based emission calculations, this would not be the case if we adopt a consumption-based framework.
The climate action plan that is being proposed by the ruling class in the Global North and which externalizes the costs to the Global South is part of a prolonged attack on the gains of anti-colonial movements in the aftermath of the retreat of the Bandung-era project(s) in the 1970s. Anthropogenic climate change threatens to roll back nearly all of the social, health, and economic gains which have been achieved in the aftermath of independence.
The climate action plan presented at COP27 also signals the continuation of a policy of ignorance of and contempt towards popular anti-imperial movements, and demands made from poor, working class peoples from nations within the Global South , as well environmental movements led by Black and indigenous peoples in the Global North. It is worth illustrating how movements for global consciousness and demands for environmental protection from industries, policies, and economic adjustment programs have long demanded localised environmental practices and knowledge to be central in determining green technologies and economic policies around questions of environmental preservation.
The connection between local environmental movements and anticolonial movements illustrates how people within the Global South have long demanded setting an environmental agenda that is antiracist, anticapitalist, abolishes the afterlives of the colonial international hierarchical order and is both future oriented while taking into account the environmental harms of the past. While many of the popular led environmental movements that took off in the 1960s and rose to prominence throughout the three decades that followed were localised in form – that is, confined to national contexts and thus dealing with local issues pertaining to immediate ecological surroundings – growing consciousness of the unequally inherited effects of environmental degradation among historically racialised nations within the Global South led to convergences between local and global consciousness.[1]
Popular narratives about the rise of environmental degradation usually find their origin stories in the early 1970s, when the United Nations’ Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm resulted in the declaration to focus on “underdevelopment” and “overpopulation” as factors central to environmental degradation. By 1973, with the reverberations of the first oil-shock felt on a global scale, shifts in the types of energy being used (oil versus nuclear) became a predominant issue especially within the United States and across Western Europe. Spurred by the outbreak of grassroots movement actors in the United States and across the Global North, eco-friendly development initiatives were introduced to transnational corporations headquartered in the U.S. and Europe and operating in resource rich nations within the Global South. However, by the mid-1970s, with economic and political pressures for recently decolonised nations to rapidly industrialise, elites at the state level in the Global North and Global South did not succeed in embracing or requiring environmentally conscious policies around economic development. Meanwhile, amidst the backdrop of elite-driven political discourse and technocratic planning over what should be, and what could be done while still promoting the common good of the international economy, grassroots movements that resulted in the establishment of transnational NGOs like Greenpeace International or Friends of the Earth provided a platform for progressive environmental agendas premised on taking seriously (at least by their own account) popular environmental movements across the globe.[2] But between each of these major historical moments was the often unacknowledged work on behalf of anticolonial activists within the Global South or their diasporas in the U.S. organising to ensure that the gains made during and after movements for decolonisation would not be rolled back in the grip of neo-imperial politics.
The intersection between anticolonial movements and environmental consciousness can be traced, in part, to the organising work of a handful of transnational activists influenced by the rise of Pan-Africanism. Figures such as Trinidadian activist and ecological engineer Pauluu Kamarakafego, Australian-Indigenous environmental activist and poet Jack Davis, Black American activist and educator Thais Aubry, for example, all overlapped in their various forms of activism around land rights for African, Black American, Aboriginal and Indigenous people of the Pacific and North America in the mid-20th century. Historian Quito Swan has recently illustrated how Kamarakafego’s transnational travels from the 1960s onward helped to forefront Black environmental consciousness within both elite-driven and grassroots movements agendas in the United States, Ghana, Trinidad, Bermuda, Cuba, Australia, and Fiji.[3]
Kamarakafego’s environmental agenda focused on how movements for self-determination could center solutions for moving beyond ecologically extractivist practices. Along with contemporaries such as Walter Rodney and Kwame Nkrumah, Kamarakafego rightly predicted that ecological extractivism would be paramount to the continuation of economic domination set in place through colonisation, and solidified during the neoliberal counterrevolution on behalf of Western Europe and the United States. His activism centered on fostering and bringing to the forefront of international policy localised, indigenous knowledge of how best to care for and produce raw materials. In each place that Kamarakafego travelled, he would meet with local activists who were often farmworkers, hear about the issues they faced with massive agricultural farmlands owned and run by European or American private corporations, and help to strategise ways to build a transnational consciousness about these problems. In effect, Kamarakafego, along with other activists of his time, sought to sow consciousness about how localised environmental issues stemmed from the racialised economic policies coming out of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, peddled by elite-actors within the Global North.
Like Kamarakafego, Jack Davis and Thais Aubry spent years organising and helping to raise local and transnational knowledge about the shared environmental struggles that African, Black and Indigenous communities faced, and the need for a collective, transnational grassroots movement that sought to put Indigenous land knowledge at the forefront of international agendas. Inspired by the Pan-African movement for self-determination, Davis travelled to the United States to work alongside Black organisers such as Queen Mother Moore and to build alliances with Indigenous people around land rights and environmental self-determination. His work was influential in mobilizing Aboriginal self-determination movements in Australia. Thais Aubry organized around environmental land rights for Pacific Islanders from the 1960s through to the 1970s. Her consistent involvement in the Women Speak Out! A Report of the Pacific Women’s Conference helped to build a transnational Black and Aboriginal feminist environmental consciousness about the way in which economic policies and environmental technologies from the Global North together not only posed a problem for non-Western forms of self-determination, but for Black and Aboriginal women’s liberation.
All three of these figures came of age during the rise of mass rural farmworker uprisings across the Black Atlantic in the mid-twentieth century. Chief among these uprisings were those spurred in Ghana between 1945 and 1951. In large part brought on by increasing discontent among Ghanian farmers with British colonial control over cocoa crops, extractivist policies, and the environmentally degrading effects of mass agricultural farm lots, farmworkers movements quickly spread, colliding with broader movement politics in the Global South to secure land rights among Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples. Farmworker movements that sought to center the environment and the demand for overcoming economic domination spanned from the Caribbean, West Africa, and the United States. These were, in part, early attempts to make anticolonial environmentalism a part of the international human rights agenda at the United Nations. At the end of his life, Kamarakafego himself worked as a consultant on rural development and renewable energy resources. He helped build the International Network of Small Island Developing States of NGOs and Indigenous People, and served on the executive and steering committees on the UN Commission on Sustainable Development reporting on the demands of farmworkers movements across the Black and Indigenous diaspora.
Kamarakafego, Davis, and Aubry are just a few representative examples of many environmental activists who followed after them and sought to build transnational agendas for environmental racial justice. In the late 1970s, on the Southside of Chicago, Black environmental justice activists and their white allies came together to form People for Community Recovery (PCR) which, while initially focused on the overdue repair work in Altgeld Gardens, would become best known for its work calling attention to and demonstrating against urban environmental pollution once it became known that the Southside of Chicago had a higher rate of cancer than in any other part of the city. PCR activists argued that, due to the heavy concentration of industrial pollution, residential communities in the area were exposed to exorbitantly higher rates of toxic chemicals compared to other communities across Chicago. By the 1980s, PCR activists were travelling to Brazil, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, South Africa and Indigenous communities within the United States. They would end up collaborating with Greenpeace to halt the transnational actions of ChemWaste which operated in several nations and in the Southside of Chicago. Hazel Johnson, the founder of PCR, and the activists involved would again highlight that local issues required a transnational response rooted in popular movement demands.[4] As of today, race in the United States continues to be the largest contributor to whether one lives next to a toxic waste dump or not.
Aware of the unequally inherited effects of climate change on people within the Global South, especially food security and forced migration, these early activists influenced by the global anticolonial moment foreshadowed a strand of environmental consciousness that is necessary for combating the possibility of neo-imperial climate strategies, strategies that continue to put unfettered capitalist economic profit over the livelihood of the people. Their activism prefigured the organising necessary to attend to the environmental catastrophes we and they have inherited today. To undo the continuation of neo-imperial ‘green technology transfers’ and elite-decision making power, a space must be opened up on an international scale that takes seriously the demands of the people in the Global South slated to bear the brunt of climate disaster. Their claims have long been articulated, the question is if we choose to listen, and how we choose to respond.
References
[1] For more on this, see: David Naguib Pellow. Resisting global toxics: Transnational movements for environmental justice (MIT Press, 2007).
[2] Paul F.Steinberg and Stacy D. VanDeveer, eds. Comparative environmental politics: theory, practice, and prospects (MIT 2012).
[3] Quiot J. Swan. Pauulu's Diaspora: Black Internationalism and Environmental Justice (University Press of Florida, 2020).
[4] Pellow, Ibid.
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/cop ... mperialism
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11 568 KM2 of Forest Lost in the Brazilian Amazon in 12 Months
The highest rate of deforestation (27 700km2) in the Brazilian Amazon was recorded in 2014, according to the Legal Amazon Deforestation Satellite Monitoring Project. Nov. 30, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@GracielaMariani
Published 30 November 2022
Between August 2021 and July 2022, the deforested area of the Amazon region reached 11 568 square kilometers, said the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
According to INPE data released on Wednesday, the figure indicates a decrease of 11.27 percent compared to the period from August 2020 to July 202, when 13 038 square kilometers of forest were lost.
The Satellite Monitoring of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon Project (Prodes), considered the most accurate for measuring annual deforestation rates, provided the above figures.
In 2004, the country recorded the highest rate of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, with 27 700 square kilometers of forest lost.
In contrast, 2012 was the year with the least devastation in the Amazon, when 4 500 square kilometers were lost, according to Prodes. Three years later, the situation was reversed.
Four years of the Bolsonaro government, 45 thousand km2 of forest have been totally cut down. The worst: a new frontier of land grabbing has been consolidated, in Acre, BR-319, around the Transamazonia (west of PA and south of AM). High risk for Amazonia (follow the thread) +
Under the government of incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, rainforest loss increased by 59.5 percent, said the Climate Observatory.
The entity's executive secretary, Marcio Astrini, said after the release of the INPE data that "Bolsonaro received the country with a rate of 7 500 square kilometers of deforestation in the Amazon and is handing it over with 11 500 kilometers."
President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who will take office on January 1, 2003, has pledged to put Brazil back on the environmental stage and diplomacy.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/11- ... -0021.html.