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In
depth I
Climate change
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NGOs warn of World Bank's climate fund
Source:
Third World Network
The World Bank’s proposed initiatives threaten to divert funds away from the UNFCCC process, and undermine efforts there. Specifically, the World Bank’s proposed Climate Resilience Pilot Programme is running parallel to and is in direct competition with the UNFCCC’s newly approved Adaptation Fund. April 2008.[see more]
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Climate change is widely considered to be one of the gravest threats to the sustainability of the planet's environment, the well-being of its people and the strength of its economies. Mainstream scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing from the build-up of greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide, that result from such essential human activities as electricity generation, transportation and agriculture.
They also agree that industrialized countries —those with very high per capita GHG emissions— need to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, improve agricultural practices, and conserve forests and other ecosystems that absorb carbon from the atmosphere. Developing countries, whose per capita emissions are generally much lower, are concerned with meeting the immediate energy needs of their people rather than reducing their emissions, but the time is right for them to also begin pursuing a more sustainable path of development.
The international response to climate change started with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Agreed to in 1992, the Convention is a framework for action to limit or reduce GHG emissions. In 1997, 159 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention, committing industrialized countries to quantified targets for abating their emissions of GHGs.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, the US - by far the world's largest emitter of GHGs – was meant not only to slow down but also reverse the growth of its emissions to reach a target level of seven per cent below its 1990 emissions. In March 2001, US President George W. Bush de facto reneged on this undertaking by the previous administration, which had signed the Kyoto Protocol. He declared that he would propose his own strategy, and not seek ratification of the protocol, because he was worried about its effects on the US economy. Instead, the Bush administration came up with its own climate change strategy: one that, by 2012, is likely to result in a 30 per cent increase, over the 1990 levels, in the emission of greenhouse gases.
Over the last years, the centre of the debate on climate change has revolved around the so called “flexible” clauses of the Kyoto Protocol. In order to persuade the developed world to sign the convention, the protocol includes a “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) that allows the emission of a generous quantity of GHGs provided that countries commit themselves to investing in programs that compensate for their contamination. Namely, these consist in forestation and the preservation of green areas capable of absorbing carbon dioxide and transforming it into oxygen through the process of photosynthesis: the so called “carbon sinks”.
Although many NGOs and international organizations such as the World Bank agree that this mechanism provides a satisfactory solution to all parts, environmental groups and green organizations claim that no real improvement on climate change will be made if there is no reduction of GHGs emission. Furthermore, many argue that the CDM in fact bargains the right to contaminate thus leading to yet another form of commerce: the “carbon trade”, which is far from tackling the root causes of the problem.
Despite the fact that the effects of climate change affect the world as a whole, the south is increasingly turning into the “carbon sink” of the north, which causes serious alterations in its biodiversity and hinders the possibility of sustainable development.
In recent years, several countries have been promoting the use of biofuels - liquid fuels produced from biomass grown in large-scale monocultures, also called 'agrofuels'- as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. Promoters claim biofuels provide significant greenhouse gas emissions savings, but environmental NGOs have increasingly warned that the rush to agrofuels encourages intensive, industrial agriculture, providing a new promotional vehicle for GM crops, and posing a serious threat to food sovereignty. Indeed, the destruction of rainforests, peatlands and other ecosystems to make way for agrofuel plantations may well accelerate global warming.
Versión
en español
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| COMMENTS |
Sun Apr 27 2008 |
Thanks for this opportunity to communicate openly about what to me looks like the proverbial "mother" of all global challenges: the human overpopulation of Earth in our time.
It looks like humankind inhabits a tiny celestial orb that is miraculously set among of sea of stars. As far as we know, life as we know it exists nowhere else in the Universe. In the light of these one-of-a-kind circumstances, perhaps we of the human family have the responsibility of assuring the security for the future of life in our planetary home.
I am trying to focus attention on the pressing need for human beings to protect and preserve the finite resources of Earth and its frangible ecosystems. If we fail to achieve this goal, then an unimaginably bleak future could await our children. In all the seriousness of what could be somehow true, I mean the children of my generation.
If 6+ billion human beings live on Earth now and 9+ billion are expected to populate our small planet by 2050, then the human species simply cannot keep engaging in certain unbridled activities that we can see overspreading the Earth because the Earth has limited resources upon which all forms of life and human constructions like national economies utterly depend for existence. Without adequate resources and ecosystem system services of Earth, life as we know it and human institutions could collapse, I suppose.
Now, some portion of the world’s human population conspicuously over-consumes the resources of our planetary home. Other people, working in huge multinational conglomerations, are operating businesses in a way that recklessly scours the oceans' floor, decapitates mountains, turns biomass into human mass and, in these and many other ways, end up dissipating natural resources at such an alarming rate that the Earth has insufficient time to restore the resources for human benefit. Still other people in the family of humanity are overpopulating the planet. The leviathan-like scale and rapid growth of global human consumption, production and propagation activities are putting the Earth, life as we know it, and the human community in grave, clear and present danger.
Elder human beings of the overdeveloped world, of whom I am one, are among the people in our planetary home who are ravenously over-consuming Earth's resources. We could choose to consume less. People in the developing could choose to limit overproduction of unnecessary things, to stop ravaging the planet, and to contain industrial pollution. People in the underdeveloped world could limit their number of offspring. Perhaps these are some ways the family of humanity begins to respond ably to the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously before humanity in our time.
While I certainly agree that action should have been taken by my generation of old folks when we were young in the 60s and 70s, when we became aware of the "population bomb," still we have responsibilities to assume and duties to perform, here and now, for the sake of our children, grandchildren and coming generations.
The idea of making a conscious choice to do nothing in the face of the recognizably daunting global challenges that are visible before humanity on the far horizon is anathema to me.
At a minimum, do we not have a "duty to warn" others of the potential for some kind of ecological catastrophe if the human community adamantly chooses to continue relentlessly down the current "primrose path" marked by soon to become unsustainable consumption, production and propagation activities now threatening to overwhelm the surface of Earth?
Always with thanks,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php |
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Steve Salmony
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Chapel Hill, NC
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USA
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Fri Apr 18 2008 |
Dear Friends,
I am imagining that the following questions are rhetorical ones to many people in the Choike community.
“Why are politicians and skeptics so willing to risk their future and everyone else’s future on blindly clinging to a course of action that has a high probability of leading to a seriously crippled future? If you even suspect that global warming represents a serious risk to your survival (and we have far more than suspicion these days), why wouldn’t you do everything protect and conserve your planet?”
It would please me to hear from others; but from my humble perspective the “answers” to these questions are all-too-obvious.
The leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, of increasing per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are evidently insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors.
We religiously promote our shared fantasies of endless economic growth and soon to be unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction oand overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources upon which the survival of life as we know it depends.
My not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves. We are the “what’s in it for me?” generation. We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the understanding that we are no more or less than human beings with “feet of clay.”
We live idolatrously in a soon to be unsustainable way in our planetary home and are proud of it, thank you very much. Certainly, we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” We will fly around in thousands of private jets, own fleets of cars, live in McMansions, exchange secret handshakes, go to our exclusive clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold most of the Earth's wealth and control the power it purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our ‘rights’ to ravenously consume Earth’s limited resources; to expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; to encourage the unbridled growth of the human species so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire.
We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We have no regard for human limits or Earth’s limitations, thank you very much. We are idolaters of the global political economy. Please understand that we do not want anyone to present us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making…… a manmade world filling up with distinctly human enterprises which appear to be approaching a point in human history when global consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species become unsustainable on the tiny planet God has blessed us to inhabit........and not to overwhelm, I suppose.
Sincerely,
Steve
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Steven Earl Salmony
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Chapel Hill, NC
(
USA
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News |
| Up-to-date current affairs information. |
Thu Feb 01 2007
Stark findings on climate change
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In-depth
reports |
| Detailed
reports on key issues |
Agrofuels
Fostered by the oil and climate crisis, agrofuel development has arrived on the global stage amid warnings that the cure might be worse than the disease.
Wetlands conservation
Nearly half of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed, adding yet another threat to to the earth’s ecosystems.
The water crisis
If access to water is a basic human right, should its provision be left in the hands of private corporations?
Desertification
Over 250 million people are directly affected, and one billion people in over 100 countries are at risk.
Rio+10: Earth Summit 2002
Ten years after Rio ’92, is there still an agenda for sustainable development?
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Campaigns |
| NGO-organised
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People's ratification campaign of the Kyoto Protocol
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Introduction: What is Global Warming? |
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Tackling the problem: international conventions |
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The real impact of climate change |
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Gender and climate change |
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Adapting to climate change |
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Carbon trade: the debate |
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Agrofuels and climate change |
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The voice of southern civil society |
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Climate change and the G8 |
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Negotiations follow-up |
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