Justice

Climate Debt: Who Profits? Who Pays?

Illustration by Feggo

19 Climate Debt: Who profits? Who Pays? Nicole Fabricant The Struggles for It has been more than three 22 Development Alternatives in : The Impulse, the Resistance, and the Restoration years since NACLA published its 27 Bolivia vs. the Billionaires: Limitations of last report dedicated to natural- the “Climate Justice Movement” in resources, development, and International Negotiations “the new extractivism” in Latin 32 Commodifying Water in Times of Global Warming America. That report, which 38 A Healthy Life: Weighing Hydroelectricity’s Costs appeared in September 2009, as the Climate Changes Around Us highlighted natural-resource 41 Photo Essay: Patagonia, Peru, New York conflicts in which capitalist 50 A Most People’s ? development projects and envi- 55 REDD: Development Opportunity ronmental problems collided. At or Neoliberal Threat? that moment, many left-of-center 57 Amid Gas, Where Is the Revolution? regimes, despite their shared

SPRINGSPRING 2013 2013 NACLA NACLA REPORTREPORT ONON THETHE AMERICASAMERICAS 19 platform to “nationalize” natural-resource wealth, sup- altered landscapes in the Global South. We can map the ported a model of transnational extractivism. Several connections between private capital in North and South years later, these environmental conflicts have become and similar market-based mechanisms as solutions to the ever more complicated as new ecological problems as- . Further, a web allows us to weave together sociated with global warming threaten to disrupt local the realities of rural and urban spaces and global forms economies, means of production, and historic ways of of consumption with localized and daily struggles of sur- life. This spring 2013 report re-elevates themes from vival in Latin America. 2009, most importantly the dynamic relationship be- Carlota McAllister’s article vividly illustrates the sweep- tween extractive industries, environmental degradation, ing interconnections between northern consumptive dependency upon non-renewable fossil-fuels, and the practices and the restructuring of lifeways in the South altered role of the state versus international conglomer- using specific illustrative material from the dam building ates—all in relation to the climate crisis. in Patagonia, Chile. Historically, dam building has pre- We are living in an era in which the world as we know sented a cleaner, greener solution to capturing energy. it is rapidly and radically changing. Weather patterns are Nevertheless, people like the Patagonian farmer whose more erratic than ever, storms and more severe, story McAllister tells are frequently forced to reconstitute landscapes parched, and disappearing. We are their lives as water is rerouted outward toward major de- living in a new world where we will all have to imagine velopment projects of hydroelectric power through large- “living differently or risk extinction.” Nation-states in the scale dam building. McAllister critically asks whether Global South that have historically contributed the least these “so-called renewable” resources at every level of the to carbon-dioxide emissions will ironically be especially chain guarantee “a healthy life.” The dynamic interplay vulnerable to the consequences of these dramatic shifts between the degradation of historical ways of life and because of the damage wrought by extractive industries rapid environmental change is at the heart of her analysis. and the limited resources and state apparatus to cope with The rapidity and destructiveness is of an unprecedented such change. scale. Equally important, the direct (hydroelectric dam It is in this context that many nations in Latin America, construction) and indirect (broad ) rep- following the UN climate change conference in 2009, pro- resent the breadth and depth of this change. This idea posed a reparation policy of “climate debt.” This proposal of “healthy life” as alternative to capitalism has become asserted that northern nations owed reparations to the a popular construct for resistance to global capitalism’s Global South for the crisis that they have created. Naomi unquenchable, expansive appetite for resource-based Klein indicated that the proposal was among the “smart- wealth. Eduardo Gudynas discusses the concept of buen est and most promising proposals” coming from leaders vivir (living well) in Bolivia and how this has served as a in the South. She further argued in 2009 that this was model of alternative development. Yet he also warns of our very last chance to save a threatened planet. More re- the limitations of such indigenous philosophical tenets for cently, however, commentators and observers have been a addressing and resolving global climate crisis. bit more hesitant regarding the transformative possibility Importantly, every contributor queries the use of mar- of the climate justice movement. In part, as Fabricant and ket-based solutions to the market-induced problems of Hicks point out in this report, this is a consequence of “ecological crisis.” Astrid Stensrud’s article about melting the billions of dollars being funneled into lobbying efforts glaciers and water scarcity in Peru forcefully asserts that to block any international proposals regarding restrictions market-based solutions to water scarcity shift responsibil- on carbon-dioxide emissions. Fabricant and Hicks more ity from “the state” to individuals. In this instance, inter- largely argue that the global capitalist economy prevents national NGO representatives argue that if rural farmers any forward movement on radical climate policy. “could take care of headwaters and use available water This report, therefore, critically explores the idea of more efficiently,” individual families could gain by sav- economic, social, cultural, and environmental “embed- ing water. These short-term, quick-fix solutions, however, dedness” of the capitalist system and of the consequent will not resolve the long-term and systemic problem of challenges for the climate justice movement. Marxist melting glaciers. geographer David Harvey, for example, has noted that Daniel Cohen’s article also references market-based so- the metaphor of the “web of capitalism” is an important lutions in Brazil, for example the increasing popularity of analytic construct for the situation we find ourselves in. proposals for “green economies” essentially using regula- We begin to see the web of connections between north- tion and market mechanisms to slow deforestation and ern dependency upon fossil-fuels and the changed or innovate development to reduce the destructive

20 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS VOL. 46, NO. 1 influences of rapid capitalist development. Juliet Erazo, of the articulation between the workings of power and in her piece about REDD+ in Ecuador, questions “green politics and the industry. These are important solutions” through market-based mechanisms of carbon insights that highlight not just the rural and urban divide reduction. While Daniel Cohen argues that green solu- in climate justice movements but the political conflicts tions essentially mean “fighting commodification with between the Northern anti-carbon, anti-fossil fuel stance, commodification,” Erazo uses the conflict between two and Southern imaginations of natural-resources providing indigenous organizations, CONFENIAE and COICA, over possibilities for development. carbon measurement as a world in a grain of sand. Her As well, there is a plethora of problems writ large essay uses this specific conflict as a basis for describing within the broader climate justice movement. An espe- the tensions between top-down developmentalist “green cially compelling question raised throughout this Report economic” projects and the realities of “autonomous in- is, How do we connect the dots of global capitalism to digenous territories”: the need for resources, jobs, and understand how particular flows of capital, goods, and infrastructure. It is within this context that many simply resources leave behind physical markings on local com- support such market-based and short-term solutions, munities, environments, and ways of life? hoping for much-needed “economic development” in Critically, then, this question of embeddedness comes their communities. full circle at the end of this Report through efforts to un- Cohen describes yet another layer of “embeddedness,” derstand the challenges of building a global movement in this case the intimate connections between rural and to both resist and offer alternatives to the present brand urban ecologies and the ongoing challenges of incorpo- of ecological reform and continuing destruction of global rating urban activists into the climate justice movement. capitalism. For example, the group 350.org is attempt- He notes that urban dwellers in Brazil are often unable ing to do this, by crossing international space (working in to see the connections between issues of uneven urban the same diffuse way as global capitalism) but struggling to link distinct communities across international divides and in turn to We hope that activists North and South can move a political agenda that diminish- es our shared dependence upon fossil- learn how to hold accountable those who fuels. A central problem is convincing urbanites in Latin America teetering are profiting from the climate crisis. on the edge of survival that their daily problems of poverty (lack of water, development and environmental or climate destruction. sanitation services, displacement caused by development) As an environmental activist told him, “Bringing urban are intimately connected to consumptive practices in the movements in is a big challenge that we haven’t had a Global South and North that must be dramatically altered. lot of success with.” The daily problems of poverty have Such an educational campaign, in part, requires that local blinded urban activists in Brazil. Their blinded reality—or struggles must be understood in a global context and that denial—renders them increasingly unable to connect the broad-based struggles must be related to daily challenges daily problems of poverty to broad-based global uneven- of survival. ness: such as our constant quest for non-renewable fossil- But in order to seriously challenge industrialized na- fuels. As well, he documents the material connections be- tions in the North on these fundamental issues, the cli- tween flows of food, structures of agriculture, and sources mate justice movement must begin to create new strate- of energy. Connecting problems of urban poverty to ques- gies and tactics that directly attack and threaten centers of tions of the environment is one of the many challenges, power. We are at a political and organizing moment of argues Cohen, facing the climate justice movement. great import. Cross-border, cross-community learning Bret Gustafson also sheds light on the challenges of that must take place must attempt to maximize the poten- building a broad-based climate justice movement in the tial for progressive change. One of the hopes of the au- South: moving beyond “extractivism” does not seem like thors of this Report is that activists in the South can teach a real possibility in a place like Bolivia, deeply dependent the North how to translate long histories of militant and upon resources like natural gas for economic develop- embodied politics into new spaces and places. It is our ment and social programming. Yet he does not stop there. hope that activists North and South can learn how to use He asks what might need to happen to move political this kind of militancy to hold accountable those who are debate and discussion toward a deeper understanding profiting from the climate crisis.

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