critical currents Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Occasional Paper Series

Carbon Trading How it works and why it fails no.7 November 2009 critical currents no.6 October 2009

Contours of Climate Justice Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics

Edited by Ulrich Brand Edgardo Lander Nicola Bullard Tadzio Mueller

With contributions by Kolya Abramsky Eduardo Gudynas Alberto Acosta Mike Hodson Walden Bello Enrique Leff Achim Brunnengräber Simone Lovera Ewa Charkiewicz Simon Marvin Anne Laure Constantin Alexis Passadakis Gopal Dayaneni Wolfgang Sachs

Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation Uppsala 2009

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 1 09-11-05 11.17.56 The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation pays tribute to the memory of the second Secretary General of the UN by searching for and examining workable alternatives for a socially and economically just, ecologically sustainable, peaceful and secure world.

In the spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld’s Critical Currents is an integrity, his readiness to challenge the Occasional Paper Series dominant powers and his passionate plea published by the for the sovereignty of small nations and Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. their right to shape their own destiny, the It is also available online at Foundation seeks to examine mainstream www.dhf.uu.se. understanding of development and bring to the debate alternative perspectives of often Statements of fact or opinion unheard voices. are those of the authors and do not imply endorsement By making possible the meeting of minds, by the Foundation. experiences and perspectives through the Manuscripts for review organising of seminars and dialogues, should be sent to the Foundation plays a catalysing role [email protected]. in the identifi cation of new issues and the formulation of new concepts, policy Series editor: Henning Melber proposals, strategies and work plans towards Language editor: Peter Colenbrander solutions. The Foundation seeks to be at the Layout: Karim Kerrou cutting edge of the debates on development, Design: Mattias Lasson security and environment, thereby Printed by X-O Graf Tryckeri AB continuously embarking on new themes ISSN 1654-4250 in close collaboration with a wide and Copyright on the text is with the constantly expanding international network. authors and the Foundation.

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 2 09-11-05 11.17.56 Contents

Preface ...... 5 Introduction ...... 9

Ulrich Brand, Nicola Bullard, Edgardo Lander and Tadzio Mueller Radical climate change politics in Copenhagen and beyond: From criticism to action? ...... 9 part 1: How did we get here in the fi rst place? ...... 17 Ewa Charkiewicz A feminist critique of the climate change discourse. From biopolitics to necropolitics? ...... 18 Achim Brunnengräber Kyoto´s ‘fl exible mechanisms’ and the right to pollute the air ...... 26 Eduardo Gudynas Climate change and capitalism’s ecological fi x in Latin America ...... 36 Walden Bello The deadly triad: Climate change, free trade and capitalism ...... 42 part 2 : Wrong turns, dead-ends and cross-roads ...... 45 Simone Lovera REDD realities ...... 46 Tadzio Mueller and Alexis Passadakis Green capitalism and the climate: It’s economic growth, stupid! ...... 54 Anne Laure Constantin Fixing the world’s climate ‘foodprint’ ...... 62 Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin The right to the city – energy and climate change ...... 70 part 3 : Mapping (and walking) the terrain of climate justice ...... 79 Gopal Dayaneni Climate justice in the US ...... 80 Wolfgang Sachs Climate change and human rights ...... 85 Kolya Abramsky Energy, crisis and world-wide production relations ...... 92

Enrique Leff Degrowth, or deconstruction of the economy: Towards a sustainable world ...... 101

Alberto Acosta The rights of nature, new forms of citizenship and the Good Life – Echoes of the Constitución de Montecristi in Ecuador ...... 108

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 3 09-11-05 11.17.56 critical currents 6 book_b.indd 4 09-11-05 11.17.56 Preface

‘Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.’

Albert Schweitzer

More than 75 years ago, in a letter to Rut- he kept from the mid-1920s onwards. For ger Moll (probably in 1933), Dag Ham- Hammarskjöld, nature amounted almost to a marskjöld wrote about his emotions while sacred frontier. Some of the notes from 1951 spending the summer hiking in northern show with particular clarity his deep bonds Sweden. For him, this experience evoked ‘a with the wilderness, which for him was the: feeling of solidarity with nature’ as ‘almost the most important thing’.1 Hammarskjöld …extrahuman in the experience of the had a profound, intimate relationship with greatness of Nature. This does not allow the world of the sea and even more so that itself to be reduced to an expression of of the mountains.2 He had a deep-rooted our human reactions, nor can we share and conscious personal interaction with na- in it by expressing them. Unless we each ture, which was evidenced by, among other fi nd a way to chime in as one note in things, his admiration for the work of Carl the organic whole, we shall only observe von Linnaeus as well as his affi nity for the ourselves observing the interplay of its fi ction of Joseph Conrad and his belief in thousand components in a harmony out- the ethical philosophy of Albert Schweitzer, side our experience of it as harmony.4 to mention only the obvious instances. His posthumously published childhood memo- Hammarskjöld’s photos, which he took with ries of his upbringing on Uppsala’s Castle a passion during his explorations, pictured Hill provide further striking insight into his mostly landscape and were a visual expression almost spiritual relationship with the natural of this respect for nature. As he commented environment and habitat.3 in an essay entitled ‘The camera has taught me to see’, he was seeking to illustrate ‘the Not the least testament of this relationship balance of strength and nervous sensitivity so can be found in his entries in the notebook often displayed by nature’s own creations’.5

1 Quoted in Thelin, B. (2001), ‘Dag Hammarskjöld – Nature, Landscape, Literature’, Development Dialogue, Vol. 1, p.88. 2 See on the latter the magnifi cent pictorial tribute by 4 Hammarskjöld, D. (1993, 16th printing), Markings. Grundsten, C. (2007), Swedish Wilderness. The Mountain New York: Random House, p.66. World of Dag Hammarskjöld. Stockholm: Max Ström. 5 Quoted from ‘Landmarks. Photographs by Dag 3 Hammarskjöld, D. (2000), Castle Hill. Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld’, in Development Dialogue, Vol. 1, Hammarskjöld Foundation. 1987, p.28.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 5 Photo: Dag Hammarskjöld Dag Photo:

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 5 09-11-05 11.17.57 The second secretary general of the United much beyond square one. Despite more than Nations most likely did not have climate 300 multilateral agreements negotiated and change in his mind. However, his notion entered into since 1972, the world’s climate of ‘solidarity with nature’ calls for further as we know it faces ultimate collapse. Politi- and fuller contemplation. Suffi ce it to con- cal and institutional constraints have stood clude within the confi nes of this preface that in the way of a solution: throughout his varied career he clearly had an awareness of natural beauty and serenity Many of the problems related to sustaina- and appreciated them as a treasure to be pro- ble development would have been solved tected in the post-Second World War era, easily, or would not have evolved if the with its belief in progress and modernity agreements reached early on actually had based on technological advancement and a been implemented. However, by the end Fordist conception of the industrialisation of the process, a huge implementation and commodifi cation of consumer societies. and accountability gap had accumulated – a failure that lies at the core of the chal- Soon after his untimely death in the early lenges today.6 hours of 18 September 1961 on a mission to the Congo to seek a peaceful resolution of The tendency of governments to place nar- the confl icts arising from its decolonisation, row state interests above global survival humankind’s disastrous eff ects on nature, and comes at a life-threatening price. It is there- responsibility for them, became a topical is- fore not surprising that many concerned per- sue in global governance initiatives. In 1967, sons have few if any expectations or illusions Sweden proposed that the UN General As- that those participating in the Copenhagen sembly convene a conference on the environ- event will actually demonstrate the required ment. The UN Conference on the Human problem-solving capacity. Despite all the Environment in Stockholm (1972), the UN declarations, declamations and lip service, Conference on Environment and Develop- even the scariest climate-change scenarios ment in Rio de Janeiro (1992) and the World are proving to be understatements of what Summit on Sustainable Development in Jo- might come. Policy responses and adapta- hannesburg (2002) were subsequent markers tions fall short of addressing the challenges. in a series of top-level global meetings, which The logic of the era of the Enlightenment, were continued in other forums all over the in which human beings utilise nature for world. They created normative reference short-term gain without concern for long- points and political institutions such as the term survival, approaches bankruptcy. Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change Securing a future for human beings and the in order to meet the challenges. many other endangered species on this plan- et requires instead a change of mindset. The More than four decades after the Swed- ish initiative in 1967, with governments of 6 Engfeldt, L-G. (2009), From Stockholm to Johannesburg the world due to meet in Copenhagen in and Beyond. The Evolution of the International System for December 2009 to seek a follow up to the Sustainable Development Governance and its Implications. Stockholm: Government Offi ces of Sweden/Minis- Kyoto Protocol, progress has not advanced try for Foreign Aff airs, June, p.15.

6 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 6 09-11-05 11.17.57 quote above by Albert Schweitzer has been farmer, and she is a woman and she is des- used as a motto for a ‘Provocation’ published perate’. by the Swedish Tällberg Foundation. In its postscript, the authors conclude, that ‘we That date, 24 October 2009, also marked the have to rethink the principles upon which we International Day of Climate Action (350 base the development of our economy, tech- Day) when people in 181 countries came to- nology and governance. Nature is what it is. gether for the most widespread day of envi- We cannot negotiate with nature to change ronmental action in the planet’s history. At its nature, its processes, and its chemical and over 5,200 events around the world, people physiological characteristics’.7 gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis. Copenha- The urgency of the situation has in the gen could be an important marker in cur- meantime also been expressed in offi cial rent eff orts to face the challenges responsi- arenas and discourses. On 24 October, the bly on a global level and at the level national fourth European Development Days, organ- governance, through state institutions and ised in Stockholm by the Swedish govern- governments. But the solution lies beyond ment during its presidency of the EU, closed Copenhagen. with a plenary session on climate change and development. Edward Natapei, prime The contributions to this volume seek to minister of the small Pacifi c island state of strengthen awareness of the key issues and Vanuatu, made this appeal: ‘Urgent action is the urgent need for initiatives and commit- needed to avoid a genocidal impact on small ments beyond one place at one specifi c mo- island states’. Ahmed Shaheed, minister of ment in time. They testify to the need for foreign aff airs of the Maldives, warned that a mind change and the implementation of at current rates of sea-level rise, the island subsequent new paradigms, a commitment soon risks losing its international airport. most politicians as representatives of their ‘We must fi nd ways to adapt to rising seas, governments and states still seem to lack – coral bleaching, fl ooding and disease.’ particularly on the level of global govern- ance. Dag Hammarskjöld, from what we Mary Robinson, president of the Ethical know of him, would have been on the side Globalization Initiative and vice president of the deeply concerned voices advocating a of the Club of Madrid, called on Europe to fundamental shift in mindset.8 take the lead in climate change negotiations: ‘The time has come for decision taking. It is Henning Melber time for leadership’. She added: ‘The image of climate change is the polar bear. I like polar bears, too, but that is the wrong im- age. The image of climate change is a poor 8 This suggestion is strengthened by the noteworthy fact that Sverker Åström, one of Hammarskjöld’s closest colleagues and friends since the 1940s, as the Swedish permanent representative to the UNs in the 7 Ekman, B., Rockström, J., and Wijkman A. (n.d., mid-1960s initiated and with much foresight and de- 2008/09), Grasping the Climate Crisis. A Provocation termination oversaw the implementation of the pro- from the Tällberg Foundation. Stockholm: Tällberg cess leading to the Stockholm Conference of 1972. See Foundation, p.38. Engfeldt, From Stockholm to Johannesburg, pp.32 ff .

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 7

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 7 09-11-05 11.17.57 Introduction »

8 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 8 09-11-05 11.17.57 Radical climate change politics in Copenhagen and beyond: From criticism to action?

Ulrich Brand, Nicola Bullard, Ulrich Brand is a professor of Edgardo Lander and Tadzio Mueller international politics at the Institute of Political Science at Vienna University, member of the Scientifi c Council of Attac Germany and of the working There is something uncanny about the politics group on social ecology of the Federal of climate change. An issue at the same time Coordination of Internationalism old and new; omnipresent, yet easily forgot- (www.buko.info). Among his recent publications is ten; threatening the destruction of billions of ‘Postneoliberalism. A Beginning Debate’ (Uppsala: Dag lives, yet somehow relegated to a relatively ob- Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2009), a special issue of scure corner of the global political system, the Development Dialogue (co-edited with Nicola Sekler). United Nations Framework Convention on Nicola Bullard has worked with Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty organ- trade unions, women’s organisations, isation far less powerful than, say, the World human rights groups and development Trade Organization (WTO). But whence the agencies in Australia, Th ailand and relatively sudden prominence of the issue, af- Cambodia for more than 20 years. Since ter languishing in the environmentalist dol- 1997, Nicola has been with Focus on drums for nearly two decades – is it ‘really’ the Global South, the international policy research and because of the climate crisis, or are there other advocacy organisation based in Bangkok, Th ailand, and interests, other structures at work? And what is currently coordinating its climate justice programme. can ‘we’, the global movements, global civil society, whatever name we give to ourselves, Edgardo Lander is a social scientist what can we do about the issue? These ques- and works at the Venezuelan Central tions might not be resolved here, but we feel University in Caracas, and is a member that it is important to start asking them. of the secretariat of the Social Forum of the Americas. He researches and writes Since public discussion of the issue began in on Venezuelan society; environment and earnest in the 1980s, climate change and its the limits of planet Earth; development; alter-globalisation potential and real impacts have become more movements; epistemology and the critique of Eurocentrism; and more obvious. Not only the develop- the colonial character of hegemonic modern knowledge and science and technology as political issues. ments in scientifi c research, but also the ac- tivities of environmental movements,media, critical intellectuals, progressive state offi - Tadzio Mueller lives in Berlin, where cials and alternative energy producers have he is active in the emerging climate focused social and political attention on the justice movement. Having escaped the implications of the problem. With the UN- clutches of (academic) wage labour, he FCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, an interna- is currently writing a report on ‘green tional political mechanism to manage the capitalism’ for the Rosa Luxemburg issue was developed in the 1990s. Foundation. He is also an editor of Turbulence-Ideas for Movement (www.turbulence.org.uk).

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 9

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 9 09-11-05 11.17.57 In the last two years especially, climate an informal gathering of the governments of change has climbed to the top of the political the main emitting countries, known amongst agenda. There are, of course, a multiplicity NGOs as the ‘Major Emitters Forum’ – has of reasons for this resurgence of an issue that been meeting every month since March 2009. has gone through alternating cycles of low A number of preparatory meetings have tak- and high public attention, but central among en place, and in Copenhagen itself we will them are, no doubt, the publication of the no doubt be treated to the best that the thea- Fourth Report of the Intergovernmental tre of international diplomacy can off er: the Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); of the negotiations will be extended in a dramatic Stern Report – whose message, crucial from lock-in of the delegates, and at the very end, the perspective of enlightened capital, is that we will be served a ‘result’ of sorts, because in it is cheaper to take action on climate change spite of recent offi cial attempts to downplay now than in the future, and that a ‘green the relevance of the summit, ‘total failure’ capitalism’ might be possible; sky-high en- would just be too embarrassing an option to ergy prices (recall that in 2007 and 2008, oil contemplate. And yet, it is unlikely that there prices were touching the US$ 150 mark); and will be a signifi cant ‘deal’ of any kind, that the argument that peak oil, that is, a peak in the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol will be global oil discovery relative to demand, had signed there. More likely, we will get a type been reached, after which prices would have of roadmap for further negotiations (with a to rise drastically. In the comparative politi- protocol being fi nalised in Mexico in 2010). cal frenzy that followed, the IPCC and Al Still, there will be a dramatic showdown. Gore were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, while G-8 summits in 2007 in Germany, in Alas, with all the attention, all the drama, 2008 in Japan and in 2009 in Italy had the not much has changed in the last 20 years, linked issues of energy and climate change at least not for the better. Oil and gas con- high on their agendas. The UNFCCC sum- sumption have increased enormously, and so mit in Bali in December 2007 was widely has the rate of increase – and, of course, glo- covered in the global mass media. bal greenhouse gas emissions show the same trend. Production and consumption patterns The climate summit in December 2009 in are still the same and, moreover, have rap- Copenhagen, the ‘COP 15’ (15th Confer- idly been globalised through transnational ence of the Parties to the UNFCCC), will capital, state policies and the lifestyle of a no doubt be a decisive moment – one way ‘global middle class’. or the other – and everybody is gearing up for it. Global attention is guaranteed, and as The main reason for this lack of change is this: a publicity stunt, UN Secretary General Ban Environmental policies in general and climate Ki-moon initiated a ‘global count-down to change policies in particular are formulated Copenhagen’ on 24 September. The meeting in line with dominant political and economic will also be important for the fact that US structures and interests. Today, in spite of the President Barack Obama and his administra- economic and political crises that are rocking tion are, for the fi rst time, going to engage in the globe, these dominant politics remain neo- the process. The Major Economies Forum – liberal and neo-imperial, oriented towards

10 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 10 09-11-05 11.17.57 competitiveness and maintaining and enhanc- not only by globalised capitalism, but more ing the power of Northern governments, cor- specifi cally by a top-down kind of climate porations and elites. To be sure, this is not just politics. The build-up of pressure within the a North-South issue: the lifestyles of Southern agricultural sector to produce crops for agro- elites are as ‘unsustainable’, if the somewhat fuels for the world market is merely the most tainted word be allowed, as those dominant visible example of this trend. Over the last 20 in the global North. Policies formulated at the years, a type of global resource management global level reinforce the position of owners of has emerged wherein government offi cials, assets, and of the global middle classes – includ- business, scientists, some NGOs as well as ing the middle classes of economically ‘emerg- media act in concert to control and manage ing’ countries such as China, India or Brazil. the destruction of the environment and to The ‘Western lifestyle’ is still being promoted profi t from it both politically and economi- around the world, its destructive insanity not- cally. Over the same period, the content of withstanding. Human wellbeing and social these policies has been criticised. However, security are still seen as closely tied to eco- there has not been a critique of their form; nomic growth, which implies resource-inten- this intergovernmental politics, this kind of sive growth of car production, of airports, of diplomacy that occurs under the pressure of industrialised farming, etc. lobby groups searching for consensus, while systematically leading to weak compromises. The role of global crisis dis- Most importantly, however, the question of courses and the UNFCCC form is one of the economic ‘overcoding’ In spite of its obviously political nature, the of apparently environmental concerns sur- issue of climate change is often perceived as a rounding climate change: the line of thought question of science rather than politics. This in goes from scientifi c knowledge to global turn leads to a situation in which the problem problem, and from global problem to eco- of climate change is exclusively or predomi- nomic opportunity, while questions of power nantly framed as a problem that has to be dealt (between genders, classes, North and South, with globally, that is, from above, with West- of corporations…), lifestyle, production and ern knowledge and through the techniques consumption are pushed aside. Following the of scientifi c and economic management rath- zeitgeist of the 1990s, the instruments of glo- er than through social and political transfor- bal environmental politics are largely market- mation. Such an approach obscures the many based because powerful actors consider the local confl icts over scarce resources and land market to be the superior means of dealing use that are as constitutive of ‘climate change’ with fundamental problems such as climate as any abstract fi gure expressing the amount change. Not by chance, the main instrument

of CO2 in the atmosphere. The many local, of the UNFCCC is therefore emissions trad- practical alternatives – more precisely, exist- ing. This in turn justifi es weak policies ‘at ing low-carbon lifestyles – to be found are home’. The current division of labour (along downplayed. Moreover, a number of eco- lines of class, gender, race, age and power in logically sustainable forms of producing and the international system) is hardly problema- living have actually been put under pressure tised. Environmental policies have thus be-

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 11

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 11 09-11-05 11.17.57 come a moral and effi ciency-based strategy To counter the development of a top-down aimed at the middle classes. The generalisa- system of global resource management, we tion of the Western lifestyle (a generalisation need a broad public debate about as well as that remains valid for most people in spite practical steps towards the necessary transfor- of the signifi cant diff erences in power and mation of production and consumption pat- wealth within Western societies) is cynical terns, society’s relationship with nature and because billions of people are poor and lack the power of states and capital. Of course, the access to even basic means of subsistence. UNFCCC is not responsible for the contin-

Besides this managerial framing, a catastrophic ued growth of CO2 emissions or for our fos- discourse about climate change and its eff ects silistic mode of development, that is, for fur- has been established. In 2007, the head of the ther climate change. This is a much broader IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, stated that ‘we’ process involving many more powerful eco- must bring about a complete turnaround by nomic and political actors and structures, for 2012 in order to avoid ‘disaster’ and that the example, the lifestyles of the global upper two or three years from 2007 onward would and middle classes. At the institutional level, be decisive. This kind of invocation of ur- the WTO, the International Monetary Fund gency, its basis in scientifi c discourses not- (IMF) and the World Bank, all of which withstanding, narrows the room for a critique promote trade liberalisation and structural of existing global climate change policies and adjustment policies, are far more signifi cant politics; goes hand in hand with a ‘technoc- in terms of climate change (their policies ac- ratisation’, that is, depoliticisation, of climate celerate it, for example, through expansion change politics; and places our hopes in the of industrialised agriculture and global trans- discovery of some as yet unknown silver bul- port, two major greenhouse gas emitters). let-technological solution that would simply The UNFCCC, however, maintains that it ‘fi x’ the anthropogenic greenhouse eff ect. is the most central and appropriate institu- Such technologies – if any – are likely to be tion to stop climate change. But in the last 15 large-scale and delivered by powerful play- years, it has become evident that technocratic ers such as the DeserTec Consortium that approaches and their catastrophic framing is planning to build large-scale, centralised change very little with respect to the prob- solar-power generating systems in the Sahara lem: on the contrary, current lifestyles and to supply Europe’s energy needs. dominant (and so far ecologically pointless) policy orientations are being re-legitimised. Geographer Erik Swyngedouw has else- where shown how this catastrophic framing To be sure, the UNFCCC embodies the of climate change fi ts in neatly with pow- fact that there is today a politicised aware- erful political discourses on post-democra- ness of climate change. Within the institu- cy and post-politics. It seems that there is tion, however, this awareness is then framed virtually no alternative to existing forms in specifi c ways and in line with dominant of politics and to the socioeconomic condi- interests and social forces. This spells daily tions that give rise to them. Quoting Fre- disaster for billions of people – in fact, some dric Jameson, he reminds us that today ‘it is movements from the global South argue easier to imagine the end of the world than that the policies driven or encouraged by to imagine the end of capitalism’.

12 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 12 09-11-05 11.17.58 the UNFCCC are today a greater threat to G-8 or the UNFCCC. But in fact, the current their livelihoods than climate change itself. forms of environmental and resource politics The political mode of crisis management are the result of, and in turn reproduce, exist- that exists on this terrain is diplomacy, and ing relationships of domination. Irresponsible behind this is the pursuit of ‘national inter- policies like the development of nuclear power ests’ under conditions of globalised capital- plants are formulated in other forums such as ism and the race for competitiveness. Once the G-8 and will no doubt be picked up by the governments come back from major confer- UNFCCC. ences at which, yet again, the notion of ‘be- ing at a crossroads’ has been evoked (as they Beyond global resource management are now doing around the climate summit in Copenhagen), they continue to obey Of course, a simple breakdown of the UN- powerful actors such as the car industry, FCCC would probably not be the best pos- seed companies, industrial farming, meat sible outcome for the movements for global producers, etc. Additionally, environmental (climate and environmental) justice. We al- ministries tend to be relatively weak within most certainly need internationally formu- governments, as energy issues are usually lated, binding and enforceable rules in order dealt with by other, stronger apparatuses. to promote the profound transformations necessary to deal with not only the climate Take agro-fuels as an example. When it comes crisis, but also the wider biocrisis, and to to energ y secur it y and profi ts, critical questions transform the idea of ‘development’. From and disastrous experiences are simply brushed an emancipatory perspective, stopping cli- aside. The issue of agro-fuels is presented by mate change is of the utmost importance, Southern governments such as Brazil or In- which means stopping fossil-fuel-based pat- donesia as an ‘opportunity for growth and de- terns of production and consumption. velopment’. But for whom, and at what price? In these countries, agricultural restructuring But radical social movements and criti- is determined by the huge demand from the cal NGOs as well as critical intellectuals EU, where specifi c norms have recently been and some media are increasingly recognis- implemented that call for a higher percentage ing that the UNFCCC in its current form of ethanol to be mixed with gasoline. The is not an adequate mechanism to deal with global middle class consumers support these this enormous task. Like other international policy developments because they fear high institutions, the UNFCCC is part of a capi- energy prices. Alternatives are left aside or talist, Western, white and masculine regime are reduced to a sideshow in the wider ‘en- of global resource management. It should no ergy mix’. Finally, what we see in the fi eld of longer be legitimised through the participa- environmental politics is an attempt to resta- tion of NGOs, social movements and other bilise the neo-liberal, neo-imperial globalisa- critical actors. We do not need ‘sustainable tion project by presenting a progressive image globalisation’, basically another expression for in the fi eld of environmental policy-making. neo-liberalism and neo-imperialism – or, put ‘World leaders have understood the problem’, another way, maybe neo-liberalism’s Plan B. is the message we hear from summits of the

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 13

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 13 09-11-05 11.17.58 Fifteen years after the UNFCCC’s fi rst meet- tal issues. Of course we need to consume ing in 1994, we can clearly see that what is less meat, cars/auto-mobility and electrical needed are fundamentally diff erent political gadgets. But this cannot amount to a sim- and social responses. In this process, states ple moral claim that ignores social struc- will still be important, but they and their of- tures and the power relations on which they fi cials will not be the forces driving it. On are based. Alternative and attractive forms the contrary, today they are mainly an obsta- of living, producing and exchanging; new cle to serious action against climate change. social divisions of labour; and alternative Changing production and consumption pat- identities are necessary, as well as possible, terns, lifestyles or the meaning of the ‘good and in many cases revolve around concrete life’, and attacking corporate power and the struggles for the protection of the natu- politics of resource management are complex ral commons (water, biodiversity, air, etc.) and long-term processes. Several elements against their commodifi cation. The public need to be considered. One major element sector and its accompanying infrastructures, has to be a practically rooted critique of the more energy effi ciency and sustainable dogma of competitiveness linked to techno- goods are not only linked to learning proc- logical developments. There are few gov- esses, but might also call into question the ernments and social actors who have really power of certain producers and the speed of understood the dangers of existing trends. globalisation. What we need is the ecologi- What is needed is a repoliticisation of the cal conversion of existing industries, while ‘market’. It is not just the effi cient mechanism taking advantage of the enormous knowl- for allocating resources that it is often taken edge of the producers that lies within them. to be, but a highly eff ective instrument for Environmental issues are profoundly linked the production of domination of some peo- to questions of social power. For example, ple over others – and for hiding precisely this over-exploitation of labour, especially of il- relationship. Markets imply and in turn ob- legalised migrants and many workers in the scure power and exploitation along the lines global South, obeys the same logic of profi t of class, gender, race and North-South divi- and accumulation that is at work in the de- sions. And at the same time as we need to struction of nature. It is necessary to politi- criticise the structure of market relations, it cise the immediate desires of workers for is equally crucial to restrict the power of in- cheap food, energy and other goods, which dustrial and fi nancial corporations that thrive are produced under unsustainable and unso- within them. cial conditions. But there is also a problem here that needs to be solved: the short-term Of course, if such an endeavour were suc- interests of many people are linked to un- cessful, it would mean less economic sustainable patterns of production and con- growth, with all that this implies for profi ts, sumption. Emancipatory socio-ecological the power of private capital, the tax basis of orientations and practices therefore need to the state and employment in the traditional be linked to all aspects of life, as well as to a sectors. An emancipatory politics has to take redistribution of social wealth. care not to be moralistic about environmen-

14 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 14 09-11-05 11.17.58 Emancipatory demands and confl icts About this publication

Many alternatives are thinkable, possible We met in January 2009 in Belem at the and already exist. It is possible that socio- World Social Forum for the fi rst time to ecological confl icts can show that much discuss compiling a dossier as a contribu- more is at stake than symbolically tackling tion to ongoing debates about the politics climate change through global resource of climate change. It is this inspiring envi- management: questions of democracy and ronment that motivated us, an environment decision-making, power over social knowl- where the practical critique of globalised edge and the means of production, the nec- capitalism in its many facets is condensed, essary reduction of working-hours, the val- where the frustrating and productive expe- orising of reproductive activities concerning riences of struggles against exploitation and caring, health, food, etc. For that, we need patriarchy and for justice and real democ- to develop radical demands and propos- racy come together. For a long time, climate als through debates and the exchange of change issues had not been at the top of the views and experiences. With our critique of agenda of the global justice movement, but dominant climate change and environmen- a few years ago, this changed. And still it is tal policies we are not cynical about climate not at all clear what a radical or emancipa- change and we do not intend to strengthen tory climate politics will look like. the lobby that defends the fossil-fuel path of development. However, we do not see the Our goal is to contribute to a more sophis- solution to the problem in Western scien- ticated understanding of the emerging cli- tifi c knowledge, in intergovernmental proc- mate justice movement and to create reso- esses and in ecological modernisation for nances between diff erent perspectives and the Western middle classes at the expense spheres of engagement. We want to render of many others, especially the poor, and the more explicit a multiplicity of experiences material living conditions on earth. Politics and proposals and put them into context, re- in times of deep socio-ecological crises have ferring to real or supposed tensions and con- to change; to become a democratic and in- tradictions – such as that between ‘develop- formed transformative process, taking into ment’ and ‘climate justice’ – and showing consideration the many ambiguities that ex- the existing wide array of alternatives. The ist, but with a view to a more just world activities around the COP 15 in Copenhagen based on solidarity beyond the dogma of are a starting point in the creation of such a competitiveness and profi tability. We want broad movement – or in Naomi Klein’s in- to reorientate debates and policies towards spired words used to describe the anti-WTO fundamental socio-ecological and emanci- protests in Seattle exactly 10 years before the patory transformations in conjunction with publication of this dossier, they can be the an acknowledgement of alternative practices movement’s ‘coming-out party’. A ‘move- and processes. ment’ goes beyond the activities of activists, their importance notwithstanding. It in- cludes convincing many people to engage in diff erent everyday practices and convincing

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 15

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 15 09-11-05 11.17.58 journalists to refer to voices from outside Nuss at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in the conference halls and offi cial science. It Berlin, as well as the Institute of Political implies politicians who are willing to break Science at Vienna University. Special thanks with the dogma of competitiveness and pol- go to the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation itics as a power game among elites and it and its director, Henning Melber, for giving takes seriously changes in institutions such us the prestigious intellectual and political as private and public fi rms, schools and uni- space of Critical Currents and for sharing our versities. This ‘movement’ is a broad proc- political concerns over dominant develop- ess of social transformation and its core and ments and our desires to change the world. catalyst is the collective thinking and action Our thanks also go to the good people as- that is currently taking place within the cli- sociated with the Foundation who did such mate justice movement. a wonderful job on language editing, layout and other essential tasks: Peter Colenbrand- This issue of Critical Currents was a collec- er, Mattias Lasson and Karim Kerrou. As tive undertaking. First of all, we would like usual, all remaining fl aws are entirely our to thank the authors contributing to the responsibility. dossier. We are grateful for the many con- tributions we received from activists and We hope that this publication can contrib- scholars from diff erent continents and social ute to shaping a future climate and energy contexts, with knowledge of varying fi elds politics that will prove capable of solving the of international climate and energy politics, multiple crises that climate change is part of, and with very diverse perspectives. The and which humanity is facing in the second common ground is that we are all preoc- decade of the 21st century. cupied with, and critical of, the direction in which international climate politics are and have been heading for a long time.

Three of the editors want to warmly thank the fourth, Tadzio Mueller, who had by far the heaviest workload and who is in many ways responsible for getting this issue done. We are grateful for the generous fi nancial support for his and other work that came from Focus on the Global South, Sabine

16 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 16 09-11-05 11.19.50 critical currents 6 book_b.indd 17 09-11-05 11.17.58 A feminist critique of the climate change discourse. From biopolitics to necropolitics?

Ewa Charkiewicz

Global ecology and global markets interact in a number of ways, to the point that now- Ewa Charkiewicz is an activist and adays the two are mutually indistinguish- researcher with an interest in critical able. On the one hand, the global expansion globalisation studies, as well as feminism of markets increases demand for resources and ecology as new social critiques. She and puts more pressure on the integrity of lives in the Netherlands and is currently ecosystems, one result being global climate involved with Feminist Th ink Tank, Poland. change. On the other hand, measures to ad- dress climate change rely on market instru- ments for environmental policy. Cap-and- cial security systems and other public forms trade measures contribute to the creation of of social provisioning, for instance, educa- new virtual fi nancial markets. Today, the tion or healthcare, as well as public admin- neoclassical model of the market is also of- istration (the state itself) are reorganised in fered as a compelling conceptual model for terms of economic rationality. The fi rm be- thinking about solutions to the problems of comes a regulatory ideal, a beauty queen, environmental degradation. for state, school or hospital. Environmental policy, too, has been subsumed under this Close to half a century ago, French phi- economic rationality. losopher Michel Foucault coined the con- cept of ‘biopolitics’ to point to the problem The way interactions between markets and of how human life is managed or adminis- the environment are governed has far-reach- tered. Foucault understood biopolitics as a ing consequences for human and non-human historically contingent mode of the mutual life. The combination of environmental and implication of power and knowledge that human resources has been neatly captured by enabled the diff erential adjustment of hu- Teresa Brennan (2000) as ‘living nature’. Her man bodies to new forms of capital accu- work exemplifi es a new feminist social cri- mulation (Foucault 1990). Later, neo-liberal tique, which has developed some interesting biopolitics would expand the notion of the arguments about the relationships between economic to include the social (Foucault people, nature and capital. These relation- 2004). Domains of government such as so- ships, as in all social institutions, are funda-

18 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 18 09-11-05 11.17.58 mentally gendered. In other words the pro- with the rationality of the market, and have duction of knowledge, access to resources, become one of the avenues through which division of labour, responsibilities and en- the neo-liberal revolution has aff ected more titlements are founded, signifi ed and legiti- and more areas of human life. The changes mised by way of the concepts of gender and in environmental policy were eff ected in gender relations. While for decades concerns two steps: fi rst, techno-managerial and fi s- have been raised about the ecological and so- cal instruments gained ground, and second, cial limits to growth, with the latter focused a shift from material to virtual took place. on poverty, feminist political thinkers have pointed to the eff ects that neo-liberal mar- Thirty years ago, after the failure of attempts ketisation has had on social reproduction or at measures to ‘control and prevent’, pro- the economy of care, where people’s lives posed solutions for the global environmen- are sustained, maintained and reproduced at tal crisis were framed using the concept of the level of everyday life (Bakker 2004, El- ‘sustainable development’. The high point of son 1994). Neoclassical economic models are these debates was the formulation at the UN blind to the maintenance of life in the house- Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 of holds, or see households as fi rms, as single the global programme of action known as units that maximise their utility. The con- Agenda 21 (Agenda for the 21st century). cept of the ‘care economy’ shows how mar- Agenda 21 was a multilayered document kets and states depend on the reproduction that accommodated diff erent vocabularies, of the lives of subjects (confi gured as taxpay- including changing consumption patterns, ers, workers, soldiers, consumers) that takes linking poverty eradication with environ- place in the household economy. According mental improvements, as well as clean tech- to global studies, the vast majority of care and nologies and economic instruments. While reproductive work is done by women. The the strategy of suggesting that women were expansion of the concept of the care econo- better environmental managers was debat- my to include relationships with nature opens able, nevertheless the governmental Agenda up new possibilities for linking feminist and 21 gave unprecedented visibility to women. environmental agendas. In this short piece, I At the time, the political space created by will show how the relationships between na- the UN’s global conferences enabled the ar- ture and human reproduction have been cap- ticulation of dissent in the form of alterna- tured by a neo-liberal biopolitics and discuss tive treaties from Rio, such as the ‘Women’s the possibilities for strategic interventions in Agenda 21’, which represented an alterna- the current global conjuncture. tive vision of social and ecological justice and participatory democracy. From managerialism to marketisation Over the next 10 years, former critics of Rio In the period since the signing of the United who in 1992 had rejected the summit’s com- Nations Framework Convention on Cli- promise between ‘the environment’ and mate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Sum- ‘development’, by 2002 had become defend- mit in 1992, global environmental politics ers of Agenda 21. The turning point was the have been fundamentally reframed in line Rio+10 conference on sustainable develop-

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 19

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 19 09-11-05 11.17.58 ment in Johannesburg (WSSD), where the sifi ed pressures on the environment. Ironi- battle for a North-South deal on environ- cally, in light of man-made climate change, ment and development, and for keeping the persuasive neo-liberal metaphor of lift- Agenda 21 intact, was lost. In Johannesburg, ing all boats literally comes true. the question of the ecological and social lim- its of economic growth was displaced from Crucial in the move towards a neo-liberal the summit agenda. In the fi nal documents biopolitics was the relocation of environ- of Rio+10, poverty was no longer an issue mental policy to the domain of virtual fi - pertaining to access (or the lack thereof) to nancial markets. This move was consolidat- sustainable livelihoods. Women simply dis- ed on a global scale with the Kyoto Protocol. appeared from fi nal document (with two Pollution was no longer something that pol- minor exceptions). Sustainable development icy-making sought to avert, and its materi- morphed into global environmental man- ality was banished to the subtext. Instead, agement, the threads of which were already environmental policy itself became a means to be found in Agenda 21. To quote former of creating virtual markets, such as local UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (2001) markets for pollution permits or global cap- during the preparations for the Rio+10 con- and-trade measures. What Rio+10 did to ference in 2002, ‘we have to make globalisa- sustainable development, the Kyoto Proto- tion work for sustainable development’.1 In col did to climate change discourse, in eff ect fact, it was the other way round: sustainable harnessing global ecology in the service of development was retooled to work for neo- the expansion of virtual fi nancial markets. liberal global governance. From the perspective of the materialities of Now the solution to interlinked global cri- everyday life, reducing ‘environmental pol- ses no longer lay in fundamentally chang- icy’ to mere techno-managerial fi xes makes ing consumption and production patterns, it far more diffi cult to avert global ecologi- but in liberalising global trade and invest- cal and climate crises, as the politically and ment fl ows. Trade as the new saint and the technologically mediated growth in the vol- new saviour of development was supposed ume, scale and speed-up of production and to raise all boats. According to the script consumption has far outpaced environmen- of free market ideology, the liberalisation tal effi ciency gains (Sonntag 2001). The shift of investment fl ows was meant to generate to market-based instruments either transfers funds for environmental improvements and some of the environmental costs of produc- to reduce poverty. With the help of fi scal tion and consumption to the end user, that policy incentives, environmental manage- is, the consumer (with poorer households ment and new technologies, the environ- paying the largest share of cost relative to mental mess would somehow be cleaned up. their income), or creates new virtual money Of course, these policies designed to speed markets for pollution permits through glo- up capital fl ows and turnover further inten- bal cap-and-trade systems, with no eff ect on the real economy in terms of reducing global 1 Annan, K. (2001), Implementing Agenda 21. Report emissions. As pointed out in a UN Depart- from the Secretary General to the ECOSOC, www. ment of Economic and Social Aff airs (DESA) johannesburgsummit.org

20 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 20 09-11-05 11.17.58 policy note of 2009, the policy focus on fi scal world…nature, and the unruly masses, incentives for green technologies and cap- particularly women of color in the north and-trade measures will offl oad the costs of and south, are monitored and managed dealing with climate change on to develop- as never before. ing countries. Just like earlier end-of-pipe policies, these new techno-fi nancial strate- Current mainstream wisdom on climate gies do not decouple economic growth from change is that new technologies and fi nan- environmental pressures and continue to cial instruments will mitigate the conse- transfer the risks and costs of ecological cri- quences, or fi x the problem. To be sure, glo- ses on to households. Given historical gender bal feminist discourse has also been aff ected divisions of labour and responsibility as well by the neo-liberal revolution and become an as the exigencies of biological reproduction, avenue for the marketisation of social im- women who provide caring work in formal aginaries and human interactions. Recently, or informal markets or in their households free-market feminism, alpha-girls feminism bear the greatest burden in making up for the or the feminist managerialism so visible in environmental and social costs of neo-liberal the reorientation of gender mainstreaming governance. The loss of existential security, from women’s rights agendas towards for- and specifi cally the loss of means of liveli- mal equity – and technical anti-discrimi- hood, food security and health as acutely ex- nation – politics have gained prominence. perienced by poorer households and popula- Analogous with the dubious eff ects free tions, as well as the intensifi cation of work market environmentalism has had in reduc- and claims on time and physical energy, exert ing the impacts of economic growth on the enormous pressures on people’s capacities to environment, feminist managerialism has live, and on the care economy or reproduc- not improved the quality of women’s lives, tive economy, in particular in households nor has it slowed the intensifi cation of new in the global South. Not surprisingly Ter- forms of exploitation of bodies, which are esa Brennan (2003) analysed globalisation in bombarded with toxins, forced to work terms of the ‘terrors of everyday life’. long hours in fl exible and insecure labour markets, while all the costs of reproducing Environmentalism, feminism people are reprivatised to households. and neo-liberal revolution In both cases, neither environmentalists nor In her critique of global environmental feminists have abandoned the ideas of sus- management, Ynestra King (1997) wrote tainability, justice and rights, but for both that the end of 20th century involved: groups it has been increasingly diffi cult to bring this language into global policy are- ...a massive renegotiation of power, nas. The old strategies of working from both knowledge, and the ownership of life inside and outside were preempted when from the molecular to the planetary. Fer- the discourse, for instance on poverty, shift- tility, labor, ‘natural resources’ can all be ed from meeting basic needs towards the rationalized and controlled…all part of technical Millennium Development Goals the managed and manageable brave new (MDGs) in the late 1990s. One possibility

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 21

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 21 09-11-05 11.17.58 for strategic intervention is, therefore, to re- leged men and subsequently determined cover old language and the memory of shifts by anonymous capital pursuing its own in conceptual frameworks to challenge the reproduction. When the industrial revolu- contemporary enclosure of feminist and en- tions relocated part of traditional women’s vironmental discourse within the rational- housework to the market (making clothes, ity of the market. There are various feminist cooking, healthcare, childcare, etc.), it was and environmental stakes in challenging this always valued less monetarily than work rationality not only in relation to economic signifi ed as ‘male’. With the modernisa- activities, but also to the extent that markets tion of patriarchy (Pateman 1987), women have captured the politics of states, which now have access to markets on terms of be- enforce neo-liberal policies and increasingly ing equally exploited with men, while their operate according to the economic logic of responsibilities for care are intensifi ed un- the enterprise, where budgetary/macroeco- less they can aff ord to ’outsource’ it to other nomic politics is ‘the last argument of the women in global care work-chains. king’, the ultima ratio regum.2 This massive renegotiation of power and The fi nancialisation of politics, including knowledge, while maintaining modernised the politics of everyday life, entails the re- patriarchal structures intact in the domain of production of patriarchal, gender, class and global economic, environmental and social race relations in new guise. All human in- policy, coincided with political changes in teractions and institutions are gendered – the status of human subjects. When markets including markets. As Joan Scott (1987) puts become the key source of political rationality it, gender is a primary signifi er of power, (as Foucault argued in his 1979 lectures on and gender relations are constitutive of all the birth of biopolitics), not only nature but power relations. The fi rst economics text- also human beings are remade and re-cate- book in history, Xenophon’s (427-355 BC) gorised, no longer being subjects or citizens. Oeconomicus (‘The Economist’), describes the From the perspective of markets and states, good manager of the oikos (household and we become revenue-generating resources, estate) as one who knows nature in order to disposable sources of discretionary income to make the best use of it in order to enhance be cultivated and optimised for the market, the value of all his possessions. The good or transformed into human waste. The state manager arranges workers like soldiers in a no longer legitimises itself by taking care of battle to plough the fi elds, and takes care of its citizens. Responsibilities for social repro- commerce while the nameless wife attends duction are not shared, as they were in social- to duties under the household roof, includ- ist or liberal welfare states, but are relocated ing the management of slaves. What today to the households. The assumption is that is seen as economic activity is based on the women’s time is infi nitely elastic in provid- same historically established gender divi- ing paid and unpaid work, turning women sion of labour, time and money, with access into a buff er zone for rises in productivity, to wealth and money controlled by privi- declining quality of jobs and for everything else that is required in the speeded-up time of the reproduction of capital. 2 This was the inscription on the guns of King Louis XIV.

22 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 22 09-11-05 11.17.58 Neo-liberal biopolitics optimises human sub- the market is not good for business. Now we jects as economic units suffi cient unto them- need to argue that this kind of business is not selves, idealising those who can aff ord the good for people. bill for all their needs, including healthcare, children’s education and pensions; who have Last but not least, one of the salient features suffi cient disposable income to aff ord savings; of neo-liberalism is the so-called pragmatic and who do not need systems of mutual social shift from discussing causes of social and insurance. Neo-liberal biopolitics has its dark environmental misery and predicaments to underside, the politics of death or necropoli- focusing instead on dealing with their ef- tics, as Achille Mbembe (2003) put it, where fects (preempting the option of dealing with the poor are left to die or are exploited to the causes). An example of this is the aban- the verge of bare existence in this new slave donment of any debate on changes in con- economy. As the expansion of credit markets sumption and production patterns that was to the ‘sub-prime’ sector (with all its eugenic perceived as central to addressing the causes connotations) shows, the poor are continu- of the global environmental crisis back in ously accessed and processed for profi t. As the days of Rio (chapter 4 of Agenda 21). indeed is nature, a quest that includes new All the talk of emission volumes, emission appetites for extraterrestrial resources, dan- reduction scenarios, estimates of mitigation gerously coupled with new techno-political costs, focuses the climate change discourse capacities for planetary enclosure. It is not on eff ects, while the in-depth causes of cli- unlikely that these trends will be amplifi ed mate change are removed from the agenda. in the future. From the standpoint of criti- Analogous to earlier end-of-pipe policies, cal social movements, this calls for strategic new techno-fi scal strategies do not decou- interventions in the name of human agency ple economic growth from environmental and universal indivisible human rights. The pressures and continue to transfer the risks ‘right to a healthy environment’ has now be- and costs of ecological crises to households, come the right to live. To prevent the slip while the benefi ts of economic growth and into necropolitics, the future of the present income from markets increasingly accrue to – with its diff erential life chances for useful a small privileged group with economic and neo-liberal subjects and for human waste, political resources. and new scenarios of the future where the spaceship earth is abandoned to rot – needs When looking at the climate crisis from to be inserted into the social imaginary. En- the perspective of environmental integrity vironmentalists and feminists have to take up and social reproduction, the major source the role of Cassandras who challenge neo- of misery is revealed to be the unrelenting liberal politics of truth, free market Muzak growth of pressures on both nature and hu- and nihilism, with clear accounts of where man bodies. People need nature and nurture this course is threatening to take us as hu- to live, and to live they have to produce and man communities. For too long, while pur- to consume. In a capitalist society, the inter- suing the strategies of change from inside, actions between nature and people are me- NGOs have patiently argued that destroying diated by money. The currently ruling form the environment or excluding women from of money (fi nancial capital) is driven by the

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 23

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 23 09-11-05 11.17.58 compulsion to reproduce itself. As Teresa From this perspective, and taking climate Brennan (2000) points out in her theory of change seriously, what is at stake is to energetics, the time of reproduction of liv- shift the language of the debate from ef- ing nature (human and non-human) is on a fects (emissions) to causes (the way virtual collision course with the time of reproduc- and productive economies are functioning tion of capital. Following and reworking the now), and to reorganise markets, in particu- arguments of Karl Marx, she argues that the lar to slow down the fl ow of money through accumulation of capital requires the input the economy. With the transaction time of of living nature (human and non-human) global money markets now reduced to mil- into products and services. As ‘raw materi- liseconds, market growth dependent on its als’, nature and human labour are sources of further speed-up and expansion has disas- energy and sources of surplus value. Both la- trous consequences, as the recent fi nancial bour and nature give more than they cost. Capital crisis shows. To challenge these powerful does not pay the costs of the reproduction trends, we need to socialise and ‘green’ mar- of people, but transfers these costs to house- kets. Markets have always existed as a form holds (to the care economy, as some femi- of exchange. The problem is how markets nists would say). Nor does capital pay for the are constructed and regulated, in particu- reproduction of nature (under substitution lar in the current lethal regulatory form of laws), unless forced to do so. neo-liberal governance where all social and ecological costs are externalised to house- The real costs of nature are always de- holds, with disastrous eff ects for the weakest ferred...Speed of acquisition and spatial social groups. Socialising markets implies expansion increase pressures on living recapturing the notion of the market as a nature...In the event that natural proc- form of exchange, where costs of human esses of reproduction cannot be speeded and environmental reproduction are shared. up, the cost of natural reproduction has This is where feminist agendas of securing to be reduced to make up for the drag on the integrity of social reproduction and en- exchange-value. (Brennan 2003: 128) vironmental agendas of environmental sus- tainability coalesce.

24 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 24 09-11-05 11.17.58 Literature

Bakker, I. (2004), ‘Governance and Repri- King, Y. (1997), ‘Managerial Environmen- vatization of Social Reproduction: Social talism, Population Control and the New Provisioning and Shifting Gender Or- National Insecurity: Towards a Feminist ders’, in Bakker. I. and S. Gill (eds), Power, Critique’, Political Environments, Vol. 5, Fall. Production and Social Reproduction. Human Insecurity in the Global Political Economy. Mbembe, A. (2003), ‘Necropolitics’, Public New York: Palgrave. Culture, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.11-40.

Brennan, T. (2000), Exhausting Moder- Pateman, C. (1989), ‘Fraternal Social Con- nity. Ground for a New Economy. London: tract’, in Patemen, C., Disorder of Women. Routledge. Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brennan, T. (2003), Globalization and Ter- rors of Everyday Life in the West. London: Scott, W. J. (1987), ‘Gender as Useful Routledge. Category of Historical Analysis’, American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5, pp.1053-75. Elson, D. (1994), ‘Gender and Macro, Mez- zo, Micro Levels of Economics Analysis’, in Sonntag, V. (2000), ‘Sustainability in Light Bakker, I. (ed.), The Strategic Silence. Gender of Competitiveness’, Ecological Economics, and Economic Policy. London: Zed. Vol. 34, pp.101-13.

Foucault, M. (1990 [1976]), The History of UN Department of Economic and Social Sexuality. Volume I. London: Penguin. Aff airs (2009), Achieving Sustainable De- velopment in an Age of Climate Change. Foucault, M. (2004),’Society Must Be Defend- Policy Note. United Nations. ed’: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76. London: Penguin.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 25

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 25 09-11-05 11.17.58 Kyoto’s ‘fl exible mechanisms’ and the right to pollute the air 1

Achim Brunnengräber

The current fi nancial and economic crises are generating pressures towards the regula- tion of the global capitalist economy, but the much-heralded strategies for reform remain mere piecework and seem to have reached their limits long before the crisis has run its course. After all, their primary focus is on the revitalisation of the banking and trade sectors, not on global environmental issues. The relapse suff ered by Angela Merkel – once hailed as the ‘climate chancellor’, now considered once again a run-of-the-mill car and industry chancellor – shows that during a crisis, the environment has no lobby. To be sure, environmental organisations, green Achim Brunnengräber is at the (wings of) parties, engaged scientists and Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, international environmental and develop- Free University, Berlin. His research ment NGOs issue regular reminders about areas are environmental governance, the United Nations Framework Convention energy policy, climate change policy and on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the politics, vulnerability and adaptation. Kyoto Protocol. But that, too, is symptom- atic of the problem: the crisis has not led to a critique of market-based instruments, but rather to an ever more desperate attempt to cling to them, in spite of all their weakness- es, for beyond them there seems to be noth- ing but political wilderness. This makes a critique of the political economy of climate change all the more important.1

1 For a more detailed exposition of this argument cf., Brunnengräber (2009), Die politische Ökonomie des Klimawandels.

26 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 26 09-11-05 11.17.59 The Kyoto Protocol is a set of political rules get the incentives right.2 We are witnessing for the economic management of a capitalist the emergence of a climate neo-liberalism, crisis phenomenon, which had already been which may very well energise some national on the agenda long before the fi nancial crisis economies, but will certainly not protect – at least since the UN Conference on En- the climate. vironment and Development in Rio de Ja- neiro in 1992. The third Conference of the Climate change and Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC in Kyoto in 1997 agreed on a path towards the regula- global constitutionalism tion of the crisis. Ecological necessities such At the international level, governments have as reducing the use of fossil fuels, the expan- waived such options as taxes, imposing bans sion of renewable energies, as well as new on certain substances or reducing ecologi- concepts of mobility and new lifestyles were cally damaging subsidies. Dominant actors largely ignored. Powerful economic interests within these governments, as well as private were pushing for market-based instruments businesses and international NGOs (partici- and insisted that these should not interfere pating in the process in a kind of confl ict- with growth targets or economic competi- ual cooperation) have largely enforced the tiveness. As a result, the mechanisms con- use of economic instruments in the interna- tained in the Kyoto Protocol will not make tional governance of climate change. When it possible ‘to reduce emissions more quickly governments guarantee rights to pollute by

than the rhythm of economic growth would emitting CO2, they develop a specifi c steer- allow’, argues Enrique Leff (2002: 102). ing mechanism by means of which they cre- ate the framework for economic actors to At the same time, the Kyoto Protocol was regulate themselves. By doing so, they abdi- also the starting point for the emergence of cate their responsibility for the general good an international regime of resource man- and, in this case, for the environment. Gov- agement that would soon open up new ernments only point the self-regulating mar- business opportunities. Within the context kets in one particular direction, primarily of international climate governance, eco- in order to secure the later surveillance and nomic processes have taken on a life of their control of newly institutionalised property own and now reach far beyond the protocol rights, thereby reducing transaction costs. In as such. The crisis is seen not as a systemic the context of ‘global constitutionalism’ (Gill crisis of capitalism, but as an opportunity: 2000), the contractual international regula- a ‘Green New Deal’ or a ‘Global Green tion of ‘rights to pollute’ is thus the precondi- Recovery’ (Edenhofer/Stern 2009; cf., also tion for the creation of new markets. Friedman 2008) is meant to create jobs, For companies, this implies the emergence of reenergise the global economic system and protect the climate. A ‘green capitalism’ is 2 According to Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber of the Pots- seen as a signifi cant source of potential tech- damer Institut für Klimafolgenforschung, protecting nological innovations, if only governments the climate will lead to a ‘third industrial revolution’ due to the technological innovations it will induce (Frankfurter Rundschau, 8 November 2005).

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 27

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 27 09-11-05 11.17.59 new criteria of competitiveness, which aff ect fundamentally the contradictions cannot be the conditions for the valorisation of capital, excised, the governance of climate change their investment and innovation strategies remains a fragile construct (Brunnengräber and their choice of location and technol- 2007). ogy. The precondition for this is the ability to render the natural environment in mon- Carbon trading, or the etary values. Nature the way that we perceive it does not exist per se, but is subordinated valorisation of nature

to the dominant socioeconomic rationality. The creation of a market for tradable CO2 This rationality also shapes the politics of cli- emissions is seen as a signifi cant step towards mate change: rather than ethical questions, it the solution of the global climate crisis. By

is questions about the costs of climate change virtue of being tradable, CO2 certifi cates and of instruments for companies, states and are meant to contribute to the reduction societies that determine the dominant dis- of greenhouse gas emissions in the places course. ‘If we do not take any steps to pro- where such reductions are cheapest. The tect the climate’, says Claudia Kemfert of the cap that limits the amount of certifi cates is Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftspolitik, ‘by intended to contribute to the realisation of 2100 we will be faced with global climate greenhouse gas reduction targets. This trade change-related damages of up to 20 trillion in emission rights follows an economic logic US$’ (2005: 1). Nicholas Stern, former chief that is fundamentally and widely accepted. economist at the World Bank, has calcu- However, so far experiences with this in- lated that a further increase in greenhouse strument, both in Germany and the wider gas (GHG) emissions could lead to up to 20 EU, have been rather sobering, even if the per cent being lopped off the global GDP by impacts of carbon trading have not been 2050. These kinds of calculations are prima- only negative for German industry. Al- rily intended to make environmental prob- though emission rights were given away for lems fi t into economic discourses. free in the fi rst trading period, energy com- panies simply added their theoretical costs to At the same time, the instruments in the the price of energy (windfall profi ts). Accord- Kyoto Protocol cement the separation of ing to the German ministry of the environ- international climate change politics from ment, in 2005 this practice resulted in the other international institutions and organi- companies raking in profi ts of between € 6 sations. In many ways, the treaties aiming for and € 8 billion at the expense of their cus- economic growth and the liberalisation of tomers (Tagesspiegel, 16 May 2006). trade in goods and services contained within the World Trade Organization (WTO) con- In the EU, some 9,400 energy producers and tradict the goal of the Kyoto Protocol. The industrial facilities require a certifi cate for

discursive-ideological as well as institutional each ton of CO2 emitted. However, given separation of a global climate problem and fos- that the EU’s member states were rather sil fuel (in-)security enacts a (temporary) rap- generous in their distribution of about 1,829 prochement between the economy and the million tons of emission rights, industry’s environment (Altvater 2008). But because real requirements were exceeded by 44 mil-

28 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 28 09-11-05 11.17.59 lion tons in 2005. In May 2006, the price of tion whose material (physical-chemical) ef- these emission rights accordingly collapsed fect on the atmosphere becomes obscured. from € 30 per ton to less than € 10, ‘an em- barrassing success for the environment’, a Protecting the climate thus becomes ‘a German newspaper commented (die taz, 16 matter for speculators’ who strive for May 2006). From 2008 to 2009, the price rents and profi ts from fi nancial transac- of certifi cates that the KFW Bankengruppe tions, while not being at all interested in could sell for the German government had climate change (Altvater 2008: 154). crashed by 60 per cent. At EXX, the energy exchange in Leipzig, they were temporar- Another problem is the participation of the ily available for less than € 8 (cf., www.exx. Central and Eastern European (CEE) coun- com for an evaluation of the fi rst trading pe- tries in the emissions trading system. The riod cf., DEHSt 2009). In the second trad- agreement in Kyoto was that Russia and

ing period (2008-12), the number of CO2 Ukraine would, by 2012, merely have to sta- certifi cates that were distributed was some- bilise their emissions as measured against the what reduced as a result of pressure from the baseline of 1990. But the breakdown of their European Commission. Now, however, the economies generated massive real reductions economic crisis and the ensuing reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, such that today

in the CO2 emissions of many companies both countries can sell their surplus emission are leading to a drop in demand for the cer- rights on the future market for certifi cates. tifi cates, which in turn reduces their price. Even in the absence of any further measures to achieve reductions, Russia’s emissions in But the mechanism at the heart of the Kyoto 2020 would most likely still be some 20 per Protocol can only work effi ciently if certifi - cent lower than those of 1990. The CEE cates are scarce and therefore expensive. If countries will thus be able to sell signifi cant they are too cheap, they do not generate amounts of ‘excess’ emission rights on the pressure towards reducing emissions and market, although these certifi cates will not their steering eff ect remains limited (cf., be based on any real emission reductions. Brouns/Witt 2008). In addition, prices for Many describe the possibility that govern- certifi cates have been extremely volatile, ments and companies will use these cer- highly dependent on the ups and downs of tifi cates to eff ectively buy themselves out of the business cycle and the vagaries of specu- their responsibility to reduce emissions as the lation. So far, the erratic movements of the production of ‘hot air’. The problem might price of certifi cates have more or less negat- only deepen once the developing and new- ed the hoped-for regulatory eff ects (Hollain ly industrialised countries participate in the 2009). Carbon trading is thus an instrument global carbon-trading market. For reasons of of dubious value that cannot guarantee a re- justice, these countries are granted the right duction in greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, to increase emissions in order to close gaps in it is even doubtful whether the certifi cates economic development and progress (cf., the that are being traded on the exchanges actu- article in this journal by Eduardo Gudynas). ally still represent real emissions, or whether The quandary is that the emission allowances they have become mere objects of specula- they are granted can be unrealistically high.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 29

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 29 09-11-05 11.17.59 A reduction of absolute emissions in the in- credited towards the investing government dustrialised countries, as formulated in the or company and deducted from their re- Kyoto Protocol, seems hardly realistic against spective emission reduction targets. The ar- this backdrop since additional emission cer- gument is that, from a global point of view, tifi cates are so easy to come by. Even the it is irrelevant where exactly greenhouse gas German Bundesverband Emissionshandel emissions are reduced. Thus, protecting the und Klimaschutz has to admit that the trade climate is made possible not only cheaply

in CO2 certifi cates has so far ‘inhibited rather and effi ciently but also profi tably. than strengthened the transformation of the energy sector towards structures that are less Growth prospects for CDM projects are sig- dependent on emissions’. Renewable energies nifi cant. In June 2006, 190 projects were reg- have not benefi ted from the emissions trade istered and 860 were in preparation. By early either. It is not merely teething problems that 2009, 1,400 projects had been registered and are preventing an anti-fossilistic transforma- 4,600 projects were in preparation (see http:// tion, but political and economic constraints, cd4cdm.org for current numbers). The fre- interests and power relations. The emissions quently high expectations for CDM projects

trade functions as a creative form of CO2 ac- were often disappointed, however. In or- counting that simply allows business as usual der for investments in emission reductions to continue. This might explain the ‘unprec- to qualify as CDM projects, they have not edented lack of critique vis-à-vis the funda- only to make a contribution to sustainable mental fl aws of emissions trade’, as Valentin development but also fulfi l the criterion of Hollain puts it (2009: 25). additionality. In order to qualify for the CDM, projects have to prove that they would indeed Flexibility through loopholes: The generate additional emissions reductions in their host country. Measures that would also Clean Development Mechanism have been taken in the absence of the CDM The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) (such as the construction of a hydroelectric opens yet another way for the governments power station that was planned before the and companies of industrialised countries existence of the CDM) are not eligible under to meet their emission reduction targets by the Kyoto agreement. One particular goal of reducing emissions not in their own but in CDM is also to support ‘host countries’ on developing and newly industrialised coun- their path to more sustainable (cleaner) devel-

tries. The CDM eff ectively allows CO2 opment by way of technology transfer. reductions to be ‘exported’ to the global South, while emissions in the industrialised Primarily, however, CDM helps industrial- nations remain constant or even increase, ised nations and their companies to avoid depending on how many CERs (Certifi ed having to really reduce their emissions at Emissions Reductions) are fed into domestic home. The actual point of the instrument is systems. Common examples include refor- to reduce the costs of protecting the climate estation projects or the construction of wind by implementing measures where expenses turbines and power plants. The emissions are low and profi ts high (Witt/Moritz 2008). saved or captured by such projects are then The additionality and actual contribution to

30 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 30 09-11-05 11.17.59 sustainable development that many CDM demand support from industrialised na- projects make is also in question. One study tions. The latter should carry the ‘new and reveals that 40 per cent of the CDM projects additional’ costs3. Three global fi nancial registered before summer 2007 did not meet funds have been established to meet these the criterion of additionality (Schneider demands: 1) The so-called Special Climate 2007). This means that ‘false certifi cates’ Change Fund (SCCF) with the goal of reach the EU, eventually leading to a glo- promoting development in the energy and

bal increase in CO2 emissions. A particularly transport sectors. By March 2008, the fund strong critique is directed towards projects had received about US$ 90 million in volun- to eliminate or dispose of partly halogen- tary contributions (GEF 2008); 2) the Least ated hydrocarbons (HFCs) and laughing Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) pro-

gas (N2O) in China, India and Brazil. More vides fi nancial aid for the implementation than one-third of the tradable certifi cates of the most important adjustment measures derive from these so-called ‘end-of-pipe’ and serves only LDCs. Altogether, US$ 170 technologies. The gas that forms as a residue million had been paid voluntarily into the in the production of coolants has very high fund by March 2008; and 3) the Adaptation global warming potential and is an extreme Fund (AF), whose aim it is to strengthen climate killer. By burning it, emission cer- concrete adjustment measures and projects. tifi cates can be earned fast and at low cost. This fund is fi nanced by a mandatory 2 per cent tariff on each CER generated by CDM The CDM is biased in favour of large projects. Measured against current stimulus projects and tends to ignore smaller ones packages, these sums are hardly more than with relatively higher costs. Over 90 per ‘peanuts’. Furthermore, the projects most cent of the CERs come from India, China, likely to be funded are those that open up South Korea and Brazil. However, espe- new market opportunities for the technolo- cially Least Developed Countries (LDCs) gies produced by industrialised countries. often lack the institutional infrastructure for CDM projects. Likewise, few CDM The countries most aff ected by climate change investments reach rural areas. The lasting are those of the global South – countries that transformation of energy systems and the are extremely poor by socioeconomic stand- extension of decentralised renewable supply ards. The consequences of climate change systems are goals of the CDM only on pa- will spawn and intensify confl icts over access per. Market-based mechanisms invest where to resources such as water or arable land (Un- it is cheapest. Costlier eff orts to protect the müßig/Cramer 2008, WBGU 2007). Con- climate – eff orts that demand strong invest- sidering the adjustment measures and fi nanc- ment in sustainable technologies – are ne- ing programmes employed so far, there exists glected (CDMWatch 2004). reasonable concern that these are not based on the needs of the most vulnerable popula- Peanuts for adjustment measures tions, but rather determined by other inter- When it comes to climate protection and adjustment measures, the LDCs commonly 3 Art. 4.3. and 4.4., UNFCCC, United Nations (1992).

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 31

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 31 09-11-05 11.17.59 ests. This would seem to be confi rmed by the concerns were damages to objects or serv- exclusion of local actors from the planning ices already insured. The key question was stages of national adjustment strategies and risk assessment. The costs likely to be caused by the apparent economic and technological by climate change were factored into prog- prioritisations (Dietz/Scholz 2008). noses of estimated future damages. The re- insurance companies were among the very Hot investment climate few players in the private sector to demand far-reaching reductions in greenhouse gas In industrialised countries, climate change emissions and adaptation measures as soon has long been of economic importance. In- as climate change politics became an inter- ternational regulations create a booming national issue. They have also added their market of unforeseen possibilities. Consult- own studies to relevant discussions. ing fi rms are founded that advise the industry in its approach to emissions trading, while Recently, the market opportunities created banks and brokerage houses create their own by the climate change debate have become boards to manage the trade. On the stock ever more obvious. Insurers off er compre- market, new types of fi nancial instrument hensive policies, from covering your own are developed that take into account compa- home against storm fl oods to covering entire nies’ eff orts to reduce their climate footprint. tourist regions against potential income loss Meanwhile, companies develop programmes as a consequence of climate change. Take, that allow off setting emissions caused by in- for example, the case of coral reef bleaching. ternational travel by way of special taxes. The Ernst Rauch writes: purchase of emission certifi cates for individu- als is managed by initiatives like MyClimate As concentrations of climate gases soar, so or climepartner (www.myclimate.org, www. do the demands upon the insurance indus- climatepartner.com). Evaluation services as- try: without adequate primary insurance

sess companies’ CO2 emissions and counsel rates, stable reinsurance capacity will no on reduction possibilities. International agen- longer be possible. The solution lies in risky cies direct climate protection programmes joint ventures between primary and sec- towards developing countries, and internet ondary insurance companies and the capital fi rms off er emission-free communication market. (www.munichre.com, downloaded platforms. In addition, there are the reports 15 September 2006) and surveys from the fi eld of economics that 4 supplement and rationalise the process. Conclusion: multiple crises? Climate change has been on the agenda of reinsurance companies such as Munich Destructive modes of production as well Re and Swiss Re since the 1970s. They are as resource-intensive consumer habits and mainly aff ected by the increasing costs of mobility needs are being defended. Neo- natural catastrophes. Early on, their main liberal policies would not be successful if they were not able to transform the climate 4 Cf. ‘Zum Geschäft mit der Erwärmung’, Der Spiegel change debate into new market opportuni- 32/2005, and ‘Das Portal zum Emissionshandel und ties. The ‘fl exible mechanisms’ are neither Klimaschutz’, www.co2-handel.de.

32 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 32 09-11-05 11.17.59 aimed at reducing growth nor towards en- ialised, developing. We can hardly expect ergy or development policies. No measures upcoming negotiations and conferences on are introduced that increase the production climate change to change this. of renewable energies, or contribute to the decentralisation of energy structures. The The concept of a Green New Deal does to focus lies instead on the societal use and val- some degree respond to criticism of the cli- orisation of nature, as well as on the enor- mate policies we have seen to date, but it mous innovation potential of the climate remains very vague as far as future meas- change label for the economy. The regula- ures are concerned. So far, no response to tion of climate governance by the market is the ever-increasing destructive consump- the result of special interest lobbyism, con- tion of resources has been found. The idea tributing to the stabilisation of hegemonic of sustainability, celebrated in 1992, has capitalist structures and exploiting climate failed (Park et al. 2008). Technological ap- protection for profi ts made in newly created proaches, insurance policies and adjustment (fi nancial) markets. The empirically evident measures fi t smoothly into the ambitions for diffi culties of administering the mechanisms growth and market effi ciency. They follow of the Kyoto Protocol thus form a veil be- the same logic that has been responsible for hind which the consolidation of a political the destructive ecological eff ects of indus- economy of climate change and the economisation trialisation. In the end, it is always easier to of nature proceed apace. approve economic stimulus packages that cosmetically modify existing structures This raises the question of whether the in- than strive for fundamental transformations ternational climate regime is in fact the right that challenge a paradigm of growth which institution to combat climate change is both ecologically unsustainable and so- Twelve years after signing the Kyoto agree- cially unjust. ment (1997) and 17 years after signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change Translated from German (1992), it should be obvious that the eff ects by Gabriel Kuhn. of these policies are not only incredibly slow, but also that they have not achieved their desired outcomes. Presently, the fi nan- cial crisis and economic recession make low energy prices, the preservation of jobs and national competitiveness more important than the reduction of emissions caused by production and consumption. This goes for all countries: industrialised, newly industr-

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 33

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 33 09-11-05 11.17.59 Literature

Altvater, E. (2008), ‘Kohlenstoff zyklus und Auswertung__1__Handelsperiode,templ Kapitalkreislauf – eine “Tragödie der At- ateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/ mosphäre”’, in Altvater, E., and A. Brun- Auswertung_1_Handelsperiode.pdf (down- nengräber (eds), Ablasshandel gegen Klimawan- loaded 14 May 2009). del? Marktbasierte Instrumente in der globalen Klimapolitik und ihre Alternativen. Hamburg: Dietz, K., and I. Scholz (2008), ‘Anpas- VSA, S. 149-168. sung an den Klimawandel. Eine “neue” Qualität von Multi-Level-Governance im Brouns, B., and U. Witt (2008), ‘Klimas- Nord-Süd-Kontext?’ in Brunnengräber, chutz als Gelddruckmaschine’, in Altvater, A., H-J. Burchardt, and C. Görg (eds), Mit E., and A. Brunnengräber (eds), Ablasshandel mehr Ebenen zu mehr Gestaltung? Multi-Level- gegen Klimawandel? Marktbasierte Instrumente Governance in der transnationalen Sozial- und in der globalen Klimapolitik und ihre Alterna- Umweltpolitik, Schriften zur Governance- tiven. Hamburg: VSA, S. 67-87. Forschung, Band 11. Baden-Baden: Nomos, S. 183-206. Brunnengräber, A. (2007), ‘Multi-Level Climate Governance: Strategische Sele- Edenhofer, O., and N. Stern (2009), To- ktivitäten in der internationalen Politik’, wards a Global Green Recovery. Recom- in Brunnengräber, A., and H. Walk (eds), mendations for Immediate G20 Action. Multi-Level-Governance. Umwelt-, Klima- und Report Prepared on behalf of the German Sozialpolitik in einer interdependenten Welt, Foreign Offi ce, Berlin. Schriften zur Governance-Forschung des Wissenschaftszentrums Berlin (WZB), Band Friedman, T.L. (2008), Hot, Flat and Crowd- 9. Baden-Baden: Nomos, S. 207-228. ed. Why the World Needs a Green Revolution - and How We Can Renew Our Global Future. Brunnengräber, A. (2009), Die politische New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Ökonomie des Klimawandels. Ergebnisse Sozial-ökologischer Forschung, Band 11, Gill, S. (2000), ‘Theoretische Grundlagen München: oekom i.E. einer neo-gramscianischen Analyse der europäischen Intergation’, in Bieling, H-J., CDMWatch (2004), Market Failure. Why and J. Steinhilber (eds), Die Konfi guration the Clean Development Mechanism won´t Europas. Dimensionen einer kritischen Integra- Promote Clean Development: http://www. tionstheorie. Münster: Westfälisches Dampf- cdmwatch.org/files/market-failure-2004. boot, S. 23-50. pdf (downloaded 26 March 2006). Hollain, V. (2009), ‘Gute Alternativen zum DEHSt (2009): Emissionshandel: Auswer- Emissionshandel’, in Solarzeitalter (01): S. 25-26. tung der ersten Handelsperiode 2005-2007: http://www.dehst.de/cln_099/nn_476194/ Kemfert, C. (2005), Weltweiter Klimaschutz - so- SharedDocs/Downloads/Publikationen/ fortiges Handeln spart hohe Kosten. Berlin: DIW.

34 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 34 09-11-05 11.17.59 Leff , E. (2002), ‘Die Geopolitik nachhaltiger Schneider, L. (2007), Is the CDM fulfi lling Entwicklung. Ökonomisierung des Klimas, its Environmental and Sustainable Devel- Rationalisierung der Umwelt und die ges- opment Objectives? An Evaluation of the ellschaftliche Wiederaneignung der Natur’, CDM and Options for Improvement. Stud- in Görg, C., and U. Brand (eds), Mythen glo- ie des Öko-Instituts im Auftrag des WWF. balen Umweltmanagments: ‘Rio + 10’ und die Berlin. Sackgassen nachhaltiger Entwicklung. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, S. 92-117. United Nations (1992), United Nations Frame- work Convention on Climate Change. New Lohmann, L. (ed.) (2006), Carbon Trading. A York: United Nations. Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Pri- vatisation and Power. Uddevalla: Mediaprint. Unmüßig, B., and S. Cramer (2008), ‘Afrika im Klimawandel’, Giga Focus. Nr. 2. Park, J., M. Finger, and K. Conca (eds) (2008), The Crisis of Global Environmental WBGU (2007), Welt im Wandel: Sicher- Governance. Towards a New Political Economy heitsrisiko Klimawandel. Studie des Wis- of Sustainability. London: Routledge. senschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen. Berlin. Ptak, R. (2008), ‘Wie ein Markt entsteht und aus Klimamüll eine Ware wird’, in Al- Witt,U., and F. Moritz (2008), ‘CDM - sau- tvater, E., and A. Brunnengräber (eds), Ab- bere Entwicklung und dubiose Geschäfte’, lasshandel gegen Klimawandel? Marktbasierte in Altvater, E., and A. Brunnengräber (eds), Instrumente in der globalen Klimapolitik und ihre Ablasshandel gegen Klimawandel? Marktbasierte Alternativen. Hamburg: VSA, S. 35-50. Instrumente in der globalen Klimapolitik und ihre Alternativen. Hamburg: VSA, S. 88-105.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 35

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 35 09-11-05 11.17.59 Climate change and capitalism’s ecological fi x in Latin America

Eduardo Gudynas

The issue of climate change has recently ac- quired great prominence in South America. It has received considerable coverage in the mainstream media, been the object of many citizen-led campaigns and has at least been discursively acknowledged by governments and some companies. Yet despite this grow- ing presence in public debate, the question is whether the proposals that have been cir- culated so far are really aimed at devising eff ective measures to tackle climate change.

The analysis in the present text shows that the discourses of all South American gov- ernments today, while not denying the challenge of climate change, present it in a Eduardo Gudynas is director of the distorted way. Climate change is thus ren- Latin American Center on Social Ecology dered as functional for a process of com- (CLAES), a think tank on sustainable modifi cation of nature and a reorientation development based in Uruguay. of environmental policy. Even under left- wing governments, South America is wit- nessing the redeployment of variations on the theme of faith in progress through the varied, and range from possible losses in appropriation of nature, thus preventing the agricultural production, the disappearance substantive agreements that would be neces- of the Andean ice fi elds, coastline changes, sary to confront climate change. declines in tourism or the eff ects of an in- crease in natural disasters. Their emphases, A distorted perspective on climate change too, are very diverse, from enraged speechi- fying to the establishment of scientifi c com- All the governments of South America are mittees and the promotion of campaigns. worried about climate change. The reasons are Concomitantly, the conventional media

36 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 36 09-11-05 11.17.59 recycle reports on the subject, almost all of the offi cial reports by various South Ameri- which, however, originate in industrialised can countries), or relativised according to countries: the ones that are more regularly evaluations in proportion to surface or popu- cited come from the Northern hemisphere, lation. Despite their global responsibility, and thus obviously express the problems and many Southern countries oppose accept- priorities of richer countries. ing any substantive commitments to reduce emissions on the grounds that they do not It is thus that, step by step, a certain idea want to be tied to reduction goals that might of climate change has spread across South hinder their development. But they also, by America, wherein the following elements are emphasising their condition of victimhood, central: emphasis on the responsibility of in- insist that the fi ght against climate change dustrialised nations as a way of deferring and must be fi nanced and supported with tech- avoiding commitment; identifi cation of emis- nology transfers from industrialised nations. sions by sectors such as industry and trans- Their own responsibilities – which, however port as the main culprits; and the view that ‘diff erentiated’, are global nonetheless – dis- South American countries would be, above appear. Their own initiatives remain limited, all, ‘victims’. However much truth there is in and South American countries contribute to each of these elements, the whole set leads to the eternal horse-trading and bargaining in distorted positions, allowing South Ameri- international negotiations concerning the can countries to engage in media campaigns money that is expected in order to initiate while avoiding both debate and concrete ac- national measures against climate change. tion to tackle the roots of the problem. Correspondingly, the way in which these To be sure, a much greater responsibility falls governments have begun to take action on on industrialised countries, particularly if the climate change accentuates other deforma- question is considered from a historical per- tions. While recognising problems of vul- spective. However, we must also admit that nerability, which are serious and urgent, their several Southern countries have become huge mitigation campaigns are focused on reduc- greenhouse gas emitters, sometimes at levels ing emissions in sectors such as transport, in- higher than developed nations. For instance, dustry and electricity generation. On these if we consider total emissions (excluding land- fronts, their actions are generally modest and use changes), Brazil ranks 7th, ahead of coun- narrow, and usually exhaust themselves in tries such as Germany and Canada; Mexico is programmes to foster the use of energy-sav- 11th (ahead of Italy and France) and Argen- ing light bulbs, fi lters in some factory chim- tina, 25th (ahead of The Netherlands).1 neys and praising hybrid cars. Whatever their true effi cacy, in the end these programmes The volume of current emissions is some- matter because of the support they garner in times minimised, sometimes hidden (this the form of public opinion. Besides, this kind partly explains the delayed presentation of of initiative is in line with the dominant mes- sage in the media, where the stress is always 1 Emission fi gures for 2005, based on the Climate on industrial or transport emissions. Analysis Indicators Tool – CAIT database, World Resources Institute.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 37

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 37 09-11-05 11.17.59 The problem is that this does not corre- marketing campaigns around themes such as spond to South American reality. A greater light bulbs. In this way, the most urgent and proportion of emissions in the energy sec- politically most costly themes, such as agri- tor is typical of rich countries. For instance, cultural policy, go undiscussed. This stance transport and industry generate about 90 per is, nevertheless, instrumental in strengthen- cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. ing their international bargaining positions It is for this reason that these are the sectors while carrying on with the present models targeted by such countries. of development.

The situation in South America, however, is The commodifi cation of nature very diff erent: the most substantial portion of greenhouse gas emissions (75.2 per cent) The persistence of conventional develop- comes from agriculture and land-use chang- ment strategies is one of the main causes of es. Industry, transport and the like represent the resistance to a climate change agenda in

23.6 per cent of emissions of CO2 equiva- South America. The dominant model is still lents.2 Agriculture, land-use change and one based on the appropriation of nature and forestry represent 83 per cent of total emis- on export-led growth. Even the so-called sions in Brazil, almost 86 per cent in Peru progressive governments (Argentina, Bo- and 91 per cent in Bolivia. It is obvious that livia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uru- this situation is diff erent from what many as- guay and Venezuela) have been resurrecting sume. This situation exposes the contradic- a particular version of an ideology of progress tions of, for example, Brazil, which has be- – according to which, these countries possess come a great global emitter, but resists taking enormous natural resources and ample poten- substantial measures, demands compensation tial for ecological buff ering, and so the gov- and transfers while at the same time present- ernments take it as their mandate to make the ing itself as a new global power. most of this wealth. The high price of com- The gravest and most urgent problems for modities in recent years has amplifi ed this climate change in South America relate to tendency, and many governments thought it agricultural policy, land use and exports of essential to take advantage of these opportu- agrifoods. The agenda of political debate and nities in the global economy to further their the most urgent measures must turn to these foreign trade. To that end, they refused, and questions, and in particular to urgent issues are still refusing, any idea of environmental such as deforestation, land reform and the ex- conditions or restrictions, although now the pansion of export monocultures such as soy. justifi cation is the global crisis that has nega- Yet this nexus does not receive the attention tively impacted economic expansion. it deserves from the South American public: on the contrary, it is repeatedly avoided by The distortion of the climate-change agen- governments whose mitigation plans are in- da enables governments to evade a deeper adequate and whose goals are vague. What is debate on the central ideas of this style of more, they take advantage of this distortion development, which are central in the for- in the debate on climate change by organising mulation of land-use and agriculture poli- cies. But this same distortion means that 2 Data for the year 2000. CAIT database, World Re- some conventional actions can be present- sources Institute.

38 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 38 09-11-05 11.17.59 ed as having an environmental purpose. A cates of the incorporation of environmental typical case is the agro-fuel programme in goods and services into the WTO regime. Brazil, greenwashed as a fi ght against an oil-based civilisation, when in fact it con- Other actors operate in the same way. Among stitutes a deepening of the expansion of soy the so-called conservation BINGOs (big in- and sugarcane monocultures in support of ternational NGOs), for example, market- exporting agribusiness, with serious social based mechanisms such as carbon trading are and environmental impacts. seen as key in responding to the challenge of climate change – extending all the way to Thus nature is turned into a basket of com- extreme cases such as Conservation Inter- modities: environmental goods and serv- national’s proposal regarding the Amazon, ices replace ecosystems, and natural capital whereby protected areas should self-fi nance comes to express the environment’s mon- themselves by way of the sale of environmen- etary value. This kind of approach is func- tal services and goods, or carbon capture, in tional to the trade in natural resources, and global markets (Killeen 2007). This is an ex- so does not contradict the present version of tremely pessimistic position, which assumes the ideology of progress. incapable states and the forsaking of any idea of transforming global capitalism, and ac- This emphasis is not new, and is part of the cepts the destruction of the greater part of heritage of the neo-liberal years, but it has the rainforest, while all that is hoped for is to also been promoted by South American gov- salvage the odd protected area by including it ernments. One should remember the Rio+10 in the very commercial networks that cause summit in South Africa in 2002 where vari- environmental destruction. ous Latin American countries, led by Brazil, insisted on the idea of promoting the com- Along the same lines, the recent ECLAC mercialisation of their own biodiversity and (Economic Commission for Latin America ecosystemic functions as if they were but one and the Caribbean) report on international commodity among others. This explains the trade, insofar as it even acknowledges the present insistence on the part of various pro- importance of climate change, also calls for gressive governments on arriving at agree- resistance to green forms of trade protec- ments on environmental goods and services tionism. More importantly, this proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO). demonstrates other aspects of this distor- tion, since national or local environmental In the framework of the commodifi cation of problems vanish from the agenda. Environ- nature, the environment is broken up into mental impacts that range from the loss of commodities to be inserted into productive biodiversity to urban contamination are not processes. As a consequence, the components adequately considered; the actions to con- of ecosystems – its fauna and fl ora, or even their front them are emptied of meaning; envi- genes, ecological cycles, etc. – are converted ronmental institutions are even more frag- into commodities that are subject to trade laws ile; and there are multiple problems with and can have owners and an economic value. enforcement. Much is said about environ- Countries like Brazil and Argentina, for ex- mental questions, but from a distorted per- ample, are among the most energetic advo- spective, while a parallel weakening of na-

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 39

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 39 09-11-05 11.17.59 tional and local environmental governance livian president, Evo Morales, has recently in South America takes place. challenged environmental organisations and even local communities that oppose oil ex- The ecological fi x for capitalism ploration thus: ‘What are we to live off ?’ he asks. Along the same lines, support for a tra- This distorted perspective on climate change, ditional style of material development can and the advancing commodifi cation of na- be found in old social movements, such as ture even in times of global crisis, are due trade unions with an industrial, urban base. to the fact that we are witnessing a sort of ‘ecological fi x’ for capitalism. This new ver- In this context, the social policies charac- sion is diff erent from the programme pushed teristic of progressive governments remain in the framework of the neo-liberal reforms targeted at specifi c social groups and com- of the 1980 and 1990s, since today there is pensate for the negative eff ects of this very acknowledgment of the problems with those developmentalist strategy of the commodi- positions, a greater role for the state is envi- fi cation of nature. Environmental questions sioned and social programmes are to remain are engaged at a surface level, usually taking in place. the form of marketing campaigns, but the in- sistence is still that environmental regulation Yet there has been no progress in develop- would slow economic growth and represent ing a substantive critique of the economic a risk to development itself. As a result, only a order, of the excessive emphasis on the ap- superfi cial environmental agenda is accepted, propriation of nature or the logic of progress or one that eff ectively incorporates actions and economic growth. The progressive or that are functional to economic growth and a left-wing governments of South America relationship to the global economy that relies have rectifi ed some of the extremes of the on the export of primary commodities. This old politics, especially in the social arena, explains the distortions of the debate on cli- and this is no small matter. But they have, mate change and the resistance to discussing, nevertheless maintained the same style of for instance, the role of emissions originating development as natural resource-exporting from agriculture and land use. countries. What is more, in some of these governments the state acts to facilitate the Since this style of development now has a intensifi ed use of natural resources, the ex- social and environmental face, it generates port of primary commodities and the attrac- the illusion of a ‘benign capitalism’. The tion of foreign investment: directly, through fundamentals of its functioning go unques- state enterprises, such as national oil compa- tioned, as do those of the commodifi cation nies, as in the case of Bolivia or Venezuela, of nature or the supporting role of social or indirectly, as in the plans to attract large- programmes. Instead, there are measures of scale mining investment in Ecuador. reparation and compensation, and even the acceptance of another kind of globalisation, For the said governments, the importance of with greater state regulation (a good exam- the state as a new promoter of the appropria- ple would be the ‘capitalism 3.0’ proposal of tion of nature is clear. For example, the Bo- economist Dani Rodrik).

40 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 40 09-11-05 11.17.59 Targeted poverty-alleviation programmes are itself at the centre of the debate, and particu- very important in emergency situations, but larly its goal of achieving economic growth when they become permanent they dampen through the export of primary commodi- the most acute eff ects of this capitalism and ties. The ‘solutions’ that beckon with the pacify social unrest. Governments fi nd polit- commodifi cation of nature are not enough ical legitimacy and so prevent the discussion to tackle national environmental problems, of their mode of appropriation of nature and let alone global ones. Measures such as the their international insertion based on natu- creation of international carbon markets are ral resources. The examples above show how mere illusions of supposedly eff ective alter- governments, several big NGOs and signifi - natives, when in fact they do nothing but cant sectors of academia are complicit in this. exacerbate the problems. If there is no radi- The degradation of the environment is hid- cal change in this kind of relationship, eve- den, made invisible. However much recogni- rything points to the persistence of sluggish tion of ecological eff ects there may be, the ar- international negotiations that will repeat- gument is that they are the inevitable costs of edly avoid real commitments to tackle the leaving underdevelopment behind. Not only root causes of climate change. that, but the intensifi cation of the commodi- fi cation of nature is presented as a solution to Translated from Spanish the existing problems. by Rodrigo Nunes.

Climate change and post- material development Literature A radical shift in international negotiations Acosta, A., E. Gudynas, E. Martínez, and on climate change requires another kind of J.H. Vogel (2009), Leaving the Oil in the leadership from South American countries. Ground: A Political, Economic, and Eco- It is necessary to break with the ideology of logical Initiative in the Ecuadorian Ama- progress and to move towards post-material zon. Americas Program Policy Report. development. To the extent that political de- Washington, DC: Center for International bate in South America is today richer and Policy, 13 August. more diversifi ed, it is possible to move for- ward with this agenda. For example, the ECLAC (2009), Panorama de la inserción proposal for post-oil development in Ecua- internacional de América Latina y el Caribe dor, including a moratorium on oil drilling 2008-2009. Santiago de Chile: CEPAL. in the Yasuní region (Acosta et al., 2009), is a very important intervention. In the same Killeen, T.J. (2007), ‘Una Tormenta Per- way, we need to discuss urgently policies fecta en la Amazonia. Desarrollo y conser- regarding agriculture, cattle farming and vación en el contexto de la Iniciativa para la forestry, and generally come up with a new Integración de la Infraestructura Regional design for rural development. Sudamericana (IIRSA)’, Advances in Applied Biodiversity Science, No. 7, Conservation In- In this task, it is necessary to put the essence ternational. of contemporary Latin American capitalism

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 41

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 41 09-11-05 11.17.59 The deadly triad: Climate change, free trade and capitalism

Walden Bello

The way out of the global recession, it is al- leged by fi gures ranging from Gordon Brown to Pascal Lamy, is by expanding global trade, and the key to this is concluding the stalled Doha Round of trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization (WTO). But there is something surreal about this argu- ment. Faced with the looming spectre of cli- mate change, the trade negotiations in Ge- neva amount to little more than arguing over Walden Bello is a member of the House of the arrangement of deck chairs while the Ti- Representatives of the Philippines, president of tanic is sinking. Indeed, one of the most im- the Freedom from Debt Coalition and senior portant steps in the struggle to come up with analyst at the Bangkok-based research and a viable strategy to deal with climate change advocacy institute, Focus on the Global South. would be to derail the Doha Round. He is the author of 25 books, the latest of which is Th e Food Wars (London: Verso, 2009). Global trade: deeply dysfunctional Global trade functions by virtue of a trans- From the point of view of environmental port system that is heavily dependent on fos- sustainability, global trade has become ever sil fuels. It is estimated that about 60 per cent more dysfunctional. Take agricultural trade. of the world’s use of oil goes to transporta- As Daniel Imhoff has pointed out, ‘the aver- tion activities, which are more than 95 per age food item journeys 1,300 miles before cent dependent on fossil fuels. A study by the becoming part of a meal’.2 Long-distance Organisation for Economic Cooperation and travel contributes to the absurd situation Development (OECD) estimated that the wherein ‘ten calories of energy are required global transport sector accounts for 20-25 per to create just one calorie of food energy’.3 cent of carbon emissions, with some 66 per cent of this fi gure accounted for by emissions The WTO has been a central factor in in- in the industrialised countries.1 creasing carbon emissions from transport. A

2 Imhoff , pp.425-6. 1 new economics foundation, p.9. 3 Ibid.

42 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 42 09-11-05 11.17.59 study done by the OECD in the mid-1990s Again Mander and Retallack: ‘Each ton of estimated that by 2004, the year marking the freight moved by plane uses forty nine times full implementation of free-trade commit- as much energy per kilometer as when it’s ments under the WTO’s Uruguay Round, moved by ship…A two minute takeoff by there would have been an increase in the a [Boeing] 747 is equal to 2.4 million lawn transport of internationally traded goods mowers running for twenty minutes’.8 In of 70 per cent over 1992 levels. This fi gure, support of trade expansion and global eco- notes the progressive British think tank new nomic growth, authorities have by and large economics foundation (nef), ‘would make taxed neither aviation fuel nor marine bun- a mockery’ of the Kyoto Protocol’s manda- ker fuel, which now account for 20 per cent tory emissions reduction targets for industr- of all emissions in the transport sector. ialised countries.4 Since then, with the ex- ception of the dip in global trade caused by Along with fossil-fuel-intensive air trans- the world economic crisis, things have been port, fossil-fuel-intensive road transport getting progressively worse. has also been favoured by the expansion of world trade, instead of less emission-in- Transportation: More fossil- tensive modes of transportation such as rail traffi c. In the EU, for instance, the focus on intensive than ever building up a road transport network led an Ocean shipping accounts for nearly 80 per OECD study to comment that ‘the way in cent of the world’s international trade in which the EU liberalisation policy has been goods. The fuel commonly used by ships implemented has favoured the less environ- is a mixture of diesel and low-quality oil ment-friendly modes and accelerated the known as ‘Bunker C’, which contains high decline of rail and inland waterways’.9 levels of carbon and sulphur. As Jerry Man- der and Simon Retallack point out, ‘if not Decoupling growth and consumed by ships, it would otherwise be considered a waste product’.5 energy: a panacea Aviation, which has the highest growth There has been talk about decoupling trade rate as a mode of transport, is also the fast- and growth from energy use, or shifting est growing source of greenhouse gas emis- from fossil fuels to other, less carbon-in- sions, with its consumption of fuel expected tensive energy sources. This is the position to rise by 65 per cent from 1990 levels by held by the G-8. The assumption is that af- 2010, according to one study cited by nef.6 fl uent societies can take on commitments to Other estimates are more pessimistic, with reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate still grow and enjoy their high standards of Change (IPCC) suggesting that fuel con- living if they shift to non-fossil fuel sources sumption by civil aviation is increasing at of energy. Moreover, the domestic imple- a rate of 3 per cent a year and could rise by mentation of the mandatory cuts agreed on nearly 350 per cent from 1992 levels by 2050.7 multilaterally by governments must occur by way of market-based mechanisms, that 4 new economics foundation, p.10. 5 Mander and Retallack, pp.28-9. 8 Mander and Retallack, pp.28-9. 6 Cited in new economics foundation, p.11. 9 OECD, quoted in new economics foundation, p.11. 7 Ibid.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 43

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 43 09-11-05 11.17.59 is, through the creation and trading of emis- inevitable if the world is to address serious- sion permits. The subtext is: techno-fi xes ly the challenge of climate change and the and the carbon market will make the tran- broader environmental crisis. In the short sition relatively painless and – why not? – term, however, a sharp U-turn in consump- profi table too. tion and growth in the developed countries and a signifi cant decrease in global trade The reality is that other energy sources and are unavoidable if we are to have the space technologies are either dangerous, like nu- to mount this more strategic enterprise of clear power; have deleterious side-eff ects, moving away from capitalism towards a like agrofuels’ negative impact on food pro- more ecologically sustainable form of eco- duction; or are simply science fi ction at this nomic organisation. stage, like carbon sequestration and storage technology. Moreover, market mechanisms The outcome of the Doha negotiations will such as carbon trading are simply a way for determine whether free trade will intensify states to avoid forcing their corporate sectors or lose momentum. A successful conclusion to make the hard decision to signifi cantly to Doha will bring us closer to uncontrolla- cut emissions now. ble climate change. It will continue what nef describes as ‘free trade’s free ride on the glo- It is also rapidly becoming clear that the bal climate’. A derailment of Doha will not dominant paradigm of economic growth be a suffi cient condition to formulate a strat- is one of the most signifi cant obstacles to egy to contain climate change, but given the a serious global eff ort to deal with climate likely negative ecological consequences of a change. But this destabilising, fundamental- successful deal, it is a necessary condition. ist growth-consumption paradigm is itself more eff ect than cause. The central prob- Literature lem, it is becoming increasingly evident, is a mode of production whose main dynamic is Imhoff , D. (1996), ‘Community-supported the transformation of living nature into dead Agriculture’ in Mander J., and E. Goldsmith commodities, creating tremendous waste (eds), The Case Against the Global Economy. in the process. The driver of this process is San Francisco: Sierra Club. consumption – or more appropriately over- consumption – and the motivation is profi t Mander, J., and S. Retallack (2002), ‘Intrin- or capital accumulation. sic Environmental Consequences of Trade- related Transport’, in International Forum on Global trade has been a central mechanism Globalization, Alternatives to Economic Global- of this capitalist dynamic of accumulation, ization. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. consumption and expansion. And for the foreseeable future, trade expansion and glo- New economics foundation (2003), Free bal growth will fall in line with their his- Trade’s Free Ride on the Global Climate. Lon- torical trajectory of being correlated with don: new economics foundation. increased greenhouse gas emissions. OECD (1997), Freight and Environment: Ef- Ultimately, a fundamental transformation at fects of Trade Liberalisation and Transport Sector the level of the mode of production seems Reforms. Paris: OECD.

44 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 44 09-11-05 11.20.30 part ii » Wrong turns, dead-ends and cross-roads

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 45

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 45 09-11-05 11.17.59 REDD realities

Simone Lovera

Some six years ago, Kevin Conrad, a close friend and advisor to Michael Somare, prime minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG), had a great idea. The prime minister was com- plaining to him that the World Bank had forced him to comply with a number of strict conditions on a loan to the PNG for- estry sector. The conditions were aimed at conserving the forests in this remote coun- try. As the biodiversity and carbon stored in these forests were of global importance, Mr Conrad advised his prime minister to ask for compensation from the world community for the ‘environmental service’ of reducing deforestation. Thus the concept of payments Simone Lovera is managing coordinator of for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation the Global Forest Coalition, an international and forest Degradation in Developing coun- coalition of NGOs and IPOs campaigning tries (REDD) was born. for rights-based, socially just forest policies. She also works as a volunteer for This anecdote is often told by Mr Conrad Sobrevivencia/Friends of the Earth-Paraguay. himself at international meetings. However, Mr Conrad seldom specifi es what the con- ditions of the World Bank exactly entailed – that the government of PNG would make a strong eff ort to combat corruption in its forestry service and illegal logging in gen- eral. So in fact, the prime minister of PNG wanted to be compensated for complying with his very own forestry laws.

46 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 46 09-11-05 11.18.00 The basic principle of REDD is not neces- namely indigenous peoples, local com- sarily objectionable. In fact, the suggestion munities and women; that industrialised countries should contrib- • these funds were shared equitably among ute fi nancially to policies and actions taken countries that have already put in place by developing countries to reduce emissions eff ective strategies to reduce their defor- from deforestation and forest degradation estation and countries that have failed to is very much in line with Article 4 of the do so until now; Framework Convention on Climate Change • there were serious problems with cor- (FCCC) and the concept of common but ruption and bad governance in the coun- diff erentiated responsibilities. Reducing tries concerned; and deforestation is a contribution developing • the reductions in deforestation are real. countries can make towards global eff orts to mitigate climate change. As industrialised The problem with REDD is that there are countries have a historical responsibility for simply too many ‘ifs’ to be true. Although climate change, it is reasonable that they the overwhelming majority of policy papers should fully compensate the costs of such on REDD published over the past years, actions. So REDD could be a great opportu- whether by NGOs, indigenous peoples, nity to combine climate change mitigation, governments, scientifi c institutions or mul- forest conservation and income provision tilateral donors,1 have listed most if not all for forest-dependent communities, if: of the conditions above as preconditions for eff ective and equitable REDD strategies, few • REDD actions were voluntary and addi- of these policy papers subsequently reach the tional to deep emission cuts in Northern logical conclusion that REDD should thus countries; not be implemented if these preconditions are • the payments by these same Northern not met.2 This means that the REDD dreams countries covered the full costs of these sketched in these policy papers are likely to actions, and these funds were additional to become REDD nightmares in reality. the signifi cant ecological reparations they are expected to pay to compensate South- ern countries for the signifi cant damage 1 http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/12/08/accra- climate change has already caused them; caucus-statement-on-forests-and-climate-change/ • these funds were spent on the conserva- http://research.yale.edu/gisf/tfd/pdf/stakeholders/ tion and restoration of forests and not on FERN%20REDD%20Position%20Paper%202.pdf http://www.redd-monitor.org/2008/12/08/rights- the establishment of monoculture tree based-climate-change-mitigation-and-adaptation plantations; http://www.tebtebba.org/index.php?option=com_ • these funds were spent on policies and docman&task=cat_view&gid=62&Itemid=27 http://research.yale.edu/gisf/tfd/pdf/stakeholders/ programmes fully in line with the UN FERN%20REDD%20Position%20Paper%202.pdf Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_fi les/ Peoples (UNDRIPs); Books/BAngelsen0801.pdf http://www.un-redd.org/LinkClick.aspx?fi leticket= • these funds were shared equitably with gDmNyDdmEI0%3d&tabid=587&language=en-US the actors that are actually responsible 2 A noteworthy exception is the recently published for forest conservation and restoration, IIED briefi ng paper, Cotula, L. and J. Mayers (2009), Tenure in REDD, Start-point or Afterthought?

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 47

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 47 09-11-05 11.18.00 REDD without emission reductions REDD markets versus ecological debt The reality is that Northern countries are It is also unlikely that Northern countries not willing to commit to deep reductions. will provide the new and additional fund- The draft US climate legislation that is sup- ing necessary to pay for REDD on top of the posed to be adopted this year is estimated ecological debt repayment Southern coun- to lead to approximately 0 per cent domes- tries have demanded. The African Union tic emission reductions by 2020 compared recently demanded between US$ 65 and to 1990 levels (if all non-domestic off sets US$ 200 billion per year as ecological debt are excluded).3 The chances that the US repayment. The additional costs for REDD administration will take a position that is vary signifi cantly with the kind of policies more ambitious than this are close to zero. that will be implemented. However, the While the EU has at least committed itself original REDD concept as promoted by to 20 per cent reductions by 2020 even if PNG would imply that landowners will be other Northern countries will not follow, granted a right to ask for compensation for the chances that Canada, Australia, Japan or not cutting down that forest to produce, for other industrialised countries will commit example, palm oil on their land. Oil palm to signifi cant emission reductions without plantation owners can earn between US$ the US are equally slim. 3,600 and 12,000 per hectare of plantation. Considering that there are 1.5 billion hec- The source of REDD funding is another tares of tropical forests, and that at least 50 important factor here. If fi nanced through per cent of these areas are suitable for oil public funds, the reduced emissions from palm production, the world community deforestation will at least be additional to would theoretically have to provide be- the meagre emission cuts proposed. But tween US$ 2,700 and US$ 9,000 billion per many Northern countries seem to be in year to compensate potential oil palm farm- favour of funding REDD through carbon ers alone. The chances that Northern coun- markets. This implies that REDD will, by tries will commit to paying those costs, on defi nition, not contribute anything to emis- top of their ecological debt payments, are, sion reductions, as every ton of carbon saved again, very slim. The fi nancial off er by the by reduced deforestation will be compensat- EU made on 10 September 2009, less than ed for by an extra ton of carbon emitted in three months before the Copenhagen Sum- the global North. REDD without emission mit, is more in the range of US$ 1.5 to US$ reductions will simply mean the end of most 4 billion per year, some 0.1 per cent of what of the world’s forests, as climate change it- would be needed for the PNG version of self is the number one threat to forests and REDD alone. other ecosystems. Many institutions have argued that REDD should be fi nanced through a ‘basket of funding options’,4 that is, by a combination 3 The legislation is still being discussed, but this is a conservative estimate. Diff erent US-based NGOs have estimated that the bill will reduce emissions to 4 http://research.yale.edu/gisf/tfd/pdf/stakeholders/ 1990 levels between 2024 and 2042. FERN%20REDD%20Position%20Paper%202.pdf

48 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 48 09-11-05 11.18.00 of public funds and carbon markets. As stated monocultures in non-forest areas. The Bra- above, the fi rst and foremost problem with zilian national climate strategy, for example, this is that it will mean that REDD does not includes a target of 13 million hectares of contribute to climate change mitigation, but additional tree plantations, of which only rather to helping the North fi nd cheap re- 2 million hectares will be planted with na- duction options. Allowing carbon off sets for tive species. The more recent ‘planted for- REDD and other projects will also seriously ests’ strategy sets a target that is more than undermine Southern claims to reparations for double that. Most of these plantations will ecological debt. By absorbing the little devel- either replace other ecosystems like pampa opment space that Southern countries have (grasslands), cerrado (semi-dry woodland) left, such off sets will signifi cantly increase or caatinga (arid woodlands), and/or areas inequities in the division of ecological space where forests might have grown back pro- between North and South (FoE 2009). vided the land was left undisturbed.

REDD forests or REDD, indigenous rights REDD monocultures and equitable sharing of benefi ts Another major problem with REDD is the Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations (IPOs) defi nition of forests that was adopted by have expressed strong concerns about the po- the parties to the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. tential impact of REDD on their rights and This defi nition includes not only a forest as interests, including their land rights. Consid- commonly perceived, but also any kind of ering the signifi cant amounts of funding that tree monoculture, and even areas that are might be at stake, their fear is that indigenous ‘temporarily unstocked’ (a euphemism for lands will be subjected to land grabbing for clear-cut) but waiting to be planted again at profi table projects. These impacts will be an unspecifi ed future moment. This fl awed signifi cantly aggravated if REDD is fi nanced defi nition will most likely be adopted for through carbon markets, as commercial fi - REDD activities. As a result, REDD poli- nance is likely to fl ow towards projects that cies might not only ignore serious forms of are able to reduce deforestation rates signifi - forest degradation (see also Sasaki 2009) but cantly. Comparative research in Brazil re- also the quite common forestry practice of vealed that deforestation rates in indigenous replacing biologically diverse forests with reserves are between 1.7 and 7 times lower monoculture tree plantations. than deforestation rates in surrounding areas (Nepstad et al. 2006). The Center for Inter- While some of the latest proposals include national Forestry Research has thus recom- references to the need for ‘co-benefi ts’ for mended that payments for environmental biodiversity and even reject ‘the replace- services should not be targeting indigenous ment of natural forests by tree plantations’, peoples, as it would be highly ineffi cient to these safeguards, even if accepted, will not pay people who were not planning to defor- prevent signifi cant amounts of funding from est their territory anyway. being used for the establishment of tree

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 49

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 49 09-11-05 11.18.00 An analysis by the Global Forest Coalition nance systems promoting collective sustain- of the impact of market-based conservation able management of biodiversity became, in fi ve diff erent communities revealed that: under the impact of market-based mecha- nisms, more likely to act individually and [t]he use of market-based mechanisms in- pursue individual economic interests such evitably means that the odds are stacked as jobs, profi ts and fi nancial rewards. The against those in a weaker initial nego- position of women within the communities tiating position. This includes people was also aff ected, as women’s interests are with no legal land tenure and those un- more likely to be overlooked in commercial able to aff ord the considerable expense transactions normally closed by men (even involved in the preparation of environ- in communities where women previously mental impact assessments, the delivery had responsibility for matters related to for- of environmental services, the fulfi lment ests and biodiversity). Women have a disad- of a range of quantifi able qualifi cation vantageous position in monetary economies criteria and the provision of upfront and in general, as they spend a signifi cant part operational fi nance, including insur- of their time on activities such as childcare, ance against project failure. This implies household management, procuring clean that market-based conservation mecha- water and other goods for the family, which nisms will inevitably lead to increased are not rewarded in monetary terms.6 corporate governance over biodiversity conservation, and erode the governance The challenge of equitable sharing of bene- systems of (monetary) poor communities fi ts is felt not only on a sub-national level. By and social groups including Indigenous defi nition, REDD will lead to much higher Peoples and women.5 payments for countries that have failed to halt deforestation until now, as these coun- While carbon markets can, in theory, bring tries have deforestation to reduce. Recent some economic benefi ts to local communi- proposals to include ‘enhancement of car- ties, it is important to analyse any economic bon stocks’ (that is, reforestation, including costs in terms of decreased food security and the establishment of monoculture tree plan- food sovereignty and the loss of alternative tations) and land management practices are sources of jobs and income related to, for unlikely to resolve these inequities, as those example, the establishment of labour-ex- countries that have caused much carbon tensive tree plantations. The most signifi - emission through both deforestation and cant impact was the sense of disempower- other unsustainable land management prac- ment felt by many community members. In tices will still receive far higher payments all cases, local residents reported that their than countries that have practised sustain- control over their forests and livelihoods able land management. African countries had decreased because ‘the main decisions will not be able to compete with the likes were now taken by other actors’. Thus, of Indonesia and Brazil in reducing emis- communities that had their own gover- sions from land management. Thanks to its

5 GFC 2008. 6 ibid.

50 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 50 09-11-05 11.18.00 land-based emissions, Indonesia has joined indigenous rights’ instruments, these rights the world’s three largest emitters. A country could easily be marginalised again. Indica- like Ethiopia will have a hard time compet- tions are that the capacity of national IPOs ing with that, even if it does decide to plas- themselves to engage in the national REDD ter its countryside with 27 million hectares debate are a determining factor on whether of monoculture tree plantations, as Brazil REDD will benefi t them or not, and regret- intends to do, according to its draft ‘planted tably many of them still lack that capacity. forests’ strategy. Last but not least, at the international lev- Thanks to the vocal campaigns of IPOs el, REDD is in violation of UNDRIPs, as themselves, especially at recent conferences the negotiations have continued until now of the parties of the Climate Convention, without any meaningful participation by concerns about indigenous rights seem to be indigenous peoples, despite the fact that a taken seriously by at least some governments. REDD agreement by the FCCC will have In this respect, it has been helpful that the a signifi cant impact on indigenous territo- two main multinational initiatives to fi nance ries, which are home to many of the world’s countries’ eff orts to ‘prepare’ for REDD, most precious forests. the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and the UN-REDD programme, REDD corruption are respectively bound to instruments that demand consultation with and participation The need for good governance as one of the by indigenous peoples in the development preconditions for proper implementation of of policies that aff ect them. UNDRIPs even REDD has been emphasised by many inter- specifi es the right to ‘free prior and informed governmental and non-governmental in- consent’, which means that REDD policies stitutions.7 Without good governance, cor- should formally be implemented with ex- porations and other national actors will be plicit indigenous peoples’ consent. It is im- inclined to claim overestimated or otherwise portant to note that this pressure from the fraudulent emission reductions. In order to main REDD donors has been helpful in con- calculate the reductions caused by a specifi c vincing at least some governments to consult conservation project, one has to establish an with IPOs in the elaboration of their REDD appropriate baseline in order to ascertain strategies. For some countries, especially in exactly what proportion of the emission re- Africa and Asia, this was the fi rst time ever ductions is the result of the project. But es- indigenous peoples were seriously consulted tablishing proper baselines and verifi cation on forest policies. of the added value of REDD activities has proven a tremendous challenge. It is hard to However, it is important to remain cautious defi ne what would have happened with a here, as these multilateral donors are mainly funding the preparation of REDD strategies. 7 http://www.unredd.net/index.php?option=com_ Once these strategies reach the implementa- docman&task=doc_download&gid=455&Itemid=53/ tion stage and support comes in from donors http://www.rightsandresources.org/publication_ and carbon markets that are not bound to details.php?publicationID=857

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 51

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 51 09-11-05 11.18.00 forest in a business-as-usual situation. De- themselves in 2002 to signifi cantly reducing termining a proper baseline: biodiversity loss by 2010, those countries that still have high deforestation rates are would either take the form of a reference obviously not complying with international period in the past or a scenario which commitments. That makes REDD a recipe could be used as a convincing projec- for disaster in countries like PNG, Brazil and tion of the future trends of deforestation. Indonesia, in fact, in practically all countries Unfortunately, there is little chance that that still, 17 years after the UN Conference the future resembles the past; robust pre- on Environment and Development, have dictions of future deforestation seem un- not succeeded in reducing deforestation. likely given the complex interactions of factors commanding the pace of defores- Learning from success tation, especially as most of them lie out- side the forest sector. (Karsenty 2008) instead of paying for failure Luckily, there are countries that have suc- Another major problem is that of ‘leakage’, ceeded in reducing or even halting deforest- which is inherent in forest-related carbon ation. These countries are complying with projects. Leakage means that the environ- the relevant regulations, and they should be mental benefi ts of a project are undermined rewarded for doing so through the provi- or even completely negated because the de- sion of signifi cant new and additional fi nan- structive activities are simply moved to an- cial resources. Respecting indigenous land other area. Protecting one forest area from rights and community forest management logging, for example, makes little sense for has proven to be one of the most equitable, the climate and provides few environmental eff ective and effi cient policy incentives for benefi ts if the logging shifts to a nearby area, forest conservation and forest restoration. or another country. While these policies require far less fund- ing than compensation schemes targeted at Here again, the problems with REDD are compensating soy farmers for not burning seriously aggravated if REDD is funded every hectare of their land, they still require through carbon markets. If non-additional institutional capacity, sound monitoring emission reductions from deforestation are and enforcement systems and resources to used to compensate for real emissions in the develop socially just, participatory and in- North, the net result will be increased emis- clusive forest conservation and restoration sions and thus aggravated climate change. policies. Both the Convention on Biodi- versity and the Framework Convention on The fundamental dilemma with REDD is Climate Change that were signed in 1992 that deforestation itself is an indicator of bad oblige all governments to conserve forests governance and thus a good reason not to and require developed countries to contrib- implement REDD. As practically all coun- ute new and additional fi nancial resources tries in the world (the US being the only to reward developing countries for the in- exception) have not only ratifi ed the Con- cremental costs of providing global envi- vention on Biodiversity but also committed ronmental benefi ts through reducing de-

52 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 52 09-11-05 11.18.00 forestation. The fact that the overwhelming majority of developed countries have not complied with these legally binding agree- ments does not imply that they do not ex- ist anymore. Instead, as pointed out by an increasing number of G-77 countries, the failure to comply with these commitments has created an ecological debt that should be repaid on top of the new and additional resources that were promised 17 years ago.

Literature

Cotula, L., and J. Mayers (2009), Tenure in Lovera., S. (2006), ‘Reducing Deforestation, REDD – Start-point or Afterthought?’. Natural It’s the Money We Love’, Forest Cover 20. Resource Issues NO. 15. London: Interna- October. tional Institute for Environment and Devel- opment. Nepstad, D., S. Schwartzman, B. Bamberg- er, M. Santilli, P. Schlesinger, P. Lefebvre, Friends of the Earth (FoE) (2009), A Danger- A. Alencar, D. Ray, E. Prinz, and A. Rolla ous Distraction, Why Off setting in Failing the (2006), ‘Inhibition of Amazon Deforestation Climate and People: The Evidence. and Fire by Parks and Indigenous Reserves’, Conservation Biology, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp.65- Global Forest Coalition (GFC) (2008), Life as 73. Commerce: The Impact of Market-based Conser- vation on Indigenous Peoples, Local Communi- Sasaki, N. and F. Putz (2009), ‘Critical Need ties and Women. for New Defi nitions of “Forests” and “For- est Degradation” in Global Climate Agree- Karsenty, A., (2008), ‘The Architecture of ments’, Conservation Letters, Vol. xx, pp.1-7. Proposed REDD Schemes after Bali: Facing Critical Choices’, Département Environne- ments et Societés, Montpellier.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 53

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 53 09-11-05 11.18.00 Green capitalism and the climate: It’s economic growth, stupid!

Tadzio Mueller and Alexis Passadakis

‘For things to remain the same, Tadzio Mueller lives everything must change’ in Berlin, where he is Sicilian aristocrat Tancredi, active in the emerging from the The Leopard climate justice move- ment. Having escaped ‘The Chinese use the same sign for the clutches of (aca- “crisis” as they do for “opportunity”’. demic) wage labour, ‘Yes, “Crisitunity”!’ he is currently writing a Dialogue between Lisa and report on ‘green capitalism’ for the Rosa Luxemburg Homer Simpson Foundation. He is also an editor of Turbulence-Ideas for Movement (www.turbulence.org.uk).

Alexis Passadakis Is green the new black? studied political sci- ence and global politi- Remember the days when ‘the ecology’ cal economy in Berlin seemed to stand in stark contrast to ‘the and Brighton. In recent economy’? When capital, labour and gov- years he has worked ernments stood side by side to see off the with diff erent NGOs challenge articulated by ‘mad’ environmen- and is currently a mem- talists; when to admit the reality and threat ber of Attac Germany’s coordinating council. He is of ‘climate change’ would place you far be- active in the emerging climate justice movement yond the realms of acceptable discourse; and and co-organised the fi rst German climate action when green parties were perceived as stand- camp in Hamburg in 2008. Alexis lives in Berlin. ing to the left of Social Democracy?

Alas, times and climes change. Not too long ago a small revolution took place in, of all places, conservative Germany. The local

54 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 54 09-11-05 11.18.00 version of the Financial Times, a newspaper an increasing number of fi nancial capitalists known around the world as the mouth- and industrialists? Our hypothesis is this: piece for the more enlightened, forward- viewed from the perspective of capital, as thinking fractions of transnational capital, well as a number of governments, what is for the fi rst time in the history of German interesting about a GND is not whether it journalism endorsed a party for the Euro- can, or cannot, solve the multiplicity of eco- pean parliamentary elections. Big deal, one logical crises we are currently facing – we might think, they probably endorsed the argue that this is, in the medium term, an market fundamentalists in the FDP, or else impossibility – but whether it can internalise they went for stability-über-alles by endors- these crises as an engine of growth and le- ing Chancellor Merkel. But not this time: ‘If gitimation, thus solving several other crisis you want to use your vote to support mean- tendencies currently affl icting global capi- ingful change, then this time you should talism. It is not, to be clear about this, an vote for the Green Party’. Why? Because the exercise in traditional ‘greenwashing’, but party is, they argue, a ‘market-friendly en- an attempt to kick off , at the end of the neo- gine of innovation’ that is pushing a Green liberal phase of capitalism, a new round of New Deal (GND) that they describe as a accumulation and mode of regulation. And ‘stimulus package for the ecological tech- the point about the ecological crises, or nologies of the future’ (FTD, 4 June 2009).1 ‘biocrisis’, is that it is neither solved nor ig- And lest anyone think this is a German pe- nored in a green capitalist regime, but rather culiarity, take it from the mouth of Tho- placed at the heart of its growth strategy. mas Friedman, neo-liberal par excellence re- cently turned ‘green’: ‘Making America the A world in crises: from the world’s greenest country is not a selfl ess act of charity or naïve moral indulgence. It is economic to the biocrisis now a core national security and economic The world is currently facing not just an interest’ (Friedman 2008: 23). economic crisis but a multiplicity of linked yet relatively autonomous crisis tendencies This of course raises the question of why all so severe that a number of indigenous peo- things green – green jobs, green growth, ples’ movements took the opportunity at even a Green New Deal – in short, why the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem to green capitalism has suddenly become so declare the current conjuncture a crisis of attractive, not just to the editorial team of the Western model of civilisation. To start, the Financial Times Deutschland and to Tho- there is the political crisis that has seen not mas Friedman, but to an increasingly broad only global but also national governance in- coalition of actors ranging from Achim stitutions – from the World Trade Organi- Steiner at the head of the United Nations zation (WTO), the International Monetary Environment Programme (UNEP), to Ban Fund (IMF), to national parliaments, par- ki-Moon and Al Gore, Barack Obama and ties and institutionalised class compromises green parties all around Europe, as well as – haemorrhage legitimacy and public sup- port since at least the end of the 1990s. This loss of legitimacy was briefl y countered by 1 All translations into English by the authors.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 55

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 55 09-11-05 11.18.00 the Global War on Terror, but this was at Crisitunity? New Deal, best a strategy of domination in the face of a antagonism and green capitalism breakdown of neo-liberal hegemony, which ended up undermining the stability of the Of all the crises named above, there is some- system more than it maintained it. Second, thing special about the last, the biocrisis. Far there is the global economic crisis, the result from threatening to destroy capitalism, it not ‘merely’ of the collapse of the fi nancial in fact contains the promise of solving all sector, but of deeper causes such as a struc- the other major crises in one fell swoop. tural lack of what Keynes would have called Recall that in a capitalist economy, crises ‘eff ective demand’ arising from decades of are not necessarily negative. The Austrian successful neo-liberal class struggle from economist Schumpeter thought of crises as above; and of the absence of a sustainable unleashing the force of capital’s ‘creative de- engine of growth (Stern 2008), as a result struction’, a kind of radical diet that would of which more and more profi ts had to be purge the unproductive and the unprofi table made within ever shorter-lived bubbles. and make way, after running its course, for a Third (in this non-exhaustive list), there is leaner and meaner economy to emerge at the the energy crisis: supplies of fossil fuels, on other end. More importantly, nor is antago- which the global economy has been based nism necessarily a problem – it is, in fact, for some 250 years, are less and less able to precisely what is at the core of capitalism’s match demand, which will, in the medium dynamism, of its infamous ability to profane term, lead to drastic increases in energy all that is holy and melt all that is solid into prices and escalating confl icts over ‘energy air. The core of the Fordist-Keynesian New security’. Deal, which contributed signifi cantly to the at least temporary resolution of the Great And fi nally there are the multiple ecological Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, lay in the crises that are currently affl icting the globe in fact that the antagonism between capital and diff erent ways. While the most discursively labour was neither solved nor ignored, but visible of these is no doubt the climate cri- internalised as the driving force of capitalist sis, we are at the same time facing a drastic development. reduction in biodiversity; desertifi cation; a fresh-water crisis; overfi shing; the destruc- The economic situation that prevailed dur- tion of forests, and several more: together, ing the ‘Roaring ‘20s’ in the US was in many they constitute a biocrisis, a crisis of human life ways not dissimilar to the situation we faced (bios) on this planet. While each of these has until recently: high corporate profi ts, a high its relatively autonomous immediate causes, degree of fi nancialisation, a signifi cant ex- in the fi nal analysis they are all the result of pansion of production as a result of increases an antagonism between the requirements of in productivity. However, since wages were human survival in stable eco-social systems stagnating as a result of an ‘excess supply’ of and the requirements of capital accumula- labour (and in spite of increasing unionisa- tion – or, more succinctly, between capital’s tion in the industrial workforce), at the end need for infi nite growth and our collective of the 1920s a crisis of overproduction/un- survival on a fi nite planet. derconsumption hit – then, as now, there

56 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 56 09-11-05 11.18.00 was not enough eff ective demand in the off ers governments and some advanced frac- system (Rupert 1995: 79-81; Negri 1988). tions of capital the chance to at least tem- porarily manage the abovementioned crises. Keynes’s often cited ‘genius’ – most recent- Examples in the fi eld of politics range from ly by the Green New Deal Group (2008: the way the G-8, led by the German gov- 12) – simply lay in recognising the systemic ernment, outfl anked protest movements at relevance of an arrangement that was not their summit in 2007 in Heiligendamm by technocratically imposed from the top, but talking about climate change, thus avoid- rather emerged as the result of a multiplic- ing the delegitimising strategy of the move- ity of often militant workers’ struggles and ments, and in fact managing to relegitimise of the initially mostly defensive reactions of themselves; to the World Bank’s attempts to capitals and the US government under FDR present itself as a ‘green bank’ (Young 2000); (both acting under the impression of the all the way to the military’s use of climate constant imagined threat of a Soviet-type change to push its agenda of securitisation revolution). As increasingly well-organised and expansion (Wagner 2008). Economi- workers put upward pressure on wages in cally, beyond the rather measly ‘green’ com- certain key companies – for instance, at the ponents of recent recovery programmes, the Ford Motor Company – these industrialists Financial Times (24 September 2009) as usual in turn put pressure on the government to makes the case most convincingly: generalise these high wage deals across the economy, lest they suff er a competitive dis- If an industrial revolution to produce advantage. Almost miraculously, the results energy with much lower carbon emis- of this were that a) the high wages led to an sions gathers momentum in Copenha- increase in purchasing power that allowed gen in December, there will be fortunes for the absorption of surplus production; b) to be made…The scale of the task is vast. the class antagonism, managed by the trade Limiting carbon dioxide emissions to unions that were increasingly integrated into the levels scientists suggest would keep the emerging ‘Fordist’ mode of regulation, global warming to no more than about was domesticated; and c) high wages became 2°C would mean building nuclear power the driving force of capitalist development as stations, wind farms and solar panels at they forced companies to become ever more rates never seen before. effi cient in order to maintain their profi t margins. Thus began what would later be Capitalism and the climate: seen as the ‘golden age of capitalism’. it’s economic growth, stupid! What the class antagonism was 80 years ago, It is therefore quite conceivable, though at the biocrisis is today, itself a product of an this point far from certain, that some kind equally indissoluble antagonism – between of green capitalist project (such as the GND) capital’s limitless drive for accumulation and might indeed be able to temporarily solve our survival on a fi nite planet. The biocrisis, the economic and other crises. But what it suitably internalised in the economic and certainly will not be able to do is to solve regulatory machinery of a green capitalism, the biocrisis – for it is at heart a project of

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 57

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 57 09-11-05 11.18.00 capitalist renovation, which needs must Of course, some might now respond that perpetuate capitalism’s dynamics, of which this argument, while possibly correct at Marx wrote, long before the advent of the a very general level of abstraction (in the neo-liberal project that the Green New infamous Marxist ‘last instance’ – the one Deal Group falsely sees as having caused that never comes to pass), ignores some very the climate crisis (GNDG 2008: 2): ‘Accu- concrete, positive steps that have been tak- mulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and the en in the environmental modernisation of prophets’ (Marx 1971: 621). Capital needs, capitalism, which have gone some way to- or is, accumulation, and 200 years of actual- wards addressing some concrete needs and ly existing capital accumulation has hitherto urgencies – for example, concerning climate always destroyed the environment. change. International climate negotiations at the United Nations Framework Con- Why is that? Because money only becomes vention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), capital (rather than the coins and bits of paper however, have precious little to do with the we have in our pockets to buy stuff in or- climate, and everything to do with hag- der to satisfy a concrete want, such as hun- gling over percentage points of economic ger) when it is invested in the production of growth. Let us be quite clear on what glo- goods that are then sold in order to achieve a bal climate change policies have achieved return on the initially invested capital. Or in so far. First, ecologically: since the signing short: money – production – more money. of the Kyoto Protocol, not only have total This process involves a whole range of in- global greenhouse gas emissions increased, puts and requirements, from labour to raw so, too, has their rate of increase.2 In addi- materials, from machines to energy. And tion, a conference held in Copenhagen in historically, although the relative resource March 2009 agreed that the pace of global intensity of capitalist production might have warming was accelerating more rapidly than decreased (that is, the same product can now hitherto predicted in the Intergovernmental be made with fewer inputs of raw materials), Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) worst- in absolute terms, capitalist production has case scenarios (Guardian, 12 March 2009). If always required more and more and more progressive supporters of the protocol now inputs – wild-eyed dreams of a capitalist uto- deploy the counterfactual argument that, pia of ‘immaterial’ growth based on services without the treaty, things would have been and the ‘digital revolution’ notwithstanding even worse, then this only reveals their utter (Guardian, 4 May 2009). Just as the antago- strategic despair. We do not need counter- nism between labour and capital cannot be factual arguments, but real and just emis- solved within a capitalist framework – it is, sions reductions! after all, the very constituent feature of the capitalist mode of production – the antago- Second, politically: rather than address the nism between capital and life in relatively full range of activities that negatively impact stable eco-social systems cannot be solved, the climate – say, trade, agriculture and most because there is a necessary contradiction between the infi nite accumulation of capi- tal, and life on a fi nite planet. 2 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11 /061130190831.htm

58 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 58 09-11-05 11.18.00 fundamentally, the ‘fossilistic’ industrial sys- almost measly US$ 100 billion to US$ 2,000 tem – the UNFCCC maintains and rein- billion by the end of this decade. Notwith- forces the illegitimate compartmentalisation standing the uselessness of economic fore- of ecological concerns into a separate and casting, particularly in a recession, that is a toothless regulatory regime, thus insulating lot of potential investment of dubious eco- other institutions such as the WTO from logical but of defi nite economic value. scrutiny and critique. In fact, the WTO’s free trade policies, which usually lead to an There have, however, been two processes in expansion of ecologically and socially de- the last 30 years that have generated ecologi- structive industrial agriculture and increase cally signifi cant emissions reductions. Rath- the volume of international trade, have er than government intervention or green signifi cantly more negative impacts on the modernisation, these have been economic climate than the UNFCCC’s policies have crises, that is, drastic reductions in econom- positive ones. To date, the UNFCCC’s po- ic growth. First, this occurred during the litical eff ect appears to be one of legitimating breakdown of the growth-oriented econo- a destructive and unjust economic and reg- mies of the Eastern bloc, where a 40 per cent ulatory system by channelling the attention reduction in Soviet GDP coincided with a of potentially critical environmental groups roughly 40 per cent reduction in emissions into meaningless negotiations; and project- (Harrison 2001: 3; Smith 2007: 22). Second, ing the impression that ‘something is being during the current global economic crisis: done’ about climate change, thus blunting citing a report by the International Energy the potential for more widespread, mass Agency (IEA), the Financial Times (21 Sep-

movements for climate justice to emerge. tember 2009) writes that ‘CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels had undergone “a Third, economically, which is where things signifi cant decline” this year – further than get interesting. In very short: without the in any year in the last 40…Falling industrial UNFCCC, the idea of emissions trading output is largely responsible for the plunge

would almost certainly not have become in CO2’. Of course, this is not meant to sug- global ‘best practice’ in offi cial climate poli- gest that an uncontrolled breakdown in the tics as quickly, or as universally (recall that global economy, with all the social devas- the EU was initially opposed to emissions tation this would wreak, is currently desir- trading, but was convinced to accept it by a able. But it does point to the need for a col- man who would later receive a Nobel Prize lectively managed, just process of degrowth for a slideshow). But given its relative lack of the global economy; of, particularly in of ecological utility, why has the system be- the global North, shrinking our overdevel- come so attractive to so many players? Quite oped economies. simply because it off ers a brilliant (if partial) short- and medium-term fi x for the prob- Open ends lem of over-accumulated fi nancial capital: the ‘ecological’ consulting fi rm Point Car- Where to go from here? The call for ‘de- bon calculates that the global market for growth’, for the want of a better word, has emissions rights will grow from its current some unpleasant undertones. On the one

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 59

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 59 09-11-05 11.18.00 hand, there are its political shortcomings: cause capital that does not grow ceases to how would a strategy that aims to shrink be capital), many are likely to ask whether the economy gain the support of trade un- degrowth does not simply mean more crisis, ions, which by and large remain wedded to more austerity – and even more upward re- the Fordist growth compromise (since they distribution of wealth and power. are unable to fi ght for more, what is there for them to distribute but the benefi ts of To be sure, there will not be easy answers to growth?)? How do we start leaving fossil fuels these questions. Clearly, the intellectual task in the ground if the miners sitting on top of is to create convincing concepts for a glo- them are, with good cause, fi ghting for their bal economy that does not rely on constant livelihoods by trying to extend coal min- growth – in other words, for a post-capital- ing and supporting the myth of ‘clean coal’ ist macroeconomics, if the slight misnomer (as happened in the British climate camp in be allowed (compare, Sustainable Develop- 2008)? On the other hand, there is the fear, ment Commission 2009). But, unsurpris- especially when articulating a critique of ingly, writing papers will not be enough. growth from a position in the global North, Whether in regard to the question of North that this ends up resurrecting Malthusian and South, or that of ‘environmentalism’ discourses of ‘overpopulation’, where – gen- and workers’ rights, the directions in which erally – ‘post-reproductive wealthy white we will have to look can only emerge from men’ lecture ‘the poor’ on how they should collective struggle, because it is in strug- have fewer children (Guardian, 29 September gling together that we become capable of 2009). Finally, there is the small matter that recognising each other and internalising we are currently living through an enforced each other’s interests. As another movement period of degrowth (the world economic in another time once put it, caminamos pre- crisis), and because in a capitalist economy guntando. this necessarily takes the form of a crisis (be-

60 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 60 09-11-05 11.18.00 Literature

Green New Deal Group (2008), A New Smith, K. (2007), ‘Climate Change and Green Deal. London: nef. http://www.new- Carbon Trading‘, Critical Currents, H. 1. economics.org/NEF070625/NEF_Regis- http://www.dhf.uu.se/critical_currents_ tration070625add.aspx?returnurl=/gen/upl no1.html oads/2ajogu45c1id4w55tofmpy55200720081 72656.pdf Stern, N. (2 December 2008), ‘Upside of a Downturn’, www.ft.com/climatechang- Harrison, M. (2001), Are Command eseries Economies Unstable? Why Did the So- viet Economy Collapse? Warwick: War- Sustainable Development Commission, wick Economic Research Papers. http:// 2009: Prosperity Without Growth? The Transi- www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/ tion Towards a Sustainable Economy. London: research/workingpapers/publications/ Sustainable Development Commission. twerp604.pdf http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pub- lications/downloads/prosperity_without_ Marx, Karl (1971 [1867]), Das Kapital – growth_report.pdf Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie. Erster Band. Berlin: Dietz Verlag. Wagner, J. (2008), ‘Die Versicherheitlic- hung des Klimawandels – Wie Brüssel die Negri, T. (1988), Revolution Retrieved: Erderwärmung für die Militarisierung der Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Europäischen Union instrumentalisiert’, Crisis and New Social Subjects 1967-83. Lon- Ausdruck – IMI Magazin. don: Red Notes Archive. http://www.imi-online.de/download/ IMI-Analyse2008-016.pdf Rupert, M. (1995), Producing Hegemony. The Politics of Mass Production and American Young, Zoe (2002), A New Green Order? Global Power. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- The World Bank and the Politics of the Global versity Press. Environment Facility. London: Pluto.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 61

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 61 09-11-05 11.18.00 Fixing the world’s climate ‘foodprint’

Anne Laure Constantin

In the framework of the global climate talks, the international community is struggling to identify agriculture’s potential for help- ing to cool the climate. The discussions are complicated by scientifi c uncertainties that hamper decision-making.

One thing is certain and unanimously rec- ognised: agricultural production is vulner- able to climate change. Extreme weather events, as well as changes in average temper- atures and precipitation levels, are aff ecting Anne Laure Constantin joined production capacities. A series of droughts the Geneva offi ce of the Institute for in a few key grain-producing regions in Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in July 2006-07 contributed to the panic that led to 2006. Anne Laure came to IATP from the food price crisis last year. More than 1 the French Committee for International billion people are suff ering from hunger in Solidarity, where she advocated on 2009, and the impact of climate change on international agriculture and trade issues. food security is set to become more serious She has a Master’s degree in international in the coming decades. relations from the Sorbonne in France.

Agriculture also contributes to climate change, although the extent needs to be better understood. According to the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), agriculture’s contribution to glo- bal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is ap- proximately 12 per cent – the emissions are mainly methane and nitrous oxide. Figure 1 shows the main sources of emissions.

62 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 62 09-11-05 11.18.01 11  7  Rice production Manure (CH4) (CH4 + N2O)

12  Biomass burning (CH4 + N2O)

38  Soil emissions (CH4 + N2O)

32  Enteric fermentation (CH4)

Figure 1: Main sources of GHG emissions in the agricultural sector (ITC - FiBL 2007, based on IPCC fi gures)

According to Greenpeace International, to climate change – is critical. The conver- if land use, transportation, packaging and gence of multiple crises – a global economic processing of agricultural products are in- recession, global warming, hunger and the cluded in the calculations, agriculture’s con- depletion of natural resources, etc. – reinforc- tribution to global greenhouse gas emissions es the need to identify integrated solutions. is somewhere between 16 and 30 per cent.1 This proportion grows if we take a food The temptation of quick fi xes system-wide approach (including distribu- tion, consumption and disposal). Under the There is a strong temptation to hope that IPCC’s classifi cations, these other emissions ‘miracle solutions’ will reverse climate are accounted for by other sectors such as change. In the case of agriculture, techni- forestry, transport and energy. cal fi xes and market-based solutions attract most of the attention, particularly in the In light of the signifi cant contribution our framework of the initial discussions at the food systems make to climate change and the United Nations Framework Convention on urgent need to curb global greenhouse gas Climate Change (UNFCCC). emissions, addressing our climate ‘foodprint’ – that is, the contribution of food production Genetic manipulations applied to plants and animals are described as promising ways to 1 Bellarby et al. (2008), http://www.greenpeace.org/ reduce emissions from agriculture. In partic- international/press/reports/cool-farming-full-re- ular, the livestock industry hopes that high- port (accessed 29 May 2009)

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 63

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 63 09-11-05 11.18.01 tech breeding techniques or the use of vac- from agriculture at the UNFCCC. Few cines will help curb methane emissions from other countries have clear positions in re- cows and sheep – those represent about one- lation to the sector, despite its importance third of all agricultural emissions according for food security, rural livelihoods and the to the IPCC. New Zealand is leading an economic and ecological wellbeing of many ambitious international research network on of the world’s countries. As a result, most of this topic called LEARN.2 The seed industry, the options on the table seem only to take Monsanto in the lead, is promoting drought- us further down the very same energy-in- and heat-resistant crops. Climate change tensive path that created the current climate mitigation and adaptation are becoming new and food crises. It is time for a real paradigm arguments in the quest for profi ts by transna- shift to create low input, sustainable and re- tional agribusiness companies. silient food systems around the world.

A newly formed international industry alli- Real solutions ance – the International Biochar Initiative – is actively promoting the use of ‘Biochar’ as a Build on agriculture’s multifunctionality way to maximise the potential of soil carbon sequestration, where 89 per cent of agricul- Absent from current international climate ture’s mitigation potential lies, according to discussions is an essential aspect of agri- the IPCC. Biochar is a process consisting of culture’s role in ‘cooling the earth’, multi- the combustion of biomass, producing char- functionality. The International Assessment coal that is then buried in the soil. Support- of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and ers claim biochar could help turn unused Technology for Development (IAASTD) – a land into gigantic carbon sinks. groundbreaking international and multidis- ciplinary report endorsed by 58 governments Finally, New Zealand supports the design in 2008 3 – stressed that ‘multifunctionality of an ‘optimal global production pattern for recognises the inescapable interconnected- agriculture’. In other words, let those coun- ness of agriculture’s diff erent roles and func- tries whose agricultural production is most tions’. Not only does agriculture provide effi cient in climate terms feed the world. the food we all need to live an active and This might be tempting in theory – in real- healthy life, it is also a source of livelihood ity though, the recent food price hike re- for about 2.6 billion people, an engine for minded everyone that food security is about economic development, a part of the cul- access to food, not availability. New Zea- ture of many peoples and an integral part land’s proposed focus on trade liberalisation of environmental management. Because the to solve the climate crisis would come at the climate negotiations fail to take these diff er- expense of food security. ent dimensions into account in an integrat- ed manner, the technical or market-based At the time of writing, New Zealand is de solutions currently under consideration are facto leading the discussions on mitigation bound to fail.

2 http://www.livestockemissions.net/ 3 http://www.agassessment.org/

64 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 64 09-11-05 11.18.01 Despite its importance, the climate cri- ger are also among those most at risk from sis cannot be considered in isolation from climate change’.5 In the wake of the global other global crises such as the global food food price crisis, there is increasing recogni- security crisis. In this context, it would be tion that small-scale farmers and agroeco- misleading to adopt an approach focused on logical production methods need to play a reducing greenhouse gas emissions without central role in solving the global hunger and considering other social, economic or en- environmental crises.6 IAASTD pointed to vironmental aspects. Additionally, because the relevance of indigenous and traditional agriculture is both a contributor to and a knowledge in building a climate-friendly victim of climate change, we need to focus agriculture system. The UN Environ- on solutions that contribute to mitigation as mental Programme (UNEP) and the UN well as adaptation – not one or the other. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) point to the failure of ‘the ‘The way the world grows its food will great technological progress of the past half have to change radically’ – IAASTD century’ in reducing hunger in developing There are a number of ways to cut emissions countries.7 Finally, the UN’s Comprehen- from agriculture. Out of the list of technical sive Framework for Action on the 2008 food options outlined by the IPCC,4 some pro- crisis emphasised the specifi c role of small- vide numerous co-benefi ts for agriculture’s holder farmers in building resilient food sys- other functions. Rather than going through tems and eradicating poverty. the technical options, we present a few prin- ciples to guide a profound reform of food For all these reasons, small farmers and in- systems that takes into account the need to digenous g roups need to be central in discus- curb our climate ‘foodprint’ and build resil- sions about agricultural mitigation strategies ient food and farm systems. and policies. Via Campesina, an internation- al network comprised of small farmers’ or- • Adopt a rights-based approach to ganisations, is raising serious concerns about agriculture and climate policies the direction of the current climate talks: its Human rights enshrine the principles of call to mobilisation for Copenhagen is enti- participation, accountability and transpar- tled ‘Stop! The UNFCCC is going off the ency. Democratic decision-making around rails!’ Ignoring these concerns would be un- food and climate policies is a challenge but wise and would compromise the likelihood also a fundamental precondition to achiev- of an eff ective outcome. ing sustainable solutions. • Prioritise soil fertility, low-input farming systems A rights-based approach calls for action fo- cused on the needs of the most vulnerable. Nitrous oxide emissions from soils represent As Germanwatch and Brot für die Welt put about 38 per cent of emissions from agri- it, ‘it is generally likely that those already

suff ering from undernourishment and hun- 5 Bals et al. (2008). 6 See, for instance, the UN’s Comprehensive Framework for Action (2008) or UNEP-UNCTAD (2008). 4 For that, see Smith et al. (2007). 7 UNEP-UNCTAD (2008).

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 65

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 65 09-11-05 11.18.01 culture. The excessive use of agrochemical • Move away from monoculture, towards products, particularly synthetic fertilisers, diversifi ed production systems is a major contributor. Greenpeace stress- es that 50 per cent of the nitrogen used in Over the past three decades, the develop- farming is lost to the environment8 – there ment of commercial agriculture around the is a critical need to get rid of this overuse. world has favoured large, specialised farms Chemicals are also responsible for land deg- organised around a monoculture. The de- radation and water pollution. Reducing the velopment of soy cultivation is a particularly quantities used, or using organic fertilisers illustrative case: the crop now occupies about where possible, would have multiple ben- half the agricultural land in Argentina, Bo- efi ts: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, livia, Brazil and Paraguay. Soy is mostly used but also restoring water quality or reducing as animal feed in livestock operations. production costs for farmers. Agricultural policies – particularly in Annex I countries, There are numerous reasons why the viabil- China and India – need to move away from ity of such a model is questioned. In terms subsidising harmful fertiliser-use towards of climate policy, these farms are of particu- incentives for low-input farming systems. lar concern because of the energy they re- quire (machinery, fuel, chemical fertilisers) In many developing countries, productiv- and because of their vulnerability to climate ity will need to increase signifi cantly in the shocks. coming decades to meet the food needs of a growing population without increasing the In contrast, diversifi ed systems provide the demand for new productive land that puts opportunity to develop synergies between pressure on forests – conversion of forest into diff erent types of production (for example,

agricultural land is a major source of CO2 crop rotations, use of animal waste to ferti- emissions. Restoring or maintaining soil lise crop production) and increase the farm’s fertility can contribute to this eff ort. More resilience in the face of climate shocks. attention needs to be paid to numerous stud- ies which have shown that sustainable agri- • Address livestock’s long shadow culture, including organic agriculture, has The FAO’s groundbreaking report Live- signifi cant potential to increase yields.9 Or- stock’s Long Shadow, released in 2006, traced ganic agriculture also allows an increase in all emissions related to meat production: the amount of carbon sequestered in soils, as from deforestation to the use of fossil fuel in do agroforestry systems and the use of cover production and transport of processed and crops, for instance. Methods of production refrigerated animal products, to the produc- which protect the carbon that is stored in tion of feed, to land degradation in grazing soils need to be given priority, particularly areas, etc. It concludes that ‘overall, livestock since they also provide benefi ts for produc- activities contribute an estimated 18 percent tivity by enhancing soil fertility. to total anthropogenic GHG emissions’. In a recent New York Times editorial, Nicholas D. Kristof stressed that ‘[a]n industrial farm 8 Bellarby et al. (2008). with 5,000 hogs produces as much waste as a 9 UNEP-UNCTAD (2008).

66 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 66 09-11-05 11.18.01 town with 20,000 people’.10 Methane emis- US, the retail sector has loss rates of about sions from liquid slurry are only one aspect 26 per cent. This represents an enormous of this contribution to environmental con- amount of wasted energy and emissions as tamination. well. The multiple crises we face today call for a fundamental reorganisation of the way The FAO report presents a series of options food chains are organised. Climate-related for mitigation that need to be considered concerns will need to be central in this urgently. It is also clear that serious recon- reorganisation, without underestimating sideration of meat-based diets that prevail in other benefi ts for consumers and producers Western countries, and are growing in de- associated with a decrease in the number of veloping countries, is much needed. Dr Ra- intermediaries. jendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC, himself launched this call: ‘Please, eat less meat: it’s a Conclusions: next steps very carbon intensive commodity!’ A shift towards practices that diversify mar- • Rethink the organisation of ketable products, close waste loops and re- thefood chain, and cut waste duce the need for external energy and fossil Measuring the climate impacts of the post- fuel inputs will help mitigate the climate production stages of the food chain (trans- problem, reduce energy use and pollution portation, refrigeration, cooking) poses and create more adaptive food and agricul- challenges. The emergence of the ‘food tural systems. This shift is ambitious and miles’ concept – to identify emissions asso- requires the development of strong agri- ciated with the air-freight of fresh products culture and food policies, with incentives – has triggered considerable controversy, for climate-friendly practices and sanctions emphasising the need for further research against harmful practices. To pave the way and discussion of the issues. for this shift, below are a few recommenda- tions for more immediate measures. In a recent report,11 the UNEP emphasises that ‘[c]hanging the ways in which food is a. An agenda for agriculture research produced, handled and disposed of across Too much uncertainty still exists about the the globe – from farm to store and from interactions between agriculture and cli- fridge to landfi ll – can both feed the world’s mate change – more research is certainly rising population and help the environmen- needed to overcome this gap. However, tal services that are the foundation of agri- the focus of the research matters. Follow- cultural productivity in the fi rst place’. Over ing the assessment of the IAASTD, gov- half the food produced globally today is lost, ernments need to recognise both that the wasted or discarded as a result of ineffi ciency multifunctionality of agriculture calls for in the human-managed food chain. In the multidisciplinary approaches to the sector, and that local, indigenous knowledge must

10 New York Times (2008), ‘Obama’s “secretary of be respected and more highly valued than it food”?’, 11 December. has been to date. 11 UNEP, The Environmental Food Crises: Environment’s Role in Averting Future Food Crises (2009).

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 67

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 67 09-11-05 11.18.01 Research needs to focus on how to make c. Refocus international climate negotiations agroecological methods more productive There is no getting around the fact that cli- and on how to disseminate better what we mate change is a global problem. It requires already know these methods can achieve. In global solutions and fair systems to support a recent report on organic agriculture and those who are most at risk (generally those climate change, the International Trade least responsible for the problem). Multilat- Centre stresses, ‘as 99 percent of the world’s eral negotiations are thus critical. public and private research funds have fo- cused on optimizing conventional and inte- But existing proposals and the dynamics of grated food and farming systems during the the negotiations at the UNFCCC fall far last decades, major progress and solutions short of the challenge and the emergency. can be expected as a result of agro-ecolog- The global climate talks need to be refo- ical and animal welfare research activities’.12 cused. First of all, governments must ensure Substantial funding will be needed to sup- the meaningful participation of aff ected port this new research agenda. groups, such as farmers’ organisations, in- digenous peoples and environmentalists. At b. Raise awareness and mobilise public opinion the same time, industry’s activism in pro- ‘History shows that most struggles for great moting quick fi xes needs to be controlled. change – such as the abolition of slavery or The private sector’s contribution is vital, the emancipation of women – started not as not least their capacity to innovate and dis- the initiative of states but as the endeavour of seminate new technologies. There must be ordinary people.’ These words of Amnesty criteria in place for any public support for International Secretary General Irene Khan such initiatives, however, to ensure a desir- are particularly relevant to the climate chal- able outcome beyond quick profi ts for the lenge. There are many cases where ordinary fi rms involved. people are ahead of their governments in implementing climate-friendly practices, in The push to include agriculture as a specifi c particular in their consumption habits. Food sector in the framework of the negotiations is a sector where more outreach and dissem- strictly so that it can benefi t from carbon ination eff ort is needed so that consumers credits is troubling. Without even going can make choices that will ultimately put into the reforms that would be needed to pressure on policies. But more can and needs make the Clean Development Mechanism to be done to raise public awareness about work for sustainable agriculture, it is clear the relationship between their food and the that carbon prices would crash under the climate. A good mix of ambitious leadership associated explosion of credits. The recent and grassroots mobilisation will be neces- fi nancial crisis should be enough of a warn- sary to move us in the right direction. ing against the risks of excessive speculation on carbon markets. More research, scientifi c evidence and pilot projects are needed be- fore making decisions that could overhaul the global landscape of agriculture.

12 ITC-FiBL (2007).

68 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 68 09-11-05 11.18.01 Finally, UNFCC Annex I countries need to confront their historic responsibility, par- ticularly in shaping existing food systems. They need to contribute proportionately to the identifi cation and implementation of comprehensive solutions. This can be done through policy reforms, research and more support to developing countries to build climate-friendly food systems.

Literature

Actionaid International (2005), Power International Trade Centre (ITC)- Forsc- Hungry: Six Reasons to Regulate Global Food hungsinstitut für biologische Landbau Corporations. (FiBL) (2007), Organic Agriculture and Cli- mate Change. Bals, C., S. Harmeling, and M. Windfuhr (2008), Climate Change, Food Security and Li-Ching, L. (2008), Sustainable Agricul- the Right to Adequate Food. Stuttgart: Brot ture: Meeting Food Security Needs, Addressing für die Welt, Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe, Climate Challenges. Penang: Third World Germanwatch. Network (TWN).

Bellarby J., B. Foereid, A. Hastings, and Smith, P., D. Martino, Z. Cai, D. Gwary, P. Smith (2008), Cool Farming: Climate H. Janzen, P. Kumar, B. McCarl, S. Ogle, Impacts of Agriculture and Mitigation Potential. F. O’Mara, C. Rice, B. Scholes, and O. Amsterdam: Greenpeace International. Sirotenko (2007), Agriculture in Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Working Group Edwards J., J. Kleinschmit, and H. Schoon- Contribution. IPCC. over (2009), Identifying our Climate ‘Food- print’ – Assessing and Reducing the Global UNEP-UNCTAD (2008), Organic Agri- Warming Impacts of Food and Agriculture in the culture and Food Security in Africa, 2008. U.S. Minneapolis: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. UN Food and Agriculture Organization (2006), Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmen- Ernsting, A., and R. Smolker (2009), Bio- tal Issues and Options. char for Climate Change Mitigation: Facts of Fiction? UN Food and Agriculture Organization (2008), Climate Change and Food Security: A IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Framework Document. Institute) (2009), Agriculture and Climate Change: An Agenda for Negotiations in Varghese S. (2009), Integrated Solutions to the Wa- Copenhagen. ter, Agriculture and Climate Crises. Minneapolis: Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 69

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 69 09-11-05 11.18.01 The right to the city – energy and climate change

Mike Hodson and Simon Marvin

Introduction Cities are critical sites in our understanding Mike Hodson is of both energy and climate change. They research fellow at the are often simultaneously represented as be- SURF Centre in the ing a signifi cant part of the ‘cause’ of climate United Kingdom. change, since urban areas and their inhab- His research interests itants may be responsible for up to 75 per focus on city-regional cent of global human energy consumption transitions to low- and carbon emissions; as foremost among carbon economies, the ‘victims’ of climate change, particularly the ways in which this the vulnerable coastal megacities of the glo- may or may not happen and understandings of bal South; and, as key sites of ‘innovative the lessons to be learned from such processes. responses’, such as through the actions of the representatives of large cities in the C40 Simon Marvin is network.1 All cities face the critical chal- professor at and co- lenge of how to ensure they can guarantee director of SURF. He is an their long-term ecological and economic expert on the changing survival in a context of human-made global relations between ecological change – referred to as the An- neighbourhoods, cities, thropocene period (see below) – that implies regions and infrastructure greater uncertainty about climate change networks in a period and the availability of critical resources such of resource constraint, as food, water and energy (see Dalby 2007). institutional restructuring and climate change.

1 The C40 was formed in 2005 and is a group of the ‘world’s largest cities committed to tackling climate change (because) cities and urban areas consume 75 per cent of the world’s energy and produce up to 75 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions’‚ see http:// www.c40cities.org/

70 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 70 09-11-05 11.18.01 Strategically, we are interested in trying to one of the most precious yet most neglect- understand whether emerging ecological and ed of our human rights. (p.23) resource constraints lead to particular types of response and to what extent these responses Critically, the questions we want to ask are: imply quite diff erent cities (Hodson and Mar- What does urban energy security mean? vin 2009). In what follows we present two Which social interests are dominating the diff erent pathways that are currently being search for urban energy security, which so- discussed. The question is: Is the response to cial interests are excluded and what conse- environmental crises and resource constraints quences does this have? based on the desire to develop relative auton- omy for a city, as it seeks to withdraw from Cities as planetary terraciders/terraformers reliance on national and international infra- structure to by-pass uncertain and vulnerable – Urbanatura in the Anthropocene resources and develop its own local resources Cities are the material representation of to- and thereby create a form of bounded securi- day’s energy-intensive economies, where ty? For that response, eco-cities are the iconic carbon-based energy systems – oil, electric- examples. Or alternatively, are responses to ity and mobility systems – have made the constraint based on a wider concept of social huge agglomerations of cities and modern needs, the right to a minimum level of en- industrial systems possible. Urbanisation ergy service, and more collective ecological completely dominates the huge metalogisti- security that addresses the needs of all com- cal systems made up of resource fl ows, en- munities and attempts to build a concept of ergy, water, waste foods as well as fl ows of global security? Here, the idea of relocalisa- people and goods that make up the contem- tion movements is key. In this brief review porary world. The prefi x ‘meta’ helps us to we critically assess emerging responses and view the city as an active intermediary, as a the unsettling implications they have for the site of material transformation that antici- conception of our collective rights to the city. pates, modifi es and excretes the movement As David Harvey (2008) argues: of resources, materials and people

The question of what kind of city we want Cities are connected through intensive air- cannot be divorced from that of what kind line networks, logistical transportation sys- of social ties, relationship to nature, life- tems, enormous energy and water grids as styles, technologies and aesthetic values well as communication and ICT systems we desire. The right to the city is far more interconnecting markets, production and than the individual liberty to access urban consumption systems, people, organisations resources: it is a right to change ourselves and governments. Yet in the contempo- by changing the city. It is, moreover, a rary period there is a recognition that these common rather than an individual right industrialised systems – not all located in since this transformation inevitably de- cities, but certainly largely controlled by pends upon the exercise of a collective organisations located in large global cities – power to reshape the processes of urbani- have ecological eff ects that are beginning to zation. The freedom to make and remake change the global ecological context within our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue,

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 71

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 71 09-11-05 11.18.02 which cities attempt to ensure their contin- There is increasing recognition of the fact ued reproduction (Luke 2003). that the metalogistical systems that make the very notion of cities possible are actually re- Geologists at the University of Leicester have shaping global planetary ecologies through suggested that a new epoch has begun, which resource depletion, carbon production and they call the Anthropocene (see Zalasiewicz pollution. In turn, these eff ects themselves et al. 2008). It is proposed that this is the re- reshape the context within which contem- sult of human actions whose critical mark- porary cities then have to ensure their own ers include disturbances of the carbon cycle economic (and ecological) reproduction. and global temperature, ocean acidifi cation, It is possible to see that there are multiple changes to sediment erosion and deposition, ways in which cities can be represented in and species extinctions. This period coincides relation to climate change and resource clearly with the development of industrialisa- constraint, but that these need to be under- tion and the global growth in urbanisation stood through an existing system of uneven that resulted in an estimated 50 per cent of economic divisions of labour between and the world’s population living in urban areas within cities. by 2000. Indeed, ‘the cover of GSA Today in which this work appears makes the case While cities exist within a highly unifi ed rather strongly, showing the high-rise build- and integrated global space of capital fl ows, ings of Shanghai fading out into the distance. particular cities vary widely in their access It’s a stark reminder of how megacities like to ecological resources. Highly energy- this one are transforming the planet’.2 intensive urban environments in the US contrast with the cities of the global South, where millions do not have access to clean water, energy and basic telephones. The US has almost 5 per cent of the world’s popula- tion, but it generates about 25 per cent of greenhouse gases. Americans’ ability to tap into and control global ecosystems of fos- sil fuel means that US cities are able to be far more spatially expansive and destruc- tive than if they had to survive solely on the resources available in their national space. Clearly then, global cities are able to exert control over critical resources in competi- tion with residents and refugees in other less important and more ordinary cities.3

Cover of Geological Society of America. 3 As well as the diff erences between cities of the North and South, there are of course also signifi cant in- ternal diff erences within all cities in terms of levels of social access to critical resources such as energy, 2 See http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1701 water and a clean local environment.

72 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 72 09-11-05 11.18.02 Consequently, we would expect signifi cant security and access to energy sources under diff erences in the capability of cities to re- the changed ecological conditions of climate spond eff ectively to energy security and cli- change and resource constraint. mate change. Critically, which cities have the resources, knowledge and expertise, Urban energy security – Relocalisation social and institutional relationships, wider governance capacity to shape systemic and as divisible or collective security? managed (rather than project and piecemeal) Urban responses to the mentioned pressures change in the social and technical organisa- are being developed in two quite diff erent tion of their cities and infrastructure? An- ways. First, there is a set of responses to these thropocenic change creates a new urbanatura pressures focused on the development of – a much more unpredictable context for the ‘new-build’ eco-developments. The second longer-term development and reproduction set of responses focuses on more bottom- of cities marked by climate change, resource up community-based approaches around constraint, as well as energy, water and food relocalisation. Figure 2 compares these ap- security issues (see Luke 2008). Now, cities’ proaches. Let’s look at each of these in turn ability to ensure their longer-term economic in more detail. and material reproduction will be dependent on their ability to guarantee their ecological The fi rst focuses on new styles of develop- ment projects, sometimes called eco-cities

Figure 1: Urban Energy Security Compared

neo-liberal responses feature ‘alternative’ responses

Transcendence of limits Ecological constraints Work within limits

Commercial – banks, developers Community – NGOs, Social interests architects, utilities environmental groups, charities

Divisible Concept of security Collective

Productionist-scale economies Scale of solution Consumption – small local

Eco-urbanism – eco-cities, Type of build Retrofi tting – existing and new regions, blocks and towns

Product of bounded Consequences Mutual interdependencies security and by-pass

Dongtan (Shanghai), Exemplars Transitions Towns, Relocalisation Masdar (UAE)

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 73

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 73 09-11-05 11.18.05 but replicable to other scales – eco-regions, point because the city of Masdar, whose eco-blocks, eco-towns, eco-villages. These name translates as ‘the source’, will be responses have at their core the claim that off -limits to automobiles. Solar power they are able to transcend conventional plants in the surrounding sand, already notions of ecological constraint – climate in early construction, will provide elec- change and resource constraint – as they tricity for lighting and air-conditioning build ecological security by internally pro- and for desalinating ocean water. Wind ducing their own food, energy and other farms will contribute, along with eff orts critical resources. The 24 September 2008 to tap geothermal energy buried deep issue of Scientifi c American announced that underneath the earth. The municipal- ‘massive developments proposed for the ity, which will ultimately aim to be zero US, China and Abu Dhabi aim to reduce or carbon and zero waste, will boast a plant even eliminate the environmental cost of city to produce hydrogen as well as fuel from living’ (added emphasis, Biello 2008). Eco- the residents’ sewage, according to plan- blocks have been developed as a new type of ners Foster + Partners. Perhaps most im- urban ‘gated community’ development that portant for the desert city, all water will is ‘resource self-suffi cient (i.e. carbon neu- be recycled; even residents’ wastewater tral) in its operation (or close to it), and if it will be used to grow crops in enclosed, could replicate and spread throughout the self-sustaining farms that will further re- world, this would be a major force in revers- cycle their own water. (Biello 2008) ing global climate change’ (Fraker 2006). Common to these diff erent developments – Scientifi c American then goes on to look at promoted by diff erent sets of commercial, three examples of eco-city development: developer, architectural and engineering Treasure Island in San Francisco, Dongtan interests – is the notion of test beds, dem- in Shanghai and Masdar in the United Arab onstrations or experiments of what might Emirates. What all these cities seek to do is constitute new models of sustainable cities. to reduce their reliance on external resourc- Critically, it is not clear whether at these es of food, water and energy and extract scales it is possible to achieve their energy value from waste streams, although the ex- and ecological objectives, given the disap- tent to which this is possible varies between pointments with large multi-user buildings. developments. For example, Dongtan and But these developments are also designed Treasure Island are seeking to reduce ex- to be fi nancial as much as eco-technical ternal energy and water requirements by up projects. Masdar’s property developer was to half, whereas in the longer term Masdar quoted as saying: ‘We want Masdar city to aims to be carbon neutral. be profi table, not just sunk cost. If it is not profi table as a real-estate development, it is A sheikhdom whose wealth rests on not sustainable’ (added emphasis, quoted in black gold is building a city that will not Bullis 2009). There are, then, clearly com- rely on any of it. Subterranean electric mercial limits to the development of eco- cars – dubbed Personalized Rapid Tran- cities. As Gary Lawrence argued, the rea- sit – will ferry passengers from point to son that Dongtan did not aspire to carbon

74 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 74 09-11-05 11.18.05 neutrality was partly technological but also any case will be developed for elites in order because of the ‘need for the owner to make to help ensure their replicability. Third, they a profi t’ (quoted in Biello 2009). The inten- are strongly technocratic and productionist- tion is to develop new models of develop- oriented, and fi t logically with the claim ment whereby the developer can extract that, by incorporating clever eco-technics value from being an infrastructure provider within the design of cities, it is possible to by internalising and commodifying resource carry on reproducing cities largely without fl ows within the development. Ultimately, changing the organisation of society or the the objective is to turn the whole develop- economy. Given such issues, one wonders ment process, including the energy and in- about the relevance of new styles of urban- frastructure, into a single fi nancial product ism that are promoted for their ability to that is replicable in other contexts. remarkably transcend eco-limits yet at the same time do so in such a socially regressive In this sense, eco-urbanism may represent an and market-oriented way, where success is attempt to build privatised and bounded eco- reduced to their economic replicability. logical spaces that can anticipate and transcend ecological constraint and climate change for Our concern then is that eco-cities represent their users. Consequently, there are clearly one particular response to the problems of cli- limits involved in developing transcendent mate change, resource constraint and energy urbanism. While it may be possible to create security in a period of particular ecological contexts where it is commercially viable, this emergency and economic crisis. As such, we is likely to mean these are designed, as in the should see them as the purest attempt to cre- case of Masdar, ‘as a playground for the rich’ ate neo-liberalised environmental security, (Friend quoted in Bullis 2009). not at the scale of the whole city or even the planet, but in the form of a more bounded For the developers of these cities, it is criti- divisible security in order to try to guarantee cal to develop and test new models of ur- ecological security for elites. banism and then roll these out in other con- texts as a form of replicant eco-urbanism. But there are also other debates that include Yet these new models assume a number of wider sets of social interests and try to put key features that raise worrying issues about other social objectives on the urban policy the degree to which we can talk about fair agenda. These include the Transition Towns cities. First, they are being developed by a and Relocalisation movements being de- limited range of commercial interests that veloped as local social and behavioural re- explicitly seek to develop eco-cities as po- sponses in a number of urban contexts in the tentially replicable global fi nancial products UK and US. For example, there are now 28 that can be developed in any context and Transition Towns in the UK: transcend ecological limits. Second, their success is partly measured by the degree to A Transition Initiative is a community which they can be profi tably reproduced, that is unleashing its own latent collec- therefore reducing their replication to spe- tive genius to look Peak Oil and Climate cifi c market-based circumstances, which in Change squarely in the eye and to dis-

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 75

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 75 09-11-05 11.18.05 cover and implement ways to address this This implies a more critical view of our re- BIG question: ‘for all those aspects of life liance on energy and the resultant implica- that this community needs in order to tions. Evidently, there would be signifi cant sustain itself and thrive, how do we sig- benefi ts in looking further at such alterna- nifi cantly increase resilience (to mitigate tives and how they compare and contrast the eff ects of Peak Oil) and drastically with the strategies involved around eco- reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the cities. There would be value in contrasting eff ects of Climate Change)?’ The result- the diff erent logics in terms of the social in- ing coordinated range of projects across terests, the solutions developed, the balance all these areas of life leads to a collective- between productionist and demand solutions ly designed energy descent pathway.4 and the implications of such strategies. More widely, there would be benefi ts in consider- Such strategies seem to imply a more collec- ing how other constructions could be based tive approach to innovation around climate on concepts, such as mutual interdepend- change and resource constraints, one that is ence, relationality, trading and trade-off s, not solely oriented towards technical fi xes, fair shares and environmental justice. and a more socially and culturally driven ap- proach to new solutions and confi gurations. Conclusion Critically, these are designed in context and cut across all aspects of urban life. A key fo- There are a range of critical pressures to re- cus is on resource reduction rather than re- internalise energy and other infrastructure producing the productivist bias of commer- fl ows within the conception of urban devel- cial approaches. To take another example, a opment. A new set of eco-technics is seek- US network draws together over 172 urban ing to develop internalised metabolisms that post-carbon groups world-wide. What is are simultaneously an attempt to build eco- interesting about this network is that: logical security for the few and an attempt to create new mobile fi nancial products of The Relocalization strategy developed integrated urban development as a new op- in response to the environmental, social, portunity for capitalist reproduction. Our political and economic impacts of glo- argument is that the dominant logic of neo- bal over-reliance on cheap energy. Our liberal responses is the creation of ‘bounded’ dependence on cheap nonrenewable security in new ecological enclaves for pre- fossil fuel energy has produced climate mium users that ignore wider distributional change, the erosion of community, wars questions about uneven access to resource for oil-rich land and the instability of the politics. These are the ecologically secure global economic system.5 gated communities of the 21st century that seek to internalise ecological resources and build strategic protection from climate change and wider resource constraints.

4 http://www.transitiontowns.org/ (accessed 29 January 2008). 5 http://relocalize.net/about/relocalization (accessed 29 January 2008).

76 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 76 09-11-05 11.18.05 Consequently, at the moment markets for back on the urban agenda. Movements such new eco-developments are likely to exist as green jobs, Transitions Towns and Re- only in premium sites – that is, world cities localisation are trying to develop an alter- – where the premium product that is pro- native discourse about greater self-reliance. duced is largely irrelevant to the claims of Part of this discourse are questions of social reproducibility made by its proponents. It control – technology for whom by whom is likely that eco-funding through bailouts –, attempts to link investment to local need may be used to accelerate the development and the development of interdependencies of such solutions in an attempt to reconfi g- and mutuality rather than securitisation, al- ure capitalist urban development. Of course, though these are more marginal and exter- such premium ecological environments have nal to the dominant responses. relatively little to off er to the real challenge of re-engineering and systemically retrofi t- Finally, if we are to build fair cities that ad- ting existing urban environments to reduce vance collective planetary security, we need energy and water use, accelerate low-carbon to think about linking these disconnected technologies and provide aff ordable energy logics of development together rather than for all users. allowing a dominant security-led approach to sit alongside a much more marginal set of At the same time, it is not even clear if the approaches. We need more interaction in the claims made about the new self-reliant and following fi ve ways. First, to bring together autonomous developments are achievable. questions about which social interests are There is a long history of eco-buildings and involved and excluded – we need to bring districts not achieving the savings claimed users back into questions about resource for them, as users behave in unanticipated futures. Second, to bring together over- ways. In any case, we are usually only talk- technicised and over-socialised responses ing about forms of greater autonomy and – we need socio-technical change. Third, self-reliance – therefore, only relative forms to develop knowledge and expertise that is of ‘by-pass’. Will centralised infrastructure not just about ‘new-builds’ and security, but networks act as the provider of last resort about retrofi tting the existing city. Fourth, when local technologies fail? Critically, what we need to emphasise questions about need about forms of mobility – especially inter- and the politics of interdependencies rather nationally: how will these be provided? than bounded security for some. Fifth, it is crucial to develop a debate about the con- In contrast to these conventional responses, sequences of a new style of urbanism rather there are alternative movements that are less than the creation of new urban eco-technic commercially focused, more locally based, and fi nancial products as a response to eco- less technologically fi xated, which are also logical crisis. trying to put questions about relocalisation

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 77

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 77 09-11-05 11.18.05 Literature

Biello, D. (2008), ‘Eco-cities Urban Plan- Harvey, D. (2008), ‘The Right to the City’, ning for the Future’, Scientifi c American, 24 New Left Review 53, Sept/Oct. September, see http://www.scientifi cameri- can.com/article.cfm?id=eco-cities-urban- Hodson, M., and S. Marvin (2009), ‘“Urban planning (accessed June 2009). Ecological Security”: A New Urban Para- digm?’, International Journal of Urban and Re- Bullis, K. (2009) ‘A Zero-Emissions City in gional Research, Vol. 33, Issue 1, March. the Desert Oil-rich Abu Dhabi is Building a Green Metropolis. Should the Rest of the Luke, T.W. (2003), ‘Codes, Collectivities, World Care?’, Technology Review, March/ and Commodities: Rethinking Global Cit- April, see http://www.technologyreview. ies as Megalogistical Spaces’, in Krause, L., com/energy/22121/page2/ (accessed June and P. Petro (eds), Global Cities: Cinema, Ar- 2009) chitecture, and Urbanism in a Digital Age. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Dalby, S. (2007), ‘Anthropocene Geopoli- tics: Globalisation, Empire, Environment Luke, T.W. (2008), ‘Climatologies as Social and Critique’, Geography Compass, Vol. 1, Critique: The Social Construction/Creation No. 1, pp.103-18. of Global Warming, Global Dimming, and Global Cooling’, in S. Vanderheiden (ed.), Fraker, H. (2006), ‘Unforbidden Cities: Political Theory and Global Climate Change. Can a New Type of “Gated Community” Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Reverse China’s Ecological Debacle?’, Cali- fornia Magazine, Vol. 118, No. 5. pp.44-9, Zalasiewicz, J. et al. (2008), ‘Are We Now Sept/Oct. Living in the Anthropocene’, GSA Today, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp.4-8.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our colleagues in SURF, Tim May and Beth Perry, for their support in developing the ideas in this paper and to Vivian Liang for excellent help in securing the permissions for the fi gures and photo- graphs illustrating this contribution. Our thanks also to the editors of the report for providing constructive and helpful feedback on the paper.

78 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 78 09-11-05 11.10.04 part iii » Mapping (and walking) the terrain of climate justice

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 79

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 79 09-11-05 11.18.05 Climate justice in the US

Gopal Dayaneni

Between a rock and a hard place, or the global trash compactor Most readers are probably familiar with the 1977 science fi ction blockbuster movie, Star Wars. Remember the trash compactor scene? That scene provides a nice metaphor for the state of global economic and eco- logical crisis. We are all trapped in a global trash compactor. The walls are closing in. On one side, we have climate chaos with all its myriad consequences. On the other, we have the wall of racial, gender, economic and environmental injustice also closing in on us. In the middle, we have us – every- Gopal Dayaneni serves on the planning one. And as the walls begin closing in, what committee for Movement Generation is the fi rst thing you do? You try to push Justice and Ecology Project, which works to back. Many people concerned over the past bring a strategic understanding of ecological 30-plus years with the rapidly increasing crisis and facilitates strategic planning concentrations of greenhouse gases in the for action among organisers working for atmosphere have been pushing against the economic and racial justice. Gopal also wall of climate chaos. Armed with the best serves on the board of the International science, they have been demanding, and Accountability Project, is an active trainer sometimes taking real action to slow the re- with the Ruckus Society and a member of lease of carbon into the atmosphere and/or the Progressive Communicators Network. get carbon out of the atmosphere.

Up against the other wall are the communi- ties attempting to push back against the ad- vance of ever increasing inequity, poverty, violence and injustice. Those folks (for the

80 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 80 09-11-05 11.18.05 sake of the metaphor, we’ll call them the reb- down. We need to go R2D2 on a systemic els) are primarily peoples in the global South level and address the root causes of the prob- and indigenous peoples worldwide and poor lem. That is what climate justice is about. As communities and communities of colour in David Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park (2009 the North. These are the people who have forthcoming) of the University of Minnesota been the victims of colonisation, environ- write: mental racism, destructive development and economic impoverishment in the name of People of color, indigenous communi- progress. The North (and elites in the South), ties, and global South nations bear the instead of pushing back, are running to the brunt of climate disruption in terms of centre, staying as far away from the walls ecological, economic, and health bur- closing in as they can, buying themselves dens. In addition, climate change infers some time, but only time and not very much of a naturally occurring process rather than it. As they crowd the centre space, more and a disruption created by specifi c human more folks are forced up against the walls, al- activity. For these reasons, activists and lowing those in the centre to ignore both the scholars have developed the concept of walls closing in and the folks getting crushed. climate justice, which recognizes that the But we are now at a place in which the walls struggle for racial and economic justice are so close they can no longer be ignored. So is inseparable from any eff ort to combat what do we do? climate change. Climate justice begins with an acknowledgement of climate We grab some big piece of metal and try to injustice and views this problem not as jam it up there, thinking that a system de- an unfortunate byproduct of climate dis- signed specifi cally to crush that stuff might ruption, but as one of its core elements, be thwarted by it. Let’s call these the false and one that must be confronted if cli- solutions. They are everything from the mate disruption is to be reversed. techno-fi xes such as biofuels, ‘clean coal’ and geo-engineering, to the kinds of mar- Rights-based climate justice ket-based climate policies that we know won’t work, but might, at best, slow the rate But what is the R2D2 of climate justice? of collapse. Slowing down the collapse – that is Here is where the metaphor breaks down. the best we can hope for from these false so- Our solutions will not come from folks on lutions. And the best evidence we have right the outside of the crisis, but from coordi- now says that those false solutions will make nation of forces within the climate justice the situation worse – accelerating both the movement – where we recognise that we ecological collapse and the inequity, there- have multiple strategic points of leverage by making mitigation and adaptation that and that we must align these approaches. much harder for the most vulnerable and Currently, the term ‘climate justice’ is used least responsible. in many ways, but without some level of strategic alignment in interventions, we will So what do we do? We need to do exactly not achieve the level of impact necessary to what they do in Star Wars. Shut the system lead us towards the real solutions we need.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 81

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 81 09-11-05 11.18.06 While there is some alignment, and the dif- the voices of those communities least respon- ferent approaches to climate justice are in no sible for and most severely impacted by cli- way mutually exclusive, greater alignment mate change, namely poor people of colour is critical. Let’s explore these diff erent takes and indigenous peoples, and demanded that on climate justice. climate policy does not further exacerbate ex- isting economic and environmental inequal- As we approach Copenhagen, the question of ity, but redress it. According to Nia Robin- what kind of global policy on the climate cri- son, director of the Environmental Justice sis can emerge has very much dominated the and Climate Change Initiative, in an inter- political imagination, and in this context cli- view with the author, ‘the successful creation mate justice refers to a rights-based/justice- of climate policy can not happen without the based approach to climate policy. Organisa- input of communities that have suff ered as tions that take positions that are broadly in a result of the US fossil fuel addiction. Our line with declarations and statements in the government must begin to recognize these international context on climate justice such communities as experts or run the risk of cre- as the Bali Principles (2007), the Belem Dec- ating policies that will do as much harm if not laration (2009) and others, are within the cli- more than climate change itself’. Just as the mate justice fold. Additionally, a key theme environmental justice movement transformed is the subordination of climate policy to UN the environmental movement by reposition- rights declarations and conventions, such as ing human communities and equity at the the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous centre of environmentalism and brought a Peoples. Policy initiatives emerging from this racial and economic justice lens to that work, approach include broad opposition to a mar- the climate justice movement has pushed the kets-based approach to carbon (carbon trad- climate movement in the US. Through the ing), and even more adamantly, opposition movement’s orientation embodied in this use to exotic market instruments, namely, off - of the term ‘climate justice’, we see emerging sets; ramp-down to low-carbon economies; a ‘popular movement of movements’, led from a phase-out of fossil fuels; and, probably most the grassroots. A key issue for the climate jus- importantly, an ecological debt-based mech- tice/environmental justice movement in the anism for fi nancing and technology transfer US is articulating that even within the North, from the North to the South. In this catego- there is a South; that this ‘South in the North’ ry we include a broad range of groups who is owed the same ecological debt (to indig- share positions, who work domestically and/ enous peoples, to African Americans for the or internationally and use a broad range of legacy of slavery and others); and that there strategies, including research, international are communities disproportionately impacted solidarity, analysis, public education, advoca- due to race and class. cy and organising. This approach to climate justice is also present in US climate policy. Struggles-based climate justice In the US, the environmental justice move- In recent years, also stemming from the envi- ment has given rise to a climate justice move- ronmental justice and environmental health ment that has simultaneously fought to raise movements, the use of climate justice has

82 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 82 09-11-05 11.18.06 emerged as referring to the grassroots strug- tion. Some of this is emerging from main- gles of communities in the US and Canada stream environmental organisations and some who are fi ghting against the root causes of from the youth climate movement. While we climate change in their own backyards/ see lots of young people holding posters that frontyards. Put another way, Fenceline and say ‘Climate Justice’, we did not see a clear ar- Frontline communities fi ghting oil, coal, ticulation of a justice/rights-based agenda on gas, tar sands, incineration, deforestation, etc. climate. In fact, many groups that are driving Only more recently have these folks emerged the youth climate movement support policies on the scene as part of the ‘climate’ issue. For that run counter to the established principles example, communities fi ghting refi neries and of climate justice. We are seeing more and power plants across the country as environ- more of this use of the term by a broad range mental justice struggles against point-source of groups who are now using direct action in pollution have focused on health, poverty some form or other to address climate change. and environmental racism as the core themes There is, again, overlap. Many groups that of their struggles. Now, confronting the are engaging in creative direct action or civ- root causes of climate change has emerged il disobedience as part of their strategy are as a critical, unifying theme. This started in also advancing a rights-based framework, the late 1990s, and really took hold after the are supporting the leadership of those most 2nd People of Color Environmental Lead- directly impacted and are attacking the root ership Summit in Washington DC in 2002 causes of climate change. But many are not, (10 years after the 1992 Environmental Jus- and diff erentiating between the two becomes tice Leadership Summit). Examples are the critical. One way to think of this is that cli- struggle against ‘mountain top removal’ in mate action is not always action for climate Appalachia (the practice of blowing off entire justice. Depending on the theory of change mountaintops to reach underlying mineral and strategies you are employing, the action deposits), coal mining on indigenous lands must either, and ideally in combination ad- and tar sands development in Canada. These vance a rights-based agenda consistent with struggles have long been fought locally and the frameworks established collectively by are now fl ashpoints of climate justice as local the international climate justice movement; fi ghts to address the root causes of climate take leadership from and be accountable to change, while fi ghting for concrete improve- those most directly impacted and least re- ments in the daily lives of communities. sponsible; or engage in community struggles There is a strong focus here on accountability on the root causes of climate change. to communities and on communities speak- ing for themselves, while there has been less The strongest movement for climate justice emphasis, until recently, on the questions of coming out of the US will be one where climate policy. we have strategic alignment between these groups, and there are many organisations Climate action as climate justice? and networks that represent this alignment, particularly the Mobilization for Climate Also developing more in recent years is the Justice, the Indigenous Environmental confl ation of climate justice with climate ac- Network, the Environmental Justice and

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 83

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 83 09-11-05 11.18.06 Climate Change Initiative and the Envi- Literature ronmental Justice Leadership Forum on Climate Change, among others. We need Pellow, D.N., and L. Sun-Hee Park (2009, a rights-based approach to climate policy forthcoming), ‘From Climate Change and led by directly impacted communities and Climate Disruption to Climate Justice: grassroots organising that takes direct action Analysis and Policy Considerations for Af- in support of and with leadership from com- rican American Communities’, Department munities on the frontlines of the chain of of Sociology, University of Minnesota. production of climate change. As Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environ- mental Network observed in an interview with the author:

In the US and across the globe, the movement for Climate Justice has been steadily growing, not simply demanding action on climate, but demanding rights- based and justice-based action on climate that confronts false solutions, root causes of climate change and amplifi es the voices of those least responsible and most di- rectly impacted. Not only are we the front-line of impacts, we are the front line of survival. As Indigenous Peoples, all of humanity is dependent on our tra- ditional, sacred, evolved knowledge of Mother Earth.

If we can create a people-powered, inside- outside approach both in the US and inter- nationally, we have a chance for a just tran- sition to a sustainable future.

84 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 84 09-11-05 11.18.06 Climate change and human rights

Wolfgang Sachs

Tulun and Takuu, two tiny islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea, are close to be- ing swallowed up by the Pacifi c Ocean – vic- tims of global climate change. The govern- ment has sent emergency food supplies to the islands, as the inhabitants have had to live on fi sh and coconut since salt water fl ooded their fi elds. Many fear that a distinctive culture will vanish if the people of Tulun and Takuu are forced to give up their native land.

Who are the winners and who the losers in climate change? Burning fossil fuels (as well as forests) has both huge benefi ts and huge Wolfgang Sachs is a senior fellow at the costs. As to the fi rst, access to fuel provides Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment economic power. Thus, we see in the nego- and Energy, as well as an honorary professor tiations for a post-Kyoto agreement nations at the University of Kassel, Germany scrambling for allowances to use the atmos- phere as a dumping-ground for greenhouse gases. Climate equity in this context is about equality among nations. As to the second, however, causing the dumping ground to overfl ow gives rise to numerous climate threats, possibly to such a degree that fun- damental rights might be violated. Climate equity in this context is about human rights.

Dangerous to whom? The 1992 United Nations Framework Con- vention on Climate Change calls for the sta-

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 85

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 85 09-11-05 11.18.06 bilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations Impacts at levels that ‘would prevent dangerous an- thropogenic interference with the climate When the earth’s atmosphere grows warmer, system’ (Article 2). But what increase in glo- nature becomes unstable. It is no longer pos- bal mean temperatures is tolerable? Climate sible to rely on rainfall, groundwater levels, negotiations have largely refrained from de- temperature, wind or seasons – all factors fi ning what may constitute dangerous an- that, since time immemorial, have made bi- thropogenic interference with the climate otopes hospitable for plants, animals and hu- system (Hare 2003). What kind of threat mans. The most important impacts are likely qualifi es as ‘dangerous’? If the sea level rises to aff ect the natural assets that underpin hu- by 20 centimetres? By one metre? A one de- man existence – water, food and health. gree rise in average global temperature, or three degrees? And in what timeframe: in With regard to water, it is important to note 20 years, or in 80 years? that 30 countries with a combined popula- tion of over 500 million are currently con- These questions appear to be technical, but sidered to be aff ected by water scarcity, a in reality are highly political. What lurks be- condition that by the year 2025 is likely to hind them are basic decisions regarding the aff ect some 50 countries with a combined coexistence of people and nations on earth. population of about 3 billion. The hydro- Because diff erent impacts are associated with logical cycle is expected to intensify, which diff erent levels of temperature rise, who will essentially means more droughts and fl oods be aff ected, how and to what extent largely and more variable and extreme rainfall. depends on how far global warming is al- Generation-old patterns of rainfall may be lowed to proceed. The dire eff ects of cli- shifting, severely impacting plants, animals mate change will intensify global poverty and people. Several hundred million to a and deepen social polarisation, since they few billion people are expected to suff er a aff ect the poor more than the rich. Particu- reduction in their water supply of 10 per cent larly the countries of the South, especially or more by the year 2050 in climate change rural communities that depend directly on projections corresponding to a 1 per cent

nature, will come to feel the destabilis- per year increase in CO2 emissions. Regions ing eff ects of global warming much more where water stress is likely to increase due to abruptly than overdeveloped countries and climate change include Central and South- urban populations. Therefore, any decision ern Africa, Central and Southern America about what is to be considered a dangerous and the watersheds around the Mediterra- level of impact is clearly a political and ethi- nean, while South and East Asia are likely cal issue. It basically implies two valuations: to see an increase in water resources (Arnell what kind of danger is acceptable, and what 2004). Finally, too much of the wrong water kind of danger to whom is acceptable? It is can be dangerous as well. Rising sea levels the response to the latter question that de- obviously increase the risk of coastal fl ood- termines the degree of environmental injus- ing, which could displace large numbers of tice involved in climate politics. people. Some of the most vulnerable regions

86 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 86 09-11-05 11.18.06 are the Nile delta in Egypt, the Ganges- regions where many people are already un- Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh and many dernourished, notably Africa. small islands, such as the Maldives, the Mar- Finally, as public health depends to a large shall Islands and Tuvalu. extent on safe drinking water, suffi cient food and secure shelter, climate change is Furthermore, climate change will leave its bound to have a range of health eff ects. On imprint on the conditions for food produc- the fi rst level, a shortage of freshwater caused tion across the globe. In temperate zones, by climate change will increase the risk of small increases in temperature might boost waterborne diseases, just as food shortages yields for some cereals, while larger changes will increase the risk of malnutrition. On are likely to decrease yields. In most tropi- a second level, climate change, by way of a cal and subtropical regions, potential yields shift in background climate conditions and are projected to diminish with most increases changes in regional climatic variability, will in temperature. For instance, damage to the aff ect the spatial and seasonal patterns of the world’s major crops begins when daytime potential transmission of various infectious temperatures climb above 30ºC during fl ow- diseases. With global warming, the geo- ering. For rice, wheat and maize, yields are graphic range of potential transmission of likely to decline by 10 per cent for every 1ºC malaria and dengue is likely to increase. A increase over 30ºC (Halweil 2005). If, in ad- rise in temperatures, for example, would re- dition, there is also a large decrease in rainfall sult in an increased prevalence of malaria in in subtropical and tropical dryland/rain-fed higher altitudes and latitudes. The human- systems, crop yields would be even more ad- induced warming that the world is now ex- versely aff ected. In tropical agricultural areas, periencing is already causing 150,000 deaths yields of some crops are expected to decrease and 5 million instances of disease each year even with minimal increases in temperature from increased malaria and diarrhoea, most- (IPCC 2001). Moreover, it is expected that ly in the poorest nations (Patz et al. 2005), the income of poor farmers will decline with though actual disease occurrence is strongly a warming of 1.5ºC-2ºC above preindustrial infl uenced by local conditions. On the third levels (Hare 2003). In fragile rural areas, such level, climate change will be accompanied a change will aggravate the circumstances by an increase in heat waves, often exacer- of people who derive their livelihood from bated by increased humidity and urban air direct access to forest, grasslands and water- pollution, which would cause an increase in courses. While global production appears to heat-related deaths and episodes of illness, remain stable, diff erences in crop production particularly among the elderly and the sick. between temperate and tropical regions are likely to grow over time, leading to a sig- Summing up these possible eff ects of global nifi cant polarisation of eff ects, with substan- warming on sea levels, water availability and tial increases in the risk of hunger among the the incidence of malaria, it has been estimat- poorer nations, especially under scenarios of ed that with an increase of global mean tem- greater inequality (Parry et al. 2004). De- perature of 2-3 degrees above preindustrial clines in food production will most likely hit levels, 20-30 per cent of all higher plants and

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 87

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 87 09-11-05 11.18.06 animals will be threatened with extinction; State Parties to the present covenant recog- more than 100 million people living in delta nise the right of everyone to an adequate areas will, under conservative estimates, be standard of living for himself and his family, threatened with fl ooding and will have to including adequate food, clothing and hous- move; and water stress is likely to increase ing...’ (Article 11) and ‘the right to the high- for 1 billion more people every 30 years be- est standard of mental and physical health’ tween 2020 and 2080 (IPCC 2007). (Article 12). Infl uenced by this formulation, which echoes Article 25 of the Universal Human rights Declaration of Human Rights, the debate on development has changed tack in the past There has been injustice in the world since decades: overcoming hunger, illness and time immemorial. Similarly, the expulsion misery is no longer seen as a matter of char- of people from their land, the assault on ity or solidarity, but as a matter of human their physical wellbeing and the withdraw- rights. The needs-based approach in devel- al of their means of subsistence have been opment has been more and more replaced standard instruments in the repressive exer- by a rights-based approach. cise of power. But only since the middle of the 20th century have such ways of degrad- Rights-based climate policy ing others been thought to involve contempt for human rights. In today’s world, there is The dire consequences resulting from cli- an international consensus that instances of mate change – in particular, several decades humiliation and impoverishment have to be from now – will spread across the globe, measured against the norm of guarantee- albeit in varying degree. Countries – and ing the fundamental rights of every human regions within countries – are dispropor- person. By birthright, people are considered tionately aff ected for basically two reasons: bearers of rights that protect their dignity, higher impacts and higher vulnerability. As regardless of their nationality or cultural indicated above, the adverse impacts of cli- affi liation. These rights are equal, that is, mate change are likely to be more concen- everyone enjoys the same rights; they are trated in areas of Africa, South America and inalienable, that is, they cannot be forfeited; Asia than in the global North. Impact pro- and they are universal, that is, every human fi les diff er according to the kind of impact being is a holder of fundamental rights. Es- and geography, but water stress and fl ood- pecially in an age of globalisation, it is in- ing, declining agricultural productivity and creasingly the discourse of human rights weakening ecosystem services, crop pests that defi nes the terms of reference for dis- and human diseases are more likely to oc- putes over power and its victims. cur in subtropical and tropical countries, in coastal areas and in arid and semi-arid agri- When human beings do not have the basic cultural areas. Higher vulnerability, howev- capability to support themselves with dig- er, derives from the fact that in many places nity, their human rights are under threat. at risk a great number of people already live The International Covenant on Economic, in fragile conditions, economically and with Social and Cultural Rights declares that ‘the regard to their health. The ability to prepare

88 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 88 09-11-05 11.18.06 for and to cope with threats varies widely justice, misses out on the universalist nature according to income and living conditions. of human rights entitlements. The impact of a hurricane in Orissa, India, for example, may be much more severe than Furthermore, climate rights call for extra- the impact of a similar hurricane in Florida, territorial responsibility. Climate distur- USA. The poor generally tend to have much bances obviously exceed the jurisdiction of lower coping capacities: they are more ex- individual states: they are, in fact, a strik- posed to disasters, drought, desertifi cation ing example of the transnational character and slow economic decline. of threats in a highly interdependent world. Under such circumstances, the human Climate perturbations are likely to be super- rights obligations of states and non-state ac- imposed on economic insecurity. As people tors cannot simply stop at territorial borders. already living at the edge see themselves Rather, they must reach into other coun- pushed into disaster, climate eff ects may tries as well. As the special rapporteur to the trigger an infringement upon economic and Human Rights Commission on the Right social human rights. This is not to say that to Food has recently stated: ‘Governments climate-related threats (hurricanes or heat must recognise their extraterritorial obliga- waves, for instance) to human physical in- tions towards the right to food. They should tegrity under conditions of greater affl uence refrain from implementing any policies or may not constitute a human rights violation programs that might have negative eff ects as well, but impacts in poorer regions often on the right to food of people living outside exacerbate an already structurally precarious their territories’ (UNCHR 2005). When livelihood situation. It is the compounded the right to food is threatened by climate eff ect of economic insecurity and climate change, the principle of extraterritorial ob- stress for large numbers of people that is at ligations becomes even more relevant, given the centre of the question of how much cli- that rich countries are largely responsible for mate change should be allowed as a human climate perturbations in poorer countries. rights issue. Just as climate eff ects reach to the ends of the earth, the geographical scope of respon- However, climate-related human rights are sibility has become global as well. matched by only imperfect, not perfect, du- ties. Just as a violation of the right to food, However, this responsibility is in the fi rst health or shelter can often not be traced place a negative one: it implies avoiding back to the action of a clearly identifi able harmful action rather than intervening to duty-bearer, so can climate eff ects not be provide the conditions for a life without attributed to a culprit with a name and ad- privation. Under human rights law, gov- dress. Who exactly should be held respon- ernments are supposed to carry out a triple sible for hunger and widespread illness? But task with regard to the rights to food, health the absence of culprits or judges does not and housing: they have the duty to respect, nullify rights. A strictly legal conception, protect and fulfi l them. It would follow that which maintains that there are no rights the same hierarchy of obligations applies to unless they can be enforced in a court of climate rights: the right to live in freedom

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 89

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 89 09-11-05 11.18.06 from human-induced climate perturbations 2ºC above preindustrial levels. It is obvious has fi rst to be respected by avoiding harmful that such a target calls for mitigation com- emissions nationally; it has, secondly, to be mitments far beyond the Kyoto Protocol. protected against third-party emissions by Finally, human rights considerations also countries or corporations through interna- imply vigorous measures to facilitate ad- tional cooperation; and, thirdly, it has to be aptation to unavoidable climate change. fulfi lled by upgrading people’s capability to Inasmuch as mitigation is insuffi cient, the cope with climate change through adapta- polluter-pays principle requires that high- tion measures, such as dam building, reset- emitting nations prevent rights violations tlement or land redistribution. and off er compensation for damages caused. Measures may range from upgrading health- Mitigation and adaptation care, to investments in construction, to the building of dams. Recent calculations sug- In 2005, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference gest that US$ 10-40 billion annually will be fi led a legal petition to the Inter-American required to fi nance such adaptation meas- Commission of Human Rights demanding ures. And, of course, the polluter-pays prin- that the US limit its emissions. This move by ciple requires that high-emitting nations of- the people living in the Arctic represents the fer compensation for damages caused. fi rst legal case brought against a high-emit- ting nation in defence of economic, social Compensatory payments are necessary, but and cultural human rights (Watt-Cloutier they leave the causes of pollution untouched. 2004). Many indicators suggest that global Cuts in fossil fuel use are imperative not warming is threatening the ability of the only to protect the atmosphere but also Inuit to survive as a hunting-based culture. to protect human rights. Since the Bill of Rights was won during England’s ‘Glorious From a human rights point of view, the clas- Revolution’, freedom from physical harm sical policy responses to dangerous climate has been the core of the basic legal canon change, mitigation and adaptation, ought that states have an obligation to guarantee. to be pursued with additional urgency. As Yet millions of people are in the process of to mitigation, human rights considerations losing this core of civil rights – food, shelter need to enter into the defi nition of what and an infection-free environment. Only constitutes dangerous climate change and this time, the threat of physical harm comes recent moves in the UN Human Rights not from the state but from the cumulative Council point in this direction. They direct long-range eff ects of energy consumption attention to the most vulnerable sections of in the prosperous parts of the world. The the world population, suggesting a frame need for low-emission economies in the of evaluation that is consistent with the ba- South and the North is therefore far more sic law that governs world society. A sur- than a question of an appeal to morality: it vey of possible impacts (Exeter Conference is a core demand of cosmopolitan politics. 2005) suggests a target that avoids systematic Climate protection is not simply about crops threats to human rights would need to keep and coral reefs – it is, fundamentally, about the global mean temperature increase below human rights.

90 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 90 09-11-05 11.18.06 Literature

Arnell, N.W. (2004), ‘Climate Change and IPCC (2007), Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Global Water Resources: SRES Emissions Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of and Socio-economic Scenarios’, Global En- Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment vironmental Change, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp.31-52, Report. Cambridge: Cambridge University April. Press.

Exeter Conference (2005), Avoiding Dan- Parry, M.L., C. Rosenzweig, A. Iglesias, M. gerous Climate Change. A Scientifi c Sym- Livermore, and G. Fischer (2004), ‘Eff ects posium on Stabilisation of Greenhouse of Climate Change on Global Food Pro- Gases. Exeter, 1-3 February (www.stabilisa- duction under SRES Emissions and Socio- tion2005.com) economic Scenarios’, Global Environmental Change, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp.53-67, April. Halweil, B. (2005), ‘The Irony of Climate’, World Watch Magazine, pp.18-23, March/ Patz, J.A., D. Campbell-Lendrum, T. Hol- April. loway, and J.A. Foley (2005), ‘Impact of Re- gional Climate Change on Human Health’, Hare, W. (2003), Assessment of Knowledge on Nature, Vol. 438, pp.310-17. Impacts of Climate Change – Contribution to the Specifi cation of Art. 2 of the UNFCCC. Expert UNCHR (United Nations Commission on study for the German Advisory Council on Human Rights) (2005), Report of the Spe- Global Environmental Change for the Spe- cial Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean cial Report, ‘Climate Protection Strategies Ziegler, E/CN.4/2005/47, 24 January. for the 21st Century: Kyoto and Beyond’. Berlin: WBGU. Watt-Cloutier, Sheila (2004), Climate Change and Human Rights. www.carnegiecouncil. IPCC (2001), Climate Change 2001. Synthesis org/viewMedia.php/prmID/4445 Report. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 91

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 91 09-11-05 11.18.06 Energy, crisis and world-wide production relations

Kolya Abramsky

Changes within the energy sector are accel- erating dramatically. A variety of ecologi- Kolya Abramsky has worked over the last cal, political, economic and fi nancial factors 10 years with a wide range of grassroots are converging to ensure that energy pro- social and environmental organisations duction and consumption become central to from around the world within diff erent the global restructuring of social relations in anti-capitalist networking processes. He the years ahead. This is true of energy in has just completed an edited volume general and the globally expanding renew- on energy- related struggles entitled, able-energy sector in particular. The way Sparking a World-wide Energy Revolution: in which the world’s energy system evolves Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post- in the years ahead will be intimately inter- Petrol World, and is currently preparing twined with diff erent possible ways out of a global conference, to take place in the world fi nancial-economic crisis (which late 2011, on anti-capitalist transition is also increasingly becoming a crisis of le- processes towards a new energy system. gitimacy and political control).

The multiple intersecting and mutually re- inforcing crises starkly pose the need to con- newable energies has the potential to make struct new world-wide relations of produc- an important contribution to the process of tion and exchange that are substantially more constructing new relations of production, decentralised, participatory and egalitarian exchange and livelihood that are based on than the relations that currently exist. How- solidarity, diversity and autonomy and are ever, climate change and peak oil require a substantially more democratic, egalitarian

massive and rapid reduction in CO2 emissions and ecologically sensitive than those that and energy use, and hence also a fundamental currently exist. Furthermore, the construc- change in how humans interact with nature tion of new social relations along the above and the ecology they are a part of. lines is also likely to be crucial in avoiding disastrous ‘solutions’ to the fi nancial-eco- The process of building a new energy sys- nomic and political crises. tem based on a greatly expanded use of re-

92 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 92 09-11-05 11.18.06 Some kind of transition to post-petrol ener- energy is essential to both production and gy sources is virtually inevitable. However, sustaining life. the outcome is not a technical given. It is no longer a question of whether a transi- However, class struggle is inherently uncer- tion to a new energy system will occur, but tain, and this is the central uncertainty of rather what form it will take. Will it involve the transition process itself. Who will bring a dramatic and rapid collapse, or will it be a it about, and for what purposes, for whose smoother and more gradual process? Which benefi t, and at whose expense? Importantly, technologies will a transition include, and given that energy is relevant to class rela- on whose terms and priorities? Who will be tions in general (since energy both replaces able to harness the necessary global fl ows and enhances human labour), energy ‘cri- of capital, raw materials, knowledge and sis’ and ‘transition’ are also relevant to class labour? Indeed, will people even let their struggles in general, not just those that exist resources, knowledge, skills and labour be within the energy sector itself. ‘harnessed’ from above and outside, or will they strongly assert the possibility of using Many years will elapse before it is clear their skills and energy to their own benefi t whether capital can harness new combina- and on their own terms? And, above all, tions of energy that are capable of imposing will the process be chaotic, reinforcing al- and maintaining a certain stable (and prof- ready existing hierarchies, or will it be part itable) organisation of work the way fossil of wider process of world-wide emancipa- fuels did; or whether in fact a new energy tory social change based on the construction system will not allow for this to occur, and of new social relations? could actually strengthen the material basis for anti-capitalist struggles. We are in the Energy: key to production, early stages of what is likely to be a lengthy and complex struggle, the outcome of which but also to life will determine whether capital will be suc- As the world’s energy system is on the verge cessful in its eff orts to force labour (that is, of far-reaching changes, it is also coming people throughout the world, as well as the up for grabs. In other words, a struggle over very environment itself that green capital- who controls the sector and for what pur- ism proclaims it wishes to save) to bear the poses is intensifying. It is becoming increas- costs of building a new energy system, or ingly clear, both to capitalist planners and whether labour, understood in its broadest those involved in anti-capitalist struggles, sense (namely, social and ecological struggles that some form of ‘green capitalism’ is on over production and reproduction through- the agenda. We are told from all sides that out the world) is able to force capital to bear it is fi nally time to ‘save the planet’ in order the costs. This struggle is already becoming to ‘save the economy’. In eff ect, this means central in shaping social relationships and is that the transition process to a new energy likely to become ever more so in the com- system will be central to the next round ing years. of global class struggle over control of key means of production and subsistence, since

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 93

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 93 09-11-05 11.18.06 A question of relations of production, Northern countries where the eff ects of cli- reproduction and consumption, mate changes have less immediately visibil- not regulation and policy ity and impact. Nonetheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that solutions will not be The kind of massive and rapid reductions found at this level.

in CO2 emissions (and the corresponding changes in the system of energy produc- The problem is one of production. The cur- tion and consumption that are necessary for rent world-wide system of production is this to occur) will not be possible without based on endless growth and expansion. This very far-reaching changes in production is simply incompatible with a long-term re- and consumption relations at a more general duction in emissions and energy consump- level. However, dominant approaches to cli- tion. Despite the fact that localised and mo- mate change focus on promoting regulatory mentary reductions may well occur, energy reforms. This is true of governments, mul- consumption and greenhouse gas emissions tilateral institutions and also large sectors of of the system as a whole can only increase so-called ‘civil society’ (especially the major in the long run. All the energy-effi ciency national and international trade unions and technologies in the world, though undoubt- their federations, and NGOs). edly crucial to any long-term solution, can- not on their own square the circle by reducing The stark reality is that the only two recent total emissions from a system whose survival periods that have seen a major reduction in is based on continuous expansion. Leader-

global CO2 emissions have coincided with ship in an emancipatory transition process is periods of very sudden, rapid, socially disrup- unlikely to come predominantly from above tive and painful periods of forced economic from international regulatory forums, but degrowth: namely the breakdown of the Soviet is more likely to come from autonomous bloc and during the current fi nancial-eco- movements self-organising from below in nomic crisis. In May 2009, the International order to gain greater control and autonomy Energy Agency reported that, for the fi rst over energy production and consumption. time since 1945, global demand for electricity This is not to say regulation is not important. was expected to fall. Experience has shown It is essential. However, the regulatory proc- that much time and political energy have ess is unlikely to be the driving force behind been wasted on developing a highly ineff ec- the changes required, but rather a necessary tive regulatory framework. Years of interna- facilitation process to secure a legal and in- tional climate negotiations, the institutional stitutional framework (as well as fi nancial basis for global regulatory eff orts, have simply support) conducive to a grassroots process led proven to be hot air. Unsurprisingly, hot air from below, which enables wider changes to has resulted in global warming. Only unin- occur and deepens ones already under way. tended degrowth has had the eff ect that years Furthermore, it is highly unlikely emancipa- of intentional regulations sought to achieve. tory regulation that is strong enough to be Regulatory eff orts will certainly be pursued, eff ective could even come about without ma- and they may well contribute to shoring up jor pressure, far greater than currently exists, legitimacy, at least for a time, especially in from below.

94 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 94 09-11-05 11.18.06 The need to construct new human subsistence. These include land, relations of production seeds, water, energy, factories, universities, schools, communication infrastructures, Leaving the necessary changes in the social etc. Especially signifi cant in this context are relations of production and consumption (of the major energy-intensive industries, such energy, and more generally) to the logic of as transport, steel, automobiles, petrochemi- accumulation of profi t in the world mar- cals, mining, construction, the export sector ket is likely to be both far too slow, given in general and industrialised agriculture. the urgency of the climate crisis, and im- mensely socially disruptive. And, given the It is, however, very diffi cult to imagine that abovementioned eff ectiveness of unplanned it will be possible to bring about a rapid and degrowth in reducing emissions relative to far-reaching process of collectively planned international negotiations, an urgent ques- emancipatory change at the necessary pace tion facing emancipatory social and ecologi- and scale unless these key means of generat- cal struggles is how collectively and demo- ing and distributing wealth and subsistence cratically to construct a process of planned are under some form of common, collective, rapid and broad degrowth, based on collec- participatory and democratic control, deci- tive political control and democratic and sion-making and ownership. Furthermore, participatory decision-making over produc- it is crucial to make sure that they are used tion, consumption and exchange. to meet the basic needs of all the world’s population, rather than the profi t needs of ‘Peak oil’ starkly poses the question of how the world market and the select few workers to manage scarcity collectively in a fair and communities able to reap the benefi ts manner in order to avert extremely destruc- of this. In other words, there is an urgent tive power struggles that exacerbate existing need to decommodify these sources of wealth inequalities (especially in relation to class, as much and as fast as possible. race, gender and age). It will also be crucial to seek to avoid the imposition of auster- However, following years of market-led re- ity measures on people. Solutions that do forms and an unprecedented concentration not actively strive to avoid pitting diff erent of wealth and power, we are still very far workers, both waged and unwaged, in dif- from this reality. This is true both in con- ferent regions of the world against one an- crete terms and in terms of our collective other are almost certain to result in a transi- aspirations and strategic approaches. Domi- tion being carried out on the back of these nant political strategies for achieving change workers and their communities. The failure are entrenched in seeking minor regulatory of emancipatory movements to force capital reforms (at best, including state ownership) to pay the burden would, in all likelihood, rather than a more fundamental shift in prove immensely divisive and destructive. power relations pertaining to structures of ownership and control. Of particular importance in relation to building a new energy system are the key Consequently, an urgent task for the years means for generating society’s wealth and ahead is to discuss what kind of short-term

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 95

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 95 09-11-05 11.18.06 interventions might help to make such a po- South Africa or Iraq, they have faced harsh litical agenda more achievable in the near- repression from state and military forces. In and medium-term future. It is not a new many areas, what is at stake in these strug- discussion. In the past, collective ownership, gles is literally life and death. On the one management and control of key means of pro- hand, struggles over energy ownership have duction (either in the form of worker, com- been at the heart of foreign military occu- munity, cooperative or state) have been at the pations, such as in Iraq, but have also pro- heart of radical proposals for social struggles. vided a key material resource basis for wider Furthermore, emancipatory left-wing cri- emancipatory or even revolutionary social tiques of state communism, socialism, social processes, such as in Venezuela or Bolivia. democracy and their respective bureaucracies These are the struggles that currently defi ne have not been based on a rejection of collec- the world-wide energy sector. They are a tive ownership of key means of production. central, and frequently overlooked, aspect Instead, they were based on a strong critique and cause of the so-called ‘energy crisis’. In of the fundamentally limited nature of state no small way what is emerging is a crisis of ownership as a model for democratic, par- capitalist control over the sector – though ticipatory and self-organised social change this is certainly not the only cause of the from below – on an understanding, in other energy crisis. Importantly, these struggles words, that state control is in some ways sim- are likely to intensify in the future. Further- ply a modifi ed form of private ownership and more, they have by no means already been capitalist class relations. lost by emancipatory movements.

Struggles for control of the means of While there are widespread and ongoing struggles over the control of fossil fuel re- (re)production in the energy sector serves, such as oil in Nigeria, Iraq, Ecua- and energy-intensive industries dor, Venezuela or Colombia and Bolivia (to name but a few examples), similar processes Within the energy sector itself, the picture are also under way in relation to electricity is one of intense struggle. Important strug- generation and distribution, infrastructure gles over ownership and control of energy and pricing. Such struggles are occurring in production and extraction processes, as South Africa, France, Germany, Dominican well as over access and price are under way Republic, India, South Korea or Thailand throughout much of the world. This has en- (again, to name just some of the struggles tailed developing a range of diff erent forms in the sector). Similarly, there is a world- of ownership, including by communities, wide process of resistance to the privatisa- users, workers, cooperatives, municipalities tion of forests, one of the main sources of and states, which in diff ering degree chal- the non-commercial biomass fuels that meet lenge private ownership and commodifi - the domestic energy needs of approximately cation. Broad social sectors have been in- 2 billion people worldwide. Women, who volved: energy users, aff ected communities, mainly collect and process these fuels, are peasants, indigenous peoples and workers often at the heart of such resistance, espe- both in the energy sectors and more gener- cially in Africa, Asia and Latin America. ally. Frequently, for example, in Colombia,

96 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 96 09-11-05 11.18.06 Importantly, such struggles are also intensi- trade agreements, all with the full support fying in relation to the globally expanding of national policies aimed at undermining renewable energy sector. Since the 1970s, previous forms of democratic and participa- many pioneering initiatives in renewable tory control. energy have strongly emphasised coopera- tive and local control. This has included The question of ownership of and control farmers’ wind energy cooperatives in Den- over territories rich in renewable energy mark, citizen energy projects in Germany resources is becoming increasingly impor- (including cooperatives, buying local grids tant. In Mexico, indigenous communities and all-women’s initiatives); or a worker- are being deceived and displaced so that the owned cooperative in Spain that became country’s wind resources (among the best in one of the important producers of wind the world) can supply electricity to major turbines for the world market and was a multinational companies, such as the Mexi- member of the Mondragon industrial coop- can arm of Walmart. In China, police have erative group – a group that has existed for killed peasants protesting against inadequate over half a century, involves many diff er- compensation for wind turbines installed on ent industrial sectors and has over 100,000 their land. In Denmark, rural wind energy worker-members. These local and demo- cooperatives are fi nding it increasingly hard cratic ownership structures mainly emerged to compete with private investors and are in Northern countries, the major pioneers being taken over. of new renewable energy technologies in this period. However, there have also been Importantly, labour struggles are also interesting examples in Southern countries, emerging in the sector, especially in relation such as in relation to micro-hydro in Ne- to the production of the raw materials for pal, wind in Argentina and household- and agro fuels. This includes sugar in Brazil or village-level biogas digesters in India.1 Colombia; palm in Colombia, Indonesia and Malaysia; and soya in Argentina and Para- However, the processes that emphasised guay (among others). In Germany, a leading democratic and participatory community- country in the production of wind and solar controlled development of renewable ener- energy infrastructure, the major trade union gies and that contributed importantly to the IG Metall is organising workers in the face ability of the inhabitants of territories rich of poor working conditions in the plants in such energy resources to build somewhat where the infrastructure is produced. So far, autonomous and empowering development these struggles are more centred on working paths, are now being frequently under- conditions, rather than workers’ ownership. mined. This is because of the threats posed However, there are some exceptions to this. by private investors, companies and free In Indonesia, workers in the palm planta- tions have also taken steps to take over the mills. And in the weeks between the fi rst 1 Collective and locally controlled renewable energy infrastructure played a signifi cant part in China’s and fi nal drafts of this article were written, rural energy development during the early years of what is likely to be a historic turning point the Chinese revolution, but this is a very diff erent in the wind industry is unfolding in the UK. story, requiring more time to go into than is avail- able here.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 97

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 97 09-11-05 11.18.06 The country’s only wind-turbine compo- tion, transport or tourism is more pessimis- nent manufacturing plant (owned by Vestas, tic. The dominant strategic discourse in this the world’s largest producer of wind tur- regard from major organisations in these bines) currently faces closure, with the sack- sectors is equally pessimistic. Ownership ing of 600 workers. The workers occupied struggles have, by and large, already been the plant for about three weeks. Demands lost. Over the last several years, most strug- from workers and their supporters have in- gles in these sectors have revolved around cluded government nationalisation of the demanding certain reforms in the produc- plant, as well as converting it into a workers’ tion and labour process, as well as improved cooperative. The workers have met with a user access. However, little space remains combination of widespread social support as for serious struggle over (or even discussion well as (limited) use of riot police and court of) major changes to patterns of ownership rulings. The issue remains unresolved. and control.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the im- At the more radical end of ecological cri- portance of patents and the ownership of tique, there are many discussions about the knowledge and technologies. Despite initial need for profound change in production murmurings about ‘open source’ technol- relations. However, the organisations and ogy and non-commercial technology trans- collectives with such perspectives frequent- fers arising in the renewable energy sector, ly lack the social base necessary for such a inspired by the open-source computer soft- process of change to happen. In particular, ware movement, such a process is still virtu- they have little capacity (and sometimes ally non-existent. even will) to contribute to serious debate within trade unions and other worker or- On a more general level, it is worth look- ganisations within these sectors, so their ing at contemporary struggles over land and more sophisticated critique amounts to just energy-intensive industries. Land is one of that: a critique without an accompanying the most basic elements of subsistence for process of change. On the other hand, the humans throughout the world, and is also dominant ‘green’ discourse, though often essential for capital accumulation. It is both well-connected to trade union organisations a key means of production and of the repro- working on sustainability from a worker duction of human life. Collective owner- perspective, hardly talks about ownership of ship and decommodifi cation of land are still key means of production. Most campaigns at the heart of many, if not most, rural and from this broad group of organisations push indigenous struggles throughout the world for change within the existing framework of today. It is in these struggles that the clearest social relations. Finally, the dominant trade political discourse surrounding control of union discourse in these sectors favours tri- the means of production can be found. partite bargaining, ‘decent work’ and social peace, based on regulating production for However, the outlook for struggles over private profi t in an expanding world mar- ownership and decommodifi cation in en- ket. ergy-intensive industries such as cars, avia-

98 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 98 09-11-05 11.18.06 Crisis as an opportunity for industry have recently sustained an occu- reorienting our struggles pation of a car factory that lasted over two months, involving close to 1,000 workers However, the current economic-fi nancial and armed self-defence. It was only defeated crisis also off ers an opportunity to reopen after a prolonged struggle involving several this discussion, since the old model of Key- thousand riot police. For the most part, with nesian class compromise and stabilisation of the exception of the Korean car plants, these struggles aimed at changing ownership pat- have been small processes. Nonetheless, they terns of key means of production is dead, are of great importance and appear to be on and in all probability will not be resur- the upsurge. Importantly, the industries in rected. Furthermore, unless the discussion crisis are some of the key energy-intensive on production is reopened, it is very likely industries, such as cars and steel, that are es- that the ‘solutions’ found to the economic- pecially relevant to the issue of energy tran- fi nancial crisis will be authoritarian. sition and worker/community-led conver- sion processes. Starting with the economic and fi nancial collapse of Argentina in 2001, factory occu- The stark reality is that we are very far from pations and self-managed industrial produc- bringing about the kind of change in pro- tion and exchange have returned to the po- duction and consumption relations that is litical landscape. In the wake of the current needed to solve the climate/energy crisis. worldwide fi nancial and economic crisis, a We may in fact never be in a position to do ripple of factory struggles, including worker so. However, if we are to have any chance occupations and kidnapping of bosses, have of avoiding a socially and ecologically dis- spread around the world, including in the astrous process of climate change and en- US, the UK and numerous countries in forced change in social relations, it will be Eastern Europe. Such struggles are largely important to at least pose the question of defensive, related to redundancy condi- how this might come about. Until we face tions, rather than proposing a new model up to this, eff orts to tackle climate change of ownership, production and control, and will go nowhere. The task of collectively are still on a very small scale. Notably, the taking over the key means of production Detroit car factories have virtually been left and decommodifying the major productive to go under, or been given lifelines in order processes is immense. We are certainly not to draw out their demise. Certainly, they yet ready. However, what is both possible have not been taken over by workers and and long overdue is, at a minimum, to take communities and converted into renewable some initial steps towards deepening a long- energy production plants. Yet, albeit way term strategic debate about how, and for too little, way too late, even the head of the what purposes, wealth is produced and dis- United Autoworkers Union made a fl eeting tributed in society, and how people’s subsist- and cautious reference to worker occupa- ence needs are met, as part of a shift to a new tions of the plants. This is a rhetoric that energy system. Through a process of debate, has not been used in such places for many we will hopefully be able to slowly develop decades. In South Korea, workers in the car collective interventions that contribute to

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 99

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 99 09-11-05 11.18.06 these goals, so that in the medium term, as unwaged), communities and users of en- the economic-fi nancial and ecological cri- ergy and energy-intensive sectors across the ses deepen, we may be able to do what is hierarchically divided world-wide division not possible now and collectively plan the of labour. This will already be an impor- process of production and consumption tant step towards bringing about a profound based on a clear process of class struggle that democratisation of how wealth is produced brings together workers (both waged and and distributed throughout society.

Some useful literature on energy, labour and technology

Caff entzis, G. (2005), No Blood for Oil – En- Headrick, D. (1988), The Tentacles of Progress: ergy, Class Struggle and War 1998-2004. www. Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, radicalpolYtics.org 1850-1940. New York: Oxford University Press. Caff entzis, G. (1990), On Africa and Self-Re- producing Automata. http://www.midnight- Keefer, T. (2005), ‘Of Hand Mills and Heat notes.org/pdfnewenc6.pdf Engines: Peak Oil, Class Struggle and the Thermodynamics of Production’. MA re- Corrigan, P., H. Ramsay, and D. Sayer (1978), search paper, York University, Ontario. Socialist Construction and Marxist Theory: Bol- shevism and its Critique. London: Macmillan; Midnight Notes Collective (1992), Midnight New York: Monthly Review Press. Oil: Work, Energy, War 1973-1992. Brooklyn: Autonomedia (Midnight Notes 11). Corrigan, P., H. Ramsay, and D. Sayer (1979), For Mao: Essays in Historical Material- Montgomery, D. (1980), Workers’ Control in ism. London: Macmillan. America: Studies in the History of Work, Tech- nology, and Labor Struggles. Cambridge and Cowan, R. (1983), More Work for Mother: The New York: Cambridge University Press. Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Noble, D. (1977), America by Design: Science, Books. Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capital- ism. New York: Knopf. Headrick, D. (1981), The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press.

100 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 100 09-11-05 11.18.06 Degrowth, or deconstruction of the economy: Towards a sustainable world

Enrique Leff

The degrowth wager The 1960s were a period of turbulence in the modern world. At the same time as emancipatory and countercultural move- ments (labour, youth, students, gender) ir- rupted, an alarmist discourse emerged that warned of the ‘detonation’ of a so-called ‘population bomb’, and suggested that rapid demographic growth was the main cause of the ecological crisis. For the fi rst time since a nascent capitalism in the Renaissance set in motion the machinery of production and Enrique Leff is a Mexican market mechanisms, since the West had environmentalist and has as PhD in opened history to a modernity guided by developmental economics. For many the ideals of freedom and enlightened rea- years, Enrique was coordinator of the son, one of the pillars of Western civilisa- UNDP Environmental Training Programme tion cracked: the myth of progress impelled for Latin America and the Caribbean. He by the power of science and technology, currently works in the Faculty of Political converted into the most servile – and serv- and Social Sciences at the Universidad iceable – tools of capital accumulation, and Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). of unlimited economic growth.

The environmental crisis thus questioned some of our most ingrained beliefs: not only human supremacy over all other creatures on the planet and the right to dominate and exploit nature for the profi t of ‘man’, but the very meaning of human existence, grounded in economic growth and techno- logical progress. This progress was forged

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 101

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 101 09-11-05 11.18.06 in economic rationality, shaped by the tools (1962) on the eff ects of the insecticide DDT, of classical science, and set up a structure, ecological destruction has increased dramat- a model, that established the conditions for ically, accentuating global warming caused a notion that progress was no longer based by greenhouse gases and by the inescapable on the co-evolution of cultures with their laws of thermodynamics, which have set environments, but on an economic devel- in motion the planet’s entropic death. The opment based on a mode of production that remedies generated by critical thought and carried in its genetic code an imperative of technological ingenuity have been shown growth – of limitless growth! to be hard to integrate into the economic system. Sustainable development has been The pioneers of the bio- and ecological econ- shown to be short-lived, because it is not omy raised the problem of the relationship ecologically sustainable (Park et al. 2008). between economic process and the degrada- tion of nature, the necessity of internalising In its globalising drive, the economic system ecological costs and deploying distributive has continued to obscure the fundamental countermeasures to the market’s unbalanced problem. Thus, rather than internalising the machinations. In 1972, a study by MIT and ecological conditions for genuinely sustain- the Club of Rome for the fi rst time high- able development, the geopolitics of ‘sustain- lighted the Limits to Growth. This is where able development’ ended up commodifying proposals for ‘zero growth’ and a ‘steady-state nature and over-economising the world: economy’ fi rst appeared. At the same time, ‘mechanisms’ for ‘clean development’ were Georgescu-Roegen (1971) established the put in place, alongside economic instru- fundamental link between economic growth ments for environmental management that and natural limits in his book, The Entropy have gone a long way towards establishing Law and the Economic Process. The process of (private) property rights over and the mon- production generated by the economic ratio- etary value of environmental goods and ser- nality that nests in the machinery of the In- vices (Brand/Görg 2008). Free nature and dustrial Revolution is defi ned by an impulse natural commons (water, oil) have been pro- to grow or die (unlike living beings, who are gressively privatised, while an entire market born, develop and die, and human popula- has been created around buying and selling tions, which usually stabilise their growth). pollution rights (carbon trading) and giving Economic growth, industrial metabolism a price to nature (carbon off setting). and exosomatic consumption imply a per- manently growing consumption of nature Today, confronted with the failure of all (matter and energy), which not only runs up eff orts to mitigate global warming, aware- against the limits of the planet’s resources, ness of the limits to growth returns and, but also becomes degraded in the process of with it, a clamour for degrowth. The de- production and consumption, following the growth wager is not a merely critical and second law of thermodynamics. reactive moral position; resistance to an oppressive, destructive, unequal and unfair More than four decades after the eye-open- power structure; a manifestation of alterna- ing book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson tive beliefs, tastes and lifestyles. Degrowth

102 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 102 09-11-05 11.18.07 is more than a simple loss of faith, it is the with the construction of today’s productive active awareness of the existence of a force rationality (Leff 1995). right at the heart of the civilising process that puts the quality of human life and life Degrowth implies not only downshifting on the planet as a whole at risk. The call or unlinking from the economy. It is not for degrowth should not be a rhetorical re- synonymous with de-materialising produc- course in the arsenal of the critique of the tion, since that would not prevent a grow- present model’s unsustainability, it must be ing economy from going on consuming and grounded in solid theoretical argument and transforming nature until it reaches the very political strategy. limits of the planet’s own sustainability. Ab- stinence and frugality on the part of some The call for degrowth is not a mere ideo- responsible consumers do not defuse the logical slogan against a myth, a mot d’ordre to mania for growth at the centre of econom- mobilise society against the evils of growth, ic rationality, which has inscribed in itself or its deadly conclusion. It is not a counter- the impulse towards capital accumulation, order that fl ees from growth, in the way the economies of scale, urban agglomeration, hippies could extract themselves from domi- globalisation of the market and concentra- nant culture, nor a celebration of communi- tion of wealth. To jump from a moving ties marginalised by ‘development’. Today, train is not to change track. Degrowth does not even the most isolated indigenous cul- not entail moving down in the economy’s tures are safe from or can unlink themselves wheel of fortune – it is not enough to wish from the eff ects of a globalisation driven for- to make it smaller or to stop it. Beyond the ward by the engine of economic growth. But refusal of the commodifi cation of nature, it how to defuse growth in a process that has is necessary to deconstruct the economy. in its original structure and genetic code a force that impels it to grow or die? How to From degrowth to deconstruction do it without generating an economic reces- sion with disastrous social and environmental The economistic strategy that purports to consequences on a planetary scale? For if the contain the overfl owing of nature by con- economy itself, through its internal crises, straining it in the cage of modern rational- cannot arrive at the level of growth desired ity, restraining it within economic instru- by heads of state and entrepreneurs, then to ments and market mechanisms, submitting deliberately brake growth would amount to it to dominant forms of calculation and val- willingly kicking off a crisis with incalculable uation, has failed. From anxiety in the face eff ects. It is for this reason that we must think of ecological disaster and disbelief in the ef- not only about degrowth, but also about a fi cacy and morality of the capitalist market, transition towards a sustainable economy. the restlessness that demands degrowth is The latter must be more than a mere ecologi- born. However, the solution to the problem sation of existing economic rationality, it has of growth is not degrowth, but the decon- to be another economy, grounded in other struction of the economy and the transition productive principles. Degrowth thus implies towards a new rationality that can guide the a deconstruction of the economy, together construction of sustainability.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 103

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 103 09-11-05 11.18.07 The deconstruction of the economy implies fuel costs down again. The end of the oil more than a mental exercise in order to un- era will not be the result of oil’s growing ravel and identify the ideas and social forces scarcity, but of its abundance in relation to that came together in giving birth to the nature’s capacity of absorption and dilution,

modern economy, daughter of the Enlight- of its transmutation into CO2. The search enment and of the commercial exchanges of for economic balance by way of the over- nascent capitalism. It entails a much more production of hydrocarbons in order to complex philosophical, political and social continue feeding the machinery of industry exercise. The economy exists not only as (and the production of agro-fuels) puts at theory, as supposed science. The economy risk not only the sustainability of the planet, is a rationality – a form of interpreting and but that of the economy itself. To free the acting in the world – that has become insti- economy from its dependence on oil is im- tutionalised and incorporated into our sub- perative in light of the catastrophic risks of jectivity. The drive for ‘having’, ‘control- climate change. ling’, ‘accumulating’ is in itself a refl ection of a subjectivity constituted within moder- Degrowth of the economy implies not only nity’s rationality and economic structure. the theoretical deconstruction of its scien- tifi c paradigms, but also of its social institu- Deconstructing the unsustainable economy tionalisation and the subjectivisation of the means questioning the thought, science, principles that try to legitimate economic technology and institutions that create the rationality as the ultimate, inevitable mode cage of rationality of modernity. Econom- of being in the world. Nevertheless, the ic rationality is not merely a superstruc- various reasons for deconstructing econom- ture to be investigated and deconstructed ic rationality do not directly translate into in thought, it is a mode of production of strategic thought and actions that can defuse knowledges and commodities. It is the na- the capitalist machinery. It is not simply a ture-swallowing monster whose jaws ex- matter of ‘greening’ the economy, moder- hale Faustian fumes into the atmosphere, ating consumption or enhancing alternative contaminating the environment and warm- and renewable sources of energy within the ing the planet. niches of opportunity that appear profi table in the context of the increase in energy costs. It is not possible to maintain an infi nitely These principles, even if converted into so- growing economy that feeds on a fi nite na- cial movements, do not in and of themselves ture: especially not an economy based on oil eff ect a defusing of production. Rather, and coal, which the metabolism of industry, they constitute a mere normativity and a transport and the family economy transform fl ight from the system, a counter-current

into CO2, the main culprit in global warm- that fails to arrest the overfl owing torrent ing. The problem with the oil economy is of the machinery of growth. This is why not fundamentally that of its management we need to deconstruct economic reasons as a public or private good. It is not the in- by legitimating other principles, values and crease in its supply, exploiting protected re- non-economic potentials. We must forge a serves and submarine fi elds, so as to bring strategic thought and a political programme

104 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 104 09-11-05 11.18.07 that allow us to deconstruct economic ratio- device (the genetic code) of the economy, nality at the same time as an environmental and to do it without provoking a recession rationality is constructed. of such magnitude that it would bring about yet more poverty and environmental de- Beyond the task of dismantling the domi- struction. nant economic model, it is a matter of un- ravelling economic rationality while weav- The decolonisation of the imaginary sus- ing new matrices of rationality to fertilise taining the dominant economy will not new territories of life. This leads to a strat- emerge from responsible consumption or egy of deconstruction and reconstruction; a pedagogy of socio-environmental catas- not making the system crumble, but reor- trophes, as Latouche suggested when fo- ganising production and consumption based cusing on the degrowth wager. Economic on the principles of environmental ratio- rationality has become institutionalised and nality; unlinking from the cogs of capital- incorporated into our way of being in the ist market mechanisms and economic valu- world, homo oeconomicus. What is needed ation of environmental goods and services then is a change of skin. The really-existing as the dominating principle that organises economy cannot be deconstructed by an the global economy; incorporating what ideological reaction or a revolutionary so- would be the waste product into new eco- cial movement. It is not enough to moderate logical cycles through ‘clean technologies’, it by incorporating other values and social as promoted by an emergent geopolitics of imperatives. Deconstruction entails practi- sustainable development (Leff 2002). This cal measures, or we will forever stay at the reconstruction, however, is not only guided purely theoretical level, striking blindly in by an ‘ecological rationality’, but by cul- the dark with our desires for a better and tural forms and processes of resignifi cation more sustainable world. of nature. In this sense, the construction of an environmental rationality capable of de- The limit to growth, the constructing economic rationality implies processes of reappropriation of nature and resignifi cation of production and the re-territorialisation of cultures. construction of a sustainable future

Economic growth carries with it the prob- The limit is the end-point from which life lem of its measure. The omnipresent mea- is constructed. It is from death that we re- sure of GDP, by which national economies organise our existence. The law of the lim- are evaluated in their success or failure, does its of nature has refounded the sciences and not measure negative externalities. But the the human world is sustained by the recog- fundamental problem cannot be solved with nition of its cultural and genetic limits in a multiple scale or multi-criteria methods, the prohibition of incest. In the face of this or with ‘green accounts’, the calculation of panorama of culture and knowledge of the the hidden costs of growth, a ‘human devel- world, one should ask by which strange de- opment index’ or an ‘indicator of genuine sign the economy has managed to bypass the progress’. The point is to defuse the internal question of limits, as it attempts to rule the

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 105

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 105 09-11-05 11.18.07 world as a system of mechanical equilibrium tious and the speculation of fi nancial capi- among factors of production and circulation tal. Nonetheless, for as long as the economic of value and market prices. The limit to this process must produce material goods (hous- unbridled process of accumulation has not es, means of transportation, clothes, food) been the ‘law of value’, nor the cyclical crisis it cannot escape the law of entropy. This of overproduction or under-consumption of is the ultimate limit of economic growth. capital. The only antidote to this inevitable trajec- tory towards entropic death is the process The limit is marked by the law of entropy, of negentropic production (from: negative en- which, as indicated by Georgescu-Roegen, tropy) of living matter, which translates into functions as the limit-law of production. renewable natural resources. The law of entropy reminds us that every economic process, as productive process, is The transition towards this bioeconomy trapped in an ineluctable process of degra- would mean a decrease in the rate of eco- dation that advances towards entropic death. nomic growth as it is measured today, and What does this mean? That every produc- a negative rate in time, while indicators for tive process (like every metabolic process a sustainable, negentropic eco-technological in living organisms) feeds on matter and production are developed. In this sense, the low-entropy energy; that in its process of new economy is based on ecological poten- transformation it produces consumer goods tials, technological innovation and cultural with a residue of degraded energy, which creativity. In this way a post-growth society fi nally expresses itself as heat; and that this and an economy in balance with the planet’s process is irreversible. The advance of re- conditions of sustainability could begin to cycling technologies notwithstanding, pol- appear. And yet, from environmental ra- lutant residues are only partially reconvert- tionality emerges not only a new mode of ible into useful matter and energy. And production, but a new way of being in the this is what manifests itself as the limit to world, new processes of signifi cation of na- the accumulation of capital and economic ture and new existential meanings in the growth: the de-structuring of productive construction of a sustainable future. ecosystems, and their saturation with regard to their capacity to dilute contaminants in Translated from Spanish common environments (seas, lakes, air and by Rodrigo Nunes. soils), which ultimately appears as a process of global warming and the possibility of an ecological collapse that crosses the thresh- olds of the planet’s ecological equilibrium.

While the bioeconomy takes the material conditions of nature as the root of produc- tion, the ‘economy’ searches for a way out through the dematerialisation of produc- tion. The economy fl ees towards the fi cti-

106 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 106 09-11-05 11.18.07 Literature

Brand, U., and C. Görg (2008), ‘Sustain- Entwicklung. Ökonomisierung des Klimas, ability and Globalisation: A Theoretical Rationalisierung der Umwelt und die ge- Perspective’, in Park, J., K. Conca, and M., sellschaftliche Wiederaneignung der Natur’, Finger (eds), The Crisis of Global Environmen- in Görg, C. and U. Brand (eds), Mythen glo- tal Governance. Towards a New Political Econo- balen Umweltmanagments: ‘Rio + 10’ und die my of Sustainability. London and New York: Sackgassen nachhaltiger Entwicklung. Münster: Routledge, 13-33. Westfälisches Dampfboot, 92-117.

Carson, R. (1962), Silent Spring. New York: Meadows, D.H., D.L. Meadows and J. Fawcett. Randers (1972), The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971), The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge Park, J., M. Finger, and K. Conca (2008), MA: Harvard University Press. ‘The Death of Rio Environmentalism’, in Conca, K., M. Finger, and J. Park (eds), The Leff , E. (1995), Green Production: Towards an Crisis of Global Environmental Governance: To- Environmental Rationality. New York: Guil- wards a New Political Economy of Sustainability. ford Publications. London: Routledge.

Leff , E. (2002), ‘Die Geopolitik nachhaltiger

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 107

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 107 09-11-05 11.18.07 The rights of nature, new forms of citizenship and the Good Life – Echoes of the Constitución de Montecristi in Ecuador

Alberto Acosta

Every constitution synthesises a historical moment. Crystallised in every constitution Alberto Acosta is an Ecuadorian economist. is an accumulation of social processes. And He is a lecturer and researcher at the in every constitution a certain way of under- Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences standing life takes shape. And yet, a consti- (FLACSO) in Quito, and was formerly tution does not make a society. It is society secretary of mines and energy as well as that produces a constitution and adopts it president of the Constitutional Assembly. like a roadmap. Besides, a constitution must be more than merely the result of an exercise in advanced jurisprudence, seen through the logic of constitutional interpretations, and it is certainly not the product of one or a few enlightened individuals. Beyond its indis- putably legal function, a constitution must be a political project for a common life, to be elaborated and given eff ect through the active participation of all citizens.

From this point of view, the recent Ecua- dorian constitution (produced in the city of Montecristi), which remained faithful to pent-up demands and responded to prevail- ing expectations, assigns the undertaking of structural transformation to itself as both a means and, indeed, an end. In it are expressed multiple proposals for radical changes con- structed over the course of many decades of resistance and social struggles, changes that are often impossible for traditional constitu- tionalists to accept (or even to understand).

108 Critical Currents no. 6

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 108 09-11-05 11.18.07 The new state This has entailed devaluation of constitu- tional law and of constitutions themselves, A basic feature of the new constitution is with a loss of sovereignty by the people. the declaration of a liberal constitutional state based on notions of rights and justice: The Good Life a state that is social, democratic, sovereign, independent, unifi ed, intercultural, plurina- The Ecuadorian constitution calls on both tional and secular. This defi nition opens up individuals and collectivities to achieve the the possibility of a new, multiple-entry pact Good Life (sumak kausay). Society is invit- of broad coexistence. Without claiming to ed to take part at every stage and in every exhaust the defi nition of plurinationality, it arena of public management and planning is important to highlight the way in which for national and local development, and the this concept leads to a rethinking of the state execution and control of the plans for de- in its overdue acknowledgment of indige- velopment (or rather, for the Good Life) on nous peoples and nationalities, as well as its every level. The Good Life will never be a acknowledgment of the presence of other gift from powerful groups. The construc- national communities – a genuine qualita- tion of an equal, egalitarian and free society tive leap compared to the Eurocentric, mo- will only be possible through the participa- nocultural perspective dominant until now. tion of all. And its attainment will require This is why it is necessary to reformulate contesting the privileges of present domi- the relations of power between state and nant elites, without allowing new elites and citizenry, so that the latter become the true new forms of domination to emerge. sovereigns. The crisis of political repre- sentation that has aff ected, and still aff ects, The true constituent process begins im- many parliamentary systems implies a crisis mediately the constitution is adopted. This of constitutional law inasmuch as ‘popular process demands a greater and more pro- sovereignty’ is subject to various private de- found constitutional pedagogy, as well as a sires. This contradiction of the demands of mobilised society that can propel the ma- the citizenry creates a crisis of legitimation: terialisation of constitutional achievements constitutional right has all too often existed – in other words, a process of constituting on paper only. citizenship.

The task is to overcome the range of norms The consolidation of new constitutional that were explicitly or implicitly agreed by norms into laws and a renewal of politics the big economic agents that acted indepen- consistent with the proposed changes is a dently of public powers in their relations task that calls on all in the city and the coun- with each other or the state. Ultimately, try to continue on the path of mobilisation. these norms, stemming from private inter- The emptying-out of the historical content ests, including transnational agents (IMF, of the constitution must be prevented, for WTO, Free Trade Agreements, to name just example, by way of new laws and institu- a few sources of this transnational law), have tions. determined political relations with the state.

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 109

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 109 09-11-05 11.18.07 Post-development? The rights of nature The Montecristi constitution, and this is The rights of nature, which constitute ‘a ca- perhaps one of its greatest merits, opens up tastrophe for the Roman-French legal tra- a struggle over the historical sense of de- dition’, have been described as ‘conceptual velopment. In fact, the Good Life brings us gibberish’. For those who wish to conserve directly to an as yet unexplored age, that of the law (or defend the privileges of oligar- post-development. With the Good Life, what is chies?), who are essentially unable to under- rejected is the vision that purported to take stand the transformations taking place right us down the road of perpetual accumulation now, it is diffi cult to understand that the of material goods as an index of development world is constantly moving on. Through- and progress, a road that leads nowhere but out history, each creation and expansion to humanity’s self-destruction. of rights has always appeared as something previously unthinkable. The emancipation We understand once and for all that we must of slaves or the extension of civil rights to look for alternative ways of dignifi ed and African-Americans, women and children sustainable living, ways that are not a mere were in each case dismissed as nonsensical. caricature of the Western lifestyle and even For slavery to be abolished it was both nec- less a continuation of structures marked by essary to recognise ‘the right to have rights’ massive social and environmental inequality. and to exert political pressure to change the We will have to solve existing imbalances laws that denied those rights. In order to and, particularly, to incorporate criteria of free nature from the condition of being a suffi ciency rather than try to sustain, at the rightless subject or a simple object of prop- cost of the majority of the population and of erty, political pressure to have it recognised nature, the logic of effi ciency understood as as being entitled to rights is also required. ever-accelerating material accumulation for the benefi t of a small fraction of society. To endow nature with rights, therefore, means to politically secure its passage from We are aware that these new currents of legal object to subject as part of a centuries-long thought are not free of confl ict. In abandon- process of expanding who or what becomes ing the traditional concept of law as a source a subject with rights. This is a process that of right, the constitution has consolidated has been enriched by the struggles and con- a juridical point of departure independent tributions of many peoples, not only those of traditional visions. It should come as no from the Andes. It will not be easy to con- surprise, then, that this new charter has gen- solidate these transformations, especially to erated confl icts with traditional jurists, not the extent that they aff ect the privileges of to mention with those who are used to hav- the circles of power, which will do every- ing their word (and especially their interests) thing to stop the process of change. But one become law. day, maybe not too distant, we will see a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Na- ture as an inseparable complement to hu- man rights.

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critical currents 6 book_b.indd 110 09-11-05 11.18.07 The confl ict and resistance that groups Freeing the fl ows of people whose privileges are threatened can un- leash, will – perhaps surprisingly to some In contrast with the course of capitalist glo- – be positive for society as a whole, since balisation, which blocks the fl ows of peo- they will evoke an organised response on ple, the Montecristi constitution proposes the part of the majority. It is crucial to stress citizenship with universalised dimensions. that the constitutional advances are not a The rights of those who have emigrated gift of any one individual, but the result of have been consolidated: not only can they struggle involving broad sectors of the pop- vote in Ecuadorian elections, but they will ulation. Therefore, as part of the collective have their own representatives in the Na- construction of a new contract of social and tional Assembly, with full power to initi- environmental coexistence, it is necessary to ate political measures, including proposing create new spaces of freedom and to remove laws. The state will create incentives for the all the obstacles that prevent them from be- return of the savings and goods of expatri- coming eff ective. ates, so that these resources can be deployed as productive investment in the country in The source of these contradictions lies in ways decided by the expatriates themselves. the continuing power of a developmentalist Incentives will also be created so that they theory and practice that are characteristic of voluntarily participate in social security. an extractive (primary commodity-export- The constitution also grants similar rights ing) economy – and which have not only to migrants and citizens: those living in the failed to achieve the desired development, country for more than fi ve years will be al- but have also undermined our natural con- lowed to vote, without the need for bilat- ditions. This stupidity continues, in fact, eral agreements with their countries of ori- in all currently progressive governments in gin. It will be impossible to expel them to Latin America. Despite their considerable countries where their life, freedom, security advances in some areas, social in particular, or integrity, or that of their family mem- they still have enormous diffi culty in creat- bers, will be at risk because of their politi- ing new styles of development. They show cal opinions, ethnicity, religion, nationality, no sign of kick-starting a new mode of sus- ideology or membership of certain social tainable natural-resource use to benefi t the groups. Likewise, the expulsion of groups whole of society and secure the rights of of foreigners is banned: migratory processes nature. must be regularised.

Current governments – even in Ecuador – We do not wait for the world to change remain tied to neo-developmentalist per- so that we can make advances in the fi eld spectives and practices that necessarily con- of migration: we act to change the world. tradict the spirit of the Good Life. This is These proposals concerning human mobil- why it is imperative not only to overcome ity appear in the wider context of furthering neo-liberal practices, but also to strive to- the principle of universal citizenship, free- wards a harmonious relationship between dom of movement for all inhabitants of the society and nature, that is, the Good Life. planet and the progressive elimination of the

Contours of Climate Justice. Ideas for shaping new climate and energy politics 111

critical currents 6 book_b.indd 111 09-11-05 11.18.07 condition of being a ‘foreigner’ as elements social, economic and environmental rights in the transformation of unequal relations and guarantees. It is also ingrained in the among countries, especially those between principles that guide the economic regime, global North and South. To that end, the which promote harmonious relations among creation of a Latin American and Caribbean human beings individually and collectively citizenship is promoted, as are the mobilisa- and with nature. It is, in essence, a mat- tion of policies that guarantee the human ter of building an economy of solidarity, at rights of border populations and refugees the same time as various sovereignties are and the common protection of Latin Amer- recovered as central to the political life of ican- and Caribbean-born individuals in the country. We cannot depend primarily their countries of arrival and transit. on the revenues generated from natural re- sources, but must rely on the eff orts of hu- Conclusion man beings in coexistence with nature. To achieve this, it is necessary to expand so- To sum up, if we want to change the world cial capacities, starting by recovering and – and this is indeed the task – , it is insuf- strengthening multiculturality as an essen- fi cient and extremely dangerous to apply the tial element of change. paradigm of development as conceived in the Western world. Not only is this not syn- We are faced with the imperative of the onymous with collective wellbeing, it also democratic construction of a genuinely places the very life of humanity at risk. The democratic society, steeped in the values of Good Life transcends the mere satisfaction freedom, equality and responsibility, which of needs and access to goods and services. is dutiful, inclusive, equal, fair and respect- From the point of view of the philosophy of ful of life; a society in which all can have the Good Life, which embraces the essence equal possibilities and opportunities, where of indigenous cultures and the proposals for individual and collective coexist, where building a sustainable world being debated economic rationality is reconciled with the world over, we need to question the ethics and common sense, where the rights traditional concept of development. This of nature are a practical reality – in short, ‘development’ has led to generalised ‘misde- where a plurinational state and the Good velopment’ (José María Tortosa) across the Life are one and the same. planet, including in those countries consid- ered developed. Neo-developmentalism, or Translated from Spanish ‘senile developmentalism’ (Joan Martínez by Rodrigo Nunes. Allier), is not the path to development, let alone the Good Life. The growth and great- er availability of revenue has not in and of itself secured the wellbeing of any country. Let us insist that the permanent accumula- tion of material goods has no future.

The Good Life has to do with a series of

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critical currents 6 book_b.indd 112 09-11-05 11.18.07 Carbon trading lies at the centre of global climate policy and is projected to become one of the world’s largest commodities markets, yet it has a disastrous track record since its adoption as part of the Kyoto Protocol. Carbon Trading: how it works and why it fails outlines the limitations of an approach to tackling climate change which redefines the problem to fit the assumptions of neoliberal economics. It demonstrates that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, the world’s largest carbon market, has consistently failed to ´cap´ emissions, while the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) routinely favours environmentally ineffective and socially unjust projects. This is illustrated with case studies of CDM projects in Brazil, Indonesia, India and Thailand.

UN climate talks in Copenhagen are discussing ways to expand the trading experiment, but the evidence suggests it should be abandoned. From subsidy shifting to regulation, there is a plethora of ways forward without carbon trading – but there are no short cuts around situated local knowledge and political organising if climate change is to be addressed in a just and fair manner.

Critical Currents is an Occasional Paper Series published by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. It is also available online at www.dhf.uu.se.

Printed copies may be obtained from Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Övre Slottsgatan 2 SE- 753 10 Uppsala, Sweden email: [email protected] phone: +46 (0)18-410 10 00