On Thursday, December 1, the Durban Coalition - a growing network of climate justice organizations - held a press briefing at the Palais des congrès, at which experts condemned the growing prominence of the World Bank and carbon trading. Click here to read the press release in full. [pdf]

Key quotes:

"We reject the notion that carbon trading will halt the climate crisis. This crisis has been caused more than anything else by the excessive consumption of fossil fuels and by deforestation. Carbon trading gives the illusion of action, while countenancing continuing massive public investment in fossil fuels and deforestation," said Jutta Kill coordinator of the EU forest campaign group Fern.

“People in India are being thrown off their land to make way for massive tree plantations. Individual activists, and even groups of villages who resist are threatened, arrested, forcibly thrown off lands they have inhabited for generations, labeled as terrorists or shot dead: adults, women and children alike. We cannot ignore these social injustices instigated by carbon trading added to the social injustices of climate change if we are to succeed in reversing climate instability,” said Anastasia Pinto Director of the Indian NGO CORE, an Indigenous Peoples research organization from India.

"The World Bank is developing a monopoly position, profiting from carbon trading while investing heavily in fossil fuels. This is made worse by the G8 suggesting they should lead the way in a 'new framework' on climate change," said SEEN co-director Daphne Wysham.

"These negotiations are all about making money off the climate crisis, not about bringing about a change in the current system of heavy subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The truth of the global environmental crisis is beyond economic perspectives," said Arief Wicaksono of OilWatch International, headquartered in Ecuador.
by: ProfMKD @ 10:07 am