Africa and Africa and the Politics of the Politics of

Climate Justice:Climate Justice:Resource Curses, Resource Curses,

energy, emissions, energy, emissions, ecoeco--social resistancesocial resistance

Patrick Bond University of KwaZulu-Natal

School of Development Studies and Centre for Civil Society, Durban

presented to theCarleton University Institute of

African Studies and the High Commission for the Republic of South Africa

Africa Dialogue SeriesOttawa, 29 March 2011

cartoons by Zapiro

last time SA hosted global environment conference: WSSD

World Summit on Sustainable Development Johannesburg, 31 August 2002: 30,000 protesters

coming to Durban: COP 17, Nov 28-Dec 9 2011,following 2009 Copenhagen, 2010 Cancun

elites prefer ignorance about climate‘Is climate change a “serious problem”’? Global Scan polls

citizenries: percentage answering ‘Yes’ (2003, 2006)

Major sites for neoliberal plus sustainable dev. discourses

multinational corporate profitsas a percentage of firm equity

Source: UN Conference on Trade and Development (2007), World Investment Report 2007, Geneva.

extractive industries

SSA terms of trade rose from 1998-2008source: World Bank (Feb 2011) Africa Regional Strategy

Source: IMF, Regional Economic Outlook, October 2009

oil states: Eq Guinea,

Angola, Chad,

Sudan, Nigeria,

Cameroon, Rep of Congo, Gabon

commodity prices crash, exports shrink

correcting GDP bias (global)for pollution, resource extraction, etc

A “genuine progress indicator corrects the bias in GDP” Source: redefiningprogress.org

Resource Curse and GDP

Where is the Wealth of Nations?

World Bank method for

adjusting savings to account for a

country’s tangible wealth and

resource depletion:The case of Ghana, 2000

(per capita US$ measure)

World Bank (minimalist) adjustments to ‘genuine

savings’fixed capital (-), education (+),

natural resource depletion (-), and

pollution (-)

Where isAfrica’s wealth?

World Bank recording of

African countries’adjusted

national wealth and ‘savings gaps’, 2000

Resource Curse export dependenceSource: Africa Commission

Resource Curse implications include ‘Odious Debt’ (16 African countries)

huge Africa debt relief (oh yeah?)Source: Africa Progress Panel, May 2010

2005 debt relief did not lower Africa’s repayment/export ratio:mainly unrepayable debt written off

Source: IMF, The Implications of the Global Financial Crisis for Low-Income Countries, 2009

Resource-Cursed African capital flight1970-2004, Source: Leonce Ndikumana and James Boyce, Univ of Mass.

offshore tax havensfor African capital flight

‘global governance’ solutions to world crises?recent record: repeated top-down failures

• except Montreal Protocol on CFCs (ozone hole), 1987since then:• dominant neoliberals (1990s), neoconservatives (2000s)• World Bank, IMF Annual Meetings: trivial reforms (Chinese voting power rising, African falling)• ‘Post-Washington Consensus’: Stiglitz fired, 1999• UN Millennium Development Goal rhetoric, 2000• WTO Doha Agenda 2001: failure• Monterrery Financing for Development summit, 2002, then G20 global financial reregulation, 2008-09: failure• renewed wars in Central Asia, Middle East, 2001-??• UN Security Council reform attempts failed, 2005• G8 aid promises (especially for Africa) broken, 2005• Kyoto Protocol on climate: Copenhagen Accord tragedy

Copenhagen Summit crash, December 2009on last day, backroom deal by Barack Obama(USA), Jacob Zuma (SA), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Manmohan Singh (India), Wen Jiabao (China)

designed to avoid needed emissions cuts; instead, business-as-usual for fossil-fuel capital, heavy industry, transport sector and overconsumers

top US climate negotiator Todd Stern, on demand for recognising climate debt

'The sense of guilt or 'The sense of guilt or culpability or reparations culpability or reparations ––

I just categorically reject that'I just categorically reject that'(statement at Copenhagen, 12/09)(statement at Copenhagen, 12/09)

Stern rejects foundational principle: ‘polluter pays’

WikiLeaksrevealed 2/10Stern/Pershing

bribery and bullying:Zenawi, Maldives, Bolivia

Meles Zenawi: UN Advisory Group on Finance cochair,cut 2009 climate debt demands

Maldives: $50m in US aid = U-turn to support Copenhagen Accord

concept of ‘ecological debt’ now recognised in serious research

instead of paying its debt, US plays thepollution markets

DATE: December 12, 1991TO: DistributionFR: Lawrence H. Summers

... I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that… I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted. (emphasis added)

(World Bank chief economist Larry Summers, later US Treasury Secretary and Obama’s economic manager – full memo: www.whirledbank.org)

‘underpolluted?’ rise in Southern African temperatures over historic norms from 1980

Source: Al GoreSource: Mark Jury

Kiliminjaro melts,

1970-2000

climate and African food

‘In Africa, crop net revenues could fall by as much as 90% by 2100, with small-scale farmers the most affected.’– Testimony to the US House of Reps. Select Committee on

Energy Independence and Global Warming, by R.K. Pachauri, Chairman, United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, August 2007

who loses from climate change?a ‘Climate Demography Vulnerability Index’

main losers: Central America, central South America, the Arabian Peninsula, Southeast Asia and much of Africa

who caused climate change?GHG/capita by country, 1950-2000

who in Africa loses from climate change?

North Africa, the Horn of Africa,

West Africa, Central Africa,

East Africa and parts of

Southern Africa

to solve climate crisis, in 1997 US VP to solve climate crisis, in 1997 US VP Al Gore helped develop emissions Al Gore helped develop emissions trade, in exchange for promised trade, in exchange for promised

(undelivered!) US support for Kyoto:(undelivered!) US support for Kyoto:

““The European Union has The European Union has adopted this U.S. innovation adopted this U.S. innovation

and is making it work and is making it work effectively there.effectively there.””

(Gore, (Gore, An Inconvenient TruthAn Inconvenient Truth, p. 252), p. 252)

Cancun COP 16 revived the market fix(in theory,

that is)

impossible to finance renewable impossible to finance renewable energy with such low carbon pricesenergy with such low carbon prices

emissions market’s five major crashes, 2006-09, 2010 stagnation, 2011 theft-closure, 2012 denouement?

does EU carbon trading ‘work effectively’?

will carbon trading solve climate change?

Marthinus van Schalkwyk(lead candidate, UN climate chief) to International Emissions Trading

Association (September 2007):

‘An all-encompassing global carbon market regime which includes all developed countries is the first and ultimate aim.’

The Kyoto Protocol’sClean Development Mechanism formula:

+

Mt Elgon (Uganda) villagers stand amid corn planted on what the government says is national park, but which they claim has belonged to

them for generations. To plant the corn, the villagers chopped down trees planted by the Dutch FACE Foundation as part of a carbon trading project.

CDM credits for oil companies that reduce Niger Delta gas flaring?“Carbon trading reflects one of the worst forms of neoliberal fanaticism and attempts at re-legitimating corporate rule experienced in past decades.”

Asume Osuoka

Bisasar Roadconversion of

methane-to-electricity at environmentally-

racist toxic dump

Africa’s largest landfill placed in black residential suburb (Clare Estate) by apartheid; municipality

refused to close it thanks to World Bank 2002

investment hype: Prototype Carbon Fund

credits

Durban, South Africa: $15 million CDM pilot

Sajida Khan’s family home

Sajida Khan (1952-2007)though felled by cancer from dump, she had co-hosted ‘Durban Group for Climate Justice’ (2004)

and her challenge to Bisasar methane flaring temporarily rebuffed World Bank in 2005

project went ahead in 2008-09 and currently CDM is paid just €14/tonne

Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation

REDD-type projects have already caused land grabs, killings, violent evictions and forced displacement, violations of human rights, threats to cultural survival, militarization and servitude- Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network

Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and forest Degradation

CJ critiques of REDD reforms:- no chance of getting full Indigenous rights (e.g. free, prior and informed consent)- no chance to keep REDD out of carbon markets & offsets- no chance to win on definitional issues (plantations)- highly divisive within indigenous peoples, Africa (e.g. WangariMaathei is supporter)

World Banklead climate financier?• fossil fuel loans: $6.3 billion in 2009-10 year, up from $1.6 bn in 2006-07;

• commodity export dogma;• resource curse financing;• carbon trading promotion;• Robert Zoellick qualifications:

-WB prez after Wolfowitz was fired;-Goldman Sachs, 2006-07;-US State Dep’t #2, 2005-06-US Trade Rep to WTO, 2001-05-Bush’s Florida vote-counter, 2000-Enron ‘senior political advisor’, 1999-neocon Project for a New American Century founder, 1998 (‘invade Iraq’)-Fannie Mae #2, 1993-99-US Treasury: Deputy Assistant Secretary during S&L crash, 1980s

full critique: http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za

Robert Zoellick . .. breaks

everythinghe touches

a very worried panda

Should thebe

NO

“leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole, the tarsand in the land”

• Niger Delta women, Environmental Rights Action, MEND have halted majority of oil exploitation• Australian Rising Tide regularly block Newcastle coal exports• British Climate Camp (Crude Awakening block Coryton oil refinery last Oct’ – MI5 couldn’t crack it)• Alberta, Canada tar sands green and indigenous activists• Norwegian environmentalists and Attac win in Lofoten region• Ecuador’s Amazon indigenous activists + Accion Ecologica halt oil drilling in Yasuni National Park • stopping King Coal: Navajo Nation forced cancellation of Black Meza (Arizona) mine permit against

world’s largest coal company, Peabody; Mountain Top Removal nearly halted in Appalachia; and Powder River Basin (MN, WY) farmers and ranchers fight coal expansion

• derailing coal energy: nearly all 151 proposed new coal power plants in Bush Energy Plan cancelled, abandoned or stalled since 2007; key community forces: Indigenous Environmental Network, Energy Justice Network and Western Mining Action Network

• preventing incinerators: since 2000, no new waste incinerators (more carbon-intensive than coal and leading source of cancer-causing dioxins) – Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Detroit victory, world wastepickers movement

• defeating Chevron expansion in Richmond, CA• undamming Mega Hydro at Klamath River: indigenous communities defeat Pacificorp Power• building resilient communities through local action: frontline communities winning campaigns

linking climate justice to basic survival – Oakland Climate Action Coalition addresses climate disruption and local equity

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African anti-extraction movements (select examples)

• anti-extraction community movements in SA against titanium from beach dunes (MRC) and platinum (Anglo and Lonplats);

• Lesotho peasants objecting to displacement during construction of the continent’s largest dam system (solely to quench Johannesburg’s hedonistic thirst), along with Ugandans similarly threatened at the overly expensive, corruption-ridden Bujagali Dam and Mozambicans in Justica Ambientale against Mphanda Nkuwa on the Zambezi River;

• resistance to water privatisation by Ghanaian, SA and Africa Water Network activists;

• campaigns against Liberia’s exploitation by Firestone Rubber;• Africa Centre for Biosafety against Monsanto-driven GM crops;• blood-diamonds victims from Sierra Leone and Angola generated a

partially-successful global deal at Kimberley, • on grounds of water rights, Kalahari Basarwa-San Bushmen win Feb

2011 case against forced removals, as Botswana government foiled in facilitating DeBeers and World Bank investments, and

• the Marange field of Manicaland, Zimbabwe is ongoing Resource Curse

what is ‘climate justice’?core principles from Rights of Mother Earth conference, Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010)

•50 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2017•stabilising temperature rises to 1C and 300 Parts Per Million•acknowledging the climate debt owed by developed countries•full respect for Human Rights and the inherent rights of indigenous people•universal declaration of Mother Earth rights to ensure harmony with nature•establishment of an International Court of Climate Justice•rejection of carbon markets, and REDD’s commodifed nature and forests•promotion of change in consumption patterns of developed countries•end of intellectual property rights for climate technologies •payment of 6 percent of developed countries’ GDP for climate change

strong endorsement from global CJ movement – but intense resistance in UN for bracketing this language … so time for ‘Cochambamba Protocol’?

Evo Morales

Climate Justice Now!SA opposes emissions, privatised electricity, Eskom coal and nuclear, carbon trading:

demands conservation/renewables and electricity-as-a-rightOtherwise Otherwise

this danger:this danger:

can it be done?case study of successful

SA-internationalist social movement solidarity:

access to Anti-RetroVirals Gugu Dlamini

- 1990s – US promotes Intellectual Property above all, so monopoly-patented ARVs cost $10-15,000/person/year – way too expensive!- 1997 – SA’s Medicines Act allows ‘compulsory licensing’ (breaking patent for generic producers);- 1998 – US State Dept counters Medicines Act with ‘full court press’,Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) formed, stoning death of AIDS activist Gugu Dlamini in her Durban township due to stigmatization- 1999 – Al Gore for president, ACTUP! opposition to Gore, Seattle WTO protest, Bill Clinton surrender, ‘AIDS dissidents’ emerge - 2000 – AIDS conference in Durban, rise of Thabo Mbeki’s denialism- 2001 – ‘PMA-SA v Mandela’ lawsuit w Medicines sans Frontiers & Oxfam, while TAC imports Thai, Brazilian, Indian generics

TAC’s Anti-RetroVirals campaign:- 2001 – Constitutional Court supports nevirapine,

major World Trade Organisation (TRIPS) concession at Doha- 2002 – TAC critiques of Mbeki, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang

- 2003 – ANC compels change in state policy- 2004 – generics produced in SA, global AIDS funds increase

- 2010 – nearly 800 000 public sector recipients! - 2011 threats – fiscal conservatism, Obama’s Pepfar cuts

strategic successes:* commoning intellectual property

* decommodification* destratification

* deglobalisation of capital* globalisation of solidarity Zackie Ahmat,

Nelson Mandela