6. World Bank
Anyone who knows anything about the World Bank might be surprised to hear that it is jumping on the bandwagon to save the planet from climate change...or at least it is pretending to.
The World Bank has created a range of Climate Investment Funds that buy emission reduction credits from Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation and Forest projects. From 2005-2007 the Bank ran ten emission-reduction funds, earning itself around $260 million for doing so. At the same time the Bank invested over $1.5billion in high-emissions fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) projects and in 2008 the Bank increased its funding of coal projects by 256%!
One example of a project the World Bank is funding is the 'FaL-G Brick and Blocks project' in India. The Bank will buy emissions reductions made when 200 small brick-makers switch from using coal-fires to harden their bricks to using self-hardening fly ash. But fly ash is a radioactive by-product of coal-fired power plants. The Bank has turned toxic waste products into assets, rewarding fossil fuel dependent power plants and factories. The Bank claims that these projects help the poor by bringing jobs to India, ignoring that the inputs for these bricks come from polluting sources and are poisonous for humans to handle. The UN body that regulates North-South carbon trading asked the Bank to include these emissions in the projects’ carbon footprint, but the Bank said no!
The Bank continues to fund mega-dams which cause serious environmental and social damage and emit lots of GHGs. It has also been condemned by its own Inspection Panel for continuing to support industrial logging, soy and palm oil plantations and cattle ranching - violating the rights of indigenous and other forest-dependent communities. Ultimately, the World Bank's emission-reduction deals pour money into projects that produce cheap and easy carbon credits: not only does this reduce the money available for real, small-scale renewable energy projects, but also often these 'carbon credits' don't produce any emissions cuts at all.
For more information, see:
The World Bank and the carbon market : Rhetoric and Reality by CDM Watch
http://www.sinkswatch.org/pubs/CDM%20Watch%20World%20Bank%20rethoric%20and%20reality.pdf
FoE International: The World Bank and Climate Change
http://www.foe.org/international-work/world-bank-and-climate-change
The World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds: Still Fueling Global Warming
http://www.foe.org/Climate_Investment_Funds/WorldBank-ClimateOverview.pdf
The World Bank's Carbon Deals by Janet Redman
7. Fighting Back
There are many groups and organisations who are researching, documenting and fighting against carbon trading and the mechanisms created by the UNFCCC. Some of these are listed below and their websites contain a lot of useful information and reports.
Many of these groups are coming together to mobilise against the COP15 summit it Copenhagen in December under the network name 'Climate Justice Action' – www.peoplesclimateaction.org. There are already two mass actions being planned by this network – see their website for more details. Another network mobilising against the summit is 'Never Trust A Cop' - http://nevertrustacop.wordpress.com - who are calling for autonomous groups to come and do affinity group actions throughout the summit.
It is vitally important that activists around Europe do not ignore this summit. Climate change is being used by governments and corporations around the world to expand property rights, create new markets and revive a dying capitalist system by painting it green. Only a coming together of movements, as was seen in Seattle, determined to prevent the expansion of capitalism at the expense of the people, will raise the possibility to stop this.
Links
Carbon Trade Watch - www.carbontradewatch.org
CDM Watch - www.cdmwatch.org
Biofuel Watch - www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
Sinkswatch - www.sinkswatch.org
Oil Watch - www.oilwatch.org
Red Monitor - www.redd-monitor.org
World Rainforest Movement - www.wrm.org.uy
International Rivers - www.internationalrivers.org
CEE Bankwatch - www.bankwatch.org
Corporate Europe Observatory - www.corporateeurope.org
The Cornerhouse - www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate
Climate Justice Now! - climatejustice.blogspot.com
La Via Campesina - www.viacampesina.org (see especially Stop! The UNFCCC is going off the rails!)
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