Nov 26
The YouTube video on Indonesia sent out by Wendy Lee is further confirmation of the extent of the contribution of human action to global warming. The atmospheric pollution, so graphically shown in the video, is an indication of the future to which we might be condemned if we continue to dither on taking effective action to promote alternative development policies which could mitigate or halt environmental degradation…
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Thank you, Mervyn, for taking the time to respond in such an informative way. Your mention of AOSIS reminds me of the statements made by the Jamaican Government delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 and to the AOSIS meeting at the summit. I am attaching highlights of the former and the complete text of the latter, for your information. (Norman, feel free to post them somewhere on your website.)
Quoted below are a few parts of the Jamaican Government’s Statement to the World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002 that were included at the insistence of the NGO contingent (Jean Jackson, Joan Grant-Cummings and Wendy Lee):
Water and sanitation are basic human rights, and should be non-negotiable.
Jamaica supports the guiding principles of the Earth Charter as a framework for sustainable development. We affirm the wisdom that, for sustainable development to be realized, it must be pursued within a framework of true partnership in decision-making and action among all stakeholders.
Jamaica recognizes the valuable contribution to development that is being made by non-governmental organizations and other members of civil society. In this context, we assert the imperative of integrating meaningful gender considerations in the entire development process.
Promises, promises…
Wendy
A small footnote. Guyana lies below sea level and would certainly be submerged if it were to rise by six feet, at least the coastal strip where most of the population lives.
Does anyone know the answer to the following? Caricom accounts for a minute proportion of the earth’s tillage acreage. If the countries with large land masses do not take effective action, agro-based measures by Caricom would make little or no difference to the sea-level. If those large countries DID take effective action, Caricom need not do anything, ie it could be a free-riding beneficiary. Of course there are benefits other than those related to the sea-level from adopting good(organic) agricultural practices. And of course it may not the most responsible thing to be a free-rider. But does such a perspective mean that the policies paying the most dividends in respect of climate change are those that focus on getting the countries that really matter to take effective action– rather than policies focused on Caricom climate-based agricultural practices??? HB
Pehaps the answer to Havelock’s question is that Caricom and other small island states will speak with much more moral authority in pressng the larger countries to take action on climate change if they themselves are taking steps to “put their houses in order” by adopting responsible practices.
If they were not to do so, they would open themselves to the charge of wanting to be “free riders”. The larger countries could ask, “why should we take action to save your skins, when you are making no effort youselves, even if the scale is much smaller?”
Norman
As stated in Jamaica’s address to AOSIS in 2002, “If we are to continue to speak with authority on the need to address climate change and sea level rise, then we must lead by example.”
Nevertheless, the Jamaican Government has this year, 2009, announced the planned construction of at least two coal-fired power plants and two so-called ‘waste-to-energy’ (garbage incineration) facilities. They call this “diversification” of energy sources. The proponents of these expensive and obsolete plants remain impervious to all advice and evidence of their environmental and economic dangers.
Wendy
Havelock is perfectly right in making the point that, if countries with large land masses do not take effective action, agro-based measures by Caricom would make little or no difference to the sea-level, since Caricom accounts for a minute proportion of the earth’s tillage acreage. But I do not agree at all with his comment that if the large countries DID take effective action, Caricom need not do anything. Agroecological measures would be effective climate change mitigators at the global level, if adopted on a sufficiently large scale (e.g.reducing or preventing sea-level rises) but they would also be very effective if taken at the national level, even in the case of small countries. Moreover, sea-level increases are not the only dangerous consequence of climate change for Caricom.
Unveiling Caricom’s climate change strategy last week, Secretary-General Edwin Carrington described the devastating effects which global average temperatures, exceeding 1.5 degrees centigrade, would have on the region. Apart from mentioning significant destruction of coral reefs, coastal barriers, marine ecosystems, and excessive flooding and more intense hurricanes, he added: ” It will erode much of the foundation of our tourism, our agriculture and our fisheries industry; it will wreak havoc on our plant-life, our forests and most of all dislocate our people. Immediate corrective action must therefore be taken if we are to avoid this widespread destruction.”
If Caricom were to adopt agroecological policies we would be able, on our very own, to
reduce the extent of the “havoc on on our plant-life, our forests”¦” etc, including the dislocation of our people. Organic agriculture would considerably reduce the extent of the soil erosion caused by hurricanes, severe flooding, and mudslides. In severe weather, healthy organic soils will sustain the crop better and are less prone to disaster. Organic agriculture would also increase soil fertility and help restore degraded land, resulting in greater agricultural production and productivity, including foods products, which climate change will make increasingly scarce and expensive on a global scale. That, in turn, will help mitigate population dislocation e.g. massive rural-urban migration which would inevitably result from the destruction of agricultural livelihoods. It would reduce groundwater and coastal water pollution, the beneficial effects of which are obvious. Moreover, if the foundation of our fishery and tourism industries are eroded by the destruction of our coral reefs, coastal barriers, and marine ecosystems, as the Cariocm Secertary-General justifiably fears will happen with a 1.5 degrees centigrade rise, a healthy agricultural sector will be crucially important for the region’s economy and the welfare of its people.
I agree that we should do everything possible to support measures that are put forward by other countries which will help reduce global warming but, as I have always argued, we should try to make a contribution to resolving global problems whenever we can instead of merely playing a passive supporting role, as we invariably do. According to the Caricom press release (17 November 2009) issued on the occasion of the climate change campaign launch, Garfield Barnwell, Director of the Sustainable Development Programme in the CARICOM Secretariat, declared that the campaign theme ” 1.5 to stay alive” was ” key to our survival in the Caribbean”. The press release added that the campaign is intended to support and dramatize a common regional approach for mitigating the effects of climate change on the Region, which will be articulated at the Copenhagen Conference and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference opening today in Port of Spain.
Given the central importance of agriculture in the region’s economy, I would have like to see an agreoecological approach to mitigating climate change through atmospheric carbon sequestration, featured as the centrepiece of our common regional approach, and highlighted in the campaign launched to “dramatize” it. But, in the light of the AOSIS Declaration, we are likely to see instead the carbon capture and storage (CCS) approach, to which we can make no regional contribution except to support it. The Rodale approach deserves to be put on a par with the CCS one.
The carbon capture and storage (CCS) approach, which is supported by AOSIS and, presumably, Caricom, requires that the carbon captured from industrial emissions be stored in appropriately selected and managed geological reservoirs in order to keep it isolated from the atmosphere perhaps indefinitely, to ensure little or no risk to population health or the ecosystem. The Rodale approach, which is a complementary rather than an alternative one, sequestrates atmospheric carbon, not to isolate it but to use it beneficially. Carbon deficient soils are disaster prone. The soil in some Midwestern states in the US which, in the 1950s, were composed of up to 20% carbon currently have a carbon content of no more than 1-2%, according to the Rodale Institute’s researchers. Such carbon loss reduces the soil”™s nutrient value, contributes to soil erosion by degrading the soil’s structure, and increases its vulnerability to drought by greatly reducing the level of water-holding carbon in the soil.
Four European countries – the U K, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark – have changed their emission-reduction targets for the Kyoto Protocol to include contributions from organic agriculture policy based on Rodale Institute research, but I am far from certain that such an important policy action for mitigating climate change will be brought up at Copenhagen. It has not been mentioned in any of the reports and articles I have read in the run-up to the summit conference. As an agricultural region, Caricom should be spearheading such an approach at Copenhagen, as a complement to other action proposed, persuading other developing countries that it would be in their interest to join it in doing so. It should not be difficult to obtain the active support of the four European countries who are already persuaded of the merits of the Rodale approach. Most importantly, such a policy might well attract the support of the big rapidly-industrializing countries, like China and India, who are reluctant to undertake any commitment that might place restrictions on restrict their industrial economy.
Caricom’s strategy for mitigating climate change, as reported in its press release, includes a digital display to vividly illustrate the harmful effects of rising green house gases on the small island states; a documentary entitled, ” The Burning Agenda: The Climate Change Crisis in the Caribbean”; and several video presentations on how climate change has been affecting human, animal and plant life within the Region. Caricom’s strategy seems to be all presentation and no substance. Having read the declaration on climate change and development, adopted by Caricom Heads of Government last July, and Caricom’s strategy for mitigating climate change, as reported in its press release, I am none the wiser about the substantive aspects of our climate change strategy.
The Caricom press release quotes a statement by Barnwell: ” The time for action on climate change is now. How nations and their people come together to tackle this unprecedented challenge is likely to become a defining feature of our time, affecting the lives of the current and future generations.” I couldn’t agree more. It is exactly the point Jared Diamond made in his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Serious environmental problems that result from climate change are not, in themselves, a perilous threat to societal survival. It is how societies choose to fail or succeed which determines their future. As Diamond argues, it is all about group decision-making.
Wendy,I was actually pleasantly surprised and reassured by the segments that you quote from the Jamaican statement, which indicate that they are actually on the right track. While I would agree with you that more action needs to follow, this point of departure in my view is a major advance on Seaga’s statement at the 1981 UN Conference on Sustainable Energy, which advocated atomic energy as the way forward. The Earth Charter, the involvement of civil society and the inclusion of gender are foundational principles on which any serious sustainable strategy needs to be built. They inform the process of arriving at practical solutions which has so far been driven by the technical “experts”.
I was involved in drafting the Earth Charter on behalf of DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era) and was disappointed that the global community actually went backwards in Rio. The gender perspective exemplified by the work of Vandana Shiva and Wangari Maathai, with whom I collaborated closely in the lead up to for Rio, has stressed the importance of working with communities and listening to their local knowledge in order to arrive at strategies that are relevant to local realities.
Few delegates in Nairobi in 1981 listened to the women whom Wangari brought to the steps of conference centre to tell of what they were experiencing in terms of the drying up of the water sources and the impact of the destruction of the forests on changes in the climate, the availablity of food and firewood. We needed to wait on the experts almost a decade later to take their message seriously.
The peasants in India with whom Vanadana was working were telling a similar story and were being arrested for trying to hold back progress and development.
Warm regards
Rosina
Sadly, there is no reason to be reassured by the nice words in those statements, because it is quite clear that they are being ignored, and there is simply no accountability with respect to our government honouring the environmental commitments expressed. It’s not just the case that the statements were made by a previous government – THEY had no intention of honouring them either! Those statements were never publicised here in Jamaica, and I doubt whether they were read much outside the circle of the WSSD delegation. I have them because I was there as an NGO delegate (funded by the EFJ). We three NGO reps organised a series of islandwide public fora to share our experiences of the WSSD and the lessons learned. We also circulated our reports widely – with not a hint of follow-up action on the part of the government of the day.
I know I sound extremely cynical but I have been observing this kind of lip service for many years. The political will for tackling long-term environmental problems is greatly lacking in Jamaica. Indeed, I am convinced that the failure of the local government reform process to increase participatory democracy in any meaningful way is directly related to the unwillingness of those in power to be called to account or to have a light shone on their activities.
Wendy