2.4: Major Policy Frameworks

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) of 1992 is “the law of the land” in most countries, including the United States. All signatories to the treaty agreed to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. The UNFCCC is based on the principle of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities. Under the treaty, global North, or “Annex 1,” nations have committed to taking the lead on reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions, assisting global South nations with technology transfer to pursue sustainability goals there, and supporting climate change adaptation in the global South through funding, with the additional goal of poverty reduction.

In the view of many global South community leaders, the UNFCCC has been problematic because it relies primarily on market-based approaches, which present many challenges for achieving carbon emissions reductions and climate justice. These policies are rooted in a framework that embraces economic growth and social inequality, though these are some of the primary driving forces of the climate crisis in the first place.

Another reason these efforts have fallen short is because Indigenous peoples, people of color, women, family farmers, fisherfolk, forestdependent communities, youth, and other marginalized communities have been systematically excluded from the negotiations. Moreover, despite UNFCCC and IPCC goals, there is, thus far, no meaningful momentum in the global North toward reducing emissions by the targeted amounts. In fact, emissions have actually increased in global North nations; large portions of any claimed reductions have been made through offsets in the global South rather than through real action in the North. While these last two trends are part of the system’s design, many global South environmental advocates argue that this is unacceptable.

The Kyoto Protocol supplements the UNFCCC and puts forth legally binding measures for reducing emissions in global North nations. Kyoto created a number of flexible procedures for meeting emissions targets, two of which are an international emissions trading (IET) scheme for Annex 1 nations and the clean development mechanism (CDM). The IET is a carbon cap-and-trade scheme on a global scale, but it has not achieved success, according to many critics, because it encourages “business as usual” practices in many industries that profit most from the use of fossil fuels. Numerous leading global South activists have concluded that no cap-and-trade scheme can achieve climate justice.

The clean development mechanism was proposed during Kyoto negotiations in 1997 as a less painful method of capping greenhouse gas emissions and assisting nations in their efforts to adapt to new carbon constraints. The CDM has two primary goals: to promote sustainable development in global South countries and to allow industrialized countries to earn emissions credits from their investments in emission-reducing projects in the South. The CDM specifically allows global North countries to purchase credits from southern nations that reduce carbon emissions. Those northern countries can then use or sell those credits in the global North. This program has also been the target of criticism for numerous reasons. For example, major emitters in the global North generally treat buying CDM offsets as a far cheaper alternative to actually reducing their own emissions or making large capital investments in renewable energy technology. In addition, methane recovery from industrial agriculture, large hydropower projects, and coal-fired power plants can receive credits under the CDM. Emissions reductions credits have also been used to expand polluting industries in the global South.

Finally, CDM includes agrofuel or biofuel crop projects that rely on industrial-scale agriculture, which has long relied on deforestation and cheap fossil fuels, thus threatening biodiversity and food security for Indigenous communities in various regions. While the US and European governments have embraced agrofuels as a “green” alternative to fossil fuels for automobiles, in many global South nations rain forests are threatened in order to make way for agrofuel plantations. Deforestation disrupts the regulation of climate systems, as do the nitrous oxide emissions from chemical fertilizers used in plantation agriculture. The biofuels market has also led to an increase in the cost of staple foods like corn, sugar, and soy for people in the global South, leading to popular unrest in Indonesia, Mexico, and many African nations. In Tanzania, thousands of people have been evicted for the development of agrofuel plantations.

Critics claim that the problems with the CDM are insurmountable because it seeks to reduce emissions in the South and not in the North, while we need such reductions in both places. Many observers view the CDM’s strategy as unjust, given the historic responsibility on the part of the North for the vast majority of carbon emissions. Furthermore, CDM projects often create problems in global South communities, such as displacing populations from their land, and lock nations into high-carbon pathways.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) is another offsetting mechanism. Devised by the World Bank, it is slated to be a key component of any post-Kyoto climate treaty. REDD is intended to help global South countries protect their remaining rain forests and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions caused by deforestation, forest degradation, and peatland destruction. Countries that reduce net REDD emissions below a preset baseline would receive credits that could be sold in carbon markets and used by purchasing nations to meet their international mitigation obligations.

The definition of forests used by the UNFCCC includes clear-cuts, which are euphemistically referred to as “temporarily unstocked areas,” and monoculture tree plantations—that is, plantations of one species of tree, which are much less biodiverse than forests and less useful in taking up carbon dioxide. Therefore, a government or logging company could hypothetically evict an Indigenous community, clear-cut or burn down the forest, impose a monoculture plantation, and still receive REDD money, since that would not count as deforestation. The Climate Justice Now! network stated in 2010, “These plantations destroy ecosystems and subsistence agriculture, cause rural unemployment and depopulation, deplete soils and water resources and violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights.” The International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change opposes such carbon markets and calls them a new form of colonialism, declaring that “under REDD, States and Carbon Traders will take more control over our forests.” Other global South activist groups, like La Via Campesina, representing activists from more than 36 nations, view REDD as a way of privatizing forests.

Figure 2.4.1 Activists pressure universities and other institutions to divest from fossil fuels out of a conviction that we cannot wait for national and international leaders to address climate change. Fossil-free UC action at the Regents of the University of California meeting in Sacramento, May 16, 2014. 350.org. Photograph by Mauricio D. Castillo from Flickr.

Global South activists argue that we need to reduce both deforestation and fossil fuel emissions, not trade between them. Hundreds of REDD-type projects already exist and have resulted in human rights violations and violence against Indigenous peoples.

The Paris Agreement (Accord de Paris) is a global agreement that came into force in 2016 and builds on the UNFCCC with the aim of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels. All parties to this agreement are to report regularly on their emissions and implementation efforts. One major limitation of the Paris Agreement is that it is voluntary and thus has little in the way of an enforcement mechanism.

Perhaps even more exciting is the growth of a number of subnational agreements to achieve climate stability. One example is the Under2 Coalition, a diverse group of 177 jurisdictions, 37 nations, and 6 continents that represents 1.2 billion people and nearly 40% of the global economy. Their aim is to achieve the goal of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2°C through subnational government action. In other words, they are not waiting on heads of state or world leaders to reach consensus—they’re going ahead regardless of what national governments do (Figure 2.4.1).

REDD case study: the Ogiek people

A Mau Forest conservation project in Kenya, funded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), provides an example of a carbon offset project that has resulted in serious human rights violations. In 2009, the Mau Forest was “prepared” for this carbon offset reforestation project by the forceful and often violent eviction of its inhabitants, including the Indigenous Ogiek people, who had lived on their ancestral lands in the region for centuries. Prime Minister Raila Odinga argued that in order to preserve the forests, the Indigenous inhabitants had to be removed; he represented them as a threat to the stability of the ecosystem. Following up on the prime minister’s declaration, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki stated, “The government shall take action against people who destroy forests. Such people should not be spared at all, they should be arrested and charged with immediate effect.” The prime minister and the Kenyan Forest Service evicted more than 20,000 Ogiek people from their ancestral lands.

The Ogiek have confronted eviction and displacement in the past, extending back to the colonial era when, in the 1930s, British authorities similarly claimed that they were depleting forest resources needed by others. At that time, the Ogiek were forcibly removed to “native reserves” while their lands were logged and replaced with pine plantations. In the 1990s, the Kenyan government allotted large areas of the Mau Forest to friends and associates of elected officials. In 2009, the same week that evictions were announced, the government made allotments in the region to 49 companies and individuals, and one such company has strong ties with former president Daniel Moi. Underscoring this observation, Ogiek leaders argued that the displacement order seemed to ignore the activities of logging corporations and non-Indigenous settlers moving into the region. Large tracts of the Mau Forest continued to be destroyed by corporations turning trees into plywood, doors, and other products for export. Survival International condemned the eviction of the Ogiek in a statement that read in part, “If evicted from their ancestral land in the misplaced name of conservation, the Ogiek will become the world’s next ‘conservation refugees.’”

But UNEP, which has its headquarters in Nairobi, supported the government’s plans for the Mau Forest. In September 2009, well after the threats of evictions had started, UNEP’s executive director, Achim Steiner, was clear in his embrace of the project: “The Mau Complex is of critical importance for sustaining current and future ecological, social and economic development in Kenya. The rehabilitation of the ecosystem will require substantial resources and political goodwill. UNEP is privileged to work in partnership with the Government of Kenya towards the implementation of this vital project.”

In 2017, the Ogiek won a victory: an international court ruled that the Kenyan government had violated their ancestral land rights by evicting them from the forest. There is still fear, however, that the government may not abide by the ruling. While many observers agree that the Mau Forest must be restored, UNEP’s failure to focus on corporate-led deforestation there while ignoring the eviction of thousands of people to make way for a carbon offset project is troubling for the future of REDD programs and the prospects for millions of Indigenous peoples and forest-dwelling communities of the world.

As much as the above issues and cases are cause for concern, there are success stories as well. For example, The International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST) project is a global effort that seeks to empower subsistence farmers in East Africa, South Asia, and Latin America to reverse the effects of deforestation, drought, and famine. Through the sale of greenhouse gas credits, TIST generates revenue for farmers and supports sustainable agriculture, tree planting, and improvements in public health and education. TIST has over 70,000 participants organized across numerous small groups of farmers and has achieved impressive results (see www.tist.org). Perhaps the lessons from this project can be studied and multiplied many times over.

The evidence strongly suggests that major climate policy frameworks have failed to deliver, as emissions continue to rise while deforestation, evictions, and land grabs intensify. These agreements also suffer from a logical and ideological problem: they are premised on the idea that market-based, pro-growth solutions are workable, when in fact it was exactly those kinds of approaches that produced the problem of climate change in the first place. More fundamentally, the vision of infinite economic growth in a finite ecological system is a physical impossibility. Perhaps part of the problem is that many of the most affected populations and their visions of climate justice have been excluded from or marginalized in debates. Given all of these challenges, what are some alternatives?