 |
Free Speech Radio News December 6, 2011, CAPTION
People from around the world participated in the December 3, 2011
Climate March in Durban, South Africa
including indigenous folks from South
America —
completely stoic during the dancing and singing
http://fsrn.org/Add caption
|
Activists off stage at COP 17 Durban
Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett |
| UNCC Durban photo |
 |
| COP 17 UN Press Service photo |
African and Indian environmental activists Nnimmo Bassey and Praful Bidwai
spoke with host Amy Goodman.
 |
| Oil spill in Africa Friends of the Earth photo |
 |
| Child skims oil in Africa's water source |
Throughout a long history, Africa has been a major source for materials
for energy, Nnimmo Bassey said — from human beings as an energy source to items
like palm oil and other energy crops. Now, we are having a major shift to land
grabbing in Africa for production of biofuels and agro fuels. Everything about
Africa has been about extracting resources to power industry, to make life
comfortable for people outside of Africa.
 |
| Oil spill Africa |
African resources are not used by Africans. They are not used for
Africa. They are not used to improve the situation on the continent, he said.
The fight for crude
oil extraction, the fight for minerals like gold and diamond, all of this is done
in a way that the African environment is severely degraded.
Oil companies are
extracting with complete impunity, and abusing human rights in the way. The
industry gets away with murder.
 |
| USA |
In this context are ongoing, many conflicts, conflict over diamond,
conflict over gold. Wars on the continent trace to resources and life is precarious.
All of this adds up to fry — cook the continent.
Creators of harm must do more than
duck and blame
“We cannot forget historical responsibility,” Indian activist Praful
Bidwai said. South Africa’s emissions have increased at twice the global rate,
India’s at four times the global rate, and China’s at five times the global
rate, which means these countries are definitely the biggest current and future
emitters, he said.
 |
| Russia |
However, “the United States government is totally wrong in trying to
blame China … as the biggest polluter. Though China is today the biggest
emitter, the United States was the biggest emitter for 150 years; and those
effects — already in the pipeline — will be felt for hundreds of years.
“Three-fourths of all the greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the
atmosphere, and will stay there warming us up for thousands of years, come from
the developed countries of the Global North, led by the United States, … which
is responsible for more than one-quarter of all emissions accumulated in the
atmosphere.”
We must therefore have “a balance between historical responsibility and
current and future responsibility.” We must have “a principle of responsibility
based upon the contribution to global warming by different countries; and here
the industrialized countries have the maximum responsibility.”
Nnimmo Bassey reviews super powered obstruction, failed leadership, irresponsibility
 |
| Mexico Greenpeace photo |
The United States “never signed the Kyoto Protocol,” he recalls; “never
agreed to a legally binding agreement on emission reduction; and always favored
a situation where they [the U.S. stands] apart and then allow[s] others to
struggle against the tide.
“The major emitter of greenhouse gases” never having agreed fully to a multilateral
system of cooperating with other countries in the world — the United States now
teams with “heavily polluting nations such as Japan, Russia, Australia and
Canada” in opposing a just and binding agreement on use and emissions. “The European
Union generally speaks one language and walks the other way. In this way, rich
countries are standing in the way of a real agreement that could avert
disaster.”
 |
| Climate change India |
Bassey leaves a sad commentary on the situation inside the United
Nations Climate Change Conference at Durban. At COP 17, he says, “we are seeing a situation
in which the negotiation is carried out on a big platform of hypocrisy, a lack
of seriousness” when what we are looking for is a situation wherein decisions
on global warming are taken, not by the corporate entities; but by people.
 |
| Leave oil in soil Friends of the Earth |
“We believe,” Bassey said, “that
the solution will come by peoples from outside the official conference halls.”
He said, “We need to change the entire paradigm” because those inside the
conference at Durban [and earlier conferences] “are not listening to voices —
the democratic voices of people on the streets.”
This son of Nigeria suggests that an important key to achieving “people”-made
decisions on climate change “is to decolonize governments of Africa.”
 |
| Climate Change Philippines |
Sources and notes
“At Durban Summit, Leading African Activist Calls U.S. Emissions Stance
‘A Death Sentence for Africa,’” December 6, 2011 [interview with Nnimmo Bassey,
author of To Cook a Continent:
Destructive Extraction and Climate Crisis in Africa], http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/6/at_durban_summit_leading_african_activist
NNIMMO BASSEY
One of Africa’s leading advocates and campaigners for the environment
and human rights, Nnimmo Bassey has stood up against the practices of multinational
corporations in his country, Nigeria, and the environmental devastation they
leave behind destroying the lives and ignoring the rights of the local
population.
Nnimmo Bassey is Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action in
Nigeria and Chair of Friends of the Earth International. In 2010, he was
awarded the Right Livelihood Award “...for revealing the full ecological and
human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the
environmental movement in Nigeria and globally.”
Nnimmo Bassey qualified as an architect and practiced in the public
sector for ten years then in the 1980s, he became active in human rights issues
as a member of the Board of Directors of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organization.
In 1993, he co-founded Environmental Rights Action (ERA), a Nigerian advocacy
NGO, to deal with environmental human rights issues in the country, http://www.rightlivelihood.org/bassey.htm
Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth - Nigeria), http://www.eraction.org/
No land an island, no people apart
Praful Bidwai continues, offering alternatives to duck and blame
Move away from nation states as the only unit in which we understand
this and talk about other norms or other criteria.
There is a good framework called the Greenhouse Development Rights
Framework, which says, let’s draw a development threshold cutting across the
countries of the world. Those who are above the development threshold … must bear
the responsibility in proportion to their contribution to global warming.
Those below the threshold should not have to bear any responsibility,
whether they live in the developed countries or the developing countries.
If you use that criterion, you get a much more balanced picture than
what is being painted now with the bracketing of China and India together.
China [for example]
has emissions comparable to those of Western Europe per capita, whereas India
has emissions about five times lower so to bracket them together … is not very
useful. Their obligations ought to be different.
… The United States
is doing so repeatedly and blaming them as a way of avoiding and ducking its
own responsibility. It talks about the Kyoto Protocol in respect of China, but
it [the U.S.] has never—it never ratified the protocol itself.
Canada and
Australia, which are signatories to the protocol, are going to exceed their
emissions reduction targets by 30 percent or more.
…Countries like France,
Italy and the Netherlands, which ought to have cut their own emissions at home,
have been buying carbon credits cheap from the world market; and yet they are
not meeting their Kyoto targets. So there’s a lot of cheating by the developed
world.
“… The developed countries had committed themselves in 1992 to reach a
plateau in their emissions by the year 2000 and yet today their emissions are
rising; so they are in breach of their most solemn commitment under the climate
convention.”
“U.S. Focus on China, India Emissions Burdens World’s Poor, Skirts Own
Responsibility–Praful Bidwai,” December 06, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/6/us_focus_on_china_india_emissions
PRAFUL BIDWAI
Praful Bidwai is the co-author with Achin Vanaik of South Asia on a
Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament, Oxford
University Press, New Delhi, 1999, a radical critique of the nuclearization of
India and Pakistan and of reliance on nuclear weapons for security.
An independent Journalist Praful Bidwai is also political columnist,
social science researcher, and activist on issues of human rights, the
environment, global justice and peace. He holds the Durgabai Deshmukh Chair in
Social Development, Equity and Human Security at the Council for Social
Development, Delhi, affiliated to the Indian Council for Social Science
Research.
A former Senior Editor of The Times of India, Bidwai is one of South
Asia’s most widely published columnists, whose articles appear in more than 25
newspapers and magazines. He is also frequently published by The Guardian, Le
Monde Diplomatique and Il Manifesto.
Bidwai is a founding member of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament
and Peace (India) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Contemporary Studies,
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. He received the Sean MacBride
International Peace Prize (2000) of the International Peace Bureau, Geneva
& London.
Source Transnational Institute, a worldwide fellowship of scholar
activists, http://www.tni.org/users/praful-bidwai
____________________________
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment