This Handbook, comprised of 14 chapters and a glossary, is the product of collaborative efforts between environmental activists and ecological economists from around the world, all belonging to the CEECEC network (see List of Partner Organisations). CEECEC is a project funded by the European Commission’s Science in Society programme, running from April 2008-September 2010, under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Its overarching objective is twofold: to build the capacity of civil society organisations (CSOs) to participate in and lead ecological economics research on sustainability issues for the benefit of their organisational goals, while at the same time to enrich ecological economics research with highly valuable activist knowledge.
CEECEC has taken an approach illustrative of what Andrew Stirling of SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex, has called cooperative research.
This is a new form of research process which involves both researchers and non-researchers in close co-operative engagement, encompassing a full spectrum of approaches, frameworks and methods, from interdisciplinary collaboration through stakeholder negotiation to transdisciplinary deliberation and citizen participation. This is not new in practice. For instance, the first reports on the State of the Environment in India were put together in the 1980s by drawing on knowledge of both activist organizations and academics across the sub-continent. In CEECEC, CSO partners with total autonomy chose the conflicts they wanted to focus on to develop case studies.
The CEECEC team at ICTA UAB, other academic partners, and other participating CSOs, further developed the case study drafts, deciding on the appropriate concepts from ecological economics to be applied or presented in those contexts. Environmental CSOs, particularly those concerned with environmental justice (we refer to these as Environmental Justice Organisations, or EJOs), frequently carry out research on environmental conflicts, writing reports as part of their advocacy work. What CEECEC provided to these EJOs was a critical audience of interested activist and academic partners who asked questions, gave encouragement, made comparisons, and suggested key words and references, keeping in mind the final objective of developing a Handbook (as well as a series of lectures) useful for teaching ecological economics from the “bottom-up” instead of from first principles.
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Content
The resulting Handbook chapters are the product of cooperatively written case studies of environmental conflict, real examples through which the concepts and tools of ecological economics are taught from the bottom-up.
Chapter one, entitled The Manta–Manaos Project: Nature, Capital and Plunder comes from Accion Ecologica in Quito, Ecuador, and describes conflicts related to plans for a multimodal transport corridor that will eventually connect Ecuador to Brazil.
Chapter 2, also transport related, comes from A Sud in Rome, Italy. Entitled High Speed Transport Infrastructure (TAV) in Italy, it looks at the conflict that arose in Val di Susa near Torino.
Chapter 3 also comes from Accion Ecologica in Ecuador, and as the title The Mining Enclave of the Cordillera del Cóndor suggests, is related to mining and mineral extraction by transnational companies in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon in territory belonging to the Shuar people.
Chapter 4, from the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna, Austria is called Aid, Social Metabolism and Social Conflict in the Nicobar Islands and looks at the impacts on the local population of the tsunami of 2004 and the emergency “aid” that followed, and how the use of materials and energy changed in these communities.
Chapter 5, written by the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, India moves on to the topic of Participatory Forest Management in Mendha Lekha, a tribal or adivasi village in Maharashtra, relying on the good management of the commons for their livelihood.
Chapter 6, also on the topic of forestry is set in Cameroon, called Forestry and Communities in Cameroon, submitted by the Centre pour Environnment et Developpment, a member of the Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) network. It deals with international trade in forest products, highlighting export prices, local social impacts, and problems of corruption.
The focus of Chapter 7 from ICTA at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain is also set in Africa and looks at land grabbing, with the title Let Them Eat Sugar: Life and Livelihood in Kenya’s Tana Delta.
Chapter 8, another contribution from India’s CSE, is called Local Governance and Environmental Investments in Hiware Bazar, Mahrashtra, India, focusing particularly on successful water harvesting and new institutions for water use.
Chapter 9, from Sunce in Split, Croatia is called Nautical Tourism Development in the Lastovo Islands Nature Park, and as the title suggests, looks at the negative impacts of increased nautical tourism in this protected area, discussing possible policy tools for promoting the development of sustainable tourism.
Similarly, Chapter 10 from Endemit Ecological Society in Belgrade, called Local Communities and Management of Protected Areas in Serbia is concerned with national park management, but also analyses the costs and benefits arising from the construction of a large dam on the Danube.
Chapter 11 is the third chapter to come from CSE, entitled Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) in India from the Bottom-Up, and deals with a case that arose in the Himalayas, long before PES came into vogue.
Chapter 12 from REBRAF in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil takes a different approach to PES. This chapter, The Potential of REDD and Legal Reserve Compensation in Mato Grosso, Brazil proposes new means for paying for carbon storage and capture.
Chapter 13, a second contribution from A Sud in Italy looks at the complex situation of The Waste Crisis in Campania, Italy, looking at debates on the risks from waste incineration, and the role of different actors in Italian society in this crisis from activists to the so-called “eco-mafia”. Finally,
Chapter 14 comes from VODO, based in Brussels, Belgium, and raises the bar for the practice of corporate social responsibility in a case study entitled Environmental Justice and Ecological Debt in Belgium: the UMICORE Case.
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Glossary
The glossary and its entries to which the case studies are hyperlinked, was also written by CEECEC partners to complement the case study chapters by explaining in greater depth the concepts presented within them. Glossary entries were produced by drawing upon knowledge already in the public domain (on the internet and in other publications in ecological economics and political ecology), and in some cases, on the original research of the authors. There are over 90 entries in all, covering topics in alphabetical order from Access and Use Rights to Well Being. Many of the Glossary entries are key words of the respective chapters, but not all.
FOR
THE RECOGNITION AND INTEGRAL REPARATION OF THE
ECOLOGICAL
DEBT DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
WITHIN
THE AGREEMENTS REACHED IN COPENHAGEN
The
Southern People´s Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance supports
the demand of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Venezuela, Honduras, Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala,
Cuba, Belize, Dominica, St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Antigua and
Barbados, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, for the RECOGNITION
AND INTEGRAL REPARATION OF THE ECOLOGICAL DEBT DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE
THAT IS OWED TO COUNTRIES IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH BY COUNTRIES IN THE
GLOBAL NORTH, within international agreements of the 15th
United
Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark
(COP15).
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Mr. President, excellencies, Heads of State, distinguished colleagues, ministers, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of our Planet:
Developing nations are facing a threat of catastrophic proportions today: climate change. The peoples of the south are today paying for the ever increasing additional costs of the necessary actions to adapt to the adverse conditions posed by climate change and for the mitigation of its consequences.
However, those States principally responsible of the direct causes of global warming, are not assuming their responsibility for the incremental social and environmental debt they are accumulating, owed to the most vulnerable peoples of the world, generating an unjust situation that need to be urgently reversed.
In Paraguay, the recurrent droughts we suffered during the last decade, required, over the last 3 years, spending of some additional US$70 million per year, which we are mostly absorbing on our own, communities and Government, though we appreciate the support received in solidarity from our friends, nations and organizations.
In the meantime, we are exposed more and more frequently to powerful storms which cause grave damages to our crops and livelihoods of those most vulnerable.
Food production and water supply are held at high risk.
In the whole of Paraguay, in fact, the succession of extreme events derived from severe alterations in the climatic patterns, generate a social and environmental emergency scenario, every time more frequent and prolonged.
We recognize that changes in the climate are the result of patterns of production, distribution and consumption, based on the exhaustive exploitation of nature's wealth.
This unsustainable model considers nature and the commons such as water, air, land, forests, seeds, as mere resources available for sheer exploitation and privatization.
The struggle against climate change is not only a struggle for the survival of our Planet, it is also a struggle for socio-environmental justice at the global level.
The financial, social and environmental costs of the climatic emergencies we face, increase exponentially in direct proportion to the unmet commitments of developed countries.
The latest scientific reports available do not only indicate that the expenses for adaptation will be much higher to what was earlier forecasted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only two years ago. They also tell us that atmospheric warming has determined that on our Earth, high levels of insecurity are being reached.
By not accomplishing their reduction targets to avoid climate change, industrialized countries not only negate the mandate of the Convention, but also go counter basic principles of international law, such as the responsibility for not causing damages to the territories of other States.
Submission by *Republic of Bolivia *to the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] (AWG-LCA)
The climate debt of developed countries must be repaid, and this payment must begin with the outcomes to be agreed in Copenhagen.
Developing countries are not seeking economic handouts to solve a problem we did not cause. What we call for is full payment of the debt owed to us by developed countries for threatening the integrity of the Earth’s climate system, for over-consuming a shared resource that belongs fairly and equally to all people, and for maintaining lifestyles that continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of the poor majority of the planet’s population. This debt must be repaid by freeing up environmental space for developing countries and particular the poorest communities.
There is no viable solution to climate change that is effective without being equitable. Deep emission reductions by developed countries are a necessary condition for stabilising the Earth’s climate. So too are profoundly larger transfers of technologies and financial resources than so far considered, if emissions are to be curbed in developing countries and they are also to realise their right to development and achieve their overriding priorities of poverty eradication and economic and social development. Any solution that does not ensure an equitable distribution of the Earth’s limited capacity to absorb greenhouse gases, as well as the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change, is destined to fail.
NO MORE DEBTS
The rights of peoples and the rights of nature should be the central
concern of policies and programs aimed at overcoming the climate crisis.
April 2010, Cochabamba, World People's Conference on Climate Change and
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OPEN
LETTER
INTERNATIONAL
SUPPORT
FOR
THE RECOGNITION AND INTEGRAL REPARATION OF THE
ECOLOGICAL
DEBT DUE TOÂ CLIMATE CHANGE
WITHIN
THE AGREEMENTS REACHED IN COPENHAGEN
December
2009
The
Southern People´s Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance...
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gimmickry
See the teaser: http://storyofstuff.org/capandtrade/
Can a solution to climate chaos be found at Copenhagen? Not if the same
guys who gave us the problem have anything to do with fixing it!
Would you like to...
World Development
Movement and Jubilee Debt Campaign
released a new report:
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crisis: Why paying our dues is essential for tackling climate change. It
is at: http://www.wdm.org.uk/climatedebtreport
The report sets out the
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owes...
http://www.herald.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=11982&cat=8
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