RSS del sitio de los Acreedores de la deuda Ecológica http://www.ecologicaldebt.org Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:34:56 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/images/M_images/rss.png http://www.ecologicaldebt.org RSS del sitio de los Acreedores de la deuda Ecológica http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/Other-Debt/Handbook-Ecological-Economics-from-the-Bottom-Up.html http://www.ceecec.net/handbook/ (#) Introduction 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. . 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. . 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. http://www.ceecec.net/handbook/ (http://www.ceecec.net/handbook/) Fri, 22 Oct 2010 06:53:53 +0100 http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/News/COCHABAMBA-NO-MORE-DEBTS.html 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 the Rights of Mother Earth Jubilee South is taking on the problematic of climate change as one of its permanent lines of action. Our main contribution is related to the links between climate change and finance, their relation to illegitimate debt, the demand for reparations of the ecological and climate debt owed to the South and the need to strengthen the movements in the South to achieve the systemic transformations that the peoples and nature need. The depth of the financial-economic crisis has clearly led to the understanding that it is a deeper crisis, a crisis of the capitalist system, a civilizatory crisis, which is reflected in other consequent crises, such as the ecological, food, energy, political and social crises. While such crises have their origins in the North, in the role and policies dictated and imposed by Northern countries, transnational corporations and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) which they control with the compliance of many Southern governments, it is working people, fisher-folk, indigenous, traditional and forest communities and women which are being forced to pay the greatest share of the consequences and the costs, in particular the peoples of the South. The climate crisis does not escape this reality. Responses, however, have until now been aimed at reinventing and relegitimizing the very system and institutions largely responsible for this crisis. Debt has been used as an instrument to dominate and control governments, peoples, and the resources of the South, including the financing of projects and promotion of policies that have greatly contributed to the exacerbation and escalation of climate change. Nonetheless, climate change related programs continue to be loan financed through the same IFIs, leading to even greater levels of illegitimate indebtedness. Efforts are more focused on how to profit from climate change than at getting to the root causes of the crisis and creating a new system. False solutions, such as the carbon market, agrofuels, hydroelectric power plants, coal and nuclear energy, are increasingly being promoted. Carbon trading – which is central to these false solutions - only allows transnational corporations and rich countries to buy the right to pollute at the expense of the peoples and countries of the South. Worse, carbon trading has spawned new and despicable instruments to extract profits from pollution, akin to the proliferation of financial derivatives that was a major cause of the recent financial and economic bubble and crisis. It is important to emphasize that climate justice - in particular the costs of mitigation and adaptation to climate change - cannot be fully analyzed without the broader perspective of ecological debt and its relationship to financial debt and the global economic system. Just and appropriate financing to address the impacts of climate change, for example, has to be built in a completely different way from what has been pursued so far. One cannot properly address climate justice, unless climate impacts on human and nature rights in general, including the regimes of food and water, housing, energy, transport and migration - the ecological impacts- are adequately addressed in financial and economic systems. Jubilee South defends that: - the struggle against climate change depend on the transformation of the capitalist system of production and consumption and the growth paradigm based on the belief that natural resources are unlimited; - The rights of peoples and the rights of nature should be the central concern of policies and programs aimed at overcoming the climate crisis; - Real solutions to climate change do not lead to the further accumulation of illegitimate debt or the generation of more ecological and climate debt. Jubilee South demands: - Immediate and unconditional cancellation of the debts that the North claims from the countries and peoples of the South at the cost of nature and more specifically the climate; - Guarantee restitution and reparations for the ecological and climate debts owed by the northern countries, corporations and elites to nature and the peoples of the South and all communities violated and exploited by the process of accumulation that they lead; - Resist and oppose efforts of northern governments to evade cuts in emissions and divide countries of the South. - IFIs out of climate as part of larger strategy to stop their operations and intervention in the South. - Reject market-based false-solutions (carbon market, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest - Degradation (REDD), agrofuels, hydroelectric power plants, coal and nuclear energy). - The construction and implementation of alternatives that are based on the rights and needs of the peoples including community and peoples´control over natural resources, family-based agriculture, the protection of forests and a reverse path towards energy sovereignty and non hydrocarbon energy dependent societies. Strengthening the movement for Climate Justice Peoples´ Tribunals In September 2009, several organizations and movements in Asia held an International Climate Tribunal in Bangkok, during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) inter-sessional. In October 2009, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, other networks and social movements held a preliminary hearing of the International Peoples - Tribunal on Climate Justice. In December 2009, in Copenhagen, an activity and a strategy meeting "Towards a People's Tribunal on Ecological Debt and Climate Justice" were held. In Copenhagen, the organizations decided to move forward with the Tribunal in 2010, taking advantage of important moments, such as the World Peoples - Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, to think about conducting a hearing in Cancun, Mexico. Thus. Cochabamba will be an important opportunity to reaffirm the consensus reached so far, share responsibilities and advance decisions in regards to the framework of the prosecution and methodology. The goal of a Peoples - Tribunal is to deepen understanding of the causes and responsibilities related to ecological debt and climate change, and advance strategies to halt and reverse the damaging processes and seek reparations. As Jubilee South we will continue to encourage and support initiatives such as the peoples` efforts to establish an International Peoples´ Tribunal on Ecological Debt and Climate Justice - determined by multiple networks and organizations at a meeting convened for that purpose in Copenhagen - and the implementation of Climate and Ecological Debt Audits and Peoples` Creditors Assemblies to move forwards in terms of strategies and actions for restitution and reparations. These are initiatives aimed at strengthening proposals and struggles for ecological and climate justice which in turn contribute to the fight against debt domination, for financial sovereignty, and the full exercise of the rights of the peoples and nature. We call on all peoples´ movements and organizations to participate in these and other initiatives, mobilizing to change the course of the UNFCCC negotiations and achieve real progress. JUBILEE SOUTH - Abril 2010 Laura Yanella -- Aurora Donoso ecodeuda@accionecologica.org (mailto:ecodeuda@accionecologica.org) http://www.accionecologica.org (http://www.accionecologica.org) http://www.deudaecologica.org (http://www.deudaecologica.org) http://www.ecologicaldebt.org (http://www.ecologicaldebt.org) Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:02:01 +0100 http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/News/Landmark-Law-Passed-to-Tackle-Vulture-Funds.html FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 8 APRIL 2010 Landmark Law Passed to Tackle Vulture Funds UK becomes first country to ban Third World Debt profiteering in final hours of Parliamentary session A landmark bill to protect the poorest countries in the world from profiteering by so-called vulture funds became law today after passing in the House of Lords during the wash-up at the end of the Parliamentary session. Jubilee Debt Campaign welcomed the successful passage of the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, which is the worlds first law to restrict the ability of Vulture Funds to sue some of the worlds poorest countries for full repayment of debts that they have bought up cheaply. Last November two Vulture Funds were awarded $20 million in the High Court from Liberia the second poorest country in the world - for a debt dating back to the 1970s. This law is expected to make that verdict unenforceable. There was an outcry last month after the bill was blocked at third reading by an unidentified Conservative MP thought to be backbencher Christopher Chope. But the Government made time for the Bill in the wash-up, after securing cross-party agreement with a sunset clause which will mean the law has to be reassessed to be made permanent in a years time. International support for the bill has been expressed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, and President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana. Nick Dearden, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: This is a landmark law. With this act, the UK has become the first country in the world to stop vulture funds using its courts to profiteer from poverty. It will mean the poorest countries in the world can no longer be attacked by these reprehensible investment funds who grow fat from the misery of others. We now call on other governments, particularly the US administration, to take similar steps to outlaw vulture practices. We hope this is the first step towards creating a more just financial system, which operates for the great majority of people, not a tiny minority of unethical investors. Andrew Gwynne MP, Sponsor of the bill said: I am absolutely thrilled that my bill has been passed into law. It was completely unacceptable that a small number of companies were ever allowed in the UK courts to profiteer off the third world debt market. These vulture funds were completely unjust and it is to the credit of this parliament, and the efforts of the Jubilee Debt Campaign that we have finally managed to pass this law. I said I would put a stop to these vulture funds, and I did. Sally Keeble MP, who took the bill through the House of Commons, said: These vulture funds are international predators. Their victims are the poorest people in the world. It is excellent that at this stage it has been possible to get this piece of legislation on to the statute books to outlaw the activities of these vulture funds. This was a victory for a broad based campaign led by jubilee debt and other NGOs which brought this issue to public attention. For more information contact JDC media line: 020 7324 4724; 07818 651124 Notes for editors (1) Vulture Funds are private investment companies which take advantage of the relaxed laws in British courts to buy up Third World debt at dramatically reduced prices and sue poor countries for their full value plus costs. In the process, companies make excessive rates of profit. (2) Jubilee Debt Campaign is a UK coalition demanding 100% cancellation of unpayable and illegitimate developing country debts. For more information see www.jubileedebtcampaign.org.uk. (3) The Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill is a Private Members Bill sponsored by Andrew Gwynne MP. Owing to Mr Gwynnes illness, Sally Keeble has steered the bill through the House of Commons. It was objected to at Third Reading on 12 March, http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2009-10/debtreliefdevelopingcountries.html. Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:48:56 +0100 http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/News/SPAIN-Support-for-the-Who-owes-whom-campaign-Soutien-pour-la-campagne-Qui-doit-a-qui.html Dear all, As some of you might know Spanish parliament is discussing this days two new bills that will regulate two new public funds for development finance (FONPRODE) and export support (FIEM), respectively, that will become debt creating mechanisms. At the campaign's webpage (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/spip.php?article1671) you’ll find information and the “Who owes whom?” demands in relation to this two new bills, in Spanish (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/IMG/pdf_es_argumentario_QDQ.pdf), French (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/IMG/pdf_fr_argumentario_QDQ.pdf)and English (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/IMG/pdf_eng_argumentario_QDQ.pdf). Some international networks and organizations have already sent us their support by endorsing our demands. If you wish to do so, please write to page internet de la campagne (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/spip.php?article1671)ci-joints des informations ainsi que les demandes de la campagne “Qui doit à qui? (¿Quien debe a quien?) concernant ces propositions de loi, en français (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/IMG/pdf_fr_argumentario_QDQ.pdf), espagnol (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/IMG/pdf_es_argumentario_QDQ.pdf)et anglais (http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/IMG/pdf_eng_argumentario_QDQ.pdf). Plusieurs réseaux et organisations internationales ont déjà manifesté leur soutien à travers leur adhésion à nos demandes. Si vous souhaitez nous soutenir, il vous suffit de nous écrire à l'adresse suivante: quiendebeaquien.estatal@gmail.com La période pendant laquelle il sera possible de réaliser des amendements à ces propositions de loi, prendra fin dans quelques semaines. Dès lors, un processus de discussion débutera entre les partis politiques. C'est donc maintenant qu'il faut faire parvenir nos demandes aux parlementaires. À cet effet, nous avons préparé une lettre afin qu'elle soit envoyée aux députés/ées (dans les commissions de coopération et commerce). Vous pouvez participez à cette action en envoyant cette lettre à nos parlementaires, depuis la page internet de la campagne: http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/spip.php?article1718. Pour plus d'informations sur les lois, veuillez vous diriger vers notre site internet: http://www.quiendebeaquien.org/spip.php?article1653 ou nous contacter à l'adresse suivante: quiendebeaquien.estatal@gmail.com. Merci de diffuser cette information à tous ceux et toutes celles que vous penser pouvoir être intéressés, et merci encore pour votre soutien. Salutations, “¿Quién debe a quién?” www.quiendebeaquien.org Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:35:58 +0100 http://www.ecologicaldebt.org/News/Copenhagen-Seattle-Grows-Up-Naomi-Klein.html Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up By Naomi Klein, The Nation, November 12, 2009 The other day I received a pre-publication copy of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit. It’s set to come out ten years after a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement. The book is a fascinating account of what really happened in Seattle, but when I spoke to David Solnit, the direct-action guru who helped engineer the shutdown, I found him less interested in reminiscing about 1999 than in talking about the upcoming United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen and the climate justice actions he is helping to organize across the United States on November 30. This is definitely a Seattle-type moment,” Solnit told me. “People are ready to throw down. There is certainly a Seattle quality to the Copenhagen mobilization: the huge range of groups that will be there; the diverse tactics that will be on display; and the developing-country governments ready to bring activist demands into the summit. But Copenhagen is not merely a Seattle do-over. It feels, instead, as though the progressive tectonic plates are shifting, creating a movement that builds on the strengths of an earlier era but also learns from its mistakes. The big criticism of the movement the media insisted on calling anti-globalization was always that it had a laundry list of grievances and few concrete alternatives. The movement converging on Copenhagen, in contrast, is about a single issue—climate change—but it weaves a coherent narrative about its cause, and its cures, that incorporates virtually every issue on the planet. In this narrative, our climate is changing not simply because of particular polluting practices but because of the underlying logic of capitalism, which values short-term profit and perpetual growth above all else. Our governments would have us believe that the same logic can now be harnessed to solve the climate crisis—by creating a tradable commodity called carbon and by transforming forests and farmland into sinks that will supposedly offset our runaway emissions. Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these market-based solutions fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change—as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes. But activists in Copenhagen won’t simply say no to all this. They will aggressively advance solutions that simultaneously reduce emissions and narrow inequality. Unlike at previous summits, where alternatives seemed like an afterthought, in Copenhagen the alternatives will take center stage. For instance, the direct-action coalition Climate Justice Action has called on activists to storm the conference center on December 16. Many will do this as part of the bike bloc, riding together on an as yet unrevealed “irresistible new machine of resistance” made up of hundreds of old bicycles. The goal of the action is not to shut down the summit, Seattle-style, but to open it up, transforming it into a space to talk about our agenda, an agenda from below, an agenda of climate justice, of real solutions against their false ones…. This day will be ours. Some of the solutions on offer from the activist camp are the same ones the global justice movement has been championing for years: local, sustainable agriculture; smaller, decentralized power projects; respect for indigenous land rights; leaving fossil fuels in the ground; loosening protections on green technology; and paying for these transformations by taxing financial transactions and canceling foreign debts. Some solutions are new, like the mounting demand that rich countries pay “climate debt” reparations to the poor. These are tall orders, but we have all just seen the kind of resources our governments can marshal when it comes to saving the elites. As one pre-Copenhagen slogan puts it: If the climate were a bank, it would have been saved —not abandoned to the brutality of the market. In addition to the coherent narrative and the focus on alternatives, there are plenty of other changes too: a more thoughtful approach to direct action, one that recognizes the urgency to do more than just talk but is determined not to play into the tired scripts of cops-versus-protesters. Our action is one of civil disobedience, say the organizers of the December 16 action. We will overcome any physical barriers that stand in our way—but we will not respond with violence if the police to escalate the situation. (That said, there is no way the two week summit will not include a few running battles between cops and kids in black; this is Europe, after all.) A decade ago, in an op-ed in the New York Times published after Seattle was shut down, I wrote that a new movement advocating a radically different form of globalization just had its coming-out party. What will be the significance of Copenhagen? I put that question to John Jordan, whose prediction of what eventually happened in Seattle I quoted in my book No Logo. He replied: If Seattle was the movement of movements’ coming-out party, then maybe Copenhagen will be a celebration of our coming of age. He cautions, however, that growing up doesn’t mean playing it safe, eschewing civil disobedience in favor of staid meetings. I hope we have grown up to become much more disobedient, Jordan said, because life on this world of ours may well be terminated because of too many acts of obedience. Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:24:02 +0100