To: African Agriculture and Environment
Ministers
Subject: Durban COP17, agriculture and soil
carbon markets
22 November 2011
We, the undersigned civil society
organisations from Africa and around the world, strongly object to a decision
in Durban for an agriculture work programme focused on mitigation, which would
lead to agricultural soils and agroecological practices being turned into
commodities to be sold on carbon markets, or used as sinks to enable
industrialised countries to continue to avoid reducing emissions.
African ministers have been urged by the
World Bank to endorse this approach, coined as “climate smart”
agriculture. Yet legitimizing soil carbon offsets through a mitigation-based
agriculture work programme will further destabilize the climate, fail to tackle
the real causes of agriculture emissions, present a major distraction from the
need to generate public finance, and exacerbate social injustice by shifting
the burden of mitigation onto developing countries – especially their small
producers. Soil carbon offsets also have the potential to drive a new
speculative land grab, further undermining food sovereignty and the right to
food.
At the Durban COP17 negotiations, African and
other developing country leaders must:
1) Reject soil
carbon markets and an agriculture work programme that is framed within
discussions on mitigation.
2) Demand that
Annex 1 countries show political will and honour their legal obligations to new
and additional finance to developing countries, for example with direct, annual
contributions to the Adaptation Fund, instead of wasting public finances on
propping up carbon markets that are doomed to fail.
3) Demand
innovative sources of finance such as a Financial Transaction Tax (to draw a
tiny percentage from international financial transactions) or use of Special
Drawing Rights (SDRs, issued by the International Monetary Fund). These could
generate billions of dollars for developing countries to address adaptation
challenges in Africa and elsewhere.
Soil Carbon Markets will fail our climate,
small producers and developing country governments:
• The difficulty in measuring carbon sequestered in soil means that
numbers must be largely based on assumptions instead of being scientifically
verified. The complication and high cost of developing systems for the
monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of soil carbon will chiefly
benefit carbon consultants and companies in North America and Europe – and not
the smallholder farmers and herders in Africa and elsewhere. Creating the
complex infrastructure for soil carbon mechanisms is an expensive and dangerous
diversion from directly financing the well-documented adaptation needs of
small-scale agriculture.
• Corporations, governments and industrial agricultural production
systems in Annex 1 countries are allowed to continue emitting greenhouse gases
while supposedly meeting their mitigation targets through offsets. This
reliance on offsets not only shifts the responsibility for addressing climate
change onto developing country governments and small producers, but also
distracts from the priority of addressing the serious adaptation challenges
resulting from climate change.
• COP17 approval of such a work programme could pave the way for costly
and unproven technological fixes such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
and other patented technologies and practices as solutions for “climate smart”
agriculture. These technologies are not only prohibitively costly for
developing countries, but also create new forms of corporate control over
agricultural plant and animal genetic resources. Their safety is in doubt, and
environmental, social and economic harm has already occurred from their use.
They threaten to hinder rather than enhance agricultural adaptation to climate
change.
Second, African ministers and other
developing countries are falsely being promised agriculture and climate finance
through carbon markets. Yet carbon markets are in crisis, and are clearly
failing to generate finance or benefits for developing countries:
• Carbon markets are an over-hyped, unreliable, volatile and inequitable
source of funding for Africa. In spite of the vast volumes of money currently
associated with carbon markets, only a tiny fraction of this goes to projects
on the ground. In 2009, out of a total global carbon market volume of $144
billion, just 0.2% of this was for project-based transactions . The remaining 99.8%
was captured by large consultants’ fees and profits for commodity speculators,
who trade carbon on international commodity markets like any other
financialised product.
• Communities and governments’ public funds are expected to bear the huge
implementation and pre-financing costs of projects. The implementation costs of
land management methods are many times higher than the returns from the carbon
market, while, to judge by Kenya’s pilot soil carbon market project, half of
the projected returns are needed to cover transaction costs such as
administration. The financial returns from offsets will barely trickle down to
farmers, if at all. Such projects are therefore either financially unviable, or
will continue to need public funding to survive.
• Carbon markets suffer from structural weaknesses that make them highly
susceptible to fraud and manipulation, thereby making them unreliable for
climate finance and development planning.
• The global price of carbon is already too low and volatile to deliver
reliable finance to projects. Analysts predict that with commodity markets
facing turmoil, and carbon markets facing a likely flood of new offset
products, the price of carbon will only go down. This makes them a disastrous
solution for food sovereignty, improved rural livelihoods and the agriculture
adaptation needs of small producers.
• Given the technical challenges and scientific uncertainties about the
actual sequestration of carbon in soil, this makes for a poor “tradable asset”.
Given these uncertainties, soil carbon offset credits are ineligible for the
European Emissions Trading Scheme – representing 97% of the global compliance
market – until at least 2020.
Soil carbon and other agriculture offsets
will not bring adequate, predictable, additional or reliable finance for
adaptation or mitigation in Africa and elsewhere. Instead these quasi-markets
will require massive public funds for pre-financing, and serve mostly to
generate profits for commodity speculators in the North.
The focus on carbon markets also provides a
distraction from urgent conversations on how to generate public finance to help
developing countries to confront climate change. In 2009, developed countries
committed to generate $100 billion per year for adaptation and mitigation in
developing countries from public and private sources. To date, political energy
has mostly focused attention on ways to generate and leverage private finance –
usually by using public funds to prop up failing carbon markets. At the same
time, developed countries have largely ignored the potential of numerous
approaches that could be used to generate public finance (such as a tiny tax on
financial transactions, or levies in the shipping and aviation sectors) which
could go in part to support smallholder farmers and agricultural systems in
developing countries.
The Kenya Project on Agricultural Carbon is
not replicable without public funds:
The World Bank and SIDA-supported pilot
project in Kenya is being used to convince African governments that this is a
workable solution for agriculture investment. Yet even the project proponents
admit that farmers will not benefit from carbon payments: they are only likely
to earn between $5 and $1 per year. The World Bank has bankrolled the payment
of carbon consultants to develop a “simplified” carbon methodology with the
intent to duplicate it elsewhere, while SIDA funding is making up the
difference. The project suffers from high transaction costs (up to half of the
estimated revenue), low returns to farmers and uncertain environmental benefits
due to the problems with soil carbon measurement. Without the World Bank’s
support of guaranteed minimum carbon price and SIDA’s pre-financing, the huge
required investment and low returns mean that this model is not replicable for
other African countries.
We believe that agroecological practices are
a key strategy for adaptation, mitigation and increased yields for African
farmers. But these approaches cannot come packaged with, or be structured for,
carbon offset credits. The critical issues of agriculture, food security and
climate change have in fact been assessed at length in the International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development
(IAASTD). Ministers should consider whether IAASTD policy options on climate
change and food security, approved by more than 50 governments in Johannesburg
in April 2008, are suitable for adoption in their countries. The UN Committee
on World Food Security (CFS) is also charged with addressing the linkages of
climate change and food security in the coming year. The CFS process is
inclusive and allows space for genuine civil society input.
The right to food must be at the heart of any
discussions related to agriculture and climate change. Launching a
mitigation-based framework on agriculture and climate change is therefore
premature and short sighted.
Sincerely,
ActionAid International
The African Biodiversity Network (Kenya)
The Gaia Foundation (UK)
Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy
(IATP)
Signatories
International Organizations
BiofuelWatch
ETC Group – International
Friends of the Earth International
Global Forest Coalition
Global Justice Ecology Project
International Food Security Network
(IFSN),
ActionAid International
Third World Network
Africa
Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA),
on behalf of its 300 member organizations
350.org Durban, South Africa
Adnan Bashir Productions, South Africa
African Centre for Biosafety, South Africa
Bernadette Lubozhya, Landgrab Activist,
Zambia
Biowatch South Africa, South Africa
Brainforest, Gabon
CVM/APA, Tanzania
Earthlife Africa eThekwini, South Africa
Earthlife Africa Joburg, South Africa
Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale
Farmers Forum (ESAFF),
ESAFF–Burundi
ESAFF–South Africa
ESAFF–Uganda
ECOPEACE, South Africa
ESPOIR POUR TOUS, Democratic Republic of
Congo
Fathers 4 Justice, South Africa
FOE Mauritius, Mauritius
Forum pour la gouvernance et les droits de
l’homme (FGDH), Democratic Republic of Congo
Greenpeace Africa, Democratic Republic of
Congo
Guinee Ecologie, Republic of Guinea
Human Rights Network, South Africa
Improved Stoves Association of Kenya
Isis – Informal Settlement in Struggle, South
Africa
KUTA-Security, South Africa
Le Réseau des communicateurs de
l’environnement (RCEN), Democratic Republic of Congo
Les Amis de la Nature et des Jardins (ANJ),
Democratic Republic of Congo
Lyambai Institute of Development, Zambia
Maendeleo Endelevu Action Program (MEAP),
Kenya
Manenbers Social Ideology Collective, South
Africa
Noordhoek Environmental Action Group (NEAG),
South Africa
Rescope Programme, Malawi
Safe Food Coalition, South Africa
South Durban Community Environmental
Alliance, South Africa
Surplus People Project, South Africa
Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement,
Tanzania
The Living Ghoen, South Africa
The Sustainable Development Institute /
Friends of the Earth Liberia
Timberwatch Coalition, South Africa
Asia
Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt
& Development
Beyond Copenhagen Coalition (a collective of
42 organisations), India
Focus on the Global South, Thailand
HuMa (Association for Community and
Ecology-based Law Reform), Indonesia
Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, Taiwan
Latin America
Centro Ecológico, Brazil
COECOCEIBA-Friends of the Earth Costa Rica,
Costa Rica
Sobrevivencia, Paraguay
North America
Biomass Accountability Project, United States
Farmworker Association of Florida, United
States
Indigenous Environmental Network, United
States
Mangrove Action Project, United States
PLANT (Partners for the Land &
Agricultural Needs of Traditional Peoples), United States
Susila Dharma International Association,
Canada
Sustainable Energy and Economy Network,
Institute for Policy Studies, United States
Europe
FERN
Africa Europe Faith & Justice Network
(AEFJN), Belgium
AEFJN Antenne Madrid, Spain
Antenne Italienne AEFJN, Italy
Netzwerk Afrika Deutschland (NAD), AEFJN,
Germany
Africa-Europe Network, Netherlands
Agrar Koordination, Germany
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Regenwald und Artenschutz
(ARA), Germany
CDM Watch, Belgium
ClientEarth, United Kingdom
CONGOACTIF, France
Corporate Europe Observatory, Belgium
Development Alternatives, United Kingdom
Deutscher Naturschutzring (DNR), Germany
Ecologistas en Acción, Spain
EcoNexus, United Kingdom
Garden Organic, United Kingdom
IBIS, Denmark
Les Amis de la Terre, France
Message from the Grassroots, Denmark
Naturland, Germany
NOAH – Friends of the Earth Denmark
ÖBV-Via Campesina Austria
Permanent Forum of European Civil Society,
Belgium
Practical Action, United Kingdom
Pro Natura – Friends of the Earth Switzerland
Rettet den Regenwald e.V., Germany
Salva la Selva, Spain
Society for Conservation and Protection of
Environment (SCOPE), United Kingdom
SONIA (Society for New Initiatives and
Activities) for a Just New World, Italy
SWISSAID, Switzerland
Terra Reversa, Belgium
The Development Fund, Norway
The Irish Missionary Union, Ireland
World Development Movement, United Kingdom
Youth Food Movement UK, United Kingdom
Oceania
Climate Justice Aotearoa, New Zealand
Sustainable Population, Australia
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