Aggiornamento: La versione finale del Decreto Liberalizzazioni ha leggermente modificato il quadro. Gli articoli relativi a prospezione e coltivazione di risorse di idrocarburi sono diventati l’articolo 16 e l’articolo 17. Sembra mancare un articolo corrispondente all’articolo 22 della bozza del 17 Gennaio che noi avevamo visionato. Lasciamo comunque l’articolo nella versione originale, fatta salva questa precisazione.

Gli articoli in questione sono l’articolo 20 (sviluppo di risorse energetiche nazionali strategiche), l’articolo 21 (in materia di promozione degli investimenti offshore) e l’articolo 22 (semplificazione e liberalizzazione delle attività di prospezione, ricerca e coltivazione di idrocarburi). L’articolo 20 tratta in particolare di un ampliamento delle attività estrattive già in corso in Basilicata. Ci si chiede quali saranno gli effetti, al di là di quelli climatici (più estrazioni più emissioni; più idrocarburi disponibili per la combustione, più emissioni), dato che la relazione specifica che:

Tale sviluppo risulta rallentato o impedito dalle difficoltà derivanti dall’insediamento degli impianti di estrazione di idrocarburi, spesso in competizione con altre attività di sfruttamento del territorio, generalmente di minore valore economico ma fortemente radicate e che generano occupazione

L’articolo 21 si occupa invece di investimenti offshore. In particolare va a modificare norme pre-esistenti, che prevedono due tipologie di divieti:

il primo, inerente lo svolgimento di attività riguardanti gli idrocarburi sia liquidi che gassosi in mare all’interno del perimetro delle aree marine e costiere a qualsiasi titolo protette per scopi di tutela ambientale, in virtù di leggi nazionali, regionali o in attuazione di atti e convenzioni internazionali e nelle zone di mare poste entro dodici miglia marine dal perimetro esterno di tali aree; il secondo, relativo ai soli idrocarburi liquidi nella fascia marina compresa entro cinque miglia dalle linee di base delle acque territoriali lungo l’intero perimetro costiero nazionale.

Tali divieti vengono ammorbiditi dal decreto, e tale ammorbidimento vuole, nelle intenzioni del governo Monti, rendere possibili attività di “ricerca e prospezione di idrocarburi in una area più vicina alle coste senza compromettere l’ecosistema”. Inoltre la relazione specifica che tra gli obiettivi vi sono quello di favorire il rimpiazzo della produzione nazionale i cui giacimenti sono arrivati a maturità, e quello di stimolare investimenti di tecnologia (Ci viene da commentare che sono investimenti nel passato, e che la situazione del clima globale preme chiaramente verso conservazione di energia e sviluppo di fonti rinnovabili, con filiere locali/zzate e a gestione diffusa).

La parte forse più emblematica della relazione, è riportata per intero, data la sua natura di, vorremmo dire, “dichiarazione di dipendenza” dalle agenzie di rating. Ecco:

Si sottolinea come lo sviluppo delle attività di prospezione e coltivazione di idrocarburi sia tra i parametri oggetto di valutazione da parte delle Agenzia di rating per la stima della solidità economica degli Stati. A titolo esemplificativo, si rileva che tra le ragioni che hanno indotto, lo scorso 9 settembre, Standard & Poor’s ad alzare il rating di Israele ad ‘A+’ da ‘A’, c’è stata proprio la decisione del governo israeliano di sviluppare le attività di ricerca e prospezione degli idrocarburi nelle proprie acque territoriali.

La relazione prevede anche il “rientro” di “almeno 40 operatori”, in seguito all’entrata in vigore della normativa prevista nel decreto, di cui buona parte presumibilmente straniere. Infatti, una delle regioni addotte nella relazione per l’ammorbidimento dei divieti è quella degli ostacoli posti, dalla vigente normativa “severa”, ad investimenti e ad attività di prospezione. Questa è una riproposizione delle reazioni dell’industria degli idrocarburi, come evidente da questo articolo dell’Assomineraria (l’associazione dell’industria mineraria e petrolifera in italia) a seguito dell’entrata in vigore della normativa ora in via di abrogazione tramite il Decreto Monti.

L’articolo 22 infine, si occupa di semplificazione e liberalizzazione delle attività di prospezione, ricerca e coltivazione di idrocarburi. In particolare prevede l’identificazione di blocchi da assegnare con gara europea, nell’ambito delle zone del mare territoriale e della piattaforma continentale aperte alla prospezione (e in cui l’attività di prospezione di idrocarburi è libera). Interessante notare come la valutazione ambientale strategica sia posticipata ad un momento successivo al conferimento delle aree, con presumibili effetti sui possibili risultati di tale valutazione (dato che si sarebbero già assegnate concessioni esclusive ad operatori privati).

Ma questi sono solo i momenti salienti delle disposizioni contenute nel decreto, oltretutto presentate a seguito di una scansione velocicissima. Potete leggere poi l’intero testo dei tre articoli citati (PDF), e delle relative relazioni (così come il testo integrale della bozza di decreto).

[videofilmati di OneWorldTV]

2011 COP17 succumbs to Climate Apartheid!

Antidote is Cochabamba Peoples’ Agreement!

Decisions resulting from the UN COP17 climate summit in Durban constitute a crime against humanity, according to Climate Justice Now! a broad coalition of social movements and civil society. Here in South Africa, where the world was inspired by the liberation struggle of the country’s black majority, the richest nations have cynically created a new regime of climate apartheid

“Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions,” said Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth International. “An increase in global temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius, permitted under this plan, is a death sentence for Africa, Small Island States, and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. This summit has amplified climate apartheid, whereby the richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%.”

According to Pablo Solón, former lead negotiator for the Plurinational State of Bolivia, “It is false to say that a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol has been adopted in Durban. The actual decision has merely been postponed to the next COP, with no commitments for emission reductions from rich countries. This means that the Kyoto Protocol will be on life support until it is replaced by a new agreement that will be even weaker.”

The world’s polluters have blocked real action and have once again chosen to bail out investors and banks by expanding the now-crashing carbon markets – which like all financial market activities these days, appear to mainly enrich a select few.

“What some see as inaction is in fact a demonstration of the palpable failure of our current economic system to address economic, social or environmental crises,” said Janet Redman, of the Washington- based Institute for Policy Studies. “Banks that caused the financial crisis are now making bonanza profits speculating on our planet’s future. The financial sector, driven into a corner, is seeking a way out by developing ever newer commodities to prop up a failing system.”

Despite talk of a “roadmap” offered up by the EU, the failure in Durban shows that this is a cul-de-sac, a road to nowhere. Spokespeople for Climate Justice Now! call on the world community to remember that a real climate program, based on planetary needs identified by scientists as well as by a mandate of popular movements, emerged at the World People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth in Bolivia in 2010. The Cochabamba People’s Agreement, brought before the UN but erased from the negotiating text, offers a just and effective way forward that is desperately needed.

For more information, contact: Mike Dorsey – mkdorsey@professordorsey.com, or call+27 (0)79 863 8756 or +1-734-945-6424
Nick Buxton – nick@tni.org or call +27(0)81 589 8564 or +1 530 902 3772 ADDITIONAL

BACKGROUND

On technology

“The technology discussions have been hijacked by industrialized countries speaking on behalf of their transnational corporations,” said Silvia Ribeiro from the international organization ETC Group. Critique of monopoly patents on technologies, and the environmental, social and cultural evaluation of technologies have been taken out of the Durban outcome. Without addressing these fundamental concerns, the new technology mechanism will merely be a global marketing arm to increase the profit of transnational corporations by selling dangerous technologies to countries of the South, such as nanotechnology, synthetic biology or geoengineering technologies.

On agriculture

“The only way forward for agriculture is to support agro-ecological solutions, and to keep agriculture out of the carbon market,” said Alberto Gomez, North American Coordinator for La Via Campesina, the world’s largest movement of peasant farmers. “Corporate Agribusiness, through its social, economic, and cultural model of production, is one of the principal causes of climate change and increased hunger. We therefore reject Free Trade Agreements, Association Agreements, and all forms of the application of Intellectual Property Rights to life, current technological packages (agrochemicals, genetic modification) and those that offer false solutions (biofuels, nanotechnology, and climate smart agriculture) that only exacerbate the current crisis.”

On REDD + and forest carbon projects

“REDD+ threatens the survival of Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities. Mounting evidence shows that Indigenous Peoples are being subjected to violations of their rights as a result of the implementation of REDD+-type programs and policies,” declared The Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD and for Life. Their statement, released during the first week of COP17, declares that “REDD+ and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) promote the privatization and commodification of forests, trees and air through carbon markets and offsets from forests, soils, agriculture and could even include the oceans. We denounce carbon markets as a hypocrisy that will not stop global warming.”

On the World Bank and the Global Climate Fund

“The World Bank is a villain of the failed neoliberal economy,” says Teresa Almaguer of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance in the U.S. “We need a climate fund managed by participatory governance, not by an anti-democratic institution that is responsible for much of the climate disruption and poverty in the world.” “The Green Climate Fund has been turned into the Greedy Corporate Fund,” said Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South. “The fund has been hijacked by the rich countries, on their terms, and set up to provide more profits to the private sector”

On the Green Economy

“We need a climate fund that provides finance for peoples of developing countries that is fully independent from undemocratic institutions like the World Bank. The Bank has a long track record of financing projects that exacerbate climate disruption and poverty” said Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South. “The fund is being hijacked by the rich countries, setting up the World Bank as interim trustee and providing direct access to money meant for developing countries to the private sector. It should be called the Greedy Corporate Fund!”

Climate policy is making a radical shift towards the so-called “green economy,” dangerously reducing ethical commitments and historical responsibility to an economic calculation on cost-effectiveness, trade and investment opportunities. Mitigation and adaption should not be treated as a business nor have its financing conditioned by private sector and profit-oriented logic. Life is not for sale.

On climate debt

“Industrialized northern countries are morally and legally obligated to repay their climate debt,” said Janet Redman, Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies. “Developed countries grew rich at the expense of the planet and the future all people by exploiting cheap coal and oil. They must pay for the resulting loss and damages, dramatically reduce emissions now, and financially support developing countries to shift to clean energy pathways.”

Developed countries, in assuming their historical responsibility, must honor their climate debt in all its dimensions as the basis for a just, effective, and scientific solution. The focus must not be only on financial compensation, but also on restorative justice, understood as the restitution of integrity to our Mother Earth and all its beings. We call on developed countries to commit themselves to action. Only this could perhaps rebuild the trust that has been broken and enable the process to move forward.

On real solutions

“The only real solution to climate change is to leave the oil in the soil, coal in the hole and tar sands in the land.” Ivonne Yanez, Acción Ecologica, Ecuador

For more information, contact:

Mike Dorsey – mkdorsey@professordorsey.com, or call+27 (0)79 863 8756 or +1-734-945-6424

Nick Buxton – nick@tni.orgor call +27(0)81 589 8564 or +1 530 902 3772

[videofilmato di SommerFilms]

DON’T LET AFRICA FRY: ZUMA’S GOONS ATTACK from Jadis on Vimeo.

Al di là del principio base della non mercificiazione delle foreste, le caratteristiche principali di tali proposta sono le seguenti:

• le foreste non possono essere incluse nel mercato del carbonio come offset (compensazioni)
• le foreste non sono solo magazzini di carbonio, ma soprattutto sistemi vitali costituiti da organismi viventi e componenti naturali
• gli sforzi e le attività delle popolazioni e comunità locali devono essere ricompensati attraverso un fondo specifico finanziato tramite flussi di denaro pubblico mobilitati da peasi sviluppati

La proposta “Sustainable Forest Life” si pone in diretto contrasto con le politiche REDD+, in quanto riconosce le funzioni multiple e interdipendenti delle foreste, e non le considera solamente come strumenti per la riduzione delle emissioni. Tale meccanismo promuove allo stesso tempo valori comunitari di fiducia, complementarietà e solidarietà, al contrario delle politiche REDD+, che si basano invece su individualismo e competizione.

Leggi la propota della Bolivia “Joint mitigation and adaptation mechanism: sustainable forest ife” (PDF, inglese)

LA VIA CAMPESINA DURBAN DECLARATION

Assembly of the Oppressed, 5th December 2011, Durban, South Africa

As the Assembly of the Oppressed we are gathered here to demand the transformation of the entire neo liberal capitalist system. The fight against climate change is a fight against neo liberal capitalism, landlessness, dispossession, hunger, poverty and the re-colonization of the territories of the people’s of Africa and the global South. We are here to declare that direct action is the only weapon of the oppressed people of the world to end all forms of oppression in the world.

We are here in Durban, South Africa where the 17th United Nations Conference of Parties is taking place and are discussing false solutions to the climate crisis. And we can see that the future of Mother Earth and of humanity is in peril as those responsible for nature’s destruction are attempting to escape their responsibility and erase history.

We, La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasants, small-scale and agricultural family farmers, is severely dismayed at the attempts of the developed countries to further escape their historic responsibility to make real emission cuts and push for more false and market based solutions to the climate crisis.

Here in Durban, they are discussing a “new mandate” as an outcome of the COP 17, one which contains market mechanisms and a voluntary pledge system in order to move away from the mandated program of working towards legally binding commitments to cut emissions. Also, developed countries are working hard to escape their historical responsibility and not pay their climate debt by pushing for a green climate fund that involves private capital and the World Bank. Finally, there is a push to include agriculture in the negotiations, treating agriculture as a carbon sink rather than a source of food and livelihood. For La Via Campesina, with this trend of negotiations, it is better to have no deal than a bad deal that condemns humanity and our planet to a future of climate catastrophe.

We are now at the worst moment for agriculture and small farmers and for nature. The impacts of climate change are steadily worsening, leading to harvest failures, destruction of habitats and homes, hunger and famine and loss of lives. The future of humanity and the planet is in critical danger and if these false solutions push through, it will be a catastrophe for nature, future generations and the whole planet.

We therefore demand to all governments in the negotiations:

• For all countries from the global South to stand up for their people and to defend the people and the planet with dignity and conviction. The government of South Africa has already sold out its people in this regard.
• For all the developed countries to live up to their historical responsibility of causing this climate crisis and to pay their climate debt and commit themselves to at least 50% domestic emission reductions based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.
• Stop industrial farming that promotes pollution and climate change through high levels of use of petroleum based chemicals
• Governments must support agro-ecology
• For all countries to listen and work for their people and not be under the control of transnational corporations.
• For all countries to stop trying to save capitalism and making the people, including small farmers, pay for their economic and financial crisis.

We as La Via Campesina, demand the implementation of the people’s global agreement on climate agreed on in Cochabamba. And here in Durban and in a thousand Durbans, we strongly reiterate our solutions to the climate crisis.

• Further global warming must be limited to a rise of 1 degree Celsius only.
• Developed countries must make domestic emission reductions of at least 50% based on 1990 levels, without conditions and excluding carbon markets or other offset mechanisms.
• Developed countries must commit to payment of their climate debt and give funding from at least 6% of their GDP. All funds for this climate finance must be public and be free from the control of the World Bank and private corporations.
• All market mechanisms must be stopped, including REDD, REDD++ and the proposed carbon markets for agriculture.

We reiterate that there will be no solution to climate change and the predatory neo-liberal system that causes it, without the liberation of women, and rural women in particular, from age old patriarchy and sexist discrimination. We therefore demand as part of comprehensive action against patriarchy and sexism:

• The promotion of women’s land access and rights through targeted redistribution
• Laws and policies must be made responsive to the particular needs of women

We as La Via Campesina, demand an end to the commodification of our Mother Earth reject the mechanisms of the carbon market. Furthermore, we reject the proposed inclusion of a work program on agriculture in the negotiations and reject all proposals of market mechanisms surrounding agriculture.

We as La Via Campesina and the people of the world have the real solutions to the climate crisis and we call on all governments to heed them before it is too late. At this assembly of the oppressed we declare to the people of the world that the solutions are in their hands. Through building social movements and mobilizing popular struggles for social change the world’s people will overcome the close alliance between governments and multinational corporations that is strangling the world. In Africa at the moment this alliance is perpetrating one of the biggest land grabs in history, which would mean more chemical-industrial farming, more poverty and exploitation, and more climate change. The only serious counter to this is the land occupations initiated by the landless themselves. From the perspective of food sovereignty, agrarian reform and climate justice, these land occupations deserve the fullest support.

Sustainable peasant’s agriculture and agroecology cool down the planet.
Food Sovereignty is the solution!

Peasant agriculture is not for sale!

Globalize the struggle, Globalize the hope!