3.11.09
This evening there was a protest outside a posh restaurant where delegates were meeting with hydropower corporations. Delegates & execs were harangued as they made their way from their buses & posh cars to dine together. Banners added to the yelling of ‘no more dams no more lobbies, climate justice!’, that quite spoilt the appetite of those trying to carve up the environment inside. Eventually the police came and tried to ID everyone, but we stayed a bit longer, and a bit more, till they left and we decided to move on…
Press release:
On the occasion of the Barcelona summit 2 to 6 November, the last preparatory session of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP15)
Under the slogan “Dams kill rivers and people, they are not a Clean Development Mechanism!” activists denounce corporate lobbying in climate change negotiations
· Dams and reservoirs are important generators of greenhouse gases, and responsible for almost one quarter of the methane emissions caused by humans
· Nasa’s leading climate scientist James Hansen has warned that corporate lobbying is gravely undermining democratic attempts to curb carbon emissions.
Barcelona, 03 November. The aim of today’s action against corporate lobbyists is to make noise to wake the world up, to express outrage at the questionable legitimacy of today’s meeting between major hydro-electrical corporations (Richard Taylor, Executive Director, International Hydropower Association and Jose Maria Calvo-Sotelo, Senior Vice President Regulation and Corporate Development, Endesa Latinoamérica) and delegates from the negotiations in parallel to the official UNFCC.
According to Olivier Hoedeman from lobbying watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory “From Washington DC to Ottawa, Brussels to Tokyo, the most influential governments in the climate negotiations are facing an unprecedented corporate lobbying offensive, aiming to weaken greenhouse gas reduction targets.”
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a market-based tool that allows industrialized nations – obliged to reduce their emissions by the Kyoto Protocol ‑to avoid cutting excess emissions by paying developing countries to make the emissions reductions in the form of supposedly ‘clean energy’.
The creation of an artificial ‘climate’ market means large corporations are able to buy carbon credits issued by the UN. Thus, business groups that are expected to reduce emissions are linked to questionable projects in developing countries in the name of “sustainable development” and continue to pollute in developed countries.
The CDM actually increases emissions because the credited projects often do not deliver the expected emissions reductions. Companies represented by corporate lobbyists such as the International Hydropower Association are receiving billions of dollars through this instrument.
Hydroelectric projects have quickly become the number one technology in the CDM, despite their high climate impact. Dams and reservoirs are important generators of greenhouse gases, besides being responsible for almost one quarter of the methane emissions caused by humans, specifically 104M tonnes, corresponding to 4 ‑5% of all induced warming.
Another terrible consequence is the displacement of over 80M people, an overwhelming number of victims, flooding of many places of great social and cultural value, in addition to the irreversible destruction of river ecosystems.
Today we denounce the death and destruction caused by large dams, and promoted by prominent lobbyists in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Today we say, NO MORE DAMS! LOBBIES OUT OF OUR CLIMATE! THE CLIMATE IS NOT FOR SALE!