Carbon Markets Can Provide a Crucial Part of the Solution to the Climate Crisis

Posted on December 18, 2019 by admin

Climate Change, Conferences, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Energy, Environment, Global, Green Economy, Headlines, Labour, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Fenella Aouane, Principal Green Finance Specialist, Investment and Policy Solutions Division, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec 18 2019 (IPS) – One of the main discussions at the COP25 climate change talks was Article 6, which is designed to provide financial support to emerging economies and developing countries to help them reduce emissions by using global carbon markets. Carbon pricing is an essential piece of the puzzle to curb emissions. Without a value on carbon, there is less incentive to make positive changes, especially in the private sector. The most efficient way to carry this forward is to allow trading of carbon both nationally and internationally, which will ensure the lowest cost of mitigation for participants globally.

Fenella Aouane

The COP25 negotiations in Madrid have largely been dominated by Article 6 negotiations on potential carbon markets as they are perceived by many, including businesses, as a way to generate financial flows to emerging economies and developing countries, and to reduce emissions at the lowest possible cost. Thus, it’s crucial to adopt decisions on Article 6 as rules need to be set to show how such markets will operate – this is the guidance the Article 6 rulebook will create. The sooner the better, overall mitigation in global emissions (OMGE) will be possible under the Paris Agreement through international carbon trading with aspects such as corresponding adjustments, which were lacking under the Kyoto Protocol. Carbon markets are a way to not only manage mitigation emissions cuts, but help to find the lowest cost and therefore a strong motivator for implementing international efforts.

The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), a Seoul-based treaty-based international, inter-governmental organization that supports emerging economies and developing country governments transition to a model of economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive, is already involved in several programs, funded by developed country governments such as Norway and Sweden. GGGI is working with the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment on wider policy approaches, which have been made possible under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement through cooperative approaches. This program looks at helping its member and partner governments to identify areas above their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets, where emissions reductions directly resulting from policy interventions are quantified and transacted. This creates a flow of carbon finance, in exchange for the transfer of the resultant internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs). These programs will not only create ITMO transactions but also set up the lasting infrastructure needed for countries to be able to govern and properly account for future transfers, ensuring environmental integrity and transparency.

GGGI has a key role to play. A further good example is GGGI’s recent collaboration with the Swedish Energy Agency (SEA). The two organizations will work together to catalyze international trading of mitigation outcomes in support of the increased climate ambitions needed under the Paris Agreement. Through a joint cooperation, SEA and GGGI will identify and structure mitigation activities and support the establishment of governance frameworks within host countries as required under the developing rulebook of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, with the goal of completing ITMO transactions.

Although specific rules related to cooperative approaches under Article 6 have yet to be codified, Article 6 aims at supporting the authorization of international emissions trades while avoiding double counting and ensuring environmental integrity, permitting the movement of the related emission reductions between registries, and better linking national emission trading schemes, project-level transactions, and cooperative approaches.

What next? Carbon markets can and should be seen as an opportunity to lower the cost of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and enabling countries to commit to more ambitious targets. At next year’s Glasgow climate change conference, countries need to come forward with more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions. GGGI’s work on pioneering designs for international carbon transactions over 2020 will help shape how the carbon markets can contribute to this increased ambition. It has also made the 2020 NDCs a priority in support of its Members and will ensure that there is strong support to deliver this next year. We need to come to Glasgow with concrete plans and steps. However, tackling climate change cannot be solved by one government alone. There needs to be high-level political commitment and collective action – these are a must.

Social Summit Demands Stronger Commitments in Climate Talks

Posted on December 9, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Climate Change, Conferences, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors’ Choice, Environment, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Globalisation, Green Economy, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Poverty & SDGs, Regional Categories

Climate Change

One of the continuous protests staged at the Social Summit for Climate Action, meeting Dec. 7-13 parallel to the official 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) on climate change. The Summit, hosted by the Complutense University of Madrid, is tackling issues such as the controversial trading of carbon credits, human rights in the climate struggle and opposition to the growing production of hydrocarbons. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

MADRID, Dec 9 2019 (IPS) – As the COP25 deliberations enter the decisive final week, representatives of environmental and social organisations gathered in a parallel summit are pressing the governments to adopt stronger commitments in the face of a worsening climate emergency.

In the debates in the week-long Social Summit for Climate Action, which began Dec. 7 parallel to the Dec. 2-13 United Nations 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) on climate change taking place in Madrid, skepticism has been expressed with respect to the results to come out of the official meeting.

“Nothing good is going to come out of it for Central America, only proposals that are going to make it more vulnerable. The damage is going to become more serious,” Carolina Amaya, representative of the Salvadoran Ecological Unit, told IPS, pointing out that the region is one of the most exposed to the climate crisis, facing persistent droughts, intense storms, rising sea levels and climate migrants.

The social summit is taking place at the public Complutense University, in the west of the Spanish capital, about 15 km from the IFEMA fairgrounds which are hosting COP25 after Chile pulled out on Oct. 30 from holding the event due to massive anti-government protests and social unrest.

The alternative activities, which also end on Friday Dec. 13, include a varied menu of issues, such as free trade and its socioenvironmental impacts, oil drilling in indigenous territories, the protection of forests, and opposition to trading reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which cause global warming.

They are also discussing the monetisation of environmental services, increased funding for the most vulnerable nations, climate justice and attacks against land rights activists.

The Madrid Social Summit is also holding sessions in Santiago de Chile, under the same slogan, “Beyond COP25: People for Climate”, although there are fewer representatives of organised civil society than at previous COPs because of the last minute change of venue.

Civil society groups are also organising activities at their green pavilion within the official COP25 compound of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), where their participation is more formal and ceremonious.

The demands of civil society gained visibility thanks to the mass demonstration held in Madrid on Friday Dec. 6, with the participation of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, the reluctant star of the official conference and social summit.

COP25 is the third consecutive COP held in Europe, this time under the motto “Time to act”.

The deliberations, which enter the crucial phase of the adoption of agreements Tuesday Dec. 10, are focusing on financing national climate policies, rules for emission reduction markets, and the preparation of the update of emissions reductions and funding of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, designed to assist regions particularly affected by climate change.

COP25 is the climate summit that directly precedes the 2020 entrance into effect of the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted in the French capital in 2015, which left key areas to be hashed out at the current conference, such as the controversial emissions market.

In their statement to the COP, the organisations criticise the economic model based on the extraction of natural resources and mass consumption, blaming it for the climate crisis, and complaining about the lack of results in the UNFCCC meetings.

“The scientific diagnosis is clear regarding the seriousness and urgency of the moment. Economic growth happens at the expense of the most vulnerable people,” says the statement, which defends climate justice “as the backbone of the social fights of our time” and “the broadest umbrella that exists to protect all the diversity of struggles for another possible world.”

At the social summit, the first “Latin American Climate Manifesto was presented on Monday Dec. 9, which lashes out at carbon credit trading, the role of corporations in climate change and the increase in production of hydrocarbons, while expressing support for the growth of agroecology, the defence of human rights and the demand for climate justice.

In addition, indigenous peoples are holding their own meeting, the “indigenous Minga“, with the message “Traditional knowledge at the service of humanity in the face of climate change.” They are demanding respect for their rights, participation in the negotiations and recognition of their role as guardians of ecosystems such as forests.

“We are here to raise our voices and offer our contribution to fight” against the climate emergency, Jozileia Kaingang, a chief of the Kaingang people and a representative of the non-governmental Articulation of the Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, told IPS.

Brazilian indigenous groups are in conflict with the government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro because of its attempts to undermine their rights and encourage the commercial exploitation of their territories. In fact, the Brazilian government delegation does not include a single indigenous member – unprecedented in the recent history of the COPs.

Faced with this dispute and the critical situation of the Amazon jungle, Brazil’s indigenous people have sent representatives to Madrid to speak out and seek solidarity.

The murder of two leaders of the Guajajara people in northeastern Brazil on Saturday Dec. 7 shook the indigenous delegation. Two murders had already occurred in that native community in the last two months.

In 2017, the States Parties to the UNFCCC adopted at COP23 the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform for the exchange of experiences and best practices, thereby ensuring the participation of these groups in the negotiations of the convention.

The Platform’s facilitative working group, composed of delegates from seven States Parties and seven indigenous peoples, is currently developing its plan for the period 2020-2021.

Martín Vilela, a representative of the Bolivian Platform for Climate Change umbrella group of local organisations, questioned the effectiveness of the climate summits.

“The agreements are only paper. Emissions continue to rise and countries’ voluntary targets are insufficient. The countries have to be more ambitious if they really want to avoid major disasters,” he told IPS.

Social organizations fear that the Paris Agreement, when it replaces the Kyoto Protocol next year, will be stillborn, because countries are failing to keep their promises, even though scientists are warning that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is insufficient.

The Agreement sets mandatory emission reduction targets for industrialised countries and voluntary targets for developing countries in the South.

“The countries need to know that we’re monitoring them. We, the organisations, must prepare ourselves to demand better action,” said Amaya from El Salvador.

For her part, Brazil’s Kaingang argued that the climate struggle would only be effective if it includes indigenous peoples.

COP26 will be hosted by Glasgow, Scotland in November 2020, after pre-conference meetings in Germany and Italy.

This article was supported by the COP25 Latin American Journalistic Coverage Programme.

Under Pressure. Can COP25 Deliver?

Posted on December 2, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Climate Change, Conferences, Development & Aid, Energy, Environment, Featured, Global, Green Economy, Headlines, Natural Resources, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

Farhana Haque Rahman is Senior Vice President of IPS Inter Press Service; a journalist and communications expert, she is a former senior official of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Climate change effects, such as extreme weather events, drive up environmental remediation costs. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

ROME, Dec 2 2019 (IPS) – Mass public pressure backed by the weight of scientific reports is starting to bring governments to their senses as the annual UN climate summit kicks off in Madrid today.

But despite warnings that the planet is reaching critical tipping points, the two weeks of talks with nearly 30,000 participants and dozens of heads of government attending may still end in that familiar sense of disappointment and an opportunity missed.

The annual Conference of the Parties, this year being COP25, was to have been a highly arcane if crucial process of finding agreement on carbon markets, known in the jargon as Article 6 of the ‘rulebook’ to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement on stopping the planet from overheating.

Highly contentious, and in part pitting developing countries like Brazil, China and India against others, the Article 6 debate could not be resolved at last year’s summit – COP24 in Katowice, Poland – nor at meetings in Bonn in June and hence was left for COP25 to try and fix. The other big elephant in the room – setting more ambitious national targets to reduce carbon emissions – was conveniently going to be left to be settled at next year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.

But action is needed now, and senior officials representing nearly 200 countries have been put on notice that the climate emergency in all its forms is dominating the public sphere across the world. Just last week we saw student-led demonstrations and strikes in many places that appropriately fell on Black Friday, delivering a broadside against rampant consumerism as well as government inaction.

Farhana Haque Rahman

“Striking is not a choice we relish; we do it because we see no other options,” youth leaders Greta Thunberg of Sweden, Luisa Neubauer of Germany and Angela Valenzuela of Chile declared in a joint statement.

“We have watched a string of United Nations climate conferences unfold. Countless negotiations have produced much-hyped but ultimately empty commitments from the world’s governments—the same governments that allow fossil fuel companies to drill for ever-more oil and gas, and burn away our futures for their profit.”

UN Secretary General António Guterres has told COP25 that “the point of no return is no longer over the horizon”.

“In the crucial 12 months ahead, it is essential that we secure more ambitious national commitments – particularly from the main emitters – to immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a pace consistent to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. We simply have to stop digging and drilling and take advantage of the vast possibilities offered by renewable energy and nature-based solutions,” Guterres said.

Just last month the UN Environment Programme’s annual Emissions Gap Report warned that the Paris Agreement ambition of keeping average temperatures within 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times was “on the brink of becoming impossible”.

Global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would have to be under 25 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to reach that target but, at current rates of growth, emissions are projected to reach more than double that level. Clearly drastic action is needed.

Reinforcing the sense of emergency, the World Meteorological Organization reported that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached new record highs in 2018. China is the world’s largest emitter.

Spain stepped in to offer Madrid as a venue for COP25 after Chile withdrew as host because of mass anti-government unrest. However Chile is still leading the conference and together with Spain will be pushing countries to act quickly to raise the ambition of their carbon emission reduction targets. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says the goal is for “the largest number of countries” to commit to net zero emissions by 2050.

From 2020 to 2030, emissions must be cut 7.6% a year to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, the UNEP says.

However the main negotiation process in Madrid is expected to focus on the unfinished business of the market-based mechanisms to create and manage new carbon markets under the Paris Agreement. This would allow countries and industries to earn credits for above-target emission reductions that can then be traded. Big developing countries have already accumulated huge amounts of carbon credits under the previous but now largely discredited carbon credit scheme. It is a highly complex tangle of interests.

Carbon Brief, a UK-based climate website, says the Article 6 debate has the potential to “make or break” implementation of the Paris Agreement which comes into force next year.

“To its proponents, Article 6 offers a path to significantly raising climate ambition or lowering costs, while engaging the private sector and spreading finance, technology and expertise into new areas. To its critics, it risks fatally undermining the ambition of the Paris Agreement at a time when there is clear evidence of the need to go further and faster to avoid the worst effects of climate change,” Carbon Brief explains.

While Article 6 is a highly technical area, the underlying issues are political, with some countries forming unofficial alliances to defend their own interests rather than the common good of the planet. But politicians have been put on notice that this time the world’s public is watching closely. Horse-trading cannot be allowed to put our futures at risk.

Africa’s Civil Society Calls for Action as COP25 Kicks off in Madrid

Posted on December 2, 2019 by admin

Africa, Aid, Civil Society, Climate Change, Conferences, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Energy, Environment, Featured, Global Governance, Green Economy, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Climate Change

In Africa, climate change has caused drought, change in distribution of rainfall, the drying-up of rivers. Intense flooding causes landslides and in Kenya, residents of West Pokot County are currently grappling with with the deaths of 50 people who were last week buried alive by landslides following heavy rainfall that continues to pound the East African region. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

MADRID, Dec 2 2019 (IPS) – During the 25th round of climate change negotiations starting today in Madrid, Spain, African civil society organisations will call on governments from both developing and developed nations to play their promised roles in combating climate change.

“We’re fatigued by COP [Conference of Parties] jamborees which have become a ritual every year,” said Dr Mithika Mwenda of the Pan Africa Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) – an umbrella organisation that brings together over 1,000 African climate and environment civil society organisations.

“We know the science is clear about the level [in which] we need to act, yet we procrastinate and prevaricate while maintaining our profligate lifestyles,” he told IPS in an interview.

The 25th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP 25) comes a week after the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) released a report warning that unless global greenhouse gas emissions fall by 7.6 percent each year between 2020 and 2030, the world will miss the opportunity to get on track towards the 1.5°C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement is an agreement reached at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) in Paris, France, where the world’s nations undertook a determined course to reduce climate change. Among the commitments was to reduce the increase in global temperatures.

The annual Emissions Gap Report, which was released on Nov. 26 warns that even if all current unconditional commitments under the Paris Agreement are implemented, temperatures are expected to rise by 3.2°C, bringing even wider-ranging and more destructive climate impacts.

“Any slight change in global temperatures can have a devastating effect on millions of livelihoods, and could expose people to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding,” said Dr Mohammed Said, a climate change research scientist based in Kenya.

According to his research in Kenya’s Arid and Semi Arid regions, people in counties that experienced increased temperatures in the past 50 years have suffered significant loss of livelihoods with some having to change their lifestyles altogether.

“In Turkana County for example, the temperatures increased by 1.8°C, and as a result, the cattle population declined by 60 percent, and now residents have been forced to turn to more resilient camels, goats and sheep,” he told IPS.

It is the same situation all over the world. A study published in Nature Climate Change points out that if global warming causes a rise of 1.5°C or 2°C, then there will be extremely hot summers across Australia, more frequent drought conditions and more frequent heat leading to bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef.

Another study by the United Kingdom’s Met Office reveals that the changing climate will make heat waves a common phenomena worldwide and even intense in the U.K..

In Africa, climate change has caused flooding, drought, change in the distribution of rainfall, and the drying up of rivers. It has affected agriculture, food security and human health. And it has also led to conflicts over resources, impacting national security in various countries.

In Kenya, residents of West Pokot County are currently grappling with the deaths of 50 people who were last week buried alive by landslides following heavy rainfall that continues to pound the East African region.

According to the Kenya Meteorological Department, the above-normal rainfall has been caused by sea surface temperature anomalies in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans caused by global warming. Floods in the region, which have already displaced hundreds of households and have swept away bridges, roads and property, are expected to continue for the next three weeks, according to the meteorological focus.

However, Mwenda believes that all is not lost. He notes that though the Nationally Determined Commitments (NDCs) are inadequate to lead to emission levels required by science and justice, there is still hope that momentum building on their implementation won’t be compromised.

“We will not be tired of telling our leaders that the future generations will judge them harshly as they have failed to rise to the occasion even when science is very clear that we have exceeded planetary boundaries,” he said.

In order to address climate change adequately, civil society is also calling for a dedicated financial mechanism to be established in Madrid to support Loss and Damage with a clear agreement on new sources of finance.

During the 19^th round of negotiations in Poland, the COP established the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change Impacts (Loss and Damage Mechanism), to address loss and damage associated with impacts of climate change, including extreme events and slow onset events, in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

“As we head to Madrid, we expect that all countries will endeavour to deliver on ambitious commitments in climate finance, especially in regard to loss and damage, strong national targets, and clear rules on trading emissions between countries,” said Robert Bakiika, the Executive Director of EMLI Bwaise Facility, a Ugandan NGO and one of the admitted observer organisations at the UNFCCC.

Water Is Worth More than Milk in Extrema, Brazil

Posted on November 29, 2019 by admin

Biodiversity, Civil Society, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors’ Choice, Environment, Featured, Food & Agriculture, Green Economy, Headlines, Integration and Development Brazilian-style, Latin America & the Caribbean, Projects, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations, Water & Sanitation

Water & Sanitation

Elias Cardoso is proud of the restored forests on his 67-hectare farm, where he has protected and reforested a dozen springs as well as streams. “I was a guinea pig for the Water Conservator project, they called me crazy,” when the mayor’s office was not yet paying for it in Extrema, a municipality in southeastern Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

EXTREMA, Brazil, Nov 29 2019 (IPS) – “They called me crazy” for fencing in the area where the cows went to drink water, said Elias Cardoso, on his 67-hectare farm in Extrema, a municipality 110 km from São Paulo, Brazil’s largest metropolis.

“I realized the water was going to run out, with cattle trampling the spring. Then I fenced in the springs and streams,” said the 60-year-old rancher. “But I left gates to the livestock drinking areas.”

Cardoso was a pioneer, getting the jump on the Water Conservancy Project, launched by the local government in 2005 with the support of the international environmental organisation The Nature Conservancy and the Forest Institute of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, where Extrema, population 36,000, is located at the southern tip.

The project follows the fundamentals of the National Water Agency‘s Water Producer Programme, which focuses on different ways to preserve water resources and improve their quality, such as measures to conserve soil, preventing sedimentation of rivers and lakes.

But at the core of the project is the Payments for Environmental Services (PES), which in the case of Extrema compensate rural landowners for land they no longer use for crops or livestock, to restore forests or protect with fences.

The “Water Conservator” (Conservador das Águas) began operating in 2007, with contracts offered by the PES to farmers who reforest and protect springs, riverbanks and hilltops, which are numerous in Extrema because it is located in the Sierra de Mantiqueira, a chain of mountains that extends for about 100,000 square km.

“Then everyone jumped on board,” Cardoso said, referring to the project in the Arroyo das Posses basin, where he lives and where the environmental and water initiative began and had the biggest impact.

View of the new landscape in the hilly area around Extrema, after the reforestation of thousands of hectares in three basins in this municipality in southeastern Brazil, where the local government has fomented the process of recovery by paying landowners for environmental services. The priority is to restore the forests at the headwaters of the rivers and on hilltops and protect them with cattle fences. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

In the 14 years since it was launched, the project has only worked fully in three basins, where two million trees were planted and close to 500 springs were protected. It is now being extended to seven other watersheds.

“The goal is to reach 40 percent of forest cover with native species” in the municipality and “so far we already have 25 percent covered, and 10 percent is thanks to the Water Conservator,” said Paulo Henrique Pereira, promoter of the project as Environment Secretary in Extrema since 1995.

“Planting trees is easy, creating a forest is more complex,” the 50-year-old biologist told IPS, stressing that it’s not just about planting trees to “produce” and conserve water.

The project began with the prospecting of areas and the training of technicians, after the approval of a municipal PES statute, since there is no national law on remunerated environmental services.

“The bottleneck is that there is no skilled workforce” to reforest and implement water conservation measures, Pereira said.

The project now has its own nursery for the large-scale production of seedlings of native tree species, to avoid the past dependence on external acquisitions or donations, which drove up costs and made planning more complex.

Since 2005 Paulo Henrique Pereira, Secretary of Environment in Extrema since 1995, has promoted the Water Conservator Project, which has won national and international awards for its success in recovering and preserving springs and streams, by paying for environmental services to rural landowners who reforest in this municipality in southeastern Brazil. “Planting trees is easy, creating a forest is more complex,” he says. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The success of Extrema’s project, which has won dozens of national and international good practice awards, “is due to good management, which does not depend on the continuity of government,” said the biologist, although he admitted that it helped that he had been in the local Secretariat of the Environment for 24 years and that the mayors were of the same political orientation.

“It is a well-established project that is not likely to suffer setbacks,” he said.

The fact that the project offers both environmental and economic benefits helps keep it alive.

“My grandfather, who spent his life deforesting his property, initially rejected the project. It didn’t make sense to him to plant the same trees he had felled to make pasture for cattle,” said Aline Oliveira, a 19-year-old engineering student who is proud of the quality of life achieved in Extrema.

“When I was a girl, I didn’t accept the idea of protecting springs to preserve water either. I thought it was absurd to plant trees to increase water, because planting 200 or 300 trees would consume a lot of water. That was how I used to think, but then in practice I saw that springs survived in intact forest areas,” she said.

Later, when the PES arrived in the area, her grandfather gave in and more than 10 springs on the 112-hectare farm were reforested and protected. The payment is 100 municipal monetary units per hectare each year, currently equivalent to about 68 dollars.

Aline Oliveira studies engineering and lives on her family’s farm in southeastern Brazil. She is proud of the way life has improved in Extrema, a process that began with the establishment of the Payments for Environmental Services system, which guarantees income to farmers and ranchers for reforesting watersheds. It is a secure income at a time of falling milk prices and in a town far from the dairy processing plants. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

“The PES is a secure income, while milk prices have dropped, and everything has become more expensive than milk in the last 10 years. In addition, there were losses due to lack of transportation, since there is no major dairy processing plant within 50 km,” she told IPS.

Thanks to the municipal payments, “we were able to invest in cows with better genetics, buy a milking parlor and improve health care for the cattle, thus increasing productivity,” which compensated for the reduction in pastures, added the student, who works for the project.

The programme coincided with a major improvement in the economy and quality of life in Extrema. “I was born in Joanópolis, where there were better hospitals than in Extrema. But now it’s the other way around” and people from there come to Extrema, 20 km away, for heath care, Oliveira said.

This is also due to the industrialisation experienced by Extrema in recent decades, which becomes evident during a walk around the town, where many new industrial plants can be seen.

The water conservation project has also contributed to the water supply for a huge population in the surrounding area.

Arlindo Cortês, head of environmental management at Extrema’s Secretariat of the Environment, stands in the nursery where seedlings are grown for reforestation in this municipality in southeastern Brazil. “Building reservoirs does not ensure water supply if the watershed is deforested, degraded, sedimented. There will be floods and water shortages because the rainwater doesn’t infiltrate the soil,” he explains. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

The Jaguari River, which crosses Extrema, receives water from fortified streams and increases the capacity of the Jaguari reservoir, part of the Cantareira system, which supplies 7.5 million people in greater São Paulo, one-third of the total population of the metropolis.

“If the watersheds are deforested, degraded and sedimented, merely building reservoirs solves nothing,” said Arlindo Cortês, the head of environmental management at Extrema’s Secretariat of the Environment.

Extrema’s efforts have translated into local benefits, but contributed little to the water supply in São Paulo, partly because it is over 100 km away, said Marco Antonio Lopez Barros, superintendent of Water Production for the Metropolitan Region at the local Sanitation Company, Sabesp.

“No increase in the capacity of the Cantareira System has been identified since the 1970s,” he said in an interview with IPS.

“Thousands of similar initiatives will be necessary” to actually have an impact in São Paulo, because of the level of consumption by its 22 million inhabitants, he said, adding that improvements in basic sanitation in cities have greater effects.

São Paulo experienced a water crisis, with periods of rationing, after the 2014 drought in south-central Brazil, and faces new threats this year, as it has rained less than average.

Extrema also felt the shortage. “Since 2014 we have only had weak rains,” said Cardoso. The problem is the destruction of forests by the expansion of cattle ranching in the last three decades.

“The creek where I used to swim has lost 90 percent of its water. The recovery will take 50 years, the benefits will only be felt by our children,” he said.

Source

IDB Modernises Crucial Social and Environmental Safeguards

Posted on November 27, 2019 by admin

Civil Society, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Editors’ Choice, Environment, Eye on the IFIs, Global Governance, Green Economy, Headlines, Integration and Development Brazilian-style, Latin America & the Caribbean, Projects, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Development & Aid

The IDB finances sustainable transportation projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, but these and other works to which the bank provides loans must meet social and environmental standards. The picture shows part of Mexico City’s Metrobus public transport system, which runs on a dedicated lane with bi-articulated units. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

MEXICO CITY, Nov 27 2019 (IPS) – The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is in the process of modernising the social and environmental safeguards that govern the financing of projects considered vital for the construction of sustainable infrastructure in the Latin American region.

The participation of social organisations and local communities in the analysis of projects, dissemination of information, gender perspective and the focus on climate change are major challenges in this process of reforming the safeguards.

The Washington-based IDB will begin regional consultations with civil society organisations in January to upgrade the standards of those safeguards, approved between 1998 and 2010, after it closed the public consultation for the draft of the new environmental and social sustainability policy for its private sector lending arm IDB Invest on Oct. 15.

Vanessa Torres, deputy director of the Colombian NGO Environment and Society, told IPS that a Latin American coalition of NGOs and local communities asked for adequate time to coordinate their positions and exchange and study information.

“There will be an opportunity to update the risks and comment on the substance. They will have to be adapted to the characteristics of the region. We have not yet seen the draft of the update. Our concern is that substantial aspects, which are already in the current safeguards, not be watered down.” — Carolina Juaneda

“The communities affected by the projects must be informed in order for them to participate. This is a positive process, because the bank has been very open, but we are waiting to see what was included in the draft,” said Torres, an environmental lawyer.

The IDB, whose president is Colombian businessman Luis Moreno, will disseminate the draft at the end of November and stage consultations in 2020 in Argentina, Panama, Jamaica and Peru.

In September 2020, the bank’s Board of Executive Directors, made up of 14 representatives from several blocks of countries, will receive the final version and the implementation plan.

Among other measures, at the end of the process, in terms of environmental and social policy in project finance, the IDB will adopt the eight principles of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, on issues such as environmental impacts, labour issues, biodiversity conservation and indigenous peoples, and will apparently incorporate a gender approach and stakeholder participation and information dissemination.

The multilateral institution proposes an integrated policy framework, with a socio-environmental statement and 10 technical standards for the management of environmental and social risks.

The current IDB Environmental Safeguards and Compliance Policy consists of environmental, population resettlement, disaster risk management, gender equality, indigenous peoples and access to information requirements.

In 2018, the IDB approved 96 sovereign guaranteed (backed by a government) loan projects with total financing of 13.4 billion dollars, and disbursed more than 9.9 billion dollars.

The bank ranks the level of risk in terms of a project’s environmental and social sustainability. In 2018, eight percent of the loans were granted to high risk projects, 24 percent substantial risk, 31 percent low risk and 37 percent moderate, according to the 2018 Sustainability Report.

The IDB will investigate whether IDB Invest, its private finance arm, failed to comply with the safeguards in the loan for the Ituango hydroelectric plant, which is being built on the Cauca River, 170 km from the city of Medellín, Colombia, after a serious accident with the dam in 2018. Credit: Courtesy of Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office

Ten percent of the projects failed to meet the standards, 20 percent adhered to the guidelines, 21 percent required immediate corrective action, and 49 percent had partially consistent compliance with the requirements.

The IDB has 2,596 active projects worth 60.8 billion dollars, most of which are being implemented by Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Paraguay in areas like transportation, energy, water and sanitation. In addition, it is evaluating 225 projects for another 19.8 billion dollars.

The ravages of the climate emergency in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as more intense hurricanes, rising temperatures, loss of biodiversity and rising sea levels, make the construction of sustainable infrastructure an imperative.

Safeguards as a tool

Beginning in the 1990s, multilateral financial institutions began to design safeguards that their clients – governments and companies – and the projects they finance must respect, thanks in part to pressure from affected social organisations and communities demanding that the impacts of these ventures be taken into account.

They also put in place mechanisms to process complaints of non-compliance with the standards or requirements set by the safeguards in projects financed by the multilateral banks.

Since last decade, financial institutions have revised these guidelines to adapt them to a changing social and environmental context, such as the worsening of climate change and its effects, including intense storms, droughts and rising temperatures. Currently, the greatest pressure on the banks is for them not to finance hydrocarbon projects, due to the climatic urgency to stop using fossil fuels.

Moreno, who assumed the presidency of the IDB in 2005, will conclude his term in mid-2020 and wants to do so having put in place updated social and environmental standards.

In updating the safeguards, the IDB has developed more than 60 new environmental, social, economic and institutional criteria to be applied in the design, construction, operation and final conclusion of a project financed by the institution.

The update stems from recommendations made in 2018 by the IDB Office of Evaluation and Oversight, which found that a large percentage of IDB projects that were reviewed did not fully comply with the initial safeguards requirements prior to loan authorisation and that the requirements were not addressed during execution.

The organisations involved in the update process mention, as an example of unsustainable infrastructure, the Ituango hydroelectric dam, built by Empresas Públicas de Medellín on the Cauca River, Colombia’s largest river. The IDB provided 550 million dollars for the project and administered part of the one billion dollars provided by other banks.

In May 2018, torrential rains overflowed the river, causing the collapse of the tunnel built to divert that flow, and as a result landslides, floods and the displacement of thousands of people from their homes, raising serious questions about the sustainability of the country’s largest hydroelectric project and one of the biggest in Latin America.

In June of that year, 477 residents of eight municipalities in the northwestern department of Antioquia requested that the Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (Mici), the bank’s autonomous body responsible for evaluating performance against its standards, investigate whether the IDB and IDB Invest respected their own socioenvironmental safeguards.

The IDB Board of Directors resolved on Oct. 29 that it would inquire whether IDB Invest had complied.

Between 2010 and September 2019, Mici received 151 complaints, of which 144 referred to the IDB, four to IBD Invest and four to IDB Lab, a platform that seeks to mobilise capital, knowledge and connections to promote innovation in the region. Thirteen are active, of which seven are in the consultation phase, five in the compliance review phase and one is being assessed for eligibility.

This year, Mici has three cases open from Argentina and two from Brazil, while it rejected two complaints from Argentina and Brazil, and it has one each from Barbados, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana and Paraguay, respectively, while it declared a complaint from Chile ineligible.

The organisations say the bank’s sustainability framework should include a comprehensive approach embodied in the operational strategy and safeguards, with an exclusion list of hydrocarbon projects.

The IDB has an active regional initiative to promote the reduction of polluting emissions and improvements in efficiency through the use of gas, backing for Guyana’s oil sector and other support for the “sustainable and responsible development” of mining and hydrocarbons in Colombia.