Carbon market allows richest people to pollute, say environmentalists

The carbon market is one of the central issues of the 22th UN Conference on Climate Change (COP22), which is being held since November 7 in Marrakesh (Morocco), and became a pillar of international efforts to encourage the reduction of CO² emissions. A group of scholars, environmentalists, and social activists has questioned the world leaders' attitude of overrating carbon pricing as a solution to global warming problems.

In Brazil, representatives from communities located in regions rich in natural resources report that they suffer harassment by companies involved in forestry economic activities.

The president of Santarém Rural Workers Union in the state of Pará, Manuel Edvaldo Santos Matos, reported that the networks formed by indigenous communities, peasants, and traditional communities have resisted the implementation of forest carbon projects selling credit in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Conservation Unit with over 640,000 hectares of forest. This project was being articulated by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), the Ministry of Environment, and international organizations of forests management and conservation and sustainable business financing and was suspended after indigenous people occupied the headquarters of the institute in Santarém, in August 2015.

At the time, the project had an initial investment of $118,600 from the private sector, said Matos. "The money would not be directly transferred to the communities, but to the government's coffers. And then there would be no control over the [money] destination. But it is not over yet. We will return to this discussion," he regretted. "The communities fear being banned from performing productive activities of natural resource management, like planting cassava, maize, and other subsistence crops. We need to regularize the land to end land disputes, to have access to health and education, to technical assistance and policies for us to make our living on our production," he said.

The ICMBio reported that "there has never been any project for selling carbon credit. They had just started to discuss the issue with the communities, but it has not progressed for several reasons."

For Lourdes Cardozo Laureano, root worker from Turmalina, in Minas Gerais state, biodiversity and knowledge cannot be priced. "We see that there is a dispute over the biodiversity in the Cerrado, which is very rich, but also over our knowledge, closely linked to the genetic heritage. We don't trust this green economy that gives priority to money, to the market value," she said. "We take care of the community's health using plants and dense roots. We are aware of the families' health and their disease profile, of the woman who had difficult childbirth, of wives infected by their husbands, of families that face difficulty with food security. This knowledge and sustainable use of nature are not payable, but are priceless," she said.

The Cerrado is the second largest of South American habitat types, and occupies an area of 2,036,448 km2, about 22% of the Brazilian territory. In it, there are the three major drainage basins of the region (Amazon/ Tocantins, São Francisco, and Prata).

Carbon Metrics

The valuation of the environment with traditional market mechanisms was the theme of a lecture promoted by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro at the end of October. The speakers argued that the logic of the green economy based on carbon metrics cause more harm than good to the environment and to the citizens of the planet.

Co-author of the book “Critique of the green economy”, German researcher Thomas Fatheuer said at the meeting that until now the methods used to reduce emissions failed to halt the destruction of forests or pollution. "And they are still boosting the usage of risky and harmful technologies—like the nuclear energy—claiming that it emit less carbon. A recent study shows that over 60% of the world's production of palm oil are burned to fuel, forests are burned in Indonesia to reduce emissions in Europe," he said.

"The ways to reduce CO² emissions are set by the market and not by society. This is a great failure of the green economy," said Fatheuer. One of the solutions to the problem, he argued, is the expansion of political space for citizens to avoid violations and distortions caused by corporate greed. Another solution is a substantial democratization of wealth, for the economy to serve human beings again, and not the opposite.

Camila Moreno, researcher at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, co-author of the book “Carbon Metrics—Global abstractions and ecological epistemicide”, pointed out that over the years a speech that ended up justifying and naturalizing carbon metrics around the world was spread.

"Carbon metrics are a fiction that simplify and depoliticize [the discussion]. They deny the different ways of knowledge which give meaning to different peoples and cultures in the world. Scientific rationality isolated the contradictions of several regions of the world, of ecosystems, food chains, social, power, and religious relations. It isolated everything into an aseptic environment, creating unity among the world," she said, arguing that science is not free from ideologies.

Also according to Camila Moreno, we need to discuss this simplistic theory that sees nature as a machine. "We know how science is produced, financed, and controversial. Science is the vortex from which real power is exercised in society today," he added.

Monocultures

Another negative aspect of this market, according to the critiques of the green economy, is the expansion of monocultures. Agronomist Luiz Zarref, from the coordination of the Landless Rural Workers (MST), regretted the amount of land occupied by fast-growing trees, like genetically modified eucalyptus, which destroy thousands of hectares of land due to the large amount of water that they remove from the soil.

According to Zarref, the main rural social movements understand that agroecology—agriculture from the perspective of a sustainable ecosystem—is the only possibility of reproduction of the peasantry and food production on a large scale. "We need to ensure food sovereignty, what, where and when we want to produce. We need land reform and healthy food for the cities. "

The planting of exotic trees (like eucalyptus), according to the Ministry of Environment, captures atmospheric carbon dioxide and provides a source of sustainable and carbon-neutral charcoal. The Secretary for Climate Change and Environmental Quality of the Ministry of Environment, Everton Lucero, reported that the government wants to encourage this economic activity in the country. "This sector values natural resources and the forest, and has great potential to contribute to achieving carbon reduction targets by 2025 and 2030," he said. "Companies working in this area are structured with long growing season and organize the planting according to conservation areas, ecological corridors, and the maintenance of native vegetation."

In the secretary's view, the development model shall change, but a low-carbon economy will only be achieved in the long term. "Thus, we need a strategy that values environmental resources and boosts the usage of renewable energy to replace fossil fuels," he said.

Form X Content

For Carlos Hittl, executive secretary of the Brazilian Climate Observatory, carbon metrics have been very useful as an indicator and diagnosis to the problem. "We use carbon metrics to analyze the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. By looking at past concentrations of these gases in layers in ice cores, we can trace history back hundreds of thousands of years. Carbon metrics allow us to say that at least for 4 million years, there has never been so much carbon in the atmosphere as we have today," he noted.

"Current production and consumption patterns need to change. Unfortunately, we will not change the bases of capitalism and all its perverse effects in time to solve the problem of climate change. We have six years and two-thirds chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°. We need to drastically change this trajectory," said Hittl.

André Guimarães, executive director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), argued that some bad projects cannot invalidate the original idea of selling carbon credits. "We need to separate the content from the form. The form should really be enhanced, transparent. It should not be a top-down project," he said. "We need to prevent the misuse of money, the appropriation of traditional peoples' rights. However, the forest preservation and the sustainable development cost money. If the form is wrong, we improve the form, but we have to keep investing."

Suzana Kahn, head of the Brazilian Panel on Climate Change (PBMC), believes that the carbon market can be very useful if it does not give priority only to carbon reduction. "It is interesting to make the production process that uses carbon more expensive. But it is necessary to create several conditions, to determine the projects eligible to enter the market and the effective control mechanisms," she said.

The only apparent consensus is that social justice and strong democracy are safe paths towards sustainable development. "If we do not improve our democracy, with a wide-ranging political reform, we will continue discussing, debating, and everyone will lose. And those who always won with the predatory exploitation of natural resources will continue winning," noted Carlos Hittl.

Translated by Amarílis Anchieta