A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 271No Need to Know? The Secret Economy of CarbonIn 2004, the women’s self-help group ofPowerguda village of Andhra Pradesh,India, was given cash in exchange forplanting Pongamia trees. The tree’s seedscan be used to make a petrol substitute.The women were given a certificate andusd 645 for ‘offsetting’ the emissions producedby a World Bank workshop on climatechange held in Washington, DC. 100The Bank claims that 30 years of biofueluse by government authorities in AndhraPradesh will compensate climatically forthe workshop’s emissions.The women didn’t know why they had receivedthe money. They were also un awareof the benefits that went to the carbontraders, releasers and agencies involved.The irony is that northern Andhra Pradeshhas recently been hit by one of the mostdevastating droughts ever, very possibly asa result of global warming. In the summerof 2004, the number of suicides in the provinceamong farmers driven to desperationby their crippling debts reached 3,000.The lack of discussion with affected partiesthat was evident in Andhra Pradeshappears to be a common denominator ofcarbon -saving projects nearly everywhere:• The Project Design Documents of fourdifferent Indian biomass power projectseach repeated, word for word, allegedfavourable comments made by a villagehead. All of the projects – Rithwick,Perpetual, Indur and Sri Balaji– are located in Andhra Pradesh state,but all have different characteristics andare spread over hundreds of kilometres.Even spelling mistakes were repeated inthe documents, suggesting that consultationwas not genuine. The private consultantswho prepared the documents,PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Ernst andYoung, responded lamely that identicalprojects in similar geographical locationswere likely to have similar Project DesignDocuments. 101• A senior legal officer at the West BengalPollution Control Board, BiswajitMukherjee, was surprised to learn aboutCDM support for sponge iron industriesin his state. How, Mukherjee wondered,can companies with long records of pollution,including some still paying penaltiesto the West Bengal government, start‘clean development’ projects? 102• In Uganda, community members livingclose to the UWA-FACE carbon plantationproject near Mount Elgon said thatthey knew nothing about the project’scarbon credits. Members of the Bubitasub-county local council and top districtofficials were also in the dark. Residentswanted to know about the financial benefitsFACE Foundation receives, particularlybecause the project encumbers theirland for a long time, and planned to takethe matter up with their local parliamentarian.• The Ugandan acting deputy commissionerfor forestry in the Ministry ofWater, Lands and Environment, IgnatiusOluka-Akileng, told an interviewerin 2001 that his forestry directorateknew little about carbon trades involvingstate forest lands, nor how much foreigncompanies were to gain from them,and begged the interviewer to help findinformation.