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

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288 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingboundary, it’s hardly surprising that many in the community wantthe dump shut down. Under pressure, the city council itself pledgedin 1987 to close the site and turn it into sports fields, picnic areas andplay areas for children. When, in 1996, the council reneged a secondtime on the promise, some 6,000 local residents signed a petition ofprotest, with many blocking the dump site entrance and staging demonstrationsand marches. Yet the site was kept open and even startedreceiving rubbish diverted from a dump in a wealthy white-dominatedDurban suburb, which was closing as it was ‘earmarked for upmarketproperty development’. 136The BisasarRoad landfilldump.In June 2002, Clare Estate resident Sajida Khan filed a lawsuit againstthe eThekwini municipality and the federal Department of EnvironmentalAffairs and Tourism for negligence in permitting the dump tostay open. After three years of delays, the case was due to be heard inthe autumn of 2005, but due to Khan’s poor health (see below), thecase will remain in the docket until she is declared fit enough to participate.In the meantime, the Department of Water and Forestry atthe provincial level has been delayed in rendering its decision on anappeal against keeping the dump open, estimated to have cost the cityR40,000 to fight. 137Very unpleasant, clearly. But what does all this have to do with mitigatingclimate change?In 2002, the World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) signed anagreement with DSW to promote a prospective CDM project to ex-
offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 289tract methane from the Bisasar landfill and burn it to generate up to45 megawatts of electricity for supply to the national grid.I’m not sure I understand. How can a project that emits carbon dioxide usingfuel from a smelly landfi ll site be climate-friendly?The idea is that the electricity generated by the project would ‘replace’electricity that otherwise would have been generated by burningcoal. It’s claimed that the project would generate enough powerto light up 20,000 informal houses or 10,000 formal-sector houses.Because burning methane is less climatically damaging than simplyreleasing it, and better than burning coal (the dirtier fuel usuallyused) the project is better than the alternative.‘The poor countries areso poor they will acceptcrumbs. The World Bankknow this and they aretaking advantage of it.’Sajida Khan, BisasarRoad community residentSajida KhanThe alternative? There’s only one?Well, of course, in reality there are many alternatives. But the carboncredit market demands that there be only one alternative. If there’smore than one alternative, then you’ll have more than one numbercorresponding to the carbon ‘saved’, and you won’t be able to assigna single number to the number of carbon credits your project is producing.So you won’t have anything definite to sell.But how can other alternatives be ignored?They are classified as ‘implausible’.Who says they’re implausible? What about using the money to close the dumpdown and treat some of the waste? What about just pumping the landfi ll gas intothe nearby Petronet gas pipeline network so that it would not need to be burnedon site? Or fi nding ways of using electricity more effi ciently? Or more non-fossilcommunity-level power sources? None of these sound implausible to me.Nevertheless, none of them can be acknowledged as alternatives, becauseto do so would make it impossible to calculate the credits for theproject under consideration. That’s one of the ways that a seemingly‘technical’ accounting system can help limit the political choices a societycan make to small, incremental variations on business as usual.How was such a one-sided view of the choices available enforced?In the early phase of the project, authority for deciding what wouldand would not be possible in South Africa in the absence of theBisasar Road scheme was quietly given to two individuals at thePCF in Washington, DC – Sandra Greiner and Robert Chronowski. 138Their decision was clothed in many pages of impressive numbers andreinforced through meetings and professional review.
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PRESS RELEASEContact:Linda Chiavaro
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ContentsEditorial note 2Chapter 1 I
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editorial note 3in Dorset, UK - poi
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6 development dialogue september 20
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Chapter 2‘Made in the USA’A sho
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Page 331 and 332: Chapter 5Ways forwardIn which the c
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ways forward 339hold little appeal
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ways forward 341Waiting their Chanc
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ways forward 343ways - many of whic
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ways forward 345energy - loan benef
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ways forward 347From an Open Letter
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ways forward 349be answered in the
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ways forward 351rogated by Indian v
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ways forward 353argue, they’ve he
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ways forward 355‘The US alone acc
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appendix - the durban declaration o
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appendix - the durban declaration o
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A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

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