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

‘made in the usa’ – a short history of carbon trading 59Bank finance being offered for ‘carbon sinks’, other NGOs confinethemselves to trying to reform or ‘contain the damage’ done by tradingprogrammes such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).Most Northern members of the largest NGO grouping on climatechange, the Climate Action Network, have thrown their support behindthe carbon market, often demoting themselves to the role ofadvisers to governments on such matters as national emissions allocations.<strong>Critical</strong> NGOs, to borrow the words of Daphne Wysham ofthe Institute for Policy Studies, are being continually urged ‘to unitebehind an entirely bizarre, incomprehensible, and totally corruptiblesystem of carbon trading’. 104 Even well-meaning artists such as sculptorDamien Hirst and rock group Coldplay have got into the act asboth clients and spokespeople for carbon marketing firms. 105What’s the UN’s role in all this?As carbon trading moved into the centre of international climate policy,UN climate conferences began to resemble trade fairs more thaninternational environmental negotiations. From the start, umbrellagroups such as the International Petroleum Industry EnvironmentalConservation Association, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue and theEmissions Marketing Association have been in touch with nationalgovernments to promote market approaches to global warming, andcorporation executives even sit on country delegations. 106 At today’sUN climate negotiations, carbon traders, consultants, manufacturersassociations, fossil fuel, mining, nuclear and forestry companies, togetherwith lobbyists and other corporate representatives of all kinds,easily outnumber both government delegates and environmentalists. 107Early on, the rot also spread to UN agencies other than the UNFCCCas well.Business meets andgreets in exhibition andconference spaces atUN climate meetings.Such as?The World Bank, which provides billions of dollars in public moneyto fossil fuel companies for their production and transport expenses,profitably expanded its remit to host seven different carbon fundsaimed at providing cheap credits to corporations to allow them tocontinue to use fossil fuels. 108In addition, in the late 1990s, the UN Development Programme(UNDP) put its head together with the World Business Council onSustainable Development to get companies involved in CDM projects 109and, together with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, sponsoredresearch into carbon sinks and carbon accounting. 110 By 2006, UNDPwas pushing for an international pollution permit trading system that