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Thousands reject the extractivist logic at the World Bank-IMF meeting in Peru
Thousands reject the extractivist logic at the World Bank-IMF meeting in Peru
The annual governors’ meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank opened on October 5 in Peru’s capital city. In the meeting, an estimated 800 representatives from 188 countries were negotiating the shape of the world’s soon-to-be renovated finance infrastructure.
While the international media focused on the official meetings, no news outlets outside of Latin America have mentioned the Plataforma Alternativa conference — a parallel three-day meeting organized under the theme “Belying the ‘Peruvian Miracle.’”
More than 1,200 people attended Plataforma Alternativa’s conference. Dozens of young volunteers zoomed through the marbled hallways of Lima’s Hotel Bolívar, which hosted the conference. Participants represented dozens of organizations and countries as diverse as the Netherlands, China, the United States, Belgium, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Indonesia, Spain, Mexico, the Philippines, Germany, Palestine and Argentina.
On Friday, an estimated 5,000 people marched across 70 blocks in Lima, from Plaza San Martín to the first of three police perimeters around the official conference. Groups at the protest included indigenous feminist organizations, the Lima-based Comando Feminista, Bloque Hip Hop, worker unions, the Peruvian Campesino Confederation, and dozens of others.
Peru reportedly mobilized 20,000 police for this event, many of whom were safeguarding key areas around the city for the 12,000 visitors: from the airport to hotel areas.
The counter-conference was free, open to the public, and streamed online. It featured U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, a former World Bank chief economist and an outspoken critic of its policies, as its keynote speaker.
“Inequality is a choice — not the result of inevitable economic laws,” Stiglitz said in his speech after reminding the audience that Latin America has the highest rate of wealth disparity among world regions. At the end of September, Oxfam — one of several organizations in charge of the conference — released a report indicating that, at the current pace, one percent of Latin Americans would be wealthier than the remaining 99 percent by 2022.
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From Bad to Worse: A Roadmap to Global Burning | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community
The “Lima call for climate action” which came out of the recent UN climate talks, establishes a roadmap to a post-2020 agreement that will be weaker than the ongoing Cancun Agreement (for 2012-2020), and it lays a foundation for an even worse agreement in Paris in 2015.
The Cancun Agreement opened the door to dismantling the Kyoto Protocol, pushing for voluntary “pledges” instead of increased mandatory “commitments” for emission cuts.
The bottom-up approach of the Cancun Agreement has failed. Four years since its adoption in 2010, there is a big gap in emission cuts of around 12 gigatons of CO2e by 2020. The “business as usual” scenario for global greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 is 57 gigatons of CO2e. The Cancun Agreement has reduced that figure only by one or two gigatons, and we need to be below 44 gigatons by 2020 in order to be on a pathway that limits the increase in global temperature to 2º C.
The emissions gap for this decade was not reduced at all during COP20 (the 20th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC) in Lima, Peru. This makes it impossible to catch up with a 2º C pathway in the next decade, since, according to reports from sources like UNEP’s Gap Report and the Stockholm Environment Institute, the global peak year should happen before 2020. This situation is even worse because China announced in its agreement with the United States that it will only reach peak emissions by 2030.
Climax Denied As Climate Denial Group Hits Repeat At UN Climate Talks in Lima | DeSmogBlog
Climax Denied As Climate Denial Group Hits Repeat At UN Climate Talks in Lima | DeSmogBlog.
You know that weird sensation when you experience something and you immediately get the feeling you’ve seen that very same thing before?
No, I’m not talking about déjà vu.
I’m talking about watching a press conference from climate science denialists at United Nations climate talks.
Specifically, we’re talking about the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) whose delegation took up the option of a press conference a couple of weeks ago within the confines of the latest round of international talks in Lima, Peru.
In a flyer promoting its press conference, CFACT declared “UN Allows Debate on Global Warming!” – a declaration that sounded like some kind of breakthrough moment when the UN had finally granted a press conference to climate science misinformers.
Except 12 months earlier, CFACT had also been granted press conference time at the talks in Warsaw, Poland (CFACT has long been accommodated by the UN and has also held press conferences at talks in Bonn, Durban and Doha to name a few).CFACT even survived expulsion when one of its delegates – British hereditary peer Lord Christopher Monckton – was debadged in Doha in 2012 after impersonating an official delegate during talks.
Even climate change experts and activists might be in denial
Even climate change experts and activists might be in denial.
Another month, another important UN climate change conference. The latest is in Lima, the capital of Peru. Thousands of experts from the world of politics, business, academia and civil society – and Leonardo DiCaprio – have flown around the world to urge us all to curb our carbon emissions.
Recent meetings have failed to make significant progress. Yet, this year there are high hopes that the US-China climate deal and the New York UN Climate Summit will allow Lima to provide a stepping stone for a binding emissions agreement at next year’s meeting in Paris.
However, even if a deal can be reached – despite the urgent need for it – there is no guarantee that global greenhouse gas emissions will actually come down significantly and dangerous climate change can be averted. Psychoanalytic theory provides disturbing insights into why this may be so – and it is all to do with the split psychological make-up of those who work at the forefront of climate science, policy and activism.
Emissions-Cutting Deal Reached at COP 20 Lima, But Will It Help Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change? | Democracy Now!
After more than 30 hours of extended talks, a global agreement on climate change was reached over the weekend at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed to a new deal that forms the basis for a global agreement on addressing climate change. Supporters say it marks the first time all nations have agreed to cut back on carbon emissions. The final draft says all countries have “common but differentiated responsibilities” to deal with global warming. The countries most dissatisfied with the outcome in Lima were those who are poor and already struggling to rebuild from the impacts of climate change. We host a roundtable with guests from three continents: in Peru, Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. environment correspondent for The Guardian; in London, Asad Rehman, head of international climate for Friends of the Earth; and in New Delhi, Nitin Sethi, associate editor at Business Standard.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: After more than 30 hours of extended talks, a global agreement on climate change was reached over the weekend in Lima, Peru, at the United Nations climate conference. The talks were scheduled to end Friday but lasted two days into overtime. Shortly before 2:00 a.m. Sunday, negotiators from nearly 200 countries agreed to a new deal that forms the basis for a global agreement on addressing climate change. The final deal will be decided next year in Paris. This is the president of the talks and Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal.
Weakened deal reached in Peru climate talks – Americas – Al Jazeera English
Weakened deal reached in Peru climate talks – Americas – Al Jazeera English.
About 190 nations have agreed upon the building blocks of a deal to combat climate change in 2015 amid warnings that far tougher action will be needed to cut rising world greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Lima deal, reached early on Sunday, lays out a wide range of options for a global deal to be reached in Paris, due in December 2015, and also lays out how each nation will submit its own plans for curbing warming in the first half of 2015.
It is a watered-down version of the original deal following an extra day of bargaining between rich and poor countries.
Negotiators had been struggling to unblock the UN climate talks after developing countries rejected a draft deal they said would allow rich countries to shirk their responsibilities to fight global warming and pay for its impacts.
Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, Peru’s environment minister, presented a new, fourth draft just before midnight and said he hoped it would satisfy all parties, giving a sharply reduced body of remaining delegates an hour to review it.
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Lima climate summit extended as poor countries demand more from rich | Environment | The Guardian
Lima climate summit extended as poor countries demand more from rich | Environment | The Guardian.
Climate talks in Lima ran into extra time amid rising frustration from developing countries at the “ridiculously low” commitments from rich countries to help pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
The talks – originally scheduled to wrap up at 12pm after 10 days – are now expected to run well into Saturday , as negotiators huddle over a new draft text many glimpsed for the first time only morning.
The Lima negotiations began on a buoyant note after the US, China and the EU came forward with new commitments to cut carbon pollution. But they were soon brought back down to earth over the perennial divide between rich and poor countries in the negotiations: how should countries share the burden for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and who should pay?
The talks were designed to draft a blueprint for a global deal to fight climate change, due to be adopted in Paris late next year. But developing countries argued that before signing on they needed to see greater commitments that the industrialised countries would keep to their end of a bargain to provide the money needed to fight climate change. After 10 days of talks, developing countries argued that those assurances were not strong enough.
By midweek, a little over $10bn had been raised for a green climate fund, intended to help poor countries invest in clean energy technology. That was below the initial target of $15bn and many of those funds will be distributed over several years.
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