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A. KEY MESSAGES

1. The world is on a precipice.  From flooding to hurricanes to droughts and food shortages, the impacts of climate change are becoming more frequent and devastating day by day. While people and communities around the world are paying with their livelihoods and lives, and the risk of runaway climate breakdown draws closer, our governments are driving forward the same failed policies that have caused the crisis. 

2. The corporate capture of this year’s climate negotiations points to the heart of the problem we face. Our governments are in the pockets of the powerful corporations and elites that are reaping profits and shareholder value by driving forward dirty fossil fuel extraction, carbon trading, industrial farming and other policies that are causing and exacerbating climate change.

3. Tackling climate change means changing the unjust and unsustainable economic system, especially our dependence on polluting fossil fuels and the over-use of the world’s resources.  Solutions exist to solve the climate crisis and create a better future for all of us and future generations. Around the world communities and activists are resisting fossil fuels, building clean energy cooperatives, transforming our food systems, demanding ambitious action from our governments and building ties and solidarity with each other. While the rich country governments maintain their shameful inaction on the climate crisis, this movement for true alternatives grows bigger and stronger day by day.

B. Messages - Energy
What’s wrong with our energy system?

Energy is a common good and access to it is a basic human right and a necessary condition of a dignified life. We need energy for fuel and electricity to cook our food, to be comfortable in hot and cold places, to ensure that everyone has access to basic services like health and education, to communicate and to share and access information via the internet.

Yet our current energy system – the way we produce, distribute and consume energy – is unsustainable, unjust and harming communities, workers, the environment and the climate.  Emissions from energy are a key driver of climate change and the system is failing to provide for the basic energy needs of billions of people in the global South. The world’s main sources of energy like oil gas and coal are devastating communities, their land, their air and their water. And so are other energy sources like nuclear power, industrial agrofuels and biomass, mega dams and waste-to-energy incineration.  None of these destructive energy sources have a role in our energy future.

What changes do we need to our energy system?

The interests of humanity must be prioritised above the profits of corporations, starting
through an urgent and dramatic transformation of the world’s corporate-controlled, destructive and
unsustainable energy system. 

We believe that a climate-safe, sustainable energy system which meets the basic energy needs of everyone and respects the rights and different ways of life of communities around the world is possible.  An energy system where energy production and use support a safe and clean environment, and healthy, thriving local economies that provide safe, decent and secure jobs and livelihoods. This climate-friendly, sustainable energy system is based on democracy and respect for human rights.

To make this happen we urgently need to invest in locally-appropriate, climate-safe, affordable and low impact energy for all, and reduce energy dependence so that people don’t need much energy to meet their basic needs and live a good life.  We also need to end new destructive energy projects and phase out existing destructive energy sources, all the while ensuring that the rights of affected communities and workers are respected and that their needs are provided for during the transition.  And to make the transition we also need to tackle the trade and investment rules that prioritise corporations' needs over those of people and the environment.

All of this requires that we challenge the corporate influence over our governments and exert real democratic control over the energy transition so that the needs and interests of ordinary people and the planet take priority over private profit.

C. Messages – UN Climate talks
What’s happening in the UN Climate talks?

Industrialised countries’ governments are neglecting their responsibility to prevent climate catastrophe. The positions of these governments at global climate talks are increasingly driven by the narrow economic and financial interests of wealthy elites and multinational corporations.  These interests, tied to the economic sectors responsible for pollution or profiting from false solutions to the climate crisis like carbon trading and fossil fuels, are the key forces behind global inaction.

The UN climate talks are supposed to be making progress on implementing the agreement that world governments made in 1992 to stop man-made and dangerous climate change.  The agreement recognises that rich countries have done the most to cause the problem of climate change and should take the lead in solving it, as well as provide funds to poorer countries as repayment of their climate debt.

But developed countries' governments have done very little to deliver on these commitments and time is running out.  What’s more, rich countries continue to further diminish their responsibilities to tackle climate change and dismantle the whole framework for binding reductions of greenhouse gases, without which we have no chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. 

They are also pushing for the expansion of false solutions like carbon trading, a further escape hatch from emissions reductions which will make climate change worse and cause further harm to people around the world while bringing huge profits to polluters.

What needs to happen in the climate talks?

Within the UN, rich developed countries must meet their historical responsibility by committing to urgent and deep emissions cuts in line with science and justice and without carbon trading, offsetting and other loopholes.

They must also repay their climate debt to poorer countries in the developing world so that they too can tackle climate change.  This means transferring adequate public finance and technology to developing countries so that they too can build low carbon and truly sustainable economies.

This will help ensure a safe climate, more secure livelihoods, more jobs, and clean affordable energy for all.

How bad is the climate crisis?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s fifth assessment report on the physical science basis of climate change, released in Sweden in September, confirmed beyond all reasonable doubt that climate change is real; that it is caused by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions; and that it poses a severe and immediate threat to human well-being, including food production and human security.

The IPCC confirmed that climate impacts already experienced have been worse than originally predicted, and predicted a likelihood of increased frequency of heat waves, increased frequency and severity of heavy storms, and a significantly increased risk of devastating forest fires.

It draws alarming conclusion that an average global warming of 4 degrees Celsius is “as likely as not likely” by 2100 and asserts with a high degree of confidence that warming over large land masses, such as Africa, Asia and the Americas, will be even higher than average global warming.

D. ISSUE SPECIFIC MESSAGES
What is wrong with carbon markets / carbon trading?

Carbon trading is a false solution.  Carbon trading involves offsetting – an escape hatch for countries and companies from making urgently needed emissions reductions.  Carbon trading is locking rich countries and poor countries into dirty, high carbon economic models and a continued reliance on fossil fuels and other destructive energy sources. 

It is undermining our chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change by delaying the much needed transformation of our economies away from destructive energy. 

Despite its deep-seated problems, many countries want to expand the global carbon market.  Such a decision would have disastrous impacts, including by providing developed countries with further opportunities to offset their emissions reductions (i.e. avoid making domestic emissions cuts), as well as potential human rights and environmental impacts resulting from the land grab associated with many offsetting projects like REDD, plantations and agrofuels.

There is a very strong corporate lobby in support of the expansion of the global carbon market and adding new market based approaches, coming from a variety of different financial, business and industrial sectors in both developed and developing countries.  This includes financiers, traders, owners of polluting industries, owners of land or resources with potential to qualify for offset credits and others.  Governments must resist it, and support real emissions cuts and real solutions to the climate crisis.

What is happening with climate finance?

It is essential that developing countries receive adequate climate finance if they are to adapt to the impacts of climate change whilst also tackling urgent development needs.  This finance is the repayment of the climate debt of the rich developed world which has done the most to cause the problem of climate change and has far greater resources available to tackle the problem.

However, there has been little, if any, new funds pledged by developed countries this past year. A continuation of the UNFCCC’s work program on long term finance took place, but there were no decisions taken and no progress was actually made as far as getting more money.

Developing countries cannot and should not be forced to address the climate crisis without money from those countries which caused the problem.  But developed countries have refused to commit to any kind of pledging session, nor to any sort of timetable – indicative or otherwise – to get to the (US) $100 billion by 2020 promised in Copenhagen in 2009. Many developed countries assert that the majority of the money will come from the private sector.

Climate finance, including for the Green Climate Fund (GCF), must be new and additional to existing aid money and emissions reductions (i.e. by paying for carbon offsets) by rich countries, and must come from public sources.  There must be no role for finance from carbon markets, nor should there be, recycled aid money diverted from other urgent causes. 

Many innovative sources of public funding are available, like the Robin Hood tax – also known as a financial transactions tax or FTT - which could deliver hundreds of billions of dollars per year from a minuscule tax on global financial transactions (such as the trading of stocks, bonds, and derivatives) with little to no impact on the pockets of ordinary people. Additional substantial sources of climate finance could be made available today – such as slashing fossil fuel producer subsidies, and redirecting military budgets.

What is the corporate capture of the UNFCCC ?

Large multinational corporations and corporate and financial elites are unduly influencing political decision-making on climate change, and pushing for the prioritization of their short-term economic interests (such as energy, manufacturing, industrial agriculture and financial interests) over the protection of the environment and the wellbeing of people and communities.

Major corporations and polluters are lobbying to undermine the chances of achieving climate justice via the UNFCCC.  Much of this influence is exerted in the member states before governments come to the climate negotiations, but the negotiations are also attended by hundreds of lobbyists from the corporate sector trying to ensure that any agreement promotes the interests of big business before people's interests and climate justice.   This year the Polish presidency of the UNFCCC has held a special pre-COP meeting where businesses had privileged access and no civil society groups were allowed to participate.

Despite the fact that the UNFCCC is the most democratic and appropriate global institution for international negotiations, its capture by corporate interests is a major cause of environmental injustice.

Is agriculture fuelling climate change?

Industrial agriculture is resource intensive and polluting. It drives climate change and environmental destruction through its dependency on fossil fuels and chemicals, clearing of forests and destruction of soils.

It also displaces small scale food producers and their methods of food production, which are proven as being the most resilient to climate change. Industrial agriculture commodifies food and does not feed the world. Rather it is responsible for food price rises, malnutrition, land grabbing and human rights violations and abuses, whilst driving up the profits of large corporations.

Industrial agriculture is a threat to the small-scale agro-ecological farming which is truly climate-friendly and that feeds the majority of the world today.  Protecting, investing in and expanding small-scale agro-ecological farming and food sovereignty is essential if we are to reduce emissions from agriculture whilst ensuring a safe, culturally appropriated, nutritious and sustainable food supply for the world’s population.