opinion: Africa: Carbon Trading – Colonising the Atmospheric Commons

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Whether it is used to described rolling blackouts or civil wars, the catchphrase ‘Africa wins again’ remains a favourite amongst naysayers naturalising the continent as a place where tragedies symbolise the realisation of Africa’s innate ‘destiny’ – to self-destruct.

ARMS AND ENERGY

Of course, such ‘tragedy’ is rarely located in context: The US for example has supplied arms or technology to 90 per cent of conflicts at the turn of the millennium. Presently, there is a 92 per cent correlation between rising arms sales and rising oil prices and over 50 per cent of government-to-government buyers are autocratic governments with brutal human rights records.

But militarisation directly corresponds with the policies underpinning the exploitation of resources ‘held in common’, specifically fossil fuels. Despite obvious scientific evidence that the global commons can no longer sustain carbon dumps, the battle to geostrategically secure fossil fuel resources has intensified, especially in Africa.

This is not because the US and China, for example, lack the know-how to utilise renewable energy. In fact, implementing (’05) current technology renders it possible to reduce emissions to pre 2000 levels while making a profit on at least 50 per cent of implemented technologies – and this achievable by 2010 with ‘zero net costs’.

Says who? The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – almost five years ago.

Yet developed nations, specifically the US, emitting 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per capita annually, continue subsidising oil giants to the tune of US$300 billion, all the while claiming that significant caps cannot be realised.

Meanwhile, for mal-developed regions situated at the base of the commodity chain, blackouts – the result of structural adjustment programmes upending basic state services, are guaranteed by ecologically destructive ‘white elephant’ projects such as mega-dams, classified as low-carbon sources of energy.

CLEAN AND GREEN?

Over 60 per cent of Africa’s energy is derived from hydropower, chiefly linking mega-dams to foreign industries via costly transmission lines. In the process, disruption and loss of riverine resources and flood recession agriculture – amongst other socio-ecological consequences – are marginalised as externalities.

Thanks to ‘offsets’ that grant industrial polluters a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), polluters circumvent caps by bankrolling ‘green-wrapped’ business-as-usual projects in ‘poor countries’.

Yet ‘between a third and two-thirds’ of CDM projects do not represent actual reductions, according to the head of Stanford University’s Sustainable Development programme. (Like many other institutions of influence, Stanford was on the receiving end of US$225 million in oil-money from Exxon-Mobil for Global Climate and Energy project.) Instead, offsets facilitate the process of corporate gaming, simultaneously utilising Africa’s ‘underdeveloped’ status as yet another exploitable resource.

A CANCEROUS LEGACY

It’s happening in my old home town of Clare Estate in South Africa, where the Bisasar Road dump – previously Africa’s largest landfill, will remain open for business, estimated to generate 6 MW of so-called ‘green power’ electricity from toxic gasses. (Durban’s daily consumption is around 1500 MW). Some fifteen years after liberation, and countless promises to close and rehabilitate the dump, medical, industrial and domestic waste continues to frequent the land, formerly designated an Indian area by the apartheid regime’s Group Areas Act. But closing the dump – as opposed to harvesting methane – does not represent ‘market efficient’ economic use of pollutions trading i.e.: it does not generate cash.

Another alternative – integrating the landfill flow of gas (7 000m3 per hour) to Petronet’s pipelines running past the site – was rejected by Durban’s solid waste department (DSW) project manager who stated: ‘[What] if something goes wrong with this pipeline? If the land subsides or they do something funny with their pipeline…?’

The scar across my own pelvis perhaps bears witness to the carcinogenic effects of the dump, an area where seven out of ten households have ‘reported tumour cases.’ Clare Estate’s Sajida Khan, Bisasar’s ‘whistleblower’ who died of cancer fighting the dump’s cancerous legacy, diagnosed the lack of political will as: ‘Poor countries are so poor they will accept crumbs. The World Bank know this and they are taking advantage of it.’

WHO BENEFITS?

But if countries or nation-states are composed of citizens and regimes – two separate identities altogether – and the World Bank represents not the world but the disproportionate voting shares controlled by powerful economies, it follows that CDMs are justified and accepted not by the ‘poor’ but by those rich in political or financial capital.

According to the deputy head of the engineering at DSW, ‘What makes them worthwhile is the revenue that can be earned from carbon credits.’ Though private purchasers are rumoured to be financing the project, in 2008 at least, the World Bank’s Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) was still billed as the chief bankroller at US$3.9 per ton.

Despite cheap available solar and wind options, less than 5 per cent of the Bank’s CDM projects (2005) account for renewables, focusing instead on hydropower, methane-capture and other toxic investments. This is not surprising given that the World Bank remains a consistent backer of fossil fuel projects with 82 per cent of the World Bank’s financing for oil-related projects designed for export back to the North. Since Kyoto, Bank has invested billions in more than 128 fossil fuel projects, US$17 billion in related projects, with an increase of 256 per cent for coal from 2007-2008.

Bisasar’s CDM classification neatly legitimises the presence and active state of the lethal and carcinogenic dump for US$15 million in certified emissions reduction credit (CER) for methane-to-electricity conversion over a 20-year lifespan.

Trevor Manuel, previously the country’s minister of finance, now head of economic planning (whatever that means), recently stated that CDM projects would even be subject to tax exemptions. No need to convince the African regimes – already great fans of tax ‘competition’: Africa’s exports (80 per cent of which are primary commodities) are negotiated via secretive development agreements, swopping corporate tax holidays (the main source of income from rents) for bribes – a leitmotif that also appears to characterise the business of CDM.

THE AFRICA THAT WINS AGAIN…

Ironically, ‘Africa wins again’ traditionally referred not to the corporate-state corruption siphoning US$148 billion in development revenue each year from the continent, but to Africa’s harsh climates. Yet, it is precisely this lack of revenue disclosure, redistribution and re-pricing -concealing social ecological costs of extractive industries classified as externalities or hidden costs – that has catapulted Africa into the position of continent most vulnerable to climate change, according to the UN’s IPCC. Unlike developed nations, which derive 80 per cent of wealth from intangible capital (education etc), African citizens depend on the health and evolution of direct ecosystem services such as fisheries, fertile land and fresh water, which account for 70-80 per cent of wealth. Unfortunately, according to the IPCC, by 2100, crop revenue will decrease by 90 per cent, particularly affecting small farmers lacking access to irrigation.

But the West’s liberalised version of the constitution, individualising human rights, dismantles democracy by undermining collective ecological and host community rights over shared resources. Not only do these communities lack legal titles to inhabited land, but regimes are often able to legally displace citizens on the discovery of valuable resources – in the name of the greater common good. It is the same logic used to justify land-grabbing – some three million fertile hectares (and the ground water beneath it) have been purchased by multinationals hiding behind the veneer of governments. ‘We are not farmers. We are a large company… The same way you have shoemakers and computer manufacturers, we produce agricultural commodities,’ stated an official from Agricola.

Khadija Sharife

http://allafrica.com/stories/200911051023.html

Posted on November 7, 2009 · in Global

Tagged as: carbon credits • Carbon Dioxide • CDM