Pollution in Medellín, Colombia. The United Kingdom has red-listed seven countries in the Americas—including Colombia—which requires even vaccinated travelers to quarantine. This has been lambasted as a political move in light of the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland / credit: Milo Miloezger on Unsplash
Early in October, the United Kingdom introduced new rules for international travel in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. A “red list” of 54 countries was announced that mandated quarantine for passengers from mostly Global South countries. A few days later, the red list was revised to retain seven countries—Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.
But how will these travel restrictions affect negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 26th Conference of Parties, also known as COP26? This summit is scheduled to be held next month in Glasgow, Scotland, where delegates from more than 190 countries are convening to figure out how to meet the stipulations of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
However, people from the seven red-listed countries traveling to the United Kingdom must undergo a mandatory quarantine, even if they are vaccinated. And while the U.K. government has announced it will cover quarantine costs, these rules may be contributing to an already inequitable COP set-up. Previous COPs had ended in less-than-ideal outcomes over issues concerning equity.
“[The red list] evidences disparities between countries and the reality of vaccine inequality,” said Maria Alejandra Aguilar, associate lawyer in the climate justice division at Ambiente y Sociedad, an environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) in Colombia. Aguilar is an accredited observer for COP26 and despite her credentials, she worried about being able to travel to Glasgow. “The visa process was a nightmare for me and several delegates—even official ones,” she added, noting how her visa arrived on October 20, two days before her flight, even though she had applied for the visa on July 27.
Aguilar tweeted about her experience with the British Embassy in Colombia, noting how they held onto her passport for two months without an answer. Then on October 6, they asked her what COP26 is and what she intends to do in the United Kingdom.
I want to share the level of incompetence of the @GOVUK visas&immigration- I applied the 5th of August for a visa to attend @COP26 as accredited observer @UKinColombia 2 months without answer + withholding my passport, today this was their reply #COP26pic.twitter.com/JjFcwTwgxU
“I haven’t been able to understand why my country was on the red list, but the U.S. was never on the list, even though they had many COVID cases,” said Adrian Martínez, director and founder of La Ruta del Clima, a Costa Rican NGO focusing on climate governance processes and climate justice. As of publication, the United States had about 80,000 cases per day, whereas Costa Rica had around 600 cases per day. “We felt that we were being differentiated because of where we’re from,” he added.
Until a few days ago, most of Latin America was on the red list. Martínez said that is why countries like Mexico were considering sending only the core team of negotiators to Glasgow. He also added many NGOs in these countries did not try to obtain visas because they thought they would not be able to participate in COP26, given the restrictions.
If a country only sends a core team of negotiators, experts who routinely accompany negotiators to climate-change negotiations very likely will not be doing so because of the uncertainties that have arisen in the process, even with the revised red list. These countries also may reduce the number of negotiators they would send to Glasgow.
Martínez described the situation as a “distraction” from the prep work negotiators and other experts normally engaged during the weeks prior to previous COPs. “How to participate [at COP26] and who can get there has become the main issue,” he explained.
A COP26 spokesperson said ensuring the voices of those most affected by climate change are heard is a “priority for the COP26 Presidency.” The spokesperson also added financial support is available for delegates from developing countries for quarantine stays. But the spokesperson has yet to respond to what extent such financial support can remedy problems Global South representatives have faced in the last few months and will continue to face during negotiations. Meanwhile, the U.K. Department for Transport has yet to reply to this reporter. Questions also were sent to the UNFCCC. This article will be updated when responses are received.
“This closed, gatekeeping approach [to COPs] is political,” Martínez said. “It was supposed to be the most inclusive COP, but it has been the opposite. We had to complain and fight and persevere.”
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
Mangrove forest on the island of Nusa Lembongan in Indonesia / credit: Joel Vodell on Unsplash
More than 10.3 million acres of primary tropical forests—spanning about the size of Belgium—went up in flames in 2020. A new coalition claims it will mobilize $1 billion to thwart global climate change’s increasingly devastating forest fires. But scientists and other experts have raised doubts about this new program corporations and governments have kicked off.
Primary tropical forests are untouched by human development. More than 1 billion people live in and depend on the world’s tropical forests, and nearly 300 million people live in lands targeted for tropical forest restoration, according to Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a non-governmental organization. Meanwhile, RRI’s data shows over 900 million people live in the biodiverse areas of low- and middle-income countries.
The new coalition is called “Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance”—or LEAF—and it is expected to become “the single largest private-sector investment to protect tropical forests.” At the Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22, multinational corporations entered into a coalition with the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Norway. The list of corporations includes Airbnb, Amazon, Bayer, Boston Consulting Group, GlaxoSmithKline, McKinsey & Company, Nestle, Salesforce and Unilever.
Experts have raised this coalitional strategy could further marginalize communities dwelling in tropical forests across the developing world. They also have questioned the effectiveness of strategies that aim to raise funding to halt deforestation.
For example, Forrest Fleischman, an assistant professor of forest resources at the University of Minnesota, says the success of the LEAF coalition will depend “not on their ability to mobilize money from wealthy companies, but in their ability to negotiate complicated political arrangements which may involve challenging the powers that be, including states and private companies.
How Has Carbon Finance Worked?
Political and economic conditions create opportunities for power plays in carbon finance, i.e. the funding provided for carbon sequestration programs like forest restoration. In most cases, governments, corporations and aid organizations have immense discretionary power regarding carbon finance. That is why experts say Indigenous and other forest-dependent peoples should have primary decision-making power over monetary allocations, as well as the power to choose projects.
Not involving such communities can erode their rights. For example, consider how afforestation programs in India have been carried out on lands used for agricultural purposes by Indigenous and forest-dwelling communities.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, former United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, says forest conservation programs like LEAF “cannot work if the rights of Indigenous communities are not protected and the flow of money only leads to violence and conflicts” because of struggles over land rights. More specifically, she highlights a need to ensure land rights of forest-dwelling communities are recognized and that these communities play an active role in designing the LEAF program, as well as receive a fair share of the resources LEAF aims to gather.
Indigenous communities, such as the Yurok tribe in what is known as northern California, the Suquamish tribe in what is known as the Seattle, Washington area, as well as the U.S.-based Indigenous Environmental Network, could not be reached for comment, as of press time.
Fleischman also emphasizes LEAF’s aim ought to be to “transform the economic and political conditions surrounding forests, rather than just setting up conservation areas and providing payments to people.”
As for effectiveness, past efforts offer lessons.
“In Brazil, deforestation is a major source of emissions. So, it is important to have [internationally mobilized] resources to fight the climate crisis. But, at the same time, we worry when we hear about new funds to support forests because we have seen how the Amazon Fund has been used,” says Maureen Santos, policy officer at Federation of Organizations for Social and Educational Assistance in Rio de Janeiro.
Santos adds President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has failed to use the fund as a climate change tool. Deforestation rates in the Amazon have surged under Bolsonaro.
The Amazon Fund is a REDD+ initiative the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognizes. “REDD” stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The aim here is to provide economic incentives for forest conservation. But reports have pointed to high deforestation rates in the Amazon basin, even after the Amazon Fund was fully operationalized.
Pays to note a leading partner at LEAF is the United States, which is the biggest historical emitter of CO2. “Initiatives like LEAF have to be followed up with stronger initiatives to reduce emissions, because even if you save all the forests in the world, you cannot solve the climate crisis until you stop emissions,” Santos adds.
Recognizing Land Rights and Asymmetrical Power
A recent paper that analyzed what happened with the Yurok tribe, who occupy the redwood forest of northern California in the United States. The tribe obtained funding to enable carbon sequestration on ancestral territory. This is different than what is known as the “Indian model,” which includes large-scale plantation drives by the government under the Paris Agreement and other forest conservation, afforestation and reforestation efforts funded by international agencies like the World Bank.
The paper highlights when land managers and users possess enforceable rights, like in the case of the Yurok tribe, “power is balanced, accountability is clear, authorities represent the interests of the broader user community and carbon storage aligns with local interests.”
In India, the report found, forest carbon finance is controlled by state governments who “do not share benefits of carbon finance with the rural forest-dependent people whose actions play a major role in determining the outcomes of these programs.”
Communities dependent on forests also lacked countervailing power because their rights to forest land are not recognized.
One of the key findings of the paper is mobilizing money is not enough to ensure forest protection. This is because a wide variety of influences impact forest conservation, many of which are not directly related to financial incentives. Fleischman, the lead author of the paper says, “We’ve long recognised that insecure land tenure is a major driver of forest loss, however it is not clear how giving a country or state money leads to securing land tenure for poor or marginalized people.”
Financial investment, including ones that aim to promote forest conservation, do not work out well. This occurs, Fleischman explains, in cases where financial investments in land end up undermining secure land tenure, which then leads to land degradation. When land values increase, owing to interest from international funding agencies, power actors like companies, states and NGOs are incentivized to control land-based revenue by grabbing land for themselves. This process forcibly takes away the land rights of rural and Indigenous people.
The problems that arise from not recognizing land titles extends to Brazil, too.
Santos adds the first priority ought to be to ensure community land rights are recognized, and environmental regulations and oversight mechanisms are strong enough to assess the success and failures of proposals like LEAF.
Organizations that monitor land use, such as Land Conflict Watch and Vasundhara in India, as well as Amazon Watch, could not be reached for comment.
The Path Ahead
“Substantial investment in the recognition of Indigenous and community land rights is a prerequisite to the global climate agenda,” concluded a study published in June by Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). The authors looked at 31 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which hold 70 percent of the world’s tropical forests to highlight risks in developing carbon markets without first settling the land rights of Indigenous communities.
Bryson Ogden, associate director for strategic analysis & global engagement at Rights and Resources Group—the secretariat for RRI—notes “serious power imbalances” in the geographies where the LEAF Coalition plans to operate. He adds power imbalances between companies and governments on the one hand, and rural communities on the other, “often exacerbated by insecure land tenure, have driven land-grabs and violations in the past, and more recently, hindered efforts to eliminate supply chain-driven deforestation.”
In response to concerns about power asymmetries and land rights, Emergent Media, administrative coordinator of LEAF Coalition, told Toward Freedom that LEAF participants recognize Indigenous peoples and local communities are “essential stakeholders in the design and implementation” of plans to reduce deforestation and maintain forest cover in the jurisdictions where they live.
Emergent Media noted safeguards have been drawn up to ensure protection and respect of land-tenure rights and effective stakeholder participation. They also added these safeguards are based on the Cancun Safeguards drafted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
But doubts still remain. Nothing is concrete in either publicly available documents about the coalition, nor in its statement that Indigenous and local people are directly involved in the design and evaluation of projects. Fleischman pointed out it seems like the coalition is treating Indigenous and forest-dependent people “as secondary people who need to be protected in projects designed and financed by others, as opposed to directly empowering those people to make decisions about their lands.”
The kind of economic and political changes that are needed to “ensure [forest] conservation when it conflicts with the profits of companies and the interests of national governments” are left lacking, Fleischman says.
Ogden of RRI suggests a just way to achieve emission-reduction aims would be to scale-up the legal recognition of customary land and resource rights of forest communities—including the carbon stored therein—across proposed accounting areas; develop operational feedback and grievance redress mechanisms; and adequately involve affected constituencies in the design of benefit sharing plans.
The question remains of whether the $1 billion LEAF proposes to raise is enough to conserve tropical forests around the world.
“To the extent that money can address conservation challenges, the quantity of money may need to be much larger to make a real dent. In other words, if money is what matters, the money may need to be roughly equivalent to the potential profits to be made by clearing forests to grow soybeans or palm oil,” Fleischman says.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development joined climate campaigners in June in The Philippines’ financial district to sound the alarm on several Asian companies for their continued financing of fossil fuels amid the climate emergency / Twitter/AsianPeoplesMovement
The Asian Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) 2021, a meeting of hundreds of civil society organizations and others interested in clean energy policy, was underway on June 15 in Manila, The Philippines, when one session came to a halt.
An Asian-led network of over 250 civil society organizations from around the world called NGO Forum on ADB decided to disengage from a session it was co-hosting alongside the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The session in question was about ADB’s draft energy policy. ADB is a multilateral bank that finances development projects, specifically involving fossil fuel energy across Asia.
“The focus of the ACEF discussions were topics like energy transition and of course these are important,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), a member organization of the NGO Forum on ADB. “But we believe their approach to transition is not fast enough and not ambitious enough considering what we need to prevent climate catastrophe.”
In May 2020, the ADB released a draft of its energy policy. Titled “Energy Policy: Supporting Low Carbon Transition in Asia and the Pacific,” the document is a revision of the bank’s 2009 energy policy. The draft signals a shift away from coal financing, but it allows for financing of natural gas projects. And so, given a nod for continued financing of fossil fuel projects in an era of climate change, ADB’s energy policy has been criticized. Whether the bank will actually engage with such criticism though is another question.
“ADB has opened up consultations with civil society groups, but the meetings for these consultations are very brief,” Nacpil said. “There isn’t enough space for dialogue and debate about important passages in the energy draft, like the usage of false solutions like carbon capture and storage.”
Scientists have criticized technologies like carbon capture and storage for being “expensive, energy intensive, risky and unproven.”
The reasons for disengaging from the clean-energy forum included the lack of transparency, inclusivity and meaningful consultation with civil society in the ADB energy-policy review process. For many civil society organizations from across central, southern and southeast Asia, they did not experience anything but a one-sided push aimed at informing rather than engaging with participants.
NGO Forum on ADB added the ADB Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department (SDCC) has not provided any information about the timeline for consultations or the process by which inputs provided by groups like NGO forum on ADB will be taken into account before the draft is finalized.
This reporter sent questions to Bruno Carrasco, director general and chief compliance officer of the ADB SDCC regarding the lack of transparency and a need for Engagement, but received no comment.
Grassroots Voices Left Out
“The name ‘Asian Clean Energy Forum’ is a misnomer. ACEF is neither Asian nor clean,” said Vidya Dinker, national president of the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) and coordinator of Growthwatch, a research and advocacy group in India. INSAF is another member of NGO Forum on ADB. “It’s a networking event for ADB to reach out to people who they think will broaden their reach and business.”
In a press briefing held on June 18, Hasan Mehedi from the Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) Bangladesh, said, “ADB is continuing to finance fossil fuels including Liquified Fossil Gas and Waste to Energy while global scientific communities warn about any further investment for fossil fuels.” But Mehedi said ADB has yet to reach out to the project-affected communities on the ground. “Without consulting the affected communities and local civil society, how can ADB finalize such an important policy which has a direct impact on local communities and on the environment?”
Nacpil noted a need to “overhaul” ADB as an institution. The reasons, she explained, includes “neoliberal paradigm and strategies,” “undemocratic governance system” and the “use of loans as leverage to reshape Asian economies, according to its private sector and market driven growth framework.”
In a statement submitted as part of the Fossil Free ADB campaign, APMDD said “financing of fossil fuel projects has largely been in the form of loans. In addition to the grave impacts and implications of its fossil fuel financing on people, communities and on the climate, we are also deeply concerned that ADB’s fossil fuel financing has also exacerbated the debt burdens of its member countries. It is only fitting that the ADB Energy Policy Review also address the loans involved in its fossil fuel financing.”
The Fossil Free ADB campaign is aimed at ensuring a “no fossil fuels” ADB energy policy. It is organized by a group of civil society organizations, researchers and activists, including NGO Forum on ADB, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), 350.org and the Consortium for Energy, Environment and Demilitarization.
The Therma Visayas Energy Project is a 340-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant operating since 2019 in Cebu Province, Philippines.
APMDD called on ADB to adopt a policy and take action that will address accountability for impacts of ADB-financed coal projects and ways to ease the debt burden created by ADB lending, especially lending to harmful projects.
“In their draft energy policy, they acknowledge coal projects have been problematic and that’s why we need to shift to clean energy now,” Nacpil explained. “But they are not taking into consideration the economic impacts of the projects they have funded, the kind of financial burden these projects have brought to countries.”
Rayyan Hassan, executive director of NGO Forum on ADB, said that with ADB’s coal ban having yet to be implemented, it is logical to consider calls for decommissioning old plants and the loans associated with them. Examples of such plants include the Masinloc and Visayas thermal power plants in The Philippines, the Tata Mundra coal plant in India, and Jamshoro coal plant in Pakistan.
In response to questions about debt relief, Dr. Yongping Zhai, chief of the energy sector group at ADB said that for ADB, “offering any form of debt relief to any of its borrowing member countries will compromise its preferred creditor status, which underpins ADB’s strong credit ratings. Our strong credit rating is critical for ADB to offer low-cost funding to all borrowing member countries, in support of their development efforts.”
“Yongping Zhai is speaking as a banker, not a development banker who is concerned about member countries’ debt burdens,” Dinker said.
As of now, the draft energy policy does not specify if any debt relief will be provided in relation to fossil fuel projects. It remains to be seen if this undergoes a change as deliberations with civil society groups and activists move ahead. The draft is up for submission to ADB’s board of directors later this year.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
MOLEGHAF, a grassroots anti-imperialist organization in Haiti, held a day of activities on April 4 in the capital of Port-au-Prince, as part of a multi-country launch of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Zone of Peace campaign. Above is part of the result of the graffiti and sign-making session that took place / credit: MOLEGHAF
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with partner organizations, held events April 4 in three countries across the Americas to launch an effort to activate popular movements in the region in support of a call for a “Zone of Peace.”
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) declared the Americas region a “Zone of Peace” in 2014. This came in response to centuries of oppression at the hands of Europe and, later, the United States. U.S. policy has related to Latin America and the Caribbean as the United States’ “backyard” ever since the Monroe Doctrine was announced in 1823.
“The U.S. declared the European states must stay out of the hemisphere, which meant the United States was claiming the entire region as its own,” said Margaret Kimberley, a BAP Coordinating Committee member, who spoke at a BAP press conference held April 4 in Washington, D.C. She added CELAC exists to counter the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral organization based in Washington, D.C., and known for backing U.S. policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
After years of struggle and U.S. sanctions that have been linked to the deaths of 40,000 people in 2018, socialist-led Venezuela completed its withdrawal from the OAS in 2020. Meanwhile, another socialist country, Nicaragua, announced it was exiting in 2021.
“Biden says it is the ‘front yard’ in a clumsy attempt to be somewhat progressive,” Ajamu Baraka, chairperson of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, told Jacqueline Luqman and Sean Blackmon on the day after the launch, April 5, on “By Any Means Necessary,” an afternoon talk show on Radio Sputnik.
Launch events were held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Washington, D.C., USA; and in Havana, Cuba, where the call for a Zone of Peace was initially made in 2014. The event in Port-au-Prince involved eight hours of activities, ranging from performances, talks, exchanges, and graffiti and sign-making.
The launch took place on BAP’s 6th anniversary, which is the 55th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Exactly one year prior to his murder, King had publicly denounced the U.S. war on Vietnam, as well as what he identified as the three pillars of U.S. society: Materialism, militarism and racism.
“This campaign will be informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition,” reads BAP’s press release. “With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.”
BAP describes the reason behind the use of “Our Americas” on its website:
Nuestra América is a term revolutionary forces in the Americas have used to assert themselves against colonialism and imperialism by claiming one contiguous land mass stretching from Canada to Chile for all of the historically oppressed peoples of the region. BAP has translated the singular Nuestra América (Our America) into the plural “Our Americas” to help bridge the gap between the U.S. usage, “America,” that describes the United States as the only “America” and the concept put forth by revolutionary forces.
However, Baraka distinguished the campaign’s target.
“We’re not talking about the people of the U.S.,” he told “By Any Means Necessary.” “We’re talking about this settler-colonial state. We know [the United States] cannot exist as a settler-colonial state if it gave up its militarism.”
The public and members of Haitian organization MOLEGHAF gathered for a day of activities to launch the Zone of Peace campaign on April 4 in Port-au-Prince / credit: MOLEGHAF
BAP also issued six “initial core demands”:
Dismantle SOUTHCOM. Shut down the 76 U.S. military bases in the region
End U.S./NATO military exercises. Close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves, as well as withdraw foreign occupation troops
Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces
Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination
Return Guantánamo to Cuba. The United States must give back to the Cuban people and their government the territory it illegally occupies
Sanctions are war. End illegal sanctions and blockades of regional states, including all economic warfare and lawfare, and recognize their sovereignty
The Zone of Peace campaign was launched in three cities, including in Havana, Cuba. Here, Black Alliance for Peace members pose with members of Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP), an organization that encourages people-to-people exchanges / credit: Black Alliance for Peace
Yet, BAP is clear the method for going about this work must be different than what has emerged from predominantly-white organizations based in the United States.
“This work must be de-colonial, anti-imperialist, advance a People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) framework, and be conducted across at least five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Haitian Creole,” BAP states on its website.
Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team, said at the press conference that the United States uses multi-lateral organizations like the OAS to oppress the peoples of the Americas. And, so, of the initial approximately 25 organizations that had signed onto the campaign before it had been launched, more than half are based outside the United States and Canada. Some of the partner organizations that will help coordinate the effort include:
MOLEGHAF (Haiti)
REDH (Network In Defense of Humanity) (Cuba)
Caribbean Organisation for People’s Empowerment
African People’s Socialist Party (Bahamas, Jamaica, United States)
Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) (Colombia)
Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Nicaragua)
“Our homelands are not playgrounds for the U.S. to launch its wars of aggression,” said Nina Macapinlac, secretary general of BAYAN USA, an anti-imperialist alliance of 20 organizations dedicated to the liberation of the Philippines. Macapinlac spoke at the Washington, D.C., press conference as a member organization representative of the United National Antiwar Coalition, one of the organizations that BAP has partnered with for the Zone of Peace campaign.
BAP invites organizations and individuals to endorse the Zone of Peace campaign and activate the popular movement element in what they describe as a “multi-phase campaign that aims to build a united-front opposition to liberate our Americas from the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.” A U.S./NATO Out of the Americas Network will be launched as the mass-based structure of this campaign.
