Carbon markets won't save seas - or forests, or climate, for that matter

Date: 2009/12/28

Subject: Re: "To save the planet, save the seas," Dec 27, 2009, Op-Ed, Dan Laffoley
To: letters@nytimes.com, editorial@nytimes.com

To the editors:

 

Re: "To save the planet, save the seas," Op-Ed, Dec 27, 2009, Dan Laffoley

Dan Laffoley advocates for the use of nearshore marine ecosystems as carbon sinks in climate change negotiations. He bases this idea on the assertion that the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) agreement was a positive outcome from the talks at COP 15. This position fails to recognize the reality that carbon sequestration is a false solution to climate change.

 

Carbon sequestration as a mechanism for mitigating climate change is not supported by the biology and ecology of forests -- or oceans. Such programs have also contributed to human rights violations and the erosion of indigenous peoples' and smallholder farmers’ lives and livelihoods.

For instance, Larry Lohmann’s work details the economic, environmental and human rights problems associated with and resulting from carbon trading and carbon sequestration schemes.

LIkewise, indigenous peoples argue that REDD will violate native peoples' sovereighty around the world and contribute to public health and human rights disasters. Farmers' and poor people's movements such as Via Campesina and Jubilee South concur. Given the existing evidence, creating a "REDD for oceans" will likely create more climate refugees by displacing artesanal and subsistence ocean-dependent communities from "conservation" or "protected" areas while ignoring and perhaps incentivizing violators to continue their bad behavior.

Given the time frame for and predicted increases in magnitude of catastrophic events related to climate change, conservation efforts for marine and nearshore marine ecosystems must not wait for the development of a market - or its inevitable collapse. Governments could do that already, through a combination of policymaking and the repayment of climate debt. Likewise, immediate reductions in emissions in greenhouse gases in the global North and South can be effected by conservation measures, policymaking and appropriate technology transfer in industrial, corporate, municipal and consumer arenas.

 

As global people’s social movements and hundreds of thousands of affected communities and individuals worldwide know, the way forward for global sustainability must start from a radically different point of departure: a fundamental commitment to universal human rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, and respect for Mother Earth.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Diana Pei Wu, PhD

Copeland Fellow in Global Sustainability, Amherst College

December 28, 2009

address:
Johnson Chapel 17
Amherst College
AC#2234
Amherst, MA 01002
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Diana Pei Wu
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