Durban Watch: A first update from the UN climate talks in Durban

It is the eve of the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa. Two years on from the catastrophic talks that took place in Copenhagen; there has been little progress on a global deal on climate change. In fact, as the science demands ever stronger action, with people’s lives becoming increasingly impacted by extreme weather events, disease, failing crops and reduced water supplies as a result of climate change, the same rich industrialised countries that grew wealthy by causing the crisis have only lowered ambition.
 
Inside the talks, the picture looks bleak. Rich industrialised countries are doing their best to destroy the only legally binding framework on emissions reductions that exists, aiming instead to replace it with a voluntary ‘pledge and review’ system which current figures suggest would lead to disastrous global temperature rises of over five degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. Furthermore, there is a strong push to do away with any notion of historical responsibility for the big polluters, now reluctant to either reduce their emissions or pay compensation, as they agreed when the signed up to the UN convention on climate change.

The attempt to further expand failing carbon markets is a clear example of this. Rich countries recognise that trading their way out of climate change provides a double get out clause – they can get out of providing the funds they have promised time and again, whilst at the same time claim to have reduced their emissions. But of course, carbon credits put the responsibility back onto to developing countries to make emissions cuts. And this means little in terms of meaningful efforts to tackle climate change.
 
Meanwhile, concern is growing that the new Green Climate Fund currently being designed, hailed as one of Cancun’s successes, could end up looking more like a ‘Greedy Corporate Fund’. If involvement of the discredited and undemocratic World Bank wasn’t worrying enough, there is now an increasing concern around proposals for a ‘private sector facility’ within the fund. If it went ahead, it would inevitably serve the interests of the corporate and financial sectors, subsidising multinational corporations and financial institutions instead of financing activities to save the planet or provide people living in poverty with funds.

But there is hope. One thing is clear from my time here so far; there remains a strong and growing global movement for climate justice. As a climate campaigner in the UK, over the last year it has felt as if attention has largely moved away from climate change. But in other parts of the world, across Asia, Africa and Latin America, concern is growing, and a strong a united movement for climate justice is building. Climate change is not seen as a stand alone issue; it is seen as a symptoms of a bigger problem.

Like the financial crisis, it is seen as symptom of an unsustainable way of living that has pushed infinite growth on a finite planet and put the benefit of corporate profit over the lives of people. Climate change is not a stand alone issue, and we need to stand united in the struggle against it.