Many years ago, in a desperately poor village in Rajasthan, people decided to plant trees on the land adjoining their pond so that its catchment would be protected. But this land belonged to the revenue department and people were fined for trespass. The issue hit national headlines. The stink made the local administration uncomfortable. They then came up with a brilliant game plan—they allotted the land to a group of equally poor people. In this way the poor ended up fighting the poor. The local government got away with the deliberate murder of a water body.

I recall this episode as I watch recent developments on climate change. At the recent Durban climate change conference small island nations—from the Maldives to Granada —believed, rightly so, that the world has not delivered on its promise to cut emissions and is jeopardising their future. But they do not have the power to fight the powerful. So, this coalition of climate victims turned against its partner developing countries, targeting India, for instance, for inaction. These nations pushed for India to take legal commitments to reduce emissions, dismissing its concerns of equity as inconsequential.

The divide is complete. According to Bangladeshi climate change researcher and old friend Saleemul Huq, the issue of equity—the setting of emission targets based on the contribution of each country to the stock of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—is an old fashioned idea. He says it will not work in the new world where the dichotomy of the rich and poor countries has vanished; instead, there are equal and big polluters like China, India, South Africa and Brazil (BASIC). These, he says, are equally responsible and must take steps to cut emissions. He wants the notion of historical emissions junked. For him, countries like the Maldives and Bangladesh are victims. India is a polluter, a rich country whose government is hiding behind the poor to avoid cutting emissions.

But the fact is Maldives’ per capita emission is higher than India’s. So, should the Maldives take mandatory emission reductions? Is it a victim or a polluter? India also has a longer coastline than vulnerable Bangladesh. Is it a polluter? Or an equal victim? Sivan Kartha, a climate change researcher with the Stockholm Environment Institute, tears into this argument that is dividing the poor world and taking the focus away from countries that need to be told to take action fast. He compares India and Africa, countering the charge that Africa is being destroyed because of rich India’s reluctance to take emission reductions. “Actually, 1.1 per cent of Africans have made it to the top global wealth decile against 0.9 per cent Indians. As against this, 21 per cent Americans are in the top global wealth decile. Then, India’s total emissions are only two-thirds of what Africa emits.” As against this, US emissions are four times India’s. In this way, while the poor fight over crumbs, the cake is eaten by the rich.

My colleagues at the Centre for Science and Environment analysed income distribution and emissions data to see if rich Indians emitted more than their counterparts in rich countries. They found that the per capita emission of the richest 10 per cent of India’s population was the same or slightly less than the per capita emission of America’s poorest 10 per cent and it was less than one-tenth the per capita emission of America’s richest 10 per cent. In other words, the rich in India emitted less than even the poorest Americans. This is not to deny that Mukesh Ambani’s enormous house and electricity consumption—reportedly Rs 75 lakh a month—is distasteful. But energy and emission apartheid in the world remains unacceptable.

Simple plot. Sinister design. The poor have been divided to fight over who is more vulnerable. But one must realise that this divide is a deliberate creation. In 2009 at the Copenhagen Conference of Parties, two categories of countries were devised. One, vulnerable countries that would get fast track funds to adapt to climate change and two, emerging polluters grouped under the BASIC banner. The bribe and divide was blatant and successful. It was openly said in the conference plenary that polluting countries like India, who wanted an agreement based on equity, were blocking funds that would flow to Bangladesh and the Maldives. That penultimate night of the conference the poor fought the poor. Since then the divide has grown.

It’s time we stopped this kindergarten fight. Let us be clear the world has to cut emissions drastically and fast. There must be limits on each country based on its per capita emission and taking into account its historical contribution. China is the biggest current emitter. But in cumulative terms—taking into account the stock in the atmosphere accumulated over the years—it contributes 11 per cent against US share of 26 per cent. It must also be brought under limits, as must India. But these limits will have to be based on the principle of equity so that these countries will also have the right to development.

This is the most inconvenient of truths. But it is the truth.

This piece was originally published at CSE India.

What will the presidential election in November mean for U.S. environmental policy? Although we don’t yet know who the Republican candidate will be, we know all too well what will be on his environmental agenda. The endless televised debates have exposed what the New York Times called “the broken windows of the Republican idea factory.” It’s not a pretty sight.

The candidates all share the same approach to the environment. Ron Paul plans to govern primarily by abolishing things. His hit list includes America’s foreign wars, but also the Federal Reserve, most federal taxes, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and all limits on offshore drilling and the use of coal and nuclear power. Rick Santorum agrees that energy companies must be entirely deregulated. Newt Gingrich will build a moon colony by 2020, and will replace the EPA with a new agency that “will operate on the premise that most environmental problems can and should be solved by states and local communities.” Mitt Romney promises to “eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration’s costly and ineffective anti-carbon agenda,” and to slow down or block regulations in general whenever industry complains about their costs (i.e., always).

Do we really need to slow down the snail’s pace of current environmental regulation, and pay more attention to industry as it bemoans the cost of compliance? Consider the case of coal ash: produced in stupendous quantities by coal-burning power plants, it contains dangerous concentrations of arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxic metals. Improper disposal has led to contamination of groundwater in many communities, and to occasional disasters such as the billion-gallon sludge spill that inundated Kingston, Tennessee in 2008.

This looks like the poster child for hazardous waste regulation – except that the coal industry has consistently used its considerable political clout to win special treatment. Back in 1980, near the dawn of modern waste regulations, Congress directed EPA to study coal ash in detail before applying hazardous waste rules to it.

That process of study has already stretched over more than 30 years. Under the Obama administration, closure was finally in sight; in 2009, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said she would complete regulation of coal ash that year. It turns out that the industry’s clout is undiminished, and the revised Obama plan is to punt until after the election. In January a coalition of environmental groups announced plans to sue EPA to force regulation of ash disposal.

Industry’s grumbling about regulatory costs has taken two forms. One is the claim of job losses: regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste, according to an industry-sponsored report, would eliminate more than 300,000 jobs a year. I re-examined their report and found it to be close to a complete fabrication; using standard methods of economic analysis, regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste would cause a net annual gain of 28,000 jobs.

A more exotic claim is that the stigma created by regulation of coal ash disposal would destroy the market for ash reuse. More than one-third of coal ash is recycled, often used in construction materials such as concrete, cement, and wallboard. Although EPA’s proposed rules explicitly exempt ash recycling, the industry claims that regulation of ash disposal as hazardous waste would stigmatize all uses of ash, including recycling.

If coal ash disposal bears a regulatory stigma, is it deserved? Nuclear waste is stigmatized as dangerous, which is a huge setback for any plans you might have to bury it in your backyard. No one, however, would count the lost income from your inability to open a backyard nuclear waste dump as a cost of regulation. Nor would we count the loss of income if sales dropped for a different product that was mistakenly stigmatized as nuclear waste. The latter is exactly parallel to the purported stigma effect on coal ash reuse.

Liz Stanton and I critiqued the stigma theory in testimony on ash disposal rules in 2010. At the time, the idea seemed purely hypothetical. Now the industry alleges that regulatory uncertainty and “toxic” publicity are already driving down recycling; after soaring under the previous administration, the ash recycling rate stalled in 2008-2009 and declined in 2010.

The industry has missed the obvious explanation for these trends. Coal ash is created by electricity generation; ash reuse often occurs in construction. In the economic boom before 2008, construction grew more rapidly than electricity generation, so markets for ash reuse expanded relative to the supply. In the crash after 2008, the reverse was true: construction declined more steeply than electricity generation, so reuse markets shrank relative to ash supply.

Is regulation too expensive because it calls hazardous materials hazardous, and clueless customers could accidentally extend the resulting stigma to other products? In rational debate in ordinary times, this notion would be greeted with derisive laughter, at best. Yet in a year when leading presidential candidates discuss statehood for a non-existent future moon colony, or plans to make immigrants engage in voluntary self-deportation, it’s hard to know what will count as serious.

The current administration’s environmental policies have frequently been a disappointment, but the choice in the November elections seems sure to be between disappointment and disaster.

In an article in Newsweek, Niall Ferguson argues that, the main reason why Americans should care about the European debt crisis is that “what is happening in Europe today could ultimately happen here.”

I have news for Professor Ferguson.  He has his diagnosis the wrong way around.

An important reason why Europe is in its current debt crisis is because for decades it has been emulating the US example of creating a permanent “culture of debt”.

I use the term “culture” here deliberately.  The global debt crisis is not just about the growing government debt burdens of economies, nor about the financial liquidity crisis plaguing banks.  The true debt crisis is much deeper than that.  It involves entire economies and societies evolving towards a mind-set in which more and more benefits are expected today –  but any costs are either increasingly postponed to the future, or preferably, dumped on others.

The problem with such a mind-set is that it ultimately leads to economies creating debt rather than wealth.

In a previous blog post (Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!) I posed the question: What do the worldwide debt crisis and global warming have in common?

They both represent economies drawing down assets faster than they can replenish them.

In the case of the debt crisis, economies are spending more wealth than they are accumulating.  In the case of global warming, we are using up nature’s capital and its vital services at an alarming rate.  Rather than adding to wealth – both financial and natural – economies are squandering it.  This is not a new problem but has occurred throughout history, as I pointed out in Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Scarcity, although this tendency has accelerated in recent times.

Which economy has led the way in creating both types of debts?

The United States, of course. For decades.

Until recently overtaken by China, the US economy was for years the number source of global greenhouse gases, followed closely by the European Union.  US households have carried the largest debts of all consumers, although evidence suggests that UK households may now be the biggest debtors.  Other European consumers have been quick to imitate this pattern, too.  The US economy has been running chronic trade deficits since the 1960s, and paying for it by selling financial assets, property, US government bonds and any other domestic economic assets available to foreign investors.  And, we all know what that global financial deal led to in 2008-9!

Our culture of debt also extends to management of our other two vital economic assets – human and natural capital.

Average student loan debts incurred by US graduating college seniors in 2010 $25,250, which is 5% more than the previous year.  Yet, 2010 graduates experienced an unemployment rate of 9.1% , and the average pay for those with jobs is $50,034.   A highly skilled workforce is valuable to the US economy and its prospects for growth.  But higher tuition costs, lower funding and expensive student loans means that we are forcing our most skilled laborers – university graduates – to go into debt before they even begin to put their human capital to work and collect any rewards for it.  Now, of course, the Europeans are also emulating the same student loan system that is at the heart of the human capital problem.  Caveat emptor!

We are also running down our natural capital rather than protecting or restoring it.  As I argue in my book Capitalizing on Nature: Ecosystems as Natural Assets, we are quickly entering into an Age of Ecological Scarcity.   Over 60% of the world’s major ecosystem goods and services have been degraded or used unsustainably. The demise of key global ecosystems include mangroves (35% either lost or degraded), coral reefs (30%) and tropical forests (30%).  Over the next 50 years, global biodiversity loss will accelerate, leading to the extinction of at least 500 or the 1,192 currently threatened bird species and 565 of the 1,137 mammal species.  Given these trends, it is unlikely that the world is ever going to “balance its budget” when it comes to managing ecosystems, biodiversity and other critical natural assets.

The “culture of debt” is certainly not just a European problem. Nor is it solely an American disease – although the US is clearly its main poster child.

The culture of debt has become a global issue, and it is not just financial, but defines how every society and economy now interacts with respect to their fundamental economic, human and natural assets.

At this time 12 months ago, this column had highlighted how the dying year 2010 could be labeled the year of natural calamities, and predicted more on the way.

Sure enough, the year that has just passed witnessed even worse disasters. If 2010 was marked by the Haiti earthquake, 2011 surpassed that in impact (if not in deaths) by the Fukushima triple tragedy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident.

But Fukushima was only the worst of the calamities that included hurricanes in Central and Latin America, drought in parts of Africa, massive floods in Thailand and elsewhere, and many typhoons and storms in the Philippines.

This new year, more is in store from Mother Nature. Extreme weather events are expected to be more frequent and more intense, and some of these are linked to climate change, according to a recent report of the inter-governmental panel on climate change (IPCC).

The extensive flooding in Thailand in October and November, which wreaked havoc on homes, factories, farms and entire towns, is a warning to Malaysians on the intensity of what may happen here someday. The floods that have recently affected many Malaysian states may in future be even more intense and more damaging.

Another disaster in our region was caused by the tropical storm Washi that swept across Mindanao in Southern Philippines in December, killing over 1,000 people and displacing 300,000 in massive flooding, flash floods and landslides.

Better disaster risk preparations would have helped avert the high number of casualties, according to Filipino Senator Loren Legarda, a disaster risk reduction champion for the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).

She called on local authorities throughout Philippines to invest in flood infrastructure, including river embankments, pumping stations, flood walls, drainage systems, storm drains, canals and flood retention areas, noting the high number of casualties caused by Washi could be due to a lack of awareness of the risks involved.

Countries should implement the UNISDR strategy, which aims to guide and coordinate efforts to reduce disaster losses and build more resilient communities and countries.

As Greenhouse Gases continue to increase at an alarming rate in the atmosphere, the effects of climate change are bound to worsen. Thus, a useful New Year resolution that countries should make is to put in much more effort and funds to strengthen disaster preparedness. It will save many lives, homes and other properties.

The new year 2012 will likely suffer from man-made disasters as well. A new world-wide recession is now a larger possibility, as the economic austerity policies across Europe and the deleveraging of its banks take effect this year in reduced demand, higher unemployment, credit tightening and reduced output.

The year will continue to witness the Eurozone governments wrestling to save the Euro. If, as many analysts predict, the policy makers remain behind the curve of events on the ground, then 2012 will be a disaster year for Europe, with recessionary effects on the rest of the world.

If, however, the European leaders and institutions get their act together, then the disaster could yet be averted. But fewer experts believe that policy will finally get ahead and prevent chaos.

As with natural disasters, preparedness for economic slowdown or recession is needed, at least to cushion the effects.

A slowdown in the advanced economies will affect developing countries through the trade and finance channels. On the trade front, developing countries that are more export-dependent must expect to be hit by reduced demand for their products and by lower commodity prices.

On the finance front, developing countries should expect a reversal of the strong capital inflows of the past couple of years as Western funds seek the “safe havens” of their own countries during these uncertain economic times.

Indeed, a significant net outflow of portfolio capital has already begun in several Asian countries, including India, Thailand and Malaysia.

The outflow can be absorbed without much difficulty in countries like Malaysia that have strong current-account surpluses, but can be a significant problem for countries like India which have a current-account deficit and which have relied on capital inflows to cover it.

2011 was a turning point in laying the foundations for the current economic problems. Thus, 2012 could be the year when these problems mature into fully-fledged crises. Thus we should be preparing early for what the year may bring.

This piece was originally published at the Third World Network.

Greenhouse gas emissions are a global problem. Regardless of who emits them, these gases impact everyone, everywhere around the world: raising average temperatures and sea levels, and changing historical weather patterns. But climate change will not affect everyone equally. The two dozen island nations of the Caribbean are a case in point. With 40 million people living on islands in a small geographic area, it would be easy – but incorrect – to expect that they will all face the same climate damages. In fact, according to new research from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Caribbean residents are not all “in the same boat” and should expect to face a very wide diversity of climate impacts.

Yes, each person living in the Caribbean will experience about the same change in climate – temperature increase and shift in weather patterns – and degree of sea-level rise as her neighbors over the next decades. And her children and grandchildren can expect about the same changes to weather and sea levels as their neighbors. But these changes in the physical world will not impact all Caribbean residents in the same way.

SEI’s new Climate Impact Equity Lens (SEI-CIEL, see www.sei-ciel.org for more information) examines the diverse impacts of climate change by zooming in on four important types of diversity that affect individuals’ expected impacts from climate change: family income; share of income from economic sectors that are especially vulnerable to damages from climate change; exposure to sea-level rise and storm surge; and present-day water availability.

Family income plays an important role in who will be vulnerable to damages and who can afford to adapt as the climate changes. The Caribbean islands include the countries with the highest and lowest average incomes in the greater Latin American and Caribbean region: in Haiti, the average person makes less than US$500 a year (but, of course, some people make a lot more than $500 and some people make a lot less); in the Cayman islands, the average income is $52,000. The Caribbean islands account for less than 1 percent of global population, but Caribbean incomes span the same diversity as world incomes: from the very poorest to the very richest. Families making a few hundred U.S. dollars each year can scarcely afford basic living expenses much less investments in air conditioning, sea walls, or imported water. The richest families, in contrast, can afford these investments and much more; it seems unlikely that the very rich will experience much real suffering from climate change.

The diversity of climate impacts is also affected by the source of income. For those that work in agriculture, fisheries, tourism, or other sectors or industries especially vulnerable to climate change, expected damages are much higher. Tourism, for example, contributes about half of all income in Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, Saint Lucia, and Turks and Caicos, and far more than half of all income for many households throughout the Caribbean.

Physical vulnerabilities like exposure to sea-level rise and water scarcity also vary throughout the region. Some families live close to the shoreline, at low elevations, or in floodplains, but many others – especially on the largest islands, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) – are well protected from the first several meters of sea-level rise. On most Caribbean islands, fresh water is a scarce resource, but on a few islands water resources are more abundant. Climate change is expected to make many of the most arid areas around the world even drier; where present-day water scarcity is severe, families are more vulnerable to changing weather patterns.

The SEI-CIEL model finds that, if greenhouse gas emissions continue, climate damages for the average person in Latin America and the Caribbean would equal “savings” from not paying to reduce emissions through about 2100. (If emissions are not controlled, we all “save” by paying lower energy costs.) This average does not, however, represent the diversity of individual impacts from climate change expected in the Caribbean, where damages for many individuals will outstrip “savings” by 2050, and by 2100, most people experience net damages.

If policy makers pay attention only to the average regional result, their conclusions about the urgency of climate change would be very different than if they consider the diversity of individual impacts. Many people, in the Caribbean and around the world, will experience serious net damages from climate change by 2050. Those who care about the well-being of the most vulnerable will press climate policy makers to slow emissions as quickly as possible.

This piece was originally published by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network blog. Ramón Bueno is a staff scientist for the Climate Economics Group at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

In Durban, South Africa, world officials and diplomats decided to do nothing about climate change. Although China produces per capita emissions that are four times lower than those of the United States,  it should not ignore the fact that these emissions are already above the world average. Meanwhile, the US blames China for the rise in its aggregate emissions and refuses to make any commitments to reduce its own emissions. In Durban, rich countries pledged money, but also more carbon dioxide. Latin American countries took a variety of positions.

The Seventeenth International Climate Change Summit (Conference of Parties (COP-17)), which ended last month in Durban, should have forged a strong international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in December 1997 and came into force in February 2005 after ratification by the Russian Federation. The US signed the agreement but it was not ratified by any of the successive administrations of Clinton, Bush and Obama. The Kyoto Protocol has tried unsuccessfully to  reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from most polluting countries by at least 5% between 2008 and 2012 as compared to 1990.

The agreement of the COP-17 calls for the negotiation of a “protocol, a legal instrument or a legally binding result” in 2015, which limits emissions by all countries “from 2020″ onwards. That is, the “ball” – or rather the planet – is kicked forward into the abyss.

Over time, aggregate carbon emissions are increasing. Globally, annual growth rates were 3.3% in the seventies, 2% in the eighties, 1.2% in the nineties, and 2.5% in 2000s. There were reductions in the emissions growth rate in 1980-1982, in 1992, and during the economic crisis of 2008-2009. The concentration of parts per million (ppm) of CO2, the most important indicator to measure climate change in the atmosphere, also rises. Worldwide, between 1970 and 2010, the average concentration increased from 325.7 to 389.8 ppm, i.e.,  0.6% per year, according to measurements from the Mauna Loa Observatory, in Hawaii.

Sometimes, officials and diplomats gather and talk,  but they produce agreements that are useless or even exacerbate the problems. It is only a lot of talk. So it is with climate change.

Read this post in Portuguese.

Sunita Narain

In 1992, when the world met to discuss an agreement on climate change, equity was a simple concept: sharing the global commons—the atmosphere in this case—equally among all. It did not provoke much anxiety, for there were no real claimants. However, this does not mean the concept was readily accepted. A small group of industrialised countries had burnt fossil fuels for 100 years and built up enormous wealth. This club had to decide what to do to cut emissions, and it claimed all countries were equally responsible for the problem. In 1991, just as the climate convention was being finalised, a report, released by an influential Washington think tank, broke the news that its analysis showed India, China and other developing countries were equally responsible for greenhouse gases. Anil Agarwal and I rebutted this and brought in the issue of equitable access to the global commons. We also showed, beyond doubt, that the industrialised countries were singularly responsible for the increased greenhouse gases.

In 1992, it was accepted that the occupied atmospheric space would need to be vacated to make room for the emerging world to grow because emissions are an outcome of economic growth. This acceptance recognised the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in reducing emissions. A firewall was built to separate those countries that had to reduce emissions to make space for the rest of the world to grow. That year in Rio de Janeiro, the world was talking about drastic cuts of 20 per cent below the 1990 levels to provide for growth as well as climate security. Even in that age of innocence, the negotiations were difficult and nasty. The US argued its lifestyle was non-negotiable and refused to accept any agreement specifying deep reductions. In 1998, the Kyoto Protocol set the first legal target for these countries much below what the world knew it needed to do.

Two decades later, the idea of equity has become an even more inconvenient truth. By now there are more claimants for atmospheric space. Emerging countries have emerged. China, which in 1990, with over a quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for only 10 per cent of annual emissions, contributed 27 per cent by 2010. So, the fight over atmospheric space is now real. While the rich countries have not reduced emissions, the new growth countries have started emitting more. In 1990, the industrialised countries accounted for 70 per cent of the global annual emissions. In 2010, they accounted for 43 per cent but this is not because they have vacated space. The new growth countries—China in particular—have only occupied what was available. Emission reductions proposed 20 years ago have still not been committed or adhered to. In fact, in most already industrialised countries emissions have either stabilised or increased. In coal and extractive economies, like Canada and Australia, emissions have risen by 20 per cent and 46 per cent respectively.

The world has run out of atmospheric space and certainly of time. Will the rich, who contributed to emissions in the past and still take up an unfair share of this space based on their populations, reduce emissions? Or will the emerging countries be told to take over the burden? This is the big question, and an inconvenient one at that.

And mind you climate change is not the problem of the present but past contributions. The stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has a long life. This means that any discussion on how the carbon cake will be divided, must take into account those gases emitted in the past and still present. So while China accounts for 27 per cent of the annual emissions, in cumulative terms (since 1950) it still accounts for only 11 per cent. Similarly, India contributes 6 per cent to the annual global emissions, but is only responsible for 3 per cent of the stock. The rich countries, with less than a quarter of the world’s population, are responsible for some 70 per cent of this historical burden. This stock of gases is responsible for an average global temperature rise of 0.8°C and another 0.8°C in future, which is inevitable. To keep temperature rise below 2°C, the world needs to cut emissions by 50-80 per cent below the 2000 levels by 2050. Now equity is no longer a moral idea, but a tough challenge. It is for this reason that global climate negotiations reached their nadir in Durban. It is for this reason that the US and its coalition are hell bent on erasing any mention of historical emissions from all texts. It is for this reason that the rich world is pointing to the emission growth in China and India, and dismissing their need for development as their obdurate right to pollute.

It is also an idea that is difficult to sell in a world distrustful of idealism and any talk of distributive justice. Even climate change negotiators do not really believe this form of climate-socialism can happen. They will tell you that the world is never going to give up space, that the world is too mean to give money or technology to poor nations for transition to low-carbon growth.

But this is because they forget that climate change is the market’s biggest failure. We cannot use the market for its repair. To avoid catastrophic changes it is essential to reach a collaborative agreement, which will be effective. And cooperation is not possible without fairness and equity. This is the pre-requisite. Take it because we must.

This piece was originally published by the Center for Science and Environment.

Looking back now that the dust has settled, South Africa’s COP17 presidency appears disastrous. This was confirmed not only by Durban’s delayed, diplomatically-decrepit denouement, but by plummeting carbon markets in the days immediately following the conference’s ignoble end last Sunday.

Of course it is tempting to ignore the stench of failure and declare Durban “an outstanding success,” as did South African environment minister Edna Molewa. “We have significantly strengthened the international adaptation agenda,” she explained about the near-empty Green Climate Fund. “The design of the fund includes innovative mechanisms for bringing private sector and market mechanisms into play to increase the potential flow of funding into climate change responses.”

Because the $100 billion promised by Hillary Clinton in Copenhagen two years ago is apparently fictional (aside from minor commitments by South Korea, Germany and Denmark), Molewa’s two crucial albeit unintended words are ‘play’ and ‘potential.’ In our new book, Durban’s Climate Gamble: Trading Carbon, Betting the Earth, critical researchers show why emissions markets are as comatose as the Kyoto Protocol. Only a casino drunkard would put money – much less the planet – on the odds of a death-bed resurrection.

Bolivia’s former UN ambassador Pablo Solon scolded the hosts for turning Kyoto into a “Zombie, a soulless undead.” The 1997 treaty’s soul was a commitment that emissions cuts would be binding, but several of the richest polluting countries – the US, Canada, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand – won’t sign on the second commitment period. To sabotage Kyoto, Washington continues its voluntary ‘pledge and review’ policy pantomime. Kyoto’s original brain contained a species survival mechanism: a pledge to keep the earth’s temperature at a livable level. Now, the Durban Platform contains “less than half of the necessary cuts to keep the temperature increase below 2°C,” says Solon.

As the soul-deprived, brain-dead, heartless climate-policy Zombie stumbled off the Durban Platform last week in the direction of Qatar for the COP18 next year, it immediately tripped on the crumpled carbon markets. The emissions trade is failing not only in Europe but also in our own Durban backyard. An Africa Report investigation unveiled South Africa’s highest-profile pilot Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project as a scam.

At Bisasar Road landfill in the Clare Estate neighbourhood, the R100+ million methane-to-electricity CDM project was despised because it kept the continent’s largest official dump open far beyond the point it should have been closed. Instead of being burned and flared on-site, methane gas from Bisasar’s rotting rubbish should have been piped out for industrial use, far away from residential areas, according to the late community activist Sajida Khan. Before dying of cancer caused by the dump in 2007, she tirelessly campaigned to close Bisasar dump and thus end one of Africa’s most notorious cases of environmental racism.

Khan failed, because in 2001 the World Bank promised funding for methane extraction that would keep the dump operational. The crucial factor, according to Durban officials, is that “Landfill gas offers a viable renewable energy source only when linked to carbon finance or CDM.”

Based on the assumption that without outside funds, the project could not be justified, in 2006 the United Nations listed Bisasar Road as an active supplier of CDM credits through at least 2014. It turns out this was a fib. On an official tour of Bisasar on November 30, journalists from Africa Report and San Francisco-based Pacifica News interviewed Durban Solid Waste manager John Parkin, who admitted, “We started the project prior to the CDM. We were already down the road. It just made it come faster because the funding was there.”

Why is this scandalous? Africa Report interprets: “It is questionable as to whether the project should have been approved as a CDM initiative at all, as approval requires the existence of ‘additionality’. According to the UN, ‘Additionality is the cornerstone of any credible CDM project, basically answering the question whether a project is additional, or would it proceed anyway, without the CDM.’ That is, without qualification as an additionality, the CDM shouldn’t be approved.”

Parkin confirmed to the journalists, “We already started the project and we were going ahead no matter what. So whether CDM became a reality or not, the project was going to go ahead.”

Such a whimsical approach to climate finance is why hopes by Molewa and Manuel for filling the Green Climate Fund with carbon trade revenues will be dashed.  CDM trading volumes are down 80 percent from their 2007 peak, and the European Union’s carbon futures market – once above €35/tonne – hovered between €11-14/tonne through 2010-11 but crashed to €4.4/tonne on December 13.

Remarked Susanna Twidale of the Point Carbon news service, “While a lot of the focus of the last fortnight of UN meetings was on supply of carbon credits, not one country deepened its carbon target, leaving international carbon offset prices languishing at near record lows.” Reuters news service confirmed, “Carbon markets are still on life support”, quoting a leading trader: “A sick market needs a cure and instead of deciding which cure to use, the doctors keep using pain relief to gain more time to make the final prognosis.”

Back in Durban, 20,000 carbon credits are being issued from the Bisasar Road CDM each month. According to Parkin, “We don’t have a partner to buy them at the moment. But we’ll probably get €8 to €9 if we’re lucky.” Durban is unlucky to have Parkin gambling with city finances, the air in Clare Estate, and the planet’s health.

What the late Vaclav Havel said once about Soviet-era politics – “a monstrous, ramshackle, stinking machine” whose worst legacy was a “spoiled moral environment” – applies equally to Bisasar Road, to the UN’s Conference of Polluters and to those who departed Durban without hanging their heads in shame. All they have to show for their work, during this planetary emergency, is creation of a dangerous Zombie.

In this milieu, Parkin was brutally frank, at least: “As the City, if we can make some money out of it, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be done and the whole moral issue is separate from the project. The project is successful. The moral issue, I have no influence on that – as a technocrat, I do my job.”

Bond edited Durban’s Climate Gamble (UNISA Press), authored Politics of Climate Justice (UKZN Press), and directs the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society in Durban.