The best excuse that Western corporate polluters and their political allies have devised to justify their attempts to wreck the Kyoto Protocol is that it does not mandate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in Third World Countries.

In June 1997, the United States Senate passed 95-0 the Byrd-Hagel Resolution which stated, inter alia, that the US should not be party to climate change agreements unless they contained "new, specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for developing country parties within the same compliance period". Then President Bill Clinton responded to the Senate resolution by stating that there needed to be "meaningful participation" by developing countries before the US would consider ratification.

President George W. Bush, in a recent letter to a US senator, said, "I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80% of the world." The non-inclusion of Third World countries in the first compliance period of the Kyoto Protocol (from 1990 to 2008-2012) was one of two major reasons cited by the Bush administration for its March 2001 decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol (the other, interrelated reason being the economic impacts of reducing greenhouse gas emissions).

The Australian government is also insisting on the inclusion of Third World countries as a condition of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. In November 1997, Prime Minister John Howard "All along we have argued that climate change is a global problem and all countries should contribute to the solution. Action by developed countries alone will be ineffective. Over time, developing countries must become involved - as by early next century they will account for over 50% of global emissions."

In an April 29, 1998 press release, Environment Minister Robert Hill said that the "engagement" of developing  countries is one of the pre-conditions of Australian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. In an April 25, 2000 address to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Hill said that, "In agreeing to the Kyoto protocol we, in essence, said we were prepared to pay a price for carbon reduction. ... And as simply transferring efficient industry to developing countries because of economic imbalances created by the Kyoto protocol does not achieve a better global outcome, the need to engage developing nations in early targeted reductions was obvious."

The Australian department of foreign affairs, in its August 2000 submission to the federal parliament's treaties committee, said that, "The absence of commitments from developing countries means that carbon will remain cost free in those countries. This will give industries in developing countries a savings on production costs compared to industries in developed countries. Consequently, shifts in global trade and resource flows from developed countries towards developing countries may occur, as may changes in the production of greenhouse gas-intensive goods. This would undermine the environmental effectiveness of abatement action undertaken in accordance with the Protocol."

Such arguments are also advanced by Western corporations. For example, David Coutts, executive director of the Australian Aluminium Council, said in a March 31, 1998 address to a "Greenhouse beyond Kyoto" conference that the Kyoto Protocol "has one dramatic flaw and that is that developing countries are not part of  the process of setting targets". Coutts said, "If we put the expansion of the aluminium industry at threat in Australia by forcing energy costs up, then new investment will be in countries such as India and China; probably operated less efficiently than in Australia; and more than likely using  Australian coal for electricity generation. That won't help the greenhouse global  problem but it surely will harm the Australian economy."

While environmental organisations have been almost unanimous in opposing these arguments, some have argued for emission reduction targets for Third World countries, primarily because of the dynamic set up through the Kyoto Protocol process which has led to an ongoing process of attempting to secure US ratification by continually watering down the Protocol. Anju Sharma from the Centre for Science and Environment notes that at United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings following the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, "As the US held the negotiators hostage, the goal of the convention suddenly became US ratification rather than climate change mitigation. NGOs from the US started pushing for 'voluntary' developing country participation as the only "pragmatic" way of getting the US on board" (<http://www.corpwatch.org/climate/background/2000/asharma.html>.)

That process of appeasement has been all the more evident as a result of the US decision to pull out of the Kyoto process.

Fuzzy math

One problem with the argument that Third World countries ought to commit themselves to short-term greenhouse gas reduction targets is that, to borrow a phrase from Bush, it involves 'fuzzy math'.

Per capita emissions are 20 times higher in the advanced industrial countries than in the Third World according to Jan Pronk, Dutch environment minister and chair of the UNFCCC.

The argument that emissions from Third World countries will account for half of all global human emissions within a decade or two assumes steady growth - an unlikely prospect for Third World countries in a capitalist world economy.

If and when emissions from Third World countries (accounting for about 80% of the global population) do reach 50% of the total, the per capita ratio will still be 4:1 in favour of the advanced industrial countries. That ratio would be still greater with the inclusion of historical emissions - advanced industrial countries are responsible for about 80% of total historical emissions.

China and India are oftened cited as major future greenhouse emitting nations. Assessments of relative responsibility need to consider four factors: historical emissions, current and future emissions, per capita emissions, and ability to reduce emissions without hardship. China and India fit just one of the four criteria - significant projected future emissions. They are not major historical contributors, they have relatively low per capita emissions, and their widespread poverty makes it relatively difficult to reduce emissions.

Australia's per capita emissions are seven times higher than China and 16 times higher than India. With 17% of the world's population, India accounts for 4.2% of global emissions. With 4% of the world's population, the US accounts for about 25% of global emissions.

The US, with a population of 300 million, emits as much carbon dioxide as 135 developing countries with a combined population of 3 billion. (Kevan Bundell (Christian Aid), November 2000, "Global warming, unnatural disasters and the world's poor".)

Agus Sari, from the Energy and Resources Group, University of California (Berkeley), calculates that the US reached its fair share of greenhouse emissions (if allocated equitably) by the 1940s and notes that 50 years later, the US signed (but did not ratify) the Kyoto Protocol with an initial target of a 7% reduction from 1990 to 2008-2012. Using the same logic, Third World countries ought to begin limiting greenhouse gas emissions at the end of the 21st century or the beginning of the 22nd century. "Thus, there should be no commitments now, not in 2010, not for the 2nd commitment period [of the Kyoto Protocol], but maybe in 2050 as earliest date for developing country commitments", Sari argues. (Andrea Rück and Christoph Bals (Voices from the South), 1999, "The role of 'developing countries' in the climate regime", Working paper #16. <http://www.germanwatch.org>)

Andrew Simms, author of a 1999 Christian Aid report titled 'Who Owes Who?', based his calculations on an assessment of sustainable carbon use per person and concluded that the US uses 12 times its allowance, Britain uses six times its allowance, whereas Bangladesh, Sudan and Tanzania could increase their emissions by factors of 10, 15 and 22, respectively to reach their allowance.

The villains are not Third World countries but corporate polluters based in the advanced capitalist counties. Kingpins of Carbon, a 1999 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the US Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, analysed fossil fuel production in 1997 and found that: nearly 80% of the fossil-fuel derived carbon that ends up as carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere came from 122 of the world's largest producers of fossil fuels; Exxon and Mobil's combined carbon production exceeded the combined carbon emissions of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines; Gazprom's carbon production exceeded the carbon emissions of the entire continent of Africa; and Shell's carbon production exceeded the combined carbon emissions of Mexico, Argentina, and Chile.

The second argument used by the US government to justify its March 29 announcement that it will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol is that it would be too 'costly' to do so. But if the richest country on earth cannot fund a transition to climate-friendly energy, transport, and agriculture, how can Third World countries be expected to do so?

Vulnerability

Third World countries account for less than 20% of total historical greenhouse emissions, yet they are most at risk of climate related environmental destruction, social dislocation and disease because of their geography (especially low-lying islands), economies (high dependence on climate-sensitive agriculture and natural resources more generally) and poverty (a relatively limited capacity to prepare for or respond to climate change - 96% of deaths from natural disasters occur in developing countries).

At risk are small island states (such as the Caribbean, the Maldives and the Marshal Islands), low-lying delta states (including Bangladesh, Egypt, China and Vietnam) and drought-prone states (mostly in the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and countries south of the Sahara).

According to CorpWatch, "Communities that already bear the brunt of oil company activities-such as the Ogoni in the Niger Delta, the Gwich'in in the Arctic Refuge, or African Americans in Norco, Louisiana -face a "double whammy." First they are hit by the local environmental and human rights problems associated by the oil industry ... then they face the prospect of their communities being adversely effected or destroyed by climate change." <http://www.corpwatch.org/climate/background/2001/cjfactsheet.html>

'Level playing field'

One of the main issues cited by Western corporate polluters and their political allies is that fossil-fuel based industries would move from Western to Third World countries as a result of the Kyoto Protocol. Environmental standards being worse in the Third World, the end result would be even greater greenhouse emissions along with a transfer of jobs from the West to the Third World.

However, the Kyoto Protocol would be a trivial consideration with respect to new investments, and it would be still less likely to result in the transfer of existing industries to Third World Countries (because of 'sunk' capital investments). Factors such as infrastructure (access to resources, energy etc.) and access to markets are far more important considerations. Moreover, the huge subsidies provided to corporate polluters would act against a shift of industry to Third World countries.

The issue of differing environmental standards between countries could easily be solved by legislation forcing Western corporations to adhere to the same standards in Third World countries as they do in the West.

Centuries of colonialism, and more recently economic neo-colonialism, have led to a situation in which a vast gulf separates the West from the Third World. The 'level playing field' is tilted heavily in favour of the advanced capitalist countries - if it is partly balanced through greenhouse abatement programs, then so much the better. Corporate crocodile tears about jobs being lost in the West are just part of a divide-and-rule strategy to pit workers in the West and the Third World against each other.

According to the Climate Justice Network: "Industrialisation [in Europe and America] was made possible by the flow of cheap raw materials from the colonies. Slaves, coffee, steel, minerals and cotton were among the commodities that the colonialists extracted from the 'third world'.  Having free labour, cheap food and metals allowed the colonisers to invest in and develop the new technologies that appeared at home.  It is fair to say that the social and economic developments in the industrialised world happened at the expense of the colonised world. While Europe and America developed, the continent of Africa was devastated by the loss of generations of people through slavery and the Americas through extraction of natural resources.  This generally resulted in preventing industrial development in the colonies, from which these countries still feel the effects. The exploitative relationship between the colonisers and colonised continues today in more subtle ways.  The comparative advantage that the colonisers achieved through warfare, fear and violence during the days of rampant colonialism is still apparent in the way that the global market place works and the environmental problems that result from an economic system put in place by the powerful and maintained for the benefit of the few. Historically it can be seen that industrialisation, which is largely responsible for the causes of climate change, was itself fuelled by colonialism." <http://www.risingtide.nl/colonialism.html>

Contemporary examples of 'carbon colonialism' are not hard to find. According to a 1998 report by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network and the International Trade Information Service, the World Bank has spent 25 times more on fossil fuels than on renewable energy sources since the 1992 Earth Summit, and 90% of these fossil fuel projects will benefit transnational corporations based in the world's seven richest countries while less than 9% of World Bank lending is devoted to the energy needs of the world's poorest two billion people. (See also <www.corpwatch.org/climate/background/2001/cjfactsheet.html>.)

The 1999 Christian Aid report 'Who Owes Who?' calculates the 'carbon debt' owed by the West to Third World nations based on carbon dioxide reduction targets set by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as prevailing estimates of the economic value and costs of emitting greenhouse gases. <http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/carbon-cn.htm>. The carbon debt owed to the Third World is approximately three times the level of the financial debt owed by the Third World.

"Contrary to popular perceptions, some of the poorest countries on earth are also the most economic users of energy", the Christian Aid report says. "Comparing the amount of dollars of economic output generated for every kilogram of fossil fuels used commercially, demonstrates clearly that the least developed countries are nearly twice as efficient as all the industrialised countries combined."

'Who Owes Who?' also challenges the argument of some Western governments that carbon dioxide quotas should be set in proportion to the size of a nation's economy rather than its population. That stance reflects the short-term interests of industrialised countries, the report notes, but "you cannot argue for one person's right - entrenched in an international agreement - to claim a larger share of the world's natural resources than any other."

Carbon 'casino capitalism'

Tackling climate change necessarily involves fighting Western corporate polluters and their political allies, but the raft of proposals under negotiation through the UNFCCC/Kyoto process aim to reinforce corporate power and profits.

Western corporate polluters and their political allies are primarily concerned to avoid domestic emission reductions through a variety of carbon emission trading schemes. The problems with these schemes are summarised by the Climate Justice Network: "In the current global political and economic context exists extremely unequal relationships between countries - due mostly to the ... colonial devastation of many peoples through history. Emissions trading will not exist in a vacuum. It will operate in this system, established through hundreds of years of oppression and inequity. Emissions trading does not challenge this system, it was borne out of it. The financial benefits that developing countries will reap from selling the unused quotas of greenhouse gases they have gained, through not industrialising, will be far smaller than the costs they will incur when there are no cheap credits left to sell and they will have to pay according to the fluctuations of an unstable carbon market. As happens with any other market commodity in today's global economy, the rich and powerful nations of the world will be able to afford to pay the prices for pollution and poor countries won't. The status quo remains. Not only will this happen, but also the rich nations will have no incentive to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at home and climate catastrophe will not be averted. Climate related disasters will increase and it will be the poor that pay for them." (<http://www.risingtide.nl/colonialism.html>)

In a November 2000 paper published by Corporate Europe Observatory, Adam Ma'anit argues, "Like other global financial markets, the emissions market will also feature transactions that are purely speculative. Trading house Mitsubishi, for instance, envisages 'a business in which we purchase emission rights at low prices and sell them at higher prices for profit.' Not only will emissions credits be traded, their derivatives will also constitute a multi-billion-dollar market. Hedge funds will also undoubtedly find a niche, as will speculation in 'futures' and 'options'."

One scheme under negotiation under the UNFCCC/Kyoto umbrella is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), whereby advanced industrial countries can earn carbon credits by investing in non-polluting infrastructure in the Third World. Theoretically, the CDM might reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also promote other environmental values such as biodiversity as well as providing direct social benefits in the Third World such as jobs. In reality, the reverse applies. The purpose of the CDM is to help industrialised countries meet their targets; it is designed to help the rich and not to assist the poor to achieve sustainable development.

The main CDM strategy is afforestation to create carbon ‘sinks’. (This is already being practised by some corporations in anticipation of an international emissions trading scheme; see for example 'CO2lonialism - Norwegian Tree Plantations, Carbon Credits and Land Conflicts in Uganda', a study by Harald Eraker for Norwatch, a Norwegian non-governmental organisation.)

According to the World Rainforest Movement, large-scale tree plantations are commonly a direct cause of deforestation, usurp needed agricultural lands, replace valuable native ecosystems, deplete water resources, worsen inequity in land ownership, increase poverty, lead to evictions of local peoples, and undermine local stewardship practices needed for forest conservation." (<http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr125i.htm>)

Moreover, corporations investing in plantations as a CDM mechanism are doing so in order to gain carbon credits in order to continue emitting greenhouse gases elsewhere. The World Rainforest Movement notes, "A corporation willing to pay for a 'carbon forest' service will be continuing carbon dioxide emissions elsewhere. They will also be supporting the extraction of fossil fuels elsewhere. In both cases there will be affected communities. Among them might be a community in another country living near the polluting industry buying the carbon credits from the forest community. Or there might be an indigenous community - in a third country - affected by oil extraction in its territory. For these two communities affected 'long distance' by the carbon project, carbon forestry projects could well be a 'lose-lose' proposition."

Indigenous peoples declared in the First International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change in France in September 2000, "sinks in the CDM would constitute a world-wide strategy for expropriating our lands and territories and violating our fundamental rights that would culminate in a new form of colonialism".

According to Chee Yoke Ling, an environment representative of the Third World Network, CDM forestry activities could encourage large-scale fast-growing tree plantations which, in turn, "could well mean natural forest clearance, loss of biodiversity, massive use of chemicals and social disruption as local communities and indigenous peoples often live in the forests and other lands targeted for plantations". (www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr125a.htm>)

Various other CDM projects have been proposed for the benefit of multinational corporations, such as genetic engineering in agriculture, or subsiding Western nuclear vendors to build nuclear power plants in the Third World (the 'Chernobyl Development Mechanism'). Another likely outcome is that bilateral "aid" to Third World countries could be made conditional on earning carbon credits for the Western "donor" nation or corporation.

Solutions

Trying to kill the Kyoto Protocol is a gamble on the part of the corporate polluters and their political allies. It's up to us to make them pay the price.

Which way forward? The strategy of watering down the Kyoto Protocol to appease the US is a dead-end strategy. Corporate polluters and their political allies must be fought and defeated, not appeased.

More promising are ongoing struggles such as the folllowing listed by Oilwatch, an international movement against fossil fuel-mining in the tropics  (<www.oilwatch.org.ec>, see also <www.corpwatch.org/climate/background/2001/cjfactsheet.html>):
- halting Shell, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil and other companies' oil extraction in the Niger Delta would protect the human rights and environment of the Ogoni, Ijaw and other indigenous people, while keeping 770 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. In December 1998, Ijaw youth from 40 clans in Nigeria launched Operation Climate Change. They confronted oil companies in the Niger Delta, closed oil wells, extinguished fires that flared 24 hours a day and closed production stations.
- preventing Occidental Petroleum from extracting oil from indigenous U'wa territory in Colombia would protect the U'wa while keeping 154 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.
- halting the UNOCAL-Total-Fina sponsored Yadana gas pipeline in Burma would end associated forced labor and environmental degradation there, while keeping 156 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.
- in Ecuador, the Cofan communities have resisted oil activities since 1969, confronting oil companies, including Texaco of the US, and the Ecuadorian military. The affected areas are part of the Ecuadorian Amazon forest. Peaceful occupation of oil platforms, burning as a last resort, public campaigns, lobbying of the national government and international solidarity have successfully stopped at least 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released. The civil actions led to the following: in 1997 the highly contested and fragile Imuya zone was declared by the national government as perpetually closed to extractive activities; in 1998 the Cofan community closed down the Dureno 1 oil well and this same community is one claimant in a lawsuit aginst Texaco in New York; in September 2000 work by Ecuadorian company Lumbaqui Oil to reopen the Rubi 1 well was stopped - Santa Fe company of the US had in 1998 drilled Rubi 1, causing an explosion and severe contamination of Cofan land, waters, fish, medicinal plants and trees. Santa Fe left the country.

"Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice", a 1999 report by the Transnational Resource and Action Centre and CorpWatch, concludes: "Ultimately, Climate Justice means holding fossil fuel corporations accountable for the central role they play in contributing to global warming. This signifies challenging these companies at every level—from the production and marketing of the fossil fuels themselves, to their underhanded political influence, to their PR prowess, to the unjust "solutions" they propose, to the fossil fuel-based globalization they are driving. Climate Justice means stripping transnational corporations of the tremendous power they hold over our lives, and in its place building democracy at the local, national and international levels."

These projects (and many others) have attracted substantial local opposition and international solidarity. The task is to build and link the various movements and campaigns around the world - hence the importance of the global anti-corporate movement, which has the potential to seriously challenge corporate polluters and corporate tyranny in all its manifestations.

The atmospheric concentration target chosen to ensure climate stabilization and the allocation of responsibilities for meeting it have equity dimensions. They include differential vulnerability, and differential resources and historical responsibility. Parties have to reach agreement on a safe atmospheric concentration level and a fair way of including all parties under it. These are ultimately political questions that must be built upon the scientific foundation which is being increasingly strengthened.

Thankfully not even the Umbrella Group has sought to reopen the question of immediate developing country participation [at the July 2001 UNFCCC conference in Bonn, Germany]. The EU was well aware that concessions to the G77 and China rather than concessions from them were going to be in order at this COP. The scale of the final financial package was not adequate for the tasks of capacity building and adaptation the South faces. But these negotiations have made it clear the South is increasingly assuming the role of both agent and ally in the creation of progressive multilateral environmental governance and resisting being an accessory to Northern appropriation of the global atmospheric commons.

While the remaining rules are being written and the ratification end-game plays out in the North, how should we act in a forward-looking way? The weakness of current operational rules means a greater rate of climate change and greater destruction and suffering to be borne primarily by the South. Effectively, these are concessions to the economic interests of the North. So, as many NGO veterans and parties have pointed out, the fight should be to minimize use of loopholes. We have continued to point to large and early cuts in emissions necessary to reach stabilization at a science-based target of 450 ppm GHG concentrations (CO2 equivalent) or lower. We must not soft-pedal the fact that in quantitative terms the Protocol’s ratification will only be a small start to the deep economic and technological transition needed.

The ongoing equity debate is taking place under the requirements for adequacy of reduction commitments for climate stabilization, sustainable development, and common and differentiated responsibilities. A number of approaches to the climate equity issue have been emerging withing this context as a way to incorporate developing countries into an eventual global trading system that goes beyond the CDM. These include, among others, the Brazilian proposal based on cumulative contributions to a temperature change constraint, a transition to equal per-capita emissions allocations under climate stablization emissions paths, standards for national carbon intensity improvements starting from current levels and ecological debt. In exploring these approaches, it is important to recognize the South may not accept a scheme that continues to ensure greater wealth confers greater access to the atmosphere.

This historic gap between rich and poor must be closed on a rapid and practical timetable. Moreover, given the sustainability mandate for operationalizing the UNFCCC, steps should be taken to ensure basic human needs (including food, health, clean water and education) are met, human capacities are developed, indigenous communities are protected, sustainable livelihoods are promoted and public empowerment is strengthened.

Finally, there has to be an intimate link between the UNFCCC process and grassroots movements for global environmental justice. Climate equity is central to that link. The Protocol negotiations are essential but not sufficient to avert the looming climate crisis. The wider public must become engaged at all levels. There is a need to be clear about the rate atmospheric space is filling and begin to talk honestly about how it should be preserved and its access shared. These reflections must be embedded within the larger discourses on environmental justice and sustainable development.

It is clear the Kyoto Protocol has limitations. Nevertheless, in the shadows of Seattle and Genoa, the UNFCCC - if it can seriously address the equity question - can point to an acceptable dimension of globalization. Its inclusive and multilateral negotiating processes offer a counter-example which could inform and connect with other debates on global environmental issues.

The news have reached the entire world: the Kyoto Protocol has been saved! In spite of this information being formally true, it hides the fact that this does not mean that the planet's climate has been saved, which is the real issue at stake. On the contrary, as it now stands, while not solving the problem it was intended to address, the Kyoto Protocol will impose further impacts on local people through the implementation of carbon sink projects.

Though anticipated, it is sad to confirm that the Bonn meeting of the Convention on Climate Change was more focused on "sinks" than on "sources" of greenhouse gases. This means that instead of seeking means by which to reduce the use of fossil fuels - coal, petroleum and natural gas - which are at the root of the greenhouse effect, climate negociators focused instead on means to avoid commitments on fossil-fuel emission reductions.

The meeting was held in a context where the United States - responsible for 25% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions - publicly stated that it refused to comply with the commitments agreed to in Kyoto in 1997. Such context facilitated arm-twisting by a major polluter such as Japan, which was finally instrumental in reaching an agreement to "save" the protocol. The solution to "save" it was the inclusion of tree plantations as carbon sinks.

Climate negociators chose to ignore the increasing number of scientific studies which question the capacity of tree plantations to be a long-term solution to climate change. They also chose to ignore that this mechanism will in fact result in a net increase of fossil-fuel emissions in the North. And they also opted to ignore the impacts that large-scale tree plantations have on people and the environment.

As a result, polluters will now have a licence to pollute under the guise of implementing plantation projects to act as "sinks" for their emissions. Unless local opposition prevents them from doing so, most of these plantations will be implemented in the South, where trees grow much faster than in the North, thus being more "efficient" for carbon sequestration. At the same time, they will be much cheaper than in industrialized countries - where labour and land are more expensive - and will receive all the necessary support from Southern governments - including repression of local opposition - desperate to accept any investment which may leave some - however little - money in the country.

To understand the threat that this will mean to people, soils, water and biodiversity, it is necessary to realize that this "solution" may result - to make theoretically sense from a climate perspective - in hundreds of millions of hectares of fertile land being converted to large-scale plantations of fast growing species such as eucalyptus. In the South, those lands are already occupied by people, who depend on them for their subsistence. Those people's lands are therefore now under the threat of appropriation to make way to plantations. The areas to be occupied by these carbon garbage dumps host much of the world's biodiversity, much of which could be wiped out by large-scale monoculture plantations. At the same time, these would deplete water resources and result in dramatic changes in the soils where they are implemented.

In sum, with their decision to include plantations as carbon sinks, climate negotiators have not only not addressed the problem they were meant to address - climate change - but have added new problems to millions of people who will now be facing the appropriation of their lands and resources for conversion to Northern carbon garbage dumps. The price for "saving" the process has clearly been too high and the inclusion of sinks has sunk the Kyoto Protocol and the hopes it had raised. It is now up to people and organizations really concerned with the Earth's future to stop the implementation of this false solution and to force governments to address seriously the issue of global climate change.

NGOs and scientists, which form the backbone of the world's civil society, have had a role in the global warming issue from the very beginning — first in raising public awareness of the gravity of the problem, and, early in the negotiations, in keeping the issue in focus. At the first conference of parties (COP) of the UNFCCC in Berlin in 1995, NGOs from the North and South came together under a coalition called the Climate Action Network (CAN), to dispel the notion of large developing countries being bottlenecks for solving the climate problem. A 200-people strong CAN backed the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation, in opposing a German proposal that implicated developing countries by looking only at future emission projections, completely ignoring the past and current emissions of industrialised countries. The remarkable consolidation of NGO opinion at Berlin forced German environment minister Angela Merkel to withdraw the proposal.

Post-Berlin, however, as the climate issue got more and more entrenched in political and scientific complexities, the role of civil society has become increasingly blurred. Many Northern NGOs have fallen victim to the web of scientific complexities spun by industrialised countries unwilling to take on reduction commitments, and lost sight of their original goal in a maze of baselines, percentage cuts, sinks, trading and a whole lot of other creative diversions. North-South equity, the mainstay of NGO concerns during the UN Convention on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, has become secondary. Northern NGOS dominate the CAN coalition, and most representatives from the developing world have completely failed to bring basic Southern concerns onto CAN's agenda. They have been happy to serve as consenting voices to the Northern NGO agenda.

At COP-3 in Kyoto in 1997, and also at COP-4 in Buenos Aires the following year, most CAN members fell victim to the Stockholm syndrome, once the US announced that it would not take on reduction targets unless it had participation from key developing countries. As the US held the negotiators hostage, the goal of the convention suddenly became US ratification rather than climate change mitigation. NGOs from the US started pushing for 'voluntary' developing country participation as the only "pragmatic" way of getting the US on board. At COP-4, some NGOs from the North came out in open support for the Argentine decision to take on voluntary commitments. A press release issued by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace International welcomed the move, and warned that they will be "watching to ensure that it (Argentina) brings forward an environment-friendly target."

As at the Seattle demonstrations during the World Trade Organisation's 1999 ministerial meeting, these Northern groups seem only too willing to abandon principles and expect developing countries to give up too much of their sovereignty to deal with cross-border environmental problems while allowing industrialised countries to jealously preserve theirs. To them, concepts such as social justice and equity seem to have become anachronistic as they settle down to accept a world where economic might is right.