Re-posted from All Voices
By AkanimoReports

ENVIRONMENTAL rights advocacy groups in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s main oil and gas region, have joined Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) in expressing strong concerns over the stated agenda of the United States and a number of other developed countries at the forthcoming United Nations climate talks in Durban, South Africa, from November 28 to December 9.

Co-ordinator of the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), Mr. Patrick Naagbanton, told AkanimoReports in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, yesterday that the global grassroots environmental federation is calling on other governments to stop these countries from undermining the globally-agreed framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to ensure stronger targets for legally binding emissions cuts in line with science and equity.

The climate talks have been deadlocked since the beginning of the decade because of the failure of developed countries – those historically responsible for the bulk of the climate-changing emissions – to deliver on their moral and legal obligations for climate action.

Full article

photo credit: Kendra E. Thornbury
http://www.sweetcrudemovie.com/photoGallery.php?SECTION=1&SHOW_GALLERY=YES&DB_OFFSET=15

Re-posted from Climate Connections

by Global Justice Ecology Project | November 17, 2011

“No REDD Papers, Volume I is a must read for all who seek to know the truth about this mercantilist tool called REDD. It is also highly recommended for those who believe that policies to fight the current climate chaos must see the people and Mother Earth, and not merely see trees as commodities for cash and carbon speculation.”

—Nnimmo Bassey, Alternative Nobel Prize Laureate, Executive Director of Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Chair of Friends of the Earth International and poet

NoReddPapers_Download

NoReddPapers_Download_spreads

Global Justice Ecology Project has just published the No REDD Papers, Volume 1. To download it, click on one of the links above. The top link will download the booklet with one page per sheet of paper; the bottom link will download the booklet with 2 pages, side by side, per piece of paper.

To download the beautiful poster, click here: NO REDD_Poster-Cartel

Your future, our climate and Indigenous Peoples are threatened by a devious false solution to climate change called REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Unfortunately, industrialized countries, oil companies and other climate criminals that are trashing the planet have absolutely no intention of drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions which is necessary to truly address climate change.
Instead, along with the World Bank and the United Nations, they are concocting this REDD scheme to take over the forests of the world as supposed sponges for their pollution. In the process, they are evicting the very people who have conserved those forests for millennia. REDD may be the biggest land grab of all time, cause genocide and replace real forests with massive industrial tree plantations that could even include genetically engineered trees. Read this book so together we can resist this new form of colonialism and privatization of the air we breathe, and defend the trees and forests that we love.

image: poster art by Santiago Amengod, design by Melanie Cervantes
image source: Climate Connections, Global Justice Equality Project

OCCUPY PROTESTS: WE’LL BACK NIGERIANS, SAYS FoEI
Lagos : Nigeria | Nov 17, 2011
Re-posted from AkanimoReports

FRIENDS of the Earth International (FOEI), a global federation of environmental rights advocacy groups, has said that they will stand by the Nigerian people to protest against any form of continued socio-economic, political and environmental injustice inline with the Occupy protests in some parts of the world. The global group which is Chaired by Nigeria’s Nnimmo Bassey, told AkanimoReports on Thursday in a telephone interview that they will rally around citizen groups anywhere in the world rising against any form of injustice. He was spoke just as the group in a statement pointed out that they were in support of the Occupy protests and called for environmental activists and organizations around the world to join the movement to demand radical system change.

FoEI with member groups in 76 countries, said at a time when many of the camps are being shut down by police, ”we offer our solidarity and our support, and we join this movement wholeheartedly”, adding, ”to save our communities and our environment, we stand united in calling for a profound transformation of the current globalized political economic system”.

The grassroots organization believes that tackling excessive corporate power and promoting economic justice are key to solving the environmental crisis, including the climate crisis.

According to Bassey, ”we are one with those who are raising and will raise their voices against corporate greed and who are speaking and will speak out for social equity and real solutions to the crises we face”

Full article

photo: Nnimmo Bassey, Chair Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth International from Radio Nederland Wereldomroep’s photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rnw/4190503174/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Interview by Pambazuka News

Re-posted from LINKS

November 2, 2011 — It’s unlikely there will be “an equitable outcome” from the COP17 climate talks, to be held in Durban in December 2011, but it will be “a great moment to intensify campaigns against the business-as-usual manner” in which climate negotiations have been conducted so far, Friends of the Earth International’s Nnimmo Bassey told Pambazuka News.

* * *

Pambazuka News: What role will Environmental Rights Action (ERA) and Friends of the Earth International be playing at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP17) in Durban? What will you be pushing for?

Nnimmo Bassey: While there is a generally low level of expectation from the Durban Conference of the Parties (COP17), we see it as a great moment to stand with impacted peoples and the environmental justice movement and call for a climate tackling regime that understands the depth of the crises and the fact that the impacts are already manifesting. We will push for polluting countries to cut emissions at the source and not through offsets and related market mechanisms that help polluters profit from the damage they do. We will push for legally binding emissions reduction targets to ensure that temperature increase is kept below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. ERA will demand the recognition and payment of the accumulated climate debt due to centuries of exploitation and colonisation of the atmosphere.

Friends of the Earth International will particularly bring to light the negative impacts of carbon markets, dirty energy, dams, agrofuels, plantations/industrial agriculture – all funded or potentially fundable through the carbon markets. We will also highlight land grabs and related issues. Details of our full focus are still being fine-tuned. As you know, we have member groups in 76 countries and each of these is autonomous so we invest time and energy in consultations. You will hear of our detailed plans once they are ready.

Judging from the outcome of the COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico, obtaining a multilateral agreement through which those most to blame for causing climate change take responsibility for the damage they are causing to those most affected by climate change, is unlikely to happen at COP17 in Durban, South Africa. But even though this is expected to be the case, why is the Durban event still important for climate justice activists?

You are right to say that we may not expect an equitable outcome from Durban. Nevertheless, Durban will be a great moment to intensify campaigns against the business-as-usual manner [in which] the negotiations have been conducted. Durban has a rich history that will inspire the climate justice movement to get stronger. Remember that Gandhi’s non-violent resistance was more or less birthed in Durban. Some of the most intense organising against apartheid also occurred in Durban. Currently, Durban is the hub of the environmental justice activism in South Africa. This has not occurred accidentally. Durban has some of the most polluted neighbourhoods in the country, with highly polluting refineries and chemical factories located there.

The building rage on the streets of Durban will inspire the climate justice movement. For me, the need to resist the planned offshore exploration for crude oil off the coast of Durban, an act that is bound to rub salt in raw injuries, holds an additional pull.

Hypothetically speaking, what in your mind would be the key aspects of a just global climate deal and why?

Getting polluters to accept to cut emissions at source and to the extent required by science to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. A regime of voluntary targets would simply translate to roasting Africa and sinking the small island states.

Full article

image: Nnimmo Bassey (centre). Photo: Right Livelihood Award Foundation.

Re-posted from AFP– Oct 24, 2011

YENAGOA, Nigeria — A Nigerian environmental group on Monday claimed an oil spill from a pipeline operated by Italian firm ENI had badly polluted an area in the south of Africa’s largest oil producer.

The spill which reportedly occurred on September 27 is said to have polluted the swamps of the Ikeinghenbiri area of Bayelsa state in the main oil-producing Niger Delta region.

“The volume of the spill is very high and in some cases it is difficult to separate the crude from the water,” Environmental Rights Action field monitor Morris Alagoa told AFP a day after he visited the village.

The group’s executive director, who is also chairman of Friends of the Earth International, Nnimmo Bassey, said, “I understand it’s a very severe spill.”

Alagoa said he found that “in some places the whole length of the swamp is black (with oil).”

Full article

Interview: Johannes Beck (stf)
Editor: Sarah Steffen

Re-posted from Deutsche Welle

 Nnimmo Bassey (right) with Johannes Beck, DW’s head of the Portuguese for Africa department

10/12/11

International head of Friends of the Earth, Nnimmo Bassey, is a special guest at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. The Nigerian campaigner spoke to DW about the link between literacy and environmental protection.

For years, Nnimmo Bassey has been fighting against the oil industry’s pollution in the Nile Delta. Broken pipelines, illegal small refineries and the burning of excess gas have caused an ecological disaster. According to Bassey’s organization “Environmental Rights Action,” the Nigerian chapter of Friends of the Earth, a proper cleanup would cost $100 million.

Bassey, a laureate of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), spoke to the head of DW’s Portuguese for Africa department, Johannes Beck, at the Frankfurt Book Fair’s LitCam conference. This year’s focus is on how education can contribute to sustainable economic growth. To hear the full interview, click the link below.

Deutsche Welle: Today we’ve heard how literacy can contribute to climate protection. Yet if we look at industrialized countries, we see that many have a high literacy level – for example Germany – but we still cause a lot of carbon dioxide emissions. What do we need?

Nnimmo Bassey: The industrialized world has to a large extent – and I say this with due respect – lost the connection with nature. I mean, when was the last time you looked at a night sky to see the stars? If you are in a city with so much electric light everywhere you almost don’t know what a beautiful night sky looks like. And this is [just] a small thing.

We actually require taking this literacy to the popular level. Our scientists have to be retrained to communicate their work in a popular way, to speak the language that the people on the street can understand. Because when you keep on producing statistics and things that sound like flying above people’s heads, this is okay as a scientific finding, but is has nothing to do with me. People want what they can relate to, what they can understand.

You said industrialized countries have lost their connection to nature. But when I travel to Latin America, Africa or Asia, I feel that at least in the big cities of the developing world, people also have a very fragile connection to nature. Is it really only a problem for industrialized countries?

I would agree with this. We need a worldwide reconnection, but we must also not forget the historical basis of the conflict and challenge we are facing. When scientists tell us that 80 percent of the atmospheric space for carbon has been taken, this was not done by the developing countries.

We know some really rich polluting entities of the world, which have taken off and colonized the atmosphere by themselves. They don’t want to negotiate how the remaining 20 percent can be shared.

They don’t really care what happens the day after, because they have better resilience and better capability to withstand the storms of life that most inevitably will confront all of us.

But again, when we make some broad statements, we have to look at details. We have the global north in the south; we have the global south in the north. Because there are very rich people in poor countries who live very wasteful lives and who are creating as much damage as anybody else.

I’m personally engaged and committed to engage in joining people across the world to confront power, because corporate power has captured public structures across the world.

Full text interview

Full audio interview