International

By Flint Duxfield from Aid/Watch in collaboration with Adam Wolfenden from the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET)

As the urgency of action on climate change becomes increasingly apparent, attention must be given to the interlinkages between global warming and global trade, which plays a significant role in the production of greenhouse gases. In countries such as Australia, global trade accounts for up to 40% of greenhouse gas emissions1. Moreover, increasing trade liberalisation, promoted by institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank has meant that trade-related transport emissions are growing faster than emissions from any other sector2.

At the same time, governments’ efforts to combat global warming are increasingly restricted by a raft of multilateral trade rules and free trade agreements which constrain their ability to introduce the policies and technologies necessary to effectively reduce emissions.

By Lucy Michaels
It’s easy to switch off when you hear another story of just how bad the situation in the Middle East is. News from this part of the world is usually bad and rarely hopeful yet it often has global ramifications. Well, as you probably imagined, it can still get worse. The two burning issues of our time meet in this little corner of the Eastern Mediterranean and the result is not pretty.

By Emma Brindal, Climate Justice Co-ordinator, Friends of the Earth Australia

Climate change impacts are already dangerous for many of the world’s people and highlight the necessity of rapidly moving away from dependence on coal and other fossil fuels. The fact that impacts are now happening at a much faster rate and at lower temperatures than predicted makes this action all the more urgent.

By Kevin Smith

Carbon trading and offsets distract attention from the wider, systemic changes and collective political action that needs to be taken in the transition to a low-carbon economy. Promoting more effective and empowering approaches to climate change involves moving away from the blinkered reductionism of free-market dogma, the false economy of supposed quick fixes, the short-term self interest of big business.

THE CONCEPT THAT underpins the whole system of carbon trading and offsetting is that a ton of carbon here is exactly the same as a ton of carbon there. That is, if its cheaper to reduce emissions in India than it is in the UK, then you can achieve the same climate benefit in a more cost-effective manner by making the reduction in India.

But, the seductive simplicity of this concept is based on collapsing a whole series of important considerations, such as land rights, North-South inequalities, local struggles, corporate power and colonial history, into the single question of cost-effectiveness. The mechanisms of emissions trading and offsetting represent a reductionist approach to climate change that negates complex variables in favour of cost-effectiveness.