FRIDAY FILE - The eighteenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP18) took place from November 26 to December 8, 2012 in Doha, Qatar.
AWID spoke to anthropologist Iara Pietricovsky from Instituto de Estudios Socio-económicos del Brasil (Brazilian Socioeconomic Studies Institute) and Marcela Ballara from the International Council on Adult Education (ICAE), based in Uruguay, to get their views on the meeting.
By Gabriela De Cicco*
A road to disappointment
Feminist, environmentalist and other social movement activists agree that no progress was made in Doha and that once again the lobby by large corporations won, as no structural decisions were made about climate change.
One of the most problematic issues during the negotiations was the “common but differentiated responsibility” (CBDR) defined in the 1992 Rio Declaration as follows, “States shall cooperate in a spirit of global partnership to conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth's ecosystem. In view of the different contributions to global environmental degradation, States have common but differentiated responsibilities. The developed countries acknowledge the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit to sustainable development in view of the pressures their societies place on the global environment and of the technologies and financial resources they command”.
COP 18 managed to extend the Kyoto Protocol for eight more years, but with the withdrawal of a number of essential States, some with among the highest global carbon emission rates including, Russia, Japan and Canada (the US never signed up to the Protocol), because they wanted changes to the concept of CBDR.
According to Iara Pietricovsky financing was another complex issue, she recalls the Cancun COP (2010) where a Fund for Climate Change was created but says that in reality not enough money has been committed to promote the strong mitigation or adaptation actions needed to provide concrete answers to climate change. She says that there is a strong debate happening (and can be linked to Rio+20) around financing that relates to the privatization of multilateral institutions like the UN. One of the modalities contemplated for funding is to approach the private sector as a new way of fundraising, to attract new money. But this means mega corporations will enter multilateral processes where governments are trying to reach joint agreements to balance the forces on the planet and opening those spaces to private corporative demands and visions, which will raise serious problems for democracy and independence.
At Rio+20 privatization was raised together with the notion of the green economy. According to Pietricovsky, “This is a problematic notion that attempts to relate to an existing development model without changing anything, just promoting a green revolution, maximizing technologies that follow the logic of the system and thus perpetuating differences and inequalities, and concentrating processes and powers in the hands of a few powerful corporations or national States that can articulate their power with those corporations.”
Women’s Rights
Women’s rights issues were also complicated in Doha and the space a difficult one to navigate, even in local mobilization, because Pietricovsky, says “ It’s an Arab country, where women’s issues are already a difficult discussion”. In addition, “possibly as a by-product of Rio +20, it became evident that we are moving backwards in terms of rights. All the issues that are very important, like women’s human rights or sexual health and reproductive rights and abortion, that apparently have nothing to do with climate change [according to the Rio+20 outcome document] but that actually do, that are part of women’s claim to participate and be involved in the solutions coming out of public policies that fund effective changes including for climate change. Rights are being challenged as obstacles to capital reproduction, and women are the first to be affected by this, because it is women who are deprived of their rights that are the easiest to control, to place in situations of over-work and exploitation. And this happens because in many societies we still don’t own our own bodies. It is like a cycle that repeats itself, and is restricting the rights we have secured up to now.”
Marcela Ballara agrees that the UNFCCC process is complicated, “It is different from other conferences. During the year, UNFCCC schedules meetings on different topics that are part of the Conference process itself, and that take place in different countries. It is hard for civil society to participate in many of these due to lack of funding, and this is turn has huge implications for lobbying.”
Gender balance
During COP18, different women’s groups organized actions like “Not in my name”, urging States to take immediate measures to provide practical solutions to climate change related problems. This resulted in a joint statement declaring that the COP had no legitimacy to speak on behalf of the people of the world unless the Parties made real progress toward climate solutions. Also, the Women and Gender constituency organized a daily morning caucus to share information on women’s rights and climate change.
One of the achievements of COP18 was the acknowledgement of the importance of women’s participation in climate change policies. Decision L.36 was adopted, which aims at promoting “gender balance” and improving women’s participation in UNFCCC negotiations well as promoting a gender balance in all UNFCCC bodies. According to former Irish President and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson “A gender balance at the UNFCCC will improve the decision-making process at future COPs, make climate policies more effective by being more gender-aware and will lead to better protection of those who are most vulnerable to climate change".
For Ballara, the proposed gender balance means that “Women will no longer be considered an auxiliary addendum to the UNFCCC goals, and in this context the Secretariat committed to organize a workshop at COP19 to discuss gender sensitive polices and strategies to promote gender equality in decision-making around climate change. But, this will depend on the lobbying that the Women and the Gender Constituency continue to do, and particularly on the pressure that women’s organizations put on their governments in each country to include their demands in the discussions around climate change policies and plans of action at the local or national level. I think this latter process is much more effective to respond to what women are experiencing than participation at the UNFCCC.”
And while the decision to include equal numbers of women in delegations and bodies is welcome, the last minute change in language, replacing gender equality with gender balance, was yet another concession women had to accept. Pietricovsky is skeptical, equating the decision as a mirage in the desert, “if we look closely, women are not and do not decide, because the Vatican and conservative forces prevent governments from handling the situation without religious contexts. I've been hearing ‘gender balance’ since 1992, it is not new. But in reality it does not become public policy, or produce a stimulus for governments to have internal debates or producing public policy, fundraising and policy development in accordance with the rights assigned from the Beijing Conference.”
A passionate youth movement
WEDO reported, thepower and passion of the youth movement as one of the most promising aspects of COP18, “…in the face of turbulent political strife and economic hardships across the globe, and a real lack of any ambition and movement in this process, youth movements from around the world come back with even greater passion, conviction, knowledge and ambition- to push governments to take responsibility for their future and the future of all generations to come.” The Youth Gender Working Group emphasized issues like the right to financing and technology, how disasters impact women, LGBT communities, sexual health and reproductive rights. WEDO describes the work done during the two weeks of the meeting as that of “A passionate and informed generation who understands that gender equality is a prerequisite for sustainable development- they have the power to move the world”.
Post 2015 Development Agenda
With a new Post-2015 global development agenda currently being defined[1], for when the Millennium Development Goals come to an end, we asked about the connections between the results of the Doha conference and the post-2015 agenda. According to Ballara, “The post-2015 process needs to include among its objectives, analyzing climate change and building on the agreed proposals from Doha and the previous UNFCCC with realistic goals that take into account the interests of women, men, youth and elders living in the countries that are most affected by climate change, including Small Islands.”
Pietricovsky thinks, “The post-2015 discussion has to do with downsizing institutions, with their modus operandi, representation, participation, global wealth distribution, inequality, the role of the corporate sector, public powers, national states, accountability and who responds to whom. The issue of progressive and regressive taxes has important implications for national States that need to collect money to implement public policies for the realization of rights. So all those issues are included in the post-2015 but each stakeholder is playing its own game, with their own goals and concepts they have developed.”
--
[1] For additional information read AWID Friday Files, The Post 2015 Development Agenda – What it Means and How to Get Involved and The UN Post-2015 Development Agenda – A Critical Analysis
*Thanks to Alejandra Scampini and Ana Inés Abelenda for their contributions