PRESS RELEASE:
BAKU, AZERBAIJAN, 13 NOV 24 – The opening day of COP29 saw the undemocratic gavelling through of carbon markets, once again enshrining the interests of Big Polluters over people. Carbon markets are not climate finance; they are a gift to the fossil fuel industry to continue polluting while leaving the door wide open for rampant proliferation of dangerous and unscientific false solutions such as geoengineering, ‘offsetting’ and carbon capture.
Rich countries and big polluting industries continue to funnel money in to wars, genocide and “fixes” that will allow them to keep their extractive economic systems going without delivering on the urgent climate finance for the Global South countries. These schemes only perpetuate neocolonial patterns of extractivism, with Global South and Indigenous communities first and foremost impacted.
Members of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice put the spotlight on the polluters’ attempt to derail climate action.
“Full operationalisation of carbon markets was approved on the first day of COP29, sending a disappointing message to the world, with lack of democratic process enabling parties to discuss. Indigenous Peoples and communities in the South will not be the ones celebrating this event – it will be the Big Polluters and rich countries, the same ones who spend billions in genocide and false solutions instead of the climate finance needed for a Just Transition and Loss and Damage in the Global South. Carbon markets are not climate finance – this is a lie, this is a false solution. This will not support the real solutions from communities in the South, the real proven cost effective community centred solutions are being increasingly swept aside in favour of these business driven schemes.
COP16 in Cali took place a few weeks ago – we have pushed for the confluence of biodiversity and climate agendas for years, but the way it is now happening is only in favour of big polluters. We are seeing the same false solutions, at the profit of industries and at the expense of communities. Only the last 2 days of COP16 were given to the discussions of finance – the GN continues to evade responsibility for their climate debt.”
Tatiana Rodríguez Maldonado, CENSAT Agua Viva / Friends of the Earth Colombia
“We work for the inherent and collective rights of IP and the dignity of IP throughout the world. The unprecedented bypass of procedure in this COP29 demonstrates a desperate attempt to rush more carbon markets, offsets, removals that have resulted in IP rights violation, land grabs, and human impacts. Climate change cannot be changed from a system that facilitates growth and the profit of corporations. These false solutions do not cut carbon emissions at source, they will continue to profit the world’s largest polluters whilst continuing to sidetrack the much needed emission reductions. We don’t want to see this as the continuation of colonisation towards a termination agenda of IP rights. Mother Earth is not a commodity, she is not for sale.”
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network
“We must call out these FS wherever they show up. One of them is CCS, there is no evidence that CCS can work, yet the rush for financing these technologies continues. These inequitable solutions like CCS and geoengineering exclude the leadership of young people especially those on the frontlines of climate change, facing the worst impacts. We must not allow genuine measures like climate finance to be co-opted by these schemes. There will not be a magical technological solution that means we can continue business as usual.”
Dylan Hamilton, Alliance of Non-Governmental Radical Youth
“I often get asked – how do you spot false solutions? There are so many benchmarks. Here is one simple example: for the last decades carbon markets have been pushed and rolled out, has there been any real and lasting emission reductions? No? Then why do we gavel them through on the first day of COP? There is a very simple way to spot false solutions, and that is to trace any scheme or proposal to its source. Spoiler alert, if those that are pushing these schemes are the same actors that have been fueling climate change whilst knowing for half a century of the harm it would cause, then these so-called solutions are not solutions. These BigPolluters are only about one thing – protecting their own profit. This is why they think nothing of continuing to fuel a genocide, or violating Indigenous Peoples rights.
Yet it doesn’t have to be this way – there are real, proven, cost effective solutions that respect communities rights and the world we live in. We must look beyond these halls, reject these dangerous distractions, and finally and urgently embrace real solutions.”
Rachel Rose Jackson, Corporate Accountability, member of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice
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