Whose CARBON hypocrisy?
western civil society, it seems, has decided to go global and represent the world without any effort to understand what constitutes democracy and fairness from the point of view of poorer countries. Several Northern groups are now urging their governments to use their influence on international financial institutions, and stop funding for fossil fuel projects in the South as a means of climate change mitigation. A petition to this effect, was submitted by the Washington dc -based World Resources Institute ( wri ) to the Group of 8 ( g8 ) industrialised countries at their annual summit held this July in Okinawa, Japan. wri urged the countries "not to undermine their (viz. industrialised countries') commitments to reduce the threat of global climate change by continuing to finance new projects that increase greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries ' (emphasis added).
To Southern groups familiar with the delicate and often duplicitous politics of international climate change negotiations and the resulting Kyoto Protocol, this position is an anomaly. Industrialised countries do have commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ( ghg ), but these are industrialised country commitments presumably to be met by them domestically . The protocol certainly does not have any provision for the g 8 to force developing countries to take on ghg reduction activities by making this conditional for energy loans.
If g 8 countries accept the wri demand they will not be doing so with any powers vested in them by the Kyoto Protocol, as the wri seems to suggest. In fact, they will only be using financial muscle against weaker countries. Any section of the global civil society interested in global democracy should find the use of financial clout reprehensible for more than one reason.
To begin with, of course, developing countries do not have commitments under the Kyoto Protocol . They have contributed little to the global warming problem historically, and need time, and