To: Retort From: TS/AT/PB [In the aftermath of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit (COP15), an analysis by Tim Simons & Ali Tonak, and two ripostes, by Tord Björk (via RS) and by Patrick Bond. IB] The Dead End of Climate Justice Tim Simons & Ali Tonak 8.i.10 On the occasion of its ten-year anniversary, the antiglobalization movement has been brought out of its slumber. This is to be expected, as anniversaries and nostalgia often trump the here and now in political action. What is troublesome, though, is not the celebration of a historical moment but the attempted resurrection of this movement, known by some as the Global Justice Movement, under the banner of Climate Justice. If only regenerating the zeitgeist of a radical moment was as simple as substituting 'Climate' for 'Global'; if only movements appeared with such eas! In fact, this strategy, pursued to its fullest extent in Copenhagen during the UN COP15 Climate Change Summit, is proving more damaging than useful to those of us who are, and have been for the past decade, actively antagonistic to capitalism and its overarching global structures. Here, we will attempt to illustrate some of the problematic aspects of the troubled rebranding of a praxis particular to a decade past. Namely, we will address the following: the financialization of nature and the indirect reliance on markets and monetary solutions as catalysts for structural change, the obfuscation of internal class antagonisms within states of the Global South in favor of simplistic North-South dichotomies, and the pacification of militant action resulting from an alliance forged with transnational NGOs and reformist environmental groups who have been given minimal access to the halls of power in exchange for their successful policing of the movement. Many of these problematic aspects of the movement’s rebranding became apparent in Copenhagen during the main, high-profile intellectual event that was organized by Climate Justice Action (CJA) on December 14 . CJA is a new alliance formed among (but of course not limited to) some of the Climate Camp activists from the UK, parts of the Interventionist Left from Germany, non-violent civil disobedience activists from the US and the Negrist Disobbedienti from Italy. The event, which took place in the "freetown" of Christiania, consisted of the usual suspects: Naomi Klein, Michael Hardt, and CJA spokesperson Tadzio Mueller, and it was MCed by non-violent activist guru Lisa Fithian. In their shared political analysis, all of the speakers emphasized the rebirth of the anti-globalization movement. But an uncomfortable contradiction was overarching: while the speakers sought to underscore the continuity with the decade past, they also presented this summit as different, in that those who came to protest were to be one with a summit of world nations and accredited NGOs, instead of presenting a radical critique and alternative force. Ecology as Economy and Nature as Investment Capital "What's important about the discourse that is so powerful, coming from the Global South right now, about climate debt, is that we know that economic debt is a tool of domination and enforcement. It is how our governments impose their neoliberal capitalist policies around the world, so for the Global South to come to the table and say, 'Wait a minute, we are the creditors and you are the debtors, you owe us a huge debt' creates an equalizing dynamic in the negotiations." Let's look at this contemporary notion of debt, highlighted by Naomi Klein as the principal avenue of struggle for the emerging climate justice movement. A decade ago, the issue of debt incurred through loans taken out from the IMF and World Bank was an integral part of the antiglobalization movement's analysis and demand to "Drop the Debt." Now, some of that era’s more prominent organizers and thinkers are presenting something deemed analogous and termed 'climate debt'. The claim is simple: most of the greenhouse gases have historically been produced by wealthier industrial nations and since those in the Global South will feel most of its devastating environmental effects, those countries that created the problem owe the latter some amount of monetary reparations. The idea of climate debt, however, poses two large problems. First, while "Drop the Debt!" was one of the slogans of the antiglobalization movement, the analysis behind it was much more developed. Within the movement everyone recognized debt as a tool of capital for implementing neoliberal structural adjustment programs. Under pressure from piling debt, governments were forced to accept privatization programs and severe austerity regimes that further exposed local economies to the ravages of transnational capital. The idea was that by eliminating this debt, one would not only stop privatization (or at least its primary enabling mechanism) but also open up political space for local social movements to take advantage of. Yet something serious is overlooked in this rhetorical transfer of the concept of debt from the era of globalization to that of climate change. Contemporary demands for reparations justified by the notion of climate debt open a dangerous door to increased green capitalist investment in the Global South. This stands in contrast to the antiglobalization movement’s attempts to limit transnational capital’s advances in these same areas of the world through the elimination of neoliberal debt. The recent emergence of a highly lucrative market formed around climate, and around carbon in particular cannot be overlooked when we attempt to understand the implications of climate reparations demands. While carbon exchanges are the most blatant form of this emerging green capitalist paradigm, value is being reassigned within many existing commodity markets based on their supposed impact on the climate. Everything from energy to agriculture, from cleaning products to electronics, and especially everything within the biosphere, is being incorporated into this regime of climate markets. One can only imagine the immense possibilities for speculation and financialization in these markets as the green bubble continues to grow. The foreign aid and investment (i.e. development) that will flow into countries of the Global South as a result of climate debt reparations will have the effect of directly subsidizing those who seek to profit off of and monopolize these emerging climate markets. At the Klimaforum, the alternative forum designed to counter the UN summit, numerous panels presented the material effects that would result from a COP15 agreement. In one session on climate change and agricultural policies in Africa, members of the Africa Biodiversity Network outlined how governments on the continent were enclosing communally owned land, labeling it marginal and selling it to companies under Clean Development Mechanisms (CDMs) for biofuel cultivation. CDMs were one of the Kyoto Protocol's arrangements for attracting foreign investment into the Global South under the guise of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. These sorts of green capitalist projects will continue to proliferate across the globe in conjunction with aid given under the logic of climate debt and will help to initiate a new round of capitalist development and accumulation, displacing more people in the Global South and leading to detrimental impacts on ecosystems worldwide. Second and perhaps more importantly, “Climate Debt” perpetuates a system that assigns economic and financial value to the biosphere, ecosystems and in this case a molecule of CO2 (which, in reductionist science, readily translates into degrees Celsius). “Climate Debt” is indeed an "equalizing dynamic", as it infects relations between the Global North and South with the same logic of commodification that is central to those markets on which carbon is traded upon. In Copenhagen, that speculation on the value of CO2 preoccupied governments, NGOs, corporations and many of the activists organizing the protests. Advertisements for the windmill company Vestas dominated the metro line in Copenhagen leading to the Bella Center. After asserting that the time for action is now, they read "We must find a price for CO2". Everyone from Vestas to the Sudanese government to large NGOs agree on this fundamental principle: that the destruction of nature and its consequences for humans can be remedied through financial markets and trade deals and that monetary value can be assigned to ecosystems. This continued path towards further commodification of nature and climate debt-driven capitalist development runs entirely antithetical to the antiglobalization movement that placed at its heart the conviction that "the world is not for sale!" The Inside in the Outside One of the banners and chants that took place during the CJA-organized Reclaim Power demonstration on December 16 was "Whose summit? Our Summit!". This confused paradigm was omnipresent in the first transnational rendezvous of the Climate Justice Movement. Klein depicted her vision of the street movements’ relationship to those in power during her speech in Christiania as follows: "It's nothing like Seattle, there are government delegations that are thinking about joining you. If this turns into a riot, it’s gonna be a riot. We know this story. I'm not saying it's not an interesting story, but it is what it is. It's only one story. It will turn into that. So I understand the question about how do we take care of each other but I disagree that that means fighting the cops. Never in my life have I ever said that before. [Laughs]. I have never condemned peoples' tactics. I understand the rage. I don't do this, I'm doing it now. Because I believe something very, very important is going on, a lot of courage is being shown inside that center. And people need the support." The concept that those in the streets outside of the summit are supposed to be part of the same political force as the NGOs and governments who have been given a seat at the table of summit negotiations was the main determining factor for the tenor of the actions in Copenhagen. The bureaucratization of the antiglobalization movement (or its remnants), with the increased involvement from NGOs and governments, has been a process that manifested itself in World Social Forums and Make Poverty History rallies. Yet in Copenhagen, NGOs were much more than a distracting sideshow. They formed a constricting force that blunted militant action and softened radical analysis through paternalism and assumed representation of whole continents. In Copenhagen, the movement was asked by these newly empowered managers of popular resistance to focus solely on supporting actors within the UN framework, primarily leaders of the Global South and NGOs, against others participating in the summit, mainly countries of the Global North. Nothing summarizes this orientation better than the embarrassingly disempowering Greenpeace slogans "Blah Blah Blah, Act Now!" and "Leaders Act!" Addressing politicians rather than ordinary people, the attitude embodied in these slogans is one of relegating the respectable force of almost 100,000 protesters to the role of merely nudging politicians to act in the desired direction, rather than encouraging people to act themselves. This is the logic of lobbying. No display of autonomous, revolutionary potential. Instead, the emphasis is on a mass display of obedient petitioning. One could have just filled out Greenpeace membership forms at home to the same effect. A big impetus in forging an alliance with NGOs lay in the activists' undoubtedly genuine desire to be in solidarity with the Global South. But the unfortunate outcome is that a whole hemisphere has been equated with a handful of NGO bureaucrats and allied government leaders who do not necessarily have the same interests as the members of the underclasses in the countries that they claim to represent. In meeting after meeting in Copenhagen where actions were to be planned around the COP15 summit, the presence of NGOs who work in the Global South was equated with the presence of the whole of the Global South itself. Even more disturbing was the fact that most of this rhetoric was advanced by white activists speaking for NGOs, which they posed as speaking on behalf of the Global South. Klein is correct in this respect: Copenhagen really was nothing like Seattle. The most promising elements of the praxis presented by the antiglobalization movement emphasized the internal class antagonisms within all nation-states and the necessity of building militant resistance to local capitalist elites worldwide. Institutions such as the WTO and trade agreements such as NAFTA were understood as parts of a transnational scheme aimed at freeing local elites and financial capital from the confines of specific nation-states so as to enable a more thorough pillaging of workers and ecosystems across the globe. Ten years ago, resistance to transnational capital went hand in hand with resistance to corrupt governments North and South that were enabling the process of neoliberal globalization. Its important to note that critical voices such as Evo Morales have been added to the chorus of world leaders since then. However, the movement's current focus on climate negotiations facilitated by the UN is missing a nuanced global class analysis. It instead falls back on a simplistic North-South dichotomy that mistakes working with state and NGO bureaucrats from the Global South for real solidarity with grassroots social movements struggling in the most exploited and oppressed areas of the world. Enforced Homogeneity of Tactics Aligning the movement with those working inside the COP15 summit not only had an effect on the politics in the streets but also a serious effect on the tactics of the actions. The relationship of the movement to the summit was one of the main points of discussion about a year ago while Climate Justice Action was being formed. NGOs who were part of the COP15 process argued against taking an oppositional stance towards the summit in its entirety, therefore disqualifying a strategy such as a full shutdown of the summit. The so-called inside/outside strategy arose from this process, and the main action, where people from the inside and the outside would meet in a parking lot outside of the summit for an alternative People’s Assembly, was planned to highlight the supposed political unity of those participating in the COP15 process and those who manifested a radical presence in the streets. Having made promises to delegates inside the Bella Center on behalf of the movement, Naomi Klein asserted that "Anybody who escalates is not with us," clearly indicating her allegiances. Rather than reentering the debate about the validity of 'escalating' tactics in general, arguing whether or not they are appropriate for this situation in particular, or attempting to figure out a way in which different tactics can operate in concert, the movement in Copenhagen was presented with oppressive paternalism disguised as a tactical preference for non-violence. The antiglobalization movement attempted to surpass the eternal and dichotomizing debate about violence vs. non-violence by recognizing the validity of a diversity of tactics. But in Copenhagen, a move was made on the part of representatives from Climate Justice Action to shut down any discussion of militant tactics, using the excuse of the presence of people (conflated with NGOs) from the Global South. Demonstrators were told that any escalation would put these people in danger and possibly have them banned from traveling back to Europe in the future. With any discussion of confrontational and militant resistance successfully marginalized, the thousands of protesters who arrived in Copenhagen were left with demonstrations dictated by the needs and desires of those participating in and corroborating the summit. Alongside the accreditation lines that stretched around the summit, UN banners proclaimed "Raise Your Voice," signifying an invitation to participate for those willing to submit to the logic of NGO representation. As we continue to question the significance of NGO involvement and their belief that they are able to influence global decision-making processes, such as the COP15 summit, we must emphasize that these so-called participatory processes are in fact ones of recuperative pacification. In Copenhagen, like never before, this pacification was not only confined to the summit but was successfully extended outward into the demonstrations via movement leaders aligned with NGOs and governments given a seat at the table of negotiations. Those who came to pose a radical alternative to the COP15 in the streets found their energy hijacked by a logic that prioritized attempts to influence the failing summit, leaving street actions uninspired, muffled and constantly waiting for the promised breakthroughs inside the Bella Center that never materialized. NGO anger mounted when a secondary pass was implemented to enter the summit during the finalfour days, when presidents and prime ministers were due to arrive. Lost in confusion, those demonstrating on the outside were first told that their role was to assist the NGOs on the inside and then were told that they were there to combat the exclusion of the NGOs from the summit. This demand not to be excluded from the summit became the focal politic of the CJA action on December 16. Although termed Reclaim Power, this action actually reinforced the summit, demanding "voices of the excluded to be heard." This demand contradicted the fact that a great section of the Bella Center actually resembled an NGO Green Fair for the majority of the summit. It is clear that exclusionary participation is a structural part of the UN process and while a handful of NGOs were "kicked out" of the summit after signing on to Reclaim Power, NGO participation was primarily limited due to the simple fact that three times as many delegates were registered than the Bella Center could accommodate. In the end, the display of inside/outside unity that the main action on the 16th attempted to manifest was a complete failure and never materialized. The insistence on strict non-violence prevented any successful attempt on the perimeter fence from the outside while on the inside the majority of the NGO representatives who had planned on joining the People’s Assembly were quickly dissuaded by the threat of arrest. The oppressive insistence by CJA leaders that all energy must be devoted to supporting those on the inside who could successfully influence the outcome of the summit resulted in little to no gains as the talks sputtered into irreconcilable antagonisms and no legally binding agreement at the summit’s close. An important opportunity to launch a militant movement with the potential to challenge the very foundations of global ecological collapse was successfully undermined leaving many demoralized and confused. Looking Forward: The Real Enemy As we grapple with these many disturbing trends that have arisen as primary tendencies defining the climate justice movement, we have no intention of further fetishizing the antiglobalization movement and glossing over its many shortcomings. Many of the tendencies we critique here were also apparent at that time. What is important to take away from comparisons between these two historical moments is that those in leadership positions within the contemporary movement that manifested in Copenhagen have learned all the wrong lessons from the past. They have discarded the most promising elements of the antiglobalization struggles: the total rejection of all market and commodity-based solutions, the focus on building grassroots resistance to the capitalist elites of all nation-states, and an understanding that diversity of tactics is a strength of our movements that needs to be encouraged. The problematic tendencies outlined above led to a disempowering and ineffective mobilization in Copenhagen.Looking back, it is clear that those of us who traveled to the Copenhagen protests made great analytical and tactical mistakes. If climate change and global ecological collapse are indeed the largest threats facing our world today, then the most important front in this struggle must be against green capitalism. Attempting to influence the impotent and stumbling UN COP15 negotiations is a dead end and waste of energy when capital is quickly reorganizing to take advantage of the 'green revolution' and use it as a means of sustaining profits and solidifying its hegemony into the future. Instead of focusing on the clearly bankrupt and stumbling summit happening at the Bella Center, we should have confronted the hyper-green capitalism of Hopenhagen, the massive effort of companies such as Siemens, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Vattenfall to greenwash their image and the other representations of this market ideology within the city center. In the future, our focus must be on destroying this reorganized and rebranded form of capitalism that is successfully manipulating concerns over climate change to continue its uninterrupted exploitation of people and the planet for the sake of accumulation. At our next rendezvous we also need to seriously consider if the NGO/non-profit industrial complex has become a hindrance rather than a contribution to our efforts and thus a parasite that must be neutralized before it can undermine future resistance. Tim Simons and Ali Tonak can be reached at: anticlimaticgroup0. ------------------------ Yankies Go Home! An answer to Tim Simons and Ali Tonak Tord Björk 9.i.10 How is it over
there in the US? Do you have a nice and cosy time sitting in your left-wing
ghettos throwing accusations at each other for not being omnipotent
enough? I must say
that it is a bit amusing from the sidelines. Although I am in general
critical towards how domestic US problems and examples of less universal
interest is overwhelming many international email lists the one by Tim Simons and
Ali Tonak accusing CJA for manipulating the movement into supporting
NGOs and turning nature into investment capital is a real goodie. A conspiracy
theory worthy of any US main stream thinker or left wing competitor. The authors
make their claims mainly based on two occasions. One is a plenary at
Christiania on December 14 organized by CJA with a panel consisting of
Naomi Klein, Michael Hardt, and Tadzio Mueller. The other is the Reclaim
Power action on December 16 organized by CJA and CJN. For some reason the
authors in the national publication Counterpunch have to claim that Lisa
Fithian, the moderator of the session, was a US non-violence guru. When I made a
search on the internet she was accused of being a terrorist. Must be
somewhat of a women when the different male authors labelling her both guru or
terrorist has to make such incapacitating remarks. Why CJA to
such a large degree selects North Americans to dominate their so called high
profile plenary debate I do not know. I have as a Swedish environmentalist
noticed that left wingers also in Sweden seems to be impressed by
North American intellectuals. I am not. I prefer to listen to Walden Bello,
Medha Patkar, Josie Riffaud or Joao Stedile rather than North Americans
lacking democratic roots in movements or political parties. Although I
must admit that Naomi Klein at several occasions when I had the chance to hear her in Copenhagen said good things. I also do not share the estimation
by Tadzio Müller and many others that Seattle was so important
neither for the global justice movement nor the climate justice movement. It
was rather in the Laconda jungle in Chiapas, in the GMO soya fields and
Eucalyptus plantations in Rio Grande do Sul or among the Chipko movement in
the Himalayas that both the global justice movement and climate justice
movement emerged long before Seattle and still have their most solid basis. Climate debt a way to commodify nature? But when the
CJA plenary debate and the Reclaim Power Action is so much criticized it
is appropriate to bring up some facts and perspectives that seems lacking
in the Californian analysis of Copenhagen. Firstly it is
of course useful that criticism is brought forward. The best of this
criticism ought to be taken seriously. As far as I understand the criticism
concerning making turning nature into investment capital comes from the
argument that in the CJA organised debate Klein stated: ” 'Wait a minute, we are
the creditors and you are the debtors, you owe us a huge debt' creates
an equalizing dynamic in the negotiations." I guess it is the line
equalizing dynamics in the negotiations that causes the criticism. The point made if
I understand it correctly (English is not my mother tongue) is that it is not
only carbon trading and offsetting which is a problem causing marketization
of nature but that debt payments in the name of climate justice
negotiated through the UNFCC would have the same or similar result. This is of
course a criticism to take into consideration. When Bolivia and others makes
these claims it may well be in the self interest to rip off some money
from the process and maybe even excepting some kind of marketization
of nature if this is the only way to get hold of the money. This is not so
much different from development aid which is also constrained by many
factors making it a tool for dominant forces in the world. Yet the
environmental movement has since decades demanded payment of the ecological
debt and so are many others doing with Jubilee South and many key movements in
the Global Justice movement in the forefront. Are we all idiots? Well
partly yes. Politics is always full of risks. But what we say is not the
same thing as Naomi Klein is claimed to have said. In the Klimaforum
declaration is stated on this issue: ”Reparations and compensation
for Climate Debt and crimes: We demand full reparations for southern
countries and those impoverished by northern states, TNCs, and tax-haven
institutions. By this, we partly address historical injustices associated to
inequitable industrialization and climate change, originating in the
genocide of indigenous nations, transatlantic slave trade, colonial era, and
invasions. This must be accompanied by an equally clear strategy for
compensating impoverished people for the climate and broader ecological debt owed by
the enriched. A global and democratic fund should be established to
give direct support to the victims of climate change. Developed
countries must provide new, mandatory, adequate, and reliable financing as
well as patent-free technologies so that developing countries can better
adapt to adverse climate impacts and undertake emission reductions.
This would allow developing countries to play their part in curbing
climate change, while still meeting the needs and aspirations of their people.
International financial institutions, donor agencies, and trade mechanisms
should have no part in reparations.” and furthermore: ”A rejection of
purely market-oriented and technology-centred false and dangerous
solutions such as nuclear energy, agro-fuels, carbon capture and storage, Clean
Development Mechanisms, biochar, genetically “climate-readied”
crops, geo-engineering, and reducing emissions from deforestation
and forest degradation (REDD), which deepens social and environmental
conflicts.”. (the former a quote from the full text, the last quote from the
summary). The Klimaforum
has been initiated by the Permaculture Association and 26 other Danish
smaller ecological, peasant and fishermen organisations. Together with
mainly movements from the South the declaration was finished including an
open process the first days of the forum. I cannot see that the criticism
against the climate justice movement has much relevance for what the movement
actually states collectively. One can of course claim that any kind of
argument that claims that the industrialized countries owes a climate debt
to the impoverished countries means automatically some kind of financialisation
of nature. The authors states that: ”The foreign aid and investment
(i.e. development) that will flow into countries of the Global South as a
result of climate debt reparations will have the effect of directly
subsidizing those who seek to profit off [..] and monopolize these emerging
climate markets.” It is quite
clear that what Western countries wanted with the COP15 was to establish in
practice a global investment regime making them able to do in practice what
they partly were stopped from by the defeat in the struggle against the
multilateral investment agreement which signalled the era of anti-globalization
struggle. Why this has not been expressed clearly to my knowledge I do
not know. Maybe because the environmental movement and their allies in like
minded popular movements strongly have opposed the kind of market
mechanisms and technologies in the hands of Western TNCs which would be the
practical content of such a revival of large scale private investments in
the South. One can claim
that automatically the kind of demands put forward by the Klimaforum
declaration will end in ”green capitalist projects” in ”conjunction with
aid given under the logic of climate debt and will help to initiate a new
round of capitalist development and accumulation, displacing more people in
the Global South and leading to detrimental impacts on ecosystems
worldwide.” The specific tool that the climate debt argument would enable
according to the authors was Clean Development Mechanism which the climate
justice movement reject but according to the authors in practice will promote. But rather
than looking upon politics as a game with automatic results it is rather
important to estimate the power relationships and what kind of demands might
strengthen such classes that can contribute to a sustainable transition. In
the combined class struggle and alliance building which is at the core of
the climate justice movement the mass criticism against false solutions
described as market based and technological as well as constructive
solutions as food sovereignty has been at the core of the common
platform. This should be seen in combination with the climate debt argument.
Together they form a basis which might be possible to make better but is at the
moment sufficient for addressing the problems brought up by the
Californian comment. If Naomi Klein makes a statement that climate debt is the most
central for the climate justice movement as it is useful inside the
negotiations it is her standpoint and have very little to do with what the popular
movements are struggling for outside or inside. One could say
that the accusation by the Californian authors that the same movements that
once brought about the global protests against neoliberalism and debt now
suddenly do not know what they are doing is more of falsifying history than
making a serious assessment. What one left winger states that is not part of
a democratic climate justice movement might be a slip of the tongue or
rather something that by the Californian authors is grossly over-emphasized.
To claim that the hundreds of movements from all over the world that
have signed the Klimaforum declaration or the CJA and CJN platforms are
lacking the insights that the West Coast Seattle protesters had ten years
ago is not so much a serious attempt at discussion. Is CJA
oppressing the movement? The second
part of the authors argument is also interesting. They claim that CJA have
caused ”the pacification of militant action resulting from an alliance
forged with transnational NGOs and reformist environmental groups who have been
given minimal access to the halls of power in exchange for their
successful policing of the movement.” Their empirical evidence is summarised as: ”The concept
that those in the streets outside of the summit are supposed to be part of the
same political force as the NGOs and governments who have been given a
seat at the table of summit negotiations was the main determining
factor for the tenor of the actions in Copenhagen. The bureaucratization
of the antiglobalization movement (or its remnants), with the increased
involvement from NGOs and governments, has been a process that manifested
itself in World Social Forums and Make Poverty History rallies. Yet in
Copenhagen, NGOs were much more than a distracting sideshow. They formed a
constricting force that blunted militant action and softened radical
analysis through paternalism and assumed representation of whole continents. In Copenhagen,
the movement was asked by these newly empowered managers of popular
resistance to focus solely on supporting actors within the UN framework,
primarily leaders of the Global South and NGOs, against others participating
in the summit, mainly countries of the Global North. Nothing summarizes
this orientation better than the embarrassingly disempowering Greenpeace
slogans "Blah Blah Blah, Act Now!" and "Leaders Act!" ” The rhetorical
trick used by the authors is to conflate CJN popular movements and
NGOs with any NGO and the Bolivia, Tuvalu and some other governments
with any government. Then to attack CJA and CJN for what Greenpeace
does who is not a member of neither of the two networks. On the contrary is
CJN and CJA started as a critique and outspoken alternative to the kind of
NGO demands claiming leaders have to act restricting oneself to the official
agenda. The purpose of the Reclaim power action was to disrupt the official
process and by civil disobedience establish a People’s Assembly to state
another agenda demanding system change not climate change. This purpose was
also achieved in practice politically although the police were able stop the
inside and outside action to reach each other by using violence. We
came as close than less 50 meters from each other and the People’s
Assembly than had to be established by the outside action with the support by
Bolivia and Venezuela from the tribune inside the negotiations. Thus instead
what the authors claim that all mass actions in Copenhagen was organized by
”newly empowered managers of popular resistance” to ”focus solely on
supporting actors within the UN framework” the opposite happened. The main trust
was in building an independent climate justice movement that by civil
disobedience will change the world in alliance with a few progressive
governments like Bolivia. The precise
formulation which is used to create a modern myth about how some leaders of the
movement have stabbed the once radical anti-globalization movement in
the back is ”newly empowered managers of popular resistance”. By this one
cannot mean Greenpeace or Oxfam as they have been existing since many years, it
can only mean CJN and CJA. This is why the article in Counterpunch
is falsifying history and should be denounced as such. The reason is
simple. CJN is not any popular movements or NGOs, actually it is not even
primarily NGOs. The driving force behind establishing CJN are Via Campesina,
Indigenous Environmental Network and other popular movement organisations.
So why do not the authors name them and blame them? Well it would destroy
their image of being radical and supportive of system critical movements and
would make their false historical myth impossible. It is true that a few
NGOs like Focus on the Global South also are active in CJN. It is also true that
system critical mass movements do not have much resources to come in large
numbers to Copenhagen. But I counted the flags in the Reclaim Power action
and it was totally dominated by Via Campesina. There were also some from
Jubilee South and fishermens organisations, some few environmental organisations
like Robin Wood, the young Greens from Munich and what I could see one single
left wing flag of what I guessed was NPA from France. The mass movements
of the South dominated the scene in terms of visible organisation
symbols. And so they did as speakers at the People’s Assembly. Maybe the left
wing in California is unable to make the distinction between NGOs like
Focus on the Global South or Oilwatch and other NGOs. I can tell mass movements
in the South are not. I belong to the environmental movement who have since
the 1980s criticized NGOs strongly and sometimes been somewhat
puzzled by the consistent defence of some NGOs by system critical movements in
the South. I guess the reason is simple, they live in a real political
world and have to make distinctions concerning who their enemy and who their
friends are so they do not get fundamentalistically isolated in a corner but
when need be uses some NGOs willing to cooperate on system critical terms
and serving the mass movements. In my view this is how CJN emerged. The
story the Counterpunch authors tries to tell us is a paternalistic
piece of left wing movement imperialism. They try to tell the mass movements
of the South what to do instead of building their arguments on the actual
reason why the alliance between system-critical movements and NGOs have
emerged. The authors
are not only lazy and manipulative in their way of presenting CJN, they are
also arguing against their own premises. They present themselves as
totally against any government or influencing a UN negotiation as if the only
thing that matters is the movement outside. But they admit that Bolivia
is an exception. They do not do the same with the popular movements and
NGOs inside. Actually they do not even acknowledge that there are popular
movements inside but falsely claim that there is only NGOs (if we by the word
NGO do not mean everything and nothing including system critical
popular movements whether inside or outside). Nor do they name any possible
exceptions as they did when they gave some approval of Bolivia. This shows how
uneven the authors estimate different actors in society. When it comes to
popular movements and NGOs they are to lazy or manipulative to mention any
exception to their rule that anyone inside is supporting the system. When
it comes to governments they do the opposite. This asymmetric way of giving
importance to governmental actors but being less accurate and feel free to
misjudge popular movements and NGOs makes it clear what the authors see as
most important. They look for celebrities and what main stream media
see as important and makes invisible the mass movements. Very many knows
about the Bolivian example and thus it is wise to acknowledge this as an
exception to get the reader to feel that the authors are balanced and
progressive. Very few I guess in the US has any knowledge about Via Campesina so
why mention them. It would not be a way to win easy approval and thus lets
forget about these 200 million organised peasants all over the world. After
all what are these 200 million people worth in relation to one single left
wing North American celebrity were it is possible to gain some ideological
pin points in the internal US left wing ghetto price awards. As a whole it is
to the authors more important to use readers unawareness of the existence
of such things as system critical mass movements and NGOs in the CJA-CJN
alliance and instead focusing on exceptional governments and celebrities
like Naomi Klein. After all why not stick to the already by main stream media
given political realities and main actors and get some cheap arguments
instead of doing the hard work and start to make the collective system
critical actors visible. But it is not
only by conflating system critical popular movements and NGOs with any NGOs
that the authors claim CJA and CJN were oppressive and distorted the
protests in Copenhagen. They also state that CJA pacified all militant
actions and destroyed the diversity of tactics concept so important for anti
capitalist mobilisation ten years ago. This
accusation builds on the idea that CJA had monopoly on initiating actions in
Copenhagen and did everything to attack others that wanted to to use different
tactics. It is true that CJA made a political statement against the
dominant political message of the December 12 demonstration and refused to be
among the endorsers although they marched in the system change not climate
change bloc. But they did inform about more militant actions and as far as I
know refused to take part in attacking more militant initiatives.
What they did do was to state that the action they organized should use a
strict non-violent code of conduct which is not working against the diversity
of tactics concept but according to it. Personally I am critical
towards the diversity of tactics concept as I am against branding tactics by
professional NGOs which I see equivalent to and reinforcing elitist
militant action by the few building identity rather than being part of class
struggle and mobilizing people in common. But CJA cannot be accused of what the
authors wrongly accuse them for. The way the
authors assess the Reclaim Power action makes it clear what they see as most
important in judging the result of different tactics: ”In the end, the
display of inside/outside unity that the main action on the 16th attempted to
manifest was a complete failure and never materialized. The insistence on
strict non-violence prevented any successful attempt on the perimeter
fence from the outside while on the inside the majority of the NGO representatives
who had planned on joining the People’s Assembly were quickly
dissuaded by the threat of arrest. The oppressive insistence by CJA leaders that
all energy must be devoted to supporting those on the inside who could
successfully influence the outcome of the summit resulted in little to no
gains as the talks sputtered into irreconcilable antagonisms and no legally
binding agreement at the summit’s close. An important opportunity to
launch a militant movement with the potential to challenge the very
foundations of global ecological collapse was successfully undermined
leaving many demoralized and confused.” This
assessment is biased in different ways. The claim that the action was a complete
failure shows how physically or even militaristic the authors look upon political
action. It is a fact that the People´s Assembly was established by
the civil disobedience action and got support from the tribune inside
the official negotiation by Morales and Chavez both in its political
demand for system change not climate change and in its way of protesting
shows a political success of the action. But to the authors everything
less than a militaristic victory is a complete failure. Furthermore
the authors tries to degrade the action by labelling the inside participants
in an incapacitating way. They claim that the inside action was failing
because of threats of arrests when in fact it was stopped on a narrow bridge
by severe police violence. There claim
about a complete failure for the Reclaim power action has also as a
cornerstone the necessary supporting argument that if not the leadership of
CJA had betrayed the militant tactic there would have been successful
actions in Copenhagen with sufficient numbers of committed activists to
storm the Bella center, the harbour or any ”massive effort of companies such
as Siemens, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Vattenfall to greenwash their image
and the other representations of this market ideology within the city center”
to quote their article. Well who
stopped them? Actually a number of actions against the greenwash goals
mentioned by the authors were announced. But this is ignored by the authors as
they use double standards. Their own preferred kind of tactics, without strict
non-violent code of conduct is given a constant approval and the results in
reality are simple wiped out of memory while Reclaim power action is
declared a complete failure also according to the authors on their own merits.
Many militant actions or half militant actions like blocking the harbour or
attacking capitalist targets in the city centre were announced. But they were
either stopped far from reaching its goal when almost everyone got arrested
or were pushed into the main demonstration on December 12 by an overwhelming
police force before even getting started. Here we can talk about complete
failure if we should not include that the police used the city centre
Never trust the COP action to provoke some smashing of a dozen windows which
was the result when the city centre action was forced into the main
demonstration and one hour later made an excuse for mass arresting more than 900
people in another bloc. There is in
Denmark a left wing discussion claiming that both the militant and the
Reclaim power actions were a failure according to the same militaristic
logic as the Californian authors use. The Danish discussion is contrary to
the one in Counterpunch fair in assessing all activities in Copenhagen
with the same focus on physical rather than political result. But equally unable
of making a political judgement based on a combination of physical and
political factors. The Californian version starts with the same factual points
as the Danish, the mobilisation failed in terms of to little people. But
contradictory to the Californian version the Danish include also the more
militant tactics and declares all the mass actions as failures. I do the
opposite. Although city centre anticapitalist actions on December 12 was a
complete failure both politically and physically the other militant or half
militant actions were not. The many actions against business, refugee
politics, agriculture politics etc. highlighted the political conflicts
almost every day during the summit marginalizing the NGO social media and
business sponsoring activities. Concerning the claim that if not only the
oppressive CJA leadership had not been there a sufficient number of committed
militant activists would have stormed the fences around Bella center and any
greenwash capitalist activity in the city centre: it is a cute little
omnipotent Californian dream. The left in
the hands of the NGO development industry One point I do
share with the Counterpunch authors is the criticism against focusing
solely on North-South relationships. I agree that there is a tendency
towards ”the obfuscation of internal class antagonisms within states of the
Global South in favor of simplistic North-South dichotomies” but would add
that social conflicts everywhere sometimes are avoided. Contrary to
the leftist Californian writers I claim that this is primarily the result of
the key left wing actors who betrays the more socially conscious
environmental, peasant and indigenous movements and tries to put a main focus on
North-South interstate relationships. These left wing actors are also the
same that betrays the demonstrators by not joining hands with CJA, CJN and
other popular movement actors in a united struggle against the repression.
Deeply entrenched in their competitive parliamentary, non-parliamentary
or anti-parliamentary boxes the strongest of them as the Social
democratic party and the Socialist People´s party aggressively attacks the
demonstrators by identifying with the police definition of violence while
others claim they have done enough by sending a press release stating that
the police operation was ”disproportionate” if they are the key main
demonstration organiser or make their isolated statement a bit stronger if they are
not. Why the left
replaces the struggle for social justice by solely addressing the issue of
global justice is a matter for the left to discuss internally. For the rest
of us outside this in Copenhagen mainly reactionary left wing force with
their internal quarrels and incapacity to react to repression nor address the
social issues it will be interesting to enjoy your blaming on others for
your own problems. As an
environmentalist believing rather in the rural class struggle than the much
advertised struggle of the male urban industrial or big city left wing anti
capitalist elite and refusing to split my identity into left wing revolutionary
or bourgeoisie reformist it was interesting to see in Copenhagen how
the left operates. The sudden left wing opportunistic interest in
ecological matters which cuts across some different class aspects than
they are used to in a global political reality were the internationally
organized trade unions are the reactionary force and the peasants,
environmentalists, indigenous, women and pacifist are the progressive
with third world leadership in global organizations produces some odd
results. This is not
the case when it comes to CJN which is mainly an _expression_ of global mass
movements and some allied NGOs questioning marketization and the false
solutions that is promoted in the negotiations. Our main focus is not on climate
debt reparations the way the Californian authors claim but rather opposing the
main technological and market based fixes whether in the North or the South
which than by definition has a social critique in every society built into the
demands. The
organisations of importance solely focusing on interstate North South relations are
left wing organisations. So are also some NGOs like Oxfam and the Make
poverty history kind of campaigners that CJN and CJA are in opposition to.
But these NGOs have no influence of the climate justice movement other
than that the left wing organisations tries to give them. To many left
wing organisations the main tactic has been to mobilise as many people as
possible and to focus upon global justice and not climate justice. The key
organisers behind the mass demonstration December 12 are left wing parties with
the Socialist Workers Party in Britain and their síster organisations
in a central role. To them broadness is everything including excepting top
model celebrity speakers which is quoted in the mass media as the sole voice
of the 100 000 demonstrators stating reactionary messages. I agree with the
need to make ones hands dirty in politics and a mass demonstration
has to some degree be a compromise but why these left wing actors do
accept top models and do not jointly with all the environmental, CJN, CJA and
whatever could be mobilised denounce immediately the betrayers of the
demonstration as the Social Democrats that also were selected speakers and
organisers of the demonstration while supporting the police excesses
against the demonstration, that I cannot understand or accept. Furthermore
the main problem is not using the tactic of doing compromise by organizing a
broad demonstration but that the left wing organizations put their almost
only effort into interstate North- South issues and betrayed the need for
strongly addressing social justice. Thus the key Danish modern and radical
left wing organization, the Red Green Alliance chose to solely focus upon
levels of emissions and oppose carbon trading. The trotskyists were
everywhere and nowhere happy about that they could have one speaker at the main
demonstration from SWP, a Vestas worker, while also celebrating their
cooperation with the tcktcktck campaigners and avoiding the radical CJA
mobilization. The last trotskyist attack on radicalizing the movement came in the
final CJN plenary in Copenhagen when Ian Thompson from Global Climate
Campaign opposed that there should be any other mass mobilisation than a new
huge global day of action 2010 of similar kind as on December 12 2009. Why have
a System change not climate change mass manifestation when one can solely
repeat the Peoples first Planet first appeal to world leaders once more with
a trotskyist worker as a decoration on the NGO lobbyist band wagon. We ecologists
had our own ways of marginalizing the NGO band wagon and as it came out also
the formal Northern left wing organisations with their opportunistic
tactics. We initiated the Klimaforum with some 50 000 visitors. We
refused to give in to the sweat promises of the NGOs to allow them to take
over which was the result of hard political battles but also due to the
fact that NGOs becomes more and more marginal in politics as they are more
interested in being inside negotiations than being with the people, they are with
other words today new governmental organisations and not at all
non-governmental organisations. We also refused the sweat left wing marriage with
NGOs with their social forum open space concept to promote political
consumerism and opted instead for a declaration process to unite the climate
justice movement. A joint declaration was adopted by the whole Klimaforum as
a common political challenge against official agenda negotiated at
COP15. That was an easy battle to win as we environmentalists as well as
movements like Via campesina always have been sceptical about the social forum
process with its left wing and trade union bias lacking ecological
awareness and above all market way of organizing a forum demobilizing
people in the end if not conscious attempts are made as in the US to oppose
the negative aspects of the social forum formula. In Denmark none believes
in the social forum concept anymore so the politically more radical
ecologists could easily convince the whole Klimaforum initiators to make a
political declaration process. The result has
of course quite a few weaknesses. There were severe lack of resources for
translation favouring the English speaking as so common. In general the
Klimaforum had about one tenth of the personal staff compared to when the NGOs
organised the main alternative summit at the UN conference on social
development in Copenhagen 1995. But when it
comes to social justice and the need for class struggle there were no
problems at all to have such content included. As a non leftist environmentalists
I was a bit amazed about that it lacked in the first draft but made a
proposal and none rejected it, on the contrary. Of course as it is a climate
justice statement the relevant class struggle are different from when the
formal left wing formulates the issue, thus it states about the
sustainable transition: ” it will need stronger alliances within and across all
borders between direct producers in agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and
industry.” It would have been good to address class issues more and I am
sure that it would have been added if others also had contributed.
As such there were no blocking of class issues or social justice
questions in the declaration process whatsoever. It is the left wing organisations
that chose to make interstate North-South relation their main message in
Copenhagen and maybe a left wing individual in a CJA plenary debate, not
the climate justice movement. Why the
environmental and peasant movement can get so little support from left wing
organisations when it comes to addressing class and social justice issues is a
bit astonishing. The reason why the left wing is so reactionary can be seen in
its old fashioned class definition. Already Karl Marx talked about the
countryside as unworthy of becoming important in political struggle. That
it is rather the rural classes than the urban male industrial that are in
the forefront of today's struggles seams to make the left wing perplex.
Instead they stick to old fashioned ideas about more equal relationships
between nations in the hope for some role for the established left in
managing the power balance between the working class and other social actors
in the national state. While loosing the actual social struggle at
home out of sight they want to represent the masses in the South, the
victims. They adjust more and more to a NGO identity managed by the mass
media. We
environmental movement activists have a different view. We believe in the necessity of
changing our own societies as the primary solidarity action. The struggle
to change production and consumption patterns in the North is the key to a
sustainable transition, not to try to become a state-centric actor focusing
on helping the victims in the South or identifying oneself with the
oppressed people in other parts of the world while escaping for taking
responsibility for changing the society you live in. You may have
environmental NGOs with other messages, but that is in odd not so important
parts of the world when it comes for changing transnational movement
cooperation as the US. In Sweden we have been defeating your US kind of
environmentalism since it first tried to influence the world at the UN Conference
on Human Environment in Stockholm 1972 with fascist and capitalist
ideas about forced sterilization of people in the third world and making the
environmental issue an individual moral issue. We defeated this dominant Anglo
American ideology already then with the help of Womens International
League for Peace and Freedom and many other popular movements joining our
efforts with activists from the third world who could come in the last
minute when we put pressure on the government to fund their participation.
Your odd US kind of necessity to establish a specific environmental
justice movement never have been necessary here or in many other
countries were social justice is self evident for the environmental movement.
Today the kind of extremist Anglo-American environmental NGOs are more
marginalised in practice although they live their zombie life in the mass media
sphere. They are marginalized thanks to a large degree for the long term organizing
of global democratic popular movements as Via Campesina and Friends of
the Earth International and recently especially CJN! Why all system
critical left wing parties or organizations in Denmark refused to
support the Reclaim Power action to not talk about Never trust the COP I do
not know. But it is a fact that when there was a historic opportunity
for the left to contribute to the emergence of an independent climate
justice movement built on both social and global justice awareness the formal
Danish left with one last minute exception in the small radical Danish Attac
refused to participate. And Danish left refused certainly on grounds
totally opposite to those put forward in the Counterpunch article. The
formal Danish left-wing even refused to make any serious attempts in helping us
counteract repression. Contrary to
what the Californian authors believe the future lies not in movements
defining themselves as strictly left wing. On the contrary left wing
organisations in Denmark showed themselves to be the most reactionary among the
possible allies of a climate justice movement. The future lies in movements
cooperating in alliances as CJN and CJA whether identifying themselves as
left wing or not. It is here the force to confront the refusal of bringing up
social justice and class struggle issues by left wing and NGOs
organisations exists. It is also no coincidence that the only effort to confront the
political parties including the left wing in their lack of counter acting
against repression was taken by Friends of the Earth Sweden, Attac Denmark
and Climate Movement Denmark at the Klimaforum on December 15 together with
representatives of mass movements from all Southern continents. It
was on short notice and only Red Green Alliance turned up but also the
social liberal party was interested, actually the parliamentary party that
consistently been criticizing the new anti democratic laws and the policing
of the demonstrators in opposition to the Social democrats and the Socialist
Peoples Party as well as the government and the right wing extremist
Danish Peoples party. Why we not
anymore could trust the left wing to make collective initiatives in Copenhagen
to bring up social justice issues in climate struggles or act against
repression is historically interesting. Such initiatives rather came from us
defining ourselves as not belonging to a left that sees the main conflict in
society defined by the conflict between capital and the working class. We who
maybe only think that there are other values than economic efficiency and
that nature cannot be reduced to a goal for short term profit. Or we
who claim that there are other conflicts as well, other classes to see
as important or not only capitalism but also patriarchy or ideological
paternalism of the left wing kind as a problem. In times of changes main
conflicts can occur not only between capitalism and the working class but also
between those with organizational resources in trade unions and NGOs or
left wing organisations using their intellectual capacity to create
unnecessary splits between reformists and revolutionaries dividing movements
according to their ideological wims rather than serious building of solidarity. Conclusion:
Yankies Go Home! The conclusion
of this criticism of the article in Counterpunch is simple: Yankies Go
Home! We do not need your internal quarrels and lack of interest for collective
processes. We do not need left wing movement imperialism going to other
countries as if the political culture in the country you go to do not
exist. We do not need paternalistic claims that the serious worries by
third world movement activists for being deported and not allowed back to EU is
to be ignored. We do not need double standard assessment of different
tactics to strengten attempts at causing ideological splits. Come back when you
have done your home work by building some kind of class struggle
movements that are defined not primarily by their reformist or revolutionary
ideological quality but their capacity to mobilize people and being part of
global democratic movements. Come back when you are willing to learn about
other political realities than the Anglo-American. The days when Anglo-American
political culture could dominate the world by the establishment
of the sustainable development NGO system are over and so are those
political forces that sees this reactionary American political NGO model as the
main enemy also were it do not exist. This American form of NGO management was
defeated in Copenhagen by a combination of mass activities with the
alliance between CJA and CJN at the core of it. The world will not be the same
and the US is from now on placed among system critical movement were it
belongs, as one among many political cultures. There are still those in the left
wing elite that looks upon Anglo American left wing celebrities as the utmost
of global intellectual thinkers. Those in CJA the selected the panel for the
plenary at Christiania December 14 obviously did. The rest of us in the
non-leftist climate justice movement do not. Your time is out. Please come
back when you are willing to work in solidarity with the rest of us. Finlandsgatan
2 291 31
Kristianstad Sverige/Sweden E-mail: tord.bjork0 Copenhagen Inside-Out Patrick Bond 12.i.10 Tim Simons and Ali Tonak (hereafter S&T) have gone overboard in their critique of radical climate politics, offering an always-welcome warning against ineffectual reformism, but making enemies inappropriately due to their inadequate exposure to the Climate Justice (CJ) movement’s political analysis and to their misreading of Copenhagen alliances, strategies and tactics. For S&T, ‘the antiglobalization movement has been brought out of its slumber’ because ‘anniversaries and nostalgia often trump the here and now’. Yet ‘what is troublesome,’ they worry, is ‘the attempted resurrection of this movement, known by some as the Global Justice Movement, under the banner of Climate Justice.’ Others may differ, but I think it’s terribly important to generate political linkages to the earlier tradition, dating not to the Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) protest but to Zapatismo in 1994 (as CJ might date its origins to Accion Ecologica’s pathbreaking work in Ecuador at roughly the same time). Seattle+10 wasn’t actually the leading CJ’s movement’s founding moment; that occurred in Bali, Indonesia two years earlier when Climate Justice Now! (CJN!) emerged outside another failed Conference of Parties (COP). That crucial moment stitched together global justice and radical environmental activists. Since then, the growth of CJ politics has been not merely the rebranding of existing radical networks – but instead has witnessed a new red-green movement across borders that is necessarily going to be anti-capitalist if it addresses the problem with the seriousness required. A litany of anti-CJ claims S&T repeatedly insist that the CJ movement promotes ‘the financialization of nature and the indirect reliance on markets and monetary solutions as catalysts for structural change’. As is well known, CJN! and the main Copenhagen activist network, Climate Justice Action (and before them the Durban Group for Climate Justice starting in October 2004), are explicitly against commodification of the atmosphere, strenuously opposing carbon trading and offsets. S&T also claim the movement ‘obfuscates internal class antagonisms within states of the Global South in favor of simplistic North-South dichotomies.’ This is a danger, of course, and always has been in internationalist politics. But against that danger, dynamic CJ movements are emerging to challenge national elites (and the transnational corporations they front for) in Brazil, India and South Africa (three of the four sell-out countries whose leaders joined Barack Obama for the December 18 Copenhagen Accord) and in most other major Global South sites. S&T worry about ‘the pacification of militant action resulting from an alliance forged with transnational NGOs and reformist environmental groups who have been given minimal access to the halls of power in exchange for their successful policing of the movement’. Yes, there’s a danger of demobilization, but CJN! arose specifically because the existing Climate Action Network was so incompetent, compromised and ideologically corrupted. Moreover, in Copenhagen, some of the most militant South-based transnational movements - e.g. Via Campesina and Oilwatch affiliates – showed they are able to negotiate the inside-outside space with power and grace. So too did the CJ’s movement’s major formal NGO network which worked to undermine elite legitimacy within the Bella Centre, Friends of the Earth (as a result, they were booted). S&T repeatedly allege that senior movement strategists (only Naomi Klein is named – though out of context, prior to the December 16-18 degeneration) ordered ‘those who came to protest to be one with a summit of world nations and accredited NGOs, instead of presenting a radical critique and alternative force.’ But in this instance, it’s not either/or but both/and: establishing a durable alliance with the Bolivian government delegation was perfectly consistent with presenting a radical critique and posing alternatives. It may be tedious, but since S&T make so many unjustified allegations, consider some of the finer details. Should climate damage be paid? Regarding climate commodification, S&T begin by unfavourably comparing CJ politics to a decade past when, for example, ‘debt incurred through loans taken out from the IMF and World Bank [informed] the antiglobalization movement’s analysis and demand to “Drop the Debt.”’ Sure, but Jubilee South soon went much further and by 2001 also insisted on ‘Reparations for Slavery, Colonialism, Apartheid’ from the UN World Conference Against Racism (here in Durban). Because WCAR conference leaders Thabo Mbeki and Mary Robinson dogmatically refused to even table reparations for discussion (and also refused to recognize Zionism as racism), a march of 10,000 protesters set the stage for future anti-UN actions. The best of the older Jubilee South debt/reparations language and ‘Ecological Debt’ demands that have been made ever more forcefully, culminating in the insistence on $400 billion/annum by 2020 (a figure that has been rising dramatically as we learn more about the damage ahead). CJ ecodebt demands were originally associated with Accion Ecologica and have overlapped closely with the broader global justice movement via Jubilee South, dating to the late 1990s. Hence it may embarrass S&T to recall that ‘Drop the Debt’ language was actually the least challenging component of this critique of world finance and economy. The most obvious component of Ecological Debt is Climate Debt, and since S&T do not recognize the latter, they miss the crucial difference between Northern elites owing vulnerable ‘countries’ (as S&T say), when actually they owe people and ecosystems. This is important because if the North provides climate monies to Ethiopian tyrant Meles Zenawi (a close ally of George W. Bush when invading Somalia in January 2007 and of Nicolas Sarkozy when halving Africa’s Climate Debt demands just prior to arriving in Copenhagen) plus most other African elites, these recipients would likely abuse the funds. We need Climate Debt paid, but directly to the victims of climate chaos, and mechanisms need to be established to do so. (Similar debates have characterized the apartheid reparations movement’s strategies for non-state funding mechanisms.) Hence we don’t need to waste time with S&T’s misguided critique of Climate Debt – instead, we need to restate this relationship as one between the primary victims of climate chaos and the beneficiaries of greenhouse gas emissions, including Southern elites such as most white South Africans and corporations such as SA’s Anglo American, Eskom and Sasol. Thus if articulated fully, Climate Debt should cover not only the damages done by climate change but also finance for the South’s transcendence of extreme uneven development associated with the world economy’s export-oriented operation. Payment of Climate Debt damages and of ‘adaptation’ financing – if done properly - would ideally permit (and compel) the Global South to delink from all manner of relations with the world economy that damage both the exporting economy and the climate: fossil fuel extraction, agricultural plantations and associated deforestation, export-processing zones, vast shipping operations and foreign debt that forces further attempts to raise hard currency. Climate Debt is not, therefore, a ‘simple claim’, as S&T allege, it’s potentially a complex challenge to capitalism’s internal logic of commodification and neoliberal policy expansion. This is critical because S&T claim that the earlier ‘Drop the Debt’ language aimed to ‘not only stop privatization (or at least its primary enabling mechanism) but also open up political space for local social movements to take advantage of. Yet something serious is overlooked in this rhetorical transfer of the concept of debt from the era of globalization to that of climate change.’ Not true. Only by understanding Climate Debt simplistically do you fall into this trap. Likewise ‘Drop the Debt’ could be read in a simplistic way – as did the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign run mainly by Oxfam, the Gleneagles G8 ‘mobilizations’ (characterized by Bono and Geldof’s untenable victory claims), and the Global Call for Action Against Poverty’s white bands and Millennium Development Goals, which all stupidly encouraged debt relief alongside tighter subsequent relations with world financial, industrial, commodity and commercial circuitries. Does counting climate chaos lead to climate commodification? Most inaccurately, S&T claim that our CJ ‘demands for reparations justified by the notion of climate debt open a dangerous door to increased green capitalist investment in the Global South’. Yet the door has been wide open since 1997, when the mainstream greens adopted the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as a North-South financing strategy. Climate Debt analysis does the exact opposite: delink reparations obligations from market mechanisms. This is so obvious a strategy that even African elites adopted it in their own negotiations rhetoric in late 2009. In short, to promote Climate Debt does not require us to promote CDMs or other existing financing strategies that tie the South more deeply into Northern-controlled circuits of capital. On the contrary, the Climate Debt demand is why we can legitimately argue the South should halt export-oriented agriculture, extraction of minerals and petroleum, cheap manufacturing platforms and metals smelting, mass-produced consumer imports, further debt, further migrant labor supplies, further Foreign Direct Investment, further aid dependency, etc etc). Moreover, S&T fail to recognize that Climate Debt is about reparations to people who are suffering damages by the actions of Northern overconsumption of environmental space - damages that can be proven even in courts (the way the Alien Tort Claims Act has proven useful in the US for some of the Niger Delta plaintiffs against Shell recently and for apartheid victims). S&T further suggest that ‘“Climate Debt” perpetuates a system that assigns economic and financial value to the biosphere, ecosystems and in this case a molecule of CO2’, and that ‘Everyone from Vestas to the Sudanese government to large NGOs agree on this fundamental principle: that the destruction of nature and its consequences for humans can be remedied through financial markets and trade deals and that monetary value can be assigned to ecosystems.’ Even if S&T’s political conclusion is wrong, their resistance to quantification of nature is understandable and commendable. Yet it’s passé, particularly given the CJ movement’s hostility to – and track record fighting – carbon markets. Under capitalism, after all, everything gets commodified, and it seems to me that the optimal Climate Debt narrative involves recognizing this problem, to insist on explicitly compensation for damages done by climate chaos to the South (especially islands, Africa, Bangladesh and other vulnerable sites), and then, yes, to make a rough estimate of this damage. The point is both financing compensation (for ‘adaptation’ - i.e. survival) and disincentivizing further climate damage by penalizing the polluters. Climate Debt analyst Joan Martinez-Alier responds to this kind of critique by acknowledging, ‘although it is not possible to make an exact accounting, it is necessary to establish the principal categories and certain orders of magnitude in order to stimulate discussion.’ Once we have generated discussion about the damages done to South climate victims (including their inability to use the environmental space that is occupied by the North), next comes the logical demand for reparations. To refuse on principle to make any kind of quantification, as do S&T, is to refuse to acknowledge that damage is being done - and then to refuse to halt it. That’s Washington’s revolting viewpoint, of course, as was stated repeatedly by Obama Administration officials in Copenhagen: ‘Don’t owe, won’t pay’ – while the president’s Kenyan relatives are amongst the first serious victims. Alliances with enemies? S&T then condemn Copenhagen CJ activists for insufficient militancy, which they trace to the inside-outside strategy. S&T’s mistake is understating the possibility for a large-scale walk-out from the Bella Centre, which appeared the most likely scenario until December 17th, when the African Union (AU) delegation lost spine. Prior to that point, it really did appear that Copenhagen might be ‘seattled’ by virtue of a denial of consensus by the AU, small islands and Bolivaran countries, similar to the outcome of the 1999 Seattle and 2003 Cancun World Trade Organization ministerial summits. What happened to the first two core groups between the 16th and 18th of December is unclear, but by Friday the AU and small islands had nearly all been pounded into submission, i.e., allowing the UN to ‘note’ the Accord. Optimally, the AU delegates would have walked out, as was threatened as early as August, and as was dress-rehearsed the month before in a Barcelona meeting. But the elites running the AU - especially Zenawi of Ethiopia and Jacob Zuma of South Africa - took the AU in the usual direction, to work against the interests of the African masses and environment. One lesson we must draw is that the CJ activists did not sufficiently weaken the Northern negotiators and provide enough support to these Southern elites. Another is that the AU elites cannot be trusted, full stop (and I for one was mistaken by the extent of Zenawi’s militant rhetoric - we call this ‘talk left, walk right’ - from August-November). But on December 14 we didn’t know the extent of the coming sell-out, so at that stage, CJ activists expressed the sense that the South elites might indeed repeat the Seattle/Cancun walk-outs - albeit as Naomi Klein put it, this would be ‘nothing like Seattle’ insofar as back in 1999 there was virtually no connection between the African elites who walked out and the street militants (only a couple of NGOs, Third World Network and Seatini, had feet in both camps). Indeed the final lesson of Copenhagen is that the only really reliable government to support CJ principles is Bolivia’s, perhaps adding Cuba and Venezuela (though petro-socialism is a contradiction in terms). Looking ahead, only those sleeping through Copenhagen will have any expectation that in November the bulk of state delegations, the multilaterals and the mainstream green movement (WWF, IUCN, EDF, NRDC, etc) will do anything useful at Mexico’s COP 16. Given that reality, only a very few outliers in the CJ movement, such as Greenpeace, will be asking ‘our political leaders’ - as TckTckTck chair Kumi Naidoo described them in a widely circulated AP article on December 24 - to do better next time. Instead, like James Hansen, the CJ movement has (or should have) wised up to the need for further Copenhagen-style global elite gridlock (e.g. in the US Senate where failure to generate a climate bill will be welcome in coming months since no legislation is on the table that will improve matters), and hence direct actions of a much more serious nature at local and national scales, e.g. keep the oil in the soil and coal in the hole, and protest at environmental regulatory agencies and planning commissions that are not doing their job properly. Militants demobilized? S&T claim that ‘the bureaucratization of the antiglobalization movement (or its remnants), with the increased involvement from NGOs and governments, has been a process that manifested itself in World Social Forums and Make Poverty History rallies’, a fair point. Though still brimming with potential, the WSF was always mainly a talk shop. MPH was, from the start, opposed to what S&T call ‘antiglobalization’, and its core force, Oxfam, called itself ‘globophile’ as against our movement’s ‘globophobes’. Sure, some global justice components are bureaucratized, but others - like CJ - show a very healthy radical orientation. S&T claim that CJ activists were ‘asked by these newly empowered managers of popular resistance to focus solely on supporting actors within the UN framework’, but there are no names or organizations identified to go back for an accountability check, aside from Greenpeace. Indeed, Greenpeace embodies some extreme contradictions. In South Africa, we’ve criticized their applause of the Zuma government at the outset of Copenhagen for being a ‘star’ (thanks to Pretoria’s lies about potential emissions cuts), i.e., classical Greenpeace malpractice of parachuting into a place they don’t know and doing great damage by stumbling around, mismessaging and hogging the airwaves with their brand and ability to carry out effective publicity stunts (in SA, Greenpeace asked Zuma to attend Copenhagen by placing a high profile sign with this request around the neck of the main statue of Nelson Mandela, and Zuma not only did so in order to defend SA’s lamentable emissions and new coal-fired power plants, but on December 18 was one of five core leaders to sign Obama’s public relations gimmick). I hope the new Greenpeace director, Kumi Naidoo (from Durban), can turn that around, though his statement on December 24 wasn’t encouraging: `One thing our political leaders have learned is that they have to up their game’. S&T allege that ‘solidarity with the Global South’ was conflated with ‘a handful of NGO bureaucrats and allied government leaders’. As one who applauded Zenawi’s walk-out threat as early as last August - mindful of his tyrannical role, to be sure - I’ll plead guilty to misreading the potential for fully seattling Copenhagen, and likewise I recognize that the new CJ movement in South Africa was not as effective in undoing the enormous damage of SA government officials as it could have been. But that just means much tougher analysis and better organizing is needed in future. There are certainly some in the CJ movement who would put the North-South contradiction ahead of internal class conflict as a priority for struggle, and while I’m not one of those, that tension is openly recognized and has been the source of frank debating as this broad global movement is organized quickly, without secretariats and enforced norms/values/processes. It’s not easy, and requires constructive criticism, not a writing-off of the nascent CJ movement. Romanticizing the 1999 WTO shutdown – ‘Ten years ago, resistance to transnational capital went hand in hand with resistance to corrupt governments North and South that were enabling the process of neoliberal globalization’ – S&T forget that in Seattle and Cancun four years later, there was plenty of celebrating in the streets when the African elites denied consensus and broke up the WTO ministerials. S&T claim that ‘Those who came to pose a radical alternative to the COP15 in the streets found their energy hijacked by a logic that prioritized attempts to influence the failing summit, leaving street actions uninspired, muffled and constantly waiting for the promised breakthroughs inside the Bella Center that never materialized.’ As I understand it, though, the only real breakthrough that CJ movement people had hoped for, until around December 17th, was a walkout by the AU, AOSIS and ALBA. Did Copenhagen wreck CJ’s future? But the final outcome wasn’t bad: no legitimacy, a carbon market crash in subsequent days, and CJ movement building. Yet S&T believe that ‘the display of inside outside unity that the main action on the 16th attempted to manifest was a complete failure and never materialized,’ way too negative a conclusion. The December 16th protest action was a partial success, and certainly the beatings that many suffered trying to get out from the Bella Centre unveiled the UN process as profoundly flawed, if even those basic rights of _expression_ were denied. S&T therefore assume that ‘An important opportunity to launch a militant movement with the potential to challenge the very foundations of global ecological collapse was successfully undermined leaving many demoralized and confused.’ But only people who had the mistaken impression that Copenhagen would generate elite consciousness and action about climate were despondent. I don’t think that category includes any CJ militant realists. S&T are simply wrong to conclude that in the process, the CJ movement ‘discarded the most promising elements of the antiglobalization struggles: the total rejection of all market and commodity-based solutions, the focus on building grassroots resistance to the capitalist elites of all nation-states, and an understanding that diversity of tactics is a strength of our movements that needs to be encouraged.’ The first two are obviously false claims, while the third is a matter of conjunctural analysis. I’m willing to hear a scenario in which more militant activities outside would have genuinely changed the process, but it strikes me that it could have degenerated into adventurism without doing anything more durable for movement building, mass concientization on the issues, and delegitimation of the elites. Copenhagen was actually a successful moment if we take those as three objectives. This is, after all, a movement in its early stages, and if the long tradition of protests for democracy and social justice in Mexico are any guide, and if Cancun in 2003 and the 2006 Mexico City march of 10,000 against the World Water Forum (just as illegitimate a body as those deciding our climate future) are precedents for internationalism, then it will be worthwhile to again descend on the November 2010 Cancun COP and battle to get the issues raised properly - including big emissions cuts, big Climate Debt repayment and the decommissioning of carbon markets - and when the elites refuse the demands of science, environment and most of all radical Southern social movements, who will be there in much greater numbers than in Copenhagen, then the momentum will have decisively shifted away from the centrist NGOs and mainstream environmentalists who do, certainly, aim to band-aid not transform the system. S&T would have preferred CJ activists to confront ‘the hyper-green capitalism of Hopenhagen, the massive effort of companies such as Siemens, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Vattenfall to greenwash their image and the other representations of this market ideology within the city center.’ But the world’s CJ movements are, it seems to me, targeting both the corporates directly (especially at coalface in the Niger Delta, Ecuador, Australia, Europe, West Virginia and S&T’s own San Francisco), and the national and multilateral executive committees of the bourgeoisie who go to COPS. As they should. S&T wrap by appropriately asking whether ‘the NGO non-profit industrial complex has become a hindrance’, but this question has long applied to the big corporate green groups, not the bulk of the CJ movement. Their first task, I think, might be to add specific and more constructive critiques, and in the process to build a more radical movement that can demand accountability. This is the way it has always been, and always will be. S&T have made a start, but too sloppily to be of much use as it is. Patrick Bond is at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal; <pbond0>. |