On March 16th, the Global Justice Ecology Project sent a team to Chiapas, Mexico to investigate the impacts of a California-Chiapas climate deal that relies on carbon offsets. We partnered with Indigenous organizers, human rights groups, researchers, journalists, activists, and local indigenous videographers to document and expose the social and ecological impacts of this unjust climate scheme. We travelled to remote locations around the state of Chiapas and interviewed affected communities, investigated coercive displacement and landgrabs associated with the Sustainable Rural Cities Program, and recorded the destruction caused by industrial oil palm plantations. Our investigation includes video and audio recordings as well as still photos.
The Global Justice Ecology Project team of Orin Langelle and Jeff Conant were the first international journalists/activists to conduct interviews with Zapatista community leaders in more than two years; the first to draw out the links in Chiapas between climate policy and landgrabs; and the first to challenge this climate agreement based upon on-the-ground investigation and testimonies from affected communities.
We are now following up this trip by meeting with environmental justice and climate justice organizations from impacted communities in California, in order to share what we found in Chiapas. We will collaborate on strategies to use that information to contribute to the effort to defeat the unjust aspects of California’s AB32 Climate Bill—in particular the provisions that allow California corporations to avoid reducing pollution by purchasing carbon offsets from equally unjust projects in Chiapas.
We will also publish articles, photo essays, videos, audio interviews and a report on our findings. These will be translated into English and Spanish and widely distributed in California, Chiapas and internationally. The findings and outcomes of our investigation will also be released at the UN Climate Convention COP17 in Durban,South Africa thorugh an official side event, a press conference and a presentation to the international NGO and IPO communities at a workshop at the alternative venue in Durban.
By using widespread media coverage to expose the problems with carbon offsets through our documentation of the impacts of the California-Chiapas REDD agreement, we will mobilize public awareness and action around the broader concerns of climate justice and false market-based solutions to climate change, not just in California and Chiapas, but throughout the United States. Given the key role of the US in the global climate negotiations in pushing carbon offsets as a means to avoid their responsibility to cut their lion’s share of emissions, this is a critically important objective. Click here to read a photo essay from the Chiapas investigation. Click here to read a revealing article about the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Chiapas under the guise of sustainable development.
We have extensively produced and distributed articles, photo essays, and video and audio based on our findings from Chiapas. We have written feature articles for Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, and Race, Poverty and the Environment; and have produced photo essays and other material for these blogs: Alternet.org, UpsideDownWorld.org, Climate-Connections.org, Race, Poverty and the Environment and Common Dreams. (see complete list below)
In addition, La Jornada (Mexico’s largest left daily newspaper) covered our findings in Chiapas.
We also have an ongoing partnership with KPFK Los Angeles (Pacifica radio station), providing them with interviewees every week; and daily during major climate events. They have provided ongoing coverage of the situation in Chiapas and the climate legislation in California.
Links to the work we have published so far:
Chiapas: REDD Alert--Urgent Action Needed
A Broken Bridge to the Jungle: The California-Chiapas Climate Agreement Opens Old Wounds
REDD, la brecha lacandona y nuevas formas de despojo (La Jornada, 23 April, 2011)
Chiapas, Mexico: From Living in the jungle to ‘existing’ in “little houses made of ticky-tacky…”
Why Market-Based Solutions to Climate Change Can Cause More Harm Than Good
New Ruling Puts California Cap and Trade on Permanent Hold
Apartheid Housing Posed as Solution to Climate Vulnerability in Chiapas
Interview with Santiago Martinez of Amador Hernandez, Chiapas
Forest Policy Fails to Address the Underlying Causes of Deforestation and Degradation
Outsourcing Global Warming Solutions
Turning the Lacandon Jungle Over to the Carbon Market (Z Magazine July-August 2011)
Jeff Conant and Alegria de la Cruz on Radio Bilingue today at noon, PST
Statement from Chiapas Villagers to California Air Resources Board: “We say NO to REDD plus”
Action Alert and Video: Village in Chiapas Starved of Medical Services for REDD
In this video, villagers from Amador Hernández, inside the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico describe an ongoing threat to their land as a result of the state government’s pursuit of a climate change policy to “protect” the forest. The action alert calls on people to submit comments to California’s Air Resources Board to reject carbon offsets.
Under-Reported Indigenous Struggles July Video of the Month: Village in Chiapas Starved of Medical Services for REDD
Jeff Conant, Brent Newell, and Victor Menotti on REDD and AB32, KWMR (11 July 2011)
Benefit for Chiapas Women’s Health Organization in Amsterdam Tomorrow (22 June, 2011--this benefit resulted from our publicity of the situation in Amador Hernandez and loss of medical services)
Declaration of Patihuitz: Divided We Become Allies of the Government <http://globaljusticeecology.org/connections.php?ID=543>
Communique from the communities of the Amador Hernandez region, Montes Azules, Lacandon Jungle <http://climate-connections.org/2011/09/05/communique-from-the-communities-of-the-amador-hernandez-region-montes-azules-lacandon-jungle/>
In addition to this public education and mobilization work, we are collaborating with and mobilizing environmental and climate justice organizations in California including Communities for a Better Environment, Movement Generation (builds power among environmental justice organizations), Youth 4 Climate Justice (youth of color working for climate justice), and the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (which exposes the links between climate change and migration). Internationally, we work with Global Forest Coalition, Carbon Trade Watch and World Rainforest Movement.
