Transition Derby

Durban Climate Conference – Derby feed-back

Peter Robinson of the ‘UK Climate Alliance – for jobs, climate and communities’ and convenor of Derby Climate Change Coalition gave a feedback session on his return from the ‘outside space’ events of the Durban UN Climate Conference. He set the scene by showing clips of ‘actionaid’ footage of rural women farmers. A woman from Lesotho gathered 6 bags of maize for the year compared to 18 in the past – she already has seed debt to pay next harvest. A South African woman observed ‘there is something wrong with our skies’ as the rain expected in September didn’t fall till October. Then the deluge ruined the crops before they could ripen. A speaker at the Rural Women’s Assembly on the fringe of COP17 warned people in the developed world not to hide behind the false image that it’s only the poor who are going to be affected from such changes in climate.

Pictures of the main protest on the Global Day of Action showed the throng of 12,000 with huge banners calling to ‘Keep the Oil in the Soil and the Coal in the Hole’. Groups such as ‘Waste Pickers Uniting’ marched with International labour unions - civil society groups with environmental organisations. Peter met women active in many struggles[i] – one woman told him how floods in her township left mud knee deep. He also met up with Bandile Mdlalose who had spoken in October in Derby during the World Development Movement ‘Africa Demands Climate Justice’ speaker tour. As coordinator of 64 Informal Shack Settlement civil society groups she had arranged for a group to visit the Kennedy Settlement. A woman there had had her hut swept away by recent floods – the official help she had received was a blanket and a tin of beans. During a visit to the area dense with industry south of Durban, Peter met the mother of a child who had been overcome with fumes after a fire at one of the oil refineries – her compensation for the health damage he suffered was £3. South Africa has got billions of World Bank dollars for a coal-fired power station due to open in 2015 yet in a country where the poorest shack dwellers have to pay up-front for intermittent electricity there is no ‘Concentrated Solar Power’ production and little Photo-Voltaic generation either.

Commenting on the outcomes of the conference[ii] and the judgement by many commentators that they would lead to a catastrophic increase in global temperatures by the end of the century of at least 4⁰Celsius, the question was asked ‘is the possibility of progress too late?’ Countries including US have agreed to have legally binding targets but not what these targets should be. The division of countries into ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ under Kyoto needs revamping but is it worth the delay caused in working out the new ‘Durban Platform’ rather than continuing with the agreement from four years ago at COP 13 - the Bali Climate Conference? A suggestion was made that Canada withdrawing from commitments on carbon reduction targets was due to its growing income of billions of dollars a year from tar sands[iii] . The net energy gain for oil from tar sands is 2 to 3 units for every unit of energy used in its extraction – a result only economically worthwhile in the last few years as supplies for a variety of reasons including the worldwide peaking of supply have become insecure and increasingly expensive. A key aim of campaigns leading up to this year’s talks - COP 17, had been for the setting up and funding of a Green Climate Fund. This was approved but no means were agreed on how it would be financed so that poor countries can get funds to develop by utilising greener technologies as well as adapt to the climate change impacts they are already experiencing.

In drawing attention to the feed-back event’s name ‘United, we can make a difference’ Peter said there was no choice but to continue to build a movement. As progressive social change comes through social interactions, Climate Alliance values connections across movements. An aspect of his time in Durban which Peter had enjoyed alot, was the singing, dancing and drumming which wasn’t only part of the protest march but added energy to the formal meetings of the ‘outside space’. Making participatory art and music would be welcomed here too – Derby 50K are organising an ‘Art of Protest’ Workshop[iv]. As the meeting ended people were talking about other possibilities.