Lethal Heating: 02/01/20

01/02/2020

(AU) Bushfire Survivors Join Claim Against ANZ For Financing Climate Crisis

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Three survivors joined Friends of the Earth to accuse ANZ of misleading consumers by investing in fossil fuel projects

One survivor, Jack Egan, claims there is a clear link between ANZ’s support for fossil fuels and the exacerbated bushfires conditions. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Three bushfire survivors have joined environment group Friends of the Earth in a legal claim against ANZ, accusing it of financing the climate crisis by funding fossil fuel projects.

The case, lodged under international guidelines agreed by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), demands the bank disclose its greenhouse gas emissions, including “scope three” emissions resulting from its business lending and investment portfolio, and set ambitious targets that align with the Paris climate agreement.
The claim was inspired by a successful complaint against ING bank in the Netherlands by Friends of the Earth, Oxfam and Greenpeace. Mediation following that complaint led to ING committing to measure and publish its indirect emissions, reduce its thermal coal exposure to near zero by 2025 and make its portfolio consistent with the Paris goal of keeping global heating well below 2C above pre-industrial levels.
The complainants in the ANZ claim include Jack Egan, who was approached by Friends of the Earth to join the action after his home near Batemans Bay, on the New South Wales coast, was destroyed on New Year’s Eve.
Egan said there was a clear link between ANZ and other institution’s ongoing support of fossil fuels and the extreme hot and dry conditions that exacerbated the fire that left him homeless. “We are not seeking damages or compensation from ANZ, I just want them to stop fuelling dangerous climate change,” he said.
Friends of the Earth announced the action at a protest outside ANZ headquarters in Melbourne’s Docklands. It lodged the claim with the federal government’s OECD national contact point, a section of the federal treasury responsible for hearing complaints of corporate wrongdoing under the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises.

The national contact point’s initial role is to attempt to broker a mediation between the parties. If agreement cannot be reached, it can make recommendations, but cannot force parties to take action. ANZ declined to comment on Thursday.
The environment group alleges ANZ’s breaches of the OECD guidelines include misleading consumers by claiming to support the Paris agreement targets while continuing to invest in projects that undermine the meeting of those targets.
Emila Nazari, a legal officer with Friends of the Earth, said the bank had increased investment in coal 34% over the past two years as it lent $8.8bn to the fossil fuel sector. She said the bank was Australia’s largest financier of fossil fuel industries, and continued to invest billions of dollars in “climate wrecking projects” while bushfires raged across Australia.
“It is illegal for someone to light a bushfire, and we believe it is illegal for companies to finance the burning of our common home. This case is one of many to come against climate criminals,” Nazari said.
The other names attached to the action are Joanna Dodds, a Bega Valley Shire councillor and member of the group Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action, and Patrick Simons, a Friends of the Earth renewable energy campaigner whose family lost their home in NSW.

Links

(AU) Getting Down To The Business Of Evolving Australia's Climate Policy

Sydney Morning Herald - Innes Willox*

Scorched by unprecedented bushfires, our nation badly needs a global solution to climate change.
Evolving emissions policy, as the Prime Minister has suggested, can deliver a more ambitious, durable and trade-neutral approach, and get investment flowing to the industry and the infrastructure we need for a prosperous future.
Success requires clarity about what we’re trying to do, and smart policy design that suits the enduring needs of the community and industry.

The fire threat will become inescapably worse in a warming climate, but what if global temperatures rise by 3C rather than the target of 1.5C? Credit: Nick Moir

Many fear that the recent fires are the "new normal". The truth seems to be both better and worse than that. The specific circumstances that produced the most dire bushfire season in recorded Australian history won’t recur every year.
But an underlying increase in average temperatures and shift in rainfall patterns has made more severe bushfires more likely. That shift is guaranteed to deteriorate.
Australia is currently dealing with a 1C increase in global average temperatures over pre-industrial levels. The goal of the Paris Agreement is to keep the total increase to no more than 1.5C – with significantly greater impacts than today and requiring difficult, costly adaptation.
But the initial set of commitments that nations have made under Paris puts us on course for 3C or more.
Global central banks say that would seriously threaten the world economy. It is absolutely true that Australia (which accounted for 1.1 per cent of global emissions in 2016) can’t halt climate change alone. Nor can China (23.5 per cent), the United States (11.8 per cent) or the European Union (7.3 per cent).
Collectively, emitters of Australia’s size or smaller account for more than 30 per cent.
It takes ambitious action by all countries to achieve a net-zero-emissions world. The logic of Paris is for nations to commit to the greatest action they can, then keep upgrading those commitments towards net zero as mutual confidence grows and technology improves.
Australia’s national interest lies in everyone driving that positive spiral by going beyond minimalist compliance with current commitments. If we don’t lift our weight, it takes the moral and political pressure off emitters of all sizes and makes a global solution much harder.
We can contribute by charting our own course to net-zero emissions by 2050, backing it with policies that preserve equity and competitiveness, and co-operating internationally to improve technology and promote success.
Australia has many places to start. The federal government is developing a long-term emissions strategy, an electric vehicle strategy and a technology roadmap, it has options to expand its investment in clean innovation.
The states all target net-zero by 2050 and are developing plans to deliver; greater co-operation and co-ordination on those plans is needed.
The next integrated system plan for the national electricity market will be finalised in June. Internationally, Australia has joined a collaboration on harder-to-decarbonise industrial sectors, and Britain is asking all nations to bring deeper emissions commitments to the Glasgow climate summit in November.
Policy-making needs a clear sense of what matters and what doesn’t. Being seen to "do something" is not enough. Quality matters.
The policy principles offered by the Australian Industry Group and the Australian Climate Roundtable – a broad alliance of major Australian business, environmental, farmer, investor, union and social welfare groups – should guide any policy. It covers environmental integrity, economic efficiency, trade competitiveness, social equity and more.
Electricity is already transitioning, but badly needs clear, integrated, long-term climate policy to attract sufficient investment to meet our needs and support net zero. But the rest of the economy accounts for two-thirds of Australian emissions and needs workable pathways too.
Trade matters. Losing competitiveness via uneven international climate policies has long been our greatest reservation about Australian efforts. Different trade risks are now also opening up: Europe pushes climate in trade deals, and is developing a carbon border adjustment – potentially, tariffs on carbon-intensive imports.
Smart policy design can manage these trade risks, allowing Australia to show leadership while maintaining competitiveness. Some current shibboleths may be dispensable. Carry-over credits for past over-performance don’t help with the long-term transition to net zero, and controversy over them threatens to shut Australia out of international co-operation.

The RBA is warning climate change could lead to the next global financial break down.

The aversion to a carbon price should be rethought. What justifies it today beyond the inertia of past politics? Carbon prices are key policies for major economies on every continent except Antarctica – and Australia.
An emissions trading scheme for China’s huge power sector starts this year.
Should Australia rely solely on government regulation and public spending to reform our economy? Many different pricing models are available, not only those developed by former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
We need creative thinking. The fate of Australia’s fossil fuel exports lies ultimately with our customers’ decisions about their energy systems in light of changing technology and preferences.
We need to be ready for those decisions.
The recently announced national hydrogen strategy is a great first step towards an economic hedge. It is an industry whose growth prospects are the inverse of the expected long-term decline in fossil exports in a world that successfully limits climate change.
The trauma and tragedy of the bushfire crisis is shaking climate politics and policy out of its rut.
Evolution is needed.
And all of us have a responsibility to shape it.

*Innes Willox is the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group.

Links

Trust Our Expertise Or Face Catastrophe, Amazon Peoples Warn On Environment

The Guardian - Patrick Greenfield

Indigenous leader urges focus on native knowledge as study shows rainforest areas under tribal stewardship manage carbon better

Amazon-based indigenous leader Tuntiak Katan. Photograph: Courtesy of Tuntiak Katan

Ecosystems will continue to collapse around the world unless humanity listens to the expertise of indigenous communities on how to live alongside nature, a prominent Amazon leader has warned.
Tuntiak Katan of the Ecuadorian Shuar people, who is vice-president of the pan-Amazon organisation representing communities in the river basin, said governments were spending millions of dollars on environmental consultants while largely ignoring the land management skills of the planet’s indigenous people that could help combat the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.
Speaking to the Guardian from the Ecuadorian Amazon, Katan, who became the first indigenous representative at a UN climate action summit last year, said environmental “catastrophes” such as the fires that devastated the world’s largest rainforest in 2019 would continue unless the contributions and human rights of indigenous people were respected.
Indigenous communities support around 80% of the planet’s biodiversity despite accounting for less than one twentieth of the human population, according to the World Bank.
Katan’s warning came as a new study revealed that parts of the Amazon rainforest under the stewardship of indigenous peoples sequester carbon better than areas with little protection, leading to less deforestation and degradation.
“We are the defenders of nature, of the life of the forests, of our territories,” said Katan, vice-president of Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (Coica). “The world is investing lots of money to implement public policy to combat climate change, help conservation and restoration. But these policies are made in offices by technical experts with little or no knowledge of the Earth.”
Biodiversity loss was named as the third biggest risk to the world in terms of likelihood and severity this year by the World Economic Forum, ahead of terror attacks, infectious diseases and interstate conflict.

Children from the Huni Kuin tribe on land ravaged by the 2019 Amazon fires. Photograph: David Tesinsky/Mediadrumimages

Despite the concerns expressed by the global elite in Davos, there was no indigenous representation at last week’s forum in the Swiss ski resort, according to Katan. He said he would welcome the opportunity to attend next year’s forum to outline an indigenous economic model based on maintaining the health of the world’s soils, rivers and the forest.
“If the proposals, knowledge and management practices of indigenous people are not listened to, there will be more big catastrophes. The issue of fires in the Amazon will continue, the degradation of forests and water will continue, deforestation will continue,” Katan added.
This month, the UN unveiled the draft of a Paris-style agreement on nature calling for a commitment to protect at least 30% of the planet, dramatically reduce pollution and promote the participation and practices of indigenous people.
Katan said: “We are well-coordinated with our brothers and sisters from Indonesia, the Congo, communities in the Arctic and from the Pacific. We’ve been discussing issues with our brothers and sisters from all parts of the world.
“In Indonesia, for example, they also have a lot of knowledge about how to manage tropical forests. But the same story is being repeated here as in other parts of the world: the lack of recognition of their knowledge and the lack of respect for the human rights of indigenous populations.”
Anti-indigenous sentiment is increasing in some parts of the planet. This month activists said they would sue Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro for his latest racist comments in which he questioned the humanity of indigenous communities.
In one of his weekly Facebook broadcasts, Bolsonaro declared: “Indians are undoubtedly changing … They are increasingly becoming human beings just like us.”

A person holds cardboard crosses that read ‘indigenous land’ during a protest against budget cuts on public education by President Jair Bolsonaro’s government. Photograph: Silvia Izquierdo/AP

The new study from the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, found that between 2003 and 2016, 90% of net emissions came from outside protected lands in the Amazon.
Scientist and lead author Wayne Walker said: “Our work shows that forests under the stewardship of indigenous peoples and local communities continue to have better carbon outcomes than lands lacking protection, meaning that their role is critical and must be strengthened if Amazon basin countries are to succeed in maintaining this globally important resource, while also achieving their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement.”
The findings add weight to the recommendations of a report on land use and the climate crisis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found that areas held or managed by indigenous peoples had much less human impact on the environment.
The report also highlighted the lack of consideration of indigenous views and knowledge in understanding large regions and ecosystems.

Links