About the Carbon Trade Watch project

Carbon Trade Watch:

• Monitors and critiques carbon trading, a key feature of the Kyoto Protocol, which has seen polluters turn the threat of climate change into an opportunity for profit
• Produces regular, accessible and popular resources - reports, exhibitions, and videos - highlighting the failures and contradictions of carbon trading and carbon offset schemes
• Works proactively to get the message of the social and environmental costs of carbon trading out to alternative and mainstream media. CTW is frequently cited in a variety of media, including the Guardian, BBC, Rebelion.org and ZNet
• Supports communities worldwide most affected by climate change and free market “environmentalism”, and social movements struggling for climate justice
• Actively participates in the Durban Group for Climate Justice, a global grassroots network who reject the free market approach to climate change

By centring its work on bottom-up community-led projects and campaigns, Carbon Trade Watch aims to provide a durable body of research which ensures that a holistic and justice-based analysis of climate change and climate policy is not forgotten or compromised.

Carbon Trade Watch is organised non-hierarchically and is committed to challenging prejudice in all its forms. This is actively pursued in all areas of work as CTW believes that challenging domination is a vital part of the process of achieving a diverse spectrum of just and sustainable societies.

Case study: Carbon Connection: two communities linked by carbon trade

TNI helped facilitate a unique video conversation between two communities affected by one new global market – the trade in carbon dioxide. On one side a community in Scotland who had been dealing with pollution caused by a BP refinery since the 1940s. On the other side, a community in Brazil whose water and land is being swallowed up by destructive monoculture eucalyptus tree plantations – perversely funded by carbon credits bought by the same refinery.

The trilingual documentary followed the story of two groups of people from each community who learned to use video cameras and made their own films about living with the impacts of the carbon market. From mental health issues in Scotland to the loss of medicinal plants in Brazil, the communities discover the connections they have with each other and the film follows them on this journey.

The imaginative and powerful film received positive reviews from the media, and won the Special Student Jury Award at the Sondrio International Documentary Festival in 2008.

“The activists behind Carbon Trade Watch are smart, and their critique of the carbon trading system is brutal and effective.” Andrew Leonard, Salon.com, 7 March 2006

History

The adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 laid the foundations for a new unprecedented global marketplace in greenhouse gases. Overnight a new commodity was created literally out of “air” spawning a whole industry dedicated to maximising profits from the climate crisis. It soon became apparent that many carbon credit projects were highly dubious: supporting unsafe waste dumps, unsustainable eucalyptus plantations and green-washing the privatisation of basic services.

Carbon Trade Watch was conceived at the end of 2001 and born in 2002 with the aim of exposing key flaws in the pollution trading model. This formed the cornerstones of  two reports in 2003: The Sky is Not the Limit and Where the Trees are a Desert. The latter also took the form of a photo exhibition that was widely displayed.

Since then, Carbon Trade Watch has expanded its critique of carbon trading. In 2005, Hoodwinked in the Hothouse highlighted the role played by the G8 in promoting free-market environmentalism. The Carbon Neutral Myth, published in 2007, showed how “voluntary offsets” represent modern day indulgences, sold to an increasingly carbon conscious public to absolve their climate sin. The same year saw the publication of Paving the way for Agrofuels, which highlighted the devastating potential of EU “biofuel targets.”

A number of short films were produced to highlight the damaging impact of carbon trading, culminating in the release in 2007 of The Carbon Connection, a 40-minute documentary compiled from a series of video letters between two communities affected by the global market. This work has been accompanied by numerous workshops and extensive field research – including in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Thailand, as well as tours of the EU and US.

Carbon Trade Watch  contributes crucially to the building of a
badly-needed climate justice movement … In a totally un-hierarchical
way they respect cultural differences to communicate and see where the
gaps are, who needs help and follow through to get projects done. (Larry Lohmann, Cornerhouse)

 The work of Carbon Trade Watch is embedded in various networks that promote alternatives to free-market environmentalism and advocated instead a climate justice agenda. In July 2003, Carbon Trade Watch organized a preliminary strategy meeting in Oxford bringing together critics of carbon trading from South and North, and in October 2004 a major international conference in Durban, South Africa saw the launch of “Climate Justice Now! The Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading.” It has since become a focal point for critical analysis of carbon trading.

In December 2007, Carbon Trade Watch was amongst the co-founders of Climate Justice Now!, a broad coalition pushing for radical alternatives to the false solutions promoted at the heart of international climate policy. It is also participating in Climate Justice Action, a mobilisation towards the climate talks in Copenhagen in December 2009.