About TNI's Environmental Justice Programme

Up until 2009, TNI's Environmental Justice Programme was coordinated through its project, Carbon Trade Watch. Carbon Trade Watch became an independent organisation in 2010. For more information, please visit http://www.carbontradewatch.org. TNI continues to collaborate closely with Carbon Trade Watch and other organisations and networks in the Climate Justice movement.

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 of Carbon Trade Watch

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, as part of TNI, 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.

Carbon Trade Watch expanded its critique of carbon trading with the publication in 2005 of Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, which 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 was 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 was 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.