Environmental Justice

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should create a special commission to cross-check all references in its report if errors such as the one on Himalayan glaciers are not to recur.

Most political leaders face a challenge they refuse to acknowledge: to gain control of runaway climate change they must abandon convenience, the unchallenged assumptions that place the corporation as means and ends of policies.

Like Hamlet, Shakespeare's conflicted Prince of Denmark, China was caught between conflicting currents in Copenhagen. Its failure to manage these challenges led to its biggest diplomatic debacle in years.

So it seems that for once everyone agrees on something: the UN climate summit in Copenhagen was a spectacular failure. That is quite an achievement in itself, since consensus seems a rarity in these times.

The reason for the failure in Copenhagen is clear - rather than discuss coordinated efforts, countries lobbied for their particular interests. Everything now depends on individual states and their respective blocs.

With ministers and heads of states arriving in Copenhagen, protests surrounded the climate change conference venue, while negotiations remained blocked.

The book contributes to a growing field of critics of carbon markets by highlighting several up-to-date examples of where the system has failed and often led to negative social, economic and environmental impacts in deprived countries.

Civil society groups inside and outside the COP process issue call to unite in “Peoples’ Assembly” to demand real solutions to the climate crisis

Instead of stimulating new commodity markets, the targets and obligations placed on industrialised countries should be met domestically.