Archived press release

World Bank's carbon trading fund is deeply disturbing

9 December 2010

Commenting on the World Bank's new fund to enable developing countries to set up their own carbon markets, launched at the UN climate talks in Cancun yesterday, Friends of the Earth's international climate campaigner Sarah-Jayne Clifton said:

"It is deeply disturbing that the World Bank is promoting carbon markets in developing countries.

"Carbon trading has already proved ineffective in cutting the emissions of rich countries at the pace needed to avoid catastrophic climate change - and it will not provide the reliable source of funding developing countries need to grow cleanly and adapt to the impacts already affecting hundreds of millions of people.

"Planned schemes look set to duplicate the serious flaws of the old, and are likely to lock developing countries into a future dependent on dirty fossil fuels instead of green sources of energy.

"An expansion of carbon trading will widen the escape hatch for rich countries to wriggle out of cutting their own emissions and risks a speculative bubble which could cause a double whammy of financial and environmental ruin.

"Friends of the Earth's own research has already shown that there are many better tools in the toolbox to cut emissions - including a global feed-in tariff programme to guarantee prices for small-scale renewable energy projects, sharing green technologies, and tackling deforestation in a way that protects the rights of the people who depend on them."

ENDS

Notes to editors

1. At the talks in Cancun, Friends of the Earth is calling for rich countries to cut their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020, without resorting to carbon offsetting, and for them to commit to this under a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol - the internationally agreed mechanism for legally-binding emissions reduction targets.
2. Friends of the Earth is also calling for sufficient money to be made available for developing countries to grow cleanly and adapt to the effects of climate change already causing damage to their people's livelihoods and families. The green campaigning charity is calling for this money to come from public sources, not a global expansion of carbon markets, and to be governed and distributed by the UN through a new Global Climate Fund. Friends of the Earth believes the World Bank should play no part in providing, managing or distributing this money because it is one of the largest lenders for fossil fuel projects in the world.
3. We are also calling on governments to agree an approach to protecting forests which works with, rather than against, the interests of those which rely on them, and not to agree measures which would simply mean they end up in the hands of the highest bidder.
4. Friends of the Earth is supporting the campaign for a tax on financial transactions - a Robin Hood Tax - to provide finance for developing countries to develop cleanly and adapt to the effects of climate change.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust