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	We are redefining nature so that it fits within the economic system by Camila Moreno, Lili Fuhr, Daniel Speich Chassé Open Democracy   Instead of changing our economic system to make it fit within the natural limits of the planet, we are redefining nature so that it fits within the economic system.   Until recently terms like “carbon accounting,” “carbon footprint,” and “carbon offsetting” would have raised some quizzical eyebrows among the general public. Today, such carbon-based metrics are everywhere, but are they helpful or unhelpful in motivating the necessary action on climate change?   Although the case for metrics may seem incontrovertible, what is measured is always a political choice, and such choices favor certain interests and approaches over others. In that sense the trajectory of global environmental policy over the last 30 years is a history of forgotten alternatives. Our worry is that transformational approaches will be ignored if carbon-based metrics become the only indicators that are used to guide investment decisions and set priorities for public policy. How so?   At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a ‘silver bullet’ was found to tackle climate change: reducing CO2 emissions. Accordingly, the goal was to make cars and household appliances, power plants and entire industries more efficient. This ‘end of pipe’ approach (by which contaminants are removed at the end of a process) deflected political attention away from the causes of climate change and allowed policy makers to deal only with the symptoms in the form of emissions.   Secondly, a decision was made to express climate change in units of calculation known as ‘CO2 equivalents.’ CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide have very different qualities when it comes to their warming potential or the number of years they remain in the atmosphere. They also appear in specific natural surroundings, and interact with local ecosystems and economies in different ways.   Expressing all of these different qualities and potential impacts in one standard number reduces a very complex problem to something that policy makers feel they can deal with through a single solution, policy, instrument and target.   A third wrong turn was to offset emissions from the burning of fossil fuels against those from biological processes involving land, plants and animals. Paddy fields and cows were turned into emissions sources, and tropical forests and bogs into emissions sinks. By the time of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, ‘more flexibility’ had become the watchword of the day, and trading in emissions certificates (or permits to pollute) the preferred policy option.   But such trading has since been used by industrialized nations to dodge some of their own domestic CO2 reduction commitments in exchange for financial contributions to cuts beyond their borders. In this process, policy-makers were steered towards an even more carbon-centered worldview.   Today, we see new markets for so called ‘ecosystem services’ spreading all over the world, including ‘wetland’ or ‘mitigation banking,’ ‘biodiversity offsetting,’ and ‘forest credits.’ These schemes not only copy the faulty conceptual principles of emissions trading, but in some cases they actually translate biodiversity and ecosystems into carbon equivalents. Instead of changing our economic system to make it fit within the natural limits of the planet, we are redefining nature so that it fits within the economic system.   In the aftermath of the climate summit in Paris in December 2015, the world is on the verge of taking yet another wrong turn by embracing the idea of “negative emissions,” with the goal of reducing net emissions to zero by using new technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.   This strategy implies that we can continue to produce emissions so long as more techniques are invented to suck carbon out at a later stage—instead of embarking on a more radical trajectory now that leaves fossil fuels in the ground, transforms our agricultural systems, and restores natural ecosystems.   But this is a myth: we can’t continue to emit massive amounts of CO2, and even establish new coal-burning power plants, in the vague hope that new technologies will address climate change successfully.   The poster child for this new approach is “Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage” (or BECCS). BECCS entails the planting of huge quantities of grass and trees, and then burning their biomass to generate electricity, capturing the CO2 that is emitted, and pumping it into geological reservoirs underground. Such technologies might or might not work, but they are riddled with practical challenges and carry the risk of future leakages which would have major social and environmental consequences.   What’s clear from this gallop through recent history is that the dominance of carbon metrics has increased as a result of each iteration in global environmental policy. Since ‘what gets measured determines what gets done’ (and left undone), this is an extremely important development. But how have we allowed ourselves to be fooled in such a way?   One possible answer is that we have taken so many wrong turns in the past few decades, and each one of them has further narrowed our vision of what is wrong and what is possible in the future. In the monoculture of carbon metrics, real alternatives become literally unthinkable.   The contemporary obsession with measurement and accounting goes far beyond the environmental sphere. The world runs on abstractions: calories, meters, kilos, GDP, and now carbon. The creation and adoption of the metric system itself was a decisive step in forging a truly globalized world.   We seldom remember that these abstractions have a history that profoundly determines them in many ways. And we often forget how they hide questions of power and politics behind expert language which is apparently ‘objective.’   An illustrative example is the measurement of economic output in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), which was innovative at the time of the Second World War but has since become a source of frustration from which there seems no escape. GDP hogs the limelight like an all-powerful autocrat—over-emphasizing the money economy, consigning non-economic values to a secondary position, and distorting decision-making.   Quantification can be illuminating, but it can also act as a blindfold. Like the headlamps of a car on full beam, a small part of the road ahead may be crystal clear, but the darkness of the night is all the more enveloping. We run a similar risk in making carbon the sole negative measure of prosperity.   There’s a special characteristic to the measurement systems which dominate societies today—their demand for totality and universality, which is closely connected to the emergence of the capitalist world system.   In that process quantification took over from qualitative thinking; linear understandings of change replaced more complex imaginations; and standard measures destroyed the nuances of local specificities.   Translated into the climate change arena, this means that anything that marginally reduces net carbon emissions has to be the right thing to do—even if it prevents a fundamental transformation of the economy or reduces the ability of communities to define problems and solutions on their own terms.   These effects can be observed in the European Emission Trading Scheme (or EU ETS). While its proponents argue that this scheme has reduced the problem by setting a clear cap on emissions, its impact on climate change is questionable. The German Energy Transition, for example, has little to do with EU ETS, and the existence of the scheme has helped fossil fuel companies and car lobbyists to fight for a single ‘technology neutral’ climate or emissions reduction target, thereby weakening calls for a wider range of renewable energy targets, energy efficiency targets, and fuel quality standards.   The obsession with carbon metrics helps to promote nuclear energy, natural gas extraction (including fracking), biofuels and other risky and harmful technologies, so long as they can claim to emit less carbon than was expected to be emitted without them. But none of this will bring us any closer to the transformational changes in self and society that are required to deal with climate change, and that depend on the preservation and utilization of diverse, non-linear ideas and approaches.   As the writer and activist Boaventura de Souza Santos puts it, the failure to recognize different ways of knowing is an act of “cognitive injustice” or “epistemicide.” ‘Ecological epistemicide’ places the world at risk of losing a huge variety of knowledge, wisdom and practices that could help us to confront the multiple crises that we face: for example, the diverse systems of agroecology that are often ignored in favor of “climate smart agriculture” whose impact can be measured in carbon equivalents. So what’s to be done?   Wiring our brains into a new measurement system doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long-term process. A metric mind requires a metric mentality, a way of thinking of its own, of apprehending the world in terms of figures.   Under the dominance of carbon metrics, new generations will only know a carbon-constrained (or—one day perhaps—a low carbon) world. But that is a greatly-reduced vision of the future.   Better and richer strategies require a different way of thinking and knowing as well as active engagement to reclaim and conserve the spaces where these alternatives can grow and flourish.   By contrast, the climate agreements signed in Paris fully embody the rule of carbon metrics, cementing a pattern that may well be here to stay. This pattern constitutes one more chapter in the long history of quantification under capitalism, but it takes it to new heights by embedding a narrow and self-limiting set of indicators into an increasingly problematic discourse of ‘de-carbonization.’   By doing so the prospects for more fundamental changes in society will be set back still further, despite the fact that such transformations are the only way to tackle the challenges of climate change with any real conviction.   * Camila Moreno is a researcher at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro and the author of Carbon Metrics and the New Colonial Equations. Daniel Speich Chassé is professor of history at the University of Lucerne, where he works on the evolution of knowledge systems. Lili Fuhr heads the Ecology and Sustainable Development Department at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung in Berlin.   http://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/camila-moreno-lili-fuhr-daniel-speich-chass/beyond-paris-avoiding-trap-of-carbon-metr
	The Pen is still mightier than the Sword by Nabila Khouri Search for Common Ground   Throughout history, journalists and the media have often been regarded as both heroes and villains. They have been the watchdogs of political power. They have given a voice to the voiceless. They have also been used to trample the rights of others, and support the agendas of dictators and tyrants.   New technologies have potentially turned anyone who has access to the Internet into a reporter, shattering the filter between the news and the audience. Citizen journalism may well be one of the greatest revolutions in the fields of information and communication.   In Nepal, people are documenting the horrifying effects of the recent earthquake. The images they are producing and the stories they are telling are helping attract donors and volunteers from all over the world. Seven thousand miles away, in Baltimore, Maryland, the media is being faced with a crucial task—choosing what to focus on and in doing so, shaping public opinion.   As the way we communicate rapidly evolves, preserving the freedom of the press – the great privilege of being able to express discontent with government, society and injustice – remains a fundamental element of peace. It also bestows upon journalists an immense responsibility. We incorporate in our work the use of digital technology, multimedia and journalism to empower ordinary citizens and media professionals alike to be responsible storytellers. Stimulating curiosity and active learning, we encourage them to listen to every side of every story.   In the MENA region, we have seen how powerful media is in our work to inspire women and children to be active leaders for coexistence in their communities.   In Lebanon and Morocco, our project Everyone Gains aims to enhance the condition of women in two ways: by supporting civil society organizations to devise a campaign for women’s economic empowerment, and by sensitizing the media to issues concerning women’s inequality. Earlier this year, we organized workshops to train Lebanese and Moroccan media professionals on how to talk about women’s rights objectively and fairly.   In Tunisia, we’ve been working with youth, who are already acting as amateur reporters through social media, to encourage responsible reporting. One Step Forward, a non-profit we founded in Tunis, was awarded a small grant to establish an online platform led by young journalists to discuss local events. The association’s members have already participated in two rounds of training with established Tunisian journalist Hedi Yahmad, with a third in the making.   The success of our programs on journalism is not limited to the Middle East and North Africa. In Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and Rwanda we’ve adopted a number of innovative media strategies to broaden our audiences and participants.   Sri Lanka is home to many cultures, traditions and languages. The country is still recovering from a 26-year civil war that left it economically and socially torn. Our recent initiative, Eastern Voices, strengthens the capacity of journalists from the Trincomalee district to highlight human rights issues and inequality, without ethnic biases that can lead to further tension.   Trincomalee is one of the most diverse districts in the country, but years of violence have divided its residents.We brought together 25 journalists with different levels of experience for a series of trainings, including conflict sensitive reporting, IT skills and photojournalism. Over 60 percent of the participants had never received formal training, even though they were already working in media.   “Before the training I never covered issues and problems of the Tamil and Muslim communities. Everyone focused only on their community. So, all three groups would produce one-sided articles. The chance we were given to work as mixed teams helped us realize how useful it is to share information with each other and work as a collective,” said Lakmal Baduge, a novice journalist.   The percentage of trainees that defined themselves “confident” in reporting on sensitive topics rose from 5 percent at the start of the training to 65 percent toward the end.   Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Kyrgyzstan has been moving towards stability despite economic struggles and political divides. In recent years, it has faced another major issue—the recruitment of youth into violent extremist groups. The project Strengthening Capacity to Prevent Violent Religious Extremism is using media to influence the debate around radicalization and recruitment in the country.   We organized a series of press-cafés in the past months in Bishkek and Osh, bringing together 6 government officials, 12 experts and religious leaders, and more than 30 journalists, including representatives from newspapers, radio outlets, web news agencies and others.   “One of the issues discussed recently was around freedom of press and fight against extremism, after one of the news sites posted an ISIS video involving children,” said Keneshbek Sainazarov, our Kyrgyzstan Country Director. Though the authorities shut down the website, there is still a question of how controlled freedom of the press should be when radical groups like ISIS are present.   “Journalists and experts in the areas of extremism and radicalization have discussed fundamental issues around freedom of press, indirect advertisement, promotion of extremism, and using force to prevent the promotion of violent messages into mass media,” he said. Sainazarov has recently been awarded the Jubilee Medal by the government of Kyrgyzstan for his contributions to national efforts to counter violent extremism.   In many areas of Africa, radio is the most widespread medium – an incredibly useful tool to communicate with rural and urban audiences alike. Our multilingual radio program in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Génération Grands Lacs (GGL), manages to reach tens of thousands— if not millions— of listeners in the region.   The project specifically targets the quickly growing youth demographic, fostering camaraderie and understanding across borders. Audiences use texts, phone calls, email and social media to contribute to GGL’s programming, engaging in informal citizen journalism in the process. An active Facebook page accompanies the radio show, where discussion topics build anticipation for the upcoming broadcast.   Our approaches differ from region to region, and so do our target audiences. But the goal we have in mind is the same – empowering regular citizens to become unbiased grassroots journalists, and fostering the skills of media professionals to pursue fairness and independence in their reporting. History teaches us that only when all voices are given a platform, peace is truly possible. When people are armed with enough knowledge to understand both sides of a conflict, they can make decisions that are supported by facts, rather than opinions.   * Nabila Khouri is a communications Intern at Search for Common Ground. She recently graduated from the University of Richmond where she studied journalism.   http://www.sfcg.org/category/blog/ http://www.sfcg.org/our-media/ Visit the related web page
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