Klimakvoter kan gi negative konsekvenser for fattige

Foto: Ellen Henrikke Aalerud

Carbon Scandals and Renewable Energy – NILF Professor argues for more research on the economic and social impacts of large scale investments.

Professor John Bryden writes:

At last the ‘carbon’ scandals are emerging – right now at the COP in South Africa. We are told by reputable NGOs of efforts by the rich countries, led by the UK and the US, to capture the ‘green climate fund’ which emerged from the Kyoto protocols. We are also told by other reputable citizens movements of the illegal or dishonest acquisitions of forest land rights (e.g. in South America) by western (including Norwegian) corporate interests in order to claim ‘carbon offset’ payments, also a result of Kyoto.

In 2005, while I was programme director of the Arkleton Trust - a UK charitable organisation involved in rural development - we produced a report on adaptation to Climate Change. In it we concluded, among other things, that “the impacts on rural communities of the ‘top down’ initiatives following Kyoto, and especially the systems of trading in ‘carbon credits’ of one kind or another, seem to be potentially harmful or even disastrous! Indeed, while the effects of climate change are probably ubiquitous, the impacts of the measures to reduce emissions seem to be particularly ‘rural’, and especially so in the poorest countries! At the very least, one can argue that this is largely ‘unexplored territory’ urgently needing attention.” The report continued to argue “No doubt climate change offers some opportunities for at least some rural communities, as well as threats. For example, renewable energy resources are mainly located in rural areas. But unless the interests of rural communities are considered, what appears as an opportunity may well turn out to be not only a threat but a truly exploitative type of development.”

Since 2005 I have continued to take an interest in the economic and social impacts of renewable energy, and have undertaken some research on the topic in rural areas of nine countries. Much of this has been as part of an action research project on ‘renewable energy as a rural development policy’ which involves rural regions in 10 countries of Europe and N America, started in 2010 and ending in 2012. It is a participatory project with regional actors involved as peer reviewers, and led by the public governance and regional development directorate in the OECD. The aim is to reinsert the interests of local and regional interests in a policy that has hitherto been driven from the ‘top’ by energy security and climate change mitigation targets. This project is already leading to much greater interest in the local and regional impacts of renewable energy production and innovation systems relating to it, as well as on the economic and social impacts more generally. Hopefully, future policies will give much more attention to ways in which policies can encourage greater benefits for people and localities.

This context today is that annual investment in renewable energy is now more than five times greater than that in agriculture, and that nearly all of this investment is taking place in rural regions. This is driven mainly by policies relating to mitigation of climate change, and to energy security. However, in most cases, rural people get very little benefit from this investment, and at the same time they normally bear nearly all of the negative externalities and their impacts (for example on tourism).

Because the Nordic countries have good cases where rural populations have benefited from the development of renewable energy and related technologies, it may be that they are particularly blind to the fact that elsewhere in the world such benefits are at best elusive, at worst questionable. However, renewable energy is here to stay, even given the ‘disappointing’ outcomes of the recent COP in S Africa. Alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear energy are increasingly needed. Most rural people in the world are still without reliable and sustainable sources of energy, the availability of which can transform their lives. Yet it will be vital for the future that rural people actually benefit from the development of alternative energy sources, either through direct ownership of the production, or, better still, ownership in combination with grass roots technological development and innovation which they own and control. Norway, as a leading investor in renewable energy technologies, and in the clean energy instruments, must help to assure these benefits rather than simply assume them.
 

Les også 

• John Bryden (2010) Renewable Energy as a Rural Development Opportunity. NILF Discussion Paper
• International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change AWG-KP Opening Intervention –Tuesday, November, 29, 2011 – Durban/COP17 Read by Ben Powless, Indigenous Environmental Network 
• OECD Workshop in 2010 on the Production of Renewable Energy as a Regional Development Policy in Rural Areas

For mer informasjon kontakt John Bryden

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Publisert 19.12.2011, oppdatert 22.12.2011