Carbon Pricing: UnMasking False Solutions & Empowering Community-led Leadership
This week colonial governments and corporate industry convened at the 2023 UNSDG Summit to continue pushing fals solutions that do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) or address the root cause of the climate crisis.
So, what are some of these false solutions? How do we identify them? And, what are the real solutions we should be fighting for?
ICA’s Carole Monture and our friend Sage Goodleaf attended Indigenous Environmental Network’s Carbon Pricing Training back in May and have a lot to share on this topic:
“Through my work in the Climate Leadership Program at ICA I felt that I had a general knowledge of carbon markets and other false solutions to climate change. However, after an immersive three-day training led by the IEN team, I became concerned. Not only do these mechanisms exist, they are being pushed forward within international bodies such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and within the colonial government of Canada’s Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change and the Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy, using terminology such as “carbon neutral” or promises of “net zero emissions by 2050”. Even the commitments of 30x30, which is the global movement to conserve 30% of the lands and waters by 2030, with no real plans to scale down fossil fuel production.
Meanwhile, the effects of climate change are escalating. Just this year, ten million hectares of forest have been burned in what is the worst wildfire season on record, with the average global temperature higher during the month of July than what has ever been recorded, and possibly the last 100,000 years. Research has shown Indigenous people in so-called Canada contribute the least to greenhouse gas emissions yet our communities are forced to deal with the impacts of climate change first and worst. Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of being are known to be viable and effective solutions to the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the systems that created climate change in the first place have no intention of stopping their destruction; they are simply changing the language they use in an attempt to placate the urgent need for real climate action.”
Carbon Pricing 101
Within the last decade, carbon pricing systems have become the dominant method within climate conversations as a solution to address the ongoing crisis. This narrative is often pushed by extractive industry and other leading polluters, making the call for global, market-based climate policies unsettling.
What is Carbon Pricing?
With the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, global market-based climate policies were established, such as Carbon Pricing, and presented as a viable solution—to allow countries to commit to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through emissions trading systems and carbon taxes.
There are two types of carbon pricing:
Emissions Trading Systems (also known as cap and trade systems): This system would limit (or cap) total GHG emissions for specific regions as permitted by the state. These caps make it acceptable for industries with lower total emissions to sell off “extra carbon credits” to major polluting corporations. This allows major polluters to emit more GHGs than their defined limits by purchasing these extra carbon credits within the market.
Carbon Taxes/Prices: The pricing of carbon emissions is determined by a set tax rate on GHG emissions or by measuring carbon content of fossil fuels. This puts the financial responsibility of carbon pollution onto individuals, corporations, and countries that are emitting it.
It is important to note that only the biggest emitters of GHGs are subjected to what is known as “compliance markets”, which are developed and managed by international carbon reduction policies and procedures. Meanwhile, “voluntary markets” operate separately from these and allow businesses and individuals to buy carbon offsets.
The Problem with Carbon Pricing
“As Onkwehonwe (real people or authentic ones), we are the first to see and feel the effects of climate change, and with these deceptive offsetting schemes. We are the ones who lose the most in our relationship with the lands and waters… The UNFCCC does not necessarily include Indigenous voices at the policy-making table—meaning a lot of nations enter the carbon credit market, ending up in worse positions, as many of these policies do not account for the future seven generations.”
The goal of Carbon Pricing is to report an overall reduction through buying and selling credits, but does not actually demand a reduction by major polluters. Carbon Pricing allows corporations to gain profit and continue fossil fuel extraction persistently under the guise of reducing their emissions—and these tactics are not new. Historically, corporations have always worked hand-in-hand with governments to develop false solutions that only intensify climate chaos. True climate regulation, mitigation, and action threatens industry’s ability to maintain their overwhelming profits, and they know this.
False Solutions
The UNFCCC is promoting carbon markets and carbon pricing as solutions to the climate crisis, encouraging countries to adopt emission trading systems or carbon taxes. The belief is that putting a price on carbon emissions creates economic incentives for companies and individuals to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
As the climate crisis continues to unfold, climate change solutions are becoming progressively more politicized and polarized. It is vital that we understand false solutions, like Carbon Pricing, are rooted in colonialism and developed from narratives that favour existing oppressive economic and political systems.
What are False Solutions?
We consider solutions “false” if they:
do not acknowledge, reinforce, or advance the rights of Indigenous Peoples;
have unintended or unknown side effects that can make greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) worse; or
rely on market-based, capitalist notions & mechanisms, without addressing consumption or emissions.
delay effective action and lead to unsuccessful efforts to try and maintain the system of fossil fuel extraction and consumption that is driving climate change.
False solutions mask the consequences of an unsustainable system—one that perpetuates environmental racism against Black, Indigenous, and Communities of Colour worldwide—and presents them as “technical problems” that can be corrected using market-based solutions.
Carbon pricing schemes, like carbon taxes and emission trading, can be summarized down to one objective: to make it easy for governments and corporations to hide behind false claims of reduced GHG emissions, while not actually reducing them.
Carbon Pricing is a False Solution
The push for carbon markets promotes a false solution to climate change that justifies pollution. Carbon markets depend on the existence of pollution to function effectively, perpetuating a system where pollution continues to exist, rather than supporting steps toward a Just Transition. By fixing a dollar amount on pollution, carbon emissions commodifies the environment and assigns a financial value to pollution.
Example: An oil refinery on Indigenous lands producing large amounts of emissions are told they need to offset those emissions, so they purchase carbon credits from the Amazon. As a result, not only does this destroy the land the refinery occupies, it also contributes to continued land theft and displacement from Indigenous communities globally.
[Quote by Sage] “We are Indigenous to the lands we are born to and bear the responsibilities of maintaining a healthy connection to the lands we are intrinsically related to and born from. Maintaining good relationships with them (the land) and consciously working with them acknowledges them as our equals nurtures the understanding that there is no ownership or dominance over them.”
It is important to understand that carbon markets and carbon pricing:
Do not leave fossil fuels in the ground;
Do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions beyond what is economically viable (if reduced at all);
Ensure the expansion of a capitalist system valuing endless economic growth;
Allow polluters to gain from this system, incentivizing pollution and profiting from their extractive and destructive industries;
Allows Indigenous, Black & racialized communities to be impacted first and worst; and
Further divide communities who are dealing with the impacts of white supremacy, colonialism, imperialism and lateral violence.
Carbon Markets and Carbon Pricing distract from the root causes of the climate crisis, assigning a price to air, water, and the lands—encouraging us to do the same as we continue to violate Mother Earth. This mindset only serves to continue colonization through the theft of Indigenous Peoples’ traditional lands and territories.
Empowering Leadership
Since launching in the spring of 2021, ICA’s Climate Leadership Program has trained over 100 people across so-called Canada. The intent of this program is not to provide authority over climate strategies, but rather offer regionally relevant resources and training that is adaptable and dismantles hierarchy through revitalizing Indigeneity and uplifting cultural resurgence as a guide to true solutions.
The Climate Leadership program aims to:
Support Indigenous Peoples to be climate change leaders;
Support Indigenous Peoples to develop regionally relevant and effective climate strategies;
Center Indigenous knowledge and systems;
Build a network of Indigenous climate change leaders and strategies; and
Build capacity and nurture community-based solutions to guide action.
The program explores:
Global Warming vs Climate Change
Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse Gases (GHG)
Drivers of Climate Change
Impacts of Climate Change
Indigenous peoples & Climate Change
Empowering community leadership and nurturing regionally relevant climate adaptation strategies that center Indigenous knowledge systems and ancestral wisdom must be at the core of our efforts to confront the climate crisis. It’s time for us to realize that we are our own experts when it comes to creating climate solutions within our communities.
To see our rights as Indigenous people as separate from the land and water is colonial. We are the land and water; we were gifted the tools from the sky to interpret what the land cannot say. We are the physical manifestation of the land fighting for itself, and we stand strong together. - Sage Goodleaf
Learn more about Indigenous Environmental Network’s (IEN) Carbon Pricing Training for Trainers at: https://co2colonialism.org/
Join us for an Upcoming Webinar
Two-Part Webinar Learning Series: The Colonial Urge to Commodifying the Climate Crisis
Date: Thursday, October 26 & November 16, 2023
Time: 1PM PT / 2PM MT / 3PM CT / 4PM ET / 5PM AT
Location: Zoom
Contributors
Karahkwinetha Sage Goodleaf-Labelle is Psychology and Neuroscience student at McGill University. She was born to the Bear Clan of the Kanien’kehá:ka nation, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Raised by two inspirational women, a psychologist and a teacher, both of whom identify as Two-Spirit, she developed an everlasting understanding of traditional values and an interest in helping others understand themselves. She is a member of McGill's Indigenous Youth Advisory Council, and the youth subcommittee of the Collective Impact project in Kahnawake.
Carole Monture is of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Wolf Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is the Climate Leadership Coordinator at Indigenous Climate Action.
