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The Forum > Article Comments > Lessons from Australia? Engaging indigenous peoples in carbon markets > Comments

Lessons from Australia? Engaging indigenous peoples in carbon markets : Comments

By Elizabeth Buchan, published 5/12/2012

New market mechanisms offer hope for the effective engagement of indigenous peoples in carbon markets but policy makers must tread carefully.

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I predict this will become a scandal. Some scientists with the right kinds of political sensitivities assure us that frequent firing of savannah will increase soil bound carbon while removing it from the atmosphere. That is more burning = less CO2. If other scientists dispute that it's an attack on indigenous employment opportunities. Invariably something will go wrong like a burnoff hurting people, animals or property while the science is questioned or exaggerated. Then the whole thing looks dodgy and patronising.

The sleazy aspect is that big polluters will use the carbon credits to keep on polluting. It's bizarre to picture smoke plumes in both the burning savannah and city power stations somehow cancelling each other out if not in particle pollution but in CO2 terms.

The aim should be to burn less coal in the first place, not find trendy excuses to let that continue. Find something else for indigenous people to do. For example some indigenous people could make money storing nuclear waste on their land which helps genuine causes like cancer treatment.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 5 December 2012 9:22:36 AM
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The annual burn produces carbon and sends millions of tons of virtually irreplaceable nutrients into the sky to wind up in our oceans, where it does no end of harm.
If it becomes the most valuable most traded commodity? Well, shouldn't we make more of it, so we can make more money; even as the tundra melts, sealing mankind's doom?
Carbon credits, earned by not producing quite as much carbon, in the annual management burn, is more of the same sort of stultifying stupidity, that created climate change in the first place.
We need to utilise a vastly more productive way to manage the landscape!
And that way is by very short term, intensive cell grazing.
This has the capacity to quite dramatically reduce the so-called fuel load.
The very short turnaround time, limits the damage done by hooves, which instead of compacting soil, simply break it open; allowing such moisture as falls to penetrate, rather than run off. The usual experience, when burn-offs simply bake, harden and almost permanently glaze topsoil!
Similarly, we need to jettison any ETS, in favour of something that actually compels carbon reduction!
Like say a broker free, cap and tax paradigm, that incorporates a sliding cap and a progressively more punitive tax. Which however, only ever taxes, the above cap carbon component!
We have to stop listening to those who are part of the problem!?
Putting a price on it has allowed some of the most ingenious and basically bent schemes to evolve?
Carbon trading is alive and well in Germany!
Who recently proposed the complete shut-down of its carbon free nuclear power, in favour of so-called high tech, coal fired power stations!
Meaning, there has to be money in carbon!
140 billions annually, globally!
Therefore, make more of it!
A melting tundra says, we are all but stuffed anyway, so why not?
We're led by the "Leaders" we deserve; or, those too deep in domestic dirt, to look up and see, what's burning, while they fiddle!
Better it should be previously unused cerebral cells, than our home planet!
Rhrosty.
Posted by Rhrosty, Wednesday, 5 December 2012 11:05:59 AM
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"Carbon markets have long been a tool to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change".

Yet another kid quoting from the global warming hand book.

I wonder if the young lady would like to qualify the wild statement, quoted above. I have yet to see any evidence of the statement having even the slightest validity.

Note to author. Don't talk bull dust, if you want to be taken seriously by other than the faithful.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 5 December 2012 12:15:41 PM
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I live near a National Park filled with literally millions of trees. I haven't burnt ANY of them, ever. Just think of all the CO2 I haven't released! Where do I queue for my government grant?

Or do I have to be 'Indigenous'? Well, I'm indigenous to England, and I haven't burnt any trees THERE either! I should be up for thousands! I can add it to my monthly cheque from the oil industry...

To present the kind of absurd drivel in this article seriously, with a straight face, requires a special kind of mind. A frightening kind.
Posted by Jon J, Wednesday, 5 December 2012 2:27:08 PM
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Taswegian,

You don't take into account that there is non-Indigenous CO2 (bad) and Indigenous CO2 (good). You don't seem to realise that scrub-bashing and setting fire to the environment to one's heart's content, is a Good Thing if done by Indigenous people -, Culturally-Appropriate - but sheer vandalism when done by white yobbos.

And of course, tree-planting across the North - now that rainfall is heavier than before - is an alien concept to hunter-gatherers, a vile concept imposed by outsiders, and should be condemned, when it is acknowledged at all.

Yes, it's true, it could provide employment for all able-bodied Indigenous people - including those who aren't inclined to ever work - across the north for the next century or two, but it's obviously neo-colonialist to attempt to impose such a strategy on people as to build up a biomass-oriented environment - certainly while they are busy burning the bloody place down whenever they feel inclined.

Let's try to get it straight - buring things is part of zelf-determination; growing trees (and down the track, processing them into furniture timber etc.) would be part of a new form of neo-colonialism.

Okay, got it.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Wednesday, 5 December 2012 5:24:18 PM
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Reminds me of the tulip bubble. Can't wait till it bursts. Though it keeps boring people occupied I suppose.
Posted by Atman, Wednesday, 5 December 2012 7:17:06 PM
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