1. En el derecho colombiano
1.4. El papel del Plan Anual de Adquisiciones como herramienta de planeación del contrato
Like the efforts to precisely date the emergence of the new environmental movement by identifying a ‘big book’ or a significant event, various analysts have attempted to locate a singular event marking the emergence of the radical climate justice movement. Some of the literature points to COP-‐13 in Bali in 2007, when a number of NGOs broke away from CAN-‐I, as the origins of the radical climate justice movement’s manifestation as the CJN! (for example, refer to de Lucia 2014, Bond 2014 and Tokar 2014). CAN-‐I member Hans Verolme also identifies COP-‐13 in Bali as signalling the split between the moderate and radical wings of the climate
movement, and his recollections emphasise the role that social justice issues played in this split:
Equity came to a head in Bali. There was a very large contingent of people from the Third World Network, the FOE network and climate justice community, who very openly started to challenge some of the ‘dinosaurs’ in CAN. That was partly because there was an influx into the climate negotiations of people who had worked on other issues, like trade.204 As a result they were framing the politics of climate change more in terms of trade and development than in environmental terms. There was a serious disagreement about how to assess both the tactics and substance of the negotiations. That battle around equity became very deep and deeply personal because people felt that their personal integrity was being called into question. It led to several organizations leaving CAN.
(CAN 2014, p. 57)
Analysts and commentators also identify several other significant events, such as the first known conference on the theme of ‘climate justice’ at the 2000 alternative people’s climate summit at COP-‐6 in The Hague (Bond 2014, p. 208; Tokar 2014) and the manifesto outlining twenty-‐seven Principles of Climate Justice developed by fourteen NGOs at the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (Steger, Goodman & Wilson 2013). COP-‐15 in
(2011), Ciplet (2015), Fisher (2010), Hadden (2014), Mason and Askins (2013), McGregor (2011), and Wahlström, Wennerhag and Rootes (2013) for accounts about different aspects relevant to COP-‐15 events and outcomes.
204 According to Steger, Goodman & Wilson (2013, p. 142), the new CJN! network also
included NGOs and SMOs who had been key actors in the GJM – groups such as Focus on the Global South, La Via Campesina, the Transnational Institute, and Third World
Network. [This footnote has been added; it was not in the original quotation presented above.]
Copenhagen in 2009 is also widely referred to as significant in the development of the radical climate justice movement (for example, refer to Bedell & Görg 2014, Bond 2014, della Porta & Parks 2014), as is the 2010 Cochabamba People’s
Agreement, a program developed at an alternative climate change summit convened at the invitation of Bolivian president Evo Morales in Cochabamba after the failure of COP-‐15 (Angus 2016). All these events are important in their own right as instances of climate justice activism and their contributions to the evolution of both the ideology and the strategy and tactics adopted by the radical climate justice network have been extensively analysed.205 However, as Meyer and Rohlinger (2012) caution, the evolution of social movements is complex and occurs over a much longer period than is generally acknowledged in the literature; it should therefore come as no surprise that ideas about climate justice were being discussed widely for many years within the climate movement and the global justice movement before CJN! was created as an identifiable radical climate justice network. In this dissertation, rather than trying to identify all the significant events shaping the development of the radical climate justice movement, I focus on its aims and strategies, and on the ideology informing these.
The main ideas defining the radical climate justice movement have been linked to the environmental justice movement of the 1980s discussed earlier in this chapter, a “movement that especially emphasized the racial and class injustices of pollution in the United States” (Bond 2014, p. 208), as well as to the GJM associated with the anti-‐capitalist protests against the WTO in Seattle in 1999 (Garrelts & Dietz 2014; Steger, Goodman & Wilson 2013; Tokar 2014). According to Tokar (2014), the first published reference to ‘climate justice’ was in the 1999 report, Greenhouse
Gangsters vs. Climate Justice (TRAC 1999), by a group associated with the GJM. Not only does this document refer to ‘climate justice,’ but it also draws attention to ‘false solutions’ and calls for a ‘just transition’ to a fossil fuel-‐free economy. With a strong critique of corporate power, and especially of the power of the fossil fuel industry,
205 The Routledge Handbook of the Climate Change Movement (Dietz & Garrelts 2014) is
an excellent introductory resource, and Steger, Goodman & Wilson (2013) also provide a detailed account of the climate movement’s components and some of the key events in its development.
Greenhouse Gangsters vs Climate Justice identifies ‘technological and market oriented’ solutions such as ETSs, as well as the Kyoto Protocol’s Joint
Implementation and CDM mechanisms, as ‘false solutions’, and attempts to set out ‘a platform for Climate Justice’ (TRAC 1999, p. 6 and pp. 23 – 26). The authors of the report argue that the only way to counter the immense power of the fossil fuel corporations and their many corporate, political, and institutional allies is to build a powerful grassroots movement linking social and environmental struggles around the globe. They suggest that climate justice activists join forces with allies such as: alter-‐globalization activists trying to dismantle the power of corporations and global economic institutions; indigenous people and subsistence farmers in the Global South trying to defend their territories, health and livelihoods against the
environmental threats of fossil fuel projects; disadvantaged groups in the Global North trying to defend their communities against toxic pollution; and workers calling for a just transition from a fossil fuel economy.206 These suggestions are reflected in much of the thinking within the current radical climate justice movement, as well as in its operation as a network of grassroots groups working locally on specific
campaigns while simultaneously demonstrating solidarity with their allies’ campaigns (for example, refer to Bond 2010, Klein 2014, and Temper & Gilbertson 2015).
A comparison of the principles and positions of the two extreme wings of the climate movement suggests that the two features that fundamentally distinguish the radical climate justice movement from CAN-‐I, and from other groups that lie in between the two extremes, are its anti-‐capitalism and its uncompromising ethical stance. Radical climate justice movement actors do not support measures identified as ‘false solutions’ by those who are affected by them; instead, they provide principled support to the least powerful and most marginalised people whose livelihoods and very lives are discounted by a neoliberalising and totalising global capitalist
economy, which also discounts the lives of other species, entire ecosystems, and all
206 A more recent publication by this group, A-‐Z of Green Capitalism (Corporate Watch
2016), is available on the Corporate Watch website and provides explanations of the meaning and significance of complex concepts relevant to climate change and climate justice in simple language.
future generations.207 In other words, the radical climate justice movement adopts an uncompromising ethical stance that gives it the moral high ground, and although many would argue that this is its greatest weakness, it could also be argued (as I do) that this is its greatest strength.208 The CAN-‐I member quoted previously, who reflected on the split between CAN and CJN!, ended his reflection as follows:
Yet, after a year or so it [the split] led to a much deeper exploration of what equity means which, in my view, has contributed to the growth of CAN and the deepening of positions. Those groups that left have become less visible in the UN process, in which CAN is now the dominant NGO player.
(CAN 2014, p. 57)
But an objective consideration of what CAN-‐I has achieved as a result of choosing to work cooperatively within the system to encourage reforms suggests that its
position of ‘dominance’ in the official climate change negotiations is perhaps not as significant as CAN-‐I hoped it would be. COP-‐15 was a disaster, with many analysts agreeing that the 2009 Copenhagen Accord was a last-‐minute attempt to salvage a very bad situation (Carter, Clegg & Wåhlin 2011; Parker et al. 2012). The 2015 Paris Agreement’s so-‐called ‘bottom-‐up approach’ is just as ineffective (if not actually regressive in comparison to the Kyoto Protocol that preceded it), having yielded
207 The concept of ‘false solutions’ is essential if one is to understand one of the key
differences between the moderate climate action movement and the radical climate justice movement: while, on a superficial level, it is possible to discern ‘averting climate change’ as a broad common goal, unlike the reformist climate action movement, the radical climate justice movement is not prepared to achieve this aim using means that will put even greater burdens on subaltern social groups that are already disadvantaged in capitalist societies. It is for this reason that radical climate justice activists do not support moderate climate movement actors’ implicit or explicit support of policies that aim to further privatise the commons and thereby facilitate the exploitation and dispossession of powerless people. Radical climate justice movement actors are also more likely than moderate climate movement actors to be critical of technological solutions that further tamper with the planet’s biosphere (for example, through experimental and potentially dangerous ‘technological’ fixes such as geo-‐engineering).
208 UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity seems to indicate that people
respond well to honesty and integrity, and that they are also not necessarily averse to positions that elites do not support. Lewis (2017) suggests that Corbyn’s unexpected achievement in ‘narrowing the gap from around 20 to two points’ in the June 2017 election debunks several myths, including that ‘left-‐wing Labour manifestos go down badly with most voters.’ According to Rowley (2017), another factor explaining his ‘shock performance’ is that “He may not be slick, but people clearly see him as genuine.” All this suggests that honesty, integrity, and maintaining a principled defense of
common human decency in refusing to be complicit in the suffering resulting from ‘false solutions’ may be the best long-‐term strategy for the radical climate justice movement.