To argue that carbon trading has negative impacts by allowing the polluters to continue polluting and stressing southern environments with tree farms and other land intensive offset projects is an abstraction for many of us. The documentary, The Carbon Connection, created in partnership with Transnational Institute’s Environmental Justice Project, Carbon Trade Watch, and its Community Training & Development Unit, brings the realities of the carbon trading market from abstraction to stark relief.

The film is shot in two towns, Grangemouth, Scotland the home of an oil refinery formerly owned by BP and the village of Sao Jose do Buriti, Brazil where a water intensive monoculture eucalyptus plantation has been put up by a company called Plantar through a prototype carbon fund developed by the World Bank. BP paid into that fund to offset its emissions in Grangemouth under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. The footage is shot by the residents of these two towns in the form of personal video postcards which they shared with one another at community screenings.

The video shot in Brazil shows dried up springs and wells, eroded soil and the destruction of unique plants, many of which have medicinal qualities. The Scottish video shows the plant, right in the town, emitting pollution, soot and other contaminants. As one woman recounts, sometimes she would let her dog out and it would come back in looking green from the coating of soot. The ability to offset emissions not only has had deleterious effects on the town hosting that offset project, but it also allows the company to keep polluting and harming the environment and local residents.

Brazil is one of the most active ‘hotspots’ for the carbon market, hosting nearly 20 per cent of all offset projects. In Brazil there are nearly 4 million hectares (an area the size of Belgium) of monoculture eucalyptus plantations, some of which are being earmarked for carbon trading by the Government, the World Bank, and private companies. Much of this land was appropriated by the former dictatorship and ceded to private plantation companies without regard for the communities that have been living there for generations. Numerous people have been evicted from their lands, lost access to shared water and land resources, and have had their livelihoods and ecosystems destroyed. One local farmer, Antonio, remarked: ‘Eucalyptus has been grown with blood.’ -- New Internationalist

Grangemouth Refinery, Scotland

In one of the more poignant moments of the film, a woman from Sao Jose, a town that has had its natural springs dry up and agriculture wane as a result of the 100,000 acres of eucalyptus trees, watches the videos from Scotland and declares that they have it worse in Grangemouth. Yes, Sao Jose was suffering, but the residents of Grangemouth were subject to respiratory and other illnesses as a result of the refinery emissions. Norman Philip, one of the Grangemouth residents featured in the film, said it was a shock to hear her say that when he went into this thinking that the Brazilians were the ones in peril, not he and his friends and neighbors. He went on to tell me that they have since asked the Scottish government to look into cancer and respiratory illness clusters in their town as a result of the refinery, but have not been successful in getting them to recognize the refinery as a public health hazard. As he explained, the pollution form the refinery is the most obvious cause, but to prove that causality is a whole other thing.

Since the film was made, BP sold the refinery to a smaller company and Grangemouth residents worry that a less high profile company will have even less incentive to clean up its practices. The participants in Sao Jose, who have gone against the local authorities’ support of Plantar, have received death threats and the eucalyptus plantations continue to suck up Sao Jose’s water supply and arable land.

The 41 minutes you will spend watching this film are one of the few opportunities we have to see the carbon market in action. But don’t take my word for it, you can watch the film for yourself:

 

Further Reading:

• Interview with Norman Phillips - The Carbon Connection
• The Case Against Carbon Trading
• Carbon Credits Used to Fund GMOs?
• Hot Air and Snake Oil: Carbon Offset Upsets
• Offsetting Democracy
• REDD: Growing Money on Trees