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Why EcoEquity?
EcoEquity is a research and advocacy organization
dedicated to the promotion of a just and adequate solution to the
climate crisis. Through our participation in domestic and international
networks of both activists and scholars, we argue for a precautionary
approach to the prevention of dangerous climate change, and for
a global policy architecture that would protect the right to sustainable
development.
EcoEquity seeks to contribute to a just solution
to the climate crisis by emphasizing the importance of equity principles
in all aspects of the policy response, by producing political and
economic analyses that highlight equity issues, and by developing
practical proposals for equitable climate policies. Our focus is
on the international negotiations but we believe as well that, domestically,
strong "just transition" policies will be crucial for
both realist and moral reasons.
In the few years since 2000, when we were organized,
we have accomplished a great deal, and this with only a very, very
small amount of funding. For example, we have:
- Established ourselves as a trusted, expert presence
in a number of key climate networks, including (domestically)
the U.S. Environmental Justice movement, where we have long been
members of the Environmental Justice
and Climate Change Initiative and (internationally) the Climate
Action Network.
- Maintained a well-regarded,well-trafficked website
in which we've published a number of noted essays. These have
focused on the politics and philosophy of equity in the climate
debate, but have also sought to summarize the science in a clear
and straight-forward manner. See, for example, Honesty
About Dangerous Climate Change, which we published in September
of 2004 (and will be revising soon).
- Worked to develop the Contraction
and Convergence approach to global climate justice into a
more robust system capable of accounting for both per-capita emissions
rights and varying national circumstances, which we dubbed "Per
Capita Plus."
- Published Dead
Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (Seven Stories Press,
2002). The book was well received, has been widely quoted, and
is used in academic courses at Princeton and the University of
Washington, among others.
- Served as core organizers of the Climate Action
Network's 2002 "Equity Summit" in Bali, a key climate
movement strategy retreat in which the demands of equity were
closely examined and debated.
- Become the resident climate change experts at
the online foreign policy think tank Foreign
Policy in Focus. See for example, Where
We Stand, which was written just before the 2005's Montreal
climate conference.
- Via consulting contract for the UK's Institute
for Public Policy Research, influenced the International
Climate Change Taskforce to endorse a long-term climate stabilization
target of 400 ppm CO2-equivalent. This is the first time this
honest but demanding target was publicly tied to the 2ºC
threshold.
- Managed, finally, in the
blog we published during 2005's Montreal climate conference,
to finally engage the anti-emission-trading mainstream of the
climate justice movement in a public
debate about international financial mechanisms.
And all this is just the beginning. We are now established
experts, publicly known and seriously taken. And we use our influence
whenever we can. Just now, for example, we are:
- Working to deepen and broaden the "trading
debate" on our blog, with the goal of helping to catalyze
a more nuanced left position on this crucial subject, one in which
the need for trading (as an instrument of efficiency) is taken
seriously, even as we (the climate movement, not just us) campaign
to ensure that emissions trading is fair.
- Using our small influence to try to ensure that
the Climate Action Network's internal debate on "decarbonization"
funding is not simply ad hoc but rather takes proper account of
national measures of historical responsibility for climate change,
and on national capacities to respond to it.
- Developing a new framework for international
climate justice which we call "Greenhouse Development Rights."
This framework grew out of our attempt to save the "Contraction
and Convergence" by adding national circumstances to its
pure per-capita approach, an attempt which we subsequently abandoned
as unworkable. We presented GDRs at COP10 in Argentina in 2004
and will be publishing the final concept paper this spring.
For justice in a finite world...
Tom Athanasiou
and Paul Baer, EcoEquity Co-Directors
By the way, our advisory board
is...
- Azibuike Akaba,
Environmental Justice Specialist, California EPA
- Eugene Coyle, PhD, Ecological
Economics, "public servant"
- John Gershman,
Asia/Pacific Editor, Foreign Policy in Focus
- Barbara Haya, PhD Candidate,
Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley
- Glenn Fieldman, Lecturer,
San Francisco State University
- Donna Green, Research Scientist,
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (Australia)
- Dan Kammen (chair),
Professor, Energy and Resources Group and Goldman School of Public
Policy, UC Berkeley
- Juliette Majot,
Consultant specializing in Non Profit Organizations
- Patrick McCully,
Executive Director, International Rivers Network
- Richard Norgaard,
Professor, Energy and Resources Group
- Susan Ode, Program
Coordinator, International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives
- Timmons Roberts,
Professor of Sociology, College of William and Mary
- Agus Sari, Executive Director,
Pelangi, Indonesia
- Sivan Kartha, Senior Scientist,
Tellus Institute
- Jim Williams, Energy consultant
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