Foolish people have argued that there is a choice between preventing the worst effects of climate change and adapting to unavoidable changes, despite compelling evidence, such as that produced at the latest meeting at Copenhagen that the majority cannot survive without drastic emissions reductions and even if we do, adapting to a lot of changes. While there is a very lively debate on mitigation, on reducing the amount of carbon in the air, the debates on adaptation have been sidelined, perhaps becuase they are seen as distracting from the serious task of saving the world – or perhaps saving the relatively rich English-speakers having the debate. Most measures supposedly designed to reduce carbon in the air also tend to have a horrible impact on the poor. Bio-fuels, which would allow a kind of business-as-usual in terms of running car on liquid fuels, are a prime example – large scale cultivation will disrupt food production. Indeed, the World Bank claims that 75% of last year’s food price spike was down to this very factor.

Another example is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) designed to get developing countries involved in  Carbon Trading. These are mitigation measures, this money might help adaptation as well, but, under the current system, it won’t.  India’s Center for Science and Environment has been very critical of CDM, which lets the rich buy all the cheap ways of reducing their carbon outputs, forcing the rest to pay more for this later. In addition, the complex process of obtaining carbon credits means it is only really suitable for big companies. So the money won’t go to helping the poor adapt, but will go to the big companies, who do most of the polluting in the first place.

Aided and abetted by consultants from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, business lobbies have managed to get environmental impact assessment laws diluted in India. Bribery and political influence from big companies is so widespread that several activists have been forced to send industrial water pollution samples to the US to get them processed, because no Indian laboratory dares to return results that would upset big business. Are we seriously going to direct more resources at this lobby in the hope that this will reduce emissions? And how exactly will this help the poor to adapt?

Alternatives will need to be fought for. The recent Forest Rights Act has made its way through Indian Parliament and is now being put into practice. It sets an interesting precedent by putting into law a framework of rights to underpin local democratic control of natural resources. This highlights one of the few advantages the poor have in terms of winning real adaptation concessions. Despite the tiny character of their landholdings,  due to their sheer numbers, they command control of a sizeable proportion of the land.

If you combine the recent findings about climate change with likely emissions reductions paths, you see that we little chance of making it through this crisis without taking some of the carbon back out of the air. The global carbon cycle suggests two main ways of doing this: put it into the sea, by seeding the oceans for instance, but the technology is not developed yet. Alternativey, you can put it into the land, either through minerals like Olivine, or through biomass, and turning it into charcoal (Biochar). It has been correctly observed that using charcoal as a global commercialised solution to climate change has the same effect as bio-fuels on displacing food production. However, dismissing biochar out of hand misses an important strategic point.

Oxfam and others argue that Human Rights should be put at the heart of the climate debates, particularly adaptation. However, they are somewhat more coy in public about the fact that rights are generally never given freely by the powerful, but forced as concessions from them by the struggles of others. But what on earth do the rich need the poor for? One area is to get access to land. Tata’s troubles in building a plant to manufacture the new Nano car illustrates that the poor will not give up control of what little land they have so easily. If the rich need to use land for getting carbon out of the air, and if the poor can prevent the rich  from doing so by thwarting their plans, perhaps this gives them leverage to demand more rights over their natural resources.

Despite biochar being criticised as an unreliable way to improve soil quality, there have been studies that show that used correctly it can be a useful input into organic agriculture, as well as offering a credible method for sinking carbon into the soil, especially when considered as a part of strategies to increase tree-cover overall. Can we afford to dismiss Biochar as an option because we fear the implications of its commercialisation? As a potential low cost-technology that the poor could implement to improve their land, and a possible source of some leverage on the rich in adaptation negotiations, it may be rash to dismiss it out of hand. With only $1Bn of the already pitiful $18Bn of adaptation funding having been paid out, current approaches to mobilising those resources are clearly not working. Can we afford to overlook the potential advantage the poor may have in the one resource they may control?

If the Indian Forest Rights model can be extended to support dryland organic agricultural practices within a democratised natural resource management framework, this actually creates a model where subsidy for mitigation, in the form of support of increased tree coverage and use of biochar might be used to build productive assets for the poor that may help them adapt. The experience of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India shows that productive use of subsidy is crucial to prevent the subsidy from undercutting the existing local economy, especially agriculture. Thus the issue of having a rights regime to protect access to the environment and thus local economic activity is crucial to any adaptation approach. There is almost no chance of realising such regimes unless the poor have some real leverage to exercise in order to get them.

 Anyone see any other leverage out there?