A New EJOLT Report: Towards a Post-Oil Civilization. Yasunization and Other Initiatives to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Soil

Text by Leah Temper A new report from the EJOLT project argues that leaving oil and other fossil in the soil is a necessary, effective and feasible way to avoid more climate change, biodiversity loss and risky exploitation, and to move towards an energy transition. EJOLT stands for “Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade” and is an FP7 EU funded project with 23 partners from around the world that aims at promoting mutual learning between civil society organizations and ac...


WITH COMMENTS BY SUSANA FONSECA AND RICARDO COELHO
A new report from the EJOLT project argues that leaving oil and other fossil in the soil is a necessary, effective and feasible way to avoid more climate change, biodiversity loss and risky exploitation, and to move towards an energy transition.
EJOLT stands for "Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade" and is an FP7 EU funded project with 23 partners from around the world that aims at promoting mutual learning between civil society organizations and academic researchers around concepts such as Ecological Debts (or Environmental Liabilities) and Ecologically Unequal Exchange. We focus on the use of these concepts in science and in environmental activism and policy-making to support struggles for environmental justice.
EJOLT is geared to support research on two key issues of immediate interest to society. "Which are the causes of the increasing ecological distribution conflicts at different scales?" and "How can such conflicts be turned into forces for environmental sustainability?" EJOs are Civil Society Organisations locally or globally involved in conflicts over the unequal distribution of environmental entitlements, burdens of pollution and uneven access to natural resources and environmental services. The information base of this project lies not in academic research but in the incredibly large amount of work that has been done by Environmental Justice Organizations, or EJOs and their activist knowledge. For example, calls to Leave Oil in the Soil originated from the work of EJOLT partners Acción Ecológica, Ecuador and ERA, Nigeria.

LEAVING OIL IN THE SOIL
The word yasunizar has the following origin. Ecuador proposed in 2007 (when Alberto Acosta was minister for Energy and Mining) to leave oil in the ground (850 million barrels) in the Yasuni ITT fieldin order to respect indigenous rights, keep biodiversity intact, and avoid carbon emissions. The proposal implies avoiding carbon dioxide emissions of about 410 million tons from eventual oil burning, equivalent to French emissions for one year. The original idea came from civil society. The government of Ecuador asked for partial outside compensation, 3.600 million US$roughly about one half of lost revenues. The Trust Fund under UNDP administration was set up in August 2010. Investments would go for energy transition and social investments. This is an initiative to be imitated. We cannot burn all the oil, gas and coal in the ground at the present speed because of climate change. The question this report poses is: how to select the places where it is best to keep oil, gas or coal in the ground?
As we argue in the conclusion, Yasunization entails a "glocal" perspective that has been able to transcend and unify place-based and universal environmental justice struggles and to create democratic spaces for action in ways that are both defensive and pro-active. Its emphasis on structural changes to the economy, to restorative rather than retributive justice and its emphasis on sovereignty and direct action provide a blueprint for an alternative to development that has the power to shift the terms of the climate debate towards new models and away from carbon counting. This report aims to act as a call for further strategizing, coordinated debate and sharing of tactics among climate justice activists from all ends of the pipeline to work towards post-oil civilizations and global environmental justice.
As (Hildyard & Lohmann, 2013) write in a recent paper on Energy Alternatives for The Corner House: Far from being a movement of simple refusal, the original Yasuni initiative encompasses a broader questioning of extractivism, a striving to strengthen community livelihoods, and a collective investigation of the possibilities of postpetroleum civilization, and coordinates with efforts developing different approaches to energy… Yasunisar signifies the spread of similar approaches to other regions and countries worldwide, in the sense neither of the application of a universal formula nor of a "scaling up" of the principle of keeping oil in the soil, but in the sense of an alliance of movements growing out of specific histories of resistance, working toward a post-fossil civilization, and continually discovering and developing what they are. To "yasunize" is to engage creatively and autonomously in a complex of collective resistance and social construction and reweaving that cannot be reduced to an application of scientific principles or concepts of global governance. 1 It is in this line that we argue that while most governments may not be enlightened enough to engage with such a project, the Yasuni discourse holds significant power to create solidarities that connect local-based struggles, global movements and other democratic spaces for action in ways that are both defensive and pro-active, and that can contribute to shifting the terms of the climate debate towards new models. This report aims to act as a call for further strategizing, coordinated debate and sharing of tactics among climate justice activists from all ends of the pipeline.
This report builds mainly on the experience for over two decades of two EJOLT's partners, ERA in Nigeria and Acción Ecológica in Ecuador. In 1995, immediately in the aftermath of the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his companions in Nigeria, they came together in a meeting in Lago Agrio in the area devastated by Texaco in Amazonia of Ecuador, and they founded a south-south network, Oilwatch. The idea of "leaving oil in the soil" (against climate change and against local damages from oil extraction) arose already in 1997, and it was put forward in the parallel meetings to the Kyoto protocol in that year. In Nigeria there was an outcry against Shell for damage in the Niger Delta.
Shell has been operating in the Delta for over 60 years, causing widespread pollution that a recent UN report qualified as the most oil-polluted place on the planet. Authors of this report have been at the vanguard of such grassroots discussions and proposals for many years. In Ecuador, the Yasuni Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) proposal got government support in 2007, when Alberto Acosta was Minister for Energy. This contributed powerfully, as this report explains, to popularize in the world at large the idea that, in order to prevent carbon dioxide emissions, the simplest strategy was to leave fossil fuels in the ground. Often, there were locally many other powerful reasons for doing so, including human rights, indigenous territorial rights, biodiversity values. Such has been the case with the links between groups sharing information in the fight against the "shale gas revolution" as well as the struggles against the Canadian tar sands and the related pipeline infrastructure.
Further, as Patrick Bond argues 2 , Yasuni could and may still be the inaugural climate debt project par excellence.
The report offers a set of policy recommendations:  EU governments should urgently revise their mining laws to rule out any further exploration for fossil fuels on their territories and marine zones, and start negotiations for a global ban on fossil fuel exploration. Current policies head in the opposite direction: Italy has recently reversed its ban on offshore drilling, Spain is forcing exploration in the Canary Islands against the wishes of the regional government and Greece is stirring up dangerous waters with Turkey.
Better would be to invest in solar and other renewable energy sources in those sunniest places in Europe, supported by a framework for accelerating the spread of solar-based energy. To save taxpayers' money they should stop subsidising exploration, and end the tax deductibility of exploration expenses (as was done a few years ago for expenses for bribery).
 Which one third of proven reserves shall we consume, and which are the two thirds to be left in the ground? Even if all further exploration is stopped, the choice which reserves are to stay in the ground should be based on an assessment of socio-environmental costs associated to drilling and pumping oil or gas, and for digging coal in each place. Europe must define criteria regarding which sources of fossil fuels are acceptable for consumption (such as the import criteria for agrofuels). The environmental impact, in particular the carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, land use and water consumption should be minimised, the rights of local communities, indigenous or not, must be respected and their territories protected, and it should become mandatory to ask local populations, often victims of an expanding commodity frontier, for their prior informed consent before any new drilling happens.  As an immediate measure, the EU should consider a fund for contributing to such initiatives in line with its commitment to so-called responsible extractivism, this should be done as an immediate measure. In the longer run such compensation mechanisms could be institutionalised through a Daly-Correa Tax on oil exports levied by OPEC countries. The tax income would be deposited into a fund (perhaps under UN administration) to help finance a world energy transition away from fossil fuels, supporting also poor countries without oil, and supporting those declaring reserves 'unburnable' e.g. for biodiversity conservation and social integrity in places like Yasuni or the Niger Delta.

COMMENT BY SUSANA FONSECA ISCTE -UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LISBON
The report "Towards a Post-Oil Civilization" brings us experiences from several social movements that have been occurring in different parts of the world, aiming at similar resultsto build a stronger society by creating a sense of community and connection with others (humans and non-humans). While talking about initiatives to leave "oil in the soil", a connection with climate change is almost immediate. And yet, reading some more we can see that yasunization is much more than that. Leaving oil in the soil is not mainly about reducing greenhouse gas emissions (although it is a direct contribution for that to). It is a new perspective on what is more relevant to our existence as a species. On how we can prevent future problems by learning from past experience and how important it is to understand the unbalanced share of benefits and costs that has been happening for centuries. And for that, we need to go far beyond we have gone so far. Climate change is not the only relevant issue, as the present report points out.
By no way wanting to diminish the relevance of all the work that is being done to raise the awareness on the seriousness of climate change, I can't help feeling that, as overwhelming as climate change may seem as a global issue with intra-and intergenerational effects and consequences, there is yet another wider picture, an even wider context to be taken into account that is at the heart of these and other environmental and social problemsconsumption and production.
The numbers are striking. During the 20 th century the amount of natural resources extracted increased by a factor of 34. The yearly per capita consumption of natural resources in Europe is 16 tonnes, with around one third being wasted and ending up in landfills. 3 Of the 16 tonnes, at least 3 are imported from other regions of the globe making Europe the continent with the highest net-imports of resources. 4 This increased pressure on natural resources, despite the efficiency gains that have been achieved in the last two decades, has resulted in more and bigger environmental problems. In fact, in the last three decades Europe managed to achieve a 30% increase in efficiency for each euro generated. But the continuously increased consumption of goods and services has completely overridden such an achievement.
Such a tendency can be seen in resources in general and in energy in particular People in developed countries consume up to 10 times more natural resources than those in developing countries. People in North America consume 90 kg of resources per capita per day and Europeans consume around half (45 kg), whereas in Africa the average consumption is around 10 kg per day. 7 In such a context we must think beyond the usual solutions. Equilibrium won't be reinstated unless structural changes take place. And yet, despite the potential for the present financial crisis to highlight the need to "turn the boat around", no matter where we look, contradictory signs emerge. This would be the right moment to look for experiences like the ones presented in this report and taking the best out of them to build a truly sustainable society, where the four pillars (environmental, economical, social and governance) go hand in hand and where the economy performs its true task of providing wellbeing within the constraints placed by the fact that there is only one known "Earth".
Personally I don't automatically discard some movements that are trying to establish a "green economy". As with every other concept, different perspectives emerge, and there is a lot you can do with it, as long as you take the present knowledge into account. But as several reports have shown, that won't be achieved by "business as usual" strategies. Proposals like the "resource cap policy" presented on the EJOLT report can give an important contribution. But even considering the limits of the green economy concept, we are so far from getting there. Considering just the energy resources extraction, the unsustainable irrationality of exploring tar sands or gas fracking is so evident that it is difficult to understand how a short time perspective can overshadow all the evidence of the disaster that will result from such investments. This is the basis of the Yasuní ITT initiative, born from the struggles against the devastation caused by extractivism in the South, which are documented in the EJOLT report. The initiative was supported by Ecuadorian groups like Acción Ecológica and by the then Minister of Energy and Mines Alberto Acosta and explicitly followed the indigenous principle of "buen vivir", which states that economies should be based not on endless growth but rather on the satisfaction of people's needs, respecting the planetary boundaries. This is not a new idea, not even in the North, namely due to a long tradition of Aristotelian philosophy on the contradictions between the "good life" and limitless material accumulation.
With the Yasuní initiative, the world was put on trial. Ecuador was to abandon plans for oil extraction in a part of the Amazon and it would be compensated for it through a crowdfunding campaign, where governments, organizations and individuals, mainly from the North, would contribute financially to the cause. There were three principles underlying these donations, though, which are worth analyzing in detail.
The first principle is the compromise of directing the funds to projects that improve people's living conditions and contribute to nature preservation. This is fundamental to assure that the funds are not used in projects that aggravate fossil fuel dependence, In August, Ecuador announced the cancellation of the Yasuní initiative, alleging lack of interest by potential donors. This implies that oil extraction will be approved in an area that is highly biodiverse and where indigenous peoples, including tribes living in voluntary isolation, live. The decision follows a general attitude of growing hostilization towards social movements and praise of extractivism from the government. Does this mean that the dream of "Yasunizing the world" is dead? Of course not.
The initiative was important to show how a mechanism for financing a transition to a post-fossil fuels economy can be designed, respecting the principles of climate justice, which imply rejecting false solutions like carbon trading that only serve the interests of polluters. This a part of the fundamental work of broadening horizons and making utopias palpable that we as activists and/or researchers must do, learning from the experience of resisting the destruction of the planet for profit that the EJOLT report summarizes so brilliantly.

LEAH TEMPER
Leah Temper is one of the coordinators of the EJOLT project, responsible for the