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Asia and South America
Indigenous people see harm from Kyoto warming pact
November 8, 2006 by Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn in Reuters
November 8, 2006 by Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn in Reuters
Indigenous peoples from the Amazon to Asia said on Wednesday that U.N.-backed clean energy projects meant to combat global warming were aggravating threats to their livelihoods.
They said hydropower projects or plantations of fast-growing trees, prompted by a billion-dollar scheme under the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol for limiting the planet’s dependence on fossil fuels, were damaging nature.
“We are not only victims of climate change, we are now victims of the carbon market,” Jocelyn Therese, a spokesman for indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin, told a news conference on the fringes of U.N. talks on global warming.
“Efforts that are supposed to…retard climate change are having an equally disastrous effect,” said Ana Pinto, representing indigenous peoples in India.
But world energy resources are adequate to meet this sustained growth trend because global oil reserves today exceed the cumulative projected production to 2030, IEA said. This optimistic outlook, however, is based on a reference scenario that IEA describes as "unsustainable."
Under that reference scenario, primary world energy demand increases by an average rate of 1.6%/year, with fossil fuels accounting for 83% of the projected increase. By 2030, the world consumes 16.3 billion tonnes of oil equivalent (toe)/year5.5 billion toe more than it does todaywith more than two thirds of energy use coming from developing countries.