On the face of it, everything is clear; mankind faces a challenge that calls for united action - a global environmental problem, climate change. And it seems generally agreed that a solution to this problem has already been found; by using mechanisms like emissions trading we should be able to modernise society along ecological lines and at the same time open up new markets. This appears to be the general consensus.

We want to use the 32^nd BUKO to challenge this consensus. In our opinion the climate conflict is by no means a global problem of mankind as such, defined by a common level of threat or a collective interest in finding a solution. If we want to take a close look at the causes and the impact of this problem, we have to take into consideration many factors relating to region, society and time. The G8 states alone are responsible for half the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and the main source of man-made climate change has long been located in the capitalistic methods of production and consumption. On the other hand, the regions of the world that suffer most from poverty and whose inhabitants, as it is, have limited access to resources, suffer to a very high degree from the consequences of climate change.

We see this climate change as an expression of a fundamental social crisis – an all-encompassing crisis of social relations and societal relations with nature. Current climate policies tend to obscure the fact that the predominant societal relations with nature are part of a certain social context and should be dealt with as such. A good example is agro fuels. A lot of emphasis is put on the development of such fuels because they are needed to maintain an excessive volume of transportation of people and goods that relies on fossil fuels that are bad for the climate. But massive production of agro fuels requires establishing huge areas of monoculture, destroying the rain forest and biodiversity, and robbing smallholders of the basis for their subsistence economy. The effects on both climate and global justice are enormous. Climate change is clearly not a topic just for ecologists, and it cannot be dealt with solely on the basis of ecological protection or by coming up with technological solutions. The crisis, to a huge extend, is shaped by social power relations: relations between the genders, between global North and global South, rich and poor etc.

We believe that we have to put the existing power relations up for discussion if we want to deal with the present social-ecological crisis in an emancipatory manner. A radical, democratic restructuring of socially constructed relations with nature differs fundamentally from everything that current official policies, civil society and big business try to achieve by measures that can be summed up by the grossly overused term ‘sustainability’. Looking at climate change from an emancipatory perspective means putting the question of social-ecological justice into a global context, whereas the current dominant approach to the climate change problem and its solution leads to the reproduction of social and ecological injustice. Eco-colonial structures are being established and maintained. The Kyoto protocol, for example, enables the ‘North’ to avoid - by means of the Clean-Development-Mechanism - unpalatable emissions reductions by supporting more cost effective projects in the south, such as power dams. It is often doubtful how much these projects will really contribute to reducing greenhouse gases. Furthermore they tend to produce new local and/or regional social-ecological conflicts.

Faced with the dire need to act, do we still have time to overcome capitalism and the power relations mentioned before? We strongly feel that we have to make time for criticising the ruling powers and to demand global justice, and we will take this time!

So what kind of transformation does climate change make necessary? The answer to this depends on another question: will it be possible to establish a counter force capable of action and to establish structures that will enable us to modernise society, given that our way of life, as well as the currently predominant methods of production, are the main sources of the social-economic crisis we a faced with. If we cannot establish such structures, all we will get is a green New Deal: an adaptation of the capitalistic dynamics for crisis management that will again just reproduce social and ecological injustice. The basis for such an adaptation has already been established. Will we end up with a green New Deal, or will we be able to move forward into a phase of emancipatory social upheaval? That remains to be seen.

At the BUKO, we want to discuss these questions in workshops and panel discussions. We want to make visible a reality that is otherwise obscured and neglected. We want to help strengthen standpoints and positions that up to now have been marginalised by the mainstream debate.

For us, internationalism means, among other things, making social movements from the global South heard over here. We want to present the many already existing emancipatory alternatives to problem solving approaches based primarily on the demands of the market and on technology. We want to bring together voices of criticism from the global South and the North and we want to hear what demands people and movements are putting forward. One thing we can be sure of from the start: climate change is by no means a single issue topic.

At the conference we are going to take a closer look at certain topic areas that are of extreme importance when talking about and dealing with climate change. Some examples are food production/agriculture, migration/racism, security policies/militarisation, and gender relations/injustice. What kind of reality brings about climate change and, in turn, what kind of reality is produced by it? What kind of role, for example, do gender relations play for vulnerability? Where are the currently predominant concepts for change being criticised by social movements and what are the demands being put forward? What is the current role of ideas for problem solving that aim at changing our way of life and our economy? We will look at regional struggles in various parts of the world, at the climate camps that are being organised internationally, and at the mobilisation taking place right now around the COP-15 Conference in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that will be held in Copenhagen. And by doing so, we will ask and discuss the question of an emancipatory practical approach to climate policy. How do we envisage such an approach and what forms can it take?

For further insight into the current discussion within BUKO and elsewhere, we recommend the articles and links posted here:

Mobilization to COP15: http://www.climateaction09.org

German articles of the BUKO Working Group on Social Ecology:

http://www.buko.info/buko_projekte/as_soziale_oekologie/die_debatte/

Reader of seminars of the BUKO Working Group on Social Ecology