Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

72 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
mitting themselves to radical measures to drastically reduce
the output of greenhouse gases. For instance, the United
Kingdom in 2008 adopted targets for an 80 percent cut in
their carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. 7 Such large cuts are
seen as essential to address the scale of the crisis. They cannot,
however, be achieved without massive changes to the nature
of the current economy.
Therefore business is challenged to respond to the crisis,
through cuts in their production of carbon dioxide during
their industrial processes and practices in their offices. This
can be partially achieved by use of more efficient processes,
and even improvements in planning and management systems.
For companies, however, whose business is the extraction
of increasing amounts of carbon for sale, such as oil, gas and
coal, the challenge then is obviously more direct and serious.
An examination of the corporate plans of extractive industry
companies and their financing may show commitments to
cutting emissions in their head office operations or even cuts
in per ton of production emissions. Nonetheless they continue
to predict year-on-year significantly increased production and
therefore increased emissions, which dwarf the impacts of any
of their other initiatives. 8
Mining and Forests
One of the most serious contributions to carbon dioxide
release into the environment during the last century has been
as a result of tropical forest destruction. Climate change scientists
now stress that the protection of remaining forest is an
essential element in guarding against further carbon release.
It represents potentially 20 percent of global carbon emissions
if forest destruction were to continue. After decades where
forest destruction has been encouraged and promoted by
governments and financial institutions as a route to financing
development, its value as a living resource is finally becoming
recognized. 9
Mining has traditionally been about tunnelling, and this
deep mining has placed major demands on forest resources.