International

By Mark Lynas

marklynas@zetnet.co.uk

Perhaps it was a signal of approval from on high. The night before a deal was done at the climate negotiations in Marrakech, the heavens opened and drought-stricken Morocco got some much needed rain.

But then perhaps it wasn’t. The rain stopped after half an hour, and the weather system moved on to neighbouring Algeria, where over a thousand people were killed in flashfloods and mudslides.

London Rising Tide will be bringing its opposition to BP's planned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to one of its potential funders, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), every Thursday from now until October, when consultation on the public funding ends. We'll be there every thursday afternoon from 4.30-6pm. Feel free to join us; bring noise, colour and (fossil fuel-free) energy. Email london@risingtide.org.uk for more details.

Activists from Oxford and London Rising Tide went to the Conference of Parties (COP9) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Milan, Italy to protest against the privatisation of the atmosphere and the false solutions that are exacerbating human rights and environmental problems.

Activists this morning disrupted a London conference dedicated in part to 'overcoming ecological and environmental concerns' about the pipelines that are beginning to criss-cross the Caucasus with Big Oil and US military backing.

Raising profile
The protesters in Bonn drew up twelve principles (see http://www.risingtide.nl)an inclusive set of ideas which, if implemented, would almost certainly bring about the changes necessary to prevent climate chaos.

This is the statement on climate change that has been drafted by a coalition of some 42 NGOs in Morocco, consensually agreed upon over a series of roundtable discussions held around the country in September and November. The statement has been named "Ourikaßs Call" to commemorate the victims of an incredibly violent storm that decimated a rural village near to Marrakesh in 1995, killing a number of people and making many more homeless.

WHAT IT IS AND WHAT YOU CAN DO

Graffiti that appeared on AMEC offices in Leeds | Bigger pic

WHAT IS THE PIPELINE?
British Petroleum (BP) is leading the consortium of companies intending to build two pipelines to bring oil and gas from the Caspian oil fields to Europe. BP is also the operator and a similarly sized shareholder in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field and Shah Deniz gas field, which would supply the pipelines.