Most people think of climate change as an enormous issue that can only be addressed on a global level. How can small grants of $500 or even $5,000 make a difference to such a monumental challenge?
We believe local action through small grants can make a big difference. Since 2000, Greengrants has given well over $1 million dollars to hundreds of organizations working on climate change in every corner of the globe.
As the stories of these groups indicate, although the issue of climate change is global, the methods of attacking it are as unique as the peoples and local environments that it will so drastically affect. We believe, as is the case with nearly every other environmental issue, that long-lasting solutions will have to include those who will be most affected. We hope you are inspired, as we are, by their efforts.
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CDM Watch, Indonesia
The world’s poor, those least responsible for global climate change, suffer from climate change the most. We provide grants to many groups to enable them to attend climate change talks and make their voices heard by those in power.
Northern governments, even the firmest supporters of the Kyoto Protocol, continue both to subsidize fossil fuel developments and to support privatization of carbon sinks and ìcarbon tradingî schemes. In July, for instance, the European Commission, which likes to present EU member states as “climate heroes” in contrast to the US, proposed to allow private companies to help develop speculative new overseas carbon sinks instead of cutting their own fossil fuel use. That could mean that the EU could burn as much as one-third more coal, oil, and gas than it would be allowed to otherwise under the Protocol.
Based in Bali, Indonesia, CDM Watch is a non-profit organization that monitors the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. CDM is a project-based flexible mechanism designed to make it easier for industrialized countries to meet their greenhouse gas emission reduction targets not by reducing them, but by supporting compensating projects in developing countries. CDM Watch analyzes CDM projects, such as sinks and sequestration projects, and issues briefing papers on related issues.
With support from Greengrants, CDM Watch was able to fly two activists from developing countries to Europe to inform key governments and to do media work aimed at raising the public profile of the CDM Campaign. The goal of this endeavor is to discourage these countries from buying carbon credits from CDM projects in Southern countries that use unsustainable technologies like large dams and monoculture plantations as carbon sinks.