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For the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), just transition begins not just with carbon, but with resilience – the daily struggle of poor women to withstand the heatwaves, floods and crop failures already battering their lives. Climate shocks that are stripping poor women not only of income, but of dignity.

Representing 3.2 million informal workers across 18 states – street vendors, waste pickers, construction labourers, home-based producers and small farmers – SEWA has spent more than five decades fighting for rights and recognition.

“This is what ‘just transition’ must mean for us,” says Mansi Shah, senior coordinator at SEWA. “It is not only about future green jobs or phasing out polluting industries. For women workers on the frontlines, it is about surviving heatwaves, floods and crop failures today – and doing so with dignity.”

    SEWA’s own surveys underline the urgency. More than 90% of women workers report livelihood losses from climate shocks, while 74% say their children’s education has been disrupted. Over 80% of households face water insecurity, 62% food insecurity, and nearly 40% report mental health impacts.

    “When people talk about adaptation or resilience, it sounds abstract,” Shah says. “For our members, it means the difference between feeding your children and selling your dignity.”

    “On one side, hungry children. On the other, her respect”

    One member – a smallholder farmer – told SEWA organisers what happened when a prolonged heatwave dried her fields and wiped out any possible work as an agricultural labourer. With children to feed and no savings, she went to a local moneylender.

    The terms were brutal: extortionate interest and demands for sexual favours.

    “She had to choose between her children’s hunger and her own respect,” Shah says. “That is the kind of choice no woman should ever face. But climate change is forcing it every day.”

    By chance, the woman had been enrolled in SEWA’s pilot parametric heat insurance scheme – designed to trigger automatic payouts when temperatures cross preset thresholds, providing fast, predictable relief when heat destroys livelihoods. On the very day she faced the moneylender, the insurance activated and 1,800 rupees (about $20) landed in her account – enough to buy food for two weeks, enough to walk away.

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    Women-led solutions prove just transition works

    For Meenaben, a SEWA smallholder in Kutch district, the blow came from unseasonal rain and hail. Her 1.5-acre rain-fed millet crop, almost ready for harvest – and crucial fodder for her cattle – was shredded overnight.

    “Government relief can take months to reach a village,” Shah explains. “So women like Meenaben are pushed toward debt – often predatory – just to survive the gap.”

    SEWA’s answer is speed and self-help. Through its Livelihood Recovery & Resilience Fund (LRRF) – a blended pool seeded by one day’s wage per member per month, matched by philanthropy – women can access rapid loans within 14 days of a climate shock, long before state compensation arrives. The fund kept Meenaben’s household afloat, paid for inputs for the next sowing, and avoided a spiral into debt.

    “We can’t wait for others to save us,” says Shah. “So SEWA women build their own safety nets – and get back to work.”

    Mansi Shah, senior coordinator at SEWA, says informal women workers want to survive climate shocks with their dignity intact.

    Mansi Shah, senior coordinator at SEWA, says informal women workers want to survive climate shocks with their dignity intact.

    From Gujarat to the Global South

    After piloting its member-owned LRRF a decade ago, SEWA shared its results at a global women leaders’ meeting in 2023 with Secretary Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Melanne Verveer and women’s organisations from Africa and Latin America. The message was clear: women workers across the Global South face the same shocks and the same finance gap.

    On the strength of that model, SEWA partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative to launch the Global Climate Resilience Facility (GCRF) in February 2024. Its framework is complete and fundraising is underway. Once capitalised, it will support frontline women’s organisations to run LRRF-style funds, expand parametric insurance, and scale women-led adaptation and clean-energy solutions across the Global South.

    From rural daughter to solar entrepreneur

    If these stories show the cost of climate shocks, Payalben Munjpura’s shows what investment unlocks.

    Payalben grew up in a village of 250 households in Surendranagar district. Her father was an electrician. Like most rural daughters, she was expected to stay indoors – until SEWA persuaded her parents to let her train as a solar PV technician.

    She completed a three-month course and certification, then formed a team of four. Drawing on her father’s skills, she brought him into the enterprise, saving costs and rooting the work in local expertise. Together, they now install rooftop solar systems in nearby villages through India’s new PM Surya Ghar scheme, which offers households subsidies covering up to 60% of installation costs.

    Her income has transformed the family: she helped reclaim their mortgaged farm, paid for her younger brother’s education, and rebuilt their home.

    “Women are always seen as energy users,” Shah says. “Payalben shows they can be owners, managers and distributors. If skills are brought to their doorstep, women will turn the climate crisis into opportunity.”

    The women-led solutions already in motion

    SEWA’s members are not waiting for policy promises – they are already building resilience from the ground up. Through its Building Cleaner Skies campaign, SEWA links local experience with a broader strategy of women-led adaptation.

    Its Climate School turns climate science into simple visual lessons, training grassroots leaders as climate educators. Its Green Villages initiatives bring clean cooking, biogas, drip irrigation and rooftop solar – all managed by women handling finance, vendors and repairs.

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    The movement also nurtures young women climate entrepreneurs who deliver adaptation technologies and green livelihoods. And when shocks hit, SEWA’s insurance and finance schemes move faster than the state, trigger quick payouts and provide loans within 14 days.

    “These are not abstract pilots,” says Shah. “They are working now, in villages across Gujarat. The problem is not solutions. The problem is finance.”

    Lessons for COP30

    A just transition must also confront the realities of climate impacts. For informal women workers, it is not about distant promises of green jobs, but about surviving the effects of warming now – and building social protection systems that can secure their livelihoods.

    SEWA’s experience shows that women-led action works. From grassroots insurance schemes to rooftop solar enterprises, women are already designing and scaling climate solutions that protect both their income and dignity.

    To take these efforts further, finance for just transition policies must be deployed – and made accessible to women on the frontlines. The Belém Action Mechanism (BAM) for a Global Just Transition – proposed by civil society as a key deliverable for COP30 – could help bridge that gap by aligning governments, international institutions and community movements, creating clearer pathways for funding and technical support to reach grassroots initiatives directly.

    But whatever happens in Belém this November, for millions of women like SEWA’s members, the transition has already begun.

    The post For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity appeared first on Climate Home News.

    For Indian women workers, a just transition means surviving climate impacts with dignity

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    Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls

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    8 hours ago

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    February 19, 2026

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    Uganda’s plan to use future revenues from its emerging oil industry to drive economic development may not work as expected, because evidence so far shows that the government’s effort to extract and export its crude oil may not produce the returns it is counting on, analysts have warned.

    A new report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) found that Uganda stands to benefit far less from oil production than previously projected, with revenues set to be half of earlier estimates if the world transitions away from fossil fuels on a path to reaching net zero emissions.

    Uganda’s oil ambitions involve developing two oilfields on the shores of Lake Albert – Tilenga and Kingfisher – and constructing the 1,443-km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), with the aim of transporting 230,000 barrels of crude per day to Tanzania’s Tanga port for export.

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    Led by oil major TotalEnergies and China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), alongside the Uganda National Oil Company (UNOC) and Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation, the project was given the financial go-ahead in 2022.

    Will Scargill, one of the IEEFA report’s authors, told an online launch this week that oil may have seemed a historically attractive option for Uganda but the benefits it could yield are very sensitive to major risks, including cost overruns around the project and in the refining sector, which it also plans to enter.

    “The EACOP project is expected to cost much more than the original expectations, so it’s a major project risk in Uganda as well,” he said.

    The start of oil production and exports through the East Africa pipeline had been expected by 2025 – nearly 20 years after commercially viable oil was first discovered in the country – but has now been delayed until late 2026 or 2027.

    Meanwhile, the cost of construction – particularly for the EACOP part of the project – has continued to rise, reaching around $5.6 billion, a 55% increase from the $3.6 billion projected shortly before it got financial approval, the report said.

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    Ugandan riot police officers detain an activist during a march in support of the European Parliament resolution to stop the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline in Kampala, Uganda October 4, 2022. REUTERS/Abubaker Lubowa

    US tariffs, China’s EV boom to curb oil revenues

    Beyond delays and cost overruns, “there’s the risk the impact of the accelerating shift away from fossil fuels will have on the oil market,” Scargill said.

    The report said the most significant factors for the Ugandan oil industry – which are beyond its control – have been the reduced outlook for international trade spurred by recently imposed US tariffs and the growing uptake of electric vehicles (EVs), particularly in China – which has led to a peak in transport fuel demand and an expected peak in overall oil consumption by 2027.

    The 2025 oil outlook from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that growth in global oil demand will fall significantly by the end of the decade before entering a decline, driven mainly by electrification in transport which will displace 5.4 million barrels per day of global oil demand by the end of the decade.

    In addition, structural changes in global energy markets, including oil supply growth outside the OPEC+ bloc – a group of major oil-producing countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia that sets production quotas – particularly in the US, Brazil and Guyana, are lowering prices.

    “It’s a particularly bad time to be taking single big bets on particular sectors that are linked to external markets,” said Matthew Huxham, a co-author of the IEEFA report.

      To make matters worse, Uganda’s public finances have been weakened in the past decade by external shocks including higher US interest rates and commodity prices, resulting in downgrades of the country’s sovereign credit rating, he added.

      “What that means is, generally speaking, there is less fiscal resilience to shocks,” Huxham said.

      Lower global demand for oil would likely see lower prices, profits and revenues for the Ugandan government, the report authors said. In addition, a global shift to renewable energy would mean Uganda selling even fewer barrels into international markets.

      All of these factors suggest that investment in Uganda’s oil industry “would unlikely be as transformational as expected” for its development, Scargill said.

      Climate Home News reached out to the Uganda National Oil Company and EACOP but had not received a response at the time of publication.

      Foreign investors to recover costs while Uganda faces risks

      Uganda has invested a significant amount of government funds not only in the oil pipeline but also in supporting infrastructure such as a planned refinery. The report authors raised concerns about revenue-sharing agreements under which foreign investors are entitled to recover their costs first, taking a larger share of oil revenues in the early years of production.

      IEEFA estimates that while TotalEnergies’ and CNOOC’s returns could fall by 25-34% as the world uses less oil and moves from fossil fuels to clean energy, Uganda’s expected revenues could decline by up to 53%.

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      Uganda is pursuing a $4.5-billion oil refinery project in Hoima District, with the country’s oil company UNOC due to take a 40% stake. To finance part of this investment and other oil-related infrastructure, UNOC has secured a loan facility of up to $2 billion from commodity trader Vitol.

      Under the deal, Vitol gains priority access to oil revenues, placing it ahead of the Ugandan government when money starts flowing in, the report said. The IEEFA analysts warn that this will likely displace or defer planned use of the revenues for other government spending on things like health, education and climate adaptation, especially if oil production and the refinery construction are delayed or profits disappoint.

      “Even if the refinery project is on time and on budget, the refinery and loan repayments could consume 40% of Uganda’s oil revenues through 2032,” Scargill noted.

      Pointing to recent cost overruns at oil refinery projects in Africa, the report authors said Nigeria’s
      Dangote refinery ended up costing more than twice the original estimate – jumping from $9 billion to over $18 billion.

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      They said analysis shows the Uganda refinery will cost 25% more than planned, on top of an expected overrun of over 50% on the EACOP project, cutting the annual return rate to 10%.

      “This means there is a high chance the project, by itself, will not make any money,” the report added.

      Responding to the report, the StopEACOP coalition said the analysis confirms that beyond causing ongoing environmental harm and displacing hundreds of thousands, the project “does not make economic sense, especially for the host countries”.

      They called on financial institutions, including Standard Bank, KCB Uganda, Stanbic Uganda, Afreximbank, and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector, which are backing the “controversial” EACOP project, “to seriously engage with the findings of the IEEFA reports and reconsider their support”.

      Prioritise climate-resilient investments instead

      In another report released alongside the one on oil project finances, IEEFA argued that Uganda could achieve stronger and more effective development outcomes by redirecting its scarce public resources towards climate-resilient, electrified industrialisation rather than doubling down on oil.

      Uganda is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, yet ranks low in readiness to cope with its impacts. The report authors urged the government to apply stricter criteria when deciding how to spend public funds, focusing on things like improving access to modern energy services and climate adaptation.

      The IEEFA report recommended investments in off-grid and mini-grid solar electrification, agro-processing, cold storage, crop irrigation and better roads as lower-risk alternatives to investing in fossil fuels.

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      Investments that take climate risks into account could also attract concessional climate finance and align with Uganda’s fourth National Development Plan and Just Transition Framework, the report said.

      “They also take less long to construct, are easy to deploy, pay back over a shorter period and they also put less pressure on the system,” Huxham added.

      The post Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls appeared first on Climate Home News.

      Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls

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      Ugandans living near new oil pipeline let down by compensation programmes

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      9 hours ago

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      February 19, 2026

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      Most Ugandans whose land and livelihoods were affected by the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) are dissatisfied with training programmes provided by developers which were designed to stop them being left worse off, a survey has found.

      The Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) asked 246 people in seven communities affected by the project for their views on the developers Resettlement Action Plan (RAP).

      It found that while most affected households have received some form of support, most were dissatisfied with the quality of food security programmes and training on alternative vocations and financial literacy.

      Dickens Kamugisha, AFIEGO’s CEO, said that while the Ugandan government claims it is developing the oil sector to create lasting value for everyone, this study shows that this is not the case especially for the people that were displaced for the project.

      “They lost their land, were under-compensated and now an inadequate livelihood restoration programme is being implemented. Instead of creating lasting value for the project-affected people, the government and the EACOP company could create lasting poverty for the people”, he added.

        EACOP is being built by a coalition led by the French company Total, along with China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation and Uganda and Tanzania’s state-owned oil companies.

        The 1,400 km pipeline will take oil from Uganda’s Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields through Tanzania to the East African coast, where the oil can be put on ships and exported.

        Inadequate training

        Nearly four-in-five of those surveyed described vocational training programmes, designed to give displaced people new professions like bakers, welders and soap makers, as inadequate. They cited short training periods, absentee trainers and limited hands-on learning.

        One participant said he was trained in catering for four months in 2024. “I did not understand what I was taught. We were not learning most of the time”, he said.

        The young man said that he only cooked once in the four months and that trainers told them that they would be sent home if they complained.

        The financial literacy programme, aimed at training people to use their compensation wisely, was also described as inadequate by nearly four-fifths.

        They said the training was only one day and was conducted by a commercial bank, which pushed them to open bank accounts rather than improving their money management practices.

        “They were interested in business, and not in people learning”, one woman said, “no wonder when people got money, some married more women. The compensation was also too little!”

        EACOP-affected people during a community sensitisation meeting in Hoima district, 2025. Photo: AFIEGO

        Not enough food

        Those who were physically displaced by the pipeline or who lost more than a fifth of their land to it were supposed to be entitled to food assistance for up to a year or more.

        While three-quarters of respondents received some food assistance, just a third said it was adequate. They complained that they did not understand why some people were getting food and others not.

        There were also complaints about the quantity of beans, rice, cooking oil and salt provided, particularly from those with big families. One woman said her family of 30 used up the 4 kg of rice and beans in one meal.

          An agricultural recovery programme aimed to help people transition but, while many confirmed receiving seeds, seedlings or fertilisers, they complained that the seeds were poor quality and distributed too late – after the rains – for crops to grow.

          In Kyotera District, one participant recounted receiving 70 coffee seedlings, of which only 20 survived. “We were given very young coffee seedlings. They were also poor quality with some having no roots,” the participant said. “I watered those coffee seedlings, but they did not grow. They were poor quality!”

          Some of the affected communities also complained about not getting the livelihood options they wanted, adding that those who wanted livestock were given seeds instead because they did not have a building to house the livestock.

          On the other hand, the survey found that about two-thirds of affected people were satisfied with the distance between their homes and the pipeline. The third who were not satisfied said they feared accidents like oil spills and noise and dust pollution as the pipeline is built.

          “I fear for my life,” said one man in Hoima, “the pipeline can burst, spill and affect us. We have also been told that the pipeline will be heated. The heat from the pipeline could affect our soils”.

          The post Ugandans living near new oil pipeline let down by compensation programmes appeared first on Climate Home News.

          Ugandans living near new oil pipeline let down by compensation programmes

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          Virginia House Passes Data Center Tax Exemption, With Conditions

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          14 hours ago

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          February 18, 2026

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          New and existing data centers could continue receiving a break on the state’s retail sales and use tax, as long as they moved away from fossil fuels and tried to reduce energy usage.

          By Charles Paullin

          RICHMOND, Va.—The Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday passed legislation continuing billions of dollars in state tax exemptions for all qualifying new and existing data centers as long as they take a series of steps to move away from fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.

          Virginia House Passes Data Center Tax Exemption, With Conditions

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