Isatis M. Cintron-Rodriguez is a Puertorrican climate scientist and staff associate at Columbia University’s Earth Insitute. Liane Schalatek is associate director at the Heinrich Boell Stiftung Washington with expertise in UN climate funds and finance. Lien Vandamme is senior campaigner for the Climate & Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law.
Imagine losing your home to catastrophic floods, your loved ones to unprecedented hurricanes, your livelihood to raging wildfires, or your ancestors’ graves to rising sea levels.
Then, to add insult to injury, imagine losing your voice and rights in the very UN institution mandated to alleviate the costs of these climate-related harms for the hardest hit in communities such as yours.
Technocrats talking about you, without you; decisions made – including, ironically, on participation and stakeholder engagement – while you have no meaningful say. Justice denied from the outset.
This could be the dire reality when the new board of the Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) convenes for the first time in Abu Dhabi (UAE) next week (April 30 – May 2). Designed to provide long-awaited justice for those suffering the most from climate impacts, the fund risks failing right from the start by limiting access for those it claims to support.
Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet
Those most affected by the climate crisis know all too well the losses and damages they are suffering and how to repair these harms. Their involvement in the LDF is essential not only for its effectiveness but for its legitimacy and for justice. Even more than any other, this fund needs to be driven by people, to respect their rights, and hear their voices.
Let’s start with the basics: public participation and access to information are human rights. Accountability, transparency and participation in decision-making are the hallmarks of democratic governance – and their importance for the LDF’s ability to meet local needs and priorities cannot be overstated.
These fundamental rights are rooted in the understanding that people should hold power over decisions that concern their lives and communities. Science and experience show that such participation also leads to more effective and sustainable outcomes. Getting participation right from the start is essential to the LDF’s legitimacy, equity, effectiveness and potential for transformative change.
Sidelined in planning
The LDF would not exist if it were not for the decades-long relentless calls for justice and affirmative action by communities, civil society and Indigenous Peoples, which escalated to an impossible-to-ignore volume over the last few years.
Despite these loud calls, rightsholders’ representatives were sidelined during the fund’s planning stages last year. While a small group of countries in a Transitional Committee debated the fund’s scope and aims, civil society consistently had to put up a fight merely to be let into the room.
And history is repeating itself. The LDF’s Governing Instrument (adopted at COP28) reinforces the need to support local communities and recognition of their participation. Yet the first board meeting limits participation to two people per UNFCCC stakeholder group – some of which represent millions, even billions, of people – such as Indigenous Peoples, youth, and women and girls.
Such overly restrictive numbers do not allow for the representation of the diversity of voices, groups and organisations under the umbrellas of these groups, and will lead to the exclusion of critical voices.
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These limitations are in stark contrast with participation at another UN fund, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which – while it still has a long way to go to enable effective participation – does not limit board meeting observer attendance either in number or by stakeholder groups. The GCF had a significantly higher attendance than the LDF at its first meetings.
Restricted seating in the actual room will further limit direct interaction with LDF board members making the decisions. The claimed ‘space constraints’ behind the restrictions are particularly unconvincing, coming from a country that organised the biggest climate talks in history just a few months ago.
Climate justice requires inclusion
The LDF has the potential to set a new precedent for climate finance – one that values human dignity and amplifies the voices of its beneficiaries. This requires more than a token dialogue with a handful of stakeholders in the first meeting; it necessitates a broad, inclusive consultation process that genuinely influences the fund’s policies.
By explicitly endorsing the principles of inclusion, non-discrimination, transparency, access to information, empowerment, collaboration, and accountability, and proactively enabling active participation at all stages – from designing board policies and assessing community-level needs to implementation and decision-making – the LDF could live up to expectations and deliver climate justice.
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If the Board does not explicitly and meaningfully include the diverse voices of the rightsholders who are meant to be the LDF’s main beneficiaries, the fund risks becoming another bureaucratic relic, preserving the status quo of climate injustice.
During its first meeting next week, the board has a chance to overcome business-as-usual, as decision-makers will discuss procedures for the participation of observers and stakeholders. It must radically choose to enable and support meaningful participation by the diverse range of groups involved.
The time to act is now. At its inaugural meeting, the board must choose to champion transformative change and genuine justice, setting a course that will define the fund’s legacy. The lives and livelihoods of far too many are on the line.
The post Limiting frontline voices in the Loss & Damage Fund is a recipe for disaster appeared first on Climate Home News.
Limiting frontline voices in the Loss & Damage Fund is a recipe for disaster
With the U.S. bombing Iran and the Strait of Hormuz closed, energy experts say countries transitioning to renewables will be more resilient in the “face of the shock.”
The United States’ war on Iran could fundamentally alter how countries consume and generate energy and hamper international progress in combating climate change, a panel of energy experts said today.
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One month into the US and Israel’s war on Iran, at least 60 countries have taken emergency measures in response to the subsequent global energy crisis, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
So far, these countries have announced nearly 200 policies to save fuel, support consumers and boost domestic energy supplies.
Carbon Brief has drawn on tracking by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and other sources to assess the global policy response, just as a temporary ceasefire is declared.
Since the start of the war in late February, both sides have bombed vital energy infrastructure across the region as Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz – a key waterway through which around a fifth of global oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) trade passes.
This has made it impossible to export the usual volumes of fossil fuels from the region and, as a result, sent prices soaring.
Around 30 nations, from Norway to Zambia, have cut fuel taxes to help people struggling with rising costs, making this by far the most common domestic policy response to the crisis.
Some countries have stressed the need to boost domestic renewable-energy construction, while others – including Japan, Italy and South Korea – have opted to lean more on coal, at least in the short term.
The most wide-ranging responses have been in Asia, where countries that rely heavily on fossil fuels from the Middle East have implemented driving bans, fuel rationing and school closures in order to reduce demand.
‘Largest disruption’
On 28 February, the US and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, triggering conflict across the Middle East and sending shockwaves around the world.
There have been numerous assaults on energy infrastructure, including an Iranian attack on the world’s largest LNG facility in Qatar and an Israeli bombing of Iran’s gas sites.
Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf, is causing what the IEA has called the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”.
A fifth of the world’s oil and LNG is normally shipped through this region, with 90% of those supplies going to destinations in Asia. Without these supplies, fuel prices have surged.
Governments around the world have taken emergency actions in response to this new energy crisis, shielding their citizens from price spikes, conserving energy where possible and considering longer-term energy policies.
Even with a two-week ceasefire announced, the energy crisis is expected to continue, given the extensive damage to infrastructure and continuing uncertainties.
Asian crunch
Carbon Brief has used tracking by the IEA, news reports, government announcements and internal monitoring by the thinktank E3G to assess the range of national responses to the energy crisis roughly one month into the Iran war.
In total, Carbon Brief has identified 185 relevant policies, announcements and campaigns from 60 national governments.
As the map below shows, these measures are concentrated in east and south Asia. These regions are facing the most extreme disruption, largely due to their reliance on oil and gas supplies from the Middle East.
Nations including Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and India are already spending billions of dollars on fuel subsidies to protect people from rising costs.
At least 16 Asian countries are also taking drastic measures to reduce fuel consumption. For example, the Philippines has declared a “state of national emergency”, which includes limiting air conditioning in public buildings and subsidising public transport.
Other examples from the region include the government in Bangladesh asking the public and businesses to avoid unnecessary lighting, Pakistan reducing the speed limit on highways and Laos encouraging people to work from home.
Europe – which was hit hard by the 2022 energy crisis due to its reliance on Russian gas – is less immediately exposed to the current crisis than Asia. However, many nations are still heavily reliant on gas, including supplies from Qatar.
The continent is already feeling the effects of higher global energy prices as countries compete for more limited resources.
At least 18 European nations have introduced measures to help people with rising costs. Spain, which is relatively insulated from the crisis due to the high share of renewables in its electricity supply, nevertheless announced a €5bn aid package, with at least six measures to support consumers.
Many African countries, while also less reliant on direct fossil-fuel supplies via the Strait of Hormuz than Asia, are still facing the strain of higher import bills. Some, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia, are also facing severe fuel shortages.
There have been fewer new policies across the Americas, which have been comparatively insulated from the energy crisis so far. One outlier is Chile, which is among the region’s biggest fuel importers and is, therefore, more exposed to global price increases.
Tax cuts
The most common types of policy response to the energy crisis so far have been efforts to protect people and businesses from the surge in fuel prices.
At least 28 nations, including Italy, Brazil and Australia, have introduced a total of 31 measures to cut taxes – and, therefore, prices – on fuel.
Even across Africa, where state revenues are already stretched, some nations – including Namibia and South Africa – are cutting fuel levies in a bid to stabilise prices.
Another 17 countries, including Mexico and Poland, have directly capped the price of fuel. Others, such as France and the UK, have opted for more targeted fuel subsidies, designed to support specific vulnerable groups and industries.
These measures are all shown in the dark blue “consumer support” bars in the chart below.
Such measures can directly help consumers, but some leaders, NGOs and financial experts have noted that there is also the risk of them driving inflation and reinforcing reliance on the existing fossil fuel-based system.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, spoke in favour of short-term measures to “smooth the shock”, but noted that “broad-based and open-ended measures may add excessively to demand”.
Measures to conserve energy, of the type that many developing countries in Asia have implemented extensively, have been described by the IEA as “more effective and fiscally sustainable than broad-based subsidies”.
So far, there have been at least 23 such measures introduced to limit the use of transport, particularly private cars.
These include Lithuania cutting train fares, two Australian states making public transport free and Myanmar and South Korea asking people to only drive their cars on certain days.
Clean vs coal
At least eight countries have announced plans to either increase their use of coal or review existing plans to transition away from coal, according to Carbon Brief’s analysis. These include Japan, South Korea, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Germany and Italy.
These measures broadly involve delaying coal-plant closure, as in Italy, or allowing older sites to operate at higher rates, as in Japan – rather than building more coal plants.
There has been extensive coverage of how the energy crisis is “driving Asia back to coal”. However, as Bloomberg columnist David Fickling has noted, this shift is relatively small and likely to be offset by a move to cheap solar power in the longer term.
Indeed, some countries have begun to consider changes to the way they use energy going forward, amid a crisis driven by the spiralling costs of fossil-fuel imports.
Leaders in India, Barbados and the UK have explicitly stressed the importance of a structural shift to using clean power. Governments in France and the Philippines are among those linking new renewable-energy announcements with the unfolding crisis.
New renewable-energy capacity will take time to come online, albeit substantially less time than developing new fossil-fuel generation. In the meantime, some nations are also taking short-term measures to make their road transport less reliant on fossil fuels.
For example, the Chilean government has enabled taxi drivers to access preferential credit for purchasing electric vehicles (EVs). Cambodia has cut import taxes on EVs and Laos has lowered excise taxes on them.
Finally, there have been some signs that countries are reconsidering their future exposure to imported fossil fuels, given the current economics of oil and gas.
The New Zealand government has indicated that a plan to build a new LNG terminal by 2027 now faces uncertainty. Reuters reported that Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup has told the government it wanted to abandon a plan to build a new LNG-fired power plant in Vietnam, in favour of renewables.
The post Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Iran war analysis: How 60 nations have responded to the global energy crisis
Seven Senate Democrats launched the probe over controversial tax credits to the country’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Seven Democratic U.S. senators have launched a probe into a $370 million “alternative fuel” payout to Cheniere Energy, made earlier this year by the IRS, that critics say the liquefied natural gas export company never should have received.
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The Global Energy Supply in a Decade ‘Is Not a World We’re Going to Recognize’
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