Category: Previous Issues Articles

ECO is happy to share this part of our publication with the Indigenous Peoples Caucus (IPO) to help amplify their voice. This article reflects the views of the IPO.

With greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures, and sea levels rising, climate change is a matter of life and death for Indigenous Peoples in all seven socio-cultural regions of the world. We are the stewards of over 80% of the world’s biodiversity, and as stewards of our lands and territories, we are protecting the future generations for all of humanity. 

For hundreds of years, Indigenous Peoples and our lands and territories have suffered under the predatory systems of colonialism, imperialism, genocide, and ecocide. This continues today, with the extraction of fossil fuels forcing Indigenous Peoples lands to become sacrifice zones, and violating our rights outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Fossil fuel industries violate our right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, yet they persist with land grabbing, water contamination, hazardous air and living conditions, and ultimately threatening the health and well being of all living things. 

Consultation is not consent, and as Indigenous Peoples we say NO to any new fossil fuel projects, development, and infrastructure!
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There is no safe future in a world fueled by coal, oil, and gas. This is the clear message from climate science and a reality already faced by vulnerable communities in the Global South.

Seven years ago the world signed the Paris Agreement. Article 2.1c commits to “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low GHG emissions and climate-resilient development.”

But while COP28 delegates work themselves to tears trying to address the climate crisis, the world’s banks and investors merrily ignore that commitment, and keep the finance flowing to the fossil fuel industry. Furthermore, subsidies are lowering the price of fossil fuel products for consumers, disincentivising the use of renewables.  

Trillions of dollars in loans, underwriting, investments and subsidies flow to the fossil fuel industry every year. Meanwhile, communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, especially in the global south, suffer the impacts of decisions made in distant boardrooms on the other side of the world. Communities who have done so little to cause the climate crisis are the ones who must deal with deforestation, land grabs and pollution caused by the relentless financing of fossil fuels – all compounded by the injustices of climate change.

It is time to fix the world’s finance flows so that they stop doing harm.
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The science is clear – the 1.5°C target is only achievable if we stop burning fossil fuels. The political reality is also clear – we’re only going to do so if we stop drilling and mining them out of the ground in the first place. Finally, the practical reality is clear – we’re only going to stop this extraction if we do so in a manner that is very widely accepted as fair.  

All this we know. What we don’t know is what it means in practice, on a timeframe that is consistent with the 1.5°C goal, in a world that is starkly divided between wealthy and developing countries, and between rich and poor. Fortunately, a lot of work has already been done on the challenges of rapid extraction phase out, up to and including the equity challenges.

Many of these challenges can be described in terms of capacity and dependency, which is to say capacity to change and dependency on the revenues and jobs associated with fossil-fuel extraction. Some developing countries – South Africa is a fine example, as is India – are high-poverty countries that are highly dependent on coal. Others – including our host the UAE – struck oil a long time ago, and have become wealthy, high-capacity countries with money and resources to buffer the turbulence that will come with its phase out.
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Like the last group at a bar who just won’t leave, the oil and gas industry have overstayed their welcome in New Zealand.

It’s clear to ECO that the nation must ditch its toxic relationship with the fossil fuel industry and commit to renewables.

While governments around the world are calling for a phase out of fossil fuels, it is disappointing to see that  New Zealand is busy playing dirty games, and making promises that will prove to be no more than a fantasy. 

The ruling party has a long love affairs with the fossil fuel industry – from its energy minister promoting “sexy coal” in 2012, to criminalising protests near oil infrastructure in 2013, to now – in 2023 – trying to woe the fossil industry back to bed six years since their last encounter. This time, its attraction is to gas – but it’s clear to ECO that the relationship is doomed to end up in a fling.

The Government claims that this relationship will help it to finally cut ties with Big Coal – but at the same time, amongst friends, it is talking about increasing its investment in that relationship, too.

However, a new report “Closing Time” is clear; there is no future for New Zealand’s  relationships with fossils.
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A single year of emissions from major oil and gas corporations including BP and TotalEnergies could cause at least 360,000 people to die prematurely due to extreme heat and cold by 2100, according to a harrowing study released today by Greenpeace Netherlands. 

The ‘Today’s emissions, tomorrow’s deaths’ study analyses the self-reported 2022 emissions of nine major European oil and gas companies, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, Eni, Repsol, OMV, Orlen, and Wintershall Dea, painting a stark reality of avoidable human losses caused by their greenhouse gas pollution.

“Are fossil fuel companies getting away with murder? Just one year of emissions will create deadly ripples until the end of the century. So, if the fossil fuel industry continues extracting and burning fossil fuels at today’s scale, millions of people all over the world could die prematurely. Phasing out fossil fuels is a matter of life and death, so governments need to act now to ban new fossil fuel projects and force fossil fuel companies to rapidly cut their emissions,” Greenpeace campaigner Lisa Göldner said.

The emissions, totaling 2.7 billion metric tons of CO2, are forecasted to generate at least an estimated 360,000 premature deaths due to extreme heat and cold, however, there are additional risks like air pollution and extreme weather not included in this estimate.
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The excitement at last year’s COP was palpable, with Lula’s Brazil promising to be a breath of fresh air as a climate champion.    
But, as Uncle Ben in Spiderman would say, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’. Brazil is the winner of today’s Fossil of the Day as they appear to have mistaken oil production for climate leadership. Brazil’s dash for oil undermines the efforts of Brazilian negotiators in Dubai who are trying to break old deadlocks and act with a sense of urgency. 

Brazil’s Energy minister, Alexandre Silveira, thought it strangely appropriate to announce membership of Opec+ on day one of the conference. In line with this skewed logic they must be thinking: in for a penny, in for a pound, as they have plans to auction off 603 new oil blocks on December 13, just one day after COP28 ends. This can’t be just a coincidence, right?

According to Agência Pública yesterday, expected emissions from one of the new oil frontiers Brazil wants to open, the Equatorial Margin (which includes blocks at the mouth of the Amazon River) will more than cancel out emission cuts achieved from zero deforestation by 2030. Contrary to what the oil companies tell us, you can’t offset the destruction of an entire ecosystem with one good deed. 
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ECO can’t seem to get this song out of its head – a catchy tune that hit the charts in 2015 titled “The Paris Preambular Paragraph on Human Rights” released by a collective of 195 geographically diverse singers. Ever since, it pops up at many parties! ECO danced to it at an ACE Work Programme gala in 2021, keeps hearing it at the carbon markets pub, and just two days ago, the DJ of the Loss and Damage Fund Fest threw it in the mix (an unfortunate failed attempt to get people dancing as he was not in the Governing Instrument Room). 

It’s a really good song with especially catchy lyrics: it’s about Parties committing to respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights when undertaking climate action. It goes on about all the different meanings that it can have: the rights of Indigenous Peoples, gender equality or intergenerational equity – it’s all there (and more!). Last year – at a big festival in Sharm el-Sheikh – a remix was released, adding a chorus on the Right to a Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment, making the song even better than it already was.

ECO can’t get enough of it but is starting to think the collective might be ready for a sequel called “Operationalizing the Human Rights Paragraph.”
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As the battle around the phasing out of fossil fuels shifts gears (hint, delegates: think phase out and all fossil fuels), ECO insists that there be a truly ambitious energy transformation package in the final decision text which includes tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030. The pledge announced yesterday is not good enough.  

Yet not all ‘renewable’ energy is created equal. Whilst some (like wind and solar) offer genuine solutions to cutting emissions, air pollution and household costs, others are simply dangerous.  

One touted ‘solution’, hiding in plain sight, is particularly devious. This imposter is large-scale centralised bioenergy, often generated by cutting down huge swaths of forests. This is not the same industry as your friendly 19th century woodcutter. Under an invisibility cloak of flawed UNFCCC guidelines together with dodgy claims about carbon neutrality, bioenergy receives vast sums of subsidies.

But burning biomass, and especially biomass from forests and plantations for liquid biofuels, emits at least as much carbon as coal per unit of energy — carbon that can take decades to be reabsorbed from the atmosphere when (or if!) the biomass grows back. The result is further warming of the atmosphere. 

What’s more, the ability of forests to fight climate change is compromised by burning biomass, and, compared to wind and solar, many of its forms are land hungry and terrible for biodiversity.
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After four days of enjoying too many 25-dirham coffees, Finance Day couldn’t have come soon enough for ECO. 

The combination of low financial resources and serious coffee habits have left ECO wondering about how the same thing can have so many different prices in different parts of the world. 

Have no doubt, while ECO loves coffee, we’re not here for the coffee, but for urgently scaling up ambition so the world will not get hotter. At least this is the mandate of the Mitigation Work Programme.

We are here to agree to phase out fossil fuels equitably, and to both double energy efficiency and at least triple renewable energy before 2030. But also in this necessary endeavour, we need to face the reality that not only coffee but items necessary to make the energy transition happen, such as solar panels and wind turbines, have very different prices in different parts of the world. 

And even if the underlying price is the same, the value of the money needed to buy these items is very different in different parts of the world. For example: countries with cheap capital currently have interest rates of 3-5%. So, if a windmill costs 1 million dirham, it will have an annual cost of about 40,000 dirham in China, Europe or the US.
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ECO wonders if developed countries still remember their COP26 promise to double their annual adaptation finance by 2025 (compared to 2019.) The recently published OECD report shows that adaptation finance flows have declined in 2021 by 14%. Isn’t that alarming? The UNEP adaptation gap report confirms this drop in adaptation finance and reveals how drastically the adaptation finance gap is widening. Meanwhile, adaptation needs and costs far exceed previous estimates. One telling example is that Africa will need a five to ten fold increase in adaptation finance flows to over $100 billion per year by 2035. 

This widening gap has massive implications for enabling vulnerable countries, peoples, and communities to adapt to the changing climate and confronts them with ever-growing losses and damages. ECO is extremely worried about these recently revealed trends, and that developed countries have so far not produced any credible plans for achieving the doubling of adaptation finance they committed to in Glasgow.

Let ECO remind you that it is not only the numbers that matter, but also the quality of finance that’s being offered. The time of channeling the majority of adaptation finance, especially for Africa, as debt or loans is over. Adaptation finance must focus on the needs of those communities that are most vulnerable to climate change.
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