You’d have been winning points galore in recent days. We’ve seen a raft of announcements in support of a socially fair move towards climate neutrality – a ‘just transition’ – at COP26.
ECO likes it best when words are matched by actions. Luckily, that also seems to be the case. Two years after the launch of the Katowice Declaration in 2019, countries are finally committing to support each other financially to drive just transitions.
However all too often, when ECO looks closely, the details are missing. And we all know that’s where the devil is.
Take the new ‘Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet’ (GEAPP) led by the Rockefeller Foundation. This acknowledges the need to provide technical assistance, regulatory reform support and work with transformative country partnerships, but we need to know how this will work.
And the partnership of the EU, US, Germany, France and UK to help South Africa get out of coal has focused on the money (US$8.5 billion over 3-5 years). We need to know more about the ‘investment framework’ and the conditions for financing.
ECO is adamant that we can’t have a happy and healthy society if our environment is hurting. We need to work on both together.
For that, we need international solidarity, cooperation and finance. We need to make sure the right projects are financed – in a transparent and fair way. We also need just transition projects and initiatives to ensure transitions are aligned with 1.5°C and that they protect nature.
So, for now, ECO applauds the financial commitments and the effort made to start putting words into practice. But the just transition bingo will only become a real win for nature and for people if the details are right and help usher in just energy transformation globally.
A just transition for Latin America
Decarbonization. The star tool with which the global south countries propose to achieve a green energy matrix, reduce emissions, and reach net zero.
In Latin America, decarbonization is urgent. The problem of energy generation from fossil fuels has long since moved away from being treated as a technical challenge and into the space of climate justice. The demand is no longer to change the technology to a cleaner one but to repair the social, environmental, and human damage caused. When you live in an area with decades of environmental degradation, government neglect, and imposed extractivist vocation, the spectre of general blackouts no longer scares you.
However, as neoliberalism has taught us, every crisis is an opportunity. That is how the large power generation companies that dominate the Latin American electricity market see it. Decarbonization will happen anyway, as world markets increasingly punish coal and favor renewable energies. The question is how it will happen and who will decide it.
Will we continue with large power plants and extractivism but now “green”? The green hydrogen and lithium for the energy transition of the global north leaves latin america in the same place it has always been: where everything is extracted, and nothing is gained.
In a continent increasingly threatened by the effects of climate change, a socially and environmentally just energy transition is needed, with markets different from what we already know. That has led us to the crisis we are in now.
Climate justice must be the pillar for democratic, decentralized, and equitable energy systems, with broad access and diverse forms of financing. This transition implies a paradigm shift and not a dream of green capitalism that we will regret in a few years.