Farmland in the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in Almora in the Indian state of Uttarakhand / credit: Charanjeet Dhiman on Unsplash
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis.
Although the poorer and vulnerable sections of the Global South are least responsible for climate change, they are the most likely to suffer from its ravages. Despite this, their concerns have been the least heard in negotiations at the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), the largest annual climate-change summit that attracted more than 190 countries. Meanwhile, leading businesses have influential lobbyists who quickly move to use any opportunities to corner funds.
Having sniffed out new opportunities, they have occupied important positions in the planning and negotiations relating to climate change to try to prioritize their projects as beneficiaries of new green funding.
Officially constituted expert committees have in recent years linked dam projects in the Himalayan region to ecological destruction and flash floods, which have claimed thousands of lives. Yet, similar kinds of projects are now being advertised as examples of green energy and solutions for climate change. Climate smart agriculture is being defined in ways business lobbies vying for more control of farm and food systems are being strengthened. At the same time, this weakens small farmers’ sincere efforts for ecologically protective farming. Projects that displace poor people in the name of protecting the environment are wrongly prioritized, alienating them.
Hence, it is important at this stage to warn against the misuse of funds marked for climate change mitigation and adaptation. These funds should reach those who need this help the most and are likely to put this to the most just and ecologically protective use. This means in practical terms that most funds should reach small peasants and rural landless workers for taking up mitigation as well as adaptation work. Indigenous people and tribal communities have a particularly important role in this as they have been closer to nature.
What’s more, this concern should be extended to wider planning in which reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is linked to meeting the basic needs of all people, with an emphasis on a justice-based resolution of climate change.
Small peasants should be supported for ecologically protective farming, including soil and water conservation work, which can improve the organic content of soil in just a few years. Organic soil spread over vast areas can absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide. At the same time, by avoiding or reducing chemical fertilizers, pollution caused by nitrous oxide can be reduced. That gas is about 300 times more potent compared to carbon dioxide. Mixed farming that includes indigenous trees can be well integrated, supplying more staple foods that are produced in healthy ways and close to home, reducing a long transportation burden. While contributing to mitigation, millions of acres under organic farming will ensure small farmers are less dependent on expensive chemical inputs and improve their adaptation capacity. Hence, both adaptation and mitigation can be achieved simultaneously on a sustainable basis. This is a particularly important aspect of such efforts. In fact, the more the organic content of soil improves with the passage of time, the more the mitigation and adaptation capacity increases. Such efforts simultaneously improve food sovereignty, reducing dependence on polluting and expensive substances.
Land reforms can help the landless emerge as small farmers and be a part of such efforts. In addition, the landless should be assured employment close to home in various tasks of the ecological rehabilitation of villages and nearby areas. One possibility is protecting degraded land and giving nature time to regenerate it. Yet another is to increase protections for remaining natural forests. New afforestation with indigenous species of trees should seek to mimic local natural forests.
Apart from fair wages, the landless should get longer-term rights to non-timber forest produce. This again helps mitigation as well as adaptation at the same time.
All these efforts should seek to tap and encourage creativity of workers and farmers for local solutions and innovations. To give just one inspiring example, a farmer from the Bundelkhand region of India named Mangal Singh invented a special turbine that can lift water from streams and canals without using diesel or electricity.
A turbine invented by farmer Mangal Singh. The device can lift water from streams and canals without using fossil fuels or electricity
Although the primary aim of the inventor was to help farmers and reduce costs, calculations show that a single unit serving over 15 years can reduce the use of 125,400 liters (33,127 gallons) of diesel oil and avoid 335 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. This can increase further if, with a few adjustments, this innovation is put to additional use, such as in crop processing. This has been highly praised by many senior experts, including those in official positions.
However, government apathy has stood in the way of its spread, even though the Maithani Committee appointed by India’s Rural Development Ministry strongly recommended its rapid deployment. Potentially, tens of thousands of units can be installed worldwide wherever suitable conditions exist. These kind of innovations by villagers can help greatly in simultaneously addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation. If there is better support for such initiatives, the creativity of farmers and workers can contribute much more because they are the most familiar with their local conditions.
In urban areas, construction of improved design shelters to provide protection from excessive heat to workers and homeless persons could be an obvious priority.
Democratic participatory systems based on transparency and honesty should be established to implement such initiatives. Such work is best achieved by grants, not by loans. Hence, climate funds also should be based on grants, not on loans. Unfortunately, the trend in the recent past has been rich countries providing a much bigger share of climate funding for the Global South in the form of loans. This must change to favor grants.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener of the Campaign to Save Earth Now. He has been involved with several social movements in India. Dogra’s most recent books include Man Over Machine and Planet in Peril.
Women in the Rhino Refugee Camp in Urua, Uganda. Developing countries have been relying on developed countries’ financing to help them adapt to and mitigate climate-change effects / credit: Ninno JackJr on Unsplash
With its climate pact and a climate law, the European Union is often viewed as progressive when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis. But positions that both EU countries and the EU bloc have taken in the run-up to the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), the largest annual climate-change conference, paint a different picture.
At a workshop held in June, the EU proposed an end to discussions on long-term climate finance. The workshop was part of Sessions of the Subsidiary Bodies, a set of meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
“The [work] program was to come to an end in 2020, not the agenda item of long-term finance,” said Zaheer Fakir, one of the lead coordinators for the African Group of Negotiators on Climate Change (AGN). Fakir, of South Africa, co-facilitated the workshop. “But developed countries in the EU and the U.S. are reluctant to continue these discussions,” he added.
The work program on long-term finance was first launched at COP17 in 2011. As part of the program, parties decided on a host of actions, such as the sessions and convening biannually to continue dialogues on climate finance until 2020.
At the workshop, many developing countries—African ones in particular—opposed the EU proposal as a violation of the Paris Agreement’s principles of equity. Representatives from the small African country of Gabon stressed the need to continue discussions on long-term finance given how the goal of mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 remains unmet.
Climate finance is considered a key tool to help developing countries adapt to a changing climate by developing coastal defense mechanisms or drought-resistant crops. This funding also helps countries take action to mitigate the effects, such as by scaling up the renewable energy sector. And as Toward Freedom previously reported, developed countries are falling short in fulfilling their financial obligations and sometimes are adding to the debt burdens of developing countries.
Fakir said these discussions on long-term finance are the “only real, substantial financial discussions under the Convention [UNFCCC].” He also added the work program was one of a kind because it included a variety of stakeholders, like parties to UNFCCC and development banks.
“Discussions on long-term finance cannot be shut down as long as developing countries are required to implement climate actions to achieve Paris Agreement goals,” said Meena Raman, a Malaysia-based legal advisor and senior researcher at the Third World Network (TWN), a nonprofit international research and advocacy organization focusing on Global North-South affairs.
Discussions on long-term climate finance are set to be held during COP26. Meanwhile, the EU, the COP26 presidency and the UNFCCC have not responded to questions.
African Group of Negotiators Lead Coordinators Strategy meeting, African Roadmap for Climate Action, held in March 2020 in Libreville, Gabon. African countries have rejected the EU’s proposal to end discussions on long-term climate financing.
A Showdown Over Net-Zero Terms
In the first week of October, a dispute broke out at the 30th meeting of the board members of the Green Climate Fund (GCF). GCF was established in 2010 as a financing vehicle that would help developing countries address climate-change needs.
The re-accreditation of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to the GCF fell through because GCF board member Lars Roth required the DBSA accept net-zero targets, according to TWN’s account of the meeting. Roth is affiliated with the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
Green Climate Fund board member Lars Roth, who the Third World Network reports was trying to prevent an African bank’s re-accreditation by demanding more stringent climate terms. Roth said the group simply ran out of time to re-accredit the bank.
“Institutions like DBSA are key to the southern African region in terms of implementing their NDCs [nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement],” Fakir said.
However, TWN reported Roth tried to impose conditions on GCF members like a long-term net-zero target by the year 2050, an intermediate net-zero target for 2030, as well as shifts in overall investment and loan policies away from fossil fuels.
Board members from developing countries objected to these conditions.
Roth told this reporter the main reason DBSA was not re-accredited is the GCF board wasted time on “procedural discussions.” The bank’s re-accreditation was the final item on the meeting’s agenda. “We ran out of time to iron out remaining differences,” Roth said.
But Roth wanted the DBSA re-accreditation to be postponed irrespective of the substance of the discussions, said AGN advisor Richard Sherman. He added Roth’s was a deliberate move to put pressure on the DBSA to make a public statement regarding net zero and fossil-fuel investments.
Sherman also added the GCF board’s policy for accreditation and re-accreditation does not include any provisions “beyond an expectation that the portfolio of the entity would evolve and it does not provide any guidance on how to measure such a shift.” In essence, the provisions do not require net-zero commitments and fossil-fuel phaseouts.
The GCF did not respond to whether net-zero commitments are necessary for accreditation purposes.
This issue also shines light on the heart of the problem. That developing countries are expected to show greater ambition on climate action, while not being provided with the support to execute.
Article 2 of the Paris Agreement speaks of “equity and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances.” This means each country is required to take action aligned with its historical responsibilities and current capabilities. The entire African continent has contributed only 3 percent to cumulative emissions since the Industrial Revolution, as opposed to the EU, which has contributed 22 percent.
The proposal to not re-accredit DBSA could be considered discrimination and therefore not in line with the Paris Agreement. The other issue is banks like DBSA that finance projects in developing countries are core to both their general infrastructure needs as well as a just transition away from fossil fuels.
“One of the key achievements of developing countries in the GCF process was having direct access modality,” Fakir explained. Here, “direct access modality” refers to the possibility of national and regional institutions (institutions other than the UN and World Bank) to be accredited to the GCF to act as vehicles to finance climate-related projects across developing countries. DBSA is one such institution. Therefore, the decision to not re-accredit the bank will impact a pipeline of projects across southern Africa.
“How will these countries transition [into clean-energy economies]?” Fakir asked.
Morocco’s Noor Midelt solar power project, which Germany primarily funded / NS Energy
Lack of Finance Becomes a Barrier In Africa
All of the above detailed issues played out in the context of grave climate-driven disasters across Africa and increasing adaptation costs, which would require more GCF financing than ever before.
A new paper points to how climate finance from developed countries is heavily skewed towards mitigation despite Africa’s climate adaptation costs totalling around $7 to 15 (USD) billion per year and rising. Yet, the paper states that finance targeting mitigation was almost double that for adaptation.
The paper also highlights only 46 percent of financial commitments toward climate-adaptation measures are distributed. “If you want to have an impact on the ground, funding has to reach the communities on the ground,” said Georgia Savvidou, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the paper’s lead author.
The fund flows also are not in line with the Paris Agreement, which states countries should balance climate finance between mitigation and adaptation. Early this year even the UNSG stated 50 percent of climate finance should be towards adaptation.
“Around 60 percent of GCF financing, if not more, is directed towards mitigation,” Fakir noted. This despite GCF’s mandate to invest 50 percent of its resources to mitigation and 50 percent to adaptation. And even within such allocation, the fund is mandated to invest at least half of its adaptation resources in the most climate vulnerable countries like African states and least developed countries.
The paper also points to how the disproportionate mitigation financing is linked to European funding sources. In northern Africa, where 83 percent of finance commitments were directed to mitigation, around 65 percent of such funding originated from European donors, which includes two banks and the countries of France and Germany.
The authors suggest self-interest drives such financing:
“One mega-project in Morocco financed primarily by Germany accounts for 26 percent of the region’s total mitigation finance: The Noor Midelt Solar Power Project is one of the world’s largest solar projects to combine hybrid concentrated solar power and photovoltaic solar. Morocco’s proximity to Europe means it could potentially export significant amounts of renewable power northwards, and in doing so help Europe to achieve its climate neutrality targets.”
To de-link donor interest in bilateral climate funding, the authors suggest direct access modalities like Adaptation Fund and GCF as one option. “These funds are better at reaching the most vulnerable countries,” Savvidou said. But, as laid out above, the integrity of GCF processes remains in question.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
Every morning, Pandurang Khondre starts his day by looking for Khandya. “He was our family member,” he said, teary-eyed / credit: Sanket Jain
For the first time in Khandya’s life as a working ox, five veterinary doctors visited him more than 30 times in one week at Pandurang Khondre’s cattle shed.
It all started in mid-2022 when Khondre saw traces of an infection on the right leg of Khandya, his strongest ox. “Khandya” is derived from the name of a local deity named “Khandoba.”
“The ox had worked without any trouble for the entire day,” the farmer recounted. “However, I saw a few red-colored nodes when I returned the next morning.” Khondre immediately called a private vet. When the doctor showed up an hour later at Khondre’s cattle shed in the Jambhali village of western India’s Maharashtra state, he suspected Khandya must have been infected with Lumpy skin disease. That began the first of eight weeks of veterinary visits for Khandya and other cattle on the farm.
Lumpy, or LSD, is a contagious viral disease that affects cattle. Certain species of blood-feeding insects, like flies, ticks and mosquitoes, transmit it. Symptoms include skin nodules, severe loss of appetite, fever, nasal discharge, watery eyes, drop in milk production, and swelling of limbs and genitalia.
In 2022, Lumpy became an epidemic in India, affecting 2.9 million cattle (1.51 percent) across 23 states. From 2022 until the first week of this month, India reported 184,447 cattle deaths. No reports in the public domain have yet to sum up economic losses for the whole country. However, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2020 risk assessment report mentions Lumpy caused $1.45 billion in direct losses of livestock and production in south, east and southeast Asia. The report added, “These losses may be higher, due to the severe trade implications for infected countries.”
As of this month, 84.19 million Indian cattle have been vaccinated against Lumpy. If going by the latest livestock census released in 2019, that would mean 43 percent of cattle.
With the lives of India’s poor having been complicated by climate change impacts and livestock diseases, many have been forced to flee their homes in search of another source of income and take on loans for living expenses, as this reporter documented in a previous article for Toward Freedom.
Pandurang Khondre’s daughter-in-law shows a photo on her smartphone of their late ox, Khandya, who succumbed to Lumpy skin disease / credit: Sanket Jain
A Tearful Ox
Lumpy’s impact is so severe that Khandya went from eating 50 kilograms of cattle feed daily to finding it difficult to swallow five kilograms. Khondre, who is in his early 50s, and his wife, Malan, in her late 40s, spent over 16 hours a day looking after the ox as he struggled with the disease.
“He wouldn’t eat anything. When asked what happened, he always responded with tears,” says Khondre.
Khandya is among the 34,711 cattle in Maharashtra who have succumbed to Lumpy, for which goat pox vaccine is being administered. While India has developed an indigenous vaccine, it has yet to be made available for commercial production.
Then, in the final 72 hours of Khandya’s life in October, the situation took a bad turn.
“He had become so stiff that whenever we touched him, it felt like we were touching wood,” Malan said. “The nodes often returned despite the regular treatment.”
The Khondres spent over 60,000 Indian Rupees ($724) over three months on the treatment.
“The Government doctors wouldn’t show up. There were times we waited for an entire day,” Khondre said.
Vishnu Kumbhar and his wife, Sarasvati, spent almost 16 hours a day looking after their cow and the bull calf infected by Lumpy / credit: Sanket Jain
A Dearth of Vets In a Country of Cattle
Public vet and livestock supervisor Raosaheb Salunkhe, working in the Danoli village of Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, has helped save several cattle.
“During the peak of the outbreak, we were attending to as many as 80 cases daily,” Salunkhe said. “Many farmers spent a lot of money on private vets and consulted us much later, when the disease became severe.”
For the 302.79 million bovine population (as per the 2019 livestock census), India has 73,129 registered public veterinary practitioners and just 54 recognized veterinary colleges. That means 1 vet is available to care for every 4,140 cattle.
Of Khondre’s five cattle, another affected ox survived the disease. However, Khondre said the ox wasn’t the same after recovering. “After an hour’s work, he felt dizzy and kept losing balance.” Eventually, he sold the ox and bought a new one by paying another $181.
Khondre is now worried about his last stable income source drying up.
“Whenever the oxen worked in the fields, I got 800-1000 rupees ($10-12) daily. Now, with just one ox, I have to rent another, and even earning 400 rupees ($4.8) daily has become difficult.”
Buying another ox will cost him $1,000, which remains out of bounds with Khondre having taken a hit over recent years. Climate change events, such as incessant rainfall, heat waves and repeat flooding, have caused financial losses.
Farmer Vishnu Kumbhar, 70, who has been farming for over five decades, said he has never seen a disease like Lumpy as well as recurring floods, which have made farming unsustainable / credit: Sanket Jain
‘Everything Was Gone In a Few Hours’
About 30 kilometers from Jambhali village, Vitthal Kumbhar and his family recounted their own trouble with Lumpy. Of their five cattle, a 10-year-old indigenous cow and a bull calf were infected in November in their village of Bhendavade.
“Within a day, the swelling spread to all the legs,” 70-year-old Kumbhar described, “and at the same time, she was diagnosed with pneumonia.”
It took over two months for both animals to recover.
Jitendra Kurundwade, assistant commissioner of Kolhapur’s Animal Husbandry Department, explained how the district handled the contagious disease.
“There were cases where we were treating the same cattle for almost a month.”
Given the rapid movement of the virus, almost 31,000 cattle in 54 villages of Shirol block were at risk of being infected. (In India, several villages form a block. Jambhali village is part of Shirol block.)
“So, we decentralized the vaccination process,” Kurundwade said, “and vaccinated all of them in a week, which otherwise would have taken at least six months.”
Their efforts were successful, as Kurundwade shared that around 4,500 cows (14 percent) were infected and 150 succumbed. The death rate came to 0.48 percent of all cows and 3.33 percent of infected cows.
“Everything was gone in a few hours,” said Sarasvati Kumbhar about how severe climate change events, such as incessant rainfall and hailstorms, destroyed the sugarcane she cultivated on 1.5 acres / credit: Sanket Jain
A Virus and Climate Change Wreak Havoc
When the cow first showed Lumpy symptoms, Kumbhar called a private doctor from a nearby village. The vet visited once and suggested seeking treatment from the public hospital, as private hospital care is pricey. Kumbhar’s son, Ganesh, 32, transported each of the four public doctors on his bike from the veterinary hospitals on a daily basis. Collectively, they provided more than 90 injections in a month.
Before Lumpy, the cow produced daily at least six liters of milk, which they served to the bull calf. Now, they are forced to buy milk from the market or use milk from other cattle, which eats up a source of their income.
Farmers reported affected cattle took at least four months to recover. A decline in milk production and in cattle strength affected farm operations.
However, India remains the highest milk producer, contributing 23 percent to global milk production. The country produced 210 million tons of milk in 2020-21.
The dairy sector employs 80 million rural households in India, with the majority being marginal landowning farmers and the landless. For millions of farmers, dairy remains the only source of income, as climate change continues to destroy crops. For instance, in just October, Kumbhar’s 1.5-acre field was among the 2.8 million hectares (6.91 million acres) destroyed during heavy rains in Maharashtra.
In 2021, floods devastated crops on 7.79 million hectares (19.24 acres) of farmland in India, affecting 38.56 million people and killing 64,880 cattle. Further, from January 1 to September 30, 2022, climate disasters continued to wreak havoc in India, with extreme weather events on 241 out of 273 days.
Kumbhar survived the 2019 and 2021 floods, 2022 heat waves, and erratic rainfall only because of cattle milk. However, his cow barely produces milk after Lumpy, and debt is mounting fast.
His wife, Sarasvati, in her mid-60s, put things in perspective by recalling the recent disasters in their village, Bhendavade, in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district. In October, hailstorms devastated the sugarcane she cultivated on 1.5 acres.
“Everything was gone in a few hours.”
Of the 100 tons she was expecting to cut that would have been worth $3,625, she only harvested 32 tons. “I wasn’t even able to recover the cost of production.” But that wasn’t the first time. In 2019, her family harvested just 30 tons of sugarcane. Then, in 2021, severe floods left them with 10 tons to cut. “Never in my life have I reported such low production,” Kumbhar said. “Despite using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the production isn’t increasing.”
Similarly, Khondre, too, recently harvested 21 tons of sugarcane on three-fourths of an acre, compared to at least 45 tons.
“It takes about 15 months for the sugarcane to grow completely. The only thing we got from this was more debt.”
In the 2019 and 2021 floods and incessant rainfall of 2022, the Kumbhar family lost most of their sugarcane and couldn’t even recover the cost of production / credit: Sanket Jain
Mounting Debt and Losing a ‘Family Member’
Recurring climate disasters have led to mounting debts, forcing Indian farmers to cut back on fodder (animal feed). A 40-kilogram sack of maize cattle feed costs at least $17 and lasts less than a week. “If we can’t sell the cattle milk and face repeated losses in the field, how will we buy this fodder?” Kumbhar asked. Nowadays, most of the time, he skips fodder, which affects milk production.
Last year, they took out a crop loan of $1,208 and will have to take on another loan this year. With 30 tons of sugarcane, he just managed to get $1,087. In normal climatic conditions, it would have fetched him at least $3,624. “In 15 months, I couldn’t earn a single rupee. Rather, I am making a loss,” Kumbhar said.
“Just an agriculture loan is not enough now. We’ll also have to take loans from friends and private moneylenders,” said his daughter-in-law, Poonam, 28. Her husband, Ganesh, could not go to work for two months as an operator at a grinding machine in a nearby factory.
“I spent most of the time with the cattle,” he said.
Similarly, last year, Rohit Koli, Khondre’s neighbor down the road, spent over two months with his infected Holstein Friesian cow. “I couldn’t sleep properly for over 45 days. The vets treated her every day for 25 days. But, still, we lost an important family member,” the Jambhali resident said.
“For the final six days, she ate nothing, after which she passed away,” he recounted. “It will cost at least 110,000 Rupees ($1,329) to buy another Holstein cow, which we can’t afford.”
Koli recalled the cow produced at least 24 liters of milk daily, fetching him over $8. Four of the seven cows he owns were infected, of which three recovered and one died.
“Lumpy is like a corona of animals,” Koli said, referring to the novel coronavirus of 2019 that mainly affected humans. “I’ve never seen so many cattle falling sick and dying.”
Meanwhile, every morning, Khondre, starts his day by looking for Khandya. “He was our family member,” he said, teary-eyed. When the ox died, more than 100 farmers gathered to mourn. “Everyone loved Khandya,” said Khondre, looking at the ox’s photo once again on his daughter-in-law’s smartphone.
“Majha bail (My ox).”
Sanket Jain is an independent journalist based in the Kolhapur district of the western Indian state of Maharashtra. He was a 2019 People’s Archive of Rural India fellow, for which he documented vanishing art forms in the Indian countryside. He has written for Baffler, Progressive Magazine, Counterpunch, Byline Times, The National, Popula, Media Co-op, Indian Express and several other publications.
The Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development joined climate campaigners in June in The Philippines’ financial district to sound the alarm on several Asian companies for their continued financing of fossil fuels amid the climate emergency / Twitter/AsianPeoplesMovement
The Asian Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) 2021, a meeting of hundreds of civil society organizations and others interested in clean energy policy, was underway on June 15 in Manila, The Philippines, when one session came to a halt.
An Asian-led network of over 250 civil society organizations from around the world called NGO Forum on ADB decided to disengage from a session it was co-hosting alongside the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The session in question was about ADB’s draft energy policy. ADB is a multilateral bank that finances development projects, specifically involving fossil fuel energy across Asia.
“The focus of the ACEF discussions were topics like energy transition and of course these are important,” said Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), a member organization of the NGO Forum on ADB. “But we believe their approach to transition is not fast enough and not ambitious enough considering what we need to prevent climate catastrophe.”
In May 2020, the ADB released a draft of its energy policy. Titled “Energy Policy: Supporting Low Carbon Transition in Asia and the Pacific,” the document is a revision of the bank’s 2009 energy policy. The draft signals a shift away from coal financing, but it allows for financing of natural gas projects. And so, given a nod for continued financing of fossil fuel projects in an era of climate change, ADB’s energy policy has been criticized. Whether the bank will actually engage with such criticism though is another question.
“ADB has opened up consultations with civil society groups, but the meetings for these consultations are very brief,” Nacpil said. “There isn’t enough space for dialogue and debate about important passages in the energy draft, like the usage of false solutions like carbon capture and storage.”
Scientists have criticized technologies like carbon capture and storage for being “expensive, energy intensive, risky and unproven.”
The reasons for disengaging from the clean-energy forum included the lack of transparency, inclusivity and meaningful consultation with civil society in the ADB energy-policy review process. For many civil society organizations from across central, southern and southeast Asia, they did not experience anything but a one-sided push aimed at informing rather than engaging with participants.
NGO Forum on ADB added the ADB Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department (SDCC) has not provided any information about the timeline for consultations or the process by which inputs provided by groups like NGO forum on ADB will be taken into account before the draft is finalized.
This reporter sent questions to Bruno Carrasco, director general and chief compliance officer of the ADB SDCC regarding the lack of transparency and a need for Engagement, but received no comment.
Grassroots Voices Left Out
“The name ‘Asian Clean Energy Forum’ is a misnomer. ACEF is neither Asian nor clean,” said Vidya Dinker, national president of the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) and coordinator of Growthwatch, a research and advocacy group in India. INSAF is another member of NGO Forum on ADB. “It’s a networking event for ADB to reach out to people who they think will broaden their reach and business.”
In a press briefing held on June 18, Hasan Mehedi from the Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) Bangladesh, said, “ADB is continuing to finance fossil fuels including Liquified Fossil Gas and Waste to Energy while global scientific communities warn about any further investment for fossil fuels.” But Mehedi said ADB has yet to reach out to the project-affected communities on the ground. “Without consulting the affected communities and local civil society, how can ADB finalize such an important policy which has a direct impact on local communities and on the environment?”
Nacpil noted a need to “overhaul” ADB as an institution. The reasons, she explained, includes “neoliberal paradigm and strategies,” “undemocratic governance system” and the “use of loans as leverage to reshape Asian economies, according to its private sector and market driven growth framework.”
In a statement submitted as part of the Fossil Free ADB campaign, APMDD said “financing of fossil fuel projects has largely been in the form of loans. In addition to the grave impacts and implications of its fossil fuel financing on people, communities and on the climate, we are also deeply concerned that ADB’s fossil fuel financing has also exacerbated the debt burdens of its member countries. It is only fitting that the ADB Energy Policy Review also address the loans involved in its fossil fuel financing.”
The Fossil Free ADB campaign is aimed at ensuring a “no fossil fuels” ADB energy policy. It is organized by a group of civil society organizations, researchers and activists, including NGO Forum on ADB, Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), 350.org and the Consortium for Energy, Environment and Demilitarization.
The Therma Visayas Energy Project is a 340-megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plant operating since 2019 in Cebu Province, Philippines.
APMDD called on ADB to adopt a policy and take action that will address accountability for impacts of ADB-financed coal projects and ways to ease the debt burden created by ADB lending, especially lending to harmful projects.
“In their draft energy policy, they acknowledge coal projects have been problematic and that’s why we need to shift to clean energy now,” Nacpil explained. “But they are not taking into consideration the economic impacts of the projects they have funded, the kind of financial burden these projects have brought to countries.”
Rayyan Hassan, executive director of NGO Forum on ADB, said that with ADB’s coal ban having yet to be implemented, it is logical to consider calls for decommissioning old plants and the loans associated with them. Examples of such plants include the Masinloc and Visayas thermal power plants in The Philippines, the Tata Mundra coal plant in India, and Jamshoro coal plant in Pakistan.
In response to questions about debt relief, Dr. Yongping Zhai, chief of the energy sector group at ADB said that for ADB, “offering any form of debt relief to any of its borrowing member countries will compromise its preferred creditor status, which underpins ADB’s strong credit ratings. Our strong credit rating is critical for ADB to offer low-cost funding to all borrowing member countries, in support of their development efforts.”
“Yongping Zhai is speaking as a banker, not a development banker who is concerned about member countries’ debt burdens,” Dinker said.
As of now, the draft energy policy does not specify if any debt relief will be provided in relation to fossil fuel projects. It remains to be seen if this undergoes a change as deliberations with civil society groups and activists move ahead. The draft is up for submission to ADB’s board of directors later this year.
Rishika Pardikar is a freelance journalist in Bangalore, India.
