“PEOPLE’S VOICES AND THEIR ABILITY TO INFLUENCE POLITICAL
DECISIONS WILL BE CRITICAL TO ENSURING THAT ANY TRANSITION TO NET ZERO IS JUST AND ACTUALLY REDUCES POVERTY.”
For millions of people in poor and climate vulnerable
countries, from Southern Africa to the Pacific islands,
rising global temperatures are already an existential
threat. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these same countries
have long been at the forefront of calls for urgent action
to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,
the target enshrined within the Paris agreement, which 196
governments adopted in 2015.
Meeting the Paris target, and preventing runaway climate
change, requires fundamental changes in how societies
and economies are organised. Greenhouse Gas emissions
(GHGs) must be cut close to zero, and this needs to happen
quickly, with any remaining emissions re-absorbed from
the atmosphere, mainly by oceans and forests. Net zero is
the subject of intense discussion, and no small amount of
pledging by countries and companies, with the UK the first
major economy to put the target into law, in 2019. However,
there is little agreement about how to achieve net zero. While
some approaches have potential spill-over social and economic
benefits, others have been widely criticized for their failure to
address the root cause of the climate crisis, namely our current
dependence on a carbon-intensive global economy.
NO DELAY
A rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is key to
stopping the climate crisis snowballing into a climate catastrophe. Any delay, even if it is followed by more dramatic
cuts in the future, will result in bigger cumulative emissions,
and an increased risk of extreme weather and of ‘tipping
points’ being reached. It would be reckless to rely on as yet
unproven technologies such as ‘negative emissions’ to suck
CO2 out of the atmosphere. These may also have unforeseen
environmental consequences and risk creating incentives for
continued wasteful investment in high carbon technologies and
infrastructure, despite their in-built obsolescence. Similarly,
and despite the extravagant claims often made for it by
major polluters, offsetting can at best make only a marginal
contribution to net zero, and according to evidence from
Greenpeace, in practice often displaces rather than reduces
GHGs. Offsetting also creates its own social and environmental
problems, for example where large-scale monoculture tree-
planting is at the cost of land rights and biodiversity. Genuine
‘nature-based solutions’ must prioritise ecosystem restoration
and complement, rather than replace steps to reduce emissions
across the economy.
PROTECT AND SUSTAIN
Any transition to net zero carries risks, especially for people
who are already poor. Some industries will need to be
phased out, as others are created. An unchecked resource
rush for renewable energy could create its own set of
negative environmental and social effects, including forced
displacement. Governments must make active use of policies to create decent work and sustain communities that currently rely
on carbon-intensive jobs. They must also take steps to protect
the environment and enable access to affordable, sustainable
and renewable energy, especially for the 940 million people in
Africa and Asia who’ve no electricity supply. The quality of the
transition matters most for those people, a majority of them
women, whose survival as smallholder farmers, fisherfolk and
pastoralists depends directly on a healthy ecosystem.
LOCAL VOICES
People’s voices and their ability to influence political decisions
will be critical to ensuring that any transition to net zero is just
and actually reduces poverty. Large hydroelectric dams have
a dismal track record when it comes to human rights and local
environmental impacts, and large wind or solar farms can have
similar implications for land rights. Christian Aid is promoting
more decentralised approaches, which are championed by local
communities and appropriate for local conditions.
In our era of resource constraints and multiple crises,
governments and policymakers need to respond to climate
change in a way that addresses more than one problem at a
time. Achieving net zero through approaches that have wider
benefits for sustainable development is both the right thing to
do, and the smart option. For those people and societies who
have become rich on the basis of fossil fuel economies, there is
a moral imperative to provide the financial and technological
support needed to make a just transition possible.
By Patrick Watt, Christian Aid