 Okay. Hi all, and welcome to this event titled Running in the Wrong Direction by Diversity and Social Impacts of Emerging Fossil Fuel Production. Very glad you could all join. The discussion we're going to have today, which will consist of roughly half of the time devoted to remarks by the speakers, which I'll introduce, and half of the time for broader discussion, Q&A, has to do with the continuing expansion of fossil fuel production and the impacts it's having not only in climate change, but also with regard to the local environments and societies in which that expansion is occurring. I would like to introduce the speakers in order, and I'll share my screen. Is that good? Can everyone see a screen being shared right now? Good. Okay. I'm Shivan Kartha, Senior Scientist at Stockholm Environment Institute, and I'm one of the co-leaders of this project. My work is in climate change, climate change policy in particular, and I've been working primarily on the issue of an equitable international climate regime that would be ambitious enough to actually address the climate crisis. And that involves not only looking at the sort of formal structural regime elements, but also how is mitigation undertaken in a way that is beneficial for the communities undertaking it. Next to speak will be Bart Vickle. Bart is a senior scientist at Stockholm Environment Institute, and he's trained in Earth Sciences, and he's been leading projects using spatial analysis and remote sensing for large-scale natural resource planning and conservation. He's been with us for over 20 years, working in river basin conservation and climate adaptation around the globe. And in this project, he's been leading the development of spatial databases relating to oil and gas development and their potential impacts. And as you'll see, he's assembled several case studies that highlight the roles of spatial tools in increasing transparency and making the rather vast amount of data that's available now useful to civil society organizations working on the policy issues around these projects. Next to speak will be Omar Elmawi. He's the coordinator of the STOP ECOP campaign, which is global civil society campaign to prevent East Africa crude oil pipeline, which we'll be discussing here. And he's director of the decolonized campaign, a movement pushing for a green and sustainable energy future for Kenya. Next is Diana Nabimora. Diana is a senior communications officer at the Africa Institute for Energy Governance, Afiego. She's also led the implementation of various projects aimed at promoting environmental and biodiversity conservation, as well as community livelihoods amidst oil risks in the Albertine Robin in Uganda for over six years. After this is Liliana Hauregi. She's a senior environmental justice advisor at IUCN, International Union for the Conservation of Nature in the Netherlands. She has 18 years of experience managing and implementing programs with a focus on nature conservation, human rights and governance. And then Ryan Brightwell. He's a researcher and editor with BankTrack, the civil society organization tracking private sector banks and their impact on people in nature. He coordinates BankTrack's campaign to work on human rights and is involved in the campaign specifically to stop the East Africa crude oil pipeline. I'll start out with some sort of framing remarks, giving the context in which this work is being undertaken. One thing that's become clear, really abundantly clear, is that the urgency of the climate challenge before us is telling us that fossil fuel extraction simply must stop. What I'm going to show here is the results of a study published with United Nations Environment Program, Stockholm Environment Institute and a number of other institutes. Ploy Achakulwisit, who's with us, was closely involved in this study and will be able to speak to it as questions arise. What I'm showing is a graph giving over time, over the next 20 years, roughly, how much fossil fuel production is planned and projected based on national energy ministries, based on private sector investment plans, based on the range of data for the largest producers spanning the next couple of decades. And what we see is top line, which reflects countries' production plans and projections. So this is the best reflection we have right now of where, to what extent, our investments and engineering plans and construction on the ground taking us in terms of fossil fuel production expressed in terms of total carbon dioxide equivalent. This green band, on the other hand, reflects a production pathway consistent with limiting warming to two degrees. And this pathway is consistent with what we're seeing in international energy agency, IPCC scenarios, etc. The lower pathway, the blue one, is what a production pathway consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would look like. In other words, there's a major production gap. There is much more production happening than we need to happen than would be consistent with even the weaker of the Paris temperature goals, especially the stronger. And in fact, production would be roughly double the level required to keep warming below one and a half degrees. The brown pathway here, this is the pathway associated with countries' emissions targets. So in other words, even while countries are increasing the strength of their national mitigation pledges, their NBCs, it is well known that the NBCs do not take us anywhere near where we would need to go to keep warming below two degrees or one and a half degrees. That's one of the main purposes of the Glasgow COP coming up to enhance those NBCs. But what this recent analysis shows us is that countries' plans to produce fossil fuels is even further off track. In other words, the production gap is even greater than the emissions gap. This is remarkable, one because it's equally important, a part of the climate challenge as far as trying to get onto a decarbonized path. But it's also remarkable because fossil fuel production is so much weaker of focus of climate policy than fossil fuel emissions. And the two both need to be dealt with. Fossil fuel production is a main driver of countries' economies. And it has a political and economic momentum of its own. It will be much, much harder to reduce emissions by simply trying to press on demand if there isn't a corresponding policy effort to reduce production. The amount by which production would need to be cut was expressed nowhere more clearly than in the International Energy Agency's recent net zero by 2050 report, which said achieving net zero emissions by 2050 will require nothing short of the complete transformation of the global energy system. Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there will be no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway. And no new coal mines or mine extensions are required. This is unambiguous. In order to reach net zero by 2050, which is widely understood to be what's needed to remain consistent with the Paris, the politically agreed Paris goals, no new expansion of oil or gas or coal would be necessary. So that's kind of an important background point here, that all of the fossil fuel expansion that will be discussed through the remainder of this presentation is all fossil fuel expansion that is inconsistent with our shared climate goals. This isn't a matter of prioritizing which one should go ahead and which one shouldn't. This is a matter of working to prevent any fossil fuel expansion from occurring. Now, one additional point I'd like to make to clarify is that while most of the discussion here is based on expansion frontiers in developing countries. Another recent analysis has shown that most of the planned production over the coming decade is actually in the developed countries. What you see here is the amount of the growth in production over the coming decade that is planned in a number of key producing countries for oil and for gas. And the key point to note here is that the amount of production expansion that's planned in the United States is more than the sum of all the increase in production of oil in the other major producers combined and the same is true of gas. The amount planned in the US exceeds what's planned in all the other major producers combined. So, first and foremost, this is a problem of limiting production in the developed countries that are still expanding. But having said that, I'll go on to pass it to my colleague Bart Vickle who will be talking about the implications that we're seeing of the expansion that's planned in the south. Bart? Hi everybody. Good morning. Just one small correction. I haven't been with SCI for 20 years. I've been working on environmental issues and planning for 20 years. I've been with SCI for about eight years. So, the main driver or the main ingredient in the expansion of fossil fuel industry is an expansion of infrastructure, fossil fuel infrastructure. And as Shiven has pointed out, there's an enormous challenge with getting emissions on the control and controlling the expansion of fossil fuel emissions. This project is highlighting an additional aspect of this expansion being that a large amount of the new territories, the new frontiers for the expansion of fossil fuel, particular oil and gas development, are in areas that are currently still under very large amounts of biodiversity. So, as we started off on this project, one of the two realizations, one is on the infrastructure side and the planned side, information is very disparate and disperse. And so, we started building a new set of databases that map fossil fuel infrastructure and oil block and oil and gas blocks. But there's also this realization that there's actually a lot of information out there that can be brought together in support of this kind of project and analysis. As we started building this database, a couple of these truly visible frontiers emerged very rapidly. And as we can see in the image, most of Africa is a, can be considered a fossil fuel frontier. And currently, maybe one of the most prominent cases is the planned EACOP, East African Food Oil Pipeline. And here goes the next slide. But as you see here in this slide, looking at the global south, again, not disregarding that there's an enormous amount of oil development taking place in the north, we see that a lot of the new frontiers are in the three regions illustrated by this slide. And an additional challenge with this development is that there's very little transparency in how this infrastructure gets developed and who is affected by these developments. We've identified a set of frontiers. This is mainly based on a very qualitative view of the world where we see a general overlap between planned areas and planned infrastructure, planned oil blocks and planned infrastructure. But a key ingredient in all this planning is the investment in pipelines. And the red pipelines, the red lines indicate pipelines identified by the Global Energy Monitor program, which really are the keys to the development. Once these pipelines are in place, we unlock a very large new amount of oil and gas development. And so we can start seeing these production frontiers in this map. Next slide, please. And even though there is not a solid database of that brings together conservation value and indigenous territories and broader societal values of these landscapes, when you look at this map, you really see a pretty strong overlap between the yellow blocks which are planned oil and gas exploration areas and the greener areas which combine intact forest landscapes, protected areas and a broader set of indicators like indigenous territory. So our effort is to start building a much more comprehensive database of high value landscapes and high value conservation areas and really identify this collision course between fossil fuel development and these values. Next slide, please. As mentioned a bit earlier, EA COP is a really problematic case with a pipeline running from the coast in Tanzania to Uganda along the shores of Lake Albert. The pipeline of 1400 kilometers is under active planning right now and once this pipeline is in place, it will provide access to the oil exploration on the shores of Lake Albert. And what we try to illustrate in this case study is that even though you can make great environmental impact assessments of what the potential impact of a pipeline could be and as the industry typically communicates on it, we're able to mitigate those impacts and there's just a very broad range of risks associated with these pipelines that people are not aware of and that at least need to be communicated to society before a pipeline like this is approved. The pipeline is on the drawing board cutting through about 20 protected areas of various levels of conservation. It originates in an area of the Merchants and Falls which is a highly bi-diverse place and my colleague, Omar, will tell us more about that. But it runs through a large number of rivers that feed into Lake Victoria and as we've seen in many places around the world, especially the United States but also elsewhere, pipelines leak and so the risk that we're putting these water resources at this is unacceptable. Pipeline runs by a large number of population centers and through agricultural production areas and is exposed itself to quite significant risk of damage by earthquakes and seismic events. So by communicating this broader range of risks associated with a project like this we hope to add to the arguments of stopping this and actually go to the next slide please. And our colleagues with, we will speak in the next couple of slides, but also broader organizations in the region have started to use these materials and communicating these risks to their constituents. And this is just a quick overview for those who are not familiar with the location. The EA COP pipeline is in East Africa in Uganda, Tanzania, indicating the map. Omar, please take it forward from here. Thanks. But for the concise explanation of EA COP and definitely putting us on the map. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening ladies and gentlemen, it's always good to speak amongst friends and colleagues. So for this part of the presentation I'm going to start to just speak on three specific issues within EA COP. One will just to give more background information just for the benefit of those who might not be as aware about it. And then I'll also now proceed to speak about our reasons for why we are against it, and then conclude by peeling the veil and speaking about those who are behind it and the ones who are causing us headaches in terms of why this project is where it is right now. And after that I will welcome my friend and sister Diana Naberuma to speak on a few other things including issues around the habitat fragmentation threats posed by EA COP and then also speak about some of the recent challenges that they've been facing from the civic space constraints against those who are opposed to EA COP and what they've been doing to make sure that they are shielding themselves from those challenges. And our story begins. So in terms of EA COP, just to add on what Matt has already mentioned as a way of introduction, it's definitely going to be the world's longest heated crudel pipeline of about 1,445 kilometers, which is just a few miles above 900 miles. For those who are not conversant with the kilometer as a measurement item. We are definitely concerned in terms of how it's going to be disastrous, not just to the local communities and the people who are living within this route where the pipeline cuts across, but we're also concerned about the impacts to wildlife as well as also the entire planet. When we talk about the carbon emissions that are going to be coming from the oil which will be consumed once the pipeline is constructed. We definitely would definitely like to share as a background information at this point the fact that the pipeline itself doesn't really make sense, not just from an environmental perspective, but even from an economical perspective as well. Because one, the 2,216,000 barrels of oil that are going to be evacuated every year to be spent vis-a-vis what's going to be lost as biodiversity and the livelihood of the people who are depending from these lands for their daily livelihoods. If you do the calculations, definitely the mathematics don't make sense, especially if you're looking at it from the perspective of the government of Uganda and Tanzania and also the citizens of these countries. And the Stop Eco or Stop East African Cuddle Pipeline campaign which I coordinate is made of about 260 organizations that are supporting it. And we've been pushing different facets of advocacy in terms of trying to convince not just the government of Uganda and Tanzania, but also the biggest project proponents as well as also the banks that have been approaching the project. In terms of why we are opposed to it, I've already talked about the huge amount of people that are going to be displaced if this project is going to take effect and as you see on this slide, about 15,000 households are going to be affected and that's more than 100,000 people because African families, we are more blessed and we normally have a bigger number of people within the homes. When you talk about the courage or the size of the land that's going to be affected, it's about 5,000 class hectares of land which are going to be directly impacted. We're also talking about biodiversity and huge water resources and we're talking about both water resources in wetlands. For instance, the Lake Victoria Basin is one of the huge water resources that stand to be affected and that resource itself supports about 40 million people for their source of water for consumption but also for food production as well. When we talk about the impacts as well, before we move to the next slide, let's also talk about the carbon emission that are going to be generated by this project. The East African Global Pipeline, I've already said it's going to be evacuating about 216,000 barrels of oil each year and the calculations have already been done and the carbon emissions that will emanate from that will be about 34 million tons of CO2 every year that are going to be emitted and it's actually going to be more than what Uganda and Tanzania are currently emitting, the carbon that they are currently emitting and therefore this means that it's going to be a huge impediment to the carbon emissions and climate change commitments that we are making. We have both not just civil society and people of Uganda being affected by climate change. We talk about droughts, we talk about floods and different other things that are affecting millions of people in Africa and in Uganda and Tanzania but we've also seen some of the key government leaders including even the minister of environment confessing and agreeing in international platforms that climate change is causing a lot of impact within these areas and therefore it's time to take action towards making sure that we are moving or coming up with climate solutions and therefore this East African Global Pipeline becomes an issue that is actually almost hypocritical in our sense. Please the next slide. You jumped on slide. Yeah, so in terms of who's involved I'll just take a minute on this. So the biggest proponent is total energy which owns about 62% of the shareholding of the pipeline itself, the company and then China National but the project proponents and it was it was an increase from the 3.5 billion dollars that was previously mentioned as the price for the project and I'm sure Ryan will be coming in with more details and mathematics around that. Please the next slide. Yeah, so when we started in Ryan we'll be coming in later with more details. So the excellent work that has been done by Banktruck and some of other partners that we have within Stop Ecop was able to approach the 25 banks that we believed to be considering or approach to finance the clueless pipeline and the advocacy and the work that has been done has gotten us to a point where 11 out of the 25 banks have confirmed that they would not be funding the East African Global Pipeline. It's definitely a very, very big win for us in majority of these banks in Europe and in the West and the banks that are remaining now are mostly in Asia and specifically in China and in Japan. So I would assume the next tranche of the work that we're going to be doing is to be targeting these banks and I think with China and the President Jin Pin coming up with the commitments to stop any new call, building of call plans abroad. It's actually giving us a very good platform to push the narrative further of including aspects of fossil fuels as well because all of them are equally as bad. The carbon emissions that are coming from both these sources of fossil fuels are as bad and therefore we don't see why they cannot expand that net to include fossil fuel financing that is with Ecop. And with that I will just hand over to my colleague Diana Nabiluma to take it forward with the next phase of the presentation. Okay thanks Omar and thanks Diana shall I stop sharing and pass it to you to share your screen? Yes please. Thanks Omar and thanks to the previous presenters. Good evening to everyone and give me a second so that I get the right screen to share. Good evening or good morning or good afternoon it's evening where I am. Okay so today I'm going to allow me to switch off my video because I have better connection when my video is off. Today I'm going to be expounding on you know I'm going to be giving on ground information as regards what we stand to lose in terms of our environmental resources, biodiversity, culturally and socially if the Ecop is developed or constructed. So I thought I would begin by sharing that about the area where oil extraction is expected to happen in Uganda. The first speaker hinted on the fact that the oil discoveries in Uganda which are 6.5 billion barrels and up to 1.7 billion barrels are recoverable. We are made in the Lake Albert area and widely the area is called the Albert time rift. The Albert time rift in Uganda is you know our most ecologically sensitive and also one of the most biodiverse. If you look at the map that's on the screen you'll see those dark green patches on the map. Those dark green patches show the national parks that we have in Uganda and the majority of our national parks and protected areas. Actually 70 percent of our protected areas are found in the Albert time grabbing where the oil and gas finds in Uganda are in addition 70 percent of our protected areas and then eight out of 15 of our forests are found in the Albert time grabbing. The grabbing is also very biodiverse. It has a 50 percent of Africa's bird species as well as amphibian, reptile, plant and other species several which are endemic and over 49 of which are listed as are endangered by IUCN. So of course it's of great concern that extraction is expected to happen in these areas particularly in Lake Albert and from Matison Falls National Park after which the oil that is to be extracted will be transported by this African Cuddle Pipeline or the EECOP from Huema that's also still in the Lake Albert region of the Albert time grabbing to the Port of Tanga in Tanzania. Now unfortunately you know what has happened as a result of the oil and gas discoveries and you know the efforts to develop these discoveries or to extract and exploit and use these discoveries is that we've seen a lot of land grabbing and including of protected areas coming up. On the screen is a chimpanzee, beautiful animal. It has over 98 percent of human beings share over 98 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees so we call them our close cousins in Uganda and you know we have a forest in Uganda called Bougouma forest and it is a habitat for these chimpanzees. So what we've seen happening is that since oil discoveries were made like I said people and especially those connected to the political elite have been grabbing land and part of the land in fact a thousand hectares that has been grabbed is a part of Bougouma forest and the Bougouma forest has and sugarcane growing you know the forest part of the forest has been cleared for sugarcane growing. The sugarcane is being grown you know to among others for export purposes but also the oil and gas sector is being targeted. People are grabbing land in the Albertine grabbing with the hopes that they can use the land to either grow crops and supply the oil and gas industry or you know they can be compensated as landowners in the Albertine grabbing. So unfortunately the grabbing over Bougouma forest is a bad for biodiversity because the forest has over 500 chimpanzees and it's very important for the survival of these chimpanzees so we need to protect the forest. The forest is also one to an endemic species called the Ugandan manga bee but because of oil and gas discoveries and efforts to exploit the discoveries the forest you know several people have made claims to the forest. Yes and on this slide we can see Bougouma forest parts of the forest that have been cleared and so a lot of not a lot of other four forests in Uganda are also under threat because of the EECOP and we have Bougouma because the pipeline is going to pass between Bougouma, Wambabia and two other forests in Ajemukanya and Kasana-Kasambia those might be difficult names for you of interest to us environmentalists is a Bougouma forest and Wambabia forest. Wambabia forest is a corridor forest it supports chimpanzees to move between Bougouma and Bougouma forest all those those three forests are found in the Albertine grabbing. Now Wambabia forest the pipeline is going to pass between Bougouma and Wambabia forest and passing between those forests could lead to habitat loss for the forest but it could also make it difficult for the chimpanzees to connect between various forests and the people who understand chimpanzees very well have told us that these chimpanzees need to be able to move between Bougouma and Wambabia and Bougouma because they cannot meet with each other if they met with each other they die out they need to exchange their DNA for their survival rates to increase so any destruction of Bougouma any potential destruction of Wambabia any destruction of Bougouma forest pertains negatively for the survival of chimpanzees which are also listed as are indigent by IUCN but unfortunately because of vehicle we see that more pressure is being put on the chimpanzees then the other area of interest is Katonga river four rivers in Uganda said to be affected by the EECOP and I'm sure there are several more rivers in Tanzania because the biggest percentage of the EECOP is in Tanzania and among these rivers of importance is the Katonga river Katonga river is part of the Katonga wildlife reserve and that reserve is important for the migration of various species between Tanzania and Tanzania Uganda and Sudan now the EECOP it's expected that the EECOP will be developed through Katonga river and three other rivers in Uganda and in fact in the environment and social impact assessment reports that was produced by Total Energy and was approved by the Ugandan government in 2020 it's recognized that developing the pipeline through rivers such as Katonga will not only lead to habitat loss but you know it could hurt the migration of our species that you know got to various areas for breeding for feeding if there are droughts in other areas and for other reasons and this means that survival of these various species you know is at risk so the animals are in danger on a social level Katonga river is very important and Katonga is quite big it goes from central Uganda up to western Uganda communities in what we call the Katokorido in Uganda several districts in south southern Uganda rely on Katonga river as their most important source of water those districts in the area in the Katokorido are quite dry and they need Katonga river to survive in order for them to access water and they also need clean water both for themselves and for their animals so the risks of building a pipeline through Katonga are immense in terms of if there's any pollution those various districts in the Katokorido and their animals would be in danger if there was an oil leak and then culturally Katonga river is part of the culture norms of people from central Uganda and you know there are certain rules around the river their king is interloud to bypass or see the river so it's a central part of the culture of people from central Uganda and you know we need to conserve it but we see that there is pressure and more pressure on the river which is dangerous for the culture well-being of other people in central Uganda then Omaru talked about a lake Victoria about a third of the hiccup is going to be constructed in the Lake Victoria basin Lake Victoria is very very important not only for socially human beings in terms of providing food jobs and water but it's also important for the survival of birds and various other species on this slide you'll see some birds Lake Victoria is connected to Lake Navgavo which is very important for birds but also various other other other lakes within within central Uganda that you know if you know anything happens if there's an oil spill in Lake Victoria you'd find that interconnected lakes such as Navgavo and others that are important for migratory birds that come from Europe would be negatively affected. Yeah so this slide is a curious bird it's called the Jesus bird I am told that it works on water it has webbed feet but allow it to work on water and it's found in southwestern Uganda where the hiccup is going to pass through you know the Lake Victoria basin I've had to be through the Lake Victoria basin so you know this this this is part of the biodiversity that we are looking at as being a tourist and we feel that a sea report that was produced and approved by the Ugandan government you know doesn't contain enough or sufficient or adequate mitigation measures to ensure that our biodiversity and culture survive so finally the social aspects Omar talked about them the number of families that are going to be affected but even before their land has been taken we've already seen that a lot of our social costs are being borne by the community whose land is being affected for the hiccup they aren't currently they aren't allowed to use their land for certain developments to grow perennial food and cash crops so that has increased the food scarcity amongst the affected families but it has also increased the school dropout rates because families that cannot grow cash crops cannot take their children to school and then we've also seen because in in some areas in some districts it's centers or what we call town centers urban centers that were affected we find that family family heads are no longer working and they stopped supporting families so they've been marked increased gender best violence and several other social issues have occurred and we expect that this will not only be experienced in the short term Afiego did research that we published last year which shows that the land impacts the impacts arising from compulsory land acquisitions are felt in the mid medium term because families are unable to replace all the land that they lose and because our livelihoods in Uganda largely land best when families don't replace all the land then we see food insecurity increasing but also family incomes decreasing and that has various impacts uh thanks over to the next speaker thank you very much thank you Deanna I'll show my uh screen again and Bart will continue and then introduce uh Liliana yeah thank you so much uh Omar and Deanna it was really really great to to get such a such a rich perspective on on what's really happening uh in in East Africa um as mentioned in the chat one of the main things that we did as part of our work to to map and illustrate where these kinds of impacts may be taking place and connect those images to to a broader view is is a map story that currently the beta version is on the on a platform called maps for environment and as you'll see when you click on those maps as you can interact with the data and um zoom in where you uh have a specific interest um there's a broader backstory to that there's there's a lot more possible with that kind of platform uh end users can contribute and upload and interact with the data uh more comprehensively uh and that's something that is a key a key pillar in our in our work um shifting from an emerging potentially new frontier uh to an old frontier that has been uh in place for about 40 years the western amazon uh wanted arguably be the most diverse uh place on earth uh in Ecuador Columbia Peru has been experiencing uh oil and gas development and in a way there's sadly no better place to illustrate how devastating uh oil and oil industry can be in that kind of setting um we uh started uh as one of the case studies under our project uh bringing together a broad array of information there are a lot of local actors who are uh incredibly uh good at at mapping this with great precision there's some government databases and then there's a lot of information that can be derived from uh newly made available satellite imagery uh one of the great advances over the past years has been uh an incredible increase in accessibility of uh high resolution satellite imagery through google earth and and other outlets um which allow us to actually start mapping things with uh much more precisely and also monitor changes that are taking place uh in places where you wouldn't and shouldn't have uh development as the map here illustrates it's a little um busy but the purple areas are indigenous territories the green areas are protective areas and the darker black outlines are um current oil blocks and all the other lighter outlines are uh planned oil and gas blocks so as we can see here it's it's a frontier maybe one-third of its development and if we let it run its course uh everything in this uh area will be turned into oil wells and as we see um the red dots indicate oil spills from a national oil and oil spill database and sadly one of the the things that we realized reviewing this information is um until recently we had the uh approximate location of pipelines but all you need to do is really follow the trajectory of if you look at the north west corner of your image where the pipeline comes in you just follow the red dots and you know what the position of the pipeline is and so um as a great example uh for east africa where the party's involved will say well this is not going to spill with all the all the best practices it won't happen it does happen um that said I think uh Liliana uh can speak a lot more uh effectively to the to what's going on on the ground in in this region and uh she she'll be the next speaker thank you Bart um if you shared my first slide um thank you again for the invitation uh and this opportunity to share and to complement uh the vision from the maps to the reality on the ground so uh my speak will be about uh what does it mean for the people and nature experiences this experiencing this pressure from all these uh uh these plans uh and what is happening already in what's it's supposed to happen I will also end with uh hopefully a message of what we can do uh with uh with the current developments in the region so to start I would like to share an image of what's what's life there this is the the biodiversity of the area as Bart said this is uh the western amazon is the region with the the most biodiversity part of the amazon uh in unlike the eastern part of the brazilian amazon it's an area with uh with a largely intact ecosystem uh it's uh if you zoom in at the western amazon it's not only ecuador it's bolivia colombia peru and the western part of brazil uh and these scenarios are are repeating also in these countries but we will zoom in in in in ecuador I want also to share with you something fresh from the icn uh well conservation congress uh because icn approved uh an indigenous people's global call for action to protect 80 percent of the amazon by 2025 uh to avoid this catastrophic tipping point which is uh uh nearby so an urgent call from the environmental community to concert efforts to protect this last remaining uh forest primary forest uh so what we have here is uh is is an area with uh which is is rich and full of uh by diversity in living beings and here a small selection of some of the uh species that we have uh in our projects uh of course the jaguar one of the the five big cats uh in the world uh mammals these birds this is an amazing beautiful bird I'll take the time to present them because they are important uh the black and chestnut eagle and the woolly monkey and amphibians we have in this region a dense diversity of amphibians and uh as we know the current mass extinction crisis is is very evident in the amphibians so this presence of these animals prove that still we have a good state of forest so it's important to uh to protect it there is also a high presence of indigenous groups including some of the last uh worlds uh the world last uncontacted peoples living in voluntary isolation but as Bart just explained so graphically with the maps uh there are threats and they are immense because underlying these landscapes we have large reserves of oil and gas which has been exploited already with terrible consequences but there are many many projects to come so next slide please so this is something um I I also want to share with you this is the movement from from the people protecting these landscapes uh these these uh these indigenous groups are uh what we call the guardians of these areas are uh living in in the world more most biodiverse uh areas uh but let me start saying that Ecuador uh this is happening in Ecuador at the moment uh has a very strong constitution uh protecting the rights of nature and sometimes used as an example for the rest of the world uh in theory it prohibits the extraction of uh of uh natural resources in protected areas and it protects its peoples but when you have this so-called national interest is when you see that the other other interests appear and and other priorities take uh take the lead and you see here the uh one that I have to to to pronounce it every time but this uh this group they were not Iranian people they are a very emblematic case because they are the the latest uh indigenous group uh which was contacted in Ecuador and they took uh very strongly their case to the courts and and they won the case so with this picture they're showing our our forests are not for sale uh and they were successful on doing this uh one of their leaders also won the the goldman prize but these conflicts of course are very evident with all the maps that you see there are clear overlap between high biodiversity areas indigenous peoples territories and protected areas and as Bart explained a large part of the Amazon Ecuadorian Amazon is already planned for oil activity uh there is also a very emblematic case the Yasuni National Park where these people also live in theory under the protection of the natural park but in reality what's happening is that uh well the areas are being uh degraded but this oil projects and in the case of the of the Warani people uh because they live uh under living downriver or from oil operations they have been affected uh the the water sources are being affected uh so this is a clear example of what could happen and it's a situation that is repeating itself not only in Ecuador you see that in other countries as well and also with our communities inside Ecuador there is a specific uh case which is is very worrying and that's the the the situation of uncontacted peoples living in voluntary isolation it's a large concern for for civil society for local civil society but also for international society because there is a lack of understanding of the extent of the territories and Ecuador created a zone for so-called untouchability but there is discussion whether this is the right it's mapped correctly and there are questions about whether this area it's it's correct or not there are some reports of of people moving inside these oil blocks so this is a very worrying situation but there are two sides of the conflicts and one side you have the government claiming the authority to manage these two resources uh for uh because of the of the public interest but on the other side you have indigenous peoples claiming that the right for for the property and and the territory allowed them to exercise their right to free prior and informed consent and this is a big issue because it's it's of course a discussion but the all the two words are very important it's it's informed consent and the part of concern is concerned is always neglected so um next slide please I wanted to show you um and uh project with it actually together with a fiego it's um moving we're moving now to to some old projects and how how the development in the amazon in in the past has caused so many environmental damages and and also issues of health for local people these pictures are taking in in in a couple of years ago uh because we try to create a movement of solidarity with affected communities in ecuador yuganda and the us uh because many of of the issues these people face are similar and what you see on the left side on the top of the of the slide is is is the flares of all projects that have been burning with natural gas for for for decades uh in in the amazon uh in the ecuador there are more than 447 flares that are still burning burning for decades and local communities say that say that this are uh the fires are responsible for higher high level of cancer in the local area and something is happening now with the pictures I'm sorry they're very nice beautiful sorry so this is on the left side on the top and something important is that recently um and after many decades of procedures the local community succeeded in in in um uh yeah in again in the rights and the recognition that that ecuadorian state failed to defend their environmental rights so hopefully this will start the restoration of the area on the right side you see an old and oil spill and which is solidified and on the low side you see uh women defending uh their territories and uh well her name is jenny and what you see in reality is that many of these uh vital areas are defended by local people with with high risks and we call them the environmental human rights defenders and now I'll move to the final slide so according to international conservation I want to stress the importance of this more than 3.8 billion hectares are under indigenous peoples and local communities hence which means roughly 80 percent of the remaining world's biodiversity so protecting these areas and these peoples are vital to bend the curve of biodiversity degradation and climate change but in the reality these peoples are also at risk so taking the last report actually this month's published for world witness we see that uh last year 227 people were killed because they were defending their environmental rights and South America is the continent with the worst figures and killings are only the tip of the iceberg the the pressure on natural resources what they call here the last line of defense is increasing every year and indigenous peoples and local groups are facing the the largest killings and violations and I want to close my contribution with a message of hope and an example from Latin America to the world the binding regional treaty called the escasso agreement which is ratified by Ecuador but also entering into force the 22nd of April this year which is a commitment from the continent to sustainable development and human rights and the rationale behind escasso is that access to information in Latin America remains poor there is widespread impunity and crimes against environmental defenders in communities rights to consultation on the impact of large development projects are often disrespected so uh hopefully if this is implemented well this can protect our largest remaining forest and their inhabitants and all the immaterial values that are there the values like cultures and also the local knowledge we always speak about nature based solutions but these people have that and as the one of the ipb s reports stated and I'm using that on the right side under the in this slide slide it's important uh yeah to to learn from these people how they conserve nature and how they live in harmony with nature so with this final message I want to yeah finalize my contribution thank you thank you very much Liliana that was a graphic explanation of both ecological and the and the human impacts and I would like to finally pass it to Ryan who will give us an overview of the work that they're doing in one of the one of the largest most important initiatives to to offer some resistance to these projects expanding fossil fuel production based on on pressuring the organizations that are financing them ryan thanks very much uh shivan yeah and hi everyone um thanks very much for the opportunity to uh to speak to you here as part of new york climate week meek and the the invitation to join this panel um i'm going to speak uh as shivan indicated about our advocacy towards the banks whose finance is enabling the climate and extinction crisis that we've been talking about on this panel um i want to start with uh uh the east africa crude oil pipeline a lot's already been said about the e-cop on this panel uh by my colleagues oma and dana especially i don't want to go over the same ground but to talk briefly about our advocacy aimed at cutting off the money that this project is going to need to proceed uh this pipeline is looking for a three billion dollar project loan and loans this size will need a lot of banks to to chip in probably upwards of a dozen uh banks and we've been calling on banks starting with those that uh that we know are already major finances of total the leading company behind the project to make public statements ruling out finance for the for the project um together with the the stop e-cop coalition we've sent an open letter to to banks supported by over 260 civil society organizations showing the you know the the wide strength of feeling especially from from civil society uh in the region as well as globally and we've provided briefings to these banks setting out the impacts to uh to make clear uh where that due diligence process needs to needs to look as they consider whether to to finance this loan we've also used the the geospatial mapping tools uh the the kind of tools that uh that Bart has has set out on this call to help make the case to the banks for example uh some banks have policies not to finance activities with impacts on sensitive wetlands which are protected by something called the Ramsar Convention and we used SCIs mapping to to show you banks clearly which Ramsar wetlands the the pipeline will impact as shown on the the map on the on the left of this slide and this kind of detailed geographic information about where the pipeline is going and where the protected areas are that will be impacted um has helped persuade um the banks uh that of the impact of this project and and help lead to uh to the the situation we're in now where where 11 major banks have ruled out financing the project with Mizuho in Japan and HSBC in the UK that the latest to join them um there are still banks out there that the project can turn to but with so many of total biggest financiers uh ruled out we expect it will be far harder now for the project to find the finance that it needs so the next slide please so uh unfortunately the the ECOP is just one project in a global oil and gas industry which is still set on expansion um and the reality is that bank finance for for fossil fuel expansion is essentially proceeding uh unrestrained and one reason we're focused on the banks financing uh this this fossil fuel extraction is that uh the banks uh are more vulnerable in terms of their reputation often than than fossil fuel uh companies and um they they can be influenced to to improve their policies and they are being influenced to improve their policies around the fossil fuel industry uh but looking at the amount of finance that they're actually providing for fossil fuels um it's uh it's essentially uh it's massive and the the banking on climate chaos report the rainforest action network and bank track and other applies have been putting together every year uh for some years now assesses the scale of bank finance and the fossil fuel industry and has found that the banks have provided 3.8 trillion in finance uh since the Paris Agreement in 2016 that's about two billion dollars a day so while the world's governments are aiming to and struggling to put together 100 billion a year in in climate finance um some 60 banks are by themselves providing around six times that each year to the fossil fuel industry so the next slide please so the overall trend in fossil fuel finance from private sector banks is unfortunately uh increasing uh some better news is that 2020 saw the first decline in fossil fuel finance from the world's largest banks uh however this this decline is uh is mostly pandemic related uh and the the trend for the first half of 2020 was still an increase on the first half of 2019 so we really need to see this decline in fossil fuel finance sustained uh next slide please so which banks are we talking about here which banks are the worst offenders uh well the US banks are by far the largest financiers of fossil fuels JP Morgan Chase is is leading the the dirty dozen largest fossil fuel financiers and the rest of the top four are also uh large US banks with Canadian and Japanese banks also well represented in in the top 12 a couple of European banks as well um you might be thinking I've heard about all of these banks net zero targets uh and indeed you know last since last year almost all of these banks certainly at least nine out of these 12 have developed net zero targets for 2050 uh or in the case of JP Morgan an intermediate target for 2030 covering their finance emissions um and these these commitments are a sign that banks are listening and responding to to pressure from uh climate activists but these 2050 commitments are delaying the urgent action that is needed now to to stop violence for fossil fuel expansion to take JP Morgan as an example they have a target to reduce the carbon intensity of the oil and gas the companies that they financed by 15 by 2030 however as the stop the money cap the stop the money pipeline campaign in the ux has pointed out if a company owns a thousand oil wells and no windmills and Chase gives it a 10 billion dollar loan to build 400 new oil wells and 200 windmills then the company is going to reduce its carbon intensity significantly and probably help JP Morgan hit that carbon reduction target uh but it will still be growing its emissions it will still be new building new oil wells uh in the midst of a climate crisis so JP Morgan's current climate targets allow it to keep financing fossil fuel expansion for at least the next nine years um also these banks like to point out that they've committed many trillions of investment into green initiatives in the coming years which is which is also positive news however banks don't deserve too many people it's for profiting both of the crisis and the response to that crisis so the next slide please so our call on the banking sector is therefore that banks must stop financing fossil fuel expansion uh and phase out their existing finance for the fossil fuel industry to zero by 2050 with strong interim targets in line with the Paris agreement and this isn't a call for the overnight end to the fossil fuel industry but it's a call for the overnight end to its growth and this would free up billions for financing green initiatives it must be done in a way that's that's rights compatible with a focus on supporting a just transition and avoiding finance for companies and projects that are abusing human rights um and this isn't just our call this is a call supported by over 200 civil society organizations large and small who've signed up to uh to support it on the the fossil banks website so uh the good news is go to the next slide please uh that more and more groups around the world are working together to target fossil fuel financiers with campaigns multiplying in the run up to plazko targeting specific banks or calling to halt to finance specific projects uh and the fossil banks no thanks platform uh on that website fossil banks.org aims to bring as many of these efforts as possible together uh on this slide of some of the the platform partners and provide a shared resource for campaigners show the strength and the diversity of this growing movement so uh so we invite organizations to to sign up to support this call on banks also to join the platform if they have uh campaigns at a local level on banks and and climate change and the last slide please so um this activism is having an impact the Dakota access pipeline was an example of a project that did get financed from private sector banks but the backlash the backlash against the banks that financed that project was massive and led to led to some changes now the east african crude oil pipeline is struggling to find financiers the lamu coal plant in kenya uh it's just one example of a project that has been cancelled after the international the industrial and commercial bank of china uh pulled out coal plants around the world are being cancelled for lack of finance and china's commitment today should hopefully uh accelerate this but we can't keep financing we can't keep fighting one project at a time we need to demand that uh our banks stop using our money to stop financing um fossil fuel expansion everywhere um and we need to see as many banks as possible come forward with much stronger uh commitments before the glasgow summit in in 39 days time so thank you very much and i'll pass back to uh to shivan to uh to queue up this the discussion session thank you very much ryan and thank you to all of the speakers um i uh i i think the the main point of what we've been trying to present is that when you look at the look at the increasingly unambiguous information from reflecting what's happening in the global situation both with regard to the climate challenge which has become a climate crisis and the biodiversity challenge which has become an extinction crisis um the message out of them both really is that uh fossil fuel expansion has to stop and fossil fuel use has to be phased out and what we've tried to do here is use um from sci's perspective use the increasingly um massive and sophisticated and um still expanding set of data that's available from um uh remote sensing sources and and big data sources and turn that data into information into useful information that the organizations located in the regions of these individual fossil fuel expansion projects can make use of can make use of in their own efforts to deal with with the local efforts to expand fossil fuels um to resist those efforts um what i'd like to do now is use the remainder of our time which is about 15 minutes i guess um sorry we seem to have gone over i hope it was useful information to um take any questions that um that uh audience members may have oh morgan corrects me we have uh we don't have uh an hour and a half we have two hours so we have 45 minutes uh that we can use for question and answer um i'd welcome the other speakers to to come on camera again and i welcome guests to um to just type any questions into the into the chat box and we'll uh we'll um we'll direct those to the appropriate speaker while you think of any questions either relating to individual points that were raised by um by particular speakers or or sort of overall questions about the challenges facing us and what we're what we're um endeavoring to do about it um while while folks are coming up with the questions i i have a few um a few angles on on the discussion that i'd like to open up um and the first is the following and i guess it's i guess maybe it would be most appropriately directed to lilyana and beana who are both in their own ways involved in the governance challenges and the regions that they're working um so one one of the main purposes of civil society organizations it seems is to take the um the laws the regulations the governance institutions and their their respective um domains of authority uh seriously and to hold the government to account to enforce its own laws and to uphold its own regulations and i'm wondering if um if if there's anything more you can say about ways in which um access to information access to data and challenges in getting that data um um how that could how that could make it um how that could be useful for you in your efforts dealing with governments and providing providing arguments um um as as you interact with uh with uh the local governance procedures there and i i am raised that in part because one of the things that bar pointed out is that in addition to the potential impacts from expanding projects one of the really important um sets of conclusions one can draw from this kind of work is the impacts that have already occurred from existing uh fossil fuel projects which gives a strong basis for for drawing conclusions about what will happen if expansion happens further i can start saying something and maybe liyana can compliment because i imagine that there are similarities between the regions um so as i said the the problem of information the accessibility of information information that is understandable for local communities and information that is seen as neutral it's very difficult uh so every every map of every uh fact it's always discussed and and put in into um debate as it's debatable so the importance of uh information which is uh yeah reliable and neutral is is crucial as i said the the this new treaty yeah this binding treaty it's all about access to information but the information has to be there and that's uh there's still a problem it's not only a matter of capacity it's also a matter of uh of accessibility also a matter of that communities understand the maps sometimes you have to translate uh this maps that we have been seeing for for for local communities and indigenous peoples are difficult to read and so um it's it's it's very abstract uh for local people to read so that you need to translate that as well so there are several steps that you need to to do in order to help local communities to take informed decisions so availability and translation is important and that's the role of of local civil society because they are uh i think central but international civil society can also help with the validation right so that is less discussion whether this is neutral or this is again uh lobby from some of of the social groups which is generally the case uh so i hope it's as a part of the of the of the answer from my perspective uh i don't know diana if you can also compliment um could you repeat the question please thank you yeah um given the ways that you are in a position of interacting with your government and and helping to pressure them to enforce existing rules um and laws what ways can information uh such as the information that this project is making available um provide useful input and be a useful tool as you're as you're trying to do that what types of information or in what forms oh okay um thank you so um you know i can relate with what liliana has said um access to meaningful information that can help uh decision makers but also communities to understand what the impacts of other projects that are proposed or the projects that uh you know that are being implemented are is uh still limited in our settings and uh you know big reports are produced and and you know sometimes there is not enough discussion of the impacts because the you know there's a lot of impacts that are going to occur so and the report is already very big so you try to summarize as much as possible so there's a lack of in-depth information sometimes but also there are instances where there are opportunities to provide in-depth information but we see in our context that uh because communities uh you know stakeholders don't want communities to be you know genuinely aware of what's coming or what's happening in another area where oil impacts are and you know we have a statement uh the impacts of these are insignificant or you could suffer health sorry i'm being told that my internet connection is unstable i hope you can still hear me so you can the communities can be told you could suffer health impacts because of this but the gravity of the health impacts is in to explain so there is an issue sometimes the reports are too big so there's no in-depth information being shared or there's a deliberate effort to hide information and what we do as a fiego and our partners radio is the most used medium of communication but also and we are an oral society we love storytelling so meetings with communities radio talk shows short films are used to communicate to try and feel that gap but gaps certainly still exist thank you thank you diana um i i'd like to follow up on that uh with you bart and bring in a question that was raised by shell um who said that this is we've referred to this in one slide as an early warning system um and shella is pointing out that the ability to to challenge a project early on um is very helpful um you bart had mentioned the the development of what you're referred to as a transparency tool and um and um have mentioned the the value of something that's interactive and open access and easy to use and makes the state available to um um to any any groups team use it could you just say more about that and how that might unfold and how how you um yeah how you how you would propose it being used yeah no that's it's one of the core questions right so what we're trying to identify here is sort of first of all from a very large perspective these turnkey kinds of projects the western amazon oil development would not have taken place without two main pipelines funneling the oil from the fields to the coast and we can identify these projects as as ryan has indicated very clearly uh through their their finance angle but also uh bring that information to a more local level through the tools that like the mapping tools that uh that we're working on to communities so you can create awareness of the existence of these planned projects and in a way a very helpful and convenient thing about the oil industry and the finance industry in the end is that they are announced well in advance so you to the broader investment public right and a certain subset of society uh that information is often not necessarily clear transparent or readily accessible until the company trucks start showing up in on the shores of lake albert or uh in amoeba or wherever these kinds of developments take place and so by having a comprehensive data set of these planned projects and being able to zoom in to where you're interested where you where it affects you is is key and as lilyanna is was was was voicing simplicity is really the key as well we're not talking about deep scientific analysis this is a one plus one exercise you are planning something on top of something that already has a designated designation as a protected area or an indigenous area or is identified as something of being a great value for communities through the water resources for example and it's it really is a one plus one exercise where you say wait a minute you're planning this through that that's that's that's going to be a problem and the simplicity of the the kinds of analysis with ramshark as as ryan has illustrated is is showing banks have policies to not invest in uh destructive activity surrounding uh ramshark side so that's that's kind of the key but at the community level i think there's a lot of extra work that can be done we can uh through a web interface allow communities to own this information it's not our mission to own any of it it's bringing together knowledge and information and developing the platform through which it can be shared um and so that's how we try to bring it to uh the local level that's great and i think one thing that's really striking about that is that one um a really simple analysis that's simply overlaying you know a planned pipeline route and a set of protected wetland areas um there are very simple analysis can show that yeah these projects are problematic um and and for for that information to get in the hands of people at the point um before there's um um already a number of investors lined up before the engineering plans are done before there's sort of facts on the ground that end up making it inevitable is incredibly important and and one of the things that i think is striking about the data that's now available is that not only does it show sort of what's being planned and what's announced and sort of what's what's on the horizon but um by being able to compile for example the lease blocks that have recently been put up or leased you're able to see what's beyond the horizon what's still coming but at a phase where it's potentially even more um more subject to being to being uh resistant changed or cancelled um so good um thanks um dick heady raised the question um which i don't think we really got into here but it would be interesting to hear from those of you who are involved in litigation about what are the most effective jurisdictions within which to raise um litigation about about such projects um lily on it do you have a do you have experience with that in your position as a yeah i'm not a lawyer so i'm afraid i'm going to say maybe the wrong things but there are in in latin america there are some cases that are have been used as uh yeah creating jurisprudence for example the the the the conflict i mentioned between the national interests and the rights of indigenous peoples both are existing rights but one at the national level and the other one is uh approved in 2007 with the the framework for the indigenous peoples rights but you see that there are a couple of examples like uh in suriname the samaca case the samaca people against the suriname government was like the first time that uh the free private informed consent was seen as superior so from there you see that uh yeah some cases started to succeed and the case i mentioned was done at the provincial level and it was actually a case with nine girls uh it was a very small case um instead of you know something at the national level so it would be i don't know uh the background of of of the of the person raised raising that question but there is a path there of single cases that are creating space for victories that are you know giving recognition for the so-called environmental rights that are sometimes seen as less important than the national interest as i was mentioning so those are cases all of them both of them very different one the case of the samaca people was at the at the uh inter uh inter-american uh human rights court so a regional case but started from a national case and the other one was the provincial case uh so both won so uh we'll be good to look at into these strategies yeah i i think that this speaks to the to the very important point that that we have not been thinking about climate policy in terms of fossil fuel extraction we've been thinking of it for the last 30 years in terms of emissions control and so there isn't any sort of a framework there isn't any sort of a of a comprehensive approach to policy and legislation and litigation on the extraction side it really is a patchwork it's a patchwork across different sizes different size jurisdictions and different scales it's a patchwork across different domains whether it's human rights or environmental statutes and so it's it's very much a work in progress unep's recent report on sort of the state of climate litigation reports that there's more than 800 cases that were in in processed this past year in a couple dozen countries and so i think i think uh dick the answer to the question might be that there's it's still um this is an area where a lot of precedent is being set and a lot of a lot of new battlegrounds are being opened um oh my i was just wondering do you have anything to add to that as far as your work on yikap yeah definitely um so on on on litigation as a strategy or a tactic um i i think the what i've learned so far because i've been involved in litigation one in challenging the lamu coal plant which is a coal plant based here in kenya i mean also in challenging the lamu port as well under the lapsid project and and i would say for us in terms of looking at litigation as as an aspect in something we can take advantage of and the jurisdictions it's something that we'll have to take on a case by case basis because they are definitely the pros and cons that you have to weigh before you decide whether it's a good strategy to to implement all right but from the experience that i've been to um it it was a good strategy for us because one our jurisdiction in kenya especially if you go to the environmental tribunal once you challenge some of these projects you automatically get an injunction or a say order which means that the project cannot proceed in the construction at least until that case has been had and determined and what this means is now you have an opportunity to implement the other strategies people like ryan now can come in and start pushing on the financiers to make sure that the money is never committed people like diana can make sure that the community opposition is seen and therefore affecting the the the reputation of of these particular projects i mean it could also mean now working with the policymakers to try and reverse some of the laws that might be sympathetic to some of these fossil fuel projects so it helps to give you time at least to push but some of the of the of the disadvantages of litigation is one of land that it normally takes a while you know it takes anywhere between five to ten years before you are able to you know hear the case until it's determined i mean what that means then is that it's also expensive especially for africa and in our case in kenya it was the first call plant in kenya and therefore we you know normally the law how it is generally is that he who alleges must prove and therefore if you say a project is bad you have to bring the evidence to convince the court to overturn that project and that meant now finding the experts and some of them are far back from from the united states in china and others in south africa to bring them here at our own cost and we are an unprofit organization and therefore convincing funders to give you the money and and you will see the disadvantages of that sometimes you'll go to court in our court systems are unpredictable you're bringing experts from as far back as the united states here and then the court it decides at the 11th hour that they're not going to proceed because one of the judges was not able to come to court because of stupid reasons really and you have to tell these people to go back and wait for another day to come here so it takes time it's expensive but it's worthwhile it's if it's giving you that time to to implement other strategies because at the end of the day we have a higher chance of stopping these projects before they happen but once they've broken ground and you know these the construction has started our chances of stopping them are quite minimal thanks Omar thanks for some underground perspective with a with a specific project um diana you have your hand up um you want to come in oh yes sure thank you um i wanted to share about uh the legal strategies in our context in Uganda we are using them and also at the african court of justice but um in the Ugandan context you know it's not a very encouraging jurisdiction uh our civic space in Uganda is quite limited and it keeps decreasing and you also find that though the judiciary is in part you know of part of a what we would normally call civil society their independence also is is you know the judiciary is in terms stronger and independent as we want you to be so you'll find that uh cases are delayed but also they are usually decided against um you know judges decide against environmental conservation especially where strong stakeholders who are connected to the political elite are involved thank you thanks diana um i'd like to pick up on a question that rick raised earlier and directed to you ryan um given your your focus is on finance um rick is asking about the effectiveness of approaches targeting um uh shareholders and large investors yeah i'm i think um this is this is this is quite an active strategy in terms of efforts to to advocate for for commercial banks to to reduce their their exposure to to fossil fuels and to stop financing fossil fuel expansion um and i think it's uh i think it's a strategy that is that is that is it's really helping to to have an impact um there are each year there are there are more and more uh shelter resolutions that are raised at banks calling for strong climate action um and uh there's uh there's a there's a consistent level of support that they that they get usually usually they don't get a majority uh of support um an example this year there was a there was a shareholder resolution put to put to barkleys by uh our colleagues at market forces and and others um which was uh which was calling for a very a very strict commitment to to phase out fossil fuel finance uh on paris align time scales uh exactly what's what's necessary and it was uh it was the management of barkleys of course advocated firmly for this for this to be to be rejected um it was it was supported or abstained by by 25 percent of of shareholders because so it's an influential amount it's an amount which will uh which will push barkleys to uh to show that it is doing more uh on this topic but it but it's not enough it's not enough to to force management's hand um and you know i think that there are a lot of a lot of large asset managers out there with with big shares in banks who have who have climate commitments who talk a lot about about the need to the need to vote in favour of climate resolutions without without necessarily doing that i think uh i think you know there's there's an active push but i think uh i think this needs to be mainstream and you know we we really need to see mainstream asset managers consistently voting for um for the kind of the kind of climate action that is that is necessary but i think you know there is a process going on of um educating a larger a larger a larger group of you know the asset managers and uh you know there is there is growing understanding there there's further work to be done there thanks ryan um um i i have a question i'd like to raise because i i i think it's among the most important questions and and we haven't we've sort of touched on it glancingly but that's it and um it is the case that the currently wealthy portions of the world reached their current state um in good part owing to their exploitation of fossil fuels and the use of fossil energy to power their economies for the last 150 years um and now there are technological alternatives to that thankfully um but in some in some cases in some contexts given the given the world we live in now it's not always the easiest approach and so as far as as far as um completely foregoing fossil fuel expansion in developing countries i'm wondering um oh my you touched on this i wonder if you could speak more to this issue of sort of the alternative development path what are the what does the root look like um that provides a country that still is energy poor with a source of energy and with the source of jobs or other other um economic benefits of fossil fuel production um yeah what is there more you can say about that and then i'd welcome you as well diana yeah definitely and and i've i've seen a lot of debate around this in people trying to to to justify why africa has been left behind the west and other countries have taken advantage of their fossil fuel um uh reserves that they have and resources that they have to take them to the developed state status that they are in um but what's being left on that debate um is the fact that you know having fossil fuels and exploiting them is not a guarantee that you're going to develop as a country um we've seen it in nigeria they've actually become more poor by exploiting their fossil by their oil resources in the country and we've seen it with a huge number of countries in africa um and and the thing is um what's also being left in this discussion is that uh when the when the west was doing it or the other countries that are developed now when they were doing and extracting their fossil fuels at that time they did no better in terms of some of the impacts uh that they are causing to the to the world the carbon emissions and tipping us closer to a planetary crisis um and uh while we do agree that these are resources that are available in africa um and that uh africa should not exploit them uh we also definitely at the same time also say that uh the developed countries have contributed a huge chunk uh to where we are today in the planetary crisis and therefore africa in not exploiting these resources um we we definitely are aware one of the potential of the green renewable energy sources um so there more than um enough availability of solar of wind uh and other renewable energy sources within the country um and and therefore the plan will be to come up with a model uh where one we are talking about uh funding the alternative that we're talking about in africa uh so for those who have contributed to the planetary crisis and benefited from the same to support the impoverished nations that want to use the same model uh to leap from these fossil fuels and reach a position where they are they're imploring or infusing um renewable energy options so we're talking about funding uh we're also talking about technology transfer because when you talk about renewable energy development uh we're not talking about uh the same situation we're having for scramble for resources in africa uh where we're seeing places like BRC democratic republic of congo and others um having countries coming in and mining some of the resources that are needed for you know battery generation and other stuff that are needed for renewable energy options and then being taken out there to be um you know used and made by other countries and then brought back to africa but support this technology transfer to africa as well uh and train uh these countries towards uh making sure that we're able to take advantage of this there are many many um research and and and papers and analysis that have been done to really paint a picture of uh leapfrogging from fossil fuels to renewable just renewable energy is not necessarily an economic impediment but actually an opportunity so we have to look at renewables and just renewable energy not as um you know uh settling for what will be the less towards thing to do but actually an opportunity that will make us not only um avert from the environmental and climate uh disasters that we're talking about uh but also to be able to make a lot of money uh and improve our our people on the same um finally what i would say is um when you talk about uh fossil fuels and the climate change disasters we're talking about it's not just about environmental issues uh climate change is costing uh africa and the entire world lives and money i mean lives and livelihoods um for an instance uh the case in kenya which i'm more uh aware of every year was reading their indices that they released uh in december just last year they were saying that climate change is costing us about three to five percent uh as economic costs to our gdp uh that actually means uh if you translate it into money it's about three hundred uh about three to five billion us dollars every year just from the impacts that are being uh emanated from climate change so definitely uh our aspect of pushing towards uh renewables is our way of ensuring that we are averting some of these uh impacts and to finalize this point in 10 seconds i would also say that there's also this debate where people are saying the us the west are already uh you know extracting more oil than all the countries combined uh and that then uh how how can people from the west come and tell us that we should not uh be exploring some of these resources that we have but the the the the the truth of the matter is that we affected the most by climate change and that by not leading the way of showing how it can be done in a better way we're actually losing the moral footing of telling jp morgan and telling the other banks in the west not to finance fossil fuels because you're also looking at the same development model um the definition of insanity is always going to be the same doing the same thing but expecting different results thank you omar uh diana was there anything you wanted to add to that yeah very quickly to say that um i do understand the pressure that governments are under to create jobs because you can that has a very high unemployment rate and especially amongst the youthful population that needs to be working but uh you know while i do recognize that i say that uh going the fossil fuel exploitation mode is in the best way to create the jobs because i've studies have shown that uh just over 160 000 jobs will be created these are both direct and indirect jobs and the experts say that uh these projections are likely known to materialize even less jobs will be created and while a few jobs are going to be created many more stand to be lost in agriculture and other and other fishing agriculture fishing and other economic sectors that are dependent on environmental conservation so we we will lose more than we will gain uh interestingly uh yuganda has a great green economic potential and the yugandan government was supported by UNDP among other development partners to do a study that showed that uh investments in agriculture tourism agroforestry and other sectors could create nearly four million jobs and add 10 percent to yuganda's GDP so we can certainly go green and we can forgo fossil fuel exploitation thank you thank you diana um i i i'll add another part to this story which is that i think that the um the prospects of fossil fuel expansion in countries to actually be economically beneficial are just a lot more than they would have been in the past that there's so much uncertainty about uh how rapidly ambitious climate policy may come in there's already uh skittishness among many financial institutions about investing in fossil fuels um that um the the likelihood that a given project that requires an investment that has a lifetime of 20 years 30 years to actually be yielding a profit for that long um i think i think a strong claim can be made that it's more dim now than it it had been previously um i think another another important point is that uh often in these financial arrangements between northern investors in particular and southern governments the structure of the of those arrangements really are such that the the risk is is overwhelmingly transferred to the host country um while while returns are overwhelmingly appropriated by the by the investing institutions or countries um so i'll just add that um i was wondering if i could bring you in ploy um ploy as i mentioned um a colleague of mine at stock home environments too was centrally involved in the production gap report and also and the coming production gap report and in the um trends and fossil fuel extraction report that i also quoted earlier that was looking at uh expansion plans across different countries and i'm i'm wondering ploy um if there's much of a sign when you look at individual governments and um the corporations and individual countries about whether there are some countries that are starting to um where you're starting to see a signal of their responsiveness to the civil society resistance to the increasing financial institutions skittishness to the science um and you're starting to see projections shift downward and start to become at least edged toward being in line with uh with paris any any good signs yeah thank you shivan i mean i think there are a few countries we could point to like germany um who you know have put in place a call face out pact right but um or other countries where you see kind of expected declines in oil and gas production like norway in the uk um but in a lot of these cases you know they reflect a sort of natural resource depletion rather than a planned managed wind down with equitable and just um transition policies in place and you know without giving too much away over this year's findings for the production gap report i just think that in aggregate we find that basically um the government uh plans and national energy outlooks of major fossil fuel producing countries still have a large disconnect between you know kind of what they're saying in terms of net zero targets and lofty climate ambitions and then what the national energy projection to actually say in terms of how much they want to expand um in particular oil and gas production um and there's a lot of you know this kind of narrative of gas being the transition transition for without any plans to phase it down in the long term it also seems that each individual country or each individual corporation feels that um it can expand because it'll be it'll be the last one standing and it the global path will be consistent with paris nonetheless because the others will phase out more quickly and there doesn't seem to be any uh any sense or any sort of empirical co-operate co-operation for any for any view like that um we're coming up toward the end and um i'm wondering if there are any other speakers who would like to add in any point now in response to a question they've seen or something that you feel that we've missed um ryan you haven't uh you haven't had too much which has to wait way in in the last bit thanks sivanya i was i was thinking i mean on the on the alternatives uh question and you've in the in the case of the the east africa crude oil pipeline you've got you've got total sort of pushing to to lock in the region to it to this sort of dead end development model um you know with a project where the amount of revenue that it would would gain would really be would be minimal and there's a real trade-off between the amount of revenue that total would get for this and the amount of revenue that uganda and tanzania uh would make and it's that it's a it's a squabble over peanuts essentially um but and you know meanwhile you've got development banks like the african development bank they've said that they won't finance this project um which is which is positive that's one thing that we're looking for but we we need them to really step up we need development banks and private sector banks uh to step up and and bring the alternatives to uh to projects like this to to the market so that you know you know uganda and tanzania um aren't just just looking at one proposed development model that the total are pushing them uh but you know the the renewable based the clean energy alternatives um are there and they're supported by by real capital from from international investors so uh so you know the alternatives are there but but they do really need financial support um and a second thing I wanted to add on the question about litigation um was just to emphasize I think the the shell ruling is something we can't really underestimate the importance of um in the here in the Netherlands the shell was ordered by 2030 to reduce its emissions by by 45 percent which is really significant and this was based on um human rights norms it was based on the un guiding principles which are very broadly applicable I think that's going to be an influential an influential ruling I certainly hope it will be and it's I think it's applicable outside of the oil and gas industry and to to finance as well that there are human rights reasons why why companies including oil and gas companies and banks as well need to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and reduce their reduce their emissions rapidly on that kind of timescale thanks Ryan thanks Ryan that that is helpful I think that that that is an absolute key that uh that uh especially to the extent that uh the development model that uh is seen to be sort of the defaults the only proven path to to prosperity which is one that developed countries have taken um it is it is uh to a good degree the obligation of the currently prosperous countries to help make an alternative development pathway available everyone thank you so much for joining I think that it's pretty clear that whether you look from the global perspective um and see that unambiguously we have to stop fossil fuel production both for biodiversity and climate or whether you look from the local perspective and the ecological impacts and the human impacts that further expansion is causing either way the the conclusion is unambiguous and hopefully hopefully this work and this collaboration among these groups where we're trying to bring global data to bear on the local efforts to to stop expansion um hopefully that will be that will be something that can be helpful um further going on forward but also maybe serve as a as a um as a trigger as an inspiration for other ideas to use this sort of collaboration and uh and um um um um accelerated success at phasing out fossil fuels thank you very much all for joining thank you thank you bye bye bye thank you all bye all thank you very much cheers