Don't leave the climate debate to the high priests of finance

Don't leave the climate debate to the high priests of finance

Knowledge is power. Money is power. So knowledge of money must be a super power, right?
 
The importance of money is not news to the climate community. It’s long been at the heart of debates like how to create incentives for clean energy production, pay for adaptation and public infrastructure, and generate investment in local living economies. What does seem to be changing is the emphasis put on private sector money, and increasingly the financial sector, to finance the global fight against climate disruption.

 
“What’s the big deal?” you might ask. Well, many of us working in and with grassroots groups made up of the people most impacted by climate change realized we didn’t necessarily have the language to even answer that question. And without the language, it was hard to jump into conversations at the UN climate summit, Green Climate Fund board [or Treasury Department] and make policy demands with confidence.
 
Yes, we can hire economists to help us – and we do. But building the political power to stop climate change means growing a base of empowered advocates and activists who can speak for themselves and be taken seriously – by their neighbors and their decision-makers.
 
I’m not saying that it’s necessary (or even possible) for all of us to know everything about every issue related to climate, but basic literacy is a must if we want to combat policies that keep ‘business as usual’ in place and instead promote a transformational agenda.
 
Look at Europe in Dark Ages – the Vatican’s priests maintained luxurious wealth while most people lived as serfs in part because no one could understand Latin – the language of religious rules. Once the bible was translated into languages people understood, they could interpret the rules for themselves and politics was no longer the sole property of the priesthood – i.e. the experts.
 
This metaphor may feel like a bit of a stretch, but the high priests of finance are already finding ways to keep lay people out of the rule-making game.
 
Consider the Green Climate Fund (GCF). Its board members will meet in late June to talk about putting control of a private sector sub-fund – arguably the most important body of the GCF – into the hands of financial professionals. Their argument for giving the private fund a decision making body separate from the rest of the GCF is that “experts know best.” But this leaves the voice and vote of the public – whether in the form of government representatives or civil society groups – out in the cold unless invited to participate as financiers see fit.
 
That doesn’t bode well for the climate movement or for ending climate disruption. When we left the bankers to watch Wall Street, we got the mortgage crisis and financial collapse. When we’ve left the World Bank alone to manage its energy portfolio we saw a spike in coal lending.
 
No one’s arguing that financial professionals are mean-spirited, but their job is to look for profitable investments – not necessarily promote clean energy access for people living in poverty or move money for non-lucrative national adaptation measures.
 
So to give climate activists and advocates some tools to understand and intervene in the debates happening in the Green Climate Fund, at national Treasuries, in the halls of the climate negotiations the Institute for Policy Studies recently launched a web platform with reading material, on-online courses, a glossary of financial terms, and tools kits that can be adopted for local workshops on climate finance.
 
I’m not saying that after joining a Climate Finance 101 workshop I’d let you manage my retirement account. But we hope you’d be able (and excited) to join the conversation about how to make our money work for people and the planet. 
 
Janet Redman is co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies, which recently launched climatemarkets.org 

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