Energy Charter Treaty
We celebrated a huge victory this year in our long-term fight to bring down one of the biggest barriers to climate action, the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and the investment protection mechanism, ISDS. Over the course of 2022, no less than seven European countries announced plans to withdraw from the harmful treaty. In November, the European Parliament responded to this shift by calling for a coordinated EU withdrawal. In its statement, the Parliament echoed the analysis of TNI: efforts to ‘modernise’ the ECT are not enough to align the treaty with global climate goals. Targeted campaigning and advocacy in the Netherlands and Spain – including a new report examining ECT investment arbitration lawsuits against Spain – contributed to both countries’ decision to withdraw.
TNI also successfully catalysed efforts to prevent expansion of ECT membership in the Global South. Workshops and technical support helped to strengthen campaigns and advocacy against the ECT by organisations and movements in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda. In Nigeria, TNI partnered with Public Services International to co-publish an analysis of ISDS cases and the threat of ECT and urge the country to abandon its plans to join the treaty. In Uganda, TNI supported allies in analysis, outreach and effective advocacy toward the government, which has since indicated that it will not join the treaty. In Bangladesh, TNI supported the emergence of a vibrant civil society campaign that succeeded in putting ECT on the agenda of media and policymakers.
‘This [ISDS] mechanism needs to be removed immediately in various multilateral, regional, and bilateral economic agreements.’
– The Environment, Climate Justice and Energy Transition Working Group of the C20 Indonesia 2022
Growing opposition to ISDS
TNI’s work on the ECT has been crucial for increasing awareness about investment protection in general as an obstacle to climate action. Key actors in the climate debate – civil society organisations, social movements, climate scientists, trade experts – now recognise ISDS as a major barrier to climate action. In anticipation of the G20 meeting in Indonesia, the environment, climate justice and energy transition working group of the C20 (the G20’s civil society counterpart) called for the immediate removal of ISDS from all multilateral, regional, and bilateral economic agreements. During the UN climate talks, some 300 climate and environmental organisations, among others, joined a statement calling on governments to remove the threat that ISDS (investor state dispute settlement) poses to climate action. For its part, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its 6th Assessment Report, identified ISDS alongside of the ECT as barriers to phasing out fossil fuels. Later in the year, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in its report on international climate change investment trends and policy developments, also identified the potential of ISDS in hindering climate action. The tide is turning.
Climate profiteers
Given the logic of capitalism, humanity’s existential crisis is seen by corporations as a money-making opportunity. In 2022, TNI examined how diverse actors have positioned themselves to benefit from the climate crisis. A new briefing illustrated how the world’s biggest asset managers are both fuelling and profiting from the climate crisis, not only through investments in fossil fuels and destructive agribusiness, but also border militarisation. TNI is building a body of evidence to show how climate change, which is increasingly being framed as a national and international security threat, is being used to justify militarised responses to migration – a vital climate adaptation strategy for people worldwide. The briefing illustrated the vicious cycle of planetary destruction and human rights abuses: fossil fuel and agribusiness industries, two primary contributors to climate change, drive loss of land and livelihoods, food insecurity and violence, which in turn leads to forced displacement and migration. States respond with surveillance, detention and other human rights violations. Throughout the cycle, corporations reap the economic rewards of human suffering.
‘An accelerated arms race globally is the opposite of climate justice.’
– Egyptian activist, on TNI’s report Climate Collateral
Since 2019, TNI has co-convened an emerging network on climate and militarism, and helped integrate the network in the climate justice movement as a working group within the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice. In July, we launched climatemilitarism.org, to serve as a repository for resources on the subject. In the run-up to the COP27 summit, TNI and members of the working group co-published Climate Collateral, which showed that the richest countries spent 30 times as much on the military as on climate finance. The report was widely viewed and garnered significant media attention, including interviews on CBC, TRT, Democracy Now and an op-ed in Al Jazeera. A powerful video inspired by the report reached more than 60,000 people on social media and was shared by prominent figures, including the Director of International Center for Climate Change and Development, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Naomi Klein, who praised it for ‘connecting the dots between militarism and the climate crisis, with Egypt as a harrowing case study.’
In other work, TNI showed how the mining industry is positioning itself to profit from the rise in demand for so-called transition minerals. The briefing paper considers the need for new strategies and coalitions to respond to the industry’s changing practices, including intensification and expansion of extraction, and to challenge the push for an energy transition based on business-as-usual extractivism and energy substitution, rather than transformation. The report launched in a session at the EXALT conference on Green Extractivism and Violent Conflict, hosted by Helsinki University. A video promoting the report attracted over 215,000 social media impressions and more than 100 re-tweets.
Climate and drugs
TNI takes a systemic approach to our research and analysis of drug policies and trends, examining the underlying causes of drug production and consumption, and the diverse impacts of drug policies on a variety of issues. In 2022, we made significant strides in showing the links between drugs, drug policy, climate and the environment. Our work has been critical for pushing the environmental perspective higher up the agenda of drug policymakers, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes and the Commission on Narcotic Drugs – the central drug policy-making body within the UN system – which adopted a resolution in March to give special attention to environmental protection.
We also contributed important new analysis of the drugs-environment nexus with Prohibited Plants – Environmental Justice in Drug Policy. The report zoomed in on the environmental impacts of cultivation and prohibition of coca, opium poppy and cannabis, including the impacts of eradication efforts, such as large-scale aerial fumigations, as part of the ‘War on Drugs’. We also offered a number of concrete recommendations for the development of a more environmentally just and sustainable drug policy.
In all of our work on drugs and climate, TNI centres the perspectives of peasants, small farmers, landless, and migrant labour populations – those most vulnerable to climate change and for whom drug crops are an important alternative in an unjust economic system that otherwise excludes or harms them. In December, TNI co-hosted the Drug Policy and Climate Justice Symposium in London, which brought together people working on drug policy reform, global health, climate justice, ecology, sustainable development, economic justice, media and storytelling, to learn about how global drug policy, particularly prohibition, impacts the environment. Staff from Myanmar talked about the environmental benefits of opium cultivation in Myanmar, and the necessity of including farmers in the design of drug policies and alternative development programmes. The event resulted in an exciting new collaboration, the Working Group for Drug Policy Regime and Climate Justice.
Another publication drew attention to the climate and societal implications of indoor cultivation of cannabis, arguing that the high carbon footprint of indoor cultivation could jeopardise policy aims to meet climate goals. The report looked specifically at the German context, given the country’s recent commitment to regulating cannabis, and estimated that indoor production for the recreational market in Germany would amount to the total household electricity use of the city Cologne. At the same time, imports from traditional outdoor producing countries can create livelihood opportunities for small farmers. The comparison caught the attention of German media, leading to articles in Bild Zeitung and Die Welt am Sontag, and an OpEd in Die Welt.
