https://rightsindevelopment.org/news/jet-position-paper/
Across the world, we are confronting the dramatic consequences of industrial-era climate change (from extreme droughts to floods and heatwaves), which are displacing communities, destroying their livelihoods, and threatening ecosystems. Despite the Paris Agreement commitments – where countries vowed to reduce emissions to limit global warming – we are rapidly heading towards the 2° temperature increase, which will lead to even more catastrophic impacts.
To mitigate and avoid the worst effects of climate change, world leaders and policymakers have called for profound structural transformations and a “just energy transition”. Countries and institutions across the globe are now scaling up renewable and low-carbon energy solutions, while phasing out fossil fuels.
But behind the slogans about “green growth” and “sustainability”, the current approach to the just energy transition is marred with contradictions, as it has been used as a smokescreen to keep pursuing a neoliberal and extractivist approach. Public development banks (PDBs) are promoting large-scale projects and false solutions – such as green hydrogen, geothermal or nuclear plants – which are neither green nor sustainable, as they violate human rights and contribute to environmental degradation.
The Global South sits at a critical position within this transition. Despite being the least responsible for the climate crisis, Global South communities are being disproportionately impacted both by the impacts of climate change, but also by the rush towards renewable energy. Additionally, many countries – especially across Africa – are still grappling with the challenge to balance the need to ensure energy access (for underserved communities, industrialization and economic transformation), with the international pressure to phase out fossil fuels.
So-called “critical” minerals used in renewable technologies and large-scale renewable energy projects – mainly driven by the growing demand in the Global North – are creating new sacrifice zones in resource-rich countries. The current approach to the “just” energy transition is reproducing long-standing patterns of dispossession, rights violations, and environmental harm, as projects are being imposed without the consent of local communities and ignoring the impacts on their land, food systems, water, energy access, and cultural survival. This perpetuates a model of “energy colonialism”, that imposes projects only to benefit economic elites (and in many cases, large corporations in the Global North) at the expense of local communities in the Global South.
Critical mining and renewable energy projects are also fuelling conflict and reprisals. As civic space continues to shrink around the world, communities and human rights defenders who are resisting these projects or rising concerns are facing threats and attacks. This, in turn, generates a climate of fear, limiting opportunities for safe and meaningful consultations.
International law and standards recognize that people everywhere have a fundamental right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, nutritious food, clean water, education and housing, all rights which are inextricably linked to the right to land. International law specifically recognizes the right of Indigenous Peoples to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and requires States to protect their lands from encroachment. Additionally, international law and regional instruments (such as the Escazú agreement in LAC) also recognize the right to access to information and participation. Yet, development projects imposed in the name of the just energy transition or green growth are increasingly violating these fundamental rights.
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The Coalition for Human Rights in Development is a global coalition of social movements, civil society organizations, and grassroots groups working together to ensure that development is community-led and that it respects, protects, and fulfills human rights.
We do so by making sure that communities have the information, power and resources to determine their own development paths and priorities and to hold development finance institutions, governments, and other actors accountable for their impacts on people, peoples and the planet.
