Groups urge ADB: Be a bank for sustainable Asian development

Members of civil society and green energy groups led by the Power for People Coalition (P4P) and multi-national coalition NGO Forum on ADB trooped to the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Mandaluyong on Wednesday -- the last day of the Annual Meeting of the ADB -- challenging the bank to end support for dirty energy projects. 

Protesters, with mockups of emergency lights on vans, and clothed in personal protective equipment (PPE), held an emergency-themed event highlighting the bank’s role in bringing about the climate emergency and ecological challenges in the region for financing fossil fuel and other dirty energy investments.

“ADB caters to one of the most vulnerable regions in the world in terms of impact of climate change and environmental degradation. Yet in the past few decades, the bank opted to help build now thriving carbon-intensive energy systems in its member countries" said Gerry Arances, covenor of P4P.

He added, "Dirty energy projects have cost the health, lives, and livelihood of many people in communities, and rendered the prospects of limiting global temperature rise to the 1.5°C Paris goal."

Arances is also the executive director of Quezon City-based think-tank Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED), which published in September a study offering a critical review of ADB’s energy investments practices and portfolio in the last decade, together with NGO Forum on ADB.

“The fact that coal and other fossil fuels comprise at least half of the energy generation capacity ADB financed in the ten years goes to show that its ‘clean energy agenda’ has really been all talk. ADB needs to correct that, beginning by officially declaring a moratorium on financing coal and setting a phase-out timeline for its fossil gas investments, channeling the bank’s resources instead to systems that would benefit communities most in need, such as microgrids,” Arances added.

For his part, NGO Forum on ADB Executive Director Rayyan Hassan said ADB must use its ongoing Energy Policy updating as opportunity to establish its sustainable development and climate action leadership among other multilateral development banks.

“ADB’s 2009 Energy Policy is draconian and outdated, and we could not wait for it to be replaced with a policy that has a resolute stand against fossil fuels and other destructive energy technologies like thermal waste-to-energy and destructive large-scale hydro-plants,” Hassan said.

As a civil society watchdog group for ADB, Forum has been actively engaging the bank in the evaluation of the 2009 policy and is key in amplifying voices from affected communities across Asia to the bank’s leadership, including during ADB’s ongoing 54th Annual Meeting.

“ADB surely would not want to be remembered simply as the bank that failed to properly assess and support Asia’s energy and development needs, whose investments helped turn it instead into a highly polluted, debt-ridden, and poverty-laden region," Hassan said.

He added: "We would keep watch on the upcoming update of its Energy and other policies, and we hope the bank would truly see this process as opportunity to atone for their dirty legacy and steer the region towards sustainable progress and alignment to the 1.5°C ambition.”  —LBG, GMA News