CSDS Pitch

Hi, My name is Arthur.

Today I'm going to talk to you about my doctoral

research which focuses on leaving fossil fuels in the ground

and inclusive developed.

So let's get started.

First of all, what's the problem?

Well, the problem is that in order for us to

comply with global climate goals, as set forth in the

Paris Agreement to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius,

if not striving towards 1.5 degrees, the vast majority of

quote gas reserves must be left underground.

In fact, the currently existing developed reserves, already heavily surpassed

the 1 25 year goal, get quite close to the

two degree goal.

This means that we must stop exploring for new reserves,

stop developing new reserves and cut down production from existing

fossil fuel reserves.

This heavily resonates with an inclusive development agenda.

Failing to reach the temperature goals will likely lead to

a serious about impacts like droughts, floods, famines so on.

Not to mention the fact that existing fossil fuel production

is exclusive in nature for a Siris of prompted issues,

including, but not limited to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, local

air, water and soil pollution, water scarcity, land grab a

displacement so on and so forth.

However leading us there is quite a challenge, mainly because

of the financial costs that there are a variety of

hurt. Financially speaking, the research suggests that a global transition

to a low carbon economy may cost us as much

as $200 trillion just to get to the truth, let

alone for the 1.5 degrees it is clearly a financial

hurdle is keeping us from realizing its inclusive development agenda.

From my research, I was clear.

Curious to explore this financial challenge from the perspective of

one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to

the adverse impacts of climate change, namely the African continent.

Africa is home to 10% of the world's proven reserves,

substantial fraction of natural gas and coal.

So I was curious and asked to what extent are

financial institutions from the global north propping up in supporting

African coal, oil and gas production?

To explore this, I compiled a series of existing datasets

from various NGOs, supplemented those data sets my own, digging

through corporate reporting from financial documents and financial statements that

analyze those with some descriptive techniques and some geospatial analyses,

the latter of which were mostly done through pythons, pandas

and geo pandas packages.

And finally to make sense of the empirical tze i

calling some theories of inclusive development, socio technical transition theory

and Marxist political economy and uneven development.

So let's get to the results.

What do we find?

Well, here you see a map showing in black, the

headquarters of the 35 major coal and gas multinational companies

around the world.

These headquarters were mainly found, of course, in the world's

largest financial markets, and they're mostly concentrated in Europe and

in North America.

When you see what the red lines and the red

dots are their operations.

The operations of these companies, which include exploration, production, refinement,

pipelines, shipping for fossil fuel projects in the continent of

Africa, as you see their operations are quite ubiquitous throughout

the continent and spanned 50 of the 55 countries.

The next question really is who are the main shareholders

who, in other words, have vested interests in the growth

of these companies.

That we find after doing some digging is that around

$400 billion in equity in these 35 companies exists outside

of African very small fraction of roughly 20 billion in

the Johannesburg stalking Strange the equities and mostly focused in

the London Stock Exchange and in New York, as depicted

by the bigger blue dots that you see in this

line. Therefore, the equity in these companies is entirely outside

of the African continent.

The question then is who's loaning money to these companies

for these projects and to do a bit of digging?

I first looked at some public financial institutions, namely the

develop bilateral development here.

This map shows landing for energy projects in the last

five years by some of the biggest bilateral banks in

the world, you see, shown by the red lines which

depict loans for fossil fuel projects.

There's a heavy preference for fossil fuel, especially by some

of the development banks in East Asia, mainly China is,

and lots of European Development Bank's total, of which something

to roughly 20 billion dollars in loans for fossil fuel

projects since 2015.

A similar tale unfolds.

If you look at the export credits, which are also

public financial institutions, also from East Asian and European export

credit agencies, loans for fossil fuel projects total to roughly

$15 billion since 2015.

Your team, which is a reminder, was the inception of

Paris agreement.

These loans heavily outweigh the loans for clean energy, which

are so faint in this loans are depicted with the

green lines.

What can we conclude from this very preliminary analysis?

Well, first and foremost, global financial institutions from the global

north are inextricably propping up coal, oil and gas production

in the continent of Africa.

This is impeding these African countries from transitioning to a

low carbon economy, and impeding includes development agendas from materializing.

Looking forward, we must continue to breathe and financial frame

march in order to align with inclusive development through leaving

fossil fuels.

Thanks so much for your time today.

I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to

seeing you at the conference.

CSDS Pitch

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated