Fossil Fuel Funding and the Asian Development Bank Annual Meeting

[Graham Saul]

Hi folks,

 

Daniel Mittler of Greenpeace < daniel....@diala.greenpeace.org > wrote a useful summary (below) on fossil fuel funding and the recent Annual Meeting of the Asian Development Bank. Contact Daniel if you want a more detailed analysis.

 

Also, you can view a civil society statement that came out of the meetings on the website of Focus on the Global South at:

http://www.focusweb.org/adb-40-years-of-debt-poverty-and-ecological-plunder.html?Itemid=94

 

The statement notes that:  "The ADB continues to fund lethal coal projects which not only exacerbate climate change, but have also caused deaths and sickness in communities living in the vicinity of the project areas;"

 

Cheers,

 

Graham Saul

Oil Change International

www.priceofoil.org

 

***********************************************

 

Daniel Wrote:
A bunch of us spend the last week trying to get the ADB to stop funding fossil fuels

and expand funding renewables and demand side efficiency instead.

At the Kyoto AGM (4th-7th May), there were some gains.

A number of clean energy initiatives
were announced (some bad, some ok; let me know if you want to see our detailed
analysis of theses); there was a commitment by the Bank not to fund the
expansion of the notorious coal power plant at Mae Moh in Thailand; and despite
outrageous calls by the Japanese finance minister Omi to support nuclear, at
least Bank-head Kuroda, said that he does not expect the Bank to go into this.
That's a start, though we hope that the current energy policy review will go
further and actively and explicily exclude nuclear.

That said, the Bank continues to think that funding fossil projects should be
part of its business. And the Bank did not even commit to keeping the 1 billion
pipeline for clean energy projects free of all fossil fuels projects ...

The next step is the energy policy review, which will include public
consultations over the next three months, see:
http://www.adb.org/clean-energy/strategy.asp
Please let me know if you are interested in contributing.

We also had some fun, with various nice picture opportunities. More on that
here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/the-asian-destruction-bank
and here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/en/adb-bad/