First edition of Awakening’s Infolettre
Newsletter – 01 – 2023/11/12
Reminder
C@ARFI was born out of a desire to take a critical and pedagogical look at how to accompany the processes and dynamics specific to ongoing transition processes. We wanted to develop a critical tool that would provide each major transitional paradigm – from energy transition to degrowth and “convivialisme” movements – with points of reference on the essentials to consider when it comes to innovating on a global scale. Changing the zeitgeist to propose new organizational and institutional arrangements cannot be improvised, nor can it be decreed. It’s a gradual construction process, brick by brick, to be carried out collectively.
Hence the proposal for a Manifesto and a checklist of key elements to consider for an effective, efficient, fair, and relevant transition.
A clear objective
The purpose of the newsletter is simple. It’s a space for debate, exploration, and monitoring. It aims to develop exchanges with a view to improving the text of the Manifesto and, above all, making it easier to disseminate to a wide range of social players.
C@ARFI will be able to produce new versions of the Manifesto in the light of exchanges, debates, reports, advances, and setbacks, as the situation evolves. Updates will be made from the additions resulting from the conversations that will accompany the Manifesto’s distribution.
The first topic of conversation we are proposing is grafted onto current events. It focuses on COP28, which will take place in Dubai from November 30 to December 12.
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Awakening to COP28
A transition is underway. It is mainly presented and promoted by the various levels of government and the business class as an energy transition. Although the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals touch on a variety of dimensions, the promoters of the energy transition approach are betting that mitigation of the climate crisis will essentially involve substitution. This means switching from fossil fuels to so-called soft energies : eco-performance, electrification, biofuels, green hydrogen, de-carbonization, solar energy, green transport…
Do we need to do more ?
It would seem so, and hence we are here to cover the themes addressed in the Awakening Manifesto. To be relevant, the transition must address all the major social challenges, rather than simply extending some of them.
In this sense, and interestingly, the “Emirates News Agency – Wam” press release issued on October 19, 2023 to present the COP28 “Business & Philanthropy Climate Forum”, indirectly specifies the social dimension that must accompany the energy transition.
The energy transition must be fair, orderly, and inclusive. It must put life and Nature centre stage. Coming from the business world, these statements come as a surprise. It represents a Copernican revolution, since the very workings of market mechanisms :
Even more interestingly, the communiqué features some highly rhetorical statements, implying great powers of action and a willingness on the part of the business world to move in the same direction.
The watchwords — audacity, ambition, collaborative work, investment… – are the expressions used to signify the business world’s capacity for commitment. The challenges of climate change, as revealed by the members of the IPCC since its creation, bear witness to the fact that it is not the climate that poses a problem. It’s the anti-climactic behaviors adopted by any economic model based on extractivism. The cause of the problem is fundamentally human.
All human communities contribute to climate disruption. They do not do so in the same way, nor with the same intensity, nor do they all have the same responsibilities about the global crisis affecting us all. Business is one of the major players responsible for the ecological crisis. Hence the importance of the Business Forum’s statement, since it is important for businesspeople to adopt new values and apply the principles required to develop, as they see fit, “transformative and inclusive climate initiatives for a sustainable future”.
At a time when inflation is galvanizing prices, when major armed conflicts are raging, when we are painfully emerging from a pandemic period that is making us forget the essential — the reminder of our fragility and vulnerability in the face of a simple virus — we may wonder how and in what way the work of the “Business & Philanthropy Forum” will be able to establish, according to the intentions presented in the WAM press release, “a bold new standard for future COPs”.
There is no shortage of developmental standards, ethical statements, or life-saving declarations… The United Nations has an arsenal of texts and documents signed and adopted by the highest political authorities about rights and responsibilities. And yet, this same organization fails to enforce them, let alone see them applied.
According to the October 19th press release, it’s not just a question of “closing the annual financing gap of more than US$3,000 billion needed to achieve zero net emissions, reverse the loss of nature and restore biodiversity”. Fundamentally, it’s a question of agreeing collectively on a new representation of living together. A way of living together based on a relationship with Nature that respects its evolving rights, and on healthy and decent social relations between humans.
The “Business & Philanthropy Climate Forum” should be welcomed with interest and lucidity
Welcome with interest, because, as we said in the Manifesto, the transition is everyone’s business, without exception, even if some people, communities, and countries are more equal than others. Everyone must participate in the great collective momentum required to give us a socially just and ecologically viable representation of living together, and therefore, a new relationship with Nature.
This stance includes discussion of the choices guiding the said transition, choices which may diminish its scope or steer it towards greater injustice. The danger is omnipresent, and we must remain on our guard, as suggested by several analyses of the strategy centered on lithium as the basic element of the switch to electric vehicles. The choice of lithium, for example, accentuates extractivism on the one hand, and unequal international relations on the other.
Welcome with lucidity, of course. This is not to deny the importance of properly financing the transition. Financing it will require a spirit of timing that will not reproduce the determining factors at the root of the global and worldwide crisis we are currently experiencing, but which, without a collective ethical vision, could well intensify it.
In short, the energy transition is not necessarily an ecological transition, and an ecological transition is not necessarily a social transition.