Ep. 202: Fellow Basil Ibrahim and Tedd Moya Mose on Sustainable Energy Systems

Dr. Tedd Moya Mose is a legal professional whose interdisciplinary interests extend from international energy law and policy to the just transition to sustainable energy systems. In this conversation with our fellow Basil Ibrahim, they discuss Dr. Moya's participation at the Africa Climate Summit and the COP28 meetings last year and the dilemmas of developmental aspirations that remain tethered to carbon intensive pathways. 

Moya's work at the intersection of legal and academic practice proposes a unique perspective, combining work experience from East Africa, India, the UK and the U.S. with a sympathy for vulnerable people at the sharp end of climate catastrophes. Dr. Moya is presently an Oxford Martin fellow at Oxford University.

Find the books, links, and articles we mentioned in this episode on our website, ufahamuafrica.com.

Transcript

Dr. Mose : I'll say right from the outset (that) Africa contributes the least to global carbon emissions, roughly three per cent, yet bears the brunt of some of the highest impacts of Climate Change because a lot of the people who are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts reside on the continent. This is a problem because we know some of the poorest countries are in Africa. and that Africa is least responsible for (historic) climate change. We know 6 to 700 million people do not have access to electricity and many of them reside on the continent. So what are we transitioning from and what are we transitioning to? Well, we need justice. a just transition from carbon intensive economies. Our priority is access to energy and modern standards of life.         

I'll give you an example. I live in Oxford, (England) at the moment. The average home has nine smart devices. And this is not the average wealthy home I'm picking a neighbourhood that I know is a low income neighbourhood. An average American fridge uses 459 kilowatt hours of electricity a year. This is more than half the households in Africa use in a year. That's one appliance. So why should Africans accept one charging point and a solar panel that gives them one light bulb as energy access? We must talk about minimum measures of energy access as much as we talk about energy efficiency. Africans will continue to ask for modern services, but also advanced nations must find ways of not consuming too much. And so we must begin to look at these disparities and find out, in what ways will the American public enjoy the things that they're enjoying without consuming that much and destroying the planet. At the same time in what ways can Africans enjoy more energy services that are powered in sustainable ways?

Basil Ibrahim

That was Dr. Tedd Moya Mose, introducing this episode on the Just Transition, and setting out a preliminary conversation on Africa and the global ecological crisis. Dr. Mose is presently an Oxford Martin Fellow at Oxford University. His interdisciplinary interests extend from international energy law and policy to the question of how to work out a just transition from carbon intensive to sustainable energy systems.

Dr. Mose’s unique perspective work experience in East and Southern Africa, India, the UK and the US has produced a sympathy with those most vulnerable to climate and ecological catastrophe. His work analyses the dilemmas of developmental aspirations that remain tethered to carbon intensive pathways. He joins us on Ufahamu Africa to give us a first hand perspective of the Africa Climate Summit and the COP28 meetings of 2023. We discuss the politics of the meetings and what these portend for a just climate transition.

Tedd, what do we mean when we say Climate, and when we say Climate Change?

Dr. Mose : The rise in global temperatures leads to various problems. There's weather changes. Weather is, you know, the day to day. What you're seeing in your forecast, a little more rain, it will be a bit hotter. That's weather; the sum total of which when taken for several years, becomes climate. And so if we look at patterns, if you zoom out from the day to day changes, we are seeing the highest recorded temperatures consecutively over the last decade that we've seen in recorded history

Indeed, 2023 was the warmest year since records began. Why is climate change significant?

Dr. Mose: What this does it changes, how humans and the environment interact. For example, up to last year, the Horn of Africa had four years of failed rain seasons. And 70% of farmers in Africa are subsistence farmers. And most country's economies. are dependent on agriculture. It meant that for four years, people who are relying on agriculture for survival, not income. some of them did not make it. So we are talking about loss of human lives, But this also changes not just lives and livelihoods. It changes cultures. In the Horn of Africa, and I can speak about a cluster that I have been looking at recently, the Karamoja cluster. They are pastoralists, their wealth lies in their livestock. Their livestock is not just money. When these animals died, it changed the societal fabric. In the Karamoja cluster, we saw people terminating their lives because they felt they had nothing to live for. And we are talking about impact well beyond humans, we are talking about the global ecosystem. So when you talk about melting glaciers, we will see extreme weather on a year by year basis, unless we abate this crisis. How can we abate this? I'll speak for energy. Energy is responsible for between 78 to 83% of carbon emissions. So how we extract, develop, use and dispose of energy is fundamental to halting the climate crisis. A study done about five years ago revealed that 90 companies. were responsible for 63% of carbon emissions. So this is not just to point fingers at governments. We also need the private sector involved in creating a global solution to the problem.

With those elaborations of the concept of a Just Transition, and of the Climate Crisis, let’s discuss global attempts to prevent or mitigate the worst of this present and intensifying crisis. Please tell us about the Africa Climate Summit.

Dr. Mose: So the Inaugural Africa Climate Summit. was held in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2023. it was a moment for African leaders to collectively address the continent's pressing climate challenges. Global conferences do not have the nuances of the challenges developing on the continent. The central theme of the summit was decarbonisation for prosperity. The emphasis was that decarbonising the global economy is not merely an environmental duty, but also an opportunity for shared prosperity. And essential to mention at this stage is that when people look at sustainability or climate action, they may think that development is inimical to climate action, which is not true. And so the Africa Climate Summit was to bring these African voices, and other entities to discuss how Africa can participate in climate action while still developing.

These dilemmas, between social and ecological justice, and the imperatives of capital and the state, often glossed as economic growth and sovereignty are central to your work. We will share links to that in the show notes. Please tell us Tedd, what were the outcomes of the summit?

Dr. Mose: I'll start at the end and then fill in what happened in the beginning. One of the main outcomes of the Africa Climate Summit is that it should be institutionalised. It shouldn't be a one off. But there should be an institution, a platform for discussion. There should be expected impacts and success factors. How do we institutionalise all these recommendations so that we don't have forums that are merely talking shops?

Right, that is essential. These summits ought to do more than serve as way stations on the road to perdition. 

Dr. Mose: So the summit outcomes culminated in what is called the Nairobi Declaration on Climate Change and Call to Action. What it intended to do is to create a roadmap, a roadmap that advances Africa's climate agenda. It aimed to outline recommendations and calls for international commitment to supporting Africa's efforts to adapt, mitigate and transition to a low carbon future. What then happened in a summit with quite a few diverse interests? 

So there were I would say, roughly six main outcomes. There was a consensus that decarbonisation was a good pathway to equality and prosperity. But it became obvious that the economic realities of different African countries are diverse and some of them do not want to take the same pathway. It was now a question of how does that consensus become nuanced with the economic realities of different countries? For example, oil rich countries like Nigeria, will find transition difficult because it's not just a question of supply of energy, but a loss of income. Other countries like Kenya have good wind, solar and geothermal potential that has helped move very quickly down that sustainable development pathway.

Right, Tedd, so against perceptions of a common African or Global South position, you paint an intensely variegated picture. Do carry on, what else happened in Nairobi? 

Dr. Mose: So one of the biggest transition issues, is climate finance. Who will finance transition? This is particularly difficult because climate talks and forums tend to be quite combative as there is a subsequent question of who is responsible. There's an old globally accepted, environmental law principle the polluter pays.

Mhmmm, this recalls what you said in your introduction of the concept of a Just Transition: that an historic analysis of carbon emissions, the link between pollution on the one hand and wealth under the globally hegemonic development model, shows that those who are most vulnerable are also the least likely to have the resources to build or participate in alternative, less eco-destructive economies.

Dr. Mose: I attended quite a few sessions of the Africa Climate Summit, touching on trade, agroforestry, and carbon credits and across all these sessions the just transition boils down to money. The summit attempted to address the need for a new financial architecture and systemic reforms because we know a lot of African countries are riddled with debt and the financing architecture does not allow development to happen at pace and climate action to happen at the speed with which to stop it becoming an even greater catastrophe.

Right, as we’ve seen with the recent Cyclones Hidaya and Ialy, and the subsequent floods across East Africa, but even more broadly in wealthy societies across the planet, vulnerability to climate catastrophe correlates strongly with poverty. How did the money question play out at the Africa Climate Summit?

Dr. Mose: The question is who is going to finance this transition? Why is this important? Because we know that we will need trillions of dollars in financing to transition from a fossil fuel world to a world in which we are relying on sustainable and clean energy and where economies are responsible not only for wealth but for human lives, and for the environment. The question of the debt crisis in many developing countries was highlighted which led to questions of "how do we mobilise funds for climate positive investment?" It's imperative to mobilise not just African finance, but international finance and international development partnerships. The question is how do we have sustainable international partnerships in a space where different countries are differently responsible for climate impact? 

So the nature of international partnership for a low carbon transition is going to be something that we will negotiate for some time. 

That’s crucial to think with. Recent headlines show that even now, wealthy countries continue to make money off the climate crisis, by lending to poor countries at market interest rates.

The questions of reforming the financial system and establishing a new financial architecture seemed to have been agreed. There was the proposal for a new global climate finance charter by 2025, but when it was taken to the UN General Assembly shortly after, it was voted down. And so we have different initiatives that have tried to change unfair financial rules applying. We have the Bridgetown initiative. We have the Accra-Marrakesh agenda. There was the Paris Summit for a new global financing pact, all of which were quite positive during the meeting. But when it comes to actually putting money to align with these goals and ambitions, we have quite a bit of difficulty. We are seeing serious problems. There are currency fluctuations, rumours of an impending recession and developing nations are facing a debt crisis. So the current funding requirements exceed the borrowing capacity of many national balance sheets, especially in times of crisis and we saw this with COVID 19 it becomes very difficult to gain access to additional funds to help vulnerable people. And climate change is creating unprecedented problems

Creating and exacerbating pre-existing problems, yes. Beyond the particular case of the Just Transition, we hope to have soon on Ufahamu, a global development economist to speak about ideas for a new, just financial architecture, one that allows the closure of the productive capacity gap, i.e.when an economy is treading water, barely able to survive, in constant crisis mode, especially with regard to essentials like its currency, debt obligations, capacity to grow and distribute food, an economy like that cannot grow itself into climate-readiness or into the capacity to reduce poverty. It would need external support on terms that did not further weaken it - like is the case at present with predatory, economic regimes of ‘unequal exchange’. Did the summit propose climate financing that was different from what’s prevalent today?

Dr. Mose: Yes. I think I can sum up what happened at the Africa Climate Summit with one of the most controversial proposals made there. It was the creation of a global carbon tax or financial transaction tax. So at the beginning I mentioned that the polluter pays. It is an agreed principle. How is this principle applied in national contexts? We may have constitutional provisions that cover that. We may have climate laws that cover this so someone can be sued. And if they're found to have been the polluter, they pay. But when we look across the international divide, carbon taxes are usually a very good measure. So we have regulated markets where governments step in and say, if you exceed a certain amount of CO2 emissions, you pay a tax on it. This is called the compliance market. Then there is the private market, which looks at carbon credits and carbon trading, which is what we call the voluntary market. There, the private sector, once they emit above a certain level decide, we need to buy credits or to ensure that we are removing as much as we are putting in the air. The goal. is net zero. Net zero is about not emitting more carbon than you are taking out And how do companies. do this? Because there are hard to abate sectors, you know, cement, mining, steel, construction, tech. What they do is go out and find places where there are nature based carbon sinks. There is a forest. There's a conservation area. There's biochar that takes out carbon and then they pay for it. But the trouble with this market, especially for Africa, is that without any regulatory mechanism, in existence, it's been a buyer's market. Many countries in Africa, do not have any carbon taxation or regulatory measures. So private sector has been continuing to emit and pay very little to those who are responsible for carbon sinks.

This is essential to think about. Given the lack of support for solidarity transfers or reparatory payments from wealthy countries, not even among Western liberals who admit the crisis and claim to be concerned about it like the US’s lead climate negotiator John Kerry; the focus has shifted to how to extract payments for the transition from the circuitry of capitalism, and to then disburse these where climate vulnerability demands it. The result is not a shift from the harmful system that produced the ecological crisis and its vulnerabilities, but rather a very conservative conjuring of these streams that propose to mitigate harm by redistributing a sliver of profits, but all the while allowing the machinery to continue uninterrupted.

Dr. Mose: So what was suggested was that we need a global carbon tax. and we need a financial transaction tax, which is designed to generate revenue for climate related investments; to remunerate those who are responsible for preserving the environment; and to sort of stop or penalise those who are polluting with abandon. The proposal was opposed by some of Africa's largest economies, like South Africa and Nigeria, who have very high emissions. And. It was still under debate. But. there were other criticisms. Quite a few African ministers had or have serious concerns, about the conclusion of the summit, The Comoros, for example, an island nation which holds the rotating presidency of the African Union was highly dissatisfied with the exclusion of the Oceans and Blue Economy questions in the text. Botswana that there was no clarity on the critical issue of climate change adaptation. Egypt called for explicit doubling of international funding for climate change adaptation. The Republic of Congo's Minister for Environment disapproved vaguely worded texts on carbon sinks because the Congo Basin forests are one of the largest carbon sinks and there was no reference to that. So the trouble with the Africa Climate Summit is you cannot have the most ambitious outcomes where you have very large consensus built forums. because you take the path of least resistance.

That sounds like many unsatisfied state representatives.

Dr. Mose: Yes. I think many countries were unhappy with the final outcome, which is fair. Normally when everyone is displeased, it's a sense that some compromise was reached. But I'd say that developed countries left happier than developing ones, because the global north countries made even more pledges at the Africa Climate Summit. But there was no binding follow through mechanism on those pledges. and commitments. So I'd say the high polluting entities kicked the can further down the road and were probably the net beneficiaries because the Africa Climate Summit was threatening to create an alternative sense of climate and financial power in multilateralism. And I think things were not pushed as far as they should have. Yes.

I get that countries like South Africa and Nigeria are at present high net emitters, but aren’t their internal dynamics such that they would be net beneficiaries of a shift from the global status quo?

Dr. Mose: one would assume that, but they opposed it for a variety of reasons. One, they are heavily reliant on hydrocarbons or fossil fuels which are most responsible for climate change.

Is this the difference between incomes from fossil fuels at the fiscal level, at the level of the national treasury on the one hand, and the lived reality of extreme vulnerability for the everyday resident of the territories under these states on the other? Paying attention to the news and activists, one assumes that pastoralists, farmers, people suffering extreme weather events like flooding and drought in say Cape Town, or the Adamawa, or the Benue or Limpopo basins would have an interest in an accelerated transition? Why would Abuja or Pretoria be opposed?

Dr. Mose: Well, if you dig slightly deeper, you understand why they would be opposed to it, because as the highest national emitters in Africa, they would then be on the sharp end of a global carbon tax. And do not forget that these countries don't just rely on fossil fuels for their internal development. They rely on them for their global revenue. So if there is a tax imposed, it means that the price of their oil would either be uncompetitive or that a lot of those revenues would be taken up by some form of tax.

Dr. Mose: Secondly, there are peculiar circumstances, for example. South Africa is part of what is called the Just Energy Transition Platform, announced in Glasgow during COP26, which means that they have already secured transition funding. It hasn't been paid out yet, but pledges of more than $8 billion that were pledged to South Africa to help them transition from reliance on coal to renewable energy. So South Africa. will not be happy with anything that will make it difficult for those funds to be directed to their country. And there are already existing carbon taxes that many exporters from Africa are opposed to. There's CBAM, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism imposed by Europe. So if your goods are produced in carbon intensive ways, there is a tax imposed on them, making them more expensive and therefore noncompetitive. And so these are some of the fears that quite a few African countries that are exporting do not want with a carbon market. So the highest polluters, understandably objected to it, unless there are certain provisos that then allowed them to transition. And this is what the transition negotiation is about. How best do we move without leaving anyone behind or having transition become so impractical that it will not work?

Hmmmm, this makes it sound like those who wield fiscal power have to work out their priorities. Are they loyal to the present carbon-intensive eco-destructive system of economic interests, or to the urgent needs of their people? Which of these two constituencies will they prioritize at climate finance fora? What then happens at the COP in Dubai?

Dr. Mose: Yes. So to segue into COP 28. COP 28 was the first Committee of the Parties, which expressly agreed that fossil fuels are the main culprit behind climate change. In previous COPs this has not been the case. And this was especially remarkable because it was held in the United Arab Emirates, an economy largely dependent on fossil fuels and that has developed rapidly because of the petrodollar. So what happened is that over 100 countries committed to significantly ramping up renewable energy and improved energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is the other fundamental being entrenched at these COPs

I regret that I did not draw Dr. Mose on this question of energy efficiencies, but it is worth thinking about. Elsewhere, activist groups like Insulate Britain or movements against fast fashion for example, are pointing out that cutting down energy waste would itself yield great emissions reductions.

Dr. Mose: This consensus about fossil fuels has some thinking that this is the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. But I was there over the last couple of days and stayed a day or two extra. And the final texts were so badly watered down because, although there was an acknowledgment, there wasn't a real desire to have a binding commitment that would then stop the production of fossil fuels.

Right, underlining once more that this extends beyond the question of knowledge. It isn’t just the denialists. Even among those who concede the link between carbon emissions and the climate crisis, there is a radical gap between understanding and action.

Dr. Mose: So some argue that COP 28 was a success. Some that it was a failure. The venue of COP was deeply criticised, some said, "how can you have a climate champion who is responsible for climate and biodiversity crises, But I was in Glasgow, and Scotland is   an oil and gas producer. It was one of the most ambitious COPs Katowice deeply reliant on coal and where some of the best texts on this came out. The next one will be held in Baku

Where COP29 will be held, in Azerbaijan. 

Dr. Mose: Yes, which is also an oil producer. The success was that there was a strengthened call for climate action. And the COP 28 was the beginning of what's called the global stocktake, under which mechanism, states make what are called Nationally Determined Contributions, which are upper emissions limits, what they are going to emit or allow to be admitted as carbon emissions in their country. And then every subsequent year, up to 2030, each COP will be doing an accounting and asking, "Are you meeting your goals or not?" What was self-evident from the declaration of Nationally Determined Contributions, is that the pledges that countries made in Paris in 2015 are very far from the reality of their existing emissions. 

And so it was recognised that we need far more radical emission cuts, more than 40% by 2030. And countries were asked to submit more ambitious national climate plans by 2025. So whatever they've been pledging has not only not been ambitious enough, but it's not been met enough, which therefore calls for even more ambitious pledges, and even more ambitious and determined action. So it's not just about emission reduction any more, we need adaptation strategies. Adaptation means finding ways in which looking at the current situation, what are the best ways of ensuring that with the current circumstances. lives and livelihoods are not lost and the environment is not further damaged. 

Finally, it was clear that the interconnectedness between climate and biodiversity crises, whether it's species disappearing or extreme weather conditions leading to changes in ecosystems. This was recognised and so there was an increased momentum in addressing biodiversity loss as well as climate change, which was quite new.

Yes, that connection between the various ecological crises seems essential going forward. The new literature on maladaptation in the IPCC reports laments this capacity in climate action, a capacity to create harm when potential remedies for the climate crisis are implemented in isolation from the broader ecological crisis. So you may have a supposed climate solutions that can do more harm than good by diverting land away from food production, destroying forests, worsening water scarcity and unleashing significant amounts of emissions across their supply chains. But carry on….

Dr. Mose: I must say something that stood out for me, there is a lot of climate hypocrisy from the US and the European Union, they talk a good game, but when you walk into negotiation rooms, they take some of the hardest line positions, not wanting their funds to be committed to other countries. And that is one thing that I found extraordinary in COP 28, that the public statements do not match the intricacies of negotiations. You know, the EU is known for a lot of work on the climate and biodiversity crises, and for some of the highest uptake of renewable energy, but when it comes to meeting climate finance commitments, the EU and the US were not keen on having any binding commitments. I have mentioned increased climate finance pledges. but it's not been enough, you know, developed countries have pledged about $ 100 billion per year, and they pledged this in Paris in 2015. A lot of that has not been implemented. So additional funding is crucial for developing countries to meet their climate goals and their climate plans.

Right, right. We are all learning that wrestling with hypocrisy and blindspots of ostensibly progressive leadership is a central dilemma of struggles for justice. On the one hand it is fundamental to Western liberal political identity, to its imagination of itself as a progressive governance framework, that it performs the language and theatre of fairness and justice, on the other there is a clear reluctance to break with the political economy that produces global injustice, intense expropriation, accumulation by dispossession, disposability and desperate violence. But on that note, Tedd, how did COP28 compare with previous COPs?

Dr. Mose: I've been involved in maybe four now. This COP was different in a variety of ways. The highest form of representation, at least that I have witnessed in the COPs I've been to. There was a lot of private sector work but I think the most exciting thing about COP 28, was not the public sector, big headline state- centred, work, but the discussions that were had between activists, community members that were there. I think to me, outside of the public and private sector, the community, third sector conversations were far more enriching and they were broader this time.

Chiming with this, we hope to bring on the show community activists from South Africa who are speaking from the frontlines of the ecological crisis. But more surprising, we also saw at the COP a few strident voices among ardent capitalists, taking on an activist role for green technology. Their interventions and investments reveal that a shift away from fossil fuels is underway. For example, the Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné publicly rejected the obfuscating carbon capture and abatement technologies in favour of using renewables to completely phase out fossil fuels. The Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest made an impatient call, proposing a complete phase out of fossil fuels in his mining firms by 2030. He proclaimed the readiness of the science, and promoted the economics of technological fixes for transition. Is this change, even from emissions-intensive industries encouraging?

Dr. Mose: Absolutely. I'm a big fan of technology and innovation in terms of working for climate, for the just transition However, technological innovation can create as many problems as it solves. For example, you talk about mobile phones and we know critical minerals or what are called transitional minerals, you know, rare earths needed for processing, come from very specific regions, Latin America and the Congo so we also have look at the mining value chain. How fair is this transition to the people who live near the mines? What benefits are going to them. But at the same time, if you look at the involvement of China, for example, in the solar market, solar prices have plummeted several hundred percent because of manufacturing capacity and the improvement of technology.

Right, right.

Dr. Mose: And I've seen places like Scotland, where the sun doesn't shine as much as other places have an extremely high uptake of solar power. So technology can solve problems. but it's not the panacea. We need, not just technology. We need a good regulatory environment. We need money taken to the right place, we need transitional justice, so if how these essential technologies are structured and manufactured and distributed and priced is not is unfair we will have a highly technical in terms of just capitalistic view of benefits yet losses in terms of biodiversity, loss in terms of people's culture, disproportionate expense on and exploitation of particularly vulnerable people, which is not right. 

Exactly. For example, there’s an ongoing campaign from the DRC to hold Apple to account for its profiting from supply chains that have such a devastating and destabilising effect on life in the Congo. So many ostensibly clean technologies of the future have dire emissions, and non-carbon related externalities that are obscured in supply chains.

And that's why for me, the just transition you cannot avoid questions of justice, you cannot take a market- centred, state- centred, legalistic view of it The law must also evolve to meet these social ambitions and goals. But yes, technology has been a key, key factor and can transform energy access as much as energy efficiency. If we have, say, nuclear fusion that is not dependent on radioactive materials, it would be wonderful. If the efficiencies and the costs continue plummeting, the transition will be much quicker. So yes, I am pro technology, but it has to be one of the suite of tools that are used to address this problem.

Right, so attending to the global political ecology of the crisis, you mean, to who is dispossessed, where pain and loss accumulates, so others may accumulate profits, to what the scholarship calls The Free Things of Capitalism, these unaccounted externalities, the off-ledger costs that societies bear. We’d need a shift from the focus on what’s beneficial for the national treasury in royalties, taxes and GDP numbers, what produces the profits of global capital, and attracts external FDI, even if these firms, like say Tesla or Goldman Sachs, present themselves as green, with this new focus on ESG for example. 

Dr. Mose: Yes.

Tedd, on this note about the intuitive sympathies of decision-makers, let’s speak about the tension between decarbonisation and development. I remember here Ecuador’s pathbreaking foray with the Yasuni oil fields, an attempt to draw compensatory global payments for stranding, or keeping their oil and its subsequent emissions in the ground. Do growth and development necessarily mean high emissions, or can we achieve welfare advancement in say Cabo Delgado or Limpopo provinces, while avoiding high carbon economies from exploiting fossil fuel reserves?

Dr. Mose: That is possibly one of the most difficult to answer because development is an imperative. A lot of Africa's problems boil down to poverty or to how to harness the wealth of resources the continent bears. Development is unstoppable.

Dr. Mose: It's a question of how to make that development sustainable. And one of the things about transitional justice is looking at the global disparity in consumption. I'm sure some have heard about Degrowth. This is difficult to speak about in Africa, where, as I've mentioned, you know, you have more than half a billion people having no access to electricity. You cannot tell those people to degrow. The desire to enjoy the things that other people do is a fair ask. So climate action and sustainability are not opposed to development. In fact, the rise in solar is as a direct result of industrialization, and technological development in China. So it is a very difficult question, it requires a closer look at who doesn't have access and who is over-consuming. And then we try and correct that. But the reality is Africa needs to be at the core of this. In what ways will we produce transitional energy?

Right, but thinking about aspirations, and say from the perspective of a traffic jam in carbon-intensive Cairo, or the din of air-conditioners in Lagos. How many such high carbon cities can you afford to have given the global carbon budget? What is the model pathway that avoids carbon intensive economies anywhere and what would it be to pursue particular welfare outcomes - say effective, safe transport as a service - rather than as a business - producing economic growth?

Dr. Mose: That's a very good way of putting it.

So perhaps the scale question is crucial. Rather than a framing of Africa, South Africa or Nigeria, one wants to isolate the 500 million without electricity, transport, water, or housing. So we would have innovations that aspire to create material outcomes that make for a decent life, rather than imagining justice as an expansion of the way of life and carbon cost consequent from say, the right to a personal car, cheap parking, and ever more elaborate super-highways. So the contrast between a bus and bike system like Dakar’s instead of Nairobi’s elevated Expressway. Every choice has an opportunity cost, so even inside Africa, a model of justice, this transitional justice, will demand shifts in aspirations, in prioritisation and the allocation of scarce public funds, so that the vulnerable can have progressively more security, more energy available to them?

Dr. Mose: Let's look at it as a systemic question. You've mentioned a scalar a problem. But even when we look beyond Africa as a continent and start looking at these small pockets, how energy has been produced in the past is outmoded now. Normally it was extraction, production, transmission to populations that were far from where the energy was being produced and then distribution and supply. Now, one of the ways of resolving this, Instead of having centralised energy, is to decentralise it. And decentralise does not mean rooftop solar. It means seeing where these pockets of population are and producing enough to suit them. So you avoid transmission losses, you avoid very high investment costs. And this is just one technical solution that I'm talking about. So smarter, more localized energy systems where energy is produced, closer to where it's consumed, will not just make economic but ecological sense. That's one. Two, we have legal solutions that can come in where we need enabling legal policy and regulatory frameworks to make these innovations possible. We need financial and economic solutions built into social frameworks. The people who are highly impacted need to be involved in all of these decisions. And so because it's a systemic problem, one of the things is not to use the solutions of the past to try and solve future problems.

Did you see any of these innovative systemic solutions, breaks with past models that are appropriate to the design of an alternative world? Would you say the Loss and Damage Fund such an innovation, a source of hope for the most vulnerable?

Dr. Mose: I suppose that's the saddest question because although there was glimmers of hope, when the rubber met the road, you know, the Loss and Damage Fund was deeply and highly contested. And the money is not forthcoming. So the Loss and Damage Fund is a transitional mechanism, essentially the countries that have polluted the most that have the history of the highest emissions, and therefore have the most money, should fund the transition, should create a fund that helps developing countries to sustainably do what is called leapfrogging, which means not go through the same development path of reliance on coal, oil and gas for industrialization, Damage the environment, and only later try to decarbonise. So the trouble with that is that the more advanced countries, the ones who would be more responsible for funding it, we don't have a standard or measure or law or a resolution that would compel them to do so within a certain frame. Instead we have the existing paradigm of making pledges and then following up in a subsequent COP to see how those pledges are going. That does not move the dial. So other innovative mechanisms are needed. For example, I think development of carbon markets is an inevitability and possibly one of the best chances to harness global finance, one of the best ways of making the private sector polluter pay. It's now a question of how do we do that? 

Distributed ledger technology can create platforms through which funds with different aims can come together. When you talk about carbon finance, there are different finance mechanisms, there's grants, which is basically not a loan You are given money to do these things. Then there's debt, which is a loan. Then in the private sector, we have equity, which is where people give you money and take a share of your business. And then, you know, we have philanthropy where people have set up funds to help. all of these have different outcomes, but they have the same goal. So how do you use the same vehicle, the Loss and Damage Fund to make this possible? 

And I think something like distributed ledger technology can create the transparency, the immutability to mix all these funds so that if a philanthropist wants impact, they can see on the system whether there's impact. If it's a loan, someone can see how well their loan book is doing. If it's a grant, they can see who has received their grant. So I think we need to start thinking differently on new financial mechanism, also to change the reliance on one currency because currently there is a skewed focus on the dollar in the world and on the receiving end of that imbalance are developing countries. And this is because they have very weak currencies compared to the dollar, which makes their goods cheaper when they are exporting and makes essential transitional imports extremely expensive.

Right, and these transitional technologies we were discussing earlier would be reliant on a just economic and financial regime for the transfer of raw materials and innovative technologies.

Dr. Mose: Yes.

Dr. Mose, thinking about everyday culture, our sense of who we are, who we owe, who we are responsible for, one imagines the necessity of different forms of social and political attachment, of organising resource distribution, of framing questions of fairness. With the surge in nationalist and racist sentiment across the planet, and the current tearing up of even the hypocrisies that held together the global political order, what cultural and political changes would be necessary for a just transition, and what glimpses of the future have you seen in the collectives at the COPs?

Dr. Mose: I've seen glimpses. And I think one of the things that must change is the global economic and political culture. We must move toward accepting that we share the same fate. Because how international relations have been, it's always been inward looking and insular. And countries serving their self-interest. A delegate from Uganda, said "we are all under the same sun." 

And the planet is constantly reminding us that we must begin to see this shared fate. COVID 19 also revealed that whether you are in the global north, in the global south, whether you are wealthy or not. that, look, catastrophe. can put us in the same box. So back to your question, what glimpses are there of change in the culture? The first is multilateralism needs to change its focus from a state focus. This is not a government or a national. problem. This is a global problem. And so we must have instruments or principles and aims that cut across. If we say climate action is essential is the village elder in, say, Benin or the DRC as involved as the ambassador at the UN conference. in the movement for energy, justice and environmental justice in the movement for the just transition is that we have what we call cosmopolitan justice, that regardless of where you are, we have an interconnectedness by nature. 

And so we need to establish these common threads, whether they are commercial, social, economic or political. And I think if we begin to have that cultural change having a recognition of the importance of cosmopolitan justice in addressing these questions, then whatever the subject, whether it's creating access to transitional funds or how money is deployed or how to negotiate for your state some of these would be fundamental principles or binding commitments from which we will not waver.

Cosmopolitan justice is a powerful summation of the changes necessary for a just transition. As a lawyer, what is your sense of attempts to motivate political institution towards a just transition through force of law, or even through authoritative legal advisories - thinking even of the Vanuatu case at the ICJ for example… this is a tiny island in the Pacific, asking of the highest court in the world, that it issue an advisory opinion to push largest most powerful states to act, not in their narrow interest, but in concerted defence of those most vulnerable to global temperature and sea level rises, no matter their place of residence. I am thinking also about a case brought to the European Court of Human Rights by youth from Portugal who were affected by horrific wildfires there, and then a similar case by the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (or Swiss Climate Association for Elderly Ladies) before the same court. They charged that European states are actively abusing their human rights by failing to protect them from climate catastrophe. What do you make of these efforts? 

Dr. Mose: the Vanuatu case is a prime example of rising climate litigation. on which I've done a bit of work. Judiciaries are now part of the solution especially where states. either because of how the political economy is or how politics is worked out, will either go to international settings like the Africa Climate Summit or COP 28 and make promises but not actually take any action at the national level. We are beginning to see that judiciaries at every level, whether it's international, in this case the ICJ, or at a national Court judiciaries are called upon to address to interpret these principles and to compel states, to take action. And so the Vanuatu case is one of many there are others like you know Portugal at the European Court of Human Rights, others, internally in states. In what ways can judicial decisions compel either legislatures or executives move them to action? Well, there are several changes that are needed here. Number one, judiciaries need to be equipped to be equipped with a new alternative architecture because you see judiciaries make decisions based on their essentially national. judicial philosophy. They need access to the vulnerable voices, to gain access to the global economic and political reality. Judiciaries at every level needs to become sensitive to global realities and developments, and that's why I end on this note, saying that a platform for discussion. such as this is so important because they disseminate information, hopefully make clear our interconnectedness, our shared fate. develop, a pathway that is accessible to less technical people and find ways to move people to action? So thank you very much indeed for having me on.

Right, we have planned interviews with South African climate and social rights activists to explore the question of whether judiciaries, even under progressive constitutions, can compel states, or compel capital to act preemptively to defend the most vulnerable from ecological disaster. Even after a court ruling, where, ultimately, do the state’s fundamental sympathies lie? 

Relatedly, and although we didn’t have time to discuss it further, it is useful to think about education and activisms that transform even overhaul social culture. Could these produce new customs of practice, new social attitudes that are ethical and just, so that broad social shifts carry society towards a just transition shape global political life, and guide decision-making spaces - including but not limited to elections - away from their instincts to side with power and accumulation of wealth, and instead toward a more just resource distribution? 

It seems to me that this focus on cultural transformation may help achieve a resolution of the dilemmas of Dr. Mose’s work, supply the vision, the imagination that tilts decision-making processes so that the hypocrisy Dr. Mose laments, a conflict between stated political commitments on the one hand, and these concealed prejudices and interests on the other, may be worked out in favour of the voiceless and powerless.

Thank you Dr. Mose for the gift of your time and knowledge.

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After we spoke with Dr. Mose, the European Human RIghts Court made a landmark ruling in favour of the Swiss elders’. Dr. Mose writes to say he is reading Braiding Sweetgrass, a wonderful book by Robin Wall Kimmerer about indigenous ecological knowledge, and the reciprocal relationships between humans and the land they occupy.