Bríd Smith: Calls for Debt Cancellation, Windfall Tax and COP Protest

Okay, thanks very much. Thank you. Very, very useful and very important. And just sticking with the example of Pakistan, I just want to use it as a way of teasing out a couple of arguments. First of all, obviously we know that 33 million people were directly affected by the flooding there in a country that is responsible for 0.04% of emissions. And I got the figures here, I think it was from Oxfam, that a UN humanitarian appeal for the floods was set at 472 million. That's just over 1% of what is needed. The costs of the flooding were around 30 billion. So we have a huge, huge hole to fill and that's just one country. That's leaving aside the tragedy of the Horn of Africa, which Elizabeth talked about earlier on. And one of you said there that the funding needs to be stable, adequate and predictable. But is there also a case for calling for And I totally get that the loss and damage finance is a permanent structure that we need to put in place. But is there not also a case for calling for a cancellation of the debt in these countries and really pushing Ireland to lead on that because the IMF, which is no stranger to Ireland, it will loan money to Pakistan in this particular case, and it will loan money to other poor countries, but it will require austerity, severe austerity measures to be imposed For that on the basis of that loan. And as we know, austerity weakens the internal services and public equality that can be distributed through education, health, etc. So cancel the debt is one call, I think should go out or cop. And the other is a tax, a windfall tax on the profits of the fossil fuel industries. Jerry's just described what's going on. It's outrageous, particularly since the war in Ukraine, I think it's not the case. So I would like to comment on that. And then my final question is a little bit provocative, but I really am concerned about it, is that COP 27 has taken place in one of the most brutal dictatorships on the planet. And in the last 10 years, Sisi's government have built over a dozen extra prisons. Tens of thousands of activists, including climate activists and justice activists, are locked up permanently in prison. Many of them have to go on hunger strike to draw attention to their plight. And it just seems to me contradictory, that we can go to a country that is so brutally guilty of injustice, inhumanity, and also of climate damage, and say, here we are now, greenwashing a dictator who's going to advocate for justice and climate justice. And it can't be separated from the question of human rights. I think we'd all probably agree that. The boycott isn't going to happen, but at a very minimum, can we get our delegates to scream about this, to draw attention to it inside the conference centre, to not give Sisi a free ride while this green preening happens on the side of the Red Sea? Thank you, Deputy. Who wants to go first? Mr Kearn. Thank you, Deputy Smith. Thanks for bringing up the human rights issue, something that we've discussed in detail in Oxfam Ireland as well as across our international organisation. The next COP is going to be in the UAE, so I think the similar objections may apply there. I think that we have a protest movement called the Climate Caravan, which we're supporting right across Africa in 22 different countries, which is going to end up at the conference, and without giving too much away, we'll seek to raise publicity on all these issues, beginning with climate justice. We have tried as much as possible as an organisation to hand over agency to the African activists on the ground, and that's why when you see Elizabeth's opening statement today, she represents everything we're trying to do as an organisation, which is to give leadership to African voices, voices from the global south to carry out their agency in all these areas. It's a UN conference, so we can't control where it's held, so there's a decision made by all of our organisations at what level to engage, but I think the fact that you're going to bring that up at political levels here is absolutely right to do that. When it comes to the IMF debt and Pakistan that you mentioned, as you mentioned that, you're right, they now have to resume an IMF loan of £1 billion as a result of the floods, so that's exactly what we're trying to get away from. There are a number of means. We've called for, given the context of the last couple of years, from pandemic to current crisis, the cancellation of debts in 2022 and 2023, so that countries can just get on with trying to recover in general. There was also a question, which I'm sure you know about, of special drawing rights, which are a form of currency which is issued by the IMF, and one of the points of those is that they can pay off debt. That was really the great campaign that existed last year when we were at COP26 in Glasgow, and I had a detailed discussion with Minister Ryan about that. They've fallen off the agenda, and it's a bit of a mystery that they've done so, because at first we were talking about issuing three trillion of those across the world, and the development community as a whole was behind this. It's fallen off the agenda. It was reduced to £650 billion. Ireland has received £4.5 billion of these special drawing rights, and the idea was that we would try and allocate these to developing countries. I think it would be a very good question to ask our minister what's happened to the reallocation of the special drawing rights, and could they be a means for debt cancellation, and could they also be a means of funding loss and damage in an immediate sense? I hope that answers your question to some extent about debt and the IMF. I don't know if I've covered it. The windfall tax is something which Oxfam has led on and continues to lead on. We believe that there are significant revenues across the world to be made from the windfall profits that are being made by energy companies. Along with wealth taxes, it's a way of both addressing our inequality crisis, which is a huge contributor to the climate emergency, and we can prove that by the figures of carbon emissions by the richest 1% of society, and it's also a means of addressing immediate crises like this. I'm going to move it along because I'm just mindful of time. Ms Kern, did you want to come in on this one? Can I just say that for our guests that have joined us online, if they just want to use the raise hand function, if they do want to come in on a particular question, I'll bring you in then in order. Ms Kern. Thank you. Just to say that support Simon's points around the innovative sources of finance that can be used to fund loss and damage. I think the point that you have made, Deputy Smith, about the huge gap in finances at the moment is crucial. This is costly, but it's the poorest countries in the world who are paying the price at the moment, and we need to switch that power balance and switch the model. I suppose just to make the point, it is crucial that this finance is under the UNFCCC for the reasons of accountability and transparency. There's a limit to humanitarian responses. They're crucial. We need life-saving responses, but they're short-term, so we need to look at loss and damage. It's medium-term, it's long-term. It's the question of when someone is displaced, what happens to them? Where do they find a home? So we can give the immediate relief, but we need long-term, structured approaches to people who are dealing with the realities of loss and damage. I think the transparency and accountability is key, because the position of Ireland at the moment is that there are existing financial flows which need to be used. I think we need to listen to the demands of the Global South and what developing countries are saying. They're saying really clearly we need a separate finance facility, and that's what they need delivered. They need promises to be met, and they need their actual demands to be met, not technocratic, not technocratic responses.