Rage Against the Machinery of Climate Injustice

On a stormy Friday afternoon in Zurich, Switzerland in March 2019, I watched as thousands of school children and others waited in the rain with their banners to march for climate justice. Group after group of school children of all ages arrived from the central train station and gathered at the starting point. Posters of “There is no Planet B” were proudly held afloat next to signs of solidarity, like the one that simply announced, “Grandparents for Climate Justice.”

It was a miserable day to demonstrate. The worst. Homemade signs were no match for the winds that pelleted with hail. Paint bled. Cardboard became pulp, but none of that mattered. The air was electric. The impatience palpable. That afternoon, my colleagues and I at the university asked each other, “Were you there? Did you see the students strike? Did you hear them over the wind?” Hand over heart, we were moved. Living close to the Alps meant that we all knew the glaciers were melting.

Not too long after, I came across a Taipei Times editorial online that felt like its fingers were set on a different pulse. The essay chastised students who missed school to strike for the climate and the adults who would encourage them to miss school. The editorial then threw doubt on the motivations of the climate strikers by asking: Does the central argument — that adults and governments have not done enough to address climate change — hold true?

It is a sign of how far popular opinions have shifted in the last two years on climate change, owing in large part to young activists, internationals like Greta and other prominent local campaigners, that the answer is, simply, yes. We have not done enough to address climate change. We have not done enough to mitigate climate change. We are not doing things fast enough to protect our own livelihoods from the adverse impacts of climate change.

Islands as canaries in the mine

Climate change has disproportionate effects on those who are the least responsible for global carbon emission. There is no escape from reports that it is the world’s poorest, those who are the least responsible for carbon emission over time bearing the greatest negative impacts of climate change. This is most clearly seen in the fate of small islands in various scenarios of water level raise, whose inhabitants have pointed out that their lands are more than tourist destinations.

During COP26, one of the most striking images to capture the headlines is Tuvalu’s foreign minister Simon Kofe standing knee-deep in the coastal water, as he virtually addressed participants in Glasgow. The visual background of his speech drummed home how small island states are at the frontline of climate change and how they are slowly disappearing in the rising waters.

Tuvalu’s island neighbour Kiribati presents an even more urgent case for climate action. Kiribati lies only an average of 2 meters above water. Its particularly low-lying coastlines is a double curse, for this Pacific island state is still officially categorised as a least developed country by the UN. In the human trafficking literature, a specialised body of work has emerged that focuses on the nexus between climate-induced migration and labour exploitation, as the climate displaced come under growing factors of poverty and labour vulnerability.

Like canaries in a coal mine, small island states provide a vision of our unmitigated climate future. At least five Pacific islands – Tuvalu, the Maldives, Kiribati, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands – face the prospect of complete submersion by 2100. Due to their special vulnerability at the frontline of climate change, the Alliance of Small Island States, an intergovernmental organisation, has worked to influence intergovernmental climate negotiations since the early days of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Small island states, at the opening of COP26, criticised the global financial system for being contrary to climate justice. The goalpost of 1.5-degree carbon reduction from the Paris Agreement cannot be met if the provision of global green finance is not scaled up. Citing the drop in financing for small island developing states from USD 2.1 billion in 2018 to USD 1.5 billion in 2019, they argued that climate finance must be increased.

A key win then for the Alliance of Small Island States at COP26 is the global commitment to drive the private sector to increase green finance for the transition away from carbon. At Glasgow, private financial institutions and central banks committed to move trillions of USD’s worth of investment to achieve global net zero. This is significant because the UNFCCC Race to Zero Campaign believes private actors could provide 70 percent of total investments needed to meet net zero goals. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, for example, is made up of over 450 firms and brings together a staggering total of USD $130 trillion in assets for net zero.

Taiwan and Climate Change

Despite Taiwan also being a Pacific island, discussions around its future in various climate change scenarios tend to be less featured than questions of its political survival. Taiwan’s status of being outside the UN means that it lacks formal diplomatic channels to be a part of the Alliance of Small Island States or formally negotiates as a state party to UNFCCC (see analysis here).

Nevertheless, climate change presents a particular existential challenge for small islands worldwide, and Taiwan naturally is not insulated from the dangers of a warming and rising sea. In various scientific modelling of sea rise, Taiwan would lose valuable coastal land and sustain heavy economic loss.

In a June 2021 report, Greenpeace, using the high-emission scenario of a RCP8.5 scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway for projecting carbon emission trajectory), found that extreme sea-level rise and subsequent flooding in 2030 could place USD 29.64 billion of GDP(PPP) and 430,000 people at risk in the city of Taipei alone. Another study by scientists at the National Taiwan Ocean University found that sea level at the mid-western coast of Taiwan will rise an average of 5.8 cm. This means that certain townships (Wuqi 梧棲, Lukang 鹿港, Mailiao 麥寮 and Taixi 台西) are at high risk of inundation.

Despite Taiwan’s particular exposures to climate change risks and the international competitiveness of its financial sector, Taiwan lags behind in global efforts to create a new, more sustainable economic future. Green finance is still fairly new in Taiwan and has yet to take off in a way that is seen elsewhere.

Taiwan only released its plan for green finance in 2017 and followed with an updated Green Finance Action Plan 2.0 in August 2020. In comparison, Japan released its Principles for Financial Action towards a Sustainable Society already in 2011, followed with official guidance on green investment in 2019 and updated guidelines on green bonds in 2020. In 2017, the Sustainable Bond Grant was already up and running to promote the issuance of green, social and sustainability bonds, launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Across the Strait, China released the Guidelines for Establishing the Green Financial System in 2016 to place green finance as the engine that will bring the country to carbon peak emission by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. The momentum for a green economy was also observed in the regulatory landscape of Hong Kong, where Carrie Lam once ran on a platform of transforming Hong Kong into a green finance hub. The deterioration of the civic space in China and Hong Kong, however, raises profound concerns on whether the timely and accurate disclosure of environmental information that underpins a well-functioning green economy could be truly possible.

Out but in at Glasgow

In recent years, President Tsai Ing-wen and her government have pushed for reforms aimed at a low carbon future. Before COP26, the government committed itself to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. In President Tsai’s recorded speech, delivered by video on 7 November 2021 in a Taiwan-sponsored side event at Glasgow, she highlighted the island’s achievements in clean energy. These include Taiwan’s four-fold increase in installed solar power capacity and the launch of its first offshore wind farm in 2019.

Green finance, however, did not feature prominently in discussions of Taiwan’s domestic efforts to reach carbon neutrality. At Taiwan’s sponsored side event at COP26, the panel that hosted the discussion on green finance had the fewest number of speakers, with the panel on renewable energy taking top billing. Compared to environmentalism abroad, there has not been a similar level of awareness and mobilisation on climate change, with one scholar describing it as “the silence on climate change is almost deafening” in Taiwan.

Dr Simona Grano, Director of the Taiwan Studies Project at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and author of Environmental Governance in Taiwan: A new generation of activists and stakeholders, observes that after three decades of careless pursuit of profit, Taiwan underwent a difficult transition from industrial to post-industrial society. Environmental quality has slowly become a top priority.

Climate change, however, has not captured public mobilisation similar to other domestic environmental movements, most notably those against nuclear power and air pollution. The island desperately needs more social awareness of climate change to drive green finance. As Dr Grano explains: “Change and awareness need to come from within Taiwan, since its future as a Pacific island is closely tied to the adverse effects of climate change. Even though not a member of the UNFCCC, Taiwan can use its strength and technological know-how to help bring about a green economy.”

Green Island, Green Economy 

And this is what the earlier editorial chastising the young had failed to grasp when climate strikes first captured the public imagination of what is possible — the mobilisation of this generation for climate justice is not a fad. They are seeding the social awareness needed to fundamentally change our economic system towards one that, instead of destroying the environment, can integrate sustainability.

The impatience of climate strikers is palpable, and they are not just waiting for a protest march to start. Our fingers would be set on another pulse if we cannot feel that they are driven by a quiet rage that the economic system of today fails to internalise protections for the planet and the people. The status quo of neoliberalism does not work. Taiwan, so long out of the UN system but also a Pacific island at the frontline of climate change, needs to catch up to the global discourse on using green finance to deeply drive the transition to a low carbon future.

Lands are disappearing. Waters warm. Green island, where is the economic machinery that finally befits your name?

(School children and others march for climate justice in the heavy rain near the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, 15 March 2019, photo by Bonny Ling)