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THE
Asian Development Bank (ADB) starts today, Tuesday, a
three-day forum that aims to cull best practices in
clean energy policy and regulation, finance, and
technology as part of its efforts to update its energy
strategy.
This
forum, however, proceeds without civil-society
organizations (CSOs) and nongovernment organizations
(NGOs) critical of the ADB’s proposed strategy, with
their issues and concerns ventilated earlier during its
annual governors’ meeting in Kyoto last month.
“Through
targeted sessions on renewable energy, energy
efficiency, carbon markets and knowledge management, the
forum will identify challenges faced by public- and
private- sector institutions related to project
development and finance, and highlight effective
policies and finance strategies to promote greater use
of clean energy in Asia and the Pacific,” the bank noted
in one of its online comments.
The
bank’s new approach would put greater focus on energy
security and climate change through promotion of
cleaner, more efficient and less polluting sources and
technologies; and greater use of indigenous forms of
renewable energy as needed by developing
member-countries, it added.
Up to
200 participants, including state officials, experts,
multilateral financial institutions, carbon and clean
energy investment funds, project developers and service
providers and international organizations, would
participate in the forum.
“I am
surprised we were not invited… I have already sent a
strong letter to Woochong Um about this,” Hemantha
Withanage, executive director of the NGO Forum on ADB
said in a telephone interview on Monday.
Um is
director of Energy, Transport and Water Division of the
bank’s Regional and Sustainable Development Department.
The NGO
Forum, a coalition of international, national and local
CSOs and NGOs, in a May 30 letter to Um expressed
collective dismay over the “flawed consultation process”
that the ADB has initiated relative to this undertaking.
“We reiterate our dissatisfaction about the
nontransparent process of this ongoing energy policy
review in comparison to previous policy revisions of the
ADB. For the most part, and despite a number of
discussions with the bank since February 2007, civil
society groups were kept in the dark in terms of timely,
clear and relevant information as regards the
consultation process,” the group said.
“We
express disappointment over the lack of provision for a
minimum 30-day period between the release of the
consultation paper and the first subregional
consultation. This hinders a more informed consultation
process because participants do not have adequate time
to fully understand the energy strategy in order to come
up with suitable critical analyses and recommendations,”
it added.
Regarding the draft strategy paper, Withanage said the
NGO Forum has reservations since the bank had not
clearly stated if the document would supersede the
existing policy or how the two documents would be
related.
Withanage particularly asked if contentious provisions
like reduction of carbon emissions, adoption of clean
technology and implementation of ADB safeguards would no
longer be covered by the bank’s accountability mechanism
since the document talks of strategy and not policy. |
