Zim pleaded for more in agroecology programmes – Newsday Zimbabwe

ActionAid’s groundbreaking report on corporate capture of public finances, How Finance Flows: Corporate capture of public finances is fuelling the climate crisis in the global South.

While Zimbabwe has made progress in investing in agroecological programmes, there is still much work to be done, said Joy Mabenge, ActionAid Zimbabwe country director.

His views were expressed following the publication of a report which found that climate-damaging industries operating in countries in the Global South, including Zimbabwe, are making profits of US$680 billion at the expense of educating children in sub-Saharan Africa.

ActionAid’s groundbreaking report on corporate capture of public finances, How Finance Flows: Corporate capture of public finances is fuelling the climate crisis in the global South.

The report aimed to debunk the false narrative that the expansion of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture in the global South is necessary to address food insecurity and energy poverty and to secure livelihoods and public revenues.

Mabenge said: “Our analysis of agricultural spending in 2023-24 shows that while the government continues to subsidise chemical fertilisers, which account for 50% of the country’s agriculture, it is also starting to take agriculture funding more seriously.

“We can scale up climate solutions like agroecology by changing the public finances that currently support industrial agriculture.”

Meanwhile, the report says these funds could be used to finance the education of all children in sub-Saharan Africa, increasing 3.5-fold.

“Climate-damaging sectors receive subsidies averaging $677 billion per year in the Global South. This money could increase the cost of educating all children in sub-Saharan Africa by 3.5 times.

“Climate finance grants from the Global North to countries affected by climate change remain completely insufficient to support climate action and the necessary changes, and climate finance grants account for only one twentieth of the Global South’s public finances devoted to fossil fuels and industrial agriculture,” the report reads.

As a result of this development, the renewable energy sector in the Global South receives forty times less public funding than the fossil fuel sector, according to the report.

The report further points out that the inability of Global North countries to provide adequate climate finance means that Global South countries will remain trapped in harmful development paths that destroy ecosystems, seize land and deepen the injustice of climate change.

ActionAid International Secretary General Arthur Larok said the report exposed the parasitic behaviour of wealthy corporations.

“They are sucking the life out of the Global South, sucking up public funds and fuelling the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the promises of climate finance from the Global North are as empty as the empty rhetoric they have been spouting for decades. It is time to end this circus; we need real commitments to ending the climate crisis,” he said.

ActionAid International’s Global Climate Justice Lead, Teresa Anderson, added: “The lack of public and climate finance means that in countries vulnerable to climate change, renewable energy receives 40 times less public funding than the fossil fuel sector. It’s time for the Global South to stand up to industries that are draining their finances and destroying their climate.”

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