By Juliet Ukanwosu
Policy Alert has announced plans to hold a Special Panel Session with the title ‘why fighting corruption is urgent for a Just Energy Transition,’ during the ongoing 2022 International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC 2022) holding from 6-10 December, in Washington DC.
The event, co-organised with Publish What You Pay International, Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and other partner organisations, will hold at 3.30pm (EST) on Friday December 9, 2022, at the Hampton Room of the Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington DC.
In a statement issued by the organisation at Washington DC yesterday, its Executive Director, Tijah Bolton-Akpan, said: “Over the years, Policy Alert has worked on improving openness in the oil, gas and mining sectors and we have seen real evidence of how corruption in the sector worsens development outcomes, especially for resource-rich communities. But something else our work cannot ignore is how corruption in the fossil fuel industry has fuelled the climate crisis and discouraged companies and countries from embracing the transition to clean energy.”
The statement further noted that energy transition itself is not corruption-proof, while it is obvious that regulatory capture of the fossil fuel industry and the massive opportunities for rent are locking some countries into a change-averse course, what is not so obvious is that similar risks are potentially undermining the switch to renewables.
“The expanding regulatory space for renewable energy is fraught with governance risks. In the same way, the rapid growth of the renewables value chain, including the boom in transition minerals, comes with its own unique risks, especially for governance-challenged developing countries. There is therefore an urgent need for an anti-corruption perspective that can help countries avoid or at least minimize further fossil-fueled disaster and escape a catastrophic repeat performance with renewables,” Tijah said.
Resource persons billed to speak at the event include Matthieu Salomon of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Dr. Uche Igwe, Visiting Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at LSE, and Dr. Steve Manteaw, Co-chair of Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GHEITI). Others are Tijah Bolton-Akpan, Executive Director of Policy Alert, Juliet Alohan, Editor of Extractives360, and Carly Oboth, Director of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) USA.
