The Zeroist

Photo by Luna Zhang on Unsplash This newsletter is a bit late, and shorter than usual due to a combination of technical issues and work demands. The main items are climate litigation looks set to take off in China, the upcoming UN 2023 Water Conference next week, and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Synthesis due out on Monday. This is big.

Photo by Reproductive Health Coalition on Unsplash Decarbonization in a de-globalizing world is a theme for a year in which both the G7 and G20 presidencies are held by Asian countries. Whilst countries outside of the OECD bloc are shaping their own, region-specific iterations of energy transition, the jaw dropping profits that oil and gas majors made last year are also driving a change in narrative from we are part of the solution, to we are here for the long-haul.

Today I am talking with Elaine Johnson from the Environmental Defenders Office about climate litigation in Australia. With a unique situation as a rich country on the frontlines of climate impacts and a coal exporter, Australia has emerged as a world leader in climate litigation and 2022 was a bumper year.

Photo by Jéan Béller on Unsplash 2023 is the year that everything gets harder. The term polycrisis has gone mainstream, and it speaks to the need for a new policy paradigm that is fit for purpose to tackle, at the appropriate pace and scale, the biggest and most complex challenges of our time - most of them environmental, and happening everywhere all at once, but most of all in the poorest countries.

Photo: Royal Bengal Tiger, just 2,500 remain in the wild. By Natalia Mroz of IISD/ENB Those powerful words from the Namibian delegate after the dramatic COP15 meeting in Montreal was gavelled to a close in the pre-dawn hours of Monday summed up the challenge that lies ahead. Countries agreed a new global deal on nature with 4 goals, 23 targets, including making 30% of land and ocean a protected area to save wildlife and ecosystems, and to cut food waste in half by 2030.

Today we are excited to welcome back Sony Kapoor to the podcast, and we’re talking about the Bridgetown Initiative, a new plan - an exciting new plan - to overhaul the international financial system to unlock huge flows of finance to the global South for the energy transition.

Photo by IISD/ENB COP27 was gavelled to a close Sunday morning, and the outcome was immediately dubbed a historic win for the global south thanks to a decision to set up a fund for those countries on the frontlines of the climate emergency. The significance of this cannot be understated: it has transformed the narrative of the global South in this process, conferring agency, leadership and the ability to drive change.

Plaintiff Dennis Tipakalippa who successfully challenged Australia’s Santos in its quest to get permission to drill off the Tiwi Islands for the Barossa Gas Project. Credit: Rebecca Parker This month’s newsletter focuses on a series of successful climate law suits in the past month, with a strong emphasis on connecting human rights and environmental concerns, and asks whether this fast-growing space holds promise as a driver of faster climate action.

Photo by Li Jiangang on Unsplash This month, we’re excited to announce a shift in focus that has been incubating for some time. We’re moving to an explicit emphasis on new and emerging trends in the sustainability agenda. We will continue to monitor the ESG and finance space, but taking the perspective of: What are the main trend lines and new influences that will shape sustainability reporting requirements.