Agrégateur de flux

(L-R) Horacio (Luis) Carvalho, CEO of Climate Change Ventures, and Faraz Khan, MBE, at London Climate Action Week. Carvalho's firm advises on carbon mitigation and green investment projects. They signed an MOU to develop markets with Brazilian CPR Verde (green rural product certificate), a Brazilian financial credit instrument used to fund environmental preservation, forestry conservation, and carbon sequestration. The markets they are eyeing will be Saudi Arabia, Africa and Pakistan. Credit: Faraz Khan

By Zofeen Ebrahim
LONDON & KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 26 2026 (IPS)

The 30 COP gatherings may not have done what three months of US-Israeli war against Iran did: expose the world’s vulnerability to fossil fuels.

As the world faced its biggest energy shock in a decade, the case for investing in clean energy suddenly became far more compelling.

As an intense heatwave grips Europe, with London’s Met Office issuing a “risk to life” warning and the closure of shops, offices and schools alongside disruptions to transport during the London Climate Action Week (LCAW), calls for this shift are gaining even greater momentum.

New Sense of Urgency

“The sentiment is palpable among policymakers, investors and business leaders,” conceded Faraz Khan, MBE.

A Pakistani entrepreneur and co-founder and partner of Pakistan-based Sustainadility, a technology, data and advisory firm, with over 25 years of experience in multi-stakeholder investments and in drafting environmental, sustainability and governance frameworks, is among those gathered to discuss the future of climate finance and the energy transition.

Speaking to IPS by phone on the sidelines of LCAW which closes on June 28, Khan stressed the urgency of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, saying the shift would not be possible without investors and businesses.

Khan described the mood at LCAW, as “optimistic” tempered by caution. He also welcomed the attention Pakistan was getting. “Our country was lauded for its efforts in brokering the peace deal,” referring to the Islamabad Memorandum between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

From Rule-Making to Seeking Investment

Comparing the two events, he said the annual Bonn climate talks, held from June 8 to 18, focused on diplomatic negotiations and climate rule-making, while LCAW, also an annual event held since 2019, centres on mobilising private investment in sustainability and ESG and scaling these initiatives commercially.

“LCAW is more business- and private sector-orientated,” said Khan, who is also the founder and director of  SeedVentures, a Pakistan-based social impact organisation and impact investor.

Still, he said: “There are two sides to the coin. On the one hand, the US-Iran peace deal and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz have shown the world that oil remains crucial for the world to exist; but, on the other, many countries recognise that dependence on fossil fuels is not in their national interest and even poses a national security risk.”

Geopolitical conflicts have exposed the vulnerabilities associated with oil production, trade and transportation, which is why investment in alternative energy is expected to accelerate.

At a COP31 presidential meeting with the private sector at LCAW, which Khan attended, the conversation revolved around the circular economy, electrification and climate finance with some of the biggest names in the global climate community, including BlackRock, the World Bank, UNIDO, the IFC and several trade organisations.

“It was a gathering of the who’s who of the climate world,” Khan said with a laugh. “Even we made the cut.”

What was missing, however, Khan said, were women in decision-making roles. He was, however, impressed by those in the Turkish COP team, praising their intellectual rigour and commanding presence in the room, which he found to be “truly impressive”.

Beyond the composition of the meetings, Khan said the discussions themselves reflected a growing determination to move beyond rhetoric.

There was a strong sense in the room that a new precedent was about to be set by shifting the focus from negotiations to implementation, investment and action.

“Governments can create an enabling environment and UN frameworks can provide the rules, but ultimately it is investors, bankable projects and big businesses that will drive change,” he said.

While the Bonn climate talks focused on regulatory frameworks, LCAW’s focus is on climate finance and transactions, he noted. “And at Antalya, where the COP31 will be held this November, it will be about putting money where our mouths are—deploying capital into bankable projects and creating collaborative investment vehicles to scale climate action,” said Khan.

Private Sector Takes Centre Stage

He also observed that China was frequently cited as a global leader in clean energy investment.

“Across the various meetings, I sensed a strong and growing appetite for investment in renewable energy, and I believe this momentum will only accelerate,” he said.

Large businesses and institutions, he added, would be critical to delivering a just transition because their extensive operations and community links give them the reach needed to drive meaningful change.

The emphasis on electrification and reducing dependence on fossil fuels was echoed by Türkiye’s COP31 leadership.

Earlier this month, speaking to The Guardian on the sidelines of the climate talks in Bonn, Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s environment minister, said the 35% target would be “one of the defining priorities” of the COP31 presidency.

“By electrifying daily life, from transport to buildings and industry, we can protect families and businesses from volatile energy markets,” he told the media outlet.

Khan believed Pakistan has an opportunity to position itself at the forefront of this transition.

While Pakistan is frequently showcased as a victim of climate disasters, despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Khan said the global focus on solar should also shine a light on the country’s “silent solar revolution”, which has transformed its investment landscape.

“Pakistan has become a global example of how solar adoption can evolve rapidly, opening up substantial investment opportunities in solar manufacturing and battery production,” he said, adding that modernising the grid and scaling up utility-scale energy storage have become increasingly urgent.

Investing in Nature

Beyond renewable energy, Khan saw significant opportunities in nature-based investments.

Khan said Pakistan’s rich biodiversity—from mangroves and forests to wetlands, rangelands and mountain ecosystems—offers enormous investment potential, with private capital capable of both restoring and protecting these natural assets.

Agriculture accounts for a large share of Pakistan’s economy and is a major driver of biodiversity loss. He said private businesses could invest in regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and sustainable rice and cotton production, either to meet sustainability goals or as part of emerging biodiversity credit markets.

“Just as there are carbon credits, there are biodiversity credits, and these are directly linked to food security and agriculture,” Khan said. Given agriculture’s central role in Pakistan’s economy, he argued that the country holds enormous potential for biodiversity credits. “I think this is going to be truly phenomenal because it presents enormous investment opportunities,” he said.

But realising this potential will depend on Pakistan’s ability to attract sustained private investment.

Investment Challenges

Sadly, there are few takers.

Khan said Pakistan’s high sovereign risk remains the biggest obstacle to attracting international climate investment at scale, although recent policy reforms, including the Pakistan Green Taxonomy, green banking guidelines and ESG standards, have improved investor confidence.

He also pointed to a shortage of bankable projects, with many failing to attract global investors despite their strong fundamentals. Still, he said, the investment potential remains enormous.

Yet time may be of the essence.

If the recent turmoil in the Middle East exposed the world’s vulnerability to fossil fuels, Khan believes it also underscored the urgency of accelerating the clean energy transition. For Pakistan, he said, the opportunity is immense—but only if the country can create the conditions needed to attract the investment required to realise it.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Jun 26 2026 (IPS)

On 21 June Colombians made their choice. By the narrowest of margins, Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right criminal lawyer who’s never held elected office, became president-elect. Climate activists, human rights defenders, Indigenous communities and peace advocates have the most to lose from the incoming government’s agenda.

The election results follow the logic of a decade of deepening polarisation. Since the 2016 Peace Accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia began a contested and incomplete transition away from armed conflict, Colombian society has divided into two mutually hostile blocs. The election further revealed that no middle ground remains between them. The mainstream right is gone, its candidate receiving a humiliating 6.3 per cent of the first-round vote, and a new right, harsher and less constrained by institutional norms, has taken its place.

Peace agreement in trouble

Nothing divided the two runoff candidates more starkly than the 2016 Peace Accord. Iván Cepeda, the candidate backed by outgoing leftist President Gustavo Petro, is a long-time human rights advocate and senator, and chairs the Senate’s Peace and Post-Conflict Commission. He ran on a ‘comprehensive peace’ platform focused on addressing the structural roots of violence, including land access, inequality and the absence of state services in rural areas.

In contrast, De la Espriella said there would be no peace process under his watch, proposing instead to resume aerial bombardment of armed groups and reinstate herbicide fumigation of coca crops, a practice with well-documented environmental and public health consequences.

According to figures from Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office, the six-decade conflict caused over 1.1 million killings and more than 200,000 enforced disappearances, while over nine million were forcibly displaced. That record, and the significant progress made since 2016, will now be judged expendable by a government that regards the accords as illegitimate.

For the communities living in territories where armed groups overlap with extractive industries, this is no abstract policy debate. Human rights organisations have warned that a return to a full military offensive will be devastating for civilian populations, particularly the environmental defenders and Indigenous communities who already face lethal threats. Colombia is the world’s deadliest country for environmental and land rights defenders. It’s likely about to get worse.

Cutting the human rights lifeline

De la Espriella also proposes to part ways with the international human rights architecture that has provided Colombia’s victims with a path to justice. On the campaign trail, he announced his intention to withdraw from ‘useless’ international organisations including the UN and the Organization of American States, and denounced the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as ‘a farce’ that has served only to ‘support the left and persecute our security forces’.

In Colombia’s conflict-ridden territories where Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities continue to experience massacres and displacement, international monitoring bodies are often the only source of independent verification that violence is happening. The American Convention on Human Rights, which Colombia ratified in 1973, is embedded in the country’s constitutional framework, shaping the interpretation of fundamental rights across the legal system.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has hundreds of cases involving Colombia. In December 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the state responsible for the 1995 enforced disappearance of two human rights defenders. Their families waited almost three decades for closure, and only got it because they turned to the regional system when domestic institutions failed them. Now that route could be closed.

What the results mean

Colombia’s change of direction could have global repercussions. Just weeks before the election, Colombia hosted the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, bringing together 57 states alongside civil society and scientists frustrated by the repeated failure of UN climate summits to deliver binding commitments on fossil fuel phase-out. Under Petro, renewable energy grew from two per cent to around 16 per cent of the energy mix, and Colombia issued no new contracts for fossil fuel exploration.

That era ends when de la Espriella takes office on 7 August. He frames fossil fuel expansion as a fiscal imperative and calls for the immediate legalisation of fracking, currently banned by judicial moratorium. Since the country includes significant parts of the Amazon rainforest, the climate impacts won’t be limited to Colombia.

Ultimately, De la Espriella did not win for his positions on peace, climate or human rights. He won on security and the promise of order. Calling himself ‘The Tiger’, he modelled his campaign on the populist template of Argentina’s President Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, vowing to shrink the state, build megaprisons and combat corruption with tools normally reserved for organised crime. The movement he founded, Defenders of the Homeland, carried Donald Trump’s public backing. The combination proved effective in a country exhausted by decades of violence where many are deeply sceptical of the left’s ability to deliver safety.

The far-right candidate converted legitimate grievances about insecurity into a mandate to dismantle the peace process, reverse climate commitments and withdraw from the international human rights architecture. The consequences will be felt most acutely by those his campaign never meant to speak to.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

 

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Soldiers assigned to the 1st Battalion, 189th Aviation Regiment (General Support Aviation), and Airmen from the 219th Red Horse Squadron successfully executed the first operational joint sling load mission between the two units June 26, during a field training exercise designed to strengthen the Montana National Guard's domestic operations capabilities.

The French authorities note Burkina Faso's unilateral decision to break off diplomatic relations with France.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

Peut-on parler de rupture historique entre la France et l’Afrique ?

Indéniablement la rupture qui s’est opérée entre 2022 et 2025 avec le départ des forces françaises du continent africain est historique. Elle était prévisible mais l’érosion progressive de l’influence française caractérisée par un « sentiment anti-français », n’a pas été interprétée. Embourgeoisée dans une relation déséquilibrée et paternaliste, la France n’a pas vu monter l’exigence de souveraineté des jeunesses africaines. Facteur amplifiant, la montée en puissance de l’Union européenne depuis le traité de Lisbonne de 2007, a positionné Bruxelles comme un acteur financier important tandis que nos ambassades ne cessent de répéter qu’elles n’ont plus de budget. La nature a horreur du vide. Il a permis l’arrivée de compétiteurs comme les Russes qui, en 2018, s’installent en République centrafricaine, conséquence du départ de la mission militaire SANGARIS. La France, rétractée sur une vision héritée de l’histoire, n’a pas perçu l’arrivée massive des Russes, des Américains, des Turcs, des Chinois et in fine de tous les États européens, l’Allemagne et l’Espagne en tête, qui se ruent à la conquête de nouveaux marchés.  Notre discours récurrent sur la fin de la « France-Afrique » et du soi-disant « pré carré » a miné notre positionnement car les États africains avaient eux, intégré de longue date cet état de fait. La guerre de 2011 en Libye voulue par les Français, a enfin prouvé notre perte de la langue de l’Afrique. La France a démontré à cette occasion la perte collective de cette compréhension fine qu’elle avait du continent. L’opération SERVAL en 2013 aura été le dernier moment d’une action militaire française en autonomie. L’opération Barkhane qui a suivi n’avait, compte tenu de ses effectifs et de la dimension de la zone d’action, que peu de chances de réussir. La densification des actes terroristes dans le Sahel et la descente des groupes armés vers le Golfe de Guinée, ont révélé la faiblesse du dispositif français. Les coups d’État successifs entre 2020 et 2023 au Mali, au Burkina Faso et au Niger et le rejet consécutif de la France, ont constitué le départ du feu de brousse qui a emporté tout le dispositif militaire en 2025… à l’exception de la base de Djibouti que nous louons.

Est-elle irréversible ?

Probablement, malgré le désir caché de certains qui imaginent que, lassés des Russes, les États africains souhaiteront notre retour. Cette manière de voir les choses est illusoire et enfantine. L’histoire ne repasse évidemment pas les plats. On dénombre 58 soldats morts pour la France dans le Sahel. Le départ des forces françaises d’Afrique a été humiliant. Ce sentiment partagé par tous, a été synthétisé par Emmanuel Macron le 6 janvier 2025 lors de la réunion annuelle des ambassadeurs par son « on a oublié de nous dire merci ». Mais n’allons pas trop loin tout de même. La rupture n’est pas totale puisque des accords de coopération et de défense existent toujours. Mais nous devrons agir avec d’autres, compte tenu des 33 accords de défense signés avec les Russes en dix ans, ajoutés aux 39 accords de défense contractés avec les Turcs. Les Américains, de leur côté, ne sont pas en reste grâce à leurs différents programmes « Train and Equip » financés par le Département d’État et l’effort réalisé par Donald Trump en direction des pays dotés de matières premières rares comme en RDC ou au Nigéria. À partir de 2022, sentant le vent du boulet arriver, Jean-Marie Bockel est désigné comme « envoyé personnel » du chef de l’État pour l’Afrique. Il n’a pas démérité mais il a passé les années 2023 et 2024 à courir derrière une histoire qui allait plus vite que lui. « La France passe d’une logique de stock à une logique de flux en Afrique » conclut-il sur les ondes de Radio France Internationale le 7 novembre 2024. Perspective tellement technocratique qu’elle nous fait revenir à l’époque des comptoirs du XIXème siècle ?

La France a-t-elle trop fait preuve de condescendance ?

La parole péremptoire et paternaliste des élites politiques françaises à l’égard de l’Afrique francophone est un paramètre essentiel pour comprendre la prise de distance et le ressentiment observés ces dernières années. Il est largement sous-estimé dans les facteurs ayant contribué à une prise de distance des élites de l’ancien « pré carré » français. Or, ce facteur est essentiel. Nous y consacrons d’ailleurs un chapitre entier de notre livre.

Ce mode opératoire consistant à tenir des propos blessants et culpabilisants est l’apanage de presque tous les présidents de la Vème République. C’est bien le problème ; François Mitterrand et Jacques Chirac avec leurs injonctions sur la démocratie, François Hollande avec la question des Droits de l’Homme, Emmanuel Macron avec ses thèmes sur la démographie. Le discours que Nicolas Sarkozy a prononcé à Dakar, en juillet 2007, en est la caricature. Près de vingt ans après, nous payons encore cette intervention qu’aucun autre chef d’État à travers le monde, y compris européen, n’aurait pu tenir en terre africaine.

Loin des partenariats « gagnant – gagnant » régulièrement vantés, chaque président français se sent ainsi obligé de donner ses conseils, de s’ériger en moralisateur en expliquant aux opinions publiques africaines ce qui est bon pour elles ; que la démocratie est un passage obligé ; combien d’enfants elles doivent faire, etc.

La France est la seule ex-puissance coloniale européenne à s’autoriser une telle liberté de ton. Sans doute parce que inconsciemment elle entend toujours façonner les Africains à son image par un message universaliste. Paris n’a pas vu que, sur ce point aussi, les Africains en ont assez. D’autant que cette approche professorale bute désormais sur les relations que les pays africains entretiennent avec des pays qui, comme la Chine, la Russie ou la Turquie, ont une attitude plus respectueuse de leur souveraineté. Les Africains sont d’autant plus agacés que Paris est proche de certains pays où les libertés publiques et la démocratie sont extrêmement faibles. Ce double standard ne passe plus.

Était-ce une erreur de s’abstenir lors du vote à l’ONU, en avril 2026, sur la résolution proclamant la traite des esclaves comme le plus grave crime contre l’humanité ?

La France n’a pas approuvé cette résolution car elle ne souhaitant pas hiérarchiser les crimes contre l’humanité. Cela peut s’entendre. En réalité, elle a surtout voulu éviter de tomber dans le débat sur les réparations et les dédommagements financiers.

Il faut remarquer que, malgré quelques avancées (rapport sur la guerre d’indépendance au Cameroun, sur le génocide de 1994 au Rwanda, sur le cas de Thiaroye au Sénégal, sur l’abrogation récente du Code Noir…), la France reste en retrait par rapport à ses partenaires européens sur les questions mémorielles. Notamment sur la restitution des œuvres pillées ou spoliées durant les conquêtes coloniales. Pour l’instant, seule une trentaine de pièces ont été rendues à plusieurs pays (Bénin, Madagascar, Sénégal, Côte d’Ivoire) alors que les autres capitales européennes en sont déjà à plusieurs milliers. Il y a encore une vraie pusillanimité à regarder l’Histoire en face. En mai dernier, le Parlement français a adopté une loi-cadre sur cette question. Mais la France est-elle prête à vider ses musées si d’aventure tous les pays africains venaient à demander une restitution en masse des œuvres qui s’y trouvent ? C’est la vraie question.

L’article « Out of Africa » – 4 questions à Peer de Jong et Frédéric Lejeal est apparu en premier sur IRIS.

Committee and political group meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP