2021 – A Year in Review

December 20, 2021

Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, in 2021 ActionAid Ireland has reached some of the most vulnerable communities in the world.

This year, we have seen Covid-19 continue to spread and devastate communities. And it has had a negative impact on women’s rights, with an increase in violence against women, more women than men losing their jobs and the burden of unpaid care work falling disproportionately on women. With the escalation of climate change, poverty, and conflict occurring across the world, it is crucial to challenge the inequalities that are becoming more visible than ever.

Our Child Sponsorship Programme

This year, ActionAid Ireland has continued to advance community projects through our Child Sponsorship Programme. Thanks to this funding we worked in five countries – Cambodia, Vietnam, Uganda, Nepal, and Kenya. Our projects are only possible because of the support of our 4,000 Irish Sponsors. Not only do we provide vital resources to women and children living in developing communities, we also work with them to address the obstacles they face and provide long-term solutions.

Women’s Rights Programme

We have worked with some of the most marginalized and hard to reach women in Kenya, Nepal and Ethiopia through our Irish Aid funded Women’s Rights Programme. The programme focuses on tackling violence against women and creating jobs for local women. Read more here.

Humanitarian Emergencies

ActionAid Ireland has also responded to humanitarian emergencies in Gaza, Haiti, and Afghanistan; supporting and championing local women to lead the response in their communities and ensure that no one was left behind. ActionAid supports local women to lead the response to emergencies in their community. We do this because, we have seen that women are too often left out the decision making in humanitarian situations.

Work here in Ireland

We launched Amplify our Voices this year; this is an exciting programme bringing women together to communicate their perspective on what needs to be prioritised as the government brings an end to Direct Provision. In addition, a second project we’re running in Ireland is the AFTER Project, which has continued its crucial work in ending the practice of FGM in Ireland.

Over 10,000 people signed our petitions this year on a number of different campaigns – including ending the brutal practice of FGM both here and abroad; – bringing about an end to violence and harassment in the workplace for women; – standing with the people of Palestine as atrocities raged in Gaza; – and supporting global vaccine equity.

Thank you

Finally, from all of us at ActionAid Ireland, we would like to say a huge thank you to all of our supports for their incredible generosity this year. It has been a challenging year. But, we are hopeful and inspired by the communities we work with around the globe, and our fantastic supporters here in Ireland.

Photo credits, Clockwise starting at top left:

Mukta now attends school with the support of ActionAid in Bangladesh. (Credit: Md. Ariful Islam/ActionAid)
Taposhi Rani (20) is a feminist and environmental activist in Bangladesh. (Credit: Fabeha Monir/ActionAid)
Varou Mat now works with the Gender Responsive Alternatives to Climate Change Project in her community in Cambodia. (Credit: Natasha Mulder/ActionAid)
Muna El-Kurd, an activist, facing eviction from her home in Sheikh Jarrah. (Credit: Riham Jafari/ActionAid)

Protestors at COP 28 in Dubai. Photo: Konrad Skotnicki.

Belfast Climate Change March, 2019. Photo: Trócaire.

The Profit Driving the Crisis

Despite their overwhelming contribution to global emissions, fossil fuel companies continue to attract significant financial backing—driven by their enduring profitability. This is starkly illustrated by the case of ExxonMobil, the top fossil fuel investment held by asset managers based in Ireland. In 2023, ExxonMobil reported €33.63 billion ($36 billion) in profit. That is almost twice the GDP of Botswana (€18.1 billion) and nearly three times Namibia’s GDP (€11.5 billion).

Ireland plays a hugely disproportionate role in facilitating investments into fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. In 2023, the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland generated an estimated 72.5 million tons of CO2e. This is more than the CO2e emissions for the entire country of Ireland—and more than ten times that generated by Sierra Leone.

The Global Human Impact

The climate crisis is here, now, and it is causing disproportionate harm in the Global South. In Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe cyclones are displacing coastal communities, with projections indicating that 17% of the entire country could be underwater by 2050. The legally binding Paris Agreement on climate change explicitly acknowledges the importance of tackling private finance. Its three overarching goals are: keeping below 1.5C of warming; increasing adaptation and making finance flows consistent with low emissions and resilience.

This gives a clear mandate for action: both tax reform and corporate regulation are needed to tackle financial flows, and both nationally in Ireland and at EU level, ‘polluter pays’ taxes are lacking and regulation of the financial sector remains weak and fragmented. While EU regulation exists, it is designed more to nudge investors toward more sustainable investment practices by increasing transparency and reporting levels than to enforce strict standards. And it is moving in the wrong direction: the recently passed EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive excluded investments; and now the EU Commission’s Omnibus legislative proposal threatens to undo the limited gains made on climate plans, as well as blocking future attempts for stronger action at national level.

The Risk of Inaction

Fossil fuel investment is too profitable to remain weakly regulated. If Ireland continues with its current strategy of encouraging FDI at all costs, and relying on weak EU regulation, we are headed for catastrophe. The Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change has repeatedly warned that every fraction of a degree beyond 1.5°C brings irreversible consequences: collapsed ice sheets, vanishing coral reefs, and extreme weather events that will make vast regions of the planet uninhabitable. And yet, companies are developing oil and gas fields that could push global warming beyond 2°C.

Our research found that 91% of the investments made into fossil fuel companies by investment managers based in Ireland were to companies that have plans for fossil fuel expansion like these. Ireland cannot afford inaction on this issue.

About This Research

The figures in this report regarding investment from Ireland are based on new research commissioned by ActionAid Ireland and Trócaire. In the paper, we uncover the scale of fossil fuel investment through Ireland, who the investors are, and in which fossil fuel companies they are investing. We analyse the current regulatory framework and explain why it is inadequate—and moving in the wrong direction. And we make specific recommendations for change, which are summarised below.

Summary of Recommendations

Regulate the private financial sector
Ireland must end its outsized role as an enabler of destructive fossil fuel investment. Ireland should introduce a strong gender-responsive national human rights and environmental due diligence framework which includes the regulation of investors with respect to human rights and the environment and climate. The transposition of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive could achieve this if downstream activities are included and the Omnibus proposal is rejected. Ireland should prohibit investments in fossil fuel expansion and require investors to implement climate transition plans consistent with a 1.5°C climate limit.

Endorse the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty
Ireland should endorse developing a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to curb fossil fuel expansion and commit to a fair and funded phase out of fossil fuels.

Support tax justice
Ireland should support bold and fair new global tax rules through the UN Framework Convention on Tax, should adopt all OECD BEPS measures, and should conduct an updated and comprehensive spillover analysis of its tax policy. Ireland should take coordinated action globally, at the EU level and domestically to introduce a range of new taxes to mobilise finance needed for climate justice, based on ‘polluter pays’ and social equity principles such as wealth taxes for the highest earners, climate damages tax on investors, fossil fuel production taxes and levies on aviation and shipping.

Finance a just transition
Ireland must also meet its fair share climate finance obligations under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, and pay our ecological debt to the Global South. Ireland should support conditionality-free debt cancellation for countries on the front lines of the climate crisis, commit to a new UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt, moving debt negotiations from the IMF to the UN, and to a debt workout mechanism that is fully representative and fair.