An Appreciation of Rodney Rice, former Chair of ActionAid Ireland

August 31, 2021

The ActionAid team and Board would like to extend our sympathies to the family of the former Chairperson of our Board, Rodney Rice, who passed away on Sunday.

Rodney, a trailblazing journalist and broadcaster, served on the ActionAid Ireland Board for over seven years from 2011 to 2018. He was a Director and then Chairperson. We were and are very proud that Rodney chose to take-up this position with us and lend his name and considerable talents to our organisation.

Many of our supporters and friends will be familiar with Rodney, who hosted events like our 30th Anniversary event in 2013 and our annual Speech Writing Competition. A gifted and warm host, we were proud to have him lead such events. Rodney also wrote media pieces and conducted interviews on our behalf.

He did even more behind the scenes with ActionAid. He made himself available to build and develop many aspects of our organisation

Throughout his media career and long afterwards, Rodney was a consistent and unrelenting advocate for justice. He helped to shape the Irish consciousness about the rights of the oppressed.

He was popular with the team in Ireland, and with our colleagues around the world who he met at the annual general assembly. As well as being talented and generous with his time, he was a great raconteur, very personable and great company. And we will miss him very much.

Siobhán McGee, CEO of ActionAid Ireland from 2015 to July 2021, said:

“Rodney was appointed voluntary Chair of ActionAid Ireland’s board early in my tenure as CEO, and so from 2016 to 2018 we worked closely together to develop ActionAid’s agenda in Ireland, as well as engaging with international peers as part of ActionAid International, work which took us both to Cambodia, Mozambique, Myanmar and Greece.

Rodney was a force of nature. He cared passionately about human rights and social justice, unafraid to challenge or question inequities. Following his retirement from RTE in 2009 ActionAid Ireland was fortunate when he agreed to serve on the Board for what turned out to be two terms, the latter term as Chair.

As we spent time together I understood his deep rooted passion for social justice was equally shared with his wife Margo from their earliest days, and has been passed on to their children. His exposure to the apartheid regime in South Africa was very formative, as a journalist he covered those potent events from very close quarters and remained very committed and interested in that country’s progress.

It goes without saying that he was highly politically incisive. I saw him engage in international gatherings with ActionAid leaders from countries struggling to achieve even basic rights and social justice – among them were academics, senior NGO leaders, former politicians, journalists – people with whom he connected, deeply interested in their struggles. His knowledge of those countries’ historical and current political contexts was extensive, his curiosity undimmed.

Many people, myself included, grew up amid his work on radio and TV. In particular his commitment to bringing international development stories to Irish audiences through Worlds Apart on RTE Radio was far reaching and influential. The topics he covered seeped into our consciousness as listeners, and, I believe, helped inform and build a sense of global solidarity which was in turn reflected in Irish public policy on international development and co-operation.”

Karol Balfe, CEO of ActionAid Ireland added:

“We are grateful for the immense contribution that Rodney Rice made to ActionAid over his time as Director and then Chairperson. Though I didn’t personally work with him, he was clearly just a champion of social justice and dedicated time and energy on a voluntary basis to supporting ActionAid’s goals of ending poverty and promoting gender equality. His contribution will be felt for many years to come. All of our thoughts are with his family and friends. May he rest in peace.”

Rodney leaves a lasting legacy and we will endeavour to do him proud.

Our thoughts at this time are with his wife Margo, children Cian, Caitriona and Eoghan, and his extended family and many friends.

May he rest in peace.

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.