ActionAid is first to have its emergency response work accredited

September 16, 2019

More and more disasters, crises and conflicts are affecting the communities ActionAid works with. These emergencies have a disproportionate effect on women. They increase the likelihood of human rights violations. Further they often exclude women from decision-making and deny them access to resources. And yet women, and women’s organisations, are underrepresented in emergency responses.

ActionAid responds differently to address these systemic challenges. We focus on cultivating women’s leadership in an emergency – a central pillar of our human rights-based approach. In our work we empower women. We help them to be at the forefront and play an active role in humanitarian responses. In addition, we actively work to shift power to local organisations and movements, especially those led by women.

At the end of August 2019, we were delighted to hear that ActionAid is the first global organisation to have our approach to emergencies independently verified.

Meeting the highest standards in an emergency

This means that our emergency response work is now accredited under the CHS Alliance’s Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative (HQAI). The Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS) puts the active agency of people living in poverty and impacted by an emergency first. It promotes programming that leads to community empowerment.

By committing to meeting the nine core standards of the CHS, ActionAid is ensuring that affected communities are aware of their rights and are involved in all levels of the response. Critically, the commitments of the CHS have helped ActionAid improve the quality, efficiency and the effectiveness of our humanitarian response.

Opportunities to improve our emergency approach

As ActionAid Ireland we chose to go through CHS verification as part of a group of sixteen ActionAid members across the globe, known as the ActionAid Global Group. As part of the process, HQAI issued a report which highlighted areas where we’re performing strongly, as well as areas to improve.

For example, we performed strongly against the commitment that our emergency responses are based on effective communication, participation and feedback. However, we need to look at how we evidence this and bring lessons in to future programming.

As a result, we are making a concerted effort to respond to the report’s recommendations. For instance, ActionAid has run a series of internal webinars on the CHS and what verification means for us. In addition, there is a growing roster of people with accountability expertise. We are also rolling out an accountability training programme.

The standard in practice in an emergency

In Haiti for example, we are putting the CHS into practice through a cash distribution programme responding to food insecurity in the northeast of Haiti. Working with a local partner, ActionAid Haiti briefs partner teams and mediation committees on the CHS, on ActionAid’s humanitarian work and on gender-specific issues.

We choose sites according to a security criterion for rights holders and we apply the principles of protection and respect for the dignity of the participants. Further, accountability mechanisms are in place, such as complaints mechanisms. Additionally, we inform communities and participants of the criteria for receiving cash and the amount that they will receive. And we now see effective coordination and donors’ reports are produced on time.

Looking to the future

Although the CHS covers both humanitarian and development work, I think this needs to be understood and promoted more. The CHS is applicable to all programming. In addition, we must work with and influence the biggest players in the sector – such as governments – to adopt the CHS.

Photo caption for heading image: Women’s advocacy forum, 2017’s International Day of Rural Women. Credit: ActionAid Haiti.

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.