Climate Governance Integrity Campaign

SWELTERING CAMPAIGN FOR CLIMATE GOVERNANCE INTEGRITY IN GWANGWHAMUN

On Saturday, April 21, 2018, we held a climate change governance transparency campaign in Gwangwhamun Square, Seoul, Republic of Korea. In collaboration with some high school students, Transparency International Korea braved the early hot late-spring afternoon of the nation’s capital city. Gwanghwamun is the heart of Seoul in terms of actions, including demonstrations, protests, campaigns, awareness-raising, public concerts, and entertainments. Above all, it is where the citizens of all ages held the concerted candlelight vigils that eventually led to the impeachment of former President Park, who is currently in prison due to abuse of power and corruption.

Students leading the climate integrity campaign in Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul

During the late spring season, when the cherry blossom flowers are gone, locals and foreign visitors explore Gwanghwamun Square looking for exciting events while campaigns for awareness, protest, and other activities filled the area using banners, pamphlets, music, loudspeakers, and megaphones. We did not make loud noises except that we only distribute materials about climate transparency campaign and call out passersby to check our displays. After looking for our right spot (and having passed the interrogations by police officers about our event), we finally settled down by the pathway and started setting up our campaign materials.

Aiming to promote climate finance during this campaign and for visibility purposes, high school students who are members of its transparency club prepared four placards with slogans promoting climate finance transparency as follows: Protect Climate Finance, Promote Climate Integrity, Zero Climate Corruption, Transparency Climate Budget. Our volunteer students prepared slogans that were both in both Korean and English languages. Having two languages in each placard certainly catch more curious passersby.

Also, we prepared materials that send messages and invitations to support our campaign. Some materials we distributed include brochures (Korean and English prepared by students) and pamphlets that describe our climate project and movement to promote climate change finance transparency and governance. We distributed for free pin buttons that can be attached to bags or backpacks. “Protect Climate Change Finance” was our campaign slogan, which was inscribed on each pin button.

In addition to the placards and brochures we distributed, we thought that symbolic materials could relay our messages and evoke people’s imagination about the current climate issues. We have two materials: a huge globe and a ghost costume. The huge globe (which takes about an hour to get inflated manually), apparently, represents our fragile world that is being inundated with wastes, greenhouse gases (GHGs), and being threatened irreversible loss of biodiversity and is suffering the adverse effects of climate change.

DEMANDS FOR CLIMATE FINANCE INTEGRITY

We held the campaign demanding governments and relevant institutions with significant responsibilities to establish laws, policies, and guidelines to ensure that climate funds will benefit the intended recipients, especially those sinking islands (states), developing nations, and many difficult African countries. As we held our campaign in Korea, we hailed the government for its efforts in supporting both its national and international climate actions, while at the same time demanding that it should implement transparent financial systems.

As examples of climate finance corruption cases, houses built with no walls and basic facilities in Bangladesh and the lost funds for the tsunami victims in the Maldives, among many instances. 

In other words, transparent climate finance governance is critical in ensuring that there is no corruption involve and that there is publicly available climate finance accounting that proves that the funds went to the intended direct beneficiaries. Aside from the Korean government, we also demanded that the climate fund’s primary conduit, the Green Climate Fund, must continue establishing policies that could accurately and thoroughly fulfill its operational principles and guidelines for both mitigation and adaptation projects on the planet. Shortened as GCF, the Fund must implement all integrity principles and policies there is to ensure that it can prevent the worse scenarios of the impacts of climate change.

GCF Headquarters, Songdo, South Korea

Green Climate Fund, Songdo, South Korea

However, our campaign did target not only institutions and governments but also all citizens of the world to be vigilant and critical in all respects. Individuals, citizens, and civil society organizations have the responsibility to be aware of climate finance activities or projects and monitor their implementation development. Basically, our campaign is raising awareness about climate finance’s existence and stakeholders’ responsibilities to complement our efforts and ensure that we do not waste the scarce climate resources through corrupt practices by authorities and entrusted institutions and entities.

CAMPAIGN SYMBOLS: GLOBE AND GHOST

Apparently, our globe (which took about an hour to get inflated manually), which symbolizes our fragile Earth, is one of our campaign attractions. It was a rubberized globe with a real photo of the Earth printed on it. Around the globe, we glued on it paper money to symbolize climate finance and pictures of the disastrous impacts of climate change around the world.

To precisely symbolize the threat to climate funds, we prepared ghostly clothing (painted with the human skeleton) and the scary mask. This ghost symbolizes destruction and death, which are occurring and will get worse if the funds for mitigation and adaptation will be lost through corruption and illicit climate funds activities. One of our volunteers, who agreed to act as the ghost, moved around the globe and was gesturing as if he was trying to devour it. Our fight against the ghost summarizes our campaign in raising awareness and protecting climate finance through transparency and good governance.

Climate governance issues symbolized by the ghost

CLIMATE FINANCE CAMPAIGN OBSERVATIONS

Trying to get the attention of the passersby, in competition with other campaigns and noise, it was not easy to make one listen to our campaign contents. Nevertheless, a number of them were willing to spend time, answer a couple of questions, and listen to the main points of our campaign.

Different people give different responses. Some would shy away from us due to various reasons. While some of them are totally curious to learn about climate finance and corruption, others are just not interested and disappear into the crowd quickly.

Among those who stopped by and listened to our explanations were not aware of climate change issues – such as corruption and misuse of climate funds. A couple of them, surprisingly, know about the Green Climate Fund, while most of them, of course, do not know nor heard about it.

Most of them, ordinary citizens, have some basic understanding that global warming is the cause of the sustained rising temperatures. However, not many are aware that climate change, which is fundamentally due to carbon dioxide emissions induced by human activities (as scientifically proven), is broader in meaning (and reality) than global warming.

We wished to campaign longer, but some students had to leave the place to study for their upcoming exams at school. We spent a total of three hours for the whole activity, including the preparation and briefing of the materials for the campaign. Indeed, it was a sweltering day not only because of the hot temperature but also because of the burning issues and events observable in Gwangwhamun Square, including the successful summit between the two Koreas.

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