Haysam Azhar: Making an Impact through Climate Finance 🇵🇰

When we sat down for a chat with Haysam Azhar, we quickly realized that he was unlike any other young person we had interviewed thus far. For starters, he didn't know anything about climate change until he was 17, when he left his home country in Pakistan to attend university at Minerva Schools at KGI, where he studies Strategic Finances and Economics. When we asked about his motivations, he candidly expressed that he was driven by fear of a bleak future, rather than the hope and optimism environmental activists we've come across normally portray. Yet, by all means, he has been doing impressive, impactful work on climate finance.

Haysam's story

Haysam with Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and a climate justice advocate

Pakistan is the 5th most vulnerable country to climate disruption, yet this topic was never present in Haysam's education. He only learned thoroughly about climate change when he attended an event hosted by Climate Citizen's Lobby on the Carbon Fee and Dividend Fund in San Francisco, a non-profit grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change, which sparked his interest in both climate disruption and climate finance.

The same summer, he also went to Kenya with the group Youth Climate Leaders and worked on designing sustainable primary school communities. There, he learnt about the importance of context. "[The experience opened my eyes as to the] complexity of the situation and how [little] we understood the hardship that people faced ... Why do people not send their kids to school? Because there are no prospects to escape the cycle of poverty even with an education. Even if you are educated, as soon as you go to university, you have to pay for it. A rational person would choose to learn carpentry for a working income rather than going to school." That view would define Haysam's cornerstone belief: that we need to understand the complexity and uniqueness behind every single situation before taking action. Moreover, Haysam emphasizes that that we need to empathize with the poor and their decision, without belittling or patronizing them. Someone buying a TV with microfinancing may not be due to laziness, but because life can get boring in a village. How can the rich lay their claim on rationality without making the effort to put themselves in the poor’s shoes?

The next year, Haysam worked for a climate finance consulting organization E Co., where he worked with governments and Development Finance Institutions (DFI) around the world to get access to financing from pools of global climate finance such as the Green Climate Fund. He is currently interning at the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance a Climate Policy Initiative, a start-up accelerator for climate mitigation and adaptation projects that has, to this day, mobilized over 2 billion dollars in climate finance.

Haysam Hanging with colleagues from E Co. at Dishoom (his favourite restaurant in London)

Climate Finance and COVID-19

When we probed him about climate finance in the context of COVID-19 recovery, Haysam was honest: the future does not look great. Due to COVID-19, economies have come to a stall and thus require stimulus money from governments to revamp growth. A good stimulus package does not invest in fossil fuels, but instead sends money towards green sectors (such as renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and sustainable R&D). Haysam also noted that if there are conditions attached to the stimulus, such as discounted lending for greener companies, green recovery becomes much easier.

Unfortunately, to date, less than 5% of total funding dispersed through global COVID-19 stimuli has been tailored towards a green recovery. There are a few countries who have shifted focus, mostly those aligned with the EU's Green New Deal targets, but the rest of the world has a long way to go — especially Asia. China, for instance, is planning to create more coal-fired plants; meanwhile, India's response to their Environmental Impact Assessment as an "unnecessary... burden" was disappointing, while Pakistan's projects under China's Belt-and-Road Initiative have been mostly focused on non-green assets.

To date, less than 5% of total funding dispersed through global COVID-19 stimuli has been tailored towards a green recovery.

Despite the lack of action from the international community, Haysam assured us that a green recovery is still on the agenda, and hoped that as the pandemic continues, more countries will seriously consider this as an option. He further emphasized the actions being taken on a regional level within many countries, and the considerable progress made in China's climate bonds market, which seeks to mobilize the 100 trillion dollar bond market for climate solutions.

Challenges in Pakistan and Asia

Haysam with Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris and a major force behind the Paris Climate Agreement

Reflecting on his roots, Haysam highlighted that over the past few years, people are becoming more aware of the problem. With the establishment of a Ministry of Climate Change in Pakistan, the issue is now part of the country's agenda. He excitedly told us the country has planted 1 billion trees in the past few years, and has committed to planting another 10 billion trees by 2023. Still, he acknowledged that Pakistan does not receive a lot of funding from DFIs or in the form of official development assistance (ODA).

Part of the problem, he explained, was due to lack of country ownership, a problem not just in Pakistan, but in developing countries around the world. Currently, only 20-30% of of climate finance funds from the UN’s Green Climate Fund goes to local organizations — people on the ground with hands-on experience, who are directly impacted — while the rest goes to intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations or the World Bank. The number one barrier to sending money to local organisations is the lack of capacity. The local spaces are small, there aren't enough resources and expertise on the subject, and education programs are slow to change (midway through our call, he exclaimed, "where is climate finance as a course in any university?!"). And it's a shame, Haysam told us, because it contradicts the core principle of sustainable development: "Change is local, impact is global, and people should be given the technical expertise to implement the projects and scale them."

Change is local, impact is global, and people should be given the technical expertise to implement the projects and scale them.

Advice for Asian activists

When asked about advice, Haysam stressed, "activism can only do so much... it has raised awareness and pushed climate change to the forefront of the international agenda, but we now need to focus on the next step: ensuring that money is going to the right place." He believed activism should continue, but young people should not be distracted by it. Instead, they should focus on making tangible systemic changes, by being engaged in both the private and public sectors. He further believes that the future may lie at the intersection of the two – Public Private Partnerships.

[On activism] Young people need to tell the difference between real progress and greenwashing.

Moreover, he stressed the importance of the private sector in solving climate change. Big corporations are often seen as the evil ones behind climate change, but we cannot continue to exclude the private sector in the fight for a sustainable future, especially in developing countries in Asia where the public sector usually does not have enough fundings. Private sectors also allow for sustainable changes through a reliable stream of revenue rather than dependent on grants and charitable goodwill.

Money is the enabler of change, and the private sector is where it's at.

Future

Haysam in Iguazu in Argentina

In his final year at Minerva, Haysam is working on his undergraduate thesis: using blended finance to mobilize capital for climate adaptation and mitigation projects in developing countries. He told us that very few projects go to local institutions because of rampant corruption, a lack of capacity, and a lack of trust from international financing groups. His solution is to create national climate funds, with oversights from international development finances institutions, incorporating regional and national stakeholders as board members.

After he graduates, Haysam plans on attending graduate school, as he noted that the field of climate finance is closed to most undergrads. Eventually, he plans to return to Pakistan to work on climate finance and food security, another topic that he believes does not get enough attention. He also wants to convince more young brilliant people to work on climate finance, because its importance often gets overlooked in our conversations about climate solutions.

As we wrapped up our conversation, we felt inspired by all the work that Haysam has done, his convictions for tangible actions and tangible impacts, and his optimism that is rooted not in idealism, but concrete reality. We can't wait to see what Haysam will achieve in the future!

Want to talk to Haysam about climate finance? Connect with him on LinkedIn. To understand more about blended finance, you can also read a paper suggested by him here.

Written by Ha Tran Nguyen Phuong, interviewed by Ariane Desrosiers & Ha Tran Nguyen Phuong.