Policy, Power & People: Why Climate Strategies Still Fail
This intense and deeply reflective panel, moderated by Peter Goldmark, unpacks the critical failures and future pathways within global policy frameworks designed to address climate action and energy equity. Featuring Raihan Elahi (ESMAP), Gurbuz Gonul (IRENA) and Richenda Van Leeuwen (Hummingbird Green Solutions) the discussion confronts how policies are failing to meet the needs of 685 million people still living without electricity and how policy inertia, financing gaps, and mismatched incentives continue to block real progress.
Speakers shared personal and professional stories of failure, from electrifying health centers that go dark within two years due to lack of O&M budgets, to global climate strategies derailed by political inertia. The conversation illuminated systemic flaws such as regulatory capture, donor short-sightedness, investor misalignment, and technocratic myopia that prioritize optics and metrics over human needs. The speakers called for an urgent realignment from top-down planning to grounded, people-first approaches that prioritize long-term sustainability over flashy numbers.
