Consultancy for the Launch of the Asia Regional Study on Just Energy Transition

Summary of Vacancy:

• Program: Fair Finance Asia (FFA) Program
• Contract type: Short-term consultancy
• Consultancy period: September 2021 to November 2021
• Geographical coverage: Asia Regional, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan
• Key relationships/interactions: FFA Executive Team (ET), country and regional partners
• Commissioning manager: FFA Communication and Engagement Manager

The Program

The Fair Finance Asia (FFA) program is a five-year program funded by the Swedish Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. It is a network of civil society organizations in Asia working to ensure that financial institutions operating in Asia are transparent and accountable to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria in their business activities and investment decisions. FFA aspires to reduce inequality in Asia by creating an enabling policy environment for integration of social and environmental considerations among financial institutions (FIs) in the region and ensuring that FIs advance the interests and needs of local communities towards their well-being.

In 2021, FFA is finalizing a report aimed at highlighting the urgency for Asian financial institutions to stop coal financing, and instead prioritizing and contributing to a just energy transition in the region. The report also focuses on investments in thermal coal and will cover linkages with financial institutions, both within Asia and outside the region.

Through this consultancy, FFA seeks to communicate and amplify the message for Financial Institutions to move away from coal towards a just energy transition, and for the public to create a demand for the same.

Objectives & Scope Of Work

Designing of the report:

• Design the cover page and the inside pages (126 pages presently in Word format, with 115 Figures and 10 tables)
• Design a 4 pager Executive summary/ External Brief of the report
• The report needs to be designed in an aesthetic manner that is able to convey the major findings in a vibrant format

ATL and BTL Campaign:

• Based on the report design, develop and implement creative concepts and campaign
• For ATL campaigning, usage of blogs written by the FFA team and capturing of story lines to enable publication of the same on relevant online publications on finance and business. The consultant/ agency will work towards publishing these content on third party publications (finance and business sites); these third party publications can either be global and/ or regional and/or specific to that particular country

Digital:

• Social media marketing (Infographics, GIFs, and other promotional materials) and support to the FFA Executive Team to organize a twitter campaign
• Social media support by developing at least 5-8 Infographics, GIFs, and other promotional materials for all the eight FFA country coalitions so that a concerted social media campaign is possible
• Usage of online platforms to garner signatures of at least around 1000 people calling out to the COP 26/ G20 leadership to develop plans on ‘Just Transition’ in Asia

Monitor and evaluate the impact of the campaign

Target Group:

• General public
• COP 26 delegates
• Civil Society Organizations
• Asian Financial Institutions
• Media and online publications focused on finance

Campaign Asks:

Keeping in mind various channels of communications, FFA needs to ensure that the campaign story is simple yet inspiring. The main points of the campaign are below. While the first three are mainly asks from the Asian Financial Institutions, the key campaign ask is found in point 5.

1. Climate change is widespread, unprecedented, rapid, intensifying and irreversible (as seen in the IPCC report), and banks need to act now.
2. Financial institutions should further develop their climate change strategies into sectoral policies and strategies, especially for sectors with a high climate impact such as the fossil fuel sector, including the coal industry.
3. Financial institution should stop funding coal as soon as possible and they should actively look for possibilities to expand renewable energy generation in Asia. Financial Institutions in Asia need to move towards realizing a just transition based on key international principles, and work with stakeholders to promote and regulate an energy transition that protects the environment and respects human rights
4. Financial institutions should reorient their financing towards renewable energy innovation, while implementing strategies to exit from fossil fuels that are time bound and set clear objectives
5. Asian consumers and civil society should ensure that they demand their national governments to move towards a just energy transition

Deliverables:

• One report designed
• One 4-pager Executive summary/ External Brief of the report designed
• Infographics, GIFs and other promotional materials designed for a Twitter (Fair Finance Asia Twitter) campaign- number would depend on the campaign plan as deliberated by the agency (maximum up to 50)
• Infographics, GIFs and other promotional materials designed and developed highlighting the specific FFA country points so that countries can do a social media campaign for their specific country- number would depend on the campaign plan as deliberated by the agency
• Development and roll-out of an online petition that is promoted to get necessary signatories
• Exploring and enabling the press release/ media story to be carried out by relevant newspapers and online platforms. These third-party publications can either be global and/ or regional and/or specific to that particular country

Success Metrics:

• A well-designed report
• Actions (leads – people pledging support via web petition): 2000
• Digital reach: Over 1000 across social media platforms
• Media engagement: The story being carried out by at least 5 relevant global regional publications, and at least one publication in each pf the eight countries

Note:

• The agency will manage the social media postings of the campaign as well as marketing and promotion.
• The campaign will run for 15 days- November 1, 2021 till November 15, 2021.

For more details, please refer to the Terms of Reference at: https://bit.ly/3DDV6AH