Justin Locke is the Managing Director of RMI’s Global South program. Justin also is responsible for international strategic partnerships and resource mobilization with the multilateral and bilateral community at RMI.
Justin previously held the position of Infrastructure (Disaster Risk Management) Specialist at the World Bank where he managed the Caribbean adaptation and infrastructure portfolio. Before his tenure at the World Bank, Justin worked for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the Pacific Region—holding the role of Development Specialist at the UNDP Regional Pacific Center based in Fiji which provides technical assistance to over 14 Pacific island countries. He also held the position of Community and Recovery Specialist for the UNDP Multi-Country Office based in Samoa where he managed the Polynesian sub-region portfolio.
MPA, Public Administration in International Management, Monterey Institute of International Studies
BA, University of California, Davis
Washington, D.C.
The Republic of Kiribati is disappearing. The group of 33 Pacific Islands, home to more than 100,000 people, is one of the most vulnerable nations in the world to climate change. As the islands average only six feet above sea level, they are the proverbial canary in the coal…
The Global South is pissed off. And rightly so. Developing countries have borne the brunt of climate change and now COVID-19 related health impacts and economic contractions. While the Global North is ready to move onto a post-pandemic era, most countries in the Global South are still battling the pandemic…
One of the key recommendations of this report is to ensure inclusive multi-stakeholder collaboration. This entails communicating clear market signals to suppliers and upstream equipment providers and coordinating closely among practitioners and installers.
Distributed energy resources (DERs) bring multiple benefits not only to electricity systems but also to communities and economies. Many islands in the Caribbean are transitioning from electricity systems that are traditionally centralized in nature and powered by fossil fuels to a new paradigm incorporating DERs.
In 1976, RMI co-founder Amory Lovins wrote “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?”, which outlined his proposal for a “soft energy pathway” for global security. In an era defined by large centralized electricity generation—primarily powered by coal and nuclear energy in the United States—where power was transmitted hundreds of miles…
This blog post was adapted from a keynote presentation given at the Pacific Power Association Annual Conference and was originally posted on Virgin.com. I was in Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, in 2010, after the island of Aitutaki—just a few kilometers south of…
Last week, Hurricane Irma ripped through the Caribbean with devastating fury. Its 185-mph winds smashed buildings, downed trees and power lines, overturned trucks, and tossed boats ashore like toys. Its storm surges turned streets into raging rivers and flooded whole communities. Irma, the strongest Category 5 hurricane on record in…
When most people think about Caribbean islands, they envision white sand beaches and coral reefs. But for people like us who work on combatting climate change, what first comes to mind are rising sea levels, extreme storms, eroding coastlines, and other consequences that these islands face. They are on the…
Energy systems that incorporate renewables can lead to a lower cost system.
This guide was developed to provide healthcare administrators in the Caribbean islands the resources necessary to find energy savings for their facilities, finance those savings, and follow through with the activities necessary to realize those savings. The guide has an accompanying website (www.hospitalretrofits.org) that serves as an easy-to-use tool to…