We have already revealed that the HSBC is funding £75 billion worth of fossil fuel projects worldwide. And it is no secret that these projects are not only the cause of the displacement of entire villages and local environmental degradation – but also of accelerating CO2 emissions that are already causing catastrophic changes to the climate. What remains a secret is the level of CO2 emissions HSBC is responsible for through its funding of companies and fossil fuel projects.
You don’t have to search for long to find examples of devastating consequences of projects funded by HSBC money. Just take a look at the Niger Delta in Nigeria where Shell’s presence as the biggest and most destructive multinational oil corporation is devastating the local environment, breaking human rights, and providing no benefits for the local environment.
Look at the mining of tar sands in Canada which has not only destroyed vast amount of lands and displaced local communities – as the world’s biggest industrial project, it also has the capacity to emit twice as much CO2 as has been emitted in human history so far.
Or take a look at Madagascar where Total oil has secured the rights for mining even more tar sand despite the catastrophic consequences this will have for local...
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Guest blogger Mara Budgen compares the battle to regulate food speculation with European action to protect bees by banning neonicotinoid pesticides.
After two inconclusive votes in the European Parliament, the European Commission stepped in to approve a two-year ban (opposed by the UK) on the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. A European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) report, as well as many independent studies, urged such action on account of mounting scientific evidence that the pesticides pose a significant danger to bee populations.
Bees, as well as other pollinators, are an essential part of global food production, as they’re responsible for three quarters of all crop pollination. In fact, the decline in populations of such insects is a matter of concern for the entire agricultural sector (and, consequently, also for us).
Who knew that such a small gesture has a huge impact on the food we eat? Photo: Synapse
The EU’s decision to impose a moratorium on the use of...
If you walk down the high-street you will find them. Even though they are mostly associated with the City of London, they are present in towns and cities across the UK. Banks speculating on food are present from town centres to government corridors – and so we must be, if we want to challenge them.
Food speculation has been identified as a key cause of hunger as it drives up food prices, making food inaccessible to the world’s poorest while making profits for the world’s richest.
Thousands of people have already taken action to help bankers quit their addiction to gambling on food, through our five step programme.
With our campaign we have pushed Barclays, one of the biggest speculators in food, to admit the damaging effects and pull out of some types of speculation. However, the bank still continues to facilitate speculation by pension funds and other financial players. If we want to curb food speculation, we need to campaign where the banks are – from the corridors of power in Brussels to your local high-street. There is an urgent need for tough EU regulation on food speculation, and...
Campaigners in Tanzania have called on their government not to repay $61.5 million to the World Bank on loans for a water project which yielded ‘no positive results’.
The Dar es Salaam water supply and sanitation project, which lasted from 2003 to 2010, also included loans of $48 million from the African Development Bank and $34 million from the European Investment Bank. The loans are due to begin being repaid later this year.
A condition of the loans, as well as debt relief for Tanzania, was the privatisation of Dar es Salaam's water. City Water, a consortium which included Biwater from the UK and HP Gauff Inegnieure GmbH from Germany, began operating Dar es Salaam’s water in 2003. However, as the World Bank says, City Water “was unable to meet many of its targets and obligations from the start”. One of the reasons was because shareholders failed to invest promised equity. In May 2005, fearing that City Water was about to collapse, the Dar es Salaam water authority terminated their contract, and on 1 June the company’s three British managers were deported.
In 2007, a UN arbitration ruled that...
I love food. So I remember being really excited in late 2009 when I heard that WDM was planning a campaign on food. At the time I didn’t work for WDM, but was a member of the South West London group.
Six months or so later, the campaign launched with a bang as our first report, The Great Hunger Lottery, was published the day after the infamous ‘choc finger’ incident, with which a hedge fund pushed cocoa prices to a 33-year high. The company in question, Armajaro, had bought up virtually the entire European cocoa supply via the futures market – vividly illustrating the damaging impacts of profit-hungry speculators.
Since I joined WDM as a full time campaigner at the start of 2011, we’ve come a long way towards achieving our aim of securing European regulation that will adequately curb food speculation and prevent it...
Yesterday was the Barclays AGM in London. Together with two of my colleagues I went inside to ask the board of directors why they continue to help institutional investors to speculate on food, even though they are well aware that this pushes prices up and forces people into hunger.
The AGM is hosted at the grandiose Royal Festival Hall in central London. After passing the initial airport-like security checks and registering our questions we queue up in front of the big hall. The nearest security guard informs us that a protest is taking place outside the venue.
A group of World Development Movement campaigners are outside dressed up as blue Barclays eagles. Both shareholders and journalists will have to pass them to get in here.
We are some of the first people to get into the grand hall where the AGM will take place. We want to make sure that we get an opportunity to ask our questions. While we wait for the ‘show’ to start, I get a text informing us that since yesterday almost 1,500 people have emailed Antony Jenkins, Barclays’ CEO, in the last 24 hours asking him to withdraw completely...
This morning, campaigners from WDM protested outside the Barclays AGM in London, as well asking some questions about Barclays' continued involvement in food speculation inside.
Here are some photos of the protest and a feed of tweets from campaigners inside the meeting.
Find out more about our campaign to stop all banks betting on food - and take action by joining Bankers Anonymous, a five-step programme to help all bankers quit their addiction to gambling on hunger.
I am gathered with around 20 other protesters from four different continents outside the AGM of Anglo-American, a global mining corporation responsible for depriving thousands of people of their land and livelihood, ruining the health of workers in their mines, as well as enormous contributions to climate change. To put it bluntly, they ‘reap’ their profits of other people’s misery.
That is why I am dressed up as the Grim Reaper. I’m representing a company built on destruction and misery. A company that recently proposed to divert a major river in Colombia to feed its coal production. And a company that continuously refuses to pay compensation to the thousands of miners in South Africa suffering from silicosis.
...
Earlier this week, the price of gold dropped 15 per cent in just two days. Gold prices haven’t fallen so sharply since Margaret Thatcher’s first term as prime minister. Some have argued that the decline is due to expectations of greater gold supplies due to Cyprus having to sell off some its gold reserves to pay for its bailout. But Cypriot gold reserves are relatively small, so it’s hard to see how this provides the explanation for such a major nosedive in price.
Photo credit: hto2008
A more convincing explanation relates to the way in which gold is considered to hold its value, meaning that it’s an attractive investment for those looking to avoid their wealth losing value over time. But now it’s been suggested that speculators have been deciding to stop buying up gold (or more accurately, gold contracts – they don't get their hands on the metal itself)...
Tomorrow, 17 April, is international peasant struggle day. This day is for celebrating peasant and small farmer movements across the world, each one fighting for a food system that respects human rights rather than making them subservient to private profit. This day has been heralded by the international food sovereignty movement as a day to take action and raise awareness about the problems with, and alternatives to, a corporate-run and over-industrialised food system.
Currently, however, it is still food security that holds the main stage when it comes to national and international research and policy-making. The food security banner remains as the undertone to the IF campaign , the latest major joint NGO action on food, and has made its place onto most social science syllabuses and the agendas of countless policy centres.
Harmful chemical fertilisers are key to food security - Photo credit: soil science
At the World Food Summit in 1996, food security was defined as "when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe...
Yesterday morning in central London was a morning like any other. It was a morning of world leaders and business executives developing new ways of destroying our planet for profit. But it was also a morning of an increasingly global protest against greed and environmental destruction.
Basically yesterday morning it all came down to this: The US government is reviewing plans to construct the ‘Keystone XL’ pipeline that will transport monstrous amounts of oil from Canadian tar sands through the US. If this happens, a handful of people will become immensely rich – while thousands will see their homes destroyed and millions if not billions will be affected by the resulting catastrophic climate change.
The tar sands project is the largest industrial project in human history and it has the potential of emitting twice as much CO2 as has been released so far in human history. It is moving beyond breaking records to breaking our planet. In Canada, where the tar sands are extracted, things look even bleaker. Immense areas of land are destroyed, water sources are polluted, and the indigenous population face health risks and displacement.
That is why I, along with nearly 100 other people,...
Today’s Guardian website features an article about “food crime” mentioning thieves who stole five tonnes of Nutella in Germany as a key example. But at the same time, food prices remain at close to record levels as bankers speculate on food, resulting in falling living standards in the UK and in hunger elsewhere. It makes you wonder: What is the real food crime here? Depriving a few people of Nutella or forcing millions into starvation?
Personally, I am in no doubt that global hunger is a more urgent issue than some missing chocolate spread, and that it should therefore be a main priority to solve the problem of bankers’ apparent addiction to gambling on food. Unfortunately the UK government seems to be of a different opinion.
On average, treasury ministers are wined and dined by bankers or financial lobbyists every ten days. And the result? The UK is currently trying to water down new EU regulations restrict food speculation. We need to change that.
Now it is time for you to dine with the Treasury
This week we’ve launched step four of our Bankers Anonymous campaign in the fight to cure bankers of their addition to gambling on food. Of course we ‘common people’ do not have the privilege of inviting treasury ministers for dinner to...
The World Development Movement recently hosted Tatiana Roa Avendaño, an activist resisting the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia. Watch the video below to see what she said about Cerrejón when she visited Anglo American's headquarters.
Cerrejón is a giant open-pit coal mine in La Guajira, northern Colombia. The mine is jointly owned by three of the world's largest mining companies; London-listed Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Xstrata. Tatiana told us about how the Colombian government has presented Cerrejón as an example of responsible mining. However this is far from the truth. The Cerrejón mine is located in Wayúu indigenous territory and when mining began 30 years ago local people were not consulted. Instead their lands were seized and communities were forcibly displaced, violating their constitutional land rights. The Colombian government has failed to adequately compensate any of the affected communities.
Pollution and dust from the coal mine has caused the contamination of...
For all those who knew her, I am writing to let you know the sad news that Sarah Berger, a dedicated WDM campaigner and fellow member of the Brighton and Hove WDM group, passed away on 23 March, after a long battle against cancer.
She was an amazing campaigner and wonderful person. Words used to describe her have included: determined, wise, articulate, intelligent, passionate, committed, dramatic, practical, organised, courageous, media-savvy, upbeat and positive. I knew her from being a fellow activist at Brighton and Hove WDM and as a friend. Here’s some of the stuff that she did:
Sarah once appeared in the press as a grandmother pretending to row a boat to Genoa for the G8 protests, she dressed up as a first-aid box for a London march, crashed to the floor with a “debt-laden” sack in a tug of war, dressed all in white as a goal post in an unfair football match or as a trade barrier in Churchill Square, her theatricality was there for all to see.
At the various demos, stunts and marches she was always ready to carry a banner, keen to use a megaphone and prepared to argue with establishment lackeys (e.g. at climate marches, RBS...
During the last couple of weeks WDM supporters from all over the country have written to their local newspapers as part of the Bankers Anonymous campaign. As a result, readers’ letters about food speculation have been published across the UK sending a strong message that food is for eating, not for bankers’ profit. This is helping to increase the pressure on MPs and MEPs to support new tougher European regulations to help bankers beat their habit of gambling on hunger.
In the Bradford Telegraph and Argus Heather Grinter writes, "High food prices are a serious problem across the world. People on lower incomes in the UK are having to cut back their weekly grocery shopping, while in poorer countries high food prices can be a matter of life and death."
And in the ...
Photo credit: kholkute
The World Bank has just released its latest statistics on global food prices. The message, although determinedly optimistic, is still one that depicts shocking price increases for a large part of the world. While overall it seems that the price of internationally traded food has slightly fallen between October 2012 and February 2013, food prices are still very high and close to their historical peaks, just 9% below the all time high recorded in August 2012.
Though prices have dropped recently, the international prices of grains in February 2013 remained well above those of a year ago: wheat prices in February 2013 were 15% higher than in February 2012. Maize prices stood 8% higher than a year ago, and rice prices 5% higher than in February 2012.
A closer look at the statistics and it becomes clear that many countries in the global south are still experiencing disastrous price rises. Here are a few of the key facts:
Since October 2012:
- Wheat prices in Brazil and Bolivia rose by 13% and 11%
- Wheat prices in some markets in Pakistan increased by 14% and in Mumbai, India, they...
I can bet that a trip into the depths of the financial heartland of the UK is not on most people’s plans this weekend. Come Saturday morning the square mile is eerily deserted, void of the men in suits shuffling between mysterious glistening buildings. This murky establishment has dominated the capital for hundreds of years, yet the actions and history of the City of London remain largely unearthed in the public consciousness. But with the coalition’s cuts biting into yet another chunk of welfare spending, the link between this institution and the financial crisis is becoming more and more important to explain. This Saturday 6 April, you have the perfect opportunity to find out more!
Outside Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. Photo courtesy of http://www.MaxColson.com
In a highly commended venture of popular education, a group of ordinary people have set up an educational walking tour in an attempt to open up this secret institution to the full glare of the public. The tour’s main purpose is teach people more about the City of London’s links to the financial crisis in 2008, but also to...
I have spent this week at the World Social Forum in Tunis. It’s been a slightly chaotic week of overrunning schedules, last minute room changes and broken translated equipment, but in spite of some frustrations, it is undeniably an incredible feat of organisation.
Run by a group of activists, with no office or paid staff, the World Social Forum has still succeeded in brining together thousands of activists – some reports say as many as 70,000 – together from around the world to discuss where we’re at in the quest for real solutions to the poverty, inequality and injustice we see in the world today.
The main slogan of the World Social Forum ‘Another World is Possible’ – a slogan made real by movements from the host country Tunisia who overthrew a dictatorship two years ago. People have travelled from across the world to discuss what that looks like, and how to work towards it.
One of the key questions I’ve been focusing on here is around how we should move forward in the struggle with climate justice, given the deepening...
Today is the twentieth World Water Day. But for over a billion people who still lack access to sufficient safe clean drinking water, there’s little to celebrate.
WDM's campaigning against water privatisation in the 2000s saw a number of successes, ultimately ensuring that UK aid money supported pro-poor public water utilities rather than privatisation and higher prices. Since then, there have also been victories closer to home, with Italian voters rejecting water privatisation in 2011.
But there’s still a long way to go. In the pan-European region alone, more than 110 million people, representing 12 per cent of the population, still lack access to drinking water.
This year sees an important opportunity. Across Europe, civil society groups and unions are joining forces as part of a ‘European Citizen’s Initiative’, a type of EU-wide petition, calling for the European commission to formally recognise water and sanitation as human rights, to stop pushing for the privatisation of water...
Last month we launched Bankers Anonymous – a five step recovery programme to help bankers quit their addiction to gambling on food. So far we've asked people to take two steps: to write to their MP and to spread the word on twitter and Facebook. Now it's time for step three.
Politicians from all parties monitor their local newspapers because they want to find out what their constituents care about. We want to get food speculation into the local press to make it an issue that can't be ignored.
Europe’s finance ministers will be agreeing new rules to tackle food speculation soon, but these could easily be scuppered by the UK government's opposition to tough regulation.
Lets continue to keep up the pressure by getting the media talking about this.
This week I was proud to represent WDM at the launch of MLK50 at the House of Commons.
MLK50 is an initiative that has been set up by BARAC (Black Activists Rising Against Cuts). BARAC was set up in response to the cuts to, and privatisation of, our public services that has been driven by the neoliberal ideology of the Con-Dem government as a result of the economic crisis.
Like WDM, but working on a national level, BARAC have been highlighting and campaigning against the devastating impact the neoliberal economic agenda has on the most vulnerable members of society. As WDM has been fighting against a similarly-led agenda that the UK government has been forcing onto countries in the global south, so BARAC have been fighting the austerity agenda forced on UK citizens. Both groups are opposed to the economic injustice visited on the most vulnerable members of society by unfair and discriminatory systems and both organisations offer alternative visions for fairer systems.
The MLK50 campaign calls for ‘Equality in our Lifetime’ and, on...
Economic growth rates in many African countries have soared in recent years. But real development is still sorely lacking argues Rick Rowden in this guest post for our blog
Recent high growth rates and increased foreign investment in Africa have given rise to the popular idea that the continent may well be on track to become the next global economic powerhouse. A recent cover story in the Economist for instance pointed to Africa’s recent high GDP growth rates, rising per capita incomes and the explosive growth of mobile phones and mobile phone banking as evidence that Africa is ‘developing’. It also cited the growth in the number of African billionaires and the increase in Africa’s trade with the rest of the world.
But these indicators only give a partial picture. Rich countries figured out long ago that if economies are not moving out of dead-end activities that only provide diminishing returns over time (primary agriculture and extractive activities such as mining, logging and fisheries) and into activities that provide increasing returns over time (manufacturing and services), then you can’t really say they are developing.
What’s not mentioned in this and similar articles is the disturbing absence of manufacturing in Africa and...
On Tuesday evening I attended a Jubilee Debt Campaign protest in central London to draw attention to a shady vulture fund circling Argentina. Vulture funds buy up debts that are weak or dying and attempt to cash them when they default, making millions off the back of economic crises and exascerbating the conditions that perpetuate poverty, while hampering the state's ability to provide any remedy.
Packing pots and pans, we made our presence impossible to ignore, and informed bewildered passersby of the unscrupulous actions of these predatory speculators. The element of noise was inspired by Argentine protests and not only proved to be an attention-grabbing tactic but also had the benefit of keeping us moderately warm on an unremittingly cold February evening.
We gathered to support Argentina’s rights to refuse payment to the vulture funds, condemn the decision of the New York court which implied that the payment to vulture funds supersedes a state’s right to protect its people, and to support a debt audit to determine the extent of Argentina’s illegitimate debt.
Last November a US court ruled that Argentina must pay over $...
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) reported a £5.2 billion loss as it announced its annual results today The bank’s boss Stephen Hester is four years into his original five-year plan to bring RBS back on track – yet things don’t seem to be getting much better for the publicly owned bank. RBS blames a year of heavy fines. But let’s just remind ourselves of what these fines were:
PPI: The bank knowingly mis-sold its customers insurance which they neither needed nor could use, over a period of years. Fine: £2.2 billion
Libor: The bank illegally manipulated a crucial interest rate to benefit itself whilst negatively affecting mortgage payers in the UK (and elsewhere). Fine: £391 million
Oily bankers: Protest at RBS's 2011 AGM in Edinburgh
Bankers this year have been rewarded for doing a ‘good job’. Bonus pot: £600,000 million
Some pretty significant figures that the bank should never have been in a position to pay.
If the RBS was really making headway to being sustainable and acting in the interest...
Deutsche Bank is one of the world’s leading players in food speculation. In public it denies that excessive speculation is one of the key drivers of recent food price spikes, but in private it has known it for years. Yesterday, German NGO Foodwatch pointed to Deutsche documents showing that the bank is fully aware of the impacts of excessive speculation on food prices and global hunger.
This case of corporate deception adds weight to the case for regulating the banks. Withdrawing from food speculation isn’t enough. Here’s why:
Profits before public interest
During the food price spikes of recent years, Deutsche was aware of the impacts that speculation can have on food prices. In 2009, a paper from the bank’s research department admitted, "Speculation has also contributed to...
On 10 February, WDM helped organise the first regional food sovereignty meeting in the south west. Food sovereignty advocates that the people who produce, distribute and consume food at the centre of decisions on food systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations that they believe have come to dominate the global food system.
This was the first big meeting since the national gathering at OrganicLea on the outskirts of London last July, and it aimed to strengthen regional networks of the food sovereignty movement and make national planning more accessible to people outside of London.
The meeting attracted over 40 people from across the South West, which is testament to the vibrant community food networks alive in the region. There was a lot of energy to coordinate actions, public education materials and events in the South West, including a festival in the summer of 2014 (either in the South West or nationally). There was also an idea to start working on a regional food charter.
It was also agreed to plan an action for 17 April to tie in with the...
Cameron’s announcement today that some of the aid budget should be diverted to peace-keeping should come as no surprise. After the multi-lateral aid review was completed two years ago, the direction was written on the wall, as the World Development Movement pointed out at the time.
DFID cut aid spending to aid agencies that support agricultural development in favour of emergency relief, and reduced anti-poverty programmes in some of the poorest countries, like Niger, Angola or Cambodia in favour of countries deemed to be a high security risk.
This is short-term thinking at its worst. The best way to combat insecurity and encourage peace is to spend money on health, education and ensuring greater equity for the world’s poorest. Economic insecurity is exactly what puts countries at risk over the longer-term. If we divert aid spending away, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Cameron’s spurious direction points out why the target of 0.7 per cent being spent on aid is irrelevant if we’re not keeping watch on how aid is being spent in the first place. While the target is important in maintaining our commitment for greater wealth equity...
Yesterday was the end of a European conference against debt and austerity being held in Thessaloniki, Greece. The conference was organised by the recently established International Citizen Debt Audit Network (ICAN), which advocates public audits of national debt to determine what is illegitimate and shouldn't be paid - a model used successfully in Ecuador to achieve a measure of social justice. Delegates from across Europe are also taking the opportunity to meet Greeks and see for themselves the terrible poverty into which they are now being thrown as a result of the austerity meted out by EU institutions and the International Monetary Fund.
Nick Dearden, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign in the UK, has been blogging about it all on the ICAN website. In the blog post below he draws some parallels with Greece and the experience of Latin America in previous decades:
We met three people today who summed up the depth of the crisis being experienced by Greek people, but also the courageous attempts to build a new, more democratic society. I had to pinch myself to remember I was in Europe, the stories are...
“There are absolutely thousands of undiagnosed gambling addicts in the City. The difference is that the odds are slightly more in your favour than if you're gambling in a Ladbrokes, and so there are many more people who can be successful gambling addicts." Unnamed trader, quoted in the Guardian
Back in November, the story of Kweku Adobol, the trader who lost UBS £1.5 billion, spilled out of the financial pages and into the mainstream limelight. There was shock at how a trader’s gambling addiction can wreak such massive damage. The story also revealed to the outside world just how widespread addiction to gambling is behind the trading desks of investment banks. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Traders are incentivised by a bonus structure which rewards risk-taking with big cash pay-outs, and are cushioned by the confidence that if their...
Along with its annual results yesterday, Barclays revealed its new strategic plan to haul the bank from the pits of public disdain. As part of its new direction, Barclays – the UK’s leading commodities speculator - announced it is pulling out of food speculation. After three years of public campaigning and calling on the bank to stop betting on hunger, this is very exciting news!
Barclays had a massive PR job on its hands to mend its toxic reputation, earned from the Libor rate scam, the PPI mis-selling scandal and the interest-rate swaps rip-off of small businesses. It could have left its agricultural commodities division untouched. But it couldn't afford to ignore commodities.
Why? Well with three years of protests outside its local branches, protests outside and inside its AGM, media stories exposing Barclays’ leading...
At 11.34am on Tuesday 22 January, more than 260,000 of us who had campaigned for a radical Robin Hood tax had big news: we had won.
Even the EU head of tax admitted that we made "tax history". I think that's a bit like making history, but with more paperwork and probably less fun. To be honest, I don't know: as far as I'm aware I've done no "making history" to compare it to. There was that time I made a lego statue for my grandma and she said I'd truly made history, but I think she was just being nice.
We deserve to celebrate being one of the hundreds of thousands of grassroots optimists who wrote to our MPs, shared links on Facebook and dressed up as Robin Hood on marches. Strong public pressure forced 11 EU countries, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, to seek - and win - the green light to introduce a tiny financial transaction tax. This tax of less than 1 per cent could raise £29.3 billion a year. There's still a lot to be done before we've truly won, though: we need the tax in more countries, including here in the UK, and along with 127 coalition partners, the...
A guest blog by Kate Griffin from Oxford WDM.
If the world produces enough food to feed everybody, how come hundreds of millions of people don’t get enough to eat? Last night’s film screening made it clear that the problem is with food distribution rather than production.
Growing Change is a documentary about Venezuela’s food revolution with an inspiring message. Despite the rainy January weather, nearly 70 people came to the screening, which was organised by Oxford World Development Movement (WDM).
We learnt that Venezuela used to be a victim of its own success; after tapping into enormous oil wealth, it was no longer worth it economically for the country to grow its own food. Instead, it began heavy reliance on imports, an all-too-common phenomenon apparently known as the “Dutch disease”. It happens when countries see food supply in purely economic terms. But reliance on imports makes a country vulnerable to global food shocks.
Global free-market economics isn’t good for small producers either. Cocoa producers told stories of buyers holding off until supplies were piled up and money was low. Then the buyers could turn up and use their stronger position to negotiate a lower...
When the Independent referred to FTSE 100 company Vedanta Resources as the world’s most hated company, it wasn’t joking. Two and half years and later, the mining company is still sparking protests on several continents over its human rights abuses and environmentally destructive operations.
Vedanta's mine would destroy the home of the Dongria Kondh. © Lewis Davids/Survival
Most infamously, Vedanta wants to mine for bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills in the Indian state of Odisha, despite the determined resistance of the Dongria Kondh indigenous people who live in the hills. The Dongria, for whom Niyamgiri is sacred, say the mine would destroy their forests and rivers and their way of life.
Vedanta has already built a bauxite refinery at the foot of the Niyamgiri Hills, causing pollution and disease, and taking away the homes of more than one hundred families.
Last week saw anti-Vedanta protests by indigenous people and farmers in Odisha mirrored by demonstrations...
The UK government is yet again undermining grassroots poverty alleviation by channelling UK aid towards huge agribusiness. The Hunger Games, a report recently published by War on Want, criticises the Department for International Development (DfID) for working with the ‘who’s who’ of agrochemical and GM seed companies including Monsanto, Unilever and Syngenta.
In coalition with these companies, DfID is funding dodgy agricultural initiatives such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). This initiative in particular seeks to “trigger a uniquely African green revolution” by promoting networks of GM seed and agrochemical providers to small farmers.
The companies working beneath this banner, posing under a guise of African development, are seeking to extend their reach over emerging markets in countries like Malawi. Monsanto, a company that originally made its money from making chemical weapons but has now switched to agrochemicals, has openly declared its intention to control all of Malawi’s 30,000 tonne seed market. This transition, if it was allowed to happen, would decimate traditional seed markets, and lock local farmers further into a dependency on foreign inputs....
If you overdid it a bit on sweet treats over the festive period, you might have decided to go easy on them for a while. But campaigners in Cambodia are calling for more decisive action as land grabbing for industrial sugarcane plantations has been robbing communities of their land, homes and livelihoods.
Two million hectares - 12 per cent of the country’s landmass – have now been granted to private companies for industrial agriculture, with sugarcane one of the leading crops. At least 75,000 hectares of land have granted to private companies for industrial sugarcane production, with over 12,000 people estimated to have been affected by human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by the companies involved.
When the companies involved have arrived, local people’s homes and harvests have been burned down. The majority of people affected have land-based livelihoods, so the loss of land has pushed families into poverty, leaving them unable to afford school costs or hospital births for their children. The land that has...
The green promises have turned toxic.
And in Ben Jennings’ depiction, so too have Cameron and Osborne.
David Cameron made the headlines back in 2006, visiting the Arctic and posing for photos with huskies to prove his green credentials.
But 2012 has been the year that finally put the nail in the coffin of the Conservatives’ promises to be the greenest government ever.
We’ve seen Tory MPs openly calling for the Climate Change Act to be scrapped. We’ve seen George Osborne pushing for more money for oil and gas at the expense of renewable energy. We’ve seen David Cameron veto the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate...
Dan Iles takes a look at the latest World Bank food price figures.
The recent World Bank’s quarterly Food Price Watch, released this November, yet again paints a concerning picture in terms of continued high food prices across the world. Worryingly, the World Bank recognises a new norm of high and volatile food prices but still refuses to mention any reference to food speculation and the actions of financial institutions.
Key points:
- International food prices remain close to all-time highs. Food prices in October are still 7% higher than a year ago, and the prices of grains remain particularly high. Prices of grains are 12% above their levels 12 months ago and very close to the all-time high observed in 2008
- The national price of wheat increased by 27% in Tajikstan between July and September
- Countries reliant of US exports of maize are still very vulnerable to price fluctuations. The price of maize in Haiti and Honduras went up by 28% and 19% respectively between July and September
- The World Bank...
During the first week of the UN Climate talks in Doha, campaigners from Kingston and Richmond World Development Movement group met with Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, to discuss the government’s contributions to climate finance. As WDM members, the group were concerned that the UK is pushing developing countries deeper into debt through climate loans.
Members of WDM Richmond and Kingston WDM local group present Ed Davey with paper ‘chains of debt’
The group delivered paper ‘chains of debt’ to Ed Davey, with handwritten messages from constituents asking him to ensure that the UK’s climate policies do not drive the world’s most vulnerable people deeper into poverty.
It is the world’s poorest people who are suffering the worst effects of climate change, and it is wealthy countries like the UK who are overwhelmingly responsible for the emissions causing the damage. We owe those worst effected by climate change a large ‘climate debt’.
The UK government has been contributing to the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds (CIFs). One of these funds,...
Guest blog by WDM ally Lidy Nacpil, from the Jubilee South Movement on Debt and Development Asia Pacific, writing from the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar.
I arrived in Doha on 2 December for the second week of the UN climate negotiations, to find that no progress has been made on the critical issues that should be resolved at this meeting. I didn’t find this surprising. My direct experiences with the last five annual UN climate talks before Doha have shown a clear effort by many of the rich, industrialised countries – ‘developed countries’ in UN language – to evade compliance with their obligations under the Climate Convention and their legally binding agreements to take urgent and immediate action to address the climate crisis and prevent it from reaching catastrophic levels.
It is no wonder that some climate justice activists are now refusing to get involved in the battles taking place in the context of the international negotiations. The odds are heavily stacked against the rights and interests of the majority of people all over the world, especially those from the South - from the ‘developing and least developing countries’ - who are the most vulnerable to the devastating impacts of the crisis.
Many of us do still choose to fight in the...
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2013
Two years of concerted campaigning by WDM results in Barclays, the UK's biggest player in food speculation and one of the top three globally, announcing that it will no longer trade in food for speculative purposes.
2012
Following a prolonged campaign by a coalition of Scottish NGOs and local pressure groups including WDM Scotland, plans for a new coal-fired power station in Hunterston, North Ayrshire are shelved.
2011
After concerted lobbying by WDM supporters, French oil company Total postpones plans to mine tar sands deposits in one of the poorest regions of Madagascar.
2011
The UK government puts £10 million of its climate finance towards the UN Adaptation Fund, and agrees to give the majority of its funds to the World Bank's climate adaptation fund as grants rather than loans.