World Development Movement blog

Howard Reed

The recently published report A Bank for the Future by James Leaton and myself recommends that the government should reform RBS into a Green Investment Bank to provide financial support for the UK's transition to a low carbon economy. In the report we argue that the alternative to a Green Investment Bank – carrying on with 'business as usual' – risks imposing huge costs on the UK economy, in terms of making it more vulnerable to future systemic financial crises of the type that almost brought down the entire banking system.

Tim Jones

Politicians break promises. We are told it is naïve to think otherwise. However, society can only function through the making of promises. It is how we collectively agree to work together.

WDM campaigners James O’Nions and Caroline Griffin are in Kenya to research the effects of food price rises on ordinary Kenyans. James reports on their first visit to Kibera, the huge slum on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Over the weekend we visited Makueni, a market town about two and a half hours drive to the south of Nairobi. Driving first down the main road to Mombassa, then turning off to pass through the regional centre of Machakos, we arrived in Makueni after dark with the crickets signing to us. In the big cities, great poverty nestles next to relative wealth, but the further you go into the countryside, the more poverty keeps its own company.

Ingredients
1 full page article in the Guardian newspaper
1 interview on BBC Radio 4 Today programme
1 interview on BBC Newsnight
10 articles across other newspapers
31 articles online
900 sign ups to a phone action,
65 comments on our website

Take all the ingredients and combine well to create heat and froth.

Kate Blagojevic

Today, we launched a report showing how banks speculate on foods causing their price to rocket, increasing hunger in developing countries. Yesterday the Mail on Sunday revealed that a hedge fund bought over 250,000 tonnes of cocoa beans, a move designed to make millions for the hedge fund but losses for people in the UK who are partial to a Twix or farmers in developing countries who are finding it impossible to plan what to grow when the prices are rising and falling like a yo-yo.

I’m really pleased to see that journalist and art critic Johann Hari, described by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain, wrote a piece for the Independent last week urging people appalled about bankers speculating on food prices and causing hunger to get involved in WDM’s food speculation campaign. The article was circulated widely on the internet, including being passed on by Stephen Fry, and also appeared in the Huffington Post on Saturday.