World Development Movement blog

The Rio+20 conference on sustainable development taking place at the end of June 2012 bills itself as an opportunity for people to come together to "shape how we can reduce poverty, advance social equity and ensure environmental protection". Sounds great, but here at the World Development Movement we're a bit sceptical about some of these claims (to say the least). I suspect some of you are too. 

On Monday I went to an event organised by the UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, on the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Held at St-Martin-in-the-Fields church in London, it was advertised as a public debate bringing together MPs, faith groups and civil society. 

Last week’s Queen’s Speech saw a glaring omission – the failure to include a key coalition promise to enshrine into law the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of our gross national income on development aid. 

Author Tim Gee will be speaking at our Scottish campaigner convention on the 19th May. Here he talks to WDM Scotland about his new book on the history of social movements across the globe - Counterpower: Making Change Happen - and how history has shaped his own global justice campaigning.

Among the many participants at Corporate Europe Observatory’s EU in Crisis conference this weekend were a host of WDM allies – people we’ve campaigned with against water privatisation, on climate justice and on debt cancellation. This time they were coming together with other organisation and movement representatives to debate the Eurozone crisis and organise against the dead hand of austerity and corporate capture which is gripping the continent.

Shareholders attending the Barclays AGM in London on Friday were greeted by the World Development Movement’s two ‘evil eagle’ bankers on Barclays bikes as they entered the meeting, and our chants of ‘one two three four, Bank on hunger no more!’, and ‘speculation means starvation, what we need is regulation!’. Catchy, huh?

The World Development Movement's food and finance campaigner Christine Haigh reports on attempts by rich countries to silence the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the UN body providing an alternative perspective on the global economy.