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After months of delay, the new UN Green Climate Fund (GCF) had its first board meeting between 23-25 August.

The board is important, as it will play a key role in defining the future direction of the fund and determining whether the GCF will provide genuine and much needed climate finance to poor countries or be yet another clone of the hated World Bank and its Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) which have foisted debt on some of the world’s poorest countries.

Early indications are that the GCF may not be much better than the CIFs. Thanks to the influence of the UK and its allies, a large portion of the $100 billion (£63 billion) that rich countries have promised (but so far failed to deliver) to the fund may go directly to multinational corporations through a dubious ‘private sector facility’. This has led campaigners to call the GCF a ‘greedy corporate fund’.

The main decision taken by this meeting of the board was to elect Australia and South Africa as the co-chairs. This is not an encouraging sign as these countries don’t have a brilliant record on climate. Australia has refused to renew its commitments under the Kyoto protocol, which remains the only legally binding treaty on emissions reduction, while South Africa is in the process of building a huge coal...

The Rio+20 Earth Summit has been deservedly derided as a dismal failure. Industrialised countries refused to commit to allocating a single additional penny to help poorer countries move towards a green economy, and the final agreement was nothing more than a reaffirmation of previous commitments.

Nick Clegg, who headed the UK delegation in Rio, was clear about who he blamed for the failure. No, it wasn’t the oil and gas lobbyists, nor the fossil fuel addicted governments of the industrialised world.

It was the poor.

According to Clegg, Rio failed because developing countries were “antagonistic” towards the EU’s plan to build a green economy.

This is rich indeed given that the UK government, alongside the rest of the EU, blocked almost every progressive proposal coming from the developing world during the pre-summit negotiations.

The G77 – a group of 131 developing countries – went to Rio calling on the industrialised world to commit to providing additional funding to help the world’s poorest countries develop on a sustainable basis. Thanks to the truly antagonistic stance of Clegg and his counterparts in Europe and North...

Ayrshire Power has just announced that it is shelving its plans for a new coal-fired power station at Hunterton in Ayrshire. This is great news – and reflects the huge amount of opposition that there’s been to the power plant ever since the proposal first came to light three years ago. 

There's been a really strong local campaign for the last three years, as well as opposition from a coalition of environment and development NGOs (including the World Development Movement), and a legal case by Planning Democracy. More than 22,000 objections were made to the planning application – making it apparently the most unpopular planning application in Scottish history and showing the strength of public feeling against it.

WDM has long talked about climate debt and the importance of rich countries, like ours, who are most responsible for climate change cutting our greenhouse gas emissions.  We calculated (1) that, had Hunterston gone ahead and operated from 2015 to 2050, even with 15-25 percent carbon capture and storage...

Guest blog post by Oscar Reyes, writer and activist on climate and energy finance, and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies

Given how backwards the Rio Summit’s priorities were, it's hardly surprising that negotiations ended before they began. But a slow swarm of black ministerial limousines has crawled across Rio regardless, with Ministers, Presidents and Prime Ministers queuing up to talk the language of sustainability, while mostly advancing corporate interests. It came to a close yesterday with the adoption of a final  declaration called, without hint of irony, "The Future We Want."
The Rio declaration contains 283 paragraphs of blank prose that "reaffirms," "notes," and "acknowledges" a long shopping list of activities, but "commits" to virtually nothing. There is no program of action, figures, dates, targets, nothing at all that locks countries into taking action. It is a political non-event that turgidly regurgitates some of the sustainability-speak of the original Rio conference 20 years ago, with none of its ambition.

Despite that, there are a few straws for optimists to clutch at. The most significant-sounding, from an...

As I write, things inside Rio Centro, where the Rio+20 talks are taking place look bleak. Last Friday, after three long days of ‘preparatory committee’ meetings countries were unable to agree little more than a third of the draft outcome text. The decision was made for the UN to hand responsibility for drafting of a new version of the text to Brazil, as the host country, in the hope of finding a common pathway forward.

On Saturday night, just before midnight, a new Brazilian text was circulated. In an attempt to break the stalemate in the negotiations, and close the gulf between developed countries and the G77 group of 130 developing countries, this text had been dramatically weakened.

Pledges on increasing access to water end energy were watered down, and across the text, any meaningful language had been removed. Words such as “commit” has been largely stripped away and replaced with terms like “voluntary” and “as appropriate” – essentially enabling the statement to sound positive whilst in reality, amounting to little obligation for countries to do anything in terms of real action.

On the positive side, this new text has the potential to prevent a massive backtrack on some of the more positive principals of Rio that were agreed twenty years ago. Yet...

Ahead of the Rio+20 summit, Asian social movements have put together this statement on the fake Green Economy being pushed at the talks. It also outlines what they will be calling for at the summit.


Fight for Our Future! No Price on Nature!
 
We are movements and organizations from Asia, waging struggles on various fronts and arenas to defend our rights, resist policies and projects that cause harm and destruction, and to fight for immediate priorities and demands, as well as profound transformation of our societies.
 
We envision a social and economic system:

  • that is aimed at providing for the needs of people and aspirations for a humane, empowering and liberating life in a manner that respects the earth’s capacity to regenerate, and to sustain life based on the integrity of natural systems;
  • that is based on and promotes equity, parity, solidarity and mutual respect among people and nations regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, capabilities and class;
  • that promotes sharing of land, water, forests, atmosphere, eco-systems and territories  based on the principles of stewardship and not private ownership, and the rights of all people to equitable and responsible...

Guest blog by Teresa Anderson, the Gaia Foundation

The issue of land grabbing has itself grabbed headlines recently.  Biofuels, so-called agricultural investors, and commodity speculators buying up land have all been criticised for driving a wave of land grabbing and ecosystem destruction in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The resulting rise in food prices, and the reduced access to land, livelihood and home, means that the world’s poorest are hardest hit.

But in addition to these recognised trends, the Gaia Foundation is calling the alert on another major cause of global land grabbing: mining. Our recent report “Opening Pandora’s Box” signals a wake-up call that the scale, expansion and acceleration of the mining industry today are far greater than most of us realise. We are no longer talking about isolated pockets of destruction and pollution. New lands and communities, new ecosystems and virgin territories, new depths of earth and sea: all are now fair game for the expanding mining industry.

The extractive industries have grown significantly in the last 10 years, due to changes in consumption patterns, and a throwaway culture where regular technology...

WDM today welcomed the Scottish government's announcement of the setting up of a ‘climate justice fund’ for climate adaptation in developing countries, but warned that the scale of climate injustice suffered by countries in the south means that the SNP's £9 million manifesto pledge for the fund must be increased.

 Liz Murray, head of Scottish campaigns for the World Development Movement said:

“We welcome the Scottish government’s announcement of its ‘climate justice fund’ and its acknowledgement that Scotland owes a huge climate debt to the world’s poorest people.  Scotland got rich on fossil fuel energy at the expense of poorer countries who are now suffering the impacts of climate change.   And on a planet with limited capacity to absorb carbon, the rich world has left the rest of the world with little room to take the same development path. But the scale of climate injustice should not be underestimated, and if Scotland is going to make a fair contribution then the SNP government’s manifesto pledge of £9 million for this fund must be increased.

Cutting emissions here in Scotland is also a vital part of ensuring climate justice. That means the Scottish government must say no to a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston, to...

WDM was founded in 1970, by bringing together a number of groups which had been campaigning against world poverty during the late 1960s. We broke new ground by focusing on the causes of poverty and demanding policy changes rather than charitable giving. Since then, WDM has evolved into a democratic, politically independent organisation, with 15,000 supporters and a network of 60 local groups across the UK. Read more about our campaigning successes below.

WDM protesting about the arms trade

  • 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 were shelved.
  • 2011 After concerted lobbying by WDM supporters, French oil company Total postponed plans to mine tar sands deposits in one of the poorest regions of Madagascar. 
  • 2010 After campaigning by WDM, RBS commits to developing external environmental, social and ethical risk statements and internally implementing similar policies for oil and gas, mining and metals and forestry and defence...

Whilst rich countries are responsible for most of the emissions pumped into the atmosphere it is the poorest communities in the world that are being hit the hardest by climate change. But rather than providing compensation for causing climate change rich countries are using it to trap the world’s poor into new and dangerous climate debt. WDM is campaigning for climate justice for developing countries.

What is WDM doing?

Change the politics, not the climateWe want to ensure that the UK pays its climate debt instead of locking poor countries into further unjust debt by providing loans to help deal with climate change.

Read more

Guest post by Liam Barrington-Bush, tar sands-free campaign manager, People & Planet

I’m still catching my breath, nearly a week after an EU vote on reducing transport fuel emissions!  Seeing that sentence in writing, I realise it might not sound quite as exciting to those who weren’t active in the campaign that surrounded it. So let me take a step back for a moment and explain... 

What the Fuel Quality Directive is all about

Since 2008, the EU has been debating a ‘Fuel Quality Directive’ (FQD) – a set of measures that would aim to reduce the continent’s transport-related emissions 6% by 2020.

Excited yet?

The proposal included labelling tar sands oil – the dirtiest transport fuel in commercial production and 23% worse for the world than most conventional crudes.

Big Oil gets in the way of democracy...

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the oil companies making a killing in the Northern Alberta oil fields where tar sands were first found (though they are now being explored in Madagascar, Venezuela and elsewhere), decided, along with the Canadian Government, that...

Miriam Ross, media officer

The World Development Movement has signed an open letter sent today to the organisers of London 2012, asking them to reconsider the games’ sponsorship deal with BP.

The Olympic chiefs’ claim that this summer’s games will be the ‘greenest ever’ has already taken a serious battering, not least over sponsorship by Dow, the company behind the Bhopal disaster. Dow’s involvement in the games prompted the resignation of one the games’ sustainability commissioners last month.

BP has been selected as ‘Sustainability Partner’ for the games, despite being, as the letter points out, ‘one of the least sustainable companies on earth’. The list of the company’s environmental and human rights crimes is a long one, including the Deepwater Horizon disaster and formerly close relationships with the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the Gaddafi regime in Libya.

Now BP plans to enter the highly polluting Canadian tar sands, despite calls from local indigenous communities in Alberta for a halt to tar sands extraction projects. The World Development Movement has also been highlighting the role of bailed-out bank RBS in...

Guest post by Yann Louvel, Climate and Energy Campaigner, BankTrack.

Private banks are the first to claim to fight climate change - but do they put their money where their mouth is? That’s exactly what we, a group of NGOs (the german Urgewald, the South African's Groundwork, Earth Life and the international network BankTrack decided to look for last year, analyzing the investments of the world’s largest banks in the coal industry, the major culprit in the drama of climate change. And the answer to that question is… NO.

The report which presents the results of the study, Bankrolling Climate Change : A look into the Portfolios of the World’s Largest Banks, was launched last November in Durban during the UN climate negotiations, and the results are outstanding. We examined the portfolios of 93 of the world’s leading banks and looked into their support for 31 major coal-mining companies and 40 producers of coal-fired electricity, the biggest source of man-made CO2 emissions. And...

It’s heartening to hear that President Obama has stood up to Big Oil by rejecting the permit for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline sought by Canadian oil firm TransCanada. The reason given was that the project is not in the national interest. The pipeline was planned to carry tar sands oil more than 2,000 miles from Alberta in Canada to the oil refineries and ports in Texas. A huge campaign from indigenous activists, environmentalists, farmers, ranchers and youth climate activists was run against the project, and American citizens submitted more than 250,000 public comments against the proposal. 

This is good news. While it is still possible for TransCanada to reapply for the permit to build the pipeline, it must surely be a major blow to the tars sands industry in Canada, which needs to be able to get the oil out of Canada if it is to be economically viable.  

But the tar sands industry has to be stopped. Tar sands are one of the most polluting sources of fossil fuel, threatening water supplies and land locally when it is extracted and threatening the climate when it is burned. 

We’re linked here in the UK to the tar sands project by the global...

At 3pm today, on the final day of the UN climate talks, I joined hundreds of people to occupy the conference centre where the final plenary talks were taking place.

Here are some videos telling the story of what happened.

People sang together as they moved towards the entrance of the plenary:

...


Kirsty Wright, Climate justice campaigner writes from Durban

Alongside the UN climate talks, over the past two weeks, Durban’ KZN university has hosted a ‘people’s space’, an alternative space where people could come together to talk about the struggle for climate justice. Bringing together activists from across the world, the space has seen some fascinating exchanges, where people have shared what climate justice means in the context of their own lives, and to take on the complicated web of systemic issues that need to be tackled on the pathway for climate justice.

Whilst the mantra for many concerned citizens in the UK is to reduce energy consumption, a key demand for activists is for their right to energy access to be met. Here in South Africa, and across the continent, energy access is a vital part of struggle for climate justice. The statistics remain shocking: in urban Africa nearly three-quarters of the population have no access to energy. In rural Africa, that figure is a phenomenal ninety-four percent of people who have no access to the energy they need to drill for water, power hospitals, and cook food. Yet, in a twisted misfortune of geography, Africa is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and its people are already experiencing...

Guest post: Kevin Smith, Platform

In the last couple of years, art-interventionists Liberate Tate have generated a lot of debate and column inches over the issue of oil sponsorship of the arts, through a series of dramatic performances in gallery spaces, often using molasses or other ‘oil like substances’. It may seem like a relatively trivial issue, but the fact that oil companies put so much energy and attention into their cultural sponsorship programmes leads one to suspect that it plays a key role in how they construct their ‘social licence to operate.’

Man lying on ground covered in oil like substance

This term widely used in business and government circles that usually applies to the process of engendering support for a company’s activities in the communities who live close to their factories, oil wells, and so on. This term can shed light on how corporations construct public support far from the places of extraction or manufacture — for example how BP builds support in London. The construction of the social licence to operate is what links gallery-goers in London to the devastation of boreal...

In Climate loan sharks, the World Development Movement and the Jubilee Debt Campaign reveal that the UK is pushing $1.1 billion of climate loans, via the World Bank, on some of the poorest countries in the world.

For example Grenada’s debt is already 90 per cent of GDP, yet it is to be lent a further $22 million, over 3 per cent of the country’s GDP. Lending to such debt burdened country is at best irresponsible and at worst wilfully dangerous.

The UK, and other rich industrialised countries in the global north, owe a debt to countries in the global south as compensation for the devastating effects of climate change they have the primary responsibility for creating. A key part of this compensation is providing finance to poorer countries to help reduce the negative impacts of climate change on their lives and livelihoods. 

The report finds: 

  • The UK is providing most of its climate finance for adaptation in the form of capital that can only be dispersed as loans through the World Bank’s Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR). Of the capital that will be given out as loans via the PPCR, 97 per cent comes from the UK. 
  • Of the...

The World Bank has a long history of funding projects that are destructive to the environment and undermine human rights, investing in projects regardless of their devastating impacts both on local populations and on our planet. 

The case studies selected here demonstrate the range of projects (both geographically, and by type) that the Bank invests in, but they are by no means a definitive list. 

The World Bank has provided more than $6.7 billion in financing for these projects alone. The Bank has to be held to account for the crucial role it has played in fuelling climate change and human rights violations.

Click on the thumbnail images on the map to read about the destructive projects.

Do films motivate people any more than other kinds of campaign communication? Well, here’s one we produced on a very tiny budget aimed at informing an audience of the basic issues of our campaign to clean up the bailed out banks, in this case RBS, but also showing that campaigning on a serious issue can be imaginative, fun (dare I say zany?) and be about more than writing letters to politicians.

Does it do it for you? Have a look (it only lasts four minutes) and let us know what you think.

 

 

This section of the Community pages is a space for groups and activists to share skills and tips for effective local campaigning.  If you have something you would like to share (anything that has worked particularly well for you, and tips on what to avoid too!) then please email them to katharine@wdm.org.uk.

This Monday WDM campaigners came to the office with big smiles on their faces. Over the weekend, we’d heard that French Oil giant Total, subject to one of our latest online actions, had apparently cancelled its plans to mine tar sands in Madagascar.

High fives all around. Or?

As the story only seemed to have appeared on a mining industry website, we decided we needed to do some proper digging around. The first thing we did was get in touch with one of our allies in Madagascar. It can be just as hard for campaigners in Madagascar to get information as it is for us here, but their understanding is that Total isn’t going to pull out completely, but instead will extend its license to explore rather than moving on to full scale exploitation. 

This was also confirmed by Total’s business partner, ‘Madagascar Oil’ (based in Houston, not Madagascar), which announced last week that the two companies would not start full-scale mining, but will continue to test for the viability of both conventional oil and tar sands extraction.  

Basically, this means mining has been...

This statement is from civil society groups from countries that have been chosen as recipients to the World Bank’s ‘Pilot Program for Climate Resilience’ (PPCR) which is being supported by the UK government. The countries include: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Tajikistan, Yemen, Zambia, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga. 

Protest against World Bank loans for climate finance in Indonesia

June 2011

To Andrew Mitchell MP, UK secretary of state for international development and Chris Huhne MP, UK secretary of state for energy and climate change. 

Dear Andrew Mitchell MP and Chris Huhne MP,

The changing of the world’s climate, primarily caused by the rich industrialized countries, is already having a devastating impact on the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world. As people from countries who are the first recipients of climate loans, we are already seeing lives being destroyed. This is especially true for people from poor and marginalized social groups such as farmers...

Malaika Aleba from Alberta Canada, who spoke in London at International Stop the Tar Sands day.

Last Saturday morning I woke up with an extra spring in my step and hopped (despite the ungodly hour) onto the Oxford tube to London. Why in the world, you may be asking yourself, would a twenty-something-year-old choose to spend a Saturday morning jumping onto a bus, when she could be partaking in a myriad of other activities, such as, you know, sleeping in?


Well, June 18th's International Stop the Tar Sands Day was a great example of the inspiring fact that if the tar sands refuse to sleep in (preferably permanently), so will people across the globe! Need proof? A record number of protests took part in European and North American cities, with people waking up to speak up about what is being called the largest and most destructive industrial project in human history. 

Malaika Aleba speaking at protestSince I am currently living in Oxford but originally from Alberta, I was more than happy to speak about the horrors happening in my province. I told of how when I visited the infamous sands last fall, I became physically ill from...

Patrick Bond, director of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society

Judging by what transpired at last week's global climate negotiations in the former West German capital, Bonn, it appears certain that in just over five months time, the South African port city of Durban will host a conference of procrastinators, the 'COP 17' (Conference of Parties), dooming the earth to the frying pan. Further inaction on climate change will leave our city's name as infamous for elite incompetence and political betrayal as is Oslo's in the Middle East.

It also appears certain that Pretoria's alliance with Washington, Beijing, New Delhi and Brasilia, witnessed in the shameful 2009 Copenhagen Accord, will be extended to other saboteurs of the Kyoto Protocol, especially from Ottawa, Tokyo and Moscow, along with Brussels and London carbon traders.

What everyone now predicts is a conference of paralysis. Not only will the Kyoto Protocol be allowed to expire at the end of its first commitment period (2012). Far worse, Durban will primarily be a conference of profiteers, as carbon trading - the privatization of the air, giving rich states and companies the property-right to pollute – is cemented as the foundation of the next decade's...

Adebisi Alimi has been involved in LGBT advocacy in Nigeria for over a decade and started 'The Independent Project', now the strongest gay group in Nigeria. He had to flee his home in Nigeria after a BBC World Service interview meant his life was threatened and now works with Naz project in London as the African MSM sexual health worker.

Horace G. Campbell is professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University where he directs the Africa Initiative. Concerned with issues of conflict resolution, he has been an activist and a scholar for over forty years. His most recent book is Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA.

Jali Fily Cissokho, vocalist and kora player, is regarded as one of the great Senegal griots. His UK appearances have included WOMAD, Glastonbury and Larmer Tree and he has recently worked with A R Rahman, composer of the score for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Deborah Doane is director of the World Development Movement an organisation campaigning UK-wide for global justice. She’s on the board of the Fairtrade Foundation and has a long history of campaigning for corporate accountability.

Dele Fatunla...

This report, written by Brett Scott on behalf of WDM, is an overview of Barclays' involvement in commodity derivatives markets, with particular reference to its involvement in agricultural commodity derivatives (food speculation). 

Derivatives come in three main types: Futures/forwards, options and swaps. In practice, a lot of the dealing on investment bank trading floors will be in ‘over-the-counter’ (OTC) derivatives, which includes forwards, swaps and bespoke options. Futures are slightly different, in that they are traded on regulated exchanges. All these derivative types can be based on different ‘underlying assets’ - e.g. derivatives based on shares, bonds and currencies, economic indicators, and a lot of other things. By far the largest global derivative market is the interest rate derivatives market, followed by currency derivatives, credit derivatives, commodity derivatives, and equity derivatives.

Barclays Capital commodities division is a commodity derivatives business, facilitating derivative markets in energy commodities (e.g. oil, oil distillates, natural gas, coal), industrial metals, precious metals, carbon emissions, and agricultural commodities. There are roughly 350 employees....

Tom Shelton, Handicap International UK

Leading financial institutions, both in the UK and worldwide, are continuing to invest billions of dollars in companies producing cluster munitions, despite these weapons being banned under international law, according to a new report released last week.

The report by Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) members IKV Pax Christi and Netwerk Vlaanderen1 shows that worldwide, 166 private and public financial institutions from 15 countries continue to invest in companies that produce cluster munitions. Since the Convention on Cluster Munitions was adopted in May 2008, the global amount invested in companies that still produce cluster munitions totals US$39 billion.

The human and economic cost of cluster munitions is well-documented. The weapons cause widespread harm on impact and unexploded submunitions pose a threat to civilians for decades to come. Over the last 40 years, cluster munitions have killed and injured thousands of civilians and continue to do so today. 

...

Download the full timetable here 

Africa from exploitation to resistance

The perception of Africa that many people in the UK have is dominated by starvation, corruption and tribalism. But while Africa is at the sharp end of corporate exploitation, the story of ordinary Africans organising against injustice remains largely untold. This session will explore the African social movements who are writing their own history across the continent.

  • Njoki Njoroge Njehu, Africa Jubilee South
  • Firoze Manji, editor in chief, Pambazuka News
  • Horace Campbell, director of the Africa Initiative, Syracuse University

Africa beyond aid

Most African countries receive more than 10 per cent of their GDP in aid. This creates huge problems, including making governments more accountable to donors than to voters. Would cutting aid make things worse or better? Some big charities are currently campaigning to defend aid spending. This session will consider whether that’s the right priority, and what else we should be doing.

  • Yash Tandon, Ugandan author of Ending Aid Dependence
  • Jonathan...

‘It’s very hard,’ Holly Rakotondralambo told me before the start of last night’s public meeting in London about tar sands mining in Madagascar and Canada. ‘We only have seven people in our organisation. We are like a family.’

Holly in front of a tree

Holly and her little ‘family’ have their work cut out. They’re trying to stop French oil company Total destroying the land and stealing the water supplies of hundreds of thousands of people in Melaky, one of the poorest regions of Madagascar.

As she told the audience last night, Total is already test mining in the area. Yet neither Total nor the government of Madagascar have consulted the local people on whose land the company wants to mine.

Total is receiving corporate finance from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Holly will carry home to Madagascar the words of Sue Deranger, from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Canada, who also spoke at last night’s event. Sue’s community is 252 kilometres downstream from the tar sands mine in Alberta – the largest industrial project on earth. Her people have been devastated by pollution from the tar sands far...

Yesterday’s announcement by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg that the UK Green Investment Bank will start operating in April 2012 is good news. But the coalition’s claims to be the “greenest government ever” ring pretty hollow as long as bailed-out bank Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) continues to use taxpayers’ money to finance projects like tar sands extraction in Madagascar.
Tar sands mining by RBS-financed companies has already devastated the lands of First Nations people in Alberta, Canada. Now the bank is financing French oil giant Total’s tar-sands mining in poverty-stricken Madagascar – a project which threatens the climate, the unique biodiversity of Madagascar and the human rights of hundreds of thousands of  people living around the mining areas.

A step-change in green investment is needed to meet the UK’s climate targets and to provide clean development opportunities for countries like Madagascar. The chancellor of the exchequer has the power to cure RBS of its oil-addiction and direct its finance into much needed low carbon technologies. The government must use its majority shareholding in RBS to ensure that the bailed-out bank’s investment policies are brought in line with those of the Green...

Environmental campaigner Holly Rakotondralambo from Madagascar is visiting the UK this week to highlight the threat to her country from proposals to mine tar sands there.  Here she tells WDM about the concerns of the local communities around the mining areas that she has visited and what we can do to help stop the threat of tar sands mining in her country.

Holly Rakotondralambo talks to Liz Murray of WDM in Scotland

HollyAfter the visit by the Canadian First Nations activists for RBS’s AGM in April, WDM is this week hosting environmental campaigner Holly Rakotondralambo from Madagascar who is here to highlight the threat to her country from proposals to mine tar sands there.  Holly is here on behalf of Alliance Voahary Gasy, a coalition of 28 Malagasy environmental and human rights organisations, all of whom are concerned about the impact that tar sands mining may have on Madagascar if it is allowed to continue.

Holly will be speaking at public meetings in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London and to many journalists...

A human rights campaigner from Madagascar is in the UK this week to demand that the Royal Bank of Scotland withdraw its financing of companies mining tar sands in her country.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has a long track record of financing companies operating in the Canadian tar sands, which are devastating the land and lives of First Nations people in Alberta. The bank has also financed French oil giant Total’s test mining of tar sands in Madagascar over the last three years. Total is expected to decide next month whether to go ahead with larger scale exploitation of tar sands in the country.  If it does, the water supply of more than 120,000 people in one of Madagascar’s poorest areas could be disrupted and poisoned and its unique biodiversity severely threatened.

Malagasy woman Holly Rakotondralambo, who represents a coalition of community organisations from Madagascar, will visit London, Edinburgh and Glasgow this week in a tour organised by the World...

Jeremy Williams, blogger from MakeWealthHistory.org

As a child growing up in Madagascar, I remember the fleet of distinctive cars driven by the American oil workers. They had their own school for the children of AMOCO families. They even had their own supermarket, which we only found out about when the company pulled out. Like the rest of the expatriate community we descended like hawks on the closing down sale, and came home with armfuls of exotic US goods - bacon bits, tubes of cheese and dried French onions.

AMOCO packed up and left Madagascar in 1987 for the same reason that Chevron and Elf left in the 70s. Madagascar's oil just wasn't profitable enough to extract. It was dirty and far away, in a less than stable country with little infrastructure. Oil was selling for $20 a barrel in 1987, and at that price it was uneconomic.

Fast forward 25 years and it's a very different picture. Soaring global demand has pushed the oil price to new highs, and suddenly those marginal oil fields in difficult places look viable. The deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the push for Arctic oil are part of the same phenomenon. We've drunk the good stuff, and now we're fumbling around at...

Sarah Reader, climate campaigns assistant

Today WDM joined Campaign Against Climate Change in a demo to remind the government not to backtrack on its commitments to the Climate Change Act.

Back in 2008, WDM groups and activists successfully campaigned for a strong climate change bill. Over the last few weeks, however, it has become clear that parts of the government want to backtrack on some of the commitments made.

Last week there were threats the government would not accept the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) for a new carbon budget, focusing instead on short term economic interests.

This issue caused strong divisions within the cabinet, with leaked letters showing disagreement between Chris Huhne, the energy and climate change secretary, and Vince Cable and George Osborne who were arguing against the recommendations because of their potential impact on the economy.

Campaigners have been putting pressure on David Cameron to step in and ensure that the recommendations of the CCC are followed, in what the Guardian has called the “key test” of...

Liz Murray,  head of Scottish campaigns

So we met with RBS yesterday, after having protested outside their AGM and the First Nations activists going in to question the board.  It was a year since we first met the Chairman and his colleagues on this issue, and we do have to ask ourselves if we’ve made progress, and if it was worth it. 

Of course, I’m an optimist, so on balance I’d say yes, it was worth it.  We were able to continue to voice our concerns direct to senior executives and we learnt that RBS has clearly heard our campaign message, realises that things have to change and may be beginning to shift. We heard that a stronger policy is being developed on these issues, which is progress.  Of course only time will tell whether this will be strong enough, but there’s no doubt that if we weren’t putting on the pressure, it wouldn’t even be on the table. 

We’re still very clear that, having been bailed out with such a huge amount of public money, RBS has a responsibility to operate in a way that benefits the public good – and that means switching their investment strategy away from a purely commercially driven one and towards an ethical and environmental one.   We need to see concrete policies on financing...

Iain Thom, oil-addicted RBS banker

Inside the RBS AGM today members of three Canadian First Nations spoke out against UK public money helping RBS invest in the companies extracting tar sands in Alberta.

A group of campaigners dressed as oil-addicted bankers meanwhile staggered around outside drinking from oil cans and calling on the Government to cure RBS of its oil fossil fuel addiction.

The Canadians successfully went inside to the AGM to ask questions directly to the RBS board to put them under pressure for their investments in tar sands and the devastating effect the industry has on First Nation land. Since the 2008 bailout RBS has raised £5.6 billion in corporate financing to companies involved in Alberta’s tar sands extraction and pipeline development. And there is no let up, in the last year alone RBS have provided finance worth £2.2 billion according to new figures released yesterday by the Rainforest Action Network.

The pressure seems to be getting through. During the AGM the RBS chairman agreed to meet with Jasmine Thomas, Melina Laboucan-Massimo and Clayton Thomas-Muller who...

Press release, 19th April 2011

  • Canadian First Nations representatives to voice opposition in person at RBS AGM
  • New research shows that, since public bail-out in 2008, RBS has raised more than £5.6 billion for companies involved in controversial Canadian tar sands projects, £2.2 billion of which was in the last twelve months

Representatives from some of Canada’s First Nations are today preparing to demand in person that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) stops financing the controversial tar sands industry in Alberta, Canada, at the bank’s AGM today. [1]

The protest comes as new research, published by a coalition of UK and North American NGOs, shows that since being bailed out with public money in 2008, RBS has raised £5.6 billion in corporate financing to companies involved in Alberta’s tar sands extraction and pipeline development, £2.2 billion of which was in the last twelve months. [2]

The First Nations representatives are expected to arrive at the AGM at RBS’s global head quarters in Gogarburn, Edinburgh, at 1pm. They will take into the AGM a photo petition and motions from UK taxpayers angry that the bank is investing their money in tar sands extraction and use the meeting to call on the board to cease financing tar sands...

Following the government bail-out of the banks, public money amounting to billions of pounds has been used to support companies and projects linked to climate change and human rights abuses. For the RBS AGM 2011 we produced a leaflet spoofing their corporate branding with information on RBS investments in tar sands, oil and coal.

WDM’s submission to the International Development Committee’s (IDC) inquiry into sustainable development in a changing climate. WDM focus on the following four points: The proposed Phulbari open-cast coal mine project in Bangladesh; The centrality of creating a low carbon economy in the UK to enable sustainable development in the global south; The unsustainable use of carbon; The need to halt the growth in aviation emissions from the UK, and the impact this would have on sustainable development in the global south.
 

WDM submission to the September 2009 UK government consultation on coal power. It argues the case for why new coal power stations should not be built in the UK, such as E.On's plans at Kingsnorth in Kent.

Thousands of lives are under threat from French oil giant Total’s plans to mine tar sands in Melaky, one of the poorest regions in Madagascar. Using taxpayers’ money, the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland is helping to finance this heavily polluting industry. With your help, we can push the UK government to stop our money supporting companies that harm the world’s poor.

The Bemolanga oil field is located in one of Madagascar’s poorest regions. In the Melaky region 70% of the population live below the poverty line and 50% of children under the age of three have stunted growth due to malnutrition. The tar sands will threaten the survival of villagers throughout the region and could pave the way for further exploitation of tar sands the world over. We must not allow this to happen.

Since being bailed out with our money in 2008, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has poured money into companies engaged in projects that have a catastrophic impact on the world’s poor

One of those projects is the Canadian tar sands, which RBS has funded to the tune of $13.9 billion since 2007. The tar sands occupy 140,000 square kilometres of boreal forest - an area larger than England. The soil is strip-mined using huge amounts of fresh water and the process leaves behind giant poisonous lakes containing sand, water, silt, clay, hydrocarbons and toxic chemicals.  These lakes are large enough to be seen from space. 

A yellow digger digging up tar sands

Tar sands extraction in Alberta, Canada

Tar sands extraction has been disastrous for the indigenous people of Canada. Their water supplies have been poisoned, land has been destroyed and rates of some kinds of cancer have increased dramatically. This is despite that fact that Canada has a relatively strong legal framework when it comes to human rights and the environment.

Now WDM has learned that RBS has...

Iain Thom, Scottish campaigns assistant

Would you let an arms company sponsor National Peace Week? How about the BNP sponsoring International Refugee Day, or Lambert & Butler logos all over a cancer charity fundraising event? These (imaginary) examples seem far-fetched, but they’re no less strange than a climate action week sponsored by a coal-burning energy corporation, an oil-hungry supermarket giant and the UK’s biggest financier of fossil fuel projects. Welcome to the strange, topsy-turvy world of Climate Week."

 - Danny Chivers author of the 'No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change' writing for The Ecologist.

You might have noticed this week is Climate Week, a showcase of Britain’s ambition and confidence to...

This new report, commissioned by WDM and PLATFORM and written by former PriceWaterhouse Coopers consultant James Leaton, shows how we could create 50,000 green jobs by transforming the publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland into a powerful Green Investment Bank.

WDM and PLATFORM have been campaigning against RBS's socially and environmentally disastrous investments, particularly their funding of destructive tar sands mining. But by following the recommendations of the report, the bank could become a force for social and environmental good.

In the report, James Leaton argues: "The government needs to bring together its banking reform and green agendas to set an example with RBS of how expertise in project finance, renewables and Small to Medium size Enterprises can contribute green jobs and infrastructure for the UK and beyond."

The idea has received backing within parliament; 107 MPs have signed a motion (EDM 880) which “calls on the Government to use its majority share in RBS to prioritise climate change as a principal concern in RBS's lending decisions.”

Meanwhile the Environmental Audit Committee earlier this year grilled RBS bank chiefs for funding pollution.  At the time Martin Horwood, MP for Cheltenham and Environmental Audit Committee...

All over the world, diverse groups from community activists to schoolchildren, small businesses to faith-based networks, are starting to take action on climate change. Big business is following suit, but often with tactics that bring their integrity into question. Climate change is being used to create a new kind of brand identity, without any of the fundamental changes needed to tackle the root causes of the problem itself – the use of fossil fuels.

This report, written by environmental campaigners Platform with the help of WDM, takes the case of the Royal Bank of Scotland, an international bank with interests across the fossil fuel sector that is promoting itself as a genuine actor in climate change efforts. Using Bloomberg data this report compares RBS’ environmental rhetoric with the bank’s financing of coal companies around the world in the last three years, and examines the efforts of civil society to date to pressure the bank to adopt more climate-friendly policies.

RBS was recapitalised by the UK taxpayer from 2008 onwards, following major losses due to their reckless financial practices. Now, in 2011, the British public faces massive spending cuts. The taxpayers’ money used to bail out the banks could have...

March 21st – 27th 2011 is Climate Week

Communities, organisations and individuals across the UK are being asked to hold events, discussions, workshops and imaginative stunts to showcase Britain’s ambition and confidence to tackle climate change. Climate Week organisers want to “shine a spotlight on the many positive steps already being taken in workplaces and communities across Britain [to] inspire millions more people.”

But it’s not exactly inspiring that one of the main sponsors of Climate Week – the Royal Bank of Scotland – is undermining this kind of positive action by investing billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in climate trashing fossil fuels.

RBS - the Oil Bank of Scotland

Until recently RBS sold itself as the ‘oil and gas bank’.  It is the UK bank that has been most heavily involved in financing the global coal industry and companies mining tar sands in Canada.  Canadian tar sands extraction has been described as the most destructive industrial project on earth, producing carbon emissions three times larger than conventional oil and creating devastating impacts on indigenous communities and the local environment.

Since the 2008 banking bailout, when billions of pounds of taxpayers’...

Decades of increasing emissions have meant the UK owes a massive climate debt to the world’s poorest people to compensate for climate devastation already caused. With every ton of carbon dioxide released, crops continue to be destroyed, water becomes scarcer, disease continues to spread at an unprecedented level, and weather related disasters become more common. Ultimately, more and more lives are wrecked, and the climate debt continues to increase. 

When I speak with campaigners from the global south about climate debt, it quickly becomes apparent that whist they believe paying the debt is critical, it is also essential that the debt does not continue to grow. This is why WDM played a critical role in campaigning for the Climate Change Bill, which became an Act in 2008. Together with our allies around the UK, we pushed for, and won, the strongest climate change legislation in the world. What made this such a powerful piece of legislation was that it was supported by all political parties, not only the ruling Labour party. 

During his time in opposition, David Cameron spearheaded the Tories in speaking out on climate change. He revamped his party’s image and boosted his green credentials by campaigning...

Use your electricity bill to fight climate change - Switch your energy supply to Ecotricity and WDM will receive a donation of up to £60

Wind turbines

Image: Patrick Finnegan/Flickr

Ecotricity is different from other energy suppliers. Their mission is to change the way electricity is made, using the money their customers spend on gas and electricity to build new sources of renewable energy such as windmills. No one else will invest more of your bills in new sources of green energy.

People power is at the heart of what Ecotricity does. The more customers they have, the more green energy they can generate. They also promise to match the standard tariff of the ‘big six’ energy suppliers, so you won’t pay any extra for going green.

It’s free and easy to switch, simply go to www.ecotricity.co.uk/wdm or call 08000 302 302 and quote ‘WDM’.

If you would like more information about our partnership, or would like to promote Ecotricity to your friends or family please contact Kathryn on 020 7820 4900 or email...

Kirsty Wright, climate campaigner

Today, WDM campaigners joined other organisations from the UK and around the world for a day of action targeting the World Bank. Actions were done outside World Bank offices from Washington and Paris to South Africa and India. The day was called because of concerns about the Bank’s lending for fossil fuels, which has been increasing even at a time of climate crisis, and in spite of the Bank’s lobbying to become the institution responsible for climate finance.

Despite the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change for the world’s poorest people, over the last five years World Bank funding for coal-fired power stations has soared 40-fold to hit a record high of £2.8 billion in 2010.

 

About a quarter of the world’s population, over 1.5 billion people across the global south, have no access to electricity. They have no light in the evening, limited access to radio and communications, no modern power for their work and no way to store medicines safely. This lack of energy is keeping people trapped in poverty. However, despite the World Bank’s pro-...

Despite its pro-poor, pro-climate rhetoric, the World Bank’s fossil fuel lending has increased 400% since 2006. What’s worse, according to Oil Change International's independent analysis, 0% of these projects were funded specifically to provide energy access to the poor. 

At the same time, the International Energy Agency (IE) predicts that continuing to pursue centralised coal powered electricity will only lower the un-electrified population from 1.4 billion today to 1.2 billion in 2030. In fact, it stated in the 2010 World Energy Outlook that in order to achieve universal energy access 70% of today’s un-electrified population will rely on decentralized renewable energy systems. 

So how do we get the World Bank to change it’s disastrous lending? The first step is updating the World Bank's energy strategy so that it is more effective in fighting poverty, reducing global warming, and environmental impacts. 

On March 1st, NGOs and activists will hold actions in London, Paris, South Africa, and elsewhere across the globe to call on the World Bank to update its energy strategy to phase out fossil fuel lending. Participants will dress up as prisoners with balls and chains, with the balls representing CO2 and coal.

The tag line will be 'Free us...

Iain Thom, Scottish campaigns assistant

Timed for release just as this year’s round of bonuses and bank profits are announced, documentary film ‘Inside Job’ does just what it says on the reel tin:  Director Charles Ferguson argues that both investment bankers and financial regulators knew that the way banks and hedge funds turned a profit was rotten to the core, but that they carried on regardless. 

In short, that the 2008 financial crisis was avoidable.

Authoritative US professors and industry figures are interviewed, including the ubiquitous George Soros, but there is also a long list of names that refused to appear, the food commodity traders Goldman Sachs high up on that list.  The interviews are widely interspersed with narrative shots but sometimes I felt the chopping and changing did not allow the personalities to come through.

The film is almost exclusively US-based.  We learn of bankers who earned massive bonuses on short-term profits in a mortgage market with incentives so perverse it was set up to fail, and of regulators staffed by people who made millions from the rotten system and who simply did not do their job.

Foreclosures and job losses across the US as a result of the credit crunch cardiac arrest and...

Iain Thom, Scottish campaigns assistant

Timed for release just as this year’s round of bonuses and bank profits are announced, documentary film ‘Inside Job’ does just what it says on the reel tin:  Director Charles Ferguson argues that both investment bankers and financial regulators knew that the way banks and hedge funds turned a profit was rotten to the core, but that they carried on regardless. 

In short, that the 2008 financial crisis was avoidable.

Authoritative US professors and industry figures are interviewed, including the ubiquitous George Soros, but there is also a long list of names that refused to appear, the food commodity traders Goldman Sachs high up on that list.  The interviews are widely interspersed with narrative shots but sometimes I felt the chopping and changing did not allow the personalities to come through.

The film is almost exclusively US-based.  We learn of bankers who earned massive bonuses on short-term profits in a mortgage market with incentives so perverse it was set up to fail, and of regulators staffed by people who made millions from the rotten system and who simply did not do their job.

Foreclosures and job losses across the US as a result of the credit crunch cardiac arrest and...

As bailed-out bank RBS publishes details of its 2010 financial results, campaigners call on the government to cure RBS of its high-risk oil addition. RBS’s results show that it is still not making a profit and today’s photo call highlights the unhealthy investments of an unhealthy bank.

Campaigners from the World Development Movement and Friends of the Earth Scotland are urging the government, as majority shareholder in the bank, to use its power to switch the investments of the Royal Bank of Scotland away from climate-damaging fossil fuels and instead to finance much-needed low carbon industries.

At the Treasury, campaigners delivered over a thousand postcards signed by taxpayers angry at the Government for letting RBS use their money to finance projects and companies that are worsening climate change and threatening human rights.

A campaigner dressed as an RBS banker, addicted to fossil fuels, lay 'unconscious' on the pavement outside the Treasury this morning, having overdosed on oil while another dressed as a doctor tried to cure the banker of his oil addiction.

RBS is the UK bank that has been most heavily involved in financing the global coal industry and companies mining tar sands in Canada. Since being bailed out in October 2008, RBS has...

Stephen Hester, boss of bailed-out bank RBS, is set to get just over £2million worth of shares as a bonus for his last year’s work.  Well, as one RBS shareholder (mine are part of the Government’s 83% stake, since they bailed you out and I’m a UK taxpayer) to another, Mr Hester, I think we’d better watch out because who knows what might happen to our shares if you don’t have a long, hard look at your bank’s future investment strategy.   I’m talking about coal, oil, gas and now high-carbon, super-polluting tar sands that RBS continues to finance. 


With RBS having such a fossil-fuel rich portfolio of loans and investments, we shareholders are pretty exposed.  Because as climate change policies tighten, and the fiscal and regulatory measures needed to meet those policies are brought into play, then your bank’s fossil fuel investments could well go bad – and that would be bad news for your £2 million of shares, Mr Hester (not to mention mine).   So, let’s protect our investment. 


I think the answer is for me to ask the Chancellor to meet with you to see whether, between you, you can’t come up with a solution that reduces your investments in fossil fuels, slows the race to climate catastrophe that your bank is so keenly...

Liz Murray, WDM campaigner and UK taxpayer

Stephen Hester, boss of bailed-out bank RBS, is set to get just over £2million worth of shares as a bonus for his last year’s work.  Well, as one RBS shareholder (mine are part of the Government’s 83% stake, since they bailed you out and I’m a UK taxpayer) to another, Mr Hester, I think we’d better watch out because who knows what might happen to our shares if you don’t have a long, hard look at your bank’s future investment strategy.   I’m talking about coal, oil, gas and now high-carbon, super-polluting tar sands that RBS continues to finance.

 
With RBS having such a fossil-fuel rich portfolio of loans and investments, we shareholders are pretty exposed.  Because as climate change policies tighten, and the fiscal and regulatory measures needed to meet those policies are brought into play, then your bank’s fossil fuel investments could well go bad – and that would be bad news for your £2 million of shares, Mr Hester (not to mention mine).   So, let’s protect our investment. 


I think the answer is for me to ask the Chancellor to meet with you to see whether, between you, you can’t come up with a solution that reduces your investments in fossil fuels,...

Liz Murray, WDM campaigner and UK taxpayer

Stephen Hester, boss of bailed-out bank RBS, is set to get just over £2million worth of shares as a bonus for his last year’s work.  Well, as one RBS shareholder (mine are part of the Government’s 83% stake, since they bailed you out and I’m a UK taxpayer) to another, Mr Hester, I think we’d better watch out because who knows what might happen to our shares if you don’t have a long, hard look at your bank’s future investment strategy.   I’m talking about coal, oil, gas and now high-carbon, super-polluting tar sands that RBS continues to finance. 

With RBS having such a fossil-fuel rich portfolio of loans and investments, we shareholders are pretty exposed.  Because as climate change policies tighten, and the fiscal and regulatory measures needed to meet those policies are brought into play, then your bank’s fossil fuel investments could well go bad – and that would be bad news for your £2 million of shares, Mr Hester (not to mention mine).   So, let’s protect our investment. 

I think the answer is for me to ask the Chancellor to meet with you to see whether, between you, you can’t come up with a solution that reduces your investments in fossil fuels, slows the...

Environment Minister, Chris Huhne, was here in Scotland yesterday, speaking to MSPs about the UK Government’s plans for the Green Investment Bank.  Talk, perhaps inevitably, turned to whether the bank might be based in Edinburgh, given the renewable energy investment expertise that exists here.

Here at WDM we’re right behind the idea of the Green Investment Bank (wherever it ends up being), although there is a big question mark about the rather puny £1billion of initial capital that the Government is suggesting that it starts off with.  But it shouldn’t be overlooked that there is already a bank based in Edinburgh that, like the proposed Green Investment Bank, is almost entirely owned by the Government and that, with the right investment criteria, could make an even bigger contribution to moving the UK swiftly to a low carbon economy than the GIB’s £1billion initial capital. 

That bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, is more than 80% owned by the Government (and the UK taxpayer) after being bailed out with a whopping £45.5billion by the last Government, but it finances more fossil fuel exploitation than any other bank in the UK.  This is in direct conflict with Government targets to tackle climate change and the proposed low carbon...

Liz Murray, head of WDM Scottish campaigns, Edinburgh

Environment Minister, Chris Huhne, was here in Scotland yesterday, speaking to MSPs about the UK Government’s plans for the Green Investment Bank.  Talk, perhaps inevitably, turned to whether the bank might be based in Edinburgh, given the renewable energy investment expertise that exists here.

Here at WDM we’re right behind the idea of the Green Investment Bank (wherever it ends up being), although there is a big question mark about the rather puny £1billion of initial capital that the Government is suggesting that it starts off with.  But it shouldn’t be overlooked that there is already a bank based in Edinburgh that, like the proposed Green Investment Bank, is almost entirely owned by the Government and that, with the right investment criteria, could make an even bigger contribution to moving the UK swiftly to a low carbon economy than the GIB’s £1billion initial capital. 

That bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, is more than 80% owned by the Government (and the UK taxpayer) after being bailed out with a whopping £45.5billion by the last Government, but it finances more fossil fuel exploitation than any other bank in the UK.  This is in direct conflict with...

Kate Blagogevic, WDM media officer writng from Oaxaca, Mexico. 

Earlier this week, we met Oliver in the Universidad de la Tierra. It’s a small organisation of 7 academics who are working to provide alternative analysis, education and solutions to those being pushed by governments and the powers that lie behind the dominant system of corporate globalisation.

It was founded a decade ago in Oaxaca, a city with has a history imbued with a fight for autonomy from state and corporate power. The university offers exchanges for foreign students to open their eyes to the political and economic struggles at play in Mexico; and apprenticeships to people from surrounding communities; including midwifery, environmental management and computer science. The ethos behind this is to teach practical skills that can be put to use in communities to avoid the ‘brain drain’ from rural to urban areas and provide an alternative to the dominant education system where learning is so often directed purely towards functioning within the capitalist system that so often fails the people who try to be a part of it.

Unitierra are involved in a huge range of practical community projects helping to create a pathway towards a more...

After two long and dispiriting weeks, the Cancun climate talks drew to a close in the early hours of Saturday morning. Following the catastrophic outcome in Copenhagen, where an inadequate document was forced onto the supposedly open and democratic UN process in the final hours by a handful of (mainly rich) countries at the last moment, expectations for the Cancun meeting were always low.

So what did this supposed “deal”, that lead some to calls of “we can can can in Cancun” as the talks drew to a close, actually produce? What we have essentially ended up with is a list of non binding promises, that leave the World Bank, one of the world’s most discredited and undemocratic institutions, that even last year beat its own records on climate wrecking fossil fuel lending, as the trustee of a much heralded new ‘Green Climate Fund’. This Fund, as one person said, looks like a great Christmas present – until you realise the box is empty because rich countries are failing to follow through on their comitments. Any money the World Bank holds will simply be reinvested into the most profitable areas, which are all too often, fossil fuel projects.

Meanwhile the pledged emissions cuts, which will lead to  4 degree global temperature rise at best, sit outside the only...

At the conclusion of the climate talks in Cancun, UK-based anti-poverty campaigners from the World Development Movement say that no real progress has been made since last year’s meetings in Copenhagen in terms of tackling emissions due to rich coutnries  feet-dragging. But although they cautiously welcomed the establishment of a new ‘Green Climate Fund’ to help poor countries cope with climate change, they raised strong concerns over the level of finance and potential role of carbon trading and markets.

Dr Julian Oram, head of policy of the World Development Movement said:
“In terms of making serious commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the foot-dragging by developed countries has resulted in a text with little difference from the Copenhagen Accord. A year later, and 300, 000 more people have died from climate change related impacts, and still no more binding commitments have been forthcoming. The best that can be said is that it keeps the Kyoto process limping along until next year’s meetings in South Africa."

On the Green Fund
Dr Julian Oram, head of policy from the World Development Movement said:
“The establishment of a new Green Fund represents probably the only real breakthrough here in Cancun, but even on this big issues remain....

Catherine Negus, used to be WDM intern

WDM members and supporters from Dorset, Brighton, St Albans and London turned out in the freezing cold on Saturday to join the National Climate March and send the message to the UK government that the action being taken on climate change is appallingly insufficient.

The march coincided with the COP16 (Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) meetings in Cancún, Mexico, where world leaders have congregated (in theory) to thrash out a deal to tackle climate change. Activists worldwide are calling for decisive action. ‘We’ve come here in solidarity with the poor and vulnerable of the world’ declared Phil Thornhill from the Campaign Against Climate Change.

Despite the disruption caused by snow, the turnout was strong enough for one thousand marchers to arrange themselves into a massive ‘2030’ in Hyde Park, to highlight the march’s key demand of a ‘Zero-carbon Britain’ by the year 2030. The atmosphere was convivial yet resolute as we left Speakers’ Corner to upbeat music from blaring sound systems. The march closed off roads down Park Lane, up Piccadilly and Lower Regent Street to Trafalgar...

I completely support WDM’s campaign to urge the government to provide sufficient resources as grants, not loans, to developing countries in order to help them adapt to climate change…"
- Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion


At the heart of WDM sit its fifty-two local groups. Our groups are made up of people who are committed to campaigning against global injustices and targeting the government and business policies which are keeping developing countries locked in poverty. Through their actions and campaigning efforts, these groups are instrumental in winning our campaigns. One of the ways in which they do this is by lobbying their local MPs.

When our Brighton group met with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas recently she offered full support for our climate debt campaign. She also promised to find out from Andrew Mitchell what’s been happening with the pounds WDM supporters have been sending to DfID for the UN Adaptation Fund.

WDM groups around the country have been lobbying their MPs on both our climate debt and our...

Last week BBC London news reported that a small protest outside a library in Shepherd’s Bush was prevented by Westfield Shopping Centre security, for no better reason than the fact that particular strip of publicly accessible pavement happened to be owned privately.

Sadly, this story is all too familiar.

Recently released video footage shows of a group of campaigners at the Birmingham Bullring shopping centre attempting to collect petitions. Private security intervened just 38 seconds after the petitioning began.

Right to campaign curtailed from Felix Gonzales on Vimeo.

 

The right to protest has stealthily been curtailed as once-public areas have been bought by private companies. Birmingham’s Bullring is a case in point. This is a historic city centre market place. However, now that it is owned privately, the current law of trespass allows the owners to discriminate between different viewpoints expressed on their property, and to prohibit any activity that does not make a profit.

The area in front of the Churchill...

Iain Thom, used to be campaign assistant

Earlier today I found out Mike Bonnano, one of the amazing Yes Men, made a video for our campaigner convention in Edinburgh last year.  I’m a big fan of the Yes Men’s antics, if you haven’t yet seen these comedic vigilantes in action, what have you been doing!? Watch the trailer here.

I dug out Mike’s video from the recesses of our laptop.  We had invited him to talk with us about whether campaigning really made a difference.  We were on the eve of a visit by the G20 finance ministers to St Andrews and broad coalition of NGOs were gathering to ‘Put People First’ in the post-financial crash and post-banking bailout world that was 2009.

So turns out he lives in the Dundee, I never knew that!

I went to that G20 finance meeting now one year ago.  In the morning on St Andrews beach twenty of us donned our suits and bowler hats and stuck our heads in the sand.  Why?  Well at the time I wasn’t sure the dizzy feeling you get by doing a handstand...

Iain Thom, WDM campaign assistant

Earlier today I found out Mike Bonnano, one of the amazing Yes Men, made a video for our campaigner convention in Edinburgh last year.  I’m a big fan of the Yes Men’s antics, if you haven’t yet seen these comedic vigilantes in action, what have you been doing!? Watch the trailer here.

I dug out Mike’s video from the recesses of our laptop.  We had invited him to talk with us about whether campaigning really made a difference.  We were on the eve of a visit by the G20 finance ministers to St Andrews and broad coalition of NGOs were gathering to ‘Put People First’ in the post-financial crash and post-banking bailout world that was 2009.

So turns out he lives in the UK, I never knew that!

I went to that G20 finance meeting now one year ago.  In the morning on St Andrews beach twenty of us donned our suits and bowler hats and stuck our heads in the sand.  Why?  Well at the time I wasn’t sure the dizzy...

Dan Iles, used to be activism and events intern

Wednesday 20 October was a day marred with the realisation that we face the biggest threat to our welfare state in decades. With this concern in mind a large contingent from the World Development Movement offices left early from work to join the Coalition of Resistance’s march to Downing Street. From the perspective of an intern new to office life, it was a hugely inspiring feeling to be part of a workplace where so many of my colleagues came along to a political rally. If only every office in the country had this amount of political consciousness!

The rally itself was host to a decent and diverse collection of left wing organisations; students, anti war groups, black activists, public service trade unions, socialist and green parties, and anti-fascist groups. In particular there was a good turnout from the international development NGOs like us, the Jubilee Debt Campaign and War on Want. Inspiring speeches from the likes of John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas, Tony Benn and Jessie Jackson made a very commendable challenge to the dominant Tory dogma that ‘there is no alternative’.

However, in terms of building a big enough movement to challenge these cuts, it is clear that we are some way off. With notable...

WDM's network of groups and activists taking action on climate justice in their local communities:

Brighton & Hove WDM with their World Bank pig
Brighton & Hove WDM with their World 'piggy' bank and loan shark

Brighton & Hove WDM with their World 'piggy' bank
Brighton & Hove WDM show that climate finance should go through the UN Adaptation Fund rather than the World Bank.

Manchester WDM
Manchester WDM with their World 'piggy' Bank

Bexhill & Hastings WDM
Bexhill & Hastings WDM members smashing the World 'piggy' Bank

WDM Coventry taking part in a march against EON
Coventry WDM taking part in a march against E.ON

...

The World Development Movement reacted critically to the announcements saying that for 30 years developing countries had faced the same austerity measures which led to more poverty and more injustice for the poorest people. It also said that it was deeply deceptive that climate finance and the Green Investment Bank were being touted as 'good news stories' by the coalition government.

 Deborah Doane, director of the World Development Movement said:

 Resisting austerity: lessons from the developing world

"The experience of austerity measures imposed on developing countries should sound alarm bells for us all. These measures are not a new innovation; they were cooked up by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s and forced onto developing countries by the IMF and World Bank. The effects were devastating: inequality, poverty and injustice increased as public services and welfare spending were slashed.

 "Recently, such policies have been completely discredited; even the World Bank and IMF held their hands up and said they got it wrong. Countries, like Malaysia and Vietnam, that resisted the austerity measures remained far less vulnerable than those that had to succumb to these failed economic prescriptions. If we don’t resist this illogical...

We sit in anticipation of the full extent of the cuts today. Of course, they’re only the headlines, and one can only guess at how they’ll play out over time. People (on the right) tell us not to worry: they’ll be painful, but necessary.

We’re also told to stop whinging: Look, international development spending is being protected, they say! Aside from the fact that this isn’t really accurate – there’s no new money for climate change for developing countries, for example, and DFID’s budget will be focussed on areas where there is a “security” threat for the UK, meaning its budget will now subsidise cuts in other areas such as defence – it’s the wider trends that leave a very bitter aftertaste.

Globally, we are actually very prosperous – the financial crisis doesn’t really mean that there is less money in the world to spend – it means that we have chosen to prioritise profit for the few over human well-being for the many. Banks are currently preparing £7 billion bonus packages, thirteen times the grants expenditure of Comic Relief, the Disasters Emergency Committee, Oxfam, the British Heart Foundation and MacMillan Cancer Relief put together. Or the total UK aid budget.

The austerity measures being pushed today, and elsewhere in Europe – Ireland,...

This morning I read the new economics foundation’s new report Where did our money go? – building a banking system fit for purpose. The report looks at the causes of the financial crisis, what the results have been and – more importantly – what can be done to reform the banking sector.

A few worrying things immediately stand out. The first is that nef, looking at Bank of England data, find that the banks appear to face a ‘funding cliff’:

“In order to maintain existing levels of activity they currently have to borrow £12 billion a month; the projections we reproduce in this report indicate that in 2011 they will have to borrow £25 billion a month. We believe the public sector is likely, once again, to be asked to bail out the banks for the emerging funding gap."


Another bail out?

The second is that, despite the crisis, the banks have not reduced their reliance on high-risk securitisation processes and they don’t seem to have any strategies to reduce it in the future. This has massive implications as these processes include complex derivatives and credit default swaps which caused the crisis in the first place.

‘What is securitisation?’ I hear...

Secretive corporate lobbying efforts are being dragged into the open today at the launch of the Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2010 in Brussels. Some of WDM's old and new foes have been nominated for their part in lobbying in Europe to stop progressive change.

In the climate category, supported by: Climate Action Network Europe, Oxfam, World Development Movement. The nominees are:

- BusinessEurope: Nominated for its aggressive lobbying to block effective climate action in the EU while claiming to support action to protect the climate.
- ArcelorMittal: Steel industry fat cat, nominated for lobbying on CO2 cuts under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and profiting from free ETS emission permits.
- RWE: Nominated for claiming to be green while lobbying to keep its dirty coal-and oil-fired power plants open.

In the finance category, supported by: ATTAC Network, World Development Movement.
- Royal Bank of Scotland: Nominated for secretly lobbying in Brussels and for exploiting insider contacts by headhunting former EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen as an advisor
- Goldman Sachs and derivatives lobby group ISDA: Nominated for aggressive lobbying to defend their ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’
- Hedge fund and private equity lobby groups AIMA...

Since I joined WDM last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about “narrative”. WDM is against injustice; against poverty; against inequality. A quick trawl through our campaigns and you’ll often see us saying “stop” something – stop betting on hunger; stop RBS from spending money on tar sands: stop, stop, stop.

George Monbiot’s article today, which highlights work by Tom Crompton, an advisor at WWF, about framing, is spot on. “It goes against our nature; but the left has to start asserting its own values”. I’ve worked with Tom, and his deep thinking approach to social change has always inspired me, but I’ve never been quite sure what to do with it, until now (clearly I’m not quite as big a thinker as he is).

According to Tom’s research, psychologists have demonstrated that social identity is either based on extrinsic or intrinsic values. People with a strong sense of extrinsic values are focussed on individual self-interest, money, image and traditional notions of “success”, whereas people with more intrinsic values favour relationships, community, family and friends, and...

WDM often takes life and campaigning very seriously. And why would we not, the injustice in the world is staggering - the people who caused the problem rarely pay. This precedent seems fixed from the cuts in the UK to the people affected most by climate change - it's always the people who are least able to cope who get hit first and worst. 

WDM has worked tirelessly for 40 years fighting for justice for the world's poorest people, and we have had some great successes, including stopping Kingnorth coal power station, the third runway at Heathrow, debt cancellation, rolling back water privatisation and speaking out against the World Trade Organisation's nefarious trade deals.

But this Thursday, we are going to kick-back and laugh in the fine company of some great, up-and-coming comedians.

The line-up includes, the superb Liam Mullone who contributes to BBC Radio 4's the Now Show and Arthur Smith lectures, hard-hitting Francesca Martinez, Aussie stand-up Kent Valentine, musical comedienne Hils Barker, Matt Kirshen, co-writer of BBC Radio 4's Bigipedia and the always entertaining Charlie Talbot.

Because we know that times are tight, we are running a competition to win discounted tickets. Come...

Watch our new film, be inspired and join us in the fight for climate justice - Cleaning up the Royal Bank of Scotland

Fossil fuel fanatics, and bailed-out bank, RBS are investing our money in the most destructive project on earth; tar sands mining in Canada. They're fuelling climate change and trampling on human rights. Indigenous activists from Canada joined us in protests at the RBS 2010 AGM. 

Please share with your friends and networks!

Take action: Stop taxpayers' money funding climate change
Email the chancellor today - http://www.wdm.org.uk/tarsands

Watch our new film, be inspired and join us in the fight for climate justice - Cleaning up the Royal Bank of Scotland

Fossil fuel fanatics, and bailed-out bank, RBS are investing our money in the most destructive project on earth; tar sands mining in Canada. They're fuelling climate change and trampling on human rights. Indigenous activists from Canada joined us in protests at the RBS 2010 AGM. 

Please share with your friends and networks!

Take action: Stop taxpayers' money funding climate change
Email the chancellor today - http://www.wdm.org.uk/tarsands

The UK government has come under fire for delivering 75 per cent of its climate finance for developing countries as loans, which WDM warns threatens to reverse decades of hard-fought progress on debt relief.

Rich countries claimed a key success of the Copenhagen Accord was the announcement of $30 billion of new climate finance that would be given over 2010 - 2012 to developing countries. But WDM argues that the UN Adaptation Fund, set up specifically to manage climate finance, has received just one per cent of money committed so far by donors, leaving it with insufficient resources to respond to the urgent need of countries to adapt to climate change.

Pakistan has applied to the UN Fund for financial help so that it can improve drainage systems to help cope with events such as the devastating floods currently ravaging the country.

The campaigners say the UN is struggling to provide assistance to countries like Pakistan because rich countries are channelling finance through the World Bank, which has received 40 per cent of the funds committed by donors so far.

The UK comes in line for particular criticism from the campaigners because so far 90 per cent of the UK’s climate finance pledges have been channelled through the World Bank. The World Bank is...

Climate change is like eating a slap-up meal then handing the bill to the world’s poor
- Ricardo Navarro, El Salvador

Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity. But it is not just an environmental issue, it is a development issue, and a global justice issue.

It is our excessive carbon emissions that are driving climate change. Rich countries are responsible for almost three quarters of global emissions. But it is poor countries that are bearing the brunt of the impact. Hundreds of millions face drought, floods, starvation, disease and death.

WDM is calling on the UK government to take action to reduce the UK’s emissions and show the rest of the world that it can be done. WDM is campaigning to stop climate injustice.

For more info all of our climate change briefings and reports are also online.

The impacts

150,000 people are already dying each year because of climate change. The poorest in the world are the most affected by climate change yet they are the least responsible.

Flooding: Vast areas of land will become submerged as sea levels rise with increasing...

Clean up the banks - WDM Scotland's priority campaign

 Demonstration outside the Royal Bank of Scotland

As taxpayers, we own over 80% of the Royal Bank of Scotland but continue to invest in projects that threaten the climate. Join our campaign to clean up the bailed-out banks.

Climate Debt

Climate debt graphic depicting the earth in chains 

Britain owes compensation to poor countries for our historic and continuing over-use of fossil fuels.  Find out more

Food Speculation

Woman spreading grain

Banks are earning huge profits from betting on food prices...

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Aid campaign image - stop big business cashing in on aid