Climate change

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...

Several civil society organizations focused on climate justice have compiled a set of briefing papers to help government delegates, advocates, journalists and members of the public understand various topics being discussed at the climate change negotiations and their real world impacts.

The goal of the briefs is to connect some of the ideas and energy of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010) with issues on the table at the UN climate talks. Please feel free to use these as a resource and to distribute them further. We hope you find them useful.

Links to the briefing papers follow, please note that these materials have been produced by a number of different organisations listed in full on each brief, but the content of each is not endorsed by all the contributors

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Several civil society organizations focused on climate justice have compiled a set of briefing papers to help government delegates, advocates, journalists and members of the public understand various topics being discussed at the climate change negotiations and their real world impacts.

The goal of the briefs is to connect some of the ideas and energy of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010) with issues on the table at the UN climate talks. Please feel free to use these as a resource and to distribute them further. We hope you find them useful.

Links to the briefing papers follow, please note that these materials have been produced by a number of different organisations listed in full on each brief, but the content of each is not endorsed by all the contributors

Climate change is now producing profound impacts on agriculture and the ways of life of indigenous peoples and farmers throughout the world, and these impacts will worsen in the future.

Several civil society organizations focused on climate justice have compiled a set of briefing papers to help government delegates, advocates, journalists and members of the public understand various topics being discussed at the climate change negotiations and their real world impacts.

The goal of the briefs is to connect some of the ideas and energy of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010) with issues on the table at the UN climate talks. Please feel free to use these as a resource and to distribute them further. We hope you find them useful.

Links to the briefing papers follow, please note that these materials have been produced by a number of different organisations listed in full on each brief, but the content of each is not endorsed by all the contributors

We consider inadmissible that current negotiations propose the creation of new mechanisms that extend and promote the carbon market, for existing mechanisms have not resolved the problem of climate change nor led to real and direct actions to reduce greenhouse gases.
 

Several civil society organizations focused on climate justice have compiled a set of briefing papers to help government delegates, advocates, journalists and members of the public understand various topics being discussed at the climate change negotiations and their real world impacts.

The goal of the briefs is to connect some of the ideas and energy of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010) with issues on the table at the UN climate talks. Please feel free to use these as a resource and to distribute them further. We hope you find them useful.

Links to the briefing papers follow, please note that these materials have been produced by a number of different organisations listed in full on each brief, but the content of each is not endorsed by all the contributors

Current funding directed toward developing countries for climate change and the proposal of the Copenhagen Accord is insignificant. In addition to Official Development Assistance and from public sources, developed countries must commit to a new annual funding of at least 6% of GDP to tackle climate change in developing countries.

Several civil society organizations focused on climate justice have compiled a set of briefing papers to help government delegates, advocates, journalists and members of the public understand various topics being discussed at the climate change negotiations and their real world impacts.

The goal of the briefs is to connect some of the ideas and energy of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010) with issues on the table at the UN climate talks. Please feel free to use these as a resource and to distribute them further. We hope you find them useful.

Links to the briefing papers follow, please note that these materials have been produced by a number of different organisations listed in full on each brief, but the content of each is not endorsed by all the contributors

It is necessary that, at the next UN Climate Change Conference in Mexico, the amendment to the Kyoto Protocol be adopted for its second commitment period from 2013 to 2017 in which developed countries must commit to significant domestic GHG emission reductions of at least 50% in reference to 1990 levels.

Several civil society organizations focused on climate justice have compiled a set of briefing papers to help government delegates, advocates, journalists and members of the public understand various topics being discussed at the climate change negotiations and their real world impacts.

The goal of the briefs is to connect some of the ideas and energy of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia (April 2010) with issues on the table at the UN climate talks. Please feel free to use these as a resource and to distribute them further. We hope you find them useful.

Links to the briefing papers follow, please note that these materials have been produced by a number of different organisations listed in full on each brief, but the content of each is not endorsed by all the contributors

The “shared vision for long-term cooperative action” in climate change negotiations should not be reduced to defining the limit on temperature increases and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but must also incorporate in a balanced and integral manner measures regarding capacity building, production and consumption patterns, and other essential factors such as the acknowledging of the Rights...

Tim Jones, Jubilee Debt Campaign

Activists in Bangladesh and Nepal speak out against new debt, whilst a Nepalese parliamentary committee has said the country should ask for grants rather than loans.
On Saturday 19 February a human chain was formed in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, protesting against World Bank climate loans.

The protest was organised by seven civil society organisations, including Jubilee South members, Equity and Justice Working Group. Rezaul Karim Chowdhury from Equity and Justice said the Bangladeshi government’s decision to accept loans for dealing with the impact of climate change contradicted previous official statements that the government would not take loans.

In November 2010, the World Bank and governments such as the UK agreed to lend Bangladesh over $500 million for projects to help the South Asian country adapt to climate change, for instance making housing more resilient to increasing floods. In contrast, just $50 million is being given as a grant. The UK government has given over $150 million as loans for the projects.

Repaying foreign debts already uses up 10 per cent of Bangladeshi government revenue, more than is spent on healthcare.

Meanwhile, 12...

The World Social Forum (WSF) took place all last week in Dakar, Senegal. It is now a whole decade since the first WSF took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as a people's alternative to the annual World Economic Forum - the meeting of political and business elites in Davos, Switzerland.

Although there is some intense debate about the future of the WSF, it continues to be a useful place for movements for economic, social and environmental justice from all over the world to meet. For more detail read Jubilee Debt Campaign's blog from the event. A call was also issued from Dakar to mobilise for the G8 and G20 summits in France this year, which you can read below:

Put people, not finances, first

Call from Dakar to Mobilize for the G8 and the G20 in France in 2011

For the G8, May 21 and 22 in Deauville
For the G20, from October 31 to November 5, 2011 in Cannes

Gathered together here in Dakar during the Convergence Assembly for Action against the G8/G20 at the World Social Forum, we - the social movements, trade unions, international solidarity associations, women and men from all continents - are calling for...

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,...

Murray Worthy, used to be Policy officer

Paul Krugman is an economist I have huge respect for, and one with whom I often agree. This made it all the more disappointing when I read his recent post for the New York Times dismissing the role of speculation in current high food prices. Sadly Krugman’s arguments, apparently lifted from an economics primer, fall far wide of the mark when it comes to the reality of food markets.

The core of his argument is his simple price graph, indicating that the current price of any physical commodity will be based on the exact balance of supply and demand. Krugman dismisses the role that speculation can play in affecting commodity prices unless banks or other financial speculators take delivery of food:

“plays in the financial markets can only move the price to the extent that they affect physical flows and stocks”

While this model is nice in theory, even the textbooks admit that price formation based on a perfect balance of supply and demand can only happen when:
a) there is perfect information about supply and demand.
b) participants are well (if not perfectly) informed about supply and demand...

The World Development Movement criticised the findings of the Beddington report which promotes the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops as a key solution to global hunger.

The focus on GM in the Chief Scientist's report is a red herring and does not correctly identify the real causes of hunger.

The World Development Movement's director, Deborah Doane said: "The Beddington report does not accurately reflect the real cause of hunger in developing countries. The current record food prices are down to banks and hedge funds betting on food. The hot speculative inflows of money into commodity markets are dramatically pushing up the price of foods like bread, sugar and corn.

 "GM is not a magic bullet to cure global hunger. If the UK government really wants to reduce hunger in the developing world, they should break free of the grip of the GM and banking lobbyists, and crack down on predatory speculation by banks and hedge funds which will ensure stable and lower food prices. Furthermore, the UK government should be focused on supporting strengthening local markets and investing properly in small scale farmers in developing countries.

 "There is a long-term, gradual upward pressure on food prices, for example due to the impacts of climate...

Iain Thom, WDM campaign assistant

Susan George, is a political scientist and world-renowned author writing about social justice issues for over 30 years.  Susan is the keynote speaker at this year’s Scottish campaigner convention in Glasgow on 19 March and I had the honour of interviewing her for WDM.

Iain: Please tell us a little about yourself?

Susan: American born, French resident for 50-some years and now a citizen, 3 university degrees at ten year intervals, first book published 1976, 14 others since if you count small ones and those written in French. I’m a scholar activist meaning I’ve always been active in organisations, particularly TNI and Attac. Personally: 3 children, 4 young adult granchildren, widowed 8 years ago, 77 this year, try not to look or feel it, I work every day.

Iain: What is the Transnational Institute and how are you involved?

Susan: TNI is a community of scholar-activists which has Fellows from many countries and in house projects. The strap line says it pretty well: The TNI carries out cutting-edge analysis on critical global issues, builds alliances with grassroots social movements, develops proposals for a...

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...

Julian Oram, used to be head of policy and campaigns

I’m writing this on the bus in transit from the ‘hotel zone’ to the conference centre as we enter the final day of negotiations here at the COP16 in Cancun. If I was to describe my mood now the word that comes to mind first is nervous; I feel like its final exam day, although it’s the delegations who will ultimately leave here with the pass or fail mark.

Thursday was an odd day. There were a series of statements from various Ministers in the morning, and again in the late afternoon, on their hopes and fears of what is to come out of here. The perspectives and emphasis differed, but the key message was strikingly similar: we must not let Cancun be a failure; and we must find a way to reach agreement and set aside our individual self-interests to work towards the common goal of averting catastrophic climate change.

In between the set-piece statements, Ministers of some countries were working behind the scenes in ‘informal’ meetings to craft yet another set of negotiating texts. These surfaced around mid-afternoon, although its difficult to be sure of exactly when, because the texts were not made public or posted on the UN website. This is when it becomes useful to have connections to delegations,...

Julian Oram, used to be Head of policy and campaigns

Yesterday morning we were greeted with new negotiating texts from the twin tracks of the talks here in Cancun. These new texts represent the closest approximation of the ‘progress’ reached thus far through the past ten days of discussions.

These discussions have happened primarily in the multitude of working groups in  the twin negotiating tracks of the Kyoto Protocol and the framework for Long-term Cooperative Action. Wednesday’s documents represented an effort to consolidate these tortured talks into something vaguely coherent for Ministers to sink their teeth into.

I qualify the word ‘progress’, because in most areas the texts are neither especially advanced nor particularly encouraging for the world’s poorest countries.

Take the area of finance. The text dealing with a new global climate fund for poor countries to access finance for climate adaptation and low-carbon development is still heavily bracketed (i.e. under debate) and littered with opposing options.

Under one option, the aggregate sum is still pegged at a $100 billion/ year by 2020 for adaptation and mitigation; a sum that falls far short of amounts needed by most reliable estimates. Another option (put forward by...

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...

This morning, as I was trying to locate the bus to take me down the long mangrove lined road to the building that was host to the COP16 (short hand for the 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), I met Gopal who had traveled from Nepal to be here. Gopal showed me the way to the bus, and we started talking about his work in Nepal. He was an expert in adaptation, researching local, community-led solutions to enable people to adapt to the impacts of climate change. His main focus was in considering how this locally driven knowledge could be shared, replicated and built on.

He talked about the issues now facing Nepal; melting glaciers, increasingly unpredictable rainfall, a net decrease in food production and a huge falls in the level of ground water table that has already forced a notable migration. I asked where his organisation got its funding from, and he reeled off a list of government departments for international development from across Europe.

I then asked how they found working with these donors. At first he was a little hesitant to sound critical, saying that he didn’t work with them directly, that was someone else’s job. But after I probed a little he went on, "The thing is with these donors" he said "is...

Today, we joined Reza, one of our allies from Justice and Equity Working Group in Bangladesh to pay a visit to the World Bank's stall at COP 16. Reza was asking the Bank’s representatives why they were giving loans to a country like Bangladesh, which already has high levels of debt.

Credit: WDM / Kate Blagojevic

Of all countries, Bangladesh certainly shouldn’t be the one shackled with more unfair debt in the name of coping with the impacts of a climate crisis which it wasn’t responsible for causing. One World Bank official started answering his questions, trying to justify the loans by saying they were optional, that countries had chosen to accept them. But Reza wasn't going to be fobbed off with this pathetic justification of something that was clearly hugely unjust, and went on to explain passionately about what the impacts of climate change in Bangladesh meant for the lives of people living there. Clearly, he said, the people were so desperately in need of funds that they had no choice to accept the loans. The Bank official gulped, looking increasingly embarrassed, and in the end refused to answer any more...

Kate Blagojevic, used to be press officer

In John Vidal's blog post in the Guardian today,  he gives a real sense of the bizarreness of this conference with its heat, vast military operation and the huge number of bus rides you have to take to get to the Moon and back.

He also writes that WDM and Carbon Trade Watch are furious over the fact that the UK government has subsidised british big businesses' trip to Cancun and has invited businesses to lobby them by organising dinners and receptions promising access to high level British representatives.

And furious we are. If we needed yet more proof that the government prioritises the UK's business and trade interests, we got it, when an email landed in my inbox from a colleague with 'OUTRAGEOUS' in the subject line. It was an email invitation from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office inviting businesses to a special trade mission in Cancun as a side event to the negotiations. The basic package that is 'heavily subsidised by the British government' includes: access to Chris Huhne, other 'high level British government representatives', both Mexican and British senior...

As we arrive in Cancun with people from across Mexico and around the world, concerns about a repeat of the dismal failure of the shambles that was Copenhagen abound. The deepening of the outrageous behaviour that was seen in Copenhagen seems more likely than ever. Today I heard of rumours of a new negotiating text that completely disregards any progress painstakingly made during the year through the ongoing drafting of the negotiating text.

The text now being put on the table as the talks begin, that is set to form the basis of this years’ negotiations, apparently completely disregards any progress that has been made through the year. Perhaps unsurprisingly it entirely excludes the more progressive outcomes of the Cochabamba People’s Accord, representing the views of 35,000 representatives of social movements, scientists, and other members of civil society, which came out of the People’s Conference held in Bolivia earlier this year. Even more shocking however, is that the new text also completely excludes the outcomes of the last meeting of negotiators at pre-talks that took place in Tianjin, China in October, and in Bonn, Germany earlier in the year. If these rumours turn out to be true, it will be catastrophic for a conference that critically needs...

Rich countries and corporations have grown wealthy through a model of development that has pushed the planet to the brink of climate catastrophe. They have over-used the planet’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide. Drastic measures now have to be taken to prevent runaway climate change, making it impossible for poor countries to grow their economies in the same way.

This is a joing briefing with the Jubilee Debt Campaign.

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...

Rosie Rogers, used to be at WDM

Last night, a host of NGO’s, members of the global climate movement and the intrigued met at Bolivar hall to evoke the spirit of the first World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Chaired by Deborah Doane from WDM, there were passionate speeches and inspiring stories about the importance of the up coming negotiations in Cancun after the abysmal failure of Copenhagen, grass roots movements and the essence of what Cochabamba was all about.

One of the stories that particularly struck the audience was John Vidal’s tale about how the developing countries learnt how to use the Western media to their advantage at Copenhagen with luring Vidal into secret corridors to give him the coveted Copenhagen Accord which was made by a handful of powerful countries at 2am unbeknown to the developing countries at the conference.

Another comment provided by a woman from the Andes highlighted the gravity of what has been termed climate refugees- those who are forced from their home and often countries due to the impacts of climate change. The woman spoke of how her home land was butchered by multinationals on the hunt for minerals, droughts, glacier melts and a whole host of...

Adriane Chalastra

Last Monday, several WDM representatives attended a seminar entitled “Mobilising the UK Bangladeshi Community for Action on Climate Justice”, where Tim Jones, WDM’s recently departed policy officer was one of the speakers. The event took place at the new City Hall building on Queen’s Walk. It was organised by the Bond Development and Environment Sub-group on Bangladesh and Climate Change, who organised the seminar to raise awareness about the issue of climate change and its impacts on Bangladesh, with a focus on how the Bangladeshi community in the UK can be mobilised to take action.

Bangladesh is one of the countries most seriously affected by climate change (impacted by nearly every effect of global, such as droughts, floods, and cyclones – really everything except for glacial ice melts!), yet it is one of the countries least responsible for causing climate change.

This seminar was held at an appropriate time, as just this week the World Bank’s Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) released a new report for their strategies to integrate “climate resilience considerations into national development planning and implementation that are consistent with poverty...

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...

Saskia Read, Edinburgh local group member

This weekend I decided to escape the rain and cold and check out some of the events at this year’s Edinburgh World Justice Festival.  Now in its 5th year of running, this year’s festival, titled “A world in crisis – what’s the alternative” promised a range of events that would not only be about raising the issues, but more importantly, would be focusing on possible solutions towards positive change.  Sounded good like a good way to spend a weekend.

Friday night’s event looked at some of the recent positive developments in Bolivia and Venezuela in their attempt to address issues of social, economic and environmental injustice.  One successful initiative that was discussed was the ‘Mission Barrio Adentro’ in Venezuela, which has seen the building of local health centres within poor neighbourhoods and the arrival of tens of thousands of Cuban healthcare workers bringing free healthcare to the poor.  The Latin American theme continued into Saturday’s discussions, where WDM’s Kirsty Wright joined the Bolivian Ambassador in presenting Cochabamba: the People’s Agreement, the Bolivian alternative to last year’s failed climate talks in Copenhagen.  One of the questions raised in the discussion with...

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...

Today, there are many stories about food price rises - hitting poorer people in Mexico and countries in Africa, but delivering fat profits for the likes of contraversial agribusiness, Cargill, which is the world's largest agricultural commodity trader.

In the Daily Mail, climate change is blamed, stemming from academics studing extreme weather events and the impact on food production - they recommended more investment in agriculture and weather resistant crops.

Over at the BBC, they are asking you why you think Africa is still hungry which will culminate in a phone in on World Service this afternoon, should make interesting listening.

And the FT, they highlight that Cargill has made bumper profits because corn prices are at a two year high, that tortilla riots in Mexico in 2006 were a sign of things to come, and that there is a stampede to buy corn because of a reported drop in supply.

With the exception of the...

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 progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals is being discussed at a summit in New York. The goals were set in 2000 with a target of meeting them by 2015. Ten years later, it's clear that progress in many areas is slow, espeicially for countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where over half the population continues to live in abject poverty.

Deborah Doane, director of UK based, anti-poverty campaigners, the World Development Movement explains why:
“With only five years to reach the Millennium Development Goals, leaders of rich countries need to get beyond inspirational speeches, and pledging more aid money that never arrives. Heads of State are delivering rhetoric but little else.
 

"They need to address the root causes of poverty that simply aren’t being mentioned: including an unfair trading system, unjust debt burdens and the biggest elephant in the room: climate change. If governments continue to dodge these thorny issues, then ultimately, MDG project will be doomed to failure.”
 

The World Development Movement believes that the lack of progress can be attributed to three central failures by rich countries which are neglecting people in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, but are also failing to address inequality between...

This briefing provides answers to a range of questions related to climate debt, including:

• Why does the UK owe a climate debt?
• Why is the climate debt campaign important?
• How can the climate debt be paid?
• How is the UK government using climate finance to reinforce existing inequalities?
• How much does the UK owe?
• What's so bad about the World Bank?
• How can we pay our climate debt in a time of austerity?

Download the briefing (PDF format)

With only five years left to meet the MDGs, WDM has analysed where progress has been made. It is striking that people in Sub-Saharan Africa are being neglected. WDM believes that this worrying trend is at least partly due to a post 9/11 preoccupation with national security interests at the expense of poverty alleviation strategies. This is likely to be entrenched by the UK still deeper if you read between the lines of recent comments by Nick Clegg and Andrew Mitchell that the UK will increase aid for fragile and conflict ridden countries. 

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty

The flagship target of the MDG programme is that the number of people living on less than $1.25 per day is halved. We appear on course globally, but Africa is being left behind. Sub-Saharan Africa is now the only region where more than half of the population still live in extreme poverty.

Conversely, no progress was made in reducing hunger between 2000 and 2007. Since then we’ve seen the 2008 food price spike, during which, for example, the price of maize meal in Nairobi more than doubled. The result is that hunger topped 1 billion in 2009 and although some of the latest figures show that there has been minimal progress, current high food prices are likely to set...

Clean up the banks - WDM Scotland's priority campaign

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

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

Food Speculation

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

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WDM's climate debt campaign

Through our climate debt campaign we want to ensure the UK fairly pays the compensation it owes for causing climate change, instead of using it to reinforce existing global inequalities, by propping up the World Bank and forcing new loans onto developing countries.

Find out more about the campaign

The September issue of our monthly newsletter for WDM groups and activists, Think Global, is out now! Find out the latest on all our campaigns here, including new actions for our 'climate debt' campaign and full event listings for the autumn. 

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WDM condemns the link between public money and Cairn’s Arctic drilling. RBS underwrote loan to oil company one month before it acquired rig for arctic drilling.

A coalition of environmental and social justice organisations in the UK are condemning the use of public money through the 83% publicly-owned RBS to provide finance for Cairn energy that may have enabled them to start controversial offshore drilling in Arctic Greenland.

See coverage on Cairn's Greenland drilling here - Quest for oil reaches Earth’s final frontier - Herald

The revelation was made during the weekend that Camp for Climate Action was taking place at the Edinburgh headquarters of RBS [1] and a few days before the Greenpeace boat, the Esperanza, was challenged by a Danish warship near the Cairn rig. [2]

Edinburgh-based oil company Cairn Energy have started drilling in the Davis Straits off the coast of Greenland, nicknamed 'Iceberg Alley and close to where the recent Petermann glacier broke away. According to research that was revealed in the Sunday Herald, [3] RBS loaned $100 million to Cairn Energy on 11 December 2009, and then on 21 December 2009 it...