The World Bank / IMF

During the first week of the UN Climate talks in Doha, campaigners from Kingston and Richmond World Development Movement group met with Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, to discuss the government’s contributions to climate finance. As WDM members, the group were concerned that the UK is pushing developing countries deeper into debt through climate loans.

Members of WDM Richmond and Kingston WDM local group present Ed Davey with paper ‘chains of debt’

The group delivered paper ‘chains of debt’ to Ed Davey, with handwritten messages from constituents asking him to ensure that the UK’s climate policies do not drive the world’s most vulnerable people deeper into poverty.

It is the world’s poorest people who are suffering the worst effects of climate change, and it is wealthy countries like the UK who are overwhelmingly responsible for the emissions causing the damage. We owe those worst effected by climate change a large ‘climate debt’. 

The UK government has been contributing to the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds (CIFs). One of these funds,...

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...

Last week, WDM climate campaigner Sarah Reader donned a Nick Clegg mask and interrupted the deputy prime minister’s speech to the ‘natural capital summit’ on the sidelines of Rio+20.

Clegg was there to support to the ‘natural capital declaration’, a document drawn up by 37 big financial sector companies to call for the financial valuation of nature and the internalisation of environmental ‘externalities’ (i.e. bringing them into the market).

It seems that Sarah has raised some hackles at the World Bank. On Thursday, the World Bank’s vice president for sustainable development, Rachel Kyte, posted a blog criticising WDM for ‘missing the point’ about valuing nature:

The event had its share of unexpected excitement when a protester, wearing a Clegg mask, interrupted the UK deputy prime minister. She was from World Development Movement. Reading their blog later, I think they are missing the point. We are not talking about "pricing" nature but "valuing" it. By valuing it, you are enabling better economic decisions. For example, if you're a water-scarce country and you...

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...

Since then, UNCTAD has fulfilled a valuable role, providing an alternative perspective on the global economy, and challenging the neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’ which has dominated the policies of other multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and has led to increased inequality and economic injustice. 

The organisation has worked on a range of important issues, including aid, debt cancellation and trade policy. More recently, it has produced detailed and insightful research demonstrating how the huge increase in financial speculation in the commodity markets is driving volatility and contributing to price spikes for staple foods. And despite having much more limited resources, UNCTAD is recognised as having predicted the financial crisis when...

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.

• 2013 Two years of concerted campaigning by WDM results in Barclays, the UK’s biggest player in food speculation and one of the top three globally, announcing that it will no longer trade in food for speculative purposes.
• 2012 Following a prolonged campaign by a coalition of Scottish NGOs and local pressure groups including WDM Scotland, plans for a new coal-fired power station in Hunterston, North Ayrshire are shelved.
• 2011 The UK government puts £10 million of its climate finance towards the UN Adaptation Fund, and agrees to give the majority of its funds that year to the World...

Ecological debt is the next frontier of social economic justice"
- Wahu Kaara, Kenya Debt Relief Network

WDM is campaigning in solidarity with our allies in the global south 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.

We are calling on development secretary Justine Greening to stop pushing climate loans on developing countries, loans that will only lock countries into new debt and increased poverty. The UK must end its support for the discredited, undemocratic and unaccountable World Bank, and instead support funds through more democratic institutions such as the UN Adaptation Fund. Finally, we are also calling that the UK uses new money, rather than diverting money from the aid budget as they are currently doing.    

The UK’s World Bank climate funds are set to create hundreds of millions of pounds of new Third World Debt for some of the world’s...

Jonathan Stevenson, Jubilee Debt Campaign

As Eurozone finance ministers sat down in Brussels to decide on Greece's future, across town a well-timed University of London conference was underway to try to learn lessons from Latin America's own debt crisis in the 1980s and '90s. Eurozone ministers would have done well to attend because what happened in Latin America three decades ago bears a striking resemblance to what is currently taking place in Europe. 

Then the International Monetary Fund and World Bank lent money to dozens of countries which would otherwise have defaulted, in order to keep the debt repayments flowing back to the banks of the rich world who had created the crisis by their own reckless strategies. They then insisted those countries adopt a set of structural adjustment policies which saw industry privatised, money freed from government control and markets ripped open to competition with...

Post by Kirsty Wright and Sarah Reader, climate campaigners

For the past two years WDM along with the Jubilee Debt Campaign have been campaigning for the UK government to deliver its climate finance to help countries cope with climate change as grants through the UN Adaptation Fund rather than loans through the World Bank (see the bottom of this page for a slideshow of our campaigning).

With the UK’s latest announcement of climate finance made in Durban, South Africa, we saw significant movement on this issue. Two major things have happened.

Firstly, the UK government has announced it will put £10 million towards the UN Adaptation Fund. This is the first time that the UK has said it will contribute to the fund, despite being on the fund's board. The announcement came as the chair of the UN Adaptation Fund was suggesting that it may have to close unless rich countries started contributing funds. 

Secondly, the UK announced that it would give another £85 million through the World Bank’s adaptation fund (the focus of our Climate Loan Sharks report). Although it's disappointing that the money is going to the World Bank,...

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:

On, the penultimate day of the Durban climate talks, I joined other climate justice allies at what became one of COP17’s most theatrical press conferences yet. Organised by the Climate Justice Now coalition, allies from across the world took this opportunity to give their analysis of the conference so far, making it clear they felt ignored by the governments who are supposed to represent them. Des D’Sa from the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance gave a damning description of how the talks have failed the people of the world: “There have been discussions taking place in closed doors by those in power, who have colleagues in the corporate world and the decisions are not in the interests of mankind.”

Guest post by Innocent Sithole, used to be web intern

Our new report, Power to the people? reveals how the World Bank is diverting climate funds from communities to multinational corporations. Instead of giving energy poor people access to much needed electricity in Mexico, the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund (CTF) is powering big business and potentially adding to the country’s energy inequalities.

The CTF’s flagship project in Mexico, the La Mata and La Ventosa Wind Park in the state of Oaxaca, is set to produce 67.5 MW per year, enough to power 160,000 homes in a state where around 7 per cent of the population lack access to electricity. But in an arrangement that exposes the project’s unfair focus on big business rather than poor people, none of this electricity will power homes of local people. Instead it will be sold at a discounted rate to Walmart, the world’s largest corporation.

The wind park is 99 per cent controlled by a subsidiary of the French energy giant EDF. However, by owning a tiny stake in the wind park, Walmart has been able to circumvent Mexico’s energy laws and officially claim that it has produced the...

As campaigners focusing on climate justice, we tend to think wind energy is a good thing. And so it can be – but not when it robs indigenous people of their land. 

Last year, the World Development Movement’s climate campaigner Kirsty Wright went to the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and met indigenous activist Bettina Cruz Velazquez. Bettina told Kirsty how wind farms run by multinational corporations are being built without the consent of the indigenous people who own the land.

In October, Bettina and others were attacked and received death threats during a protest against one of the wind farms. Amnesty is concerned that the death of a man in unclear circumstances during the protest is being used to ‘unfairly prosecute protestors and to deter future protests,’ and it is asking people to write to the Mexican authorities expressing their concern.

Incredibly, one of the other wind farms in the area, also being opposed by local people, is being part financed from the UK’s overseas aid budget. It produces enough electricity to power 160,000 homes. So at the very least, it must be providing energy for the people of Oaxaca, seven...

It is the eve of the UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa. Two years on from the catastrophic talks that took place in Copenhagen; there has been little progress on a global deal on climate change. In fact, as the science demands ever stronger action, with people’s lives becoming increasingly impacted by extreme weather events, disease, failing crops and reduced water supplies as a result of climate change, the same rich industrialised countries that grew wealthy by causing the crisis have only lowered ambition.
 
Inside the talks, the picture looks bleak. Rich industrialised countries are doing their best to destroy the only legally binding framework on emissions reductions that exists, aiming instead to replace it with a voluntary ‘pledge and review’ system which current figures suggest would lead to disastrous global temperature rises of over five degrees above pre-industrial temperatures. Furthermore, there is a strong push to do away with any notion of historical responsibility for the big polluters, now reluctant to either reduce their emissions or pay compensation, as they agreed when the signed up to the UN convention on climate change....

UK money will be used for a ‘climate loan’ to Jamaica, increasing its already heavy debt burden, following a decision by the World Bank this week.

Campaigners have condemned the loan, which will drive the Caribbean nation deeper into poverty. Jamaica’s foreign debt stands at $2,500 per person, and the country spends $1.2 billion a year on debt repayments. The government’s foreign-owed debts are 55 per cent of national income, making it's debt burden one of the heaviest in the world.[1]

The $10 million loan agreed this week is intended to help Jamaica adapt to the effects of climate change. But campaigners say countries like the UK should give climate funds as grants rather than loans.

Jubilee Debt Campaign spokesperson Tim Jones said today:

Debt has devastated lives across the world, bringing economic collapse and diverting money from essential public services. The Jamaican government already spends $450 per person annually on debt repayments, more than on education and healthcare combined. The World Bank and UK government should be cancelling Jamaica's debt, not adding to it with new unjust climate loans."

...

The UN climate talks, COP17, begin at the end of November. This could be the last chance to save the current international climate deal. The first period of the Kyoto protocol ends in 2012 and rich industrialised countries are pushing to replace it with a system that is based on voluntary reductions in carbon emissions instead.

In the run up to the negotiations, we have produced a new briefing, Durban, a tipping point for the international climate talks which sets out what we see as the key issues facing us. There will be attempts to reach agreements on issues such as climate finance, technology adaptations and forests but it is possible that there will be no deal at all. There are three issues that we are particularly concerned about.

 The role of the World Bank

At last years’ negotiations in Cancun, there was an agreement to set up a new green climate fund to provide funding to countries affected by climate change. But none of the key details were agreed – other than handing a central role to the World Bank

The widely discredited World Bank is attempting to reinvent itself as the...

Aamina Ahmad, used to be campaigns and policy intern

Last week Sarah Reader and I ventured down to Barton Peveril College, Eastleigh - in energy and climate change minister Chris Huhne's constituency - to talk about our climate justice campaign.

Chris Huhne will be taking part in the upcoming UN climate negotiations in South Africa and we are keen to make contact with people in his constituency who can lobby him over his view that the UK's climate finance should be given as loans through the undemocratic World Bank. The World Bank has a long history of funding projects which are destructive to the environment and one of the aims of our campaign is for UK climate finance being given as grants through the more transparent UN Adaptation Fund instead. In the run up to the climate talks it is necessary that we increase the pressure on Chris Huhne.

We spoke to a group of sixth-form students and at first I was slightly perplexed over how to engage 16-18 year olds in the campaign. But I had underestimated the ‘alternative’ kids who were really responsive to us and willfully signed...

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...

Eight months ago, the world’s most powerful countries tasked the world’s most powerful institutions with investigating what to do about volatile food prices. The World Bank, IMF and others have just delivered their report to the G20.

The report is clear that there is a general consensus that speculation has amplified food price spikes, with devastating effects. But its recommendations amount to little more than a call for more research. The 925 million people who are undernourished can’t afford to wait.

The report recognises that “Food price increases can have major repercussions on the whole economy”. For example, 43 developing countries cut their taxes on imports in an attempt to lower food costs during the 2007-8 food crisis, meaning less money for essential public services. Short term price spikes can have long term impacts, such as stunting children’s growth or scaring off investors in destabilised economies.

Looking at the role of speculation, the report says:

While analysts argue about whether financial speculation has been a major factor, most agree that increased participation by … financial markets probably acted to amplify short...

It matters who the head of the IMF is, and it matters how they are chosen. It matters for the legitimacy of an organisation that, through the stringent conditions often attached to its loans, has a powerful hand in economic policy making – and hence politics - in many countries, particularly poorer ones. It matters for the effectiveness of the Fund, which is struggling to adapt to an emerging world order where the old Western powers are gradually being eclipsed by faster growing, larger southern countries.”

                                  Heading for the right choice? A briefing on a fair selection process

As Christine Lagarde is briefed on her new job as the managing director of the IMF (the World Bank’s sister organisation, set up post-war to promote economic stability) we are left to reflect on the rigged selection process and sad inevitability of her appointment. The legitimacy of the Fund, already in pieces, was dealt a further blow by this...

Today, decisions are due to be made on new World Bank ‘climate loans’ to Cambodia, St. Lucia, Mozambique, Nepal and Zambia. To protest against these new loans and say no to the World Bank being involved in climate finance, WDM and the Jubilee Debt Campaign gathered outside the Department for International Development in London. 

We were there in solidarity with over 50 civil society groups from the 13 countries due to receive UK sponsored loans through the World Bank’s climate funds. At the end of the protest, two 'intrepid sharks' went in to hand a copy of a statement signed by these groups to DfiD staff to pass on to international development secretary Andrew Mitchell.

The UK...

Groups from 13 developing countries have today slammed UK climate loans, set to be agreed in South Africa this week. The loans are to be given through the World Bank.

Community leaders in countries including Nepal, Bangladesh, Mozambique and Yemen have written to British cabinet ministers Chris Huhne and Andrew Mitchell rejecting the loans the UK is providing to their countries to help them cope with climate change.

In their letter they say the UK and other rich industrialised countries, who have done the most to cause climate change, owe a ‘climate debt’ to poor countries who are worst affected by the phenomenon. ‘Climate loans will only lock our countries into further debt, and further impoverish our people,’ reads the letter.

New research from the World Development Movement and Jubilee Debt Campaign reveals that the UK’s climate funding is pushing the world’s poorest countries deeper into debt.  Their report, ‘Climate Loan Sharks’, also condemns the World Bank for imposing its own priorities on countries...

Tim Jones, Jubilee Debt Campaign

Thanks to Keanu Reeves stealing historical figures for a history project in 1989, the one quote I think I remember from philosophy is from Socrates: ‘wisest is he who knows what he does not know’.

At a World Bank and Swiss government organised debt conference in Berne, there seemed a need for more acknowledgment of what we do not know.

Now that 32 countries have had some of their debts cancelled there is an emphasis on monitoring government debts to help prevent new crises in the future. Not that this monitoring has necessarily achieved its aim. We are told how 6 out of 25 African countries which have received some debt cancellation are at “high risk of debt distress” and a further 18 at “moderate risk”. To put this in context, a government can be spending 20 per cent of its earnings on debt repayments and still be considered at “low risk”.

One government official tells me he is outraged that some countries which had debts cancelled a few years ago are now seeing increased debts again. Especially as, in his view, the top lenders to these countries are the IMF and World Bank. He says when he challenged one World Bank official on this fact the response was “Are we really the largest lenders, I didn’t know that...

With a backdrop of a stagnating economy and a population increasingly questioning the logic of his strategy for cutting the deficit, this morning I heard the chancellor, George Osborne, defend his and the government’s policy of fast-reaching, sweeping cuts, many of which are yet to make their teeth fully felt. The IMF, he insisted, were soon to announce their backing for the strategy, and who could be a more independent (and thus compelling) judge than they?

Such a comment would be enough to make most WDM supporters choke on their morning coffee. Those of us who have paid even the slightest attention to the IMF’s policies in the global south over the last few decades will expect nothing but a hearty endorsement for Osborne and his neo-liberal policies from the IMF. More importantly however, we will not give such an endorsement any credit.

Time and time again the IMF has prescribed the same austerity dogma to the world’s poorest countries as a formula for growth. And time and time again these countries have not experienced the growth promised but have been subject to increasing unemployment and ever growing inequality.

Whilst a lucky few have managed to skim off the countries’ wealth and assets, thereby growing rich, it has been at the expense of the...

Since we launched our campaign against food speculation nearly a year ago – then virtually an unknown issue – momentum has been steadily building towards regulation. We’ve had wide-ranging support, including from the British mainstream media, leading academics, former hedge fund managers, the UN special rapporteur on the right of food and the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In January over 3,000 people made submissions to a European Commission consultation on the issue. Food speculation and the impact...

Hilary Aked

Why did WDM join the demonstration opposing the government’s sweeping cuts last Saturday? Why should a group which campaigns against global poverty be concerned with the domestic economy, especially when the oversees aid budget has supposedly been ring-fenced?

The fact that the current government is channelling the 0.7% GDP that goes towards oversees aid into counter-terrorism initiatives in only a handful of countries, rather than supporting those most in need might be cause enough to take to the streets.

But the main reason is that we really are ‘all in this together’ – though not in the way Cameron and Osborne mean. Across the world people are fighting against the same economic policies advocated by global elites everywhere, and have been doing so for a long time. It’s vital to make the links between the neoliberal agenda currently being pushed in this country, and the free-market policies which have been forced on the global south for decades.

The same austerity measures which will decimate UK public services in the name of ‘efficiency’ have devastated the lives of the poorest sectors of society in countries around the world. Meanwhile huge multinationals make massive profits as a result of privatisation, deregulation and the...

Today is the final day of the 13th UN Adaptation Fund meeting in Bonn. This is the UN fund set up by the main UN climate negotiations to help the poorest countries in the world adapt to the effects of catastrophic climate change, by channelling funds from rich countries into adaptation projects. While it sounds somewhat techy, WDM has a keen interest in the outcomes of this meeting.

When we learned last year that the UK would only give funding to World Bank loans for climate adaptation, we thought we would raise our concerns to DfID, by showing the public’s support for the UN adaptation grants. Our supporters even offered to put their own money towards UN grants. The consequent “send-a-pound” action resulted in over £1500 being given to DFID to help pay for the grants.

Unfortunately, DFID didn’t take us up on our generosity, and actually told us that it was against the law for them to take the money. So they asked us to come and take the money back, or they would donate it to a ‘local charity’.

After some debate with DfID, we reluctantly agreed to take the donations back, deciding that we would send this money...

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...

Over 100 European and international organisations are calling on the G20 Finance Ministers, who are meeting this weekend, to rein in speculation on food prices by banks, hedge funds and pension funds.

The Finance Ministers will be discussing responses to the record food prices which are at ‘dangerous’ levels according to the World Bank with 44 million more people pushed into poverty since last June. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, currently the head of the G20, is pushing for tighter regulation of commodity markets in order to reduce food price spikes and volatility.

But there are concerns that some governments, including the UK, could try to block reforms in the EU and G20 due to fierce opposition from the banking industry. Strong statements have been made by key EU decision makers, including Commissioner Michel Barnier and the French Government, on curbing speculation, but it remains to be seen whether European financial reforms will deliver.

In a statement signed by the Fairtrade Foundation, Friends of the Earth Europe, New Economics Foundation, Corporate Europe Observatory and over a hundred more groups from around the world, political leaders are warned...

As an anti-cuts campaigner in the UK fighting rises in tuition fees or corporate tax dodging or the closure of a local library or redundancies at a city council or (hopefully) all of the above, it wouldn’t be surprising if you have been so busy over the last few weeks that events in Tunisia have passed you by. And now that media coverage of the protests is more prominent, it still may fail to immediately resonate as your fight too.

The historical and political context of the series of protests over food prices and unemployment in Algeria, Sudan, Jordan, and the overthrow of the Tunisian president on Friday, is vastly different to the UK. But the fight to resist the dominance of neoliberalism and its iniquitous effects is a thread that ties together protests over library closures in Liverpool and rising food prices and unemployment in Jordan.

In Tunisia, protests were triggered by unrest in Algeria, food prices, unemployment and Mohammad Bouazizi, a 26 year old unemployed graduate, who set himself on fire in December after the police stopped him from making a living by selling vegetables because he didn’t have a permit.

The military responded by beating, torturing...

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,...

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...

Kate Blagovejic, used to be press officer

On high streets across the UK over the last few months, passers-by have been greeted with the sight of World Development Movement groups taking a big stick to papier-mâché, piñata, pigs. This was part of our on-going campaign to highlight that governments should not be pushing for the World ‘piggy’ Bank to be responsible for disbursing climate finance to developing countries.

In the UK, WDM staff and volunteers formed a pig production line in the basement of our office. But in Mexico, the home of the piñata, we have decided to go pro. Consequently, today we spent hours trying to find a certain shop which employs people with learning disabilities, which specialises in making piñatas.

Rosie Rogers and Kirsty Wright, used to be climate justice campaign

Yesterday people from all over the country descended on the Department for International Development (DfID). We were there to ensure that the Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell and his department didn't ignore our message that we are against countries being forced into deeper poverty with World Bank loans for climate change. As part of WDM and Jubilee Debt Campaign’s (JDC) No New Debt campaign, people have been sending pound coins to DfID, asking for them to be given to the UN Adaptation Fund as grants and calling on the UK government to honour its pre-election promises that it wouldn’t force countries into new unfair debt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCQ1PjON4-8

DfID not only refused to accept our donations, but threatened to send them to ‘a local charity’. They also confirmed that they would be supporting loans through the World Bank, in spite of Andrew Mitchell’s empty words of support for the UN Adaptation Fund to which his government have not given a single pound. Read more about DfID’s response here.

In...