WTO

Dan Iles

On the 3rd day of Nyeleni, we all took part in a meticulously coordinated action in the town of Krems, the host city of the forum. In this picture based blog post, I will explain how their use of colour, music, openness and most importantly local food to put across the idea of food sovereignty to Austrian public. This MUST come to the UK!

The March:

Setting off from the forum, we all congregated by the courtyard and then headed for the town centre. What with there being such a diverse crowd of young and old, men and women, and languages from across europe there was a lot of energy. The samba band was leading the way, which is always a great way of attracting attention from the public as well as providing a musical rhythm for the protest itself.

As we paraded around all the town's supermarkets, a dedicated team of leafleters were on the case, handing out information on the upcoming event (which I will explain about later) to every unwitting passer by. Each time we passed a supermarket we stopped, held a mini rally, handed out more flyers to the customers, and then moved on again:

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...

WDM has been campaigning on trade issues for most of its 40 year history and throughout this whole period the same thread has persisted: Rich countries forcing developing countries to open their markets to enable big business to line its pockets - at the expense of the poorest people in the world.

And so on Tuesday, when the European Union announced its new trade policy, Trade, Growth and World Affairs we weren’t at all surprised when we saw the same thread running through this ‘new’ strategy.

Earlier this year, the EU announced that it would be reviewing its ‘Global Europe’ strategy – the strategy devised by Peter Mandelson to target developing countries for trade deals. These trade deals massively favour Europe, enabling European businesses to make more profits, while people in developing countries lose jobs, livelihoods and industries. And this week, the new trade strategy, unveiled, after seven months of consultation, looks set to do pretty much the same thing.

The strategy wants to see the Doha round of the highly flawed and discredited World Trade...

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...

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...

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. 

If you would like to receive Think Global by post or email every month, sign up here

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...

Sharon Jordan

Over the weekend hundreds of people concerned about human rights abuses and the environment have gathered outside the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh. They’ve set up camp for four days to educate and campaign against the root causes of climate change.

After mobilising and helping stop the proposed third runway at Heathrow and a new coal fired power station at Kingsnorth, this growing mass movement is reclaiming our future from government and profit-hungry corporations.

Since the bank bail-out in 2008, the UK government has used a staggering £45.5 billion of UK taxpayers’ money – the GDP of Kenya and Tanzania combined – to prop up the Royal Bank of Scotland.

And RBS has been using that public money to finance projects and companies that are wrecking the climate and threatening human rights, such as tar sand extraction in Canada.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has been a Scottish institution for nearly 300 years, with its headquarters in Edinburgh. The £45.5 billion bail-out has left more than 80% of RBS owned by the UK taxpayer.

We have the right to demand that the government rein in the power of RBS, and the other bailed-out banks, and force them to keep to the highest environmental and human...

Tim Jones

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

In campaigning, we often have to comment and make judgements on promises rather than actions. During the general election campaign, we rated each opposition party based on what they said they would do. There was nothing else to go on.

Today we learnt that, rather than trying to be the ‘greenest government ever’ the coalition has dropped its pledge to introduce a limit on emissions from new power stations. An ‘emissions performance standard’, if set at the right level, would have prevented new dirty coal power stations from being built, such as Hunterston in Ayrshire or Kingsnorth in Kent.

The promise to introduce an emissions performance standard was made not once but over and over again by both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. This culminated in a...

A new WDM/PLATFORM report released today finds that transforming the Royal Bank of Scotland into the Green Investment Bank would kick start the green energy revolution.  The research, by former Pricewaterhouse Coopers consultant, James Leaton, finds that it would bring 50,000 new green jobs a year, boost the UK economy, reduce the UK's carbon emissions and improve international competitiveness - whilst not increasing the budget deficit.

It has recently been reported that amidst confusion and wrangling between George Osbourne and Vince Cable, the government may scrap plans to invest public money in a Green Investment Bank. Instead the government may rely on private capital to fund green projects such as wind farms, high-speed rail and electric cars.

The report was commissioned by pressure group PLATFORM and the anti-poverty campaigners, World Development Movement, who are campaigning for RBS to end its investment in high carbon projects. They reject the premise that investment in a green economy should be scrapped due to public sector cuts.

Deborah Doane, director of the World Development Movement, said: “It would be completely irresponsible and short-sighted to scrap public investment in a low carbon economy. RBS is...

Kate Blagojevic

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

Banks and hedge funds ‘buy’ cocoa and other food all the time but they don’t normally request delivery and stash them in warehouses in Liverpool and London. Usually, they buy and sell without ever seeing a single bean or grain, they only see money. Prices rise and fall as a mirror image of speculative hot money flooding in and hot footing it out.

You may have heard the author of our report, Tim Jones on BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning. In the Guardian today our report was greeted...

Here is our letter to the Royal Bank of Scotland following the meeting with him after the RBS AGM that was attended by our Scottish coalition to clean up the banks which includes ourselves, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Amnesty International, People and Planet & SEAD.  Also present at the meeting were two representives of Canadian First Nations who are being directly affected by the current tar sands operations...
17 May 2010

Dear Sir Phillip,

Thank you for meeting us at the end of last month in Edinburgh, and for your clear commitment to take our concerns and suggestions to the Board of RBS, and to Sandy Crombie as the senior independent director and chair of the Board's sub-committee on sustainability.
We are now writing, as agreed, to set out specific suggestions and proposals to address some of the concerns we have about the practices, policies and governance of RBS. These reflect the different competences and remits of each of our organisations.
Our concerns about RBS, especially as a primarily tax-payer owned bank, relate to the severe environmental consequences of financing projects and companies involved in exploitation of fossil fuels, and particularly tar sands, as well as to human rights abuses, and other social...

David Cameron has announced today that his government will be the 'greenest government' ever. We welcome the sentiment but we are sceptical and said that ‘history will judge this government on its green credentials by its policies to cut the UK’s emissions dramatically and getting a fair international climate deal, not by turning off its lights at night.’

Deborah Doane, director of the World Development Movement said:

"The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has brought some progress for achieving climate justice. Whilst it's welcome that central government has pledged to cut its emissions by 10 per cent, history will judge this government on its green credentials by its policies to cut the UK’s emissions dramatically and getting a fair international climate deal, not by turning off its lights at night. It doesn't take the scale of the problem seriously, any suggestion that blue and yellow means green government are premature because there are so many unanswered questions about the policies.

"The Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition has brought some campaign successes for climate justice. But it has also left a lot of unanswered questions, and media reports suggesting that blue and yellow = green government seem potentially premature."

The...

“Sin preguntas, sin negociar, el agua es vida” read one of the last billboards I saw as I was leaving La Paz. "Without question, without negotiation: water is life". The right to water, and the fear of losing it, has been a common theme since I arrived in Bolivia. Realising the right to water has long been a struggle for people here, even before the famous water wars in 2000. Now climate change brings a new threats, with melting glaciers and erratic rainfalls putting new pressures on the already scarce resources.

Yesterday, I went to visit the Khapi community at the foothills of the Illimani glacier that overlooks La Paz, dominating the skyline. Illimani has long been said by indigenous Aymara communities to be a guardian of the people. There’s certainly some wisdom in this. Not only is the glacier the source of water for the hundred of communities who live in the hills below it, as well as upwards of twenty percent of La Paz’s water supply (some estimate that it is closer to forty percent), but these agricultural communities are also the gardens of the La Paz, providing...

Ahead of the 2010 UK general election, WDM policy officer Tim Jones gives a snapshot of where the parties stand on issues that affect the world’s poorest people.

WDM and over 100 other organisations have challenged the major political parties to back a development manifesto, Vote Global. So how do the main parties stack up on key global poverty issues?

Trade justice

For the past thirty years imposition of free trade across much of the developing world has hindered economic growth and increased poverty and inequality. In contrast, countries that have been able to resist free trade have managed to cut poverty and increase employment. Since 1997, the Labour government has supported the EU, WTO, IMF and World Bank pushing free trade on developing countries.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats also support free trade and the current unfair round of world trade negotiations. The Green Party is distinct in calling for “fair trade not free trade” and for committing to push for reform of aggressive EU trade policies. Plaid Cymru also recognise the injustices of current international trade.

More and better aid

Labour, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, SNP and Plaid Cymru all support spending 0.7 per cent of UK income on aid...

Earlier this week, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) announced a new programme to support teaching on trade policy and ‘WTO-related matters’ in universities in developing countries. This programme would fund teaching, research and outreach on trade issues à la WTO.

The current Doha round is in its painful ninth year and the failure to come to a conclusion has been testament to the growing resistance of civil society and developing country governments to the bullying tactics at the WTO where rich countries have sought to fiercely promote corporate interests.

The WTO has made gains in opening up markets in developing countries but they want more. They are upping their game: If you can’t always get your way with negotiators from developing countries, why not groom some instant advocates in key countries, through a programme to indoctrinate, sorry I mean influence, a generation of potential policymakers and trade experts in the ways of the WTO?

This strategy bears uncanny resemblance to the 1957 US funded programme for Chilean students to study Economics at the University of Chicago, as cited by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine, in the hope of challenging the socialist regime back home. Chicago was, of course, home to Milton Friedman and these students were...

Kate Blagojevic, used to be Press Officer

The post-Copenhagen showdown has featured politicians, NGOs and commentators like George Monbiot and Mark Lynas slogging it out over whether to blame the US or China, for the lack of progress in Copenhagen. All reminiscent of our 2007 report; Blame it on China?

Yesterday it got a little more personal when Mark Lynas, in the New Statesman, suggested that it is wrong to call for climate justice. Mark accuses the World Development Movement of saying “anything calling into question the roles of developing countries must be a plot by the rich former colonial powers”. I have trawled our website and can't remember writing that. Perhaps he is referring to the fact that we were tough on Obama;...

A catalogue of bribery and bullying tactics are being used against developing countries in an attempt to force through a deal at all costs at the Copenhagen talks campaigners revealed today.

UK based, anti-poverty campaigners, the World Development movement said that developing countries are being bribed in numerous ways, including by threatening that international aid and finance for adapting to the impacts of climate change would only be delivered if countries cooperated with developed countries' demands.

The campaigners are arguing that there is no hope for a deal with justice at its heart, and so no deal would be better than forcing through a bad deal.

The campaigners have compared the kinds of tactics used by developed countries to those that take place in World Trade Organisation negotiations, which are widely viewed as notoriously undemocratic, unaccountable and immoral. And they say that the UN talks have been 'darkened by blatant bullying by rich countries saving face, but not the climate.'

Tim Jones, climate policy officer at the World Development movement said:
"It's absolutely scandalous that developing countries are being told that international aid and finance to cope with the impacts of climate change is dependent on cooperation...

Kirsty Wright, WDM climate justice campaigner, writes from Copenhagen

Day three of the official negotiations and things are starting to heat up. The leaking of the Danish text yesterday – which exposes the paltry deal that rich countries were hoping to put on the table – has really shifted the tone in Copenhagen. Along with the outrage, there’s also some relief that, finally, the insulting deal that the rich countries are trying to impose on the negotiations has been exposed. To many in Copenhagen, particularly campaigners from the south who’ve spent years battling rich country governments through the WTO, it’s really no surprise at all. Outrage yes, surprise, no.

By signing up to the framework of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, the rich countries have in theory accepted their historical responsibility, agreeing to lead emissions reductions, to ensure technology transfer and to provide adequate finance for the irreversible damage that is already destroying people’s lives. Of course, what's happening is far from this. Rich country governments are not only completely shirking on their...

We left Paris for Lille on Sunday morning, having been hosted by the Confederation Paysanne overnight. No sooner had we set off on the bus than Olivier, who has been one of the main organisers of the caravan, announced that we had an emergency on our hands...

One of the climate caravan participants, José Goyes, is part of a movement in Colombia called the Resguardo de Honduras Cauca. He lives in a fertile area in the south of the country, which is rich in vegetation, but also in mineral resources such as gold. This area has recently become the sight of a bitter struggle by the indigenous people whose livelihoods depend on this land, and the multinational corporations who are intent on exploiting it, apparently at any cost.

As I write, Canadian multinationals, and in particular a corporation called Cosigo Resources (Vancouver), are embarking on a programme of mass displacement of indigenous populations in south east Colombia. The Colombian government is supporting these multinationals; in the name of the Colombian government paramilitaries are persecuting and killing local indigenous people who oppose the forceful seizure of their land.

Many of the indigenous leaders, including José Goyes, have been threatened because they oppose the exploration of Cosigo...

I mentioned roosting chickens in an earlier blog, I’m not obsessed with them honestly but chickens have come up again during my time in Geneva. Ghana used to have a buoyant poultry industry but subsidised poultry from the EU has decimated the Ghanaian poultry industry.

I heard Kenneth Quartey who represents Ghanian poulty farmers say that: “If the Doha Round concludes we see little space for agriculture in Ghana and in Africa, where 60 per cent of the population relies on agriculture for its income. We just simply do not know what to do next.” This sentiment is echoed around the world by farmers and fishers, labour groups and environmentalists who all see a Doha conclusion as a complete and utter disaster.

The WTO ministerial closed today with the reaffirmation that development is still central to the Doha round and a 2010 deadline is still on the cards. It beggars belief, that the WTO has the cheek to use the word ‘development’ when its rules and policies are decimating entire sectors (e.g. chickens in Ghana and cotton in West Africa) causing massive job losses in its wake and derailing much needed poverty alleviation in developing countries.

Development is also about enabling countries to...

The WTO ministerial conference officially opened this afternoon at 3pm (2pm UK time) and as delegates from around the world were entering into the open plenary session, they were welcomed by singing trade campaigners from the Our World is Not for Sale (OWINFS) network - a network of organisations, activists and social movements worldwide fighting the current model of corporate globalisation embodied in the global trading system. The World Development Movement is a member of OWINFS and WDM trade campaigner Heidi Chow was also part of the group of singing activists. Their song was based on the tune of jingle bells and started with "no new round, turn around, the world has had enough..."

OWINFS were keen to ensure that the delegates were aware of the global protest against the WTO and the Doha round.

You can receive live updates on twitter or though Heidi's blog and read more about the WTO

Today I have been attending briefings in preparation for the ministerial conference which starts at 3pm tomorrow afternoon. I walked to the WTO building to pick up my badge which will allow me access to the ministerial as well as the NGO centre.

During a NGO briefing, we were told that we could access the open spaces at the ministerial conference (book shop, coffee bar, loos) but that the main sessions would be closed and only 42 people from NGOs (there are around 500 NGO representatives in total here) could attend the opening plenary. Most of the NGOs in the room were not happy with the lack of access but shrugged their shoulders and rolled their eyes acknowledging this is how the WTO works – unaccountable and untransparent. A Norwegian campaigner commented that when he attended the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation summit, NGOs were allowed access to the meetings and were even allowed to take the floor in some debates. The director of public affairs could only confess that the WTO were not that ‘advanced’ yet.

So my badge can get me coffee (which I don’t drink) and books (on free trade)…

...

Welcome to the December issue of Think Global.  This month we give you updates on our campaign plans for 2010; alongside the latest developments on new coal, more on our climate debt campaign, and information about what's going on in the world of European trade. 

Over the next month, WDM staff will be travelling both to Geneva to stand in solidarity with those protesting against the WTO, and to Copenhagen to demand a just deal for the world's poorest people at the crucial climate talks.  Keep an eye on our website for up to the minute blogs from both these conventions. 

Farmers, unions, fisherfolk and other civil society groups from around the world will be converging in Geneva for the WTO Ministerial at the end of the month. But ten years after Seattle, the struggle against the WTO has been globalised and Geneva will not be the only focus for WTO protest. Instead, activists around the world are organising protests and events in their own towns and cities to show the strength of global resistance. 

The World Development Movement has a long track record on campaigning on the WTO and will be organising media stunts on Saturday 28 November – in solidarity with the major civil society demonstration in Geneva on the same day. Costumed campaigners from WDM groups will be staging tug of wars across the UK.

The tug of war media stunts between farmers and corporations represents the gross power imbalances at the WTO where corporate interests drive the agenda leaving the concerns and needs of developing countries out-weighed.

The London WDM groups have joined forces to stage a tug of war media stunt around Borough market (2:30pm, near Borough market...