Past campaign

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...

WDM campaigned to clean up the bailed-out banks between 2009 and 2011.

Background

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government 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.

RBS used that public money to finance projects and companies that threaten the climate and human rights, such as tar sands extraction in Madagascar and Canada.

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

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

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

WDM has been campaigning on trade issues for almost three decades and monitoring negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) since its creation in 1995.

Background

We have been an active part of the global community of campaigners that organise counter-summits and protests around WTO meetings. WDM also has a long track record of producing credible and incisive analysis of trade issues. We have attended the past four WTO Ministerial meetings:
Seattle (1999), Doha (2001), Cancun (2003), Hong Kong (2005).

We will be going again in November 2009 as world leaders push for a conclusion to the Doha round in the wake of the global economic crisis. Check here for updates.

WTO campaign successes

2004: Prevented the UK and EU from pushing through an agreement in the WTO which would have forced developing countries to allow western private companies to take over essential services such as water, banking and shops (GATS).

2004: Got the EU to drop its demands on developing countries in trade negotiations to open up their water services to private, western...

WDM has also run one-off campaigns on individual transnational companies (TNCs) in support of communities or workers in poor countries. Companies included Disney, Nestlé, Rio-Tinto, Shell and P&O.

Mining - Rio Tinto (formerly RTZ) 1996 - 1999

Background

The Grasberg opencast mine lies in the forested hills of West Papua and exploits gold and copper deposits that are amongst the largest in the world.  The mine is operated by an Indonesian subsidiary of the US company Freeport McMoran, in which Rio Tinto has a significant share.  The company has transformed the rainforest into a vast complex of mines, roads, towns and the world's longest tramway.  But local people have not benefited.  Instead, they have seen their hunting ground taken over, their rivers polluted and their sacred mountain ravaged.  They were neither consulted nor given adequate compensation.  Hundreds of people were displaced by the first mine site and have been resettled in a crowded and unhealthy township. 

Campaign

Since March 1996, WDM, together with Partizans, TAPOL and Survival, has...

WDM campaigned on this issue between 1997 and 1998

Background

In June 1997, WDM and Bananalink representatives visited plantations run by Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte Fresh Produce in the Atlantic region of Costa Rica. They found strong evidence that the workers were victimised for joining free trade unions (which have been banned) and were being made to handle hazardous chemicals.

Campaign

In a powerful campaign, WDM supporters and local groups sent thousands of letters and cards, organised local talks and events, hosted Costa Rican trade unionists and dumped a tonne of banana skins in front of the UK office of Del Monte, the banana multinational.  In December 1998, Del Monte signed an historic agreement allowing SITRAP, an independent trade union, to organise freely on its Costa Rican plantations.  Although this was an important step forward, Del Monte has not fully implemented the terms of the agreement and has continued to deny workers their rights.

Ethical trade

WDM is a founding member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), involving companies, trade unions and NGOs....

WDM campaigned on asbestos between 1997 and 2001

Background

Thousands of people in the Northern Cape and Northern Province of South Africa suffer from asbestos-related diseases because of the blue and brown asbestos mining, milling and manufacturing operations undertaken by the English company, Cape Plc.  Cape's own graphs show that dust levels at one South African mine were 12 to 35 times higher than permitted levels in Britain, where the dangers of asbestos had long been well-known.

Campaign

WDM campaigned with Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) to build public support for the 7,500 asbestos victims, who were suing Cape Plc for failing to observe their ‘duty of care’. Claimants, represented by the solicitors Leigh Day & Co, first brought the case against Cape in 1997. However, the company argued that the case should be heard in the South African courts until, in July 2000, five Law Lords unanimously ruled that the case should be heard in the UK. The trial date had been set for April 2002. However, in November 2001, Cape agreed to enter into a dialogue to reach a settlement - by December they had settled...

WDM campaigned on genetically modified organisms (GMO) between 1999 and 2000.

Background

Biotechnology giants such as Monsanto and Astra-Zenaca have attempted to control and extract profit from some of the world’s poorest farmers by merging with multinational seed companies and buying out local seed co-operatives in the third world.  In countries such as Zimbabwe, Monsanto-owned seed companies control whole distribution networks; farmers are therefore forced to buy whatever these companies choose to sell.

Campaign

WDM was concerned about the increased concentration of GM technology in the hands of a few large companies, and the mechanisms through which it will reach farmers in the developing world.  WDM worked to highlight how GM technologies could have a detrimental impact on poor farmers in the developing world, and campaigned for strong international regulation of the trade in GMOs in the form of a Biosafety Protocol. 

In January 2000 a Biosafety Protocol was finally agreed.  This Protocol sets out important principles for the trade in GMOs, and represents a start that campaigners have...

Efforts by the World Development Movement... have got GATS exactly where the WTO does not want it to be: in the public domain

Nick Cohen, The Observer.

WDM worked on The General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) between 2000 and 2005.

Have you heard about the sale of the century? The world's services are up for grabs and the governments and corporations of rich countries are busy snapping up the best bargains from around the world. Following WDM's campaign, GATS moved from an obscure issue that no-one had heard of, to the political centre-stage.

From the moment we wake to the moment we sleep, we depend on services. We wouldn't get far without our water, health and education services, or our banks, telephone and transport systems. The service industry is huge - international trade in services is worth a staggering £1.5 million a minute.

A key role of governments should be both to ensure that people can get access to affordable basic services and to support the local economy. They do this through rules and regulations. For example, governments in many poor countries...

WDM campaigned on the issue of water privatisation in poor countries between 2005 and 2008.

Water is a gift from Earth. We need to take care of it and preserve it so the next generation can live. If we don’t, the cost is the people, it is us

Oscar Olivera, water activist, Bolivia, 2006.

Background

Most of us take clean water for granted, but a sixth of the world’s population aren’t so lucky. Over a billion people worldwide cannot reach or afford clean water.

Nearly two million children die every year because they do not have regular, safe water to drink, while the lives of many more people are blighted by the illness and preventable diseases that result from unsafe water and poor sanitation.

WDM lobbied for the UK government to adopt policies that promote access to clean drinking water, rather than waste aid money on failed privatisation. WDM campaigned to limit the spread of coporate control over water resources, and against climate change that threatens water supplies worldwide.

Water campaign successes  

• In 2009,...

The World Development Movement (WDM) has been highlighting the impact of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) on democracy for many years. This toolkit can be seen as the latest step in the evolution of this work; an attempt to provide some ideas and examples concerning how legislators can take action to improve their oversight of policy-making in an environment where the IFIs have significant influence. This document is aimed at both legislators and those who work with them. In doing so, it attempts to span a range of issues meaning some sections will cover ground already familiar to some of this audience. As the name suggests however, the toolkit is designed so that sections can be picked out if they are relevant or useful to the reader without having to look at other parts of the document.

Where were you in July 2005?

Whether you sent a postcard, lobbied your MP, joined the march in Edinburgh or sat at home and watched a pop concert, it was hard not to know that 8 of the World’s most powerful leaders were meeting in Gleneagles and the public was demanding action on poverty. And the Group of 8 – Russia, USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and the UK – did respond. But was the response adequate and have these governments lived up to their promises?

The Make Poverty History (MPH) Campaign set a range of challenges to the G8 summit in Gleneagles on aid, debt and trade. Critically, the campaign was not confined to asking simply for more aid money to help the world’s poor but was challenging the economic agenda that keeps people poor; the free market and free trade policies that have crippled developing countries across the world.

What follows is an analysis of G8 commitments on the main MPH demands and a brief assessment of what has happened since. The conclusion we reach is that while the G8 summit produced a useful step on debt cancellation and small steps on aid, not only are these inadequate but also no action has been taken to change the economic policies that will undermine this aid provision in the long term.

In recent years the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank
have adopted new ways of working and new rhetoric on ‘country
ownership’ and ‘participation’. At the start of the 1980s, the two
institutions began to make their loans and aid conditional on
implementing ‘structural adjustment’ policies. The set of structural
adjustment conditions, commonly referred to as the ‘Washington
Consensus’, have been widely criticised both for undermining national
political processes and causing widespread social and economic
damage.

In response to such criticism, the Bank and Fund have adopted new
ways of working and new rhetoric on ‘country ownership’ of policies and
‘participation’ in the development process. The centrepieces of this
supposedly new approach are Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
(PRSPs); medium-term development plans which poor countries are now
required to produce in order to receive aid, loans and debt relief. PRSPs
are meant to be developed within a country through a participative
process, thereby meaning that the policies in the PRSP are ‘owned’ by
the country.

This briefing investigates how far PRSPs have really departed from
structural adjustment policies pushed by the Bank and Fund, and...

From the early years of Senegal’s Independence up to the late 1980s the
State played a major role in economic and social development, due to the
dearth of an indigenous private sector and the necessity to meet some of
the most pressing needs of the population. The legitimacy and stability of
the post-Independence political system depended in large measure on its
ability to satisfy those needs. During the 1960s and 1970s, Senegal
achieved some significant results, thanks to the performance of the
agricultural sector and the strength of its exports.

This report, like its predecessors, is about people responding to the imposition of ‘economic restructuring’ by national governments at the behest of the IMF and World Bank. The willingness of ordinary people to take to the streets in large numbers in direct action reflects their anger and outrage at what they see as the breaking of an unwritten ‘social contract’ with their governments to provide basic protection for ordinary citizens at least as much as it does the undoubtedly very real hardship and threat to livelihoods posed by price increases, unemployment and other forms of austerity.

The three reports produced so far by WDM cover the period after ‘Seattle’ (November 1999). But such widespread, popular protest against austerity measures, undertaken as part of a process of ‘global adjustment’, is not new. Through the second half of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s, ordinary people took to the streets in their thousands – sometimes in their tens of thousands – to protest against economic liberalisation and the hardships it created, especially for the poor. What is significant is that, today, there is a greater awareness, not only of the globalisation project itself, but also of the possibility of protest and resistance. It is not too utopian to speak of an ‘anti-...