Climate justice

As the Arctic sea ice melts, oil companies are determined to drill for the same fuels that cause the melting in the first place.

Greenpeace, WDM and other organisations have been tirelessly campaigning to protect the Arctic region and stop investment in fossil fuel projects, in creative and strategic ways for years.

This July 6 women did something amazing to shine a spotlight on Shell’s Arctic drilling - they climbed The Shard: Europe’s tallest building, which sits among Shell oil’s complex in London to make the world pay attention.

We will now bring the magnificent and awe-inspiring Arctic to London and we want you to join us (no climbing required)! We will haul the biggest polar bear puppet in the world, Aurora, through the heart of London on 15th September to lead our spectacular Arctic Uproar parade.

Picture by Kristian Buus and Greenpeace

I have been truly inspired by how excited...

I work with social movements and organisations empowering communities impacted by oil extraction in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. For over 50 years, billions of dollars of oil revenues have been extracted from the Niger Delta, yet local people live in abject poverty. Oil spills are a daily occurrence, ravaging farmland and killing fish that village communities depend on for their survival. Toxic gas-flaring occurs with impunity. 

Shell is the most active oil major in the region, contributing to this legacy of human rights violations, environmental devastation and social conflict.  2 years ago, a detailed UNEP report concluded that...

       An image of the infographic at www.twoenergyfutures.org

Most people in the world prefer renewable energy to fossil fuels or nuclear power. This is what the opinion polls tell us, again and again, and it's why communities are standing up to fossil fuel  extraction projects and pushing for cleaner alternatives all over the world.

That’s all very well, say the fossil fuel proponents, and of course we all want clean energy eventually, but for now we need coal, oil and gas because renewables just can’t fill the energy gap, right? Burning carbon is just a necessary evil, so we've just got no choice to extract those tar sands, or frack that national park, or drill...

The 'Carbon Bubbles champagne bar' tour continued this morning as we brought the taste of destruction back to the city once again. This time it was outside HSBC’s AGM at the Barbican Centre. We served up the finest quality oil from the Canadian Tar Sands, financed by HSBC, to passing shareholders so that they could sample the destruction that their shares cause. Many shareholders didn’t bat an eye lid at the reality that their shares were contributing to bankrolling climate change. Additionally causing the displacement of local communities in the global south to make way for fossil fuel extraction. One older gentleman literally guzzled down the oil we were offering shareholders in champagne glasses (in reality molasses disguised as oil). Clearly displaying that those involved in the fossil fuel web of power do actually love the taste of oil, I never knew. We also had samples of coal from the Cerrejón mine in Colombia as a visual display of what shareholder money is invested in.

Between 2010 and 2012 the top five UK banks raised £170 billion in bonds and shares for fossil fuel companies. HSBC outdid them all raising £74.64 billion for fossil fuel firms during this two year period. At present fossil fuel reserves on the London Stock Exchange are over 200 times the UK’...

The World Development Movement recently hosted Tatiana Roa Avendaño, an activist resisting the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia. Watch the video below to see what she said about Cerrejón when she visited Anglo American's headquarters.

Cerrejón is a giant open-pit coal mine in La Guajira, northern Colombia. The mine is jointly owned by three of the world's largest mining companies; London-listed Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Xstrata. Tatiana told us about how the Colombian government has presented Cerrejón as an example of responsible mining. However this is far from the truth. The Cerrejón mine is located in Wayúu indigenous territory and when mining began 30 years ago local people were not consulted. Instead their lands were seized and communities were forcibly displaced, violating their constitutional land rights. The Colombian government has failed to adequately compensate any of the affected communities.

Pollution and dust from the coal mine has caused the contamination of...

One third of ministers in the UK government, including top cabinet ministers, are linked to the UK finance and energy companies fuelling climate change, a new report from the World Development Movement reveals today.

The anti-poverty campaign group has condemned the ‘finance-energy complex’ at the heart of government, and is calling on the government to force UK banks and finance companies to publish the carbon emissions released by the fossil fuel projects they fund.

Fossil fuel companies are worth £900 billion on the London Stock Exchange, and the top five UK banks underwrote £170 billion in bonds and share issues for fossil fuel companies between 2010 and 2012.

Top cabinet ministers including William Hague, Vince Cable, George Osborne and Michael Gove have links with big finance, oil and coal companies that are driving climate change.

Foreign secretary William Hague, who used to work for Shell, helped Tullow Oil get out of paying a £175 million tax bill in Uganda, one of the world’s poorest countries. Mr Hague made a personal phone call to the Ugandan president on Tullow Oil’s behalf.

Vince Cable, secretary of state for business and skills and...

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,...

The World Development Movement has warned that the climate finance the UK government has announced it will provide to developing countries risks putting money meant to help the poor into the hands of multinational companies.

The UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said today it would spend £1.8 billion between 2013 and 2015 to help poor countries adapt to climate change and develop clean energy.

The announcement, timed to coincide with the ongoing global climate talks taking place in Doha, did not specify whether any of this money is additional to the £2.9 billion previously earmarked for climate between 2011 and 2015.

DECC also announced its plans on spending the final tranche of the £1.5 billion ‘fast start’ finance the UK government promised to spend by December 2012, much of which controversially involves a prominent role for the private sector.

Alex Scrivener, the World Development Movement’s policy officer, said:

While it is good that the UK government has reaffirmed its previous commitments on climate finance, it looks like it has continued to move in the wrong direction in terms of how to spend the money. Most of the money will be...

As the latest round of UN climate talks kicks off in Doha this week, top of the agenda for developing countries, alongside the key issue of emissions reductions, is the question, ‘Where’s the money?’.

Rich industrialised countries are largely responsible for having caused climate change, yet the world’s poorest countries, which have emitted tiny quantities of carbon dioxide, are and will be the hardest hit by increasing temperatures, droughts and flooding.

For example, Bangladesh’s per capita emissions are, at 0.3 metric tonnes, just 3.5 per cent of the UK’s. But it is Bangladesh that could see 17 per cent of its landmass underwater as a result of climate change. To put that in perspective, if the UK were to lose 17 per cent of its landmass, we would lose an area twice the size of Wales.

So countries like the UK, which got rich by burning fossil fuels, owe a ‘climate debt’ to developing countries.

The UN World Economic and Social Survey says that developing countries need US$500-600 billion a year to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change, while South Centre economist Dr Manuel Montes...

Last week EquityBD, one of WDM's global allies working on economic justice, human rights and environmental issues in Bangladesh, sent us a report. The report told us that on Thursday 15 November, civil society groups and climate networks in Bangladesh joined together to protest the World Bank’s recent announcement that it would retain control of the Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF).

This fund was established to support Bangladesh’s climate change adaption plan. The Bangladesh government originally stated that it would own the fund, and that the World Bank would manage it for three years while handing over management to the government. The recent announcement that the World bank will retain control of the BCCRF has caused a public outcry in Bangladesh.

Equitybd, NGOs and civil society groups form a human chain in protest against World Bank control of climate finance in Bangladesh

Protestors formed a human chain around the national press club in Dhaka, demanding that both the BCCRF and Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) come under an autonomous board. The...

Yesterday four of us at the World Development Movement went to Westminster, to ask the Treasury for jobs. Unfortunately for gossip fans, this wasn’t a scandalous defection from our office on Offley Road, London in protest at the underuse of the office wormery for our compost, or in outrage at the lack of solar panels on our roof. Instead the queue asking for jobs outside the Treasury was of a coalition of 250 supporters from groups as wide-ranging as the Women’s Institute, UK Youth Climate Coalition, Quakers, Population Matters and the RSPB.

Green jobs must be a vital part of our economic future. Our carbon-intensive model of economic development is no longer sustainable and we must find ways in which we can provide employment to people in the UK without adding to our growing climate debt. This is no pipe dream, a third of UK economic growth already derives from ‘green’ sectors of the economy but many more jobs could be created if we moved decisively towards a more sustainable economic model.

...

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

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

It was the poor.

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

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

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

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...

Download the report

The Ouarzazate solar power project, to be built in Morocco, will on completion be one of the largest solar power plants in the world. It is part funded by UK aid money, yet it is designed to prioritise energy export to Europe rather than to ensure that ordinary Moroccans can access affordable electricity.

The project is being funded by the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund, which has received £385 million, or 14 per cent of its total funding, from the UK overseas aid budget.

This study funds that: 

• The Ouarzazate project is being driven by EU interests and policies, and is unlikely to address the energy needs of poor communities.
• Big business and the EU are likely to be the main beneficiaries, rather than the Moroccan population which is likely to face higher domestic electricity prices.
• The project risks burdening the Moroccan state with significant debts as the guarantor of loans taken out to subsidise the public-private power company that will build and run the plant.
• In Ouarzazate as in other Clean Technology Fund projects, the concentration of investment in energy utilities and the private sector in middle income countries...

Here in Scotland there is a lot of pride amongst parliamentarians over our climate change act, considered one of the most ambitious pieces of climate change legislation in the industrialised world. Of course, as climate change campaigners, we realise the challenge lies in its implementation, but we have been watching with interest the gusto with which the First Minister Alex Salmond travels the world (carbon emissions from aviation aside!) promoting Scotland’s climate change act. In January, at a renewable energy conference in Abu Dhabi, Salmond argued that 2012 should be the ‘year of climate justice’. And the international focus continued this month with a debate in the Scottish parliament on climate justice. Apparently, Holyrood’s debate was the world’s first ever parliamentary debate on the issue (and about time too).

Led by Stewart Stevenson, the climate change minister, MSPs of all parties agreed that climate change is at its heart an ethical issue, affecting the human rights of the poor in countries that bear little responsibility for the problem in the first place.

As SNP MSP Marco Biago said: “I am drawn to the World Development Movement’s phenomenal statistic—which I have no reason to doubt—that the UK emits more carbon dioxide in one year than...

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

UPDATE: Bettina has now been released. However, she still faces the charges. We have updated the information below, so please write to the contacts listed below challenging these charges. We have suggested some points you could make.

I have just heard news through friends in Mexico that Bettina Cruz Velázquez, an indigenous Mexican activist who WDM has been campaigning with, has been arrested. The information available suggests that she is the target of unfounded charges and detention as a way to deter her from her campaigning to defend the rights of indigenous people over the interests of multinational corporations. Please read on to find out what has happened, and how you can take action to support Bettina.

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. We are pleased that the UK government will now be putting £10 million towards the UN Adaptation Fund.

It will also give another £85 million through the World Bank’s adaptation fund. Although it’s disappointing that the money is going to the World Bank, the good news is that this time the UK has given the majority of its money, £70 million, as grants, not loans. This is a significant change from its previous policy.

WDM and JDC campaigners have done an amazing job in bringing this issue to the attention of politicians and decision makers in a way that they could not ignore.

Here is a slideshow of images from key moments in the campaign. 

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,...

To highlight the fact that the UK government had not given any money to the UN climate adapation fund, we asked members of the public to send donations to the fund via the Department for International Development (DfID). DfID refused to accept them and instead sent the funds to us.

Here WDM campaigners present a giant cheque to the chair of the UN Adaptation FUND at the climate talks in Cancun, December 2010. 

Alongside the UN climate talks that took place earlier this month, Durban’s KZN university hosted a ‘people’s space’: an alternative space where people could come together to talk about the struggle for climate justice. Bringing together activists from across the world, the space saw some fascinating exchanges, where people shared what climate justice means in the context of their own lives, and the complicated web of systemic issues that need to be tackled on the pathway for climate justice.

Whilst the mantra for many concerned citizens in the UK is to reduce energy consumption, a key demand for activists is for their right to energy access to
be met. This was one of the key issues under discussion at the people's space.

In South Africa, and across the continent, energy access is a
vital part of the struggle for climate justice. The statistics remain shocking: in Durban, nearly three-quarters of the population have no access to energy. In rural Africa, that figure is a phenomenal ninety-four percent of people who have no access to the energy they need to drill for water, power hospitals, and cook food. Yet, in a twisted misfortune of geography, Africa is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and its people are already experiencing more crop...

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:

Durban, 16:45, 9 December 2011

As negotiations on the final outcome of the UN climate talks look set to continue late into the night, negotiators remain focused on the EU’s proposed roadmap to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a package that makes the same demands of poor developing countries as it does of rich industrialised countries. The talks have paid almost no attention to the two most urgent issues for developing countries: emissions reductions by developed countries, and finance to help people in poor countries cope with climate change.

On the last day of the talks, Murray Worthy, policy officer at the World Development Movement said:

“The UK and EU’s talk of a new global deal is little more than a distraction from their inaction. The EU is failing to take responsibility for its part in causing climate change.  It should be taking the lead through meaningful action. Instead, the EU ‘roadmap’ has been a smokescreen for developed countries’ failure to do what is needed. It is the world’s poorest people, those least responsible for this crisis, who will end up paying the highest price.”

The talks look set to result in a new Green Climate Fund to deliver finance to developing countries. But the World Development Movement...

Talk of a long-term climate deal to cut carbon emissions is allowing industrialised countries to delay taking action, says World Development Movement policy officer Murray Worthy, writing from Durban.

The main story coming out of the UN climate talks in Durban so far has been whether or not the summit can agree to start negotiations on a new long term deal. The EU doesn’t want to talk about much else, and many media reports are focusing on whether developing countries like China and India will come on board. However, lurking behind the positive spin of a new ‘comprehensive deal’ lies the truth – developed countries are ignoring their responsibility and failing to act, and the clock is ticking. Talk of a ‘Durban mandate’ is little more than a smokescreen.

Unless you’re Lord Monckton or Lawson, the science is clear. No one at this summit disputes that humans are causing climate change. At the climate talks in Cancun, countries pledged to keep temperature rises below 2C, thought to be a key...

A year on from the World Bank out of climate finance campaign launch at the Cancun talks, last week members of the global coalition reunited outside COP17. Last year’s talks concluded with an agreement to design a new Green Climate Fund within the UNFCCC. While many welcomed this, others remained cautious because of the World Bank’s role as ‘trustee’. As the fund had not been designed, over the last year there has been much still to play for in terms of how the fund would be shaped, and to whose benefit.

Since then, rich industrialised governments, spearheaded by the UK, have continued the perpetual shift towards financialisation and corporatisation of seemingly everything proposed within the climate talks. By the time the Durban talks began, the inclusion of a ‘private sector facility’, which would inevitably preference the financial sector and corporations over the people impacted by climate change, meant the fund was already looking more like a Greedy Corporate Fund. Read the letter from 163 civil society organisations concerned about the design of the fund, which was presented to governments attending 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...

A report launched today by the World Development Movement reveals that UK climate aid is being used to produce cheap electricity for the US multinational Walmart, through a project that violates the rights of indigenous people in Mexico.

The report, ‘Power to the people?’, details how money taken from the UK aid budget has been used by the World Bank to finance wind farms in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, built without the consent of the indigenous people who own the land. The project produces enough electricity to power 160,000 homes, but is instead being sold at a discounted rate to Walmart. The project is 99 per cent controlled by French electricity giant EDF.

The La Mata and La Ventosa wind park is part funded the World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund, which receives 14 per cent of its money - or £385 million – from the UK overseas aid budget. The fund’s objectives include poverty reduction, but the wind park has done nothing to increase energy access among the seven per cent of Oaxaca’s population who have no electricity.

Local indigenous woman Bettina Cruz Velazquez told the World Development Movement:

With the pretext of advancing renewable energy, big corporations are occupying our...

• Download the report

The La Mata and La Ventosa wind park in the state of Oaxaca is the World Bank’s flagship Clean Technology Fund (CTF) project in Mexico. The UK government has provided £385 million in capital to the CTF from its overseas aid budget, 14% of the CTF’s total funding.

This study shows that:

The wind park will 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. However, it will not power any homes as all of the electricity will be sold at a discounted rate to Walmart, the world’s largest company (and owner of Asda in the UK).

This is achieved by exploiting a loophole in Mexico’s energy laws, which allows Walmart to officially claim that it has produced the power itself. In fact, the company owns just a nominal stake in the wind park, which is 99 per cent controlled by EDF (Électricité de France), the world’s largest electricity utility.

Instead, the World Bank hopes that the project will encourage a broader transformation in the Mexican electricity sector, where the state controlled company currently charges companies more for...

A report launched by the World Development Movement reveals shocking bullying and bribery tactics employed by countries including the UK and the US to try to kill the Kyoto Protocol, as negotiators from the world’s governments gather today in Durban, South Africa, for the start of the 2011 UN climate talks.

Through exclusive new interviews with negotiators from developing countries, the report exposes the ‘unfair, undemocratic and deceitful’ tactics used by developed countries to skew the climate change negotiations in their favour and backtrack on their legal commitments.

The report features previously unpublished testimonies from insiders at the Copenhagen and Cancun climate summits in 2009 and 2010. They reveal how key agreements such as the Copenhagen Accord were developed, including though secret meetings and the sidelining of developing country negotiators, followed by agreements being presented to developing countries on a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ basis.

The Copenhagen Accord marked a unprecedented shift in the UN climate negotiations, away from the...

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....

• Download the report
• Download the executive summary

Bullying and bribery are tried and tested techniques often employed by powerful countries in international trade negotiations, where short term economic interests tend to be the order of the day. It is disturbing to see that these same motivations and tactics have now been brought into the climate change negotiations, even though governments are supposed to be working collectively to bring the planet back from the brink of disaster.

Bullying tactics include overt threats, to remove financial aid flows for example, but can also be more subtle and hidden. In general, experienced intergovernmental negotiators, especially those adept at deploying the nuances of the English language, tend to be skilled in using and abusing procedural rules and linguistic niceties to advance their national priorities. But if necessary, some are clearly prepared to resort to outright deception to achieve their goals, as this report shows.

Tactics include the use of exclusive ‘green room’ type negotiations, more...

WDM campaigners protest against climate loans and the World Bank's involvement in climate finance

Last month, the transitional committee, tasked with designing the new UN Green Climate Fund, met in South Africa. This was set to be the meeting of the committee where a final proposal was to due be agreed before being sent for approval by the UN climate summit in Durban.

However, the US (followed by Saudi Arabia) refused to consent to the proposed document, leaving the whole process in a mess. Many countries still had reservations about the final proposals but were willing to put them aside to reach consensus.

But the US held out and would not support the document on range of issues. It vetoed the process that would choose which country would host the new fund, demanded that developing countries provide climate finance and wanted more to go to the private sector.

The proposals will now be sent to the UN summit but without the consent of the committee. It is clear that the US refused to agree because it believes that the fund will be a key bargaining chip at the talks and wants to keep it on the table. This means that rather...

This week the G20 heads of state are meeting in Cannes on the south coast of France. Just over 30km away, the alternative summit, the ‘people’s forum’, is taking place in Nice, where thousands of people from different countries, organisations, social movements, unions and campaigning groups have come to discuss alternatives to the current financial system and take action against it.

Cannes and Nice are both towns on the French Riviera. This is France’s most affluent holiday destinations- play ground for the rich and famous and a fitting setting to be talking about the unjustness and inequalities of the current financial system. And with Monaco, one of Europe’s most famous tax havens, less than 20km away, the counter summit is in a convenient location to be talking about tax justice. 

The week of mobilisations was kick-started yesterday with a (heavily policed) march from the centre of Nice to the convergence space for the people’s forum. The convergence space is based in an old abattoir, and is where many of the sessions will be taking place. I’ve come to Nice to meet people involved in different struggles, learn from different movements and feed in WDM’s research on...

Scotland has a world-leading climate change act with ambitious but achievable targets to reduce carbon emissions by 2020 and 2050. But these can only be achieved if public money finances our transition to a low carbon society.

In order to meet the first target, eight years from now, the next Scottish budget must properly fund action to cut Scotland’s carbon emissions.

As the next budget is being prepared, WDM Scotland is working with Stop Climate Chaos Scotland on a campaign to make sure that public funding for action on climate change is given priority.

What we would like you to do

If you live in the following constituencies then your MSP is an important decision-maker in the budget process. We need your help.

Click on the link to your constituency to join this Stop Climate Chaos Scotland e-mail campaign:

• Aberdeen South and North Kincardine: Maureen Watt MSP, Convenor of the...

Eight events in towns and cities across the UK, two amazing activists from South Africa, local speakers, and countless train journeys.... our speaker tour, ‘Africa demands climate justice’ has just come to an end.

However, we were determined when planning this speaker tour that we would avoid simply creating a series of one-off events that people attended and left, feeling better informed about climate justice but taking little else away.

We aimed to galvanize people into planning actions between now and the UN climate talks in Durban, starting on 28 November. We’ve seen some really exciting discussions taking place and it’s incredible how much energy can be created in a room, when a number of like-minded people come together, fired up by the very real stories of injustice faced by poor communities in South Africa.

We know that it’s vital that WDM’s work with our allies in the global south incorporates the opportunity for UK campaigners to hear directly from southern activists. As one WDM group member said: “It's personal stories and experiences like Bongani's that keep me inspired.”

Actions discussed have included the idea of a...

Bandile Mdlalose

Bandile is general secretary of Abhalali baseMjondolo, a shack-dwellers movement representing tens of thousands of people in South Africa. She's taking part in our speaker tour, Africa demands climate justice, which runs from 3-13 October 2011.

Climate change is one of the main issues facing the world at this moment. We all know that when things go wrong, like when there is an earthquake, a flood or a drought poor people are most vulnerable. And usually the response to these disasters is a second disaster for poor people. 

For instance in Sri Lanka the so-called ‘development’ after the Tsunami forcibly removed fisherfolk from their coastal land and gave it to developers to build hotels. Sometimes the attempts to prevent disaster are also a disaster for the poor. In South Africa when it is acknowledged that we are using too much electricity it is not the big companies or the rich that have the police and the security guards kick down their doors to disconnect them. In other countries in Africa, poor rural people are being forced off their land so that it can be used for bio-fuels. Maybe this will slow down...

The UN climate talks in Durban, in late November 2011, could be our last chance to save the current international climate deal. The first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012, and its continuation is in doubt as rich industrialised countries push to replace it with a system that allows them to pledge the reduction of emissions on a voluntary basis.

The talks are also expected to set up a new fund to deliver finance needed by countries affected by climate change.

Huge divisions remain between rich and poorer countries over the design of the fund, on issues such as whether it should be an independent institution and whether the money should be given or leant. The role of the discredited and undemocratic World Bank is also likely to be controversial as it, and rich countries, push to give it a central role in climate finance against the wishes of developing countries. 

Download briefing (PDF)

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...

Kirsty Wright, climate justice campaigner.

This June, we launched our Climate Loan Sharks report to coincide with a meeting of one of the World Bank’s climate funds, the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR). The fund was set up by rich donor countries such as the UK to provide finance to developing countries to help them adapt to the impacts of climate change. However the fund actually locks these countries into deeper debt by giving out finance as loans, rather than grants, in the name of tackling the impacts of climate change these countries did nothing to cause.

Meeting outcomes

The meeting of the PPCR, which took place in South Africa, was set to decide new climate loans for Cambodia, Mozambique, Nepal, St Lucia and Zambia. At the meeting the proposals for all five countries were approved; meaning that in total over $400m of new debt will be created. These countries are all already debt burdened, with two having already qualified for partial debt cancellation, highlighting the absurdity of building up this debt once again. In total, for the 11 countries that have had funding approved by the PPCR so far, over $1...