Climate justice

WDM’s submission to the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into the role of carbon markets in preventing dangerous climate change. The focus here is on the following issues: “prospects for the success of Phase III of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)”, “the robustness and effectiveness of "offset" schemes”, “effects of the expansion of the EU ETS to encompass aviation”, “the relationship between emissions credits and the UK carbon budgets set up under the Climate Change Act” and “transparency of and justification for counting the purchase of emissions credits...as decreasing emissions from the UK”.
 

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...

This submission focuses on UK aid in the context of its contribution towards efforts to tackle global climate change.

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Jones, Jubilee Debt Campaign

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, 12...

After two long and dispiriting weeks, the Cancun climate talks drew to a close in the early hours of Saturday morning. Following the catastrophic outcome in Copenhagen, where an inadequate document was forced onto the supposedly open and democratic UN process in the final hours by a handful of (mainly rich) countries at the last moment, expectations for the Cancun meeting were always low.

So what did this supposed “deal”, that lead some to calls of “we can can can in Cancun” as the talks drew to a close, actually produce? What we have essentially ended up with is a list of non binding promises, that leave the World Bank, one of the world’s most discredited and undemocratic institutions, that even last year beat its own records on climate wrecking fossil fuel lending, as the trustee of a much heralded new ‘Green Climate Fund’. This Fund, as one person said, looks like a great Christmas present – until you realise the box is empty because rich countries are failing to follow through on their comitments. Any money the World Bank holds will simply be reinvested into the most profitable areas, which are all too often, fossil fuel projects.

Meanwhile the pledged emissions cuts, which will lead to  4 degree global temperature rise at best, sit outside the only...

Julian Oram, used to be head of policy and campaigns

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

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

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

Julian Oram, used to be head of policy and campaigns

Apart from the strong-arm tactics being deployed by rich countries in the formal negotiations, another form of maneuvering is taking place in side events against developing countries here in Cancun.

A side event on Monday afternoon was particularly revealing. Lined up on the panel were seven representatives from the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), nominally reflecting on the ‘lessons learnt’ from their involvement to date in climate finance. Sadly, the event was more one of public relations than of honest evaluation.

Much was made of how these institutions were uniquely positioned to mobilize and coordinate new sources of climate finance; and how they have already massively expanded their portfolio in this area. But there was no assessment of their track record of debt-creation, dirty development, and economic policy conditionalities that harm the poor.

Nor was there any reflection on the appropriateness of forcing the world’s poorest nations to pay twice for a problem they did little to create by taking on new loans for climate adaptation. And there was no discussion about the lack of democratic accountability implicit in the channeling of climate finance through donor-controlled...

Julian Oram, used to be head of campaigns and policy

Arriving in Cancun over the weekend, it was quickly clear to me that this was going to be a fairly surreal week. So far, that initial impression has not let me down, either inside or outside the UN Conference of Parties (COP) 16 climate talks.

On the one hand is the shock-and-awe gaiety of the town itself: the sombrero-wearing Mexican bands; the garish clutter of mega-hotels, bars, nightclubs, more bars, amusement centres and still more bars that line the main coastal strip; the competing billboards inviting you to sail, dive with dolphins, visit Mayan ruins, and generally live the resort holiday dream. 

On the other hand, are the rather more ‘pragmatic’ aspects of hosting a major international conference: thousands of heavily armed police (are they expecting a green coup?); fleets of buses scuttling madly back and forth between the hotel zone, side event space and main conference centre; the badges, bustle and bureaucracy of a nominally inclusive yet actually highly exclusionary event.

Which brings me to the...

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

Credit: WDM / Kate Blagojevic

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

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

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

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...

In a joint effort by WDM and Jubilee Debt Campaign, this briefing outlines how in the run up to Cancun, the government has given over one hundred million dollars in loans to low income countries to ‘help’ them deal with the impact of climate change.

It outlines how the government is backtracking on their pre-election promises relating to climate finance and how these loans will lock countries further into poverty.

Rosie Rogers, used to be at WDM

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

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

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

Adriane Chalastra

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

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

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

Secretive corporate lobbying efforts are being dragged into the open today at the launch of the Worst EU Lobbying Awards 2010 in Brussels. Some of WDM's old and new foes have been nominated for their part in lobbying in Europe to stop progressive change.

In the climate category, supported by: Climate Action Network Europe, Oxfam, World Development Movement. The nominees are:

- BusinessEurope: Nominated for its aggressive lobbying to block effective climate action in the EU while claiming to support action to protect the climate.
- ArcelorMittal: Steel industry fat cat, nominated for lobbying on CO2 cuts under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and profiting from free ETS emission permits.
- RWE: Nominated for claiming to be green while lobbying to keep its dirty coal-and oil-fired power plants open.

In the finance category, supported by: ATTAC Network, World Development Movement.
- Royal Bank of Scotland: Nominated for secretly lobbying in Brussels and for exploiting insider contacts by headhunting former EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen as an advisor
- Goldman Sachs and derivatives lobby group ISDA: Nominated for aggressive lobbying to defend their ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’
- Hedge fund and private equity lobby groups AIMA...

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

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

Download the briefing (PDF format)

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

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty

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

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

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By 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...

Tim Jones, used to be policy officer

Some of us may have been surprised to wake up this morning to hear that a hosepipe ban may be introduced soon in north-west England following a lack of rain. For the past few years the ‘weather story’ in the UK has been one of cold, wet summers. Those unable to distinguish between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ have used this story to spread absurd falsities about climate change, such as the Conservative MEP who told me “the world has been in a cooling phase for the last ten years”.

Maybe the lack of rain in the north-west of England will open the mainstream media’s eyes to the true climate story which continues unabated. The decade just ended was the warmest ever recorded. 2010 is so far on track to be the warmest year ever.

Across the world we continue to see how these changes in climate affect real people. India has been suffering from a heat-wave, with temperatures reaching almost 50°C. The monsoon has made a stuttering start, after one of India’s worst ever droughts last year. Over 2 million people have been displaced from their homes by extreme floods in China.

But there...

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.’

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...

Last night, I met with Marcos from CIPCA, an organisation working with small farming communities around Bolivia, looking at the impacts of climate change and how to deal with it, at both a practical and policy level. We were discussing the Cochabamba cumbre and the resulting Cochabamba Accord, 'The People's Accord', that will be submitted to the UNFCCC.  

“What do you think of the Bolivian concepts of Vivir Bien ['living well'], and Mother Earth Rights that are being put forward to the UN,” he asked, “What do you think people in Europe think of them?” I paused before answering, wanting to be honest.
 
“To me, the concepts seem instinctive, but, truthfully, I think people in Europe find them hard to take seriously, they snigger – in part because of the name. I think for many people it has connotations of new age hippies," I tired to explain, "Which of course is ridiculous given that the concept of Pachamama has been around through the history of indigenous people.”
 
Marcos nodded, knowingly, “I think the easiest way to understand it is to think about...

As I write, I’m on the bus, heading north from Cochabamba on the long road to La Paz. Saying goodbye to Cochabamba, after two very different but equally inspiring conferences back to back – the ten year anniversary of the water wars and the People´s Conference – as well as meeting so many amazing people, feels like quite a pull. But at the same time I know that many of the connections and ideas that have come about in Cochabamba will last long beyond the time I have spent here.

The eight hour bus trip seems like a opportunity to reflect on the past few days. I’ve been on the bus for four hours now. The journey began with hints of lush green shrubs and plants clinging to the landscape. ‘Lush green’ should be usual at this time of the year, as the rainy season is just drawing to a close. But, as many people have told me since I arrived, not much rain fell this year, and the land is dry. As the scorched hills role past, the midday sun burns through the window and down on the deep red earth. We pass by parched rivers, and animals struggling to drink from evaporated lakes. The road, though a main highway connecting two major cities, is little populated. From the bus, Many of the adobe mud houses scattering the landscape, seem abandoned. Of course, as an...

To the 'people of the world' gathered in Cochabamba, its becoming increasingly clear that climate change is not just an environmental issue but a matter of justice. This week, hearing the testimonies of people from across the world where the impacts of climate change are already pervading into daily reality, has been incredibly powerful. But climate justice is not just about the impacts of climate change, but also impacts from the causes of climate change; the deforestation that destroys the way of life for forest peoples, extraction of fossil fuels, all too often being pushed through the neo-liberal policies of institutions like the World Bank, and mined by transnational corporations, with no concern for the impacts of local people. Even many of the solutions being proposed and implemented are pushing people into displacement and deeper poverty. As I heard one African speaker said today, “As long as they keep pushing false solutions, the climate debt continues to increase.”

This morning I saw Naomi Klein...

This weekend Cochabamba celebrated the tenth anniversary of its water wars. The small city, nestled at the foothills of the Andean mountain ranges, previously little known to the outside world, suddenly shot to fame in 2000 when cochabambinos forced Bechtel, a giant American corporation, out of town. Bechtel, under a subsidiary called Agua del Tunari, had taken over the town’s water supply in privatisation deal, pushed by the World Bank, that caused water rates to rise by over fifty percent in a matter of weeks. Taking place shortly after the ‘Battle in Seattle’ in 1999 and just before the G8 in Genoa in 2001, two iconic moments in the battle against the imposition of neo-liberal policies on the global south, the struggle in Cochabamba became an inspiration to people across the world, demonstrating what a small group of determined people could achieve.

Two statues reading 'sin agua, no hay vida' (without water, there is no life') and '10 anos de lucha' (10 years of struggle)

The water wars bought together campesinos from the rural...

Since the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks to both reach an outcome or even to ensure the voices of people who are going to be most effected by climate change were being represented, the Bolivian government have called a people’s conference to create space for the voices of the people – The People’s Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights

The importance of this conference at this time cannot be underestimated. Last weekend, the climate negotiations resumed at the headquarters of the UNFCCC in Bonn.  Here, more blatantly than ever before, rich countries were responsible for bullying and bribing the countries, that were standing up in opposition to the weak Copenhagen Accord – ironically not only the most affected but also the least responsible for causing the problem in the first place. One senior African diplomat told The Guardian that the UK, France, EU and US have told poor countries they would “suffer” if they did not back the Accord. WDM first revealed the bullying and bribery tactics of rich...

Patrick Bond and Desmond D'Sa

It is very important for Brits to not only keep the coal in the hole at home, as so many activists are doing. It's also the responsibility of the British citizen to watch your tax monies, and if via the World Bank they fund climate destruction, poverty and privatisation, to please speak out. 

The World Bank’s fossil fuel portfolio is the world's largest, and in 2004 the Bank board rejected its own internal Extractive Industries Review mandate to 'phase out' oil, gas and coal investments. Now, Bank president Robert Zoellick - a neoconservative ideologue (central to the Project for a New American Century) who served as an Enron advisor, Goldman Sachs official and US Trade representative (when he wrecked the WTO's Doha Round) - claims he is building a 'Climate Bank'. 

Zoellick will undermine any such claim on April 8 when the Bank Board is expected to approve a $3.75 billion loan to the South African electricity utility Eskom, to build the world’s fourth largest coal-fired power plant, Medupi.

Repaying the finance for Medupi and the next coal-fired plant (the world's third largest) will require a 127% real electricity price increase through 2012...

The start of an unusal mobilisation of pension fund members has been kicked off by the organisation FairPensions to attempt to hold BP and Shell to account for their investment in tar sands.

The idea is that individuals contact their pension funds, through an online action, to show support of environmental resolutions that have been tabled at the annual meetings of BP and Shell this spring. These call on the oil giants to report on the investment risks associated with tar sands and their plans to address them.

Exploitation of tar sands by companies, which are in some cases financed by the UK taxpayer, due to our ownership of the Royal Bank of Scotland, is likely to cause a stir this week with a new report from PLATFORM investigating the role of RBS and other UK banks in tar sands extraction.

Tar sands are among some of the world's dirtiest fuels to produce. Their extraction is having a hugely detrimental impact on the lives and human rights of indigenous communities in Canada. And their extraction produces on average three times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil, which means their contribution to climate injustice is particularly high. Climate change is already hitting the...

A politically embarrassing stand off is developing as Bangladesh is currently resisting the UK's offer of £60 million of climate finance.

Bangladesh is believed to be resisting the UK's climate finance offer of £60 million due to the UK's insistence that it must be channelled through the World Bank. The UK is pressurising the Bangladeshi government into accepting the finance whilst refusing to consider other managers of the funds, such as through a Bangladeshi fund, which has greater transparency and participation by civil society.

Campaigners from the European Action Group on Climate Change Bangladesh, the World Development Movement and Jubilee Debt Campaign, this morning held a protest outside the Department for International Development on Monday to tell DfID not to force the World Bank on to Bangladesh. At the same time, campaigners in Dhaka in Bangladesh held a mass rally and formed a human chain around the donor conference where the UK has imposed a deadline on the Bangladeshi government to accept their conditions.

The UK is further insisting that the Bangladeshi government provides its own money for the fund, likely to drive the country further into debt. Later in the year, the UK will be giving further money to Bangladesh through the World Bank to...

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;...

The UK based, anti poverty campaigners, the World Development Movement branded the Copenhagen talks as a ‘shameful and monumental failure.’ 
 
Tim Jones, climate policy officer at the World Development Movement said:
 “This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, culminating in a shameful and monumental failure that has condemned millions of people around the world to untold suffering. The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead. They have been captured by business interests at a time when people need leaders to put justice first."

“Rich countries have failed the poorest people in the world and history will judge them harshly. They have failed to offer the emissions cuts that science and justice requires. To say that this ‘deal’ is in any way historic or meaningful is to completely misrepresent the fact that this ‘deal’ is meaningless."

President Obama has presented a ‘deal’ in the form of a Copenhagen Accord. However, it was drafted with participation from just a small number of countries, the majority of them rich. Several developing countries have refused to sign, and it has not been adopted as a UN agreement.

"Countries have been right to resist the signing of the Accord. It would be better to...