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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...

Broken Markets seeks to counter the arguments put forward by those sceptical of the influence of financial speculation on rising food prices. It shows how financial speculation has boomed, turning commodity derivatives into just another asset class for investors, distorting and undermining the effective functioning of agricultural markets.

It shows how these changes in the financial markets translate into changes in the price of food, and the devastating impact this has had on the world’s poorest people. It concludes by recommending urgent action to introduce new rules to limit the influence of financial speculators and bring transparency and stability to these out of control markets. 

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How we did it

All the workshops are active and participatory, using a variety of methodologies and exercises to get people to think about and question their own views, to share them and listen to others. The facilitator is there to guide a process (and indeed take part in it) by providing a framework for all participants to think through and express their views. Collectively people know a great deal and have done tremendous things already, sharing this with others is energising and empowering. Global Connect always tries to start from where people are and engage with the issues which are of relevance and interest to them, whilst helping make links between them and particularly between local and global issues.

Taking action is a crucial part of the Global Connect and so helping participants to have the confidence, knowledge and skills is integral to any workshop. Many people already have experience of campaigning, others may not know where to start - though they often have the skills that are needed.

We decided to work in partnership with other compatible organisations where possible. Firstly an organisation like BCT has a ready-made pool of people in the group we want to work with, and a structure for interacting with them. Global Connect gives new...

What people said about Global Connect

BCT Discussion group members
 
"I enjoy learning new stuff and having a good discussion."
"There's good company, and I like meeting new people and hearing different ideas and giving my own."
"There's a sense of camaraderie and a warmth about the group, like a family. It's an opportunity to learn skills , it boosts confidence and communication skills. It gives a purpose and a chance to discuss with others. I really like the feeling of belonging."
 
“We work with people who have a history of homelessness, and a central purpose to our work is to challenge the marginalisation and social isolation many of our service users experience. WDM’s involvement has given many of those we work with an opportunity to discuss issues relevant to their lives and make the connections between local and global issues. The discussion group is structured so that everyone can feel their opinion is valued, and the positive impact on participant’s self esteem and confidence is very evident. Moreover, there have been some wonderful “ah ha” moments during the discussions, in which people, through their dialogue, have suddenly had their assumptions or opinions challenged, and see the world in a different way. It’s...

This report, written by Brett Scott on behalf of WDM, is an overview of Barclays' involvement in commodity derivatives markets, with particular reference to its involvement in agricultural commodity derivatives (food speculation). 

Derivatives come in three main types: Futures/forwards, options and swaps. In practice, a lot of the dealing on investment bank trading floors will be in ‘over-the-counter’ (OTC) derivatives, which includes forwards, swaps and bespoke options. Futures are slightly different, in that they are traded on regulated exchanges. All these derivative types can be based on different ‘underlying assets’ - e.g. derivatives based on shares, bonds and currencies, economic indicators, and a lot of other things. By far the largest global derivative market is the interest rate derivatives market, followed by currency derivatives, credit derivatives, commodity derivatives, and equity derivatives.

Barclays Capital commodities division is a commodity derivatives business, facilitating derivative markets in energy commodities (e.g. oil, oil distillates, natural gas, coal), industrial metals, precious metals, carbon emissions, and agricultural commodities. There are roughly 350 employees....

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's response to the public consultation on the review of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MIFID). This consultation was launched by the European Commission Directorate General Internal Market and Services and closed on 2nd February.

WDM's consultation response provides detailed analysis and presents an evidence base for regulating excessive speculation on food derivatives.

This response was endorsed and supplemented by Dr Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India and Dr Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA.

In 'The great hunger lottery', World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world. This in turn has led to food becoming unaffordable for low-income families, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports.

Reports by Tom Lines, commissioned by the World Development Movement, on the impact of speculation on food and proposals of how to regulate it.

This report is a guide to the policies of UK political parties ahead of the UK general election to be held on 6 May 2010. It seeks to give a guide to the policies of Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru in key areas relating to international justice: trade justice; more and better aid; making the economy work for poor people and repaying our climate debt.

The Climate Debt Crisis marks a major step in efforts to draw the links between the overuse of the world’s resources, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, and the unjust and economically harmful financial debt foisted upon the world’s poorest countries.

The report explains the concept of ‘climate debt’, and explores how redressing the balance between international ‘debtors’ and ‘creditors’ is an essential prerequisite for effective global action to combat both climate change and poverty. It demonstrates why current attempts to deal with global inequalities in emissions through carbon trading and offsetting are fatally flawed, and sets out concrete proposals to finance climate debt repayments.

This report assesses the role that UK, European and US banks play in developing countries, especially following trade deals which locked-in financial services liberalisation. It shows how the loan practices of big foreign banks in India and Mexico were reducing access to credit for small firms or poor households, and shifting credit away from ‘productive activities’ towards funding personal consumption for wealthier people. The report calls upon European leaders to change their approach to trade policy and stop demanding greater financial services liberalisation from developing countries.

This report from nef (the new economics foundation) and the World Development Movement (WDM) examines the economic arguments for the aviation industry, assesses their worth and exposes the plain truths. It focuses on the relationship between aviation, tourism and development in poorer countries. Our conclusions are that: Growth in the aviation industry cannot be maintained if we are to make the cuts in UK emissions of between 80–90 per cent below 1990 levels we know are necessary; rail can replace air travel in key markets; Many of the claimed benefits of tourism to local people in developing nations are lost to international actors; In the UK (and globally) air travel remains the preserve of the wealthy. Hence more research and debate are needed because the economic case for growth advanced by the aviation industry is flimsy at best.