The latest from WDM

Representatives from some of Canada’s First Nations are today preparing to demand in person that the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) stops financing the controversial tar sands industry in Alberta, Canada, at the bank’s AGM today.

New research shows that, since public bail-out in 2008, RBS has raised more than £5.6 billion for companies involved in controversial Canadian tar sands projects, £2.2 billion of which was in the last twelve months.

The Department for International Development will tomorrow announce changes to the way aid money is spent. Aid for ‘fragile’ states will be a priority, as will maximum value for money and the UK's national interests. It will also cut aid to UN agencies that support agricultural development in favour of emergency relief programmes. The news has been met with criticism from anti-poverty campaigners, the World Development Movement who criticised the government for 'fighting terrorism, not poverty, with the aid budget'.

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.

Press release, 04.02.2011

At a joint press conference, Director-General Jacques Diouf of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the French Agriculture Minister, Bruno Le Maire called financial speculation on food both economically dangerous and morally unacceptable. They called for an international response at the G20 to the record food prices and volatility including regulation of financial speculation on commodity markets. The World Development Movement welcomes this and supports action to tackle dramatic food price rises and volatility by reducing speculation on food by banks, hedge funds and pension funds.