Resources

Climate change and other environmental campaigns often try to mobilize people around the idea of avoiding apocalypse. This short piece for Occupied Times explores some of the weaknesses of this approach.

BBC’s flagship news programme, Newsnight, ran a 10-minute segment on allegations that Britain’s Department of International Development (DfID), through its wholly-owned private equity fund of funds CDC Group, invested in money-laundering fronts for James Ibori, the ex-governor of Nigeria’ oil-rich Delta State, who has been serving a prison sentence in the UK since 2012.

La expresión "seguridad energética" está llena de problemas, tanto como en lo político y en la retórica. Otros conceptos deben encontrarse para discutir sobre la energía y para buscar un futuro que sea democrático y libre de combustibles fósiles. (Spanish translation of The Corner House report Energy Security: For Whom? For What?)

This 124-page report aims to understand how energy and finance have been constructed and contested during stormy transformations in industry, livelihood and exploitation over the past two centuries. Its goal is to help effective movements seeking finance for a greener, more democratic, liveable energy future regard both energy and finance as political processes in motion and as continuing social struggles.

Energy politics is all about labour politics. But it is also about struggles over commons, since the emergence of energy itself was a form of enclosure of commons. What are the implications for activist strategy?

What with a growing climate crisis and increasing uncertainty over the future of fossil fuels, it can be no surprise that the question “what's the alternative to current energy systems?” is in the air. And there has been no shortage of answers competing for space and attention. In energy policy today, the main conflict is not between business as usual and “The Alternative”, but among the different proposed alternatives themselves. How are these alternatives to be evaluated against each other?

"Let's internalize the externalities" has become an important slogan of the new "green economy". Its logic is evident in the Kyoto Protocol, the UK's plans for a "net zero" economy, countless regulatory projects advised by environmental economists, and even in financial markets' efforts to commodify radical uncertainty.

But is this a solution for the environmental and social problems thrown up by capital accumulation, or a perpetual motion machine that functions merely to create more problems and business opportunities? A presentation delivered at the Institute for Social Studies in The Hague (available from The Corner House upon request) argues otherwise.

All processes of commodification are different, depending on what is being commodified, how it is commodified, the degree to which it is commodified, the resistances of the material and of the people affected and so on. For this reason, attempts to commodify some things may make headway, while attempts to commodify others fall down immediately. This chapter from Nature™ Inc: The New Frontiers of Environmental Conservation (edited by Robert Fletcher, Wolfram Dressler and Bram Büscher, 2014) proposes an analytical tool that can help explain why neoliberal efforts to commodify climate benefit are failing so disastrously. A drastically abridged version has been published by the online magazine Mute at http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/performative-equations-and-ne....

Public, state and taxpayers' money is now being channelled the world over toward private equity funds seeking turbo-charged profits from the construction of substantial new infrastructure. The adverse political and economic consequences for the public good are profound and urgently need challenging.

The "rights of nature" debate is becoming increasingly important both in the Andean context and in the wider global political debate. This set of brief notes suggests ways of approaching the issue that may help connect it to the ongoing debate between commoners and neoclassical economists, as well as help avoid the exoticisation of the Andean concept of pachamama.

Proposals for greening the economy necessarily involve the greening of finance as well. But how is a greener finance to be achieved? Activist strategies that fail to take stock of where finance is today in the wake of the 2007-08 breakdown -- and the struggles that are continuing to develop between neoliberalism and the commons -- are unlikely to succeed, and may actually do harm.

A powerpoint presentation setting out these arguments is available upon request to The Corner House.

UK-based power companies are using the myth that biomass is 'carbon neutral' to continue their climate-damaging activities unabated. A British biomass boom is set to benefit polluters and cause widespread environmental destruction through land grabs and deforestation.

The contributions collected in this special issue of ephemera question the underlying ideologies and assumptions of carbon markets, and bring to light many of the contradictions and antagonisms that are currently at the heart of ‘climate capitalism’. They offer a critical assessment of the political economy of carbon trading and a detailed understanding of how these newly created markets are designed, how they (don’t) work, the various actors that are involved, and how these actors function together to create and contest the ‘atmosphere business’. In six articles, five notes, three book reviews, and an interview (with The Corner House's Larry Lohmann), some of the most prominent critical voices in debates about the atmosphere business are brought together.

Campaigners slam government’s development approach as DfID-backed private equity fund comes under criminal investigation in Nigeria

Challenges have been repeatedly raised about the economic viability and development benefits of Desertec, a plan to build concentrated solar power plants in the Middle East and North Africa and export the electricity generated to the EU. Promoting exaggerated claims of solar mega-projects and embedding them within a neo-liberal model of energy market liberalisation undermines and discredits efforts to move rapidly away from fossil fuels. 

Building more effective climate movements is, in part, a continuous process of interpretation and reinterpretation. This chapter from a forthcoming academic volume argues that climate activists can benefit from putting the current fashion for carbon trading into the context of the other market environmentalisms with which it has evolved; from exploring the insights of actor-network theory about the genesis and limitations of commodity-ready environmental objects; and from seeing carbon trading and other current defences of fossil fuel use in the context of accumulation cycles.

The distinction between industrial tree plantations and biodiverse landscapes organized in conjunction with commons regimes is not just a distinction between various vegetable assemblages, but also a social/technical/political distinction. The slave-worked plantations of the past and the industrial plantations of today do not merely prop up colonialism; they are constituted by colonialism. Today's industrial plantations are also intertwined with overaccumulation, overproduction, financialization, and many other so-called "social" things.

This critical review of carbon trading in Africa includes analyses of the context and trends in the carbon market in Africa; offset projects in Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa; and carbon finance and regulation. It shows how carbon trading provides new and different ways of profiting at the expense of a deteriorating climate.

This article explains how today's carbon markets construct a tradable product by postulating a series of false equations – between reducing carbon dioxide and tackling fossil fuel dependence, between different greenhouse gases, between different places and times, between hypothetical and real emissions reductions, between biotic carbon and fossil carbon, and so forth. Competition to exploit cascades of ever more fanciful equations to increase profits ensures that the carbon markets become ever more damaging to the cause of combating global warming.

Un álgebra interminable: las contradicciones de los mercados climáticos

Los mercados de carbono, que constituyen el enfoque principal de los gobiernos del mundo frente a la crisis climática, construyen un producto comercializable postulando una serie de ecuaciones falsas. Estos mercados equiparan la reducción de dióxido de carbono con la lucha contra la dependencia de combustibles fósiles; equiparan los distintos gases de efecto invernadero, así como lugares y tiempos diferentes. Estos mercados dicen que las emisiones hipotéticas y reales son las mismas y que el carbono biótico y el carbono fósil también son los mismos. Estas ecuaciones tienen la función de proteger o incrementar los beneficios empresariales, y los intereses capitalistas están siempre dispuestos a inventar más ecuaciones. El resultado es que los mercados de carbono son cada vez más perjudiciales para la lucha contra el calentamiento global.

The carbon markets that constitute the default international approach to the climate crisis, argues this article in the latest Socialist Register, aim both at opening up new frontiers for profit-making and at securing the background conditions for accumulation that are currently threatened by calls for greenhouse gas emission cuts. But they are afflicted by valuation paradoxes that are far more intractable than those affecting markets in other commodities such as food, energy, consumer durables, or even complex financial derivatives. The article is supplemented with a short interview with New Left Project's Ed Lewis.

This issue of the Indian magazine, Mausam, devoted to climate justice has articles on adaptation, the Climate Development Mechanism (CDM) and REDD projects.

The European Union’s 2008 Energy Security and Solidarity Action Plan does not address conflict, insecurity, human rights, militarisation or the Millennium Development Goals. Most critically, it does not ask the questions Energy Security for Whom? or Energy Security for What?

Carbon emissions in the European Union are rising, despite the Emissions Trading System, the EU's flagship measure for tackling climate change. The third phase of the scheme, beginning in 2013, is supposed to rectify the “teething problems” that have rewarded major polluters with windfall profits and undermined efforts to reduce pollution and achieve a more equitable and sustainable economy. In practice, it will continue to subsidise polluters and help them avoid taking meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A BP-led consortium is breaking international rules governing the human rights responsibilities of multinational companies in its operations on the controversial Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the UK Government ruled today.

Mr Justice Bean pulled apart the “loosely and perhaps hastily drafted” settlement agreement reached between BAE Systems and the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in February 2010.  He sentenced the company for concealing that it was making payments to a Tanzania-based agent "with the intention that he should have free rein to make such payments to such people as he thought fit to secure the radar contract” for BAE from the government of Tanzania.

An article published in Mexican newspaper La Jornada on the eve of the UN climate summit in Cancun (English and Spanish).

Hoy, México, como muchos países del sur, tiene un nuevo producto de exportación: los derechos de contaminación. Este mercado es uno de los legados del neoliberalismo y del hábito de los países del norte de descargar sus problemas sobre el sur global.

This submission makes detailed comparisons between CDC (the Development Finance Institution [DFI] wholly owned by the UK’s Department for International Development [DfID]) and the DFIs of Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, European Union and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, commercial confidentiality cannot be used by corporations as a reason for refusing to supply the names of their agents when requested by competent authorities. This ruling by the UK government was issued in November 2010, six years after The Corner House first submitted a Complaint against BAE, Rolls Royce and Airbus.

This book chapter explores the interacting origins, development and politics of the “strange markets” in finance and climate developed in recent years and exposes the similar dangers they pose.

Los “mercados extraños” y la crisis climática

Este capítulo del libro explora los orígenes, el desarrollo y la política de los “mercados extraños” que han aparecido en las décadas recientes en el sector financiero y en la política climática internacional, y expone los peligros que presentan.

 Some 154 million people were reportedly driven further into poverty in Southern countries as a result of speculation-induced food price hikes in 2007-08. What are the best strategies for bringing about the structural change needed that progressive activists can lend their support to?

This workshop presentation, while endorsing regulatory measures including banning certain investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds and vetting of derivative-based financial instruments, cautions against becoming focussed on regulation alone as an answer. Also crucial is the promotion of non-derivative, socially-based mechanisms to protect farmers and consumers from volatile food prices, as well as price interventions that do not pit Northern farmers against their Southern counterparts.

Discussions of carbon trading are usually full of jargon, abstract concepts, mathematical formulae and technical detail, making it hard for many people to understand its implications and join in debates. This guide unravels the complexity, explains key concepts and terms, and describes how new interest groups and complex financial arrangements have become involved and transformed the practices.

A UK government department is underwriting loans taken out by the Brazilian state-run energy company, Petrobras, for an offshore oil production platform operating in the Atlantic Ocean in even deeper waters than those in the Gulf of Mexico where BP's exploration well is spewing forth oil after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in April this year.

An evaluation of Clean Development Mechanism projects in the Philippines suggests that most projects will further exacerbate climate change, compromise sustainable development, and enrich large conglomerates expanding their extractive and fossil fuel-intensive activities.

Lawyers acting for The Corner House and Indian group Samata requested a Judicial Review of the decision by the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) effectively scrapping its absolute ban on providing financial support to projects overseas involving "harmful" child labour and forced labour. ECGD stated in response that it does not have to consider whether its support contributes to human rights abuse, because it "does not owe obligations to persons outside the jurisdiction of the UK".

On 1 April 2010, a UK government department, the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD), scrapped its absolute ban on supporting projects overseas that involve child labour and forced labour. Lawyers acting for The Corner House have written to ECGD's Chief Executive stating their intention to challenge the new policy in the courts. They argue that for ECGD to provide UK, taxpayer-backed, support for forced labour would breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

A High Court judge, the Honourable Mr Justice Collins, refused to grant permission to Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House to bring a full judicial review hearing against the decision by the UK Serious Fraud Office to make a controversial plea bargain settlement with BAE Systems.

On 22 March 2010, a High Court judge, the Honourable Mr Justice Collins, refused to grant permission to Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House to bring a judicial review of the Serious Fraud Office February decision to make a plea bargain settlement with BAE Systems and to drop "conspiracy to corrupt" charges against a BAE former agent.

A BBC Radio 4 programme Law in Action examined what difference proposed reforms of the UK’s anti-bribery laws would make and recent cases, such as the Serious Fraud Office's settlement with BAE Systems.

The High Court granted an injunction prohibiting the Director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) from taking any further steps in its February 2010 plea bargain settlement with BAE Systems. The injunction is in force until the Court decides whether or not to give permission to Campaign Against Arms Trade and The Corner House to apply for a judicial review of the settlement.

PRESS RELEASE

The approach to climate change that came to grief in Copenhagen in December 2009 is based on fetishism about molecules, numbers and targets. By trying to stuff politics, uncertainty, and history into a black box that is then set to one side, it has ensured its own demise. Tackling global warming effectively requires facing, rather than evading, the realities of inequality, conflict, exploitation, context and uncertainty.

Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House expressed disappointment, anger and outrage at the announcement of a settlement between the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and BAE Systems of the long-running investigations into alleged bribery and corruption in BAE's arms deals in several African and European countries.

This short contribution to a Forum discussion on climate change in the journal Global Social Policy outlines how and why the climate solution requires turning away from fossil fuel dependence and how the main official approach to the climate crisis worldwide -- building a single, liquid global carbon market worth trillions of dollars -- is likely to make climate change worse, not only exacerbating its social impacts but also generating negative impacts of its own.

This streamlined sequel to the 2006 book Carbon Trading brings climate activists up to date with the disastrous record of carbon trading -- which in the wake of the debacle at the Copenhagen climate negotiations continues to be world elites' main response to climate change.

1 October 2009: Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and The Corner House welcomed the decision of the Director of the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to begin prosecution proceedings against BAE Systems for "offences relating to overseas corruption". The SFO has been investigating the business activities of BAE Systems in African and Eastern European countries.

Here is an issue of an Indian magazine aimed at returning the dialogue about climate change and its solutions to the "public space." Featured are pathbreaking articles uncovering the reality of UN-sanctioned "carbon saving" projects in the metals, hydroelectric, wind power, chemicals, waste management and electricity generating sectors, as well as analyses of the political economy of the scientific controversies over the monsoon and over Asia's so-called "brown cloud" of pollution.

In March 2009, the UK government published a Draft Bribery Bill, which a Joint Committee comprising members of both Houses of Parliament scrutinised in May and June, taking oral and written evidence from a wide range of individuals and organisations, including The Corner House. The Committee's final report, published on 28 July 2009, "strongly support[s]" the draft Bribery Bill. "It represents an important, indeed overdue, step in reforming the United Kingdom's bribery laws, which have been a source of criticism at home and abroad for more than thirty years."

Carbon permit prices flashing on electronic screens in Wall Street trading rooms reflect a complex political movement to reorganize and redistribute power and knowledge. The carbon markets associated with the Kyoto Protocol, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the US's Waxman-Markey Act constitute perhaps the last great class project of a waning neoliberal regime – the ill-fated attempt to privatize the climate itself.

El neoliberalismo y el mundo calculable: El ascenso del comercio de carbono

Los precios de los derechos de emisión de dióxido de carbono que aparecen en las pantallas de las computadoras de Wall Street reflejan un movimiento político complejo para reorganizar y redistribuir el poder y el conocimiento. Los mercados de carbono del Protocolo de Kioto y el Esquema del Comercio de Emisiones de la Unión Europea son uno de los últimos grandes proyectos del neoliberalismo – un intento malhadado de privatizar el clima. Este capítulo del libro, "El neoliberalismo y el mundo calculable: El ascenso del comercio de carbono", describe las contradicciones del intento de formar una mercancía con el clima.