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Development Finance as Agro-Colonialism

Campaigners from across Europe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have published a new report chronicling one of the most scandalous failures of development bank investment in agriculture. The report details how Europe's largest development banks poured upwards of US$150 million into an oil palm plantation company in the DRC despite the company's land conflicts with communities and allegations of serious human rights violations and opaque financing made against it.

Is Energy White?

In the 19th century, many new equivalences became embedded in the landscape among heat, mechanical force, muscle power, electricity, magnetism and so forth. At the same time, other relations also spread across some of the same spaces: wage labour relations, cotton slavery, new flows of waste and waste work and so on. These relations represent the hierarchies coded in thermodynamic or abstract energy. They are key to understanding today's energy as white, colonialist and patriarchal.

Heat, Time and Colonialism

Climate movements and energy transition movements customarily ask how energy might be generated and distributed more justly or democratically. Or how it might be made “green” or “renewable”. But one thing they usually don’t talk about is whether energy itself is unjust and undemocratic. And whether energy itself is anti-ecological.

UK Supreme Court Rules that Nigerian Communities can Sue Shell in the UK

On Friday 12 February 2021, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeal was wrong to refuse villagers from the Ogale and Bille communities in the Niger Delta permission to sue Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) in London for damages allegedly caused by numerous oil spills from Shell oil pipelines.

The Appeal Court had previously ruled that the English courts have no jurisdiction to hear the case because RDS was found not to exercise control over its Nigerian subsidiaries.

Translation as Class Struggle

Capitalism, Marx taught, is all about getting something for nothing. Labour “produces” because workers give capitalists the free gift not only of part of their time, but also of part of their inheritance in the commons.

Acquittal of Shell and Eni in CorruptionTrial a "Stain on Italy”

Environmental and social justice groups have condemned Italy’s anti-corruption laws as unfit for purpose following the acquittal of oil multinationals Shell and Eni on international corruption charges in Milan. Thirteen other defendants were also found not guilty.

Withdraw Defamatory Fraud Allegations or Face Legal Action, UK Group Tells Former Nigerian Attorney General's Lawyer

The UK anti-corruption group Corner House has threatened legal action in response to a widely publicised Complaint sent on behalf of former Attorney General Mr Mohammed Bello Adoke SAN to Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police.

Adoke’s Complaint alleges “various acts of forgery” by “the parties responsible for the petition, investigations and commencement of the criminal trial at the court of Milan against the individuals/entities connected with the OPL 245 settlement agreement”.

Nigerian Anti-Corruption Campaigner Detained

International anti-corruption and human rights groups have strongly condemned the detention of leading Nigerian anti-corruption activist Olanrewaju Suraju of HEDA, one of the first non-governmental groups to expose corruption allegations surrounding the acquisition of the OPL 245 oil field by oil multinationals Shell and Eni.

Attack of the Space Cadets

For the world’s richest and most powerful men -- men like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates -- the global environmental crisis has finally arrived. But what it means for them is not what it means for most people.

“The Problem is not ‘Bad Baselines’ but the Concept of Counterfactual Baselines Itself”

All carbon offsets, biodiversity offsets, water offsets and so forth are premised on the idea that there can be criteria for distinguishing between “additional” and “nonadditional” projects. But there can be no such criteria.