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Recommendations for the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) on Debt and Export Credits

Export Credit Agencies have created unsustainable debt in developing countries. Despite reforms, arms sales and other ECA-backed deals continue build up debt without contributing to development.

Call for full disclosure of revenues to all national governments by transnational natural resource companies and related national subsidiaries and business partners

Publicly-traded companies involved in resource exploitation should be required to publish a breakdown of all payments which they make for the products of every country in which they operate.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is often regarded as a pure form of practical reasoning that can shift accountability onto supposedly impersonal mechanisms, summarize complex choices in a formulaic way, and transmute popular pressure, political debate and political conflict into quiet, office-bound operations performed on fixed and agreed-upon preferences. Yet CBA’s commensuration of things that no one has any experience in commensurating leads to odd new ways of treating reason, democracy, public opinion, space, time and personhood. And the more practical steps are taken toward its algorithmic ideal of decision-making, the more unforeseen political and social difficulties crop up, including popular resistance. For other work on cost-benefit analysis see http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/whose-voice-speaking and http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/toward-different-debate-environmental-accounting.

The ECGD, Sustainable Energy and Climate Change

In 2001, governments agreed that export credit agencies should support the transfer of climate-friendly technologies. Urgent institutional reform is needed if Britain is to fulfil its commitment, argues this presentation at an NGO Seminar on Export Credit Reform held in the House of Commons, London.

“Carrying Capacity”, “Overpopulation” and Environmental Degradation

“Carrying capacity” is a term derived from the biological sciences, where it denotes the optimum number of a given species that a specific ecosystem can sustain. In the context of people and the planet, however, it is a means of preventing social change and of removing the concept of “overpopulation” from the realm of moral criticism and debate.

Balfour Beatty: Counter-Report 2000

This report raises concerns over Balfour Beatty's management of major "reputational risks" that could severely damage the company's standing. It includes a motion tabled at the annual shareholders’ meeting questioning the company’s involvement in the proposed Ilisu Dam and urging Balfour Beatty to adopt the guidelines of the World Commission on Dams.

How to talk about cloning without talking about cloning

When Dolly the cloned sheep was announced in early 1997, the government in the UK stated that cloning techniques must never be applied to humans. Yet in August 2000, it recommended that the law be amended to allow the first stages of embryo cloning and related research to go ahead. This article provides a brief resume of some government, institutional and media responses to human cloning, interspersed with reflections on these trends and omissions.

UK Export Credits Guarantee Department: Minimum Conditions for Reform

In July 1999, the UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry announced a Review of the mission and status of the UK Export Credits Guarantees Department (ECGD). This Memorandum, signed by 35 UK NGOs and parliamentarians, sets out proposals to reform the ECGD so as to bring it in line with the stated policies of the UK government on sustainable development, human rights, open government and putting ethics “at the centre” of foreign policy.

Review of EIAR for the Ilisu Dam and HEPP (HydroElectric Projects)

This Review evaluates the extent to which the Environmental Impact Assessment Report (EIAR) and Resettlement Action Plan for the Ilisu Dam and related hydroelectric projects demonstrate compliance with international guidelines, legal obligations and export credit agency conditions on resettlement of those who would have to move because of the Dam.

Engineering of consent to human embryo cloning

In January 2001, the UK parliament voted to allow research on embryo stem cells. Media reporting suggested this was an easy decision with which the majority of people agreed. Yet other examples suggest unease among the general public and parliamentarians in Britain about several issues involving life and death; sickness and health; and doctors and scientists. In anticipation of such unease and growing public distrust in scientists and government, many discussions and debates about embryo research have been channelled in certain directions so as to ‘engineer consent’ to such research.