by NESPON, NFFPFW and Nagarik Mancha
compilation | published September 2009 | summary | PDF
Here is the long-awaited latest issue of a 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.
by Larry Lohmann
article | published July 2009 | summary | PDF
Proposals for Green New Deals aimed at tackling both global warming and global recession are streaming forth worldwide. Unfortunately, many give short shrift to the need to phase out both fossil fuels and fossil fuel substitutes. Many also rely on obsolete conceptions of technology transfer. Future climate movements will have to focus increasingly on the democratization of research, planning and finance.
by The Corner House
submission | published May-June 2009 | summary
The Joint Committee on Human Rights of the UK Parliament requested evidence for its inquiry into business and human rights on the State's duty to protect against human rights abuses by businesses; corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for individuals to have effective access to remedies when their human rights are breached. The Corner House submission to the Committee focused on the policies and practices of the UK Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) in the context of the state's duty to protect human rights. The Committee subsequently called for supplementary evidence on the government's Draft Bribery Bill and the Industry and Exports (Financial Support) Bill, which The Corner House provided.
by The Corner House
submission | published June 2008 | summary | PDF
This Corner House submission to a 2008 inquiry by the Environmental Audit Committee into the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department and Sustainable Development critiqued the ECGD's decision-making procedures concerning sustainable development; its inadequate Business Principles and need for a proactive approach; its due diligence and monitoring; information disclosure; and the OECD and ECA reform.
by Peter Marshall, Newsnight
- | published May 2009 | summary | PDF
BBC2 Television's Newsnight current affairs programme summarised its 8 minute broadcast: "In 2006, the British government scotched a serious fraud investigation into BAE's biggest deal, with Saudi Arabia. Now, Peter Marshall [Newsnight presenter] reveals that the company may have returned the favour. It has stopped a billion pound insurance contract which tied the government to the Saudi business." Information about stopping the insurance contract came to light as a result of legal correspondence between The Corner House and Campaign Against Arms Trade with the UK Export Credits Guarantee Department.
by Nicholas Hildyard
news | published April 2009 | full document
by The Corner House
news | published March 2009 | summary
On 12-13 March 2009, development, environment and human rights groups from Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK, and local residents of the island of Jersey organised a seminar to discuss the necessity for tax haven reform and to exchange views on how governments and civil society can work towards achieving a "just transition" for tax havens that would not impact on poorer residents.
by Nicholas Hildyard
briefing | published October 2008 | summary | PDF
Financial entrepreneurs created a 'shadow banking system' over the past 30 years to circumvent regulation and to offload risk onto others, relying on 'derivatives' and 'securitisation'. They generated easy credit that fuelled a boom in corporate mergers and acquisitions across the United States and Europe, and that enabled companies involved in mining, biofuels, private health care, water supply, infrastructure and forestry to expand their activities signficantly. When the pyramid of deals came tumbling down, however, the public had to bear the costs.
by Larry Lohmann
article | published August 2008 | summary | PDF
Carbon trading programmes such as the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and the Kyoto Protocol have helped mobilize neoclassical economics and development planning in new projects of dispossession, speculation, rent-seeking and the redistribution of wealth from poor to rich and from the future to the present. Part of this process is the creation of ignorance, argues this article published in the journal Development. (French version also available: click on "summary".)
by Soumitra Ghosh and Subrat Kumar Sahu (editors)
news | published September 2008 | summary | PDF
This new magazine is aimed at returning the Indian dialogue about climate change and its solutions to the "public space", instead of allowing it to remain the "exclusive property of governments, profiteers and 'experts' of various shades and hues".
by Larry Lohmann
talk | published March 2008 | summary | PDF
Carbon trading proponents often assert that trading is merely a way of finding the most cost-effective means of reaching an emissions goal and a source of funding that leaves everything else exactly as it is. In fact, carbon trading undermines a number of existing and proposed positive measures for tackling climate change
by Patrick Bond
article | published December 2007 | summary | PDF
The death of Durban environmentalist Sajida Khan calls attention to the life-and-death consequences of the climate justice struggle. If South Africans are to be at the cutting edge of progressive climate activism, not partners in the privatization of the atmosphere, three citizens' networks -- environmentalists, community groups, and trade unions -- must join forces to identify the contradictions within both South African and global energy sector policies and practices and help synthesize modes of resistance.
by Patrick Bond and Rehana Dada
article | published October 2007 | summary | PDF
Sajida Khan, an environmental activist based in Durban, South Africa, who died in July 2007, dedicated her life to fighting international corporations and local municipalities over the pollution and environmental degradation of her community. An interview with Khan about her views on environmental justice and possible ways forward to create healthier livelihoods is included.
by Larry Lohmann
presentation | published September 2007 | summary | PDF
Featuring photographs by Tamra Gilbertson, Nishant Male and Franceso Zizola, this slide show continues the series portraying the practical, on-the-ground effects of the trade in carbon credits through the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism and the voluntary "offset" market.
by Kevin Smith
article | published September 2007 | summary | PDF
Carbon trading, its backers claim, reduces emissions and brings sustainable development in the global South. But in fact it may do neither, and is harming efforts to create a low-carbon economy. A Chinese version is appended.
by Soumitra Ghosh
article | published May 2007 | summary | PDF
The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism is claimed to "promote sustainable development" in the South at the same time it gives Northern industries licenses to continue polluting. But the skepticism with which countries with colonial pasts have always viewed such "aid" is also warranted here.
by Susan Hawley
paper | published February 2006 | summary | full document | PDF
The OECD Working Group on Bribery's reviews of how countries are implementing the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention are an invaluable source of information about practice in different countries in combating bribery. This paper pulls together all the Group's comments and recommendations about public procurement, and summarises the procedures countries have developed to exclude companies convicted of bribery from public procurement.
by Susan Hawley for ECA-Watch
submission | published March 2006 | summary | full document | PDF
The OECD's Working Group on Bribery regard ECAs as essential to combating bribery and believe that ECA procedures to do so could be significantly improved. The Group's reviews of various OECD countries emphasise the importance of ECAs having proper procedures in place to detect and report bribery suspicions to law enforcement agencies, and to exclude companies convicted of corruption from further export credit support.
by The Corner House, Friends of the Earth (England, Wales and Northern Ireland), WWF-UK
submission | published February 2006 | summary | PDF
Any ECGD support for the Anglo-Dutch petrochemical multinational Shell to develop two oil and gas fields off Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East would breach international guidelines and conflict with the UK's sustainable development commitments and its international environmental obligations.
by Susan Hawley
submission | published December 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
There need to be considerable improvements to the UK's enforcement regime to combat corruption and money laundering. Laws on non tax-deductibility of bribes are not being adequately enforced. The UK government should take further measures to raise awareness of bribery; introduce preventative measures and new corruption legislation; and establish a fair and workable debarment system.
by Susan Hawley
presentation | published November 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
Northern institutions have a significant impact on corruption in developing countries, particularly in the form of bribery by Northern companies and money laundering by Northern banks of the proceeds of corruption. Northern states have been directly and indirectly complicit in these activities, primarily by turning a blind eye and failing to take action. If corruption is be tackled internationally, the Northern state itself needs to be redesigned.
by Nicholas Hildyard, The Corner House, UK; and Eliah Gilfenbaum, Environmental Defense, USA
paper | published September 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
This paper documents new subsidies that ECAs may give for large dams; evaluates the accompanying standards that ECAs may require for dam projects; and identifies future ECA actions if funding for dams is not to have negative environmental and social impacts.
by Larry Lohmann
paper | published September 2005 | summary | full document | PDF
Seeing social or technical change as the application of new "theory" to "practice" is one of the hazards of 21st-century middle-class life. Middle-class activists could take a leaf from both expert elites and grassroots movements, who both tend to know better.
by Kerim Yildiz, Kurdish Human Rights Project, and Nicholas Hildyard, The Corner House
article | published June 2004 | summary | full document
Since October 2000, the UK Export Credits Guarantees Department (ECGD) has been bound by the UK Human Rights Act. But many of the ECGD's procedures potentially conflict with this Act.
by Sumati Nair and Preeti Kirbat with Sarah Sexton
briefing | published June 2004 | summary | full document | PDF
This briefing evaluates the 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development. It assesses several processes that affect women's reproductive and sexual rights and health: the decline and collapse in health services; neo-liberal economic policies and religious fundamentalisms; and development policies underpinned by neo-Malthusianism.
by Export Credits Guarantee Department
- | published March 2004 | summary | PDF
In response to a Freedom of Information request from The Corner House, the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) released a letter it had written on 4 March 2004 to the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company confirming that it had approved conditional support for several UK contracts for the Sakhalin II project.
by Dr Susan Hawley
article | published June 2003 | summary | full document | PDF
Institutional practices within the taxpayer-funded UK Export Credits Guarantee Department have exacerbated bribery and corruption by Western companies.
by Rob Cartridge, Campaigns Director, War on Want
article | published May 2002 | summary | full document
Protecting workers' rights is central to alleviating poverty. The UK Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) should require all applicants to have policies for achieving core labour standards.
by Michael Bartlet, Religious Society of Friends
article | published May 2002 | summary | full document
The ECGD's support for defence-related exports has lost money every year for the past 12 years. This strongly suggests that arms sales are being deliberately subsidised.
by Barry Coates and Daniela Reale, World Development Movement
seminar | published May 2002 | summary | full document
The UK government's Export Credits Guarantees Department (ECGD) supports British exporters. Using public money to support private businesses is only justified if it has a demonstrable public purpose.
by Ann Feltham, Campaign Against Arms Trade
seminar | published May 2002 | summary | full document
Arms sales currently take up a disproportionate amount of official export credit support. The Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) and other Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) should end support for military goods.
by Romilly Greenhill and Ann Petifor, Jubilee Research
seminar | published May 2002 | summary | full document
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.
by Global Witness
presentation | published May 2002 | summary | full document
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.
by Kate Hampton, Friends of the Earth
seminar | published May 2002 | summary | full document
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.
by Dr Susan Hawley, The Corner House
seminar | published May 2002 | summary | full document
The UK Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) has a long record of backing corrupt projects. New vetting procedures have loopholes, leaving the ECGD open to charges of complicity in corruption.
by Sean Scannell, The Ilisu Dam Campaign
report | published May 2002 | summary | full document
Summary of NGO seminar held in UK parliament to discuss Export Credit Agency reform.
by The Corner House
submission | published December 2000 | summary | full document
by Larry Lohmann
review | published December 2000 | summary | full document
Review of Culture and the Question of Rights: Forests, Coasts, and Seas in Southeast Asia, Charles Zerner, (ed.,) Duke University Press, 2001
by Nicholas Hildyard
presentation | published 18-20 October 2000 | summary | full document
by Concerned NGOs
note | published July 2000 | summary | full document
by Nicholas Hildyard
article | published 30 May - 2 June 2000 | summary | full document
“Moral dilemmas” are not unattached to political, bureaucratic, social and economic interests. They are deeply political and are products of everyday conflicts over meaning, resources and ways of living and power. Who raises a particular moral dilemma and why is thus of critical importance.
by Nicholas Hildyard
briefing | published June 1999 | summary | full document
Projects backed by export credit agencies are frequently environmentally destructive, socially oppressive or financially unviable. It is the poorest in these countries who end up paying the bill. With rare exceptions, the major ECAs lack mandatory environmental and development standards, and are secretive and unaccountable.
by Larry Lohmann
briefing | published August 1998 | summary | full document
by Larry Lohmann
briefing | published May 1998 | summary | full document
Opinion polls and cost-benefit analysis, like public relations, attempt to construct new, simplified “publics” which are friendly to bureaucracies, politicians and corporations. The success of these attempts is limited by popular resistance at many levels.
by Larry Lohmann
article | published March 1998 | summary | full document
All development projects follow a three-act dramatic plotline, as development agencies try to impose plans, meet local opposition, and improvise freely in an attempt to overcome resistance.
by Nicholas Hildyard
seminar | published 1996 | summary | full document
by Larry Lohmann
article | published April 1994 | summary | full document
Westerners wanting to engage in effective international campaigning often will need to question their very conceptions of what social movements are.
by Larry Lohmann
article | published November 1993 | summary | full document