Global Justice Now Cambridge

The group did a tour of banks in St Andrew’s Street on 15 June 2014.

It was a respectful imitation of Cambridge’s Blue Guides, stopping not outside the colleges and historic labs but the branches of NatWest, HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds.  The aim was to draw attention to the role these banks play in financing harmful coal mines.  More on that story here.

Aidan, Clare, Sue, Nicola, Bernard, Angela and some others took part, and pumped out leaflets and action cards.  And what we all said afterwards was, Let’s do it again!

Watch this space…

We fielded a stall at Strawberry Fair!  Thanks Bernard Rudd for loan of gazebo, and Beth and Colin for loan of picnic table.  The rounds were to distribute leaflets in connection with WDM’s Carbon Capital campaign.  We gathered signatures on 78 postcards calling on Lloyds Bank to pull out of bankrolling coal.

Next thing is to take that same message to the banks on the streets.

It’ll be on Sunday 2 February, 12:30 for 13:00.

If you’re not yet much involved in the work of the World Development Movement, this can be your chance to meet Cambridge members and and find out about the Movement’s hard-hitting campaigns on food justice and the bankrolling of climate change.

Or it might just be a time to meet old friends for food and an exchange of news. Kids welcome — & we hope to have a kid-friendly video or two in case food justice is not yet their scene.

Email Aidan Baker for details of the venue!

This was at the Cambridge WDM meeting of 16 October 2013.  Members (from left) Angela Macquiban, Clare Baker, Sue Woodsford, Bernard Shaw  and Angela Kalinzi Ditchfield joined Jubilee Debt Campaign‘s protest against the continuing transfer of money from poor countries to rich.

Here comes a letter to Vicky Ford on food speculation, licked into shape by Sheila, and delivered by Clare on behalf of the entire group.

Clare took it in person to the Tories’ Hardwick office on Monday, and staff promised to email it on to Vicky Ford in Brussels.  Not quite a photo-opportunity, but one way to be noticed.

30 August 2013

Dear Vicky Ford

You will remember we have had some correspondence since a group of us met you in May last year to discuss the review of the Market in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). Experience since that meeting has underlined how this legislation provides a vital opportunity to protect the lives of millions of poor consumers worldwide.

There is a growing consensus, with evidence from a wide range of sources, that excessive financial speculation is itself exacerbating food price volatility and amplifying the impact of poor harvests, higher fuel and fertilizer costs, competition from bio-fuels and other pressures. While financial players profit, the poor face hunger and long-term damage from malnutrition, especially children. The situation in countries such as in sub-Saharan Africa dependent on food imports gets increasingly precarious.

More disturbingly, risky products & strategies that are emerging in the complex commodity derivative markets (SOMO “Challenges for Regulators – Financial Players in the Food Commodity Derivatives Markets“(Nov 2012) http://somo.nl/news-en/somo-news/challenges-for-regulators ) also reinforce the case for pro-active intervention by regulators, co-ordinated across Europe. The report highlighted the increasing role of “especially opaque financial players in commodity markets such as hedge funds and commodity exchange traded funds (ETFs)”.

In October 2012, European parliamentarians showed their commitment to tackling food speculation by ensuring position limits were mandatory rather than voluntary, and including some measures to make limits more difficult to circumvent. However, there are still more dangerous loopholes in the MiFID text that risk rendering the legislation ineffective.

As this legislation enters the trialogue phase, please will you act to ensure that these loopholes are eradicated and the need for strong mandatory position limits is reaffirmed.

Please will you write to the rapporteur for the legislation, Markus Ferber, and Kay Swinburne as the lead MEP on MiFID for your group, to ask them to support all the points included in the enclosed briefing in the final compromise text

Thankyou for the interest you have already shown in our concerns about this important issue.

Yours sincerely,

pp. Sheila Brookes

On behalf of Cambridge World Development Movement

Sheila Brookes, Aidan Baker and Clare Baker from Cambridge WDM met Cambridge’s MP, Julian Huppert, on Saturday 6 July to discuss the financing of “dirty energy” projects (coal and oil extraction) by financial institutions in the City of London. The meeting took place at one of Julian’s regular constituency surgeries, held at Chesterton Methodist Church.

Aidan Baker started by presenting WDM’s case, which hinges on the desire for transparency about carbon emissions. The UK Government is bringing in mandatory carbon reporting, which essentially means that companies will need to make their carbon footprints publicly available. This is good news, but the current proposal doesn’t go far enough. In particular, banks will need to report the carbon emitted in their head offices – from lighting to executive travel – but, crucially, not, yet, emissions of projects they finance.

Many UK banks have invested huge sums in carbon intensive extraction projects in the Global South. Making them report emissions caused by these (so-called “Scope III emissions”) alongside their UK activity would shed light into some very murky financial practices. Furthermore, including Scope III emissions in mandatory carbon reporting would not itself need primary legislation; it is within the gift of the Business Secretary, Vince Cable. Our aim at this meeting was to ask Julian Huppert to write to his Liberal Democrat colleague with this request.

Julian explained that the main purpose behind carbon reporting was simply to gain a picture of the country’s emissions. He would like it to include everything that UK companies are responsible for, including aviation and shipping; the problem with adding Scope III emissions is mainly one of complexity. The banks do not own the companies whose emissions we seek to include, they merely invest in them or loan them money, and it would be difficult to include these emissions without ‘double counting’. Aidan agreed that this was a potential problem, but said that the banks needed to be accountable for the environmental damage of the projects they funded.

Aidan then handed over to Sheila Brookes to give an example. Sheila cited a large open-cast mine at Cerrejón, close to the North Atlantic coast of Colombia. Millions of tonnes of coal have been exported from this mine every year since the 1970s, mostly to the US, Canada and Europe and since 2009 the mine developers have received investments of over £7 billion from UK banks to fund its expansion. This has caused significant humanitarian problems as well as environmental damage. Whole communities have been displaced without receiving the compensation that was originally promised. The mining company is now planning to divert 26km of a river that is held sacred by indigenous communities, and these communities have not even benefited from energy produced from the mined coal: it is estimated that coal exports from the Cerrejón mine generate more emissions than the whole of Colombia.

Julian understood why we were concerned about this project, but pointed out that these concerns were clearly wider than was suggested by an emphasis on carbon emissions. He suggested that the serious problem of UK companies investing in such dodgy projects might be better addressed through campaigns such as ShareAction¹ (formerly FairPensions), which promotes ethical investment by pension funds and their managers. Aidan agreed that this could be a useful approach, but said that the problem of the “network of power” linking government, the finance industry and the extraction industry was a complex one that needs be addressed in a number of ways. Opening up these activities to public scrutiny via mandatory carbon reporting would be a useful step that could be taken easily, and the UK government, having signed up to the EU’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative², should be persuadable. Sheila added that all investment in extractive industries was investment lost from clean energy projects to benefit local communities.

Julian ended by repeating that he agreed with WDM’s aims although he was still dubious about whether simply adding numbers to reported carbon emissions was the most appropriate means to achieve them. If it could be argued that emissions were being counted more than once it might make the whole process seem less credible, which would be counter-productive. He did, however, agree to send a letter to Vince Cable on our behalf and to find out more about the Cerrejón mine.

Clare Baker