Resources: Report

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.

The World Bank has invested almost a quarter of a billion dollars in Seven Energy, an oil and gas company operating in Nigeria. Months before the first investment was made, the then Governor of Nigeria's Central Bank alleged that the company's flagship contract involved operating a scheme that was looting billions of dollars in state revenues. A number of the people associated with the contract are now either on the run or charged with money laundering.

Twenty years' experience has proved that carbon trading is making climate change worse. Rather than combating the continued use of fossil fuels, it is designed in a way that keeps them coming out of the ground. Faced with this reality, some environmentalists, states and corporations are advocating carbon taxes as an "alternative". But carbon taxes are no better equipped to address the roots of global warming than carbon trading.

In May 2014, the Indian government authorised the height of the controversial Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river in central-western India to be raised. Thousands of people, villages and towns will be submerged. A Fact-Finding Mission report calls for construction work to be halted immediately until all those people affected have been appropriately resettled.

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?)

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?

This report from Carbon Trade Watch demonstrates how, in Spain, public funds supporting increased fossil fuel use are interacting synergistically with the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme to worsen global warming. (Also available in Spanish.)

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. 

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.

Huge amounts of money and capital have been able to move around the world with ease over the past few years. Governments appear not to have been aware what was going on, let alone to know what to do now in the ensuing crisis. In fact, it was (mainly Northern) governments that created the enabling environment for such free movement of capital and new financial products in the first place. This paper describes how they did so.

In March 2007, the export credit agencies (ECAs) of Austria, Germany and Switzerland approved financial guarantees for the proposed Ilisu Dam on the River Tigris in the Kurdish region of Southeast Turkey. They stated that Turkey had provided the two downstream countries, Syria and Iraq, with the information these countries had sought about the Dam, and that Iraq had agreed to the project. Neither claim is true, according to Iraq's Minister of Water. By approving funding before Iraq and Syria had been consulted, the ECAs could be in violation of international law.

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.

Institutional practices within the taxpayer-funded UK Export Credits Guarantee Department have exacerbated bribery and corruption by Western companies.

Summary of an NGO seminar held in the UK parliament to discuss Export Credit Agency reform.

Before granting export credits to the companies that want to build the Ilisu Dam on the Tigris river in Southeast Turkey, the governments of several European countries and the USA required a full consideration of the environmental consequences of constructing and operating the dam. This review examines the environmental impact assessment’s analysis of the dam’s downstream impacts, and concludes that, if built, the Ilisu dam could cause major disruptions to water flow to Syria and Iraq, the two countries that share the Tigris with Turkey.

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.

European dam builders, suppliers and consultants continue to promote and export their technologies to the countries of the South. In doing so, they tend to ignore, misrepresent or downplay many of the negative environmental, social and economic impacts of large dams that have discredited the dam building industry in Europe. This report presents the track record of the major European companies involved in large dams, detailed by company and by dams in Turkey, Lesotho, Paraguay/Argentina/Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, India, Malaysia and China.