Global news

Movements slam corporate takeover of food systems summit

© National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates

Food sovereignty activists in the Philippines join the mobilisation in July.

Over 100 organisations of farmers, Indigenous Peoples, agricultural workers and others came together in the summer to prepare for a Global People’s Summit on Food Systems. Online events as well as ‘real life’ protests were held from Jakarta to Rome and around 9,000 people took part.

The People’s Summit was a response to the formal UN Food Systems Summit in September, which has been taken over by corporate interests including the World Economic Forum and agribusiness. Global Justice Now joined more than 500 organisations in warning against this last year, but the warning was not heeded. Yet the energy to resist the corporate hijack was clear and the call for an alternative summit arose. The People’s Summit was led by movements actually involved in building a better food system, all across the world. As Saúl Vicente from the International Indian Treaty Council said: “They wanted to bury us so that we would disappear, but they didn't know we were seeds.”

Pakistan to terminate 23 corporate court treaties

The government of Pakistan announced in August that it will terminate 23 bilateral investment treaties, known as BITs, with different countries in order to avoid the corporate court provisions they contain, which override domestic law.

It follows a succession of scandalous cases brought against Pakistan in corporate courts (also known as investor-state dispute settlement or ISDS) in recent years. In 2019, two international mining companies were awarded $5.9 billion – more than twice Pakistan’s annual budget for healthcare for 200 million people – in lost revenues from a proposed gold and copper mine found not to be legally constituted by the country’s Supreme Court.

The decision is part of a growing trend by developing countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia, to terminate existing BITS and develop models of investment agreements which do not enable foreign corporations to sue governments. Pakistan was able to unilaterally terminate 23 treaties; a further nine will require agreement with the partner government.

Hundreds arrested opposing US tar sands pipeline

More than 600 people have been arrested or received citations over protests in Minnesota in an effort to halt construction of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline through Native American tribal land. Indigenousled environmental organisations are mobilising ‘water protectors’ to try to halt the project, after successive legal efforts stalled.

Countries seek alliance to phase out oil and gas

The governments of Costa Rica and Denmark are trying to forge an alliance of countries willing to agree a date to phase out oil and gas production, as well as end new exploration permits, in order to meet Paris Agreement goals. The Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance aims to launch at COP26 in November.

Arms trade protesters have convictions quashed

Four activists who were arrested for blockading the DSEI arms fair in east London in 2017 had their convictions overturned by the supreme court in June. The judgement found that “there should be a certain degree of tolerance to disruption to ordinary life, including disruption of traffic” from exercising the right to protest.

Serbian community resists Rio Tinto mine

Protests took place in western Serbia in July against controversial plans by the Anglo-Australian multinational Rio Tinto to open a jadarite mine from which lithium is derived. The community in the Jadar Valley, normally an idyllic region of small farms and rolling hills, has been resisting the mine for more than a decade.

Hundreds of locals including farmers fearful over the impact of water and soil pollution on their livelihoods joined with environmental NGOs to protest in the town of Loznica in July. An international petition has also been launched with over 70,000 signatures. Two local NGOs have filed charges against the company’s Serbian subsidiary for environmental pollution.

“It’s a poisonous plant,” Marijana Petkovic told the protest. “They came in 2004, they never answered us as people on three key things: what to do with the noise; with the water; what is the minimum amount of pollution. None of what they promise can be fulfilled.”

Shell told to slash emissions by Dutch court

© Leonhard Lenz/Wikimedia

A Shell Must Fall protest in Berlin on the day of the company's AGM.

Oil giant Shell was ordered to cut its emissions by almost half in a landmark verdict in the Netherlands in May. The company was ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% on 2019 levels to align its policies with the Paris Agreement, after the civil court ruled it is responsible for its suppliers’ emissions as well as its own.

The case was first brought in 2019 by Friends of the Earth and six other groups, along with 17,000 Dutch citizens. Although the ruling only applies to the Netherlands, it is the first time a company has been ordered to match its actions with the international climate agreement, and it is hoped it will set a precedent. “This is really great news and a gigantic victory for the earth, our children and for all of us,” said Friends of the Earth’s Donald Pols. “The judge leaves no doubt about it: Shell is causing dangerous climate change and must now stop it quickly.”