Ninety-Nine Issue 29 - July 2024 by Global Justice Now

ISSUE 29: July 2024

Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now

Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice.

Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS 020 7820 4900 • offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk • globaljustice.org.uk

Editor: Jonathan Stevenson

Graphic Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.uk

Cover: Campaigners take the Fossil Fuel Treaty message to the City of London in February.

Photo: © Vuk Valcic/Alamy Stock Photo.

Printed on 100% recycled paper.

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Real change won’t happen unless we make it

Jonathan Stevenson Head of communications

For many of us, the general election result will have produced a sigh of relief. After more than a decade of regular calamity, finally we’ve seen the back of a government with almost zero interest in global justice. Already the Rwanda plan has been cancelled, and onshore wind farms are no longer banned. New exploration for North Sea oil and gas is due to be curtailed. So far, so good.

But that’s the easy bit. Having a government that tackles climate change with urgency should be the bare minimum. Treating people seeking safety like human beings should go without saying. And refusing to lend economic and political support to a government under investigation for genocide is surely a basic first step. But even in the early days of the Starmer era, these things remain up in the air. As Nick Dearden explains on page 8, the new government spoke in opposition of the need to rebuild trust with the global south. It will have its work cut out to do so – and will need to go much further if it wants to reset the relationship after a decade of global retreat.

There will be a green transition, come what may. Our task is to make sure it is based on justice.

At the heart of the challenge is the question of a just transition to a fossil-free economy, which we explore in this issue. It’s a key principle of our work for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. But as Fadhel Kaboub sets out on page 10, if we only try to remove the carbon from the existing global economy, based as it is on exploitation of the global south, we will not get very far. The global south can bypass the dirty energy path that we have taken, but it will take a shift from the logic of wealth extraction – and that means the global north giving up control. Climate colonialism is not the answer.

Our campaign victory over the Energy Charter Treaty, which we celebrate on page 4, is an example of the kind of structural changes needed – as well as what determined campaigning can achieve even under a Conservative government. But as Rachmi Hertanti writes on page 14, the wider legal apparatus of corporate power extends much further, and is woven into the green transition. On page 18, Cleodie Rickard outlines how we can tackle this.

There will be some kind of green transition, come what may – that much is clear. Our task is to make sure it is based on justice. On 4 July millions of us voted for change, in different ways. Now it is up to movements like ours to make sure real change happens.

New MPs feel the pressure on fossil fuel phase-out

Global Justice Now’s campaign for the UK to get behind the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty has got off to a great start, with hundreds attending our launch webinar in January and people around the country mobilising for a nationwide lobby day in May. And we continued to pile on the pressure during the general election campaign, with thousands of messages sent to candidates from every party by voters in the run-up to polling day.

We know a fair energy transition must happen quickly and be properly planned, so we’re backing the global exit plan from fossil fuels to make it happen. The Fossil Fuel Treaty’s three pillars – no new fossil fuel expansion, a fair phase-out of existing stockpiles, and a globally just transition to

renewable energy – make it a path to justice for all, from people in the global south to workers in the UK.

The UK campaign is focused on local organising and building support for the Fossil Fuel Treaty among MPs, the devolved governments and local councils, to create bottom-up pressure on the Westminster government to get on board. Results before the election included Reading Borough Council endorsing the treaty and Bradford MP Naz Shah publicly supporting it after lobbying by Global Justice Bradford.

At the same time, we’re campaigning in solidarity with people in the global south resisting fossil fuels. We recently joined protests in London to demand that UK-based insurance companies don’t underwrite the climate-wrecking East African Crude

Oil Pipeline (EACOP). This dangerous proposal would displace thousands and threaten vital water sources in Uganda and Tanzania, as well as adding over 34 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.

Our general election campaigning prioritised working with others to make climate and a just energy transition something candidates couldn’t ignore. Labour has now formed the new government, with its manifesto pledging not to license new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea. This gives us something to build on as we push MPs from all parties to back the Fossil Fuel Treaty in the crucial next parliament.

Join our call for the UK to back to the treaty at: globaljustice.org.uk/fossil-fuels

Victory: UK quits climate-wrecking trade treaty

© Andrea Domeniconi/Global Justice Now

Shortly after the last Ninety-Nine went to press we celebrated a major campaign victory, when the UK government finally announced it would leave the Energy Charter Treaty. It was the culmination of Global Justice Now’s three-year campaign, working with supporters and other organisations across the UK and Europe – and much longer of talking about the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism at its heart, which companies can use to sue governments over policies

which harm their profits.

This was a huge win for people power, defeating fossil fuel companies’ secret weapon to block the climate action we desperately need –and has sped up the treaty’s wider downfall.

In May, the European Council also approved a proposal for the European Union to exit the treaty. This leaves the treaty gutted of funding, with little ability to pursue its expansion plans or to limp on further at all.

across all its trading relationships.

The win also deals a blow to the wider system of corporate courts that puts the profits of big business over people and planet. There’s a growing trend against the reputability and legitimacy of ISDS as a whole, with countries around the world starting to exit bilateral investment deals which contain ISDS or refusing to include it in future deals. We’ll be using the momentum to push the UK government to tackle corporate courts

The victory shows we can overturn even the most obscure of trade deals, and we can build on this to address the many ways trade rules are harming communities and threatening a just green transition. So a massive thank you to everyone who was part of this campaign.

Read more about how the campaign was won: globaljustice.org.uk/ect-win

Energy Charter Treaty protests in Glasgow (top and left) and Westminster (above) over the years.

We need a strong pandemic treaty

Talks over a global pandemic treaty failed to reach agreement at the World Health Assembly in May, as rich countries continued to block measures to control Big Pharma’s ability to profiteer from health crises.

After the disastrous inequality of Covid-19, when pharma companies refused to share life-saving vaccine know-how with the global south, the need for a drastic overhaul of the global health system is clear. Along with allies in the global south, Global Justice Now has been calling for the new treaty to include measures to stop pharma companies profiteering from crisis again.

One essential step would be to achieve binding commitments to share medicines technology with the global south. Despite all the evidence of the pandemic, and all the taxpayer money that contributes to medicines development, rich countries want to leave it up to the goodwill of pharma companies to make this happen.

The UK is also resisting measures to stop outdated patent laws from getting in the way of qualified firms in the global south which want to make essential medicines themselves. With these important issues still to be resolved, negotiations on the treaty have been extended for a further year.

UK refuses to suspend arms to Israel

Since October last year, Global Justice Now has joined efforts to help stop the UK government giving its backing to Israel’s war on Gaza. We joined many other organisations in calling early on for the UK to support a ceasefire, and in recent months tens of thousands of supporters have joined our call on the government to impose an arms embargo and suspend UK-Israel trade talks.

Israel’s brutal assault has now killed more than 37,000 people, including many thousands of children, injured tens of thousands more and displaced almost 2 million people from their homes. It has been widely condemned as an appalling collective punishment of Palestinian civilians for the

terrible Hamas attacks which killed hundreds of Israeli civilians last year.

The UK has licensed £485 million of arms exports to Israel since 2015, including more than 100 licences since last October. Disgracefully, even after the International Court of Justice found in January that there is a “plausible” case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the UK government has rejected calls to suspend arms sales, as well as pledging to deepen trade ties. At the time of writing, Israel’s assault on Rafah is intensifying, despite aid workers warning that hundreds of thousands of people had nowhere safe to go.

Join the call for an arms embargo on Israel: globaljustice.org.uk/gaza

Ecuador votes against return of corporate courts

On 21 April, the Ecuadorian people overwhelmingly voted ‘no’ to the country allowing a return of investorstate dispute settlement (ISDS) in its trade deals. It was part of a long history of resistance to corporate courts, which have enabled outrageous claims by foreign oil and gas companies against the country’s policies to protect the environment

and Indigenous communities. In 2017, Ecuador terminated 16 treaties and changed its constitution to prohibit ISDS, but this year a right-wing government re-tabled the issue in a referendum.

With a mammoth effort by social movements, a national campaign was mounted within the space of a month to decry the dangers of rowing

back these safeguards against foreign arbitration, bringing together sections of the Indigenous and peasant movements with environmental activists and drawing international support from organisations across the globe. The win shores up the growing bulwark against ISDS, with countries around the world retreating from this toxic system.

London hospital making medicines without big pharma

A London hospital is pioneering a new way of making medicines, as it seeks to manufacture a vital new gene therapy treatment without relying on big pharma. Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has already developed and tested a promising new treatment for ‘bubble baby’ syndrome, a rare but life-threatening condition that leaves children with

no immune system. Now, after the commercial pharmaceutical company which had initially agreed to manufacture the treatment dropped its commitment, GOSH is seeking to license the treatment itself.

The pharmaceutical industry has a well-earned reputation for abandoning life-saving drugs when it deems them insufficiently profitable.

But not only are scientists at GOSH aiming to help fill this dangerous gap, they also say their not-for-profit model could produce gene therapies much more cheaply than big pharma companies. If successful, GOSH’s project could point the way to a cheaper, more reliable way of making medicines, benefiting patients in the UK and worldwide.

Three Waorani women protest against oil extraction outside Ecuador's Constitutional Court.

© Juan Diego Montenegro/Sipa USA

NEWS SHORTS

European movements endorse Fossil Fuel Treaty

Activists from across Europe backed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty at the European Common Space for Alternatives in Marseille in April, vowing to take it forward as a priority campaign. The threeday conference brought together European movements in the fight for climate justice, demilitarisation and more.

Colombia suspends coal exports to Israel over Gaza

Colombia announced it was suspending coal exports to Israel over the war on Gaza in June, saying they would resume only “when the genocide” comes to an end and Israel withdraws troops from Gaza. Israel imports more than 50% of its coal from Colombia, worth $320 million a year.

Vermont passes law to make Big Oil pay for climate damage

In May the US state of Vermont became the first to bring in a law forcing oil firms to pay for the impacts their greenhouse gas emissions have caused. The damage to public health, biodiversity and economic development will be assessed, in what is expected to stretch to billions of dollars of compensation.

Colombia breaks patent of rip-off HIV medicine

Colombia recently brought the price of a life-saving HIV drug down from $1,224 to $44, in a challenge to corporate greed. The country achieved this by issuing a ‘compulsory license’ to circumvent the pharmaceutical monopoly over the drug dolutegravir. This will enable thousands of people, many of whom are migrants, to access a generic version of this crucial drug.

Columbia is the latest in a long line of global south countries which have pushed back against hugely inflated

drugs prices, with countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana and Ecuador having previously issued compulsory licences for HIV drugs. This proves it is possible to break Big Pharma’s monopolies and prioritise people and public health over the profits of the few. This success is also testament to the power of collective action. It is thanks to the unrelenting pressure from activists and campaigners that this treatment is now accessible to many more people.

Legal victory over impact of burning fossil fuels

The UK’s Supreme Court ruled in June that the climate impacts of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account in planning decisions, in a landmark verdict which could change the future of fossil fuel extraction in the UK. The case, brought by Sarah Finch of the Weald Action Group (and a former editor of Action magazine, the precursor to NinetyNine! ), concerned Surrey County Council’s approval of 4 oil wells in Horse Hill, on the Weald. Like all planning assessments, it only considered the emissions produced

by the drilling operations themselves, not those of the fossil fuels extracted.

“The whole purpose of extracting fossil fuels is to make hydrocarbons available for combustion,” the court ruled, saying this must be included in the environmental impact assessment. The verdict will give encouragement to campaigners against other fossil fuel projects in the UK, including the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields in the North Sea, and the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria.

Members of the Weald Action Group and supporters celebrate the ruling.

© Weald Action Group/Friends of the Earth

Starmer must bridge a chasm of mistrust with the world

Labour has taken power at a time when the UK has rarely been more marginalised, or the West less trusted, on the global stage. NICK DEARDEN on what the new government needs to do to change course.

As the dust settles on an extraordinary general election result, Keir Starmer’s initial focus is likely to be domestic. But from Gaza to the climate crisis, people will be looking to the new government to transform the UK’s international role.

Rarely has the distrust which the majority of the world feels towards the global north been as deep as it is today. In opposition, the Labour Party spoke of the need to rebuild trust. The new foreign secretary, David Lammy, noted that attempts to persuade global south countries to join coordinated action for Ukraine have largely been rebuffed. “Given the West’s hoarding of Covid-19 vaccines and its inadequate action to mitigate climate-related loss and damage,” he concluded, “they have a point.”

Bridging this chasm of mistrust will not be easy, but it is essential. Solving the serious problems in our world will not be possible without coordinated action on a number of fronts, not least the existential threat we face from climate change. As we’re seeing across Europe, a green transition which doesn’t also redress the economic injustices in our societies will fail to build sufficiently broad support, activating instead reactionary political responses. At the global level, only a transition which also reduces international disparities in wealth, allowing people everywhere to finally enjoy the right to energy, healthcare, education and a decent life, will allow us to make progress on climate.

We are a long way away from this point. Rather, as wealth at the very top of society grows everywhere, so poverty at the bottom is proliferating. In fact, across the global south a mixture of unbalanced trade and investment deals, the growing debt crisis, and the paucity

of climate finance have combined to severely limit the policy and fiscal space of most countries, preventing them taking their own green transitions.

On top of this, the glaring double standards which the West has employed in Ukraine and Gaza have convinced many countries that international law doesn’t apply to friends of the United States. As one G7 diplomat told the Financial Times back in October: “We have definitely lost the battle in the global south. Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”

ACTIONS, NOT WORDS

Of course, no single government can redress these issues overnight. But Keir Starmer’s government has a chance to show that the election genuinely represents a move away from the imperial fantasies of the last government, and indeed of the failed neo-conservative interventions of the last Labour administration.

First and foremost, they will need to show global leadership in bringing the fossil fuel era to an end. They can move quickly to do this by backing the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty ahead of COP29 in November. This idea is gaining ground across the world, as politicians and campaigners realise the need to tackle the supply side, as well as the demand side, of carbon emissions. In other words, we need to tackle the fossil fuel industry head on, in a way which leaves no one behind.

Second, they must foster a genuinely just and equitable economy through the ‘green transition’. How we do this will define the domestic and global economy for a generation. At the heart of this is the need to re-examine the trade system,

RIght: Keir Starmer arriving at Downing Street. Public pressure will be essential if his government is to bring about real change.

to avoid building our own transition on a resource grab, extracting minerals mined in appalling conditions, based on dispossession of people from their land, and with the governments we’re trading with getting little value from this trade. The new government must pledge to exclude investorstate dispute settlement clauses from its future deals, and review any critical minerals initiatives to avoid taking a neo-colonial approach.

Third, Britain’s reputation in the diplomatic and development space has been shattered in the years following the Brexit referendum. What’s more, for most countries in the world today, the West’s double standards over Gaza are fuelling a deep distrust in multilateralism. The new government must take immediate action to show it takes this seriously, including an arms embargo on Israel and suspending trade talks.

Beyond Gaza, the government will need to show a radically different approach to the global south. In particular, the rapidly growing debt crisis is severely hampering the ability of many global south countries to fund their own green transitions, and build sustainable societies. It should announce a law to constrain

the ability of private sector creditors to stymie debt cancellation – this would seriously impact financiers’ ability to profiteer from financial crisis.

Finally, as Labour has acknowledged, the Covid-19 pandemic sowed enormous distrust globally, as rich countries hoarded not just vaccines but the technical know-how behind them. The new government should use aid money to support independent southernbased medical research, development and manufacturing, including the mRNA hub in South Africa as the first step to encouraging industrial development across the global south.

These are the sort of bold, radical policies which we haven’t seen for more than a generation, and Labour will not deliver these changes on their own. It is up to us to campaign, educate, challenge and mobilise.

Big changes have only ever come about by ordinary people demanding them. Millions of us have voted for real change, but democracy doesn’t begin and end at the ballot box. In the coming years, we will need to make our voices heard together.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now.

Decolonise to decarbonise

To have a just transition to a fossil fuel-free economy, we must end the systemic extraction of wealth from the global south, writes FADHEL KABOUB.

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr once said, in the context of the civil rights movement in the US, “I have no time for the tranquillising drug of gradualism”. He was a radical, not just in the political sense of the term but in the literal sense, meaning we need to go to the roots of the problem – that’s what ‘radical’ means. Because if we’re not radicals, then we’re operating at the surface, and that means superficial solutions, the status quo. So we need to identify the roots of the problem.

In the context of the global south, the problem today is once again external debt. That is what eats into fiscal policy space, it is what doesn’t allow us to invest in critical priorities such as health, education, and climate action. However, external debt is a symptom of three major structural issues that must be addressed if we’re going to move forward with a just transition in the global south: energy deficits, food deficits and manufacturing value-added deficits. And each of these have colonial and post-colonial roots.

when less than a hundred years ago we used to be the breadbasket for colonial powers. Again, this is not by accident, it’s by design. What is the design? It’s the rules of international trade, such as agricultural subsidies in the global north.

As soon as the African continent started to gain independence in the 1950s, European leaders met at the Treaty of Rome meeting and essentially acknowledged that Europe had a food security problem: it was too dependent on the colonies that were becoming independent. So Europe needed to introduce its own food sovereignty program, which came into effect in 1962 when the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was launched.

The global north sees Africa's renewables potential as a threat.

First, when we speak of energy deficits, it includes our biggest oil exporter in Africa: Nigeria, which imports 100% of its gasoline today; gasoline that’s actually illegal to sell in Europe. This is not by accident, it’s by design. Angola, the second largest exporter of oil, imports 80% of its fuel from international markets. Mexico imports 50% of its fuel from the United States. This is by design.

Second, when it comes to food deficits, Africa today imports 85% of its food,

CAP remains a foundational block of the European Union to this day.

It wasn’t just Europe of course, it was also the US, Canada, Australia, and the former Soviet Union – which is why Russia and Ukraine still dominate the grain industry. The way these countries protected their agricultural industries forced the global south, Africa in particular, to give up producing wheat, corn, barley and the core crops we need for our actual food security. Instead, we were forced to play a new role in the global economy, and the global food system, producing cash crops and supplementary agricultural products for export.

Once you start producing cash crops you have to produce for the taste of your consumers in the global north, so you start

Right: Workers install solar panels on the roof of a building in South Africa.

using non-native seeds that are not acclimatised to your environment. You have to pump them with water that you don't always have, and you have to import fertilisers and pesticides that you don’t have. If you do that for 30 to 40 years, you just kill the fertility of your soil. You have to double down on more potent seeds, fertilisers and pesticides that you must import on unfavourable terms, and you're stuck in a debt trap. That’s why we essentially have no food security today.

And third, when it comes to the manufacturing value-added deficits, we must acknowledge that the only manufacturing we were allowed to have in the global south is the kind where you have to import everything – the machines, the fuel to power the factories, the components to assemble with low-cost labour, and

even the packaging. So we ended up with a manufacturing base that exports low value-added content and imports high value-added content. That is a trap. You can double, triple, or quadruple your exports – but you’re always locked at the bottom of the global value chain.

These three fundamental deficits – food, energy and manufacturing – add up to a structural trade deficit year after year, decade after decade. Any country with a trade deficit finds its currency becomes weaker relative to the dollar, and with the weaker exchange rate anything we need to import the next morning – food, fuel, medicine – has to be imported at a higher cost. So we literally import inflation in the most sensitive areas, which creates the risk of social unrest, putting our governments immediately

into a defensive position, trying to find a band-aid solution to this imported inflation in food, fuel and medical supplies. As a result, we subsidise food and fuel – and it’s unsustainable to do that for 70 or 80 years.

Alongside this we ask our central bankers to do their best to defend the value of the exchange rate, which they promptly do by borrowing more dollars and accelerating the debt trap. Once you have debt payments due every month or quarter, you completely rewire your economy to prioritise any economic activity that will allow you to earn those dollars. That leads to more extractive, faster acceleration of the same colonial traps you are already in. These are the roots of the problem.

STRUCTURAL SOLUTIONS

The solutions are right there staring us in the face, and we have a wonderful opportunity to pursue them. The solution to food deficits is strategic investments in food sovereignty and agroecology.

The solution to energy deficits is strategic investments in renewable energy sovereignty, which is Africa's biggest potential. According to the latest report from the International Energy Agency, with existing renewables technology – not new inventions and innovations – Africa can produce 1,000 times its energy needs by 2040. So it can meet not just its own energy needs, but the rest of the world’s, and Europe in particular.

So why are we not cooperating to give Africa that potential, instead of building pipelines for natural gas and other fossil fuel expansion? Africa’s tremendous renewable energy potential is unfortunately perceived as a threat by the global north because it would make OPEC’s power look like child’s play in the energy system; instead of perceiving this as a winwin for Africa and the global north to leapfrog into a world of clean, cheap, and abundant energy that cannot be used as a geopolitical weapon for economic dominance.

The third strategic solution to undo Africa’s role as the continent locked at the bottom of the global value chain, is strategic investments in high value-added industrial policies – not just assembly line manufacturing. We must prioritise the use of the resources that we have in the global south, the strategic minerals that everybody wants to control. This industrial policy cannot be to produce more widgets for growth, for consumerism for its own sake, but to produce the building blocks of development and prosperity in the global south: renewable energy, green public transportation, and clean cooking infrastructure. We must prioritise the needs of the African

continent, of the 650 million people who have no electricity today, and the billion people with no access to clean cooking.

Africa today only attracts 2% of the global financial flows that go into renewables. And most of that investment is extractive, it’s to export clean electricity or green hydrogen to the global north. We are not prioritising manufacturing renewable energy infrastructure to reach that potential. Nor are we manufacturing clean transportation infrastructure, or clean cooking infrastructure for the almost billion people (mostly women and children) who are inhaling toxic fumes on a daily basis in Africa alone.

The good news about these three solutions is that not only are they about decolonisation, economic transformation, anti-inflation, and antidebt – they also happen to be climate solutions. This is what the world wants, if we're serious about decarbonisation, if we're serious about climate action.

But are we?

FLOWING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

The reality is that if you track all financial flows – including exports, imports, interest payments, debt relief, illicit financial flows and remittances from workers – the net amount moving from the global south to the global north every year is $2 trillion. That is the neocolonial extraction of wealth that continues to accelerate.

20 years ago that number was $500 billion – and we thought it was outrageous then. If we don't do anything about the global economic architecture that creates this suction mechanism, it will be $5 trillion, $10 trillion in the next few years.

What is this global economic architecture that produces this extraction of wealth from the global south? It's a colonial economic architecture. It’s the financial architecture, the World Bank and the

IMF, both created during colonial times for colonial purposes. It's the international trade and investment architecture, that is the World Trade Organisation, the rules of extraction from the global south like investorstate dispute settlement.

And it's the international taxation architecture, which for a long time was in the hands of the OECD countries, though finally last November we managed to get them into a UN tax convention process, which means we are hopefully in the process of decolonising the international tax system. Without changing that trade, investment, financial and taxation architecture, we will continue to see this extraction of wealth.

When $2 trillion is moving in the wrong direction, how much money is moving in the right direction? Part of this is climate finance. $100 billion per year was promised more than 15 years ago. Apparently, it was delivered, but when we check the numbers most of it was loans – and non-concessional loans in fact. There is the Green Climate Fund, which sounds great –it’s one country, one vote, and there's money in it. But it’s only $12 billion for the entire global south. The Loss and Damage Fund from COP28 is $700 million so far – almost nothing.

If you compare this to the annual profits of the big oil companies, you will not find a single climate fund that comes close to the profits of even one of those companies. So at this pace, we're not decolonising anything, we're not decarbonising anything, we're just doing what Martin Luther King Jr said: the tranquillising drugs of gradualism, incrementalism, false solutions and dangerous distractions. It is this that needs to change if we’re going to have a just transition.

Fadhel Kaboub is a senior adviser to Power Shift Africa and a member of the Independent Expert Group on Just Transition and Development. He is the author of the substack Global South Perspectives. This is an edited version of his speech to our national gathering in May.

Global Justice Now Supporters

From Plunder to Solidarity

Global Justice Now’s national gathering this year took place in Nottingham in June, at the iconic Nottingham Contemporary art gallery.

We were joined by some excellent speakers, including Fadhel Kaboub from Power Shift Africa, along with other allies from the global trade justice movement, to discuss what a truly just transition to a green economy looks like, and the dangers of an updated form of neocolonial trade relations being pursued by rich countries. Professor Ulrich Brand gave a very illuminating introductory talk about the ways in which most of us in the global north have been locked into a way of life which depends on ecological destruction and exploitation elsewhere, and how that has produced today’s global politics. While most conference participants were on the same page about the problems, one disagreement that came out was about the usefulness of ‘degrowth’ as a term for what we need to see as part of the solution. More broadly, the discussions at the conference will feed into the development of new campaign areas for Global Justice Now in the future.

If you’d like to see the recording of the sessions in the main space, you can find it at www.youtube.com/globaljusticenow

Photos © Chris Tregenza

Incoming council

Nominations for Global Justice Now’s council closed in April, and we ended up with exactly twelve nominations for the twelve seats. Our rules require that among those elected to council, a minimum of six must be women, three must be nominated by their local group, two must be BME and one must be under 28. Since all these quotas were met, the returning officer deemed the whole group elected.

The new council therefore consists of Victor Anderson, Nick Anim, Sally Brooks, Ludovico Caminati Engström, Aisha Dodwell, Mohammed Elnaiem, Natalia Guidorzi, Steven Jackson, Maggie Mason, Naveed Somani, Mary Steiner and Christine Thompson. You can read more about them at globaljustice.org.uk/elections-2024

The secret world of investor courts

In this extract from Global Justice Now Youth’s new podcast, RACHMI HERTANTI describes how the fight in Indonesia against foreign corporations is entering a new phase over critical minerals.

In Indonesia we have been fighting the impact of corporate courts – formally known as investorstate dispute settlement, or ISDS – for more than two decades. ISDS mechanisms are written into trade and investments deals, and allow corporations to sue governments outside the national legal system for policies which harm their profits. 70% of investment disputes in Indonesia have come from foreign mining companies, and the value can reach billions of dollars.

There are four main impacts states face when up against an ISDS claim. The costs of litigation, the costs of compensation, political costs due to the loss of state policy space, and the costs of damage to reputation. In the end the state is forced to use public money to pay all of them. In other words, ISDS lawsuits allow foreign investors to try to pass the risk of investment onto public budgets in host countries.

the rights of Indigenous people in several villages. After a four-year legal battle, Churchill eventually lost the claim in 2016, and was ordered to pay Indonesia’s legal costs. But they have spent years failing to do so.

Even when ISDS claims are not successful, they come at a public cost. Take for example the lawsuits brought against Indonesia by Churchill Mining and Planet Mining in 2012. These corporations – originally from the UK and Australia – claimed $1.2 billion through the ISDS mechanism contained in an investment treaty between Indonesia and the UK, after the regional government revoked their mining permits. These mining permits would have allowed mining to take place in conservation areas and protected forest areas, violating

Or take Newmont Mining, headquartered in the United States. Newmont submitted an ISDS claim in 2014 that was part of its strategy against the implementation of Indonesia’s mining law of 2009. As part of the law, foreign-owned mining companies were obliged to progressively divest to become minority shareholders. Within 10 years, local or the state-owned enterprises should have 51% of the shares of the company itself. Newmont’s ISDS claim helped persuade the government to negotiate over the implementation of the law, and Newmont eventually dropped the case. In this way, ISDS contributes to ‘regulatory chill’, deterring or delaying governments from bringing in policies to benefit their people.

A NEW PHASE

Since the beginning of the ISDS regime in the 1960s, the aim has been really clear: to protect the interests of colonial countries and their corporations. Today, we know that Western states like the US, EU and UK are interested in securing access to critical minerals like nickel, cobalt, rare earth and other minerals – to control the market of the green economy. They want to ensure that investment agreements

Right: A nickel mine in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Left: Rachmi speaking at our national gathering in May.

containing ISDS will provide very strong protections for investors in these sectors. The battle for critical mineral security will once again threaten the resources of developing countries through investment lawsuits.

In Indonesia today we have a national economic agenda called ‘downstream industries for natural resources’. The aim is to ensure all minerals extracted from Indonesia are processed and refined in the country, prior to export. There are several policies implemented by the current government to do this and strengthen the role of state-owned enterprises, including an export ban on nickel, making technology transfer from Western states to Indonesia an obligation, and requirements to supply most of the materials for production from within the country. But this has been resisted by Western powers.

For example, the EU submitted a complaint against Indonesia at the WTO about the nickel policy,

which it won – although Indonesia is appealing. Indonesia is negotiating a trade agreement with the EU, and this is one of the stumbling blocks of the negotiations. It's really clear that the EU wants to push Indonesia to eliminate the export ban and export duties on other raw materials. Advanced industrial countries will keep trying to impose a colonial model onto developing countries like Indonesia, and ISDS is a tool for this.

However, there are signs of resistance. In 2014, Indonesia announced it would not renew its bilateral investment treaty with the

Netherlands, and that it was working toward terminating and replacing all 67 of its remaining bilateral investment treaties. This was a good starting point in challenging ISDS. But it hasn’t stopped signing these treaties altogether, and investors are still suing Indonesia in international arbitrations using many legal loopholes that remain. If we want to eliminate the risk, the only strategy that we can use right now is to not sign any trade and investment agreement which contains ISDS.

Rachmi Hertanti is a lawyer and trade campaigner from Indonesia, and a researcher with the Transnational Institute.

The Secret World of Investor Courts – produced by Global Justice Youth – uncovers the shadowy realm of trade deals and investor-state dispute settlement, lifting the veil on its colonial history, structural injustice, and ways out for the future. Listen via globaljustice.org.uk/podcast

Tropical Modernism

A new exhibition at London’s V&A shows how countries in the global south used architecture to express their independence from colonialism.

This fascinating exhibition tells the story of an architectural movement in the global south which started life in colonial West Africa and ended up as a symbol of post-colonial progress. When architect couple Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry found little interest in pre-war Britain for the kind of continental modernist architecture typified by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus school, they decamped to Britain’s West African colonies where they found some success in adapting modernism to the tropical climate. The campus of Nigeria’s first university, the University of Ibadan, was among the projects they completed.

After India won independence in 1948, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru saw modernist architecture as a way to express India’s selfconfidence and ambition for the future. Le Corbusier was employed to design a new capital for the Indian part of Punjab at Chandigarh. His plans paid little heed to Indian culture and ways of living – he even insisted that cows and street markets be banned so they didn’t spoil his clean lines. Yet crucially, Nehru ensured that Le Corbusier’s team was full of Indian architects, who were able to learn from and later adapt his practice to the Indian context.

Back in West Africa, Ghanaian independence in 1957 saw another country claim modernist architecture for its post-colonial ambitions. The architecture school at the new Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) was central to this, and an excellent film installation at the end of the exhibition focuses on this aspect of the story.

Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence is at the V&A South Kensington until 22 September.

Boy and concrete screen at University College Ibadan, 1962

Courtesy of RIBA

Top left: Unity Hall at KNUST in Kumasi, Ghana

Designed by John Owuso Addo and Miro Marasović.

Top right: Senior Staff Club House at KNUST

Designed by Miro Marasović, Nikso Ciko and John Owuso Addo.

Above: Palace of Justice in Chandigarh

Designed by Le Corbusier.

The global scramble for critical minerals

A struggle is taking place over who benefits from the green economy, writes CLEODIE RICKARD, and trade rules are at its heart.

Around the world powerful countries and corporations are shifting into gear to try and capture the lion’s share of the new green economy. So determined are the US and the EU to do so that they are diverting from the World Trade Organisation rulebook, which they have long penalised other countries for going against, to ‘onshore’ and capture as large a share as possible of new ‘green’ value chains. The new UK government looks set to join them. While the rhetoric speaks to the need for a climate transition, it’s also driven by competition with China.

But this is only one side of the coin. The same governments are once again scrambling for raw materials – the basic metals and ‘critical minerals’ needed for renewables technology, such as electric batteries and solar panels. They are seeking unfettered access to those parts of green technology supply chains they cannot onshore, such as lithium, cobalt and copper. This is driving more and more demand for mining, often on Indigenous communities’ land, and the human rights abuses and environmental damage that so often comes with it.

But a new status quo has not yet taken hold. Some countries in the global south are taking a stand, deciding to control the terms of access to their mineral reserves: Indonesia banning raw material exports to grow local processing, Mexico nationalising its lithium sector, Panama shutting a copper mine that caused outrage over land grabs and ecological destruction.

THE CLIMATE OPPORTUNITY

In response, richer countries are seeking trade deals that lock poorer, resourcerich countries into their role as raw material exporters – stipulating market access for Western companies and barring global south governments from adding value to their industries. These trade rules are attempting

© AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco

to enshrine a colonial, extractive logic and corporate capture of the green transition.

But the imperatives of tackling climate change bring an opportunity to challenge these unjust terms of trade between north and south. We can support global south countries in pushing back against the same old provisions that have historically decimated their infant industries being included in the new critical mineral agreements countries like the UK have in their sights.

This is not just about better distributing the benefits of critical mineral mining. Current global demand for renewables will mean consuming more minerals in the next generation than in the last 70,000 years. We also need to be having conversations about demand reduction and a more circular economy. Those in power are trying to sidestep this in favour of short-termist, extractive solutions which throw the majority of the world under the bus. But by dismantling their neoliberal trade deals, we can make room for the radical alternatives we need for a transformed global economy.

Cleodie Rickard is trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now. Read our briefing, Resisting green colonialism for a just transition, at: globaljustice.org.uk/critical-minerals

‘No to mining’ and ‘Yes to life’ – Gunas Indigenous women protesting in Panama.

CROOKED PLOW

Itamar Vieira Junior

Verso, 2024

Set in early 20th century Brazil, resistance and agency are central to Crooked Plow, explored literally in the opening which sees one of our protagonists slice her own tongue off. Though voiceless she is not powerless, and the novel unfolds to reveal a skilfully woven tapestry exploring power from multiple standpoints. The injustice of landowner rule over subsistence farmers’ lives and land is explored alongside patriarchal violence, and the racialisation of colonialism is brought to the fore throughout.

The poetic, often surrealist prose cuts like a knife: you feel the anger and pain, you see the lush, sometimes brutal, imagery blooming around you. The land is irreducible to mere product – it is living, breathing, imbued with histories that refuse erasure. Exploring the ways seeds of class consciousness are planted and given conditions to bloom, Crooked Plow portrays the land struggles of Brazil’s quilombo communities with vivid, compelling intensity.

Anita Bhadani

DEFIANCE: FIGHTING THE FAR RIGHT

Satiyesh Manoharajah

Channel 4, 2024

This three-part documentary series chronicles the emergence of the Asian Youth Movements (AYMs) in cities across the UK in the late 1970s. Opening with a powerful shot of the bloodied pavement where 18-year-old Gurdip Singh Chaggar was brutally murdered in Southall on 4 June 1976, it tells the story of a British society that treats much of its newly arrived South Asian population with contempt. Amid endless hostility, working class Asian youths organise to protect their communities under the slogan “Come what may, we are here to stay!”

It’s essential viewing for anyone wanting to learn about this much-

contribution to the anti-racist movement in Britain – most notably the case of the Bradford 12, which set the legal precedent for the right of a community to defend itself. A longer series could have delved further into the experiences of South Asian women, who were notably absent in many AYMs. But despite this, Defiance is an emotional journey through a crucial chapter of Britain’s anti-racist history.

Meena Ghani

DOPPELGANGER: A TRIP INTO THE MIRROR WORLD

Naomi Klein

Penguin, 2024

Naomi Klein spent much of the pandemic exploring a rabbit hole. Perturbed by getting regularly mixed up with Naomi Wolf, she follows her one-time liberal feminist doppelganger into the dark world of alt-right conspiracy theories. In true page-turning Klein style, she examines lessons that too many of us have missed in the rise of Steve Bannon’s globalist-bashing ‘diagonal’ politics, which became so mainstream during Covid-19, filling space left by an insularity and obsession with political purity on the left.

Klein uses the concept of the doppelganger to shed light on our own increasingly alienated existence. We might feel superior to the peddlers

of conspiracy theories, but the vast majority of us inhabit our own mirror world, with lives based on sweatshops, dispossession, war and environmental breakdown – and we have become used to it. Instead, Klein’s call is to stop ceding political territory, stop moderating our demands for radical change, and to think big. Only this can allow us to look in the mirror without fear or shame.

Nick Dearden

The future

activism needs

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