Trade justice
Outside ISDS law firm Gibson Dunn in the City of London
Successful day of action
Our day of action, Corporate Courts vs The Climate helped to reach many thousands more people and build the campaign.
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stilt-walkers dressed as an oil baron and a lawyer. Watch the video of this at globaljustice.org.uk/climatecircus GJN groups and local climate groups held protests and stalls. We projected messages such as ‘Uniper: profiting from corporate courts’ and ‘Fossil fuel criminal’ onto one of Uniper’s power stations in the UK. We projected ‘Corporate courts block climate action’ onto the offices of an Edinburgh law firm that specialises in ISDS. We ended the day with a webinar with great speakers from Bolivia, Argentina and Italy. If you weren’t able to make it, you can catch up with the recording at globaljustice.org.uk/18sep-webinar
Ahead of the day itself, we had great media coverage of our latest investigation, showing that fossil fuel companies are suing governments for more than $18bn (£13bn) in corporate courts over climate policies. These are corporations that have caused the climate crisis - they should be paying to fix it, not demanding a payout. The story made the headlines on Sky News and was shared quite widely over social media, including by other campaign organisations with quite a big reach.
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The video of the story on Sky’s news bulletin is quite a good two minute explainer which could be useful to share in your group or on social media globaljustice.org.uk/sky-ECT
What now?
During the day of action: • In London we did a ‘Corporate Courts Climate Circus’ walking tour of three of the law firms acting for fossil fuel companies in climate cases, with circus 4 October 2021
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Most of the fossil fuel corporate court cases that we’ve been highlighting (eg Uniper, RWE, Rockhopper, Ascent Resources) are using the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). This is a giant corporate court deal between over 50 countries specifically for energy investments. It’s been part of our campaign all year, alongside the Canada, Australia and CPTPP trade deals, and for the next few
