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	How Corporate Courts impede efforts to battle the Climate Crisis by Nick Dearden, Jenny Ricks Fight Inequality Alliance, agencies   July 2021   How Corporate Courts impede efforts to battle the Climate Crisis, by Nick Dearden for Al-Jazeera English   Any day now, Italy expects to be ordered to hand millions of dollars over to an oil exploration corporation, following the Italian government's decision to ban such exploration off its coast.   The ruling will be handed down not by a judge in anything approaching a normal Italian or European court, but rather by a secretive arbitration process open only to big business, with Italy having no right to appeal. These "corporate courts" stem back to the 1950s, created by rich countries and oil multinationals to protect Western interests against the decolonization sweeping the world at that time.   Italy's decision to ban oil exploration came after Italians, fearing the impact of oil drilling off the beautiful Adriatic coast, protested in their thousands. They won. In December 2015, Italy's parliament banned oil and gas projects within 20km (12 miles) of the coast.   That's when British company Rockhopper, which has been exploring that same coast, sued Italy using an arbitration clause in a trade and investment agreement known as the "investor-state dispute settlement" or ISDS.   The "compensation" being claimed totals about $350 million—seven times what the corporation invested in the exploration project.   Worse still, it is being brought under an investment deal that Italy is no longer even a part of. But, as so often with such agreements, Italy is still bound by the terms of the ISDS system for 20 years after its exit.   In essence, ISDS creates a "corporate court", allowing multinational corporations from a trade partner country—in this case Britain—to sue a government in a tribunal for any law or regulation they regard as unfair.   These cases are often heard in secret, overseen by corporate lawyers who don't have to worry about the impact of their decisions on society, human rights or the environment—only investment law. These "courts" usually have no right of appeal, and they can only be utilized by foreign investors.   Corporate courts have been used by tobacco corporations to challenge governments which want to ensure cigarettes are sold only in plain packaging. They've been used to challenge increases to the minimum wage.   But increasingly, they're being used to challenge all manner of environmental regulations necessary to halt climate change. In fact, they're becoming a major barrier to the climate action governments must undertake to keep our planet habitable.   Recently two energy corporations—RWE and Uniper—challenged the Netherlands over that country's plans to phase out the burning of coal for electricity by 2030.   Both corporations run coal-fired power stations in the country and are claiming billions of dollars in compensation, in a case that will clearly make governments think twice before enacting the most important changes we currently need to deal with climate change—a phase-out of fossil fuel use.   Meanwhile, in North America, Biden's administration is being sued after it announced it was cancelling a deeply controversial pipeline due to bring hundreds of thousands of barrels of tar sands into the US.   Tar sands are one of the most polluting fossil fuels we possess, and parts of Canada have been turned into a desolate moonscape as it's been extracted from the ground. Biden's decision is right—we must stop exploiting tar sands. But the decision could cost him billions of dollars.   These corporate courts are not new, though their use is growing rapidly. Rich countries started inserting the system into trade and investment deals as long ago as the 1950s. And that's important, because it gives us a clue as to what the purpose of these corporate courts originally was.   Nicolás Perrone has written a new book digging into the history of ISDS, and he finds that it was invented by oil industry executives precisely to protect their interests overseas.   In the 1950s onwards, with governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America increasingly able and willing to stand up to the power of the US and Europe and make their economies work in their own national interest, the rich world was concerned.   How could it protect its economic interests around the world, built up in an age of empire, from these new governments? How would oil corporations protect their ability to exploit global resources? As Perrone states "Decolonization was a risk to their business model."   A flashpoint came in 1951 when Iran's parliament voted to nationalize the country's oil sector which was under the control of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, a forerunner of British Petroleum. Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a US-British coup.   From this point, Britain started inserting corporate courts into investment deals with countries, replacing the increasingly difficult 'gunboat diplomacy' with a legal regime which served Britain's imperial interests just as well.   While ISDS wasn't extensively used in its early days, from the 1990s it was added to hundreds of deals. A legal industry built up around the system, finding ever more innovative ways of bringing a claim. And claims reached absurd levels—far beyond any investment the litigating corporation has invested in a project.   Business started claiming that any regulatory change which effected its long-term expectation of profit was essentially expropriation of its assets.   Hedge funds even got in on the act, funding corporate court cases so they could keep going for longer, in the hope of wearing a government down and achieving a very profitable payout.   We now have enough cases on file to know just how serious a challenge these corporate courts are to our urgent need to halt climate change. Governments have been sued for placing a moratorium on fracking and for forcing power stations to improve their environmental standards.   One tribunal ruled that the Canadian government had violated a corporation's "rights" simply by carrying out an environmental impact assessment, a judgment that even one of the arbitrators said "will be seen as a remarkable step backwards in environmental protection".   Corporations are also using this system to evade accountability for environmental devastation.   Between 1972 and 1993, US oil giant Texaco (later acquired by Chevron) dumped over 30 billion gallons of toxic waste and crude oil into the Amazon rainforest in the northeast of Ecuador, in one of the world's greatest ever environmental disasters.   A legal case brought by 30,000 Indigenous and small-scale farmers found Chevron guilty of "extensively polluting" the region and ordered the corporation to pay $18 billion in compensation.   In 2009, Chevron launched a corporate court claim, saying it had been treated unfairly, and the case involved corruption. In September 2018, the ISDS found in Chevron's favor—overruling Ecuador's domestic law, and demanding that Ecuador pay Chevron! Shell is now taking a similar case against Nigeria, attempting to overturn a compensation award for an oil spill dating back to 1970.   Not only does this system make it harder for governments to take the sort of action they desperately need to protect the planet, it actually maintains the profits of the most reckless parts of the fossil fuel industry.   The power stations in the Netherlands were established long after it became clear that coal would need to be phased out. But corporate courts essentially made the decision to establish them risk-free for the company.   Or take Rockhopper, suing Italy for its exploration ban. A financial analyst told the Guardian that a payout in the case would be "tremendously helpful" in funding a further oil exploration off the coast of the Falkland Islands.   In other words, these corporate courts allow corporations to make utterly irresponsible decisions without consequence.   Fortunately, the backlash is well underway, with countries from Bolivia to South Africa to Indonesia ripping up bilateral trade deals that contain corporate courts, and refusing to sign new ones.   Here in Britain, Boris Johnson's government is one of the most gung ho in the world when it comes to ISDS, trying to insert corporate courts into every trade deal they sign. But he's already been beaten in the Australian and New Zealand deals, where it seems ISDS has been dropped from the negotiations.   Meanwhile, across Europe a major campaign is underway to force governments to withdraw from the Energy Charter Treaty, one of the most egregious corporate court systems, responsible for many of the cases referred to here.   Whatever commitments delegates make at UN climate conferences can be seriously undermined unless we change the way our global trade system works. Abandoning the corporate court system should be a top priority.   * Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now (formerly World Development Movement) and former director of Jubilee Debt Campaign. © 2021 Al-Jazeera English   Nov. 2019   A Growing Movement Fighting Inequality, by Jenny Ricks   A new report gathers insights from over 170 activists on the frontlines of inequality struggles in 23 countries on how to build and sustain their movements.   'This week we as Fight Inequality Alliance have released our first report, The State of the Growing Movement Fighting Inequality. We aimed to begin balancing the research on inequality its causes and symptoms, as well as the data crunching and startling statistics that others have been doing so well since inequality has skyrocketed to its current crisis levels with some analysis of how the movement fighting back is growing in response.   Over the last year, headlines generated by mass protests on issues of inequality have intensified. From Chile to Ecuador to Lebanon to Haiti to France and well beyond, a particular grievance like a rise in fuel prices or transport fares has been the spark for mass action by citizens who have simply had enough. Typically, this spark has given rise to a larger struggle for more systemic change.   In many instances, as governments respond with violence and repression, it is clear we are in desperately difficult and dangerous times for people who are bold and brave enough to seek a more just, equal, and sustainable world.   As protests continue to spark and grow around the world, the question of how movements fighting inequality are built and sustained has come into sharper focus.   In partnership with researchers, we conducted surveys and interviews with over 170 activists on the frontlines of inequality struggles in 23 countries across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe over 2018-19. Our new report, The State of the Growing Movement Fighting Inequality, analyzes these surveys and interviews, providing real insights for the way forward for those of us seeking systemic change to the inequality crisis.   Through this report, we found out that most movements fighting inequalities grow as a direct response to the impacts of inequality people are experiencing. When people are faced with the realities of inequality every day, they organize, linking up and finding power in uniting with each other to tackle the root causes.   We are now seeing this on a wider scale in how the climate movement, trade unions, community, indigenous rights, feminist and civil rights groups, and many others are increasingly joining together to fight inequality. Often movements organizing and challenging power face increasing repression and sometimes violence from the state.   The research found the three biggest struggles where inequality movements are most active are natural resources, elite capture and corruption, and women's rights and feminist agendas.   The fight for access to and control over natural resources, including land, reflects underlying dynamics of political and economic power in countries for example, reflecting the historical consequences of colonialism, and patriarchal and racist systems on the rights and liberties of Indigenous Peoples and communities. This is also linked to concerns about the climate crisis and how to create an energy transition that doesn't reinforce existing inequalities.   Many activists who we interviewed also spoke about injustices stemming from elite capture of wealth, power, and corruption, which is linked to and often fueled by the use of or control over natural resources.   There is also a strong push and need to bring feminist analysis, agendas, and action into broader inequality movements to make them truly transformative. Additionally, the growth of the #metoo movement has seen renewed attention on women's rights and power dynamics within organisations and movements.   It has proven to be the beginning of a necessary wake-up call within civil society for many movements when abuses of power and harassment have surfaced. Respondents interviewed for the study grappled with patriarchy and advancing feminist agendas in their own movements.   We also found out that movements want to become more globally connected. Seventy-four percent of survey respondents chose 'Opportunities for joint international campaigning, visibility and support' as a top form of support and connection they wanted from others in the movement.   In this era of far-right populism, with leaders preaching hate, fear, greed, nationalism, and with multilateralism at a perilous point, this shows that an internationalist movement is possible and wanted by those who need it most. But activists need to be in the driving seat.   Despite the often-bleak picture we find ourselves in, the energy and dynamism of the movement that the report reveals is inspiring and cause for hope. The cautionary tale is that if we want systemic change then we have to do the hard work, both on ourselves and in our movements, as well as remaking the societies we live in to make it happen.   * Jenny Ricks is the Global Convenor of the Fight Inequality Alliance, a group of human rights, women's rights, environmental, labor, faith-based, and other civil society organizations and movements.   The new FIA report was supported by the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity program at the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science   http://afsee.atlanticfellows.org/events http://afsee.atlanticfellows.org/blog-home http://www.lse.ac.uk/International-Inequalities/Videos-Podcasts http://inequality.org/great-divide/global-billionaire-pandemic-wealth-surges/ http://www.fightinequality.org/report-state-growing-movement-fighting-inequality http://scheerpost.com/2021/11/04/wall-streets-latest-scheme-is-monetizing-nature-itself/ http://www.escr-net.org/news/2021/escr-nets-interventions-human-rights-council-2021 http://www.escr-net.org/news/2021/urgent-appeal-call-urgent-action-secure-universal-and-equitable-access-covid-19-vaccines http://www.escr-net.org/news/2021/escr-net-member-statement-demands-imf-2021-spring-meetings http://bit.ly/2X6py5G http://www.righttofoodandnutrition.org/sofi-2021-tracking-hunger-skipping-problems-roots http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/statement-against-IMF-austerity-English-1.pdf Visit the related web page
	Governments and business must stand up for land and environmental defenders by Global Witness   Governments and business must stand up for land and environmental defenders now, so that they can help build a more resilient and fair future for us and our planet.   The world as we know it is changing at an exponential rate. The impact of COVID-19 on global health and financial systems will ripple for decades. As lives and livelihoods remain the top priority, many manifestations of this virus will continue to play out in the short, medium and long term.   At Global Witness, we're committed to being part of the movement for a more resilient planet going forward. This includes standing up for land and environmental activists. States and business must do the same.   Indeed it is in their interest to do so. It is widely recognised that deforestation and the loss of wildlife are two key contributors to the rise in infectious diseases. In order to avert a future pandemic, decision-makers will need to listen to those environmentalists, indigenous leaders and community activists taking a stand to protect nature.   Front line activists can also be a key voice in tackling the inequalities that have exacerbated the virus's impact, and in proposing more sustainable ways of doing business in future. But only if they are safe enough to do so.   As is the case for other types of human rights defenders, threats and attacks against land and environmental activists have not slowed in this COVID-19 crisis period. In fact, they appear to have accelerated. From Colombia to Niger, to Indonesia, the Philippines and beyond, Global Witness and its allies have received credible reports of:   Defenders confined to a known location and subsequently targeted, and sometimes even murdered, by state and non-state armed groups. Suspended courts and closed-door hearings, leaving criminalised defenders locked up for extended periods of time, with limited legal recourse.   Draconian limitations on free speech, including censorship measures - which have subsequently been applied to arrest those defending their land or environmental rights. Governments invoking COVID-19 as a reason to shut down protests, even in countries with no registered presence of the virus, or where protesters observe social distancing rules. Increased surveillance and intimidation of defenders, under the excuse of emergency powers.   Indigenous peoples are on the front lines of the battle to avert climate breakdown. However, they are also disproportionately vulnerable to COVID-19 - with governments neglecting their healthcare needs, and illegal miners and loggers entering their territories without precaution, bringing the threat of disease with them.   With the majority of NGOs and many social movements taking their activities online during the lock-down, fears for digital security as well as psychological wellbeing are rife.   Many grassroots defenders are forced, reluctantly, to prioritise their families daily struggle for survival, with jobs and livelihoods on the line, hindering their ability to protest and organise.   Without exception, defenders are concerned about whether the broad emergency powers implemented to contain and confront the lethal virus might be abused to clampdown on activism, reduce civic freedoms, and target those standing up for their rights.   COVID-19 response measures are already being applied differentially to activists: as governments release prisoners to reduce the spread of the pandemic in jails, detained defenders often remain locked up.   At-risk activists are not always receiving the support they ought to. Governments, diplomats, donors and responsible business must show creativity and commitment to find ways to engage with, support and protect threatened defenders without spreading the virus.   As activists struggle with these new restrictions, some businesses have responded to the relative lack of civic scrutiny to push ahead with controversial operations, lobby for loosened regulations and fast-track applications. This will only strengthen the existing root causes of the risks facing defenders.   Governments should not stand for opportunism at a time of international crisis, and should commit to building a post-COVID-19 economic stimulus upon a solid base of human rights and environmental protections.   A sustainable, resilient and fair response to the pandemic will be one in which rights are upheld and those who defend them are listened to. However, there are warning signs that some might take the opposite tack.   In the US, the Federal government have rolled back enforcement of environmental laws as a handful of States have simultaneously criminalised environmental protest.   Inspirationally, even under the heightened pressure and restrictions, human rights and environmental organisations around the world are pulling together to find creative responses, and to pool documentation.   Global Witness is part of an effort by the Defending Land and Environmental Defenders Coalition to systematically monitor COVID-19-related incidents and identify trends. NGOs are tracking threats to civil liberties and COVID-19's impact upon indigenous peoples, as well as responses to the crisis by business and the UN.   Not only are healthcare and workers rights at massive risk when activists cannot provide proper scrutiny because they are facing threats, but if we want to build a more resilient and fair planet once this crisis passes, it is crucial that land and environmental defenders are better protected.   These defenders stand on the frontline of fighting climate breakdown, and are the key to a green economic recovery the world over - halting damage to the very environment which protects us from infectious diseases, and standing up to irresponsible business that ploughs through to its profits at any cost.   In the long term, it is crucial that we consider how responsible business can operate in a way that puts local communities and defenders at the centre of decision-making, rather than at risk.   Global Witness recently published guidance for how companies and investors can do this. In the short term, governments and business should:   Use public and private communications to emphasize that the role of land and environmental defenders is as important as ever and that reprisals against them will not be tolerated. Dedicate resources to identifying increased reprisals-related risks across investments, operations and supply chains, and take action to prevent and mitigate any risks identified, and to support land and environmental defenders globally.   Use secure channels to ensure that information on the environmental or human rights impact of potential business projects reach those affected, allowing them the opportunity to engage in decision-making in a safe way. Commit to putting land and environmental rights, and those who protect them, at the centre of any response to COVID-19. Visit the related web page
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