Ninety-Nine magazine - February 2022 (issue 22)

Challenging the power of the

Issue 22 - February 2022

Patents must fall

How the global south is fighting back

Also in this issue COP26: our verdict Victory for Indian farmers Taking on corporate courts

ISSUE 22: February 2022 03 Campaign news 06 Global news 08 Fighting vaccine apartheid 10 COP26: our verdict

To vaccinate the world, we can’t rely on big pharma

13 Global Justice Now supporters 14 The India-UK trade deal 16 COP26 in pictures 18 How corporate courts can be beaten 19 Reviews

Nick Dearden Director The spread of the Omicron variant last December clearly demonstrates just how short-sighted the British government’s approach to vaccination has been. Rather than taking all possible measures to vaccinate the world, including by overriding Big Pharma’s monopolies, we hoarded doses and allowed corporations to decide who got vaccinated and who didn’t. Boris Johnson’s government is one of the few that has consistently blocked the right of Southern governments to produce their own Covid-19 medicines.

The result is a deeply unequal rollout of vaccines. That creates a fertile breeding ground for new variants to emerge, but it also threatens to deepen global inequality in the world more generally. Leaving the market to sort out this health crisis has been, predictably, a disaster.

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.

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But out of this terrible situation, we are beginning to see countries doing things differently. In this issue, I speak to South African activist Fatima Hassan who talked me through the new mRNA hub being set up in her country – a facility backed by the World Health Organization which is trying to reverse engineer Moderna’s vaccine and share the knowledge of how to make that medicine openly with the world. As she told me, this wouldn’t have happened without international campaigning for health justice.

The mRNA hub is just the clearest example of countries across Africa, Latin America and Asia building their own capacity to produce medicines. Let down by our hyper-globalised economy which invests big business with so much power, they are starting to do things differently.

South Africa's vaccine hub is just the clearest example of the global south building its capacity to produce medicines.

In this issue, we also focus on the successful Indian farmers who have beaten back the proposals of the Modi government to hand more of India’s food system over to the international market. And there is news of the new wave of progressive governments being elected in Latin America.

The commitment of these governments to build fairer, greener economies could provide a beacon of hope to others around the world.

Politics in Britain at the moment can feel insular, if not downright depressing. But around the world, there’s plenty we can take hope from.

We’re part of the same movement which is giving rise to these victories, and which in turn will provide a more fertile environment for change here.

CAMPAIGN NEWS

© Jess Hurd

Omicron delivers wake-up call as vaccine gap widens The world received a wake-up call with the emergence of the Omicron variant in November. Since the beginning of the pandemic, scientists have warned that low vaccine coverage and unchecked infections are likely to lead to new mutations, but governments have failed to take the necessary actions to vaccinate the world. Instead, by the end of 2021, less than 10% of people in low-income countries had received even a single vaccine dose.

The response of rich countries including the UK to Omicron was to ramp up booster coverage in their own countries, but keep blocking vaccine production where it’s needed most. Many countries in the

global south had hoped that patents on Covid-19 vaccines could be lifted at a World Trade Organization summit at the end of November, but Omicron’s rapid spread ironically meant the meeting was suspended.

Since then, rich countries including the UK have continued to block and stifle progress on the issue.

Meanwhile, as the world worried about new waves of sickness and lockdown, pharma shareholders were cashing in. Global Justice Now revealed in December that just 8 large pharma shareholders made $10 billion in the week after Omicron’s emergence. With the UK, EU and US receiving more vaccine doses in the six weeks before Christmas than the

whole of Africa had received all year, the vaccine gap continues to stretch.

The way to end the pandemic is to make sure all countries have control over their vaccine rollouts. A new report in December showed that over 100 manufacturers across Latin America, Africa and Asia have the capacity to produce mRNA vaccines.

This evidence should finally put paid to the colonial idea that only European and American countries can produce these vaccines.

Change is there for the taking, but it remains up to us to grasp it.

Above: In October, we carried coffins to Whitehall to remind Boris Johnson of the human cost of blocking patent waivers on Covid-19 vaccines.

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© Kiara Worth/UNFCCC (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

COP flop on climate finance Despite understandable scepticism, there was a real chance of making progress on climate finance at the COP26 summit in Glasgow in November.

But rich countries failed yet again to meet their climate finance targets, while blocking global south attempts to secure compensation for the climate impacts they are already feeling.

COP26 president and UK business secretary Alok Sharma repeatedly apologised during the summit that rich countries are still failing to provide the $100 billion a year in climate finance to the global south that they promised more than a decade ago to deliver by 2020. Sharma admitted the already inadequate target is unlikely to be

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reached until 2023, despite it being a key goal of the summit. The UK’s own contribution of $3.2 billion a year is nowhere near its fair share of climate finance (estimated at $46 billion), and the UK should use its remaining time as COP president to increase the collective target to at least $400 billion a year.

Even worse, rich countries blocked further demands for compensation for the ‘loss and damage’ being caused by climate change. With the global south already feeling the effects of climate change, this funding is only fair and just. But despite loss and damage commitments being mentioned in draft texts, the final agreement only

kicked the can down the road to COP27.

In more positive news, COP26 saw a group of rich countries (the US, Italy, Germany and New Zealand) commit to end overseas coal, oil and gas financing. The UK had already committed to the same conditions early last year, following campaigning

by Global Justice Now and others. This is a significant step that could move up to $20 billion a year out of fossil fuels. Of course, we will have to watch how this is put into practice, but the agreement is worthy of celebration.

Above: A protest to demand loss and damage finance inside the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow.

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Climate threat from corporate courts exposed In the run up to COP26 our campaigning to reveal how fossil fuel companies are using corporate courts to undermine climate action really began to cut through.

Our investigation showing that fossil fuel companies are suing governments for more than $18 billion in corporate courts over climate policies made the headlines on Sky News. These are corporations that have caused the climate crisis – they should be paying to fix it, not demanding a payout.

During COP itself, we also revealed that industry insiders themselves expect that if governments start being more ambitious in climate policy, this will drive an increase in corporate court cases. And that the amounts at stake could be over $9 trillion.

At the end of last year, the UK signed a trade deal with Australia. We had success in keeping corporate courts

out of the deal but it is still bad news for food and wider climate concerns.

Above: Sky News covered Global Justice Now’s research in September.

UK aid bank rebranded to drop ‘development’ Late last year, the UK’s infamous development bank CDC Group announced an unexpected rebrand. From April 2022 it will be known as British International Investment. Despite the organisation being funded entirely by UK aid, it has dropped ‘development’ from its title, and with it any pretence that it is focused on reducing global poverty.

Global Justice Now has long criticised CDC for funding fossil fuel projects, exclusive private schools and unaffordable private hospitals in the global south, and this rebrand seems set to exacerbate all of its worst features. In response, we published a joint open letter to the foreign secretary (which was covered in the Guardian), signed by Cafod, Christian Aid, the TUC, Unison, Stop Aids, the National Education Union and more, condemning the rebrand and the direction of travel it indicates. In the coming months we will work with our allies and MPs to hold the bank to account ahead of its official relaunch and beyond.

The campaign was launched with a guerrilla Left: Foreign secretary Liz Truss projection in Canary Wharf in March. unveils the rebrand in November.

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GLOBAL NEWS MOVEMENT NEWS

Indian farmers win year-long battle against Modi laws

© Amarjeet Kumar Singh/SOPA Images/

Farmers celebrate in New Delhi in December after the government agreed to renounce the laws.

Indian farmers celebrated the one year anniversary of protests against new farm laws with the best news possible – they won! The prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced he was repealing the new laws in November.

The laws would have exposed millions of small-scale farmers in India to the global market and the control of agribusiness – and

perhaps facilitated future trade deals including with the UK. Over 40 farmers unions organised together in unity to protest against the laws and farmers marched on New Delhi, where they formed camps around the city blockading roads.

And there they firmly remained.

They set up food supplies and shelter, they withstood police violence, water cannon and tear gas, the

weather, the pandemic and false media allegations, and they refused to leave. Between 500 and 700 protesters died over the course of the year, yet the movement held firm.

There are many accounts of solidarity being built among the protesters across religion, gender and caste.

Their win is an inspiration for people power everywhere.

South African vaccine hub aims to share Covid knowledge As vaccine inequity widened throughout 2021, countries in the global south started taking matters into their own hands. In South Africa an exciting new project, supported by the WHO, is attempting to reverse engineer Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine.

US pharma giant Moderna has already made billions in profit from its vaccine, which was entirely funded 6 Ninety-Nine 2022

by the US government. Yet it continues to refuse to share its vaccine recipe with other manufacturers. The South African vaccine hub is taking a different approach. Rather than jealously guarding the knowledge and technology, it aims to share them with scientists from other research hubs around the world.

The mRNA technology used in the Moderna vaccine has huge potential for use in other diseases, including malaria and cancer. Sharing and dispersing this technology could be a huge advance for global health. The scientists involved in the project seem to understand this, but so far Moderna continues to put profits above people.

GLOBAL MOVEMENT GLOBAL NEWS

NEWS SHORTS Serbia cancels Rio Tinto mine

The Serbian government revoked lithium mining licences granted to the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto in January after growing opposition to the company’s plans. The reversal follows months of protests around the country, which spread to the capital, Belgrade, over the environmental and health impact of the project.

Colston Four cleared of statue damage

Four people charged over the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol last summer were acquitted of criminal damage by a jury in January. More than ten thousand people took part in the Black Lives Matter protest, which followed a decadeslong community campaign for the statue’s removal.

Protests in Malawi over high prices

Thousands have taken to the streets of Malawi in recent months in protest at high prices as the country struggles with the impacts of the pandemic. With the kwacha falling in value, pressure to find revenue for government debt payments has led to the imposition of VAT on basics such as cooking oil.

Chile’s president elect vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ December saw leftist Gabriel Boric win the presidential runoff in Chile, beating hard right candidate José Antonio Kast by 56% to 44%. Neither of the traditional political blocs – the establishment conservatives and the coalition of centre and centre-left parties – made it to the second round.

Chile was the testing ground for neoliberalism following General Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, and continued to follow this path even after the return to democracy in 1990. Former student leader Boric, 35, who will become Chile’s youngest

president, promised to ‘bury’ neoliberalism.

His election follows a massive social revolt which kicked off in 2019 and forced the conservative government to concede the election of a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.

How radical Boric will be in office remains to be seen, but he represents the rise of a younger, greener, more feminist left in the country. His election also follows hot on the heels of the victory of leftist presidents in Bolivia, Peru and Honduras.

Andean communities shut down Peruvian mines

© REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda

People march with signs reading 'No to environmental contamination' and 'Farming community of Huascabamba' as they vow to continue blockading the Las Bambas copper mine.

Indigenous communities in Peru’s highlands shut down a major copper mine in December, and continue to demand further assurances that mining will provide greater jobs and wealth to the region.

Communities from Chumbivilcas, Cusco instigated repeated road blockades for over a month, shutting down operations at the Las Bambas mine. They argued that owners MMG Ltd have failed to provide the promised benefits to local communities from the project. After several visits by Prime Minister Mirtha Vásquez, an agreement was reached to reopen

the mine in January. However, several communities have rejected the deal.

President Castillo, who was elected in June, had promised to ensure that the benefits of mining were more equally shared across Peruvian society.

In November, shares of British-based Hochschild Mining plc lost a third of their value in a single day when the Peruvian government said (under pressure from local communities) that it would not renew its licences. While it appears the government later reversed its position, the pressure continues.

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PHARMA

Fighting back against vaccine apartheid Nick Dearden talks to FATIMA HASSAN, founder of South Africa’s Health Justice Initiative and a leading campaigner for a people’s vaccine.

Nick: We’ve been campaigning for a TRIPS waiver [an intellectual property waiver on Covid-19 vaccines and treatments] at the World Trade Organization for about 18 months now. I think the case for this has just become more and more clear – the inequality just gets worse and we must share these recipes so countries can start producing what they need.

But we haven’t won yet, and it seems the UK and EU aren’t close to changing their minds.

Do you still have hope?

Fatima: I think first off you’ve got to remember this is part of a much longer campaign, and while the situation certainly makes me angry, we’re well ahead of where we were in the HIV/Aids crisis of the late ‘90s, early 2000s.

In that crisis, although our struggle against Big Pharma was well publicised, we never managed to get so many people questioning the whole model. We didn’t have so many governments, so many ordinary people, right around the world, fundamentally questioning intellectual property on essential medicines.

Left: A People’s Vaccine protest in Cape Town in March.

Opposite: Cape Town-based Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is gearing up to make Africa's first homegrown mRNA vaccine against Covid-19, backed by the WHO.

We never managed to critique how these drugs are made in the first place – that most of the time they aren’t really the creation of Big Pharma themselves. We never got such a widespread acceptance that Big Pharma CEOs shouldn’t be in the position of deciding who gets these medicines and at what price.

In fact, we didn’t even get HIV medication flowing to countries like mine for seven or eight years, in spite of hundreds of people dying every day. So things are moving much faster now, and bigger change is possible as a result.

What sort of change?

Are you looking beyond a TRIPS waiver now?

I think the TRIPS waiver is such a reasonable demand, a very © Nic Bothma/EPA-EFE/ Shutterstock

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PHARMA

moderate thing to ask for. The failure of Big Pharma or some of the richest governments, like the UK, to even contemplate it has really highlighted how extreme these WTO rules are.

And it’s made governments across Africa wake up to the inflexibility of this system, and to recognise that if we’re to deal with Covid, not to mention many other health issues, this model simply won’t do.

This has prompted one of the most exciting developments I think: the World Health Organization’s mRNA hubs. The first one has been established right here in South Africa.

So this is where scientists are trying to recreate Moderna’s vaccine – or the US government’s vaccine which is being produced by Moderna I should say – and to get their heads around how this revolutionary technology works?

© Dwayne Senior/B loom

berg via Get ty Images

word on not enforcing patents. I think they actually believed their own rhetoric, that this technology is just too complicated for Africans to manage, so if we don’t help them, we can just Yes, and not only so they can produce watch them fail. vaccines here in South Africa. The idea Well they’re in for a shock, because is they can share this know-how with in just six months we think they might governments and factories around the have cracked it. And that will really world. And given mRNA is vital not just worry Big Pharma, and I imagine to Covid, but to they will be other diseases like through In the AIDS crisis we thinking malaria and TB, everything this is huge news. never managed to they can to Moderna undermine this get so many people hub’s potential. has said it won’t enforce The positive thing around the world its intellectual is Africa can turn fundamentally property, but it round and say, “to also won’t share hell with you, we questioning the its recipe. Even did this ourselves”. whole model. though it’s been The implications paid for with for the future of public money and Moderna’s already our drug research is quite profound, made billions of dollars. and certainly there will be many It’s worse than that actually. battles ahead. But I think none of this Moderna registered its patents in South would have happened without the Africa, unlike in most other countries, international campaign for a TRIPS just as the hub was becoming a waiver. reality. So I’m not sure I believe their

What are your hopes for the coming year?

There are two things to watch for.

First the US government’s action on Moderna. They’re really fed up with this company which took all this public research and showed no interest at all in sharing the medicine with the majority of the world. If Biden really takes them on, and he might, this is a game-changer. Governments have seen themselves as subservient to this industry up till now.

The second thing is that I think the WTO has proved, not simply to activists, but to southern governments, that it’s completely failed us. The WTO has done nothing at all to help deal with the problems of this pandemic. So what’s the point of it?

It’s utterly discredited. And there’s real nervousness among the rich countries, quite rightly, that a campaign for major change is now growing and it will continue to build. None of this would have happened without our movement.

Fatima Hassan is a human rights lawyer and social justice activist and founder of the Health Justice Initiative, healthjusticeinitiative.org.za.

Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now.

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COP26

COP26: Our verdict From shutting out the global south to letting in an army of fossil fuel lobbyists, many of our worst fears for COP26 were realised. But the climate justice movement is unbowed, writes DOROTHY GUERRERO. practically prevented from participating due to the problems related to the ongoing pandemic – vaccine inequality, the difficulty and increased costs of travel to the UK, and confusing and fast-changing travel rules and related factors.

Those who reached Glasgow faced additional obstacles to their participation by the capacity limitations of the official venue, health safety regulations and inadequate facilities. Many were told to follow the COP from their hotel rooms on crucial days. There were more delegates associated with the fossil fuel industry – 503 lobbyists and consultants – than with any single country delegation.

There is also the issue of the dangerously misleading ‘net zero’ targets, which the UK as COP26 host country encouraged other parties to base their climate ambitions around. Net zero targets now cover approximately 90% of emissions. While this may look like an important signal, especially with key countries’ announcements UNEQUAL FROM THE START of accelerated climate action with Global Justice Now warned that countries net zero targets, the targets are still not in the global south that are already severely proportional to the responsibilities of big impacted by climate change despite and historic emitters. Even if, and this is a very little contribution to its cause were big if, all net zero commitments or targets marginalised before COP26 even started. are fully implemented, the most ‘optimistic Climate negotiators, representatives of UN scenario’ would still produce 1.8°C global accredited observer organisations and average temperature rise by 2100, with climate activists from these countries were peak warming of 1.9°C. Corporations and Many of those following the UN climate talks at the 26th annual Conference of Parties (COP26) were frustrated, but not surprised, with its dismal results last year. Even the scientists and researchers involved in setting the process of the annual negotiations – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which started from the historic Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – publicly expressed their dissatisfaction.

The 197 parties to COP26 themselves recognised during the two-week negotiations that the total of their combined voluntary national commitments is insufficient to reach the target of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The Glasgow Climate Pact they adopted specified the need to return at the COP27 negotiations, to be held this year in Egypt, with stronger commitments which align with the Paris Agreement. Targets will now be reviewed annually instead of every five years. The global average temperature rise could top 2.4°C by the century’s end with the current 2030 short-term goals.

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Top: Dorothy Guerrero speaks at a COP26 Coalition press conference inside the summit Middle: The People's Tribunal hears evidence of the failures of successive COPs. Right: Global Justice Stirling at the protests in Glasgow.

COP26

© Kyodo News via Get ty Im ages

countries from 2020, as promised in the 2009 COP15 in Copenhagen, was postponed again until 2023.

In Glasgow, finance ministers and a consortium of investors pledged to ‘align’ $130 trillion of private finance assets to net zero. But these will come as loans and investments that will merely facilitate corporate money-making in the guise of climate action. COP26 also did not produce the ‘loss CLIMATE FINANCE REMAINS and damage’ facility demanded ELUSIVE Corporations and by developing countries.

From the very first COP (Berlin countries are evasively The long-term demands from 1995), the climate agreement the global south for climate debt specified that richer countries, using ‘net zero’ reparations, grant-based finance because of their high levels for adaptation and loss and jargon to delay real, of emissions, would provide damage have been routinely funding for poorer and climatetransformative action watered down or delayed vulnerable countries, as an completely by rich nations. This toward real zero. obligation, to help them with finance must be at the heart of climate change impacts and any just, equitable and effective technology advance for their development transition climate action. The UK government alone should give with low emissions. At COP26, we once again saw $46 billion in climate finance, with at least half going to the big failure of rich countries adaptation, to account for its historical responsibilities. in fulfilling their climate finance Finally, the widely covered watering down of a commitments. The annual $100 pledge to ‘phase out’ coal in the Glasgow pact, © Olive r Kornb lihtt/M ídia Ninja billion climate finance envisaged blamed on the Indian government, represented to start flowing to developing another sleight of hand by rich countries. Coal, like all fossil fuels, should indeed be phased out as soon countries are evasively using net zero jargon to delay real, transformative action toward real zero.

Let us not forget that the COP’s history is replete with broken promises by rich countries; changes, delay or undermining of previously agreed goalposts; and reinterpreting agreements to suit the global north’s vested corporate agenda.

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COP26

domestic actions according to polls.

Ideologically, climate denialists finally lost the argument that climate change does not exist.

At the start of the second week of COP26, Global Justice Now together with partners in the global climate justice movement, the majority of them from southern countries, organised a People’s Tribunal where the Jury of the Peoples and Nature found the UNFCCC CLIMATE JUSTICE The fact that guilty of failing to TO COOL THE phasing out oil and address the root PLANET causes of climate gas wasn't even Despite the change. It is high failures of the time too that the in the draft shows talks, many COP process itself is drew hope from where the power held to account for what happened continuation of still lies in the talks the outside the climate disasters, negotiations. species extinctions, increasing global People travelled to Glasgow inequality, poverty and indebtedness during a pandemic, took health of poorer countries. risks and spent huge amounts of As Christmas and New Year money for overpriced tickets and rolled around to the backdrop of a accommodation because they saw worsening global pandemic, news the importance of meeting in person reports shifted between Omicron’s to discuss and push governments to alarming rise and the devastating produce just outcomes. super-typhoon Rai in the Philippines, The COP26 Coalition, of which Global Justice Now was part, reported that over 800 actions were organised across the world on the global day of action on 6 November, with more than 150,000 people taking to the streets of Glasgow. Over 15,000 people attended both in-person and digital events during the People’s Summit for Climate Justice to discuss, learn, network and strategise about building the movement. The diversity of organisations that attended showed the strength of the alliance it brought together.

There is also an increased awareness that the climate crisis is already, and will increasingly, affect everyone globally. As a global crisis it also demands global collaboration and the UK public supports strong as possible as part of a just transition which recognises the common but differentiated responsibilities of global north and global south. But the fact that phasing out oil and gas never even made it into the draft text – fossil fuels which the US and EU have not already begun to phase out, as they have with coal – indicates where the power continues to lie in the negotiations.

which affected millions of people and caused 407 deaths, damage to infrastructure, homes, agriculture and people’s livelihoods. Damages are estimated at £339 million.

The Philippines is one of the world’s 18 mega biodiverse countries, which contain two-thirds of the Earth’s biodiversity and 70-80 percent of the world's plants and animal species. However, this biodiversity is under threat, as the Philippines is also amongst the world’s most climate vulnerable countries, despite contributing less than 0.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

We won’t be able to tackle climate change without a radical transformation of the global economy and reparations from those who fuelled climate change to those facing its worst impacts. Many are connecting the dots and getting the message clearly that the fight against climate change is a fight for system change. We need to rewrite the rules of our global economic system if we want to save ourselves.

Dorothy Guerrero is head of policy at Global Justice Now.

Joining the London march on the global day of action.

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Global Justice Now Supporters

Events calendar 2022

For more information as it is available, go to globaljustice.org.uk/events © Olive r Kornb lihtt/M ídia Ninja

14-31 March

Decolonise vaccines, end the pandemic Our pharma speaker tour kicks off in mid-March, over two separate weeks. From 14 March South African health justice advocate Fatima Hassan will join us, and from 28 March the tour will feature Kenyan health campaigner Maurine Murenga (see back page for specific locations).

We’re organising the tour with Just Treatment and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, and while some of the events will take place on university campuses, they’ll all be open to the general public.

21 May

Day of action on corporate courts The Energy Charter Treaty, the big corporate courts deal for the energy sector, is in crisis, with a reform process stalled and the

possibility of the EU withdrawing.

The week running up to Saturday 21 May will see another round of ECT reform talks and the AGM of Uniper, one of the fossil fuel companies suing the Netherlands over its coal phase-out. We’re hoping to get as many people and groups as possible on the streets campaigning in that week. Contact the activism team if you want help with what to do, or materials to use: activism@ globaljustice.org.uk

9 July

National gathering After two years of online AGMs, we’re returning to an in-person event this year, run as part of a national gathering. Expect external speakers, workshops and critical discussions about the state of the world. Saturday 9 July, Sheffield Hallam University. The national gathering will be open to anyone. For members, AGM details

are included as an insert in the mailing of this issue of Ninety-Nine.

17-20 August

European Summer University of Social Movements Many of our European allies, including the ATTAC network of which we’re part, will be gathering in Mönchengladbach, Germany, this August for a large, international encounter of activists from around Europe. Global Justice Now will be running workshops and seminars with our campaigning partners, which will be part of a huge range of discussion topics and organising spaces.

The multilingual event will be translated into and out of English via simultaneous interpretation.

If you’re interested in going and would like to be kept informed of the latest details, email james. onions@globaljustice.org.uk

Corporate courts versus the climate Our latest photo-led booklet explains in an accessible way how corporate courts are already threatening progress on reducing carbon emissions. We’re happy to send out bundles of 10 or more to anyone who can distribute them via campaign stalls, friendly venues, events and other avenues. Just email activism@globaljustice.org.uk

TRADE

Corporations are eyeing up an India-UK trade deal As talks start over an India-UK trade deal, JEAN BLAYLOCK outlines the threats to farmers and food, global vaccine access and more.

Last year, India’s farmers had a stunning victory when year-long protests against ‘anti-farmer’ laws were successful. Three new laws, rushed through under the cover of the pandemic emergency, would have given away the government’s ability to sustain the food system, stripping away jobs and livelihoods from millions of small-scale farmers and handing control to agribusiness.

Multinational agribusiness has long had its eye on India’s farm sector, and many saw these farm laws as also preparing the ground for future trade deals – with the UK and elsewhere – which would further expose farming communities and natural resources to mega-corporations.

But the farmers resisted. Over forty farmers’ unions joined together, marched to Delhi and refused to go home. They faced down police violence, water cannon, tear gas, media slurs and the weather, until in November India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, finally agreed to repeal the laws.

The protests were an amazing show of people power, building solidarity across religion, gender and caste. There is concern, though, that while the government has been forced to back down in the face of this massive opposition, it may look for another means to get its own way. And a trade deal with the UK is a big risk, because the UK claims one of its objectives in pursuing the deal is to break open the agricultural market in India for British agribusiness.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS Modern trade deals have increasingly become useful tools for circumventing

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democratic debate and protest. They are negotiated behind closed doors, with many people totally unaware that talks are going on. They are full of jargon, as if their scope is limited to mere technicalities.

As a result, vitally important measures that affect jobs, standards, health, climate and the environment can be horse-traded without public scrutiny. And afterwards, the trade deal provides political cover for a

Big Pharma lobbyists see trade talks as an opportunity to roll back protections in the ‘pharmacy of the developing world’. government that wants to deregulate, with politicians saying their hands are tied.

India has long been known as the ‘pharmacy of the developing world’ because it has resisted some of the monopoly demands of Big Pharma.

This allows India to produce masses of medicines which the world needs at reasonable prices. For instance, it has stronger rules against ‘evergreening’, which is when pharma companies make small tweaks to a medicine as it approaches the end of the patent monopoly and re-patent it, extending their monopoly.

India’s vaccine production expertise has been vital during the pandemic. But global trade rules on patents (known as TRIPS),

Right: A farmer showing an antigovernment poster during protests at the Singhu border in Haryana, India.

TRADE which give pharmaceutical companies monopolies, have already been a barrier to low and middleincome countries’ response to the pandemic. India and South Africa have led calls for a TRIPS waiver that would allow the recipe for pandemic-related vaccines and medicines to be shared. Despite support from more than 100 countries so far, the UK is opposing it.

We know that lobbyists for pharmaceutical giants want to use trade talks to instead impose even more restrictive rules, and the UK has said it wants to use this deal to secure changes to India’s patent laws.

With talks on a trade deal having started in January, we need clear assurances from the UK government that it will not give in to Big Pharma’s pressure to increase their stranglehold on lifesaving medicines and vaccines.

THE CLIMATE IMPERATIVE And there’s more still. A future India-UK trade agreement should explicitly state that climate goals and commitments take precedence over the trade agreement. If there is any conflict between the two, it should be the climate goals that come first. That would mean a trade deal would need to actively make space for climate policies – rather than

hedging the climate imperative with a requirement that it does nothing to be ‘burdensome’ to big business. Such deals must promote access to the tools and technologies needed for a climate transition, and not restrict them.

India has currently rejected the controversial ‘corporate courts’ (formally known as ISDS) which can be written into trade deals. Fossil fuel companies are already using these to sue for more than $18 billion. But the UK has not ruled out using the trade talks to get the Indian government to change its position on these secretive courts.

Rules in an India-UK trade deal should also not be used to deregulate, or prevent regulation of, the digital economy. All of our societies are in a very fluid state of working out how best to regulate and manage the digital world and the monopoly power of the digital platforms. That process should not be preempted by trade rules.

On farmers and food, vaccine inequality, climate justice and digital rights, we need to act in solidarity – and not allow trade rules to sacrifice people to corporate profit.

Jean Blaylock is trade campaigns and policy manager at Global Justice Now. A version of this article first appeared on the New Internationalist website at www.newint.org

© Pradeep Gaurs/Shutterstock

2022 Ninety-Nine 15

IN PICTURES

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COP26 in pictures Despite all the obstacles, the global climate justice movement came out in force in Glasgow, from mass protests to a four-day People’s Summit.

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1. Sofie Ogutu of the World March of Women, Kenya addresses a session on the Grassroots Feminist Path to Climate Justice at the People’s Summit in Glasgow. © Oliver Kornblihtt/Mídia NINJA

2. More than 10,000 people took part in the Fridays For Future youth climate march. © Oliver Kornblihtt/Mídia NINJA

3, 4. An estimated 100,000 people joined the Glasgow march on the global day of action on 6 November.

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© Hanae Takahashi/Friends of the Earth Japan; Oliver Kornblihtt/Mídia NINJA.

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16 Ninety-Nine 2021

IN PICTURES

5, 6. Indigenous Peoples on the frontline of the climate crisis were at the heart of the protests and counter-summit in Glasgow. The Indigenous Peoples Articulation of Brazil organised a demonstration on land rights outside the main entrance to COP26. © Rebeca Binda/COPCollab26; Oliver Kornblihtt/ Mídia NINJA

7. Youth climate strikers gathered around the world on the eve of the summit to tell banks to stop funding fossil fuel extraction. In London, a Defund Climate Chaos rally took place outside Standard Chartered Bank. © Denise Laura Baker/Alamy Stock Photo

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8. As so often at major summits, the policing of protests in Glasgow was often petty and heavy-handed. At one point Jubilee Debt Campaign even had an inflatable Loch Ness Debt Monster impounded. But protesters refused to be distracted from the focus on climate justice. © Iain Masterton/Alamy Live News

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TRADE

Corporate courts can be beaten.

It’s essential for climate justice It is perfectly possible to withdraw from trade deals containing investor-state dispute settlement, as former South African trade minister ROB DAVIES explains.

In the immediate aftermath of South Africa’s democratic transition we were bombarded with pressure to sign a host of treaties (BITs) containing investor-state dispute settlement, in the name of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). After some time we had a review of these treaties.

One of the first conclusions we drew was that there was absolutely no correlation between whether you had a BIT with a particular country and whether there was any flow of FDI. We found no significant increase in investment from countries we signed BITs with.

© Govern ment of South Africa (CC BY-ND

The tobacco company case targeting Uruguay was a very serious wake-up call to us. In South Africa we had an Italian company that wanted to challenge a change to the mining regime to provide empowerment of historically disadvantaged people and communities as a condition for a mining licence. This was one of several cases we were facing.

By 2012 many of these BITs had come up for renewal – you either gave notice to lapse them or they were automatically renewed for another 10 or 15 years. We took the decision to lapse them.

This created an enormous backlash – suggestions that foreign investors were going to walk away, that we were going to face Armageddon if we did this. But in fact we found there was no real reaction of real foreign investors.

I think we showed that you can walk away from this system without the world coming down on you. Foreign investors probably look at the concrete opportunities there are on the ground rather than the levels of protection that you

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offer them. We introduced our own protection of investment law, in which we specifically indicated that there was a right to public policy, while providing protection against expropriation according to the constitution of the country.

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This broken ISDS system could have a detrimental effect on a just transition to a lowcarbon economy. We need to ensure that public policy and public regulation can act in the general interest of communities and peoples. It can’t be impeded by the claims and interests of really quite speculative and vested interests who are putting their own gains above the public good, which I think is the essence of the ISDS system. This needs to be part of rebalancing a range of laws and regulations as the world goes through what ought to be in the order of a global green new deal.

Rob Davies was South Africa’s minister of trade and industry from 2009 to 2019. This is based on a talk he gave to a webinar on corporate courts at the COP26 People’s Summit in November. Watch more at: globaljustice.org.uk/7nov-webinar

REVIEWS

Reviews HOSTILE Sonita Gale, 2022 1hr 37 mins This feature-length documentary exposes the reality of living through the hostile environment for migrants introduced under Theresa May as home secretary, and not suspended even at a time of a global health crisis.

SICK MONEY: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GLOBAL PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY Billy Kenber Canongate, 2021 As an investigative journalist for the Times, Billy Kenber has covered more than his fair share of Big Pharma scandals. In Sick Money he weaves these shocking examples of Big Pharma greed into a bigger story: the financialisation of the industry, which has distorted research priorities and turned medicines into little more than commodities, the price of which can be virtually unlimited.

Kenber can at times be a little too rosy-eyed about the industry’s past, imagining companies run by socially conscious scientists dedicated to the improvement of public health. In fact, Big Pharma has profiteered from public research for many decades. But he is right that changes in the 1980s, including ever harsher intellectual property laws, have not only produced an endless wave of scandals, but created an industry which is failing in what should be its core mission – providing vital new medicines in an affordable manner. A compelling read.

Nick Dearden

It is a moving exploration of the struggles of its protagonists, as well as showing the crushing disappointment of trying to help within a system that’s designed to exclude. Community initiatives which cater for the forgotten international students and destitute families with No Recourse to Public Funds receive praise and warm words, but can’t even secure premises. Qualified workers face mounting debts and deportation threats even as the Home Office is designing its pernicious points-

based system advertising for just such skilled workers.

Without pointing fingers, director Sonita Gale explores our collective complicity in the hidden suffering of people who fall through the cracks of an ever-fractured immigration system.

It may not be prescriptive about the solution, but Hostile will leave you fired up about the problem..

Alena Ivanova

INFLAMED: DEEP MEDICINE AND THE ANATOMY OF INJUSTICE Rupa Marya and Raj Patel Allen Lane, 2021 “Our bodies”, write Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, “are part of a society inflamed”. Inflammation underlies all the leading causes of death in industrialised places, and we urgently need a balm to soothe us. This can’t come from the usual doctor-patient route – it involves huge structural changes to society as a whole.

lived – they describe how oppressed bodies are more prone to the overwhelming inflammation seen in the worst cases of Covid-19.

With humanity, animals and plants seen largely as economic inputs, we have produced a world that results in deep health inequalities. Marya and Patel point to over-representation of people of colour in Covid-19 deaths.

Drawing on the medical concept of the ‘exposome’ – the cumulative and non-genetic health impacts of a life

While acknowledging modern medicine’s success in preventing and treating disease, they criticise its focus on individualistic solutions. Instead they call for a ‘deep’ medicine that addresses the societal and historical roots of health problems.

Tim Bierley