Ninety Nine issue 01

Challenging the power of the 1%

Issue 01 - January 2015

Power to the people An agenda for public, affordable and ecological energy for all

Also in this issue Ebola: A preventable crisis Growing opposition to EU-US trade deal In pictures: Guatemalans against mining Farmers fight Monsanto

ISSUE 01: January 2015 03 Global news 06 Campaigning news 08 Ebola: a very political disaster 10 We want our power back: energy privatisation 12 Justice not jumpers: energy justice in perspective 15 How to get involved with Global Justice Now 16 In pictures: Guatemalans oppose mining and megaprojects 18 Food sovereignty: Hands off Ghana’s seeds 19 Reviews

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 • editor@globaljustice.org.uk • www.globaljustice.org.uk Editor: James O’Nions Production: Ralph Allen Design: Neo Cover photo: © Chris McRoberts/WWF Printed on paper made from 100% post-consumer waste.

Get Ninety-Nine delivered to your door three times a year when you become a member of Global Justice Now. Go to www.globaljustice.org.uk/join

2 Ninety-Nine 2015

Why Ninety-Nine?

During the high times of globalisation, there was a common belief that we need not worry about the wealth of the rich, as long as we made sure that the very poor were not being left behind.

The category of ‘extreme poverty’ denoted those who really deserved our attention, and a technical set of development policies promised to lift the very poor out of their poverty so that they too could share in the wealth of the global economy. Aid was important, the theory went, because it could help build the sort of liberalised market necessary for democracy and prosperity to flourish.

In the wake of the financial crash this theory was left threadbare.

As those most responsible for the economic meltdown walked away scot free, it became clear that globalisation has made a tiny proportion of people much better off, while the livelihoods of many others – not to mention the environment – were eroded.

At the beginning of last year we learnt that a few dozen people owned the same wealth as half of the world’s population. This level of inequality could be blamed for all manner of social ills – selfishness, violence, depression and more. Even the head of the World Bank has said: “Inequality is not just a problem in itself: in countries with rising income inequality, the effect of growth on poverty has been dampened or even reversed.”

But even this doesn’t begin to sum up the problem. Because at the heart of inequality of wealth is a massive power imbalance. Poverty isn’t simply the difference between living on $1.20 and $1.40 a day.

It’s about lacking power over those resources that you need to live

a decent life – food, water, shelter, access to healthcare, education.

If one person – or corporation – controls them, that means others don’t.

When Occupy set up camps in London and New York, they said “we are the 99%”, to reflect an anger that our whole society had been captured by a tiny elite – by 1% of the population.

Of course, 99% doesn’t express all of the complex power relations in the world. It doesn’t encapsulate what the global north still takes from the global south and from the environment, for instance.

But it does express the importance of fighting inequality in fighting poverty. And it sums up the idea that transformational social change is in the interests of the vast majority of us –that those suffering from austerity here in the north have something in common with those suffering from the economic policies of globalisation in the south.

Together, there are more than enough of us to build a very different future.

Ninety-nine expresses both our desire for a world that works for all of us, but also our ambition for creating a genuinely big movement capable of bringing this world into being.

We hope this first issue will inform, inspire and provoke. We are the 99%.

Nick Dearden Director Global Justice Now

GLOBAL NEWS

Following six months of intense campaigning, TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), has become one of the most toxic issues in the EU. The European council, commission and parliament are all divided on how to proceed and shocked by the extent of public opposition to the deal.

New European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is in disagreement with his trade commissioner over one of the most controversial aspects of TTIP known as ISDS (Investor-State Dispute Settlement). That’s the part which allows multinational corporations to sue governments for damaging their profits. Juncker is reflecting the concerns of Germany and France over ISDS. But he is unable to go further because of the British government, the US and the corporate lobby. The British government and 13 other countries have written to him, telling him to ignore popular opposition and keep supporting ISDS. Yet even the ultra free-market Cato Institute ha come out against ISDS and the Economist has said: “If you wanted to convince the public that international trade agreements are a way to let multinational companies get rich at the expense of ordinary people, this is what you would do: give foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking, protect the environment or prevent a nuclear catastrophe.”

In a new document, the Labour party indicates it might accept an ‘improved’ ISDS mechanism, rather than opposing it outright. It also expresses enthusiasm about opening US government procurement to international competition, preventing states from using ‘Buy America’

Protest in Vienna on European day of action in October

Martin Juen

TTIP: corporations dig heels in as opposition grows

policies. But of course this will also affect our own councils – for instance making it more difficult for schools to buy local, sustainable food.

Recent academic research points to more pitfalls.

One report looked at the demands of big pharmaceutical companies. It said longer patent rules and a clampdown on government’s ability to contain prices of medicines would raise NHS costs and make it more difficult for austerity-hit countries to maintain public health services.

Meanwhile a report released by TUFTS University (in Massachusetts, USA) predicts that over 10 years the average working Briton would be over £3,300 worse off as a result of the lower wages which TTIP will fuel. The paper also predicts that Europe will lose nearly 600,000 jobs, experience lower growth, a lower tax take and more austerity and social tension.

But the report also showed why some are so excited by the deal, predicting that TTIP will make the amount of an economy’s wealth going to ordinary workers fall drastically compared to the share going to the elite (through profits, rents, interest and dividends). The shift in the UK from workers’ incomes to corporate profit is predicted to be a whopping 7% over 10 years.

Full steam ahead for neoliberal India When the controversial Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party was elected prime minister of India in 2014, it was good news for big business. Modi won the election with a heady mixture of Hindu nationalist rhetoric and a ‘pro growth’ agenda.

Since independence, India’s Congress party government had vacillated between social democracy and a steadily increasing support for corporate-led growth. Yet with GDP

rising, the pro-growth agenda has largely failed millions of Indians who remain in extreme poverty.

Despite this, Modi has committed to pushing forward a programme of privatisation and free trade. He is championing the privatisation of Coal India, which will further distance India’s coal mines (mainly located in the least developed provinces of Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh) from any possibility

of democratic control or concern for the needs of forest-dependent communities.

With an EU-India Free Trade Agreement now being pushed by both parties and Modi backing mega-infrastructure projects to suit the needs of big business, the impact on Indian communities barred from the benefits of corporate growth looms large.

GLOBAL NEWS

Argentina resists vulture fund extortion

NEWS SHORTS Palestinians win prize

conduct a full audit of the country’s entire debt, much of which dates back to the military junta of the 1980s and the forced IMF structural adjustment programme of the 1990s. The campaign received a boost in September when Argentina’s parliament established a debt audit committee.

The outrageous nature of the judgement also prompted a proposal for an international commission for a new debt restructuring process at the UN General Assembly in September which was passed by 124 votes to 11. The UK and US were among those who opposed. The government of Argentina has maintained its refusal to pay the vulture funds despite renewed international pressure to make a deal in early 2015.

Ask your MP why the UK sided with vulture funds at the UN: jubileedebt.org.uk/argentinaaction

Posters opposing vulture funds on the streets of Buenos Aires

David Fernández/epa/Corbis

Two US vulture funds have so far been frustrated in their battle to extract more than $1.3 billion from the people of Argentina. NML Capital and Aurelius Capital bought up some of Argentina’s debt for only a few cents for each dollar of original debt at the height of the country’s financial crisis in 2001. They have been demanding payment of the full amount plus interest and penalties ever since.

When the US Supreme Court turned down Argentina’s final appeal last year, the country found itself banned from making payments on any of its debts unless it also paid the vulture funds in full, forcing the country into a new debt default.

Argentina’s decision to refuse to give in to ‘extortion’ attracted global support, including from over 100 British MPs. Campaigners in Argentina have been pushing their government to go further and

Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ not yet turning Presidential elections in three South American countries have seen progressives re-elected. In Bolivia, indigenous socialist Evo Morales won a third term, with a convincing 61% in the first round of voting in October. Bolivian unemployment has dropped by half since 2005 and absolute poverty has fallen from 37% to 21%.

In Uruguay, where presidents are not allowed consecutive terms, the candidate of incumbent José Mujica’s Broad Front was elected. Tabaré Vázquez will have

a hard act to follow – Mujica famously eschewed the trappings of presidential power while ushering in ground-breaking social legislation.

In neighbouring Brazil, the Workers’ Party’s Dilma Rousseff was also re-elected in a second round of voting after emphasising her social justice credentials though she lacks a majority in the congress which may make progress on these issues difficult.

The 2014 Food Sovereignty Prize has been awarded to a Palestinian farmers’ organisation.

The Union of Agricultural Work Committees was given the prize in recognition for its work building farmer co-operatives and seed banks. It was also acknowledged for continuing to seek to secure its members’ human rights to food, land and water, which is especially significant in the context of the illegal Israeli occupation. The prize was created as a grassroots alternative to the World Food Prize, an award bankrolled by multinational agribusinesses which last year honoured Monsanto executive Bob Fraley.

Colombian evictions Las Casitas, a small community on the edge of the Cerrejón coal mine, is being threatened with involuntary resettlement. The open-pit mine, already one of the largest in the world, is jointly owned by multinationals BHP Billiton, Glencore and Anglo American and is seeking to expand. The people of Las Casitas are being told they must accept a piece of land which has been found unfit for human habitation, or be left with nowhere to live.

Brazil’s organic plan Brazil’s food sovereignty movement is celebrating a government move to support smaller-scale organic production. The 2015 National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Production (PlanApo) will provide government credit and simpler registration of products as organic. The move is being seen as a victory for rural social movements who face an ongoing battle with powerful Brazilian agribusiness interests when it comes to government decision-making.

GLOBAL NEWS

The EU is on the brink of approving a set of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with a number of African countries. These deals have been roundly criticised as being unfair by campaigners.

The EPAs, which envisage African countries opening their markets to EU products while gaining almost no benefit in return, could cause economic ruin for local farmers and small producers in the five east African countries that signed the deal on 1 October. These countries had been resisting the deals, but were forced to back down after the EU threatened reprisals if the countries refused to sign.

Now the only hope of stopping these deals is that the European parliament will refuse to ratify them.

German Left Party MEP Helmut Scholz, who is the European parliament’s

Colombians protest free trade

rapporteur for the East African EPAs, has said that the deals should not be ratified unless a sustainable development chapter is added.

The UK has also approved a new bilateral investment treaty with Colombia that allows UK companies to sue Colombia in an unaccountable

Guatemalan farmers fight off Monsanto Guatemalan farmers have won a victory in their battle for sovereignty over a precious resource; their seeds.

On 4 September indigenous groups, trade unionists, women’s organisations and farmers ended ten days of street protests when the country’s congress repealed legislation approved in June that had been dubbed as ‘the Monsanto Law’.

The legislation would have given exclusive rights on patented seed to a small handful of multinational corporations. Three of these corporations, Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta, already control around 53% of the global seed market, locking farmers to exploitative and expensive seed contracts worldwide. With farmers facing fines or imprisonment if they freely use patented seeds, the law was likely to criminalise an already oppressed

Zuma Press Inc/Alamy

New wave of free trade deals

farming community that form 70% of Guatemala’s population.

But the Guatemalan Peasant Indigenous Workers Movement (MSICG) presented a motion against the law to the courts, claiming that it would have detrimental impacts on the Guatemalan people. After public marches and the blockade of the Inter American Highway by up to 120,000 people, the strength of feeling was such that the law was not just reformed but dropped altogether.

Backed by rich-country governments, corporate investors and institutions like the IMF, pro-corporate seed laws are now on the agenda of many governments worldwide.

Earlier this year, similar legislation was halted as the European Union at farmers demanded protection for their seed sovereignty.

tribunal for doing anything which impacts upon their profits. Similar deals have been used in the past to sue Egypt for raising the minimum wage and to extract billions of pounds from Argentina for freezing energy prices.

The deal is similar to the EU-US trade deal TTIP, which is being opposed strongly both in Europe and the USA.

Report reveals how Africa ‘aids’ us Rich countries receive much more money from Africa than they give in aid, a report by Health Poverty Action has revealed. While rich countries give $30 billion in aid every year to African countries, they extract $192 billion through a variety of means, including corporate profits, debt repayments and tax avoidance. This means that for every £100 given in aid, people in African countries give £640 back.

Even after deducting the money being put into Africa by other means, such as private investment or loans, Africa is still effectively ‘aiding’ rich countries to the tune of $58 billion.

Martin Drewry, director of Health Poverty Action, has said that this situation amounts to the “sustained looting” of Africa.

CAMPAIGN NEWS

A million people against TTIP

What you can do: - Your MEPs should be your starting point. They will have the chance to throw TTIP out, although they can’t amend it. Email, phone, write and set up meetings. We’re going to try to set up local lobbying meetings.

6 Ninety-Nine 2015

- Your MPs will influence their party position and can play a big part in defeating TTIP – especially as it’s an election year. Make clear you will vote depending on their TTIP position.

- We’re setting up a local authority campaign because TTIP could undermine local authorities’ ability to buy local, sustainable food and support local farmers and businesses. Get in touch with the office if you want to speak to your local councillors.

- We can help set up local meetings with activists from trade unions, churches, 38 Degrees, Friends of the Earth and other local groups.

- We have now held two days of action with a wide range of campaigners – trade unions, War on Want, Friends of the Earth, Occupy, 38 Degrees, and many more. We have another one coming up in the spring (date still to be confirmed at the time of going to press).

Find out more at globaljustice.org.uk/trade or contact our trade campaigner Guy Taylor guy.taylor@globaljustice.org.uk or 020 7820 4900.

Matt Bramall/Global

A European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is one of the few instruments to allow ordinary citizens to get their voices heard in Brussels. Gather one million signatures from seven countries and you force the European commission to review its policy and get time for a debate in the European parliament.

When the Stop TTIP campaign – a coalition of 300 European groups including Global Justice Now – applied to hold an ECI, however, it was rejected by the commission. We’re currently appealing this decision at the European court of justice.

Meanwhile, we are organising our own ECI. Although it has no official standing, our petition looks like it would have beaten previous records for ECIs. By early December, less than two months after it was launched, it had already collected a million signatures. This proves what an explosive issue TTIP has become.

Thousands oppose ing biodiversity offsett pular online actions One of our most po rsit y EU plans for ‘biodive last year opposed d plans se po 8,840 people op offsetting’. A huge uctive m of allowing destr to establish a syste that e place provided developments in on ewhere. els d ote and prom ‘nature’ is protected financial the by calculating This would be done diversit y. cost of the los s of bio s t such offset scheme We believe tha g gin ma da credentials to simply give green lly cia an fin t any at tempt to busines ses and tha o only absurd but als value nature is not s in that it encourage counterproductive, the of s rm te nature in people to only value ’s ovides to us. What pr it financial ‘services’ ts rke way to financial ma more it paves the of ing up the prospect in biodiversit y, open ies ec sp of s los ling on the speculators gamb and habitats. pond s ck when the EU res We will repor t ba to its consultation.

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Membership offer

a great obal Justice Now is Relaunching as Gl new ch out and recruit opportunit y to rea rdback ha e fre e offering a members. So we ar in’s copy of Naomi Kle excellent new book ge, about climate chan ing, yth er This Changes Ev with ns to ever yone who joi st £5 a donation of at lea of a month. This kind e is om inc regular, stable , so if us really important to , why you haven’t already not join today?

2015 Ninety-Nine 7

Ebola: a very political disaster The world has been horrified by the spread of Ebola in West Africa. But in trying to respond to the humanitarian emergency, we shouldn’t miss the real causes of the spread of this disease argues NICK DEARDEN It might have taken the threat of Ebola spreading to the west to really force the media to wake up to this crisis in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, but since then we’ve learnt plenty about the horrors of this virus.

We’ve also been bombarded with racist stereotypes about why the disease spreads so easily in ‘traditional’ societies and asked for funds by pop stars who still don’t realise that Christmas is a well understood concept in Africa.

Interestingly, we’ve seen that Ebola can be treated and contained in the US and managed effectively in Nigeria, but not in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, which suggests it isn’t the nature of the disease which dictates life or death.

Ebola has broken out in a region that has been torn apart by conflicts in recent decades. There is corruption and incompetence at the highest levels of government. But neither of these things properly explains the scale of poverty that these countries experience. West Africa is very rich in resources – so why are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea among the poorest countries in the world?

Economics not epidemiology As so often, the economic policies pursued by western countries and corporations have played an enormous role. Here I will focus on just three areas – tax, privatisation and trade.

Sierra Leone and Liberia are enjoying very high growth figures – supposedly the symbol of a country’s ‘development’.

Liberia has the highest ratio of foreign direct investment to GDP in the world and has been growing at above 10% for years.

Sierra Leone is now growing at above 20%. But through the takeover of land, exploitation of minerals and privatisation of resources, their wealth is leaving in shiploads, just as it always has done.

In Sierra Leone, growth figures largely represent mining activity and mining corporations have been granted such enormous tax incentives that the government is effectively being fleeced of wealth. Christian Aid reports that in 2011 the government spent more on tax incentives than on its development priorities. They predict the country will lose more than $240m annually from tax incentives in coming years, with the vast

Left: A government hospital in Sierra Leone (Tommy Trenchard/ Reuters) and a handwashing station in Mabella, Sierra Leone (Lesley Wright/UNDP).

8 Ninety-Nine 2015

Community health volunteers in Monrovia, Liberia (Morgana Wingard/ UNDP).

bulk helping a couple of British mining companies.

The second problem is that healthcare in Sierra Leone and Liberia is in a desperate state and left largely to the private sector. Sierra Leone has the worst life expectancy in the world (just 45 years) and in 2010 had just 136 doctors (which in World Bank ‘per 1,000 of the population’ terms means zero). Liberia had even fewer.

This hasn’t always been the case. A Sierra Leonean writer and activist told me that growing up in that country in the 1960s he remembers good schools and hospitals. But the damage inflicted by the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF, as in so many other countries, decimated the economy and social services. All of this should be borne in mind when the IMF generously announced a ‘break’ from its normal austerity policies while Ebola rages.

The under-resourced and badly-managed public sector capacity is made worse by a mania for private sector healthcare and education. The UK government is particularly interested in pouring public money into private health and education around the world, though it actually cut aid to Liberia and Sierra Leone, drawing criticism from parliamentarians that this exacerbated the spread of Ebola.

An unprofitable disease The final element of West Africa’s crisis is the intellectual property regime embedded in free trade agreements, which supposedly acts to encourage research and development. Ebola proves that the system does no such thing – at least not when it comes to life-threatening diseases affecting those without money. Ebola has been ignored by the big pharmaceutical

companies, though public money is now beginning to oil the wheels of research.

The real problem, as writer Leigh Phillips points out, is that Ebola is an “unprofitable disease”.

Phillips says “Almost everyone familiar with the subject says that the know-how is there. It’s just that outbreaks are so rare and affect too few people for it to make development worthwhile — that is, profitable — for large pharmaceutical companies.” Far more profitable is the treatment of chronic diseases that affect wealthier people (or those with public health services) for longer periods of time.

The power of Big Pharma has been enhanced by trade agreements offering ever longer patent periods in ever more countries.

Over the years, campaigners have won exemptions from these rules, for instance in cases of national emergency. But the new wave of trade agreements – including the Trans Pacific Partnership and TTIP (see page three) – represent a new offensive on the part of the pharmaceutical industry which could roll back some of these exemptions.

So there is a lot that can be done to prevent the next Ebola catastrophe including: allow Africa to keep its own wealth, support a decent public system of health and education across Africa and break the stranglehold of Big Pharma through democratic trade deals and publically funded research. But the answer is in the politics.

As the People’s Health Movement says, the reason for the Ebola epidemic “lies not in the pathology of the disease but in the pathology of our society and the global political and economic architecture.”

Nick Dearden is the director of Global Justice Now.

we want our

POWER BACK If we want both better energy access and emissions reductions, we need to reject corporate control of our energy system. CHRISTINE HAIGH explains why challenging energy privatisation is a key plank of our campaign for climate and energy justice

We’ve seen firsthand the disaster that privatisation has been in the UK. Spiralling prices have meant that more and more people are unable to afford the energy they need or are having to cut back on other essentials like food in order to keep their lights on. One in five households are in debt to their energy supplier and each winter, one older person dies of cold every seven minutes.

Yet it’s not that paying more is the price of going green: our energy system remains stubbornly reliant on fossil fuels, which still make up two-thirds of our energy mix, 10 Ninety-Nine 2015

contributing to climate change and causing destruction in communities around the world. For example, a quarter of the UK’s coal imports come from Colombia where open-pit coal mines such as Cerrejón have destroyed people’s land and homes, while pollution from the extraction has damaged their health. High energy prices are lining the pockets of the Big Six energy companies, which account for over 90% of market and which together pocketed £1.2bn in profits in 2012, five times higher than in 2009.

Photo: Obalende in Lagos, Nigeria. Electricity is scarce with many relying on diesel generators for what power they have. Impending privatisation is not likely to result in increased energy access. (Carlos Cazalis/Corbis)

ENERGY JUSTICE

Exporting a disaster The UK was among the first to experiment with privatising its energy system, and with its support, along with that of other rich governments and institutions like the World Bank, many other countries have followed suit. The results have been disastrous, with the companies involved failing to improve access to electricity and citizens suffering higher bills and disconnections. For example, in Nicaragua, energy prices increased over 50% following privatisation yet there was virtually no investment in improving access for communities that lacked it. In places like the Philippines and Kenya, privatisation has also led to job losses or poorer conditions for workers.

At the root of the problem is a simple fact: privatisation means money going into profits for shareholders and paying off higher interest loans. This means less money for improving and extending the system, higher bills – or often both.

One place currently at the frontline of privatisation is Nigeria.

The country has already had a disastrous experience of involving big companies in its energy system.

In 1999 the notorious Enron built a power station under a 13-year contract to supply power in Lagos state. Over the last 15 years, this and similar contracts have prevented the government from using more cheaply-generated electricity which could have been produced by state-owned power stations, causing major losses for the national electricity company.

Now, supported by over £100m of UK aid money being channelled through the consultancy arm of free-market think tank the Adam Smith Institute, the Nigerian government is going ahead with the privatisation of the national electricity company. Although it has

not yet been completed, the project is already shaping up to be a costly disaster. In order to attract private investors, the government has had to take over responsibility for things like pensions and use tax revenues to guarantee contracts with the companies generating the power.

No new investment Despite the fact that the Nigerian government does not expect significant new investment, prices are due to be raised by two-thirds while the companies that take over the distribution of electricity will receive an estimated 25% rate of return. The Nigerian Union of Electricity Employees has also raised concerns about their members’ rights and conditions of work under the new private companies.

It’s clear that Nigeria does need investment in its energy system: over half of Nigerians lack access to electricity (rising to 90% in rural areas) and many people rely on generators.

But as Fatih Birol, economist at the International Energy Agency, said in September 2010: “if left to the markets, they [Nigerian citizens] will never get access to electricity”. However, the estimated $6 billion needed to provide the power stations and infrastructure to deliver access to electricity to everyone in Nigeria could be paid for over the next decade using just 0.6% of the country’s oil revenues each year.

It’s clear to increasing numbers of people in the UK that energy privatisation has been a disaster – and this is an opportunity for us to challenge the government’s support for it around the world. Our campaign is demanding that the UK government stops siding with the interests of big energy companies, both here and in countries like Nigeria, and instead supports the growing efforts to build energy justice around the world.

Put the boot into corporatecontrolled energy Sign the campaign postcard enclosed with this issue of Ninety-Nine to let Justine Greening, secretary of state for international development, know that you don’t want UK aid money used to pursue energy privatisation.

If you want to get further involved with our climate and energy justice campaign you could: • S ign Fuel Poverty Action’s Energy Bill of Rights • Ask your MP to sign Early Day Motion 365 in support of the Energy Bill of Rights • Order more postcards and campaign materials • Join the Energy Justice Assembly at Take Back Our World on 21 February (see back cover for details) Go to www.globaljustice. org.uk/energy or call us on 020 7820 4900.

Christine Haigh is Global Justice Now’s energy and climate campaigner.

2015 Ninety-Nine 11

justice not jumpers Can we have energy provision which is just, democratic and sustainable?

TADZIO MÜLLER looks at Germany’s pioneering approach and draws out some lessons for how we achieve the kind of energy transition we need Remember the day when the British government suggested that those struggling with rising electricity bills ‘put on a jumper’ to stay warm?

That was a great day for those of us working on the issue of energy justice, because it highlighted an important and often overlooked fact: energy is a highly political issue. It’s about who produces what kind of energy under what conditions, who has access to it and who suffers the consequences.

And one thing is clear: the global energy system is nothing if not deeply unjust.

It is unjust because access to energy (and we’re not just talking about electricity here – transport, heating and cooling also form part of the equation) is highly unequally distributed. Some 1.3 billion people on the planet live without access to electricity, while even in the ‘rich world’, energy poverty is becoming an ever-greater issue in the crisis.

Jumper anyone?

It is unjust because in nearly every country we look at, control of the energy sector is concentrated among

12 Ninety-Nine 2015

small clusters of politically highly connected corporations. Basically, it’s the E.ONs, the Vattenfalls and EDFs of this world that are running the show.

And it is unjust because it is based (of course with significant national variations) on a combination of fossil and nuclear power. Fossil fuels are the key driver of human-made climate chaos, which tends to affect those who least contributed to it the most (the poor), while those who did most to cause it (the rich) tend to have the resources to protect themselves from its ravages.

As for nuclear power: those who are calling for a ‘nuclear renaissance’ to combat the threat of global warming should visit what Naomi Klein calls the “sacrifice zones” left behind in Niger, where much of Europe’s uranium is mined; or imagine him or herself living in one of those places that governments designate as final dumping grounds for nuclear waste; or find herself in the wake of a nuclear catastrophe like Fukushima. Safe and just simply doesn’t spell ‘nuclear’.

Justice, democracy, ecology To fight for energy justice, then, is to fight for a system where energy is fairly distributed, democratically controlled and ecologically sustainable. And if this sounds like a typical unachievable progressive shopping-list of issues and goals, we can find some solace in the material nature of the energy sector, in what German renewable energy pioneer Hermann Scheer once referred to as the ‘techno-logic’ of renewables.

Let’s start with the easy bit: clearly, renewable energy is more ecologically sustainable than either fossil or nuclear energy. This is not to ignore the fact that there is a destructive political economy of extractivism (for instance, of so-called ‘rare earths’) underpinning renewable electricity as well. But renewables are a far better idea from a climate perspective than, say, shale gas. And whereas fossil and nuclear technologies strongly tend towards centralisation, it is much easier to imagine backyard wind turbines than

ENERGY JUSTICE

Catalonian energy co-operative Som Energia celebrates its 10,000th member in 2013.

energy prices can be effectively positioned against calls for expanding renewables.

So maybe it’s not quite as easy as saying that the struggles for an ecological, a just and a democratic energy sector are linked. What we can say is that they can and should be linked because the potential benefits from bringing them together would be enormous. To understand both how this can be done and what dangers arise from doing it incompletely, it might be instructive to take a closer look at the German Energiewende, or energy transition.

In 2013 there were 888 registered energy co-ops in Germany, organising some 130,000 people

An energy transition In the first half of 2014, an average of 30% of all electricity consumed in Germany came from renewables. Around 400,000 jobs have been created in the sector over the past decade. The transition generates net positive economic effects, once all societal benefits and the avoided costs of ecological damage and fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies are factored in. There are some 25,000 wind turbines and 1.4 million solar panels in operation. And, most amazingly, more than half of this capacity is owned by individuals, farmers and other smallholders, not the ‘big four’ companies that control most of the energy market.

Anahi Aradas

backyard nuclear power plants.

And precisely because it is easier to imagine a fairer distribution of power in a renewables-based energy system, it is also easier to imagine a fairer distribution of costs, benefits and access in this system.

So while different social movements have come up with different terms to describe their struggles and their agenda – whether it’s energy justice, energy democracy or even energy sovereignty – all these struggles are linked insofar as achieving one of these demands will make it easier to achieve the others.

Unfortunately it is far too easy to come up with examples where the expansion of renewable energy leads to more power accruing to the old oligopolies rather than to a democratisation of the sector.

This could be because far too often they take the form of imposed megaprojects of little or no social and democratic (and of questionable ecological) value; or because already nationalised energy companies (eg Swedish-owned Vattenfall) behave just as ecologically and socially destructively as would Exxon, Chevron and other companies we love to hate. Or it could be because the demand for lower

In Uruguay the public sector has invested in wind energy (above), while Hamburg has seen a successful campaign to bring energy back into public hands (below)

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of all energy consumed in the country comes from renewable sources (including, however, ‘bioenergy’), whereas the global average is 17%.

Furthermore, in July 2014, the price of electricity was reduced by some 6%, a significant amount in a country where incomes are low and energy is expensive. What has been lacking here, however, has been the diffusion of renewable energy production into wider society: energy power structures remain very centralised in a state company that, although owned publically, is not necessarily much more ‘democratic’ than a private utility.

In the end, whether the coming energy transitions will be democratic, just and ecological depends on the social coalitions that fight for them.

If we manage to bring together movements fighting for social justice with those fighting for ecological sustainability and those fighting for a substantive democratisation of our ‘post-democratic’ political and economic systems, we can have a shot of achieving the objectives outlined above. If we do not, then our enemies will be able to play one social movement off against another.

The fight for energy justice, then, has just begun…

Whether the coming energy transitions will be democratic, just and ecological depends on the social coalitions that fight for them

Tadzio Müller is a climate justice activist and a researcher on climate and energy issues with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin.

Greenpeace

It is true that the Energiewende is not an unqualified success story. German emissions have actually gone up, rather than down, since its nuclear phase-out began in 2011 (though this is largely due to rising exports rather than domestic consumption). Nor is it a just transition. Jobs in the renewable energy sector are often not unionised and are badly paid and precarious.

And, like many other ecological policies, the ones supporting the expansion of renewable energies benefit the already-wealthy more than the poor.

Still, the Energiewende is a massive success for social movements, achieved by a broad coalition that included not just campaign groups but a broad range of citizens which included even conservative farmers.

It is genuinely a ‘citizens’ revolution’. In 2013 there were 888 registered energy co-ops in Germany, organising some 130,000 people and investing more than €1.2 billion. Hundreds of German towns and cities have decided to ‘remunicipalise’ part of their energy infrastructure, and local public utilities are key actors in the energy transition.

The biggest danger to this process, however, is its lack of justice. While the German trade union movement is, on the whole, sitting on the fence, energy companies and their allies in government and the media have been able to use the fact that an increase in renewables-production has meant price increases that hurt the poorest the most, to kick off a highly effective campaign against the Energiewende. Today, the fate of this process hangs in the balance.

While in Germany the Energiewende has meant more democratisation and more sustainability, but not more justice, in Uruguay they’ve managed a different ‘two out of three’. Here the government-mandated project to change the domestic energy mix has meant that today, some 40%

Protest stunt against UK energy injustice and winter deaths from fuel poverty

E IC T S U J L A B O L G R O F E IV T C A GET incides with the relaunch of the co ine -N ety Nin of ue iss t firs The M DM) as Global Justice Now. WD (W nt me ve Mo nt me lop ve De World . ople to demand a better world pe of s lot g isin bil mo t ou ab s was alway more pe to be able to do that even With Global Justice Now we ho you can be involved effectively. Here are some ways Get regular updates by email

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A blow dealt by ballot box In October the community of Totonicapan in Guatemala ran a self-organised referendum over a proposed mine. Photos by JAMES RODRÍGUEZ Large scale mining projects are being opposed across the length and breadth of Latin America, with local, often indigenous, communities all too aware of the devastating social and environmental impacts associated with them. The means of resistance range from direct action to political lobbying, but in Guatemala, indigenous K’iche’ communities have been using radical democracy to halt the advance of large-scale mining.

In October 2014, following a request from the national government to grant a mining licence in a nearby mountain, community organisers held a popular referendum. Inhabitants of the highland town in Totonicapan overwhelmingly voted against the mining development – 39,198 voted no, while 300 voted yes.

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T he municipality of Santa Maria Chiquimula on the morning of the community consultation on extractive and energy industries. A request had been made at the national level for a mining licence on the community’s sacred peak of Ikilaja, the largest mountain seen on the left of the photo.

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Locals from the community of Xesaná line up to vote.

T he ballot reads: “Are you in favour of metal mining exploitation, the installation of geothermal energy generators, construction of hydro-electric projects, installation of energy distribution and telecommunication towers within the territory of the municipality of Santa Maria Chiquimula?”

A woman places her thumbprint as she prepares to vote.

J uan Carlos Carrillo, secretary for the Permanent Council for the Defence of Life and Territory of Santa Maria Chiquimula, declares: “We are convinced that extractive activities and the imposition of mega-projects by the government are a cause of numerous social ills. The government, working together with national and transnational capital, is attempting to forcibly impose projects that try to plunder our territories, generate division amongst our people, and further increase social and economic inequalities. These extractive projects do not bring development here to our communities.”

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James Rodríguez is a photojournalist based in Guatemala.

Go to www.mimundo.org to see more of his work.

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FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

Fighting the ‘Monsanto Law’ in Ghana The Ghanaian parliament is considering a law giving multinational seed companies new powers to own seed varieties. ALI-MASMADI JEHU-APPIAH explains why farmers are mobilising against it As I write, Ghana’s parliament is discussing a law which risks the livelihoods of millions of peasant farmers. The Plant Breeders’ Bill 2013 threatens to hand the control of seeds from small-scale farmers into the hands of big business. The proposed legislation would create an intellectual property regime that would allow companies and seed breeders anywhere in the world to gain ownership over seed varieties they claim to have created.

The law is part of an overarching strategy by international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation to ‘harmonise’ seed laws. The corporate backers of this harmonisation process want to claim ownership over seed varieties that have been developed over millennia of indigenous seed breeding. And instead of freely using their own seeds, farmers would be encouraged to buy from the corporate supply chain. The rising costs associated with this could push farmers into a spiral of debt and dependency.

The proposed law is silent on the responsibilities of these corporations in cases of contamination of their corporate seed genes into the crops of peasant farmers. By contrast, it is clear on penalties that small-scale producers could incur for violating corporate rights. For example, clause 58 refers to “summary conviction to a fine of not more than two 18 Ninety-Nine 2015

thousand penalty units or to a term of imprisonment of not more than two years or to both”, for any farmer who “sells or markets the propagating material of a variety protected in Ghana” – even if they do this inadvertently!

Companies such as Monsanto, that stand to gain huge access to new markets, have played a substantial role in lobbying for this wave of reforms. It is for this reason that we have called the Plant Breeders’ Bill ‘the Monsanto law’.

And it’s not just us. Versions of this unpopular law are popping up in countries across the globe, from Africa to Latin America and Asia, overwhelming and devastating the livelihoods of innumerable smallholder farmers and farmworkers.

Small-scale farmers in Ghana are under pressure. They experience land grabbing and political propaganda blaming them for food insecurity.

After decades of market liberalization directed by the IMF, people in the countryside are already being forced into the cities as the lasting impact from the dumping of heavily subsidised foods from Europe and North America takes its toll.

It is heartening, then, that there has been massive resistance to this bill. This includes from faith-based organisations (including Muslims, Catholics and Protestants), from the Peasant Farmers Association of

Ghana (boasting three million members) and from journalists who have sent a petition to the parliament.

A particularly painful feature of the Bill is the way it has overshadowed viable solutions to Ghana's agriculture, and the adoption of agroecological practices that ensure food sovereignty. However, not all is lost. Organisations such as the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development have been running exciting projects which aim to empower and build on the existing indigenous institutions and the resource base of communities.

In northern Ghana there are alternatives which integrate conservation agriculture and agroforestry, allowing farmers to grow food at low cost while contributing to sustainable land restoration at the same time. And awards such as the Best Small-Scale Agroecology Farmers Award, give hope and light at the end of the tunnel.

Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah is a co-ordinator of Food Sovereignty Ghana with whom Global Justice Now is working to oppose the Monsanto Law.

REVIEWS

Reviews LAND AND FREEDOM LEANDRO VERGARA-CAMUS Zed Books, 2014 The Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (MST) and the autonomous Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico, are probably the two most celebrated social movements in Latin America.

This book is the first attempt at an in-depth comparative study of these quite different peasant movements. The book analyses both movements as different instances of an emergent peasant alternative to neoliberalism and weaves similarities and differences throughout. This, coupled with the focus on the lived experiences of members of the movements, gained by extensive field work, ensures the book remains easy to read and enlightening throughout.

The heart of the challenge these movements pose to neoliberalism lies in the process of transformative struggle for land which enables both movements to play the role of educating, politicising and empowering members. Thus movement members are in charge of their own ‘development’ and to differing extents provide food, education and health services without reliance on the state, despite the increasing commodification of land and neoliberal state restructurings around them.

The MST has often been characterised Zapatista dolls in the Disobedient Objects exhibition.

as a more hierarchical movement compared to the Zapatistas’ more ‘horizontal’ approach. Yet through observations of the process of participation in both organisations, Vergara-Camus shows that they both engage in a similar type of participatory democracy. For Zapatistas this takes the form of mandar obediciendo (rule by obeying). And while the MST has a more traditional party-like structure, the process of encampment and lived experience of participation means power is still very much in the hands of the movement, rather than its leaders or representatives.

For anyone interested in the collective struggle for land, this book comes highly recommended.

Matt Brammall

DISOBEDIENT OBJECTS VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON Until 1 February For a flavour of crafty and creative protest from around the world, get down to the V&A in London for the Disobedient Objects exhibition. Where the V&A usually displays objects of fashion, furniture, craft and design, this exhibition pushes the boundaries by bringing together objects that enable or enact civil disobedience and protest. Sofas aren’t only of interest for shifts in textile design but also as a crucial tool for any barricade.

You can pick up the DIY guide to making a tear-gas mask – the same set of instructions that, once uploaded online, traversed the globe facilitating protesters’ front-line defences in Ferguson at #MichaelBrown vigils and at #OccupyCentral in Hong Kong. These objects may be in a gallery momentarily, but the emphasis is on their role in the streets.

Among banners, placards, costumes, inflatables and vehicles from around the world, a rich history of dissent is weaved together as a conversation in tactics and techniques: to communicate, to organise and to resist. The makers’ intentions are shared with every exhibit and several videos add to the diversity of perspectives. Pop along and get inspired: admission is free.

Mel Evans

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING NAOMI KLEIN Allen Lane, 2014 The central premise of Naomi Klein’s important new book is that dealing with climate change is simply not compatible with the current economic system. The right-wing climate change deniers may be completely wrong on the science, but they’ve still understood something when they claim climate change is a ‘communist plot’. Dealing with climate change requires huge investment in public transport and renewable energy, more regulation and a vast drop in the profits of fossil fuel companies.

Despite the subtitle, “Capitalism vs the planet”, this is more a book about how the last 40 years of neoliberalism as accelerated the climate crisis and undermined our ability to mitigate it. It is less a theoretical book than a strategic one. It is also, despite its relative length, a popularly-written and engaging book.

“Only mass social movements can save us now,” Klein writes, but points to a number that have emerged in the five years she has been writing the book.

There is still hope, and if we organise for real solutions, they’ll make the world a more equal and co-operative place too.

James O’Nions