Think Global, June 2022

THINK GLOBAL

Khoa Pham

Act locally with Global Justice Now

June 2022

Contents 02 Welcome 03 News from Global Justice Now 04 In pictures: ISDS days of action 06 Trade justice 08 Pharma 10 Climate and finance 12 Groups news 14 Attac ESU 15 Council reportback 16 National gathering

Inserts General •

National gathering leaflets

2 June 2022

Introducing our new youth organiser Leelou Gordon-Fox Youth network organiser I’ve been working at Global Justice Now for three months now and there hasn’t been a day that wasn’t jam packed!

It was great to hit the ground running with We Rise. The event was an incredible success and I was able to meet 100+ youth network activists. It was inspiring to share a room with so many passionate people. We had a wide range of political education discussions and workshops, and we had a laugh beatboxing protest chants, learning to ‘subvertise’ and sharing delicious food! I’m now looking forward to the national gathering happening very soon in Sheffield (see back page) and the ATTAC conference happening in Germany towards the end of summer. These will both be great opportunities for youth network members to meet others in the network, and for us to continue to strengthen our activism together.

The day of action in mid-May was also a highlight, where the strength of our network shone! Groups mobilised all over the country and came together to send a strong, collective message to end the unjust system of corporate courts. I was most involved in coordinating the action in Enfield, North London, at Uniper’s power station: this was a joint action between the youth network, other Global Justice activists and local grassroots environmental justice groups. The successes of the day are definitely testimony to what we can achieve when we work together as a movement.

I’ve been involved in activism from a young age and have taken part in all sorts of organising: from assembling protests, to national educational gatherings for young people, to small intimate gatherings for making zines or sharing art and political education, to international solidarity campaigns. The Global Justice Now youth network feels like home! I’m really looking forward to building on what the youth network has done so far and really making an impact.

I thought I’d end this column with a book recommendation about movement building, for anyone who is also interested in this topic. I have recently been reading Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown and have really enjoyed it. I’d be happy to talk more about the book, to get to know more about you and what you’re working on. Don’t hesitate to email me: leelou.gordon-fox@globaljustice.org.uk

News from Global Justice Now In the media

Annual General Meeting

Our protest at Pfizer’s HQ on the day of their AGM was covered in the British Medical Journal, the Guardian, City AM and Democracy Now among others. Nick Dearden had a comment piece in Tribune on Pfizer’s bumper profits. Photos of our funeral procession from November keep appearing regularly in different media outlets, with prominent ‘Pharma Greed Kills’ and ‘Drop the Patents’ messaging.

Please remember to register if you’re coming to the AGM. We need to know how much lunch to provide! You can register for both the AGM and the national gathering in one go at globaljustice.org.uk/hope and find details about the AGM, including our new strategy, at globaljustice.org.uk/agm-2022.

Our corporate courts and climate day of action generated some excellent local media coverage – with media mentions for the protests in Bristol, Cleveland, London, Macclesfield, Manchester, Stirling and Salisbury. The Salisbury Journal even ran a live feed from the Rockhopper protest with a journalist commenting as protesters took the road to march to Rockhopper’s registered offices! Well done to everyone involved all around the country.

On finance, Daniel Willis was quoted in the Guardian on dodgy UK Export Finance projects, and our work on CDC was cited in the Independent over its funding of P&O’s parent company. He also had a comment piece in Open Democracy on climate reparations, following the February IPCC report. Our debt justice protest at Blackrock was covered by the National in Scotland.

Dorothy Guerrero was on BBC News to discuss the shocking election result in the Philippines.

Action checklist

Our AGM will take place in person again this year, alongside a public conference, Hope in the Dark. See back page for details.

Our experience recently has been that while it can be a lot easier to join a meeting online, in-person events provide kinds of engagement and benefits for participants which Zoom cannot. So we really hope some of you will be able to make the journey to Sheffield. Of course, we will also continue to run webinars at other times.

The AGM is your opportunity to ask questions of the director and our elected council, and discuss together our way forward as an organisation. Remember that local groups get a group vote at the AGM too, so agree who is representing the group beforehand.

Consultation

Thanks to all groups who took the time to respond to the groups consultation on the strategy. Nicola Ansell, chair of council, explains the outcome on page 15. The amended strategy can be found at globaljustice.org.uk/agm-2022.

Trade justice Send any signed postcards back to the office by 16 June.

Look for opportunities locally for public events around ISDS and the Energy Charter Treaty.

People’s Vaccine Order your Who Wants to Be a Pharma Billionaire? stall pack, and plan summer stalls.

Debt Talk to your MP about the debt crisis and the need for private sector debt cancellation for Zambia and other countries.

Events Book your place at the national gathering, or ensure your group is represented.

June 2022 3

Days of action against corporate courts 18 and 21 May

Léo Bodelle

4 June 2022

Above and left: Youth network members and London activists protest outside Uniper’s Enfield power station in outer London.

Uniper is suing the Netherlands under the Energy Charter Treaty for phasing out coal power.

We were also joined by the Stop the Edmonton Incinerator campaign.

Below left: Global Justice Cambridge run a stall.

Below: Youth network group Global Justice Stirling and allies on the steps of Clyde and Co, one of the law firms which takes ISDS cases.

Top row: Global Justice Stirling gather on the steps of Glagsow Royal Concert Hall.

Above left: We joined forces with local XR groups for a protest against Rockhopper in its home town, Salisbury.

Above: Global Justice Bexhill and Hastings.

Left: Global Justice Shropshire theme their stall around celebrating the exclusion of ISDS from the UK-Canada trade deal.

Bottom left: Global Justice South East London ran a busy stall during Nunhead Cemetary Open Day. Below: Global Justice Macclesfield run with the corporate sharks theme.

June 2022 5

Trade justice

Oil firm Rockhopper Exploration is suing Italy using corporate courts in the Energy Charter Treaty. On18 May we protested its Salisbury registered office, along with XR Salisbury, XR Wimborne and XR Bath Samba!

Our day of action

We had a wonderful day of action against corporate courts – which turned out to be several days of action in the end. Protests, marches and stalls happened, that we know of, in Bexhill, Bradford, Bristol, Cambridge, Glasgow, London (two actions), Kilmarnock, Macclesfield, Manchester, Salisbury and York.

See the picture spread on pages 4-5.

Online we highlighted recent research that ISDS claims from oil and gas companies over the steps the UK must take to meet its Paris Agreement target by cancelling projects in the pipeline could amount to £11 billion.

Globally the risk of claims is up to $340 billion - and big UK polluters could well be among those suing countries in the global south.

Over 70% of the UK’s risk from these claims comes from the Energy Charter Treaty.

Exiting the treaty in coordination with other countries could wipe out billions of risk at one stroke. Globally, the ECT is also the biggest single source of risk.

Energy Charter Treaty

We’re now in a crunch time for the Energy 6 June 2022

Charter Treaty (ECT). Since 2009 the idea of ‘modernising’ the ECT has been floating around, and since 2018 more concrete proposals have been discussed by ECT members. The EU says that part of what it wants is to make the ECT compatible with the Paris climate agreement.

However, the proposals are weak and nothing that is on the table would come close to doing that. The proposals would allow fossil fuel corporations to continue to sue for another 10-15 years, possibly longer.

All of the existing cases could still continue, and the fundamentally unjust nature of corporate courts would not change.

The last round of talks to finalise the modernisation proposals took place in May – our day of action was timed to coincide with this. And on 24 June the member countries of the ECT will decide whether to accept the proposals or not.

Across Europe, the campaign is focusing in these weeks on hammering home a message that the modernisation reform has failed - that it would not make the ECT compatible with the Paris Agreement.

For us, this means building on the momentum from the day of action, and to continue increasing awareness among the public and the media of the Energy Charter Treaty and the risk. We are planning to do another interim hand in of the petition ahead of the June decision point and we are looking for any parliamentary opportunities. In particular: • Use this upcoming decision point to help collect more signatures on the petition.

If you are using the A5 flyer with the QR code, signatures go straight onto the online petition. If you have any signatures on printed postcards, please send them back to the office by 16 June.

• Look for any more opportunities locally for public events – Jean or Cleodie (who is also now working on this campaign) would be happy to speak. Email cleodie.rickard@globaljustice.org.uk The good news is that quite a lot of countries almost agree with us. Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Poland, Greece, Slovenia, Latvia, Hungary and Cyprus have all at various times expressed doubts. Our allies in Europe are focusing on getting those countries and more to make the right decision and to push for all the EU countries to leave together. We need to call for the UK to step up and join them.

Sharks at Anglo American

In April we took ‘corporate shark’ puppets to Anglo American’s AGM to protest against their corporate court case against Colombia over the Cerrejón coal mine (photo above).

Cerrejón is an open cast coal mine which has been controversial for decades. In 2017 local communities won a case in the Colombian supreme court against the diversion of the Bruno river to expand the mine. The mine owners, including Anglo American, then turned to corporate courts to challenge that decision.

Jess Hurd

While countries decide their positions, this is the time to keep insisting that the only acceptable decision is to exit.

Unfortunately the pressure from the case seems to be working - from Anglo American’s point of view. The Colombian government is now saying that the mine expansion may be able to go ahead after all. This is exactly one of the reasons why big business turns to ISDS – to bully governments and get decisions reversed.

Key resources Corporate courts versus the climate Photo booklet (February 2022).

Five fossil fuel firms... Petition leaflet (October 2021).

Climate injustice How corporate courts block climate action. Four-page briefing (March 2021) How trade deals are fuelling climate breakdown Four-sided A5 leaflet (September 2021) Contact us to order these or view them at globaljustice.org.uk/resources June 2022 7

Jess Hurd

People’s Vaccine campaign

Protest at Pfizer

Pfizer confirmed at its AGM that its revenues have doubled to a record $80 billion during the pandemic and are set to grow even more this year. While the company’s executives did a round of backslapping and counted their money, we brought activists to protest outside their UK headquarters and send them a clear message: Pfizer has blood on its hands. The refusal of Pfizer and other pharma companies to share their vaccine knowhow with producers in the global south is estimated to have cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

We heard from several speakers, including activist and comedian Mark Thomas and Tanzanian journalist Sakina Datoo, who lost her father to Covid-19 because he couldn’t access a vaccine. Tarun Gidwani from our youth network also spoke brilliantly of his struggles to access medication in India, explaining how Pfizer’s profiteering is a key feature of its business model.

The protest was covered in the Guardian and some financial press, making sure Pfizer 8 June 2022

executives woke up to critical headlines and helping us build the public narrative that we need to see big changes to the sector.

Cost-price smokescreen You might have seen Pfizer’s announcement at Davos that it is going to provide some of its treatments at cost price in low-income countries. While such moves show that campaigning against the company’s profiteering has hit a nerve, Pfizer’s response is unlikely to do much to improve health outcomes. The pandemic has demonstrated clearly that relying on a small number of firms to make medicines leaves too much power in their hands and means low-income countries lose out when demand is high.

Instead of relying on private sector ‘charity’ we need to make sure ownership and production are dispersed more widely. This looks like yet another big pharma attempt to maintain control over supply.

Pfizer’s treatments Pfizer’s Covid-19 treatment has been shown to be life-saving, but the supply for 2022 has been bought up almost entirely by a

few rich countries. When calls came from the Dominican Republic, Chile, Peru and Colombia for their governments to pass laws to copy the pill, Pfizer bizarrely complained that this would infringe its ‘human rights’.

While governments including the UK have continued to delay and hinder the intellectual property waiver on vaccines and treatments, the South African mRNA vaccine hub, which has successfully copied Moderna’s vaccine, has now trained scientists from Brazil and Argentina on using the mRNA technology. What’s more, this is going to be rolled out to 12 more countries.

If monopoly power has been the problem of the pandemic then these alternative production centres, which are designed to share innovations with each other, could be a huge part of the answer.

Summer stalls

We’ve created a new game for activists to use on stalls this summer - and hopefully make the campaign as accessible as possible. We’re riffing on a classic TV gameshow with Who Wants to be a Pharma Billionaire. We hope it will be a good conversation starter on summer stalls, with 15+ questions that reveal shocking facts about big phama. Did you know?

• • •

Big Pharma has higher profit margins than both finance and energy.

Moderna’s CEO made $800,000 on his shares when a new Covid-19 variant emerged.

A former Conservative minister called for nationalised pharmaceutical industries.

You can order the game now, which will come complete with question cards, fake cash, and a banner. A big thanks to Global Justice Reading for their improvisation and craft work to trial this game before we even had the boards ready!

There will also be a new booklet to accompany the game. It will be full of graphics, key statistics and stories showing

how the monopoly pharma system has failed patients and health workers for decades. It will also explore what an alternative model of medicines production could look like and feature developments in the global south towards that goal.

The booklet and game will be ready to send out in the week of 13 June. Order your pack now to get it as soon as it is ready, by emailing activism@globaljustice.org.uk.

Key resources UK government: Suspend the patents Campaign postcard (2021).

Free Covid-19 vaccines from Big Pharma monopolies Four-page A5 leaflet (2021).

Fighting for a People’s Vaccine Supporter briefing, four pages (September 2021).

Stickers The global south needs a vaccine too. Sheets of 12.

Order via activism@globaljustice.org.uk June 2022 9

Climate and finance

Our piñata-themed protest at BlackRock in Edinburgh, held in alliance with Jubilee Scotland

Climate justice

We continue to work with the Climate Justice Coalition (formerly the COP26 Coalition) as it builds on the momentum from Glasgow last year to advance the cause for climate justice. Our Head of Policy Dottie sits on the Coalition’s coordination and international solidarity committees, while members have been active in the organisation of the Coalition’s local hubs.

In the coming months, we are planning to build awareness of demands from the global south for climate justice, finance for loss and damage, and climate reparations, including developing campaign materials for activists to use in the autumn. In early July we will run a short speaker tour with Lumumba DiAping, who was chief climate negotiator for global south countries at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen and is a leading voice for climate justice. There will be events in 10 June 2022

Birmingham, London and Edinburgh, and it will culminate at our national gathering in Sheffield on 9 July. See back page for more.

We will also be running the climate justice forum at the European Summer University of Social Movements (see page 14).

Aid

We can’t achieve climate justice without fundamentally transforming how finance maintains the neocolonial power of the global north. In recent weeks, we handed in a petition signed by 25,000 supporters opposing the government’s use of the aid budget to promote the UK’s corporate interests. We also published research and reacted in the media to the publication of the UK’s new international development strategy, which unfortunately cements this approach for the time being.

Debt

On the other hand, our campaign calling on Blackrock and other big banks to cancel Zambia’s debt, so its government can invest in climate adaptation and public healthcare, is gathering pace. In April, we collaborated with Debt Justice* and allies to organise protests outside Blackrock offices in London and Edinburgh (see photo).

We also produced a campaign video and targeted Blackrock with social media actions to build support for our campaign.

Zambia has recently started talks with lenders to renegotiate its debt, so it is crucial that we raise our voices and call for debt cancellation now.

Organising corner With Guy Taylor, groups co-ordinator

Could there be a GJN group in your town?

We have a fair number of groups around the UK, but there are areas of the country where none exist. We don’t have groups for the sake of it. Our groups make a real difference – to the towns and cities they’re based in AND to the people involved in them. I spoke to a few people about what it means to them to be in a Global Justice group. Here’s a few things people said: •

Take action Now is an important time to talk to MPs about raising debt cancellation in parliament. We have just launched an online action with a suggested letter that you can use to contact your MP. You could also ask your MP for a meeting to discuss the debt crisis with local constituents.

Contact our debt campaigner Daniel for guidance – daniel.willis@globaljustice.org.uk * Debt Justice is the new name for Jubilee Debt Campaign. The organisation also has a new website at debtjustice.org.uk.

Key resources Cancel Zambia’s debt A5 petition leaflet (February 2022).

End the debt trap: Cancel Zambia’s debt Four-page briefing (July 2021).

Financing justice? UK climate finance and how to increase ambition at COP26.

Eight-page briefing (September 2021).

Find these at globaljustice.org.uk/ resources or order from activism@globaljustice.org.uk

•

•

•

Taking action together is about solidarity, sharing experiences and ideas, learning from each other and working together to make a difference – locally, nationally and globally.

It makes you feel like a part of something much bigger – when you know there are actions like yours happening in other places you feel that we’re pulling together to make good things happen!

Having a place to go to each month to see friendly faces, to discuss positive things that can and have happened, and ideas for action is important intellectual and social interaction.

We hold our MP to account. He’s a Tory, but we demand his attention, we do get answers. We might annoy him, but we’re like a little progressive voice in his ear!

So, for those who don’t have one, why don’t we set up a group where you are?

I can help with all the things you need to make it happen: provide the initial resources to get a group off the ground; contact all Global Justice Now supporters in your area to invite them to a meeting; organise a speaker; provide help with planning follow up activities, and so on.

In other words, I can help groups get up and running and ensure the work doesn’t come down to just one or two people.

Try me, it could make a huge difference to you and the area you live in!

Email guy.taylor@globaljustice.org.uk or call me on 07956 681328.

June 2022 11

Local groups and activism news The day of action on 21 May occupied a number of groups, and with in-person meetings becoming the norm again, and the start of stall season, it has been a busy time for many groups.

Global Justice Bradford has been picketing/ holding a vigil outside the West Yorkshire pensions fund office every Friday for a good few months now, come rain or shine, demanding divestment from fossil fuels. The group held a stall in nearby Wakefield at the ‘With Banners Held High’ event, and were out for the corporate courts action.

Global Justice South East London had a prominent presence at the Nunhead Cemetery Open Day with a stall vying for pole position with choirs and Morris dancers!

They got a good response to the corporate courts literature in between performances.

Global Justice Nottingham held their group banner aloft at the trades council’s May Day demonstration and leafleted against the Energy Charter Treaty.

The first step to reviving Global Justice Bristol took shape with an ISDS day of action leafleting session in the centre of the city.

Drummers led a protest organised by Global Justice Macclesfield for the ISDS day of action, and the group now has an exhibition on the issue booked for a two-week run at the library – a fantastic initiative!

Global Justice Shropshire celebrated the absence of ISDS in the Canadian and Australian trade deals with the UK for the day of action, sporting fetching moose hats to attract attention!

Global Justice Cambridge hugely enjoyed hosting a leg of the pharma speaking tour with Fatima Hassan, and put lots into the days of action, holding a successful stall.

More stalls are planned for the summer.

12 June 2022

Global Justice Sheffield travelled to nearby Chesterfield, joining the May Day Gala march and holding a stall as part of the event (see photos above). The group also held an event as part of the Sheffield Festival of Debate with Debt Justice director Heidi Chow speaking on “Life or Debt: Big Money, Injustice and the Global Climate Crisis”.

Global Justice Leicester ran a campaign stall at a Leicester Green Film Festival screening of a film about a Swedish multinational company being taken to court for polluting a community in Chile with toxic waste and managing to escape liability twice.

Global Justice Reading held a public meeting on the pharma campaign with our campaigner Tim Bierley, and group members joined the Salisbury protest against Rockhopper (see day of action photos).

Jean spoke at a Swansea Climate Action Network webinar about our corporate courts campaign.

And, of course, we shared delicious food.

Thank you to everyone in the network who helped bring this event to life!

The speaker tour culminated with our national youth network gathering, We Rise, at the start of April. We Rise was a great success! We had a wide range political education talks; from discussions on Chile’s revolt against neoliberalism and patriarchy, to anti-capitalist and abolitionist feminism in the UK (organised by the new working group for woman and non-binary people in our network); from a panel on climate reparations and corporate power, to a workshop which unpacked the implications of the newly implemented Nationality and Borders Bill. We beatboxed protest chants, we rapped and sang together and we learnt how to ‘subvertise’ fossil fuel advertisements.

Participants in a workshop at We Rise

Groups in England organised an action in Enfield. They collaborated with different local and international grassroots environmental justice groups, including Stop the Edmonton Incinerator, COP26 Coalition, Silvertown Tunnel Coalition, Jubilee for Climate, Extinction Rebelion and IWGB. We had a workshop led by Georgie from the Brighton group and strong comms and accessibility organising from the Liverpool group.

All these events and protests were made stronger with the hard work of our Accessibility working group. We made sure that We Rise and the day of action protests were open and supportive to people with different accessibility needs. This is the kind of community care that cultivates strong, sustainable activism!

Léo Bodelle

The last three months have been busy for the youth network. As mentioned elsewhere, we helped organise a series of successful Decolonise Vaccines talks. Our youth groups in Brighton, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Cambridge, London and Stirling collaborated with student groups UAEM and Students for Global Health to deliver great events on the speaker tour.

We also participated in the national week of action against corporate courts. Our youth groups in Scotland teamed up to organise a protest outside Clyde & Co on the Wednesday. The day was really energetic and well organised, with a great attendance and speakers from the SNP, Fridays for Future and the Scottish Greens.

June 2022 13

European Summer University

of movements for a social and ecological transition 17-21 August • Mönchengladbach, Germany This August, Global Justice Now is taking part in the European Summer University of Social Movements in Germany. It’s a great opportunity to find out more about justice and solidarity issues, and learn from the perspectives of likeminded people in other European countries. So why not consider coming along?

The European Summer University (ESU) is an activist event with simultaneous interpretation between English, German and French, and a huge range of workshops and plenaries, some of which we’ve organised.

We’ve set up a temporary opt-in mailing list If you’d like to be kept informed about tickets, accommodation, sessions and Global Justice Now meetups (it doesn’t commit you to anything of course!). Find the link at globaljustice.org.uk/esu22

and solidarity trips – the centre of organised resistance to German coal mining and defence of old-growth forests is located nearby and Saturday’s programme includes our own protest at an open-cast mine.

The event is organised by the European ATTAC network (which we’re part of) and other organisations we work with such as the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute.

Sessions and speakers

Practicalities

We’ll be strategising with European trade activists and hearing from speakers such as Luciana Ghiotto from the Latin American Platform Against Free Trade Deals. We’ll be joined by Maaza Seyoum of the African Alliance, a leading figure in the People’s Vaccine campaign. Our climate justice forum will see War on Want’s Asad Rehman discuss priorities for a just transition with German activist-scholar Ulrich Brand, Italian trade unionist Simona Fabiani, Ende Gelände activist Esteban Servat and Ukranian climate expert Yuliya Yurchenko. And Shaista Aziz of Oxford Anti-Racist City will be speaking at a forum we’re organising with our close ally ATTAC France on the importance of diversity and building movements that are actively anti-oppressive, alongside Françoise Vergès, author of A Decolonial Feminism.

Mönchengladbach is just a few hours train ride from Brussels, so it’s a feasible journey from the UK without flying. Nearby Cologne is worth visiting before or after the event, and is also a handy rail hub for onward journeys as part of your summer holidays. Check out rail journeys at www.raileurope.com.

But there will be over 130 individual sessions to choose from, plus a cultural programme 14 June 2022

Accommodation is widely available and cheaper in Mönchengladbach than in bigger cities, but there will also be a free camping ground near to the venue, which is the Hochschule Niederrhein, and there will be some limited spare-bed offers with locals.

More information is regularly being added to the event website at www.esu22.eu/en The programme and tickets sales will be released fairly soon. If you have any questions about the event, you can email James at james.onions@globaljustice.org.uk or call him on 020 7820 4900.

Incorporating group responses into our new strategy Nicola Ansell Chair of council Our last council meeting took place in late April and was the first time most of the council has been able to meet in person for more than two years. We dealt with usual council business in the morning and held our annual ‘staff-council awayday’ in the afternoon – another first since the start of the pandemic. We had a very productive afternoon, generating ideas about how we take forward our work on climate change, and also how we work with global south groups. I think everyone was impressed with the sheer number of groups we collaborate with globally!

A major focus of the morning’s business was our new strategy, and in particular the outcomes of our strategy consultation with groups. Thank you so much to those who responded to this. Not all active local groups replied and of those that did, there was a good level of satisfaction with the general direction of the strategy. Both staff and council have looked at all the comments and we’ve made some amendments to our strategy to reflect them. In particular, we agreed that it was important to stress the link between environmental and economic justice, our independence from political parties and our role in campaigning on issues that other organisations are failing to cover.

We also think that forming local alliances is a really important and empowering part of our campaign strategy, and have made that clear in the strategy.

We’d like to say a huge thank you for all the suggestions and comments on specific campaign areas too. We tried to keep specific campaigns out of the strategy, and rather to provide a framework for how we choose campaigns. But, nonetheless, this input will be really helpful at that next stage of our planning. The ideas around resources, specific actions and ways of working, and

the importance of alternative models have been well received. There were plenty of other individual bits of help and advice in there that are appreciated too.

In the name of transparency and further debate, we also thought we should lay out where we disagree with some of the feedback. We highly value our political independence, but we don’t think this translates into political neutrality. While we hope to convince people across the spectrum of our arguments, we have to accept there are some that we’re unlikely to persuade. Historically we think we’ve been strongest when we’ve convinced others to take up demands and issues, and reach audiences we are unable to.

Relatedly, we strongly believe that neocolonialism exists, and the legacies of empire and colonialism – for example through our international economic institutions – are key elements driving poverty and inequality in the world. We think this is foundational to our organisation, and it’s important to call it what it is. Of course, it’s completely right to say that power dynamics in the world have changed – for instance, it’s impossible to ignore the rise of China today. But we think our main role is to challenge the government and businesses based here.

We hope we can continue debating these topics, and that you will agree with and feel part of our final strategy document. We hear that some of you think it’s all a bit general, and perhaps even ‘obvious’. But we hope that it’s a framework we can use to devise interesting plans which you will find exciting, and which is a good statement of what binds us together.

Thanks again, and look forward to seeing many of you at our AGM. June 2022 15

Global Justice Now and Jubilee for Climate present

Hope

in the

dark

Climate breakdown, reparations and a just transition

Saturday 9 July 2022, 1–6pm • Owen Building, Sheffield Hallam University Please make sure to book in advance at: globaljustice.org.uk/hope

Lumumba Di-Aping Former UN climate negotiator Esther Stanford-Xosei Reparations scholar-activist • Nick Dearden Global Justice Now • Nick Anim Jubilee for Climate • Maggie Mason South Lakes Action on Climate Change

16 June 2022

Join us for Global Justice Now’s AGM and national gathering to discuss what a just global transition looks like, and how climate justice movements are taking a stand the world over.

With panels and workshops on: the case for climate reparations • vaccine inequality • climate and trade • debt and climate justice • mobilising towards a globally just transition