Category Archives: Corporate Globalization

by | 2013-12-06 · 16:00

KPFK Earth Watch Interview: Orin Langelle on WTO Meetings in Bali

Orin Langelle, Founder and Board Chair of Global Justice Ecology Project discusses the WTO meetings in Bali taking place from 3-6 December, as well as several significant anniversaries for the global movement against neoliberal corporate globalization.  He also mentions the photo exhibit he has in Bali at the Peoples’ Camp taking place there parallel to the WTO meetings.  The exhibit can be viewed here: http://wp.me/p2Mr2B-JC

Candlelight memorial for Lee Kyung Hae at the WTO ministerial in Cancun in 2003 where Hae committed suicide in protest of WTO rules on agriculture.

Candlelight memorial for South Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae at the WTO ministerial in Cancun in 2003 where Hae committed suicide in protest of WTO rules on agriculture.  PhotoLangelle.org

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Filed under Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Earth Radio, Events, Industrial agriculture, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, Political Repression, WTO

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by | 2013-12-05 · 10:23

KPFK Earth Minute: Water privatization promoted at WTO meeting in Bali

By Anne Petermann, December 3, 2013. Source: KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio

kpfk_logoGlobal Justice Ecology Project teams up with KPFK Sojourner Truth Radio each week to produce the Earth Minute and Earth Watch segments. Listen this week for updates on the WTO ministerial in Bali, Indonesia, where water privatization is on the table and peasant movements are rising up against the continued commodification of life and land.

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by | · 09:00

Globalization photographs at the Bali, Indonesia World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings

Fence is torn down during protests against the WTO ministerial in Cancún, Mexico in 2003 shortly after the suicide of South Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae. PhotoLangelle.org Fence is torn down during protests against the WTO ministerial in Cancún, Mexico in 2003 shortly after the suicide of South Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae. PhotoLangelle.org

Fence is torn down during protests against the WTO ministerial in Cancún, Mexico in 2003 shortly after the suicide of South Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae. PhotoLangelle.org

Buffalo, NY (US) – Orin Langelle, a Buffalo-based photojournalist, in conjunction with the Asia Pacific Research Network [1], has a new photo exhibit documenting two decades of protests against globalizationhttp://wp.me/p2Mr2B-JC  that is being shown during the WTO ministerial in Bali, Indonesia.  The meeting started yesterday and ends on 6 December.

The exhibit is titled Peoples’ Struggle Against the WTO and Neoliberal Globalization.

The exhibit marks the 10th anniversary of the death of South Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae, who took his life in 2003 while atop the barricades surrounding the WTO Ministerial in Cancún, Mexico. He wore a sign around his neck that said WTO Kills Farmers. His action was part of massive protests in Cancún against the trade policies of the WTO.  Moments before he died, Lee Kyung Hae said, “Don’t worry about me, just struggle your hardest.”  He was a member of La Via Campesina [2], the International Peasant’s Movement.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Indigenous Peoples, Industrial agriculture, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, WTO

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by | 2013-11-25 · 11:04

“We Have to Consume Less”: Scientists Call For Radical Economic Overhaul to Avert Climate Crisis

Nov 21, 2013, Source: Democracy Now!

A pair of climate scientists are calling for what some may view as a shocking solution to the global warming crisis: a rethinking of the economic order in the United States and other industrialized nations. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the influential Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in England say many of the solutions proposed by world leaders to prevent “runaway global warming” will not be enough to address the scale of the crisis. They have called for “radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the United States, EU and other wealthy nations.” Anderson says that to avoid an increase in temperature of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the world would require a “revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony.”

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Green Economy, Warsaw/COP-19

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by | 2013-11-21 · 09:20

Climate Update #4: Tension high in Warsaw talks as G77+China walk out vs climate inaction

 By Tetet Nera-Lauron, 21 November, 2013. Source: IBON International

Tensions and tempers run high with only two days left at the 19th Conference of Parties (COP 19) and tremendous pressure for the annual climate summit to deliver substantive outcomes.

Members of the G77+China, a group of 133 developing countries have walked out of the negotiations on ‘loss and damage’ at dawn today, amidst growing frustration at the intransigence of the EU, Australia, Canada, US and other developed countries on the issue of who should pay compensation for the effects of extreme climate events. The developed countries insist that this issue be addressed only after 2015.

An international mechanism on loss and damage will help countries address the impacts of extreme events—such as super typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines almost two weeks ago—the enormity of which would make it difficult for them to adapt to.

Representatives from the G77+China bloc said that they have been very flexible in order to reach an acceptable outcome, and up until the wee hours of the morning, there was some progress in the negotiations. Australia then made a motion to put all the agreements in brackets, again putting everything on hold. At this point, the G77+China decided that it was time for the ministers attending the 19th Conference of Parties (COP 19) to make a political decision.

Mr. Marcin Korolec, Poland’s Environment Minister and COP 19 President, immediately sought an audience with key actors in the G77+China group, to help diffuse tensions and seek a productive way forward to the negotiations. Negotiations on loss and damage have resumed tonight, and is expected to make some progress after the impasse.

The high level segment of the internationalclimate talks has also gone full swing with two ministerial dialogues on the COP/CMP and on climate finance.

The Philippines’ Climate Change Minister Lucille Sering made an impassioned speech at the COP/CMP plenary session, stressing that almost two decades after the UN Climate Change talks began, there is still lack of progress in developing global actions against climate change.
“Every time we attend this conference, I am beginning to feel like we are negotiating on who is to live and who is to die. Would it be right for me to conclude that we failed miserably?” she said.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, speaking at the Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Finance, stressed on the need for ‘bolder’ targets to scale up climate finance and to ‘break down all barriers’ to achieve the large scale transformation necessary to keep below 2 degrees Celsius global temperature rise.

The Green Climate Fund, the operating entity of the UN Climate Convention, remains an empty shell, with very conservative pledges made by developed countries, but without actual commitments given towards its capitalization and operationalization.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Carbon Trading, Climate Change, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Warsaw/COP-19

by | 2013-11-20 · 09:25

IBON International: Update #3 from Warsaw climate negotiations

By Tetet Nera-Lauron, 20 November 2013. Source: IBON International

cop19UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon urged the ministers gathered at the 19th Conference of Parties (COP 19) to take ‘tougher action’ to reach a global deal to address climate change in 2015. While recognizing that the world’s leaders faced a steep climb ahead to arrive at an arrangement for an international climate deal, he cautioned that ‘people now face and fear the wrath of a warming planet’, in obvious reference to super typhoon Haiyan that ravaged the Philippines more than a week ago. He challenged governments to ‘set the bar higher’ in committing to climate action.

Ban-Ki Moon also called on governments, especially from the developed countries, to step up aid to help poor nations slow their rising greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of global warming. He alluded to the issue of climate finance, currently the subject of intense debates with disappointing results, and said that ‘I sincerely hope the developed world should keep their promise so all the nations of the planet Earth can move together.’

Negotiators from many developing countries indicated that this year’s summit will be the ‘finance COP’, meaning they expect to resolve long-standing issues and disagreements on the amount of resources that will be actually committed to enable particularly vulnerable countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. A High Level Ministerial meeting is being convened for that purpose, but this will remain a token gesture of dialogue if no concrete flow of resources (to countries affected by climate change) will materialize. This is the most likely outcome of the meeting, especially in the wake of Australia pulling out of its earlier pledge for climate financing, and with the United States ruling out any new pledges in the light of its own fiscal problems.

Meanwhile, Venezuela convened a meeting for civil society organizations and its head of delegation Mrs. Claudia Salerno gave a briefing on Venezuela’s organization of a Social Pre-COP in Caracas in October 2014.  They envision the Social Pre-COP to be a process that will involve diverse actors from civil society and governments from all over the world, and which will result in an outcome that, while carrying the issues, analysis, and aspirations of social movements and grassroots organizations, will also be able to feed into the formal UN climate negotiations. This initiative by Venezuela, i.e. bridging the disconnect between the voices of people from the ground and the language of the negotiations, is a bold move that has never been done before. Mrs. Salerno said that now is the ‘time for craziness, because we have tried so many things in the official process (of climate negotiations) and it didn’t work, so we are going to try to do something else. We don’t have anything to lose, but we need to try everything we can for the world to have ambitious aims.’

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Green Economy, Warsaw/COP-19

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by | 2013-11-19 · 09:39

IBON International COP19 Climate Update 2

By Tetet Nera-Lauron, 19 November, 2013. Source: IBON International

Activists drop a banner of the Polish Economy Ministry in Warsaw on Monday, Nov 18th, the opening day of the World Coal and Climate Summit. Photo: AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

Activists drop a banner off the Polish Economy Ministry in Warsaw on Monday, Nov 18th, the opening day of the World Coal and Climate Summit. Photo: AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

‘Coal power can be part of the solution to tackling global warming. If there’s a will, there’s a way.’

This was the message of UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres at today’s opening of the 2-day World Coal and Climate Summit. While stating that her presence at the Summit is ‘neither a tacit approval of coal use, nor a call for the immediate disappearance of coal’, Figueres enjoined the coal industry to ‘change rapidly and dramatically for everyone’s sake.’

The 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body tasked to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change, stated that the world will overshoot the internationally agreed goal to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius if energy demands are met in the same way as it had been in the past. The UNFCCC Chief outlined the parameters of this ‘paradigm shift’ for the coal industry: (a) close all existing subcritical plants; (b) implement safe carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) on all new plants; and (c) leave most existing reserves in the ground. Continue reading →

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Coal, Corporate Globalization, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Warsaw/COP-19

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by | 2013-11-17 · 11:45

Tom Goldtooth of Indigenous Environmental Network KPFK Interview

IEN-logoTom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network was this week’s guest for our Earth Watch interview segment on the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK in Los Angeles.  Tom addressed the issues for Indigenous Peoples around the UN Climate COP in Warsaw.  Listen below:

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Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Coal, Corporate Globalization, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Natural Disasters, UNFCCC