It's time to question the global economic systems damaging the planet, says new Global Witness head
BARCELONA, July 31 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Global Witness, a British campaign group that has earned international renown for exposing the shadowy trade in natural resources that fuels conflicts from Africa to Asia, is taking aim at climate change.
In a blog this week introducing its new executive director Gillian Caldwell, one of the investigative organisation’s three founders noted: “we are rallying ourselves around our next challenge - the greatest of our time - climate change”.
“Now, more than ever, it is clear that vested interests are still breathing life into a climate debate that should have died out many years ago, and sacrificing our planet in the name of consumption and the pursuit of profit,” wrote Patrick Alley.
The appointment of Caldwell, an American activist and film maker, is no coincidence. She is a former campaign director at 1Sky, a U.S. campaign pushing for federal reforms to cut carbon emissions and create green jobs, which has since merged with 350.org, another climate change campaign.
Before that, Caldwell headed up WITNESS, an organisation co-founded by Peter Gabriel, which uses video activism to fight for international human rights. She also worked on a major investigation into Russian mafia involvement in trafficking women for prostitution.
Caldwell spoke to the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Megan Rowling about how the global economy is driving climate change, and what might be done to rein in its excesses.
TRF: Why is climate change a major concern for Global Witness?
Caldwell: I see climate change as very directly related to the way the global economy has been evolving and the expectations it has generated for itself in terms of maximising profit at any price.
Whether it is through fossil fuel subsidies or lax regulatory schemes, companies have been able to pass on the cost - the economic expense and the devastating health impacts of corporate behaviour that pollutes the air and has too often very disproportionate impacts on the poorest and most marginalised communities.
One of the questions we (at Global Witness) are asking ourselves is what difference are we already making when it comes to climate change, and how can we be making more of a difference? That's obviously a clear challenge and it's not just an environmental problem - it's a problem with massive human rights and humanitarian implications, and it has enormous economic implications as well.
Climate change is a place where we've been very active for a long time, particularly vis-a-vis our work with respect to forests and land. We are helping preserve the lungs of the planet in many places around the world which are being targeted for clear-cutting, whether it's the Congo Basin or some new planned work we are looking at in Peru, or the work we have done in Asia - for example, more recently with Sarawak, (a state) in Malaysia.
When it comes to our work on corruption, it is the shadow system - this underlying network of attorneys and banks in the global North - that facilitates and enables the looting of vast sums of money... That has huge development implications and also substantial environmental and climate implications in situations where that network is facilitating mega projects which are drilling for or extracting fossil fuels.
One of the things that strikes me with respect to the climate debate is taking a hard look at fossil fuels, and the subsidies that are regularly handed out. You have a scenario, certainly in the United States and around the world, where politicians are too often bought and paid for, and in turn they (companies) leverage very substantial return on their investment in the form of subsidies.
That seems to be a place that would make some sense to take a look, given its relationship to corruption and the ways in which it prepares a completely unbalanced playing field in which it's really hard for renewables to compete.
TRF: Where is there the biggest need for organisations like Global Witness to focus on exposing abuses on the ground?
Caldwell: Environmental defenders are more at risk now than they have ever been before, because of the role they play as a canary in the coal mine. These individuals...are courageous enough to stand up and to say that it's not okay for major multinational corporations to waltz their way into historically indigenous territory or land that's owned by people and that states and companies have essentially absconded with in the so-called interests of development.
We have documented substantial increases in violence and threats confronting those members of the community - similarly journalists are facing unprecedented levels of threats. So we've absolutely got to see a lot more action in terms of ensuring accountability and mechanisms for investigating and prosecuting cases where people are threatened, tortured or assassinated for exercising their rights.
I lived in Chiang Mai for a year and looked at the issue of land grabbing in Cambodia and there you see so clearly the intersection between environmental and human rights abuses and its relationship to climate change...because in that country, so-called economic land concessions have now claimed 40 percent of the land mass of the country and this is for large, industrial-scale agriculture.
TRF: Has the world not made any progress in limiting opportunities for economic wrong-doing and harming the planet?
Caldwell: I do feel optimistic that when it comes to the frameworks and the expectations we all have of each other, we are making good progress in the right direction. With business, for example, the conversation today is absolutely different than it was 20 years ago. Consumers are increasingly demanding and expecting some responsibility from corporations regarding where their products are coming from and how people within their supply chains are being treated.
If we think about progress over time, over the course of human civilisation and evolution, we are seeing very rapid progress, but it's not enough - it's never enough and that's why we get up every day.
The question is always, ‘Are consumers prepared to pay the price?’ You do need to pay a price if you want people to be treated fairly and you want products to be produced sustainably. And it's up to all of us to step up to the plate and be prepared to pay the price, and for companies to be prepared to bear the price when it comes to their profit margins.
My impression is that we've got to move away from voluntary standards and towards binding standards. Sometimes you need to take an incremental approach, but in general our experience with voluntary standards has not been strong across sectors, so the more we can go for binding obligations and accountability with respect to those obligations, the better off we can be.
TRF: Can the global push for sustainable development make any real difference to the problematic economic model that fosters the kinds of abuses Global Witness seeks to stop?
Caldwell: The Pope's (recent environment) encyclical is an amazing invitation to question a system that has run amok. In so many instances, for publicly traded companies, they have a legal obligation to deliver quarterly returns and not to be taking a long-term view.
If you're a fossil fuel company, your failure to accept the reality that the G8 have made certain commitments on carbon reductions, and to act accordingly, (would be) a breach of fiduciary responsibility in a world in which you're actually held to account for a long-term economic position and financial health. But that's not what our system demands; it's not what the stock market expects.
So we really do need to ask some deep questions about the systems that we have created, the expectations that have become enshrined, and the very serious collateral damage that these systems are causing for people and the planet.
(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Laurie Goering)
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