Resources

Answers to tricky questions about our food/agribusiness campaign

Our 2011 annual review

WDM’s campaign to curb speculation on food tackles one aspect of a broken food system. We’re also helping to build a movement for a just global food system, inspired by activists in the global south.

The global food system is in crisis. Globally we are now producing more food than ever before. But while 1.5 billion people are overweight, 870 million people are affected by chronic hunger. Small-scale farmers are suffering from prices falling below their costs of production due to unfair trade regimes, corporate concentration and the dismantling of state support.

The Republic of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, is in the midst of a fossil fuel export boom. Until recently a member of OPEC and one of the world's biggest exporters of liquid natural gas, Indonesia has now become the world's biggest exporter of thermal coal, an industry centred in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo.

The UK government and the energy-finance complex fuelling climate change

Fossil fuel companies raise money through a mix of equity and debt. Large companies usually raise equity by selling shares, and the London Stock Exchange is one of the world’s leading share trading venues. The money mostly comes from ordinary people, but we have little say in the decision of fund managers to invest our pensions, insurance revenues and savings in extractive industries.

The Cerrejón coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia is the largest in Latin America and one of the largest in the world. Its steady expansion since its founding in 1976 has led to the destruction of whole villages populated by local indigenous and Afro-Colombian people.

Map of destructive coal projects and their links to UK finance