Resources

Over the past decade, the Department for International Development (DfID) has increasingly been putting the culture and interests of the private sector at the heart of its work. Aid is being used to encourage private sector involvement in developing countries, whether this is in the form of supporting pro-market policies or directly channelling aid money through companies.

The green economy the UK government and others are pushing at Rio is based on the idea that we are trashing the global commons because we don’t value it properly. Therefore, they say, we need to put a financial value on nature and the services (clean air, water, resources like trees, food, fuel) it gives us. Then we can bring these things into the market and pay the proper price.

All the workshops are active and participatory, using a variety of methodologies and exercises to get people to think about and question their own views, to share them and listen to others.

The UN climate talks in Durban, in late November 2011, could be our last chance to save the current international climate deal. The first period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012, and its continuation is in doubt as rich industrialised countries push to replace it with a system that allows them to pledge the reduction of emissions on a voluntary basis. The talks are also expected to set up a new fund to deliver finance needed by countries affected by climate change.

Call for Immediate Action on Financial Speculation on Food Commodities - list of signatories

This report, commissioned by WDM and PLATFORM and written by former PriceWaterhouse Coopers consultant James Leaton, shows how we could create 50,000 green jobs by transforming the publicly-owned Royal Bank of Scotland into a powerful Green Investment Bank.

WDM and PLATFORM have been campaigning against RBS's socially and environmentally disastrous investments, particularly their funding of destructive tar sands mining. But by following the recommendations of the report, the bank could become a force for social and environmental good.

In recent years the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have adopted new ways of working and new rhetoric on ‘country ownership’ and ‘participation’. At the start of the 1980s, the two institutions began to make their loans and aid conditional on implementing ‘structural adjustment’ policies. The set of structural adjustment conditions, commonly referred to as the ‘Washington Consensus’, have been widely criticised both for undermining national political processes and causing widespread social and economic damage.

How IMF and World Bank policies tied to debt relief are undermining development

There is a common perception that the food crisis in Malawi has been caused by the floods that ruined the planting season in 2001, or by widespread government corruption and mismanagement. These undoubtedly have contributed to the crisis. But there is another cause, which has been even more significant – inappropriate policies of donor agencies, led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).