Last November, the duly elected government of the United States of America rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline – in response to an outcry by citizens across the country and protests by the communities along the pipeline’s route.

Now, TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, is suing for $15 billion in sunk costs and lost future profits.

As crazy as this sounds, it’s because corporations can use trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to sue governments for introducing rules that protect citizens’ health, rights or the environment.

The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried climate-killing tar sands oil from Canada, was rejected by US President Barack Obama in November 2015.

The pipeline would have opened up global markets to exports of tar sands oil – one of the world’s dirtiest fuels. Blocking the pipeline was a major victory for the climate movement, putting the interests of people ahead of profits.

TransCanada’s Keystone XL permit was rejected on the basis that construction of the pipeline was not in the national interest of the United States and contributed to climate change. Instead of honoring President Obama’s reasoned decision, TransCanada is turning to secretive trade tribunals in an attempt to force American citizens to pay compensation.

Trade rules undermining environmental protection

Trade and investments agreements are no longer just about import tariffs, but about a range of issues that determine the food we eat, the energy we use and the ability of our governments to regulate in the public interest.

Current trade rules empower corporations like TransCanada to challenge legitimate environmental protections in secret tribunals. A mechanism called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that is included in most trade deals enables companies to sue governments when they feel their profits are threatened by new regulation.

TransCanada says that Obama’s decision to reject the pipeline was “arbitrary and unjustified”, and has initiated one of the largest trade appeals against the US on this basis, describing it as “a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the perceptions of the international community regarding the Administration’s leadership on climate change and the President’s assertion of unprecedented, independent powers.”

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. There are over 600 such ISDS cases worldwide, with the majority in the global south. For example, a simple bilateral trade agreement was the basis of a cigarette company’s attempt to sue the government of Uruguay for an anti-smoking campaign. And the Ethyl corporation gained the reversal of Canada’s ban on the toxic chemical MMT.

The fact that a private international tribunal composed of unelected corporate lawyers can force governments to pay billions of dollars for protecting the environment is an example of the dangerous powers assumed by big business through trade deals.

And we could see even more of these lawsuits in the future. New trade deals like the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will greatly expand this system. These deals have been called ‘NAFTA on Steroids‘.

Growing movement for change

The silver lining may be that the Keystone XL pipeline becomes a rallying point for a growing global movement of grassroots communities, activists and politicians who are gravely concerned about the implications of these unjust trade deals.

A Europe wide anti-TTIP protest on 15th October saw tens of thousands on the streets of Brussels, London and Amsterdam and a stunning 250,000 people at a demonstration in Berlin.

In Uruguay, after months of intense public pressure against a similar Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) – including a general strike on the issue – the President listened to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement last September.

TransCanada has made a big mistake by going after an oil pipeline that’s already synonymous with corporate greed, and disregard for the environment and communities. They’re putting these toxic trade agreements out into the spotlight of attention. And when people get a good look at them, the more they oppose these corporate power grabs.

Bad trade deals are a ticking time bomb for climate action and must be stopped. Trade and investment policy can no longer continue to undermine a sustainable future.

People power defeated the dirty tar sands oil pipeline, and will also defeat these unfair trade deals.

Sam Cossar-Gilbert is economic justice and resisting neoliberalism program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International. He tweets @samcossar

Last November, the duly elected government of the United States of America rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline – in response to an outcry by citizens across the country and protests by the communities along the pipeline’s route.

Now, TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, is suing for $15 billion in sunk costs and lost future profits.

As crazy as this sounds, it’s because corporations can use trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to sue governments for introducing rules that protect citizens’ health, rights or the environment.

The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried climate-killing tar sands oil from Canada, was rejected by US President Barack Obama in November 2015.

The pipeline would have opened up global markets to exports of tar sands oil – one of the world’s dirtiest fuels. Blocking the pipeline was a major victory for the climate movement, putting the interests of people ahead of profits.

TransCanada’s Keystone XL permit was rejected on the basis that construction of the pipeline was not in the national interest of the United States and contributed to climate change. Instead of honoring President Obama’s reasoned decision, TransCanada is turning to secretive trade tribunals in an attempt to force American citizens to pay compensation.

Trade rules undermining environmental protection

Trade and investments agreements are no longer just about import tariffs, but about a range of issues that determine the food we eat, the energy we use and the ability of our governments to regulate in the public interest.

Current trade rules empower corporations like TransCanada to challenge legitimate environmental protections in secret tribunals. A mechanism called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that is included in most trade deals enables companies to sue governments when they feel their profits are threatened by new regulation.

TransCanada says that Obama’s decision to reject the pipeline was “arbitrary and unjustified”, and has initiated one of the largest trade appeals against the US on this basis, describing it as “a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the perceptions of the international community regarding the Administration’s leadership on climate change and the President’s assertion of unprecedented, independent powers.”

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. There are over 600 such ISDS cases worldwide, with the majority in the global south. For example, a simple bilateral trade agreement was the basis of a cigarette company’s attempt to sue the government of Uruguay for an anti-smoking campaign. And the Ethyl corporation gained the reversal of Canada’s ban on the toxic chemical MMT.

The fact that a private international tribunal composed of unelected corporate lawyers can force governments to pay billions of dollars for protecting the environment is an example of the dangerous powers assumed by big business through trade deals.

And we could see even more of these lawsuits in the future. New trade deals like the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will greatly expand this system. These deals have been called ‘NAFTA on Steroids‘.

Growing movement for change

The silver lining may be that the Keystone XL pipeline becomes a rallying point for a growing global movement of grassroots communities, activists and politicians who are gravely concerned about the implications of these unjust trade deals.

A Europe wide anti-TTIP protest on 15th October saw tens of thousands on the streets of Brussels, London and Amsterdam and a stunning 250,000 people at a demonstration in Berlin.

In Uruguay, after months of intense public pressure against a similar Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) – including a general strike on the issue – the President listened to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement last September.

TransCanada has made a big mistake by going after an oil pipeline that’s already synonymous with corporate greed, and disregard for the environment and communities. They’re putting these toxic trade agreements out into the spotlight of attention. And when people get a good look at them, the more they oppose these corporate power grabs.

Bad trade deals are a ticking time bomb for climate action and must be stopped. Trade and investment policy can no longer continue to undermine a sustainable future.

People power defeated the dirty tar sands oil pipeline, and will also defeat these unfair trade deals.

Sam Cossar-Gilbert is economic justice and resisting neoliberalism program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International. He tweets @samcossar

Last November, the duly elected government of the United States of America rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline – in response to an outcry by citizens across the country and protests by the communities along the pipeline’s route.

Now, TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, is suing for $15 billion in sunk costs and lost future profits.

As crazy as this sounds, it’s because corporations can use trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to sue governments for introducing rules that protect citizens’ health, rights or the environment.

The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried climate-killing tar sands oil from Canada, was rejected by US President Barack Obama in November 2015.

The pipeline would have opened up global markets to exports of tar sands oil – one of the world’s dirtiest fuels. Blocking the pipeline was a major victory for the climate movement, putting the interests of people ahead of profits.

TransCanada’s Keystone XL permit was rejected on the basis that construction of the pipeline was not in the national interest of the United States and contributed to climate change. Instead of honoring President Obama’s reasoned decision, TransCanada is turning to secretive trade tribunals in an attempt to force American citizens to pay compensation.

Trade rules undermining environmental protection

Trade and investments agreements are no longer just about import tariffs, but about a range of issues that determine the food we eat, the energy we use and the ability of our governments to regulate in the public interest.

Current trade rules empower corporations like TransCanada to challenge legitimate environmental protections in secret tribunals. A mechanism called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that is included in most trade deals enables companies to sue governments when they feel their profits are threatened by new regulation.

TransCanada says that Obama’s decision to reject the pipeline was “arbitrary and unjustified”, and has initiated one of the largest trade appeals against the US on this basis, describing it as “a symbolic gesture based on speculation about the perceptions of the international community regarding the Administration’s leadership on climate change and the President’s assertion of unprecedented, independent powers.”

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. There are over 600 such ISDS cases worldwide, with the majority in the global south. For example, a simple bilateral trade agreement was the basis of a cigarette company’s attempt to sue the government of Uruguay for an anti-smoking campaign. And the Ethyl corporation gained the reversal of Canada’s ban on the toxic chemical MMT.

The fact that a private international tribunal composed of unelected corporate lawyers can force governments to pay billions of dollars for protecting the environment is an example of the dangerous powers assumed by big business through trade deals.

And we could see even more of these lawsuits in the future. New trade deals like the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will greatly expand this system. These deals have been called ‘NAFTA on Steroids‘.

Growing movement for change

The silver lining may be that the Keystone XL pipeline becomes a rallying point for a growing global movement of grassroots communities, activists and politicians who are gravely concerned about the implications of these unjust trade deals.

A Europe wide anti-TTIP protest on 15th October saw tens of thousands on the streets of Brussels, London and Amsterdam and a stunning 250,000 people at a demonstration in Berlin.

In Uruguay, after months of intense public pressure against a similar Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) – including a general strike on the issue – the President listened to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement last September.

TransCanada has made a big mistake by going after an oil pipeline that’s already synonymous with corporate greed, and disregard for the environment and communities. They’re putting these toxic trade agreements out into the spotlight of attention. And when people get a good look at them, the more they oppose these corporate power grabs.

Bad trade deals are a ticking time bomb for climate action and must be stopped. Trade and investment policy can no longer continue to undermine a sustainable future.

People power defeated the dirty tar sands oil pipeline, and will also defeat these unfair trade deals.

Sam Cossar-Gilbert is economic justice and resisting neoliberalism program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International. He tweets @samcossar

EDF is considering the sale of a €3bn (£2.2bn) stake in its British nuclear business in a bid to raise cash for new Hinkley Point reactors.

Possible buyers would be state-owned Chinese companies, who are already committed partners on the £18bn Somerset project.

EDF could unveil details of a sell-off plan on 16th February, when it is scheduled to release annual financial figures and is expected to give a final investment decision on building Britain’s first new reactors for 20 years.

The French daily, Les Echos, reported on Thursday that EDF may reduce its stake in the eight existing nuclear reactors it owns from 80% to 51% by bringing in a new investor as part of a wider €6bn disposal programme.

Industry sources told the Guardian that the possible sell off was only one of a number of different options that were under consideration as the group looked at financing Hinkley Point C and other projects.

They said it was still likely EDF would give the go ahead to Hinkley next month even though it did not have all the financing in place. The project is estimated to cost £18bn, according to EDF, though the European Union has warned it could go as high as £24bn.

EDF under pressure over rising debt and commitments

Centrica, the owner of British Gas, already has a 20% holding but has made clear in the past that it does not want a larger commitment to nuclear, and declined to participate in the Hinkley newbuild scheme.

The entire existing nuclear fleet, made up of advanced gas reactors such as those at Hinkley Point B in Somerset and Dungeness B in Kent, have a book value of €9bn.

Chinese firms have already agreed to take a one-third stake in the Hinkley project and are keen to build their own new reactors at Bradwell, another site currently used by EDF in Essex.

EDF struggled to interest anyone else in the Hinkley scheme, which many in the City have deemed over-expensive, so the Chinese would seem first in line to buy into the rest of the EDF nuclear business if it comes up for grabs.

EDF is also said by Les Echos to be considering disposing of a half stake in the Constellation Energy nuclear group in the US, plus a a similar option to ditch its 50% holding in power transmission business RTE.

Over the last six months the company’s chief executive, Jean-Bernard Lévy, has made clear he is reviewing various parts of the business in a bid to pay for a range of new commitments and rising debt levels.

EDF has been pressured by the government to buy a stake in its ailing engineering partner, Areva, and must set aside at least €55bn to upgrade its huge fleet of French reactors following safety concerns raised by the Fukushima accident in Japan.

EPR trouble in France, Finland and now China too

It has meanwhile emerged that another EDF project is running late at Taishan in China, where the company is building two 1.75GW reactors to the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design, the same as is planned for Hinkley C. The Taishan project is seen as the pilot for Hinkley C, which would also use twin EPR reactors. A further two EPRs are planned for the site.

An article in the Financial Times this week reveals that the target completion date for Taishan, which was originally due to be generating by 2013, has now been set back another year – ‘probably’. EDF is in charge of building the reactors for China General Nuclear Power Corp (GGN) – also its partner at Hinkley C.

“The Chinese plant’s targeted completion date, originally late 2013, has already been put back once, in part because of safety rules after Fukushima. Now it will probably come online in 2017 – though CGN will not say exactly when”, the newspaper reports.

It goes on to quote Zheng Dongshan, CGN senior vice-president: “We must perform a lot of tests, and since it’s now a first of a kind, we need to do more tests than we planned. Those tests should have been done already in Finland or France, but we must do them now.”

He was referring to the EPR reactors at Olkiluoto in Finland and at Flamanville in France. Both are running at roughly three times over the original cost. Olkiluoto was due to be completed by 2009 and the current target in 2018. Flamanville was meant to be working by 2012 but following the discovery of flaws in its reactor vessel no firm date is set.

And now these long delays in France and Finland, as Zheng indicated, are causing knock-on delays at Taishan.

EDF’s ‘final investment decision’ is looming

This precarious situation raises a deep and serious question for EDF and CGN to consider? Is it wise to commit to the EPRs at Hinkley C until at least one other EPR is working somewhere in the world?

This applies especially to cash-tight EDF. CGN is understandably risk-averse over EPRs and is reportedly demanding an indemnity from EDF against losses at Hinkley C – so that while EDF would only own 66.5% of the project, it would be liable for 100% of any cost overruns.

Meanwhile two legal challenges against the UK government’s enormous state aid package for Hinkley C are looming at the European Court: one brought by Austria, now joined by Luxembourg; and one by Germany’s Greenpeace Energy cooperative together with other green energy suppliers in Germany and Austria.

There is also considerable unease in EDF about Hinkley C, which some fear could, in a worst-case scenario, sink the company altogether. The leak to Les Echos is widely supposed to have come from company insiders determined to scupper the project.

This leaves two most likely options for the impending ‘final investment decision’: a refusal; or yet another postponement.

Terry Macalister is energy editor of the Guardian. He has been employed at the paper and website for 12 years and previously worked for the Independent and other national titles.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

This article is based on one by Terry McAlister originally published in the Guardian with additional reporting by Oliver Tickell.

In a dramatic example of the powers assumed by the corporate world through trade deals, energy infrastructure corporation TransCanada has commenced legal actions against the US president for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline project.

Keystone XL was designed to carry 800,000 barrels a day of tar sands oil from Hardisty in Alberta to Steele City in Nebraska, thus increasing outlets for the most carbon-intensive oil currently produced, and reinforcing the dependency that industrialised countries like the US have on fossil fuels.

President Obama turned the project down on 6th November 2015 ciring climate change as his reason for doing so. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change, and frankly approving this project would have undercut that leadership”, Obama stated.

“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.”

The legal case is being brought under the auspices of NAFTA, a predecessor of the current crop of free trade agreements such at TTIP, CETA and TPP.

If it succeeds it will set a truly dreadful precedent, by establishing that ‘free trade’ and investor rights take precedence over action to reduce carbon emissions and reduce the pace of climate change, indeed over the Climate Convention (UNFCCC) and the recently concluded Paris Agreement.

It also poses four alarming propositions for us in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

1. Canadian companies can be nasty, too …

Firstly, the threat posed by CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) between Canada and the EU. This is a prime example of the Canadian corporate world bearing its teeth. As they can no longer build a hugely profitable pipeline to the US, they want to claim compensation from the US taxpayer instead.

Never mind the environmental concerns of the project, the effects on our countryside and animal habitats, there’s money to be made. Politicians need to be very conscious of this when making their minds up whether to support CETA or not when it comes up from ratification later this year.

2. Under TTIP and CETA, all Europe would be at risk

Secondly, and following on from the first point is the potential environmental impact this could have in Europe. Firms involved in fracking, drilling, mining and other environmentally damaging practices also look to exploiting the provisions of various trade treaties to further their profit making at a cost to taxpayers across the world.

This opens up some nice possibilities from the likes of Cuadrilla, which has investment from US corporation Riverstone LLC, and similar fracking companies.

3. The thin end of wide and very dangerous wedge

Then there is the warning that despite politicians and the business world trying to allay concerns of the corporate court system that features in TTIP, CETA and the rest by saying “don’t worry, it won’t happen here.”

It is. It is happening where we were told it couldn’t. Most trade deals with ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement), the secretive corporate court system, are between developing countries and the industrialised west. Of course investment will flow in one direction in these partnerships, meaning the UK or the EU are relatively immune from resulting court actions.

Now with these mega deals between western trading blocks, it’s open season. The attractions of suing rich governments for our tax money are too much for many corporations to resist. Expect more of this kind of action.

4. The money’s so good – for the corporations and their lawyers

Finally, win or lose for TransCanada, the defending government in any ISDS case is in a lose-lose situation. It is impossible for compensation to be paid to a government in ISDS. Sixty percent of ISDS cases are won by the corporations, forty percent defended successfully by the government concerned.

That is an excellent success rate for the businesses concerned (legal law firms are set to make tens of millions from this kind of action). Then there is the question of the costs of defending such a case.

According to United Nations Conference Trade and Development legal costs for a government average at about US$8 million per suit and in complex cases that figure has been known to exceed US$30 million.

So we ask again: why is our government so determined to put future governments, the climate, and untold billions of taxpayers’ money at risk from corporate lawsuits of this type coming to our shores?

Guy Taylor is Trade Campaigner with Global Justice Now. 

This article was originally published by Global Justice Now. Some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

The British countryside, and more particularly lowland England, is enjoying unparalled prosperity. Newly thatched cottages, gleaming Range Rovers, 300 horse power tractors, and rolling seas of subsidised wheat and barley testify that the countryside harbours a great deal of wealth.

However this opulence is not shared by everyone who lives there; it masks an obstinate persistence of age-old inequalities, and a significant level of what is now termed ‘hidden poverty’.

People living in the countryside in lowland England on average earn about £90 per week more than people living in urban areas. On the other hand people working in all rural areas earn on average about £90 per week less than people working in urban areas.

The reason for this apparent paradox is that large numbers of wealthy people who live in the country earn their living in the city. The countryside does not currently generate wealth, it imports it, and it imports the people who earn it.

The influx of wealthy incomers to the countryside is sometimes applauded on the grounds that they spread money around the local economy, and this is indeed the case insofar as they buy local foods, and employ local builders and services.

The influx of the rich has left no place for rural people and workers

However their wealth has also allowed them to buy up huge swathes of rural infrastructure, with the result that the price of houses, agricultural buildings and small parcels of land has rocketed out of the reach of many people who both live and work in the countryside, whose wages, despite the largesse of the incomers, remain below the national average.

Young people born in the countryside often find they have no choice but to move to the city to earn enough money to pay for their accommodation: the proportion of 16-29 year olds in rural areas is only 13.5%, whereas in urban areas it is over 20%.

Moreover not all incomers are wealthy. Some migrate to the countryside seeking outdoor or manual work that they find more congenial than the predominantly sedentary jobs on offer in cities.

Incomers dependent on low rural wages can be at an additional disadvantage, since they do not have the benefit of kin and community support, and they will not be eligible for affordable housing until they have been settled in a locality for some time.

Such people often find themselves living in breach of planning regulations in caravans, out-buildings or similar structures. Increasing numbers are buying small plots of land in an effort to engage with the natural world and stake a claim in the rural economy.

The systematic strangulation of the rural economy

The root cause of the gap between urban and rural wages lies in the fact that the rural economy, reliant on the dispersed production of primary commodities, is vulnerable to competition from global markets and to aggressive price bargaining from cartels of processors and distributors (supermarkets) – whereas large sections of the urban service economy are immune from these forces.

This explains why less than ten percent of earnings from the UK food industry go to UK farmers and fishermen. The UK’s agriculture and fisheries industries generate less than 10% of the total value added by the UK food industry. More than six times as many people are employed in catering and food retail as are employed in primary production in farming and fishing.

Since the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s neither liberal nor socialist governments have been keen to protect land-based industries from market forces, though for completely different ideological reasons. Only after the second world war, when food and timber security issues became paramount, was it felt necessary to support agricultural and forestry production through subsidies which in recent decades have been provided through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Since then, CAP subsidies have helped the UK maintain a modicum of food production by compensating for exposure to a global free market: The UK was 47% self-sufficient in food in 1947. This rose progressively to 78% in 1984 since when it has declined to the current level of 60%.

But they have failed to raise rural wages to the level of urban wages and have instead exacerbated inequalities within the rural economy. Although they were originally linked to productivity, CAP subsidies are now doled out according to the acreage of land owned, irrespective of whether or not it is being productively farmed.

Towers of urban wealth built on undervalued rural produce

There is no mechanism within the CAP system, as applied in the UK, to ensure that payments are used to generate employment, or that it is the people actually working the land who are the recipients.

On the contrary immediate beneficiaries are mostly landowners, while the ultimate beneficiaries are supermarkets who can use the subsidies to pay lower prices for the goods they buy. As profit margins on agricultural produce dwindle to ludicrously small percentages, farms have to expand to survive and subsidies are used to secure loans and invest in ever larger labour-saving machinery to cope with the extra acres.

To illustrate the scale of the problem: the gross profit for a farmers from a 110-kilo pig, sold at a farmgate price of £120, and providing perhaps £400 worth of pork, is just £2.80. The gross profit on a 2.2 kilo broiler chicken is 30 pence. This is before fixed costs such as infrastructure costs, power and rent are deducted. The cost of producing a litre of milk is 27 pence, whereas the price paid as of September 2015 is estimated at 23 pence.

The bulk of the CAP subsidies, currently worth £3 billion, go to a diminishing number of landowners. The £2.9 billion handed out in CAP subsidies in 2014 represented 54% of all profit made by UK farms that year. It is more than the £2.4 billion paid in wages to agricultural workers. Around 40,000 of those landowners are estimated to own 28 million acres between them, around half of all the land in Britain.

Meanwhile, innumerable small family farms have disappeared, swallowed up by industrially farmed holdings increasingly controlled by corporations. In 2000 the average UK farm was 169 acres. By 2010 it was 226 acres – an increase of one third. The average for the whole of Europe is 36 acres. Over the same period, 47,000 farms disappeared, a 20% decline. UK farms are bigger than in any European country except the Czech Republic.

Since the second world war, successive governments have done little to halt the loss of family farms, or to question the blatantly inequitable flow of CAP subsidies.

Rural policy under both Labour and Conservative administrations has been overwhelmingly influenced by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and the National Farmers Union (NFU). Both organizations represent the interests of a tiny number of people – considerably less than the ‘one percent’ that proverbially constitutes the capitalist elite – who between them own two thirds of Britain’s land.

Our plan for effective rural reform

Any programme to reduce inequality in the countryside needs to recognize its two root causes, namely exposure to an unregulated free market, and the UK’s stilted pattern of land ownership.

That is not to suggest that either of these can be tackled head on through a programme of protectionist measures and compulsory land redistribution: the dogma of neoliberalism and the sanctity of property are currently too entrenched.

Rather we propose a menu of practical steps which many people will find sensible and uncontroversial but which collectively add up to a radical shift in rural policy. These include:

• The Land Registry should not be privatized. The register of who owns which land should be completed, and made easily and freely accessible on line. A cadastral map for each municipality should be made publicly available at council offices, as it is in countries such as France and Spain.
• The sell-off of county farms should be halted (except where county farmland can be sold for development and the proceeds used to acquire more or better land). Local authorities should be re-empowered to acquire land for rent to small-scale farmers and new entrants where there is a proven need.
• Common Agricultural Policy direct subsidies should be capped at €150,000 per individual farmer, releasing an estimated £4 million. The ceiling should be lowered progessively over time to a level that supports a wider range of thriving family farms.
• Much organically produced food and animal feed is not labelled as such because the costs of certification are too high for small-scale producers. The burden of labelling and certification should instead be borne by farmers who employ chemicals or other ecologically suspect practices, rather than by organic farmers. In other words, food products that have been produced using artificial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or genetically modified materials should be clearly labelled as such.
• Increase investment in council housing and social housing in villages.
• Measures should be taken to ensure that recently introduced government support for self-build housing is focussed on affordable housing, and not luxury housing.
• All rural local authorities to set targets within their area for the reduction of carbon emissions through renewable energy generation, including solar, wind and micro-hydro – especially community schemes; and through energy saving measures such as insulation of buildings.
• Support should be provided for the creation of ‘village service stations’ in rural settlements that combine retail provision of food and essential goods with post-office and banking services, car-hire and minibus services, etc.
• Include land management (horticulture, arable crops, animal husbandry, forestry etc) as a subject at secondary schools on a par with academic subjects.
• Reintroduce the fuel duty escalator, a ratcheted annual increase of carbon tax on petrol and diesel, including red diesel, with the proceeds earmarked for public transport provision.

The Landworkers’ Alliance is a union of small-scale producers and family farmers who produce food, fuel and fiber. We are a member of the international peasant farming movement La Via Campesina that represents 200 million farmers around the world. We campaign for the rights of small-scale producers and lobby the UK government and European Parliament for policies that support the infrastructure and markets central to our livelihoods.

The Land is an occasional magazine about land rights, written by and for people who believe that the roots of justice, freedom, social security and democracy lie not so much in access to money, or to the ballot box, as in access to land and its resources.

This article is an extract from the Rural Manifesto, launched on 6th January 2016 at the Oxford Real Farming conference with the support of Kerry McCarthy MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

In this version, material from footnotes has been incorporated in the text, and subheadings inserted. The policy measures listed represent a small selection from the original.

The Rural Manifesto is also supported by the Family Farmers Association.

Climate denier Professor Ross McKitrick has resigned as chairman of the academic advisory council of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), according to a statement released by the charity.

The senior fellow of the ExxonMobil- and Koch-funded Fraser Institute in Canada told DeSmog UK he had informed Lord Lawson at the GWPF in September that he intended to stand down citing increased work commitments.

The academic confirmed his stepping down had nothing to do with the high-profile investigative sting by Greenpeace last month which raised serious concerns about the council’s claims to conduct peer reviews of its publications.

McKitrick said: “I decided [to step down] late last summer, because of other commitments I had. And so, I notified them at the beginning of September that I would be leaving at the end of December.”

Asked about the GWPF’s peer review claims, he said: “I am confident the process was as described and I don’t have any further comment to make to you other than what was released before Christmas.”

‘I’m afraid Greenpeace has got it wrong’ – or maybe not …

DeSmog UK emailed the GWPF on 8th December 2015, hours after Greenpeace published its agenda-setting investigation, asking whether McKitrick would be asked to resign in light of the charity’s academic publications apparently being sold out to an oil and gas man.

Dr Benny Peiser, the former part-time sports anthologist and director of the GWPF, said then: “I’m afraid Greenpeace has got it wrong.”

An undercover investigator from Greenpeace telephoned and exchanged emails with Professor Will Happer – also a member of the GWPF advisory council – posing as a Middle East oil and gas company representative.

During the exchange, Happer discussed producing a report praising CO₂ that which would then be passed through the GWPF’s “peer review” process. He explained this was significantly easier than trying to publish in a journal. He also asked that any fee be paid to another climate denial charity.

The scandal made the front page in Britain and France during the COP21 climate conference in Paris. The Charity Commission has confirmed it will consider the Greenpeace evidence as part of an ongoing inquiry into the GWPF.

‘Peer review’ or rubber stamp?

Adam Levy, from the respected Nature journal, told openDemocracy a report described as peer reviewed by the GWPF had not gone through the process in any meaningful way.

“The review process received by this paper is not what would generally be described as peer-review. I have not encountered other instances of similar publications being cited as peer-reviewed in either academia, or science journalism”, he said.

McKitrick is something of a hero in climate denial circles for recruiting Steve McIntyre to the cause and collaborating on a decade-long attack on Professor Michael Mann and the hockey stick graph, which climaxed with the Climategate hacking.

The resignation comes almost exactly a year after McKitrick took up the post, replacing David Henderson who also stood down at his own request. Professor Christopher Essex, a longtime collaborator, will take over. McKitrick will remain a member of the council.

Lord Lawson and Dr Benny Peiser were contacted by DeSmog UK but have not yet responded with a comment. However Lawson stated in a press release:

“I am most grateful to Ross, whose work over the past year has been outstanding. He will be a hard act to follow, but I am confident that Chris is the man to do it.”

This article was originally published on DeSmog.uk.

Brendan Montague writes for DeSmog.uk. Follow Brendan @brendanmontague.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Climate academics for hire conceal fossil fuel funding‘ by Lawrence Carter & Maeve McClenaghan / Greenpeace Energydesk.

Residents of Palawan Island in the Philippines have united to take on the companies that they say have grabbed their land.

Palawan is a large island-province of the Philippines that lies midway between the rest of the archipelago and Borneo.

The great beauty and biological value of the island was validated in 1990 when the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conferred the status of ‘Man and Biosphere Reserve’ on this tropical paradise.

Palawan’s pristine coastline gives way to coconut palms and then lush, rolling, forested hills, speckled with tribal houses. The municipality of Quezon in central Palawan is the domain of the Indigenous Tagbanua people.

In recent years, however, there has been an onslaught from mining and agribusiness keen to exploit its natural resources.

Particularly pernicious is that in 2002 the Philippine government decided to expand palm oil cultivation in the archipelago to reduce imports and to fulfil the country’s rapidly growing domestic consumption.

Attracted by promises of increased incomes, many residents acceded and signed over a proportion of their private farmland for palm oil cultivation. But the farmers say they’ve yet to receive any payment, and are even being held responsible for the plantations’ set-up and loan costs.

As a consequence, residents of Palawan Island in the Philippines have united to take on the companies that they say have grabbed their land. Seventeen indigenous communities on this island province are campaigning for justice from the companies that have grown palm oil on their farms.

Government backs two major companies in mass expansion of palm oil

In 2002 the Philippine government decided to expand palm oil cultivation in the archipelago to reduce imports and to fulfill the country’s rapidly growing domestic consumption.

That same year, the Department of Agriculture calculated that annual palm-oil production was at 54,333 metric tons, with consumption running at 94,400 metric tons a year. In addition, growing demand was expected to have reached 171,700 tons by 2015.

The Philippine Palm Oil Development Council Inc. (PPDCI) published an ambitious roadmap for expansion in the Sunstar newspaper in the Philippines on 27th August 2015. It reported that the PPDCI “is eyeing another 300,000 hectares to expand oil palm plantation in a bid to make the country self-sufficient in palm oil products. The council hopes to achieve its expansion target, under its palm oil industry roadmap, within the eight years from 2015 to 2023.”

Two major palm oil companies operate in Palawan: Palawan Palm & Vegetable Oil Mills, Incorporated (PPVOMI) and Agumil Philippines, Incorporated (AGPI). PPVOMI is 60% Singapore-owned and 40% Filipino, whereas AGPI is 75% Filipino-owned and 25% Malaysian.

The parent company of AGPI is Malaysian-registered Agusan Plantations Incorporated. Other smaller companies are also joining in the ‘golden oil’ rush. AGPI has established a palm-oil mill in the Municipality of Brooke’s Point in South East Palawan for the processing of plantation harvests. As such, it buys 100% of the PPVOMI production.

With 70% of processed oil due to be exported to Singapore, China and Malaysia, the original rationale to supply domestic production appears to have been contradicted.

Tricked into handing over land for palm plantations

In deals struck with palm-oil companies, different communities in central and southern Palawan agreed to lease areas of their farm and forest land in return for a share of the income from the palm oil profits.

In other cases, local people leased parcels of land under their customary native titles to palm oil companies at low rents.

“We wanted to plant palm oil because the conditions were good – the conditions offered by the companies. But up until now, it has been six years and we have not received any benefits”, said Graciano Muniz, tribal farmer from Aramaywan community [Baringay], in the municipality of Quezon in central Palawan.

In the seven years since the first leases began, none of the participating cooperatives have reportedly received a single payment, despite four years of harvest since the plants reached production maturity at around three years.

“The landowners were fooled by this company. To the extent that prior to that they had lands to till, they had lands to plant the crops for their living”, said Rodiar Carlio, a member of the Coalition against Land Grabbing (CALG), an NGO galvanizing resistance to the palm oil companies in Aramaywan and neighboring communities. He is negotiating with AGPI for a solution to the dispute.

Everyone is involved

Palm oil has increasingly entered the world’s food supply chain in the past 20 years and is now found in a multitude of consumer items from biscuits to shampoo. Viewed by food companies as a wonder crop, the prolific harvests of palm fruit are rich in saturated oil.

However, palm crops have courted controversy wherever they have been grown. Huge swathes of the great tropical forests on the island of Borneo were felled to make space for oil palm plantations. Since then, cultivation has continued to spread throughout Southeast Asia – and even into Africa (where the wild oil palm originates) and South America – to feed an insatiable demand for the golden oil.

When sales teams from AGPI originally came knocking seven years ago, some tribal and farm communities were attracted to the high incomes the company promised relative to what they received for their dominant cash crop of coconut palm, which is still widely cultivated. So many signed over a proportion of their private farmland for palm oil cultivation.

Roberto Bardolassa is one of these farmers. He moved to Palawan in 2007 from Rizal Island to cultivate his wife’s land. “At that time the company was organizing and looking for landowners to cooperate with their company … so we decided to be their partner”, Bardolassa said.

Lies lead to land grabbing

Bardolassa and his wife leased three hectares to AGPI, but have since regretted it. “I think that what has happened here is indirectly land-grabbing”, he said. “If not why can’t we till our own land? The rights of the poor people here – especially the farmers in Palawan, are being exploited by that crocodile Agumil.”

Some elderly farmers told Mongabay that they found the scheme especially attractive because the company promised to arrange the plantation maintenance labor and provide a steady income that would ensure pensions.

“The original agreement – based on the conditions of the landowners and the co-op officials-meant there was a good possibility that we could improve our standard of living”, said farmer Graciano Muniz. “However, we have not received those benefits.”

Pasteur Motalib Kemil, tribal leader of the Tagbanua tribe in the municipality of Quezon, is Chairman of CALG. He told Mongabay that the 25-year contract was written in English, which the vast majority of farmers did not understand. He explained that officials from the tribal cooperatives often signed up on behalf of participating farmers and the title deeds for the land were handed over to the company for safekeeping.

Kemil says he is not alone in suspecting that the company has passed the farmers’ land title deeds to the Land Bank of the Philippines (a government lender) as collateral to secure the loans used to set up the plantations.

Boy Soda, elected representative of the Palawan Tribe from Baringay Salogunin in Brooks Point told Mongabay: “We haven’t received a single payment for rental of our farmland – it has all gone to the Land Bank that provided the loan. These farmers provided their land titles as collateral to the Land Bank and it takes 25 years to pay before they receive their share of the profits from the harvest.”

Arcane contracts charge all costs to landowners – plus 14% interest

Land clearance and planting of the young palm-oil saplings was then billed to the farmers as a loan incurring 14 percent interest annually. Farmers complain that many of the contractual details were kept hidden from them.

Rodiar Carlio explained: “To our surprise even the officers of the cooperative had entered into a contract, they called it PTME, the Production Technical Marketing Agreement, and they initiated the management services agreement. But the signing of PTME was concealed before the general assembly. Even the officers who signed that contract had no total knowledge of what they were signing.”

The farmers had expected that their income would begin once the palm oil trees had matured to harvest stage, around three years. They had not expected to have to pay the set-up costs and the onerous rates of interest from the Land Bank, and they claim they were deceived throughout the contractual negotiations.

“We are paying the company for the equity, for the services that they are giving the cooperative”, Carlio said. “In our cooperative alone we owe the Landbank about 11 million pesos (US$237,000). Right now the interest is almost as much as the principal loan – another 11 million. With that 11 million plus another 11 million that is 22 million and then that is compounded annually at 14%.

“Under the contract the cooperative is required to pay all the debts for six years from the start of the harvest. But the cooperative, as we analyze, under the management of the company cannot pay its debts to the Landbank.”

Motalib Kemil shares Carlio’s opinion that once all costs are deducted from income accrued from the harvest, the farmers are unlikely to receive anything over the 25-year period, even if the company intended to make payments, which it shows no sign of doing.