This guest blog post by Jonathan Kaufman is cross posted with permission from EarthRights International.

Are wild claims “facts”? Oil companies would like you to believe so. Spend some time perusing the avalanche of submissions that oil and gas companies have sent into the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) trying to water down forthcoming rules requiring them to publish their payments to the governments where they operate, and you’ll notice that they have one thing in common: a nearly complete lack of facts to back up their wild claims.

EarthRights International (ERI) advocates for strong rules because our community partners in Burma and elsewhere want to use payment information to hold their governments accountable for the wealth received from resource extraction. But the companies complain that if they have to disclose their payments as Congress has mandated, they’ll lose contracts to less transparent competitors and could be forced to violate foreign restrictions on disclosure. Their lawyers and lobbyists have done their job well – nothing keeps regulators off your back like an appeal to their fear of losing out to the Chinese or crippling American enterprise in uncertain economic times. Yet their submissions are curiously devoid of evidence; instead of providing facts, the companies pose hypotheticals, speak in generalities, and float widely varying estimates of compliance costs with no explanation.

Meticulous research by Publish What You Pay coalition (PWYP) members has shown that these scare tactics are just smoke and mirrors. When you place the companies’ claims next to the actual facts, it’s clear that what Big Oil really fears is public scrutiny of its questionable dealings, rather than competitive injury to its operations. The SEC must show that it’s not “in bed” with Exxon and Chevron and their friends and issue rules that comply with the law.

ERI recently submitted a letter to the SEC comparing unsupported industry allegations with the facts that PWYP has put in the record. A sample of the most glaring of these comparisons speaks for itself on how misleading and potentially damaging the companies’ submissions can be:

Industry claim #1: Unless the SEC grants an exemption to avoid disclosing payments made to countries that prohibit disclosures by law, the new rules will force companies to violate those laws and threaten billions of dollars in projects in the relevant countries.

Facts: Of just four countries identified by industry as having disclosure prohibition laws, three clearly do not prohibit disclosure, and there is no evidence of a legal prohibition in the fourth. In fact, at least two companies already disclose many of their payments in at least two of these countries, and one admits in the record that it knows of no prohibition.

Why it matters: An exemption for foreign laws would give secretive states – think China, Iran, and Burma – an incentive to pass laws prohibiting disclosure, giving them a veto over the U.S. Congress and cutting off information from the countries where it’s most vital.

Industry claim #2: It would cost big money to make the changes to corporate accounting systems that would be necessary to capture and disclose all payments at the project level.

Facts: Two industry associations actually admit that no company has done an in-depth cost estimate. Companies’ “guesstimates” range from hundreds of millions of dollars to “de minimis” (negligible) amounts, and at least one mining company says it already tracks most of the information and discloses it on a voluntary basis. Moreover, companies need to record government payments anyway, in order to comply with U.S. anti-corruption laws.

The bottom line: Companies are using these inflated estimates in order to erode the clear standards Congress wrote into the law. If they can convince the SEC that it’s too expensive to implement the rules according to the plain language of the law, they hope the agency will re-define key terms in order reduce the amount of information disclosed.

Industry claim #3: Producers covered by the new rules will lose out to less transparent companies, such as national oil companies from China, Russia, and Iran, because some host governments will prefer to deal with companies that don’t publish their payments.

Facts: Companies covered by the new rules have continued to beat out non-covered Asian oil producers for contracts in some of the world’s most opaque countries, even after the passage of the disclosure law. Transparency requirements haven’t deterred companies from listing either in the U.S. or on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (which also requires payment disclosures). And in the section of their annual reports where they have to report significant prospective financial risks, no company has seen fit to warn its investors that the disclosure law poses any danger to its bottom line.

What it’s really about: This is a thinly-veiled threat to sue the SEC over a particular type of cost-benefit analysis that the companies claim the agency is required to do, and to seek to have the rules vacated in court if industry doesn’t like them.

Of course, these three examples only scratch the surface of the companies’ unfounded allegations. As ERI shows in its submission, companies also use strategic misdirection to mislead the Commission on technical definitional issues (e.g., what is a “project”?) and on the legal implications of publishing false information, among other things.

For many of us who are watching this largely behind-the-scenes drama unfold, it’s obvious that industry is hoping to intimidate the SEC into issuing weak rules, and if the companies don’t get their way, they plan to sue the agency. (In fact, they more or less announced this intention in a recent submission.) If the SEC ends up in court, though, it will have to defend its decisions based on the words Congress wrote and the facts in the record. Fortunately for the supporters of payment transparency, the statutory language and the facts are completely in accord in this case, and they point to robust, project-level reporting of payments, with no exemptions.

Today the Senate Agriculture Committee held its first hearing of the year on the 2012 US Farm Bill, a $288 billion behemoth best-known for setting farm subsidy and other agricultural policy. Although it rarely receives top billing, the Farm Bill is the central legislation that guides the US government’s global food aid programs.

Here’s the long and the short of it: the US Food Aid program is immensely important, but right now it is broken, seriously hampered by special interests who lobby Congress to impose regulations that protect their bottom-line at the expense of hungry people and taxpayers. These regulations cause less food to get to the hungry people who need it with up to 32 cents out of every $1 spent on food aid going to waste as a result. To put it succinctly, the regulations cost money and lives.

Families collecting their WFP monthly ration at an Oxfam distribution point in Northern Kenya, March 2011. Photo by Andy Hall.

For years these rules have been protected by a group of well-heeled lobbying organizations representing the shipping industry and the major commodity trade groups including the American Cargo Transport Corporation, the National Corn Growers Association, and USA Rice Federation among several others.

Case in point, this letter sent to members of Congress in 2010 by DC lobbying firm Winston & Strawn on behalf of industry groups opposing reform. These groups have joined hands to fight against common sense changes that would make our food aid program more effective at saving lives and more cost efficient for US taxpayers.

But it’s time for the craziness to end. And the 2012 Farm Bill is the place to make that happen. That’s why Oxfam America and some of our friends and allies are standing up to take on the special interests that are getting in the way of life-saving reforms. We hope you’ll join us. For more detail on the issue, see the memo we put out this morning highlighting three ways that Congress can fix the food aid program.

And stay tuned to this space for more.
 
 
 
 
TO: Interested Parties
FR: Ben Grossman-Cohen, Oxfam America
RE: The Farm Bill and Food Aid

Helping hungry people during food crises is an essential part of US foreign policy; it reduces instability around the world and protects the most vulnerable communities from catastrophe. But under the current law, special interest lobbyists are having a field day with our food aid program, imposing rules and regulations that benefit themselves, cost lives, and waste taxpayer dollars. These regulations cause less food to get to the hungry people who need it with up to 32 cents out of every $1 spent on food aid going to waste.

For years, a group made up of well-heeled lobbying organizations representing the shipping industry and the major commodity trade groups including the American Cargo Transport Corporation, the National Corn Growers Association and USA Rice Federation, have joined hands to fight against efforts to make our food aid program more effective at saving lives and more cost efficient for US taxpayers.

(See the letter sent by DC lobbying firm Winston & Strawn on behalf of industry groups opposed to food aid reform.)

These groups push Congress to impose regulations which require that food be purchased from preferred growers and shipped from the US on preferred ships instead of finding the best prices and sources of food that will save the most lives and reduce dependence on aid in poor countries. This red-tape directly benefits the industries these lobbyists represent at the expense of hungry people and taxpayers.

Independent studies have shown that these rules cost taxpayers approximately $213 million a year, a massive chunk of the relatively small food aid budget. Shipping restrictions alone cost taxpayers on the order of $140 million in one recent year. Think of the lives that could have been saved if that $140 million could have been spent on food and agriculture programs instead of unnecessary overhead.

What’s worse, the regulations contribute to delays in food deliveries of up to four to six months, delays that can mean life or death for people in crisis. The rules also hurt small-scale farmers when US food aid is dumped on developing country markets. Rather than helping communities build a bridge out of poverty and hunger, these rules contribute to a cycle of poverty and dependence for small-farmers and hungry people.

America is better than this. It is time to put the interests of hungry people and American taxpayers ahead of industry lobbyists by reforming food aid’s wasteful and ineffective regulations in this year’s Farm Bill.

These reforms must allow for food aid to be purchased locally and regionally within developing countries and put an end to the use of life-saving aid doubling as corporate welfare. These fixes will save lives and ensure our aid helps build self-reliance, enabling local farmers to thrive and reducing the need for assistance over the long term.

How to fix food aid in the Farm Bill:

1. Expand the use of local and regional purchasing of food aid.
The 2008 Farm Bill created a small pilot program for local and regional purchase of food to prove that it can be done. Rigorous evaluation of this program has demonstrated that it can. Where appropriate, local and regional purchasing is a cost-efficient and effective model to save lives and enable communities to build pathways out of poverty. The current pilot should become a regular program and receive funding as part of the core food aid program.

2. Use food as food, not a source of fundraising.
Some organizations that deliver food aid are forced sell it to food traders to raise cash to fund their food aid programs. It’s perfectly legal, but totally inappropriate. This process, known as “monetization” is extremely inefficient and can damage local markets, hurting farmers and undermining food security. Food aid must be used to save lives not as an inefficient and wasteful way to generate funds for organizations providing food assistance. The US must eliminate the “monetization” of food aid. Congress must provide organizations delivering food aid with adequate funding so that they can deliver lifesaving programs without having to sell off food to keep the lights on.

3. End costly shipping restrictions.
By law, at least 75 percent of US food aid must be shipped on preferred US ships. This rule wastes money, costs lives and creates an unnecessary burden on USAID that hampers quick and effective response in times of crisis. It is wrong to use emergency food aid that is intended to save lives as corporate welfare for the shipping industry. Special set asides for the shipping industry should be stripped from the Farm Bill.

In the first Star Wars movie, Luke Skywalker and friends somehow blew up the Death Star. That’s a bit how we felt in 2010 when after years of fighting we got a new global financial transparency requirement into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. The provision requires oil, gas, and mining companies to disclose tax and other payments in every country of operation. As I’ve been writing about in the last two weeks, we now feel like we are in The Empire Strikes Back. The oil industry has threatened to sue the SEC if they don’t get a regulation they like and are using lobbyists and lawyers to try to roll-back our victory.

Now it’s time for Revenge of the Jedi and the gloves are off. Oxfam and our allies in the Publish What You Pay coalition are mounting a big campaign to tell oil companies to stop fighting transparency—join us to take action. We have a six-figure ad campaign running the next two weeks, including a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, and online ads in the Washington Post, The Hill, Politico, and the Huffington Post. (The Wall Street Journal ad is endorsed by Global Witness, Revenue Watch Institute, Global Financial Integrity, EG Justice, and the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.)

In addition to mounting an e-action campaign targeting Chevron, Exxon and ConocoPhillips, Oxfam is reaching out to our university campus-based CHANGE student activists for a petition drive to SEC Commissioners telling them to issue a strong final regulation. The ONE campaign is also pressuring the SEC with a petition that has over 84,000 signatures so far.

Last week Oxfam activists portrayed Chevron, Exxon, and the SEC in bed together outside SEC headquarters in Washington, which generated good coverage including the morning commute on NPR. This week, the “hear no evil, see no evil” monkeys will be outside the Chevron tower in Houston, telling the company and its employees the time for silence is over.

Congress is ramping up the pressure on the SEC to issue a strong final rule and to follow the law—five prominent Senators wrote on Jan. 31, and we are expecting more Congressional pressure this week.

The battle is also being fought on a number of fronts. Over in Europe, activists staged a stunt a government building in London and the ONE campaign has a big petition drive to make sure European regulators stand up to oil company lobbying there. Elsewhere, allies in resource-rich countries such as Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal, Cambodia, and Ecuador are writing to the SEC to make sure they know how important this information is to hold their own governments accountable for the spending of oil and mining wealth.

Oil companies have a lot on their plate and this lawsuit has the makings of a classic PR nightmare. (Imagine the headlines—“Oil companies sue to keep tax payments secret”.) Let’s win again and bring this saga to an end.

Oxfam SEC oil transparency stunt. Photo by Oxfam America.

The oil and gas industry loves to trumpet their support of international transparency initiatives and their tax contributions to the US government, but when a new law requires them to tell the public exactly how much gets paid to whom around the world, they bring out the lobbyists and lawyers.

Browse through the corporate social responsibility reports of the top oil and gas companies, and you’ll see them singing from the same transparency hymnbook. Chevron says it “believes that the disclosure of revenues received by governments and payments made by extractive industries to governments could lead to improved governance in resource-rich countries.”

Many oil and gas companies are also “supporters” of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). (Companies can become a “supporter” simply by declaring “their support publicly”.) Unless a country decides to implement EITI, though, they are obliged to disclose nothing. For a company such as Chevron, this means disclosing tax and other payments in Nigeria (perhaps years after the fact), but nothing in next-door Equatorial Guinea, a classic petro-dictatorship. For the citizens of Equatorial Guinea—mala suerte (tough luck)!

In July 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act was signed into law. Dodd-Frank contains an important provision (“Section 1504″) that requires each oil, gas, and mining company to disclose their tax, royalty and other payments to governments in every country of operation. (Oxfam and our allies in the Publish What You Pay campaign fought hard for the inclusion of this provision—alongside our support for EITI.)

Many of the same companies praising transparency have been actively lobbying since the law passed to gut implementation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The hypocrisy is out there in the open if you know where to look. Senate lobbying disclosure forms show that Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Conoco Phillips, Marathon, Occidental, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and others have been very active in Washington on this provision, targeting not only the SEC, but the House of Representatives, Senate, Department of State, Department of the Interior, and the National Security Council.

As I wrote last week, API (revenues of more than $198 million in 2009) has now threatened to sue the SEC unless the agency withdraws its proposed rule and starts from scratch to meet big oil’s secrecy wishes rather than the law and Congressional mandate. (Five API member companies are also on the EITI board, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, and Statoil.)

Wiston House where the EITI board meeting will be held next week. Wikimedia Commons.

No one knows how much the oil and gas industry is spending specifically to undo the Dodd-Frank provision, but the oil and gas industry is one of the biggest lobbyists in the US, spending more than $145 million on lobbying activities in 2011. ConocoPhillips, Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP were the top five oil and gas spenders on lobbying in 2011, with ConocoPhillips spending a staggering $20.5 million. API spent more than $7 million in lobbying in 2011 and is spending a “significant amount” on its faux “grassroots” advertising campaign called “Vote 4 Energy”. These are the same companies who complain that the cost to disclose information they already collect is too onerous.

The yawning gap between the transparency rhetoric of companies and the reality of their actions has never been more apparent than it is now. The SEC may shortly issue a final rule to implement the Dodd-Frank provision, while on February 14th the oil industry’s designated transparency groupies, governments, and civil society groups will convene in the UK for the latest EITI board meeting. While the EITI board members enjoy the lovely and historic “Downton Abbey”-esque country manor setting of their board meeting, the industry’s lawyers and lobbyists will be working hard in Washington to gut a new global corporate transparency standard.

It’s time to blow the whistle on the industry’s transparent hypocrisy. For the more than 1.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day in resource-rich countries, there’s no time left to wait.

Village residents fetch water from a communal pump in Faloumbou, Senegal Tuesday. Rebecca Blackwell/Oxfam America.

1504   Section in Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act requiring companies to disclose taxes, royalties, and other payments made to the US and foreign governments
 
1.5 billion  People living on less than $2 a day in “resource-rich” countries
 
$30 million  Value of Malibu mansion owned by Teodoro Nguema Obiang, son of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea’s dictator
 
1    Number of white crystal-covered ‘Bad Tour’ gloves in Teodoro’s Michael Jackson memorabilia collection valued at $3 million (See “U.S. vs. One Crystal-Covered ‘Bad Tour’ Glove” court filing.)
 
270   Days after enactment that Congress required the SEC to issue a final rule (regulation) to implement the law
 
559   Days since Dodd-Frank enacted into law by President Obama
 
289   Days that the SEC has been in violation of the law
 
13    Months after Dodd-Frank that the European Commission issued a legislative proposal that would place a similar requirement on oil and mining companies
 
0    Host country laws oil companies have been able to cite that would prohibit disclosure of payment information as required by Dodd-Frank
 
3    Commissioners eligible to vote on the final rule (Chairwoman Schapiro and Commissioner Paredes are recused because of conflicts of interest.)
 
$50 million  Estimated amount Exxon says that it would cost to comply with law, even though it provides no backing data for the estimate and presumably already collects and tracks payment information
 
$41 billion  Exxon’s 2011 profits—a 35% increase over 2010
 
$100,000  Cost Barrick Gold, world’s largest gold producer, says it would cost them to comply
 
$1.2 trillion  Approximate combined assets under management of investors who have told SEC to issue a strong final rule
 
3   Companies and industry associations (Shell, Exxon and API) who say that payment disclosure “could allow terrorists” to target a project
 
2  Nigerian oil workers unions who say it would actually make them safer
 
5  Companies who met SEC Commissioner Gallagher on December 2, 2011, to lobby for a weak final rule—Shell, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental
 
15  Oil and mining companies who “support” the voluntary Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) program who are also members of American Petroleum Institute (API). API has threatened to sue the SEC to keep payment info secret.
 
5  Companies on the EITI board who are also API members
 
11  Luxury sports cars worth at least $5 million belonging to Teodoro seized by French police in Paris as part of an investigation into possible corruption
 
20  Days after auto seizure that President Obiang scored his son a UNESCO envoy post in Paris
 
$5,000  Teodoro’s reported monthly government salary as Equatorial Guinea’s minister of agriculture
 
2010  Year Equatorial Guinea was expelled from EITI for failing to meet its minimum transparency requirements
 
5   Companies producing oil and gas in Equatorial Guinea who will be covered by Dodd-Frank (Exxon, Marathon, Hess, Noble, and Mitsui produce the vast majority of oil and gas in Equatorial Guinea. The first four are members of the American Petroleum Institute. API sent a letter to the SEC on January 19 saying it would be unlawful to issue a final rule to implement the Dodd-Frank provision.)
 
No data  Percent of Equatorial Guinea’s population living below the poverty line. An estimated 60 percent lived on less than $1 a day according to a 2006 UN report.
 
700,000  Population in Equatorial Guinea still in the dark about the country’s finances and waiting for full implementation of Dodd-Frank Section 1504

This blog post is written by Keith Slack, extractive industries program manager.

Last week, the Peruvian government announced it had selected “independent experts” to review the environmental impact assessment of the massive Mina Conga mining project in the country’s northern Cajamarca province. The project has become the latest in a series of battlegrounds over the extraction of natural resources in the country. Local agricultural communities are intensely concerned about the potential negative impact of mining-related pollution on their water sources. Peru’s president Ollanta Humala hopes that this review can help prevent these tensions from degenerating into a bloodbath like the one that took place in Bagua in June 2009, in which 33 people were killed and at least 200 injured.

The intention to bring in independent experts is laudable. Peru’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) review process is notoriously nonindependent; the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which is responsible for promoting mining in the country, retains final say over these critical documents. This is a direct conflict of interest. The government has been under pressure for years from the World Bank and civil society to change this situation, but so far has not done so. When the Ministry of the Environment was created a few years ago, the authority to approve mining EIAs was explicitly left out of its mandate in response to pressure from the mining industry.

Whether the Conga review will be legitimately independent and adequately respond to the concerns of potentially impacted communities, and whether the government will act on its recommendations, is an open question. Initial signs are not encouraging. Last week, Peru’s prime minister stated that if the project did not go forward (which, in theory, could be a recommendation of the review), Peru would be forced to “indemnify enormously” the project sponsor Minera Yanacocha (a joint venture between US-based Newmont and Peruvian miner Buenaventura.) This is an allusion to the possibility that Newmont could bring a case against the Peruvian government under the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which allows American companies to sue the government if it believes it is being treated unfairly. Newmont’s fellow American company, Doe Run, has filed such a case against the government, claiming $800 million in damages for the government’s alleged unfair treatment of the company.

The review process also lacks buy-in from local communities and Cajamarca’s regional government, which has said that it wasn’t adequately consulted in designing the process and won’t accept the results.

Breaking the cycle of conflict

It will be truly unfortunate if the Conga EIA review ends up as nothing more than an elaborate greenwashing exercise. Truly independent and reliable project reviews, carried out with the support and participation of local groups as well as the establishment of effective independent oversight panels could be a key part of finding a way out of Peru’s resource-related conflicts, of which the government currently totals 125 across the country.

Truly independent project reveiws could be key to ending Peru's resource-related conflicts. Ernesto Cabellos/Oxfam America

Competent reviewers, working with and enjoying the trust of affected communities, could point out serious deficiencies in the government’s oversight and open the door to discussions about the best long-term solution: land-use zoning. Land-use zoning means establishing clearly demarcated areas where mining and other extractive activity can take place, and those in which, for environmental, social, or economic reasons, mining is simply not a viable option.

This question of zoning (or “ordenamiento territorial” as it’s called in Spanish) has been recently analyzed by Oxfam partners Cooperaccion and Fedepaz. The municipal government of Cajamarca has also presented zoning proposals that would protect substantial areas of the province. In theory, zoning can help avoid conflicts in the first place by setting aside areas where mining development is likely to be problematic. This isn’t a “slippery slope” towards banning mining; it’s simply a recognition that some areas simply aren’t appropriate for it.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the Humala administration doesn’t appear to be prioritizing zoning as a means to resolving resource conflicts. We will know shortly whether the current Peruvian government is truly committed to finding sustainable solutions to the conflict at Mina Conga. How they handle this project will likely determine their strategy for handling future extractive industry conflicts.

On Tuesday, Oxfam hosted Bloomberg reporter Alan Bjerga to talk about his recent book, Endless Appetites. It’s a good read; very well written with some good reporting from the field, a fun exploration of the Chicago Board of Trade, and one of the better overviews of the controversial issue of the financialization of food commodities. The book also covers a lot of the same ground as Oxfam’s GROW Campaign. Edited highlights from the Q&A session appear below. Special thanks to Carolyn Yi who helped put these together.

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“The neo-liberal project in Haiti has failed.”

Robert Fatton, Haitian professor and Associate Dean in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, said these words earlier this month at a roundtable discussion marking the second anniversary of the Haiti earthquake.

You can imagine the collective intake of breath from the room full of policy experts from Oxfam, USAID, and the State Department who had gathered at a roundtable discussion to commemorate the second anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. Some were shocked. For others, it was a brutally honest assessment of what has gone wrong in Haiti.

The aptly-titled roundtable on “Aid, Governance, and the Status of Reconstruction” had stumbled onto the discussion about the role of the donor vis à vis the state. This theme is not often discussed, but understanding how the US and other international donors have bypassed the Haitian government in the past is key to understanding the choice that they now face.

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This blog was written by Emily Greenspan, extractive industries policy and advocacy advisor.

Last August, we lauded the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group—for releasing revised social and environmental standards for the companies it funds that include some important new requirements to reduce the risk associated with its projects. We were particularly excited to see that the IFC now requires its clients to secure the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of indigenous communities prior to launching development activities expected to generate adverse impacts on their lands and natural resources. Unfortunately, some of the language included in the new guidance for companies that IFC published this month raises questions that, if not clarified, threaten to undermine the IFC’s precedent-setting requirement.

In order for the IFC’s new FPIC requirement to be meaningful, it must allow for the possibility that communities will decide not to accept projects, and it must represent an ongoing process of community engagement and participation. However, the IFC’s new client guidance—specifically its “guidance notes,” which provide additional direction and detail for clients on how to implement the standards—muddies the water around these essential elements of FPIC.

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This blog post was written by Paul O’Brien, Vice President for Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam America.

You’ve heard the old line about how a “rising tide lifts all boats”? In fact, the evidence shows that the “rising tide” of global economic growth is in fact lifting mostly yachts; meanwhile, a lot of people are getting dumped in the water.

Today Oxfam released new research that shows how people’s incomes are becoming more unequal in the world’s largest economies. Oxfam focused on the G20 countries because they are the self-appointed leaders of the global economy and, indeed, constitute more than 70 percent of the world’s GDP. A survey of the G20 countries shows that only four have made progress since 1990 in reducing inequality; sixteen have seen the income gap grow, slowing or stopping progress to reduce poverty. Not only is economic growth in those countries failing to “trickle down” to ordinary people, but the G20 economies are rapidly exhausting the natural resources they need to support our health and prosperity. That ecological burden falls most on the poor, who by and large lack the resources to cope with the resulting environmental degradation, particularly climate change.

Entire families, often with many young children, live alongside their livestock of sheep and cattle in filthy hovels, often only meters away from the gleaming wedding halls and other 'signs' of wealth and progress. Photo Jason P. Howe/Oxfam Great Britain

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