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Let's be friendsThe campaign is complex, so there are questions that people may ask (or that you may be wondering about yourselves) which are quite hard to answer. Here are some of the trickiest questions, and how you could answer them.
Aren’t oil companies the real problem? Surely they’d keep pushing on with oil extraction even if DFID and the World Bank pulled out.
It’s true that public money from institutions like the World Bank is only a small proportion of the total funding for oil extraction. Oil companies put up a lot of the finance, and private banks invest in this area too. However, the crucial role of the World Bank and other public funders is to reduce risk for the oil companies, particularly in countries with unstable regimes or poor governance.
The oil industry argues that:
“In a number of projects the very existence of World Bank Group financial participation may make a project happen that otherwise would not be realised”.
Oil industry submission to the Extractive Industries Review, quoted in Pumping Poverty.
How can we tell developing countries not to develop in the way that we in the UK have done?
DFID have a very clear mandate to alleviate poverty. Oil extraction projects are likely to exacerbate poverty, both directly through social and environmental degradation, and indirectly through climate change. These projects have a history of failing to achieve development and of exacerbating corruption and authoritarianism. We are not telling developing countries how to develop, we are telling DFID that it should spend UK taxpayers´ money on poverty alleviation, not on oil projects which primarily benefit multinationals.
We need an equitable global solution to climate change. Developing countries must be able to increase their per capita emissions over the medium term, while industrialised countries cut emissions dramatically. We believe that we should make long term decisions now which break the link between using fossil fuels and economic development. DFID should be taking a lead and helping developing countries find new, low carbon forms of development, which end poverty without contributing to climate change.
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If DFID and the World Bank aren’t involved in oil extraction, surely the outcomes of the projects will be worse, with much lower social, environmental and human rights standards.
DFID and the World Bank should be looking for the most effective ways to use development aid to alleviate poverty. Oil extraction does not do this, so they should not be involved. The World Bank´s track record on improving the impact of oil projects isn´t great either. For example, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project was designed to ensure that oil revenues would be used for poverty alleviation, but the World Bank hasn´t been able to stop the Chadian government re-allocating funds to their security budget.
This campaign ignores the most important action to tackle climate change - cutting emissions right here in the UK - and in the USA too! Why aren’t you focusing on that instead?
We are! People & Planet is part of the Stop Climate Chaos I Count campaign, which gets individuals to make changes themselves and to put pressure on politicians to take decisive action as well. We’re currently demanding that the Government commit to year on year cuts in carbon dioxide emissions in the UK. We’re also running the Go Green campaign to transform the environmental performance of the UK’s universities.
We think that cutting demand for fossil fuels in the UK and the rest of the industrialised world is essential, but that the UK Government is undermining this effort by continuing to support oil extraction around the world. Fossil fuel extraction projects are bringing new fuel onto the market, which creates an economic incentive to burn this fuel in the future. By funding fossil fuels, we are making future decisions to stop using them far harder.
It’s unrealistic to think that renewables will provide all the energy we need, and with North Sea oil running out, we need to secure oil supplies for Britain - from wherever we can get them!
The most effective way to make energy supplies more secure is to reduce demand for energy, make our energy use much more efficient (for example through decentralised energy generation) and to switch to unlimited renewable energy sources. This strategy would improve energy independence - both for the UK and other countries.
Britain´s energy needs are important, but development money is for global poverty alleviation - not for advancing UK interests.
Do you have any other questions you’d like to ask about the campaign? Or maybe you’ve been asked something which left you stumped. Send us more tricky questions by using the box below and we’ll email you with responses and post answers to frequently asked questions on this page.
