Environment

Water, land, energy and raw materials are the basic necessities for the physical survival of any group of people. Yet, access to these resources is controlled at every stage - from extraction and capture right through to consumption – by corporations whose main motivation is the maximisation of profits. The privatisation of natural resources means that states have less power to legislate on immediate issues surrounding resource control and distribution, and on the longer-term climate impacts of burning fossil fuels.

Corporations fuel ecological crises around the world, promote unconventional fossil fuels, push forward false solutions to climate change and prevent real alternatives from being developed. Governments and financial institutions apply the free market mentality to the natural world, with diverse ecological resources becoming commodified as 'natural capital' and traded as products and services. Part of this 'green capitalism' entails the co-option and perversion of ecological concepts, such as corporate interpretations of 'sustainable development', which are anything but sustainable. This 'green economy' involves capitalist approaches to climate change, such as geoengineering. Such corporate technologies are technofixes that do not address the fundamental issues underlying climate change and ecological destruction. There are real solutions, but the corporate control of renewable energy technologies is highly problematic.

Since Corporate Watch was established, environmental issues have been central to our work, from research on road building, to GM crops; from nanotechnology to unconventional fossil fuels; from corporate organics to technofixes; from agrofuels to water privatisation; from deforestation to mining. We will continue to work on ecology as green capitalism develops and its opponents continue to resist it in all its manifestations.