CHRISTIAN AID NEWS

countries receive in aid each year.
What, you may ask, has that got to do
with global hunger? Well, tax pays for
services such as health and education,
which in turn support people’s ability to
work and earn a living. tax also funds the
infrastructure, such as roads and ports,
needed by people and companies (who
provide jobs) to get their goods to market,
as well as funding other essentials such
as police forces and justice systems.
in addition, tax gives governments the
means to invest in their nation’s
agriculture, on which many millions of
people in poor countries still depend for
survival. it also pays for a social safety
net to prevent people starving, while
funding work to better prepare
communities against disasters such as
floods and droughts, which damage
crops and fuel hunger.
that’s why next year, with allies across
the development sector, Christian aid
will continue to campaign for reforms to
help countries collect more of the taxes
they’re due. specifically, we’ll continue to
call on governments to end tax haven
secrecy and require companies to be
more transparent about the taxes they
pay and the profits they make in every
country where they work.
We hope you will join us. look out for
more information in the next edition of
Christian Aid News and on the act now
pages of our website.
Government backs
our carbon call
Christian aid is delighted to
announce that deputy Prime Minister
nick Clegg, on behalf of the UK
government, has committed to
introducing measures that will oblige
companies listed on the london stock
exchange to report all of their carbon
emissions. Christian aid has been
calling for this since we launched our
climate change campaign in 2007, so
we are very glad that the government
has finally backed this demand.
Christian aid supporters (you!) have
taken more than 60,000 actions on this
key issue over the past five years. thank
you for the time you gave to
campaigning. it has paid off!
nick Clegg has also acknowledged
your role in this important work:
‘it’s important that organisations such
as Christian aid continue to push hard
on these vital issues. the UK is blazing
a trail by making all businesses listed
on the london stock exchange publish
full details of their greenhouse gas
emissions, which will ultimately
encourage them to operate more
sustainably but also save them money
by doing so. Your support for this
makes all the difference when we’re
making these decisions,’ he said.
in 2007 Christian aid estimated that
global investment from UK companies
is responsible for 12-15 per cent of all
carbon emissions. so getting
businesses listed on the london stock
exchange to report their UK carbon
emissions is a great step forward in
learning the true carbon footprint of UK
companies. this will help civil society
and government to hold businesses to
account for the level of their carbon
emissions, and is an important move
towards reducing global emissions
further. this is a timely boost for our
campaigning at a crucial time.
the world’s poorest are paying the
highest price for climate change. they
need rich countries to meet their
responsibilities when it comes to their
carbon emissions – and that must start
with knowing for sure how much
businesses are contributing.
as the only international
development agency to call for this we
should rightly be very proud of our
work – and we could not have done it
without your support. thank you.
Rio failS to nail SuStainability GoalS
Campaigns journalist Rachel Baird reports on a disappointing
outcome to the Rio+20 conference in Brazil
We KneW that this summer’s rio+20
conference on sustainable development
was never going to solve the scandal of
poverty or the global environmental
crisis – but the outcome still left us
disappointed. it was ‘stunning only in its
lack of urgency’, according to Christian
aid’s senior adviser on sustainable
development, dr alison doig.
‘We leave rio with a text that contains
no deadlines for countries to take action
and lamentably few other targets,’ she
said, as the talks closed in late June.
For instance, negotiators failed to agree
on a target date by which everyone in
the world should have access to
sustainable energy – something that
some 1.4 billion people currently lack.
But there is still cause to hope that the
rio talks will have a positive legacy.
negotiators made important progress
towards the creation of a new set of
sustainable development goals (sdgs).
these will help to set the direction of
future development work after 2015,
when the existing millennium
development goals expire.
‘the sdgs could help make global
food production more sustainable
and ensure that many millions more
people can enjoy clean water and
sustainable modern energy,’ added
dr doig. ‘But this will only happen if
citizens keep up the pressure as work
continues on shaping the goals.’
People in the UK are especially wellplaced
to influence things for the better,
because the United nations has chosen
Prime Minister david Cameron to cochair
the panel that is working on the
replacement for the Mdgs after 2015.
another potentially important part of
the rio outcome document – a 49-page
tome called The Future We Want – is a
section about major companies. it could
help to increase the pressure on them to
reveal publicly how their activities affect
people and the environment.
similarly, by far the best news of all in
rio was also about big companies in the
UK having to come clean about some of
their contributions to climate change.
See story ‘Government backs our
carbon call’ above.
Christian Aid News 15