Free Trade: 1/25 of 25
Mexico's corn heritage eroded by free-trade and food speculation
Ecologist
13th September, 2011
A combination of free trade and volatile food speculation is squeezing small-scale Mexican maize farmers and allowing agribusiness to dominate. Photos by Adriana Chow more...
UK-registered companies connected to controversial Canadian seal cull
Andrew Wasley
12th May 2009
The first blows may be struck on Canadian ice, but it's at the checkout that the coup de grace is delivered. Andrew Wasley explores the UK companies profiting from the trade in seal fur more...
Struggling for Éire
Molly Scott Cato
11th May, 2009
If it is not to be choked by debt and taxes, Ireland must return to the self-sufficient, localised vision of one of its founding fathers more...
Life and debt
Molly Scott Cato
23rd April, 2009
This budget season, and so a short perambulation around the vexed question of the national debt seems in order. As a nation we've been living with debt for more the 300 years now, since 1694 to be precise, when Scottish privateer William Paterson persuaded the government of the time that creating £1.2 million of IOUs would get them out of their spending difficulties. more...
Ethiopia. Basket Case or Organic Horn of Plenty?
Robin Maynard
15th February, 2009
Ravaged for decades by famine and war, Ethiopia is trying to eliminate hunger for good with organic farming. Robin Maynard met the man spearheading the campaign more...
Market Famines
Yves Engler
13th February, 2009
The millions of people in Niger who died during the recent famines, did so because the IMF pressured its government to tax food and the poor simply couldn't afford to save themselves more...
Bent Bananas
Joanna Blythman
13th January, 2009
The economies of whole islands in the Caribbean face ruin if the WTO, acting at the behest of US-owned multinationals, forces the EU to end preferential trade agreements with small-scale West Indian banana producers more...
How to be free: bad medicine
Tom Hodgkinson
3rd June, 2008
Bono may be cheerleading for its charitable wing, but corporate America is not waging a war on AIDS for the sake of its health, says Tom Hodgkinson more...
Trade in precious minerals and timber continues to fuel violence and conflict across the globe
Ecologist
1st June, 2008
Revenues obtained from the often illegal extraction and supply of commodities such as timber and diamonds are directly bankrolling corrupt regimes and armed insurgency groups, and fund the purchase of weapons and other contraband goods that perpetuate cycles of conflict.more...
A steady-state economy
Herman Daly
1st April, 2008
Economist Herman E Daly argues that our future depends on a new economic model, one that needs to be defined by the dynamic balance – the steady state – of the natural world upon which it depends. more...
How to be free: The last untapped resource
Tom Hodgkinson
1st April, 2008
Sometimes it’s good to take a peep at what the enemy is up to. I spent last weekend reading the New York Herald Tribune, and I’ll sometimes look at The Economist. Both these publications are excellent in their way – the Tribune is far superior in writing and information to The Times, for example – but essentially feed the greed of a business-minded readership anxious to figure out what is going on in the world, the better to profit from it. more...
Campaigners celebrate collapse of trade talks
News
25th June, 2007
Environmental groups have welcomed the collapse of the latest round of Doha trade talks, which fell apart on Friday. more...
Free Trade: 1/25 of 25
Behind the Eco Labels
Pat Thomas
1st April, 2007
Ethical consumerism in the UK is currently worth £29.3 billion, yet 60 per cent of us feel we don't have enough information to make an ethical decision. There is an ever-growing array of eco labels, but what do they tell us? Or fail to tell us? Pat Thomas explains more...
How 'green' was Gordon?
Miriam Kennet
22nd March, 2007
Environmentalists held their breath in expectation of Gordon Brown's 'green' budget. Was it worth the wait? Miriam Kennet, a director of the Green Economics Institute, looks at where the Chancellor went awry... more...
Carbon Trading Scam Exposed
news
18th January, 2007
Collusion between UK carbon trading firms and Chinese factories is allowing them to make big profits without any significant reduction in carbon emissions.more...
Milton Friedman: Architect of Neoliberalism RIP
Paul Kingsnorth
1st December, 2006
Death is rarely something to be celebrated, but I can’t say I shed a tear last week when I heard that Milton Friedman, the father of neoliberal economics, had gone to the great free market in the sky. more...
New Emperors, Old Clothes
Vandana Shiva
1st July, 2005
Anyone serious about making poverty history needs to understand where poverty actually comes from and what it really is. more...
Playing Dirty at the WTO
Mark Lynas
1st June, 2003
Locked out of some meetings. Not even invited to others. And then all the decisions are made after you’ve left. It’s all in a day’s work for ‘developing’ World delegates at the WTO. By Mark Lynasmore...
Free Trade TM
Derrick Jensen
1st June, 2003
Free trade. So benign sounding a phrase. A concept whose principles no reasonable person would challenge. Trouble is, free trade as we know it – free trade as it is pushed by those who will mass at Cancun, Mexico, in September – is far from free. Think about it. If it truly was free, would they put sanctions on those who don’t want to participate and use police to violently put down protests by those who oppose it? Free trade is really just a euphemism, like ‘peacekeeping’ or ‘forest management’, that hides a far uglier, more brutal reality. Free trade is a brand – Free Trade™, which sells a repackaged product no one in their right minds would buy if they knew what it really was. more...
World Sold
Simon Retallack
1st June, 2003
In September the World Trade Organisation will be holding its fifth ministerial conference in Cancun, Mexico. Simon Retallack explains what is at stake. more... Cancun: Why Should You Care?
Paul Kingsnorth
1st June, 2003
School dinners by McDonald’s. Corporations taking countries to court because their environmental regulations are ‘too tough’. The BBC sold to Rupert Murdoch. Paul Kingsnorth explains why we should be very worried by what is about to go on behind the closed doors of Cancun. more...Puppet Show
Matilda Lee
1st June, 2003
Matilda Lee explains how democracy is bypassed as multinationals pushchanges in trade law through the labrynthine corridors of the EU more...
Economies of scale - self-sufficiency through localising business
Andrew Simms
1st June, 2003
Where trade is concerned, one size does not fit all. Andrew Simms argues the case for economic self-sufficiency through localisation more...
Globalisation: the dream vs the reality
Dele Oguntimoju
1st November, 2002
Globalisation sells Africans the Western dream. Immigration policies tell them they can’t have it. Where, Dele Oguntimoju asks, is the sense in that? more...
Government refuses to create clean technology fund
News
30th November, 1999
The Treasury signalled yesterday that money raised from the sale of carbon credits will not go into a clean technology fund as the EC had requested but instead be diverted to general treasury funds. more...Members
Follow the Ecologist
