SEEN

SEEN participated in drafting a bold, comprehensive and non-partisan plan--the Presidential Climate Action Plan-- for presidential leadership on climate change rooted in climate science and designed to ignite innovation at every level of the American economy. The plan will set the stage for 2008 presidential candidates to take positions on specific proposals to address climate, energy and national security.

December, 2007 - SEEN is pressing for substantive mandates at the UN's environmental conference in Bali. IPS is working with the International Forum on Globalization to pressure the United Nations for a new negotiating process. IPS, the IFG, and over 125 prominent citizen-leaders around the world are calling for a new agenda at the U.N.'s upcoming climate talks in Bali, that will address the inter-related ecological crises facing today's global economy. IPS has collected over 125 signatories from citizen leaders around the world. Click here to read the Bali Call.(PDF)

Check in with our Bali Blog for constant updates.

The World Bank's Recipe for Climate Disaster

October 2006: The World Bank is discussing its newly updated "Clean Energy & Development Investment Framework" with the environment and energy ministers of the Group of Eight (G-8) richest countries gathered in Mexico for the Gleneagles Dialogue follow up.

In response, civil society groups, including the Institute for Policy Studies' Sustainable Energy Economy Network, released a report, "How the World Bank's Energy Framework Sells the Climate and Poor People Short." [EN ESPAÑOL ]

Read Daphne Wysham's commentary on TomPaine.com, "World Bank's Dirty Power Plan".

Read more...

* The World Bank paper, "Clean Energy and Development: Towards an Investment Framework", plus Annex 1. Check back soon for civil society response to this document.

* SEEN co-director Daphne Wysham's "Talking points on the World Bank’s 'Clean Energy and Development: Towards an Investment Framework' paper" (Apr. 23, 2006)

More on the Gleneagles Dialogue here.

Our most comprehensive report to date on the World Bank's role in fueling the climate crisis: A Wrong Turn from Rio: The World Bank's Road to Climate Catastrophe .

SEEN exposes the U.S. government's dominant role in World Bank energy programs. Learn how the World Bank deceptively boasts about its renewable energy and carbon finance programs, and masks the climate impacts of its conventional projects.

Read the Press Release and related press coverage.

Explore SEEN's extensive database of multilateral development bank and export credit agency energy projects.

Bolivia's new constitution to settle contentious issue of gas

In August 2006, Bolivians began the pressing task of rewriting their Constitution.

The process will last about a year and will tackle important issues such as indigenous representation, the sovereign exercise of natural resources -- namely its vast gas reserves.

One of Evo Morales' first presidential decisions earlier this year was to nationalize Bolivia's gas industry, prompting the re-negotiation of contracts with foreign companies and an increase in royalties to ensure a greater local share of the gas' profits. As a consequence, Bolivia has encountered vociferous criticism from entrenched business interests and international financial institutions with stakes in keeping business as usual.

SEEN helps you sort through the facts.

July 2006: Bolivian Vice-President visits Washington. Read notes from his speech to business and government leaders.

Breaking the U.S. Oil Addiction

In his 2006 State of the Union address, Pres. George W. Bush said the U.S. must wean itself from foreign oil. He followed that speech with tours of several alternative energy facilities.

In a new commentary on UPI, SEEN co-director Daphne Wysham writes, "if Bush really wants to face up to our oil addiction, he'd stand behind a carbon tax that would funnel a portion of the money spent on fossil fuels not into the pockets of Exxon Mobil, but into the pockets of researchers, of public transportation, of hybrid car owners, and of solar and wind purchasers."

In another article, Wysham and co-director Nadia Martinez peer under the emperor's new clothing. "If past is any prediction of the future, one need only follow the money to see who has profited under the Bush Administration's energy policies and who has not," they write in the Feb. 7 edition of Foreign Policy In Focus.

Bush said the U.S. should "replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025." Wysham and Martinez worry that this will lead to more "extraction from poor and troubled countries such as Nigeria or Angola. Merely changing where the oil comes from doesn't address the real issue of energy independence, however; it only shifts it from one part of the world to another.... The only way that America will become truly independent of its oil dealers, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, is by kicking the oil habit."