Barclays
Celebrated at
UN Despite
Coal Mining,
As Cuts
Remittances
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
September 23
-- Alongside
the UN's
Climate Summit
on September
23,
corporations
paraded
through the UN
Press Briefing
Room promoting
themselves and
their good
deeds.
Inner City
Press asked Barclays'
vice chair
Jeremy Wilson
about his firm
cutting off
remittances to
Somalia, and
directly on
climate,
funding
mountain-top
removal coal
mining and
Bumi Resources
in Indonesia,
displacing
many people.
Wilson did not
directly
respond to
these issues,
except to say
that things
"move more
quickly" on
some
areas.
Did he mean,
geographic
areas?
Inner City
Press asked
a panel on the
UN Private
Sector Forum,
including
Statoil, about
that firm's
exploration
off Myanmar,
and impact on
Mozambique.
The answer
came from
another
panelist, that
one should or
can look at a
company's
trajectory and
not where it
is at the
moment.
The point,
though, is
whether the UN
should be
praising and
"blue-washing"
corporations
without asking
about coal,
remittances,
displacement.
What are the
standards?
(On
the positive
side, when the
Free
UN Coalition
for Access asked
about
bike-share
programs later
in the day,
HABITAT's Joan
Clos and Alain
Flausch,
Secretary
General of
International
Association of
Public
Transport,
gave
impassioned
defenses of
such programs,
on climate and
life-style and
"the final
mile.")
Watch
this site.
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