By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 23 -- Alongside the UN's Climate Summit on September 23, corporations came 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?
The night before the People's Climate March, the UN buildings on First Avenue will be lit up with photos and footage of trees and fish and, it seems, written messages. It is called "illUmiNations."
Inner City Press late on September 19, after covering the Ukraine, Iraq, Ebola and Iran nuclear meetings inside the UN, went out and found a sort of trial run for the screeningtaking place on First Avenue, already lined with NYPD cement blocks. Photo here.
Looking back at the UN's press release for the upcoming "VIP Press Screening" -- hard to know how they could exclude non-VIPs from it, or why they would want to -- there were laudatory quotes about UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and:
Obscura Digital has staged similar large-scale architectural mapping projection events on the Sydney Opera House, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. For examples of previous work, please visit the following linkhttp://wdrv.it/1tx7Emd.
In that video compilation, well worth watching, there are also corporate projects for Coca-Cola and YouTube owned by Google, with history at the UN.
A message Inner City Press photographed on September 19, here, was "In nature's economy, the currency is not money but life." Is this true of Coca-Cola?
There are questions about the UN's UNcritical approach to corporations and corporate "partnerships."
In the run up to the UN's September 23 Climate Summit, the UN put out a media advisory promoting the participation of 14 corporations ranging from Saudi Aramco through Cargill, McDonald's and Walmart to Bank of America and Credit Agricole.
Inner City Press on September 16 asked Summit promoter Robert Orr how these 14 were selected for listing in the media advisory, and if the UN had reviewed their wider record. For example, the recent court decision involving Cargill and child slavery in Cote d'Ivoire, orSaudi Aramco not allowing employees in Saudi Arabia to protest.
Orr mentioned a luncheon during the summit about carbon pricing and the UN Global Compact, a branch of the UN which repeatedly says it does not enforce substantive standards, only encourages reporting and dialogue. Well, Saudi Aramco did not respond to the complaint about “employees allegedly dismissed after being detained for participation in civil rights protests in Saudi Arabia.”
And what of the environment? Bank of America has been the number one funder of mountain-top removal coal mining, but Ban Ki-moon made it chairman the chief of his Sustainable Energy for All initiative.
On behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access, Inner City Press asked that those making commitments, like the 14 corporations named, hold question and answer sessions during the summit. We'll see.
