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Despite this, the meeting went ahead, and on Friday the ECT announced that an agreement had finally been reached. And if you read what the UK government says about it, it sounds like they’ve been listening to us. It talks about the ECT as ”outdated” and as putting the UK at “increased risk from costly legal challenges”. So then the government claims the changes agreed will solve this.
However when the ECT published more details of the changes, it became clear there is nothing new in it - it is the same weak proposals that have been on the table for months, and which fail to align the ECT with international climate goals.
Why the reforms are a failure
The basic problem is that the proposed reforms will keep existing fossil fuel projects protected by the ECT for at least ten years - some gas projects for even longer. But to avoid devastating climate breakdown we need to be cancelling projects in the p ipeline right now and phasing out existing fossil fuels.
Either governments will live up to their climate obligations and cancel the projects - in which case the fossil fuel companies can sue at cost of billions for taxpayers in the midst of a cost of living crisis. The risk to the UK from the ECT is estimated to be at least £9.4 billion [1] and the risk to all countries could be $111.5 billion [2].
Or the governments delay and wait ten years before cancelling - which is the chilling effect UN climate scientists at the IPCC warned about earlier this year [3] and is not something the world can afford. Appallingly it seems that this may be the approach the UK plans to take, as the government also says it is committed to ‘homegrown’ oil and gas projects, as though this makes them less damaging to the climate!
Beyond this the proposed reforms also do nothing to change the fundamentally unjust nature of corporate courts.
What now?
This isn’t a done deal at the ECT. Governments have until November to make a final decision. We need to keep the pressure up to say that the attempts to modernise the ECT are a failure. Nothing has been done but delay action for five years and in the meantime the fossil fuel companies have been suing and the climate crisis has got worse.
The limited changes on the table would lock in the damage of the ECT for another decade. The solution is still to exit the ECT.
Can you help us spread the word on what is actually on the table?
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