Holding Big Polluters to account

Pictured: Corporate Accountability staff Taylor Billings (right) and ally Wanun Permpibul of Climate Watch Thailand and APMDD (left) at the annual treaty negotiations.

You are helping to change the course of climate history. We are organizing at the U.N. climate treaty to demand an end to the corporate capture of climate policy. This year we helped open pathways for just and effective climate solutions in the treaty.

Activating people power

In the climate campaign, you are activating people around the world to take bold and meaningful action. In December at the U.N. climate treaty talks, we and our allies released the People’s Demands, a global roadmap for just climate progress led by communities most affected by climate change. People and organizations from 130 countries joined in these demands, which are the guiding light in our organizing for climate justice. In the U.S., members like you organized friends, families, and neighbors to call on state attorneys general to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its decades of climate deception.

Kicking Big Polluters out of climate policy

Read more about how you are powering the movement to kick Big Polluters out of climate policy.

Breaking ground in international policy by challenging Big Tobacco

You are supporting precedent-setting work on the global tobacco treaty. Pictured: Campaign Director, Michél Legendre at this year’s treaty negotiations.

Closing loopholes

At this year’s global tobacco treaty negotiations, more than 180 countries came together to adopt a policy that closes off the few remaining avenues for Big Tobacco to influence the treaty. And when the industry attempted to carve out a different regulatory pathway for new tobacco products like e-cigarettes, governments refused, insisting that the same lifesaving protections be applied to all tobacco products. Through the tobacco campaign, we’re setting the bar for how other industries—like Big Polluters—should be handled in policymaking spaces. Read more about the watershed moment for tobacco control.

Setting precedent

Read more about how the global tobacco treaty sets precedent for the campaign to hold Big Polluters to account.

Challenging corporate control of water

Engaging in deep Global South/North partnerships

Together through the water campaign we are stopping private water corporations that seek to use Lagos as a gateway in their quest to privatize water systems across Africa. This year, with Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA), we convened a global water summit and expanded the Lagos campaign to the national level. Your support is now making it possible for organizers throughout Nigeria to challenge the World Bank and private water corporations, and advance the human right to water. Read more.

Bode Oluwafemi, ERA’s deputy executive director, addresses the crowd at the National Water Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, where more than 150 water justice organizers and experts gathered to develop strategic plans for stopping water privatization in Lagos and scaling this successful campaign model throughout Nigeria and beyond. Photo credit: Babawale Obayanju, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

Securing public water solutions

Read more about how you helped secure an exciting victory for public water this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Fixing our broken food system

Dr. Esperanza Cerón Villaquiran of Colombia’s Educar Consumidores delivers a scathing statement on Coca-Cola’s damaging political interference at Coke headquarters.

Exposing the reality behind Big Food brands

You are exposing how Big Food is wreaking havoc on people’s health and the environment—and how the industry uses its political influence to get its way. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are seeking to expand the market for their unhealthy products by leveraging the might of their brands, which they’ve spent decades and billions of dollars cultivating. Our campaigning at shareholders’ meetings, online, in the media, and in partnership with allies reveal the true story: These corporations are fueling a public health crisis and attempting to manipulate policymaking in their pursuit of profit. Read more.

Challenging corporate control of our food system

Read more about how you helped Boston become the first on the East Coast to adopt a city-wide Good Food Purchasing Policy (GFPP) — a groundbreaking policy that helps build an equitable, local, sustainable food system.

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A vast and vibrant movement that is changing the world

The movement for transformative change that we are part of is robust, diverse, and creating the world that we want—right now. We are privileged to partner with organizations with shared visions and values for how the world should be, and we are inspired and emboldened by them to act toward making that vision a reality. We partner with organizations around the world, many based in the Global South and led by women, people of color, indigenous people, and youth.

Youth ally brings voices of young people to climate talks

“Fossil fuel corporations have had a stranglehold on climate policy longer than anyone at SustainUS has been alive,” says Aneesa Khan, executive coordinator of the youth climate justice organization. Having attended the U.N. climate treaty negotiations since she was in college, Aneesa is clear that the demand to kick Big Polluters out goes straight to the “heart of what matters right now in our fight against climate change.” She notes that SustainUS members appreciate being mentored by Corporate Accountability staff at the treaty meetings. As Aneesa puts it, “those of us on the frontline of crisis are also on the forefront of change.” We are honored to help lift up their voices and perspectives.

 

Members spur transformative action

We inspire each other

We are profoundly grateful that as a Corporate Accountability member, you go above and beyond when your imagination is sparked by the possibilities that lie ahead of us. As we partner with each other, we show up with our full selves in each interaction—and we inspire each other to act more boldly and use our resources in transformative ways. Here are three stories of how members inspired us and others to make a tremendous impact this year.

A call to hold Big Polluters accountable

It falls on working class people, poor people. The big corporations are the bad actors. Their irresponsible business practices are fueling the climate crisis.” In the end, more than 80 people came together to take action for climate justice through an inspiring evening of food and community. “It was great to speak out on these issues and hear the solidarity in the room,” she says. We are grateful for Shamaiah and other members across the country who are hosting large and small gatherings like these—they are helping to build the people- and financial-power needed to hold Big Polluters accountable.

A legacy that unlocked power and impact

He also took on other huge issues like the AIDS epidemic and nuclear disarmament. He could picture the world as it could be—and his decades-long support of Corporate Accountability was an important part of creating that better world. When he passed away in 2017, he left a legacy gift of $200,000 to Corporate Accountability. This made a tremendous impact in our work this year to improve the lives of millions of people around the world—from advancing public health policies with the global tobacco treaty to expanding water justice organizing across Nigeria and on the African continent. We are deeply grateful to him and his family.

A challenge that inspired you to new heights

In partnership with these generous donors, we not only met Nancy’s challenge we surpassed—well before the deadline! Upon seeing the enormous impact this challenge was having on our ability to advance our campaigns, Nancy joined with several other donors to extend the match. All told, this challenge raised more than $1 million! Thanks to everyone who participated, we were able to pave the way for true and just solutions take hold at the U.N. climate treaty and achieve crucial victories and progress in advancing the human right to water globally.

Read more stories about how our members are building people power in their communities to stop transnational corporations from devastating democracy, trampling human rights, and destroying our planet.

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Transformational change through a global approach

Holding corporations accountable beyond borders

This spring, Nancy MacLean, author of the renowned book Democracy in Chains strategized with our organizers at campaign headquarters. Her message was clear: We are part of a powerful movement around the country taking back and advancing our democracy. Pictured from left: Heshan Berents-Weeramuni, communications director; Shayda Edwards Naficy, senior program director; Nancy MacLean; Patti Lynn, executive director; Taylor Billings, press secretary.

Advisers

Social justice leaders, corporate campaigners, public officials, leading scholars. Corporate Accountability’s advisers bring years of experience challenging entrenched power and securing transformative change. The following is a partial list of our advisers.

Official relations

As part of our work to advance international policies that hold corporations accountable, we maintain official relations with the following United Nations agencies:

• The World Health Organization (WHO)
• The Secretariat of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)
• The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)
• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

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FY 2019 Audited Financial Report

 

Read our FY19 financial audit.

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Powering transformative change: You make this work possible

The enormous impact we’ve had this year would not be possible without you: members who donate money, time, and energy to holding corporations to account and advancing democracy. Your name listed here, as well as the many people and foundations who give anonymously at every level, is symbolic of the collective power we are building to transform the world together. Download the annual report pdf for the full list of generous members who powered this work in FY19.

Corporate Accountability grows stronger by partnering with people like you. Learn the many ways you can get involved.

Thank you!

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