State of Power

Nearly 75 years after the United Nations called for the abolition of  coca leaf chewing, the world will have an opportunity to correct this grave historic error. The World Health Organization (WHO), at  the Plurinational State of Bolivia’s request,  and supported by Colombia, will conduct a ‘critical review’ of the coca leaf over the next year.

Based on its findings, the WHO may recommend changes in coca’s classification under the UN drug control treaties. The WHO recommendations would be submitted for approval by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), with voting likely in 2026.  The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) will be monitoring the coca review process closely and examining key aspects of the debate. As part of this we are producing a series called “Coca Chronicles”.

The first issue of the Coca Chronicles discussed the current classification of the coca leaf in Schedule I of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (or its effective ban) and Bolivia’s initiation of the WHO critical review process.

The second issue highlighted three developments during the March 2024 CND session: (1) support for the coca review from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; (2) Bolivia’s call to protect the coca leaf as a genetic resource; and (3) an update on the WHO’s preparations for the review. 

In this third issue, Anthropologist Wade Davis gives us a deep dive into the history and significance of the coca leaf in the Andean Amazon region. 

Wade Davis is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. He is a multiple award-winning author of more than 25 books, and has done extensive research into coca leaf, among many other ethnobotanic explorations.  

The fossil fuel based energy system has shaped capitalism and our geopolitical order. On the 50th year of TNI's existence, the State of Power report unveils the corporate and financial actors that underpin this order, the dangers of an unjust energy transition, lessons for movements of resistance, and the possibilities for transformative change.

How can we build a Just energy transition in the age of corporate and imperial power? 

In today’s episode, a special accompaniment to the 12th Annual State of Power Report on energy, Nick Buxton speaks to three interesting people who have unique perspectives on this question.

Timothy Mitchell is a political theorist, historian and professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. In 2012, his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil retold the history of energy in the Middle East, showing how oil weakened democracy, fuelled militarism and empire and created a dangerous myth of infinite growth.

Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College and a member of the Climate and Community Project, a left-wing think tank. She works primarily on the politics of extraction, particularly in Latin America and the US. Her upcoming book is Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. 

Ozzi Warwick is the chief education and research officer of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union of Trinidad and Tobago and the General Secretary of the national Joint Trade Union Movement. He is also a founding member of the Trade Unions for Energy Democracy South (TUED South), a new South-led trade union platform dedicated to a public approach to a just energy transition. 

Nick Buxton is  TNI’s Knowledge Hub Coordinator and founding editor of the State of Power report.

Host Shaun Matsheza speaks with Sai Sam Kham, an activist from Myanmar, to try and gain a deeper understanding of the story that is in the news, and to place all the images and headlines in context.

Even a global crisis can provide opportunities for fairer, freer and better ways of organising our world. But too often they can simply become moments to further entrench power, hegemony and undue influence. Unfortunately, as history has demonstrated, global policy making has often shifted in undesirable directions because those in power use crises to push their own interests.

Some commentators have made comparisons between the global impact of 911 on public policy, and the impact of the Covid 19 virus, because while the Covid pandemic may be over, just like 911, its impacts still reverberate. And they are likely going to stay with us for some time to come. Covid 19 had a fundamental impact on our economies, on global governance, and global policy making.

Through a series of interviews with experts in their respective fields, TNI Associate, Arun Kundnani, set out to explore all the different facets of the pandemic’s impacts, from the growing role of major Pharmaceutical corporations in global healthcare, to the the response of global governance bodies such as the WHO and the UN, to the part played by Big Tech Companies, the impact on the global debt and on migration and race politics. We had a chance to sit with him and explore his findings, and to see what alternatives are available for us when the next crisis comes rolling in, something which is all but inevitable.

Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are coming, Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. He’s also recently released a new  book, is called What is Antiracism? and Why it means Anticapitalism. 

Related playlist: https://audioboom.com/playlists/4634744-talking-security-with-arun-kundnani 

Link to Arun Kundnani's work: https://www.kundnani.org/ 

Energy is currently produced and consumed based on sexist, racist and classist power relations that favour the pursuit of private profits at the expense of the common good.

Extractivist oligopolies and corporatised politics have imposed humiliating austerity measures, privatisations of public services, and excessive and growing socio-economic inequality, displacement and dispossession, and environmental destruction. These processes drive skyrocketing levels of energy poverty and a worsening ecological crisis. The most exploited and discriminated people are hit the hardest: from women in low-income households, women of colour and women with disabilities, to transwomen, single mothers and undocumented women.

We need energy democracies and participatory politics in which a variety of ordinary women can influence tomorrow’s energy policies. Collective but diversified bottom-up power can ensure a new energy model is run by and services those who the current model exploits and discriminates against. But how do we get there?  The growing call for the feminisation of politics – and energy politics for that matter – is about much more than merely increasing the representation of women in decision-making positions. We need to question the ways energy politics are shaped. We need to ask, energy for whom and energy for what?

An ecofeminist perspective on energy offers an important and underacknowledged framework for understanding what keeps us stuck in unsustainable energy cultures, as well as a paradigm for designing truly just energy systems. 

In this episode of the State of power podcast, TNI researcher Lavinia Steinfort talks to Shannon Bell : professor of  sociology, Cara Daggert : assistant professor in political science, and  Christine Labaski, associate professor of women’s and gender studies in the field of  Science Technology and society. They are all at virgina tech university in the United States, and are the co-authors of the brilliant article: Toward feminist energy systems: Why adding women and solar panels is not enough.They are also all members of the May apple energy transition collective.

image source: Repowering and Banister House Solar

Episode Notes:

Ecofeminism: fueling the journey to energy democracy

Toward feminist energy systems: Why adding women and solar panels is not enough

In 1973, a group of women from Mandal village in the Himalayas in India “hugged” trees to prevent them from being felled.  When the loggers came, the women, led by Gaura Devi, surrounded the trees and chanted: “This forest is our mother’s home; we will protect it with all our might”. This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Chipko movement, which put a spotlight on ecofeminism.  Consequently, when many people hear the term ecofeminism, it is the image of those women hugging the  trees and fighting to save the forest that comes to mind. But what exactly is ecofeminism  and how and why is it such a powerful vision that may actually save our planet? 

Ecofeminism is a cross-cutting, multi-faceted, perspective that encompasses many issues, including food, climate and energy. It offers an alternative to the oppressive patriarchal capitalist system that has had devastating impacts on the planet and on human lives and livelihoods. Ecofeminist analysis explores the connections between women and nature in culture, economy, religion, politics, literature and iconography, and addresses the parallels between the oppression of nature and the oppression of women. It challenges the artificial division between the personal and the political, and the environmental or ecological. It seeks to show that “social justice, interspecies ethics, and environmental concerns” cannot be approached as separate issues. Moreover, a growing number of ecofeminists approach gender as a social construct, challenging the men-women binary and rejecting the idea that women are somehow closer to nature,  as this is part of the patriarchal frame that subjects both “women” and “nature” to exploitation. 

Our guest on today’s podcast is a well-known ecofeminist, who is very well placed to deepen our understanding of ecofeminism, especially as it relates to our food system, and our relation with the land and with the environment. Dr Vandana Shiva is the founder of the research foundation for science, technology and ecology. She is also the founder of Navdanya a grassroots movement which promotes biodiversity conservation, biodiversity, organic farming, the rights of farmers, and the process of seed saving. Amongst the many books she has written, she co-wrote a book called Ecofeminism, written together with Maria Mies. 

She is here in conversation with Lavinia Steinfort, a political geographer and ecofeminist activist. Lavinia is a researcher at the Transnational Institute (TNI), where she is working on public alternatives such as (re)municipalisation of public services, a just transition towards energy democracy and transforming finance for the 99%.

Episode Notes

The seeds of Vandana Shiva

Borders uphold a global system of apartheid—and we should demand nothing less than their abolition. In this interview, activist and writer Harsha Walia lays out how borders and citizenship maintain colonial axes of power. From Fortress Europe outsourcing border control far into the African continent in exchange for aid, to Canada securing the availability of cheap farm workers through its selective immigration system, she demonstrates how capitalism and border regimes feed off of each other. Harsha Walia makes a compelling case for abolition: No banks, no bombs, no borders, no bosses. Or, in her own words: “Why would we fight for anything less than the freedom of all people?” 

At the State of power podcast, we’re glad to once again host Harsha Walia, who  is an activist and writer based in Canada. Her books include Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (2021) and Undoing Border Imperialism (2013). Here she is Conversation with Arun Kundnani, a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror. 

How is it that drug companies can make huge profits from vaccines while people in the global south die from lack of access to medical care? How does the global regime of intellectual property rights enable this inequality? And what is the role of Bill Gates in defending this system? 

In this interview, Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni argues that vaccine inequality is not a market but a policy failure. From the HIV crisis in the early 2000s to the recent pandemic, the public has repeatedly shouldered the risk for the development of live-saving medicines while private corporations have reaped obscene profits. How can we break Big Pharma's power and develop an alternative health system? 

Dr. Mohga Kamal-Yanni is the co-leader of the policy group of the People's Vaccine Alliance. She is a senior health advisor with 40 years of experience in health policy and programming with international and national health and development agencies including multilateral agencies, NGOs and governments. Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror.

 An influential group of big technology corporations, commonly referred to as Big Tech has concentrated vast economic power with the collusion of states, which has resulted in expanded surveillance,  spiraling disinformation and weakened workers' rights. TNI’s 11th flagship State of Power report exposes the actors, the strategies and the implications of this digital power grab, and shares ideas on how movements might bring technology back under popular control.

Our guest on the podcast is Cory Doctorow, a  brilliant science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation,  a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. His most recent book is Chokepoint Capitalism

(co-authored with Rebecca Giblin), a powerful expose of how tech monopolies have stifled creative labour markets and how movements might fight back.

This interview is part of the 11th State of power report, which focuses on Digital Power. Please be sure to check out all the other essays, as well as the infographics that give a good picture of digital power today.

You can also read an edited transcript of the interview. 

What are the economic challenges facing the Global South post-pandemic? What role have global financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF played in worsening the economic situation for poorer countries? And what economic alternatives might exist?

In this interview, Jomo Kwame Sundaram shines a light on the effects that decades of liberalisation policy have had on countries in the global South, including deindustrialisation, food insecurity, and another looming debt crisis. He argues that the recent refusal to waive international property rights related to vaccines as well as sanctions on China have worsened the situation, with the odds increasingly stacked against poorer countries.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram is Visiting Senior Fellow at Khazanah Research Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and has previously been the Assistant Director General and Coordinator for Economic and Social Development at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror.

Keywords: 

Economic Justice, Trade, IMF, World Bank, Debt, Crisis