Pumping Poverty: Britain's Department for International Development and the Oil Industry

Researched and written by PLATFORM Research

KHRP has endorsed a report by PLATFORM Research which investigates the role of British overseas development aid in facilitating oil development. The report, published by PLATFORM Research, Friends of the Earth and Plan B, concludes that the UK Department for International Development (DFID) is strongly supporting oil extraction in the developing world to the detriment of the world's poor. In particular, development aid is used to reform developing countries' oil taxation and regulation regimes to better favour British business interests. This is despite DFID's explicitly stated goals to eliminate poverty in the developing world through sustainable development. Oil extraction tends to generate suffering among a country's poor, whose energy needs are better met through small-scale, renewable energy sources, and instead serves the energy needs of the developed world.

KHRP has played a key role in drawing attention to the adverse impacts of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline on affected communities in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and in opposing DFID's support for multi-lateral financing of the project.

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