Report State of the impunity in the world another world is possible-Fight Impunity Organization.pdf

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE
promoted by
Fight Impunity-Association Against Impunity
and for Transitional Justice
edited by
Associazione Società INformazione Onlus
The Report on Global Rights is an annual publication with a fo-
cus on the processes related to globalisation and its impacts,
from various economic, social, geopolitical and environmental
perspectives.
Produced by the Associazione Società INformazione Onlus, it has reached
its 19th
edition, and since 2020 has also been published in an international
English edition. The Report focuses on human rights and the fight against
impunity, in collaboration with Fight Impunity – Association Against Im-
punity and for Transitional Justice, which promotes the volume.
The Report has proved to be a fundamental information and training tool
for those working in schools, the media, politics, public administration,
the field of work and training, social professions and NGOs.
As has become evident in many countries, and as the Report documents,
in 2021 the Covid-19 pandemic coincided with an increase in violations
of fundamental rights. Under the pretext of sanitary measures, excep-
tional measures were also introduced, curtailing freedoms and worsen-
ing social and economic conditions for millions of citizens in many parts
of the world, while the vulnerability of the democratic system and of the
rule of law became more evident.
In addition to the human rights violations documented by an Observato-
ry on Impunities, the Report analyses and denounces crimes that violate
and compromise other equally fundamental rights, that affect communi-
ties and not only individuals, such as environmental, economic and social
rights. Too often no one is held accountable for these systemic crimes,
crimes perpetrated as a result of precise political, economic and govern-
mental choices.
A study of recent data and events reveals the need for a radical and ur-
gent change of course.
PREFAZIONE Pier Antonio Panzeri
INTRODUZIONE Sergio Segio
TESTI
Maria Arena | José Miguel Arrugaeta | Alessandra Ballerini | Monika
Borgmann-Slim | Susanna Camusso | Orsola Casagrande | Roberto
Ciccarelli | Massimo Congiu | Giovanna Cracco | Kylee Di Gregorio |
Simona Fraudatario | Pier Antonio Panzeri | Simone Pieranni | Susanna
Ronconi | Onorio Rosati | Donatella Rostagno | Isabel Santos | Sergio
Segio | Marc Tarabella | Gianni Tognoni | Cecilia Wikström | Alberto
Zoratti
979-12-80682-07-9

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE
promoted by
Fight Impunity-Association Against Impunity
edited by
Associazione Società INformazione Onlus

FIGHT IMPUNITY (Association Against Impunity and for Transitional Justice)
● Rue Ducale, 41, Brussels BE - 1000
● Website: http://www.fightimpunity.com ● e-mail: contact@fightimpunity.com
● www.facebook.com/fightimpunity ● https://twitter.com/fightimpunity
Associazione Società INformazione – ONLUS
● via Tognazzi 15 C, 20128 Milan - Italy
● tel.+39 0236599270 ● e-mail: societainformazione@dirittiglobali.it
Websites: https://www.dirittiglobali.it ● https://www.globalrights.info ● e-mail: info@dirittiglobali.it
Edited by
Sergio Segio
Contributions by
Maria Arena, José Miguel Arrugaeta, Alessandra Ballerini, Monika Borgmann-Slim, Susanna Camusso,
Orsola Casagrande, Roberto Ciccarelli, Massimo Congiu, Giovanna Cracco, Kylee Di Gregorio, Simona
Fraudatario, Pier Antonio Panzeri, Simone Pieranni, Susanna Ronconi, Onorio Rosati, Donatella
Rostagno, Isabel Santos, Sergio Segio, Marc Tarabella, Gianni Tognoni, Cecilia Wikström, Alberto Zoratti
Collaborators
Francesco Giorgi, Simona Russo
Translation
David Broder, Emma Catherine Gainsforth, Sarah Gainsforth
The cover picture, by Antonella Lupi, depicts: Patrick Zaki, Hanan al-Barasi, Abdullah al-Hamid,
Malalai Maiwand, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Tahir Elçi, Saada al-Hermas e Hind al-Khedr, Yury Alexeyevich
Dmitriev, Simon Pedro Pérez López, Sandra Liliana Peña Chocué, Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, Haji
Mirzahid Kerimi
The Report, produced by the Associazione Società INformazione ONLUS, is promoted by FIGHT
IMPUNITY (Association Against Impunity and for Transitional Justice)
© Copyright by Associazione Società INformazione 2021
Milieu edizioni, Milan, Italy
Graphic design
Antonella Lupi
Printed by: Geca – San Giuliano Milanese (Mi)

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List of Contents
PREFACE. Democracy. The Chinese Metaphor and the European Ostrich
Pier Antonio Panzeri
INTRODUCTION. The Sick World and Those Below
Sergio Segio
1. A burning planet. 2. Ecocide and ethnocide in Bolsonaro’s Brazil.
3. Lethal and suicidal extractivism. 4. The war on the environment
and the climate catastrophe. 5. Without environmental justice there
is no peace. 6. What caused Covid-19. 7. Carbon footprint, lifestyles
and inequalities. 8. Lobbies and think-tanks against climate. 9. The
achievements of citizens organisations and movements. 10. Climate,
Covid-19 and Genocide. The Brazilian case. 11. Green deal and eco-
logical transition. The Italian case. 12. Unequal vaccination. 13. Pan-
demic economy. The wealthy become richer. 14. Pandemic, wars and
threats to democracy. 15. The Doomsday Clock at the time of Cov-
id-19. 16. Afghanistan: after twenty years of death and destruction
nothing has been achieved. 17. The return of Isis and the spiral of
retaliation. 18. Afghanistan, Trump’s gift to Biden. 19. How much
did the war in Afghanistan really cost. 20. Afghans are refused asy-
lum, Europe remains a fortress. 21. The controversial management
of borders: the role of Frontex. 22. Fleeing increasingly means dying
Reference list
INTERNATIONAL. The Unresolved Problems of a Sick World
Orsola Casagrande and José Miguel Arrugaeta
1. During the pandemic, it’s every man for himself. 2. Unequal eco-
nomic and social consequences in the first phase of the pandemic. 3.
A transition from neoliberalism to neo-Keynesianism? 4. The global
crisis and its unsolved problems: geopolitical clashes, migration and
climate change. 5. “America is back!”: has the Biden era begun? 6. A
burdensome legacy: Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, “enemy” coun-
tries in the region. 7. “Los de abajo” rebel: the crisis of the neo-liberal
model and unstable democracies. 8. Haiti: mystery surrounding a
murder. 9. The return of the United States to Europe. 10. European
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Union: work in progress. 11. Right-wing forces in Europe. 12. The
(non-existent) European migration policy and the threat coming
from Turkey. 13. Erdoğan’s attacks on the rule of law and democra-
cy in Turkey. 14. Turkey’s dangerous alliances. 15. Black Sea: a new
war over gas? 16. Erdoğan’s expansionist dreams and Biden’s desire
to end endless wars. 17. The withdrawal from Afghanistan. 18. The
relationship between the US and Iran remains tense. 19. Yemen, the
forgotten war. 20. Israel and Palestine: a conflict with no solution in
sight. 21. Requiem for the Arab Spring. 22. Clashes break out again
in the Horn of Africa. 23. Protests in South Africa. 24. Jihadism
expanding south of the Sahara. 25. US-China relations: changing
everything to change nothing. 26. Keywords: Bancada Ruralista,
Bloqueo a Cuba, Economic sanctions of the European Union, Fal-
sos Positivos, Frontex, Pegasus Project
Reference list
ENVIRONMENT. At the Roots of the Pandemic:
Animal Farming, Zoonoses and Deforestation
Alberto Zoratti
1. Biodiversity as an indicator. 2. Drivers of deforestation. 3. Agri-
business and deforestation. 4. Oil and mining exploitation. 5. Busi-
ness as usual, despite Covid-19. 6. The European Union-Mercosur
Agreement. 7. Rights denied, peoples repressed, defenders killed.
8. Land Grabbing, the other side of the assault on the commons.
9. Land Matrix data for 2020. 10. Watergrabbing: the other side of
resource hoarding. 11. The unstoppable increase of CO2
in the at-
mosphere. 12. Ongoing desertification. 13. Oceans. The other fron-
tier of climate change. 14. Climate. COP26 Glasgow 2021, a neces-
sary milestone. 15. Donald Trump’s alarming legacy. 16. Joe Biden
and the change in pace. 17. Lights and shadows of the European
Green New Deal. 18. Keywords: Adaptation, Circular economy,
Conference of the Parties (COP), EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agree-
ment, Extractivism, Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Human Rights
Defenders (HRDs), Landgrabbing, Mitigation, Neo-extractivism,
Paris Agreement, PPM, Sustainable development, Syndemic epi-
demic, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), Watergrabbing, World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), World Trade Organization (WTO), Zoonosis
Reference list
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WELFARE. The Right to Health and the Governance of the Pandemic
Susanna Ronconi
1. The race for vaccines and unfair distribution. 2. Covax and the
others. The fig leaf on TRIPs. 3. The African case. Covax is a drop
in the ocean. 4. Non negotiable patents. Hypocrisy at the G20. 5.
The “third way” of the European Commission (and the WTO). 6.
The world is actually ready to produce sufficient vaccines. 7. The
victory of Big Pharma over governments. The weakness of politics.
8. Vaccines. Weak contracts, less enforceable rights. 9. Little trans-
parency, a lot of lobbying. 10. Big Pharma. A flow of public money,
a sea of private profit. 11. Human rights. The virus does not stop
movements. 12. The virus of global poverty and inequality. 13.
Vaccine common good? Even global capital says so. 14. Poverty
during the pandemic and the worsening of inequality. 15. The new
“pandemic poor” are working men and women. 16. The women’s
pandemic. The many faces of the gender gap. 17. Inside the home.
Increasing domestic violence. 18. Locusts and Covid-19, the zero
hunger mirage. 19. Fighting poverty in Europe. Already modest
target at risk. 20. The virus of the gender gap for European women.
21. Social rights in the EU. More redistribution and less workfare
is needed. 22. Keywords: AROPE (At Risk of Poverty or Social Ex-
clusion), Big Pharma, Covax, Ever-green patenting, Gender Gap,
Gender-based violence, Health determinants, Health inequalities,
Health, Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI), Public Private Part-
nerships (PPP), Reproductive health, Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), Social responsibility for health, Syndemic, Trade
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), Universal
Health Coverage, Waiver (TRIPs waiver), Working poor
Reference list
ECONOMY. Digital Platform Capitalism after Covid-19
Roberto Ciccarelli
1. The state of digital economy and work. 2. The technology war
between the US and China. 3. The battle for taxation of multina-
tionals and against digital monopolies. 4. Big Tech and surveillance:
the military-technology complex. 5. Silicon Valley and immigration
policy in the US. 6. The Amazon case/1. 7. Continuity and platform
changes during the Covid-19 pandemic. 8. Impunity in food deliv-
ery and ride hailing. 9. The Amazon case/2. 10. Workers’ organisa-
tion in the digital platform economy. 11. Keywords: Digital labour
and platform capitalism, Gig Workers, Profit Shifting, Taylorism 2.0
Reference list
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GLOBAL RIGHTS. Of Impunities, Silence and Justice
Sergio Segio
1. Terrorism and counter-terrorism. 2. Collateral effects of wars.
3. The crime of war: Iraq. 4. The energy sector and environmental
crimes. 5. The double track of international justice. 6. The killing
of Palestinian children. 7. Systemic racism and state impunity. 8.
The never-ending story of colonial crimes. 9. Delays in the justice
systems are a condition for impunity. 10. Prison or reconciliation.
South Africa and Latin American dictatorships. 11. Freedom of in-
formation during the pandemic. 12. Pegasus, electronic surveillance
and the repression of dissidents. 13. State terrorism. The Colombian
case. 14. There is no justice without memory. 15. Srebrenica, 8,372
is not just a number. 16. Justice as an instrument of political strug-
gle in Brazil. 17. Systemic violence in Mexico, the arms industry
and impunity. 18. Law, justice and criminal law
Reference list
OBSERVATORY ON IMPUNITIES
Orsola Casagrande and Sergio Segio
EGYPT. Misogynist laws, inhumane jails, a 300% rise in executions
LIBYA. A country prey to violence, chaos and impunity
SAUDI ARABIA. A country in the G20, but without freedom
SYRIA. Ten years of violations and crimes by the regime, rebels and
mercenaries
IRAN. Brutal repression and constant death sentences
TURKEY. A constant erosion of the rule of law
AFGHANISTAN. The Taliban return
RUSSIA. Constant repression and trampling on human rights
COLOMBIA. A people still without peace or justice
CHILE. Social protests and state violence: little truth, no justice
MEXICO. Contradictory signs in the country where impunity
reigns supreme
MYANMAR. A year under the yoke of generals and repression
CHINA. The homeland of human rights violations
Impunity in Yemen. The Role for the European Union
Between the Quest for Accountability and the Provision of Weapons
Donatella Rostagno
1. The largest humanitarian crisis in the world. 2. Who is held ac-
countable?. 3. The role of the European Union. 4. Recommanda-
tions
Reference list
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Democratic Republic of Congo. The Fight Against Impunity:
A Challenge for the European Union
Donatella Rostagno
1. Introduction. 2. The political and security context in the DRC.
3. Challenges in the fight against impunity. 4. Convictions that give
reasons to hope. 5. Some progress in the area of governance and
justice. 6. Challenges related to crimes committed before 2002. 7.
Challenges related to crimes committed after 2002. 8. Challenges
related to new types of crime. 9. Transitional justice. 10. The role of
the European Union: Recommendations
Reference list
Mozambique. Cabo Delgado, the Forgotten Cape
Isabel Santos
1. The extractive industry and human rights violations. 2. Unsanc-
tioned abuses by armed groups, Defence and Security forces and
private military companies. 3. Abductions, Sexual Violence and
Forced Marriage. 4. Mistreatment and police extortion of undocu-
mented displaced persons. 5. Media freedom.
Reference list
Fighting Impunity, Including Impunity
That Dehumanises Migrant People
Maria Arena
Human Rights, the Dark Side of Sport and Europe’s Commitment
Marc Tarabella
Reciprocity May Help Fight Impunity
Cecilia Wikström
1. Press freedom under attack in many European countries. 2. Coro-
navirus pandemic contributes to deterioration of human rights.
3. Turkey is blackmailing the EU
Reference list
Egypt. No More Impunity, Truth and Justice for All
Alessandra Ballerini
1. Europe and the United Nations on human rights in Egypt. 2.
Forced disappearances. 3. Extrajudicial executions. 4. Complicity
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with “all the evil in the world”
Reference list
Peoples’ Rights and International Law. A Contextualised Definition
Simona Fraudatario and Gianni Tognoni
1. International law and impunity. 2. The legal, cultural, political
and theoretical dimensions of impunity. 3. Listening to the tribune
of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal. 4. Migrant peoples and the
crime of silence
Reference list
Work Is Not a Commodity, Rights at the Time of Covid-19
Susanna Camusso
1. Global workers’ rights in the pandemic. 2. Global Workers’ Un-
ion, a new start in Philadelphia. 3. The indicators and the ranking of
the Global Rights Index. 4. The interdependence of civil, social and
labour rights. 5. Combating isolation and nationalism, coordinat-
ing trade union strategies. 6. Bringing migrants’ rights and labour
rights together. The example of the CGIL
Reference list
Chinese Technological Progress and Rights. Pandemic Dispositifs
Simone Pieranni
1. The Chinese control strategy has become a model. 2. Fixation on
control, ubiquitous video surveillance. 3. The ancient roots of sur-
veillance in China. 4. Before and after Covid-19: the Xinjiang case.
5. Political repression, the case of Hong Kong
Reference list
The Wars of the Future. Artificial Intelligence, Big Data
and the War Industry
Giovanna Cracco
1. Autonomous Artificial Intelligence. 2. Semi-autonomous artifi-
cial intelligence. 3. Super-soldiers. 4. The (false) problem of human
control over autonomous weapons. 5. Big Tech and war. 6. Killer
robots. Ethics and responsibility
Reference list
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Press Freedom in Hungary and the Other Visegrád Countries
Massimo Congiu
1. From the “gag law” to the suppression of newspapers. 2. The case
of Klubrádió. 3. Poland in the wake of Orbán. 4. Freedom and safe-
ty of journalists in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. 5. Nationalist
rhetoric and opposition from mayors and civil society. 6. András
Arató, chairman of the board of Klubrádió, speaks
Reference list
The Virus in Cells. Prisons in Europe During the Pandemic
Onorio Rosati
1. The figures. 2. Infections and deaths. 3. Measures to tackle Cov-
id-19 in prisons. 4. Critical aspects of the system and the need for
radical reform
Reference list
Carceral Architectures and Abuses in the Middle East and North Africa:
The Case for an Interdisciplinary Approach
Monika Borgmann-Slim and Kylee Di Gregorio
1. Out of sight, out of mind: making the invisible visible. 2. Confin-
ing advocacy: a rights-based approach to the deprivation of liberty.
3. Reimagining advocacy: engagement beyond the dialectic of nor-
mative human rights
Reference list
Authors
The Promoters
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PREFACE
Democracy. The Chinese Metaphor
and the European Ostrich
Pier Antonio Panzeri
President of Fight Impunity - Association Against Impunity
R
ecently the Chinese President Xi Jinping used the metaphor “the only person
who can say whether a pair of shoes fits is the one wearing them” to describe
the emerging global trend in models of democracy and universal rights. The
end of the twenty-year war and Western occupation of Afghanistan, which ter-
minated in August 2021 with the completion of the withdrawal of the military
contingent, which has further destabilised the area and led to the resurgence of
Isis-branded terrorism, has reopened the debate on the concept of democracy and
its exportability. This, in fact, in addition to the destruction of Al Qaeda, was the
US objective in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. By definition,
war and terrorism should be considered – tragic – alternatives to the democratic
method and model. However, over the last twenty years we have, unfortunately,
become accustomed to the oxymoron “humanitarian war”, to the idea that the dem-
ocratic model and culture can be exported with arms, or rather, with drones and
missiles, which are, as events in Afghanistan remind us, if anything, “egalitarian”, in
the sense that they slaughter defenceless and innocent civilians and terrorists alike.
In the last decade in particular, following the increasingly rapid process of glo-
balisation and the growing capacity of the economic and financial interests of the
great powers to influence international law, a cautious scepticism has developed
in the political and cultural debate, almost suggesting a decline in the “age of
rights”. These interests and these rights, as they were understood and articulated
in the second half of the last century, have progressively started to collide.
While the value of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is acknowl-
edged, first and foremost Article 3, which enshrines the right to “life, liberty and
security of the person”, the impossibility of separating civil and political rights
from social rights is also debated, and the contradiction between the purported
universalism of the Declaration and its underlying approach, based on typically
Western individualism, is underlined.
The current crisis of democracy must be viewed in this context and must be
considered together with these contradictions, with special attention to the ques-
tion of whether it is correct to claim that “Western” models can find fertile ground
in other areas of the world. The debate has often focused only on supporting or
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Such a limited formulation, however, risks posing an unproductive or even
misleading question. At the beginning of this century two main doctrines op-
posed each other: the first was advanced by George W. Bush who claimed de-
mocracy could be exported – he defended this thesis with weapons (as he –
disastrously – tried to do in Iraq); the other has been implemented in Europe
through a laborious process to enlarge the European Union. This process has
led many eastern countries – with greater or lesser determination – to accept
the constraints imposed by European democratic parameters, whereby they
have committed to signing their Constitutions. At the same time, however, this
process has not been completed in the democratic transition due to the lack of
adequate economic and social policies. The two strategies have both failed: the
first because war is never the solution to a problem, the second because what
has emerged is that Europe lacks a political and programmatic role in manag-
ing this integration process, a role that should be the backbone of the process
– mutual bonds and common rules should be the outcome, not the premise of
such a process.
These examples clearly show that it makes no sense to speak about whether
democracy can be exported, and prompt reflection on “how” and “what” can ac-
tually be exported.
Xi Jinping’s metaphor seems to resolve the issue unequivocally: each country
decides its own destiny and establishes its own model of government. Full stop.
This thesis is becoming increasingly popular, also because Western culture
seems to have reduced democracy to the right to vote, which is being exercised
less and less. The issue is an important one, but voting alone is not a solution be-
cause it does not comprise the delicate and complex mechanisms of democracy.
On the other hand, if the same Enlightenment ideals of “representation”, “collec-
tive interest” and “popular sovereignty”, are no longer identifiable with the elites
that govern our Western democracies – as the sociologist Max Weber had already
understood in the last century – as these elites are characterised by growing oli-
garchic traits, they are indifferent and distant from the needs of the less wealthy
classes and even of the middle class, the active participation of citizens is under-
mined, the sense, feeling and conviction of belonging to a civil and democratic
community is lost.
Such a reductive concept of democracy is also adopted by many states as a way
of removing issues relating to people’s rights from their agenda and to avoid hav-
ing to respond to appeals or resolutions of supranational bodies.
This further confirms the thesis illustrated by the abovementioned metaphor.
Also, the fact that the authoritative role of major international bodies (UN, ICC,
WHO, etc.) has become progressively weaker – their decisions, requests and in-
dications are often ignored – also corroborates this metaphor.
In this context, the Covid-19 pandemic has also been used, in various coun-
tries, to bring about a further clampdown on political opponents, human rights
defenders and NGOs, strengthening national policies for the closure of borders,
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The paradox of the metaphor used by Chinese President Jinping is that, while
it tends to affirm the non-exportability of Western democracy in the world, it
unwittingly reveals the spread of non-democratic, illiberal and despotic mod-
els. There seems to be a link between the latter and democracies that are such
only in appearance. Thus, from Saudi Arabia to China, from Russia to Egypt,
or, in Europe, from Poland to Hungary, these are the models that seem to be
prevailing at the beginning of the 21st
century. Finally, what is evident in this para-
dox is the gap between enunciation and reality: the Chinese policy, thanks to its
enormous economic and financial resources and the strategy pursued by the Belt
Road Initiative, the New Silk Road, is buying up and subjecting many countries
to its domination, through an unprecedented form of external colonialism that
is depriving those countries of their freedom and future, with instruments such
as land grabbing, or in any case to a certain extent influencing their policies and
choices, especially in terms of infrastructure, through a dense network of col-
laborations and economic and diplomatic ties. This soft power is certainly more
effective and sheds less blood than the hard power practises of the United States,
but has similar ambitions and objectives.
Much of the blame is to be laid on Western powers that often allow old neo-
colonial and unscrupulous Realpolitik approaches to prevail in their policies,
according to which it is important to be on good terms with all countries, en-
ter agreements based on economic and commercial interests to the detriment of
rights and democracy. The lack of a moral commitment is one of the roots of the
problems we face today. It is the cause of Europe’s increasingly diminished role.
Because it is difficult, not to say impossible, to set an example and be a point of
reference if one decides to behave like an ostrich, sticking one’s head in the sand.
It is necessary to be aware that not opposing anti-democratic trends that tram-
ple on human rights because of “realpolitik”, however necessary or even justified,
will also plunge the western citadel into general chaos, where “monsters” are born
– also in places that are apparently safe. We are already, unfortunately, heading
down this road. Nevertheless, we can and must change direction.
Today, democracy and rights have come under attack from many sides – con-
flicts and wars, the economy, finance, technology (as in the case of the Pegasus
malware used for espionage purposes also by states to control dissidents or re-
press opponents), pandemics, and so on.
Is the future compromised? As with the climate crisis, this risk is real and evi-
dent.
This is why it is absolutely crucial to urgently and strongly support democracy,
human rights and the fight against impunity. This must be done by constantly
drawing attention to and raising awareness among a frightened, bewildered and
in some ways sleepy public; it must be done by constantly monitoring the abuses
and discrimination that are perpetrated against so many people for the most var-
ied reasons; it must be done in order to denounce to the international commu-
nity the countries that kill and imprison people whose opinions differ from the
opinions of those in power, without ever being held accountable. Last but not

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least, this must be done because it is a precise moral, ethical and political duty.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant, who inaugurated the new ethical sensibility of
the modern age, defined this duty with a very simple and clear formula accord-
ing to which we must always act in the respect and dignity of oneself and others.
Persons are endowed with absolute value and, as such, morally demand uncon-
ditional respect.
This 2021 Report clearly states our commitment to human rights and our fight
against impunity.

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INTRODUCTION
The Sick World and Those Below
Sergio Segio
Editor of the Report
1. A burning planet
The environmental disaster is by now evident to all: to those whose lives or
homes are dramatically and personally at risk or have already been destroyed, but
also to the majority of the population, that sees the images of the catastrophe on
the news, in the form of unstoppable fires, or equally devastating floods and land-
slides. These situations have become increasingly frequent in recent years, they
have been widely predicted by scientists, are regularly ignored by policy makers,
and are promptly forgotten by those who have not experienced them directly.
There have been no serious policies put in place for the prevention, maintenance
and careful management of territories. Year after year, fire after fire, the supply of
Canadair aircrafts to put out fires has repeatedly been deemed insufficient, only to
be forgotten the day after the emergency. These disasters can no longer be defined
as “natural”.
And so, failure after failure, both locally and globally, we have arrived at the
summer of 2021, with the hottest July ever – an escalation that has characterised
these last years: meteorologists claim the last cooler-than-average July in the 20th
century was in 1976 and that 2021 was the hottest month in 142 years of record-
keeping (Borenstein, 2021). Already 2020, according to the World Meteorologi-
cal Organization, was one of the three hottest years ever recorded, with a global
average temperature of about 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels. This has been
compounded by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, with its multiplying effects on
health and, for some parts of the world, food insecurity. The pandemic has also
hindered the efforts to reduce the risk of disasters (WMO, 2021).
Although entirely predictable and foreseeable, even if irresponsibly ignored, the
climate disaster can no longer be averted, the daily forecasts have been more simi-
lar to a war bulletin: floods in Germany; torrential rains in the Hubei region of
China; floods in Turkey; an earthquake in Haiti; massive fires in Greece and Cy-
prus; southern Italy engulfed by flames and a tornado in Pantelleria that caused
deaths and injured; floods in north-eastern Spain, where the damage was serious
and the tourist season was compromised, and then fires that forced thousands
to evacuate; floods in the south-east of England, where major incidents were de-
clared in London hospitals; fires in Kabylia and other regions of northern Algeria;
the Dixie Fire, the second largest fire in the history of the State, which burnt over

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200,000 hectares of land in California; hurricane Idan in the north-eastern parts
of the United States, which killed at least 46 people and flooded New York City;
floods and overflowing rivers in India, with entire villages submerged under wa-
ter; floods and overflowing rivers in Japan, with deaths, missing people and five
million people displaced; and an area of nearly 6,000 square kilometres affected
by fires in Canada.
The largest fire broke out in north-eastern Siberia, where the fire’s front line
was 2,000 kilometres long, perhaps making it the largest in history. It was also the
most devastating: not only for the loss of 13 and a half million hectares record-
ed in August 2021 nationally, but for the production of a record 505 megatons
of carbon dioxide, which only adds to the already dramatic situation of global
warming – it is no coincidence that in the Arctic average temperatures have been
rising more than three times faster than the rest of the world (The Moscow Times,
2021).
Thousands of people have died (2,200 in Haiti alone, which was devastated in
August 2021 by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake and at the same time by a tropical
storm that went by the sarcastic name of Grace), tens of thousands have been in-
jured, hundreds of thousands have been made homeless, and millions have been
displaced; these are the first figures from the catastrophes of summer 2021. Pro-
visional estimates almost always forget to mention the hundreds of millions of
animals, both wild and domestic, killed by disasters, a figure which in turn indi-
cates a tragedy not limited to contingent emergencies because of its repercussions
on habitats, which heavily impacts the future. In Italy, despite the destruction
caused by fires, the death of at least 20 million animals, it has even been possible
to anticipate the beginning of the hunting season. Demonstrating that sometimes
there really is no limit to ecocides. To this regard, it must be noted that in 2021
the policies pursued by the President of Brazil are truly unparalleled: support for
agribusiness and mining, the devastation of the Amazon and of millennial eco-
systems is accompanied by the repression of indigenous communities, violence
and murder against the defenders of human rights and of the environment.
2. Ecocide and ethnocide in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
“The ecocide causing such massive fires is also an ethnocide. Destroying the for-
est, compartmentalising it, privatising it, exploiting it, deforestation of immense
areas for the benefit of mining, ranching, the cultivation of transgenic soybeans
or palm oil, means, at the same time and with equal violence, culturally destroy-
ing the peoples who inhabit it.” (Zask, 2021)
With Bolsonaro, who has been President since January 2019, the destruction of
the Amazon rainforest, the main green lung of the globe, has strongly intensified.
Despite this, the appetite of the lobby Bancada ruralista are not yet satisfied: in
May 2021 a strong popular mobilisation together with parliamentary opposition
managed to block, at least temporarily, yet another attempt to pass a bill (no.

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490/2007) on the “Marco Temporal” intended to introduce temporal limits to the
demarcation of the lands of indigenous peoples, modifying the rights acquired
and ratified by the Constitution, on the basis of which some lands are reserved
for indigenous peoples – a total of 440,000 hectares with a population of 70,000
people, today there are about 900,000 indigenous people living in Brazil in 305
tribes.
A decision on the matter by the Supreme Federal Court, scheduled for August
25, 2021, was postponed, while Brasilia was swarmed by protests of thousands of
indigenous people representing 176 peoples from all regions of the country and
their rights. Starting with the right to life. The new rule, pursued by speculators,
would put an end to the policy of “no contact”, adopted since the 1980s, which
protects the right of indigenous groups to live in isolation and therefore to be
protected from environmental degradation. Forced contact would be devastating
for forests and ecosystems but also for the people who live in them, all the more
so in times of pandemic, since these people have no immunological memory.
Already now, the mortality rate of Covid-19 among indigenous populations is
9.6% compared to 5.6% among the Brazilian population in general (Magri, 2021;
Fernández, 2021).
“We are the ones who are suffering, that’s why we are here to fight.” “The Marco
Temporal is for us, indigenous peoples, a declaration of extermination,” said some
of those who took part in the week long mobilisation in August 2021. The ini-
tiative could count on international solidarity: a delegation included a member
of the Spanish parliament, trade union activists and two US congressional staff
members participating in a personal capacity. Who stressed the fact that the fate
of those peoples and of the Amazon concerns the whole planet.
The destiny of these people is compromised not only by that law – the greedy
agribusiness has no qualms about taking illegal actions, such as the invasions
of indigenous lands by armed and violent groups. Criminal groups are “encour-
aged by Bolsonaro, who campaigned on the promise that, if elected president,
‘not an inch would be destined to indigenous reserves’ and who has made racist
and genocidal comments about indigenous peoples during his career.” (Fishman,
2021)
The health crisis linked to Covid-19, however, has also become an opportunity
and a pretext to “proceed with a series of decrees, ordinances, normative instruc-
tions, provisional measures and bills to legalise crimes and diminish the consti-
tutional rights of indigenous peoples.” Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil
(APIB), a committee representing the indigenous movement in Brazil, is very
clear when it accuses Bolsonaro of favouring “the aggravation of violence against
indigenous peoples during the pandemic,” creating an atmosphere of terror in
which the federal government promotes “the greedy fury of agribusiness, mining
companies, corporations and international investment funds.” (APIB, 2020)
Bolsonaro is an ardent promoter of extractive and deforestation policies, but
responsibility is shared by the global financial system. As denounced by Global
Witness, a considerable stake in the Brazilian company SLC Agricola was owned

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by a British hedge fund, Crispin Odey. This company has destroyed at least 30,000
hectares of the Cerrado, a vast region of forested savannah and a delicate eco-
system. This is just one of many possible examples, which do not only concern
Brazil: six of the largest agribusiness companies (three operating in the Amazon,
two in the Congo Basin and one in New Guinea) were financed for 44 billion dol-
lars between 2013 and 2019 by more than 300 investment companies, banks and
pension funds based around the world (Global Witness, 2020).
3. Lethal and suicidal extractivism
In Latin America, the system of agribusiness and intensive livestock breeding,
monoculture and mining, and the extractive model in general, are particularly
concentrated and developed, as well as being favoured by local politicians that
are often the expression of landlordism and corruption. As in the case of Africa,
the wealth of natural and mineral resources becomes a curse, since it attracts the
devastating interests of large corporations and investment funds, as well as gov-
ernments dedicated to land and water grabbing, in which all social and ecological
responsibility is absent. Chile, for example, possesses about 40% of the world’s
reserves of lithium, a strategic metal fundamental to electronics and new tech-
nologies whose already intense exploitation is destined to increase in the current
phase of ecological transition due to the need to produce energy from renew-
able sources. It must be noted that one of the largest lithium deposits, perhaps
the largest in the world, is in Afghanistan. The estimate including other metals
and rare earths present in the Afghan subsoil reaches the value of 3,000 billion
dollars. The decades-long state of war, first with the Soviet Union and then with
the United States and NATO, have so far prevented its exploitation, which could,
however, begin in the near future, also to meet the economic needs of the Taliban
regime that has returned to power, and to provide relief to the state of prostration
of the country and its population after such a long war. This would probably ben-
efit China, which has skilfully worked to be in a favourable position.
The issue also concerns the European Union, as noted by the coalition of 180
associations and academics who denounced the plans on raw materials contained
in the European Green Deal, based on a contradictory and inconsistent idea of
“green growth”, which will lead to “a dramatic increase in demand for minerals
and metals that the European Commission plans to meet through a large number
of new mining projects, both inside and outside the Union.” Here too, as with fos-
sil fuels, in addition to the environmental damage that affects everyone while al-
lowing private companies to profit, there is a perverse system of European public
subsidies in place that benefit mining companies and their shareholders, despite
the Green Deal, which actually becomes an opportunity for more plundering of
common goods and new gains by large groups, lobbies and corporations.
To the detriment of human rights, despite there being clear responsibilities:
“The EU’s demand for foreign minerals and metals leads to social conflict, kill-

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ings of environmental and human rights defenders, environmental destruction
and carbon emissions worldwide. The EU’s current trade policy has as its sole
objective the liberalisation of the raw materials sector without regard for human
rights, the environment and the sovereignty of the countries of the Global South,
trapping these nations in a cycle of extractivism and chronic dependency.” (VV.
AA., 2021)
The goal of infinite growth has been made to look green and is presented as a
transition towards renewable sources, but it remains a practice that is distructive
of any kind of balance and is therefore suicidal. This is evident if we look at data
from the last half century: since the 1970s the world population has doubled (also
the demographic issue is neglected and removed), but the global gross domestic
product has quadrupled.
This paradigm causes greediness and profits to grow, as they are fed by the spec-
ulative dynamics of finance, accompanied by an increase in the violence against
those who defend territories and populations, and of environmental conflicts:
3,516 recorded so far (Environmental Justice Atlas, 2021).
The extractivist model characterises a process of accumulation by dispossession,
itself characteristic of the domination of financial capital; its main instrument “is
violence, and its agents are, to the same degree, state, parastate and private pow-
ers, which often work together because they share the same objectives.” “Violence
and the militarisation of territories are the rule, they are an unavoidable part of
the pattern; the dead, the wounded, and the people who are tortured are not the
result of accidental and excessive police or military control. This is the ‘normal’
way of acting of extractivism in the zone of non-being. State terrorism practiced
by military dictatorships destroyed rebel groups and paved the way for open-pit
mining and transgenic monocultures. Subsequently, democracies – conservative
and/or progressive – took advantage of the conditions created by authoritarian
regimes to further accumulate by dispossession.” (Zibechi, 2016)
It is no coincidence that most of the killings of human rights defenders are con-
centrated in that part of the world where these processes are more intense, but
also more opposed by communities and populations. According to Front Line
Defenders, 331 people were murdered in 2020, most of them (69%) defending
land, indigenous communities and environmental rights. As many as 264 of the
murders occurred in the Americas, including 16 in Brazil, 20 in Honduras, 19
in Mexico, 15 in Guatemala; with the record of Colombia, where 177 defenders
were murdered (Front Line Defenders, 2021). Global Witness, on the other hand,
reported 227 killings of land and environmental defenders during 2020. More
than half were concentrated in just three countries: Colombia (65), Mexico (30)
and the Philippines (29); followed by Brazil (20), Honduras (17), the Democratic
Republic of Congo (15), Guatemala (13) and Nicaragua (12). At least 30% of the
fatal attacks concerned defenders engaged in fighting deforestation and intensive
exploitation of resources. The most affected (more than a third of those killed)
were representatives of indigenous peoples, even though those communities
make up only 5% of the world’s population (Global Witness, 2021).

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Of course and unfortunately, the overall figures relating to violence, repression
and violation of human rights and social and political murders in those countries is
much higher (we report on it here in the chapters Global Rights and Observatory on
Impunities) and undoubtedly Colombia has a terrible and historical negative record,
which prompted the Permanent People’s Tribunal to dedicate a Session to political
genocide, impunity and crimes against peace in 2021. The judgment, issued on June
17, 2021, found that the Colombian State is guilty of the crime of genocide, which
has been carried out over decades (Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos, 2021).
This genocide continues to take place. Those responsible are the same powers
and governments that collude with the economic interests that devastate its ter-
ritories: 115 defenders and social leaders and 36 former guerrillas were killed in
2021 (as of August 28). This genocide, however, is not able to stop the popular
protest that has characterised 2021: the revolt of the paro nacional began on April
28 against the Duque government and its tax reform and the introduction of a
series of social measures on income, education and health. From the beginning
of the protest to June 26 there were 4,687cases of police violence, 2,005 arbitrary
detentions, 82 people seriously injured in the eyes, 75 killed during the demon-
strations, which increased to 80 by July 23 (INDEPAZ, 2021; Temblores, 2021).
4. The war on the environment and the climate catastrophe
From one record to another, from one environmental crime to another, from
a denialist President such as Donald Trump to one like Jair Bolsonaro, to the
dozens of other countries that have nonetheless underestimated the problem and
carefully avoided countering the interests of the fossil fuel lobbies, we are now,
with hardly any resistance – other than that of movements and NGOs – in the
situation documented in the latest Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-
mate Change (IPCC), released in August 2021, which constitutes the first part of
the Sixth Assessment Report to be released next year. In the meantime the Con-
ference of the Parties (COP26) will be held, on 1-12 November 2021 in Glasgow.
Based on the evidence collected by the IPCC, this is the last useful deadline to
take the already belated political and operational decisions to implement the nec-
essary measures not to prevent – time for doing do has already been irresponsibly
wasted – but at least to limit the irreversibility of the climate catastrophe taking
place, and limit its effects on the oceans, for instance, on regions covered in ice,
on the world’s food and water resources, and to invest in adjustments, given that
climate warming will continue for the next decades, regardless of how successful
its mitigation is.
The present and future negative effects are distributed unequally across geo-
graphical areas and census. This may reassure the cynical and the foolish. How-
ever, the warning of Mohamed Nasheed, the former President of the Maldives, an
island nation at high risk from rising sea levels, should not be underestimated.
In expressing solidarity – on behalf of a group of countries that have formed the

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Climate Vulnerable Forum – to Germany and Belgium, affected by the floods that
claimed nearly 200 lives in July 2021, he remarked that although not everyone is
affected equally, these extreme events show that in a climate emergency no one is
safe (Sengupta, 2021).
Hopefully some governments, including those of Belgium and Germany, will
decide to listen to him. As early as 2009, Nasheed organised a strongly symbolic
event: he convened an underwater Council of Ministers. He sat with his Vice-
President and 11 ministers in diving suits and masks at a table 3.8 meters un-
derwater. It was a cry for help caused by the rising sea level that threatens the
existence of the tropical archipelago and, in different ways, the whole world. The
concluding statement stressed that: “Climate change is happening and it threatens
the rights and security of everyone on Earth.” (Omidi, 2009)
12 years have already passed since that appeal went unheeded, while ongoing
environmental disasters and rising temperatures remind us how dramatically
well-founded his words are.
The data are unequivocal and should be terrifying – if the global political class
were not, for the most part, affected by a sort of cupio dissolve. The Earth’s average
global temperature has risen by 1.2°C since the epoch preceding the industrial
revolution and is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C in the next 20 years; the last
five years have been the hottest since 1850. The current concentration of major
greenhouse gases is the highest in 800,000 years; about 2.6 million pounds of
carbon dioxide are currently produced per second. Over the past 120 years, since
the beginning of the 20th
century, sea-level rise has averaged 20 centimetres, which
is the fastest rate in three thousand years; extreme sea-level events that used to
occur once every hundred years could occur annually by the end of this century.
The retreat of glaciers has also been unprecedented over the last two thousand
years. Even more telling and worrying is the forecast that temperatures will con-
tinue to rise until the middle of the century, regardless of emission reductions.
The 2°C increase at the end of the century can only be avoided if net emissions
are reduced to zero by 2050 (IPCC, 2021).
The scenario is catastrophic both because of what it describes (in no less than
3,949 pages of data, simulations and projections, which in turn are based on
thousands of studies, with over 14,000 citations and almost 80,000 comments),
which is already visibly and dramatically underway – extreme events are already
occurring, and forecasts and hypothesises are similarly catastrophic. Little has
been done since the panel, which brings together the world’s leading experts and
thousands of scientists, launched the alarm in its first report in 1990, 31 years ago.
It took 25 years to reach the fundamental Paris Agreement in 2015, an event in
which 196 countries laboriously and lengthily debated for two weeks to reach an
agreement that was however limited with regard to the commitments (contain-
ment of global warming below 2°C and hopefully 1.5°C above pre-industrial lev-
els). The agreement came into force the following year, but already in 2017 – after
the unfortunate election of Donald Trump – the United States defected and the
Brazilian President boycotted it, the former bent (like many of his predecessors)

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to the interests of oil companies, the latter to those of agribusiness, wild deforesta-
tion and the extractive industry.
The war on the environment and on nature – climate change is one of its main
chapters, and risks being the final one – is actually an epochal mass suicide. Evi-
dently, a part of the global decision-makers and the powerful of the Earth have
a well-founded expectation of being able to make “those at the bottom” pay the
highest prices of the coming catastrophe. Which means they intend to continue
relying on the same mechanisms that produce inequality that have functioned
so effectively in the last 40 years, draining social wealth upwards and, in the last
quarter of the century, making the weakest pay the costs of the economic and
financial crisis as well as, more recently, the pandemic crisis.
This is also a war being waged by an older generations against the generation
whose future is being robbed, but also and especially a war of one class against
another, and of one part of the planet against another.
5. Without environmental justice there is no peace
Like all wars, also this one takes place on an inclined plane: too easy to start and
too complicated to end. Like all wars, the fuel that keeps it alive is the religion
of profit, the interests of the few against the rights of the many. To make peace
with the Earth – and with the majority of those who inhabit it – it is necessary
to change the current system. Together with the power of the media, cultural
domination, the surrender and passivity of a large part of the political class, this
system has managed to shape a narrative according to which its own decline, the
possibility of overcoming it, is an unthinkable trauma, an impossible change.
No doubt such a change would be a radical one and this is what seems to make
us believe that this economic and social system cannot be modified, that although
it might not be the best one there are no alternatives. In truth any alternative is
preferable to the environmental apocalypse and the mass extinction we are facing
at present. The alternative exists, it is in plain view: it so evident it even seems to be
too simple. It consists in an ecological conversion of the economy. For decades, it
has been supported by non-subservient scientists, environmental associations and,
more recently, by a few loud and free voices such as that of Pope Francis and that of
a very determined young girl, capable of starting a worldwide movement of young
people who claim a future for themselves and for everyone. “We already have the
solution for the climate crisis. We know exactly what we have to do. The only thing
lacking is a decision. Economy or ecology? We have to choose.” (Thunberg, 2019)
On August 20, 2018 Greta Thunberg began her solitary protest in front of the
Swedish parliament. A pebble that became an avalanche: Fridays For Future is a
movement that has mobilised millions of people around the world, its aim is to
reclaim the future and rights that have been seized by those who have the power
to decide on climate and who are destroying the environment. A few months
later, in October of that same year, another movement, Extinction Rebellion, ap-

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peared in the streets of London, also demanding environmental justice.
Those movements and their radicalism, which have become global, represent
the legs, the head and the heart of the need for dramatic and urgent change. They
have shown us that what seems impossible is within reach, that saving a world on
fire and the humanity inhabiting it has nothing to do with salvific technologies
still to be invented, or with greenwashing, and that what is needed is a political
choice – until now at the service of the dogma of growth and of the preachers of
the globalised market.
Climate justice requires to rethink the economy and its conversion. The same
as what has happened – unfortunately in few cases so far – with war industries.
It means halting the production of death and beginning to invest in ecological-
ly, ethically and socially compatible areas: this is not impossible, it is enough to
change perspective, to understand that fossil fuels cause disasters, and environ-
mental genocide, the same as factories of landmines or missiles, in a different way
but with the same effects. What is needed, as Greta writes, is a decision. Or, to
be more precise, what is needed is that those at the bottom, who pay the highest
price for the system’s destructive nature, build the political strength necessary
to impose, with urgency and determination, this decision on those who can and
must take it – who so far have not wanted to.
The idea of degrowth was developed about fifteen years ago and perhaps was
dismissed too soon and too quickly. Controversial as it was, it posed the funda-
mental question regarding limits to and of development. The fact that the climate
emergency has become increasingly dramatic should reopen crucial questions,
starting with whether GDP can continue to be the sole guiding parameter.
6. What caused Covid-19
In a similar way, in these two years of pandemic, the word zoonosis appeared
and disappeared rapidly from political debate and the public reflection, the me-
dia and social networks. Another word, syndemic, didn’t even make the public
debate.
This is no coincidence. These words question the causes – and the unequal effects
– of the pandemic. Issues that could have been raised were promptly removed and
concealed. This fact, in turn, reflects the functioning of the system that the whole
of humanity is forced to live with, in times of globalisation: that of fossil and finan-
cial capitalism. It also reflects the way capitalism has transformed agriculture and
animal breeding into an industrial system of hyper-exploitation, indifferent to the
effects on ecosystems and the balance between species. A predatory and destructive
system, as all social, economic and environmental indicators now show.
It is a seriously ill system that has made the world sick. In this case, provoking
an unprecedented pandemic, in terms of spread and gravity, also characterised by
specific elements none of the pandemics of the past had. The difference lies not so
much in globalisation per se, its ability to overcome geographical distances and al-

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low human mobility (provided one is not poor and migrant), but in the processes
– clearly connected to globalization – that regulate the modes of production of
goods and food, of hoarding of raw materials, of exploitation of natural and en-
ergy resources. The destructive synergy of these modes of production have pro-
gressively brought the planet, and those who inhabit it, to the brink of collapse.
In this case, the pandemic originated with a spillover: the coronavirus went
from bats to man, through an intermediate passage, probably the pangolin, facili-
tated by the Chinese markets where live animals are sold, by local eating habits
and by the intensive pig farms installed at the edge of the forests where these ani-
mals live. Industrial farms reduce the space of habitats of wild species and force
cohabitation of wild animals, those being bred and humans. These are the condi-
tions is which zoonosis occurs, i.e. an infectious disease that has jumped from a
non-human animal to humans. Climate change and atmospheric pollution have
made the latter more vulnerable to respiratory infections, thus making it possible
to speak of a syndemic, the synergic interaction of two or more transmissible and
non-transmissible diseases, which affects disadvantaged populations in particu-
lar, which implies a correlation between these diseases and environmental and
socio-economic conditions.
Climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic are consequences of the same
problems and have the same causes: first of all the widespread and intensive en-
vironmental, human and animal exploitation – rendered invisible, because if the
real scale of industrialised farming, of what are actual lagers, horrific assembly
lines, were revealed it would probably be unbearable, it would not be tolerated by
the general public. These issues are almost totally absent from public reflection
and the media, they are dealt with by animal rights groups and a handful of anti-
speciesist, scientists and philosophers, but are fundamental and constitutive of a
prospect of change, which must be radical.
It is necessary to question and convert the economic system, but it is also nec-
essary to rethink lifestyles and cultures based on consumption – something the
pandemic should also encourage.
“The pain, uncertainty and fear, and the realization of our own limitations,
brought on by the pandemic have only made it all the more urgent that we rethink
our styles of life, our relationships, the organisation of our societies and, above all,
the meaning of our existence.” (Bergoglio, 2020). Once again, Pope Francis, who
is often capable of words of truth, of denouncing and advancing proposals on
social and environmental matters, expressed his concern effectively. Given where
these words come from, one would expect they would be able to induce change
or at least a lively debate. Instead, they seem to have gone unheard by political
decision-makers, but also by the very people of the Church the Pope heads: be-
cause change is scary, because the gap between what we know is right and what it
means to put it into practice is similar to a ditch, because consistency and coher-
ence seem to be rare and costly. And because, in the era of global communication
all words, even the most just and authoritative, become inaudible, covered by a
constant and confusing noise that makes it impossible to separate what is true

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and vital from what is not. This also applies to scientific discourse and evidence,
which during the pandemic have been questioned by a relatively large part of the
population, with regard to both its causes and its remedies.
What has happened – the jump of a coronavirus from bats to humans – had
already been accurately predicted in 2012 (Quammen, 2012). In fact, about one
hundred zoonoses have been recorded over the last century, and in the last two
decades they have accelerated – so in the historical period marked by the wors-
ening of overall environmental conditions. If, therefore, Covid-19 is a zoonosis,
“the pandemic has been caused by the environmental damage caused by human-
ity in order to access the ever-increasing amounts of resources necessary to fuel
economic growth, profits and consumption.” (Pallante, 2021)
This is why it is wrong to look for the cause of the pandemic, and an even more
useless explanation is that the virus was leaked by laboratory in Wuhan, as Don-
ald Trump has insistently and instrumentally tried to claim without having any
evidence. Moreover, if it is true that research on the bat coronavirus was being
carried out in that laboratory in China, it is also true that it was financed by the
Eco Health Alliance, a health organisation based in the United States (Lerner,
Hvistendahl, 2021).
What should be considered is not only the trade war and the economic and
political competition with China, which escalated under the previous US admin-
istration, but also the fact that the United States, with its lifestyle and socio-eco-
nomic model, is one of the most greedy consumers of natural resources. Which
entails an exponentially growing demand. These factors constitute the intercon-
nected causes at the basis of the current pandemic, as well as of many of the social,
health and environmental problems that mark the era of neoliberal globalisation:
the dogma of infinite growth and of absolute freedom of the market.
7. Carbon footprint, lifestyles and inequalities
Earth Overshoot Day, the date on which humanity’s demand for ecological re-
sources and services in a given year exceeds what the Earth is able to regenerate
in a year, was July 29 in 2021. In 1970 it was December 29: this is indicative of
the incredible and irresponsible speed and intensity with which natural resources
are being consumed. It has taken humanity half a century to need 1.7 planets to
satisfy its current annual demand. To the obvious detriment of future genera-
tions, who are deprived of rights and opportunities, but also of those who, living
in this epoch, suffer the harmful and lethal effects of this model of development.
Covid-19 is only the latest effect, although more serious and widespread and, as
usual, unequally distributed, since therapies and vaccines are accessible to a small
minority of the world population.
Also figures relating to the so-called carbon footprint reveal disparities, as 1.7 is
the average, but the country with the greatest impact is the United States, which
consume resources corresponding to those produced by five planets. Australia is

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at 4.6, Russia 3.4, France, Germany and Japan 2.9, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland
2.8, the United Kingdom 2.6, Spain 2.5, China 2.3, Brazil 1.8, India 0.7(Global
Footprint Network, 2021; Earth Overshoot Day, 2021).
The contribution of different parts of the world to global warming is also un-
equal and highly differentiated. Between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10% of the
world’s population (about 630 million people) were responsible for 52% of cumu-
lative carbon emissions. The richest 1% alone were responsible for 15% of emis-
sions, more than the entire European Union. The poorest 50% (around 3.1 billion
people) were responsible for only 7% of emissions and used just 4% of the avail-
able carbon budget (Oxfam, Stockholm Environment Institute, 2020).
So also with regard to the climate, the usual and unquestionable rule of capital-
ism applies: profits are privatised and concentrated, while costs are distributed
and dumped onto the weaker classes – or, in this case, weaker geographical ar-
eas. The strongest of the strong dictate the absolute law. As American President
George H. W. Bush openly said at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: “The
American way of life is not negotiable”, and everything else follows.
8. Lobbies and think-tanks against climate
As is the case with climate change, also with regard to the causes of the pan-
demic the most advanced research and the warnings of the most authoritative
scientists seem to have little or no weight in the face of the power and influence
of structural economic interests, in particular those of multinational companies.
Climate denialism – the previous President of the United States being one of its
greatest representatives – is one of the expressions of this power and of its capac-
ity – or at least of its stubborn intention – to influence not only political decisions,
but also the perception of reality. In this regard research has shown how the oil
and gas industry is massively using social media to publish ads promoting the
use of fossil fuels, spreading disinformation about climate change and minimis-
ing its effects, depicting fossil gas consumption as “green”, and fuelling fraudulent
greenwashing campaigns.
Researchers have tracked down 25,147 Facebook ads posted in 2020 by 25 or-
ganisations in the oil and gas sector, which were viewed over 431 million times.
The technique used is no longer outright denial, as in the past, and the change
is due to increasing scrutiny from investors, regulators and the public. Now, the
report notes, those companies have developed more subtle and misleading mes-
saging techniques, such as promoting gas as a low-carbon climate solution, trying
to claim oil and gas are compatible with climate awareness, and presenting oil and
gas as necessary to maintain a high quality of life.
It is not only the oil industry and conservative and denialist pressure groups
in the United States that work against the climate policies set out by the Paris
Agreement. In Europe, it is also the sectoral associations representing transport
and heavy industry that are most misaligned with the European Commission’s

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attempts to reach global warming containment targets and, in particular, with the
acceleration contained in the “Fit for 55” package, adopted on 14 July 2021, with
which member states committed to reducing emissions by at least 55% by 2030
compared to 1990 levels (Influence Map, 2021 a; 2021 b).
The giants of digital capitalism, therefore, also earn money by spreading disin-
formation about the climate. But the reverse is also true and proven, namely the
funding received by dozens of conservative non-profits and denialist think-tanks
from platforms like Google, as revealed in recent years. Among the beneficiaries,
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative political group, which has
also received sponsorships from Amazon, considered decisive in convincing the
Trump Administration to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and dismantle
Barack Obama’s previous environmental regulations (Kirchgaessner, 2019). Joe
Biden’s decision to immediately reverse this course and re-enter the Agreement,
in fact, triggered the oil giants’ countermeasures.
In the summer of 2021 an investigation by Greenpeace UK revealed Exxon
Mobil’s strategies to hinder climate action through lobbying at government level.
This is not a new strategy, as Exxon Mobil organised and funded a disinforma-
tion campaign in the 1990s and early 2000s to fuel doubts about the link between
global warming and fossil fuels. Exxon also helped found and lead a powerful
cross-industry group, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), which spent tens of
millions of dollars fighting a binding global climate agreement in the run-up to
the 1997 United Nations climate summit in Kyoto. This money was invested suc-
cessfully, as the United States did not ratify the Protocol. Again, between 1998
and 2014, the company poured at least $30 million into funding climate-denial
groups such as the Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and
the Heritage Foundation.
There is, in short, a dense network of research centres that make a living by
falsifying data and scientific findings and promoting disinformation on climate
change, as well as pressure groups that operate with governments and parties, fa-
cilitated by the revolving door system between oil companies and politics. One of
the most macroscopic examples concerns the then CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson,
who became Secretary of State under Donald Trump.
Biden’s intention to allocate billions of dollars in renewable energy to tackle
climate change has reinvigorated Exxon’s lobbying efforts, which appear to have
already achieved some results, given the scaling back of the President’s proposal,
which initially included over a hundred billion dollars in subsidies for electric
vehicles alone, to be funded in part through increased taxation of fossil fuel com-
panies (Greenpeace-Unearthed, 2021).
What has now emerged with strong evidence is that oil companies have known
about the effects of fossil fuels on global warming for over half a century, long
before the issue came to public awareness and began to concern policy makers.
This fact makes it reasonable to speak of intentional environmental crimes of
enormous magnitude, which are in fact leading to an intensification of lawsuits
against the fossil industry (Pattee, 2021).

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9. The achievements of citizens organisations and movements
The inertia or, at best, the delay of political decision-makers, the fraudulent dis-
information of climate deniers, the deceptiveness of greenwashinge, cosmetic and
deceptive rebranding (a good example of this is the French oil company Total: in
May 2021 it decided to change its name to Total Energies, its logo a display of eco-
logical rainbow colours), the powerful influence of the fossil industry lobbies are
tackled by global movements that have took centre stage in recent years, putting
their bodies on the front line to regain the future that is being taken from them
day after day, proposing radical paradigm shifts and fighting for climate justice.
On other levels and with other tools, a significant phenomenon is also emerging
in recent years: that of climate change-related litigation, which presents signifi-
cant figures. Litigation has almost doubled in four years, going from 884 cases in
24 countries in 2017 to over 1,550 in 38 countries in 2020. Largely concentrated
in high-income nations, they are however also involving areas of the global south
such as Colombia, India, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines and South Africa. The
plaintiffs are NGOs, citizen and activist groups, and indigenous communities.
Companies are being sued but also governments that are unable to enforce regu-
lations and commitments or that are inactive with respect to climate change and
extreme weather events (UNEP, 2021).
When citizens organise and activists mobilise, achievements follow, such as,
for example, the April 2021 ruling of the German Constitutional Court, which
required legislation to modify the existing law to regulate in a more detailed and
stricter manner greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for the period after
2030. Another example is the $111 million compensation awarded by the UK
Supreme Court in May 2021 – at the end of a 13-year legal battle – to a group
of 42,500 Nigerian farmers and fishermen who sued Royal Dutch Shell for years
of oil spills in the Niger Delta, which have contaminated land and groundwater.
Shell also lost a case brought against it by Friends of the Earth Netherlands and
six other NGOs along with some 17,000 individual citizens: on 26 May 2021, the
District Court in The Hague ordered the company to reduce its global CO2
emis-
sions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.
While waiting for – and urging – governments and legislators to tackle the cli-
mate emergency and environmental disasters in an adequate and generalised way,
imposing limits and rules to the excessive power of multinationals, the grassroots
initiative shows a fundamental will to claim and also conquer those environmen-
tal rights that have been violated for too long.
10. Climate, Covid-19 and Genocide. The Brazilian case
The two Presidents who have most represented and supported climate denial-
ism and opposed measures to contain global warming, Donald Trump and Jair
Bolsonaro, have also stood out for their denial and underestimation of the coro-

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navirus pandemic. According to former Presidents of Brazil Dilma Rousseff and
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro should be held responsible for at least part
of the Covid-19 deaths in their country, one of the worst hit. For this reason, ac-
cording to both he is responsible of “a genocide”. The same accusation is made
by the indigenous communities, who have denounced him to the International
Criminal Court for his deforestation policies (see the chapter Global Rights. Of
impunities, Silences and Justice in this volume).
As of August 18, 2021, the United States and Brazil ranked the first and third
in the world, with 37,023,466 cases of infection and 623,338 deaths the US, and
20,416,183 cases and 570,598 deaths in Brazil (Johns Hopkins University, 2021).
Official figures on mortality from Covid-19, however, are increasingly seen
as being significantly underestimated. Both regarding the United States (Lew-
is, Montañez, 2021) and the world in general. Finally, according to the analysts
of “The Economist”, actual figures could be more than three times higher than
the 4.6 million officially counted at the beginning of September 2021, reaching
a count of 15 million deaths. Also the World Health Organization, comment-
ing on the 1,813,188 officially dead on December 31, 2020, claimed that the real
death toll directly and indirectly attributable to Covid-19 on that date was actu-
ally around three million (The Economist, 2021; WHO, 2021).
Unlike Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro continues to be in office and to implement
policies that are harmful for the present and future of his people and his country.
In 2021 the institutional crisis worsened, with continuous changes of ministers, re-
quests for impeachment, attempts to stage coups, conflicts between powers, and the
President placed under investigation by order of the Supreme Court in April 2021
for the disastrous management of the pandemic – his generals openly threatened
the same Court and suffered no consequences. Bolsonaro himself rallied his sup-
porters and called for demonstrations in front of institutional headquarters and
personally attacked the Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes as well as the
President of the Superior Electoral Tribunal Luis Roberto Barroso, accusing him of
obstructing his attempt to introduce paper ballots ahead of the 2022 presidential
elections, a ploy to remedy the conspicuous drop in support.
The government of Bolsonaro, a retired army captain who is nostalgic for the
dictatorship, holds a world record for the presence of ministers from the mili-
tary: seven out of 23. This is hardly reassuring, especially in a country that has
been ruled by a military regime for 20 years, following the 1964 coup d’état. 16
of the 46 state enterprises, including the largest one, the hydrocarbon company
Petrobras, depend on the ministries now headed by officers of the armed forces.
6,157 military personnel, more than half of whom are on active duty, occupied
positions normally reserved for civilians in 2020. Two of the most important and
delicate areas, such as the fight against Amazon deforestation and the Covid-19
pandemic, are entrusted to military personnel: the first to the Vice-President and
reserve general Hamilton Mourão and the second to General Eduardo Pazuello,
until March 2021 Minister of Health. In both cases the results have been disas-
trous (Vigna, 2021; Vandenberghe, Pereira, 2021).

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While Bolsonaro’s popularity is declining sharply – his support is inversely pro-
portional to the increase in deaths from Covid-19 – all his efforts are aimed at the
presidential elections of 2022 and, also to that end, at tampering with the Constitu-
tion. Like Donald Trump, also the Brazilian President is determined to carry on de-
spite the country’s political and social collapse and the opposition of the people. On
August 10, 2021, while a constitutional amendment to revise the electoral system
was being debated in Congress, tanks were paraded in front of the palace.
Ten days later Bolsonaro delivered a very explicit message on Whatsapp, in
which he spoke of a “probable and necessary counter-coup” against the Supreme
Court and Congress and “a communist Constitution that has largely diminished
the powers of the President of the Republic”, then inviting his supporters to take
to the streets on September 7, Independence Day – again imitating the former
President of the United States – speaking of the likelihood of fraud in the up-
coming elections, with polls indicating that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva was in the lead. Exactly as in the 2018 vote, from which Lula was however
excluded as he was arrested in what eventually turned out to be a real plot. Freed
in November 2019, after 580 days of unjust imprisonment, the Supreme Court
approved Lula’s candidacy, a fact that has further increased Bolsonaro’s fears of
losing power and fuelled more threats. On August 16, 2021 retired General Au-
gusto Heleno, now a member of the government and head of institutional secu-
rity, claimed that “There are currently no motives for Armed Forces intervention
in Brazil, but this possibility is foreseen in the Constitution and can be used.” De-
spite these explicit signals from the military, however, some observers believe that
the greatest threat to democracy may come from Brazil’s police force, a particu-
larly violent institution that kills nearly 6,000 people a year and enjoys substantial
impunity, which Bolsonaro has often favoured (Waldron, 2021).
The political and institutional situation in Brazil is therefore deteriorating rap-
idly and is causing great concern at international level and considerable tension
in the country, seriously affected by the economic crisis and poverty, as well as by
the deaths caused by Covid-19.
11. Green deal and ecological transition. The Italian case
In July 2021, the European Commission adopted the Green Deal, a set of mea-
sures and policies on climate, energy, transport and taxation aimed at reducing
net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
This is an ambitious target – if we consider the accumulated delays – and a neces-
sary step towards zero climate impact by 2050. One third of the resources of the
Recovery Fund and the EU’s seven-year budget are available (European Commis-
sion, 2021a).
In July 2020, the European Council approved Next Generation EU, also called
Recovery Fund or Recovery Plan, to support the countries of the Union in the
difficult exit from the economic and social crisis caused by the pandemic, which

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already included the ecological transition. The plan is funded with €806.9 billion
(amount expressed in current prices, equivalent to €750 billion in 2018 prices).
Overall, for the post-pandemic, Europe has made available the EU’s long-term
budget, combined with Next Generation EU, which constitutes the largest stim-
ulus package ever funded, totalling €2,018 billion in current prices (European
Commission, 2021 b).
It is a considerable amount of money intended to build a “greener, digital, resil-
ient” Europe. Of course, many interests and lobbies, powerful entities and compa-
nies that feel threatened by a transition and by what could effectively be a “green”
shift, that is, environmentally friendly.
The case of Italy is significant. The country is the recipient of a substantial part
of the Recovery Fund, being among the countries most affected by the pandemic.
Starting from the summer of 2021, it will receive over 200 billion for investments
to be completed by 2026, of which about 70 billion are non-reimbursable subsidies.
More than a third will have to be earmarked for the so-called ecological transition.
To access these funds, the Italian government has prepared a National Recovery
and Resilience Plan (PNRR), divided into six missions: digitalisation, innovation,
competitiveness, culture and tourism; green revolution and ecological transition;
infrastructure for sustainable mobility; education and research; inclusion and co-
hesion; and health. Italy is the country that has had the highest number of victims
in Europe for Covid-19, as recalled in the foreword of the approved document au-
thored by the Prime Minister Mario Draghi; yet, paradoxically, in the distribution
of resources, health comes last, with only 15.63 billion allocated, of which seven
for the local healthcare system, facilities and telemedicine for territorial healthcare
and the remaining 8.63 allocated to innovation, research and digitalisation of the
national health service (Italian Government, 2021). On the whole a rather limited
sum, which also – for a change – risks being spent to finance private healthcare.
The drafting and finalisation of the PNRR involved two consecutive adminis-
trations: Conte’s second government, and the one that followed, headed by Mario
Draghi, who has been in office since 13 February 2021. Three versions have been
drafted, and finally a fourth, the final one, after the European Commission, in
June 2021, eliminated some environmentally questionable elements relating to
investments in hydrogen produced from fossil gas, strongly supported by ENI.
The association ReCommon has dedicated a detailed report to the efforts of
the fossil companies to access the funds granted to Italy: “Multinationals such as
ENI and SNAM have literally invaded the decision-making centres of the State,
succeeding, also thanks to a lack of vision and the absence of an industrial policy,
in convincing the governments to adopt false solutions such as hydrogen, carbon
capture and biogas, which are nothing other than attempts to prolong the life of
gas and fossil infrastructure.”
Between July 2020, when the Recovery Plan was launched, and April 2021, when
the Italian PNRR was submitted to the European Commission, the fossil industry
managed to schedule at least 102 meetings with the ministries responsible for
drafting the plan. ENI managed to ensure that successive versions of the PNRR

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“were increasingly in line with its industrial plan”. The lobbying “reached its peak
in the months following the installation of the Draghi government”, aimed “not
only at gaining consistent access to the Plan’s resources, but also at the widespread
dismantling of the few legislative instruments that communities could use to op-
pose the projects imposed on their territories.” (ReCommon, 2021) The objectives
of the fossil fuel industry have been substantially achieved, despite the mitigating
effects of the corrective intervention of the European Commission.
In short, the Italian PNRR continues to reflect an economic policy based on the
centrality of stimulus measures and growth, and on the model of development
that preceded the pandemic, whereby it removes the fact that those models are
among the causes of the pandemic.
12. Unequal vaccination
The pandemic has indeed been exploited by this economic system and its ratio
as an opportunity for immense profits.
The varied universe of No-vax denialism, indefensible from the scientific point
of view, has strong argument when it comes to the undeniable and massive eco-
nomic value of vaccines, the influence and power of Big Pharma.
If the green pass is used as a tool and a pretext to dismiss and discriminate
against workers, as a way of forcing citizens to pay for tests – again contributing to
the profits of private health systems – it is difficult to expect workers and unions
to uncritically agree with the measure and the methods being imposed. If health
is treated as business instead of being affirmed as a right, it becomes more difficult
to convince citizens that vaccination is an individual and social responsibility. If
instead of being a global public good the vaccine is perceived as being the privi-
lege of the usual part of the world, of the richest and most developed countries,
the idea of public health loses credibility – moreover, it is articulated with decrees,
impositions and exceptional measures.
If governments supported a vaccine for the population, rather than a vac-
cine for profit, and translated this statement with adequate decisions, objections
would quickly and largely vanish. This, however, would mean one thing only: a
patent-free vaccine. From the beginning this has been the request of countries
such as India and South Africa, which have asked for a temporary moratorium
on vaccine patents and anti-Covid-19 therapies, as well as NGOs, associations,
and countless public figures. These appeals, however, have remained unanswered.
In the Concluding Declaration of the World Health Summit, held in Rome on
May 21, 2021, the issue was eluded, the move in this direction being the Covax
program, supported by the United Nations, with the goal of providing two billion
doses of vaccine to about a quarter of the population of the poorest countries by
the end of 2021. However, this programme alone is insufficient and the goal is far
from being achieved, since it is can count only on the benevolence and charity of
rich countries rather than on the affirmation of the universal right to health. The

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Declaration, in fact, reaffirms the centrality of the market and the World Trade
Organization, accompanied by the inconsistent rhetoric of “ensuring that no one
is left behind.” (Global Health Summit, 2021)
Global decisions regarding the Covid-19 vaccine actually mean abandoning the
majority of the world’s population to their fate. These are harmful choices that
reveal a profound unawareness and indifference to the fact that, as with climate
change, the great and tragic lesson that comes from this pandemic is that the fate
of the world is a shared one and that no one is saved alone. As of 1 September
2021, 39.9% of the world’s population had received at least one dose of the Co-
vid-19 vaccine and 5.38 billion doses had been administered globally, but only
1.8% of people in low-income countries had received at least one dose. At that
date, in the United Arab Emirates for every 100 people the doses of vaccine ad-
ministered were 187 (with 76% of the population fully vaccinated), in the United
States the doses administered were 112, with 53% of the population fully vac-
cinated, in Israel, respectively, 153 and 61%, in mainland China 149 and 64%, in
Italy 130 and 61%. At the opposite end of the pyramid or globe, the figures were
near zero, with Congo having 0.1 doses administered per 100 inhabitants and
a percentage of the population fully vaccinated of less than 0.1%, Haiti respec-
tively 0.3 and less than 0.1%, Syria 2.3 and 0.9%, Republic of Congo 5.4 and 2%,
Ukraine 21 and 8.8%, West Bank and Gaza 30 and 9.7%, Venezuela 33 and 12%,
India 48 and 11%, and so on (Our World in Data, 2021).
This terrible gap speaks of the selfishness of a part of the world and of the culpable
and suicidal blindness of those who govern it and of the passivity of supranational
organisations. The G20 ministerial meeting on health, held in Rome on September
5 and 6, 2021, with its concluding Pact of Rome confirmed what had been decided
at the May summit (G20 Health Ministers’ Meeting, 2021). Despite a positive – but
inconsistent – reference to the holistic One Health approach, which relates human,
animal and environmental health, the document does not contain any reference to
or the slightest mention of the possibility of suspending patents, as requested by
India and South Africa and by hundreds of donors: poor countries have received a
lot of nice and meaningless words and pats on the back, accompanied by the usual
hypocritical slogan (“No one should be left behind”) and strange commitments (“In
line with the WHO, we support the goal of vaccinating at least 40% of the global
population by the end of 2021”). Poor countries have nothing else to count on be-
yond the Covax program. Too bad that, despite the charity substituting for the right
to health, that program has already proven not to work, and even the few commit-
ments made by rich countries have been inconclusive.
This confirms how short-sighted the current approach is, which does not take
into account the global characteristics of this pandemic. If 75% of vaccines are
concentrated in only ten countries, while in Africa vaccination coverage does not
reach 2%, it follows that the whole world is at risk and is condemned to a per-
petual race in the attempt to beat the many variants of the virus with third, fourth
and fifth doses. Big Pharma, meanwhile, thanks governments. Enormous profits
have been secured for the future.

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13. Pandemic economy. The wealthy become richer
The figures relating to pandemic business are so high they need no great inter-
pretation. We shall examine them in greater detail in the chapter dedicated to the
right to health. Here it will be enough to mention only some, which are particu-
larly indicative.
The major pharmaceutical companies, owners of the anti-Covid vaccines, dis-
tributed $26 billion to their shareholders in 2020. Public investment in vaccine
research amounts to more than $88 billion, but so far this has not led to a mora-
torium on patents or to a reduction in sale prices. Along with the companies and
shareholders, the owners or directors of the multinational drug companies have
obviously been the first to get rich. Nine of them, including three Chinese, have
become billionaires thanks to the vaccine – or rather, thanks to the policies on the
vaccine –: in 2020 their earnings, added up, totalled $19 billion. Eight others, al-
ready billionaires before the pandemic, have increased their assets by a total of 32
billion. Assets of the CEO of Moderna reached 5.2 billion in 2020 and increased
by another $142 million with the sale of shares in his possession. The wealth of
BioNTech founder Ugur Sahin is even greater, with assets of $5.9 billion (Oxfam
International, 2021).
Figures and trends for 2021, year two of the pandemic, are very similar.
For example, Germany’s BioNTech, which together with the US Pfizer has de-
veloped one of the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, reported a net profit of
almost €2.8 billion in the second quarter of 2021.
The pandemic economy has not only been an opportunity for huge profits for
Big Pharma, but also for digital platforms, finance and, as usual, fossil energy
companies, with oil in the lead.
In the second quarter of 2021, Amazon’s revenues grew 27% and reached $113
billion, with $7.8 billion in profits. Deliveroo, among the giants of home food
delivery, closed the first half of 2021 with revenues up 82%. In the third quarter
of 2021, Apple achieved the best result, with $81 billion in revenues, up 36%, and
a dividend for shareholders of $29 billion. Adding up Apple’s profits of the third
quarter of 2021 with those of Microsoft and Alphabet, the holding company that
owns Google , the total reaches $57 billion. Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s oil com-
pany, saw its profits increase by 103% in the first half of 2021, those in the second
quarter alone reached $25.5 billion, compared to $6.6 billion in 2020. Unilever,
a multinational food and household products company, had revenues of $11.55
billion in second quarter of 2021.
In the same period, Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, doubled
its yearly profits and reached a market capitalisation value of $131 billion. The
investment bank Jp Morgan made a profit of $ 11.95 billion in the second quarter
2021 and revenues of $31.4 billion. Goldman Sachs’s revenue was $15.39 billion
and profits were $5.49 billion in the same quarter.
These astounding figures, billions worth of profit, confirm that if the pandemic
has meant impoverishment for the many, at the same time it has been and con-

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tinues to be the multiplier of profits and earnings for the few, further widening
the wealth gap in many counties, starting with the United States, also caused by
an unequal tax systems.
Thanks to how vaccines have been managed, Moderna and BioNTech, which
together with Pfizer have recorded revenues of over $26 billion in the first half of
2021, also recorded huge profit margins, over 69%, with ridiculously low taxation:
the tax rates applied to the profits of these two pharmaceutical giants were 7% and
15% respectively. In the meantime, Pfizer expects its vaccine sales to reach $33.5
billion by the end of 2021, a record in the history of the pharmaceutical industry
(Oxfam, Emergency, 2021).
However, tax privileges do not only apply to Big Pharma. According to an in-
vestigation by the investigative journalism group ProPublica, some of the world’s
wealthiest US citizens have paid no tax in some years. Others paid very little.
For example, in the years 2014-2018, America’s top 25 billionaires collectively
increased their wealth by 401 billion and paid only 13.6 billion in federal taxes,
a tax rate of 3.4 per cent, the result of decades of tax laws favouring the wealthy
(Eisinger, Ernsthausen, Kiel, 2021).
14. Pandemic, wars and threats to democracy
The pandemic shock has become a new front line for predatory “disaster capi-
talism” capable of transforming emergencies and catastrophes – that itself cycli-
cally produces – into opportunities for economic profit and, indirectly, domina-
tion.
The global emergency has also been used by many executives and supranational
powers to reduce democratic space, to remove responsibility from or oust par-
liaments, to repress dissent, to enact exceptional laws, to experiment with new
techniques and technologies of social control, to strengthen the powers of the
“industrial-military-financial complex”, which runs the world in place of govern-
ments – or provisionally from inside them – also thanks to their submissiveness.
One need only consider that among the beneficiaries of funds and stimuli for
recovery there is also the war industry.
The pandemic crisis has brought the world and part of the economy to a stand-
still, but it has not stopped the military. For example, from March to June 2021,
as many as 28,000 soldiers were engaged in Defender-Europe 21, a major exercise
– not of NATO, but of the US military – in which 27 European allies and partners
participated. It was the largest US-led exercise since the end of the Cold War, cov-
ering an area far beyond Europe, from the Balkans to the Baltic States and North
Africa. It was a very expensive – half a million dollars – and dangerous operation,
not only because of the risk posed by the virus, but also for world stability, in the
context that seems to be that of a strategy of tension between blocs, more than a
re-edition of the Cold War, in which Europe – for a change – is hostage, a battle-
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At a global level, in 2020, the year of the pandemic, military spending reached
$1981 billion, an increase of 2.6% compared to 2019, while global GDP decreased
by 4.4% (SIPRI, 2021).
The flourishing arms market never stops, despite the pandemic slowing down
and decreasing the number of armed clashes and, consequently, the number of
victims. From 1 January to 3 September 2021, there were 62,284 violent events
(battles, attacks, also on civilians, riots) worldwide with 94,832 victims. In the
corresponding period of the previous year, also during the pandemic, there were
71,411 and 83,846, respectively. The figures for the same period in 2019 were sig-
nificantly higher: 193,889 events with 231,409 victims (ACLED, 2021).
What had an impact probably was nor so much the call for a global ceasefire
launched in March 2020 by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, as the in-
creased difficulties in terms of logistics and movement. Together with exceptional
rules and norms, these difficulties have often been used by authorities and gov-
ernments to suppress freedoms and more effectively repress dissent and freedom
of speech and information. Not only in warring countries and authoritarian re-
gimes, but also in the West and on the European continent, as recorded in the
latest Annual Report on the situation of democracy, human rights and the rule
of law in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe. In her foreword, the
Secretary General, Marija Pejčinović Burić, notes that while problems existed
prior to the pandemic, “there is no doubt that the lawful actions taken by national
authorities in response to Covid-19 have exacerbated this trend. The rights and
freedoms of individuals have been curtailed in ways that would have been unac-
ceptable in normal times”, so that there is now a danger “that our democratic
culture will not fully recover.” (COE, 2021)
A similar picture emerged from the European Commission’s subsequent com-
munication on the rule of law, which focused on the analysis of judicial systems,
the fight against corruption, the defence of pluralism and media freedom, and the
balance of institutional powers, with specific assessments for each member coun-
try. Although the overall assessment was positive, according to the Commission,
problems have often been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and, for some
member states, attacks on judges and risks to the independence of the judiciary, a
high risk of political interference in the media have been reported, with the high-
est number of reports on the safety of journalists ever recorded, the emergence of
serious cases of corruption and the lack of resources to deal with it, an insufficient
level of protection of fundamental rights, also with deliberate attacks by the au-
thorities (European Commission, 2021 c).
In short, democracy has been further weakened in these two years. Also, it
will certainly not regain strength simply by returning to “normality”. In terms of
rights and freedoms, as well as in terms of social and environmental justice, what
is needed is a decisive shift, a paradigm jump, a break with the times “before”
the pandemic, the origin and dynamics of which tell us that the time to do this is
running out.

Report State of the impunity in the world another world is possible-Fight Impunity Organization.pdf

Report State of the impunity in the world another world is possible-Fight Impunity Organization.pdf

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