Friends of the Earth’s ability to mobilize people was amply demonstrated when ten thousand people turned out to dance Bollywood-style on the beach in Ostend, Belgium, for a film for our ‘Big Ask’ campaign, organized by Friends of the Earth Belgium and the Belgian Climate Coalition. 

Another successful Big Ask action saw four thousand people ‘flooding’ the Finnish parliament to call for a climate law, in the biggest environmental gathering in Finland’s history. 

While the results of the Copenhagen climate talks in December 2009 were highly unsatisfactory, Friends of the Earth Europe, as part of the Friends of the Earth International federation, also had a strong presence in Copenhagen. One after another, groups of activists from across Europe joined together to form a five thousand-strong human ‘flood for climate justice’, showing the incredible strength of the network. 

Young Friends of the Earth Europe also mobilized many more young activists, encouraging them to make their voices heard in Copenhagen. They held four regional conferences in Malmo, Montpellier, Berlin and Dublin bringing together nearly 200 young people for training and action workshops in the run-up to the global climate talks. 

Friends of the Earth groups in Belgium, Spain and Austria also hosted a tour of climate witnesses, in advance of the Copenhagen negotiations. Beginning in Flanders, the "Climaxi" tour, brought stories from the frontline of climate change. The speakers came from Kiribati in the South Pacific, where rising sea levels are already a serious problem, and from Brazil, where indigenous peoples in the Amazon are struggling against rising water levels and the expansion of mining activities. 

Young people throughout the network also developed and organized their own actions and events in the build-up to Copenhagen, and produced and distributed hundreds of activists’ handbooks with ideas and messages for promoting climate justice. Young Friends of the Earth Netherlands, for example, collected 3,000 messages from the public about their opinion on their government’s action on climate change. They then created a beach where the washed up ‘SOS’ messages could be read (inside 3,000 recycled plastic bottles), and where young activists delivered the messages in person to the Dutch Minister for the Environment.

Friends of the Earth Europe has also been making sure that concerns about climate change are heard loud and clear in Brussels. Friends of the Earth Europe and the Stockholm Environment Institute joined forces to prove that Europe can cut its domestic emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and 90% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). Friends of the Earth Europe also organized a preview screening of the climate change film ‘The Age of Stupid’ in the European Parliament, before its official release. It was a unique opportunity to screen a powerful film on the consequences of runaway climate change.

A joint Friends of the Earth Europe and CEE Bankwatch conference on ‘Climate Proofing EU Structural and Cohesion Funds’ also dealt with the climate impact of EU funds, programs and projects. It explored opportunities for de-carbonization in the transport and energy sectors, and discussed the kind of cohesion policy needed in order to deliver low carbon development in the European regions.

A penguin refugee camp built from non-energy efficient appliances was also erected outside the European Commission. The stunt called on European decision-makers to stop caving in to industry pressure and to strengthen energy efficiency proposals so that Europe can meet its environmental and climate change targets.

Four countries also enjoyed performances by the Energy Union tour in 2009. The tour combines climate and renewable energy messages with music from UK group Coldcut into a multimedia show. The tour began in Munich and toured through Pécs, Vienna, Budapest, Košice, Bratislava, and Graz before finishing in Berlin. It continues in 2010.

Friends of the Earth also rejects nuclear power as a solution to climate change. As part of a wide movement including environment organizations, trade unions and churches, 50,000 people marched through the streets of Berlin declaring that it’s time to switch off nuclear power. It was the biggest antinuclear demonstration in Germany since Chernobyl, and sent a clear message to politicians that nuclear power is not a solution to energy security or climate change.

• In January 2009, FoE Indonesia sent a complaint to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, following the Australian government’s failure to fulfil a promise to respond directly to Indonesian organizations challenging the activities of Australian mining companies. FoE Indonesia has compiled a dossier detailing the involvement of numerous Australian mining companies in environmental destruction and human rights violations.

• In February 2009, communities in Guatemala asked the legislature and the Ministry of Energy and Mines to issue a moratorium on mining licenses of all types, until reforms to the Mining Act are agreed with them. Social organizations in the affected municipalities claim that current amendments to the document do not provide for community interests. 

• Also in February, and after years of being marginalized in relation to decisions about their ancestral lands, the Subanon people on Mindanao island came another step closer to asserting control over their territory. Their lands are currently being exploited by TVI Resource Development Phils (TVIRDI), a subsidiary of Canadian mining company TVI Pacific. Around 20 Subanon Indigenous People and farmers living within the TVIRDI mining area in Mount Canatuan, the Subanon tribe’s sacred site, halted blasting and drilling activities at the Canadian company’s open-pit mining operation, after a successful occupation of the site. 

• In March 2009, the Ghana National Coalition on Mining, a group of communities affected by mining in Ghana and civil society organizations including FoE Ghana, opposed the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency, which had granted environmental permits to Newmont Ghana Gold Limited and Adamus Resources to conduct surface gold mining activities. 

• In September 2009, FoE Hungary published their first annual alternative report on the Hungarian Oil Company (MOL). The report held a mirror up to the company’s annual report and assessed the company’s activities in 2008. After examining company data, the authors gave examples showing that the company’s practices do not actually match up to its rhetoric. 

• Also in September, FoE Costa Rica, together with and as part of Costa Rica’s popular movement, participated in a visit to mining company Crucitas, organized by the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, which had suspended Crucitas’s mining permit. There is a risk that the Supreme Court will favor the mining company, in which case FoE Costa Rica plans more mobilizations across the country, to stop this mining company restarting its activities.

• Again in September, FoE Guatemala organized an international mission to verify violations of human, environmental and economic rights by mining transnational corporations operating in Guatemala, such as GoldCorp. The aim of the mission was to ensure that the voices of victims, who are criminalized in Guatemala, can be heard at the international level. Participants included FoE Uruguay, FoE El Salvador, and FoE Costa Rica, together with people from Amnesty International and others. 

Building strong networks and alliances against the mining and extractive industries is also a priority for the RMOG Program. For example, a new network in Colombia, the Colombian Network Against Mining, has been established to challenge transnational corporations operating in Colombia with the support of the Colombian government. One of the first acts of this network was to support the demands of workers and the population struggling against British Petroleum in Tauramena, Colombia.

Many other critical activities were also undertaken by the Federation in 2009. For example:

• In Nigeria, the Second National Consultation on the Environment, 25 - 26 November 2009, saw civil society leaders, community-based organizations, civil society organizations, development experts, academia, legal practitioners, the media and representatives of government agencies come together to consider a post-petroleum Nigeria. The event was organized by FoE Nigeria in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Environment.

• FoE Philippines and Alyansa Tigil Mina co-hosted a discussion on "Tracing the Gold, Tracing the Money," in Cagayan de Oro City on 29 June. The event was designed to give participants the knowledge and skills they need to find out how mining companies finance their activities and where they sell their products. This kind of research often reveals excellent intervention points for advocates wanting to stop mining operations in their localities.

• A new report from FoE Netherlands, "Mining Matters," which was published in June 2009, reviewed practices used in mining tin (in Indonesia, Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burma), bauxite (Guinea and Jamaica), and copper (Chile, Peru, Zambia and Indonesia (Grasberg)). It also examined the policies of seven companies using imported metals in the Netherlands.

• Security forces arrested the director of FoE Indonesia and the Head of FoE Indonesia's Regional Department during a peaceful protest organized by FoE Indonesia and other NGOs together with fisherfolk organizations. The groups organized an event parallel to the World Ocean Conference (WOC) and Coal Triangle Summit 2009 which was held in Manado, Indonesia, 11-14 May. The peoples’ gathering was to draw the attention of WOC to small fisherfolks’ concerns – especially their call to ban the dumping of tailing minings into the sea - and to demand that these concerns be put on the WOC’s agenda.

• In 2009 Young FoE Norway’s priority campaign was against oil drilling off the beautiful Lofoten Islands, home to the world’s largest stock of cod and biggest cold water coral reef. They started several local groups in a network called "O`olkaction against oil drilling outside the Lofoten Islands." They also took a group of representatives from political youth parties out to the Lofoten Islands for one week, to highlight the fact that there are other possibilities besides drilling for oil in Northern Norway. 

• FoE France has published a synthesis report "Public subsidies to fossil fuels in France and the European Union," which reveals that the wealthy oil industry benefited from French subsidies of over €400 million between 2004 and 2008, mainly in the form of export guarantees. FoE’s research also shows that €6 billion of European money has been given to the fossil fuel industry over the past five years. 

The main areas of work of the program are:

• Community Resistance
• Campaign Against Corporations
• Policies and Mechanisms that Promote Mining, Oil and Gas
• Decreasing Consumption to Stop Demand for Mining, Oil and Gas

coordinators and participants

Co-coordinator: Natalia Atz Sunuc, FoE Guatemala
Co-coordinator: Romel Cardenas de Vera, FoE Philippines

The RMOG steering group includes:

• For Africa, Chima Williams, FoE Nigeria
• For APac, Natalie Lowrey, Australia
• For ATALC, Andres Idarraga, Colombia
• For Europe, Geert Ritsema, Netherlands
• For North America, Adina Matisoff, FoE USA

This is a new FoEI program and the co-coordinators and steering group are still in the processing of developing and implementing a fully-fledged strategy and workplan. Groups that have expressed an interest in participating include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Curacao, El Salvador, FoE Europe, EWNI, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Togo and the US.

Friends of the Earth International also organized two separate trainings in Brussels, Belgium, in September 2009. One was for journalists and the other for non-profit communications staff. The two target groups also participated in a joint session, sharing their experiences and opinions.

The communicators' training was delivered to 18 spokespeople and communicators from NGOs, mostly from European FoEI groups. Participants discussed and practiced the skills and tools needed to reach specific target audiences and media outlets with their messages.

The journalists' training was delivered to 14 accredited journalists from important mainstream media outlets based in the EU (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia). It provided them with useful tools with which to produce news stories related to climate justice and biodiversity in Europe and in developing countries.

The journalists' training included presentations about climate and biodiversity-related issues in Nigeria, Paraguay, Uruguay and Colombia. Journalist participants were particularly interested in these presentations from developing countries, and most of them produced related stories in the following months.

The vast majority of journalists attending stated that their ability to report on climate change issues had improved considerably following the training. 90% stated that they were interested in attending other workshops on sustainable development issues organized by FoEI.

 These trainings were possible thanks to the financial assistance of the European Union.

To do this more effectively, we focused on the use of innovative and mass means of communication, to disclose our research findings to a much wider audience than ever before, and to mobilize people to fight for environmental justice.

We have developed new ideas to convey our campaign messages in more innovative and creative ways; and used creative campaign tools so that people can understand and support our messages more easily. These included a series of video clips (community testimonies) and using YouTube to broadcast them to the public. We have also started to work with artists in designing strong visuals with a clear message.

‘Lost in Palm Oil’ is a documentary about the impacts of oil palm plantations on local communities in Indonesia, and the production, trade and consumption of palm oil. The documentary was screened (sometimes fully, sometimes partially) on TV and at film festivals. Many of these broadcasts reached out to audiences of more than 100,000 viewers. A list of TV broadcasts and slots in 2008 includes: Eenvandaag (Netherlands); ORF Weltjournal (Austria); TV Eco (Switzerland); French TV channel France 2; YLE (Finland); SWR Auslandsreporter, Phönix and NDR ARD (Germany); RTP (Portugal); TVN27 (Poland); TV2 (Finland); SVT (Sweden); Green Film Festival-Seoul (Korea); NHK (Japan); and the Berlin Film Festival (Germany). ‘Lost in palm oil’ was also screened at an alternative summit in Bali, Indonesia, during the United Nations climate talks (UNFCCC) in December 2007; and about 500 DVD copies of the film were circulated to communities in Indonesia (in Bahasa Indonesia). The DVD version is available in English, French, German and Bahasa.

For ‘Poison Fire’ FoEI contracted Lars Johansson to make a documentary about the impacts of oil in Nigeria, using a 'participatory approach' to film-making and at the same time training local community members in Nigeria to use video tools in their campaign activities. Poison Fire shows how increasing people’s capacity to advocate on their own behalf with video tools and skills led to exposing oil giant Shell’s violations of Nigerian law and the fact that it was ignoring court judgments in Nigeria.

Footage of the documentary was even aired by the Dutch investigative program 'Netwerk' and mainstream news program 'RTL news' in the years previous to the film’s formal launch.  A short film based on footage from Lars Johansson was produced with Element TV (a project focused on the UN millennium development goals) and broadcast on other MTV channels in 2007. Element was initially broadcast on three European MTV 'feeds' and in Israel, and was picked up for 'Switch', a global campaign for MTV which reached a potential audience of 1.5 billion viewers in 62 countries. Guardian films also used footage from Poison Fire (and took on board information exposed in the film) in a video report by The Guardian's George Monbiot (a renowned environmental writer and author of a number of bestselling books). The report focused on an interview with Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer, and generated substantial debate on The Guardian newspaper’s website. A short version of the documentary was also aired on MTV and at the March 2008 Amnesty ‘Movies that Matter’ film festival in Amsterdam.

The film, which can be viewed online on various websites including its own, at www.poisonfire.org, also caused intense debate in Nigeria, where it has been screened to many local communities and policy makers. Nigerian lawmakers have watched it in special screenings and commented on it. A high policy committee annexed it to its report on the Niger Delta sent to the Nigerian President. It also had an impact on Shell; the company made direct references to the film in a Shell video online on www.shell.com. In 2008, the film-maker entered a co-production agreement with Danish production company Everest Pictures (Anders Ostergaard, the director of the highly successful documentary 'Burma VJ') which decided to finance a longer, more ambitious version of Poison Fire.

In February 2008, following up on a project which started in 2006, a map with details of 50 environmentally damaging and economically dubious infrastructure projects in Central and Eastern Europe was launched by CEE Bankwatch Network and FoE Europe. The projects are either already financed, or in preparation and likely to be financed by EU structural and cohesion funds and/or the European Investment Bank (EIB). FoE Europe continues to monitor the developments of these projects, raise public awareness and campaign to stop them.

To respond to various destructive projects in Southern and Eastern Africa, FoE South Africa and FoE Mozambique, together with the International Working Group on Oil, hosted the East and Southern African workshop in September 2008. Participation was from a variety of sectors that had close links to the daily reality on the ground: fishermen from Mauritius, Islamic clerics from rural Mozambique, community members from Lake Albert in Uganda, and rural community folk from Ethiopia, together with other representatives of social organizations and local communities from Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Malawi, Somalia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Uganda, A number of participants also came from West African countries including Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Mali and Nigeria. Critically, community people shared the experience of their present struggles and considered how these struggles could provide a platform for articulating their efforts in the future.

FoEI continued, along with others around the world, to denounce the abuse by companies aiming to put Latin American governments under pressure. ATALC is monitoring the cases with ETI Telecom in Bolivia, RDC in Guatemala, Harken and other oil companies in Costa Rica, and Katoen Natie in Uruguay.

FoE groups in Europe and Latin America also worked together to address the impacts of European (mostly Scandinavian) pulp and paper producers in Latin America. At the European Social Forum, an exhibition exposing these impacts was displayed. Groups also worked together on a specific project relating to the Finnish company Botnia, and its activities in Uruguay. Several European investors, such as ING, decided not to finance the project as it has been highly controversial in Uruguay and Argentina and did not adhere to World Bank’s environmental standards.

In 2008, we also exposed the myth that fossil fuels are central to development. FoEI believes this assumption is misguided on both climate and development grounds, and subsidies to the fossil fuel sector must be ended. We challenged the Asian Development Bank during at its annual meeting in Madrid in May 2008. The ADB issues calls for clean energy investments to fight global warming, while providing massive financial support to dirty coal projects in Asia. Together with WEED, Oil Change International and APMDD Jubilee South, we produced a concise argument about the link between oil and poverty, which was distributed at the 2008 ADB annual meeting, the Netherlands conference in July 2008 on ‘The Future of the World Bank,’ and at the national level.

FoEI had a strong presence at several international events in 2008. We also supported the participation of community representatives and civil society organizations from the South in many international events, giving them an opportunity to publicize their experiences and struggles.

Some of the events in 2008 included:

• the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank
• the spring and annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
• the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank
• UN Framework Convention for Climate Change meetings
• UN Convention for Biological Diversity meetings
• MOVIAC’s meetings
• Via Campesina´s 5th International Conference
• the EU-Latin American Summit and the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Corporations
• the III Americas Social Forum
• the European Social Forum 2008
• meetings of the Latin American Network on Dams

FoEI has also consolidated the joint work with social movements and organizations around Agribusiness. This will allow the Federation to strengthen their resistance strategies, as well as the promotion of solutions, throughout the joint fight with our allies.

FoE groups have produced materials (documented studies, briefings, fact sheets and websites in different languages, and short films) and have made strategic use of the internet for media outreach and advocacy work to fight corporate control over food systems. This corporate control includes monopolistic technologies such as the production and commercialization of GMOs, agrofuels, industrial fishing and aquaculture. For example:

• FoE EWNI’s Food Chain Campaign and report “What's feeding our food?” (December 2008), which highlights the environmental and social impacts of the intensive livestock sector.
• FoE Australia’s Real Food Campaign.
• FoE Uruguay’s influential research work and publications on agribusiness such as: “Agronegocios Ltda. Nuevas modalidades de colonialismo en el Cono Sur de América Latina”; and their documentary: Soberanía Alimentaria en marcha. Recuperación del Molino Santa Rosa.
• The report “Malaysian palm oil - green gold or green wash?” (October 2008), which reveals that Malaysian palm oil exported for use in food, biofuels and cosmetics is far from 'green', contrary to claims by Malaysian palm oil producers.
  

These materials are helping to mobilize people; they help European consumers to make informed choices; help to ensure that social and environmental issues are taken into account by companies; mobilize the public and decision-makers to support changes that will help to build a more equitable North-South relationship in a key area affecting biodiversity, food security and poverty reduction; and contribute to the debate about Europe’s overall levels of consumption.

The EU is one of the world’s biggest importers of agriculture commodities, to supply a range of needs, from the food on our plates to animal feed for our livestock. In addition, in response to demands to reduce dependence on oil imports, and in order to minimize climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions, EU and national energy policies are now resulting in the rapid increase of a new commodity – agrofuels.

This has raised new and complex challenges for developing countries that are expanding agricultural production to meet Europe’s demand. In 2008, FoE groups in Europe (Austria Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, England Wales & N Ireland, Estonia, France, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain) developed a campaign called “Feeding and Fuelling Europe” to raise public awareness in the EU about the impacts of the food commodities trade, on food security, rural livelihoods and the environment in developing countries. The campaign provides opportunities, solutions and recommendations for citizens, policy makers and industry. The work is coordinated with national campaign activities aimed at fighting agribusiness and promoting food sovereignty in FoE groups in Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines), Africa (Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone) and Latin America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay).

Friends of the Earth is developing its Food Sovereignty Program in close conjunction with allies, including La Via Campesina. We attended the High-Level Meeting on Food Security in Madrid (26-27 January) where Via Campesina and FoE Spain’s joint actions outside the conference got excellent coverage in the Spanish media, and Henry Saragih from Via Campesina was eventually invited to speak on behalf of civil society in the final plenary session. The response from the conference was striking: the applause was deafening and continued for a full two minutes despite repeated attempts by the Chair to move on to the next agenda item. 

Critically, the meeting ended without consensus on a new 'Global Partnership', which was in line with civil society proposals. However, the official website is less clear about this outcome and presents a non-negotiated and non-adopted 'Final Statement' that still talks about a new Global Partnership. In general we were extremely disappointed to find that proposed solutions to the food crisis still include pesticides, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and fertilizers.

The 17th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) in May, in New York, saw important progress on food sovereignty however, when the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter's proposals included the right of peoples to access land and define their own food policies, as well as the principles that the government should support the least protected (including rural) people and implement production models that do not contribute to climate change. The UN Special Rapporteur’s position strongly echoes the new production model that La Vía Campesina and FoEI have been promoting for years, although it does not yet go far enough: people also need to have the right to define and control their own food and food production systems. A successful side event on GMOs and the food crisis was also held during this event.

Together with the EJRN Program, the Food Sovereignty Program is also starting to build a new global campaign challenging agribusiness. This lengthy undertaking is being undertaken in conjunction with Via Campesina and the World March of Women, and is a follow up to the Food Sovereignty Forum, which took place in Nyeleni, Mali in February 2007.

The plan is to build up from the regional sphere to the global. To this end, we have started organizing regional forums to launch the regional processes; from these we can then decide where to concentrate forces in our struggles for food sovereignty, how to strengthen our coordination and our joint campaign efforts. To date regional food sovereignty forums have been held in Paraguay (21-23 August) and Nigeria, with representatives from different regions of FoEI and strategic allies present at each. The meeting in Nigeria focused on Opposing Land Grabs, AGRA and Non-Ecological Agriculture, and took place in Abuja, Nigeria, 20-23 October. AGRA is an organization that focuses on the Green Revolution, and it represents agribusiness in Africa at its worst.

In April 2009, when FoEI activists from around the world were in Amsterdam for internal strategy meetings, FoEI and FoE Netherlands also co-hosted a public discussion on "Food sovereignty versus certification: the soy case in the Netherlands," with politicians, academics and members of the Dutch farming community.

In-line with the program’s objective to expose industrial corporate-led agriculture and promote food sovereignty, Friends of the Earth, together with Food and Water Watch and the European Co-ordination of Via Campesina, also produced a groundbreaking film, "Killing Fields: the battle to feed factory farms," which investigates the impacts of growing soy in South America to feed factory farms in Europe. Few people realize that a hidden chain of destruction stretches from factory farms in Europe to the forests of South America – where huge soy plantations are wiping out wildlife and making climate change worse. To make way for soy plantations, thousands of people are being forced from their land and with it, losing their ability to grow their own food. Indigenous People are being evicted and forests are being cleared. Many of the soybeans are genetically modified and massively increase the use of pesticides – resulting in the poisoning of rural communities, water sources and the natural environment.

As part of its collaborative approach, FoEI has been increasingly involved with the International NGO/CSO Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), participating in the drafting committee of the IPC’s "Eradicate Hunger" document, and in the Steering Committee of the People’s Food Sovereignty Forum that paralleled the FAO Summit on Food Security in Rome, 16-18 November 2009. As soon as the summit was announced, social movements, NGOs and other civil society organizations started a dialogue with FAO to organize the parallel civil society forum, which included some 500 farmers, Indigenous Peoples, rural youth, women and others. The forum addressed the hunger crisis affecting over one billion people and nearly one sixth of the world's population. FoEI was also involved in preparations for activities in parallel to the 3rd Session of the Governing Body on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, in Tunisia, in June. FoEI has been invited to join the IPC’s international facilitation group, which has been formed to work on the FAO process for the adoption of voluntary guidelines on land and natural resources tenure. This group will also be a space for reflection and articulation on land rights and land grabbing.

The struggle for a GM-free world also remains a priority for the food sovereignty movement and Friends of the Earth International continues its campaign against the GM industry. Working against GMOs includes struggling against soy monocultures and the dominant model of production. We are campaigning to stop GM food aid, and to increase land available to family farmers and for rural agriculture.

In 2009, we published our annual research report on GM crops," Who Benefits from GM Crops? Feeding the biotech giants, not the world’s poor," which focused on the importance of democratic decision-making in food production and distribution, and raised questions about the ability of GM crops to contribute to poverty reduction, global food security or sustainable farming.

Friends of the Earth groups and allies are also maintaining pressure on the GM industry at the national and regional levels. This has had a particularly marked impact in Europe. At the beginning of the year, the European Commission issued proposals for two new varieties of genetically modified (GM) maize to be grown in Europe despite ongoing safety concerns. In a proposal sent to EU member states, the Commission also said it wanted to force Greece, Hungary and France to drop their national bans on a similar GM maize. But the European Commission was defeated when member states voted on this issue, with many member states holding fast with their position on GMOs. Civil society organizations were clearly instrumental in this.

In Hungary, for example, Friends of the Earth, along with other civil society organizations, farmers’ organizations and politicians held a demonstration to keep Hungary free of genetically-modified organisms and demonstrators dispatched representatives to every EU foreign representative in Budapest to ask other European countries to vote against the Commission’s proposal. FoE Spain and other Spanish civil society organizations coordinated a hugely successful action against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), with more than 100 actions and protests across the country. 8,000 people also took part in a national demonstration in Zaragoza, the capital city of the GM maize-growing region. With support from FOE Europe, FoE Spain also organized actions and sent letters to the Spanish Embassies in the EU.

This European resistance received a further boost in April, when Germany banned Monsanto's GM maize MON810 as allowed under EU law (known as the ‘safeguard clause’). Germany joins Hungary, Greece, Austria, Luxembourg, France, Poland and Italy who all effectively have bans in place. The German decision is based on new scientific research, which shows that the crop damages ladybirds, butterflies and daphnia magna (water organisms). This was a huge success for FoE Germany and other environmental and agricultural organizations, who have worked hard for this outcome for many years. Furthermore, 73% of Germans polled in April said they would favor products labeled as being GM free.

In July 2009, a scientific analysis commissioned by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Europe showed that an opinion by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which advocated the safety of the only genetically modified (GM) crop grown in Europe, was fundamentally flawed. The report revealed serious mistakes and omissions, which completely undermined EFSA’s conclusion. The report was submitted to a public consultation on Monsanto’s MON810 maize, and the groups called on the European Commission and EU countries to reject the authorization of this crop.

In a related action organized by FoE Spain in September, activists dressed as Spanish maize fled to the French Embassy in Madrid to seek asylum, fearing contamination from genetically modified varieties, which are being grown in Spain without any precautions against contamination. FoE Cyprus has also been active, hosting a lecture on GMOs, and speaking at a seminar designed to educate teachers about organic food and its benefits, organized by PASYBIO (the Cyprus Organic Farmers Union).

Other national campaign successes and activities in Europe in 2009 included the following:

• On 6 March, during an extended session on food safety and regulation in the Georgian Parliament, Georgia’s Minister of Agriculture unexpectedly supported citizens’ demands to declare Georgia a GM-free country. This is an abrupt change in the political discourse, after many years of campaigning by FoE Georgia and other Georgian NGOs, and a significant public victory.

• In its Renewed Programme for Government, published on 10 October 2009, the Irish Government declared that it “will declare the Republic of Ireland a GM-Free Zone, free from the cultivation of all GM plants.” This will make it the ninth country in the EU to prohibit the cultivation of transgenic plants.

• A protest outside the head office of WWF-Netherlands with a weeping panda, a Monsanto circus director, and various people in white overalls spraying ‘Roundup’, protesting against WWF’s support for the Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) proposal to certify GM Roundup Ready soy as 'responsible'. Another action followed days later outside the head office of Ahold, which is a prominent member of the RTRS, in response to RTRS’s newly agreed criteria for ‘responsible’ soy, which will allow the continued expansion of soy and even certify GM soy. 

There have also been strong FoE campaigns against GM crops in other regions. For example:

• In Mexico, Friends of the Earth Mexico organised a festival event in the square Plaza de Mexicanos in San Cristobal, to mark World Food Day on 16 October. 

• In Nigeria, Friends of the Earth launched a campaign against field trials of the so-called ‘super cassava’, which is engineered for enhanced levels of Vitamin A. FoE Nigeria has published a detailed report arguing that the trials would be a breach of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, which Nigeria has signed. 

• In Paraguay, the Paraguayan Senate has been discussing a new law on agrochemicals, which would dramatically increase the environmental, health and other social impacts of soy and other crops in Paraguay. Several key clauses of the existing law would be weakened, such as the requirement to have vegetation barriers and to warn surrounding communities in advance of spraying. Also, as the new law would be easier for soy growers to comply with, their crops – including GM crops – could be more likely to acquire Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS) certification, which calls for adherence to national laws. Friends of the Earth and others, including small farmers’ movements, several Ministers and the World Health Organization have all strongly opposed this proposal.

The Food Sovereignty Program is also starting to develop its work around climate and agriculture, together with the CJE Program. It is important to analyze and expose the links between climate justice and agriculture including emissions from long distance transport of food for international trade; the impacts of changes in land use; the impacts of industrial agriculture on climate; and the impacts of agrofuels production. In addition, we will report on the impacts of false solutions to the climate crisis on food sovereignty, expose the impacts of climate change on women, and analyze and report the increasing control of agribusiness transnationals in the UN’s climate change negotiations.

The first steps in this process were the development of an analysis of the role of GMOs in climate change, and a seminar at the Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen in December. On 11 December, a major event on "Food, Energy Sovereignty and Climate Justice" (which also included several presentations on REDD) was also co-organized in Copenhagen, by Friends of the Earth International, the Global Forest Coalition, Via Campesina and the World March of Women.

Developing strategic relationships and alliances is a priority for the Food Sovereignty Program, especially with Via Campesina and the World March of Women, and has been a focus throughout the year, including in preparations for and actions at the Forum Against Agribusiness in Asuncion, the Conference against Land Grabbing and AGRA in Abuja, the Global Action Day against Monsanto on 16 October, and events in Copenhagen in December. This has included a number of joint letters and statements, including:

• Preparing and coordinating a statement from FoEI and Via Campesina within the framework of the 17th Session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development: "Food sovereignty: A new model for a human right" (May).

• Civil Society open letter to FAO regarding the High-Level Expert Forum on "How to feed the world in 2050" (September). 

• An open letter to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with regard to their participation in AGRA.

Other key meetings that the Food Sovereignty Program has participated in include:

• The High-Level Meeting on Food Security for All, Madrid (January)
• CSD Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting (February)
• 17th Session of the UN Division for Sustainable Development (May)
• Activities prior to the WTO Ministerial Conference, Geneva, (November-December), and the
• Trade to Climate Caravan, Geneva to Copenhagen, organized by the Trade and Climate Change Working Group of Our World Is Not For Sale and other organizations prior to COP15 (December). 

The Food Sovereignty Program’s main working areas are:

• Resistance to land grabbing and agribusiness
• A GM-free world, and 
• Climate and agriculture. 

Internal cross-cutting themes include:

• The promotion of food sovereignty and solutions; and 
• Gender

Collaboration with other programs and campaigns:

• With EJRN and Agrofuels - resistance to land grabbing and agribusiness, including Stora Enso.

International Co-coordinators

• Martín Drago, FoE Uruguay, martin.drago@redes.org.uy
• Kirtana Chandrasekaran, FoE EWNI, kirtana.chandrasekaran@foe.co.uk

Regional Coordinators:

• For ATALC: Caludia Jerónimo, FoE Guatemala, and FoE Paraguay as alternate
• For Africa: Marianne Bassey (Nigeria) and Sicelo Simelane (Swaziland) as alternate
• For Asia Pacific: Choony Kim (South Korea)
• For Europe: Helen Holder (FoE Europe) and Kirtana Chandrasekaran (FoE EWNI) as alternate

Groups that participated actively in 2009:

Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, El Salvador, EWNI, France, Georgia, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Paraguay, Spain, Uruguay, and members of the Feeding and Fuelling Europe project in Europe. 

An excellent example of our work to empower communities is the Movement of Victims Affected by Climate Change in Central America (MOVIAC) initiative, which continued in 2009. As part of this, more than a hundred representatives of Central American movements, organizations and networks, met in June, in El Salvador. MOVIAC is an invaluable and inspirational component of the Affected Peoples Campaign. Many other FoEI member groups are now inspired to create similar national and regional grassroots movements with affected communities.

FoEI’s work with affected communities also included the Climate School: Building and Mobilizing Climate Justice, which took place on 24 March 2009, in Medellin, Colombia, within the framework of the actions against the Inter-American Development Bank’s 50th Anniversary Annual Meeting, also in Medellin. In addition, a series of community exchanges between communities in Central America has enabled 120 individuals to live in and exchange experiences with other communities challenged by climate change.

FoEI has also focused on developing and deepening key alliances, in order to contribute to building a diverse, effective and global movement for climate justice and energy sovereignty. For the CJE Program this has involved working closely with key social movements such as La Via Campesina and the World March of Women, throughout the year. In particular, we agreed to cohost a joint assembly at Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, to advance the design of a political agenda that would allow us to move forward in mobilizing and organizing the defence of land. Additionally, we enhanced our cooperation with other coalitions and strategic alliances including Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, Jubilee South, the Global Forest Coalition, Jubilee South, the Durban Group, REDLAR and others.

Key moments in the evolution of these alliances in 2009 included:

• An event, "Talks between Environmentalists and Indigenous Peoples," at the World Social Forum, 31 January 2009, Belem do Para, Brazil. Organized by FoEI and the Global Forest Coalition, these strategic talks between Indigenous Peoples and environmentalists, with over 100 participants, allowed us to advance in the establishment of political agreements and strategic actions to build climate justice and to fight against the exploitation of nature.

• "Environmentalists and Indigenous Peoples united for Climate Justice," at the Foro Andino, in Colombia, 18-19 March 2009. Organized by Friends of the Earth, this event also strengthened the developing relationship between environmentalists and Indigenous Peoples from the Andean region including the U`wa, Wayuú, Nasa, Misak, Quichua and Aymara. The focus of the meeting was the impact of climate change on Indigenous Peoples’ lands and the need to move forward with a shared strategy and joint actions for climate justice.

• The 5th REDLAR Mesoamerican Conference, Boquete, Panama, 22-25 April 2009. FoE was able to promote the idea of combining Energy Sovereignty, Climate Justice and buen vivir  (literally ‘good living’) to the 264 representatives from Mesoamerica and other areas of the continent. This latter concept is central to the social movement and Indigenous Peoples in America, and is referred to as Abya Yala.

• 1st Continental Summit of Indigenous Women of Abya Yala and the 4th Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of Abya Yala, in Puno, Peru, 27-31 May 2009. Together with over 5,000 attendees, Friends of the Earth participated in talks, workshops and meetings at both summits. This was an excellent opportunity to contribute to the establishment of the concept of buen vivir and to strengthen ties and move forward with strategies for climate justice.

• Friends of the Earth also participated in the Asia Pacific Peoples’ Solidarity for Climate Justice organizing meeting, to contribute to preparations for the week of civil society activities that took place in parallel to the Bangkok UNFCCC intersessional meeting, 28 September to 9 October 2009.

• At the 1st International Climate Justice Tribunal, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 14-16 October 2009, FoEI presented a case about sugarcane cutters in South-western Colombia to the tribunal, contributing to the debate on environmental crimes, the climate and environmental debt. This case was the direct result of an international mission for the verification of agrofuels in Colombia, which FoEI organized in July 2009, with the participation of more than 40 international delegates. The mission visited five regions in Colombia which have been severely impacted by the expansion of sugar cane and palm oil to produce agrofuels.

• The months preceding COP-15 in Copenhagen involved extensive and improved collaboration with social movements - especially Via Campesina and the World March of Women - and other civil society organizations, around plans for Copenhagen, including the joint Klimaforum events, mobilizations and media work. FoEI also participated in Climate Justice Action preparations, and organized and participated in a Climate Justice Now! strategy meeting in Bangkok in October.

In 2009 FoEI's campaigning on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations involved the production and distribution of a substantial number of policy proposals and analyses in the run-up to COP-15 in Copenhagen. A new and rapidly developing focus in this respect is climate finance, a cross-cutting campaign being run with FoEI’s Economic Justice Resisting Neoliberalism (EJRN) program. We developed a robust position paper in collaboration with campaigners from the EJRN campaign, which formed the foundation for much of our campaigning before and during Copenhagen. FoEI also began to contribute to the climate finance debate within the climate justice movement. Nearly 10,000 copies of our climate finance materials, "Financing Climate Justice: Ensuring a Just Agreement on Climate Change," and "Financing Climate Justice: Summary of Demands and Ethical Criteria Matrix" were distributed in Copenhagen, in English, French and Spanish. FoEI’s ethical criteria matrix provides governments with a set of criteria for judging climate financing mechanisms proposed during negotiations.

Thousands of copies of our 2008 publication "REDD Myths: a critical review of proposed mechanisms to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries" were also re-printed and distributed in Copenhagen, as was "Voices from communities affected by climate change." In addition, 5,000 copies of the popular FoEI newspaper, "Climate Justice Times," were also distributed.  

The joint efforts of FoEI and key allies has helped to ensure that a number of governments, such as Bolivia, have officially voiced their concerns about the potential negative impacts of UNFCCC, World Bank and national policies to finance Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), especially if REDD is used to support plantations and is funded through carbon markets. As a result of lobbying by FoEI and allies, the UNFCCC’s REDD draft reflected these concerns. A key element in this effort was a side event on the potential impacts of REDD on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and biodiversity and the risks of GE trees, on 3 June, parallel to the meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies to the UNFCCC in Bonn. This was co-organized with the Global Forest Coalition and the International Alliance on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forest. Many FoEI member groups have also been informed and thus enabled to participate in national REDD policy discussions currently underway.

During the year we also produced a video trilogy, "Towards Solutions on Sustainable Energy Practices". In addition, we distributed and publicized a Friends of the Earth Europe Study entitled "The 40% Study: Mobilizing Europe to Achieve Climate Justice," which shows that domestic emissions cuts of at least 40% in Europe by 2020 are both feasible and affordable.

This research, combined with our advocacy activities, also allowed us to be particularly effective in persuading governments in many countries in the global North to introduce binding climate change laws that will help to reduce those countries’ carbon emissions. This was especially the case in Europe where FoE has focused on its Big Ask campaign: France, Scotland and the UK passed climate change laws setting emissions reductions targets, and it seems likely that similar laws will soon be passed in a number of other European countries including Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland and Slovenia.

Other member groups have also been very active on climate change. In March 2009, for example, FoE Japan organized an international workshop on climate change impacts and solutions faced by developing countries, with presentations from the Japanese government, the World Bank and several international organizations. FoEI’s involvement focused on showing how climate change and its false solutions are a result of the current neoliberal production and consumption model.

Although Copenhagen was an abject failure, it was a key moment in the intergovernmental debate on mitigating and adapting to climate change, because of the urgent need to agree and develop a successor to the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol before it expires in 2012. FoEI took a team of 400 activists to Copenhagen: some of them were engaged in lobbying and advocacy work within the Bella Center, whilst others were focused on the daily mobilizations and alternative events, including the Klimaforum, which were so important to ensuring governments heard the critical voices of civil society.

From the talks in the Klimaforum, demonstrations on the streets, and actions in the conference centre, the message was loud and clear: any climate agreement must be based on climate justice. This was an important development: before Copenhagen the term ‘climate justice’ was much discussed in civil society meetings but more-or-less unknown elsewhere. During Copenhagen on the other hand, it began appearing frequently in the mainstream media.

We promoted the development of many actions/spaces for campaigning and mobilizing during COP-15 and Klimaforum09. This included FoE Europe’s work developing the Flood for Climate Justice, an extremely successful demonstration which more than 5,000 people from many countries participated in. The event also involved mock carbon traders trying to sell carbon offsets to protestors, and a fake carbon stock exchange. It ended in front of the Danish Parliament with the creation of a massive human banner reading “Offsetting is a false solution.”

FoEI also drew public attention to our positions and alternatives for sustainable livelihoods through both traditional and new creative media activities and actions. During Copenhagen, we posted 37 blog entries and 9 videos on FoEI's You Tube channel, and 300 high-quality images on Flickr. Prior to Copenhagen, we created a website to feature the Angry Mermaid Award which included an animation story on the effect of corporate neglect of climate change on communities in the South: the website had 23,851 views. In Copenhagen's Klimaforum09, we presented an interactive Climate Capsule installation with videos, photos and drawings from around the world. We also conducted outreach on climate change during the international tour of the rock band Radiohead, and produced the graphic novel "Speechless" about the history of economic globalization.

A further key objective for the CJE program is to stop World Bank pollution of the climate debate. During 2009 we continued to monitor and conduct advocacy around the World Bank’s framework on clean energy investment and the emission-trading schemes promoted by IFIs. In September we organized a public forum on climate debt alongside the Intersessional Meeting on Climate Change in Bangkok, and a public forum on climate change and financing. FoEI was co-organizer of an international meeting on Financing Strategy and Climate, along with other networks and organizations including Jubilee South, Focus on the Global South, and Oilwatch. FoEI also supported the production of the FoEI Asia Pacific (APac) region’s first climate publication, "Climate Impacts of the ADB's Business: How the Asian Development Bank Finances Climate Change."

FoE also participated in the civil society campaign to stop governments subsidizing the climate-wrecking fossil fuels industry. In April 2009, we published Public Money for Fossil Fuels in the EU and three EU Member States, to identify the many sources of public investments in harmful industries. In 2009, both the G-20 and the UN made agreements to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, which will have a positive impact on policies regarding renewable energy.

Some FoE groups are also focusing on private finance and its role in driving climate change. FoE Netherlands, for example, has conducted research into systems for measuring carbon footprints, which was presented during a Banktrack meeting for private banks in Washington. The Climate Working Group of banks involved in the Equator Principles is now organizing workshops to develop and implement such a methodology. The outcome of our activities is that among these banks the question is not 'whether' or 'why' they should measure carbon footprints, but 'how'. FoE Netherlands has also convinced private banks in the Netherlands to commit to improving their energy-related investment policies.

The Climate Justice & Energy Program working areas are:

• Energy sovereignty
• Climate and finance / Carbon and forest markets
• UNFCCC (including REDD), and
• Stopping World Bank pollution of the climate debate.

Cross campaign areas include:

• With the Forests and Biodiversity Program - the REDD campaign
• With the Forests and Biodiversity Program, the Food Sovereignty Program, and the EJRN Program - Agrofuels
• With the EJRN program - Financing and Climate, particularly building a common position at the federation level, including on carbon markets and the Clean Development Mechanism

Coordinators and participants

In 2009, the co-coordinators of the Climate Justice & Energy (CJE) Program were:

• Hildebrando Vélez and Irene Vélez, FoE Colombia
• Joseph Zacune, FoE EWNI
• Stephanie Long, FoE Australia
  

 The CJE Steering Group included:

• For ATALC: Eduardo Giesen, FoE Chile,
• For Europe: Sonja Meister, FoE Europe,
• For Africa: Michael Keania Karikpo, FoE Nigeria
• For North America: Karen Orenstein, FoE US

Groups that participated actively in the CJE Program in 2009 included: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belgium (Flanders and Brussels), Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, England, Wales & N Ireland, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, Ukraine, Uruguay and the US.

Friends of the Earth Austria / GLOBAL 2000 launched their SOS Climate campaign, as part of FOE Europe’s Big Ask on climate change, which aims to get governments and the European Union to commit to annual cuts in emissions to fight climate change.

FoE Austria and its new youth group mobilized thousands of people across Austria to ask politicians to commit to a climate change law. They organized actions and events to encourage people to send letters and emails to their MPs.

They also conducted a study on the impacts of climate change, and publicized the findings through the media in different Austrian regions.

what changed?

Thanks to the public pressure mobilized by FoE Austria, the new coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives committed to adopt a climate bill as part of their coalition agreement.

what next?

The Social Democrat/Conservative coalition was sworn into power in 2008. FoE Austria will continue to mobilize public pressure to ensure that the Austrian government fulfills its commitment to pass a climate change law.

Ministers from Austria, Germany, Norway, Malta, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were presented with messages from young people from over 30 countries. The messages collected by Young Friends of the Earth Europe urged politicians to take urgent and drastic action to secure the future of their generation from the worst impacts of global warming.

Youth climate advocates wrapped a giant globe in messages and asked governments to 'wrap up' a just global solution to climate change.

climate justice and energy

Our Climate Justice and Energy (CJE) Program’s overall objective is to build a diverse, effective and global movement for climate justice. In 2009, FoEI continued our close collaboration with key social movements, especially La Via Campesina, and the World March of Women, and the new Movement of Victims Affected by Climate Change in Central America (MOVIAC). New links with indigenous networks and movements were also fostered at key events during the year, and FoEI collaborated with many other networks including Climate Justice Now!, Asia Pacific Peoples’ Solidarity for Climate Justice, and Climate Justice Action.

The CJE Program’s goal is to ensure that rich industrialized Annex I countries had committed to needed emissions reductions, and to financing and transferring technology to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. We published a substantial number of policy proposals and analyses in the run-up to the COP-15 UNFCCC in Copenhagen, in December 2009. This included an ethical climate finance criteria matrix, which provided governments with a set of criteria for judging climate financing mechanisms proposed during negotiations.

FoEI took a team of 400 activists to Copenhagen, who variously engaged in lobbying and advocacy work, and organizing and participating in alternative events and daily mobilizations, including our hugely successful Flood for Climate Justice mobilization. The joint efforts of FoEI and key allies helped to ensure that a number of governments, including Bolivia, officially voiced their concerns about the potential negative impacts of UNFCCC, World Bank and national policies to finance Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD).

Although the results of the Copenhagen summit were extremely disappointing, many FoEI member groups in the global North have been very effective in persuading their governments to introduce binding national climate change laws, which will help to reduce those countries’ carbon emissions. This was especially the case in Europe where France, Scotland and the UK passed climate change laws setting binding emissions reductions targets. It seems likely that similar laws will soon be passed in a number of other European countries including Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland and Slovenia.

During 2009 we also continued to monitor and conduct advocacy around the World Bank’s framework on ‘clean energy investment’ and the emissions trading schemes promoted by the international financial institutions (IFIs). In 2009, both the G-20 and the UN made agreements to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, which will have a positive impact on the development and spread of renewable energy technologies.

food sovereignty

FoEI’s Food Sovereignty Program aims to halt the corporate control of food, and stop the spread of genetically modified organisms: it defends the right of people to determine and control their own food systems. In 2009, we attended the High-Level Meeting on Food Security in Madrid where Via Campesina and FoE Spain’s joint actions outside the conference got excellent coverage, and Henry Saragih from Via Campesina was eventually invited to speak on behalf of civil society in the final plenary session. The response from the conference was striking: the applause was deafening, and the meeting ended without consensus on a new 'Global Partnership', which was in line with civil society proposals (although the official website is less clear about this outcome).

The 17th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) also saw important progress on food sovereignty when proposals from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food included peoples’ right to access land and define their own food policies, and the need for governments to support the least protected people and implement food production models that do not contribute to climate change. This position strongly echoes the positions of Vía Campesina and FoEI, although it does not yet go far enough.

The struggle for a GM-free world remains a priority, and includes campaigns against soy monocultures, genetically modified (GM) food aid, and the dominant model of production. FoEI is campaigning to increase land available to family farmers and for rural agriculture. In 2009, we published our annual research report on GM crops, "Who Benefits from GM Crops? Feeding the biotech giants, not the world’s poor," which challenges the ability of GM crops to contribute to poverty reduction, global food security or sustainable farming.

Friends of the Earth groups and allies are also maintaining pressure on the GM industry at the national and regional levels. This has had a particularly marked impact in Europe, where European Commission efforts to allow two new varieties of genetically modified (GM) maize to be grown in Europe, and to force Greece, Hungary and France to drop their national bans on a similar GM maize, were overturned by member states. Civil society organizations were clearly instrumental in this. This resistance received a further boost in April, when Germany banned Monsanto's GM maize MON810. This was a huge success for FoE Germany and other environmental and agricultural organizations who have worked hard for this outcome for many years. There have also been strong FoE campaigns against GM crops in many countries, including Mexico, Nigeria and Paraguay.

FoEI is also starting to build a new global campaign challenging agribusiness, with Via Campesina and the World March of Women. In 2009, this included regional food sovereignty forums in Paraguay and Nigeria. Together with Food and Water Watch and the European Co-ordination of Via Campesina, we also produced a groundbreaking film, "Killing Fields: the battle to feed factory farms," which investigates the impacts of growing soy in South America to feed factory farms in Europe.

agrofuels

FoEI’s Agrofuels Campaign aims to stop the production, trade and consumption of agrofuels, by raising public awareness about its negative impacts on local communities and globally. In 2009, the campaign focused on strengthening local communities’ defence of their territories, and exposing ‘false solutions’ to the climate and energy crisis. A prerequisite for this was compiling FoEI members’ research, reports, and national and regional positions.

The Agrofuels Campaign integrates FoEI’s ongoing campaign against deforestation caused by oil palm plantations. 2009 was particularly notable because of the World Bank’s suspension of its investments in oil palm plantation companies. A coalition of local and international NGOs, spearheaded by the UK organization Forest Peoples Program and including FoE Netherlands, had previously filed a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC)'s internal watchdog, the Compliance Advisory Ombudsman office (CAO), about a series of loans to palm oil giant Wilmar International. A joint report by three NGOs (FoE Netherlands, Kontak Rakyat Borneo and Gemawan) had examined Wilmar's plantations in Sambas, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, and found that the company was working with dubious licenses, and was entangled in land rights conflicts and illegal logging activities. This complaint triggered an audit by the CAO, which concluded that the IFC had violated its own procedures, and that commercial interests had overruled the IFC's environmental and social standards.

FoEI groups from Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea also joined forces to develop and propose a mandatory code of conduct for Malaysian palm oil companies operating in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. They received positive responses from Malaysia’s Human Rights Council and the Opposition Party, who accepted that Malaysian palm oil expansion has created adverse impacts. Friends of the Earth also filed a complaint with the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) against the Malaysian Palm Oil Council for falsely advertising that palm oil is the "only product able to sustainably and efficiently meet a larger portion of the world's increasing demand for oil crop-based consumer goods, foodstuffs and biofuels." The ASA ruled that this statement was misleading, as was the Malaysian Palm Oil Council’s claim that palm oil contributes to alleviation of poverty. In November 2009, we also filed a grievance with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) against the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, for violating the members' Code of Conduct and continuing to mislead the public and make unsubstantiated claims about the production, procurement and use of palm oil.

A process of capacity-building on agrofuels, land rights and monoculture was also initiated in Central America. We helped to coordinate different groups and communities wanting to work together on agrofuels. A video on Monocultures, Land and Agrofuels in Central America was created by FoE El Salvador with communities’ support. FoEI also organized an international delegation to gather evidence on the impact of agrofuels in Colombia.

Friends of the Earth’s aim of reaching a broader public was also substantially achieved through the broadcasting of footage from our commissioned film, "Lost in Palm Oil."

Lobbying efforts in Europe remain focused on challenging the EU’s target of 10% of all road transport fuel coming from ‘renewable’ sources by 2020, with a majority likely to come from agrofuels. Key to this is increasing Europeans’ awareness of the impacts of agrofuels and about potential alternatives. This included the publication of "Biofuels: handle with care," an analysis of EU biofuels policy with recommendations for action, in November 2009.

forests and biodiversity

FoEI’s Forests and Biodiversity Program campaigns against illegal logging and deforestation, and works with communities and local people to uphold their rights to manage their forests. We also expose and oppose the negative impacts of monoculture plantations of crops such as sugar cane, palm oil and soy, planted to produce agrofuels.

The Forests and Biodiversity program’s focus on strengthening and promoting sustainable local initiatives means that some of its key activities and successes occur at the national level. For example, in Uruguay Friends of the Earth successfully halted construction of the controversial pulp and paper mill proposed by ENCE who had been planning to invest US$1,500 million. In Malaysia, Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit to save a water-catchment forest on the Jerai mountain in Kedah from a quarry project that has been illegally approved by the state government. The Indonesian President identified illegal logging as a form of entrenched corruption, saying that he appreciated the efforts of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth which have been active in criticizing the forest management of his government.

The Forests and Biodiversity Program is also focused on challenging and changing intergovernmental policies that already or potentially could contribute to the destruction of forests and biodiversity, For example, it participated in the Convention on Biological Diversity’s High-level Working Group on the 2010 biodiversity target and post-2010 target(s), and successfully persuaded governments to incorporate a number of key paragraphs into the final 2010 Biodiversity Targets.

Collaborative side and parallel events during intergovernmental forums, including meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Copenhagen, and the World Forestry Congress in Buenos Aires, were also successful in raising civil society’s concerns and challenging government perspectives. FoEI also produced a video about the performance of Finnish pulp and paper company Stora Enso in Uruguay, and created a photo exhibition on the impacts of cellulose/logging corporations in the Southern Cone of South America, which was exhibited at the World Forestry Congress.

The program also participated in the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, co-hosting a workshop on plantations, market mechanisms and false solutions, with the Global Forest Coalition; and published "Community-based Forest Governance: from resistance to proposals for sustainable use."

economic justice-resisting neoliberalism

The Economic Justice-Resisting Neoliberalism (EJRN) Program’s objective is to build sustainable societies by building people’s power and dismantling corporate power, stopping corporate-led neo-liberalism and globalization, and challenging the institutions and governments that promote unequal and unsustainable economic systems.

For example, through the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ), which FoEI is a very active member of, the EJRN Program has developed legal proposals for corporate accountability and to improve OECD guidelines. The OECD now plans to revise its guidelines for multinational companies. The UN has also adopted the Ruggie Framework for Business and Human Rights, in response to pressure to improve its oversight of corporate behavior from civil society groups including FoEI. The EU has also started research into improving protection for developing country citizens, against the negative impacts of EU-based business.

The EJRN Program also developed proposals for the EU and G-20 to regulate both EU lobbying and the financial sector. This included a campaign for the implementation of an EU lobby registry which has now been implemented (although it only calls for voluntary registration so far). FoE also convinced the European Commission that the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) had falsified its lobby expenditure report, and the Commission temporarily suspended CEFIC as a result. Additionally, FoE won a case with the European Ombudsman concerning EU officials that accepted gifts from companies they were supervizing. The EU is now preparing new rules on conflicts of interest.

In 2009, FoE’s ‘Global Europe’ campaign called for the suspension of the EU-Peru trade negotiations, particularly over concerns about human rights violations. FoE also supported a delegation of representatives of Indigenous Peoples from Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, who toured European capitals to publicize the impacts of mining and biofuels. Although the negotiations have not yet been suspended, this collaborative campaign has so far resulted in a commitment from the European Commission that the Associated Agreement with Peru will not contain any provision which would be detrimental to the rights of indigenous people; and will contain proposals that guarantee that trade and economic development respect the environment, as well as a binding human rights clause.

A focused effort to persuade Shell to improve its business practices continues to be a priority for FoEI. This has included support to FoE Nigeria in its campaign to expose the harmful nature of gas flaring, which contributed to the Nigerian foreign minister publicly committing to enforcing the ban on gas flaring as of January 2010. Efforts in Nigeria have been complemented by campaigning at the international level: FoEI collaborated with several organizations to publish "Shell's Big Dirty Secret," which documents Shell's continued investment in the dirtiest forms of energy and its position as the world's most carbon intensive oil company. An OECD complaint filed by FoE Netherlands resulted in a commitment by Shell to improve its oil depot in the Philippines and its communication with surrounding communities.

In the US, the ShellGuilty campaign launched by FoEI, Oil Change and Platform London, finally saw justice done when Shell was forced to pay a US$15.5 million out-of-court settlement for its complicity in the 1995 murder of nine Nigerian activists who opposed its gas flaring, under the US Alien Tort Statute.

On 3 December the Netherlands-based court case against Shell got under way in The Hague. The case has been brought by three Nigerian communities and FoE Netherlands/Miluedefensie over oil pollution in Nigeria. Shell asked the court to rule that the Dutch court has no jurisdiction over Shell Nigeria, but on 30 December the court held that the Dutch court does have jurisdiction. Given that Shell has now lost this point, an important hurdle has been overcome, and the 'real' lawsuit can begin. This is the first time in history that a Dutch company has been brought to trial in a Dutch court for damages occurring abroad.

The EJRN Program was also very successful in strengthening hundreds of community individuals and activists across the world, including through the Third Annual Latin American Sustainability School, and community exchanges in Latin America. Many other publications and communications materials were published during the year.

resisting mining oil and gas

FoEI’s Resisting Mining, Oil and Gas Program is a new FoEI program, and groups are concentrating on planning joint campaign work and mapping FoEI’s current work with communities. Some international activities are also underway however, and these included a number of actions against Canadian open-pit mines on 22 July, in countries including Australia, Canada, Mexico and Thailand, to mark the Global Day of Action Against Open Pit Mining. Another important event was the "Conference on Extractive Industries: Blessing or Curse? Impacts of the Oil and Gas Industry," held by FoE Europe in Brussels in October.

Some FoEI groups already have established campaigns on mining, oil and gas, resulting in some important national developments and successes. In December 2009, for example, FoE Hungary celebrated the introduction of a landmark ban on the use of cyanide in mining. FoE Philippines has filed an Alternative Mining Bill, intended to introduce a new mining policy to regulate the exploration, development and utilization of mineral resources. Many FoE groups, including in Indonesia, Guatemala, the Philippines, Ghana, Hungary and Costa Rica, are also working on an on-going basis with local communities affected by mining.

Testimonies from mining communities also feature strongly in FoEI’s new media projects, as do videos on tin mining in Indonesia, and oil pollution in Nigeria, both of which can be seen on YouTube. FoEI also embarked on an ambitious project to create a series of video testimonies by women affected by large-scale metal mining.

Friends of the Earth member groups continue to work on issues related to water, defending water territories for the benefit of communities and biodiversity. We work together with local communities in protecting the right to water, and opposing privatization of water and ‘development’ projects that pollute rivers and that use large quantities of water. Finally, we mobilize the public to vote for new laws and regulations that keep water in the public domain and uphold water as a human right.

Gender

FoEI’s gender program focuses on deepening our understanding of why the feminist perspective is critical to the FoEI federation. Such an understanding can shed light on the ways in which the current neoliberal economic model affects men and women differently, both in terms of its social and environmental impacts. It also reveals the self-perpetuating nature of the patriarchal society. For FoEI, a fuller comprehension of the harsh realities faced by women in different countries and regions across the world will help us construct better and more effective campaign strategies, and change the way we ourselves act. A document on how to work from a gender perspective has already been completed and circulated internally.

Together with allied social movements including La Via Campesina (LVC) and the World March of Women (WMW), we aim to support women to resist, transform and mobilize, both at the local and international levels, to bring about the world they want to live in.

In 2009, we focused on integrating a gender analysis into our programs on Food Sovereignty and Economic Justice-Resisting Neoliberalism (EJRN), and to support the inclusion of a feminist perspective into the EJRN Program’s analysis of the global financial crisis. FoEI was also invited to participate in WMW’s Second Regional Encounter in the Americas, in August 2009, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Gender campaigners also supported the production of video testimonies from ‘Women Re-sisters’, women resisting mining, some of which can currently be viewed on the FoEI YouTube channel.  Friends of the Earth also participated in La Escuela de Formación de Dirigentas (a school for future women leaders) organized by the Coordinadora de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) and Via Campesina del Cono Sur, in Paraguay, in July 2009.

Friends of the Earth Uruguay/REDES has been particularly active in promoting FoEI’s focus on gender, in terms of supporting the international coordination of this complex and cross-cutting issue, providing conceptual contributions, and engaging actively at the national level. In June 2009, this included publication of a book that considers the impacts of forest monocultures and soya on the displacement of rural populations, with a special emphasis on the consequences for human rights and gender relations. FoE Uruguay also drafted numerous papers on food sovereignty and gender concerns including a report on the role of rural women in the defense of food sovereignty, based on investigation and interviews with women from la Red de Grupos de Mujeres Rurales (the Network of Rural Women).

european gm crop bans upheld: FoE Europe continued its strong campaign to keep Europe free of GMOs, and maintain the right to to prohibit GMO plantings in European fields. During 2007, despite the pressure from institutions like the European Commission, existing national bans on GMOs were not lifted.

no gmos in organic food: FoE Europe welcomed the European Parliament’s March 2007 rejection of a proposal to allow traces of GMOs in organic food. The vote’s result is a clear signal from European elected representatives that the right to GM-free food is non-negotiable.

biotech industry withdraws gm foods: More good news came with the biotech industry’s official withdrawal of five GM crops from the European Union because of lack of consumer demand, markets and sales. This news provides further proof that GM crops are failing. However, the EU and member states must take this opportunity to ensure that they and industry listen to European citizens’ pleas for safe GM-free food.

eu votes to defy wto ruling on gm foods: FoE Europe welcomed EU Environment Ministers’ rejection of a World Trade Organisation proposal to force Austria to lift its bans on GM foods and crops. This rejection signals a major defeat for the biotech industry and its allies in the European Commission. FoE Europe believes every country has the democratic right to protect its citizens and environment. Neither the European Commission nor the WTO should be allowed to force Europeans to eat GM foods.

To remind politicians and the public about this decisive vote, and to warn about the risk of contamination by GM canola, FoE Austria held a breathtaking action in April 2007.

Releasing approximately 10,000 ecologically-produced balloons in a historic public square in Vienna, FoE Austria described how the balloons represented a pollen flight simulation, and symbolized the dangers of GM contamination. Before being released, the red and white balloons were used to form the words “GE Gen”, the logo of the ten-year-old campaign against genetic engineering.

“Thanks to the will of the people, Austrian fields have been free from genetic engineering for ten years, but Austria now runs a risk of being contaminated by GM canola,” said Jens Karg, FoE Austria’s spokesperson on GMOs. Jens urged the federal minister responsible to protect Austrian consumers and farmers by placing an immediate ban on GM canola imports.

See images of the balloon action here.