• 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.

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 research, reports, and national and regional positions from the federation’s members, as agrofuels is a relatively new issue and data is sparse. 

Nevertheless, there have already been some excellent external achievements by this relatively young campaign, in part because of its links to FoEI’s ongoing campaign against the 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. In September 2009, the International Finance Corporation (the IFC, the World Bank's private sector arm) announced that it would halt all palm oil investments until a revised strategy for financing the sector was in place. The World Bank Group statement was unveiled on 9 September in a letter from its president Robert Zoellick, who was responding to an appeal from Indonesian and international NGOs. 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 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.

The Indonesian President has also identified illegal logging as another form of entrenched corruption, saying that he appreciated the efforts of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth which have been active in criticising the forest management of his government, saying, "I want to give my appreciation for their concerns and hope they will continue their partnership with Indonesia."

Friends of the Earth 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. An intense advocacy campaign was directed at the Malaysian opposition group in Parliament; the Malaysian Palm Oil Association, Board, and Council; and the Human Rights Council. The groups also tried to lobby the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities, and the Prime Minister. The three groups, together with Sawit Watch, testified to the failure of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) process, and requested the introduction of the proposed legally binding code of conduct. They have so far received positive responses from the Human Rights Council and the Opposition Party, who have accepted that Malaysian palm oil expansion has created adverse impacts, including haze from forest and land fires during land clearing, social conflicts with local communities, and environmental 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, and that the Malaysian Palm Oil Council’s claim that palm oil contributes to alleviation of poverty was also misleading. The ASA found there was “not a consensus of the economic impact of palm oil on local communities” and stated that the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil certification scheme was “still the subject of debate”; and that making a claim that palm oil could be wholly sustainable, which cannot be substantiated, was deemed to be misleading. In November 2009, we followed up on this ruling by filing 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.

FoE Indonesia has played an important role in these campaign actions, and regional coordination of oil palm activities in the Asia Pacific. The group also facilitated communications, and coordinated capacity-building on agrofuels, land rights and monocultures issues, including with communities in remote areas such as Kupang in Indonesia (2,000 miles from Jakarta).

FoEI is committed to strengthening local communities’ capacity to defend their territories. We have worked with and supported communities that are keen to find out more about isolating and analyzing some of the ‘false solutions’ to the climate change and energy crises commonly proposed. A process of capacity-building on agrofuels, land rights and monoculture has also been initiated in Central America. We have also helped to coordinate different groups and communities wanting to work together on agrofuels. In Latin America, for example, this has involved bringing together the food sovereignty network in Guatemala, the food sovereignty and agrarian reform network of Honduras, the Water Valley communities in Honduras, victims of kidney failure due to sugar cane plantations in Nicaragua, and Via Campesina and World March of Women groups in El Salvador, amongst others. A video on "Monocultures, Land and Agrofuels in Central America" was created by FoE El Salvador with these communities’ support.

FoEI also organized an international delegation to gather evidence on the impact of agrofuels in Colombia, 1-10 July, with 40 international participants. Several members of FoEI took part: FoE Indonesia, FoE Uruguay, FoE Paraguay and FoE Brazil. The main objective of this delegation was to gather empirical evidence about the environmental impacts of agribusinesses producing biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel). This involved identifying and documenting human rights, economic, social and cultural rights violations, as well as violations of ethnic and environmental rights, and infringements on the food sovereignty of afro-Colombian, peasant and Indigenous communities in the country.

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. This document contains a clear set of policy recommendations focusing variously on European policy, European member states, and investors and industry.

Advocacy by FoE Netherlands and allied Dutch NGOs has also led to some important national developments that are influencing the course of EU debates relating to agrofuels. Palm oil remains excluded from the Dutch subsidy ruling for green electricity for 2010, despite RSPO certified palm oil becoming available. However, palm oil is however still part of the agrofuel mix in the Netherlands, and the hard won promise from Dutch Minister Cramer that sustainability concerns would take priority cannot be fulfilled because it is over-ruled by the weaker EU Renewable Energy Directive. However, the Dutch position in Brussels includes having at least some sustainability criteria for solid biomass in the Renewable Energy Directive, and promoting the use of an indirect land use change factor for calculating emissions for agrofuels. This resulted in the postponement of an EC decision, planned for 2009, that was supposed to state that solid biomass would not be subject to sustainability criteria.

FoE Netherlands also commissioned a publication on alternative implementation of the EU Renewables Directive for Transport in the Netherlands, "New Roads for Transport - Towards a sustainable solution for the 10% renewable transport energy target in 2020." This report on agrofuels alternatives also found its way to Brussels and the UK, and has been quoted frequently by industry players from the electric car and food industries.

In April 2009, FoE US and Earthtrack published a report "A Boon for Bad Biofuels: federal tax credits and mandates underwrite environmental damage at taxpayer expense," which focuses on US subsidies to the biofuels industry.

In September, comments were also submitted by the environmental community in the US, including FoE US, on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s draft regulation on the United States Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The RFS, in the Energy Independence Security Act of 2007, mandates a massive fivefold increase in agrofuels use and is a major driver of agrofuels production in the United States and abroad.

FoEI also facilitated research into agrofuels in many parts of the world, including on:

• the increase in agrofuel plantations in Central America and the link with the free trade agreement between the US and Central America; 

• the financing policies of the Inter-American Development Bank and how they are exacerbating climate change by promoting dirty energy and the promotion of agrofuels in Latin America; 

• the size and scope of subsidies for agrofuels in the US; 

• jatropha production in Swaziland; 

• land grabbing in Africa; and 

• agrofuels production in Mozambique. 

This research has also been used to develop position papers on the activities of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS), and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels. It also laid the foundations for the proposed mandatory code of conduct for palm oil companies in Malaysia. FoE has also conducted research into the position of Dutch banks financing agrofuel plantations, and how much money oil companies receive for using agrofuels.

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," which was broadcast on ARTE channel (30 million audience); on Dutch public broadcaster VARA; on Spanish national television (TVE); and on NDR  (Germany).

In keeping with FoEI’s commitment to awareness raising and mobilization we also:

• Participated in a tour to raise awareness about the threats posed by biofuels in Costa Rica and other Central American countries.

• Held a forum in El Salvador on the international day against plantations, denouncing regional plans to promote monocultures of sugar cane, palm and jatropha for agrofuels.

• Participated in public activities such as ‘Biofools Day’ activities, on 1 April. Over 10,000 activists participated, selecting Hugh Grant of Monsanto as 2009’s biggest Biofool.

Held an agrofuels awareness raising event in Tokyo, which was hosted by FoE Japan and its allies.

Created or participated in many other ‘solidarity spaces’ including an international forum on agrofuels in Sao Paolo, Brazil; an international forum on agrofuels in Paraguay; the dialogue of the Americas on agribusiness and agrofuels, "Building Alternatives from the food and energy sovereignty perspectives"; and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) forum in Nigeria.

The EJRN Program has also collaborated with the Agrofuels Campaign to organize a set of concrete activities including a publication on the role of private banks and their funding to promote agrofuels, a photo exhibition and activities on plantations and agrofuels at the European Social Forum.

The Stop Agrofuels Campaign working areas are:

• Defence of land
• Building a movement against agribusiness
• Certification mechanisms
• EU and US goals for agrofuels

Cross-cutting areas include:

• With the EJRN Program - a focus on exposing and countering the role of corporations, trade and investments in the agrofuels sector.

• With the Food Sovereignty Program - on Plantations.

Coordinators and participants

Co-Coordinators:

Silvia Quiroa, FoEI El Salvador, yada@navegante.com.sv

Torry Kuswardono, FoE Indonesia, torry@foei.org

The Stop Agrofuels Steering Group includes:

• For Africa: Thuli Makama, FoE Swaziland
• For North America: Kate Horner, FoE US
• For Latin America: Elias Diaz, FoE Paraguay, and FoE Brazil
• For Asia Pacific: Damien Ase, FoE Papua New Guinea
• For Europe: Adrian Bebb, FoE Europe

Groups that have actively participated in the Stop Agrofuels Campaign in 2009 include: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Uruguay.

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

In 2009, FoEI’s advocacy efforts in the area of economic justice contributed to several positive developments in the EU, the OECD, the UN and a number of countries, regarding corporate practices that threaten the environment, human rights, and people's livelihoods. They have variously helped to influence policies and policy dialogue, and to strengthen civil society.

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 in order to improve them.

The EJRN Program has also been successful in its efforts to persuade the EU to improve its policies and practices with respect to human rights, international trade, and corporate regulation. The EU has finally started research into improving protections for developing country citizens, against the negative impacts of EU-based business.
  
EJRN 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. FoE is now pushing for this registry to be made mandatory, and together with ALTER EU has published research on current low levels of participation in the register and insufficient data quality ("The Commission's Lobby Register One Year On: Success or Failure?").

Friends of the Earth also filed a complaint with the European Commission arguing that the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), the main lobby group of the chemical industry in Brussels, had falsified its lobby expenditure report. The European Commission agreed with our conclusions and deemed CEFIC's lobby registration inaccurate and in breach of the code of conduct. The Commission temporarily suspended CEFIC and asked it to correct its stated lobby budget.

FoE also won a case with the European Ombudsman, challenging a case of conflict of interest, concerning EU officials that accepted gifts from companies that they were supervising. The EU is now preparing new rules concerning EU officials and conflicts of interest.  

A successful multilingual, easy-to-use cyberaction also saw 381 parliamentary candidates, including 75 MEPs-elect from 16 countries, signing pledges on lobby transparency and ethics, trade policy, financial market rules and corporate accountability.

As part of its ‘Global Europe’ campaign, the EJRN Program continued to support and strengthen civil society organizations representing Indigenous communities and local communities impacted by these policies. In 2009, this included calling 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 EU-Peru negotiations have not yet been suspended, this collaborative campaign has so far resulted in a commitment from the European Commission that the negotiated 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 in particular to improve its business practices continues to be a priority for the EJRN Program. This has included support to FoE Nigeria in its campaign to expose the harmful nature of gas flaring. Shell's Utorogu Gas Plant and Chevron’s Escravos Gas Plant are the main sources of gas that feed the West African Gas Pipeline Project (WAGP) financed by the World Bank and its private sector insurance arm, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). FoE Nigeria's research and consultation with local communities revealed the harmful health impacts of processing a local cassava snack which is dried directly from the heat emitted from the flared gas. As a result, local residents raised the issue with the government and the campaign contributed to the decision by the Foreign Minister to publicly commit to enforcing the ban on gas flaring as of January 2010. FoE Nigeria has also prepared a lawsuit against ENI, an Italian gas company, for gas flaring.  

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, but Shell refused to engage on the most crucial element of the case, relocation of an oil depot.

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.

In the US, the ShellGuilty campaign launched by FoEI, Oil Change and Platform London, finally saw justice done when Shell was forced to pay US$15.5 million in an 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.

Among the many national campaigns that fall under the umbrella of the EJRN Program, FoE Uganda's efforts to stop or improve the Bujagali dam has been very effective. Bujagali Electricity Limited (BEL) and the Ugandan government have revized their compensation policies and procedures for communities affected by the construction of a dam on the River Nile that is financed by World Bank and the African Development Bank. Bujagali Electricity Limited is now providing water tanks to communities affected by the dam and those affected by the transmission line have been promised electricity to their homes. FoE Uganda has also succeeded in submitting a legal case against Lafarge group (a mining company) for illegal mining operations in Queen Elizabeth National Park, a 1,978 square kilometer protected area.

Friends of the Earth has also succeeded in getting the world’s largest steel company, Arcelor-Mittal to make some improvements to its operations in India, South Africa, and Liberia. In collaboration with several other organizations including Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance, Karaganda Ecological Museum in Kazakhstan and the Sustainable Development Institute in Liberia, we published a report on the company's operations operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, India, Liberia, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Romania and the Czech Republic. The report, "Arcelor-Mittal: Going nowhere slowly - A review of the global steel giant's environmental and social impacts in 2008-2009," looks at the company's current practices and makes concrete recommendations to management, shareholders, International Financial Institutions and local and national authorities. FoEI also participated in shareholder meetings of ArcelorMittal and a community meeting with the board; and sent a fact finding mission to Liberia, with seven national and European media representatives, to investigate the company’s environmental, social and human rights impacts.

In 2009, the UN 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 Friends of the Earth International. In a Joint NGO statement, a group of NGOs including FoEI congratulated the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises, whilst agreeing with him that the “international community is still in the early stages of adapting the human rights regime to provide more effective protection to individuals and communities against corporate-related human rights harms.” The Human Rights Council must now broaden the focus beyond the elaboration of the ‘protect, respect, and remedy’ framework, to include an explicit capacity to examine situations of corporate abuse.

The EJRN Program was also very successful in strengthening the impact of hundreds of community individuals and activists across the world, including through:

• Friends of the Earth's Third Annual Latin American Sustainability School, which trained 40 activists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala,  Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.   

• The Asia Pacific Workshop on Economic Justice and Strategic Planning for Campaigns, which trained 25 activists from Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Timor Leste. 

• Community exchanges between communities in Central America affected by climate change (120 individuals attended), between communities throughout Latin America affected by agribusiness (150 individuals), and between communities in Africa affected by Arcelor-Mittal's mining operations. 

• Supporting FoEI representatives to attend EU conferences on corporate social responsibility, transparency with respect to lobbying, and meetings with members of the European Parliament. This included a delegation of FoEI representatives from Central American to the European Parliament, to testify to the behavior of European companies in Latin America.

• On-going technical assistance for civil society organizations in the South campaigning against harmful corporate practices. This assistance has facilitated joint North-South work on many European companies including Stora Enso, Shell, Arcelor Mittal, Monsanto, ENI, and Wilmar. 

Many other publications and other communications materials have been published including:

• "Global Europe: The tyranny of ‘free trade’ the European Way," which examined the negative consequences of Europe's shift away from a social-liberal foreign policy discourse to an approach that puts economic motivations front and center.  

• "Poison Fire," a video documentary exposing oil and gas abuses in Nigeria and featuring FoE Nigeria volunteers.

• "Would you Bank on Them?" a report on the biased composition of La Rosiere group, that advised the EU on policies to address the financial crisis, which was published in collaboration with SpinWatch, Corporate Europe Observatory and Lobby Control. 

• "A Captive Commission, the role of the financial industry in shaping EU regulation," a report on the biased composition of EU advisory groups in the financial sector. The findings of the report formed the substance of a FoE complaint to the EU Ombudsman. 

• "Public money for fossil fuels in the EU and in three EU member states," by Friends of the Earth, Oil Change International and PLATFORM.

• In the US, a written presentation was submitted to the Obama Administration committee reviewing Investor Protection Agreements, at the beginning of 2009.

• In addition, research and preparation of the upcoming publication "Calling the EU’s Bluff: Who are the real champions of biodiversity and traditional knowledge in the EU-Central American and EU-Community of Andean Nations Association Agreements?" was completed.

The EJRN Program working areas are:

• Global Europe. The objective is to expose the negative impacts and the corporate bias of the European Union’s ‘Global Europe’ agenda, and to counter trade and investment agreements that are likely to harm men and women and the environment. The ATALC region is very much involved in the Global Europe campaign, as is Friends of the Earth Europe, which has called on the EU to suspend trade negotiations with Peru and Honduras, especially after the killings of Indigenous People in Peru, and the military coup in Honduras. These violent events are indicative of the harmful effects that the EU’s Global Europe agenda can have on indigenous and local communities.

• Corporate Power: The objective is to expose and counter corporate crimes and their social, environmental and human rights impacts, specifically on women and men’s productive and reproductive activities. This campaign also aims to counter corporate influence over governments and institutions including international financial institutions, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In particular, it seeks to develop and advocate for legal measures that give rights to women, men and communities, to protect themselves against corporate power. 

The EJRN Program is very much engaged in collaborative work with the other FoEI Programs. Cross-cutting areas, include the following:

• With the Forests and Biodiversity Program, EJRN is driving the Campaign against Plantations, currently focused on ATALC and some FoE Europe groups, and soon to include the African and APac regions. EJRN’s contribution is to contribute to the Plantations campaign by exposing and countering the role of relevant corporations, trade and investments; and to foster activities that enable communities to resist. 

• With the Resisting Mining Program, the EJRN is supporting concrete campaigns to stop the mining activities of certain companies such as Shell, Holcim and Arcelor Mittal.

• With the Climate Justice and Energy Program, EJRN is focusing on Climate and Finance, particularly building a common position at the federation level, including on carbon markets and the Clean Development Mechanism. EJRN is also involved in efforts to build the Movement of Victims and People Affected by Climate Change in Latin America (MOVIAC); and exposing and rejecting World Bank involvement in climate change, including through policies and programs to promote Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) and its Climate Investment Funds (CIFs).

• With the Food Sovereignty Program, EJRN is working to create a joint campaign against agribusiness companies worldwide. 

• Similarly, the EJRN Programme is contributing to the Agrofuels Campaign by exposing and countering the role of corporations, trade and investments.

Coordinators and participants

Co-coordinator: Sebastián Valdomir, FoE Uruguay, sebastian@redes.org.uy 

Co-coordinator: Anne van Schaik, FoE Netherlands, anne.van.schaik@milieudefensie.nl (until Sept 2009)
Corporates Campaign Coordinator: Paul de Clerck, FoE Netherlands, paul@milieudefensie.nl

The EJRN Steering Group includes:

• For ATALC: Grace García (FoE Costa Rica), Mario Godínez (FoE Guatemala) as alternate; 
• For Africa: Bobby Peek (FoE South Africa); 
• For Europe: Asad Rehman (FoE EWNI), Charly Poppe (FoE Europe) as alternate; 
• For the US: Karen Orenstein (FoE US); 
• For Asia Pacific: Hemantha Withanage (FoE Sri Lanka)

Groups that participated actively in the EJRN Program during 2009 included Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, EWNI, FoE Europe, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritius, México, Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leona, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Uruguay and the United States.

Photo: FoEI's Angry Mermaid Award targeted the worst corporate lobbyists around climate change in Copenhagen, December 2009. Naomi Klein and FoEI's Nnimmo Bassey helped to deliver the award at the ceremony.

The Nyeleni Forum was crucial in helping FoEI to frame its Food Sovereignty Program, continue to build its strategic alliance with La Via Campesina, and act more strongly at both the grassroots and international levels. In 2008, around 30 FoEI member groups from Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, England Wales & N Ireland, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Paraguay, Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Swaziland, Uruguay and the USA actively participated in FoEI’s Food Sovereignty Program, and worked in solidarity to advance the food sovereignty agenda globally.

accomplishments

In 2008, FoEI's Food Sovereignty Program was able to:

• advance the food sovereignty agenda globally
• strengthen the fight for a GM-free world
• focus on the links between industrial agriculture and climate change
• link trade to food sovereignty and defend territories and land rights from agribusiness
  

This coalition enhanced information-sharing and cooperation amongst organizations fighting for climate justice, with the aim of intensifying actions to prevent and respond to climate change. There are now over 160 organizations participating in this exciting and rapidly growing coalition. FoEI took a lead role in initiating Climate Justice Now! and the focus on mobilization has greatly increased our capacity for movement-building and justice-based campaigning in the future.

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.

news: what did friends of the earth say

• Rich nations to blame for climate inaction and rejection of rights [Dec 12]
  
• Young people meet EU ministers to demand they 'wrap up' climate change [Dec 11]
• Climate change talks standstill: a human rights threat [Dec 10]
• World Bank unfit to manage climate funds [Dec 8]
  

The Climate negotiations in brief

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992 at the Rio Summit and provides a principles of equity for a multilateral agreement on addressing climate change including the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’. This reflects the rich, industrialised nations’ overwhelming contribution to historical emissions and therefore their responsibility in acting first to bring down their national emissions.

After a number of years of intense negotiations, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11th December 1997 and it the Protocol attempts to implement the principles of the Convention agreement. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012 and governments are currently negotiating the second commitment period of the Protocol as well as addressing the 'implementation gap' of other Convention commitments for finance, technology transfer and adaptation.

These talks are scheduled to be completed in December 2009.

Kyoto comes into force

The Kyoto Protocol came into force on 16 February 2005 after the Russian Parliament ratified the treaty in 2004. Kyoto commits industrialized countries who have ratified it to individual, legally binding targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to and average of 5% from 1990 levels in by 2012.

Climate negotiations continue in Poznań

Each year the UNFCCC holds negotiating sessions known as the "COP" (conference of parties). The most recent one was COP14, that took place in Poznań, Poland in December 2008. Delegates continued their work on the "Bali Action Plan" which was agreed at COP 13. The purpose of the Bali Action Plan is to commence implementation on Convention obligations that have not been met thus far, and also design the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol to start after 2012. 

Read the reports from the conference on the Friends of the Earth International blog

Friends of the Earth International believes that for the outcomes of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol under the current negotiations to be deemed as legitimate, any agreement reached must be socially, politically, economically and ecologically just and compliant with human rights. Only with a radical global change which is based on climate justice we will be able to prevent the worst consequences of climate change which would hit the poorest people hardest in a sustainable way.

A post-2012 agreement must commit developed countries (Annex I) to make immediate steep emission reductions, support for the respect of land rights and the conservation of the world’s last remaining forests. In addition Annex I countries must make large-scale financial transfers for developing country appropriate adaptation and mitigation with arrangements for appropriate and fair multilateral mechanisms to distribute funds.

Such an agreement should also ensure that the human rights impacts of climate change are taken into account and that the public and civil society have rights of information; public participation and access to justice to ensure that its provisions are developed and applied in an open, fair, transparent and just way.

On the closing day of the COP14 negotiations Friends of the Earth International were invited to give their verdict on the conference. Read it here

reports

REDD myths: A comprehensive critique of a new scheme intended to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries.

Read the press release
Download the executive summary [PDF]

Download the full report  [PDF]

blog

Read updates from the conference on the Friends of the Earth International blog

audio

Listen to Interviews and news from Real World Radio

news

• Rich nations to blame for climate inaction and rejection of rights [Dec 12]
  
• Young people meet EU ministers to demand they 'wrap up' climate change [Dec 11]
• Climate change talks standstill: a human rights threat [Dec 10]
• World Bank unfit to manage climate funds [Dec 8]
• Climate talks pressured by global day of action [Dec 5]
• UN climate talks: clash on climate goal [Dec 4]
• Giant loophole in forest plans [Dec 2]
• Forest carbon trading exposed (REDD) [Nov 27]
• Read our climate position paper for the talks [pdf]

further reading

• Read Friends of the Earth International's analysis of COP13 in Bali (2007) 
• Find out what happened at the intersessional negotiations in Accra, Ghana (2008)
  
• The World Bank and climate change

The funds - criticized by developing country governments - will be used to finance so-called clean technology including coal and agrofuels, and loans for adapting to climate change and to set up carbon trading schemes that allow industrialized countries to buy their way out of emission reductions.

Friends of the Earth US spokesperson Karen Orenstein said that G8 leaders did nothing at their meeting to stop the toll that global warming is taking on people and the planet.

“G8 leaders have signaled their support for climate chaos by spewing futile rhetoric that will do nothing to stop the toll that global warming is taking on people and the planet. By giving support to the World Bank, the world’s largest multilateral fossil fuel financier and major deforester, for its ill-conceived and unjust climate funds, G8 leaders have left the fox to guard the hen house.”

“The climate funds undermine United Nations climate negotiations, promote dirty industries like coal and force developing countries to pay for the industrialized world’s pollution by providing loans for them to adapt to the climate crisis. The World Bank is a spectacularly unqualified institution to address climate change, and the G8 summit has been a spectacular failure in addressing the climate emergency.”

During the G8, La Via Campesina, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International and other social movements and civil society organisations highlighted how corporate-driven policies being pushed by G8 nations are having serious negative impacts on communities and their environment around the world. Friends of the Earth Japan held parallel events demanding climate justice, opposing the World Bank's climate funds, and highlighting the dangers of the rush for agrofuels.

According to the French Electricity Transport Network, more than three million homes took part in the action in France. A further four million homes were recorded as taking part in countries including Spain, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, and Australia.

Participants who took part made a symbolic gesture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by switching off their lights for five minutes. In Paris, even the Eiffel Tower and some other major monuments switched off their lights.

According to FoE France’s director, Anne Bringault, "The action exceeded our expectations, and spread far beyond activist networks. This mainstream event confirms that people are very concerned and ready to act concretely, as shown by a TNS Sofres poll that 86 percent of French people are willing to reduce their electricity consumption."

The drop in electricity use in France alone corresponded to the total consumption of the city of Marseille.

More information here.