what happened

Friends of the Earth’s long-term goal is to halt the expansion of the palm oil industry in the region. In 2009 Friends of the Earth Australia initiated a project designed to develop a new national campaign in Australia, and develop a common understanding and shared regional campaign activities with other Friends of the Earth groups in Indonesia (Friends of the Earth Indonesia/WALHI), Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia/Sahabat Alam Malaysia), and Papua New Guinea (Friends of the Earth Papua New Guinea/CELCOR). 

FoE Australia hired project coordinators who initiated research and travelled to affected areas both within Australia and Indonesia, to get a better understanding of the real world impacts of agrofuels production, to strengthen links with regional campaigners, and to map future activities. Communications by telephone and skype were supplemented with face-to-face meetings in Jakarta (February 2009), Bangladesh (May 2009), and Bali, Indonesia (May 2010).

In Australia, campaigners participated in multiple public meetings, and ongoing government roundtable and lobby meetings. They also produced a range of communications materials to assist partnership development and education with both national and regional NGOs.

FoE Australia succeeded in developing a clear and targeted national agrofuels campaign strategy, and built and strengthened relationships with Australian networks working on palm oil, deforestation issues and agrofuels.

what changed

Although this campaign is only in its infancy, there have already been some key successes. In particular, FoE Australia and partner groups in Australia focused on halting the use of palm oil products in food manufacturing in Australia. In 2009 this resulted in several major food manufacturers agreeing to remove palm oil from food production. These included Cadburys (chocolate), KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and Woolworths (Australia's biggest retailer).

The campaign is supporting the work of a National Government Senator to develop a Bill to introduce national legislation introducing mandatory labelling for all food products containing palm oil in Australia.

what was learned

Friends of the Earth Australia found that China, and to some degree India, are the main recipients of palm oil from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. Previously it had been thought that the EU was the main importer. This knowledge will be extremely important in terms of developing and targeting agrofuels campaigning in the region.

The project has enabled FoE Australia to establish a core project volunteer team but securing further funding will be essential: some important collaborative activities were missed in 2009 because funding was not available. Yet fundraising is difficult in Australia, because the campaign is new, and many potential donors still believe ‘biofuels’ are a clean green energy source.

In addition, agrofuels is a complex area that touches on many different campaigns, including deforestation, food sovereignty, human rights and climate change. This can be a challenge when it comes to developing and structuring a campaign that links into and meets the needs of different campaigns in different countries.

what next? 

FoE Australia will be seek to secure additional campaign funding to maintain paid staff throughout the life cycle of the developed campaign plan. It will also develop a joint position paper for APac members to discuss and develop. Work is also continuing on developing a common regional campaign target. 

Research into Malaysia’s pivotal investment and China’s impact within the region will also continue, although it is difficult to access verifiable research data from Chinese government agencies or academic institutions. Research will also focus on the use of plantations within offsetting programmes as companies seek to ramp up their profits with the onset of carbon reduction market-based mechanisms, such as carbon trading schemes. 

Education activities will focus on both business and decision makers, and will challenge the common misconception that agrofuels are carbon neutral and a green solution to mitigate climate change. 

with thanks to our funders: the sigrid rausing trust

Groups in FoEI’s APac region are demanding a full assessment of ADB projects to determine their impacts on climate change, and the integration of climate change mitigation measures into all project designs. They are also engaged in increasing communities’ and media understanding of the full social, environmental and economic implications of ADB projects.

Indonesia, for example, is the ADB’s largest debtor, and Indonesia’s annual debt repayments consume a staggering 40% of the country’s national budget. Despite the ADB’s claims that it is acting on behalf of marginalized communities, ADB projects are responsible for widespread social and environmental destruction, including the escalation of gender inequality, and the destruction of ecosystems by mining, aquaculture and other projects. Impacts are being felt most severely by local communities, fisherfolk, and Indigenous Peoples. FoE Indonesia/WALHI aims to help create an Indonesia that is independent, free from debt, willing to seek reparations from creditors, and committed to ensuring gender justice.

what happened

FoEI members in the Asia Pacific (APac) region published a report entitled, “Climate Impacts of the ADB’s Business: How the Asian Development Bank finances climate change.” This report includes three case studies, focusing on: wetland destruction and flooding caused by the Southern Transport Development Project in Sri Lanka; the destruction of mangrove forest by a shrimp aquaculture project in Bangladesh; and the ADB’s ‘climate account’ in Indonesia. Collectively these studies illustrate the ADB’s failure to consider or address the climate change impacts of its projects in the Asia and Pacific region. The report was distributed during the official UNFCCC climate change negotiations and civil society meetings in Bangkok (October 2009) and Copenhagen (December 2009).

The report also recommends climate justice as an alternative basis for sound and equitable development, and makes specific forward-looking recommendations on climate finance. FoE APac exposed underlying problems with the ADB's current involvement in climate finance, specifically with respect to the replenishment of the Bank’s Climate Fund, and their support for false solutions such as projects on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) in Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. With a combination of hard-hitting campaigns, testimonies and a public tribunal, they were able to explain why these projects are not beneficial for people in the region. 

It was clear that FoE’s interventions during the ADB’s 42nd AGM in Bali (2-5 May 2009) successfully conveyed this growing resistance to ADB: this led to the Bank reviewing its climate financing schemes. 

During the AGM, FoE APac also advocated - in both the official and outside events – for the ADB to address climate change concerns effectively and equitably in all its strategies, policies and projects. This should include integrating climate change concerns into projects’ Environmental Impact Assessments, and changing the ADB’s Energy Policy (especially relating to coal), its Renewable Energy policy, and its climate initiatives. FoE APac called for real solutions to climate change. 

At the AGM, FoE Indonesia fielded campaigners with expertise on climate justice, privatization, debt and water issues. They held meetings with and lobbied Indonesia’s National Development Planning Board (BAPPENAS) and the Ministry of Finance. This later led to more engagements and meetings between FoE Indonesia and government representatives.

A key feature of the project during 2009 was the fact that it enabled FoE APac to help mobilize the new and growing Asian People’s Movement. During the course of the year, FoE APac was able to increase its engagements, partnerships and alliances with communities, organizations, coalitions, social movements and federations from a wide range of sectors (including fisherfolk, labor, women, farmers and environmental justice groups). Public education and media outreach were also a priority and FoE Indonesia held public education activities, press briefings, and focus group discussions, and distributed the Declaration of the Asian People’s Movement to civil society organizations. 

Impressive press coverage during the ADB AGM, also helped secure an increased number of media briefings and invitations to participate in public debates hosted by the media. It also led to increased political debate on Indonesia's current debt in both print and broadcast media. 

This widespread focus on movement-building by FoE Indonesia and others culminated in the launch of the Asian Peoples' Movement campaign against the ‘Asia Destructive Bank’ during the ADB AGM. This new campaign is now supported by several key coalitions, movements and organizations from across the Asia Pacific region. The launch and activities during the AGM involved public workshops, debates and tribunals that exposed ADB projects in various countries; and solidarity actions, mass mobilizations, demonstrations, rallies, and daily actions in front of the AGM center. 

The Asia Peoples' Movement has now met on several occasions, strengthening its forces and increasing its resistance and mobilization across the Asia Pacific region. It has linked these diverse groups and movements in key areas such as on climate justice and energy (the Asia Pacific anti-coal campaign), mines and minerals (the Asia People’s Movement Against Mining), and forests and climate (the REDD campaign).

Overall, these activities have resulted in a broader engagement with allies, and escalating public concern about the ADB’s impacts. The project contributed to a significant increase in communities’ awareness and understanding about the negative impacts of the ADB’s projects in Indonesia and elsewhere, and how these may affect people directly in their everyday lives. In the past, there was a degree of confusion about whether or not to resist Bank projects given their short-term ‘economic gain.’ This important change will help Friends of the Earth to build more momentum for a transformative agenda seeking real solutions, including those based on local traditional practices. 

There is also increased understanding about the impacts that many ADB-financed projects have on women (as in the case of women impacted by lack of access to energy following energy sector privatization). This heightened focus on gender concerns has also increased FoE APac’s engagement and activities with impacted women. 

what was learned

The report was the first to be published by the newly formed FoE Asia Pacific (APac) region. It proved to be an extremely useful tool for educating people about climate finance, and also in terms of helping to develop FOEI’s international position on climate finance indicators prior to UNFCCC COP-15 in Copenhagen. 

However it took more time than expected to collate the information across such a large and diverse region, meaning that the publication of the report was delayed, and the report was not available in time for the ADB AGM. This delay had a knock on effect, preventing FoE APac sponsoring a related event during the ADB AGM. Thus technical problems had an impact on FoE’s advocacy. This is an important learning event for the federation.

The size and complexity of the civil society event and mobilizations that took place around the Bali AGM were also challenging for FoE Indonesia as the host country group. However, the group’s success in undertaking these activities reaffirmed its confidence in its ability to organize and mobilize events on this scale. It also enabled the group to assess which areas it needs to improve (administration) and which areas it should invest in and tap into more (its campaigning skills and close relationships with communities and others sectors). FoE Indonesia also played a vital role in facilitating relationships and alliance building during the AGM.

The project deepened and strengthened relationships between FoE groups in the Asia Pacific region, and their engagement in and the links between the different FoEI program areas, especially Economic Justice-Resisting Neoliberalism, Climate Justice & Energy, and Forests & Biodiversity. This has, in turn, helped to strengthen the FoEI federation as a whole.

what next

We are now in an excellent position to monitor climate finance in the region, based on FoEI’s new climate finance indicators.

with thanks to our funders: the dutch ministry of foreign affairs (dgis)

12 percent of the funding for Friends of the Earth International comes from the membership dues paid by the member groups, and 0.7 percent comes from sales and donations. Member groups contribute a percentage of their income on the basis of their revenue from two years ago to the international network. This core funding is used to cover the

operational costs of the Secretariat.

subsidies

86.5 percent of our income is subsidies received from government agencies and foundations. These funds are granted 

to us for specific projects and campaigns and for our Membership Support Fund.

membership support fund

Our Membership Support Fund seeks to pool resources and share them across FoE member groups for the following 

objectives: network development, program coordination, capacity building, strengthening national campaigns, and increasing participation in international campaigns.

In 2009, we distributed 995,266 Euros to 32 of our members: Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, El Salvador, England, Wales & Northern Ireland, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Liberia, Malaysia, Malawi,Mozambique, Netherlands, Nigeria, Palestina, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Togo, Tunesia, Uganda and Uruguay.

We also distributed 106,142 Euros to the our regional groupings for regional meetings and capacity building.

our funders

Friends of the Earth International gratefully acknowledges financial support from:

• HIVOS
• NOVIB/Oxfam Netherlands
• The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS-TMF/MFS)
• The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Matra)
• The European Union (joint grant with IPS)
• The Sigrid Rausing Trust
• The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation
• The Netherlands Committee for Sustainable Development (NCDO)
• The Isvara Foundation
• The C.S. Mott Foundation
• The Wallace Global Fund
• The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• The V. Kahn-Rasmussen Foundation

Their financial support has been crucial in strengthening our campaigns and our network.

• 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.

membership support

what happened?

Friends of the Earth International members in Papua New Guinea, Nigeria and Brazil held workshops in late 2008, to help women in areas affected by plantations to share their experiences and find ways of working together to defend their communities and their land.

In Papua New Guinea the focus was on oil palm plantations, which are being promoted mainly to supply the European market with palm oil (used in cosmetics, soap, vegetable oil and foodstuffs) and agrofuels. In Nigeria, the focus was on rubber plantations established on a community’s land by the French company Michelin, to produce rubber for car and bus tires.

In Brazil, the case study looked at eucalyptus plantations set up by three companies – Stora Enso, Aracruz Celulose and Votorantim – to produce pulp for export to Europe for conversion into paper.

Friends of the Earth International then worked with the World Rainforest Movement to develop case studies from the workshop findings, and publicize these internationally. Advocacy and campaigning tools developed using the case studies including a report, an audiovisual resource, short articles, declarations, and sign-on letters, among other outputs.

what changed?

The project has increased awareness about the differentiated gender impacts of plantations; and the role played by European actors promoting neoliberal economic policies that favor the expansion of their corporations in the South. This issue is now included in the campaigning agenda of a broad number of NGOs and social movements in the affected regions and in Europe, and has contributed to increased South-North and South-South collaboration around this particular issue.

In Nigeria and Papua New Guinea, the workshops helped to empower women, who are shifting from being passive victims to actors capable of generating change. Participants were more able to identify the differentiated gender impacts of plantations and to share their findings with their communities. In both countries, women are play a bigger role in the struggle against plantations, while other groups within civil society are beginning to incorporate the gender dimension into their local and national campaigns against plantations.

In Nigeria, women have publicly demonstrated against Michelin’s land usurpation, backed by an international petition with more than 2,000 signatures from a large number of countries in different regions, giving international visibility to the injustices they face. As a result Michelin has paid full compensation to one of the nine communities directly impacted. A second community was also approached but has rejected the compensation offered, because it is insufficient compared to the damage caused by the invasion of their territory and the destruction of their livelihoods. The women released a communiqué in which they exposed the role played by European governments and demanded the return of their lands and full compensation for the damage done.

In Papua New Guinea, the workshop allowed women to learn from the experiences of women in other parts of the country already affected by palm oil plantations. They are now setting up the Women in Oil Palm Association, to facilitate women’s participation in decision-making processes. They have released a statement demanding a halt in the expansion of palm oil plantations, including a specific demand to the World Bank (the principal promoter of plantation expansion in Papua New Guinea) to shift its Smallholder Agriculture Development Projects facility, which provides credits to small rural producers, towards active promotion of crop diversification. These demands were reinforced by an international action that collected more than 8,700 signatures from individuals and organizations from different regions of the world.

In southern Brazil, the resistance process against plantations is already organized and political demands well developed. Women are the main actors in struggles against plantations. The project helped reinforce this at the regional level and increased the visibility of women’s leadership role and of the transformation agenda, an inspiring example for women living in affected communities across the world.

EU vice-president, Margot Wallström, has taken note of the problems documented by the project and has forwarded information to the EU agencies for Development Aid and External Relations. This will support campaigning around the EU’s energy targets, which involves palm oil plantations and second generation agrofuels.

This project created a space to circulate information and tools around many key networks and information lists, and to share information with European civil society organizations from countries involved in the case studies.

Find out more:

• Read the report: www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/women/fullreport.pdf
• See the slideshow: www.wrm.org.uy/Videos/Women_Voices.html

with thanks to our funder: the isvara foundation

Photo credits: World Rainforest Movement

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.

During the past two years, agrofuels have been a top advocacy priority for the federation, cutting across almost all of our program areas. During this period, more than 35 FoEI groups in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Denmark, El Salvador, England Wales & N Ireland, France, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Malta, Mozambique, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Uganda, Uruguay and US, worked in solidarity to achieve this goal.

accomplishments

We received a lot of press attention and succeeded in helping to shift public opinion on agrofuels, not just in Europe but throughout producer countries. The fact that increasing attention has been paid to food production, because of the global food crisis, meant that we were presented with an important opportunity to raise concerns about competition between crops for food and crops for fuel (although we approached this issue cautiously as we believe that the food crisis is driven by many significant factors, including speculation in agricultural commodities, and false solutions such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and increased dependence on artificial inputs to agriculture).

Our various activities also reinforced national and regional alliances with social movements fighting for food sovereignty and resisting large scale monocultures, raised FoEI’s profile in debates about energy and climate justice, and contributed to the implementation of FoEI’s Agrofuels campaign internationally.

The Forest 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 succeeded in a case against logging company ENCE for misleading advertising and destruction of native forests in Uruguay. We successfully halted construction of the controversial pulp and paper mill proposed by ENCE, who had been planning to invest US$1,500 million. The company was financially sanctioned and then decided to sell its land and leave the country. We also supported a local community in Uruguay to sue a company that was going to plant genetically modified soybeans in an area rich in family and organic farming.

In Malaysia, Friends of the Earth has also 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 communities located in the foothills of the mountain depend on the mountain’s rivers for water supply for domestic use and to irrigate their rice fields.

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, in forums such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the World Forestry Congress.

For example, the Forests and Biodiversity program participated in the CBD’s High-level Working Group on the 2010 biodiversity target and post-2010 target(s), which took place 11 March 2009 in Bonn, Germany. FoEI successful persuaded governments to inorporate a number of key paragraphs into the final 2010 Biodiversity Targets document (even though it still generally favors the dominant vision of mercantilization and commercialization).

Collaborative side and parallel events during intergovernmental forums have also been extremely successful in raising civil society’s concerns and challenging government perspectives. The joint efforts of FoEI's Forests and Biodiversity, CJE and EJRN programs, together with key allies such as the Global Forest Coalition, has helped to ensure that a number of governments, such as Bolivia and Paraguay, have voiced their concerns about the potential negative impacts of policies on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), especially if REDD is used to support plantations and is funded through carbon markets. The subsequent 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 genetically engineered (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 enabled to participate in national REDD policy discussions currently underway.

Similarly, a three-day capacity-building event on the impacts of tree plantations was organized prior to the World Forestry Congress, 16-18 October, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, together with the World Rainforest Movement, the Global Forest Coalition and La Via Campesina Argentina. This event helped to build capacity and provide a space for more than 150 representatives of indigenous organizations, farmers’ movements and NGOs, enabling them to voice their concerns about the current forestry model and to propose alternative solutions on an international platform.

The Plantations Campaign and a delegation of ATALC groups also produced a video about the performance of Finnish pulp and paper company Stora Enso in Uruguay, and presented 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.

FoEI is collating vital information about alternative approaches to forest management, which clearly demonstrate that community management of forests is a viable contribution to food sovereignty and community control of resources, and is already practised in many parts of the world. To this end, we published and distributed "Community-based Forest Governance: from resistance to proposals for sustainable use" in 2009.

We also highlighted local struggles and promoted alternative practices for sustainable livelihoods through a number of publications and statements. With FoE groups from Nigeria, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea, and the World Rainforest Movement, we compiled three detailed case studies that show the impact plantations have on women. These were launched to mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2009, and celebrate women’s role in opposing plantations and fighting for a better world. On the back of these studies, and in collaboration with FoE France, the Forests and Biodiversity Program also initiated a campaign against Michelin’s destructive activities in Nigeria. FoE Liberia, FoE Cameroon and FoE Netherlands also produced a video on "Illegal Logging: African stories," which has so far been viewed 1,139 times on YouTube in addition to viewings via FoE websites.

In reaction to the alarming data released in the 2009 "State of the World’s Forests" report from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), FoEI and the Global Forest Coalition again called on world governments to stop promoting plantations, and to halt the conversion of forests into biofuel plantations. The FAO report notes that the expansion of large-scale monocultures of oil palm, soy and other crops for agrofuel production has been a key factor in the failure to halt deforestation, and that cellulosic biofuels could have further dramatic impacts. It also says illegal logging could increase due to the global economic crisis, if it leads to a contraction of the formal forestry sector.

The Forests and Biodiversity program, together with other FoEI programs, also collaborated with La Via Campesina to elaborate a declaration on the International Day of Action on Monoculture Tree Plantations on 21 September 2009. Various FoEI groups – including from France, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Colombia, Chile and Argentina – marked the day with a variety of actions.

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. 100 hundred people participated.

The Forest and Biodiversity Program’s working areas are:

• Plantations campaign
• Destructive logging campaign
• Community forest governance
• Biodiversity agenda
• Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD)

The Forest and Biodiversity Program currently works with the following FoEI Programs on cross-cutting themes:

• With the Economic Justice Resisting Neoliberalism Program -  the Plantations campaign
• With the Climate Justice and Energy Program, - the REDD campaign

Coordinators and participants

Coordinator: Isaac Rojas, FoE Costa Rica, isaac@coecoceiba.org
The Forests and Biodiversity Steering group includes:

• For APac: Shamila Arifin, FoE Malaysia
• For Europe: Danielle van Oijen, FoE Netherlands
• For ATALC: Eduardo Sanchez, FoE Argentina
• For Africa: discussion with African region is ongoing

Groups that participated actively in 2009 included Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Finland, France, Honduras, Indonesia, Liberia, Malaysia, Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Switzerland and Uruguay.

In recent years we have explored many legal options for holding corporations accountable for their actions, both in the countries where the actions in question took place and in the countries where the corporations are based. As a result, governments around the world are being required to take action to hold corporations accountable for their practices and their impacts on social welfare and the environment. We have also developed a database of 15 (semi) legal cases that FoE groups have brought against TNCs, to make sure that our collective experience is shared, remembered and built upon.

We have also pursued other strategies, including the use of existing corporate regulations on misleading advertisement; working in the European Parliament to ensure lobbyists are obliged to disclose information about their clients and budgets; filing complaints at the OECD and at the World Bank Inspection Panel; and helping affected communities make best use of legal avenues to challenge harmful projects and policies.

Finally, we continued building relationships with other civil society organizations working on legal strategies (the Climate Justice Program in the UK, for example, and Earth Rights International in the US).

Our results in 2008 showed that these strategies are extremely effective. In Africa, for example, FoEI supported twelve Nigerian communities in filing an official complaint with the World Bank’s Inspection Panel concerning the West African Gas Pipeline project in Benin, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. We also facilitated an exchange visit from Nigeria and Ghana to Togo, allowing campaigners and community leaders to share their experiences and build stronger solidarity. FoE Nigeria held an environmental monitors’ training workshop in Lagos for communities that were impacted by the pipeline project, and organized a strategy session among Nigerian communities to enable them to learn how to organize themselves more effectively and find out how to engage with the Inspection Panel. We also drafted international media advisories, which received worldwide coverage. Following that, FoE Nigeria presented the project and its problems at the Public Hearing on the World Bank in October in Europe. In the end, the Inspection Panel ruled that many of the communities’ complaints were valid. As such, this campaign is a stellar example of just how effective taking local needs and wishes to the national and global levels can be.

Again in West Africa, oil corporations in the Niger Delta refuse to put a stop to gas flaring, even though it has been illegal in Nigeria since 1984. Most people in the region are poor fishermen and women and farmers, unable to stand up to multi-billion dollar corporations. The Nigerian government has also failed to enforce its ban on gas flaring which should have come into force in December 2008. FoE Nigeria is using legal channels and litigation to stop gas flaring and oil spills being pursued through the Nigerian courts, including by providing close collaboration to the lead counsel, organizing field trips in the Niger Delta to identify communities affected by new spills, and recording damages to be presented as further evidence. With the support of FoE Netherlands, in 2008 four fishermen and farmers from the Niger Delta, who had lost their livelihoods due to oil spills from pipelines or installations owned by Shell, filed a lawsuit in the Netherlands against Royal Dutch Shell for oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

In Asia, recourse to legal tools is more established. Because of the different political contexts in which they operate, many of our groups in Asia are lawyers’ organizations and already use legal strategies as their main means of achieving environmental justice in their home countries. For example, the efforts of FoE Bangladesh, through public interest litigation known as PIL, have truly sensitized the concept of ‘environmental justice' in Bangladesh: the country now has special courts to deal with environmental offenses.

FoE Malaysia assists lawyers working on important legal cases involving Indigenous communities defending their land and Native Customary Rights, against logging and plantation encroachments, illegal sand quarrying, aluminum smelting, and wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution. FoE Malaysia gathered and drafted witness statements, and produced maps. These cases will help shape future interpretation of Native Customary Rights law.

FoE Papua New Guinea carried out a number of important patrols and fact-finding missions to protect the rights of people threatened by illegal and unsustainable forest practices and oil palm expansion in Papua New Guinea.

FoE Indonesia continues to empower communities to defend themselves and to stop environmental destruction in West Kalimantan. This includes sharing and spreading information about similar resistance experiences, such as how Indigenous People in the Ketapang District are persuading their local government to resist exploitative development in the region; and how local communities have been criminalized for demonstrating against oil palm plantation company PT Ledo Lestari which is violating Indigenous People’s rights on the Indonesia-Malaysia border.

Another victory was reported by FoEI's EJRN program in a case they have been pursuing together with other NGOs in the Philippines: the Supreme Court in Manila ordered the transfer of an oil depot housing three oil firms, and dismissed an appeal by Chevron, Petron Corp, and Pilipinas Shell.

During the EU-Latin American Summit in Lima in May 2008, we held workshops at the civil society forums on a number of critical issues, arbitration between companies and governments through the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). A new worldwide campaign on ICSID was launched at the summit, involving groups in Europe, Latin America and US, and this was complemented by a resolution in the European Parliament that supports our demands for community rights and liability of companies. We also launched the booklet ‘The Story of IIRSA’; a popular education production that explains what IIRSA is through attractive illustrations and storytelling. We also prepared three cases for the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on European transnational corporations, focusing on the energy sector.

FoEI also continued to host the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ), which includes many FoE groups. The coalition launched two reports (‘Fair Law’, and ‘With power comes responsibility’) containing concrete proposals about changes to EU law intended to prevent human rights abuses and environmental degradation within the sphere of responsibility of European multinational enterprises. The ECCJ proposes to make parent companies liable for their subsidiaries; establish a parental company duty of care for environmental, social and human rights issues; and introduce mandatory environmental reporting. Our efforts have been rewarded with a resolution in the European Parliament supporting our demands for community rights and liability of companies.

The European Commission also responded with interest, setting up an interdepartmental working group to study and discuss the proposals with ECCJ and FoE. The Commission is finally willing to look into what mandatory measures are needed in addition to its policies on voluntary corporate social responsibility, and has announced it will start a study of the legal framework on human rights and environmental issues applicable to European companies operating outside the EU, in order to identify governance gaps.

Around the world, governments are beginning to take action to hold corporations accountable for their practices and their impacts on social welfare and the environment including in other countries. Examples of this trend include the case that FoE Germany won against the German government, in which the court ruled that the German Export Credit Agency must disclose the climate impacts of subsidies it has provided to corporations for projects in developing countries. The Dutch government will also start research into holding Dutch companies liable for problems they have caused outside the EU, and will also look into how victims can get better access to justice. The UK parliament will start to investigate whether or not the existing legal system in the UK provides sufficient protection against human rights violation by companies. A new law in Argentina will force companies registered in Buenos Aires employing more than 300 workers to report on social and environmental impacts. The criteria for reporting have been developed by the ETHOS Institute (Brazil) and also follow UK standard AA 1000 on Accountability.

Through the FoEI Corporates and IFIs campaigns, civil society organizations were able to halt specific harmful projects while employing campaign activities that highlight the systemic tendencies that allow these types of projects to move forward. We provided financial support for local and national activities, and technical assistance on policy research and analysis, as well as bringing international attention to local concerns in order to ensure successful campaigns.

We also accompanied Nigerian communities in their tireless efforts to force Shell and other oil companies to stop gas flaring and other damaging practices connected to oil extraction. FoEI helped twelve Nigerian communities file an official complaint with the World Bank Inspection Panel, for which the Board approved an Inspection, which then took place in July 2007. The final report of the Inspection Panel’s investigation, released in August 2008, outlines serious errors made by the West African Gas Pipeline Company, as it took possession of lands and displaced already-impoverished residents. In its response to the Panel report, the World Bank’s management admits that residents were paid just 10% of the established value of their land. The Panel also validates the complaint that the Bank refused to consider the pipeline’s impact on communities in the Niger Delta, the source of the gas. This is an important recognition of the concerns of FoE groups and communities in the region.

Given the long-term nature of our campaigns to help communities denounce and halt damaging projects in Africa, it is important to maintain momentum and encourage communities. One successful approach has been the sponsoring of community exchanges, where communities that are affected by the same corporation or sector or type of project (gas pipeline or dam, for example) can meet, share experiences, and corroborate that they are not alone. In 2008, we sponsored exchanges among communities from Togo and Mali, Nigeria and Ghana, all of whom are affected by oil companies’ environmental and social crimes.

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.

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.