what happened

The first stage of the project involved an intensive discussion and learning period within Friends of the Earth Philippines, as staff considered the concept of food sovereignty and its relationship with the struggles of indigenous peoples and other rural communities against resource extractive and energy projects. A food sovereignty campaign plan and linked community campaign work plans were then drawn up. 

In addition, a food sovereignty profiling tool has been developed for participatory community research on communities’ capacity to produce food and control their food production systems, as well as the threats posed by resource extractive and energy projects.

Discussions with communities also highlighted the connection between resource extractive and energy projects and threats to croplands, forests and water systems, agricultural biodiversity, indigenous food production systems and culture, and livelihoods. In Anislagan, for example, the community is defending its watershed, irrigated agricultural land and community livelihoods from a mining project which is in an exploratory phase. The women of Anislagan have been at the forefront of barricades keeping the mining company at bay, under the banner “Food Sovereignty First” and “Save Anislagan watershed.” 

Friends of the Earth Philippines also facilitated the participation of communities, including from Anislagan, and support groups to the Biodiversity Summit in the Caraga region, which has the most mining applications in the country.

what changed

Communities are becoming more familiar with the concept of food sovereignty, and how it links to their existing struggles. Friends of the Earth Philippines also enhanced its staff’s capacity to understand and integrate food sovereignty into its work with communities and its campaign advocacy activities. 

The research undertaken so far also led to links being made with other NGOs’ related campaigns, such as the work of the EED Philippines Task Force for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (EED-TFIP) on Indigenous Knowledge for Food Security and their “Indigenous Peoples’ Food Security Agenda.” 

what next

As exemplified during the Caraga Biodiversity Summit, tackling resource extractives from a biodiversity perspective could bring diverse groups working on human rights, development, alternative law groups, people’s organizations, church groups and community representatives together to underscore the food sovereignty of communities and the region in contrast to corporate-led development projects.

Follow up plans will include completing the food profiling research, raising the understanding and skills of communities in advocating for food sovereignty, facilitating community food sovereignty agenda setting, holding a national food sovereignty conference, and lobbying national and local governments. 

The information to be gathered in the food profiling research will be used as a basis for resource valuation, socio-economic profiling, and community development planning.

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

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.

global europe

The Global Europe campaign aims to expose the negative impacts and the corporate bias of the Global Europe  strategy; and to counter trade and investment agreements that harm men, women and the environment in the Global South, but also harm Europe's peoples as well.

corporate power

The Corporate Power campaign campaign focuses on dismantling corporate power by exposing and countering corporate crimes and their social, environmental and human rights impacts, specifically on women’s and men’s productive and reproductive activities. It also counters corporate influence over governments and institutions, including international financial institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO); and building peoples' power by developing and advocating for legal measures to give rights to women, men and communities and to protect them against corporate power.

plantations

EJRN is also engaged in the Plantations campaign (led by the Forests and Biodiversity program) through exposing and countering the role of relevant corporations, and trade and investment flows, and by promoting resistance activities.

Further, the EJRN program also contributed to the Agrofuels campaign by exposing and countering the role of corporations, trade and investments in that sector. 

Finally, the EJRN program contributed to the Climate and Finance campaign (which is led by the Climate Justice and Energy program) by exposing and rejecting the World Bank’s involvement in controversial projects on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD); stopping the World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) and other World Bank involvement in fighting climate change; and proposing and promoting an alternative climate financing mechanism

accomplishments

In 2008, FoEI's EJRN Program successfully:

• Strengthened the fight against the EU’s Global Europe policy
• Continued the fight against free trade agreements
• Disclosed the truth, built awareness about and mobilized against specific corporate abuses
• Tackled corporate lobby and greenwash
  
• Halted destructive projects
  
• Denounced corporate-driven policies
  
• Used legal strategies to defend people from corporate abuses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

accomplishments

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

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

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.

what happened?

FoE Philippines trained finance staff at Friends of the Earth Papua New Guinea / CELCOR in financial management systems appropriate to an NGO.

They helped FoE Papua New Guinea staff to understand the importance of financial management, assisted them in identifying the organization’s needs in terms of policies and procedures, and worked with them to draft a Finance Manual.

what changed?

The staff who received training have a clearer understanding of the importance of robust financial management systems, and a much better and more detailed knowledge of appropriate financial policies and procedures. They are committed to finalizing the Finance Manual.

This will all result in better financial management and reporting, which will contribute to the sustainability of the organization, as well as enabling FoE Papua New Guinea to build and maintain better relations with donors.

lessons learned

The timeframe of the project presented a challenge for both organizations. The training coincided with the period when FoE Philippines was conducting its own financial audit, which significantly increased pressure on finance staff.

what next?

FOE Philippines will continue to monitor FoE Papua New Guinea’s progress in achieving their targets and to ensure continuous improvements in their operations.

The project fostered stronger relations between the two organizations, which they hope will lead to further collaboration in future. FoE Philippines is also interested in sharing their experience and expertise with other FoEI groups and networks.

Millions of hectares of indigenous lands are being destroyed by mining and plantations for agrofuels and timber. Only 1% of the entire indigenous territory of the Philippines is covered by Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles, and even these have proven ineffective in preventing foreign corporations from exploiting the land in question.

There is massive militarization in the indigenous territories, and the government’s counter-insurgency programme is targeting community resistance against development. People have been summarily executed and forcibly evacuated from their homes.

33.7% of the population of Mindanao (the second largest island and one of the three island groups in the country) now lives in poverty, with Indigenous People most affected by the economic crisis.

what happened?

In July 2008, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo delivered her 8th State of the Nation Address, presenting her government’s extractive, corporate-led, import-dependent and export-oriented development agenda. Friends of the Earth Philippines / Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center took this opportunity to present a State of the Indigenous Peoples Address (SIPA), setting out the true state of affairs and demanding that the government fulfill its human development goals.

The Legal Rights & Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan/FoE Philippines (LRC-KSK/FoE Philippines) organized a three-day conference in Davao City, the largest city in Mindanao, in July 2008. 130 participants attended, including 80 people from 12 tribes in Mindanao, local support groups and local officials from Davao City.

The conference had three main parts:

• First, the participants watched the President’s State of the Nation Address on television. Many were aghast at the lies told and felt insulted by the promise of a food subsidy, which did not compensate for the massive conversion of their lands for agrofuel crops and other uses. They were outraged by the lack of reference to Indigenous Peoples’ rights or sustainable agriculture.
• Next, there were workshops on key thematic issues, including mining, plantations, womens’ issues, Free Prior and Informed Consent, and international legal instruments.
• Finally, conference participants wrote the SIPA statement, and sent it to the media and local, national and international networks. On 31 July, they marched through Davao City to a rally in Freedom Park, where they read the SIPA statement and presented it to a representative of the Davao local authority.
  

what changed?

The conference and statement showed the collective strength and political determination of Indigenous People, and gave fresh impetus to their struggle for rights over their ancestral territories.

“This project was a clear demonstration of the Indigenous Peoples’ collective strength as it directly challenged the government’s so-called pro-poor and pro-IP programs and policies…the conference participants were able to outline clear demands and recommendations to the government and reiterated their call for the full and genuine recognition of their existence and their rights over their ancestral territories.” said Judy Pasimio, executive director of FoE Philippines  The event brought the Indigenous communities of the Mindanao region together, giving them an opportunity to learn from and be inspired by each other. The workshops provided a space for people to share ideas about key issues and to outline clear demands. The workshop on women’s issues enabled men and women to discuss gender realities.

Invited advocates and allies from academia and religious groups gained a deeper understanding of Indigenous Peoples’ situation in Mindanao, and good media coverage of the event and the statement raised public awareness of the indigenous perspective.

There was a clear wish for FoE Philippines to be a key partner to indigenous communities. A number of participants affirmed FoE Philippines’ crucial role in supporting indigenous groups and helping them to develop a unified political, economic and socio-cultural agenda. FoE Philippines’ regional offices were also able to initiate discussions with local officials.

what next?

Participants called for another SIPA to be agreed and published in 2009, and for this process to be regularized as an alternative to the President’s State of the Nation Address.

FoE Philippines now plans to hold another SIPA in the Luzon region, to expand from Mindanao.