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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the events in 2008 included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Food Sovereignty Program’s main working areas are:

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

Internal cross-cutting themes include:

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

Collaboration with other programs and campaigns:

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

International Co-coordinators

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

Regional Coordinators:

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

Groups that participated actively in 2009:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Climate Justice & Energy Program working areas are:

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

Cross campaign areas include:

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

Coordinators and participants

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

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

 The CJE Steering Group included:

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

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

Friends of the Earth Poland / Polish Ecological Club managed to arrange the rental of bicycles so that guests from international organizations could also participate in the tour, side by side with cyclists from Poznan and other Polish cities. Over 350 cyclists participated, with Santa Claus heading the group and attracting a lot of interest. Afterwards, cyclists joined the "Climate Now" march.

Read more: Climate Summit in Poznan.

FoEI campaigners initiated the publication based on feedback from many national and grassroots people in the federation that they did not understand the range of REDD proposals, and how they would affect efforts to protect land rights and forests on the ground in southern countries.

The reports were distributed widely at the UN climate talks in Poland at the end of 2008. Friends of the Earth International campaigners from the US and Cameroon, as well as allies from the Global Forest Coalition and the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, spoke during a side event about the threats of REDD.

what changed?

The report had a significant impact in the media. Several media reported that the World Bank climate funds were 'under fire' and that more than 142 organizations, led by FoEI, rejected any role for the World Bank in controlling climate change finance.

The publication has been very useful for lobbying progressive southern governments to take a firmer stance against carbon trading based proposals. Our target governments have included Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Cameroon, UK, Malaysia, and Chile. Recently, the Bolivian government tabled a proposals against carbon trading for forests on behalf of the G77 and China, a significant outcome. Also lobbying of northern governments has resulted in some European countries publicly stating their support for including Indigenous Peoples rights to free prior informed consent in REDD methodology and mechanism.

The publication was also edited to a 6-page flyer which has been extensive distributed to grassroots communities during training and outreach activities, other grassroots NGOs and civil society, journalists and policy makers. This has served as a very useful means of informing grassroots forest campaigners in particular about the risks of REDD mechanisms as they are currently being proposed.

what next?

The REDD report has enabled us to build very strong links particularly with International Indigenous People's Organizations and alliances. We have worked collaboratively, particularly with Global Forest Coalition and International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples from the Tropical Forests to ensure that our work on REDD is complementary, and shared research and aligned our positions to run shared events at international climate negotiations. This has greatly strengthened all of our work and enabled us to collaborate together to lobby, do actions and media in international fora.

with thanks to our funders: the c.s. mott foundation

Photo credits: Simon Rawles

news: what did friends of the earth say

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

The Climate negotiations in brief

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

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

These talks are scheduled to be completed in December 2009.

Kyoto comes into force

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

Climate negotiations continue in Poznań

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

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

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

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

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

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

reports

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

Read the press release
Download the executive summary [PDF]

Download the full report  [PDF]

blog

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

audio

Listen to Interviews and news from Real World Radio

news

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

further reading

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

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

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