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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

accomplishments

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

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

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.

The Scottish Government published their Climate Change Bill, which was significantly tougher than first published due to pressure from Friends of the Earth Scotland and other groups. The Bill includes all greenhouse gases, international aviation and shipping and annual targets. This is toughest climate bill yet to be introduced in Europe.

lessons learned

That there is everything to play for in toughening up this legislation. This was shown by the success of the Big Ask campaign which helped to secure world leading climate legislation at Westminster.

what next?

The Bill will become law sometime in the second half of 2009. We have every opportunity to toughen up the Bill further, and ensure that any loopholes are closed. To do this we will mobilize activists to lobby their MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament), committee members and ministers. We also have many events planned.

We aim to ensure that:

1. The Bill includes targets not only on emission cuts, but on total amounts of emissions up until 2050. This will ensure that Scotland only emits a safe and fair amount. This also encourages the steep cuts which are urgently required over the next few years.
2. We need a Climate Fund to ensure that decision makers have genuine incentives and sanctions to reduce emissions, rather than just targets.
3. The vast majority of the cuts need to be made here in Scotland, not offset by buying credits from other countries.

FoE Scotland produced the site to ease the confusion many people have about which micro-renewables would be work for them, and also to dispel some of the myths that have built up in this area. Thousands of people have visited the site since its launch.

The experience showed that it is always worth trying to spot a niche which isn't being well exploited. The site proved highly popular with media and blogs around the world, and Yahoo! placed it at the top of their Green Pages. We also found that, unlike many projects, a site like this can be produced relatively quickly. FoE Scotland will continue to develop interactive web resources, and work out ways to integrate them with recruiting members and campaign aims.

FoE Scotland held two screenings as part of the festival. The first was “Erin Brockovich”, followed by a discussion by local Scottish "Erins" who have all gone out into their communities and created change for the better. This was followed by a sell out performance of the epic “Koyaanisqatsi”, which was accompanied by the soundtrack performed by local Edinburgh band, Urban Farm Hand. Speakers before and after the film linked it to our Big Ask Scotland campaign for a strong Climate Change Bill.

Film festivals are a fantastic way to engage new audiences and link in with campaigns. This one helped us break down some of the barriers around people getting involved with activism. We also learned about the enormous amounts of time and energy required to organize events such as these.

We will be using our experience here to make Take One: Action even bigger and better in 2009, and also use it to maximize the activism potential of new films in the coming year.

climate justice and energy

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

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

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

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

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

food sovereignty

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

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

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

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

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

agrofuels

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

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

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

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

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

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

forests and biodiversity

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

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

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

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

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

economic justice-resisting neoliberalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

resisting mining oil and gas

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

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

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

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

Gender

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

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

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

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