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

accomplishments

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

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

The Forest and Biodiversity Program’s focus on strengthening and promoting sustainable local initiatives means that some of its key activities and successes occur at the national level. 

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

In Malaysia, Friends of the Earth has also filed a lawsuit to save a water-catchment forest on the Jerai mountain in Kedah, from a quarry project that has been illegally approved by the State Government. The communities located in the foothills of the mountain depend on the mountain’s rivers for water supply for domestic use and to irrigate their rice fields.

The Forests and Biodiversity Program is also focused on challenging and changing intergovernmental policies that already or potentially could contribute to the destruction of forests and biodiversity, in forums such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the World Forestry Congress.

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

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

A key element in this effort was a side event on the potential impacts of REDD on Indigenous Peoples’ rights and biodiversity and the risks of genetically engineered (GE) trees, on 3 June, parallel to the meetings of the Subsidiary Bodies to the UNFCCC in Bonn. This was co-organized with the Global Forest Coalition and the International Alliance on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forest. Many FoEI member groups have also been enabled to participate in national REDD policy discussions currently underway.

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

The Plantations Campaign and a delegation of ATALC groups also produced a video about the performance of Finnish pulp and paper company Stora Enso in Uruguay, and presented a photo exhibition on the impacts of cellulose/logging corporations in the Southern Cone of South America, which was exhibited at the World Forestry Congress.

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

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

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

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

The program also participated in the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, co-hosting a workshop on plantations, market mechanisms and false solutions, with the Global Forest Coalition. 100 hundred people participated.

The Forest and Biodiversity Program’s working areas are:

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

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

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

Coordinators and participants

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

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

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

Many companies whose operations have disastrous environmental impacts spend significant sums of money on slick advertising campaigns intended to improve their image: FoEI focuses on exposing and challenging this greenwash. Over the last two years, FoEI has filed successful complaints against multinationals including Shell, ExxonMobil, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, OMV, and Ariva, for their misleading advertisements in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Germany. Our complaints have gained media attention across the world, at both the local and international levels, and arguments and audiovisuals targeting the cases have been reproduced in different mass media, including on popular websites like YouTube.

More than 8,500 people also took part in the online public vote for the Worst EU Lobbying Awards, organized jointly by FoE Europe, Corporate Europe Observatory, Lobby Control and Spinwatch. The Award ceremony, which exposed five controversial corporate lobbying cases, was a major success, with well over 100 guests and extensive media coverage; the 'winners' were a joint nomination for three agrofuel lobbyists - the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, Brazilian sugar barons UNICA, and energy company Abengoa Bioenergy - for their use of misleading information and greenwash. These lobbyists tried to influence crucial debates in the European Parliament and Council by claiming that agrofuels are sustainable.

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

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 cellulose industry is focusing on South America in a bid to significantly expand its export operations. Seven of the world’s ten largest cellulose companies have installed pulp mills and established tree monocultures in South America, including European transnationals such as the Swedish/Finnish paper, packaging and ‘forest products’ company Stora Enso. These companies directly threaten local people’s rights to livelihoods, water, health and democratic influence.

what happened?

Friends of the Earth Sweden and Friends of the Earth Finland are working to highlight the negative impacts of the paper and agrofuel industries. The European Social Forum (ESF), which took place in Malmo, Sweden, in September 2008, provided a focus.

FoE Sweden invited and hosted a number of guests from the Global South to participate in sessions at the ESF. Guests from Brazil, Uruguay and India contributed to seminars and workshops on paper and sugarcane monocultures, on resistance to other unsustainable developments, such as dams and motorways, and on the radical social changes needed to combat climate change.

Both before and after the ESF, the speakers toured Sweden and Finland, giving eight talks in towns and cities in the two countries, and speaking to some 420 people. The Brazilian visitor also held a debate with representatives of Stora Enso, along with Finnish campaigners.

FoE Sweden published a newspaper focusing on the issues of monocultures, climate justice, popular resistance and testimonies of struggle. 8,000 copies were distributed at the ESF and a further 1,500 at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Brazil in January 2009. They also created an exhibition, Paper and Ethanol: Northern Consumption, Southern Destruction, which was made and shown at the ESF.

In June 2008, FoE Sweden and FoE Finland, together with Friends of the Landless  Workers Movement, wrote an open letter to the Finnish parliament, the Finnish government and Stora Enso.

The work has continued into early 2009, with the WSF providing a new focus. Activists toured Brazil, meeting groups campaigning on pulp and paper and ethanol monocultures. At the WSF itself, a seminar was held on paper and ethanol monocultures, and FoE Sweden’s campaigners held meetings and made connections with indigenous organizations, small farmers and rubber tappers. Two blogs were set up to spread information about the WSF, the activists’ tour and the issues raised.

what changed?

The project has resulted in much better contacts between organizations from the Global South and North working on pulp and paper issues, both within and outside the FoE International network.

The events at the ESF and WSF, the speaker tours, and the dissemination of information in print and online succeeded in spreading the message about the campaign far and wide. FoE was very visible at both the ESF and WSF, increasing its profile and reputation.

The project also improved public awareness in the north about the impacts of companies such as Stora Enso.

what next?

Both FoE Sweden and FoE Finland plan to continue campaigning on pulp, paper and plantations, striving for climate justice, economic justice and environmental justice. They plan to build and deepen their cooperation with South American groups. The exhibition remains online and both blogs will continue.

what happened?

Friends of the Earth Finland ran a project to encourage people to reflect on how we could live more sustainably, and to raise awareness of the rights of Indigenous communities.

They produced a 20-page illustrated booklet, and an exhibition comprising 16 posters and a webpage, all using photographs and quotes to showcase Indigenous views of the Earth. These were produced with the help of Indigenous colleagues from India, Guatemala, Kenya and Burundi, as well as Friends of the Earth International groups and others working on Indigenous issues.

The materials were used at seminars, workshops, campaign events and festivals, as well as at the European Social Forum in Sweden. The posters were also exhibited at an Indigenous film festival in Turku and a restaurant in Tampere.

FoE Finland also published a magazine, Wild Forests: Making Sense with People, which contained articles on Indigenous forest communities in India; this was distributed at the World Social Forum in Brazil in January 2009.

what changed?

The materials were very successful in helping to promote discussion on Indigenous ways of life and worldviews.

what next?

Logistical challenges meant that not all the materials were distributed in 2008, so FoE Finland will distribute the remaining copies in 2009.

• view the materials or order copies at: www.maanystavat.fi/indigenous/EarthFriend.html

with thanks to our funders: the isvara foundation

Powerful transnational corporations drive the process, perpetuating the unsustainable transfer of natural resources between the two worlds. International trade can be devastating for people and their environment in exporting countries, and is squeezing the life out of local economies everywhere.

Friends of the Earth groups campaigning for economic justice aim to challenge these corporate giants head-on, and change the dynamics of international trade. To do this they need a thorough understanding of the different economic, political, social and cultural forces driving production, trade and consumption – and thus each other’s campaigns - in different parts of the world.

what happened?

FoE Uruguay / REDES and FoE Paraguay / Sobrevivencia hosted European campaigners in the first step of a staff exchange designed to facilitate a deeper shared understanding of the different contexts within which their Economic Justice campaigns operate.

Anne van Schaik, head of FoE Netherlands’ campaign on globalization and the environment, was welcomed by FoE Uruguay and FoE Paraguay. They compared their approaches to campaigning on corporates and globalization, and deepened their understanding of the different political and economic contexts in Europe and Latin America. Anne also met local communities, gave radio interviews in both Uruguay and Paraguay, and talked to farmers and regional activists in Paraguay during training courses on sustainability. Field trips also gave her an opportunity to see the impacts of the expansion of transgenic soybean cultivation first-hand.

Christine Pohl, FoE Europe’s campaigner on pulp mills and plantations helped to prepare a dossier on the Botnia pulp mill and plantation with FoE Uruguay, working from their office in Montevideo. She traveled to Peru with FoE Uruguay and the Radio Mundo Real team, who submitted the dossier to the people’s tribunal on environmental and human rights violations committed by European companies in Latin America. (This tribunal was held on the 16-17 May 2008, and was part of the Enlazando Alternativas III peoples' summit.) Christine also presented the results of FoE Europe’s research on “European financing of agrofuel production in Latin America” to a workshop at the summit.

Christine said, “I was warmly and kindly welcomed and very well cared for, and when I had to leave again, I was sad to leave these lovely people behind. These friendships I now have with people on the other side of the world are the most motivating and encouraging experience of the exchange for me. I believe that such friendships and personal bonds form a very large and important part of effective international cooperation.”

lessons learned

The exchanges deepened campaigners’ understanding of each other’s work and the various forces shaping their campaigns on globalization, market mechanisms and corporations. Anne and Christine, for example, gained a much deeper insight into the way in which foreign politics impacts peoples’ day-to-day life in Latin America. This means that campaigns challenging neoliberal politics, which are considered radical in Europe, attract strong public support in Latin America. They also met and talked to communities and farmers living with the social and environmental problems created by international trade in commodities like soy.

All the participants benefited from a renewed focus on campaign communications. Together they considered how to strengthen Radio Mundo Real as a tool to communicate the Environmental Justice program’s activities, and planned ways of bringing the voices of affected peoples to a northern public. Christine learned about engaging the media in a Latin American context, from media work around the Botnia dossier.

The experience of working together closely on a day-to-day basis also helped to create friendships and build better working relationships across the federation. Anne, for example, is now working very closely with Sebastian Valdomir from FoE Uruguay as they jointly coordinate FoEI’s Economic Justice program.

It also gave all participants a better understanding of each others’ social and political contexts, which lead to different ways of working with people and the media in different regions.

Anne explained, “It has given me better understanding of why the groups in Uruguay and Paraguay work the way they do. I was very impressed with their local campaigns, like the seed-gathering project to prevent biodiversity being lost, and the organic farm which also acts as a base for national activists in Uruguay and their international visitors. These are new forms of organizing that we don’t have in the Netherlands.”

what next?

Anne has invited groups from the Latin American region to visit the Netherlands, Brussels and the UK in 2009, to participate in a return staff exchange.

The seeds have also been sown for future campaigning, including on deforestation, plantations and the cellulose chain. The first steps of this have happened already, when FoE Uruguay and other FoE groups prepared a photo exhibition on Paper and Ethanol, and met at the 2008 European Social Forum in Malmo, Sweden, to plan future cooperation on the cellulose chain campaign.

see: The picture exhibition at: http://www.foeeurope.org/exhibitions/spip.php?article2

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

In 2008, we conducted many activities to support the development of our member groups, as we understand that the strength of FoEI lies in the strength of our member organizations, their capacity to win victories at the local and national level, relate their struggles in a global context, and act in solidarity with fellow member groups in other countries and across regions.

Our Membership Support Fund seeks to pool resources and share them across FoE member groups for the following objectives: network development, capacity building, strengthening national campaigns, and increasing participation in international campaigns.

In 2008, we distributed 1.22 million Euros to 35 of our members: Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Palestina, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Togo and Uruguay.

In addition to this fund, other membership support activities in 2008 included facilitation and accompaniment of regional development, particularly in Asia Pacific and Africa. FoEI provided strategic support and facilitation assistance during regional meetings and in setting up regional structures, as well as one-on-one support to member groups in those regions to encourage their participation in the international federation. 

Other areas of membership development are the facilitation of relationship building among member groups across regions; helping to overcome language barriers through timely translations; creating spaces for sharing experiences, such as exchanges and gatherings; and ensuring that member groups are present in the federation and don't fall off the map.

12 percent of the funding for Friends of the Earth International comes from the membership dues paid by the member groups, and 0.3 percent comes from sales and donations. Member groups contribute a percentage of their income on the basis of their revenue from two years ago to the international network. This core funding is used to cover the operational costs of the Secretariat.

subsidies

87.5 percent of our income is subsidies received from government agencies and foundations. These funds are granted to us for specific projects and campaigns and for our Membership Support Fund.

membership support fund

Our Membership Support Fund seeks to pool resources and share them across FoE member groups for the following objectives: network development, capacity building, strengthening national campaigns, and increasing participation in international campaigns.

In 2008, we distributed 1.22 million Euros to 35 of our members: Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Palestina, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Togo and Uruguay.

our funders

Friends of the Earth International gratefully acknowledges financial support from:

• HIVOS
• Oxfam Novib
• The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS)
• The Sigrid Rausing Trust
• The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation
• The Netherlands Committee for Sustainable Development (NCDO)
• The Isvara Foundation
• The C.S. Mott Foundation
• The Wallace Global Fund
• EuropeAid
  
• The Oak Foundation

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