The health impacts of gas flaring are already well documented. They emit a range of toxins, including mercury, benzene, lead, nitrogen oxide, sulphur dioxide and particulates. These lead to increased incidences of asthma, cancers and respiratory illnesses in children. The chemical benzene is especially hazardous, causing leukaemia and other blood-related diseases. Women approaching the flares and people eating the processed foods are especially at risk. In spite of these dangers, however, the Iwherekan community still has no pharmacy, no health care center and no hospital. 

The toxins have also killed most of the fish that local communities used to rely on for sustenance, as well as defoliating vegetation and corroding infrastructure.

what happened

As part of its ongoing opposition to oil and gas extraction in Nigeria, Friends of the Earth Nigeria / ERA, visited the Iwherekan, Uzere and Ozoro communities, all in Delta State. Campaigners spoke with women food processors, and held town hall meetings and consultations with community women, farmers, fisher folk and traders. 

Together they shared information about the health impacts of using gas flares to dry food, and discussed traditional alternatives, such as drying kpokpo garri in the sun or in ovens. Friends of the Earth Nigeria also exposed the claims of World Bank and its consortium that the WAGP project would provide cheap energy, improve the environment, better the lot of the communities and promote regional development. 

From Friends of the Earth Nigera’s visits, consultations, and analysis, it was clear that only women are involved in the production of kpokpo garri. 97% of the women from Iwherekan Community and Uzere Community use the flare sites for drying kpokpo garri, which they consume or sell to neighbouring communities. Only 3% use sunlight. Some of the younger women could not remember any technique other than flare drying being used: the flares mean that the food can be dried more quickly and in larger quantities. 

In the Ozoro community however, which also hosts a Shell flow station, the women still dry their kpokpo in the sun, and were able to talk to the other women about their traditional methods. 

It was clear that the women using the gas flares were very aware that their health was at risk. They complained of rashes and itching, miscarriages, burns, and cases of continuous internal ‘heat’. They also confirmed that those who eat the kpokpo suffer discomfort and stomach aches. According to the women, some of their customers complain of discoloration and a strong smell of chemicals.

what changed

A detailed analysis of the data collected showed that the use of gas flares for food processing resulted in health problems including coughs, headaches, miscarriages, irregular menstrual cycles, skin diseases, fever, asthma, difficulty in breathing, rheumatism, arthritis and eye problems. 

The project succeeded in popularizing locally proven and traditional methods of food processing. It raised local communities’ awareness of the environmental and social impacts of gas flaring, and the need for facilities for processing agricultural products. It heightened the struggle against gas flaring. 

The project also helped strengthen people’s willingness to speak out. Shortly after the consultation the Iwherekan community sent a delegation to their State government to draw their attention to the fact that, though they are the co-host of Utorogu gas plants that feeds the nation and the WAGP, the community people still live in squalid conditions lacking even the most basic amenities.

what was learned

The project was not without its difficulties. In the Iwherekan community the men kept trying to intervene in a (very well attended) women-only meeting. The presence of military personnel hovering around the consultation hall also created an atmosphere of insecurity. 

Ultimately though, the project was successful because of the goodwill of the communities visited. Without their support the project would have been very difficult to implement. It was also supported by the Host Communities Network of Nigeria.

what next?

There is an urgent need for further awareness-raising activities and meetings with local women, who are usually the ones involved in the production and processing of food.  

It will also be important to heighten and further popularize the struggle against gas flaring. Oil companies must be held accountable for knowingly exposing local communities to toxins.

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

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

operational costs of the Secretariat.

subsidies

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

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

membership support fund

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

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

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

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

our funders

Friends of the Earth International gratefully acknowledges financial support from:

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

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

• In January 2009, FoE Indonesia sent a complaint to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, following the Australian government’s failure to fulfil a promise to respond directly to Indonesian organizations challenging the activities of Australian mining companies. FoE Indonesia has compiled a dossier detailing the involvement of numerous Australian mining companies in environmental destruction and human rights violations.

• In February 2009, communities in Guatemala asked the legislature and the Ministry of Energy and Mines to issue a moratorium on mining licenses of all types, until reforms to the Mining Act are agreed with them. Social organizations in the affected municipalities claim that current amendments to the document do not provide for community interests. 

• Also in February, and after years of being marginalized in relation to decisions about their ancestral lands, the Subanon people on Mindanao island came another step closer to asserting control over their territory. Their lands are currently being exploited by TVI Resource Development Phils (TVIRDI), a subsidiary of Canadian mining company TVI Pacific. Around 20 Subanon Indigenous People and farmers living within the TVIRDI mining area in Mount Canatuan, the Subanon tribe’s sacred site, halted blasting and drilling activities at the Canadian company’s open-pit mining operation, after a successful occupation of the site. 

• In March 2009, the Ghana National Coalition on Mining, a group of communities affected by mining in Ghana and civil society organizations including FoE Ghana, opposed the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency, which had granted environmental permits to Newmont Ghana Gold Limited and Adamus Resources to conduct surface gold mining activities. 

• In September 2009, FoE Hungary published their first annual alternative report on the Hungarian Oil Company (MOL). The report held a mirror up to the company’s annual report and assessed the company’s activities in 2008. After examining company data, the authors gave examples showing that the company’s practices do not actually match up to its rhetoric. 

• Also in September, FoE Costa Rica, together with and as part of Costa Rica’s popular movement, participated in a visit to mining company Crucitas, organized by the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, which had suspended Crucitas’s mining permit. There is a risk that the Supreme Court will favor the mining company, in which case FoE Costa Rica plans more mobilizations across the country, to stop this mining company restarting its activities.

• Again in September, FoE Guatemala organized an international mission to verify violations of human, environmental and economic rights by mining transnational corporations operating in Guatemala, such as GoldCorp. The aim of the mission was to ensure that the voices of victims, who are criminalized in Guatemala, can be heard at the international level. Participants included FoE Uruguay, FoE El Salvador, and FoE Costa Rica, together with people from Amnesty International and others. 

Building strong networks and alliances against the mining and extractive industries is also a priority for the RMOG Program. For example, a new network in Colombia, the Colombian Network Against Mining, has been established to challenge transnational corporations operating in Colombia with the support of the Colombian government. One of the first acts of this network was to support the demands of workers and the population struggling against British Petroleum in Tauramena, Colombia.

Many other critical activities were also undertaken by the Federation in 2009. For example:

• In Nigeria, the Second National Consultation on the Environment, 25 - 26 November 2009, saw civil society leaders, community-based organizations, civil society organizations, development experts, academia, legal practitioners, the media and representatives of government agencies come together to consider a post-petroleum Nigeria. The event was organized by FoE Nigeria in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Environment.

• FoE Philippines and Alyansa Tigil Mina co-hosted a discussion on "Tracing the Gold, Tracing the Money," in Cagayan de Oro City on 29 June. The event was designed to give participants the knowledge and skills they need to find out how mining companies finance their activities and where they sell their products. This kind of research often reveals excellent intervention points for advocates wanting to stop mining operations in their localities.

• A new report from FoE Netherlands, "Mining Matters," which was published in June 2009, reviewed practices used in mining tin (in Indonesia, Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burma), bauxite (Guinea and Jamaica), and copper (Chile, Peru, Zambia and Indonesia (Grasberg)). It also examined the policies of seven companies using imported metals in the Netherlands.

• Security forces arrested the director of FoE Indonesia and the Head of FoE Indonesia's Regional Department during a peaceful protest organized by FoE Indonesia and other NGOs together with fisherfolk organizations. The groups organized an event parallel to the World Ocean Conference (WOC) and Coal Triangle Summit 2009 which was held in Manado, Indonesia, 11-14 May. The peoples’ gathering was to draw the attention of WOC to small fisherfolks’ concerns – especially their call to ban the dumping of tailing minings into the sea - and to demand that these concerns be put on the WOC’s agenda.

• In 2009 Young FoE Norway’s priority campaign was against oil drilling off the beautiful Lofoten Islands, home to the world’s largest stock of cod and biggest cold water coral reef. They started several local groups in a network called "O`olkaction against oil drilling outside the Lofoten Islands." They also took a group of representatives from political youth parties out to the Lofoten Islands for one week, to highlight the fact that there are other possibilities besides drilling for oil in Northern Norway. 

• FoE France has published a synthesis report "Public subsidies to fossil fuels in France and the European Union," which reveals that the wealthy oil industry benefited from French subsidies of over €400 million between 2004 and 2008, mainly in the form of export guarantees. FoE’s research also shows that €6 billion of European money has been given to the fossil fuel industry over the past five years. 

The main areas of work of the program are:

• Community Resistance
• Campaign Against Corporations
• Policies and Mechanisms that Promote Mining, Oil and Gas
• Decreasing Consumption to Stop Demand for Mining, Oil and Gas

coordinators and participants

Co-coordinator: Natalia Atz Sunuc, FoE Guatemala
Co-coordinator: Romel Cardenas de Vera, FoE Philippines

The RMOG steering group includes:

• For Africa, Chima Williams, FoE Nigeria
• For APac, Natalie Lowrey, Australia
• For ATALC, Andres Idarraga, Colombia
• For Europe, Geert Ritsema, Netherlands
• For North America, Adina Matisoff, FoE USA

This is a new FoEI program and the co-coordinators and steering group are still in the processing of developing and implementing a fully-fledged strategy and workplan. Groups that have expressed an interest in participating include: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Curacao, El Salvador, FoE Europe, EWNI, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Togo and the US.

More than 1,200 photos were received from 79 countries around the world, from amateur and professional photographers ranging in age from 11 to 73 years old.

The judges for the competition were:

• Bangladeshi photographer G.M.B. Akash, first-place winner of last year's photo competition and cover photographer of the 2007 calendar (www.gmb-akash.com).
• Peter Menzel, US photo journalist and author of "Hungry Planet: What The World Eats" (www.menzelphoto.com).
• Akintunde Akinleye, first-place winner World Press Photo 2007 in "Spot News" category, from Nigeria (www.akintunde1.com).
• Daniel Beltrá, Seattle-based Spanish environmental and nature photography specialist and winner of the 2007 World Press Photo prize for his work on soy plantations and Amazon deforestation (www.danielbeltra.com).
• Indian photographer Shantanu Das, first-place winner of the 2008 Friends of the Earth International photo competition.
• Isaac Rojas, Friends of the Earth Costa Rica/COECOCeiba
• Kokou Elorm Amegadzé and Ekue Assem, Friends of the Earth Togo
• Shamila Ariffin, Friends of the Earth Malaysia/Sahabat Alam Malaysia
• Danielle van Oijen, Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Milieudefensie

Our calendar for 2010, entitled 'Our Biodiversity, Our Lives', features 12 stunning photographs celebrating the planet's biodiversity and the people who are working to sustain it. The photographs cover a diverse range of subjects, from deforestation in Indonesia to tree planting in Guatemala, polluted waters in north India to marine conservation in the South. The calendar documents the problems but also highlights how communities are working together to find solutions.

The calendar is A4 in size (210 × 297 mm), is trilingual (English, French and Spanish) and is one of very few printed on 100% recycled post consumer paper.

The majority of the photographs for the calendar were taken by the winners of our 2009 photography competition.

View all the winning images and find out how you can take part in next year's competition.

in which people on the ground tell about their struggles and successes in their own words.

Throughout 2009 we continued to build our online library of testimonies from community residents fighting for sustainable livelihoods and environmental protection, with original productions and by editing existing footage.

We also continued to support our 'community testimony' interns from Togo, Honduras, and Indonesia by providing training and finance to facilitate follow-up activities in their home countries after their 2008 internships in Amsterdam. These activities included the production of testimonies about climate-affected fisherpeople on the coasts of Togo and Ghana; a youth video training in Indonesia; and shooting footage of the Garifuna in Honduras, another climate-affected people.

During 2009, 140 new testimonies were uploaded to our website and to Youtube in our three languages (English, French and Spanish). Our radio team at Real World Radio also produced a series of testimonies in Spanish.

membership support

what happened?

Real World Radio (RWR) produces a daily news report, which is syndicated to community radio stations around the world. The report is offered in a variety of formats, both audio and written, and CDs are distributed to radio stations in regions without good internet access. A newsletter with the most relevant news stories and features on specific themes is distributed to a list of subscribers - mostly organizations - and to several electronic lists.

The different themes it covers have been organized to foster and facilitate interaction with FoEI programs. New sections have also been created, such as the one for Peoples Affected by Climate Change.

In 2009, Real World Radio launched its new website, with a range of new features, including video transmission. It started a live show in English with correspondents from Asia and Africa. It also launched the site in French, in partnership with colleagues from Friends of the Earth Togo, and with the help of a volunteer who reads the stories in French from its studio in Uruguay.

RWR also updated its Italian site, and broadcast a special live show in Italian during the 'Peoples Forum for Food Sovereignty 2009' held in November in Rome, in parallel to the FAO World Summit on Food Security. The radio collected community testimonies on the people's struggles and resistance to mining, agrofuels and transnational corporations engaged in genetic modification.

During 2009, the radio also covered several events organized by La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International and other organizations, at which it was able to interview activists, peasants and native peoples from around the world. An example of this was Real World Radio's coverage of the Peoples' Summit and the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal against Transnational Corporations, held in May in Madrid, in parallel to the Summit of Heads of State and Government of Latin America and the EU. 

The radio also began coverage of the activities held parallel to the FAO's consultations on land grabbing, which began in Brasilia, and will continue in Burkina Faso and Rome.

RWR decentralized its production. It was able to include many more voices from different countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa (specifically in Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Palestine and Togo) by creating a network of correspondents both from Friends of the Earth groups and from other organizations, all of whom are dedicated to community communications.

what next?

In 2010 Real World Radio aims to strengthen its work with correspondents by including people from Europe and Asia. RWR will also host training sessions to build communicators’ understanding of the independent radio perspective – which implies giving voice to those silenced by the mass media.

RWR will continue its live shows in English and Spanish. It also aims to do special shows in Portuguese about socio-environmental conflicts in Latin America and Africa. RWR aims to expand its links with community radio stations, and to outreach more extensively both inside and outside Latin America.

RWR will continue to collect community testimonies, as well as covering events and following the agenda of the social movements, and exposing the injustices brought about by the current neoliberal system. It will, for example, cover the Forum Against Agribusiness to be held in El Salvador, the Americas Social Forum, the European Social Forum and other key events.

Photo credit: Pablo Cardozo

Additionally, we challenged false publicity about the potential of jatropha, and other plants that might be used for agrofuel production. In particular, FoE Africa groups and others set out to research the extent to which agrofuels are expanding across Africa, through a literature review, on-the-ground observation, and interviews with government officials, community leaders, local authorities, farmers and farmers’ organizations, civil society groups and academics. The resulting report considers the state of agrofuels production in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It records details, where available, on incoming investment, key companies, case studies, issues relating to land and legal rights, and environmental impact assessments. It also delves into government and state policies on agrofuels promotion and energy self-sufficiency.

The FoE Europe campaign on agrofuels was selected by the European Parliament Magazine as the most effective NGO campaign, specifically because of our high-visibility creative actions organized in collaboration with groups from all our regions. Improvements to our web site, and investments in communications in FoE Europe, allowed us to mobilize 47,000 people in May to participate in a poll by EC President Barroso, which changed the poll from 95% in favor of the EU's biofuels target to 89% against, in just three days.

FoEI also organized two speakers’ tours (in May and December 2008) for leaders from the South, in order to raise awareness in Europe about the devastating impacts of growing crops to produce agrofuels. We also organized an action in front of the Brazilian embassy in Brussels to protest against their agrofuels policies, in collaboration with La Via Campesina and FIAN (Face It Act Now – for the right to food). The speakers took part in lobby meetings to demand an end to the EU 10% biofuels target, with Members of the European Parliament and representatives of the European Commission. Similar meetings were organized with national parliaments in France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The visiting speakers also lectured at universities in Brussels, Grenoble, Leuven, Montpellier, and the UNDP University in Namur. They received good media coverage, including through outlets such as Télé Grenoble, Midi Libre, France 3 TV, Planète Libre Magazine, national TV RFO, Radio Campus in Belgium, Panoramica magazine, ANP Netherlands, Agrarisch Dagblad, and Agripress Belgium.

When the Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS) met in Buenos Aires, FoEI helped  gathering civil society from producer countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) as well as importing countries in the EU, to protest against the use of ‘sustainable soy’ certification schemes, which are bound to fail because they do not address the overall expansion of monoculture plantations to produce increasing quantities of agrofuels. Similar round-table approaches around the world have completely failed to address the major social and environmental impacts of industrial-scale soy cultivation and actually serve to frustrate real solutions.

Photo credits: FoE Brazil

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

global europe

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

corporate power

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

plantations

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

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

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

accomplishments

In 2008, FoEI's EJRN Program successfully:

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

These reports were very controversial as far as industry participants were concerned, and Syngenta and others walked out of the process in December. The final report was remarkably strong about the need for a radical change in agriculture, and did not promote genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It addressed the need to strengthen regional markets and protecting natural resources; the importance of traditional knowledge; diversity; agro-ecology; and the role of women in agriculture. It recognized the threats from agrofuels; GMOs; intellectual property rights rules; and the model of industrial agriculture. In short it called for more Food Sovereignty! The report was supported by 58 governments.

Europe continued to be an essentially GMO-free zone, which is a very important achievement for the European people, but also for other regions in the world. The food price crisis was cleverly used to try and persuade the EU to weaken its GMO laws and therefore get other regions of the world to grow more kinds of GMOs. FoE groups in Europe researched the issue and were able to prove that lobby groups had manipulated the facts. While this is an important success, however, we need to continue to monitor the process and ensure that laws aren’t weakened behind closed doors.

This rich natural diversity has always provided local populations with food, fuel, building materials and medicinal plants (often the only form of medicine available to them). In times when farm yields are low, meat and plants gathered from the wild are absolutely vital forms of food. Yet poverty has obliged the population to over-exploit local resources, which is contributing to accelerating biodiversity loss. The erosion of their natural resource base reinforces people’s poverty, and a vicious circle of poverty and loss of biodiversity is in place.

what happened?

Friends of the Earth Togo / Les Amis de la Terre Togo ran a programme to raise awareness of the interconnectedness of biodiversity and poverty reduction.

They organized two workshops, one on traditional conservation practices and one to identify the needs of communities living around Togo’s protected areas.

The workshop on traditional conservation practices took place in June. 29 participants, representatives of government, civil society, local communities and the media heard presentations on traditional trapping, hunting, fishing and plant-gathering and farming practices, and sacred sites and animals, and learned how these methods maintain biodiversity.

The second workshop took place in December. 33 participants discussed the issue of protected areas, and the needs of communities living around them. The meeting came up with a list of projects and priority actions to assist these communities, in order to alleviate pressure on the environment.

FoE Togo also took part in seven workshops hosted by the National Assembly to help draft legislation on the environment and biosecurity. They lobbied the Environment Minister on the creation of National Commission on Sustainable Development and the Environment

FoE Togo continued to play an active role in COPAGEN (Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage), a network of activists and farmers across Africa. This coalition is helping West African countries to resist the pressure to accept GM crops, through the production and distribution of educational materials and information on the rights of local communities and farmers, and on laws which govern access to biological resources. In June, FoE Togo hosted the annual meeting of COPAGEN Togo, at which members agreed activities for 2008-09.

FoE Togo developed and published a bulletin on biodiversity, called NONUDZO (‘Stay awake’).

They also produced a report on the impact of extractive and industrial activities and chemical products on Togo’s biodiversity.

what changed?

The project has raised awareness of the importance of conserving biodiversity and the serious implications of over-exploiting natural resources, among policy makers, civil society and the general public, particularly women, who play a key role in managing natural resources. Both women and men have adopted better practices.

FoE Togo has identified priority actions for defending and conserving protected areas, which take account of the different perspectives of civil society and the local communities.

lessons learned

The perspective and concerns of local communities are often poorly understood by official development actors, which means that local people often do not cooperate fully in official conservation schemes. FoE Togo is clear that efforts to conserve biodiversity must be linked to those designed to reduce poverty, or neither will be successful.

Some traditional practices maintain biodiversity. These are mostly little known, and it is essential to encourage and popularize them.

The bulletin proved a good way to take relevant information and messages out to the general public.

what next?

FoE Togo will carry out capacity building among community leaders on legal matters, so that communities are aware of laws and regulations governing the management of natural resources.

FoE staff will make regular visits to the countryside, and will research the impacts of extractive industries and use of chemicals, to inform the development of recommendations.

• Watch a video of the workshop on protected areas.