climate

Campaigners singled out prominent EU lobby group and summit organiser, BusinessEurope, for blocking ambitious climate action. BusinessEurope presents itself as the voice of the business  community when in fact it favours the most polluting industries and  denies there are economic benefits for Europe of early action against climate change.

Friends of the Earth is calling on European policy-makers to reject the skewed arguments of BusinessEurope.

Sonja Meister, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, said:

“BusinessEurope has been resisting tougher emission reduction targets and obstructing the climate action we desperately need. BusinessEurope speaks on behalf of the most polluting sectors of industry and ignores its members which have realised ambitious climate policies can be good  for our economy and create millions of jobs. BusinessEurope is pushing  Europe into the role of laggard in the fight against climate change and  decision-makers should stop accepting their arguments.”

The European Business Summit is Brussels' biggest lobby forum and is attended by business leaders and prominent EU decision-makers. This year ten European Commissioners, including Commission President Barroso, will participate. The theme of the event is ‘Europe in the world: leading or lagging?’.

Summit organisers claim, ‘EU decision-makers should put companies first for Europe to maintain a leading position in the world’. Friends of the  Earth Europe believes that it is exactly this approach that is fuelling the climate crisis, and has led to Europe’s most severe financial crisis in the last 80 years.

Read European Noise here

Activists gathered outside the meeting at which bankers, EU officials, industry representatives and other stakeholders were discussing the future of the bank’s energy lending. They staged a peaceful 'black comedy' and handed out dirty contracts for so-called 'clean coal' to expose the disastrous impacts of the bank’s financing on climate change and the world’s poorest people. Civil society representatives later went inside to participate in the consultation.

The World Bank has ear-marked massive funds for investment in fossil fuels, especially large coal projects. Between 2007 and 2009, the World Bank increased funding for fossil fuels by 22%. Since 2007 the World Bank Group has provided $6.6 billion for coal-based energy development. This strategy locks developing countries into carbon intensive energy models for decades instead of helping developing countries to make the transition to sustainable energy production.

The latest illustration of the bank's climate-damaging lending is the Eskom project in South Africa, to which the World Bank approved a $3.75 billion loan in April. Most of the money will be used for the building of the Medupi power plant, one of the largest and dirtiest coal fired plants in the world. Over 165 civil society groups and some governments were opposed to the World Bank loan to Eskom, because of its disastrous environmental and climate impacts, and as it will mainly benefit large foreign multinational corporations to the detriment of South Africans, perpetuating a serious energy apartheid in the country.

Anne-Sophie Simpère of Friends of the Earth France said:

"The World Bank should use its energy strategy review to stop financing fossil fuels and to redirect its investments to renewable energies and energy efficiency. The World Bank must make the needs of local communities and the global need to fight climate change paramount in its lending policy."

Similar demonstrations have taken place in South Africa and the United States.

further information

Read a full press release from Friends of the Earth Europe here
Read a report on the World Bank involvement with the South African energy company Eskom

Pressure is on high-level representatives from the EU and Canada to discuss the issue of tar sands and Europe’s aim to limit greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels through its Fuel Quality Directive. Political attention currently focuses on Canada as the major producer of oil from tar sands, but the new report reveals that investment by European oil companies – such as BP, Shell, Total and ENI – is expanding with developments around the world including in the Republic of Congo, Venezuela, Madagascar, Russia, Jordan and Egypt, with potentially disastrous consequences for the climate and local communities.

Darek Urbaniak, extractives campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: 

“Europe risks becoming a climate villain if it does not take effective action to prevent the entry of oil from tar sands into European markets. The environmental damage caused by tar sands may be outside the EU, but the trail of destruction leads to its door.”

The report reveals that the current EU proposal for the implementation of the Fuel Quality Directive does not penalise oil products from high-carbon sources, treating oil produced from tar sands as conventional oil. This could allow an influx of oil from tar sands – heavily criticised for its poor environmental and social record – into Europe.

Paul de Clerck, economic justice campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: 

“The Fuel Quality Directive is supposed to benefit the climate, but the latest proposal from the European Commission leaves the European market wide open for energy-intensive fuels produced from tar sands. The EU should be a global standard-setter, and should refrain from giving political or financial assistance to tar sands projects, instead incentivising low carbon projects like renewables.”

The vast infrastructure and capital requirements of tar sands (estimated around US$ 379 billion in the next 15 years in Canada alone) would be better spent financing the shift towards a low-carbon economy, and on efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the report says.

• Read the report here

The first of the protests took place on March 28 when 35,000 people marched for jobs, justice and climate with the 'Put People First' coalition of which Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland (EWNI) is a founding member. As part of their involvement, EWNI arranged for several climate activists to speak at the rally, including Biana Jagger, Tony Juniper and Father Joe Komakom. They spoke powerfully and eloquently about the urgency of the climate crisis and the impact of climate change on the poorest people in the world.

There were additional protests from Friends of the Earth member groups across Europe, including actions in France and Belgium under the name 'We Won't Pay for Your Crisis'.

Friends of the Earth International strongly supports the coalition's call for a fair, sustainable route out of recession and for an economy based on fair distribution of wealth, decent jobs for all and a low carbon future. The G20 summit was a meeting of the world's leaders which aimed to agree coordinated action to address the current economic crisis, as well as a blueprint for future reform of the world financial system. We demand that world leaders break with the failed policies of the past and embrace a new system that seeks to make the economy work for people and the planet.

Whilst the G20 summit itself was hugely disappointing – the world’s leaders failing to take any significant action to address climate change, the continuing global financial crisis and its impact on some of the poorest people in the world –  throughout the UK's G20 presidency EWNI will continue to call for real action on green jobs, and economic and climate justice.

• Find out more about the Put People First movement -
  

http://www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/

• Find out more about the Stop G20 movement in France -
  

http://www.stop-g20.org/

Photos: Protesters from Friends of the Earth England Wales and Northern Ireland in London. In Paris people impersonate bankers in offshore tax havens while others march through the streets.

• December 2008: Climate talks in Poznan, Poland
  
• October 2008: World Bank annual meeting addressed in Washington, Amsterdam and Jakarta
• August 2008: FoEI at the UN Climate Talks in Accra
• July 2008:  What happened at the G8 meeting in Japan?

world oil bank

The World Bank is setting itself up to become the world's climate banker. But at the same time, the World Bank is the largest multilateral lender for oil and gas projects and a major deforester, fueling climate change.

The World Bank spends some $1 billion per year on the oil and gas industry.  And these projects don’t increase poor people’s access to energy. More than 80% of all oil projects financed by the World Bank are for export back to wealthy Northern countries. Meanwhile, pollution and social conflicts surround these projects.
 
Despite all of these controversies, the institution attempts to regain relevance in the global arena. It is now promoting itself as a major actor in the fight against climate change.  The Bank has started various initiatives ranging from carbon financing facilities and climate investment funds to a strategic framework on climate and development.

The world bank's climate funds are likely to:

1. increase the global South’s debt burden and force them to pay for the climate crisis that they are not responsible for;
2. place the last remaining forests in so called 'carbon offset schemes', which would undermine Indigenous Peoples’ land rights and do nothing to reduce emissions;
3. finance a version of “clean technology” that includes dirty coal, agrofuels and large hydro dams;
4. dramatically undermine United Nations climate talks.

read more: why the world bank's climate plans are not a good idea

• 'The Poznan Statement: World vs Bank' by  142 organizations of December 2008
• FoEI briefing paper (English and Spanish)
  

• Article on forests, trade and climate change, by FoEI's Joseph Zacune
  

• Poverty, Climate and Energy: the case against oil aid

• FoE US webpage on The World Bank's Climate Investment Funds
  

• NGO letter to Governments

• Power Failure: How the World Bank is Failing to Adequately Finance Renewable Energy for Development
  

• More on public finance for fossil fuels

• FoEI climate program

• Voices from communities affected by climate change

 
Other resources

• Third World Network: No Additionality, New Conditionality: A Critique of the World Bank's Climate Investment Funds

• Sustainable Energy and Economy Network: World Bank: Climate Profiteer

• End Oil Aid Coalition: Aiding Oil, Harming the Climate

• Bretton Wood Project: World Bank climate funds: A huge leap backwards

• Bank Information Center: World Bank’s lending for fossil fuel skyrockets as it positions itself as the “climate bank”

World Bank links

• Global Consultations: Towards a Strategic Framework on Climate Change and Development for the World Bank Group

• Proposed Climate Investment Funds (CIF)

Protest at the launch of the World Bank's forest carbon facility, Bali 2007

Read our media advisory of July 8

Friends of the Earth International believes that the G8’s final communiqué regarding their action on climate change is futile rhetoric. It will do nothing to stop the toll that global warming is taking on people and the planet.

'The bad news about the G8 outcomes, is that we are doomed if the G8 countries’ proposals become reality. The outcomes of this G8 were even worse than the usual vacuous, largely symbolic previous G8 circuses – that are held behind increasingly well-fortified closed doors. This year, the World Bank has used the G8 to launch its multi-billion climate funds, backed by the UK, US and Japan. These funds are problematic for several reasons.'

Click here to learn more about the World Bank's Climate Funds

'The good news is: there increasing resistance to these proposals from global civil society and from developing countries. This was reflected in the G5 declaration of Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, India, China. The declaration affirms the G8’s historical responsibility to reduce emissions. Activists present here in Japan feel certain that next year's G8 gathering in Italy will see hundreds of thousands of peoples going to the streets calling for it to be the last G8 meeting.'

More news:

• Read the official G8 Chair's Summary of July 9 here
  

• World Bank casts its dark shadow over G8. Read our July 7 press release with La Via Campesina and Focus on the Global South here
  
• G8 leaders urged to dump the World Bank's climate investment funds. Read our July 4 press release here
  

• Read the statement of organisations affiliated with the G8 Action Network here

• Read the 'Challenge to G8 Governments' from international civil society here

• Visit the official website for the G8 Summit here

From October 8-14, during the annual meetings of the World Bank, Friends of the Earth International and others brought a message to financial decision makers gathered in Washington DC.

The message is that the World Bank is not the right institution to manage climate change funding. It has unequal decision making structures, continues to invest massively in fossil fuels, and considers coal a potentially clean source of energy.

This was the central theme of our action in front of the World Bank headquarters on October 10th, which followed various public seminars and the launch of a new report entitled Dirty is the New Clean.

See more photos of our action in Washington here

On October 12, activists from affiliate FoEI member A SEED Europe sailed the canals in Amsterdam, The Netherlands against the way the World Bank is dealing with climate change.

Read the report here or watch a short film here (in Dutch).

On October 14, FoE Indonesia and their allies mobilised in front of the World Bank office in Jakarta, Indonesia, with the same message.

Our actions were part of the

2008 Week of Global Action Against Debt and International Financial Institutions.

Further information

• Read the Friends of the Earth US World Bank and Climate factsheet
• Read our media release: World Bank and climate funds under fire
• Read more about the World Bank's climate funds on our climate and finance campaign pages