As shareholders in Brazilian mining giant Vale S.A prepare to gather online for the company’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), communities from Brazil to Indonesia criticize the company’s track record on human rights and environmental stewardship. They also point to the almost $50 billion in mounting lawsuits against the company as a risk factor that should serve as a warning sign to investors.
The U.S. is not always in the front line when it comes to the protection of human rights and the environment in developing countries, but there are exceptions. The Netherlands has recently joined the ‘climate initiative’ of President Obama, which aims at ending the public funding of coal plants. But the U.S. is going even further than that: under the ‘Appropriations Bill’, U.S. directors at international financial institutions have to vote against projects that support large dams and industrial logging or mining projects in tropical forests. We are calling on Dutch Minister Ploumen to follow the U.S. example!
Join us for the fourth session of this five-part series on women's rights and climate finance, aimed at building knowledge and power to ensure finance flows benefit local women's groups, respond to community needs and respect human rights. The webinar will be conducted in English with simultaneous translation in Spanish and French.
Join us for the third session of this five-part series on women's rights and climate finance, aimed at building knowledge and power to ensure finance flows benefit local women's groups, respond to community needs and respect human rights.
A race track for international motor bike events in Lombok continues to worry human rights experts around the world. Both ENDS and its partners are increasingly concerned about the project’s implications for ethical standards in global development financing going forward for it continues to hurt the most basic social and environmental safeguards.
Indigenous communities in Paraguay saw their attempts to regain their ancestral lands thwarted by German investors. This is the level of impact that investment treaties can have on social, environmental and economic development and rights. Why? Because of the ‘Investor-to-State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS) clauses that are included in many such treaties.