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For Both ENDS, the year 2015 marked an ending and a new beginning. It was the last year of the Communities of Change and the Ecosystem Alliance. The Fair, Green and Global Alliance also came to a close in its current form at the end of 2015. But the end of these programmes certainly does not mean the work will stop; what has been built up in the past five years will be continued within the new partnerships with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which have already started in 2016.

GENEVA/UTRECHT, 12 May 2026 – A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Sand and Sustainability: An Essential Resource for Nature and Development, warns that global demand for sand is exceeding ecological limits. Large-scale extraction of sand from marine and coastal ecosystems is leading to biodiversity loss, damage to coastal communities and increasing risks in an era of climate change. Dutch dredging companies play a prominent role in this as global market leaders in large-scale sand extraction and land reclamation. “Our analyses show that the dredging sector operates globally within a system in which ecological damage and the consequences for coastal communities are systematically underestimated, whilst transparency and effective oversight are often lacking,” says the Dutch environmental and human rights organisation Both ENDS, which contributed to the report.

Sharif Jamil is the riverkeeper. In 2009 he started protecting the severely polluted Buriganga River, becoming Bangladesh' first riverkeeper. "We have to make people responsible for their own environment."

In recent years, Both ENDS has received an additional contribution of €875,000 from the Postcode Lottery for the Autonomy & Resilience Fund (2022–2025), implemented in collaboration with the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA). This support was essential because female environmental rights defenders around the world are increasingly facing climate change, repression and shrinking civil space. With this contribution, Both ENDS supports female activists and their communities with flexible, trust-based funding, enabling them to develop their own solutions to urgent environmental and climate problems.

“I will not go!” Sena Alouka yells in the bus along the highway as we pass a desolate farm that is totally surrounded by bulldozers and soil that has been turned and ploughed. A familiar sight for most of the riders in the bus, which includes nine Africans, an Indonesian and a handful of Dutch people. Evictions and land expropriations are an almost daily occurrence in Africa and Indonesia. And then the whole group spontaneously chants: “I will not go! We will support you!”