Both ENDS
21 April 2017: Jakarta is sinking. Excessive groundwater extraction is causing the metropolis to sink by dozens of centimetres each year, making it more vulnerable to flooding. Dutch businesses have come up with a solution: an immense sea wall on the coast, which is also a stunning real estate project. But this intervention is just a pseudo-solution, say researchers from Both ENDS, Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen (SOMO) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) today in a new report. Even worse, the project threatens the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people employed in local fisheries.
Minister Liesje Schreinemacher for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation recently made her first working visit, to Kenya and Uganda. With this visit, the minister made a flying start in honouring the pledge in the new government's coalition agreement to formulate a 'targeted Dutch Africa strategy'. Such a strategy is desperately needed as, too often, our foreign trade is conducted at the expense of people and the environment, including in countries in Africa. The new strategy presents a perfect opportunity to ensure that the 'trade and aid' agendas are closely aligned.
"My idea of 'good' is that people can make decisions about their own development; that they are able to decide what happens to their environment. That we all respect the boundaries of our ecosystems and that women, just like men, are able to develop in the way that they want". Daniëlle Hirsch is responding to a question from the audience where she just gave a lecture on her views for a future sustainable economy.
Silencing the Voices of Environmental Defenders
Together with environmental justice groups from the Global South, Both ENDS works towards a sustainable, fair and inclusive world. In recent years, our partners have become increasingly threatened, intimidated, violated, imprisoned, and even murdered as a result of their environmental and human rights activities. Our advocacy partners face repressive reprisals for speaking out against environmentally destructive initiatives and denouncing human rights abuses of companies and governments, whilst the communities they support are subjected to violence for simply acting out of necessity to protect their lives, land, territories, and communities from harm.
The Green Climate Fund aims to support transformational pathways to climate-resilient development, intends to reach those most vulnerable, and commits to a gender-sensitive approach. This session presents an important way of putting these commitments into practice: by engaging small grants funds. These funds can provide the much needed channel between large international institutions and local communities adapting to climate change, and assure financing reaches women and men to contribute to transformative climate action. But how to make this shift in how financing is delivered? The audience will be actively engaged in the discussion to come to concrete suggestions to strengthen local access and gender responsiveness of climate finance.
