Both ENDS
Recently, many newspapers have written about Brussels’ rush to finalize the trade agreement between the EU and the South American Mercosur countries. According to the European Commission, national parliaments do not need to approve it because the trade part and the “political” part have been separated. This “splitting” means that the trade part can be approved as an EU-only decision by the European Council and the European Parliament, while national parliaments are sidelined and the political-cooperation part is postponed. Both ENDS and its partners are deeply concerned and are calling on the Dutch government to vote against this outdated agreement.
With pain in our hearts we say farewell to Irene Dankelman. She was pioneer in the field of gender and environment and one of the founders of Both ENDS.
100+ NGOs launch #Together4Forests urging EU action
Fires raging in the Amazon are started deliberately to make way for large-scale industrial agriculture – and EU market demand for commodities produced on former-forest land is adding fuel to the fires. Globally, the EU is responsible for over 10% of forest destruction through its consumption of commodities like meat, dairy, soy for animal feed, palm oil, coffee and cacao.
The network of international trade and investment treaties is large and complex. The Netherlands alone has signed more than 70 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and is party to the trade and investment agreements concluded by the EU, like the EU-Mercosur and EU-Indonesia trade deals.
The currently negotiated Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the US and the EU (TTIP) is higly controversial and has ignited the public debate about the costs and benefits of globalisation to society at large. In the Netherlands, concerns are raised on transparency, the growing power of big companies and the consequences for the environment. But how should we view TTIP in the bigger picture around global free trade, the relation between the North and the South and the geopolitical dynamics behind free trade agreements? Yash Tandon addresses this and related subjects in his new book 'Trade is War – The West’s War Against the World', which he will present on the 3rd of June in Amsterdam.
In October 2022, the Dutch government published a policy to implement the COP26 statement in which it promised to stop public finance for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of 2022 . The proposed policy, unfortunately, has quite some 'loopholes' that make it possible for the Dutch government to keep supporting large fossil projects abroad for at least another year. These projects often run for years and will have a negative impact on the countries where they take place for decades to come.
Recently, the World Bank announced to change its social and environmental regulations, the so-called 'safeguards'. These safeguards do not only apply to investments of the World Bank, but are often adopted by other banks and credit institutions all over the world. "If the World Bank changes the regulations, there will be significant global consequences!", Pieter Jansen warns. Last Tuesday he was in Brussels on behalf of Both ENDS for a consultation of the World Bank with European civil society organisations to give his view on the proposed changes.
Both ENDS and our Nigerian partner Kebetkache Women Development & Research Centre attended Shell’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), on May 20th, in London, to demand transparency and accountability for Shell Plc’s opaque divesment in the Niger Delta.
