Both ENDS
Regional governments in Asia will soon decide whether to proceed with the construction of Xayaburi Dam in northern Laos. This will be the first of eleven dams that are planned for the Lower Mekong Mainstream. Both ENDS asks your support in protecting The Mekong River and the millions of people who depend on it by signing the petition.
Click here to sign the petition
This year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is celebrating its 50th anniversary. On this occasion it published a book focusing on 50 years of export credits. Wiert Wiertsema (Both ENDS) writing on behalf of ECA Watch, however, thinks that this is a momentum that asks for reforms, rather than hurrays.
Replanting a watershed with trees made possible by a micro loan of € 1000: ten years later, this investment still ensures that an entire community has clean drinking water. This small success was further discussed last April at 'Small Grants', a two-day event organized by Both ENDS.
A number of our colleagues at Both ENDS made a lot of noise at various locations around the country today, as part of the national Klimaatalarm (Climate Alarm) campaign. Annelieke Douma gave a short speech in Haarlem on the major role played by the Netherlands in climate change and environmental degradation beyond our borders. She made a number of suggestions that would immediately make Dutch foreign policy a lot more climate-friendly. Below is the text of her speech.
Dutch pension money is invested heavily in companies that contribute to deforestation in the Amazon region and the Cerrado savanna in Brazil, such as soy, animal feed and beef companies. This is concluded in a report published today by Profundo, commisioned by the Fair Finance Guide, Hivos and Both ENDS. All ten pension funds that were examined invest in these types of companies, with the ABP pension fund and Pensioenfonds Zorg en Welzijn on top with investments worth EUR 580 million and EUR 383 million respectively.
Dutch development bank FMO is considering investing in the controversial Ficohsa bank in Honduras. The bank has close ties with the elite in Honduras, which holds considerable power in politics, the (para)military and the business community. Last Wednesday, a number of Honduran organisations, including the indigenous organisation COPINH – whose leader Berta Cáceres was murdered in 2016 – sent a letter to the FMO management. The letter, signed by forty organisations including Both ENDS, calls on FMO not to do business with this bank.
Amsterdam, 3 February 2020 - A step forward, but oil and gas remain a blind spot in Dutch pension fund ABP's new investment policy published today. That's what environmental organisations Both ENDS, Fossielvrij NL, Greenpeace Netherlands and urgewald say in response to the new climate policy of the EU's largest pension fund, with assets over 442 billion euros. Although ABP is taking first steps to invest sustainably, more is needed to stop the climate crisis.
Friday the 3rd of July Both ENDS facilitates a CERES Summer School workshop on the Impact and Drivers of Biofuel Production. Session 1 from 10.00-12.00h and session 2 13.30 - 15.30h are held at the Spinoza Building of the Radboud University in Nijmegen.
