Both ENDS
Almost 100 candidate EU Members of Parliament have signed a pledge drafted and endorsed by European NGOs and prominent individuals in which they commit - once elected - to promoting policies to protect and restore forests worldwide and to recognising and securing forest peoples’ territories and their rights, including the rights of women, for generations to come. The organisers hope to get many more signatures before the EU elections, to make sure the new EU parliament will start treating these topics with high urgency as soon as it is installed.
Amsterdam 1 May 2019 - Dutch pension fund ABP's 'sustainable and responsible investment report’ today suggests that the pension fund is well on track in terms attaining its internal sustainability goals. However, an analysis by Fossielvrij NL, Both ENDS, urgewald and Greenpeace shows that ABP remains on a collision course with the Paris climate goals. At the end of 2018, ABP still invested 16.5 billion Euros in the fossil industry. ABP's investments in the world's 44 largest climate polluters even increased between 2016 and 2018.
Pension funds have a lot of influence because of their enormous assets. Both ENDS therefore wants pension funds such as the Dutch ABP to withdraw their investments from the fossil industry and to invest sustainably instead.
On Saturday April 13th, the annual Africa day will take place in the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam.
Both ENDS and Voice 4 Thought will organise a joint workhop (in English), titled:
'Positive vibes from the Sahel: from regreening to slam poetry'
Facilitator: Andrew Makkinga
The Sahel region from Chad to Senegal is often seen in the Netherlands as an immensely dry, infertile area where extremists and smugglers serve and where hunger thrives. But there is so much more to tell about the Sahel region.
Over the last decades, a large number of positive social initiatives have been taken up both in the cities and in rural areas. Initiatives that create and stimulate self-esteem, culture, education, climate resilience and prosperity.
Young people are often the driving force behind these movements, which is not surprising considering that almost 70 percent of the population in a country like Niger is under the age of 25.
In this workshop Both ENDS and Voice4Thought want to tell the other story of the Sahel by highlighting some of these positive initiatives, and by showing how they are interlinked and part of a larger, bottom up movement in this area.
Hope to see you there!
On Friday March 29 a special JWHi meeting took place at the Both ENDS offices, making the most of the unique situation having several grantees in Amsterdam for various reasons. The meeting facilitated the rare opportunity to bring together perspectives of the various actors in our fund: the advisory committee, the JWHi team of Both ENDS and last but not least the grantees from Kenya, Brazil and Colombia.
We asked three of our partner organisations to tell us how climate change is already affecting the daily lives of the people they work with, what they are doing to turn the tide and if they think the Climate Court Case against Shell can be important in the context of climate change. Sara Crespo Suarez of our Bolivian partner Probioma explains how the effects are already being felt in her country.
The Hague, April 5, 2019 - Today Friends of the Earth Netherlands will deliver a court summons to Shell to legally compel the company to cease its destruction of the climate, on behalf of more than 30,000 people from 70 countries. A 236 page complaint will be delivered to Shell's International Headquarters in the Hague this afternoon by Friends of the Earth Netherlands, ActionAid NL, Both ENDS, Fossielvrij NL, Greenpeace NL,Young Friends of the Earth NL, Waddenvereniging and a large group of co-plaintiffs.
