Both ENDS
On November 11th, the 29th UN Climate Conference will start in Baku, Azerbaijan. Just like previous years, Both ENDS will be there to advocate for local access to climate finance, and to support our partner organisations in their advocacy work. How do we do that, and what are our hopes (and worries) about this 29th edition of the UNFCCC COP? We asked Marius Troost, who will be joining COP29 together with Daan Robben.
The Hague, 26 May 2021 - For the first time in history, a judge has held a corporation liable for causing dangerous climate change. Today, as a result of legal action brought by Friends of the Earth Netherlands (Milieudefensie) together with 17,000 co-plaintiffs and six other organisations (ActionAid Netherlands, Both ENDS, Fossil Free Netherlands, Greenpeace Netherlands, Young Friends of The Earth Netherlands and the Wadden Sea Association) the court in The Hague ruled that Shell must reduce its CO2 emissions by 45% within 10 years. This historic verdict has enormous consequences for Shell and other big polluters globally.
Across the world, women lead efforts to advance peace, gender and environmental justice. From the Philippines to Mozambique, Burkina Faso to Brazil, they face a deadly convergence of violence, environmental destruction, and extractivist land grabs. As corporate interests, state forces or other armed actors expand into their territories, entire communities are displaced, criminalized, or subjected to violent repression. At the same time, worsening climate disasters further erode their means of survival, exacerbating food insecurity, water shortages, forced migration and gendered inequalities.
All around the world small-scale farmers are using sustainable and inclusive methods to produce food. Working together with nature and each other, they provide their families and communities with sufficient and healthy food. But their production methods are under pressure from large-scale agriculture and the globally dominant system of industrial food production. Together with our partners, Both ENDS is trying to turn the tide in favour of sustainable, local practices that are mostly known as 'agro-ecological' or 'nature-inclusive'. Why are we focusing on these methods? Agro-ecological practices are climate-proof and inclusive and increase the opportunities for communities around the world to produce their food sustainably.
The UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP28) has come to an end. Both ENDS and our partners were well represented at the event. History was written, literally, in Dubai, as in the final document the attending countries finally put down on paper that the world must move away from fossil fuels. That is the beginning of the end for the fossil industry. Niels Hazekamp and Daan Robben look back: what did Both ENDS do there and what do we think of the outcome?
Today, 122 civil society groups are releasing letters to eleven government signatories to the Glasgow Statement on International Public Support for the Clean Energy Transition, laying out the actions they must take as soon as possible to meet their commitment. In this joint statement at COP26, 35 countries and 5 public finance institutions committed to end their international public finance for 'unabated' fossil fuels by the end of 2022, and instead prioritise their "support fully towards the clean energy transition."
Almost two-thirds of the export credit insurances that Atradius DSB provided in the 2012-2018 period went to the fossil energy sector. That is contrary to the climate agreements that the Netherlands signed in Paris.
