Both ENDS
At the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Shell in London, community leaders from the Niger Delta and international allies, including Both ENDS, are confronting Shell with a clear demand: Shell must take full responsibility for decades of pollution and human suffering in Nigeria’s Niger Delta before divesting from its on-shore oil operations.
There have been so many tributes from so many people, that anything I write seems insignificant. After all, I can’t say I knew him or ever met him, and I don’t have a memorable “Mandela and Me” moment to share. But like me, there are millions of ordinary people in this country and all around the world, who never met him, yet could not help being touched in some profound way by his extraordinary life.
The million-dollar loan that the Dutch development bank FMO provided to project developers of Honduran company DESA for the construction of the controversial Agua Zarca dam project in Honduras, may be related to gross corruption and malpractice. This is concluded in an article published today in the Dutch news paper Financieel Dagblad, based on information provided by COPINH, the indigenous organisation that has been opposing the construction of the dam for years. Several members of the organisation, including its leader Berta Cáceres, were murdered. DESA director David Castillo has recently been convicted of being involved in the assassination of Cáceres in 2016.
Today, a letter, undersigned by almost 60 organisations from countries that face the consequences of fossil fuel projects or stand in solidarity, has been sent to the Dutch Members of Parliament. This Thursday, a debate about the export credit facility and the policies around it, will take place in the Dutch Parliament. The coalition calls upon Dutch politicians and policy makers to stand up against any form of export support for fossil fuel projects that are to be executed by Dutch companies abroad, expecially in the global South.
On Monday 11 November the Dutch Parliament debated on the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF), which was initially launched in 2012 under Minister Ploumen for Foreign Trade and Development. The fund aims to promote ‘development relevant trade’: imports and exports which are beneficial not only for the Netherlands, but also for the population in (poor) countries they invest in. However, the question is whether in practice it will work this way. According to Anouk Franck of Both ENDS, the DGGF focuses too much on trade, and economic factors. This is reflected in critical report which was recently published by ActionAid, SOMO and Both ENDS.
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 Barro Blanco dam project in Panama, which has Dutch financial support, is causing indigenous lands to disappear under water. Both ENDS is working to protect the rights of indigenous communities living near the dam.
The U.S. is not always in the front line when it comes to the protection of human rights and the environment in developing countries, but there are exceptions. The Netherlands has recently joined the ‘climate initiative’ of President Obama, which aims at ending the public funding of coal plants. But the U.S. is going even further than that: under the ‘Appropriations Bill’, U.S. directors at international financial institutions have to vote against projects that support large dams and industrial logging or mining projects in tropical forests. We are calling on Dutch Minister Ploumen to follow the U.S. example!
