On Tuesday 26 February Both ENDS was surprised by a very special visit: the Dutch Postcode Lottery stopped by to tell us that Both ENDS has been chosen as a beneficiary and has been allocated an annual donation of €500,000 for the coming five years! This is great news for us, as we can now expand our plans and take them to another level. Our director Danielle Hirsch explains.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has published its new policy for energy investments. In the new draft policy, the bank states to stop investing in fossil fuel related projects from 2020. This is good news for the climate, so Both ENDS and partners are happy with this draft policy. The shareholders of the bank, the member states of the European Union, still have to approve it.
Silence can sometimes say more than a thousand words. When colleagues from our partner organisations tell us their stories,* our reaction is often silence; a dejected silence.
Each year on the 14th of November, in the Brazilian city of Cáceres the 'Day of the Paraguay River' (Dia do Rio Paraguai) is celebrated. This tradition started in the year 2000, when civil society mobilized for the first time and successfully campaigned against the construction of the Hidrovía Paraguay-Paraná. Since then, the date symbolizes the close relationship of the people with the river, its culture and the environment.
The Dutch pension fund, ABP, invested about two billion euros more in the fossil energy industry at the end of 2016 than the year before. This is announced by the report "Dirty & Dangerous: the fossil fuel investments of Dutch pension fund ABP," published today by Both ENDS, German urgewald and Fossielvrij NL. The report criticizes these investments because of the impact on the climate and the catastrophic consequences for the people in the areas where coal, oil and gas are being produced.
21 April 2017: Jakarta is sinking. Excessive groundwater extraction is causing the metropolis to sink by dozens of centimetres each year, making it more vulnerable to flooding. Dutch businesses have come up with a solution: an immense sea wall on the coast, which is also a stunning real estate project. But this intervention is just a pseudo-solution, say researchers from Both ENDS, Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen (SOMO) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) today in a new report. Even worse, the project threatens the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people employed in local fisheries.