#BothENDSatCOP29 Side Events

At COP31, Both ENDS advocates for climate finance that reaches women-led and community-based organisations at the forefront of climate action, while challenging the economic rules that obstruct the transition away from fossil fuels. Together with partners in the Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA) and the PAPeS programme, we push for locally led adaptation, gender-just climate action and greater accountability for governments and companies.

We asked our colleagues Daan Robben and Fernando Hernandez why they are going to COP31, what messages they want to bring to negotiators, and what a positive outcome would look like.

By Sarah Adongo, Lawyer, Witness Radio, Uganda

Sarah Adongo is one of the three winners of the 2026 Irene Dankelman Young Ecofeminist Award, presented on 21 October at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia. A lawyer working with Witness Radio Uganda, Sarah works with women affected by gender-based violence and communities affected by land dispossession and large-scale investments. In this piece, she shares what the award means to her and why gender and environmental justice must go hand in hand.

By Yemi Knight (they/them), Founder and Executive Director, AnchorBridge Environmental Inc., Barbados

Yemi Knight is one of the three winners of the 2026 Irene Dankelman Young Ecofeminist Award, presented on 21 October at the UN Biodiversity Conference (CBD COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia. Yemi founded AnchorBridge Environmental, a youth-led organisation that combines policy advocacy with climate education across the Caribbean. We asked them what the award means to them, what they are working on, and what they would tell other young ecofeminist leaders.

Yemi is also part of the network of the Joke Waller-Hunter Initiative, powered by Both ENDS. With a JWH grant, Yemi followed courses in Social, Environmental and Economic Impact Assessment and in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campusc, as well as a Level 1A Spanish course at the Centre for Language Learning at the university’s St. Augustine Campus.

The Netherlands and Portugal join four other EU countries facing such a complaint, as the Global Days of Action against Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) begin.

We are thrilled to share that our partner the Rural Women's Assembly (RWA) is one of this year's Right Livelihood Laureates! The award, often called the "Alternative Nobel Prize", honours RWA for bringing together more than 178,000 women farmers in eleven Southern African countries. Together, these women stand up for their land, their seeds and their right to make decisions about their own lives and bodies.

A Brazilian federal court has, for the first time, criminally convicted a mining company and three of its managers for their role in the 2015 collapse of the Fundão dam, one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazil's history. Our partner Instituto Cordilheira, which represented victims as assistant prosecutors in the case, calls it a historic breakthrough after years of impunity.

From 17 to 28 August, governments gathered in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for COP17 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). At stake was more than how the world responds to land degradation and drought. It was also a question of who gets to shape land restoration, whose knowledge counts, and where the money goes.

From 29 June – 2 July 2026, Tamara Mohr, GAGGA coordinator at Both ENDS participated in the 4th convening of the Women's Land Rights Initiative (WLRI) in Nairobi, Kenya.Hosted by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, TMG Research and the Huairou Commission, the event brought together grassroots organisations, (inter)national NGOs, government institutions and donors from around the world.

GENEVA/UTRECHT, 12 May 2026 – A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Sand and Sustainability: An Essential Resource for Nature and Development, warns that global demand for sand is exceeding ecological limits. Large-scale extraction of sand from marine and coastal ecosystems is leading to biodiversity loss, damage to coastal communities and increasing risks in an era of climate change. Dutch dredging companies play a prominent role in this as global market leaders in large-scale sand extraction and land reclamation. “Our analyses show that the dredging sector operates globally within a system in which ecological damage and the consequences for coastal communities are systematically underestimated, whilst transparency and effective oversight are often lacking,” says the Dutch environmental and human rights organisation Both ENDS, which contributed to the report.