While last Thursday afternoon half the Dutch population sat outside on a terrace to enjoy the last tropical heat of 2016, more than seventy people gathered in a room at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Why? To attend a workshop on 'Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), an international guideline which stipulates that indigenous peoples should be involved in and give permission for developments taking place in and around the area where they live.
A race track for international motor bike events in Lombok continues to worry human rights experts around the world. Both ENDS and its partners are increasingly concerned about the project’s implications for ethical standards in global development financing going forward for it continues to hurt the most basic social and environmental safeguards.
Last week the Agricultural Investment Summit took place in London, seeking to promote land as an emerging and expanding investment opportunity. Civil society organisations are concerned that this could lead to further land grabbing, threatening the livelihoods and food security of countless local communities in the global South. In a joint civil society statement Both ENDS urges pension funds and other financial institutions to stop such damaging investment practices.
To realise the energy transition, large quantities of minerals and metals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth metals are needed. These raw materials are mainly extracted in countries in the global South, and unfortunately this is almost always accompanied by human rights violations and environmental destruction. Today – also in light of EU Raw Materials Week that is happening this week – Argentinian organisation FARN and Both ENDS publish a joint report on the extraction of lithium in Argentina.
Between 2010 and 2013, Both ENDS, together with Indonesian and Dutch organisations and universities, conducted a project in the district of Sanggau in West-Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. The project was meant to help local communities with the recognition of their land rights and. This is a beautiful short documentary about how the people of one of these villages responded to the ever expanding palm oil plantations around them.