Farmers in Uganda evicted by oil palm plantations filed a lawsuit today against a joint venture co-owned by palm oil giant Wilmar International. The farmers, with the support of Friends of the Earth Uganda, are demanding restitution and fair compensation for damages, three years after their land was taken for plantation development.
The palm oil project, in the Kalangala Islands of Lake Victoria, is being carried out by Oil Palm Uganda Limited, a subsidiary…
Friends of the Earth's trade policy analyst Bill Waren recently appeared on the Progressive Radio Network's Connect the Dots show, where he discussed with host Alison Rose Levy the potential consequences of passing Fast Track trade promotion legislation. Fast Track would push pending Trans Atlantic and Trans Pacific trade deals through Congress on a quick up-or-down vote with no amendments -- before the public has had a chance to see the secret text of the…
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind today as President Obama sends his budget to Congress:
Most Americans believe that our air should be clean, that college should be cheap, and that disadvantaged children should have food and preschool. Even at a time of unprecedented partisanship, government spending that supports these goals remains solidly popular.
No one can say the same about the billions in subsidies that U.S.…
In thinking through President Obama’s sixth and penultimate State of the Union address, I’ll admit to having wildly mixed thoughts and emotions. Generally, I thought this was one of his best State of the Union addresses, and reflected on why the president was elected in 2008. The values-laden speech spoke to many of the core principles that Friends of the Earth and I hold dear: equity, creating a healthy environment for our children, fairness…
In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama set an aggressive tone on a number of key progressive issues, from education to equal pay. And while his speech featured strong points on the importance of tough action on climate change and mocked Republicans for their widespread climate denial, he also touted environmentally and economically harmful policies such as the Trans Pacific Partnership. The president’s support for the Asian and European trade deals,…
While President Obama's 2015 State of the Union speech highlighted his administration's progressive initiatives, a continued focus on environmentally disastrous trade deals undermined his strong rhetoric on climate action.
Friends of the Earth Mexico and Friends of the Earth U.S. sent a letter to California officials yesterday, urging them to forego any joint agreement with Mexico on climate change, carbon trading and REDD until the Mexican government proves itself capable of guaranteeing the security of the population.
Ambassador Michael Froman is the current U.S. Trade Representative and a former Citigroup executive and bundler of Wall Street and other contributions to the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. On December 17, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and two colleagues wrote to Froman: “We are concerned that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) could make it harder for Congress and regulatory agencies to prevent future financial crises. With millions of families still struggling to recover…
Posted 10 December, 2014 on Environmental Finance
Last week, the UN Climate Summit in Lima, Peru, kicked off amid controversy with news that Japan had counted loans for coal projects in Indonesia as international climate finance. (Climate finance is the money developed countries owe to developing countries for climate mitigation and adaptation.)
This news was triply damning. First, Japan claimed that coal was climate-friendly. Second, Japan counted money lent to its own multinational corporations…
This year’s annual UN climate summit, known as the Conference of Parties or COP, has drawn to a close in Lima, Peru. In a disgraceful outcome predictable enough to be called a pattern, the COP once again failed to deliver what climate science and justice require to avert climate catastrophe.
The Pseudo-reality of the COPs
Like many COPs before it, the Lima meeting was awash in climate double-speak by rich countries -- most notably the…