Note: This post was previously published by InterPress Service.
Dercy Teles de Carvalho Cunha is a rubber-tapper and union organiser from the state of Acre in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, with a lifelong love of the forest from which she earns her livelihood -- and she is deeply confounded by what her government and policymakers around the world call “the green economy.”
“The primary impact of green economy projects is the loss…
This fall, the EPA released a report confirming what scientists have long been saying: soybean seeds coated in neonicotinoid pesticides, which contribute to mass bee deaths, “provide negligible overall benefits” to soybean growers. The report provides yet another reason that we need to suspend these bee-toxic pesticides take large-scale action to protect bees and other pollinators on which our food system depends. That’s why we’re calling on those who care about bees and who…
Originally posted 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 as climate finance. And…
Former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be at the United Nations Climate Summit, COP20, in Lima, Peru on December 10 as part of World Climate Limited, a consortium of businesses, financiers, philanthropists and governments taking action on climate. But while the former movie-star-turned-governor-turned-climate-action-hero grandstands on climate, behind the scenes, Mr. Schwarzenegger is profiting from environmental destruction through his million dollar investment and five-percent ownership stake in Dimensional Fund Advisors, a U.S. fund manager with…
On November 25, 2014, Friends of the Earth and the Western Organization of Resource Councils, with support from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to require the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management to prepare a supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Federal Coal Management Program. As part of that program, BLM manages more than 309 leases…
In our campaign to halt the expansion of palm oil plantations, Friends of the Earth U.S. works closely with our partners at Walhi/Friends of the Earth Indonesia, and we are excited to announce that Walhi has achieved a major step toward one of the core goals of their palm oil campaign: Indonesia's new president, Joko Widodo has ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to review licenses for companies that have converted peatlands to oil…
The activists and campaigners of Friends of the Earth are having considerable success this year in beating back Fast Track trade promotion legislation in Congress. The bill would grant President Obama power to sign two sweeping trade deals that threaten people and the planet -- even before Congress has a chance to vote on them. Global corporations and Wall Street investors are pushing the Fast Track legislation in order to grease the skids…
Here at Friends of the Earth, we spend a lot of time fighting destructive projects and policies. But sometimes we forget to say thank you for the people we love and the practices we admire. There are many reasons we give thanks today, and we wanted to share a few with you. From the Friends of the Earth family to yours, we hope you all have a wonderful holiday.
“I'm thankful for organic farmers who…
Chinese banks are the largest lenders to development projects in the world. As Chinese banks increasingly invest in development projects overseas, will they also invest in environmental and social sustainability? Our new report, Going out, But Going Green? Assessing the Implementation of China’s Green Credit Guidelines Overseas, examines the extent of bank compliance with China’s landmark, green finance policy.
NOTE: An edited version of this interview has been published on Truthout under the title "Deforestation, 'Development' Connected to Spread of Ebola in West Africa", and a full version has been published on Medium.com.
It is clear that the spread of ebola in West Africa is directly linked to the region’s deep poverty -- out of 187 countries on the United Nations’ Human Development Index, Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone rank number 175, 179…