This month there are two significant anniversaries to acknowledge – the birth of the internet and the death of thousands of animals in Prince William Sound, Alaska due to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Needless to say there is far more to celebrate about the internet (other than the 1000’s of misplaced hours spent) than this spill. However, there are two positive outcomes associated with the spill: first, Prince William Sound is now home…
The Aleutian Islands—an archipelago stretching for over a thousand miles from the coast of southeast Alaska towards the far east of Russia—is remote and ruggedly beautiful terrain. Its shores and surrounding marine waters, including the Bering Sea, provide key habitat for abundant seabird colonies, endangered Steller sea lions, and Pacific cod spawning grounds. Subsistence fishing and hunting by Alaska Natives also occur in this expanse. Despite the region’s important cultural significance and remarkable…
The United Nations has declared March 21 the International Day of Forests: a day, in the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, "dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of all types of forests and trees to our economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being.”
But a close colleague of Friends of the Earth’s forest program, Wally Menne of Timberwatch, South Africa, suggests that the day should more likely be named “the International Day of Mourning…
Three years ago this month an earthquake struck Eastern Japan, sparking a tsunami and a triple reactor meltdown in Fukushima. While the disaster has faded from much of the world’s memory, it is an ongoing tragedy for the 83,000 residents of Eastern Japan waiting to return home to an evacuation zone the size of Connecticut. Tokyo Electric Power Company, commonly known as TEPCO, and the Japanese government continue to struggle cleaning up the reactor…
In a new issue brief, Friends of the Earth Europe and other allies detail the potential threats that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a massive trade deal currently being negotiated between the EU and the United States, brings to the efforts to control fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing).
The scale of TTIP is huge, and threatens to roll back safety, health and environmental safeguards on food, chemicals and fossil fuels. The proposed…
Friends of the Earth is asking for a clarification of relationships between the former United States National Security Adviser and proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline.
On Thursday, March 13, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a hearing entitled "Keystone XL and the National Interest Determination." The Committee has invited distinguished guests to discuss the why the pipeline shouldn’t be constructed, including climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, who retired from NASA to join…
As trade negotiators from the United States and the European Union gather in Brussels for the latest round in negotiations for the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP), twenty-nine environmental, farm, and consumer groups sent a letter yesterday to United States Trade Representative Michael Froman. The groups sounded the alarm about the demands that the meat industry is lobbying for in the deal. The "meat and feed industries on both sides of the Atlantic…
A harrowing new film entitled All is Loststarring Robert Redford, whose character tests his mettle against the sea, features an item familiar to many in the maritime and logistics communities: the shipping container. I’ve yet to see the movie, but the trailer starts out with Redford’s character’s yacht being punctured by an overboard container and the vessel taking in water. Although the risk of this occurring in real life is minor, it does…
As the Green Climate Fund board gathers in Bali this week for its latest meeting, 80 civil society organizations sent a letter to GCF board members sounding the alarm about the attempted corporate takeover of the Green Climate Fund.
The letter cites several concrete and troubling examples of how multinational corporations have insinuated themselves into the governance and design of the GCF. A few include:
Within the general UN Framework Convention on Climate Change process,…
On April 15, 2013, Friends of the Earth filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department asking for all communications with Environmental Resources Management, TransCanada and a host of lobbyists hired by Alberta and TransCanada. After months of foot-dragging Friends of the Earth was forced to sue the State Department in July, resulting in a court-supervised agreement for them to start turning over documents. Although we continue to believe that the…