On Monday 11 May, at the government's request, the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV) published an emergency advisory report on how the Netherlands can make an effective contribution to the worldwide fight against the Corona virus. Together with companies, scientists and environmental, human rights and development organisations, Both ENDS is today presenting a response to this report, in which we make a number of suggestions for…
Whenever deforestation is mentioned, most people will automatically think of the Amazon rainforest. In Argentina, however, the disappearance of its forests has also become a pressing problem. In the province of Salta, for example, the deforestation level is the highest. Between 1998 and 2006, the…
Today, June 17th, is the World Day to Combat Desertification. For this occasion, we have put together the following images illustrating the beauty…
Why is Dutch public money used to sponsor the world’s largest chicken factory farm in Ukraine , when we don’t even accept the production of broiler chicken on our own soil? That was the central parliamentary question raised by the Party for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren) in August 2012, just after Both ENDS and its Ukrainian partner NECU published the report Dutch money, strange meat. Now, three years later, the factory farms of Myronivsky Hliboproduct(MHP) keep expanding. And the massive slaughtering of more than 300 million chickens a year is still made possible by the Dutch tax…
Pak Japin is a quiet, slim, and softly-spoken man from the village of Silat Hulu, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. I met him at a recent documentary screening in Bali on the fringe of the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) annual conference, where he spoke about his community's nine year-long…
Last week, the first tickets for the World Cup in Brazil went on sale. A total number of around 3.3 million tickets will be available, costing between $90 and $990 each. But who will benefit? Recent demonstrations in Brazil have revealed that the World Cup in 2014 is not all good news, as the majority of the Brazilians seemed to have believed for a long time. Our colleagues from CASA, a Brazilian small grants organisation focusing on environmental…
Palm oil production is widely associated with land grabs, human rights violations, large scale monoculture and severe environmental damage. Positive examples in the palm oil sector are rarely highlighted, but fortunately they do exist. Companies like Musim Mas and Bumitama in Indonesia are leading a much needed shift to a more environmentally and socially responsible way of palm oil production. Recently, Ms. Lim Sian Choo, Head of Corporate Secretarial Services and of Corporate Social Responsibility of Bumitama was in the Netherlands for an informal meeting organised by AidEnvironment and Both ENDS. Representatives from the private sector, NGOs and government were also present to discuss concrete steps taken by Bumitama to…
“5 million hectares in the Niger desert has been transformed into a lush landscape, where trees flourish, crops prosper and livestock thrives!” dr.Abasse Tougiane exclaims enthusiastically. “This is an area larger than the Netherlands!” We are present at the lecture about the successful initiative to regreen Niger, given by Abasse and his colleague Toudou Adam at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The room is almost completely full; obviously not only officials of Foreign Affairs, but also scientists, delegates from NGO’s and representatives from the private sector are interested in the subject. The question on…