Both ENDS
Two projects insured by Atradius DSB in the Brazilian port of Suape have caused serious social problems and environmental damage. Both ENDS is helping the local people to obtain justice.
January 25th, 2024 is the solemn 5-year mark of the Brumadinho upstream mining dam collapse, Brazil’s worst environmental and industrial disaster that killed 272 innocent people and unleashed 12 million cubic metres of ore tailing into the surrounding areas including the Paraopeba River – a crucial tributary of the second largest river in the country.
Both ENDS calls on the government only to provide export credit insurance to sustainable projects that cause no social and/or environmental damage in the countries where they take place.
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.
In April 2021, the Dutch development bank FMO announced that it is no longer involved in the Barro Blanco project, a controversial dam in Panama. GENISA, the Panamanian company that built the dam, unexpectedly paid off the multi-million dollar loan early. The question is to what extent, now that the bank is no longer actively financing the project, FMO can still be held responsible for the damage and suffering that was caused when this was still the case.
At the moment, Argentina is going through difficult times in terms of politics, related to the growth of institutional violence and that is why FARN believes passionately that the defense of the environment is also the defense of human rights, the defense of a good life for people, the defense of justice, of equity. So they fight passionately for greater access to information and for people to live better.
Utrecht/Amsterdam, 27 September 2022 - On Wednesday 28 September, Dutch civil society organisations will organise a protest at the offices of oil giant TotalEnergies in The Hague, drawing attention to the problems surrounding the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Uganda. They are calling on investors to get out of TotalEnergies because of this project, which is causing human rights violations and serious environmental pollution. Two weeks ago the European Parliament passed a resolution against the human rights violations linked to EACOP.
The United States Senate has sent a letter to the US Treasury, calling for better enforcement of the World Bank’s social and environmental rules. These rules, the so called ‘safeguards’, are meant to prevent the World Banks projects from causing social and environmental damage. But these safeguards are not always adhered to, and are likely to become even weaker as the Bank’s Board is currently revising them. Therefore, Pieter Jansen from Both ENDS, together with different partners from civil society organisations from all over the world, informed Republicans as well as Democrats about the negative consequences of the investments of the World Bank on local communities. Successfully, as the letter shows.
