On the 29th of May Sjef Langeveld took leave from his office as director of Both ENDS and introduced Daniëlle Hirsch to replace him. The farm of Sjef in the beautiful surroundings of the village of Chaam was the setting for a day filled with memories, but above all ideas for the future.
Last week the Hunger 4 Action Conference’ , the Second Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change took place in Hanoi. More than one hundred Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), including Both ENDS, signed a letter in which they express their concern about the conference. Crucial topics would hardly be addressed, and the voice of small farmers, cattle-breeders and fishermen would not be heard while they are responsible for about 70 percent of global food production. The letter, which also contains suggestions about how it should be, was sent to the outgoing minister Maxime Verhagen, one of the organizers of the conference.
Both ENDS letter to the World Bank on the Environmental and Social Safeguards policies review. The World Bank safeguards review is part of a reorganization that aims at making lending cost-effective with less rules in place, which likely entails an increase in the number of problem projects. The reorganization aims at making lending
more cost-effective, forms in place. Safeguards policies are of crucial importance for project affected people to hold banks to account. However, Environmental and Social Frameworks (ESF) nowadays replace safeguards at banks. The ESF model leads to a reduction of a Bank's direct and mandatory role in overview, including due diligence, monitoring, and evaluation, of Bank funded activities and investments, along with a shift towards a greater reliance on client self-assessment and self-reporting. Our main ask is a return to binding, rules-based safeguards policies at banks.
About one in every six people, particularly women, directly rely on forests for their lives and livelihoods, especially for food. This shows how important non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and forests are to ensure community resilience. Not only as a source of food, water and income, but also because of their cultural and spiritual meaning.
Almost a billion people worldwide have to survive without clean drinking water and millions of people don't have proper sanitary provisions. This causes a lot of health risks. Managing water is a source of conflict in many areas and ill water management is one the biggest problems in providing clean water. From 12 until 17 March, Both ENDS will be attending the sixth World Water Forum (WWF) in Marseille which is held every three years since 1997. The theme this year is 'Time for Solutions'. At the WWF, deputies from local communities, together with NGO's, policy makers and companies will be searching for solutions for worldwide water issues.
This week, a special rapporteur of the United Nations spoke out against the opening of an open-pit coalmine in Phulbari in the northwestern part of Bangladesh. He did this because of the enormous human rights violations this project might lead to. A year ago, the International Accountability Project (IAP) presented a proposal for research on this subject to a number of UN Special Rapporteurs. Olivier de Schutter (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food) has worked on the proposal since then. From the start, Both ENDS has been active within several networks that are trying to prevent the opening of this coalmine.
Koussanar, in eastern Senegal, is a small town that is expanding rapidly, surrounded by villages still rooted in rural and nomadic life. The region is hot and dry, which is exacerbated by climate change. The soil in the region is also dry and often exhausted due to a combination of factors such as unsustainable agricultural practices, (peanut) monoculture, intensive agriculture, forest fires and overgrazing. Today, however, the region's farmers and nomadic pastoralists take a different approach. They are working towards a better future by committing to the restoration of degraded land using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR).