Interviews


“We want a living rural world”

On October 27-28, Friends of the Earth Spain, together with La Vía Campesina Europe and other agrarian, cattle farming, environmental and consumption groups celebrated “The Days of Action for Good Food” demanding changes in the food system based on policies that promote healthy food for the people and the planet. “We´ve been seeing for years that the European food system…

Drop by drop

In 2004, Uruguay was the first country that enshrined the access to drinking water as a human right and a common good, not a commodity, in its Constitution. The irrigation law passed by the Parliament in 2017 authorizes private companies to bottle and sell water, that is, against what is established in the National Constitution. On October 26, several civil…

The process continues

The resolutions and conclusions of the Intergovernmental Working Group submitted by Luis Gallegos, permanent representative of Ecuador at the UN and chair of the negotiations, were approved, but the representatives of the European Union were the only ones there who did not agree with the conclusions. Now the chair will present a revised version of the binding instrument before June…

Close to the victims

“As Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), we are here (at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva) because we are working with communities, and those communities are affected by transnationals corporations, so we need a Binding Treaty to hold accountable those transnationals which violated human rights”, said Kwami Kpondzo, from FOEI, in an interview with Real World Radio. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txedt5BnvZo&feature=youtu.be[/embed] Kwami,…

“The European Commission is the most obscure power of all”

MEP Lola Sánchez, of Podemos Party, Spain, said this Monday in Geneva (Switzerland) that the head of the European Union delegation at  the UN negotiations for a binding treaty on transnational corporations and human rights, Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, “does not represent us, because he doesn´t have an official mandate”. “We really don´t know where his opinions come from”, said Sánchez in…

The EU and the Corporate Impunity Nexus

“The EU, in obstructing the process, is using the exact same arguments of the corporate lobbies and that's because there is a corporate capture of the EU and also increasingly of the UN”, denounced Juliette Renaud, Senior Campaigner on Corporate Accountability at Friends of the Earth France, with reference to the negotiation process at the United Nations for the building…

Starting Over

In the past few hours, different international media have reported about the end of the rescue works  after the terrible earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck the central region of the Indonesian island of Celebes (also known as Sulawesi), on September 28th. The official death toll nears 2000. There are 10,000 injured people and around 5000 remain missing. After the…

The fight against climate change

“Mobilizing and using people power is actually crucial to face the climate emergency”, said Friends of the Earth International´s Climate Justice and Energy Program Coordinator, Sara Shaw. A radical systemic change is needed, she warned. From this Saturday to October 13th, the member groups of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), present in 75 countries, will mobilize together to highlight…

It´s time for Peasants´ Rights

Ana María Suárez Franco, permanent representative of FIAN International in Geneva, Switzerland shares an update on the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and its process of approval at the UN´s Human Rights Council that is expected on Friday September 28. “To protect, respect and fulfil the rights of peasants”, who defend territories, is the aim of the Declaration, which…

Plantations are not forests

This day is to “mark the struggle against monoculture tree plantations, to celebrate the struggles at global level which have succeeded in stopping the advance of monocultures or in exposing their impacts or highlighting that monoculture tree plantations are not something positive, as the public opinion is told in order to justify industrial land grabbing actions and strong environmental, social…