The post Get Bank of America Back On Track: Background for AGM 2024 appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>2023 was the hottest year on record, and last year, world nations reached a landmark agreement to “transition global energy systems away from fossil fuels” but instead of strengthening its positions and policies to reflect the scope and severity of the climate crisis and international resolve to act on it, Bank of America is backtracking on longstanding, as well as recently committed to, climate and human rights policies and safeguards.
At Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting on April 24th, shareholders have the opportunity to demand accountability from how the bank, which is the world’s 4th largest cumulative financier of fossil fuels, is acting to address mounting climate risks to our global financial system. Shareholders have an opportunity to vote in favor of two resolutions that call on the bank to improve the level of transparency communicated to shareholders and investors around the bank’s lobbying activities (proposal #6) and the bank’s relative levels of financing to clean versus fossil energy activities (proposal #7). Shareholders will also have the option to vote to remove Clayton Rose, Bank of America’s Risk Committee Chair, following an exempt solicitation filed by Majority Action today. All three shareholder actions carry significant climate implications.
Since the beginning of the year, Bank of America has removed explicit bans on financing coal and Arctic drilling projects (weakening its own policies put in place just two years ago). It has also withdrawn from the Equator Principles which apply fundamental environmental and human rights standards to financing granted for projects around the world. Bank of America is also the only major global bank to approve financing for Australia’s Whitehaven coal company to acquire two mines for metallurgical coal extraction.
Now Bank of America is unwilling to publish its own financing ratios for how much money it is funneling towards fossil fuel versus clean energy activities or even provide fuller disclosure around its lobbying activity. The bank issued its proxy report on Monday March 11th laying out its reasons for why shareholders should vote against these two climate-relevant resolutions. The Bank’s main defense boils down to a claim that they are either already providing information called for in the resolutions or that that information can already be sourced from third parties. Both these assertions dismiss the desire being voiced by major investors for even greater levels of transparency.
Providing transparency on clean energy financing ratios is a basic pillar of the bank’s fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders and investors. An institution’s financing ratio serves as a clear indicator of its funding priorities and how the ratio changes year-on-year illustrates the credibility of its transition plan for reaching net zero targets.
Bank of America’s argument that the analysis of third party data firms (like BNEF) negates the need for the Bank to perform and share its own internal accounting is akin to saying “Why bother doing our own homework when we can just copy off someone else?” Bank of America’s argument is also undermined by the actions of its peers; both JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup have agreed to publish their respective financing ratios. In addition to being negligent, Bank of America’s claim that publishing its own financing ratio would be redundant is designed to keep prying eyes away from its books and suggest that third party estimates are complete and sufficient even when the authors of those estimates explicitly cite data access issues as key limitations of their models. When combined with the Bank’s walk back of foundational environmental and human rights standards, the Bank’s approach highlights severe deficits in risk management that far from being merely missteps are unmistakable indicators of a misguided course.
Shareholders, as guardians of the bank’s direction, must signal their disapproval of current risk stewardship and demand accountability by voting to remove Clayton Rose, the Chair of the Enterprise Risk Committee. It’s time for a reset, with leadership that recognizes the integral role of sustainability and transparency in the bank’s long-term success and its responsibilities to the planet and its people.
Fact-Checking Proxy Report Claims On Proposal #7 (Shareholder proposal requesting disclosure of clean energy financing ratio):
The New York City Employees’ Retirement System (comprised of the NYC Comptroller’s Office and the NYC/NYS pension funds) introduced the same resolution at six major US and Canadian banks requesting a transparency measure for the bank to disclose its relative levels of financing to clean versus fossil energy activities. They released their own arguments in favor of proposal 7 in the form of 10 reasons to vote for the proposal.
Financial experts at BloombergNEF modeled that financing for clean energy must outpace financing for carbon intensive energy by a factor of 4:1 this decade, increasing to 6:1 or 7:1 by the end of the decade if the world is going to meet its goal of slashing global emissions in half by 2030. BNEF developed the methodology to calculate a Low-carbon to Fossil Fuel Energy Supply Investment Ratio (ESIR) and a Low-carbon to Fossil Fuel Energy Supply Banking Ratio (ESBR) for both individual financial institutions and averaged across the banking and investment sectors.
Bank of America is the world’s 4th largest cumulative financier of fossil fuels, having pumped $280B into fossil fuels since 2016 and approximately $35.4B in 2022 alone. The Bank has also made a pledge to increase its financing for clean energy to $1T by 2030.
As of 2021 data analyzed by BloombergNEF, Bank of America funded low carbon and high carbon transaction activities in equal proportion (a ratio of 1:1). However, in order for Bank of America to comply with a 1.5˚C compatible trajectory of slashing global emissions in half by 2030, the Bank must increase its funding of low carbon transaction activity by a factor of at least four relative to its funding for high carbon transaction activities.
That means that Bank of America must rapidly shift its portfolio behavior and make demonstrable progress scaling up support for clean energy and scaling down its support for dirty energy year-on-year. That progress, or lack thereof, captured in a yearly updated financing ratio must be accessible information for shareholders as it will show if the Bank is serious about taking commensurate action to advance the global energy transition, achieve its own transition and net zero plans, and address climate financial risks including physical, asset, legal, regulatory, and reputational risks.
While BNEF will continue to calculate these ratios for individual banks and the broader economy using the best available data, they explicitly cite data availability as a limitation of their model. To date BNEF uses mostly external data sources and estimations to derive their measurements, not bank-supplied data contrary to what Bank of America claims in their proxy note to shareholders. Banks must begin calculating and publishing these ratios themselves. Moreover, Bank of America already committed to collecting the requisite data from its internal operations and clients in its Approach to Zero plan. Meanwhile, BNEF figures will remain a crucial check to keep banks honest.
Bank of America’s argument to its shareholders that it doesn’t need to provide them with data they can get from a third party is an abdication of its responsible governance. It’s like saying, “Why bother doing our own homework when we can just copy off someone else?” Bank of America’s argument is also undermined by the actions of its peers; both JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup have agreed to publish their respective financing ratios.
Bank of America’s reluctance to disclose its energy financing ratio is part of a broader pattern of transparency shortcomings, which include inadequate disclosure of the bank’s efforts to reduce its overall emissions and in its management of transition finance. BOA has made crucial progress in setting targets for reducing emissions from high-emitting sectors including but not limited to its financing for energy and power sector activities. But BOA has still only committed to reducing the carbon intensity of its lending and not to setting absolute emissions reduction targets for these sector activities. Transparency on changes in the carbon intensity of bank portfolios is already incomplete transparency on the actual level of emissions generated by the bank’s portfolio. BOA can’t point to an already deficient disclosure practice as justification for why it doesn’t need to provide more data, disclosures, and information to its investors, clients and shareholders.
Transition finance is a critical area of bank activity but it requires more disclosure and transparency not less and the transparency that exists currently is not sufficient to meet BOA’s fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders. It is because transition finance has blended elements of sustainable and high-carbon support that investors and shareholders need as much information and consistent disclosure about these practices as possible. Financing support to help clients transition away from fossil fuels is critical but must be accompanied by rigorous measurement against clear benchmarks to ensure that bank clients are making unambiguous, rapid, and science-aligned progress. If client’s can’t show measurable decarbonization progress then banks, like BOA, must pull back from funding them or be branded as greenwashers.
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]]>The post We Vacationed with the World’s Biggest Pillagers in Boca Raton appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>But it wasn’t all fun in the sun: Conference headliners at this year’s event included Mondelēz International and Procter & Gamble — two of the world’s worst drivers of tropical deforestation, which is responsible for up to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The irony that CAGNY took place in Boca Raton, located in a region facing catastrophic sea-level rise due to climate change, was not lost on the human rights and environmental activists in attendance. Their message to event organizers was clear: Clean up your supply chains or face the consequences.
Most major brands have made public policy promises to stop sourcing “forest-risk commodities” such as palm oil, soy and beef from bad actors. Alarmingly, many of them, including Mondelēz International and Procter & Gamble, are still receiving failing grades on RAN’s annual Keep Forests Standing Scorecard.
This inaction poses extreme risks to forests, frontline communities, and our climate, but one lesser-known risk is to investors and consumer goods companies themselves. New requirements for deforestation-free supply chains under the precedent-setting European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) create a major financial risk for non-compliant companies — and most are nowhere near compliance.
To underscore these points, we disseminated informational postcards during a presentation by one of the conference’s worst offenders, Mondelēz International, the maker of ubiquitous brands like Oreo and Ritz. Security escorted us out while we politely but loudly explained the risks to tropical forests associated with Mondelēz’ commodity sourcing to investors.
Before leaving the resort, we slipped some copies of our KFS Scorecard under conference attendees’ doors — ideal beach reading for a winter retreat along Florida’s vanishing coastline.
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]]>The post Profiles in Community Action: RAN’s Community Action Grants Program in 2023 appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>The CAG program offers easy-to-access grants to frontline groups actively fighting climate change in their communities. These grants can provide a lifeline for communities and organizations that may face challenges gaining access to more traditional funding sources. Since 1993, RAN has distributed more than $6.5 million through over 1,000 grants to frontline communities. In 2023 alone, RAN provided more than $800,000 in support through 86 grants in 17 countries, from the forests of Indonesia to the Amazon to the US Gulf South.
RAN’s Community Action Grants are also diverse in nature because they are initiatives that are grounded in each frontline organization’s unique strategies and organizing style. In 2023, CAG partners created projects to secure land rights, highlight the negative impacts that LNG has on communities, provide training on the intersection of land defense and security, create networks of black and indigenous environmental activists, and even mobilize voters in a referendum against fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon.
In March 2023, RAN provided the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe in south Texas with a $10,000 grant to support Bridges to the Ancestors, a youth-led run/walk to raise awareness about methane’s (LNG) toxic impacts, while building alliances across West Texas and down the Rio Grande Valley. The 10-day journey, beginning in late March, passed through frontline communities impacted by LNG, with the goal of highlighting how different facets of LNG affect the community, from extraction and transportation to processing and export. The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe used the walk to connect and collaborate with other Indigenous Peoples resisting fossil fuels, including a series of nine ‘Town Hall’ meetings organized within the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe’s ancestral territory.
The CAG program works to strengthen the tools environmental defenders can wield to protect their territory. In May 2023, RAN granted $20,000 to support a delegation of 40 Indigenous people from 14 countries and four continents to travel to the Ecuadorian Amazon to participate in an event organized by Digital Democracy for Earth Defenders. Participants received training on Digital Democracy’s Earth Defenders Toolkit, learned from other Indigenous peoples, shared strategies, and built collective power. Free digital tools were introduced in local languages that can be used for mapping territory, data collecting and monitoring, storytelling, and collaborating and sharing information within communities and with partners. At a time when earth defenders are facing unprecedented repression and even death, trainings like this are fundamental to ensuring our partners can conduct their advocacy work with increased security and visibility.
RAN’s CAG program has been at the forefront of supporting major victories against extractivism and for the right of Indigenous people to exercise their autonomy, with the victory of the Yasunidos campaign an important recent milestone. The campaign successfully sought to convince the Ecuadorian people to vote to keep the “Ishpingo – Tiputini – Tambococha” (ITT) oil fields, known as block 43, permanently in the ground underneath the northeast part of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon, among the most biodiverse places on Earth and home to Indigenous Peoples living in isolation. This meant new drilling plans would be stopped, and all existing wells and extractive infrastructure would be progressively closed down. After the referendum passed in August 2023 with nearly 55 percent of the vote, it made international news and showed a model for hope in a world that seems to be heading toward climate disaster. RAN is proud to have supported an organizing and media campaign to get the referendum passed with a $10,000 grant from the CAG program.
In April 2023, Indigenous land defender Delima Silalahi was nominated by RAN and won the prestigious Goldman Prize for organizing Batak Toba communities in North Sumatra, Indonesia, against the notorious, rainforest-destroying pulp and paper giant TPL. Delima is the Executive Director of KSPPM, which led a campaign to secure legal stewardship of 17,824 acres of tropical forest land for six Indigenous communities, reclaiming this territory from TPL, which had partially converted it into a monoculture, non-native, industrial eucalyptus plantation. The six communities have begun restoring the forests, creating valuable carbon sinks of biodiverse Indonesian tropical forests. This work has been supported in the past by Community Action Grants, and RAN provided additional grant funding in 2023 for ongoing work with 23 Indigenous Tano Batak communities in the Lake Toba region as part of a multi-year effort to secure land rights to more than 50,000 acres.
In another region of Indonesia, RAN supported ongoing efforts to secure Indigenous Forest recognition for the Long Isun community in East Kalimantan. In addition to our ongoing Community Action Grants funding to the community this year, RAN launched a case study highlighting the Long Isun community’s fight for their land rights, and work is ongoing to pressure large multinational brands and banks to stop deforestation in Borneo’s vanishing rainforests. The formal recognition of community land rights is moving forward as government officials made site visits accompanied by Perkumpulan Nurani Perempuan supported by our Community Action Grants program. Project activities include supporting work aligning community members around shared priorities, submitting relevant documentation to regional government agencies, facilitating a boundary resolution process with a neighboring village necessary to finalize the recognition, and pushing to move the process forward through communications work and public pressure.
CAG facilitates lasting connections and solidarity between frontline communities through grants that support gatherings and knowledge exchanges. In October 2023, CAG granted $25,000 to support an anti-mining camp and the Black and Indigenous Liberation Movement gathering in Ecuador. The camp brought together 27 Black and Indigenous activists from across the Americas in the heart of Kichwa territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon to share knowledge with the Kichwa people and learn tactics and approaches from their struggle against mining in their territory. The gathering also allowed the Black Indigenous Movement to conduct their annual conference, define strategy, and work on communications narratives. Through grants like this, RAN can help center and uplift the narratives of frontline communities across the globe and help create lasting connections between these communities.
In 2023, Brazil saw historic changes in Indigenous representation following the election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. President Lula da Silva appointed long-term Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara as the first minister for the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. Additionally, Joênia Wapichana, the first Indigenous congresswoman in the country, was appointed by Lula to be the president of FUNAI, the main government body for Indigenous affairs, both of which are firsts for Indigenous women in Brazilian history.
To further support Indigenous rights in Brazil, RAN provided $50,000 through Community Action Grants (and in partnership with Global Greengrants Fund) to support three major Indigenous-led mobilizations in 2023. During the Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL) in April, the theme was Demarcação Já, or “Demarcation Now!” Demarcation is the Brazilian government’s process for the formal recognition and titling of Indigenous lands. These demonstrations resulted in President Lula’s announcement of six new officially recognized Indigenous territories, marking a historic milestone in the multi-generational struggle for Indigenous rights, self-determination, and autonomy. One of the Indigenous territories entering the final steps of the demarcation process is Sawré Muybu, the Munduruku Indigenous land that 2023 Goldman Prize Winner Alessandra Munduruku and her community have been working to get formally recognized for decades. RAN has supported Munduruku land rights and women’s leadership initiatives many times through CAG in close collaboration with our partner, Amazon Watch.
CAG is a key component of RAN’s work, ensuring that frontline communities, particularly Indigenous communities, are able to access funds critical to progress their own work. The program serves to decolonize these funding networks, reflective of the inequalities between the Global North and Global South and the histories of extractivism and colonialism, by facilitating access to funds for organizations that may not be able to access these funding networks. The program is enhanced by RAN’s diverse global team of advisers in constant contact with frontline communities in every corner of the globe.
In 2024, with the help of our supporters, RAN will continue to fund new projects from Frontline communities through our Community Action Grants program. Look forward to stories about projects that RAN will be supporting in the Amazon, the Gulf South, and throughout Asia in the upcoming months through our Profiles in Community Action series.
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]]>The post Charting Our Course: Rainforest Action Network’s Five-Year Strategic Plan appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>For nearly 40 years, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has undertaken bold campaigns to hold some of the world’s biggest corporations accountable for business models that are linked to forest destruction, loss of biodiversity, climate change, and the marginalization of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights and livelihoods.
Thank you for being a crucial part of our Network.
We now find ourselves in 2024 — six years until the indisputable, internationally agreed upon deadline to cut global emissions by half if we want to mitigate the most disastrous effects of climate change. In developing our ambitious five-year strategic plan over the past year, we have reflected on the impact of our four decades of challenging corporate power and systemic injustice while considering how our campaigns can evolve to meet the growing urgency of our times.
RAN’s core mission, strategies and commitment to activism are unchanged, and more necessary than ever to respond to the scale of ecological and social crises being fueled by profit-driven interests. We remain resolute in our commitment to preserve forests, protect the climate, and uphold human rights.
You can click this link to download and read through our entire strategic plan. And following are highlights of our big picture organizational strategy, major wins from the past five years, and specific ways that our campaigns will continue to have the biggest impact.
Over the past five years, we have achieved significant progress and wins across our campaigns.
Photo: Paul Hilton for RAN
Photo: Erik McGregor
Photo: Erik McGregor
In short, the past five years have proven time and again that RAN is uniquely placed among movement allies to build and sustain bridges between forest, climate, and human rights issues. This intersectional work shows up in RAN’s organizing work and direct actions, our inside/outside corporate engagement strategy, and extensive research, communications, and digital activism. Combined, this work provides a crucial value addition to the broader movement as we navigate the next five years and move toward a Just Transition.
Over the next five years, while our mission and vision remain the same, our increased capacity from the significant growth we have experienced and the success of our previous campaigns are allowing us to expand our programs to meet the urgency of our times. Following are highlights of how RAN will continue to have the biggest impact over the next five years.
Keep Forests Standing
Over the next five years, RAN will protect tropical biodiversity from corporate expansion and support the rights of Indigenous and traditional peoples to control and manage their territories. This means we will focus on ending expansion in areas with significant Intact Forest Landscapes where Indigenous or traditional communities are opposing industrial logging and agribusiness development on their lands. This work will be guided by a few core principles — respecting human rights, supporting community forest management and remediation, promoting food sovereignty, and demanding corporate accountability.
Protecting Our Climate
Over the next five years, RAN will work to stop the expansion of fossil fuels, phase out all fossil fuels to limit warming to below 1.5C, and enable a Just Transition to people-centered energy systems that support the rights of Indigenous peoples and frontline communities. We will focus on corporate campaigns that pursue inside / outside strategies, partnerships with frontline communities, and in-depth research and policy analysis.
Partner Support and Community Action Grants
RAN will continue to leverage our resources and positional power to build a stronger movement by financially supporting grassroots groups and by seeking, respecting, and being accountable to leadership from grassroots, frontline, and Indigenous leaders. We will advance our goals through the Community Action Grants (CAG) program that provides direct grants to the frontlines.
People Power
At the center of our mission is a commitment to people power. We believe creativity, integrity, and people power drive the success in our campaigns and move us toward achieving our mission. And right now people are more motivated than ever to address the climate crisis. We will continue to build people power through building authentic partnerships with frontline and fenceline allies, building strong coalitions with other nonprofits working toward similar goals, providing direct support to community partners through our grantmaking program, sharing our research with the activist community, and providing leadership, organizing, logistic, and communication support to bold actions designed to hold corporations and banks accountable for their actions.
Racial Justice
RAN will continue to incorporate racial justice, human rights and equity into our programs, partnerships and operations as well as expand our analysis to incorporate international and intersectional frameworks. With our partners, we will bring culturally responsive and global racial justice analysis into our campaigns. We will also infuse principles of a Just Transition toward a people centered economy across our programs.
The victories we achieved over the past five years — from groundbreaking bank policies ruling out financing for new oil and gas, to data indicating a decrease in deforestation rates in Indonesia, to the first policy by a US insurer to respect Indigenous consent, and more — were the result of the tireless efforts from RAN, our partners, and YOU. And they are proof that our time-tested theory of change, and the power of our collective vision for a just and sustainable future, works.
In the next five years, with your support, we will leverage the growing momentum of last year’s achievements, and the global movement toward a just and sustainable future, to expand our campaigns and build on the work that you’ve made possible.
I cannot overstate the impact of your commitment to people and planet. We truly appreciate your investment in this work.
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]]>The post Banking on Biodiversity Collapse: Inaugural Report Reveals Major Bank and Investor Policies Accelerating Deforestation, Biodiversity Destruction, and Rights Violations appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>The inaugural report, Banking on Biodiversity Collapse, launched on ‘Finance Day’ at COP28 by the Forests & Finance Coalition. The report maps commercial financial flows to the forest-sector operations of 300 companies within six forest-risk commodity sectors – beef, palm oil, pulp and paper, rubber, soy, and timber – collectively causing the most tropical deforestation globally. This report lays out the role that banks and investors play to drive deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change, and human rights abuses in tropical forest regions through credits and investments. By making lofty pledges on sustainability without any real transparency or accountability, finance are enabling bad actors and are complicit in driving biodiversity collapse.
Banks and financiers invest billions in forest destruction
We assessed over 100 financial institutions and found that financial flows to the forest-risk commodity sector are dominated by banks in Brazil, Indonesia, China, the United States, and Japan, collectively representing 73% of all recorded credit since 2016. We also found that from January 2016 to September 2023, banks provided at least US$307 billion in credit. Moreover, institutional investors held US$38 billion in shares and bonds as of September 2023, with 66% of this total coming from just two countries, the United States and Malaysia.
Our analysis shows that financial institutions’ existing policies that claim to mitigate the risks and impacts to forests and communities are dangerously inadequate. The findings suggest that much of the finance is being provided without the necessary safeguards to prevent deforestation and other social and environmental harms.
We looked at case studies of four corporations – JBS, Cargill, Royal Golden Eagle, and Sinar Mas Group – to showcase the type of egregious client behaviors that are tolerated and facilitated by banks and investors. These corporations have extensive legacies of land grabbing in Indigenous and local communities, rights abuses, greenhouse gas emissions, and unceasing deforestation. Unfortunately, the behaviors in these case studies are emblematic of the bad practices allowed by financiers across the sector. Despite mounting evidence, banks and investors appear to be systematically ignoring harms in order to maintain highly profitable business relationships.
Systemic solutions are needed to end systemic biodiversity collapse
The financial sector appears to be failing to address its role in environmental destruction and rights abuses. Governments and financial institutions need to act now to address the climate and biodiversity crises. This report advocates for governments to step in and mandate financial sector regulation necessary to safeguard society and the ecosystems on which we all depend. This is a systemic problem which ultimately demands stronger, more systemic interventions.
We call on governments and the financial sector to adopt 5 basic principles: halt and reverse biodiversity loss, respect and prioritize the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, foster a just transition, ensure ecosystem integrity, and align institutional objectives across sectors.
At a time when catastrophic climate impacts are felt around the world, and critical ecosystems that enable a liveable planet are on the brink of failure while the people defending their lands and rights are being threatened and criminalized – business as usual is no longer an option.
Read the full report and learn more on the Banking on Biodiversity Collapse landing page. You can also engage with our full Financial flows dataset and policy assessments on the Forest & Finance platform, and read the latest news, analysis and blogs relevant to forests and finance issues.
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]]>The post Breaking the Fracking Cycle: From Texas LNG to Europe appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>Once the gas is liquefied, it’s transported via tanker ships across the Atlantic to LNG import terminal facilities. The tanker ships dock at the LNG import terminal site, and the liquefied gas is put into storage tanks to be processed back into a gas for electricity. Many European countries have built LNG import terminals or have plans to build new ones, like Germany, which has five planned LNG terminal sites. Construction and operation of these LNG facilities are highly destructive to the pristine lands the facilities are built on; industrialization impacts the surrounding community with explosion risks, and the emissions would damage the public’s health.
We visited and met with several German community organizations impacted by existing and proposed LNG import terminals; these communities refuse to be used by the German government and fossil fuel corporations for the build-out of the fracking cycle. We toured the Stade community to see a proposed site of an LNG import terminal that plans to receive gas from the US Gulf Coast; activists here pointed at the open water in their ship channel where a company would dock an LNG ship.
In Wilhelmshaven, we stood without proper coats with German activists in the windy, cold weather with intermittent hail falling on us at the port where a floating LNG terminal docked. Reporters listened to us as we explained what life is like for our communities in Texas dealing with LNG export terminals and dangerous fracking that feeds import terminals like the floating one in Wilhelmshaven.
In Texas, fracking sites can be seen next to daycares and in low-income communities of color where there’s little to no access to healthcare. I shared my personal story of attending a university in a North Texas town with fracking on campus, next to the football stadium, and the drill underneath the school. During my college life, we saw video footage of cancer-causing emissions from the drilling site billowing into the dorms, which was painful to watch, especially knowing that we were facing compounding student loan debt. The citizens of Denton, TX, voted to ban fracking in 2014, and the State of Texas immediately responded by passing a ban on fracking bans. While most European countries have banned fracking, the fossil fuel industry’s influence on the Texas government ensured that right was taken away from us—yet another hypocrisy we highlighted during the tour.
Chloe Torres, an organizer with Texas Campaign for the Environment, spoke to reporters about living near the Corpus Christi LNG export terminal in the Coastal Bend region of Texas, which actively sends tanker ships of liquid gas to this floating terminal. Chloe talked about “enormous flares, huge balls of fire,” and people mistaking the torches for the sunset.
In Berlin, we joined a panel about communities facing LNG. We heard from German activists from Ruegen Island fighting a proposed LNG import terminal that could ultimately take over and devastate the island. It’s similar to the story of Quintana Island in Texas, which was turned into an industrial zone by the Freeport LNG export terminal. Freeport LNG eventually exploded last year because the company cut corners, such as not hiring enough staff; the blast resulted in a community member falling and splitting their head open. Melanie Oldham with Better Brazoria shared this story during the panel. Freeport LNG’s explosion forced a temporary shutdown, causing domestic gas prices to go down and back up again when the facility restarted. Activists from Ruegen gave each of us tokens from their island to take with us; mine was sanded beach wood with a piece of amber.
I ventured off on my own and took several trains and buses (I missed a bus twice because of the language barrier) to Sines, Portugal, a beach town and the most industrial city in Portugal. I walked 45 minutes along the Port of Sines to the front gate of the LNG import terminal owned by the Portuguese company GALP, which plans to import gas from the not-yet-built Rio Grande LNG export facility proposed for my community. Portuguese activists had sat with me the day before in a Chinese restaurant in Lisbon to tell me the story of community members who did everything they could to stop the LNG import facility.
I left Portugal knowing our community is building a relationship with Portuguese activists.
Every community I visited resisting an LNG import terminal had a similar story: their governments were working hand in hand with the fossil fuel industry to parrot falsehoods about the demand for LNG in Europe. Communities impacted by LNG in Germany and Portugal don’t need or want the gas; they won’t freeze in winter without it, and Europe is already oversupplied. Everyone we talked to agreed that this is being forced on us by corporations demanding profits.
The fracking cycle includes the process of drilling, pipelines, LNG import and export, and the corporations cutting the checks to the corporations building out this industry. European governments, corporations, and banks are directly involved in every part of the deadly fracking cycle in Texas. In Madrid, we joined a toxic tour with Spanish activists, where we went outside various corporate offices with banners and signs, and in particular to our fight, outside the office of the bank Banco Santander, which is directly financing Rio Grande LNG. In July of this year, Banco Santander gave a $1.08 billion loan to Rio Grande LNG.
Banco Santander is just one of the dozens of European investors jumping on the Rio Grande LNG project investment bandwagon. The other European investors include TotalEnergies (France), Intesa Sanpaolo (Italy), Standard Chartered Bank (UK), and HSBC (UK).
Rio Grande LNG, the Rio Bravo Pipeline that would feed gas to this project, and the nearby Texas LNG project have yet to be built. Our community opposes these projects, and local organizations have lawsuits against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that rubber-stamped authorization. It’s not a done deal, and these LNG projects are still missing additional authorizations or permits to pour concrete on the pristine lands. The Rio Grande Valley: At Risk From Fracked Gas Terminals 2023 Summary Update details the status of the projects that inform investors to pull their money out and stay away.
We’re stepping up our opposition as these LNG companies begin prematurely staging their construction equipment in our community. The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, who are the original Indigenous people of the Rio Grande Valley, have land along the route of the Rio Bravo Pipeline, where they are showing their opposition to LNG. The Tribe is against their sacred lands, becoming part of a fossil fuel extraction colony for European governments, corporations, and banks. Our low-income Latine and Indigenous communities refuse to see our wetlands, sacred lands, and neighborhoods turned into a 3,000-acre complex of fossil fuel industrial landscape with smoking flares, storage tanks, and pollution.
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]]>The post Resourcing the Movement appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>Community Action Grants provides critical and rapid funding — sometimes the very first funding — for people fighting for their own communities. CAG supports people protecting millions of acres of forest, keeping millions of tons of carbon in the ground, and protecting the human rights, land rights, labor rights and the right of self-determination for local communities across the globe.
To date, our grantmaking program has made more than one thousand grants totaling more than $6,500,000 to organizations on six continents doing critical work. This includes grantmaking in partnership with our longstanding allies at Global Greengrants Fund.
Donate to Community Action Grants
Supporting Indigenous and frontline communities has always been core to our strategy at Rainforest Action Network. Indigenous and frontline communities are the best stewards of the world’s rainforests and the best organizers against climate change. History has proven this fact time and again.
Through the years, the global and programmatic scope of CAG grantmaking has been as wide as the work has been urgent. Indigenous activists stopping oil and gas drilling in the Copper River Delta in Alaska. A women-led coalition in Northwestern Liberia fighting plantations on community land. Mexican climate organizers holding demonstrations and workshops through Central and South America as they travel to COP20, the UN climate summit in Lima, Peru. A Bunin community-led mapping coalition in Indonesia to protect lowland rainforests from development and preserve habitat for critically endangered Sumatran elephants.
RAN launched this program to support communities bearing the first and worst costs of climate change and of the dominant model of economic development. From stolen ancestral lands to child labor to intimidation and corruption to lingering health impacts of devastated landscapes and water sources.
We also launched this program specifically in response to outdated grantmaking models built around external decision-making and exclusionary conservation practices. We still field questions from those wanting to preserve forests by sealing them off from the communities that lived in harmony with them for generations. “Can I buy an acre of rainforest to protect it? How much would that cost . . ?”
For Indigenous peoples and local communities, the dispossession of lands and exclusion from decision-making processes have been the unfortunate hallmark of far too many efforts in the name of protecting biodiversity and preserving landscapes. The principle of free, prior and informed consent for any activities undertaken on Indigenous land informs RAN’s programmatic work as well as our grantmaking efforts. In short, this means self determination and building trust with our partners is key to creating impact and positive change through our grantmaking.
Although the CAG program formally began in 1993, RAN actually began transferring funds to Indigenous activists as early as the 1980s. In some cases, we provided the first grant ever received by local activists. We have seen grantees become strong, independent and powerful non-profit organizations. And we have been proud to provide consistent support to growing regional movements.
With communities of color and women led-organizations traditionally receiving much fewer grants from traditional philanthropy, we have focused on doing what we can to support those communities.
RAN has been proud to be an early and consistent supporter to women visionaries who are leading the way to environmental and social justice on multiple continents, including:
Nemonte Nenquimo
An Indigenous Waorani woman committed to defending her ancestral territory, culture, and way of life in the Amazon rainforest.
From the traditional community of Nemonpare in the Pastaza region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, Nenquimo co-founded the Indigenous-led nonprofit organization Ceibo Alliance in 2015 to protect Indigenous lands and livelihoods from resource extraction. In 2018, she was elected the first female president of the Waorani organization of her region.
Nemonte led her people in an historic legal victory against the Ecuadorian government — protecting half-a-million acres of primary rainforest in the Amazon, setting a precedent for Indigenous rights across the region and was awarded the Goldman Prize in 2020.
Farwiza Farhan
Chairperson of Forest, Nature and Environment Aceh Foundation (Yayasan HAkA), a grassroots organization based in Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia.
HAkA focuses on the conservation, protection and restoration of the Leuser Ecosystem — one of the most critical ecosystems on the planet. She has worked to increase meaningful access and involvement of local communities in the development of policy pertaining to their environment and livelihood. She was recognized with the Whitley Award in 2016.
Tara Houska
Founder of the Giniw Collective and the former campaign director of Honor the Earth.
A member of the Couchiching First Nation, Tara was born and raised in International Falls, Minnesota. She has been on the frontlines of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest in North Dakota and fight in Minnesota against Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline. She has played a lead role in convincing major banks to divest from pipeline ventures.
RAN also supports those amplifying the voices of Black, Indigenous and People of Color community members. Often on the front lines of extractive industries and deforestation, BIPOC communities are leading pipeline fights, opposing mining projects, raising the alarm on toxic leakages, and more.
Asociacion de Raíces Indígenas Amazónicas Peruanas (ARIAP) was founded in 2017 by and for Indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon. Their radio program has been a critical tool in unifying the 130 Shipibo-Konibo communities and promoting Indigenous language revitalization. They also report on uncovered stories, such as potential disastrous fossil fuel excavation on their lands.
The Hakhu Fundacion Amazonia began after the Indigenous women’s mobilization in 2016 where more than 500 women marched calling for protection of their territories and rights. In addition to the sustainable income projects, Hakhu works to foster a creative voice for Indigenous people through developing storytelling and filmmaking skills, including comprehensive filmmaking retreats and workshop where artists from Amazonian Indigenous communities come together creatively, share their individual experiences with trauma and resistance, heal collectively and use their inspiration to create visual stories.
RISE St James is a faith-based grassroots organization formed to advocate for racial and environmental justice in Louisiana. They are opposing the Taiwan-based Formosa Petrochemical Corporation’s $9.4 billion chemical manufacturing complex — including a counter PR campaign linking Formosa to rising cancer rates, destroyed home values, respiratory problems, and more flooding.
RAN has supported long term grassroots movements that make incredible progress against enormous odds. One example is the consistent support to groups defending the Brazilian Amazon.
The rights, lives, and territories of Indigenous and forest peoples faced constant attack under the Bolsonaro administration in Brazil, starting in 2019. Communities faced efforts to invalidate Indigenous land claims via the Supreme Court, weakening the National Indigenous Peoples Foundation (FUNAI), and planned mining on Indigenous lands. There have been increases in deforestation, human-made fires, and invasions of Indigenous lands. In response, there have been three Indigenous Women’s Marches led by Articulação Nacional das Mulheres Indígenas Guerreiras da Ancestralidade (ANMIGA) and the annual Free Land Camp, or Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL), led by Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (APIB), all of which have been supported by our CAG program.
The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president in 2023 brings hope. Indigenous peoples are getting a greater voice in the decisions over their lives and territories. As part of this transition, long-term Indigenous leader Sonia Guajajara was appointed as the first minister for the newly created Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. Joênia Wapichana, the first Indigenous congresswoman in the country, was appointed by Lula to be the president of FUNAI, the main government body for Indigenous affairs. Never before in Brazil’s history has an Indigenous woman presided over FUNAI or assumed a ministry.
Lula’s announcement in May to formally recognize six Indigenous Lands also marked a historic milestone. In September, the ANMIGA-led Indigenous Women’s March organized thousands of Indigenous women from all six Biomes in Brazil — culminating in a march to Congress to deliver demands around Indigenous women-led strategies to defend and protect traditional territories.
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]]>Over the last year and a half, RAN has worked with partner organizations within the Insure Our Future Coalition to expose the hypocrisy rampant among insurers. Our work has resulted in some targeted insurance companies adopting new, more rigorous policies and greater scrutiny of the insurance sector as a whole.
March and November 2022: RAN organized two high profile protests against Chubb, one of the largest North American insurers and a major laggard in adopting more responsible policies.
November 2022: The Insure Our Future Coalition published its sixth annual scorecard of the sector. The report showed there was industry-wide movement away from insuring coal — but little movement away from oil and gas.
March 2023: After consistent pressure, Chubb became the first insurer to limit insuring oil and gas. The Wall Street Journal covered the new policy highlighting the RAN-sponsored actions against the company. However, while the policy represented a major step forward, it did not go far enough.
May 2023: In the lead up to Chubb’s Annual General Meeting, RAN projected demands onto massive gas tanks in North Brooklyn — pushing the company to end insuring oil and gas completely.
June 2023: In an open letter, on the one year anniversary of an LNG terminal explosion in Freeport, TX, RAN demanded the world’s largest insurers stop insuring methane gas export terminals and meet with the community members affected by these projects. Signed by over 140 groups and covered by Politico, the letter highlighted fossil fuel expansion projects that continue to be insured while individuals living in affected areas saw protections restricted.
In the same month, the U.S. Senate announced a first of its kind investigation into the largest insurance companies and their disregard for climate impacts. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said, “By underwriting and investing in new and expanded fossil fuel projects, U.S. insurers are helping big oil bring us closer to the worst runaway climate scenarios, which threaten lives, livelihoods, and the federal budget. [This] is especially relevant as some of these companies begin to pull out of certain markets because they see the coming catastrophic climate risks — despite continuing to provide services to the fossil fuel industry.”
August 2023: The Gwich’in Steering Committee published their insurance industry scorecard, reporting that 20 insurers created new policies ruling out insuring projects in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.
September 2023: Insure Our Future coalition member Public Citizen reported that insurers continue to underwrite coal, in violation of their own policies. Their report received global media coverage in Bloomberg, The Guardian, and MSN.
September 2023: RAN and partner Better Brazoria rallied at Chubb offices to deliver a letter signed by over 22,000 supporters calling on the insurer to drop Freeport LNG.
October 2023: RAN held a rally to demand real climate leadership at the annual Insurance Leadership Forum in Colorado Springs, CO. Local homeowners who are struggling to find and afford home insurance that will cover their homes thanks to increased risk due to climate impacts — like fires and flooding — showed up to the rally in force. Then our team infiltrated the Leadership Forum and brought the message directly to top executives — explaining the disastrous impacts of LNG and methane gas.
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]]>The post P&G: Stop Forest Destruction appeared first on Rainforest Action Network.
]]>Rainforest Action Network has continued to ramp up the pressure on P&G, demanding that the maker of popular cleaning and personal care products cut ties with Royal Golden Eagle (RGE), a supplier with deep ties to land grabs in Indigenous territories in North Sumatra, Indonesia. We are also calling on them to improve their policies to uphold Indigenous land rights and obtain Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) of impacted Indigenous communities.
This spring, a delegation of Indonesian Indigenous leaders from partner organization KSPPM, a Sumatra-based human rights and forest advocacy organization, were invited to Cincinnati for a meeting with P&G executives to discuss their demands. Following the meeting, RAN staff and the delegation joined with Cincinnati activists and local leaders to march from Cincinnati City Hall to the P&G headquarters in solidarity for forests and environmental justice — drawing attention to the company’s failure to address its role in driving the destruction of climate-critical forests around the world and bringing our demand set to their front doors.
And again in the fall, we escalated pressure in the month leading up to P&G’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), where leaders and shareholders come together to discuss and vote on key issues. RAN led a month-long organizing project, in partnership with a broad coalition of climate, forest, and human rights advocates. Organizers and activists led direct action trainings and community building events and built awareness around P&G’s destructive policies by holding a presence at college campuses and high profile events — where P&G is typically seen as a sponsor or community leader and sheltered from negative public opinion.
The month of action culminated in a powerful statement aimed to communicate the urgency of the crisis and the role P&G continues to have in rampant destructive practices: Days before the meeting, we dropped a 37 foot banner with the message P&G: Stop Forest Destruction over one of Cincinnati’s most prominent bridges, urging P&G to take immediate action.
The day of the AGM, we brought our message back to P&G’s door, with a rally of over 100 people, including Cincinnati community members, activists from across the globe and descendents of the Procter and Gamble founding families., We gathered to say “Enough is Enough — Deforestation and Human Rights Abuses Must Stop.”
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]]>Here are some notable highlights from the past year, demonstrating how the nexus of strategy and collaborative alliances with partners gives rise to pivotal moments of campaign progress.
One of our biggest fights is against the expansion of methane, also known as liquefied “natural” gas (LNG). Methane expansion projects result in massive emissions and are causing irreversible damage to the ecosystem and frontline and Indigenous communities in the Rio Grande Valley. The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas is a leader in resisting extractive industries of all kinds: from oil and gas to Space X and border wall construction. This spring, RAN staff joined these activists in their Bridge to the Ancestors: an Indigenous, youth-led walk spanning over 600 miles along sacred sites of their customary lands. This is also the route across which methane is transported in the U.S. before being exported and burnt around the world. The inspiring action brought awareness to the immense impact extractive industries continue to have across communities across Texas and the Gulf Coast.
During the week-long walk, French mega-bank Société Générale withdrew its financial support from the highly controversial Rio Grande LNG shale gas export project planned in South Texas.
Delima Silalahi knows a thing or two about holding corporations accountable: Her recent campaign work turned the tide in a decades-long struggle between Batak Toba Indigenous peoples, stewards of some of North Sumatra’s last intact rainforests, and a notoriously destructive pulp and paper company connected to the Procter & Gamble supply chain — Toba Pulp (TPL).
Delima’s organizing helped six Batak Toba communities secure the legal land rights of 17,824 acres, a feat which won her international acclaim and a 2023 Goldman Prize. But her work is far from over: Nearly two dozen Batak Toba communities could lose their customary lands and livelihoods indefinitely due to TPL’s activities.
In May, a delegation of Indigenous Batak Toba activists joined Delima in Cincinnati at the Procter & Gamble headquarters to protest a notable instance of rights violations. A broad coalition of Ohio activists and RAN staff protested alongside Delima and the delegation, including outraged descendants of P&G’s founders. The delegation was granted a meeting with P&G executives where they shared their grievances in great detail.
Right now, there are 45 methane gas (LNG) import terminals and power plants proposed in the Verde Island Passage (VIP) in the Philippines — the most biodiverse marine habitat in the world, with over 2 million people relying on it for sustenance and livelihoods. The LNG terminals would make the region the epicenter of fossil fuel expansion in Southeast Asia, and Filipino communities are fighting back.
RAN and international climate finance groups are partnering with Filipino based Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development (CEED) to stop the gas buildout in the VIP area. In June, the CEED team headed to San Francisco for the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) conference. RAN & CEED hosted a session on Protect Verde Island Passage, including an exhibit of powerful images that captures the heart and momentum of this important fight.
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