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Last week, RAN joined sixty environmental and social organizations, including a dozen Indonesian groups, in signing an open letter to banks and other financial institutions across the globe warning them to avoid investments in pulp and paper industry projects associated with deforestation and human right abuses in Indonesia. The letter highlights concern with companies associated [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 12, 2011
Malaysia Sustainable Palm Oil. Photo: astromediashop As I reported on Monday, the Malaysian government—hand in hand with the country’s largest palm oil companies—is attempting to undermine the RSPO’s “sustainable palm oil” certification standard by creating its own certification. Problem is—the Malaysian palm oil industry’s version of “sustainable palm oil” is pure greenwash which is extremely [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 5, 2011
This is the third and final installment in a series of posts that endeavors to answer a simple question: What is sustainable palm oil? The answer, of course, is anything but simple. The first blog post in this series explored the weaknesses of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the dominant certification standard for [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Last December, I hinted that the World Bank was moving to adopt stronger new standards on Indigenous rights. After nearly three years of deliberation, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, announced its revised Sustainability Framework last month. As the largest source of international financing for companies in the [...]
Continue reading...Monday, June 6, 2011
“Everyone has the right to a final resting place. Our ancestors deserve to have a resting place on their original land without the threat of being removed for the sake of a park.” – Corrina Gould, Chochenyo/Karkin Ohlone A spiritual encampment to protect a Bay Area sacred site is now in its 50th day. Local [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, May 4, 2011
As Canadians were casting their votes in the Federal Election, another important decision was playing out in the board rooms of Canada’s top banks: what to do with Enbridge, sponsor of the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Over the last several weeks, RAN teamed up with First Nations of the Yinka Dene Alliance to put senior banking [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, March 17, 2011
Research shows that carbon offsets aren’t working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and stall global warming. That’s why RAN has founded the Climate Action Fund. In theory, a carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon or greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for or to offset an emission made elsewhere. Rather than [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, December 22, 2010
It took nearly two years, but today Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) finally adopted environmental and social standards on its financing in the tar sands. Great! So what does that mean? Clearly, it means a significant about-face on tar sands for one of the world’s biggest banks. Before today, RBC trailed its peers on basic [...]
Continue reading...Friday, December 17, 2010
With President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will “lend its support” to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the U.S. has at last joined the global consensus on this critical human rights issue. In a decision that reverses the position taken by the Bush administration in 2007, when the [...]
Continue reading...Monday, July 12, 2010
A light at the end of the tunnel?Photo: . SantiMB . via Flickr The tar sands tide may finally be turning at Canada’s biggest bank. RBC is among the largest financiers of Canada’s Tar Sands but so far lacks policies adopted by other banks that seek to limit harm to Indigenous rights, water quality and [...]
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Wednesday, November 14, 2012
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