About Us

ECA Watch is a network of non-governmental organizations and bodies campaigning for ECA reform. Organizations participating in the campaign include bodies working on issues related to the environment, development, human rights, community rights, labor rights, and anti-corruption.

Since 1996, NGOs from many countries have joined forces in an international campaign to reform ECAs. The goals and demands of the campaign are best described in the Jakarta Declaration for Reform of Official Export Credit and Investment Insurance Agencies, endorsed by over 300 NGOs following a May 2000 international ECA reform strategy session in Jakarta, Indonesia. While focusing on the impacts of ECAs in Indonesia, the Jakarta Declaration has a global "call for reform" that includes:

  • Transparency, public access to information and consultation by ECAs and the OECD ECA Working Party;
  • Binding common environmental and social guidelines and standards that are no lower and less rigorous than existing international procedures and standards for public international finance such as those of the World Bank Group and OECD Development Assistance Committee;
  • The adoption of explicit human rights criteria guiding the operations of ECAs;
  • The adoption of binding criteria and guidelines to end ECA abetting of corruption;
  • The adoption of a commitment only to finance economically productive investments;
  • The adoption of comprehensive relief for developing countries for ECA debt.

Read the Jakarta declaration

Members

Above Ground

Above Ground promotes corporate practice that is respectful of human rights and the environment. We produce information and analysis about the overseas operations of Canadian companies and the regulatory context in which multinational companies engage.

Bank Track

Both ENDS

Both ENDS is an independent non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works towards a sustainable future for our planet. We do so by identifying and strengthening civil society organisations (CSOs), mostly in developing countries, that come up with sustainable solutions for environmental and poverty-related issues. Building on such effective alternatives, we create and support strategic networks capable of promoting social-environmental interests.

Corner House

The Corner House aims to support democratic and community movements for environmental and social justice. We aim to pay constant attention to issues of social, economic and political power and practical strategy.

Counter Current

CounterCurrent is a non-governmental initiative working for the observation of human rights and environmental protection by German actors in their activities abroad. It targets the German government as well as German banks and companies.

Euronatura

EURONATURA - Center for Environmental Law and Sustainable Development is a non-profit and non-governmental organization funded in 1997 and currently active in three areas: Climate; Forest History and Policies; Exports, Environment and Human Rights.

FERN

FERN is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) created in 1995 to keep track of the European Union’s involvement in forests and coordinate NGO activities at the European level. Our work centres on forests and forest peoples’ rights and the issues that affect them such as trade and investment and climate change. All of our work is done in close collaboration with social and environmental organisations and movements across the world. The name FERN was chosen because ferns are one of the few species that grow in all forests.

Finance & Trade Watch

Finance & Trade Watch (formerly ECA Watch Austria) was founded in the late 1990s as a platform of Austrian environmental and human rights organisations aiming for the reform of the Austrian export credit agency OeKB and was established as an independent environmental and human rights organisation in 2008.

Friends of the Earth Japan

Friends of the Earth Japan (FoE Japan) has worked for a long time on socio-environmental problems caused by publicly funded Japanese development projects.

Friends of the Earth USA

Go to the FOE USA web site

Pages