(Above Ground, Ottawa, 12 November 2018) Canada’s Export Development Act is under review. In our submission (pdf) to the government, Above Ground and other Canadian civil society groups call for legal reforms to bolster the accountability and transparency of Export Development Canada (EDC). EDC’s policies state that it screens and monitors the business it supports for associated social, environmental and business ethics risks. Yet over the years we have identified multiple companies that receive support from EDC despite credible or proven allegations involving environmental damage, corruption and human rights violations. In this submission we urge Parliament to adopt legislative reforms that include prohibiting EDC from supporting firms involved in wrongdoing, subjecting it to judicial oversight and expanding the Auditor General’s mandate regarding EDC. We have also made a second submission (pdf) calling for reforms to address the climate impacts of business supported by EDC. In addition, Both ENDS and other CSOs working from a number of countries made a joint submission as formal input to the EDC legislative review regarding EDC support for fossil fuels. The submission emphasized the Canadian governments’ ambition to show leadership on climate change and to prioritise climate change action and clean economic growth.
Bank Track
Environmental groups to campaign against ‘strategic’ corporate lawsuits
(Global Legal Post, London, 29 August 2018) 20 environmental and civil liberties groups have joined foceces to protest against companies using lawsuits they say are aimed at silencing critics. The ‘Protect the Protest’ task force is targeting what it says are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, which use legal action and the threat of financial risk to deter people and groups from speaking out against something they oppose. The twenty environmental and civil liberties groups say the lawsuits are aimed at limiting free speech and silencing critics. Katie Redford, co-founder and director of EarthRights International, says ‘we know from our own experience that this legal bullying tactic will work if it’s not shut down.’
Federal US Judge says Dakota Access developer can’t sue BankTrack
(Tampa Bay Times, Bismark, 26 July 2018) A federal judge has ruled that the developer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline has no claim under federal racketeering law for damages against a Dutch environmental group that urged banks not to finance the $3.8 billion project. U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson dismissed Netherlands-based BankTrack as a defendant in a lawsuit that Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners filed in August against that group, Greenpeace and Earth First. In separate rulings this week, he also cast doubt on whether the lawsuit will succeed against the other two groups. Wilson said the lawsuit “vaguely attempts” to connect BankTrack to acts of radical ecoterrorism, but he concluded that “None of BankTrack’s actions promoted, assisted or condoned violent criminal conduct,”. BankTrack Director Johan Frijns in a statement said the judge’s ruling “confirms that this type of advocacy work is legitimate.”
Judge Demands Explanation in Pipeline Lawsuit
(WTOP, Washington, 30 March 2018) Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners in August sued Earth First, Greenpeace and BankTrack for up to $1 billion, alleging they disseminated false and misleading information about the $3.8 billion pipeline that’s now moving oil from North Dakota to Illinois, and instigated violent protests while the pipeline was under construction. Greenpeace and BankTrack maintain the lawsuit is meritless and an attack on free speech. The Center for Constitutional Rights maintains Earth First is an unstructured social movement or philosophy, similar to Black Lives Matter, and can’t be sued. However, U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson says Earth First has been a listed plaintiff in three federal lawsuits in the 1980s and 1990s, involving a water project in Arizona, a wilderness area in Oregon and a New Mexico canyon important to American Indians. “If Earth First can sue, it seems to me that it is subject to being sued,” Wilson said in a March 22 order.
Report finds major banks ramped up fossil fuel financing to $115 billion in 2017
(BankTrack, Amsterdam, 28 March 2018) A report released today by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Sierra Club, and Honor The Earth, endorsed by over 50 organisations around the world, reveals that in spite of the urgent climate crisis, 2017 was a year of backsliding by private banks. Despite 2017 being the costliest year on record for weather disasters, the new report reveals that banks increased extreme fossil fuel financing last year [US$115 billion], led by a more than doubling in lending to tar sands companies and pipelines.The report provides invaluable data on specific banks and sectoral investments. In our November 2017 What’s New, ECA Watch noted that export credit agencies fund almost $40 billion worth of fossil fuel projects each year. (Some of that overlapping as guarantees for private banks.) That is a whopping 12 times more than what they spend on clean energy projects.
Attorney calls for sanctions against Energy Transfer Partners in Dakota Access pipeline suit
(Associated Press, Bismark, 9 February 2018) Attorneys for a Florida-based environmental publication want a federal judge in North Dakota to sanction the Texas-based developer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline in a dispute over whether the publication can be sued. Earth First Journal maintains Energy Transfer Partners attorneys aren’t acting in good faith by associating the publication with the Earth First social movement, which the company contends was part of an effort to undermine the pipeline project and the company. Energy Transfer in August sued Greenpeace, BankTrack and Earth First for up to $1 billion, alleging the environmental groups disseminated false and misleading information about the $3.8 billion pipeline moving oil from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to Illinois, and instigated violent protests. Journal attorney Pamela Spees maintains the journal and movement aren’t the same thing, and that the insistence of company attorneys to the contrary is “intentional and reckless disregard of their duties to the court.” Spees asked Hovland to order the plaintiffs to pay the center’s fees and to educate lawyers at the plaintiff firms about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which she claims have been violated.
ECAs go to Market
(Finance & Trade Watch and CEE Bankwatch, Dec. 2017) Export credits are big business. Members of the industry’s Berne Union, both state and private, insured approximately USD 1.9 trillion per year between 2012 and 2016, of which USD1 trillion was state ECA insured. That amount far exceeds the total investments of multilateral lenders such as the World Bank and the regional development banks and represents some 11% of world trade Between 2015 and 2017, Finance & Trade Watch and Bankwatch, together with their national partners, researched state export credit agencies (ECAs) in seven countries of the European Union (Austria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia). The aim of this research was to assess how the procedures and performance of these institutions comply with the relevant national, European and international regulatory frameworks. These include transparency, accountability, environmental and social standards as reflected in the OECD (Common Approaches), the EU (ECA Regulation) and the UN (Sustainable Development Goals, the Aarhus Convention and the Paris Agreement). Their report finds: a lack of ECA transparency, dubious investements, particularly in fossil fuels, projects contrary to national greenhouse gas commitments under the Paris Agreement, and OECD and EU standards and monitoring which are voluntary and unable to guarantee that prohibited investments are being approved. This has led to their involvement in a number of economically and politically-compromising projects. This first-of-its-kind research examines ECAs in the ‘new’ EU Member States and compares these with an example from the EU 15 – the Austrian ECA OeKB – as well as examples from other EU 15 countries. It shows regulatory gaps and offers a range of policy recommendations. The full report is available here and a summary here.
Banks criticised for funding coal deals despite Paris agreement
(ECA Watch, Ottawa, 31 December 2017) At the One Planet Summit in Paris in December 2017 a number of NGO, environmental and social movement organizations released briefings and research reports highlighting fossil fuel projects that are being funded by multilateral and national development banks and export credit agencies. The Big Shift global campaign released a briefing titled Dirty Dozen (pdf); complementary reports, ‘Banks vs. the Paris Agreement’ and ‘Investors vs. the Paris Agreement’ (pdf) were launched by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Urgewald, Friends of the Earth France, and Re:Common at the Climate Finance Day in Paris; and the Natural Resource Defense Council released Power Shift: International Coal vs. Renewable Energy Finance.
Pipeline developer sues social movements
(Kallanish Energy News, Greensburg, 18 December 2017) Dakota Access Pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) and Florida-based environmental publication Earth First Journal are arguing in federal court whether something called a “social movement” can be sued. ETP in August filed a lawsuit against enviro-groups Earth First, Greenpeace and BankTrack, alleging they issued false and misleading information about the $3.8 billion pipeline, to move North Dakota crude to Patoka, Ill., interfered with construction, and damaged the company’s reputation and finances through illegal acts. The company’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in North Dakota, seeks damages that could approach $1 billion, The Associated Press reported.
Dakota Access Pipeline Owner Sues Enviros for Terrorism
(BankTrack, Nijmegen, 22 August 2017) BankTrack has taken note of the outrageous allegations in the lawsuit that ETP/ETE has filed against BankTrack, Greenpeace International, Greenpeace Inc., Greenpeace Fund, Inc., Earth First!, and other organizations and individuals that together opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline Project. BankTrack vehemently rejects all accusations brought forward by ETP/ETE. BankTrack considers the lawsuit an attempt of ETP/ETE to silence civil society organisations, and to curb their crucial role in helping to foster business conduct globally that protects the environment, recognises the rights and interests of all stakeholders, and respects human rights. This attempt is bound to fail.
