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Rush to log Liberia’s forests will jeopardise the reform process

Under intense pressure from the timber industry – including many familiar faces from the past – the Forest Development Authority (FDA) of Liberia has started to issue timber contracts. Yet key legislation on community rights – to ensure an equitable balance between community, conservation and commercial forestry – is still in draft. The rush to allow a timber trade with a poor track record of corruption and trampling on community rights raises the spectre of Liberia’s forests once again undermining stability in this fragile country.

Land mark study calls for restoring land rights in Liberia

A new report, launched in Monrovia 30-1-2008, proposes formalizing customary Liberian land ownership by registering it as private property. This would signal the launch of a reform agenda that would restore the forest land rights of the overwhelming majority of Liberia’s rural populations; made up of poor agrarian families and clans.

European Parliament passes resolution to end taxpayer support for fossil fuels projects

Brussels, 29 November 2007 – With a resounding majority (540 MEPs in favour), the European Parliament today passed a resolution on trade and climate change which calls for “the discontinuation of public support, via export credit agencies and public investment banks, for fossil fuel projects”.

NGOs Walk Out of OECD Meeting on Official Export Credits

Paris, 5 November 2007. Citing their frustrations at years of silence in response to repeated proposals for effective implementation of environmental and social standards, as well as for coherence with related OECD goals and agreements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) representing hundreds of thousands of taxpayers in OECD member nations, walked out of an OECD meeting called to consult civil society organisations.

Expropriation begins at Ilisu Dam site

The European ECA campaign has learned during a site visit, that without the knowledge of responsible authorities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Turkish government has begun to expropriate the first affected villages at the controversial Ilisu dam site on the Tigris river in a move that violates conditions imposed by European export credit agencies.

Liberian Government actions threaten to violate the newly adopted Forestry Law & undermine ongoing forest sector reform

A NGO Coalition for Liberia press release. Despite persistent civil society advice that the Government of Liberia prioritizes the development of the National Forestry Management Strategy, a major prerequisite for granting new concessions, the government is set to go ahead with plants to grant at least ten (10) new timber concessions before the end of the year.

Delegates from Turkey ask EU to keep a close eye on the planned Ilisu dam

A delegation of representatives from the region Hasankeyf/Diyarbakir in Southeast Turkey visited Brussels from 15 to 17 June 2005 to discuss the planned Ilisu dam project in the context of Turkey’s process of accession to the European Union. The delegates say that EU standards are not being met.

Ilisu Dam project moves Turkey away from accession

In a workshop held on 11 May 2006, the European Parliament discussed the planned Ilisu dam project in the context of Turkey’s process of accession to the European Union.

Revised OECD export credit standards empty basket for NGOs

A joint ECA-Watch/FERN press release: On 23-24 April 2007, the OECD's Export Credit Working Group (ECG) appears set to approve revised and weakened environmental and social standards governing projects supported by export credit guarantees or loans of greater than 10 million SDRs (US$15.3 million or 11.2 million).

Article 13 of the virtually final negotiating draft of these standards, known as the 'Recommendation on Common Approaches on Environment and Officially Supported Export Credits', allows export credit agencies (ECAs) to opt out of applying any standards at all, provided that they report this to the notoriously secretive and effectively unaccountable OECD working group.

Human rights abuses, land conflicts, broken promises

A new report by WRM of carbon offset projects in Uganda shows a string of human rights abuses linked with carbon trading and that carbon projects undermine development.