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This article Why solidarity is vital to freeing imprisoned human rights defenders was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Every Aug. 30, the world marks the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Beneath the official statements and solemn commemorations lies a stark, unsettling reality: the practice of making people vanish — and holding them in silence away from the world — remains a favored tactic for powerful regimes seeking to crush dissent. The goal of authoritarian states is to cut dissenters off from the outside world until public attention fades. 

Yet as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani highlighted during a global leadership summit last month, solidarity is far more than a moral sentiment; when organized effectively, it acts as a concrete strategy to pull those trapped in state-enforced shadows back into the light. 

Six years ago, when CIVICUS, a global alliance dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society, launched the Stand As My Witness campaign, we made that exact wager: that the surest way to protect an imprisoned or disappeared defender is public visibility. In practice, that means turning quiet solidarity into loud, coordinated action, sharing their stories, mobilizing petitions, amplifying their voices across borders, and forcing governments to act. The objective is simple: to make their continued detention impossible to ignore.

Since 2020, the campaign has put faces to some 50 detained defenders and helped win freedom for 32 of them. Among them are Loujain al-Hathloul, who stood up for women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia; Floriane Irangabiye, who set up a radio station to profile the lives of exiled Burundians; and Muhammad Ismail, who spoke out against human rights abuses by security forces in Pakistan. Solidarity works. That is exactly why we cannot stop now. 

Refusing erasure

Authoritarian regimes rely on the quiet assumption that if a prisoner is hidden long enough, the outside world will simply move on. Countering this state-enforced oblivion requires bringing individual names, faces and struggles back into the light.

Khurram Parvez has spent decades ensuring that victims of state-enforced disappearances in Kashmir are not forgotten. For that work, the prominent human rights defender was jailed in November 2021 under India’s draconian anti-terror laws. In exposing how security forces made citizens vanish, Parvez became a target of the same machinery of erasure himself.

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In 2023, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his imprisonment unlawful. Though an Indian court recently granted him bail after four and a half years without trial, state authorities moved instantly to halt his release. His ongoing ordeal is a reminder that when those who document disappearances are silenced, an entire society loses its voice.

Narges Mohammadi’s story reveals both the power of witness and its fragility. The Iranian Nobel laureate who has spoken out against torture and the death penalty has been repeatedly arrested, re-sentenced and subjected to periods of incommunicado detention — a form of short-term enforced disappearance designed to cut her off entirely from family, legal counsel and the outside world. 

Her ongoing persecution maps almost exactly onto the world’s attention span: when global pressure was high, she was granted temporary relief; when it eased, authorities placed her in punitive isolation and handed her additional sentences. In May, after collapsing in prison following suspected heart attacks, she was released on medical bail, some 45 pounds lighter and barely recognizable. Her cumulative sentence still stands at 44 years. A conditional release is not freedom, and the threat of return — and total isolation — has never lifted.

Buzurgmehr Yorov’s decade behind bars illustrates how states turn the justice system itself into a tool of erasure. Arrested in 2015 after taking on targeted political clients and speaking out against their torture, the Tajik lawyer has faced continuous punishment for refusing to stay silent. Held incommunicado and repeatedly placed in solitary isolation, he has been subjected to secret trials behind closed doors that pushed his sentence out to 2043, when he will be in his 70s. Though the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called for his immediate release years ago, Tajikistan continues to keep him in the shadows. Silencing the advocate to bury the abuse is the ultimate act of state-enforced invisibility.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya embodies a newer frontier of enforced disappearance: the deliberate targeting of those who keep others alive. Director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, he was detained by Israeli forces after refusing to abandon his patients, and he has since been held without charge, cut off from his family and the outside world as his health deteriorates. 

He is not alone. He is one of 14 Gaza doctors whose release Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is now seeking before Israel’s Supreme Court. Amnesty International has warned that his life is in grave danger, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has ruled his detention unlawful, and Médecins Sans Frontières has called for the release of all arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers. Their vanishing carries its own chilling logic: when the very people who run toward catastrophe to save others can be made to disappear, no one is meant to feel safe.

Breaking the architecture of erasure

Demolishing this system of state-enforced silence cannot be left to traditional diplomacy or closed-door negotiation alone. Protecting the space for dissent requires transforming public solidarity into an active, organized strategy.

At that same forum, Mamdani challenged governments to consider who among today’s vilified activists will be glorified in retrospect once history passes judgment. Parvez, Mohammadi, Yorov and Dr. Abu Safiya are direct answers to that question, alongside dozens of other defenders sitting in cells or secret detention facilities.

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And the space to defend them is shrinking at an alarming rate. Through the CIVICUS Monitor, we have tracked a steady global closing of civic freedoms — to the point where a mere three percent of the global population now lives in countries with open civic space. Across 83 countries now classified as “closed” or “repressed,” states rely on a familiar playbook: new laws branding activists as foreign agents, cross-border surveillance, and a news cycle so crowded with crises that political prisoners risk slipping into total obscurity.

Human rights defenders are not a threat to national security. They are often the last line of defense between a society and its own collapse: the journalists, lawyers and organizers who strive to hold power to account when institutions fail. Defending them is not charity; it is self-defense for democracy.

When powerful regimes attempt to bury dissenters in prison, global solidarity becomes a lifeline. Just as worldwide public pressure was instrumental in freeing Nelson Mandela after 27 years of state isolation, public witness remains the most formidable tool we have today. Thirty-two former political prisoners are free because ordinary people chose to speak up when states demanded silence.

As Mamdani noted, it is often in the darkest moments that true light becomes visible. The current darkness around civic freedoms is undeniable. Our ask remains deceptively simple: Learn a name. Say it out loud. Stand as a witness. Let us make sure that Khurram Parvez, Narges Mohammadi, Buzurgmehr Yorov, and Dr. Abu Safiya are not still waiting in the dark when the next anniversary comes.

This article Why solidarity is vital to freeing imprisoned human rights defenders was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

Nevada officials have long presented themselves as a voice for compromise and conservation in debates over the Colorado River. The Las Vegas area, home to two-thirds of the state’s population and most of its economy, has become a model of urban water conservation. As the river has declined from overuse and a decades-long drought exacerbated by climate change, southern Nevada water planners built extensive water reuse facilities and implemented tight restrictions on new turf and fountains, dropping the region’s per capita water use by 58 percent in roughly 20 years. Meanwhile, in interstate negotiations over the management of the Colorado River, state representatives have positioned themselves as bridge-builders, sometimes referring to themselves as the “middle basin” between the river’s divided upper and lower basin states. 

When the federal government’s new management plan for the river was announced earlier this month, most observers thought Arizona, which stands to take the largest immediate cuts, would launch the first lawsuit over the plan’s implications for its water supplies. So it came as a surprise to many Colorado River experts when Nevada became the first to sue the federal government over the plan this week.

“I expected that there would be litigation, but it was surprising to me that Nevada fired the first shot,” said Anne Castle, former chair of the Upper Colorado River Commission,

Nevada’s lawsuit comes after more than two years of negotiations among the seven Colorado River states and the federal government over how to reduce water use on the declining river. The states failed to reach a long-term agreement before the river’s current management procedures expire in October, leaving the Interior Department to impose its own plan. The federal government’s plan largely relies on cuts to water use among the Lower Basin states — Arizona, Nevada, and California — to prop up water levels in the river’s largest reservoirs. Those reservoirs have been draining so quickly that the dwindling water depth could threaten hydropower and dam operations within months without intervention. 

Nevada argues that the federal government’s plan illegally forces it to take too much of those cuts. In a worst-case scenario, the plan could allow for a 71 percent cut to the Las Vegas area’s water supply, the state argued, calling it an unacceptable risk to the state’s largest population center and economic hub. Nevada believes this outcome results from a misreading of the law and also claims the government didn’t consider important alternatives to such drastic cuts.

This worst-case scenario, which experts say is an interpretation of the plan’s implications by Nevada, would become possible if reservoir levels continue to drop and if Nevada couldn’t reach an agreement with Arizona and California to help it absorb more of those cuts. Those three states already have such an agreement, which is incorporated into the federal plan and meant to last through 2028, at which point the plan allows the states to update the operations with a new agreement. Without an agreement, the federal government will implement cuts based on preexisting water rights and agreements, cutting the most from Arizona and leaning increasingly on Nevada and California as potential shortages increase. The plan was created through a decision-making process required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which mandates that federal agencies gather public input and consider environmental and socioeconomic impacts of major decisions.

Read Next The Colorado River is vanishing — and the fixes are getting weird Jake Bittle

At first glance, the lawsuit seems like a departure from Nevada’s long-standing posture as the river’s conciliator, advocating consensus among the river basin’s seven states and 30 tribes, which hold vast water rights but are not formal members of interstate negotiations. John Entsminger, the state’s negotiator on the river, has repeatedly portrayed compromise as the state’s preferred path, telling a Las Vegas water conference just a week before the lawsuit that negotiation and cooperation were the state’s “first, second, and third choice.” 

But Nevada has consistently paired its call for consensus with a warning that it would defend its water if negotiations failed, and the state’s case seems less surprising in light of the drastic cuts it claims are possible under the federal plan. Unlike other states, Nevada sends its Colorado River water almost entirely to urban areas. That means cuts fall directly on the Las Vegas area, while other states can cushion the blow by fallowing agricultural fields.

“There is an absurdity to a plan that would require Las Vegas to cut 71 percent. That’s existential. Of course Nevada sued,” wrote John Fleck, water expert and author in residence at the University of New Mexico’s Utton Center, in a recent blog post. 

The lawsuit can also be read as a continuation of Nevada’s advocacy for consensus among the basin states and tribes. With the states unable to reach a long-term agreement and the federal government moving ahead with its own plan, Nevada is now using a different tool to make the same basic argument: that a federal decision without full buy-in from all the states can’t accommodate all their needs and find the innovative solution needed to manage the river.

Nevada argues in its suit that the legally required decision-making process that led to the federal plan failed to account for economic consequences to the Las Vegas area or consider creative alternatives to such drastic water cuts, such as changes to the structure of Glen Canyon Dam. Nevadans argue the process was too narrow and failed to consider solutions that would have avoided such massive theoretical water shortages in a major metropolitan area.

“Nobody can deny that the federal government did a ton of modeling and scenario analyses, but in terms of where the rubber meets the road, what were all the inputs, and what were some of the other analyses that could have been done?” said Kyle Roerink, former director of the Great Basin Water Network, an advocacy group for rural Nevada water resources.

How a court will see that issue has become complicated in the wake of a series of Supreme Court cases that reshaped the federal government’s responsibilities when conducting reviews under NEPA, especially with decisions that involve large, multifaceted infrastructure systems.

The suit, experts say, isn’t the cannonball-splash Colorado River experts have feared for years. That case, in which Arizona challenges the Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming — on whether they have met their obligations under the 1922 Colorado River Compact, may still materialize. Such a case could force judges to determine fundamental questions about who bears responsibility for the river’s decline. The resulting court battle could last years and remove states’ control over the fate of the river. Castle describes this scenario as where the “really big risks are.” 

Still, Nevada’s lawsuit has cast uncertainty over the river’s near-term operations. Nevada hasn’t yet asked for an immediate restraining order against the federal government, which would request that a judge immediately vacate the plan. But if the state convinces a court to rule against the federal plan, it could throw a wrench in the initial two-year arrangement that was expected to keep Lower Basin states afloat in the near future. 

“We are disappointed to see Nevada filing suit here, and are concerned about what the ramifications will be for the operations plans in 2027 and potentially 2028,” said Jay Weiner in an interview, speaking in his capacity as counsel for the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, a senior water rights holder along the Colorado River in Arizona and California.

But experts agree this move, and even a theoretical Arizona suit, don’t strike a death knell for collaboration and negotiation on the river. States in the lower part of the basin may still negotiate regular arrangements to share shortages while litigation proceeds, while the possibility of a full seven-state agreement remains possible if negotiations resume.

Speaking at the Paris Las Vegas casino during the Colorado River Water Users’ Association conference in 2024, Navajo Nation Chief Counsel Bidtah Becker reminded the audience that water litigation and negotiation are not mutually exclusive: “You can get along and argue at the same time, and you develop long-term relationships through that.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Nevada preached peace on the Colorado River. Now it’s suing to protect its water. on Aug 28, 2026.

SLF-2007-040 The Sakhalin Papers XXX: The Letter That Was Both a Commitment and “No Decision” — Inside ECGD’s 4 March 2004 Conditional Support One day Britain’s export-credit agency told Sakhalin Energy it was able to support specified contracts, subject to conditions. The next day a minister told Parliament that approval would come only after the outstanding issues had been satisfactorily addressed. The apparent contradiction would eventually reach the High Court — but never receive a judgment on its merits.

Archive reference: SLF-2007-040
Collection: The Sakhalin Papers
Principal record: Export Credits Guarantee Department letter to Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd, 4 March 2004
Supporting record: Royal Dutch/Shell Form 6-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, May 2003; Parliamentary answers of February and March 2004; Administrative Court papers in R (WWF-UK and The Corner House Research) v Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; National Audit Office case study submitted to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee; contemporaneous reporting
Evidence standard: The existence and wording of the ECGD letter are treated as documentary fact. ECGD’s later description of the letter, ministerial statements and Shell corporate filings are separately identified. Allegations advanced in the proposed judicial review are not represented as judicial findings because the proceedings ended without a merits judgment.

Introduction

The previous archive file examined what different parts of Whitehall were saying internally about Sakhalin II before Britain committed itself to anything.

This instalment examines the piece of paper that came next.

It is only three pages long.

Dated 4 March 2004, it was sent by Britain’s Export Credits Guarantee Department — ECGD — to Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Its own internal reference described it as:

“Confirmation of conditional support.”

The significance of those words would not become fully public for another three years.

The letter did not issue the final approximately $650 million project-finance guarantee being contemplated for Sakhalin II.

It did something more complicated.

It confirmed that ECGD was able to support a series of specified preliminary contracts — subject to a substantial list of conditions.

Years later, ECGD would acknowledge in correspondence reproduced in Administrative Court papers that the 2004 letter bound it to support the financing of the relevant contracts if its conditions were satisfied. Yet ministers and ECGD simultaneously maintained that no substantive decision had been made to support Sakhalin II as a project. (The Corner House)

That is the puzzle at the centre of this file.

Both statements appear in the documentary record.

Understanding how they could coexist is essential to understanding the British financing controversy surrounding Shell’s Sakhalin project.

1. Shell Had Already Committed to Phase 2

The corporate background is unusually well documented.

On 15 May 2003, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and The “Shell” Transport and Trading Company filed a Form 6-K with the US Securities and Exchange Commission announcing that Sakhalin II Phase 2 would proceed.

Shell described Sakhalin Energy as a 55 per cent Royal Dutch/Shell Group company. Mitsui held 25 per cent and Mitsubishi 20 per cent.

The filing estimated project investment at approximately $10 billion and described Sakhalin II as the largest single foreign direct-investment project in Russia. (SEC)

The same authenticated Shell filing contained an important environmental detail.

It said that the final approval stages for the project’s design and construction documentation, including a substantial environmental impact assessment, were still progressing. (SEC)

That fixes the sequence.

Shell and its partners had made their investment decision.

Construction planning and contracting were moving forward.

But environmental assessment and prospective lender scrutiny had not ended.

Britain was therefore being asked to consider financial support for an enormous project that was already advancing while significant environmental questions remained under examination.

2. 4 March 2004: The Letter

The surviving original is addressed directly to:

Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd
35 Dzerzhinskogo St.
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Russia

It refers to earlier applications for conditional ECGD support dated 26 December 2003 and 27 January 2004 and to a meeting held on 4 February 2004.

Then comes the operative paragraph.

ECGD confirmed that it was able to support the contracts listed in schedules attached to the letter, which it called the Preliminary Contracts, subject to specified conditions.

This was therefore not simply:

We may perhaps consider supporting Sakhalin II someday.

Nor was it:

Here is your final guarantee.

It occupied an intermediate position.

The support was real.

But conditional.

The distinction later became legally and politically contentious.

3. The Environmental Condition Came First

The first condition is particularly important.

Before the support could become operative, ECGD required satisfaction as to measures proposed or taken to identify and mitigate adverse environmental and social impacts arising from Sakhalin II.

Other conditions required acceptable arrangements for project financing; acceptable loan and ECGD-support arrangements for the UK procurement element; additional applications covering individual preliminary contracts; any further due diligence ECGD considered necessary; and appropriate declarations or recourse arrangements from UK suppliers.

The environmental requirement was therefore not peripheral.

It was written directly into the conditional support.

That fact supports ECGD’s later position that the environmental assessment had not been bypassed simply because the 4 March letter existed.

But it also created the issue eventually raised by WWF and The Corner House:

Could a government department place itself under a legally binding conditional commitment before completing the environmental assessment on which satisfaction of that condition depended?

That became a legal argument.

It never became a judicial answer.

4. The Conditions Went Well Beyond the Environment

The letter also required full continuing disclosure to ECGD of facts material to the project and its financing.

It imposed UK-content requirements and warned that contracts with less than 20 per cent UK content would be a particular concern.

ECGD reserved powers to withdraw support in specified circumstances, including financial deterioration, payment problems and certain political or sovereign-risk events.

And one final provision is historically interesting.

The letter stated that the details of ECGD’s support were confidential to Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd.

The document would not become public until 2007.

By then, its precise legal status had become a controversy in its own right.

5. There Were 29 Schedules

The final page records:

“Encs. 29 schedules relating to the Preliminary Contracts.”

That detail matters because it reinforces the narrowness of what the letter actually did.

This was not merely a blanket promise to finance every component of Sakhalin II.

It related to identified preliminary contracts connected with the UK procurement element of the project.

The broader ECGD application was approximately $650 million, intended to support UK goods and services associated with Sakhalin II. A later National Audit Office case study identified companies including AMEC, Parsons and Rolls-Royce among the prospective UK supply interests. (UK Parliament)

The institutional purpose was export support.

That statutory purpose would itself later become one of the issues raised by the judicial-review claimants, who questioned whether support could still be said to be “facilitating” exports once some contracting and construction were already substantially advanced.

Again, that was an argument.

It was not adjudicated.

6. The Day Before the Letter: “No Decision”

The public record immediately surrounding the letter is striking.

On 26 February 2004, Trade and Investment Minister Mike O’Brien told the House of Commons:

“No decision on ECGD cover has yet been taken”

pending a full assessment. (Hansard)

That statement was made one week before the conditional-support letter.

There is nothing inherently surprising about it.

At that point, the letter had not yet been issued.

What happened next is more interesting.

7. The Day After the Letter: Parliament Was Still Told Approval Lay Ahead

On 5 March 2004 — the day after ECGD sent its conditional-support letter — Mike O’Brien answered a series of Parliamentary questions concerning Sakhalin II.

He addressed the Western Gray Whale, river crossings, earthquake risk and waste disposal.

On the whale issue he said ECGD was awaiting further information and wanted reassurance that the potential impact would be minimised.

Asked when a decision would be taken, O’Brien said that support would be approved only if he was satisfied that the outstanding issues had been satisfactorily addressed. (Hansard)

This is the documentary tension in its clearest form.

4 March: ECGD confirms conditional support.

5 March: the minister speaks as though approval remains to be decided after further assessment.

It is tempting to call that a contradiction.

The surviving record requires greater care.

8. Commitment and Final Decision Were Not the Same Thing

ECGD’s later explanation distinguished between two stages.

There was:

a conditional commitment concerning specified eligible contracts;

and there remained:

a substantive decision whether the outstanding conditions had been met and the final guarantee should actually be issued.

The Administrative Court grounds filed by WWF and The Corner House reproduce ECGD correspondence from March 2007 acknowledging that the Department considered itself bound by the 4 March 2004 letter if its stipulated conditions were satisfied. (The Corner House)

Yet as late as February 2007, the Government was still telling Parliament that decisions on Sakhalin II support “have yet to be taken.” (Hansard)

And in January 2008, minister Malcolm Wicks stated that ECGD had not made a decision on support and that financial, technical and environmental factors were still under consideration. (UK Parliament)

The language only makes sense if “decision” is understood differently in the two contexts.

There had been a binding conditional contractual commitment.

There had not been the final substantive underwriting decision.

9. That Distinction Was Not Obvious to Everyone

Environmental organisations regarded the distinction as deeply problematic.

After obtaining the 2004 letter, WWF and The Corner House argued that ECGD had represented publicly for years that no decision had been made when in fact it had already entered into a legally binding conditional arrangement.

They also argued that environmental assessment should have been completed before any such binding commitment was given. (The Corner House)

Those claims became grounds for judicial review.

But contemporaneous reporting also recorded ECGD’s answer.

When The Guardian reported on the proceedings in August 2007, an ECGD spokesman stressed that there was no actual cover in place, no premium had been received and no taxpayer money was then at risk. (The Guardian)

Both sides were therefore talking about something real.

WWF and The Corner House focused upon the legal significance of the conditional promise.

ECGD focused upon the fact that no final guarantee had been issued.

The disagreement was not merely semantic.

It concerned what legal consequences flowed from that intermediate stage.

10. ECGD Had Not Finished Its Environmental Work

A later official retrospective helps explain why the final decision remained outstanding.

The National Audit Office case study published through the House of Commons records that ECGD and other prospective financial institutions concluded that Sakhalin II did not fully meet some relevant World Bank Group guidelines at the time, but believed the deficiencies could be addressed through further action by Sakhalin Energy. (UK Parliament)

ECGD therefore continued what it described as constructive engagement.

The project subsequently produced expanded environmental and social documentation, a Health, Safety, Environment and Social Action Plan containing more than 2,000 commitments, further lender scrutiny and, eventually, a Remedial Action Plan. (UK Parliament)

This history matters.

It prevents the March 2004 letter from being represented as an unconditional environmental approval.

It plainly was not.

The environmental test was still alive.

11. But That Created the Campaigners’ Central Legal Objection

The same chronology supported the opposite argument.

If substantial environmental assessment remained unfinished, WWF and The Corner House asked, should ECGD have entered into any legally binding support arrangement at all?

Their legal grounds challenged the March 2004 decision on several bases, including the timing of environmental assessment, the Department’s statutory export-facilitation powers and the alleged absence of adequate consultation before the conditional commitment. (The Corner House)

Their Parliamentary evidence later argued that ECGD’s own case-handling material described preliminary indications of cover as being given without commitment, whereas Sakhalin II had produced something different: a conditional arrangement that ECGD itself later accepted was binding. (UK Parliament)

That is a serious legal contention.

But the evidential label is essential:

Claimants’ argument — not judicial finding.

12. 15 August 2007: Judicial Review Begins

WWF-UK and The Corner House filed their judicial-review proceedings on 15 August 2007.

The challenged act was the March 2004 conditional-support decision.

They sought to have its legality examined by the Administrative Court. (The Corner House)

By this point Shell was no longer the majority shareholder in Sakhalin Energy; Gazprom had taken control during the restructuring completed in 2007.

But that subsequent ownership change does not alter who controlled the company when the 2004 letter was issued.

At that time, the authenticated Shell SEC filing establishes that Royal Dutch/Shell held 55 per cent. (SEC)

13. The Case Never Reached Judgment

This is the most important qualification in the entire file.

The court did not decide whether ECGD’s 4 March 2004 conditional commitment was lawful.

On 29 February 2008, Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application for ECGD support.

The later official case study records that ECGD had still not reached its substantive decision whether to issue the guarantee. Its Business Principles Unit had not completed its evaluation and further financial information was still awaited.

After Sakhalin Energy withdrew, ECGD confirmed that its conditional offer had also been withdrawn. (UK Parliament)

Contemporaneous Interfax reporting quoted a Sakhalin Energy representative saying there was significant uncertainty over the timetable for final decisions by ECGD and the US Export-Import Bank. (Interfax.ru)

With the application gone, WWF and The Corner House did not proceed with their judicial review. (The Corner House)

Therefore:

No merits judgment exists.

14. Do Not Confuse This Case With the Friends of the Earth Case

The Sakhalin archive contains two British legal proceedings that are easily conflated.

One concerned disclosure of government environmental information.

Friends of the Earth ultimately succeeded in preserving an order requiring disclosure when ECGD’s appeal was dismissed by Mr Justice Mitting in March 2008.

The other concerned the legality of the March 2004 conditional-support decision itself.

That second case — WWF and The Corner House — ended without a judgment after Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application.

The first produced a judicial ruling.

The second did not.

Any account stating that a British court declared the March 2004 financing commitment unlawful would therefore be incorrect.

15. Did Britain Ultimately Finance Sakhalin II?

No.

Not through this ECGD application.

The 4 March 2004 letter did not become a final $650 million guarantee.

By early 2008 the official record says ECGD had still not made the substantive underwriting decision.

Sakhalin Energy then withdrew its application and ECGD’s conditional offer fell away. (UK Parliament)

That fact must sit alongside the equally important fact that a meaningful conditional commitment had existed since 2004.

Neither should erase the other.

16. Did Ministers Mislead Parliament?

The surviving documents do not justify stating that as an established fact.

Campaigners argued that Parliament and the public had not been given an adequate account of the legal significance of the March 2004 letter.

The chronology explains why they made that argument.

A document headed “Confirmation of conditional support” existed.

ECGD later accepted that it was bound if its conditions were fulfilled.

Meanwhile ministers repeatedly spoke of a support decision as still lying in the future.

But the Government’s distinction between conditional commitment and final substantive approval was also genuine and is supported by the later official record.

No court decided that ministers deliberately misled Parliament.

No such finding should be manufactured now.

The defensible historical conclusion is narrower:

The terminology used publicly did not make the legal significance of the March 2004 conditional commitment obvious, and that ambiguity became sufficiently serious to generate judicial-review proceedings.

Documentary Findings Established

Royal Dutch/Shell held a 55 per cent interest in Sakhalin Energy when Phase 2 was approved in 2003. Shell’s SEC filing described the project as requiring approximately $10 billion at that stage and recorded that environmental approval work remained in progress. (SEC)

ECGD sent Sakhalin Energy a letter dated 4 March 2004 expressly confirming conditional support for identified preliminary contracts.

The letter imposed environmental, social, financing, due-diligence, disclosure and UK-content conditions.

It referred to 29 schedules covering preliminary contracts and stated that details of the support were confidential to Sakhalin Energy.

ECGD later accepted, in correspondence reproduced in the judicial-review papers, that it considered itself bound to provide the relevant support if the conditions were satisfied. (The Corner House)

Government ministers nevertheless continued to state that no final support decision had been made. (Hansard)

The official later retrospective records that ECGD had still not made its substantive decision by early 2008.

Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application on 29 February 2008.

ECGD’s conditional offer was then withdrawn. (UK Parliament)

Alleged in legal proceedings but never adjudicated

WWF and The Corner House alleged that ECGD had acted unlawfully by entering into the conditional commitment before completing the environmental and social assessment.

They questioned whether ECGD had properly exercised its statutory export-facilitation powers.

They challenged the transparency and consultation surrounding the March 2004 decision.

They argued that the public description of the decision-making process did not adequately reflect the binding nature of the conditional support.

Those propositions were pleaded or advanced by the claimants.

They were never determined by the court because the financing application was withdrawn.

Not established

It is not established that ECGD ever issued the contemplated final Sakhalin II guarantee.

It is not established that British taxpayers ultimately financed Sakhalin II through this ECGD application.

It is not established that a British court declared the 4 March 2004 letter unlawful.

It is not established that a court found Shell or Sakhalin Energy environmentally liable in these proceedings.

It is not established that ministers deliberately deceived Parliament concerning the conditional-support letter.

It is not established that the environmental conditions in the letter would inevitably have been satisfied.

And the existence of the conditional commitment should not be described as proof that ECGD had completed or approved its environmental assessment.

The official record shows the opposite: that work continued for years.

Commentary

The importance of the 4 March 2004 letter lies precisely in its refusal to fit comfortably into a simple category.

It was not nothing.

It was not the final guarantee.

It was a conditional commitment with legal significance.

That middle category explains much of the later confusion.

To Sakhalin Energy, the document offered meaningful assurance that specified UK-related contracts could receive ECGD backing if the stipulated conditions were satisfied.

To ECGD, the decisive underwriting judgment remained outstanding.

To environmental campaigners, entering that commitment before the environmental process was complete placed the cart before the horse.

To ministers answering Parliamentary questions, the final decision still lay ahead.

All four propositions can be found in the documentary history.

The central question is therefore not whether the 4 March letter existed.

It did.

Nor whether it was conditional.

It plainly was.

The unresolved legal question was whether a government export-credit agency was entitled to bind itself in that conditional way at that stage of the environmental assessment and contracting process.

WWF and The Corner House asked a court to answer it.

The court never did.

Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application first.

Twenty-two years later, the most reliable conclusion remains written on the document itself:

conditional support.

Two words that proved considerably more complicated than they sounded.

Source Record

The principal primary record is the Export Credits Guarantee Department letter to Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd dated 4 March 2004, subsequently disclosed following information requests. The surviving three-page document records the conditional support, its environmental and financing conditions, disclosure requirements, withdrawal provisions, confidentiality clause and 29 accompanying contract schedules.

The principal authenticated Shell record is the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company/The “Shell” Transport and Trading Company Form 6-K filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in May 2003. It identifies Sakhalin Energy as a 55 per cent Royal Dutch/Shell Group company, records the then approximately $10 billion Phase 2 investment and states that final approval work on project documentation, including substantial environmental-impact assessment, was progressing. (SEC)

The contemporaneous Parliamentary record includes Mike O’Brien’s answers of 26 February and 5 March 2004, documenting the Government’s position that the full assessment and final approval process remained unfinished. (Hansard)

The principal legal record is the filed Administrative Court material in R (WWF-UK and The Corner House Research) v Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, which identifies the March 2004 decision challenged and reproduces ECGD’s later description of its legal effect. The claims contained in those papers are treated as pleadings rather than judgments. (The Corner House)

The principal independent official retrospective is the National Audit Office Sakhalin Phase II case study published through the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, which records the approximately $650 million application, the continuing environmental due diligence, the initial failure to meet some relevant World Bank Group guidelines, subsequent mitigation work, the absence of a substantive ECGD guarantee decision and Sakhalin Energy’s eventual withdrawal. (UK Parliament)

Contemporaneous reporting includes The Guardian account of the August 2007 judicial-review challenge, recording both the campaigners’ allegation that the commitment was legally problematic and ECGD’s response that no cover had actually been issued. (The Guardian)

Archive disclaimer: A conditional commitment is distinguished throughout from a final guarantee. Allegations advanced in judicial-review proceedings are not treated as findings of law. The judicial review concerning the March 2004 decision ended without a merits judgment after Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application. Nothing in this instalment should be read as asserting environmental liability, ministerial misconduct or illegality beyond a finding made by an identified competent authority.

Site wide disclaimer also applies.

Next Archive File SLF-2007-041 — The Sakhalin Papers XXXI: The Judicial Review That Never Reached Judgment — WWF, The Corner House and the Unanswered Legality Question

On 15 August 2007, two campaigning organisations placed the question raised by the 4 March letter before the Administrative Court.

Their case went considerably further than saying that the Government had been unclear.

They challenged the legal basis of the conditional commitment itself.

Was ECGD entitled to make a binding conditional decision before completing its environmental assessment?

Had its statutory power to “facilitate” British exports been properly engaged when construction and contracting were already under way?

Should interested parties have been consulted before a commitment carrying legal consequences was made?

And what was the legal difference between an indication given “without commitment” and the arrangement ECGD had actually given Sakhalin Energy?

The court papers set out those allegations in detail.

ECGD rejected the campaigners’ interpretation and continued examining the project.

The hearing was approaching.

Then, on 29 February 2008, Sakhalin Energy withdrew its application.

The legal question disappeared from the court list.

It did not disappear from the historical record.

SLF-2007-041 will reconstruct the judicial review that came within weeks of testing Britain’s Sakhalin financing process — and explain precisely what the court was never asked to decide.

THE SHELL LEAKS FILES: 28 AUGUST 2026 was first posted on August 28, 2026 at 7:27 pm.
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The Trump administration is demanding that Venezuela hand over control of more than a dozen of the country’s vast oil fields, according to reports from Axios. If the deal moves forward, the U.S. federal government would take ownership of the fields and would hand operational control to private oil companies. In response, Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, issued the following statement:

“President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are demanding Venezuela turn over ownership of more than a dozen Venezuelan oil production fields to the United States federal government. If this comes to pass, Trump will likely transfer operational control to U.S. oil companies, opening the door to Trump’s typical bilateral transactional corruption, bestowing lucrative opportunities for the oil companies he chooses to reward.

“In the nearly eight months since Trump’s illegal January 2026 Venezuelan invasion, the Trump administration has managed a $13 billion slush fund gleaned from its control over Venezuelan oil sales, with zero transparency, and little to no public oversight or accounting. The President has no authority to negotiate a deal where the federal government takes control over foreign oil production facilities, and Congress must intervene and put an end to Trump’s oil fueled imperialism.

“Trump hasn’t been shy about expressing his admiration of Gulf Monarchs’ oil slush funds, and his effort to establish a South American kleptocracy is an outrage. There’s been no improvement in human rights in Venezuela, so Trump’s move is further evidence that his illegal actions in Venezuela are all about controlling oil with no public accounting, transparency or oversight. This is yet another Trump gift for Big Oil.”

An on-the-clock, worker-to-worker education session trains farmworkers on the FFP’s protections, including its heat stress standards The Packer: “By pairing electrolyte access with shade and rest, the upgraded rules give agricultural workers critical defense against chronic heat-related health risks.” Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount! in Florida Trib: “We think the model pioneered by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is capable of doing what government can’t do right now, which is guaranteeing life-saving protections for workers.”

Last week, we shared how the Fair Food Program’s new rule mandating the year-round provision of electrolytes across all participating farms is generating a wave of national news. Today, we want to share three more stories that dive deeper into the new rule — highlighting both its urgent importance in protecting farmworkers from the growing dangers of extreme heat and the power of the FFP model to inspire workers in other industries to build enforceable protections of their own.

The stories underscore two distinct aspects of an increasingly stark reality: The dangers facing workers in a rapidly warming world are growing every day, but workers are also increasingly building proven solutions capable of meeting those dangers head-on. And as the Fair Food Program continues to expand, the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model pioneered by the CIW is providing a roadmap toward enforceable protections for workers far beyond the fields where it was born.

This week, we’d like to share a few more news stories that dive deeper into the FFP’s new rule and explore its impact beyond just the fields where it is being implemented. To start, here is the produce industry’s leading outlet, The Packer, providing an overview of the new rule, its reach, and the unique enforcement mechanisms underlying the FFP:

Fair Food Program Rolls Out Year-Round Electrolytes to Protect Farmworkers From Heat Illness By pairing electrolyte access with shade and rest, the upgraded rules give agricultural workers critical defense against chronic heat-related health risks.

Fair Food Program (FFP) has instituted a new rule requiring all participating agricultural growers to provide electrolyte beverages or supplements to workers year-round, effective Aug. 1.

The mandate expands the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ existing Heat Illness Standards, which already mandate shade, cool drinking water, paid rest breaks, and heat safety training, to combat both acute heat illness and chronic conditions like long-term kidney damage.

“Sweating in the heat pulls electrolytes out of the body faster than water alone can replace them,” Roxana Chicas, associate professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, says. “Making electrolytes available year-round, alongside shade, rest, and water, is a practical way to help keep workers safe from heat illness and to guard against kidney damage. Many growers already work hard to protect their crews in the heat, and this is one straightforward step that growers and workers can build into the daily work routine together,” she adds.

Unlike voluntary government guidelines, FFP standards carry binding market enforcement. Supported by agreements with 14 major retailers, including Walmart, McDonald’s, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s, participating buyers must suspend purchases from growers who fail to comply. The Fair Food Standards Council handles independent monitoring and enforcement through farm audits and a 24-hour complaint hotline.

Workers attend an education session as part of the FFP in New Jersey

“The health and safety of our employees is non-negotiable. It is incumbent on all employers to do everything possible to ensure that responsibility,” says Jon Esformes, CEO of Sunripe Certified Brands and a founding member of the FFP’s Working Group. “The formalization of what has been a best practice for some time is a singular action that is one of many to fulfill that responsibility. Here at Sunripe, and the Fair Food Program, we are always honored to lead the way.”

The Fair Food Program protects tens of thousands of farmworkers harvesting dozens of crops across 23 states and three countries, including the United States, Chile, and South Africa.

The importance of those protections becomes even clearer when viewed against the human toll of rising temperatures. More than 550 workers die from heat every year in the United States, according to La Jornada in its own coverage of the FFP’s new electrolyte rule. And for farmworkers — who labor for hours under the sun performing some of the most physically demanding work this country has to offer — the danger is especially acute.

But the FFP demonstrates that those dangers are not inevitable. Workers, growers, and buyers have built a system capable of identifying emerging threats, developing practical solutions, and, critically, ensuring that those solutions are actually implemented in the fields.

And just a few hours east of Immokalee, workers in Homestead’s massive plant nursery industry face many of the same dangers farmworkers confronted when the CIW began organizing more than three decades ago: extreme heat, wage theft, harassment, and retaliation. Inspired by the FFP’s example, those workers are now attempting to build enforceable protections of their own. 

To read about that effort, check out excerpts of The Florida Trib’s article below. To read the full article, click here, and to read more about how the CIW is working with WeCount! to help replicate the FFP’s protections in the plant nursery industry, read our post about that initiative here.

Weakened federal heat protection rules leave Florida workers sweating

…“There’s no way to talk about the ongoing fight for heat protections nationally without talking about what’s happening in Florida, both on side of the problem and more importantly on the side of the solution,” said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount!, a human rights group pushing for heat safety protections in the plant nursery industry.

Dozens of American workers die from heat-related illnesses each year and thousands more are injured, according to federal statistics. Those numbers probably undercount heat’s true toll, since toiling under the sun gradually contributes to chronic illnesses such as kidney failure and raises the risk exhausted workers will have accidents like falls or crashes. In Florida, heat kills a worker almost every summer.

With few other options, workers are organizing protests and boycotts to pressure companies into giving them water and breaks, following the example of farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, who won some of America’s strongest heat protections.

In Homestead, WeCount! is organizing plant nursery workers like Sandra along with plant buyers and community members to demand stronger labor protections as part of a campaign called Planting Justice.

“We think the model pioneered by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is capable of doing what government can’t do right now, which is guaranteeing life-saving protections for workers,” said Londoño.

A laboratory for change

In the absence of government regulations, Florida has become the national epicenter of workers organizing for heat protections.

Immokalee farmworkers created the most successful model. Starting in the ‘90s, tomato pickers organized protests against abusive employers. In 2001, they launched the Campaign for Fair Food and fanned across the country, visiting churches and college campuses to tell Americans about the dangerous labor conditions under which their food is grown.

The workers drafted a code of conduct that included protections from violence, wage theft and sexual harassment. They demanded Florida tomato growers agree to follow the rules, and they also called on fast food companies and grocery stores to buy tomatoes whenever possible from participating farms. Then they asked Americans to protest and boycott companies, starting with Taco Bell, until they agreed to join the program.

The pressure campaign worked. Nearly all Florida tomato growers agreed to follow the workers’ rules and submit to regular audits and inspections to guarantee compliance. The Fair Food Program (FFP) now covers more than 25,000 farmworkers in 23 states and three countries who grow more than a dozen crops. Fourteen retailers including Walmart, Trader Joe’s and Burger King have agreed to not buy produce from farms that break the rules.

Nely Rodriguez (speaking) and Lupe Gonzalo (to Nely’s right) of the CIW join plant nursery workers with WeCount! at a press conference on the Planting Justice initiative in Miami earlier this year.

Five years ago, the FFP added mandatory heat protections to its code of conduct. Participating farms have to give workers access to cold water, shaded rest areas and 10-minute breaks every two hours on hot days. Starting this month, they must also offer workers electrolyte drinks or supplements such as Gatorade year round.

“While the hope for federal heat rules now wanes, the FFP is strengthening its protections with mandatory, year-round electrolytes even as it expands to more farms across the country,” Coalition for Immokalee Workers co-founder Lucas Benitez said in an emailed statement.

Workers on South Florida tropical plant nurseries hope to follow suit. This year, they launched the Planting Justice campaign, which would build a similar program around houseplants. Organizers are calling on Costa Farms — the country’s biggest plant nursery, headquartered in Homestead, Florida — to become the first grower to join the program. As part of a national letter writing campaign, more than 2,000 people have written to Costa Farms to urge them to join…

That’s all for today, but stay tuned for more updates on the Fair Food Program!

The African continent’s hopes for a legally binding agreement to combat drought have been dashed again, as UN land restoration talks in Mongolia passed the issue onto the next set of talks in Egypt in two years’ time.

For over a decade, Africa has pushed for a UN protocol on drought risk management that would acknowledge drought as an issue requiring a regional and global – not just a national – response, potentially paving the way for more finance to help ensure water is available when drought hits.

A formal protocol would enable countries to transition from reacting to drought once it hits to “a proactive enabling mechanism to address drought and its effects such as migration”, said a Tunisian negotiator on behalf of the African Group of countries last week. Once land is regularly too dry and infertile to grow crops or graze animals, people often leave to seek a living elsewhere.

But this effort to adopt a protocol, led by Africa, has been resisted at successive land restoration COPs under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), mainly by developed countries, which argue that a legally weaker alternative – a framework – would be faster and cheaper to set up.

A traditional Mongolian Ger tent at COP17 (Photo: Anastasia Rodopolou/IISD ENB)

Governments at the previous COP in Saudi Arabia in 2024 failed to reach agreement despite talks running past midnight, while this year’s saw African officials coordinate a walkout from negotiating rooms on Wednesday morning, according to two sources at the talks.

Drought deal delayed until 2028

The IISD’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin, a non-governmental organisation which unlike the media is allowed to watch and report on closed-door talks, said a call to suspend negotiations on Wednesday showed negotiations had reached “boiling point” and “made some jaws drop”.

Negotiations resumed after a lunchtime meeting with the Mongolian COP presidency although governments were only eventually able to agree that they could not find consensus in Ulaanbaatar and should resume talks on an instrument to deal with drought in 2028.

Christine Colvin, WWF’s head of freshwater policy, told Climate Home News that, with droughts hitting from Honduras to the English region of Hampshire, something concrete – whether a protocol or a framework – is needed urgently “rather than the can being kicked down the road for another two years as will now happen with the protocol procrastination”.

Negotiators talk at COP17 (Photo: Anastasia Rodopolou/IISD ENB)

But, in a closing press conference on Friday, the Mongolian minister presiding over talks celebrated that governments had reached consensus on several “contentious” issues and that agenda items blocked at this year’s COP17 would be put on the agenda for COP18 in Egypt.

US blocks agenda items

Other agenda items that divided countries were on measuring land degradation’s effects on women, enhancing the involvement of civil society and women in land COPs, and the UNCCD working more closely and effectively with the UN’s climate and nature conventions.

On the COP’s opening day two weeks ago, the US representative said the Trump government objects to these agenda items “on their premise and no amount of negotiation will allow us to join consensus on these items. As such we request that they be struck from the agenda at which time we will then be able to approve it, saving us valuable negotiating time.”

A US State Department spokesperson later told Climate Home News that the US wants the UN “to get back to basics by refocusing on its core mandate, eliminating overlap, and reducing competition for scarce resources”.

The spokesperson added, “that means prioritising the concrete work member states created [the UN] to do – rather than diverting limited time, attention, and resources toward social and political agendas, including gender-related initiatives.”

A protester calls for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and youth to be on the agenda of COP17 (Photo: Anastasia Rodopoulou/IISD ENB)

On COP’s first day, the European Union and Brazil pushed back against the blocking of these agenda items, with a Brazilian negotiator saying his country attaches “great importance” to them. But the Mongolian presidency directed governments to adopt the rest of the agenda without the controversial items, which were discussed privately with countries throughout the two weeks.

An EU statement, read out later by Irish minister Timmy Dooley, accused “some parties” (meaning national governments) of having adopted a “less constructive approach” and preventing “discussions on important matters from even commencing”.

The agenda items the US refused to engage with were never discussed and were only placed onto the agenda for the next COP on the last day. Those talks will take place in Egypt in two years’ time, with Donald Trump due then to be in his last year as US president.

No restoration without women

The blocking of the gender agenda item has stymied attempts, agreed on by governments at the last COP, to develop gender-specific indicators for the UNCCD’s next overall framework and to facilitate more women delegates at COPs. Women made up only about a quarter of delegates to COP15 in 2022, UNCCD analysis with the latest data shows

Criticising the move to keep gender off the agenda, the EU said in a statement that it welcomes “the attention being given at COP17 to women pastoralists and herders, recognising their contribution to sustainable land management and resilient rural livelihoods”.

The head of the UNCCD, former Egyptian environment minister Yasmine Fouad, said on Friday that “regardless that the agenda item was blocked”, she was proud that she and COP17 President Batmunkh Battsetseg had led the COP as women and attended the gender caucus (a meeting of groups supporting women at the talks).  

Yasmine Fouad and Batmunkh Battsetseg talk at the COP17 closing press conference (Photo: Kiara Worth/UNCCD)

“Without the women,” she told the closing press conference on Friday, “we will not be able to restore land, restore hope, restore life or restore even our children and grandchildren. And we will keep on pushing that agenda.”

The civil society agenda item aimed to allow NGOs to attend land COP negotiations, as they do at climate COPs, and included terms of reference for an Indigenous Peoples Caucus.

A representative of Indigenous Peoples told the COP’s closing plenary meeting that the group had “deep disappointment that the agenda of this COP has removed the dedicated space for indigenous peoples”. “We cannot restore the land while removing the voices of those who care for it,” she said. 

On Tuesday, the UNCCD’s deputy head Andrea Meza was asked about Indigenous Peoples’ participation. She said that the blocking of “one agenda item” is “generating uncertainty in the progress” towards creating caucuses for Indigenous Peoples and for Local Communities within the talks.

Because of the “complex geopolitical situation” making it hard to obtain consensus, coalitions of the willing have become more important, she added. 

Mining out, money in

Outside the formal negotiations, the summit was marked by a focus on the strongly Mongolian issues of the role played by pastoralists and rangelands like grasslands, as well as mining, in both degrading and restoring land.

Part of the conference was sponsored by Australian mining company Rio Tinto and its local partner Oyu Tolgoi. Their presence was protested by campaigners wearing T-shirts calling on the companies to “stop wasting drinking water” and to “get out of Mongolia”.

A campaigner protests at COP17 on Thursday (Photo by IISD/ENB | Anastasia Rodopoulou)

The UNCDD and others praised the success of the summit in raising more finance for land restoration. The COP saw institutions like the Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Facility pledge money to combat land degradation, with the UNCCD estimating that $645 million of new commitments were made.

An estimated $355 billion a year is needed through 2030 to meet global land restoration commitments, compared with around $77 billion currently invested. Private finance accounts for only around 6% of global investment, according to the UNCCD.  

UNCCD chief scientist Baron Orr told a press conference that many of the announcements were public-private partnerships that use government money to “even the playing field” for companies that want to protect land, in a bid to ensure they are not disadvantaged compared with those that do not.

Such partnerships are a “huge opportunity”, he said, especially as “we’re not in a moment of public finance – public finance is tight in every country.”

The post Despite African walkout, fractious land COP ends without drought deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

August, 2026.

The undersigned organizations, which have been monitoring the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations since 2022, wish to express our deep concern and alert the public to the following facts:

Since the beginning of 2026, only so-called “informal” meetings have been taking place between heads of government delegations, and according to available official information, these modality of meetings will continue to be held to address the fundamental issues for negotiating the Global Plastics Treaty. These meetings are conducted behind closed doors and in confidence, without access for observer organizations, which severely limits the transparency of the process and prevents informed participation by civil society. This situation creates a worrying lack of transparency surrounding key discussions for the future of the treaty and marginalizes the voices of civil society organizations that defend the public interest.

The situation is such that during this year it has been impossible for us to fully exercise this role due to the working modality adopted by the chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), Ambassador Julio Cordano.

While heads of delegations hold meetings to address the substantive aspects of the negotiations, observer organizations have been relegated to virtual meetings with the INC presidency. During these sessions, the only available interaction mechanism is a chat, which is clearly insufficient to foster genuine dialogue. These virtual spaces neither substitute for nor can replace direct interaction between observer organizations and government delegations, which is an essential component for ensuring effective and meaningful participation in the negotiation process.

This format of online meetings with the INC presidency only allows us to learn general guidelines and organizational aspects of the process, information that is largely already public and does not offer real opportunities to exchange perspectives with national delegations, present evidence and recommendations during substantive discussions, or contribute to strengthening the positions that governments bring to the negotiating table.

We firmly believe that the participation of observer organizations cannot be limited to receiving information about decisions already taken or about the planning of the process. Meaningful participation requires access to spaces where the contents of the treaty are discussed and the possibility of dialogue directly with government delegations before and during the definition of their positions. Excluding civil society organizations from these bodies reduces the transparency of the process and weakens the principles of participation and accountability that should guide the construction of a global treaty of this relevance.

We denounce this practice as contrary to the principles and standards of environmental democracy, which in our region are enshrined in the Escazú Agreement, particularly regarding access to information, public participation, and transparency in environmental matters. These principles require that decision-making processes be conducted with openness, timeliness, and effective participation of stakeholders.

Therefore, it is legally paradoxical that the president of the INC, who was a promoter of the Escazú Agreement in the region, adopts working methods that do not conform to the principle of progressivity, recognized in international environmental law as an obligation to advance in a sustained manner in the expansion and strengthening of access rights.

In this regard, the implementation of closed spaces and the restriction of substantive interaction between observer organizations and government delegations constitute a clear regression in the standards of participation previously achieved in the negotiation process itself, weakening the minimum democratic guarantees that should govern the drafting of an international instrument of this nature. Ultimately, these are implementing procedures that restrict the effective influence of observer organizations.

Even more concerning is the INC president’s request that observer organizations appoint representatives from among our organizations. Implementing this measure will widen the gap between our organizations and government delegations, limit the diversity of voices, and diminish the wealth of scientific, technical, territorial, and public policy contributions that our organizations directly share with our governments during negotiations.

In this context, civil society organizations working to protect human health, planetary health, ecosystems, and independent science denounce our exclusion from discussion forums that define essential aspects of the treaty. This situation has limited our timely access to the debates, hindered our ability to understand the evolution of government positions, and restricted our capacity to contribute independent scientific evidence, technical expertise, and experiences from territories directly affected by plastic pollution.

Our role as civil society is to accompany the negotiations, understand and analyze the positions of our governments, and contribute to strengthening decision-making through evidence and independent recommendations free from industry conflicts of interest, incorporating the realities of the affected communities and territories and oriented towards the protection of the public interest, human rights, human and planetary health, and ecosystems.

For all the above reasons, we call upon the Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee, Ambassador Julio Cordano, and the Board of Directors of the INC to reestablish mechanisms that guarantee effective, direct and meaningful participation of observer organizations in all stages of the negotiation process.

A global treaty on plastics can only aspire to be legitimate, solid and ambitious if it is built through a transparent, inclusive process that respects the principles of environmental democracy.

Signatories:

Acción Ecológica México, México   

Aliança Resíduo Zero Brasil

Alianza Basura Cero Chile

Alianza Basura Cero Ecuador

AMAR Associação de Defesa do Meio Ambiente

Break Free From Plastic

Centro de tecnologías aplicadas de Argentina

CESTA, Amigos de la Tierra, El Salvador

Coalición Ciudadana Antiincineración, Argentina

Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco, México

Colectivo Tz’unun Ya’ -Guatemala

Colectivo Viento Sur, Chile

El Poder del Consumidor, México

FAS, PANAMA

FUNAM, Argentina

Fundación Agua Clara, Venezuela

Fundación PlastiCo. Project, Ecuador

Alianza Global para Alternativas a la Incineración, GAIA 

Manos Abiertas La Bandada, Argentina

Mingas por el Mar, Ecuador

Organización Ecologista Piuke, Argentina

RADA, Chile

RAPAL, Uruguay

Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente. República Dominicana

Taller de Comunicación Ambiental, Argentina

Taller Ecologista, Argentina

Toxisphera Associação de Saúde Ambiental, Brasil

The post PUBLIC STATEMENT BYLATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN ORGANIZATIONS ON THE LACK OF PARTICIPATION IN THE 2026 PLASTICS TREATY NEGOTIATIONS first appeared on GAIA.

Nurses at Watsonville Community Hospital (WCH) in Watsonville, California, will hold a rally on Monday, Aug. 31, to protest the Watsonville Community Hospital Administration and Pajaro Valley Health Care District Board of Supervisor’s closure of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) services.

Agosto, 2026

Las organizaciones firmantes de esta declaración que hemos dado seguimiento a las negociaciones del Tratado Global de Plásticos desde 2022 queremos expresar nuestra profunda preocupación y alertar a la opinión pública sobre los siguientes hechos:

Desde los primeros meses de 2026 se vienen realizando y, de acuerdo con información oficial disponible, continuarán realizándose únicamente reuniones denominadas “informales” entre jefes de delegaciones gubernamentales, en las que se abordan los temas fundamentales para la negociación del Tratado Global de Plásticos. Dichas reuniones se desarrollan de manera cerrada y confidencial y sin acceso para las organizaciones observadoras, lo que limita gravemente la transparencia del proceso e impide una participación informada de la sociedad civil. Esta situación genera una preocupante opacidad en torno a discusiones clave para el futuro del tratado y margina las voces de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil que defendemos el interés público.

La situación es tal, que durante este año nos ha sido imposible ejercer plenamente este rol debido a la modalidad de trabajo adoptada por el presidente del Comité Intergubernamental de Negociación (INC por sus siglas en inglés), embajador Julio Cordano. 

Mientras los jefes de delegación sostienen reuniones para abordar los aspectos sustantivos de la negociación; las organizaciones observadoras hemos sido relegadas a reuniones virtuales con la presidencia del INC. Durante las sesiones, el único mecanismo de interacción disponible es un chat, el cual resulta claramente insuficiente para propiciar un intercambio real. Estos espacios virtuales no sustituyen ni pueden reemplazar la interacción directa entre las organizaciones observadoras y las delegaciones gubernamentales, la cual constituye un componente indispensable para garantizar una participación efectiva y significativa en el proceso de negociación.

Esta modalidad de reuniones en línea con la presidencia del INC solo nos permite conocer orientaciones generales y aspectos organizativos del proceso, información que en gran medida ya es de carácter público y no ofrece oportunidades reales para intercambiar perspectivas con las delegaciones nacionales; presentar evidencia y recomendaciones durante las discusiones sustantivas; ni contribuir al fortalecimiento de las posiciones que los gobiernos llevan a la mesa de negociación.

Creemos firmemente que la participación de las organizaciones observadoras no puede limitarse a recibir información sobre decisiones ya adoptadas o sobre la planificación del proceso. Una participación significativa requiere acceso a espacios donde se discuten los contenidos del tratado y la posibilidad de dialogar directamente con las delegaciones gubernamentales antes y durante la definición de sus posiciones. Excluir a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil de estas instancias, reduce la transparencia del proceso y debilita los principios de participación y rendición de cuentas que deben orientar la construcción de un tratado global de esta relevancia.

Denunciamos que este proceder resulta contrario a los principios y estándares de democracia ambiental, que en nuestra región están consagrados en el Acuerdo de Escazú, particularmente en lo relativo al acceso a la información, la participación pública y la transparencia en asuntos ambientales. Dichos principios exigen que los procesos de toma de decisiones se desarrollen bajo criterios de apertura, oportunidad y participación efectiva de los actores interesados.

Por lo que resulta jurídicamente paradójico que el presidente del INC, quién fue promotor del Acuerdo de Escazú en la región adopte modalidades de trabajo que no se ajustan al principio de progresividad, reconocido en el derecho ambiental internacional como una obligación de avanzar de manera sostenida en la ampliación y fortalecimiento de los derechos de acceso.

En este sentido, la implementación de espacios cerrados y la restricción de la interacción sustantiva entre organizaciones observadoras y delegaciones gubernamentales constituyen una clara regresión en los estándares de participación previamente alcanzados en el propio proceso de negociación, debilitando las garantías mínimas democráticas que deben regir la elaboración de un instrumento internacional de esta naturaleza.  En definitiva, se están implementando modalidades que restringen la incidencia efectiva de las organizaciones observadoras.

Más preocupante aún es que el presidente del INC haya solicitado a las organizaciones observadoras designar representantes únicos entre nuestros integrantes. De implementarse esta medida, se profundizará la distancia entre las organizaciones y las delegaciones gubernamentales, limitaría la diversidad de voces y reduciría la riqueza de los aportes científicos, técnicos, territoriales y de política pública que las organizaciones trasladamos directamente a nuestros gobiernos durante las negociaciones. 

En este contexto, las organizaciones de la sociedad civil que trabajamos por la protección de la salud humana, la salud planetaria, los ecosistemas y la ciencia independiente, denunciamos que hemos sido excluidas de espacios de discusión en los que se definen aspectos esenciales del tratado. Esta situación ha limitado nuestro acceso oportuno a los debates; dificultado conocer la evolución de las posiciones gubernamentales y restringido nuestra posibilidad de aportar evidencia científica independiente, conocimientos técnicos y experiencias de los territorios directamente afectados por la contaminación por plásticos. 

Nuestro papel como sociedad civil es acompañar las negociaciones, conocer y analizar las posiciones de nuestros gobiernos y contribuir a fortalecer la toma de decisiones mediante evidencia y recomendaciones independientes libres de conflictos de interés de la industria, que incorporen las realidades de las comunidades y territorios afectados y estén orientadas a la protección del interés público, los derechos humanos, la salud humana y planetaria y los ecosistemas. 

Por todo lo anterior, hacemos un llamado al presidente del Comité Intergubernamental de Negociación, embajador Julio Cordano, y a la Mesa Directiva del INC para que restablezcan mecanismos que garanticen una participación efectiva, directa y significativa de las organizaciones observadoras en todas las etapas del proceso de negociación. 

Un tratado global sobre los plásticos sólo podrá aspirar a ser legítimo, sólido y ambicioso si se construye mediante un proceso transparente, inclusivo y respetuoso de los principios de la democracia ambiental. 

Firmantes:

Acción Ecológica México, México   

Aliança Resíduo Zero Brasil

Alianza Basura Cero Chile

Alianza Basura Cero Ecuador

AMAR Associação de Defesa do Meio Ambiente

Break Free From Plastic

Centro de tecnologías aplicadas de Argentina

CESTA, Amigos de la Tierra, El Salvador

Coalición Ciudadana Antiincineración, Argentina

Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco, México

Colectivo Tz’unun Ya’ -Guatemala

Colectivo Viento Sur, Chile

El Poder del Consumidor, México

FAS, PANAMA

FUNAM, Argentina

Fundación Agua Clara, Venezuela

Fundación PlastiCo. Project, Ecuador

Alianza Global para Alternativas a la Incineración, GAIA 

Manos Abiertas La Bandada, Argentina

Mingas por el Mar, Ecuador

Organización Ecologista Piuke, Argentina

RADA, Chile

RAPAL, Uruguay

Red Dominicana de Estudios y Empoderamiento Afrodescendiente. República Dominicana

Taller de Comunicación Ambiental, Argentina

Taller Ecologista, Argentina

Toxisphera Associação de Saúde Ambiental, Brasil

The post Organizaciones latinoamericanas y del Caribe ante la inexistencia de espacios de participación en las negociaciones del Tratado de plásticos 2026 first appeared on GAIA.

Nurses at Kaiser Permanente facilities across the state of California will hold informational pickets on Sept. 1 to protest the Kaiser management’s refusal to address RNs’ deep concerns about safe staffing and AI protections.

Take Action Here! For Immediate Release 27 August 2026 Response to USDA Deregulation of Failed GMO Chestnut New York–Global Justice Ecology Project released the following statement today regarding the announcement by the USDA of the decision to deregulate the genetically engineered (GE) Darling 54 American chestnut tree. “Given the current trend toward the disregard of science and concern for […]

After three days of dialogue among 187 delegates from 20 countries, the Second Congo Basin Convening closes with a declaration that puts numbers, deadlines and a mandate behind its demands

Yaoundé, Cameroon — 27 August 2026. The Second Congo Basin Convening has closed in Yaoundé with the adoption of the Yaoundé Declaration 2026, a 24-point regional pact on agroecology, food systems, biodiversity and climate justice in the Congo Basin. Over three days, 187 delegates from 20 countries — governments, farmers’ and pastoralists’ organisations, Indigenous Peoples, women’s and youth movements, researchers, parliamentarians, regional institutions, funding partners and media — worked through the progress made since the first Convening in Kinshasa in 2023 and turned it into a single, shared document. The official closure was pronounced by H.E. Mounouna Foutsou, Cameroon’s Minister of Youth Affairs and Civic Education, represented by Dr Akede Metounge Erik, who received the Declaration on the Minister’s behalf and committed to sharing it with the relevant government ministries.

The Declaration does not deal in vague aspiration. It calls on governments and the African Union Commission to name agroecology explicitly in national and regional agriculture investment plans, with at least 30 percent of relevant budget allocations dedicated to it. It demands that community and customary land rights be secured, that free, prior and informed consent apply without exception to conservation and extractive projects, and that farmer-managed seed systems be protected in law. It urges the Green Climate Fund, the African Development Bank and other financing partners to open direct-access windows so that at least 20 percent of climate and biodiversity finance reaches farmer organisations, women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities directly — and it calls for a dedicated regional financing mechanism for agroecology, so the transition no longer runs on project cycles.

Alongside these calls to decision-makers, the Declaration binds its own signatories to action: farmer and community movements commit to seed banks and farmer-to-farmer training; civil society to a permanent cross-basin consultation space; governments to public annual reporting on what has been allocated and delivered; regional bodies to harmonised policy and cross-border trade; researchers, private-sector actors and media each to their own stated commitments. To carry it forward, the Convening adopted a Congo Basin Regional Action Roadmap and mandated the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) to raise funding for the implementation of the Congo Basin Biodiversity, Climate and Agroecology Initiative (COBCAI) and to host the regional coordination unit, while each of the six Congo Basin countries establishes or strengthens its own national platform. Progress will be published annually and reviewed, call by call and commitment by commitment, at the Third Congo Basin Convening.

Four voices marked the closing session. Elisabeth Atangana, President of CNOP-CAM and Treasurer of the AFSA Board, begged the participants to repeatedly ask themselves: “What part of the Declaration depends on me?” The history of the Basin, she said, will be written by those who turn commitments into action, not by those who make the finest speeches.

Dr Million Belay, AFSA’s General Coordinator, reminded delegates how the region is read from outside: a carbon sink, and a place to extract minerals. Seventy-five percent of the world’s cobalt comes from Congo. The entire energy transition rests on it, which puts the people of the Basin at the centre of the global climate conversation. “We need resources, we need money,” he said. “But when we come back, we will do the work, whether there is money or not.”

Baba Adama, for the AFSA Citizens’ Working Group, argued that Yaoundé had strengthened the bridge between governments, communities and partners, and that protecting the Basin is everyone’s job. Dr Akede Metounge Erik closed with the line that may define what comes next: “Ecosystems do not negotiate. They regenerate or degrade.”

Read the full Yaoundé Declaration 2026:
[English version] · [Version française]

Since the complaint was filed, FirstEnergy, AEP and other Ohio utilities have planned more than $4.3 billion in local transmission without adequate oversight, the Office of the Ohio Consumers' Counsel said.

The USDA just approved SilvaBio’s defective GMO chestnut! Take action NOW to keep our forests wild and free from these disastrous trees! On August 27, 2026, USDA-APHIS granted “nonregulated status” to the genetically engineered D54 American chestnut tree — clearing the way for its release into wild forests with no monitoring or oversight. This was […]

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When I was invited to speak at the Chautauqua Institution a couple weeks ago about the future of agriculture, food and technology, four words bounced around my head.

They come from the philosopher William MacAskill: “We are the ancients.”

It’s a simple phrase but a powerful one, because it’s a reminder that although we tend to think of ourselves as descendants of the past—which we certainly are!—we’re also ancestors of the future.

And I think, in a really fundamental way, we’re misunderstanding the future. When I think about the future of food, I don’t start with technology itself. I start with the people using it.

I’ve spent more than two decades traveling around the world and talking with farmers, scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, fishers, food workers, community leaders, and so many others. That’s become my work and my passion: I’m a professional listener.

And I listen to a lot of farmers. Typically, they’re not looking for the next silver bullet technology. They want solutions that quietly improve their lives. Because in the end, technology isn’t the destination. It’s a tool.

People often ask me whether I’m excited about artificial intelligence. I am, for the most part. They ask about biotechnology. Robotics. Precision agriculture. Gene editing. Digital tools. My answer is almost always the same: Yes, with guardrails and intentionality. Artificial intelligence is helping reduce food waste. Digital platforms are helping farmers reach new markets. Weather forecasting tools are helping producers deal with the impacts of El Niño. Traceability systems are removing opaqueness from agricultural and marine supply chains.

What’s necessary to make these emerging digital technologies into forces for good is that they solve problems people actually have, not imaginary ones. And that they’re shaped by the people actually experiencing the problems the technologies aim to solve.

Because what I’ve heard from farmers around the world is that people rarely wake up wishing for a new technology—they’re looking for solutions. They’re trying to grow food with less water. They are trying to protect their crops from existing and emerging pests and diseases. They are trying to reduce backbreaking labor. They are trying to counter the impacts that will come from El Niño. They are trying to simply feed their families. They are trying to build a future their children want to be part of.

Too often, we talk about the future as if we have to choose between high-tech and low-tech agriculture. Between artificial intelligence and Indigenous knowledge. Between robotics and agroecology. Between biotechnology and biodiversity. Too often, we talk about technology as if what’s happening in farmlands in Zambia and conference rooms in Silicon Valley are totally unrelated.

But this is a dangerously false dichotomy. Those aren’t competing ways of knowing; they’re complementary. One expands what we can measure. The other deepens what we understand.

The future belongs to agriculture that combines innovation with experience, scientific discovery with practical wisdom, and new ideas with generations of accumulated knowledge. The future is defined by our ability to bring together the best of what we already know: The knowledge of farmers. The insights of scientists. The wisdom of Indigenous communities. The creativity of entrepreneurs. The leadership of women. The energy of young people. And the power of technology when applied thoughtfully and responsibly.

The next agricultural revolution won’t be judged by how sophisticated our technologies become. It will be judged by whether future generations inherit healthier soils, healthier communities, healthier ecosystems, and healthier food systems because of the choices we make today.

And perhaps that’s the most important lesson I’ve heard over the past 20 years of listening: Food systems transformation isn’t powered only by the technologies we invent but also by the relationships we build with one another. That’s how innovation spreads, how communities become more resilient, how we truly nourish both people and the planet.

Another question I get asked all the time is whether I’m optimistic about the future. And I don’t think optimism is quite the right word; hope is. Hope is seeing people respond to extraordinary challenges with creativity, determination, and courage. That’s what gives me confidence. The future of agriculture is not something that happens to us. It’s something we create, every day, from a foundational place of hopefulness.

After more than 20 years of traveling the world, I remain hopeful. Not because I think someone is coming to save us, but because I’ve seen what people are capable of when they are trusted, supported, invested in, and connected to one another. Technology matters—but relationships matter more.

The future of food is already being built. Our responsibility is to make sure the people building it have the resources, opportunities, and respect they deserve. If indeed “we are the ancients,” we need to start thinking and behaving like the stewards we’d hope to be remembered as being.

Watch Danielle’s full keynote address at the Chautauqua Institution below:

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Photo courtesy of Duta Waskita, Unsplash

The post To Build the Future of Food, Technology Matters. Relationships Matter More appeared first on Food Tank.