Project 2025 Undermines Water Justice and Threatens Public Health

July 21, 2024 / activist360

Splash of a drop of clean water with text that reads: “Protect our water. Protect our environment. Vote #Harris. Vote Blue.

Project 2025 envisages a conservative restructuring of the EPA that prioritizes industrial and business interests over the need for clean water and air, putting communities at risk, especially those near industrial zones. Project 2025 undermines the agency’s ability to protect diverse communities and uphold the human right to clean water. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

Decentralization and Reduced Federal Oversight

Earlier this year, on April 10, 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration finalized the first-ever national drinking water standard to protect against PFAS, alongside announcing nearly $1 billion from the “Investing in America” agenda to combat these contaminants in public systems and private wells. This landmark initiative, benefiting around 100 million people, aims to significantly reduce illnesses and deaths associated with PFAS exposure, which have been linked to severe health problems including cancers and liver damage.

Project 2025 undermines these advances and instead create a patchwork of environmental standards. States with fewer resources or less governance resolve will fail to adequately protect water quality, which disproportionately affects vulnerable communities that rely on strong federal standards to safeguard their environment. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

Cutting Back on Regulatory Authority

Project 2025 foretells a reduction in the breadth of the EPA’s authority to regulate, allowing polluters to operate with less scrutiny. This will lead to increased water contamination incidents, similar to the Flint water crisis, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities.

By focusing on reducing the EPA’s regulatory reach and emphasizing cost-effective solutions over comprehensive environmental protections, essential safeguards are weakened, especially those that prevent industries from polluting water sources. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

Redefinition of Scientific and Risk Assessment Standards

The push for open-source science and revising scientific advisory roles dilutes scientific rigor in decision-making if it is driven by political considerations rather than unbiased scientific inquiry. This results in standards that fail to adequately protect against contaminants known to harm human health. The move toward risk-based regulation overlooks long-term and cumulative impacts of exposure to pollutants. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

Limiting Legal Recourse

Project 2025 reduces the EPA’s enforcement and compliance capabilities, restricting individuals and communities’ ability to hold polluters accountable through legal action. By delegating more authority to state and local levels, it weakens the uniformity and strength of enforcement across regions and diminishes the legal empowerment of affected communities to sue for enforcement and compliance. This shift erodes a key check on corporate and governmental accountability in environmental protection. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

Human Right to Clean Water

Clean water is a fundamental human right recognized by the United Nations. Any weakening of water quality standards or reduction in enforcement capability jeopardizes this right, particularly for the most vulnerable populations. Effective protection of water sources is essential not just for health but for the dignity and well-being of all individuals.

Communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income populations often face the brunt of environmental degradation and are the most affected by policies that do not prioritize robust environmental protections. Ensuring their right to clean water requires strong federal oversight and stringent, uniformly applied environmental regulations. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

Summing Up

Project 2025 proposes a conservative restructuring of the EPA that places industrial and business interests ahead of the imperative for clean water and air, potentially endangering communities. Project 2025 undermines the EPA’s capacity to safeguard diverse communities and the human right to clean water by favoring economic considerations over environmental and public health protections, exacerbating existing inequalities and environmental justice issues, necessitating the maintenance of robust federal oversight and stringent environmental standards. Reject Trump. Vote Blue.

‘Turn off the tap on plastic,’ UN Chief declares amid debate over new global treaty

December 4, 2022 / activist360

*Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash*

“Plastics are fossil fuels in another form,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, “and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity.”

By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams

Hours before the first round of negotiations to advance a global plastics treaty concluded Friday in Punta Del Este, Uruguay, the leader of the United Nations implored countries “to look beyond waste and turn off the tap on plastic.”

“Plastics are fossil fuels in another form,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted, “and pose a serious threat to human rights, the climate, and biodiversity.”

Guterres’ comments elevated the demands of civil society organizations, scientists, and other advocates fighting for robust, legally binding rules to confront the full lifecycle impacts of the plastic pollution crisis. A coalition of more than 100 groups has called for limiting the ever-growing production and consumption of plastic and holding corporations accountable for the ecological and public health harms caused by manufacturing an endless stream of toxic single-use items.

Petrochemical industry representatives who attended the first intergovernmental negotiating committee meeting (INC-1) for a global plastics treaty, by contrast, attempted to bolster fossil fuel-friendly governments’ efforts to slow the pace of talks—convened by the U.N. Environment Program and set to continue off-and-on through 2024—and weaken proposals for action.

In the wake of this week’s opening round of debate, the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) alliance launched a petition outlining what it calls the “essential elements” of a multilateral environmental agreement capable of “reversing the tide of plastic pollution and contributing to the end of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.”

According to experts associated with BFFP, an effective global plastics treaty must include the following:

Significant, progressive, and mandatory targets to cap and dramatically reduce virgin plastic production;
Legally binding, time-bound, and ambitious targets to implement and scale up reuse, refill, and alternative product delivery systems;
A just transition to safer and more sustainable livelihoods for workers and communities across the plastics supply chain; and
Provisions that hold polluting corporations and plastic-producing countries accountable.

BFFP member Graham Forbes, head of the Global Plastic Project at Greenpeace USA, said in a statement that “we cannot let oil-producing countries, at the behest of Big Oil and petrochemical companies, dominate and slow down the treaty discussions and weaken its ambition.”

“If the plastics industry has its way, plastic production could double within the next 10-15 years, and triple by 2050—with catastrophic impacts on our planet and its people,” said Forbes. “The High Ambition Coalition must show leadership by pushing the negotiations forward and calling for more ambitious measures which protect our health, our climate, and our communities from the plastics crisis.”

A global plastics treaty, Forbes added, represents “a major opportunity to finally end the age of plastic, and governments should not let this go to waste. We demand that world leaders deliver a strong and ambitious treaty that will dramatically reduce plastic production and use, open inclusive and justice-centered discussions, and ensure that the next INCs are free from industry interference.”

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) senior attorney Giulia Carlini pointed out that profit-maximizing corporations “have deliberately manufactured doubt about the health impacts” of their products in previous treaties that address health issues, such as the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

“There is strong scientific consensus that plastics-associated chemicals cause diseases,” Carlini continued. “If the treaty is to succeed in meeting its health objectives, it will be essential to set strict conflict-of-interest policies going forward.”

After more than 145 governments expressed support this week for developing a pact with specific and shared international standards—which could include a ban on single-use items and requirements to ensure reuse and circularity—Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy lead at the World Wildlife Fund, said that “the momentum demonstrated at these negotiations is a promising sign that we will get a truly ambitious treaty with effective global measures to stop plastic pollution” by 2024.

“It has been a very important week in the history of protecting the environment and people,” said Lindebjerg. “This week we saw an encouraging level of agreement, both in formal and informal spaces, on the urgency of seeking a joint solution to this major threat to nature and communities, and to do so in a comprehensive, effective, inclusive, and science-based manner.”

However, he warned, “this is just the first step towards a legally binding global treaty that can help us stop plastic pollution.”

“The next stage of negotiations will be more challenging, as countries must agree on the technical measures and rules,” said Lindebjerg. “Although in the minority, there are also some powerful opponents of global rules and standards, which risk potentially weakening obligations on countries to take action. The push for an ambitious global plastics treaty has only just begun.”

“Millions of people around the world, whose livelihoods and environments are affected by plastic, have their eyes on these negotiations,” he added. “Now negotiators must harness this momentum to push for specific rules to be negotiated as part of the treaty.”

Lindebjerg’s assessment was shared by other summit delegates.

“Negotiations at INC-1 this week demonstrated that the majority of countries are ready to take urgent action to confront the plastics crisis, including by addressing the plastic production that drives that crisis,” said CIEL president Carroll Muffett. “Sadly, it also proved that plastic producers and their allies are equally committed to slowing progress and weakening ambition—from the U.S. insistence that the plastic treaty replicate the weaknesses of the Paris agreement, to last-minute maneuvers by other fossil fuel and petrochemical states to block countries’ ability to vote on difficult issues.”

“Despite these maneuvers, the world made real progress in Punta Del Este,” said Muffett. Robust “global commitments and binding targets remain both necessary and achievable,” she added, but securing them will require “the U.S. and other countries join the rest of the world in pairing claims of high ambition with the policies that high ambition demands.”

While this week marked the first time that governments have met to hash out global-scale regulations to restrict plastic production, the United States and the United Kingdom—the world’s biggest per-capita plastic polluters—have so far refused to join an international treaty to curb the amount of plastic waste destined for landfills and habitats, though both countries are reportedly now open to the idea.

“Over this week, we have seen multiple interventions raising whether the future treaty will be based on national action plans, or global, mandatory targets,” said CIEL senior attorney Andrés Del Castillo. “We know that this will be top of the agenda at INC-2. The failure of countries to fulfill their emissions reduction plans under the Paris agreement shows that we cannot afford another treaty that centers on the whims of its leaders.”

The next session of the conference aimed at creating a global plastics treaty is set to take place in Paris in May 2023.

Why aren’t countries reporting environmental defender killings?

December 19, 2021 / activist360 / Leave a comment

By Carole Excell and Eva Hershaw, World Resources Institute (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

It’s been nearly 10 years since Chut Wutty, an environmental investigator and activist from Cambodia, was murdered while trying to halt an illegal logging operation.

His death prompted widespread indignation and inspired the civil society organization Global Witness to begin documenting the killing of land and environmental defenders worldwide. This led to the publication of “Deadly Environment,” in 2014, a landmark report that would become an annual account of killings against such activists worldwide. In its first report, Global Witness noted that killings were “notoriously under-reported” by governments.

A year later, in 2015, the question was taken up by the United Nations, which adopted Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 to achieve peace, justice and transparent institutions. The framework included a specific benchmark — indicator 16.10.1 — calling on countries to monitor killings of all human rights defenders and protect them.

But in the six years since the SDGs were approved, violence perpetrated against human rights defenders, specifically land and environmental defenders, has continued unabated. In fact, despite growing international attention, the overwhelming majority of governments have failed to take meaningful steps to better protect them.

Governments aren’t tracking and reporting violence against environmental defenders

For years, land and environmental defenders have served as our first line of defense against the destruction of vital natural resources, livelihoods and territories that have mitigated an impending climate disaster. They have exercised their fundamental rights to challenge companies, governments and private actors who have driven destruction of the water, land, biodiversity and climate on which we all depend.

Their crucial contribution has made environmental activists an unequalled target for violence, yet states have failed to monitor their situation in a meaningful and systematic way.

The recent Crucial Gap report, released by the Alliance for Land Indigenous and Environmental Defenders (ALLIED coalition), of which WRI is a member, details the concerning extent to which official data on land and environmental defenders is missing.

Since 2015, only 14 countries* have reported any cases of violence against human rights defenders to the U.N., whether through Voluntary National Reviews — progress reports, presented by states at the High Level Political Forum — or other mechanisms. Of the 162 countries that submitted Voluntary National Reviews since 2015, just three countries — Central African Republic, Nigeria, and Palestine, fewer than 2% — indicated that at least one human rights defender had been killed or attacked. Seven countries reported no cases of violence, while 94% of countries did not report at all.

The low numbers presented by governments at the High Level Political Forum comes in stark contrast to the widespread violence against these defenders, well documented by civil society groups and non-profits. In its recently published report, Last Line of Defence, Global Witness reported 227 land and environmental defenders murdered in 2020 alone, the highest number of lethal attacks ever recorded. Front Line Defenders, reporting cases from the Human Rights Defenders Memorial, noted that 331 human rights defenders, including land and environmental defenders, were killed during the same period.

The U.N. has also recognized the extent of violence beyond that reported by governments. In his 2020 SDG Progress Report, the Secretary-General stated that the U.N. had verified at least 1,940 killings of defenders from 81 between 2015 and 2019 — cases that largely came from civil society reporting. The dataset published by the U.N. remains limited to killings (and enforced disappearances) of human rights defenders by region and sex. The agency does not release country-level data, nor specific figures for land and environmental defenders, ethnicity or affiliation with indigenous groups.

For years, civil society has been working to cover this crucial reporting gap, but they cannot stand in for the state. Ultimately, it is the government that bears the responsibility for guaranteeing fundamental rights to all citizens, protecting them from harm, and upholding binding commitments made in regional and global human rights mechanisms.

How to better document violence against environmental defenders

There are, however, some glimmers of hope.

A small number of national human rights institutes and government agencies — in cooperation with national statistical offices, and the U.N.’s Human Rights Office (OHCHR) — are working to bolster national-level data collection, further encouraged by the Global Action Plan set forth by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutes. The U.N. is supporting this work in many countries, but progress remains limited.

In the meantime, civil society continues to organize their data collection and explore ways to further support the construction of better national datasets. The ALLIED Data Working Group represents a number of these organizations, such as CEMDA in Mexico, ANGOC’ in Indonesia, UDEFEGUA in Guatemala and CINEP in Colombia, though many others could be mentioned.

Such monitoring initiatives have been central to efforts to protect activists in many countries, but this is ultimately an obligation that must be assumed by the state to fulfil their SDG requirements. Unless they commit to monitoring violence against human rights defenders, states will continue to fail to understand the root causes of such violence and will not be able to build the evidence-based policies needed to prevent further violence.

Among its findings, the Crucial Gap report recommends five specific actions, relevant to state and intergovernmental bodies, and to data collectors broadly:

States must develop and sustain mechanisms that collect and report data on attacks on environmental and human rights defenders.
States should develop and support national human rights institutes to be independent, authoritative monitoring bodies of attacks.
States and reporting agencies must recognize and protect the important role played by civil society data collectors, providing for their meaningful participation in monitoring processes and acknowledging their contributions, as well as the risk they incur for the work they do.
Reporting bodies — including National Human Rights Institutes, custodian agencies, treaty bodies, and other data collectors — must make the work of particularly vulnerable groups, including land, environmental and indigenous human rights defenders, more visible.
The international community must work towards a global, harmonized database of attacks and killings to capture the verified cases violence against land and environmental activists (and human rights defenders, more broadly), building on the work of ALLIED and others.

In order to better protect land and environmental defenders and to build policies that foster an enabling environment, the state — not civil society alone — must be monitoring, reporting on and ultimately responding to their situation. In many cases, we see government discrediting civil society monitoring work while they fail to protect defenders themselves.

Until national governments commit resources to build monitoring capacity and develop mechanisms to document violence against defenders, the message sent to civil society and the global community will be the same: that stopping violence against activists is not a priority and, as a result, it’s not monitored.

Without a state-led commitment to stop this violence, such attacks will continue.

In the nearly 10 years since Chut Wutty died, thousands of defenders across the world have lost their lives in defense of the land, environment and indigenous territories. It is time for governments to step up, assume their responsibilities, and in the next 10 years, do a better job of defending their defenders.

Endnote:

*Four additional countries – Colombia, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines – reported data directly to OHCHR, the custodian of indicator 16.10.1.