Successes Friends of the Earth Netherlands

Environmental actions rarely achieve quick results. It often takes years before businesses or governments recognise a problem and take action to solve it. For example it took fifteen years of protest to stop plans to reclaim land in the Markerwaard or to get the nuclear power plant in Dodewaard to shut down. Luckily there are also examples of battles that were won more quickly.

Significant successes since 1990

• The popular initiative against factory farming, initiated by Milieudefensie and her youth department JMA, has been signed by more than 100,000 people. This obliges the Parliament to decide on a greatly supported proposal about an environmental and animal friendly future for Dutch cattle farms. A future that meets the farmers needs as well.
• As a result of campaigning by Milieudefensie Fortis Bank decides to make her management climate neutral world-wide and Rabobank announces specific climate policies. Both banks acknowledge that they can do a lot in the struggle against climate change in this way.
• Milieudefensie is happy to see that power company Essent has decided to defer the purchase of palm oil to use for green power. Milieudefensie campaigned against Essent in order to convince them of the fact that palm oil is not a sustainable resource for generating electricity. The production of palm oil leads to deforestation, dehydration and incineration of peat bogs and also to violation of industrial and territorial rights.
• Publication of a supermarketblacklist, listing those that sell vegetables and fruit which contain too many agricultural pesticides. Milieudefensie has been campaigning on the subject for years. Milieudefensie assumes that publication of the offenders will have a preventive effect.
• Shell replaces out-dated pipelines in the South African seaport of Durban. These pipelines polluted the residential areas and the harbour due to heavy spills. Replacing the pipelines resulted from international cooperation, also with Milieudefensie.
• Plans to build a new 1500 acre industrial estate called Moerdijkse Hoek were scrapped. Milieudefensie squatted one of the empty industrial buildings, conducted a survey and engaged in heated debate, thereby proving that a large part of the nearby industrial estate was vacant and that new buildings would be very unpopular.

• In order to save the grey whales in the area, Sakhalin Energy Investment Company (SEIC) -in which Shell has a major interest/majority share- decides to use an alternative route for a pipeline along the eastern coastline of Russia. Worldwide actions in which Milieudefensie took part in Holland have led to this result.
• The city of Geldermalsen planned to build an enormous shopping mall and entertainment center right in the center of the famous Dutch river landscape. Local organisations have approached Milieudefensie and together they presuaded the province of Gelderland to renounce the building plans.
• Dutch air is among the most polluted of Europe. Traffic is the main culprit. Partly due to Milieudefensie's efforts steps have been taken towards cleaning the air:
  - 50 mph zones have been established around some of the big cities;
  - Buying carbon filters is tax deductable.
  Cities like Haarlem, Tilburg, Amsterdam and Nijmegen were actively involved in projects to reduce pollution.

2003
35,000 thousand people signed action cards to Dutch timber traders
Jongeneel and Pontmeyer asking them to stop doing business with bad Indonesian logging companies. As a result of this action, both traders are going to take measures to stop the import of illegal timber.

2003
Five years of action resulted in a clear signal to the financial world not to invest in destructive copper and gold-mining activities when ABN Amro Bank decided to withdraw its investments in the Freeport mine in Indonesia. Unfortunately, Freeport can still continue its destructive copper and gold-mining activities.

2003
FoE Netherlands joined together with regional environmental organisations and won a case against the plans to build a container terminal on a unique fossil beach, the Kaloot.

2003
FoE Netherlands' actions prompted Akzo Nobel to withdraw from a project in Kalimantan which involved cutting down 50,000 hectares of tropical rainforest area.

2002
Plans to build a multi-modal transport centre in the hear of the picturesque Betuwe region near Nijmegen were cancelled following a court ruling. This ruling ended years of actions that even included purchasing a protest orchard with the support of thousands on planned building site of this megalomaniacal project.

2002
FoE Netherlands was able to refute corporate claims that there was no demand for organic products when tens of thousands placed their orders for organic applesauce. The company, Hak was convinced and will soon launch its first organic product line.

2001, 2003
FoE Netherlands' youth group bet their environmental minister (2001) and their province (2003) that they could do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than the government. In both cases, the young people had no trouble to win their Bet.

2001
The banks ABN Amro, ING and Fortis promised to stop financing or at least follow strict criteria when financing oil palm plantations which involve tropical rainforest destruction. A joint FoE Netherlands Greenpeace report followed by a mass petition earlier that year prompted this decision.

1993-2001
Located on the planned site of Schiphol's fifth runway, the famous Bulderbos (Thunder Forest) was a real obstacle to the airport's expansion for over eight years. Together with the Dutch Society for the Protection of Nature and Environment and local citizen's initiatives of people living near the airport, FoE Netherlands won several cases in court, which helped to stop the special treatment Schiphol enjoyed in the past. Though there is still much room for improvement, Schiphol is finally starting to be seen as a business like all others that should -keep within its environmental limits.

2001
FoE Netherlands joined the FoE network in building a huge Lifeboat during the international climate negotiations to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive in Bonn.

2000
Following the success of several car-free Sundays, FoE Netherlands and the Platform for a Car Free Sunday , the Dutch government decided to join the European Car Free Day initiative.

1998
Together with ABN Amro bank clients, FoE Netherlands convinced the bank to commission independent research into the dubious situation of the Freeport company in Indonesia. Freeport is an ABN Amro client.

1996
FoE Netherlands pressured Phillips and other electronics manufacturers to take responsibility for recycling their electric appliances. Today consumers can bring their old appliances to municipal depots or the shop they buy their new appliances from.

1995
FoE Netherlands raised the alarm about the oil pollution caused by Shell in Nigeria. This was part of the pressure that opened the multinational's eyes to the criticism of its business activities.

1992-1999
FoE Netherlands campaigned successfully to get DIYs and garden centres to sell more timber with the FSC label, which comes from sustainably managed forests. As a result the import of "bad" tropical timber decreased substantially. FoE Netherlands teamed up with Dutch printers and publishers to prevent virgin forest in Scandinavia from being turned into paper.

1992, 1995
FoE Netherlands published the reports Sustainable Netherlands and Sustainable Europe which gave governments and NGOs all over the world a framework to analyse and tackle environmental problems

1991
136 municipalities and 6 provinces join the Climate Union, a FoE Netherlands initiative to reduce municipal energy and tropical rainforest consumption.

1990-now
Our many actions to promote food production that is more friendly towards environment and animals have resulted in organic products from vegetables to meat becoming more and more available in Dutch supermarkets.