CIEL’s research exposed that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are derived from fossil fuels. Yet, their role in driving the climate crisis has largely gone unnoticed. Agrochemicals not only create significant greenhouse gas emissions, but also pose considerable risks to human health, wildlife, and the environment through the food we eat, soil runoff, and intentionally added microplastics in seeds, pesticides, and fertilizers.
Photo de Mirko Fabian: https://www.pexels.com/fr-fr/photo/clairiere-campagne-tracteur-pulveriser-12612073/
Addressing this issue directly is crucial: The production and use of fertilizers currently contributes more to the climate crisis than commercial aviation, and this contribution is projected to grow another 50 percent by 2050. At a time of surging fossil fuel, fertilizer, and food prices — against the backdrop of escalating climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises — the case for transitioning away from fossil fertilizers and fossil fuels altogether has never been clearer.
CIEL is helping to build an integrated global movement to confront the intersecting risks of fossil fuels and agrochemicals. This work includes filling specific research and knowledge gaps; facilitating connections and education to develop cross-movement strategies; crafting legal analyses, arguments, and campaigns; and raising media awareness about the links between agrochemicals and fossil fuels.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes a carbon market mechanism, among other approaches, for countries to cooperate to reach their climate goals. Carbon markets are trading systems where credits issued for greenhouse gas emissions reduced or avoided in one place can be bought or sold to “offset” ongoing emissions elsewhere. Such schemes enable widespread greenwashing through mathematical manipulation, allowing countries and companies to claim to be mitigating their climate impacts by paying for another’s climate actions, without genuinely reducing their own emissions. But the concept of offsets rests on a false premise that all tons of carbon are equal, and that we can trade reductions ‘here’ for emissions ‘there,’ when what we truly need is transformation everywhere.
Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, CIEL has worked to ensure that Article 6 does not undermine real, necessary, human rights-compatible climate action. With partners, CIEL has educated negotiators on the flaws in carbon trading schemes, the growing credibility crisis plaguing carbon credits, and their history of harming people and ecosystems, as in the case of the Alto Maipo and Barro Blanco hydroelectric projects in Chile and Panama, respectively. In a significant win this year, Parties at COP27 rejected an initial proposal to include carbon “removals” in the carbon market, which could open the door to dangerous technological interventions, like geoengineering, jeopardizing climate action and human rights.
Using key regional and international fora, CIEL works to protect both current and future generations from exposure to toxic substances by creating greater chemical transparency, stronger regulations, and phasing out “forever chemicals.”
Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm Conventions (BRS)
States banned three forever chemicals: methoxychlor (a pesticide), Dechlorane Plus (a chemical flame retardant found in the blood of waste recyclers), and UV-328 (a UV-stabilizer dispersed by plastics debris and seabirds). The recognition of plastics debris as an effective, long-range transboundary carrier of persistent organic chemicals (POPs) is particularly significant and historic. As CIEL highlighted in new research, ‘Breathing Plastics,’ microplastics are ubiquitous in the environment and circulate around the world.
Plastic waste amendments are being implemented at the national level, ensuring the reduction of plastic waste export to countries that don’t have the capacity to safely and sustainably manage them.
CIEL and advocacy partners placed waste containing nanomaterials on the BRS agenda.
Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM)
Through active engagement with government delegations and our NGO partners, CIEL continued to push for an agreement on issues of concern, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), nanomaterials, women and gender, and more.
CIEL supported a broad NGO coalition’s effort to ban Highly Hazardous Pesticides.
We are actively driving momentum behind a globally coordinated tax on chemicals that would make polluters pay and ensure there is just, sustainable, and predictable funding for managing toxic chemicals.
The EU introduced EDCs in the rules on how it classifies and communicates about the hazardous properties of chemicals, setting a precedent for global adoption.
The Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability promised legislation to end the double standard of producing pesticides and chemicals banned in Europe for export to countries with weaker regulations. A coordinated campaign, grounded in CIEL’s legal analysis, is ongoing to hold the EU accountable to its promises.
With the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and key scientists, CIEL actively engages in the negotiation of the Science-Policy Panel on chemicals, waste, and pollution prevention to ensure that it supports action on chemicals and is protected from conflicts of interest.
First negotiating sessions of the plastics treaty conducted (see page 17).
Globally, the chemicals industry is poised to double by 2030, and the rate of regulation is far outpaced by the number and diversity of chemicals coming onto the market.
International development institutions like the World Bank aim to “do no harm” to people and the environment, but far too often, bank-financed development projects — dams, electricity expansions, infrastructure, and extractive projects — do more harm than good, especially for local communities.
Thirty years ago, CIEL helped create the first independent accountability mechanism at the World Bank, and we have spurred the creation of many others at development banks worldwide. However, development banks are still falling far short of their obligation to take responsibility when harms occur and to deliver remedy to project-affected communities. CIEL set out to change that last year.
Whether remedy takes an economic, physical, social, cultural, or moral form, ensuring effective, inclusive, and participatory policies, as well as the resources to deliver remedy within international development institutions, is critical to prioritize communities’ wishes when development projects harm their lives, livelihoods, and environment. When the initial draft proposals from the World Bank Group were insufficient, CIEL mobilized hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals, and will continue focusing on impactful, aligned advocacy in the year ahead.
Goal
Secure policy proposals within two banks for holistic and effective remedy
Strategy
Lead global coalition to advocate for robust remedy with institutional decision makers
Targets
International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)
Timeline
2022 – 2023
Mapping CIEL’s Support of Remedy
Guatemala
Indigenous Mayan Mam from San Miguel Ixtahuacán – Goldcorp Marlin Mine (2005)
In the lush Panamanian jungle, local communities are organizing to protect one of the country’s last intact rainforests from a 330-kilometer long electrical transmission line.
This transmission line, known as “Line IV,” passes through the ancestral lands and territories of the Indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé communities in Bocas del Toro. It not only threatens the rights of local communities and the environment in a country vulnerable to climate change, but also threatens to open the region to further unwanted development — from new roads to massive mining projects.
CIEL has been supporting the Movement for the Defense of the Territories and Ecosystems of Bocas del Toro (MODETEAB) to protect Indigenous rights affected by Line IV. This year, CIEL supported MODETEAB in speaking directly to the UN about their fight. We won a major victory when two UN treaty bodies, the committees responsible for monitoring States’ compliance with human rights law, warned that Panama is failing to respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights in the context of development projects such as Line IV.
In a landmark victory for MODETEAB and CIEL last year, the independent accountability mechanism of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) found that the IFC violated its own environmental and social sustainability policy when it failed to respect Indigenous People’s rights. Now, the State-owned company must secure the free, prior, and informed consent of impacted Indigenous communities before construction proceeds. CIEL met with MODETEAB in Bocas del Toro to build their capacity to demand an effective consultation process going forward and to ensure they have access to information about Line IV’s impacts before deciding whether to give their consent to the project.
One of the largest public retirement funds in the US — best known by its acronym “TIAA” — holds over a trillion dollars in assets and represents nearly 5 million active and retired teachers. It’s also one of the largest institutional investors in fossil fuels.
CIEL supported the flagship TIAA-Divest! campaign urging TIAA to drop its fossil fuel holdings and assets. Leveraging CIEL’s legal analysis, 300 professors and scientists brought a climate-washing complaint against the $1.2 trillion retirement giant. The complaint alleged that TIAA’s substantial investments in fossil fuels and activities driving deforestation violate its climate pledges, responsible investment principles, and its duties to look out for the long-term interests of employees and retirees. The complainants called on the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), of which TIAA is a signatory, to investigate and take action. When PRI refused to act, CIEL secured global media coverage criticizing its inaction. Since the complaint was introduced, PRI restarted a review of its minimum requirements.
Outside the TIAA campaign, CIEL pushed for stronger regulations requiring financial actors to disclose climate-related risks through submissions to several US and international financial regulatory bodies. These efforts have helped elevate and mainstream concerns about reliance on CCS and carbon offsets, among other key dimensions of fossil fuel-related climate risk.
