Lake Baikal, a unique UNESCO world heritage site, is under threat from the Russian Government, after permits have been given to open a toxic pulp and paper mill on its shore. Petition General Director of UNESCO Irina Bokova to step up and defend this unique world heritage! Take action

River Ganga is now a ‘national’ river. The Prime minister of India announced this on November 4, 2008 after a meeting, with the ministers for water resources, environment and forests and urban development, to discuss how to bring the river back to life. Though a very important step, it is too early to predict what this ‘national status’ would actually mean to India’s most revered river and its people.

What gives us hope is the fact that government has accepted that all is not well with the Ganga Action Plan (GAP)—a dedicated programme launched in 1985 to restore the river back to bathing water quality. This certainly is winning half the battle. Press communiqué from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) reads:“there is a need to replace the current piecemeal efforts taken up in a fragmented manner in select cities with an integrated approach that sees the river as an ecological entity and addresses issues of quantity in terms of water flows along with issues of quality.”

• More informations : http://www.cseindia.org

Extractive Industries: Blessing or Curse? - An awareness raising campaign to improve the performance of the extractive industry in relation to poverty and the environment.

Overall objective of our campaign is to achieve substantial improvement of the extractive industry performance in developing countries, in order to ensure that it has a positive impact on poverty reduction and that it does not contribute to social and environmental problems.

We will focus on EU based companies and investors involved in the extractive industry activities in developing countries and on national and EU policies that can reverse these negative impacts.

To achieve this goal, Friends of the Earth Europe will work together with Friends of the Earth Netherlands, CEE Bankwatch Network and Friends of the Earth France.

The campaign will run in the following countries: Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia. It will also have activities focused on EU institutions.

We will also work together with local partners outside the EU from DAC countries in Cameroon, South Africa, Nigeria, Georgia, Russia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Peru, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia.

• For more information about this campaign : http://www.foeeurope.org/