Saving Macedonia’s Mavrovo national park and the Balkan Lynx
December 12, 2017
With the cancellation of a EUR 65 million loan from the EBRD, the Boškov Most hydropower project lost its major source of funding and is unlikely to be realised. The project threatened the Macedonia’s Mavrovo national park, one of Europe’s oldest and home of the endangered Balkan Lynx.
Croatia drops plans for controversial coal plant
June 16, 2016
After five years of campaigning led by Bankwatch member group Zelena akcija/Friends of the Earth Croatia, Croatia’s economy minister Tomislav Panenić has finally announced that the Plomin C coal power plant project has been halted.
The EU’s bank quits coal
September 2, 2013
Fifteen years after Bankwatch began requesting information from the European Investment Bank, only to receive the terse reply “We are accountable only to the market,” the campaign to reform the EU’s house bank took another step forward towards making the world’s largest public lender a leader in the fight against climate change.
Poland’s glorious Rospuda Valley is saved from hosting a motorway
September 2, 2013
Campaigning requires, among other things, determination, guts and stamina – and all of these were to the fore in the seven year struggle of Polish and international environment groups, including Bankwatch, for the Rospuda Valley.
Bankwatcher honoured with ‘environmental Nobel Prize’
September 2, 2013
In 2004, Manana Kochladze, Bankwatch’s Caucasus Coordinator, was honoured with the Goldman Environmental Prize – the so-called ‘environmental Nobel Prize’ – in recognition of her work in the campaign to minimise the harmful effects of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline on local communities and the environment.
Here be monsters – the map of EU funding failures that’s being referenced by decision-makers
September 2, 2013
The map of dubious EU funded projects prepared by Bankwatch and Friends of the Earth Europe has received wide media attention and decision makers have treated a project’s inclusion on the map as a serious blemish.
Making gender a real issue at the international development banks
September 2, 2013
Following research and intensive advocacy work by Bankwatch, the EBRD’s established a Gender Action Plan and developed a complex gender toolkit for use by the EBRD, its clients and their consultants, that will hopefully contribute to more gender-based considerations governing its lending.
Policy engagement delivers for indigenous peoples
September 2, 2013
Thanks to Bankwatch’s engagement with the EIB and the EBRD, both banks now require project promoters to ensure a free, prior and informed consent by affected people to any relocation.
Working with local communities and authorities for sustainable waste solutions
September 2, 2013
Bankwatch’s work on waste issues chimes closely with what a majority of Europeans want, namely more recycling and fewer incinerators. It’s a major reason why we have had so many victories (see below) against incinerator projects.