Belgrade incinerator plans raise burning questions
Blog entry | 19 December, 2018The planned Belgrade waste incinerator in Serbia, being considered for financing by the EBRD, EIB and IFC, is incompatible with increasing waste prevention and recycling rates and endangers the already precarious livelihoods of the 12,000 people who currently live from waste-picking in the city. The recently published environmental and social impact assessment for the project fails to resolve either of these issues, as well as numerous others.
Read moreIf the EBRD does not lead the energy transition, we will have to do it ourselves
Blog entry | 18 December, 2018In the middle of last week, negotiators in this year’s UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, were scrambling to agree on guidelines for the Paris Agreement that would ensure global warming is capped at no more than 2 degrees. At the same time, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), one of the world’s key development banks, adopted a new energy lending strategy that ends its support for coal but keeps the door wide open for gas. Ioana Ciuta of CEE Bankwatch Network takes a closer look.
Read moreAs human rights declaration turns 70, development banks have a ways to go to respect and protect rights defenders
Blog entry | 10 December, 2018Today 10 December marks the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To coincide with this milestone, Bankwatch together with more than 200 organisations globally has called on international financiers [1] to ensure that these institutions support the realisation of human rights, avoid causing or contributing to rights abuses, promote an enabling environment for public participation, and safeguard rights defenders.
Read moreEuropean Parliament warns Balkan countries to stop destructive hydropower
Blog entry | 6 December, 2018The European Parliament urged the EBRD and EIB to review their support for hydropower plant projects in its last week’s resolutions on the European Commission’s 2018 reports on Albania and Montenegro. The votes come as a clear sign that the European institutions are starting to reconsider their support for hydropower as green energy.
Read moreWill the long-awaited bypass road pave the way to reconciliation?
Blog entry | 15 November, 2018Villagers in rural Olyanytsya, in central Ukraine, are hopeful that village life is about to become a lot more bearable. After putting up with intense heavy vehicle traffic from the industrial farming operations of agro-giant Mironivsky Hliboproduct (MHP) for years, the company has finally finished building a bypass road to divert traffic around residential areas.
Read moreLeaked World Bank report depicts Georgia’s Nenskra hydropower project as major liability
Blog entry | 14 November, 2018Successive international analyses have cast serious doubts over the financial viability of the planned Nenskra plant. While the Georgian government keeps the project’s contract confidential, a leaked World Bank report offers a scathing account of the fiscal implications of this hydropower development.
Read moreEBRD confirms it will not finance New Kosovo coal plant
Blog entry | 13 November, 2018Following the World Bank’s recent statement [1] that it will not provide support for the 500 MW New Kosovo coal power plant, the EBRD has now followed suit by confirming that it is not considering support for the project.
Read moreControversial dam project in Georgia abandoned by constructor
Blog entry | 30 October, 2018Already mired by controversy, the billion dollar Nenskra hydropower plant is now facing another major hurdle as the company contracted to realize the project is now leaving it.
Read moreEBRD – still fixated on gas despite IPCC warnings
Blog entry | 15 October, 2018In its new draft strategy for the energy sector, meant to guide the bank’s lending between 2019-2023, the EBRD gives too much prominence to gas as a so-called “bridging fuel” on the way to decarbonisation – much more prominence than is given to energy savings and even to sustainable renewables.
Read moreEuropean public banks continue financing coal bonanza
Blog entry | 1 October, 2018The EIB and EBRD have been channelling billions of euros in public money to fossil fuels dependent companies, hampering the international community’s efforts to tackle climate change.
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