Jeff Conant, Friends of the Earth US
Last week 10 civil society and rights holder organizations filed a complaint to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) grievance mechanism. The complaint alleges that in co-founding and continuing to champion the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) - UNEP has breached its own policies on environmental defenders, gender equity and access to information. Most egregiously, by setting up a corporate-only taskforce that includes many of the very corporations that are failing to act on environmental or human rights abuses. At least 45% of the 40 taskforce company members face serious environmental and human rights concerns, including legal cases, OECD complaints, investor exclusions or fines.
The complaint follows years of efforts to raise the alarm about the TNFD’s greenwashing risks. The TNFD’s baseline recommendation is only that companies report on how biodiversity impacts on business, but not the company’s impacts on nature. It does not recommend companies list complaints they face. Nor does it adopt transparency that allows communi-ties to identify the companies sourcing from their areas or banks that finance them, nor to fact-check TNFD report claims. The TNFD also does not challenge the ability of corporations to profit from environmental or human rights harms. The complaint highlights that UNEP has undermined environmental defenders, amplifying the views of corporations - instead of the solutions that Indigenous Peoples, women and local communities are advocating for.
The complainants call on UNEP to suspend its support for the TNFD while the complaint is investigated.
Meanwhile at COP 16...
On Friday, theTNFD chose to put notorious mining company Vale on a panel. Vale’s role in mining dam collapses in Brazil in 2015 and 2019 devastated nature and killed hundreds of people. In 2023 Vale paid $55 million to the US SEC to settle a case of misleading disclosures, and investors in nine countries have excluded it. Meanwhile, Vale’s TNFD report includes claims such as: “for each 1 hectare affected/impacted in the world, we protect 11 hectares.”
During a demonstration at the Green Zone event, Shirley Krenak, a leader from an Indigenous community impacted by the 2015 Mariana disaster and still fighting for justice, protested Vale and TNFD, alongside allies. She delivered a powerful speech about how the disaster killed the river, killed the fish, that polluted land and water in turn pollutes her people’s flesh. She recounted the harsh day-to-day reality of ecological devastation. She warned: ‘This is a false solution’.