The document summarizes various campaigns by activist groups targeting large corporations. It discusses a human rights complaint filed against major fossil fuel companies in the Philippines for their role in climate change impacts. It also discusses campaigns pressuring Cargill, PepsiCo, and Amazon over their policies on issues like water use, palm oil sourcing, and selling Roundup weedkiller. Greenpeace and other groups are calling on these companies to strengthen their commitments to sustainability and human rights.

1. PAGE 15
ACTIVISTS AND CAMPAIGNING
Who’stargetingwhomandwhy?
Fossil fuel suppliers under fire, water use in agriculture, and pressure on Cargill, PepsiCo and Amazon
Essential insight
• First ever human rights complaint issued
against big carbon emitters, calling for
more accountability over impacts of
climate change on Filipinos.
• Quality of irrigation water used for
Californian crops called into question,
with fresh produce firms such as Bee
Sweet Citrus in the spotlight.
• WRI tracking tool claims APP suppliers
are responsible for “majority” of Indonesian
haze. APP denies it.
• Cargill’s latest forest policy is not
good enough, says Greenpeace, which
wants extended soy moratorium, among
other things.
• PepsiCo urged to close the “massive
loophole” in its palm oil sourcing policy
to include Indonesian suppliers.
• Amazon called on to stop selling Monsanto
Roundup, which contains herbicide the
WHO says is dangerous to human health.
First ever human rights complaint
for fossil fuel polluters
In a world-first, typhoon survivors along
with a number of environmental campaign
groups in the Philippines, have filed a national
petition at the country’s Commission on
Human Rights (CHR) because they want
big oil and gas companies to be accountable
for the suffering, and numerous deaths,
of millions of Filipinos affected by climate
change disasters.
The 40-page petition produced by the
group, which is led by Greenpeace Southeast
Asia, is demanding an investigation into
the activities of the 50 largest fossil fuel
and cement companies in the world – the
so-called Carbon Majors. They are calling on
the CHR to look into whether the polluting
companies have breached their responsibilities
to respect the rights of the Filipino people
and to recommend legislation that will
protect human rights through "appropriate
mechanisms and standards for corporate
reporting of human rights issues", especially
on climate change impacts; and to request the
submission of plans from the Carbon Majors
as to how they will limit or prevent such
violations in the future.
The 50 companies, including ExxonMobil,
Chevron, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and
ConocoPhillips, are a subset of the 90 legal
entities that are said to have contributed the
lion’s share of cumulative global CO2
and
methane emissions in the earth’s atmosphere,
as identified by peer-reviewed research.
The groups behind the complaint – which
range from Amnesty International and Avaaz,
to the Center for International Environmental
Law and the International Trade Union
Confederation – want an investigation to be
launched by the end of this year. Regardless
of how successful the campaigners are – and
they do face an uphill battle against some of
the biggest companies in the world – the case
is seen as a significant moment in establishing
the moral and legal precedent that big
polluters are able to be held responsible for
human rights infringements resulting from
fossil fuel activities. The key argument is that
the Carbon Majors have benefited financially
despite having knowledge that there is harm
being done by their products.
None of the 50 companies have yet reacted
to the petition.
Island nations in the Pacific including
Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji and Solomon
Islands have also declared their intent to bring
legal action against big polluters.
Earlier this summer, a court in the
Netherlands ruled that the Dutch government
is putting its citizens in danger by failing to
address greenhouse gas emissions and ordered
it to reduce CO2
emissions by 25% by 2020
compared to 1990 levels. The case – the first
of its kind – was brought by 900 citizens with
the Dutch NGO Urgenda. Now, similar cases
in Belgium and Norway are likely to have a
similar outcome.
Major energy suppliers under new pressure
Can Carbon Majors be held
responsible for human rights
infringements resulting from
fossil fuel activities?
NGOS AND CAMPAIGNSSUPPLY CHAIN RISK & INNOVATION

2. PAGE 16
What sort of water are your suppliers
using to grow crops?
Almost 40,000 people have signed a Courage
Campaign pledge to boycott a number of
fresh produce companies based in California
after it emerged that they might be using
contaminated oil industry wastewater to grow
their crops.
It all started with an article published by
Mother Jones, which claimed that Wonderful
Citrus, Sunview, Trinchero Family Estates and
Bee Sweet Citrus were using water coming
from a wastewater treatment site where oil
companies provided half of the water supply
in 2014. According to the LA Times, Chevron
is one of those companies and it recycles 80m
litres of water every day which is then used on
the local crops.
The Courage Campaign asked people to
question why the corporations in question
think it is okay to irrigate their crops with
oil wastewater which might lace them with
carcinogens.
Essentially, oil companies have been
keen to sell the wastewater generated by oil
extraction because of tightened regulations
about how it can be disposed of, and given
the severe droughts experienced across
California, the campaign suggests companies
have turned a blind eye to what might be in
the water. It points to a test carried out by the
environmental group Water Defense which
found "high levels" of the toxic compounds
acetone and methylene chloride in wastewater
from Chevron used for irrigation purposes.
It also found some oil which was supposed to
be removed during the wastewater recycling
process.
Speaking to Mother Jones, James
Sherwood from Bee Sweet Citrus, says that all
farming operations receive some water from
the water district in question and hoped that
more would be done to raise awareness of the
need for more above-ground water storage
in California. Meanwhile, Edwin Camp from
DM Camp & Sons, which supplies Trinchero
Family Estates, says that the water being used
"has been well-proven for 20 years that it’s
fine". The other produce companies have yet
to respond.
Indonesian haze blame game
The haze caused by southeast Asian forest-
burning fires sent Singapore’s three-hour
Pollutant Standards Index (a measure of
air quality) into the "very unhealthy" range
on numerous occasions during September.
The air pollution led to school closures and
flight disruptions across Malaysia, and,
in Indonesia, a few children died due to
respiratory failure.
The Singapore newspaper The Straits
Times investigated the story, using data from
the World Resources Institute (WRI)’s Global
Forest Watch (GFW) Fires online platform
– which overlays data from fire hotspots
detected by NASA satellites with information
on agribusiness concessions – it claimed that
more than 400 forest fires had been spotted
on pulpwood concessions in Sumatra during
early September – and that the "majority of
the companies" involved are suppliers to Asia
Pulp & Paper (APP).
APP has been quick to deny the claims,
saying that the reports painted a "misleading
impression of the reality on the ground".
The company’s head of sustainability Aida
Greenbury argues that just because a fire
was detected on a concession area, it doesn’t
necessarily mean the company had anything
to do with starting it.
The GFW data showed that between
5th and 12th September, 54% of all fires
began outside concessions, while pulpwood
plantations accounted for 41% of the blazes,
with palm-oil and logging concessions making
up the remainder. However, the WRI admits
that the information, gathered from remote
sensing snapshots, was "limited" and can’t
determine exactly who is causing the fires.
Contaminated water in food supply chains?
PULPWOOD PLANTATIONS:
41%fires in
mid-September
NGOS AND CAMPAIGNSSUPPLY CHAIN RISK & INNOVATION

3. PAGE 17
Greenpeace demands more from
Cargill despite renewed forest policy
Put your head above the parapet and you can
expect an NGO to take a shot. But when a
company appears to move the goalposts on
targets, is it fair game?
Like a number of big businesses, food
giant Cargill used the occasion of the first
anniversary of the New York Declaration on
Forests (NYDF), a multi-sector commitment
to safeguard the world’s forests, to issue a new
policy on forests.
By signing the NYDF agreement, it was
already promising to help halve deforestation
by 2020 and end it completely by 2030. Now,
the new policy and a series of action plans
go – as the company sees it – a step further
by giving the specific measures it will take
to reach the goal, including: staying on track
to meet sustainable palm oil procurement
from Indonesia and Malaysia; supporting an
extension of the Brazilian soy moratorium
indefinitely and helping to implement the
Brazilian Forest Code; and continuing
to grow a sustainable soy programme in
Paraguay, complying fully with the existing
local forest code.
But Greenpeace says the company’s new
policy still falls short in a number of areas.
Matt Daggett, the campaign group’s global
forests campaign leader, says that Cargill was
failing to uphold its original commitment to
eliminate deforestation along its agricultural
commodity supply chain by no later than
2020 with a "weak 2030 deadline" for most
commodities, which gives it "another ten years
to profit from forest destruction".
Instead, it wants the business to extend
its soy moratorium to cover more South
American rainforests – and then introduce
something similar to protect Indonesia’s
forests from palm oil. "Only then will Cargill
begin to achieve the ambitious goals it has set
for itself," he says. Cargill has yet to respond to
Greenpeace’s demands.
‘Tell Pepsi to close its palm oil
loophole,’ says ILRF
The International Labour Rights Forum
(ILRF), along with other campaign groups
including SumOfUs and the Rainforest Action
Network (RAN), have been collectively
campaigning against PepsiCo’s commitment
to responsible palm oil sourcing. They say that
while the company’s latest sourcing policy
for palm oil might look good on paper, it
has a "massive loophole" in that one of the
companies that produces the firm’s products
in Indonesia, called Indofood, is exempt from
meeting the standards.
Indofood is the third biggest palm oil
business in Indonesia and, according to ILRF,
it also has a history of treating workers badly
and forcing communities off land.
Gemma Tillack, the RAN’s agribusiness
campaign director, described Pepsi’s
latest palm oil commitment as a "missed
opportunity" adding that any serious
responsible stance has to include Indonesia.
Pepsi has a good opportunity to react
when it publishes – due before end of
2015 – its action plan for implementing the
new guidelines. In the meantime, multiple
campaigns will continue to urge consumers to
voice their opinions.
Amazon under fire for selling
Monsanto Roundup
SumOfUs says it is baffled that Amazon is
still selling Monsanto Roundup weedkiller
even though the World Health Organization
has deemed the product to contain an active
ingredient that is "probably carcinogenic to
humans".
According to the campaign group, the
scientific evidence against the herbicide
in question, glyphosate, is mounting, with
Monsanto "furiously scrambling" to rubbish
the science. So, it has decided to target up the
supply chain, focusing on the biggest retailers
of Roundup and is calling on its audience to
ask the world’s biggest online retailer Amazon
to stop selling Roundup – a move it says
would have "enormous impact".
Glyphosate can be found in surface water,
groundwater, soil and even in humans – and is
said to be pushing some crops and species to
the verge of extinction.
SumOfUs has got previous with this
type of campaigning. Around 750,000 of its
members called on a range of retailers in the
US to stop selling pesticides that were known
to kill bees – and Lowe’s and Home Depot
took action, removing products containing
neonicotinoid pesticides from their shelves.
In 2013, Amazon moved to stop selling
foie gras on its UK website after animal
welfare campaigners piled on the pressure.
SumOfUs hopes it will do the same again, to
stop selling a product it says as "no place in
the 21st century". ★
Roundup: the usual suspects
Cargill commits to more sustainable soy
NGOS AND CAMPAIGNSSUPPLY CHAIN RISK & INNOVATION