friends of the earth international at 40

This 2011 anniversary briefing by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) outlines the organization's 40-year history, its evolution into a global federation of 76 national member groups, and its strategic approach to environmental and social justice. The document details FoEI's shift toward addressing systemic neoliberal economic drivers and its commitment to a 'mobilise, resist, transform' framework to combat climate change, deforestation, and corporate power.

• Friends of the Earth International has evolved from a small group of activists in 1971 into a global federation comprising 76 national member groups with over 2 million members and supporters and approximately 5,000 local activist groups.
• FoEI's strategic approach is centered on a three-part framework: 'mobilise, resist, transform'. This involves building broad public support, challenging the underlying causes of environmental problems rather than symptoms, and developing sustainable alternatives such as food sovereignty and climate justice.
• The organization identifies the 'current neoliberal economic model' as a primary driver of environmental destruction, poverty, and human rights violations, and focuses a cross-cutting program on 'Economic Justice – Resisting Neoliberalism'.
• FoEI advocates for 'climate justice', which asserts that those most responsible for the climate crisis must mitigate it and provide reparations for the 'climate debt' owed by the Global North to the Global South.
• The federation promotes several key political concepts to guide its strategies: 'environmental space' (equal per capita resource rights), 'ecological debt' (the debt of industrialised nations to the Global South), and 'food sovereignty' (the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture systems).
• FoEI has achieved specific policy and legal successes, including the 1982 IWC moratorium on commercial whaling, the 2008 UK Climate Change Act (via the 'Big Ask' campaign), and a country-wide ban on metal mining in Costa Rica.

APA

Friends of the Earth International (2011). friends of the earth international at 40. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/10-foei-at-40-lr.pdf

Chicago

Friends of the Earth International. friends of the earth international at 40. 2011. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/10-foei-at-40-lr.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Friends of the Earth International |title=friends of the earth international at 40 |date=June 2011 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/10-foei-at-40-lr.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{friendsoftheearthinternational2011friends, author = {{Friends of the Earth International}}, title = {{friends of the earth international at 40}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2011}, month = jun, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/10-foei-at-40-lr.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }