Basel (Switzerland), 8 March 2007

37 non-governmental organizations from 18 countries are asking investors and banks to shun the Malaysian logging giant Samling which was publicly listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange earlier this week. The NGO's appeal is appearing in a quarter page advertisement of the Friday 9 March global edition of the International Herald Tribune under the title "Investing in rainforest destruction: Samling Global Ltd. listing with support from Credit Suisse, HSBC, Macquarie".

MOSCOW - Russia plans to start new checks on the Exxon Mobil-led Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project at the end of March, an environmental watchdog official said on Thursday.

Oleg Mitvol, deputy head of the Russian environmental agency RosPrirodNadzor, said the examination of the scheme on the Pacific island of Sakhalin would focus on how Exxon and its partners fulfil their environmental obligations.

Last primary rainforests of Sarawak under immediate danger of destruction

12 February 2007

Samling, the Malaysian logging giant, has started to log the last primary rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak after the police removed a roadblock set up by the local indigenous Penan communities. This was learned from the Borneo Resource Institute BRIMAS, a local NGO based in the city of Miri.

Environmental groups are withholding judgment on the deal struck Thursday between Shell and Russia in which the government-controlled Gazprom apparently acquires a majority stake in the problem-plagued Sakhalin II oil and gas project.[1]

There’s good news to celebrate with our campaign partners in New Caledonia! A French court ordered a temporary halt to construction of the Goro Nickel plant in New Caledonia, on environmental grounds. Since 2003, Global Response has organized several rounds of letter-writing in support of the indigenous Kanak people who oppose the Goro project.

Tropical Rainforest and Native Communities May Never Fully Heal From Three Decades of Carcinogenic Dumping: Online Interviews with Achuar Leaders

By Tony Thien

Some 3,000 Penan from 11 longhouses in the Belaga district in Sarawak filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) against a private company engaged in logging, plantation and reforestation activities on a sizeable area of their land.

A Suhakam team which went to the area recently to follow up on the complaint found clear evidence of what one of its commissioners Dr Denison Jayasooria described as "the devastation of forests as far as the eyes can see."

Russia has ordered a full environmental probe of Royal Dutch Shell's US billion Sakhalin-2 oil and gas development in Russia's Far East

Shell has already spent upwards of US billion on Sakhalin-2, due to start up in 2008. Much of the initial production has found customers in the United States and Japan.

Until August, the company said it had worked in step with Russian regulators to fulfil all necessary regulations.

Celebrate this victory in a campaign we launched in January 2004!

Thanks to all who have written letters to the Russian government and to the Sakhalin II oil project's potential financial backers. With this week's decision, the Russian government has taken an important step to put some teeth into corporate accountability and to protect Sakhalin's fragile wild salmon habitat.

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Russia Revokes Permit for Sakhalin Energy Project

We've just received good news from Kosovo, where the United Nations is at long last providing appropriate medical treatment to Roma children who are suffering from lead poisoning. The poisoning occurred while displaced Roma families lived in UN-administered camps that were contaminated with lead.

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's environmental regulator said Tuesday it had filed suit seeking to revoke approval for a billion international oil project led by Royal Dutch Shell on the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

The Federal Service for the Supervision of Natural Resources had signaled for several weeks that it planned to ask the Natural Resources Ministry to withdraw its approval for the Sakhalin-2 project in Russia's Far East.