By Karen Stephenson

Millions of people around our world are in a constant battle against poverty, hunger, other nations who exploit their vulnerabilities, and a degraded natural environment. The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) campaigns internationally on issues on which their grassroots partners advocate locally, and empowers them with knowledge.

EJF believes that protecting the environment is not just about quality of life - it's a matter of life or death for the world's poorest people. The EJF is comprised of a group of individuals who are well-educated, articulate, very passionate and knowledgeable on the issues they undertake. They stand firm when they say that environmental security is a human right. The facts speak for themselves: a degraded environment results in hunger, brutal poverty and vulnerability for millions of people every day.

EJF History

Steve Trent and Juliette Williams are EJF's founding directors. Established in 2000, the EJF became a registered charity in the UK that same year. Trent and Williams have over 30 years' experience investigating, exposing and resolving environmental abuses, and have worked together in over 40 countries.

In nine years, EJF has trained environmental advocates in the Global South and has campaigned to raise awareness of issues affecting the West. Since 2002, they have actively partnered with grassroots environmental and human rights groups, and have undertaken investigations in 15 countries from Guatemala to Cambodia and Uzbekistan to Guinea.

EJF has produced 17 campaign reports and 6 films, including "White Gold", the award-winning film on Uzbekistan's cotton industry. They have also produced a series of training manuals for grassroots activists.

Trent and Williams established the EJF to ensure that these skills and know-how are passed on to tomorrow's activists. They have witnessed the changes that dedicated individuals have made and their organization acts as a catalyst for change. Today, EJF has a team of campaigners and film-makers based in London, England, and they currently work with partners in Brazil, Vietnam, Mali, Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan, Mauritius and Indonesia.

Empowering People

EJF empowers those people who suffer most from environmental abuses to find peaceful ways of preventing them. Working with grassroots organizations in some of the world's poorest countries, EJF cuts through political and commercial agendas to reach those people who so often lack a voice for their basic rights. They also:

• Protect the natural environment so that people and wildlife that depend on the land have their needs met.
• Create and implement solutions where they are most needed.
• Train local people and communities who are directly affected to investigate and combat environmental degradation as well as defend human rights.
• Provide training in the latest video technologies, research and advocacy skills to document problems and solutions.
• Work through local media to create public and political platforms for change.

Current Campaigns

Cotton Production

Cotton is a $30 billion-a-year industry with two thirds of it being grown in developing countries and the former Soviet Union. Often referred to as "white gold", the cotton industry should be improving lives, yet it too often brings misery. Although progress is small, the inequitable and abusive conditions under which most of the world's cotton is produced still exists. Issues that need to be addressed include:

• Pesticide use is poisoning cotton workers and the environment.
• In Andhra, India, over 100,000 children work 13-hour days for .50 cents a day.
• Children are trafficked to work in cotton fields in West Africa.
• Uzbekistan orders hundreds of thousands of children, some as young as seven, to harvest annual crops (with little or no pay).

Pirate Fishing

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a global issue that has detrimental environmental, economic and social impacts. The world's fisheries are at risk due to plunderers. Areas that are most vulnerable to those who "pirate fish" illegally are African coastal nations. Many African coastal nations are at the mercy of ruthless trawlers (European, Russian, Chinese, etc.) who leave little or no fish for local fishermen, who therefore can not earn a living to sustain their families. For some African families this means starvation as fish is their only form of food.

These fishing practices also inflict damage on seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles and on marine biodiversity as a whole.

Shrimp Farming

There are many impacts of irresponsible expansion of shrimp aquaculture activities. Even the industry itself has recognized some of the issues which include:

• Coastal habitat degradation
• Depletion of wild fish stocks
• Pollution of marine environments
• Pollution of valuable ground water and clean drinking water
• Pollution of agricultural land
• Human rights abuses - child labour, people being displaced, land seizures, violence and murder

Pesticides

Pesticides are toxic and every year they are suspected of causing tens of millions of cases of accidental poisonings. Even in North America, some communities knowingly spray these chemicals on their home lawns, parks where children play and school yards.

Developing countries are used as a dumping ground for hazardous chemicals that are banned in some countries because of the proven serious threats they pose to human life and to the environment. The EJF is actively campaigning to:

• Press governments to introduce measures to ban the import, sale and use of dangerous pesticides.
• Raise awareness of health impacts to specific chemicals such as endosulfan.

Wildlife Trade

The illegal wildlife trade is big business worth up to $20 billion annually. Illegal trafficking of plants and animals reduces wildlife populations, some that are on the endangered species list. Traded for pets, trophies, furniture, clothing, medicines and food, this illegal trade supplies a thirsty demand for these products.

The Environmental Justice Foundation is a dedicated organization that relies on many passionate people. Members of the EJF are not only doing their piece to help improve the quality of life, they're saving lives as well.