*[Enwl-eng] [Aarhus.econet] Please distribute it further!!!
ENWLine
Dear friends and colleagues,
We are writing to ask for your support to protect a fragile and unique ecosystem in Turkmenistan, which is on the Caspian Sea coast. The Hazar Nature Reserve is a Ramsar protected site and home to over 50 species of endemic fish, at least 10 of which are endangered. It is also habitat to 264 species of birds, including 55 nesting species; 37 species of reptiles, including two endangered species of snake; and 47 species of mammals, 12 of which are endangered. The Hazar Reserve is threatened by a project, which is requesting funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which would transport hydrocarbons through the territory of the reserve.
The EBRD wants to use public (tax-payer) money to provide $21 million in loans to CMI Offshore, a company that would purchase one or more sea-faring vessels to service offshore oil rigs. The project the loan would support would use an offshore transportation route of the Anchor Handling Tug Supply (AHTS) for vessel(s) to crosses through the Hazar Nature Reserve, putting it at risk from hydrocarbons.
According to its own procedures, the EBRD is required to conduct environmental and social due diligence before providing funding for this type of project. However, the institution has failed to do so by stating that the project is a “transportation” project rather than a project associated with oil and gas facilities. It has also taken at face value the assessment of Turkmenistan’s government that the project will not harm the Hazar Reserve. It should conduct its own assessments.
Turkmenistan is one of the world’s most opaque and corrupt regimes, and is run by an authoritarian dictator who stifles all dissent and who has made it impossible for civil society organizations, including environmental defenders, to work.
We are asking the EBRD to review its own procedures and to carefully evaluate what it is proposing to fund with this loan. We believe that such a review will show them that the project should be a category A project—the most dangerous kind that the bank funds—and thus that a range of additional procedures will be necessary before the EBRD can even consider funding this project.
Please sign on to this letter, which will accompany our complaint to the EBRD, to show your support for our group of activists—international environmental and human rights defenders and those inside the country, who risk their life and limb by defending the reserve.
Sincerely,
Kate Watters
Crude Accountability and member of the Turkmenistan Working Group of the Civic Solidarity Platform
Kate Watters <ka...@crudeaccountability.org>
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Дата: Четверг, 5 октября 2017, 11:20 +04:00
Тема: [Aarhus.econet] Please distribute it further!!!
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