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How EU hygiene standards facilitate illegal fishing in West Africa.

EJF's No Place Like Home: Where next for climate refugees? report considers how the negative impacts of climate change are impacting on human rights and driving millions of people from their homes and land each year. It puts the call to governments and political leaders to secure a new agreement on climate refugees, guaranteeing them effective enjoyment of their human rights and a fair claim to our shared world.

In collaboration with the Pesticide Action Network UK this report reveals the routine use of harmful chemicals, including nerve agents and neurotoxins, on cotton crops.

Vomiting, paralysis, incontinence, coma, seizures and death are some of the many side effects suffered by farmers and children in the developing world who are routinely exposed to pesticides, many of which are banned or restricted in use in the West. The report puts a case across for organic cotton alternatives.

This Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) report reveals how children in some of the world’s largest cotton-producing countries are serving as underpaid, free or forced labourers to feed the global demand for textiles.

China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Uzbekistan and Turkey – six of the world’s top seven cotton producers – have been reported to use child labour in their cotton fields. In India, where as much as 70% of the country’s estimated 100 million child labourers work in agriculture, several hundred thousand children – mostly girls – sacrifice their education and health to produce hybrid cottonseed for a thriving industry.

Mangroves represent far more than just a ‘bio-shield’. Despite being regarded for many years as ‘wastelands’, ripe for development, it is now known that mangroves provide coastal communities with many services and utilizable products, and perform vital ecosystem functions.

This report concludes that the conversion of mangrove habitat into shrimp farms, tourist resorts, agricultural and urban land over the past decades, as well as destruction of coral reefs, contributed significantly to the catastrophic loss of human lives and settlements during the 2004 tsunami. Conserving and restoring coastal mangrove areas is essential if coastal communities are to recover and be protected from future similar events.

The report documents how illegal fishing activities are facilitated in Guinea by the lack of Monitoring, Control and Surveillance and the widespread use of Flags of Convenience. It makes recommendations to stop the plunder, including regional cooperation and EU leadership.

This internationally acclaimed report exposes how the billion-dollar cotton industry is causing an environmental catastrophe and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, Central Asia.

White Gold highlights the disastrous demise of the Aral Sea as the rivers that once fed it have been diverted to irrigate cotton fields. The report also draws attention to the endemic use of forced child labour in the annual cotton harvest. Uzbekistan is unique for the scale of forced child labour - hundreds of thousands of children are forced to labour in the fields undergoing arduous work for little or no pay.

Detailed investigations by EJF expose the use of cotton revenues in Uzbekistan to support a corrupt, brutal and coercive dictatorship.

'What's the Catch? - Reducing bycatch in EU distant water fisheries' documents EJF's research on the dramatic economic, ecological and developmental impacts of bycatch. It makes practical recommendations to reduce the EU distant water fisheries bycatch through highlighting successful technical and operational methods.

Every year, pesticides are estimated to cause tens of millions of cases of accidental poisoning. Many of these poisoning cases are in the developing world where awareness of the dangers is lacking. Symptoms of pesticide poisoning can range from short-term headaches and nausea to convulsions, unconsciousness or death. Longer-term effects include damage to nervous systems, respiratory and skin diseases, cancers and birth defects.

What's Your Poison? highlights the shocking evidence between pesticides and damage to human health in developing countries.

This report describes the development, current status and future targets of shrimp aquaculture in the Socialist Republic Of Vietnam (henceforth Vietnam). We highlight the social and environmental importance of mangrove and wetland habitats and demonstrate the decline in such ecosystems due to shrimp aquaculture. We characterise the economics of shrimp aquaculture, both nationally and at the local level, and highlight the industry’s key problems. Finally we describe a range of alternatives and solutions, and present recommendations to the Government of Vietnam, the international donor community, non-governmental organisations and the governments of shrimp-importing countries.

Describes our trip to Vietnam to learn more about the Vietnamese shrimp farming industry, as part of our campaign for sustainable shrimp production.

This report is one of a series documenting EJF’s international investigations into the social, economic and environmental impacts resulting from shrimp production and consumption.

Shrimp farming has had major impacts on coastlines (particularly mangrove forests) and coastal communities worldwide. Shrimp is becoming a more affordable food-stuff in industrialised nations but the true cost of shrimp is that paid by the rural poor in producer countries.