A study set to be published on Monday has found elevated levels of mercury, lead and eleven other toxic elements in the oil sands’ main fresh water source, the Athabasca River, refuting long-standing government and industry claims that water quality there hasn’t been affected by oil sands development.

As we applaud the significant strides accomplished by transparency advocates this year, it’s useful to recall why opening the books is so important...One of the primary ways that extractive industries contribute to human rights abuses in some countries is by providing a source of income to oppressive governments.

Cookie Simpson was born in a tent in the Dog Head Reserve near the shores of Lake Athabasca in northern Alberta, about 660 kilometres north of Edmonton. Her access to clean drinking water was as good as any city kid's, but it didn't involve a tap. Instead, she scooped her water with a cup right from the lake.

CALGARY, Alberta, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Environmental groups demanded on Tuesday that Alberta's energy regulator rescind its approval for Syncrude Canada Ltd's plans to reduce toxic waste from oil sands production, saying they do not meet the regulator's own regulations.

When we worry about the influence of big business on our existence these days, we generally think about a variety of companies: our employer, the financial institutions that handle our money, the drug companies that treat our ailments, the agribusiness firms that feed us, the telecoms that allow us to communicate, etc.

The donation to the Proposition 23 campaign comes from a subsidiary of Kansas-based Koch Industries, which owns refineries and controls 4,000 miles of oil pipelines.

The United States Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) voted on Wednesday to seek a final review of a $900m loan for a controversial 3,960 MW coal-fired power plant in India, reports Pacific Environment, a San Francisco-based environmental group.

Wal-Mart Stores asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to review the largest employment discrimination lawsuit in American history, involving more than a million female workers, current and former, at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores.

Sodexo...and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)...have joined forces to improve farm worker wages and working conditions in the tomato fields of Florida.

Americans love entrepreneurship, and no form of it is more celebrated than the family business. Most of us distrust big banks and giant corporations, but who doesn’t have warm feelings about mom and pop companies or family farms?

Cargill has not suspended its relationship with a palm oil company recently exposed for misleading investors and buyers on its environmental transgressions, reports the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), an activist group campaigning against environmentally-damaging forms of palm oil production.

A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, and the Sierra Club has identified an additional 39 sites in 21 states where toxic coal ash is contaminating drinking and surface water with arsenic and heavy metals. These new sites added to those already identified by the Environmental Protection Agency brings the US total to 137 in 34 states.

An editorial in Monday's Wall Street Journal, "The Case against Corporate Social Responsibility," by Associate Professor Aneel Karnani of the University of Michigan's School of Business, joins a number of other recent well-meaning, but uninformed, essays critical of corporate responsibility.

If a tobacco company gave the World Health Organisation a $10 million grant to examine the health effects of smoking, health campaigners would be outraged. They would also treat the results with great suspicion.

After nearly 90 days of picketing in the broiling sun outside the sprawling Mott’s apple juice plant here in upstate New York, Michelle Muoio recognizes that the lengthy strike is about far more than whether the 305 hourly workers at the plant get a fatter or slimmer paycheck.

On the heels of its endorsement of a July ad campaign aimed at branding Alberta as one of the world’s dirtiest energy producing places to visit, the Polaris Institute welcomes Corporate Ethics International’s re-think Alberta campaign encouraging people in the United Kingdom to think twice about visiting Alberta.

Sinar Mas, an Indonesian conglomerate whose holdings include Asia Pulp and Paper, a paper products brand, and PT Smart, a palm oil producer, was sharply rebuked Wednesday over a recent report where it claimed not to have engaged in destruction of forests and peatlands.

According to a recent study, percent of households living within 10 miles of the Gulf coastline that have seen income drop because of the BP oil disaster: 20.6

In last month's blitzkrieg tour of Central and Southeast Asia, two of the four stops made by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton share the unfortunate bond of enduring an invasion by US air and ground forces.

What does the financial reform package recently signed into law in the US have to do with preventing mass rape in Africa? Quite a lot, it seems.

Eight days after returning home from his Gulf oil-spill response job, Jason Brashears has flashbacks of a scene that he witnessed one day in Lake Ponchartrain, Louisiana: Thousands of fish gasping at the surface in a sea of foamy oil and dispersant.

Wal-Mart's profits rose to $3.6bn (£2.3bn) helped by cost-cutting and growth in international markets. But Wal-Mart sounded a note of caution, saying the slow economic recovery would "continue to affect" customers.

If you're still planning your summer holiday, don't be fooled by Canada's green image and Alberta's famed Rocky Mountains. Canada is the surprising home to the most destructive project on Earth, the Alberta tar sands.

The TakeAway: Shareowner Activism Can Help Deter Human Rights Violations...[A] landmark agreement released on 4 August 2010...commits Nucor

With Washington silent for now on legislation championed by unions, the debate is playing out instead in the states.

The Congressional practice of quietly attaching an unrelated provision to a larger piece of legislation at the last minute has all too often been used to benefit powerful corporate interests.

A federal judge on Friday banned the planting of genetically modified sugar beets engineered by Monsanto Co in a ruling that marks a major setback for the biotech giant.

The U.S. doesn't even have such a ban, and the Basel Action Network's Jim Puckett says we are "way behind" Europe on e-waste, estimating that up to 80 percent of e-waste in the U.S. is exported, again mostly to developing countries, primarily China.

The type of oil that flowed through the Enbridge pipeline when it ruptured in Calhoun County on July 25 is far more damaging to the environment than regular crude at every stage, from extraction to refining, and poses higher risks when spilled into lakes and rivers

A few years ago, the state of California passed a landmark bill designed to reign in carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2020, and Governor Schwarzenegger signed it into law.

Speculation in agricultural commodities by banks caused hunger during the 2008 food crisis by amplifying price surges, World Development Movement said.

In 2005, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community tried to lease the sacred Eagle Rock site from the State of Michigan for ceremonial use. Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula near Marquette, Eagle Rock and the surrounding Yellow Dog Plains are part of lands ceded to the tribe for hunting and fishing by an 1842 government treaty upheld by the courts again in 1983.

The Central Bureau of Investigation…filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court in the Bhopal gas tragedy case to recall the order dated September 13, 1996, quashing charges under Section 304 Part II of the Indian Penal Code (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against the accused.

International oil companies operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region agreed to set up a fund to cover the costs of oil spills, the country’s environment minister said.

Following a recent African conference, a substantial number of organisations, supported by their overseas colleagues, are calling for “the promotion and protection of community rights, the environment, and realisation of the aspirations of African peoples” impacted by mining.

Some of responsible investing’s best known names, such as APG, the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, Railpen and the International Corporate Governance Network, are involved in a new group looking at how to integrate ESG (environmental, social and governance) factors into corporate reporting.

It is reported Ecuador will be compensated for leaving oil reserves in Yasuni National Park untouched. This is a major victory for Ecuador, the rainforest movement, and Ecological Internet – who was the first to campaign internationally on the issue.

A US court has given approval for a lawsuit to proceed from 72 Iraqi nationals against a private contractor accused of complicity in the alleged abuse of detainees at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Today’s Financial Times has a preview of a much-awaited World Bank report on land grabs. The Bank has, for months, been promising the arrival of a report that makes a cast iron case for why allowing rich foreign investors to buy land in poor countries is win-win-win-win.

Avastin for breast cancer – no evidence of improved overall survival, no improvement in quality of life, serious side effects, all at $50k a year.

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is 100 days old, and now another company is competing for the spotlight as a major petro-villain.

When I first heard yesterday's announcement that Seventh Generation and Walmart are entering into a long-term strategic partnership to get Seventh Gen's eco-friendly cleaning products, diapers and wipes into Walmart's stores as well as online shop, my initial reaction was to check the weather reports to see if hell had indeed frozen over.

Some say that the Deepwater Horizon oil-gushing disaster is Obama's Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps in response to that suggestion, President Obama signed an executive order last week to create a first-ever National Ocean Policy.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) made the declaration this month as it published its annual online update of pollution data from industrial facilities across the continent.

It's not just the low wages or the near-scientific union busting. It's the preference for poverty, the business model built on turnover, the manipulative PR. Is this really the best way to bring jobs and food to the south and west sides?

Russia has conceded it will miss by three years a legally binding deadline of 2012 for destroying its massive stockpile of chemical weapons, the top official overseeing compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an international treaty on chemical weapons destruction, announced late last month.

This June the City of Chicago approved Walmart's bid to open up dozens of new facilities, beginning with grocery stores in the city's chronically underserved South side.

Diane Wilson is a feisty, 61-year-old former shrimp boat captain who was recently arrested at a U.S. Senate hearing for allegedly smearing herself with oil and repeatedly shouting at Tony Hayward, the former CEO of BP, as he spoke to lawmakers.

Why did a parliamentary committee suddenly destroy drafts of a final report on tar sands pollution? Here's what they knew.

he US Ambassador to Canada is in Calgary with a message for the Alberta government. He wants more done to clean up the oilsands.

Silicon Valley is the epicenter of computer innovation, but the "e-waste," the debris of Californians' high-tech lifestyle, gets exported to places like India, China and Nigeria, where the electronic scraps sit in open landfills, a source of income for children and adults who sift through the piles of discarded parts in hopes of extracting copper, aluminum and other metals.

Large numbers gathered yesterday (Saturday July 17) for a rally outside Castlerea prison in County Roscommon to celebrate the release of jailed Shell to Sea and Human Rights activist Pat 'the chief' O'Donnell.

The socially responsible investment community views the shareholder resolution process as a vehicle for allowing investors to raise and debate issues that may eventually impinge on the corporate bottom line.

The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to renew for one year a ban on imports from Myanmar over alleged human rights abuses by its military rulers.

The BP Gulf oil spill is not an anomaly but the result of industry-wide recklessness, as companies employ more and more risky methods to reach inaccessible reserves as the conventional ones run dry.

As the Gulf disaster continues to unfold, people are looking at alternatives. Canada's Minister of the environment has been pitching the Alberta oil sands as a greener, safer alternative, but as Jeff Rubin said, "You know you are at the bottom of the ninth when you are schlepping a tonne of sand to get a barrel of oil."

Most of the world’s governments have ratified at least one human rights treaty or convention. Kirk Herbertson, Kim Thompson and Robert Goodland of the World Resources Institute ask why the World Bank Group – which is owned by these same governments – is hesitant to discuss human rights openly.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), a senior member of Congress and chair of the powerful Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce has penned a public letter to the Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton, in which he states strong opposition to a planned oil pipeline that would transport Canada's controversial tar sands oil to the US Gulf Coast.

A common complaint about U.S. trade and agricultural policies is that they have favored the economically powerful while doing li􀄴le for the average person. Labor and citizen groups say the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) gave unprecedented rights to multinational firms and investors at the expense of workers and communities.

Major U.S. companies are contributing to the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests by sourcing paper from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), a subsidiary of Indonesia-based conglomerate Sinar Mas, alleges a new report from Greenpeace.

The amount of oil that will ultimately be released into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon blowout of April 20, 2010 may never be known.

Strikes are rare these days (outside China), so the walkout by a group of some 300 workers at a Mott’s juice and applesauce plant in upstate New York takes on added significance:

A delegation of indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador is visiting Louisiana this week at the invitation of the United Houma Nation, a tribe in coastal Lafourche and Terrebone parishes that has been hit hard by the BP oil catastrophe.

[On the occasion of the launch of FIDH’s guidebook “Corporate Accountability for Human Rights Abuses: A guide for Victims and NGOs on Recourse Mechanisms” and OECD Watch report “10 Years On: Assessing the contribution of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises to responsible business conduct”,

Just before sunset on April 10, 2006, a DC-9 jet landed at the international airport in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, 500 miles east of Mexico City. As soldiers on the ground approached the plane, the crew tried to shoo them away, saying there was a dangerous oil leak. So the troops grew suspicious and searched the jet.

British oil firm BP has been fined $5.2m (£3.5m) by the US Interior Department.

After New York state passed the new e-waste law earlier in June, we figured the lawsuit by electronics manufacturers against New York City for its toughened requirements for e-waste collection would be a moot.

As U.S. senators debate some of the most sweeping climate change laws in American history, a powerful lobbying effort led by Canadian officials and huge oil firms may be winning big concessions.

GARDINER HARRIS

Days after President Barack Obama lashed out at British Petroleum (BP) saying he would not let them ‘nickel and dime’ his people in the oil spill case, a sessions court in Bhopal did precisely that with the victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster.

If we could go back in time before the BP Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, what would we learn? What steps would have helped avert what is now the nation's worst environmental disaster? Could this hindsight help us prevent similar catastrophes in the future? Would our political leaders have the moral compass to "get it right" this time around?

By all rights, the laissez-faire crowd should be silent these days. Recent months have been marked by one example after another of the perils of deregulation and the folly of trusting large corporations to do the right thing.

The industry’s PR response from Deepwater is shaping up nicely. This is the industry message: We will give you improved safety and you give us resumed drilling. The Gulf of Mexico represents energy security and jobs for the boys to boot.

…Economic globalisation has encouraged an unprecedented mobilisation of unskilled and low-skilled labour…The ILO estimates the population of migrant workers to be 120 million.

A judge Wednesday upheld one of the basic rules of the Internet, saving YouTube one billion dollars and letting the rest of us get on with business as usual. Viacom had accused YouTube of profiting from Viacom copyrighted content, but the judge in the case decided that the Google-owned website acted appropriately.

President Obama’s handling of the gulf oil spill has been disappointing.I say that not because I endorse the dishonest conservative critique that the gulf oil spill is somehow Obama’s Katrina and that he is displaying the same kind of incompetence that George W. Bush did after that hurricane.

The financial crisis and the global recession had limited effect on efforts to lower production costs for Canadian oil sands, companies including Statoil ASA and Canadian Oil Sands Trust said.

The Chamber won a big victory yesterday as Jeffery Skilling, the chief mastermind of the Enron collapse, had a portion of his sentence overturned by the Supreme Court.

A group of U.S. representatives asked the State Department not to approve a TransCanada Corp. oil-sands pipeline until the oil’s effect on greenhouse-gas emissions is studied.

As representatives of over 1000 companies gather this week in New York at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, Realizing Rights and the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre have published a list of over 270 companies worldwide known to have adopted a human rights policy statement

Update: The International Whaling Commission (IWC), which was supposed to decide a way forward for whales over the next decade has ended without an agreement.

Large corporations, not small-scale farmers, are now the major forces behind the destruction of the world’s tropical forests. From the Amazon to Madagascar, activists have been directing their actions at these companies — so far with limited success.

Rabia Balkhi wrote her last poem on the bathroom wall with her blood while dying. She had fallen in love with a servant and her brother ordered her killed.

Recently local Alaskan communities were leaked a new draft of a plan to log 80,000 acres of the Tongass forest making its way through the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee.

Although the High Court decision reverses parts of the lower courts’ rulings, the judgment holds that a vacatur bars the planting of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Alfalfa until and unless future deregulation occurs. It is a victory for the Center for Food Safety and the Farmers and Consumers it represents.

Henry Ford once described history as "one damned thing after another." And he didn't even live in Louisiana.

Last month, BP initially balked at congressional requests to live stream the Gulf oil gusher. Rep. Ed Markey persisted, using public pressure and shaming, and BP finally relented.

House Democrats are asking BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward about risky cost-cutting and time-saving measures identified by a Congressional investigation that appear to have increased the risk of a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Migros, Switzerland's largest supermarket chain, will lodge a formal complaint against Malaysia's IOI Group after the palm oil grower was linked to illegal forest-clearing and encroachment on indigenous lands, reports the Bruno Manser Fund.

The Innu communities of Matimekush-Lac John and of Uashat mak Mani-Utenam, supported by the member communities of the Innu Strategic Alliance, are undertaking concrete actions to have their rights respected and to make the governments understand that no mining development is to take place on the territory without prior consent of the Innu people.

In atmosphere of heightened concern, State Department extends comment period, but builder still expects approval

The unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has prompted attempts to exonerate what’s happening in northern Alberta’s oil sands. Does the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico make the oil sands look good by comparison?

This morning Sen. Jeff Merkley will introduce "America Over a Barrel: Solving Our Oil Vulnerability" (PDF), a policy plan devoted to reducing oil use, at an event at the Center for American Progress. I think it could make a big difference in the debate.

The conservative political group Citizens United has won a ruling from federal election authorities that it does not need to disclose the donors that finance its political documentaries.

Things have become ugly in the Mediterranean: over the weekend, fishermen and Greenpeace activists squared off over the fate of the Critically Endangered bluefin tuna.

In a legal settlement that could affect the entire U.S. meat industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to identify and investigate thousands of factory farms that have been avoiding government regulation for water pollution with animal waste.

Nordic bank Nordea has sold all its shares in BP, accusing the oil giant of a lack of transparency over the US oil spill.

In a fight that showed the flaws in California's ballot initiative process and the sheer nerve of PG&E, the state's largest utility, clean energy and local control has won.

Former executives of U.S. chemical giant Union Carbide's India unit are sentenced to two years. The first criminal convictions in the 26-year-old case are widely condemned as a mockery of justice.