Honoring energy company EnBW with the Federal Government’s Sustainability Prize would send a “wrong message”

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) criticizes the nomination of energy company EnBW for the “Corporate Social Responsibility” Prize of the German Federal Government, demanding – together with other human rights organizations – not to honor EnBW with the sustainability award.

“It is unacceptable that a company was nominated that still imports coal from Colombia, committing systematic human rights violations in the supply chain. Honoring EnBW with the CSR Prize would send a completely wrong message,” stated Jan Königshausen, the STP’s expert on Indigenous peoples. This year, the focus of the award ceremony on April 3 will be on “corporate responsibility also along the supply and value chain.” EnBW was nominated in the category “constructive stakeholder involvement.”

The coal that EnBW imports from Colombia comes from the controversial mines of Cerrejón in La Guajira and Drummond in Cesar. The mining areas are located in the ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples who have been living there for generations. “Coal production has catastrophic consequences for the indigenous Wayuú. It is successively destroying their livelihood: water sources are polluted or drained, the soils are being destroyed, and the air is being polluted with toxic coal dust. Respiratory and skin diseases are common, especially among children. Many members of the Indigenous community are forces to leave their land – on the one hand due to direct expulsion measures, but also due to intolerable living conditions as a consequence of the mining,” Königshausen said.

Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in Colombia have been demanding for years that companies such as EnBW, but also the national and regional governments as well as the governments of the countries to which the coal is exported, must live up to their responsibilities: they must ensure that international human rights standards are met, that Indigenous rights are respected, and that those who are actually affected have a say regarding their territories. However, coal mining continues unabated – without transparent disclosure of the origins of imported coal and without effective measures to ensure that human rights violations and environmental destruction are prevented or at least adequately compensated.

“The case of EnBW is part of a larger problem: indigenous territories all over the world are being exploited to satisfy the industrialized nations’ hunger for raw materials. Colonial structures are perpetuated – and increasingly under the guise of alleged sustainability concerns. What is needed are clear, binding standards and an honest examination of the consequences of the German energy policy for affected communities all over the world. The supply chain law makes an important contribution in this respect,” Königshausen emphasized.