About Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific

Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific (FoE APac) is a formal regional structure of Friends of the Earth International, a federation of environmental organisations present in 73 countries, uniting over 2.2 million members and supporters.

Established in November 2008, The Asia Pacific region is the most diverse, encompassing member groups from the global North and the global South.

Member groups from the region are active in community-based struggles against destructive projects including mining and other extractive industries. We work hand-in-hand with indigenous peoples, grassroots communities, peasant farmers, fisherfolk, trade unions, feminist movements, and human rights groups to secure sustainable livelihoods and fight against vulnerability to environmental disasters.

We campaign on today’s most urgent environmental and social issues. We challenge the current model of economic and corporate globalisation, and promote solutions that will help create environmentally sustainable and socially just societies.

 

Our Vision

We envision a society of interdependent peoples living in dignity, wholeness, and fulfillment in which equity and peoples’ rights are realised. This will be a society built upon peoples’ sovereignty and participation. It will be founded on social, economic, gender, and environmental justice and be free from all forms of domination and exploitation, such as neoliberalism, corporate globalization, neo-colonialism, and militarism. We believe that our children’s future will be better because of what we do.

Our Mission

  • To collectively ensure environmental and social justice, human dignity, and respect for human rights and peoples’ rights to secure sustainable societies.
  • To halt and reverse environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources, nurture the earth’s ecological and cultural diversity, and secure sustainable livelihoods.
  • To secure the empowerment of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, groups, and individuals, and to ensure public participation in decision-making.
  • To bring about transformation towards sustainability and equity between and within societies with creative approaches and solutions.
  • To engage in vibrant campaigns, raise awareness, mobilize peoples and build alliances with diverse movements, linking grassroots, national and global struggles.
  • To inspire one another and harness, strengthen and complement each other’s capacities, and live the change we wish to see and work together in solidarity.

Meet the Secretariat

Bareesh H Chowdhury
Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific Coordinator

Bareesh H Chowdhury has been working as a Research Lawyer at the Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers’ Association (BELA)/ Friends of the Earth Bangladesh since 2020, after finishing his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex in 2019. Prior to this, he worked for the UN Foundation in Washington, DC in their Energy Access and Climate programme, as well as short stints at Amnesty International and the Essex Human Rights Centre in the UK, and Naripokkho, an organisation for the prevention of violence against women, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He has served as the Regional Facilitator for Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific since 2021. Bareesh regularly writes op-eds for The Daily Star in Bangladesh, and his main interests lie in the nexus of human rights, climate change and renewable energy.

Theiva Lingam
Majelis Member (Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific board member)

Theiva Lingam is a public interest lawyer and environmental activist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Theiva is a legal advisor to Sahabat Alam Malaysia/Friends of the Earth Malaysia and the Consumers’ Association of Penang. She has been a part of Friends of the Earth for 24 years, campaigning on forests and biodiversity issues. 

Emma Harvey
Communications Coordinator and Internationalist Solidarity Team

Emma has been the Communications Coordinator for Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific since 2017 and joined the Internationalist Solidarity System team as one of two regional focal points in 2020. She holds a BA in International Community Development and is currently completing a MSc in Environmental Studies. Outside of Friends of the Earth, Emma works for a local NGO, coordinating an urban food project for primary school children. Based in Melbourne, Emma is hosted by Friends of the Earth Australia.

Meet the Membership and Development Team

Chloe Aldenhoven
Membership Development

Chloe has represented the Asia-Pacific region in the Membership Development Team since 2016. She has worked and volunteered at Friends of the Earth Australia since 2012, supporting communities to protect their land, water and climate from invasive fossil fuel mining. She is passionate about developing networks of solidarity to support grassroots environmental justice struggles across Asia-Pacific and the world, and creating spaces for communities to come together to develop an internationalist environmental justice analysis.

We’re a part of Friends of the Earth International

Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is the world’s largest grassroots environmental federation with 73 national member groups and millions of members and supporters around the world. Member groups campaign internationally, nationally and locally to protect the environment and peoples’ rights, and build sustainable societies. 

To find out more visit www.foei.org