Friends of the Earth: Press Releases: : Watts Leaves Shell With Green Pledges Unfulfilled

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Watts Leaves Shell With Green Pledges Unfulfilled

Mar 3 2004

Commenting on the announcement of Sir Philip Watt's resignation as Chairman of Shell, Friends of the Earth's Senior Corporate Accountability Campaigner Craig Bennett said:

"The way Sir Philip Watts has been hounded out for failing to find quite the quantity of polluting fossil fuels the City would have liked proves that the environment is still peripheral to mainstream business.

"But Sir Philip also failed to deliver on promises to the communities who live alongside Shell's refineries and pipelines. Despite his green spin, the environment is clearly still peripheral to Shell. It is absolutely clear that the City and corporations will only take these issues seriously when they are forced to do so by legislation."

Sir Philip Watts made a number of pledges on sustainable development during his time as chair of Shell, but the company has been the frequent target of campaigns by Friends of the Earth.

The environment group published an alternative "Shell Report" detailing the failure of the company to deliver of its green promises [1] at last year's AGM, which was attended by representatives from the communities that neighbour Shell's plants and refineries around the world. The chairman promised that he would "personally ensure" that the social and environmental performance of Shell's refineries would improve.

Campaigners and Shell's neighbours will now be piling pressure on incoming Chairman Jeroen van der Veer to honour the promises made by Watts. They will also be calling on the UK Government to bring in laws to improve the social and environmental performance of UK companies.

Note

[1] Failing The Challenge: The Other Shell Report is available at:
www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/failing_challenge.pdf (PDF format)

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Media team