CEE Bankwatch Network is one of the strongest networks of environmental organizations working in eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union, with 17 members operating in 12 countries. As an organization Bankwatch is unique in that it is the only network actively monitoring the use of public financial flows in its region, tracking investments across a number of sectors - like transport, energy and mining - from such lenders as the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Union’s Structural and Cohesion Funds. Additionally Bankwatch’s focus is ever increasingly relevant given the current economic crisis and its implications for the lending practices of its target institutions.

With such a broad thematic and geographic focus, maintaining effective communication is essential for the success of Bankwatch campaigning activities. In the past year or so - due in part to the proliferation of user-friendly, open-source communication tools - a gap was identified in the way that Bankwatch maintains its internal and institutional knowledge. Coupled with turnover of long-standing staff members, important information, like contacts to key allies and members of parliaments, or intelligence on policy positions from particular decision makers, was lost. Similarly, as the economic landscape in which the network operates continually changes, it is ever more important to facilitate exchange among Banwkatch’s various member organizations in the most effective and efficient way possible.

With an annual lending portfolio of over 50 billion euros approved in 2006, the European Investment Bank is the largest public international financial institution (IFI) in the world. As the EU-house bank, operating with support of European taxpayers' money, the EIB is subject to EU law and is supposed to support EU commitments, including those on climate change, biodiversity, protecting and enhancing the environment and fostering sustainable development.Yet EIB support for fossil fuel extraction and exploitation is undoubtedly contributing to climate change. Many EIB projects in the Global South, notably those in the area of the extractive industries, like the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, the West-African Gas Pipeline or large hydro like the Bujagali dam in Uganda or the Nam Thun 2 dam in Laos, have generated controversies and debates over their contribution to environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity as well as social problems such as loss of livelihoods, increased poverty and the fostering of gender inequality. Over the last five years EIB lending to the energy sector was some three billion euros annually and the EIB plans to increase this investment further. While it is recognized that the EIB should play an important role in financing energy development, it is also crucial that when doing so it should strive to minimise its carbon-footprint and to cool rather than fuel climate change. In an effort to make the EIB more accountable to its climate change commitments and in the run-up to the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poznan, Poland later this year (the so-called COP-14), CEE Bankwatch Network will analyse the EIB's lending portfolio in the last ten years and prepare a map of EIB-financed (or planned for financing) oil projects with information on their environmental, social and climate impacts. In addition to an overview of nearly 200 hundred different projects, the map will also present more detailed case studies of eighteen specific projects globally.We are seeking technical and artistic help with the programming and designing of a website employing data mash-ups. Using Google Maps API and data we have collected, we would like to build a website that presents the EIB’s portfolio of oil projects over the last ten years in an engaging and attractive manner. In addition to different documents, reports and other background information, the website will also include images of specific projects, ideally by or using data from Bankwatch’s own online image gallery, or by mashing together an image API, like Flickr or Panoramio. As we plan to launch the map prior to the COP-14, we are aiming to have the project completed by mid-November.
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