According to the Transnational Resource and Action Center, after a year-long campaign by environmentalists, human rights groups, labor unions and other NGOs, a leading U.N. agency has abandoned its perilous partnership with a group of transnational corporations whose tarnished human rights, environmental and development records threatened to rub off on the world body. The U.N. Development Programme has canceled plans to create a global sustainable development facility, known as a GSDF, in partnership with about 15 corporations, that included Dow Chemical, mining giant Rio Tinto, energy conglomerate ABB and biotechnology leader Novartis.