Africa (general)

 By SERVINDI . While the world’s governments debate the catastrophic consequences of global warming, a trading structure of global scope threatens to establish a new form of subjugation in Asia and Africa, by appropriating one of the main agents of life on Earth: its forests. The lead actor in this threat is REDD, which is sponsored by the United Nations and masquerades as one of the solutions to global warming.

Background Much has been written about the plunder of biodiversity and other natural resources from Africa, in particular where negative social, economic and environmental impacts have resulted; as with indiscriminate clear-cut logging of forests, ruthless mineral extraction, and the conversion of community land into industrial plantations. But despite substantial political change over the past 100 years, Africa’s unequal economic relationship with the global North remains.

Industrial oil palm plantations have been expanding in many countries in the global South, increasingly in Africa and Latin America, invading territories of rural populations, indigenous peoples and traditional communities in order to produce palm oil for export or agrofuel for foreign markets.

A report by Edwin C. Perry, Cheryl Potgieter and Urmilla Bob,(1) highlights the links between environmental conflicts and women. The authors join to the growing attention put by women’s movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and researchers, among others,on violence against women as well as on the need to examine its links to situations of conflicts

The women and men farmers and peasants belonging to the Via Campesina, are calling for this April 17th to be a global day of action and mobilisation in defence of the struggles of farmers and peasants, and, in particular, in defence of peasants' and farmers' seeds which are a heritage of the world's peoples in the affirmation of Food Sovereignty.

La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International, Focus on the Global South, the World Rainforest Movement and more than than 120 organizations from around the world sent a letter to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO, in Rome, on the occasion of March 21st, the UN International Day of Forest. The letter demands that the FAO change its present definition of forests.

Around the world ‘development’ is robbing tribal people of their land, self-sufficiency and pride and leaving them with nothing. “There you go” is a short, satirical film, from Survival International, that tells the story of how tribal peoples are being destroyed in the name of ‘development’. For further information see http://www.survivalinternational.org/

The No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) initiated the “Week of Action Against False Solutions”, from October 28 to November 4. The action, joined by the global convergence Reclaim Power! http://reclaimpower.net/, opposes the “dirty energy” and the companies who try to greenwash themselves with false solutions like REDD and other false solutions such as carbon trading, CDM, 'green economy', biodiversity offsets, CCS, geo-engineering and of course the big false solution- 'clean coal'.

“To cook a continent”, the oil industry in Africa, by Nnimmo Bassey. Nnimmo Bassey examines the oil industry in Africa, probes the roots of global warming, warns of its insidious impacts and explores false 'solutions'. His intelligent and wide-ranging approach demonstrates that the issues around natural resource exploitation, corporate profiteering and climate change must be considered together if we are to save ourselves.

By Nnimmo Bassey Read the entry on Nnimmo's blog here: http://nnimmo.blogspot.com/2013/11/silence-is-treason-remembering-saro_9.html#!/2013/11/silence-is-treason-remembering-saro_9.html