Asia (general)

By selecting the ‘Mekong River Basin’ from the left panel where it says 2River Basins in Focus’, detailed information will appear about the area.

 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.

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.

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/

Solo disponible en inglés - Agribusiness large-scale land acquisitions and human rights in Southeast Asia - Updates from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Burma Forest Peoples Programme, August 2013 By Marcus Colchester, Sophie Chao, Jonas Dalliner, Su Mei Toh, Chan Kiev, Indriaswati Saptaningrum, Mark Anthony Ramirez and Juan Pulhin Ed: Sophie Chao, Forest Peoples Programme

Agribusiness large-scale land acquisitions and human rights in Southeast Asia - Updates from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Burma Forest Peoples Programme, August 2013 By Marcus Colchester, Sophie Chao, Jonas Dalliner, Su Mei Toh, Chan Kiev, Indriaswati Saptaningrum, Mark Anthony Ramirez and Juan Pulhin Ed: Sophie Chao, Forest Peoples Programme

Biomass is the oldest energy source used by humans. It is found in abundance in almost every part of the planet and today, more than two billion people depend on it for cooking, heating and lighting, particularly in the countries of the global South. Energy produced from biomass is called bioenergy.

Barbara Zimmerman with the International Conservation Fund for Canada and Cyril Kormos, Vice President for policy with the WILD Foundation are the authors of a new study in Bioscience which argues that the ecology of tropical hardwoods makes logging with truly sustainable practices not only impractical, but completely unprofitable.