Naming the crimes (and criminals) for what they are
The tactics and strategies employed to impose land control and extractive operations in the forests are many. Most of these tactics and strategies are criminal acts.
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Legal but corrupt
The boundary lines between the “legitimate” and the “criminal” have long been paper thin. Indeed, mainstream capitalist enterprise arguably only prospers because its particular forms of looting, theft, fraud and cheating have been blessed with the holy water of “legality”.
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Sexual Exploitation and Violence against Women at the Root of the Industrial Plantation Model
Patriarchal oppression is inseparable from the industrial plantation model, and it is at the base of how companies generate profits. Companies target women, including due to their fundamental role in community life.
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Organized land theft for industrial tree plantations in Brazil: The case of AMCEL
Land grabbing in Brazil is a clear example of organized crime, of land theft from small farmers.
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Indonesia: Legalizing Crimes Under the Slogan of “Creating Jobs”
The government of Indonesia endorsed the criticized Omnibus Law by saying that it is “crucial to attract investment and ultimately create jobs.” The Law is a direct attack on the territories and communities resisting the increasing destruction that has been ongoing for decades in Indonesia.
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Law, Crime and Deforestation in the Thai Countryside
How are forest crimes defined? In Thailand, forest-dependant communities, rather than the government and companies carrying out large-scale deforestation, became scapegoats for this destruction.
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RSPO: outsourcing environmental regulation to oil palm businesses and industry
The RSPO certification scheme used the palm oil industry’s legitimacy crisis to strengthen the terrain to the industry’s own advantage by issuing certificates that supposedly guarantee sustainability standards.
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African Peoples Tribunal against Industrial Plantation Companies
Friends of the Earth organised the First session of the African Peoples Tribunal in Lagos, Nigeria, in November 2020. Affected communities...
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2020: A year of resistance and defiance
Focus on the Global South recently released its newsletter with a message from Asia, where, despite the pandemic and all its consequences,...
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An explanation of the new financial markets on nature’s destruction
Recent calls to action to address critical loss of biodiversity are both long overdue and very welcome, but a parallel debate on the...
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(Thai) นักกิจกรรมและองค์กรทั่วโลกร่วมสนับสนุนประชาชนไทยในการต่อสู้กับอุตสาหกรรมเหมืองแร่
ดาวน์โหลดจดหมายพร้อมลายเซ็นที่นี่
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International support to a struggle against mining in Thailand
Organisations, social movements and activists, from 40 countries express their support and solidarity with a community struggle in Northeastern Thailand to reclaim the land and forests encroached on by the Thor Silasitthi mining company.
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Video: Violence and sexual abuse against women in oil palm plantations MUST END
The video “NO to violence against women and girls living in and around oil palm plantations” denounces the violence against women in West and Central Africa whose lands have been invaded by industrial oil palm plantations.
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Evangelists of Development
This bulletin seeks to warn about the strategies used by those imposing themselves on territories with the development flag. They increasingly work in alliance with financial capital—which they see as a partner, and which they reinforce with public resources.
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Development: Understandings from the Ground
WRM spoke with close allies from Brazil, Gabon, India, Mexico and Mozambique, to hear from them and learn about their understandings of development.
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The Enduring Legacy of a Little-Known World Bank Project to Secure African Plantations for European Billionaires
Why haven’t Africa’s post-colonial governments dismantled the colonial plantation model of exploitation and extraction, returned the lands to their people and emboldened a resurgence of Africa’s diverse, local food and farming systems?
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Why Governments should Reject Land Commodification Efforts Orchestrated by the World Bank and the United States
The development narrative continues to be revived despite its role in driving the current crisis and the millions of livelihoods it has destroyed through displacement and dispossession.
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Indonesia: REDD+, European Development Funding and the ‘Low-Carbon Economy’
How does REDD+ fit into the development agenda in Indonesia? What are the actors involved in promoting REDD+ and with which interests?
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European Development Bank Involvement into Congolese Palm Oil Company Perpetuates Racism of Colonial-Era Land Grab
European development banks have financed a plantation company in DRC that is built on injustice and violence dating back to a colonial-era land grab. When the company went bankrupt in 2020, the banks chose to uphold the plantation model.
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The African Development Bank and the Tree Plantations Industry
In June 2019, a report from the AfDB and WWF Kenya made a call to development-funding agencies, mainly from Europe, and the World Bank, to provide aid money to a new Fund for financing 100,000 hectares of (new) industrial tree plantations, to support the potential development of 500,000 hectares, in Eastern and Southern Africa.
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“It has Always been the same”: Cooperation that does not Cooperate
This article is about how so-called ‘development cooperation’ hides, and grants legitimacy to, an agenda of dispossession and capitalist expansion; and how this ‘cooperation’ actually co-opts the political agenda of grassroots movements.
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Unravelling Concepts tied to Development
Development discourse is intertwined with an array of concepts. It is impossible to talk about development without thinking about other...
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“They should not be called public development banks”
A sign-on statement denounces public development banks for financing companies and private projects that heavily impact communities, their...
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Stolen Land Reclaimed in Argentina
The organization, Independent Producers of Piray, in Argentina, organized to stop the Alto Paraná company and the monoculture of pine...
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“Transform the System”
The last bulletin related to the global pandemic from the organization Focus on the Global South encompasses seven articles that pose the...
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The Suspension of UPM’s Works is Requested until the Environmental Requirements of their Authorization are Met
Members of MOVUS (Movement for a Sustainable Uruguay) denounced before the courts that UPM pulp company failed to comply the environmental...
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The Development Dictionary
This 1992 book, edited by Wolfgang Sachs, compiles more than 15 key concepts that served as a basis for, and a way to expand, destructive...
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(Swahili) Ni jambo gani linaloweza kuwa baya kuhusiana na upandaji miti? Shinikizo jipya kuhusu upandaji wa miti kwa ajili ya viwanda Kusini mwa Dunia
Pakua chapisho katika pdf.
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Support the struggle against mining in Thailand!
We call organizations around the world to adhere to this letter of solidarity with the women and men human rights defenders (W/HRDs) of Khao Lao Yai-Pha Jun Dai Forest Conservation Group.
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Say NO to Green Climate Fund money for REDD in Nicaragua!
We call on organizations to sign this open letter before this Friday 6th of November!!!
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Community members from Mozambique and organizations around the world say NO to more industrial tree plantations
On the eve of the International Day of Struggle against Monoculture Tree Plantations, an open letter signed by more than 730 members of Mozambican communities, and 120 organizations from 40 countries has been released.
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Open Letter to HSBC about Suzano in Brazil
This Open Letter is a public reply from the Alert against the Green Desert Network from Brazil and WRM to an email from the investment department of the HSBC bank in the USA, requesting more information regarding the Suzano paper and pulp corporation in Brazil.
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Resisting a (Mono)Culture of Devastation
Despite the various tactics that try to hide the underlying harm and violence behind large scale tree plantations, each year, communities and movements raise up on September 21st to give visibility to their struggles and to denounce the detrimental impacts tree plantations have on their lives and territories.
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The Agony of a Tree-Planting Project on Communities’ Land in Uganda
The large-scale plantations from UK-based New Forests Company (NFC) have meant violence for thousands of residents from Mubende, Uganda. More than 15 years after the company began its operations, affected communities still confront the long-lasting and severe damages.
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From the ‘Greening Motherland’ Campaign to the ‘Ant Forest’ App: Tree-planting in China’s environmental politics
A historical reflection of China’s main mass tree-planting projects puts in evidence the increasingly key role of capital and market forces in rural China. The most recent one is based on the idea of “green” consumerism and benefits some of the biggest retailer and technology companies.
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South Africa: Death by Eucalyptus Monocultures
Several of Sappi’s plantations have been converted from pine to eucalyptus trees without authorization. Data obtained in over 75 years to verify timber plantations’ water use demonstrate that eucalyptus trees use 30 to 50% more water than pine trees.
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Colombia: Palm-Producing Company Poligrow Plans to Grab more Land under the “Small Producers” Scheme
Violence, massacre and forced displacement in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia have served to advance the industrial cultivation of oil palm. Palm-producing company Poligrow has an undeniable role in land-grabbing and intimidation in the municipality of Mapiripán.
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A Different Vision of “Doing Conservation:” The Kawsak Sacha of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku, Ecuador
Most governments, NGOs and corporations are promoting more Protected Areas and conservation areas around the world. But what does conservation mean? Marlon Santi of the Kichwa people of Sarayaku explains to us what the Amazonian peoples of Ecuador consider to be conservation.
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Deforestation in the Amazon, and the REDD+ Money that Keeps Coming to Brazil
The tens of millions of euros that the government of Acre received from the German government for its REDD+ program failed to stop deforestation. Despite this fact several Brazilian states continue to receive funds from the German government.
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The Road that Threatens to Destroy the “Protected” Harapan Forest in South Sumatra, Indonesia
The approval of a road construction inside the first Ecosystem Restoration Concession in Indonesia puts in evidence the inherent contradictions of such concessions.
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Feminist critique of corporate power
Women’s March Global and Semperviva Feminist Organization (SOF) have produced a series of videos that bring a feminist critique to...
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Land defenders facing ever-increasing violence
The NGO Global Witness recently released its 2019 report on the violence against land and environmental defenders – those who are at...
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“Meaningless certification”
Three-quarters of oil palm concessions in Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) occupy...
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The donation farce during the battle against Covid-19 in Brazil
A network of civil society organizations and social movements launched a letter to expose how big companies (agribusiness, industrial tree...
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Declaration: International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Tree Plantations – September 21st, 2020
We share the Declaration of the Latin American Network Against Monoculture Tree Plantations.
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We need your support! Help stop the advance of monoculture tree plantations in the global South!
Sign this letter to alert people in the global North! Stop development agencies from promoting expansion of large-scale tree plantations.
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Complete the WRM Bulletin Survey!
We invite you to complete the survey. Your inputs, suggestions and constructive critiques are essential for the planning and production of the WRM Bulletin.
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The Green Climate Fund (GCF) must say No to more REDD+ funding requests.
That is the message from more than 80 organisations to the GCF Board on 17 August 2020. The organisations call on the Board to reject in particular two requests for so-called “Results-Based Payments” for deforestation supposedly reduced years ago.
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Dukung surat ini! GCF harus menolak permintaan pendanaan REDD
Kami mengundang organisasi –organisasi seperjuangan untuk menandatangani surat terbuka kepada anggota Dewan Green Climate Fund (GCF) hingga batas waktu Senin, 17 Agustus 2020.
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Support this open letter! The GCF Board must refrain from approving more REDD+ funding requests
We invite organisations to sign until Monday, 17 August. The letter urges the GCF Board to reject in particular two requests for so-called “Results-Based Payments” from the goverments of Indonesia and Colombia.
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Audio: Impacts of Covid-19 on Forest Dependant Peoples
Here we share some fragments of a conversation between the journalist Margaret Prescod, from the Sojourner Truth radio show on KPFK Radio,...
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Support this Public Letter to denounce the “donations farce” of corporations in Brazil
We invite organizations from Brazil, and also from other countries, to sign-on this letter -until September 21st- to strengthen our struggle and resistance against the impacts of corporations in our territories.
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How Covid-19 impacted the oil spills clean-up process in Ogoniland?
Godwin Uyi Ojo, Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria.
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What is the role of the agro-industry, and what actors are behind this enormous chain of production?
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group.
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How is Covid-19 strengthening the push towards a so-called “energy transition”?
Hendro Sangkoyo – School of Democratic Economics, Indonesia.
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What are the parallels between Covid-19 and climate change?
Ivonne Yánez, Acción Ecológica, Ecuador.
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What do growing numbers of pandemics (human and nonhuman) mean for capital in a longer historical perspective?
Larry Lohmann, The Corner House, UK
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How do you see the impacts of authoritarian regimes unfolding due to the measures implemented in front of Covid-19?
Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South
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Exploiting the Pandemic: Corporate and Elite Profiteering
Communities have a long history of confronting the disasters imposed by corporations and elites. For them, the “emergency” was a reality well before the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, profit-seekers are abusing the situation to advance land grabs and roll back legislation.
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Indigenous peoples in Brazil fight against government policies… and the pandemic
From its first day in office, the government led by Jair Bolsonaro has been trying to undermine the constitutional rights of Indigenous Peoples and quilombola communities in Brazil. WRM spoke with the organization CIMI in the Western Amazon.
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Communities in West and Central Africa Resist Industrial Oil Palm Plantations, Even in Times of Covid-19
While palm oil companies present themselves as benevolent donors during the pandemic, communities living in and around these plantations tell another story. Activists against industrial oil palm plantations talk about communities’ situation since the Covid-19 outbreak.
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Indonesia: How the Pandemic Strengthens Immunity for Mining Corporate-Oligarchy and Paves the Way to a New Dictatorship
This article highlights four trends that evidence how the mining industry continues to benefit from the Covid-19 pandemic while continuing its destruction throughout the archipelago. While corporate-oligarchs are hijacking democracy by perpetuating emergencies, a new dictatorship is being installed under the flag of mining capitalism.
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Indonesia: Bagaimana Pandemi Memperkuat Imunitas Oligarki Tambang dan Membuka Jalan menuju Kediktatoran Baru
BAHASA. Artikel ini menyoroti empat tren yang menjadi bukti bagaimana industri pertambangan mengeruk manfaat dari situasi pandem Covid-10 sembari melanjutkan agenda penghancurannya di seluruh kepulauan nusantara. Sementara korporasi-oligarki sedang berupaya membajak demokrasi, kediktatoran baru sedang menancapkan kakinya di bawah bendera kapitalisme pertambangan.
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Agro-imperialism in the time of Covid-19
Agro- and meat industries are winning the jackpot with the Covid-19 pandemic. While the pandemic profits stay at the top, devastation is what trickles down to the bottom. The consequences are deadly. A new wave of structural adjustment is on the way that will focus on increasing foreign agribusiness investment and exports of agricultural commodities.
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Brazil: Against Covid-19, Feminist Economics in the Countryside and the City
With the Covid-19 crisis, the initiatives of movements and collectives based on feminist economics have gained strength. Feminist economics leads us to reflect on the updated mechanisms of control, while continuing to affirm the capacity for resistance and reconstruction of bodies in movement.
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The Pandemic in Forests in India: Escalated Attacks on Communities
Funds from the Compensatory Afforestation scheme have been allocated for Covid-19 relief measures. The scheme has funded plantations that invade community land and has led to illegal evictions where “Protected Areas” have been declared. This has not stopped during the lockdown.
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Reflections amid the Covid-19 Pandemic from WRM’s Advisory Committee
Members of the WRM’s Advisory Committee were invited to contribute to this special Bulletin with reflections on the devastating situation of deepening injustices that forest communities and peasant families around the world are facing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Papua: Violence against Indigenous Peoples and Forest Defenders
The documentary “Selling out West Papua”, shown on Al Jazeera, with associated reporting by news portals Gecko and Mongabay, reveals...
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India: The impact of Covid-19 and lockdowns on Adivasi (Indigenous) and Forest Communities
In a series of articles, forest communities talk about the violation of their forest rights as a result of government approvals for forest...
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“Overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic: Lessons from the dulet”
“Dulet”: A highly transferable disease brought by the meginalew (good spirit) to discipline the wrongdoings of humanity. Alim...
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Arbaro Fund: More Money, More Conflict?
Company plans 75,000 hectare expansion of Industrial Tree Plantations in Seven Countries in the Global South: Sierra Leone, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia, Peru, Ecuador and Paraguay. Download the leafelt to know more about the company and why communities should be alert.
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Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees: 20 years after
Twenty years after the founding of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees, groups in the Campaign are launching a new website & video, among other tools, to accompany the relaunch of their effort to prevent the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment.
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DR Congo: Communities take back control over land stolen from them and urge the oil palm company Feronia to confirm their announcement to “abandon” the land
More than 100 years ago, lands were stolen from communities in DR Congo for industrial oil palm production. Since 2009, those lands are under control of the company FERONIA.
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The Conservation Industry’s Agenda in Times of Crisis
The environmental, climatic and social crisis has been a reality for many for a long time. Yet, rather than acknowledging their contribution to this crisis, corporations and allies use the pandemic to amplify their push to expand Protected Areas, presenting it as a “global solution”.
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Who Protects Protected Areas and Why?
The conservation industry’s plan to double the size of Protected Areas (PAs) is supposed to be the solution to biodiversity loss, climate change, and now even COVID-19! Although PAs will solve none of these, if the conservation industry keeps repeating a big lie, people will eventually come to believe it.
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Nepal: A False Solution for the Conservation of Chure Region and its Impacts for Forest Peoples
When the Chure region was declared a Protected Area, the rights of thousands of Community Forest Groups were undermined. They keep resisting despite the overall violence and the accepted project from the Green Climate Fund.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Batwa and their Return to Ancestral Lands in the Kahuzi Biega National Park
A group of riparian Batwa people, exasperated by the extreme poverty following their eviction in order to establish the Kahuzi Biega National Park, decided to return to their ancestral forests. Since then, they regularly clash with the “eco-guards,” sometimes leading to the loss of human lives.
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Indonesia: What is an Ecosystem Restoration Concession?
Back in 2004, conservation NGOs and the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry pioneered with a model called Ecosystem Restoration Concessions. This article takes a closer look at this model in the context of new and old threats to forests, and the global push for “forest restoration”.
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Indonesia : Apa itu Konsesi Restorasi Ekosistem?
Dalam beberapa dekade terakhir, pendekatan bisnis dalam memulihkan deforestasi semakin menguat. Pada tahun 2004, LSM konservasi dan Kementerian Kehutanan Indonesia menginisiasi sebuah model yang dikenal dengan istilah Konsesi Restorasi Ekosistem. Artikel ini menyoroti lebih dekat pelaksanaan model tersebut dalam konteks ancaman lama dan terkini terhadap hutan Indonesia, serta dorongan global untuk ‘Restorasi hutan’.
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Brazil: Plantation Company Suzano Covers Up its Devastating Impacts with Claims of “Conservation”
A key tactic for the giant pulp producer, Suzano S.A, to keep expanding its industrial eucalyptus plantations in Brazil, is to market itself as a company that practices “conservation” and “restoration.” This conceals its disastrous track record related to forest and forest-dwelling populations.
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Patriarchies in the Forests in India: Communities in Peril
The inter-dependencies in and among communities with their life spaces and practices sheds light to the conservation practices of forest communities. And within these interdependencies lie the stories of women.
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Panama: Other Perspectives on “Doing Conservation”
The indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé people had to endure brutal repression to avoid the onslaught on their territories. They managed to get the Government to ban mining and hydroelectric dams in their territory. However, another intense onslaught came from conservationist NGOs.
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Mozambique: Letter-Response to Portucel and ORAM
In response to an article that was published in WRM’s bulletin, Missão Tabita and WRM received letters from the plantation company, Portucel, and the organization, ORAM. The letters claimed that the article was untrue; however, neither Portucel nor ORAM could prove that the information published was not true.
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Land conflicts between plantation company SOCFIN and communities in Sierra Leone
Civil society organizations welcomed a Technical Committee report set up by the government of Sierra Leone to look into a legal dispute...
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International appeal to stop violence against the peoples in Colombia
Different national and international movements, organizations and networks condemn and vigorously denounce the systematic and selective...
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Legalising land theft in Brazil while the focus is on Covid-19
While most media is focusing on the Covid-19 crisis, new land laws in Brazil stand to usher an unprecedented dispossession of rural land...
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How have Asian Governments responded to the COVID-19 Pandemic?
In the opening article for the Focus on the Global South newsletter, Shalmali Guttal alerts on how lockdowns in Pakistan, India, Thailand,...
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An activist resource pack in front of the pandemic
The African women network against resource extraction (WOMIN) has compiled useful information for activists confronting the measures...
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The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) plant 1,000 trees in an encampment in Paraná, Brazil
500 native trees and 500 fruit trees were planted at the Maila Sabrina camp, during the closing of the Training Course for Pedagogical...
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Organisations ask Sierra Leone Government to move forward with resolution of the land conflict between plantation company Socfin and communities
The completion of a report is an important step towards finding a resolution to the long-standing land dispute in the Malen Chiefdom.
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Martin, we remember
Martin Khor (1951-2020), Third World Network’s Chairman and former Director, passed away on 1 April 2020 in his home in Penang, Malaysia. Martin was one of the founders of the WRM.
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What could be wrong about planting trees? The new push for more industrial tree plantations in the Global South
This publication aims to alert community groups and activists about the corporate push for a new round of large-scale tree plantation expansion.
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Video|Rio Tinto’s biodiversity offset in Madagascar: Community suffering continues
The community of Antsotso produced this video showing the impact of a biodiversity offset project of the mining corporation Rio Tinto /QMM on their livelihoods and their subsistence food production.
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March 21st | UN International Day of Forests
This year, the theme chosen by the UN is “Forests and Biodiversity: Too Precious to Lose”. But how can the UN highlight this when its main policies related to forests and biodiversity allow for large-scale deforestation and biodiversity destruction?
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Green Climate Fund ignores Open Letter demand to say NO to funding requests for industrial tree plantations
On 11 March 2020, the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) approved a requests from the Arbaro Fund for USD 25 million to set up industrial tree plantations in seven countries in Africa and Latin America.
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Organizations tell the Green Climate Fund to say NO to funding requests for industrial tree plantations
133 organisations and 101 individuals from 56 countries have signed the letter to the GCF Board. Specifically, they call for the rejection of a funding request from the Arbaro Fund which the GCF Board will discuss at its 25th meeting from 10-12 March.
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March 8 | Women’s Day
Women, particularly those who depend on forests for their livelihoods and sustenance, face many struggles.
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2020: More Agreements to Increase Deforestation
This editorial aims to raise a high alert with regard to the corporate agendas that dominate international forest-related processes, which appear to be entering new phases. The decisions taken have very real impacts on forest communities.
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Ghana: Eucalyptus plantations for producing energy
The Norwegian company APSD is establishing industrial eucalyptus plantations in Ghana for biomass fuel, which is considered a “carbon neutral” fuel. The Youth Volunteers for the Environment in Ghana spoke with communities affected by these plantations.
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Driving “Carbon Neutral”: Shell’s Restoration and Conservation Project in Indonesia
Oil multinational Shell claims that it is possible that consumers drive “carbon neutral”, simply by paying extra for offsetting their emissions – planting trees or investing in existing forest areas elsewhere. But what is happening in those areas elsewhere?
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