World Rainforest Movement
This Bulletin articles are written by the following organizations and individuals: Survival International; the Federation of Community Forest Users in Nepal (FECOFUN); the Center for the Accompaniment of Indigenous Pygmies and Vulnerable Minorities in DRC (CAMV); an activist from Brazil; the Forum For Women Farmers’ Rights in India (MAKAAM); Missão Tabita in Mozambique and members of the WRM international secretariat.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Civil society organizations welcomed a Technical Committee report set up by the government of Sierra Leone to look into a legal dispute between the multinational company Socfin and communities affected (Read More)
Different national and international movements, organizations and networks condemn and vigorously denounce the systematic and selective murders of comrades from rural and urban organizations in Colombia, without the government or (Read More)
While most media is focusing on the Covid-19 crisis, new land laws in Brazil stand to usher an unprecedented dispossession of rural land in Brazil, expanding deforestation and destruction, pushed (Read More)
In the opening article for the Focus on the Global South newsletter, Shalmali Guttal alerts on how lockdowns in Pakistan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Philippines have left millions (Read More)
The African women network against resource extraction (WOMIN) has compiled useful information for activists confronting the measures against the pandemic. The compilation gathers basic health information, tools to help organizing (Read More)
500 native trees and 500 fruit trees were planted at the Maila Sabrina camp, during the closing of the Training Course for Pedagogical Collectives of the Schools of the Landless (Read More)