World Social Forum: A pause on the way
The World Social Forum met in Nairobi, Kenya from 20 to 25 January. Beyond the opinion that each one of us may have about its achievements, what we would like (Read More)
OURVIEWPOINT
COMMUNITIES AND FORESTS
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Brazil: Dams would destroy isolated tribe Enawene Nawe’s livelihood
The Enawene Nawe — a small Amazonian tribe (over 420) who live by fishing and gathering in Mato Grosso state, Brazil — are a relatively isolated people who were first (Read More)
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Burma: The greening of the military junta by the Wildlife Conservation Society
The remote and environmentally rich Hugawng valley in Burma’s northern Kachin State has been internationally recognized as one of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity. It even remained largely untouched by (Read More)
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Colombia: The U’wa Indigenous People resist oil exploration
On 15 December 2006, the Colombian government made public its decision to reinitiate oil exploration activities in the Siriri and Catleya Blocks located in the Departments of Arauca, Santander, North (Read More)
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Costa Rica: Business conservationism impacts on rainforest peasants, women and children
Costa Rica has been built as an export-oriented economy, with no political or economic independence. Export pressure on resources by the world system resulted in great inequality. Since the Kyoto (Read More)
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Ecuador: The government faces a challenge in the Yasuni National Park
When couple of days ago President Rafael Correa affirmed that the environmentalists want to return to the Stone Age on requesting an oil moratorium he was only repeating what has (Read More)
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India: The Forest Rights Act, a weapon of struggle
The passage of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006 is a watershed event in the hard-fought and prolonged struggle of adivasis and (Read More)
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Mali: Forests within food sovereignty
Mali is host in February to over 500 women and men from some hundred countries from all over the world that are meeting at the “Nyeleni 2007: Forum for Food (Read More)
COMMUNITIES AND TREE MONOCULTURES
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Australia: Tasmania shows the way to ban tree plantations
Last year, about 170 farmers met in the farming community of South Riana to air their concerns and see how to stop valuable farmland being converted to timber plantations. They (Read More)
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Brazil: Veracel’s deceitful practices
The Veracel pulp mill is located in the south of the Brazilian state of Bahia, some 45 kilometres from the coast, on the border between the municipalities of Eunapolis and (Read More)
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Cameroon: FAO’s rubber “forests”
According to the FAO definition, rubber plantations are “forests.” Recently we visited one of these “forests” in Kribi, Cameroon and talked with the workers and local population. Unlike the FAO (Read More)
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India: World Bank forestry project goes from bad to worse
Indian NGO Samata and the UK’s Forest Peoples Programme have found that the resettlement action plan (RAP) of the World Bank-funded Andhra Pradesh Community Forest Management Project (APCFMP) undermines customary (Read More)
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Kenya: Let’s plant seeds of peace and hope, not seeds of conflict!
Kenyan winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, and also Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources and Member of Parliament, Wangari Maathai, launched in 1977 the Green Belt (Read More)
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Malaysia: Acacia plantation plan threatens the Belum-Temenggor forest
For decades, the presence of communist insurgents kept Malaysia’s northern frontier free from exploitation. Too dangerous to open up for tourism or development, the Belum-Temenggor forest stood in pristine splendour (Read More)
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Vietnam: What’s happening in the pulp and paper sector?
Vietnam’s paper industry is booming. In 1995, paper production stood at 220,000 tonnes. In 2007, the Vietnam Paper Association aims to produce more than one million tonnes of paper. Demand (Read More)
CARBON SINKS
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Uganda: Notes from a visit to Mount Elgon
The land near the southern boundary of the Mount Elgon national park is green and the volcanic soils are fertile. But since it was declared a national park in 1993, (Read More)
BIOFUELS
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The EU’s dead-end approach to climate-proofing Europe’s transport sector: The More Gas You Guzzle the Greener You Are
Biofuels are flavour of the month for car-makers and politicians keen to be seen as green without directly addressing the problem of ever-rising transport emissions. The buzz has also caught (Read More)
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Facing the biofuel rush: Land must be used to feed people, not cars
The present eagerness of the European Union to favour the use and import of biofuel as an alternative to fossil fuels has risen serious concerns among those who are aware (Read More)