Green discourses and deforestation
While the destruction of forest territories continues, more pledges, agreements and programs are being implemented in the name of ‘addressing deforestation and climate change’.
Bulletin 243 – April/May 2019
The articles in this Bulletin are written by the following organizations and individuals: Susan Herawati of The People’s Coalition for Fisheries Justice in Indonesia (KIARA – Koalisi Rakyat untuk Keadilan Perikanan); the Academic Association for rural communities’ development in Mozambique (ADECRU – Acção Académica para o desenvolvimento das comunidades rurais); Environmental Justice in Mozambique (JÁ! – Justiça Ambiental!); Friends of the Earth Malaysia (SAM – Sahabat Alam); Soumitra Ghosh of the All India Forum of Forest Movements in India (AIFFM); the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador and members of the WRM international secretariat.
OUR VIEWPOINT
HIDING DEFORESTATION: NEW TRENDS AND RESISTANCES
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Indonesia: Fate of Fishing Villages in the Climate Crisis and the Failure of ‘Blue Carbon’
Blue Carbon (or Blue REDD+) appeared as a new carbon offset scheme between emissions and carbon absorption in coastal territories. However, organizations in Indonesia warn that the initiative is a strategy to change the coastal and marine territories into tradable assets .
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Mozambique: The Threat of Biodiversity “Offsets”
BIOFUND, a conservation fund to finance protected areas in Mozambique—with support from the World Bank, international cooperation and conservation NGOs—intends to use biodiversity offsets to obtain resources and speculate in financial markets.
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Indigenous territories in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, threatened by monoculture plantations
Millions of hectares of mostly forested areas in Malaysia have been targeted for developing monoculture plantations –including expanding timber plantations-, however, many of these have not been fully developed yet.
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Misguided funding: Green Climate Fund support for REDD+
Despite the government of Brazil announcing cutbacks to action against deforestation, the Green Climate Fund awarded US$ 96 million for alleged emission reductions in the Brazilian Amazon. These avoided emissions in part exist only on paper.
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Attempt to Re-Colonize Forests in India The new Draft Amendments to Indian Forest Act
A long cycle of state repression in India now sees new amendments to the colonial Indian Forest Act which would not only make forest bureaucracy more powerful than ever, but would also de facto put an end to the landmark Forest Rights Act.
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Ecuador: Stories of Dispossession and Deforestation Caused by the Extraction of Palm and Wood
The expansion of oil palm and logging in Wimbí is a fact. And in both cases, the protagonist is the same: the land trafficker who allowed the palm company, Energy & Palma, to enter. This new cycle of dispossession threatens the culture and survival of the community.
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WWF in the DRC’s Salonga National Park: Torture, Murder and Gang-Rape
Serious abuses in DRC’s Salonga National Park at the hands of park rangers supported by funding from the WWF and a range of international donors are just the latest to be documented. This is a wider problem on human rights abuses and colonial interventions in forests.
ACTION ALERTS
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Finnish and Uruguayan Organizations Against a New UPM Pulp Mill
Finnish company, UPM, plans to install its second pulp mill in Uruguay—which would be one of the largest in the world and produce over two million tons of pulp per (Read More)
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Sarawak: Save the Mulu Rainforest from oil palm plantations!
An area of 4.400 hectares of the Mulu rainforest is currently being converted into palm oil monocultures; an area directly adjacent to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Mulu National (Read More)
RECOMMENDED
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Brazil’s Amazon: The Wealth of the Earth Generates the Poverty of Humankind
As the largest rainforest in the world, the area most rich in minerals and the main biogenetic reserve of the planet, the Amazon is one of the most desirable territories (Read More)
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Planting Conflicts: Monocultures and Dispossession in the Peruvian Amazon
A short documentary by Oxfam Peru shows the serious environmental and social problems that come with the expansion of monoculture tree plantations in the Peruvian Amazon. Thousands of hectares have (Read More)
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Voices of Women Against Extractivism
The most recent monthly bulletin of the Latin American Network of Women Defenders of social and environmental rights brings together several articles from the region that highlight the violence that (Read More)
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Papua: Co-optation of indigenous traditions for oil palm monocultures
Indigenous Papuans are seeing their forest being destroyed to be replaced by monoculture plantations. An interview by Mongabay news to anthropologist Sophie Chao evidenced the complex tensions between communities and (Read More)
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Free Trade Agreements: Instruments that Subjugate Rights
A workbook created by the Biodiversity Alliance seeks to rethink the effects of the free trade agreements, as well as point out their harmful effects; since these are powerful “legal” (Read More)