Climate Change: The lesson from Lyon
Government delegates from all over the world met this month in Lyon, France, in a Preparatory Conference prior to the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change (Read More)
Bulletin Issue 38 – September 2000
OURVIEWPOINT
LOCAL STRUGGLES AND NEWS
-
Belize: Shrimp farming threatens Placencia Lagoon’s mangroves
In 1999 local residents of Placencia Lagoon –a shallow water body fringed by mangroves and very rich in terrestrial and aquatic wildlife, located in southern Belize– organized themselves to resist (Read More)
-
Gabon: Polemic agreement on the Lope Reserve
Last July the government of Gabon, logging companies operating in the country and some environmental groups –among which the World Wildlife Fund– reached an agreement to keep the Lope Reserve (Read More)
-
Kenya: Mangroves threatened by Canadian mining company
The Kenyan coast is estimated to hold more than 10% of the world’s unexplored deposits of titanium, a metal used in the pigment industry, and increasingly in the manufacture of (Read More)
-
Nigeria: At whose expense is oil drilled in the Niger Delta?
Indigenous peoples of the oil-rich Niger Delta region continue to suffer environmental degradation, poverty and violence to the hands of oil companies that operate in the area. The companies themselves, (Read More)
-
Zimbabwe: Demystifying the role of “the poor” in forest destruction
The image of the last tree in a dry region of Africa being cut down by a poor peasant –ultimate responsible for environment destruction– is widespread. Nevertheless, such image is (Read More)
-
UPM-Kymmene and APRIL: The Chinese-Indonesian connection
UPM-Kymmene Corporation –one of the world’s largest forest products companies and paper producers, with industrial plants in 15 countries– the APRIL Group (Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Ltd.) and APRIL’s (Read More)
-
India: Indigenous peoples victims of “conservation” at Rajive Gandhi National Park
Two visions are confronted in relation to the conservation of protected areas. One of them –originated in the conservationist circles of the North– considers that they have to be kept (Read More)
-
Malaysia: Penans’ blockade against logging in Sarawak
For years indigenous peoples of Sarawak have been fighting to defend their land and forests against “development” plans involving logging, oil palm plantations, pulpwood plantations, hydroelectric dams, mining activities and (Read More)
-
Philippines: A new approach on forests in Palawan
Palawan is an island of the Philippines, located in the Western part of the archipelago and surrounded by the South China Sea and the Sulu Sea. As a result of (Read More)
-
Whose trees? Vietnam’s five million hectare “reforestation” programme
Vietnam has a history of tree plantation programmes dating back to 1956. According to a report by Nguyen Ngoc Lung, Director of Vietnam’s Forest Development Department, between 1956 and 1992 (Read More)
-
Nicaragua: Indigenous peoples’ rights and the Bosawas Reserve
The East of Nicaragua is known as the Atlantic Coast (Costa Atlántica), and is geographically divided in a Northern and a Southern region. This area is characterized by being mostly (Read More)
-
Mexican “justice” finds environmental activist guilty
Mexican “justice” has once again ruled against justice. Rodolfo Montiel, a “campesino” leader imprisoned for leading a successful opposition movement against logging operations by the US-based Boise Cascade in the (Read More)
-
Argentina: Forest loss and plantations in two provinces
Coinciding with the conquest of the vast territory of Argentina by the Buenos Aires centralized government, started in the second half of the 19th century in the name of modernization, (Read More)
-
Bolivia: Hydroelectric dam project questioned
The basin of the Beni River in western Bolivia, which comprises part of the Andean region and part of the Amazon forests, is being threatened by a hydroelectric megaproject, that (Read More)
-
Colombia: Even historical documents confirm the U’wa’s territorial rights
The U’wa indigenous people are maintaining a long conflict with the Colombian state and the oil company Occidental Petroleum in the defense of their traditional territories. The permit granted to (Read More)
-
Venezuela: “Stop it, Mr. President” say indigenous Pemon leaders
The inclusion in the Venezuelan National Constitution –approved in 1999– of a chapter that establishes legal rights for indigenous peoples and indigenous communities in line with International Labour Organization Convention (Read More)
-
Fiji: A coup d’etat sparked off by a mahogany plantation
It is already a well-known fact that large scale tree monocultures result in a large number of social and environmental impacts. However, we had not yet heard of a situation (Read More)
-
Hawaii: Are eucalyptus the only possible crop in Hamakua?
Friends of Hamakua is gravely concerned over a proposed plywood/veneer plant and about the State Forest Hamakua Management Plan, which would imply the harvesting of 4,000 acres of old “non-native” (Read More)
THE CARBON SHOP FILES
-
The word of Indigenous Peoples in Lyon
The following are some quotes from indigenous peoples’ representatives at Lyon, which –in sharp contrast with government delegates– address the true issues at stake, in a climate change process which (Read More)
-
Compensating for emissions through carbon sinks: a cheat’s charter
In WRM bulletin 35 we exposed the conflict of interest among some of the experts who produced the IPCC special report on land use, land use change and forestry last (Read More)
-
Tanzania: Another case of Norwegian CO2lonialism
A project implemented in Uganda by Norwegian company Tree Farms to set up between 80,000 and 100,000 hectares of plantations of pines and eucalyptus to act as carbon sinks has (Read More)
-
Brazil: Dump your carbon garbage with us please!
Although the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Climate Change has not yet approved plantations and forests as carbon “offsets”, the carbon shop is already very active. What (Read More)