The devastating impacts of Green Resources’ tree plantation and carbon offset project in Uganda exposes the limits of carbon markets. While villagers carry the social, environmental and other costs of this project by loosing access and control over their land, the company is allowed to profit even more from its destructive plantations, framing them as “carbon sinks”.
Bulletin articles
The extractivist paradigm in Southern Africa threatens the lives and livelihoods of peasant communities, in particular women and girls: From the Tete Province in Mozambique, where women confront water scarcity and pollution to Zimbabwe’s Marange community, where militarised and often sexualised violence haunts women’s daily lives.
Zambia’s peaceful context and strategic geographical location, combined with a desperate hunger for foreign direct investment, positions the country at the frontline of the global wave of resources grabbing, the crisis of global capital and the capitalisation of climate change
The Programme of Infrastructure Development for Africa (PIDA) was adopted in 2012 with the aim of connecting the continent’s energy, transport, water and communication infrastructure. But what kind of infrastructure does “Africa” really need and who is getting more access with such initiative? This article looks into the hydropower dams proposed for PIDA
Industrial tree plantation projects in Mozambique are gaining more and more ground in processes of land acquisition and dispute. The Portuguese company, Portucel, has a “reforestation” plan through 2026 that aims to cover 356 thousand hectares.
Over the past few years, the mopane worm population - found in isolated patches of dense forests in the driest parts of Zimbabwe, like in the Mazwi village - has been diminishing, threatening local livelihoods and food sovereignty.
This article gives an overview on the industrial tree plantation expansion threat in eastern and southern African countries, its external drivers, as well as the challenges this expansion presents to affected communities struggling to defend their land and livelihoods.
Rights - land and territorial rights, human rights, women rights, peoples’ rights, rights of nature, etc.- have long played a role in the struggles of local resistance, social movements, support organizations and groups in one way or another. So, why did we feel it important now to focus a WRM bulletin on this topic?
In August 1838, a young man called Frederick Bailey escaped from slavery in Baltimore on the east coast of the United States (US). Less than three weeks later, walking through his new home city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, he spotted a pile of coal that had been delivered to the street in front of a house. Bailey offered his services to carry it safely away into storage. Once the job was done, the lady of the house put into his hand two silver half-dollars.
The foundation of critical thinking, then, is in the dissent of the existing state of things and the search for alternatives, drawing from characterizations of the present situation, whose causes can obviously be located in the past” (1)
in memoriam Hector Alimonda
Since ILO Convention 169 was ratified in 1995, indigenous peoples in Honduras have demanded the creation of a consultation mechanism to obtain Free, Prior Informed Consent (FPIC). This is in light of the avalanche of "development" projects and programs that endanger the survival of our peoples as differentiated cultures.
Western colonialists and imperialists have for centuries pillaged and taken the lands, territories and natural resources of Indigenous Peoples (and the rest of the world) with impunity. This impunity extends to the pillage of people themselves through forced labor and slavery. Successor States as they gained independence continued the practice with the same impunity on Indigenous Peoples living within their borders.