Communities and International Redmanglar member organizations expressed their solidarity with the people and community of Cumbe, Ceará, while expressing its total rejection to criminalize actions that the community lives by the particular interests of the employer Rubens Gomes dos Santos, who has tried every means to revive illegally abandoned shrimp farm.
Bulletin articles
Among many indigenous peoples, words are considered sacred, and must be used with care. But in today’s digitalized, high-speed, globalized world, words are not viewed this way. They are used carelessly, often without realizing the true meaning of what is being said or typed. And sometimes, often without meaning too, we end up inadvertedly reinforcing ideas, concepts and values implied by the words we use.
According to the dictionary, to “grab” is to seize suddenly or roughly, sometimes forcibly or unscrupulously. It carries a connotation of greed, of grasping what one wants with no concern for the welfare of others.
Uganda like many other African countries is in the campaign drive of promoting plantations under the guise of creating income and other benefits for Ugandans, destroying a lot of natural resources including forests, wetlands and up hills. In the past ten years, thousands of hectares of forests have been destroyed and replaced by monocultures.
The indigenous network ALDAW in the Philippines(Ancestral Land/Domain Watch) is deeply concerned about the findings of a recent study it carried out in Southern Palawan. The research shows that oil palm development is impoverishing local indigenous communities while destroying biologically diverse environments. The ALDAW case study “The Palawan Oil Palm Geotagged Report 2013.
The certification of industrial tree plantations by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has served as a tool to legitimize the large-scale monoculture plantation model. The FSC’s internationally recognized certification scheme is supposed to ensure consumers that the companies that have been awarded its “green” label practise “environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable” forest management.
While land grabbing is generally associated with the taking over of land for large scale monoculture plantations, grown for export-crops or conservation projects like REDD, the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta have faced another form of land grab – the loss of their territories, traditional lands, fertile mangrove and river systems to the oil companies that have been devastating the region for decades.
Organizations and individuals in the state of Acre and other states in Brazil sent an open letter this month to the governor of California and the California REDD Offset Working Group, challenging the legitimacy of a “consultation” carried out – through three workshops in California and over the internet, in English – regarding the inclusion of REDD offsets, primarily from Acre, in California’s carbon trading scheme.
REDD has been contentious ever since it was presented during UN climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 as a way to supposedly reduce deforestation. In addition to pointing out that REDD as a carbon market instrument is a false solution to climate change, many indigenous peoples in particular have expressed concern that REDD will undermine indigenous peoples’ rights, become a mechanism that divides communities and will put indigenous peoples’ control over and access to their traditional territories at risk.
In March 2013, the presidents of the so-called BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – met in Durban, South Africa. Surrounded by security barriers so that no one who would dare to protest could get near them, the presidents of these nations discussed a number of issues, including cooperation proposals.
One of the proposals most widely highlighted in coverage of the event was the creation of a BRICS development bank, with USD 50 billion in seed capital contributed in five equal parts by the bloc’s member countries.
In an international context of growing privatization and concentration of wealth, a process that is also manifested through land grabbing, financial actors are seeking out mechanisms that will enable their speculative activities. The circulation of enormous amounts of money is needed, and the international financial institutions and multilateral banks have fulfilled this role.
Genetically Engineered Eucalyptus Plantations Threaten Communities and Forests Around the World