Palawan, located between the Sulu and South China seas, is one of the most beautiful islands of the Philippine archipelago. The island is 450 kilometers long and 40 kilometers at its widest portion. Along its gorgeous beaches - framed by mangroves and by the last remaining lowland evergreen forest - coral reefs are home to unique marine biodiversity.
Bulletin articles
During 11 years - from 1991 to 2002 - a harsh civil war fueled by the inequitable distribution of power and resources decimated the population of Sierra Leone. The country now faces a state of food insecurity and has become a net food importer attributed not only to the war but also to World Bank and IMF recipes. With the aim of fostering a market-based economy, those institutions imposed policies that curtailed state agricultural programs and investments in agriculture.
On December 7 and 8, 2011, a meeting was held in the Amazonian city of Cobija, Bolivia, to assess the status of the rights of indigenous peoples living in isolation or in situations of extreme vulnerability in the Amazon and Gran Chaco regions, and to establish an action plan for the defence of their rights.
To commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Instituto de Estudios Ecologistas del Tercer Mundo (Third World Institute for Ecological Studies) and to pay tribute to Ricardo Carrere (who was the WRM coordinator up until December 2010), the Ricardo Carrere Conference on Ecological Thinking was held in Quito, Ecuador. (*).
The United Nations (UN) declared this year, 2011, the International Year of Forests. Now that 2011 is coming to an end, it would be interesting to take a look back for a brief overview.
For WRM the women's struggle is a struggle for freedom and social justice. It is essentially a demand for changes in the social structures that have placed women in an unequal and subordinate position. Thus, the fight for gender justice becomes a social struggle against the dominant capitalist and patriarchal system that treats women and nature in a similar way exerting violence against women's bodies and lives to control them, and against communal goods such as water, land, sovereignty and even culture in its insatiable quest for profit and appropriation.
Land grabbing is a global phenomenon that has grown even more widespread as a result of the food, climate and financial crises created by the capitalist elites through their own neoliberal policies. Now, those who are responsible for these crises have set their sights on the world's land and natural resources in a new phase of capitalist expansion aimed at total control of the planet's natural wealth.
Real action to face climate change has once again been blocked by the world's polluters. The 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN COP17) in Durban ended with the launching of a new round of negotiations (the Durban Platform) aimed at a new regime. The decision represents a crime against humanity as long as postponing action to 2020 allows global temperatures to increase 4 degrees Celsius, based on the promises for emission reductions, made by industrial countries in Cancun for the period 2012-2020.
Since December is the month in which International Human Rights Day is commemorated, we feel it is urgent to highlight the cases of two communities in countries that seem very distant from one another and yet have a great deal in common. In Honduras and India, these communities have been struggling for years against the new form of colonialism represented by powerful economic groups connected with oil palm plantations and the iron and steel industry, respectively.
A new report published in November 2011, exposes how local police in the Province of Jambi on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, working with oil palm plantation staff, systematically evicted people from three settlements, firing guns to scare them off and then using heavy machinery to destroy their dwellings and bulldoze concrete floors into the nearby creeks. The operations were carried out over a week in mid-August and have already sparked an international controversy. Andiko, Executive Director of the Indonesian community rights NGO, HuMa said:
In Thailand, indigenous communities have been and continue to be threatened to be expelled from their traditional territories as a result of the implementation of the country´s REDD+ policy. This human rights violation is due to the fact that communities have been accused of contributing to the climate crisis because they would deforest, they would destroy natural resources and they would cause forest fires, all activities that result in carbon emissions. At the same time, they use not to be consulted when this type of analysis and, based on this, policies are being formulated.
What can we expect from the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Durban?