The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) has issued a report on the indigenous Ayoreo people in Paraguay and the injustices they have been experiencing due to the expansion of ranching, illegal sale of land and extractive industries (1).
More than a report, it is an urgent wakeup call that Director of Iniciativa Amotocodie Benno Glauser introduces as follows:
Bulletin articles
We are witnessing a global process of agribusiness expansion and land grabbing in the South. Through lease, concession, even purchase, corporations or foreign states take over large areas of farmland on a long-term basis to produce staple foods or agrofuels for export. It is estimated that roughly 1,000 investment groups have targeted more than 50 countries in Asia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America (1).
A group of Latin American social organizations (1) met in Montevideo to examine the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that the European Union (EU) signed last May with Central America, Colombia and Peru. Not only are these FTAs a serious threat to the food sovereignty of the peoples, the forests, the region’s main ecosystems and to artisan fisheries, but they will also worsen climate change.
Patrick Birley, the Chief Executive of the European Climate Exchange, knows a thing or two about carbon trading. He should do. He claims that about 95 per cent of all the carbon traded globally is traded through his exchange. So when he talks about carbon markets, we would do well to listen.
By convening the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, the plurinational government of Bolivia set the stage for a transcendental political event: social movements representing an extraordinary range of sectors collectively formulated a unified agenda of their own, with a radical stance towards climate change – radical because it focused on the root of the problem.
An analysis of Peoples’ Agreement (1) that emerged from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held from 20 to 22 April in Cochabamba (Bolivia) may lead us to think that the gender issue was not present at that Conference.
Letter from Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, read at the opening ceremony of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth:
The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth starts today in Cochabamba, Bolivia, convened by Bolivia’s President Evo Morales.
Concerns have been raised in Kenya about the high water consumption of eucalyptus trees, which in 2009 led the country’s Environment Minister, John Michuki, to order the uprooting of eucalyptus trees from wetlands and banned their planting along rivers and watersheds. WRM welcomed this move and provided an overview on this issue in WRM bulletin 147 (October 2009).
Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) is one of the most controversial and destructive paper companies on the planet. The company has cleared vast areas of rainforest to feed its two million tonnes-a-year pulp mill in Sumatra, Indonesia.
The government of Mozambique is in the process of expanding large-scale monocultures of alien, fast-growing tree species, mainly eucalyptus, pine and teak trees in the northern part of the country.
In August 2009, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and shortly thereafter the wider World Bank Group (WBG) of which it is part suspended finance for the palm oil sector. This was done in response to critical complaints by Indonesian NGOs and indigenous peoples’ organizations and international NGOs which triggered a damning audit report by the IFC’s own Compliance Advisory Ombudsman.
According to the FAO, halting deforestation is neither a political nor a social nor an environmental issue: it is just a matter of definitions.