Wetlands are ecosystems having a high biodiversity, temporarily or permanently flooded by fresh water, brackish water, mixed waters or sea water with a maximum depth of 6 metres. In some cases they form swamps, mud flats, peat bogs, lakes or lagoons, usually accompanied by grasses, seaweeds, mangroves or other vegetation. In some cases wetlands remain temporarily dry and devoid of vegetation and desert-like and become productive and full of life during rainy seasons.
Bulletin articles
Last month, a new Australian-Indonesian Forest Carbon Partnership was announced under the scheme of the International Forest Carbon Initiative (IFCI) - a government initiative, with implementation jointly managed by AusAID and the Department of Climate Change. The A$30 million funded REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) trial project will be implemented in the Indonesian Jambi province located on the east coast of central Sumatra.
The concept of protected areas, born in the United States in the nineteenth century as an idea of conservation by establishing “national parks,” was part of the colonization of the “Wild West” and, in many cases served as an instrument to appropriate indigenous peoples’ territory, handing it over to the States, research centres or corporate interests. Although an international organization such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has acknowledged that when establishing protected areas, indigenous peo
El Pambilar with its 3123 hectares of native forest, has since 1997 been a matter of dispute between peasant farmers and the logging company Bosques Tropicales S.A (Botrosa), belonging to the Peña Durini group.
Following the resounding and anticipated failure of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen in December 2009, the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has taken the initiative of calling another type of summit meeting in search of solutions. The World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth will be held from 19 to 22 April 2010, in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba (http://cmpcc.org/).
Criticism of the ineffective and unjust solutions to climate change which under carbon compensation and trading pretend to continue business as usual, are mounting amid global civil society.
There can be no doubt that we are immersed in a long and sometimes resisted process of gender awareness regarding social relationships that in general terms have historically placed women in an unequal and subordinate position.
Women often play a crucial role in environmental conflicts over oil extraction, mining and logging activities, shrimp farming and tree plantations. These courageous women do not hesitate to challenge political power, local tyrants and armed violence for protecting the surrounding natural resources they and their family depend on. Therefore they protect their culture, way of life, sacred places, livelihood means and so on.
The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. According to the official web site, “It is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity.” Biodiversity is portrayed as our “natural wealth”, on which we rely to provide us with “food, fuel, medicine and other essentials” we “simply cannot live without.”
Africa is richly endowed with mangroves, which cover over 3.2 million hectares, extending from Mauritania to Angola on the Atlantic coast and from Somalia to South Africa along the Indian Ocean.
The last remnants of forests in Bangladesh are disappearing and much of the blame goes to local peoples’ “slash and burn” agriculture. The government –supported with loans and funds from multilateral and bilateral financial institutions- is actively promoting the plantation of trees and would thus appear to be trying to revert the situation.
An article published in the newspaper “La Tercera”(1) and taken up on the Mapuche IMC blog (2) reveals the results of research carried out by scientists from Valdivia’s Austral University that link the presence of native forests with greater water production.