The struggle for environmental defenders in Mexico continues. Activists who seek to protect their local ecosystems continue to be under threat from illegal loggers and the inaction of local government authorities.
Bulletin articles
The Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSSTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), will hold its thirteenth meeting in Rome from 18 to 22 February 2008.
In the meeting’s agenda there are two items of extreme importance for WRM’s concerns: forest biodiversity and invasive alien species. Though they will be treated separately (the former by the full meeting and the latter by a working group), we believe that they are inextricably linked.
In August 2006, Phulbari, a town located in the Dinajpur district, witnessed the killing of five persons at the hands of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) during a massive rally against the controversial open pit coal-digging project supervised by UK-based Asia Energy. More hundreds were injured among a crowd of some 50,000 people opposing a coal open-pit mine which would cover an area with more than a hundred villages of seven unions in four Upazilas —Phulbari, Birampur, Nawabganj and Parbatipur— and part of Phulbari Sadar Upazila, under Dinajpur district.
Since 2003, New Zealand's Scion has been carrying out a field trial planting of genetically engineered (GE) Radiata pine and Norway spruce trees at its research facilities in Rotorua. The GE trees contain reporter genes, herbicide resistance genes and genes which according to Scion are "thought to affect floral development". The trial is planned to last 22 years, although none of the trees will be left in the ground for more than 10 years.
The main threat to the world's forests is not that they will all be cut in the coming decades. There is an even larger threat; that the last tracks of rich, beautiful, vibrant biologically diverse primary forests that still exist on this planet will all be replaced by ugly, biodiversity-poor and empty rows of monoculture tree plantations.
In Latin America biotechnology applied to research on varieties of transgenic trees to give them certain characteristics facilitating their large-scale monoculture plantation is being led by two countries: Brazil and Chile.
In Brazil, the National Biosecurity Technical Commission (CTNBio), the body responsible for monitoring recombining DNA technology – implying gene manipulation –approved standards for planned liberation into the environment of experiments with transgenic eucalyptus trees in the country in June 2007.
The Sixth Meeting of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) took place in Penang, Malaysia from 28 November to 3 December 2007. The 25th Anniversary of the foundation of this Network was celebrated in the same city that saw it come into being: Penang.
PAN is a network involving over 600 non-governmental organizations, institutions and individuals, who work in over 90 countries to replace the use of dangerous pesticides by ecologically and socially just alternatives.
Front-page articles in mainstream newspapers and magazines have pictured Congo’s crisis along the “preconceived notion of the ‘savage,’ ‘depraved’ African”, said Maurice Carney and Carrie Crawford, from Friends of the Congo (FOTC), in their article “Casualties in the Scramble for Congo’s Resources” (at http://friendsofthecongo.org/commentaries/congo_casualties.php).
India's new Tribal Forest Rights Act came into force in the beginning of 2008. It gives indigenous forest communities rights to continue their forest life. Adivasi communities should not be evicted if they do not agree to be displaced for the establishment of a "critical wildlife habitat" in their area. But still the administration of the forest areas and the corporations often try to displace Adivasi communities, even for mining activities in sanctuary areas.
In 2003, Liberia emerged from 14 years of national and regional conflict that left around 270,000 people dead and 1.5 million displaced. Presidential elections in November 2005 were won by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first ever female president. It is well documented that the conflict was in part fuelled by uncontrolled exploitation of and competition for Liberia’s resources, especially timber. This factor along with associated corruption and revenue misappropriation led to sanctions being imposed on Liberian timber exports by the UN in 2003.
Liberian NGOs hope that negotiations expected to start this spring between the European Union (EU) and Liberia for an EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) partnership agreement will support their calls for legal reform and respect local peoples’ rights to land. At the root of any EU/Liberia partnership agreement must be a definition of legality that ensures good governance and provides long-term control to Liberian communities as the natural custodians of Liberia’s forests.
At the end of 2007, the Peruvian government opened the way to the exploitation of new oil plots in the Province of Loreto, on the frontier with Ecuador: plots 67 and 121 to the US Barrett Resources Corporation and plot 39 to the Spanish company Repsol YPF.