In the symbiosis between water and forest referred to in the previous article, another component should also be considered: climate change. Climate is a determining factor of the forest, of its flora and fauna. Climate makes a forest boreal or humid-tropical and consequently its diversity will be of one type or another. In turn, forests have been crucial in the development of the world climate because of their role in trapping carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.
Bulletin articles
“The surface of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm sea and the great expanse of the sky. There was nothing brought together, nothing which could make a noise, nor anything which might move, or tremble, or could make noise in the sky. There was nothing standing; only the calm water, the placid sea, alone and tranquil. … Only the Creator, the Maker, Tepeu, Gucumatz, the Forefathers, existed in the water surrounded by clarity.” (Fragments from Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya, explaining the origin of the world).
Together with the arrival of large-scale monoculture tree plantations is the departure of water. This affects the whole village community, but for women, the effects are particularly differentiated. They tell us about with their own words.
International Women’s day is around the corner and we would like to pay homage to the countless women struggling for their rights by sharing parts of a recent research (1) carried out by two women in Brazil which, on the one hand, provides a broad account of women’s struggles against plantations in that country and on the other hand provides testimonies from local women on how those plantations have impacted on their lives and livelihoods.
In her article “Peoples hidden in the forest: the right to live in their own Amazon? (*), the Argentine writer, Elina Malamud explores with great sensitivity the conditions that have led numerous forest peoples to voluntarily choose isolation. The author quotes the words of Sydney Possuelo, a Brazilian champion of the struggle in defence of the rights of indigenous groups to continue living their way of life: “If we were more decent, there would be no peoples in isolation, but our behaviour has led them to seek protection from us. Their isolation is not voluntary, it is forced by us.”
Late last year, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), a life sciences research institution applied for permission to establish a field trial of genetically modified poplar trees in Belgium. The GM trees would have modified lignin content, aimed at making production of ethanol easier.
From the Amazon to Finland, New Zealand and Chile, from Indigenous Peoples to European NGOs, from women to youth groups, in just a week nearly 140 people got connected and became involved in the gathering of signatures for an Open Letter demanding a ban on the release of genetically engineered (GE) trees.
On 28 March 2006, in the midst of strong pressure from the Government and the timber industry, Law 1021 was adopted in Colombia, better known as the “Forestry Law” (see WRM Bulletin No. 105), enabling major timber investors to have easy and privileged access to the country’s forests, thus compromising the future of these forests, both public and those belonging to Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.
Born to independence in 1960, the Democratic Republic of Congo has lived since then amid fighting. Its former colonial ruler Belgium, as well as the US, the EU and international financial institutions such as the World Bank have been key hidden actors and interested parties in a scenario where ethnic rivalry has caught the world attention, while hiding economic struggles over the riches of a country which was the world’s largest cobalt exporter, the fourth biggest diamond exporter and ranked among the top ten world producers of uranium, copper, manganese and tin.
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.
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.