The Transnational Institute’s State of Power 2018 report highlights three interviews with women activists who have displayed incredible courage, determination and creativity to confront corporate power and state violence.
Other information
The Movement of Dam-Affected peoples in Brazil (MAB, by its Portuguese acronym) warns that the construction of dams affects women more intensely, and that it is women whose rights are more brutally violated. A well-known tragedy is the incentive for prostitution and trafficking of women—problems which take place with companies' complicity.
A video from the Center for International Forestry Research shows a day of Magdalena Pandan, a 35-year-old oil palm plantation worker in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, who rises before dawn every day to carry out her duties toward her job, her family and her crop lands.
(Only available in Spanish). Documental sobre la expansión de monocultivos de palma aceitera y piña en América Latina, realizado por Aldo Santiago, periodista mexicano independiente, y Claudia Ramos, integrante de la organización Otros Mundos A.C./Amigos de la Tierra México. Duración: 35 minutos. Idioma: Español.
The Sengwer are indigenous people who live in the Embobut forest in the Cherangani Hills in Kenya. Since British colonial rule, the Sengwer have been evicted from their homes. Now, these violent evictions are taking place in the name of conservation, to protect the forests, and to address climate change. The European Union is funding a new six-year project: the Water Towers Protection and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Programme. In 2016, the Sengwer appealed to the EU to respect their rights to live in the forest.
Almost five decades after their planting began, eucalyptus plantations have become the main cause of the deterioration of water resources in the semi-arid region of Minas, says technician Walter Viana, head of Environmental Monitoring at the Northern Minas Environment and Sustainable Development Commission, and author of a thesis on desertification in the region. As a measure to combat the water shortage that the growth of eucalyptus causes, environmentalists defend the prohibition on new plantings in the region. Read the article (in Portuguese) here:
Three villages in Côte d’Ivoire were informed in 2015 that the government had granted a concession covering a total of 11 thousand hectares to Compagnie hévéicole de Prikro (CHP), the Ivorian subsidiary of the Belgian corporation Société d’investissement pour l’agriculture tropicale (SIAT), for establishing an industrial rubber tree plantation. A recent report from the NGO GRAIN recounts the communities’ on-going struggle for recuperating their land.
The latest issue of the African biodiversity Network (ABN) Newsletter highlights the processes that participants of the 2017 Biennial Partner meeting in Nanyuki, Kenya followed to analyse and reflect upon the actions of the network over the previous two years. The newsletter also includes a reflection on Kenya’s new ban on manufacture, use, importation and sale of plastic bags as well as an article on a primary eco-school in Benin which places endogenous knowledge at the front of education. Access the newsletter (in English) here: http://africanbiodiversity.org/abn-news-07/
This briefing, compiled by the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) and the Timberwatch Coalition (TW), is now also available in Swahili. It focuses on various internal and external factors determining changes in the extent of land under industrial tree plantations in 11 eastern and southern African countries: Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe; Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda; South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho; and Madagascar.
Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity press release:
The UN session in New York was finally closed WITHOUT including the nefarious paragraph proposed by the European Union and no change was made in the budget for the next sessions of the UN Working Group on the Binding Treaty (OEIGWG).
Since 2003, the camp that bears the name of environmentalist, José Lutzenberger, has reconciled the production of foods free of agrochemicals with the recovery of native “Mata Atlantica” forest. For this reason, it was chosen for the Juliana Santilli award, in the category of increasing and conserving agro-biodiversity. The area, which for decades was degraded by landowners' cattle ranching activities, has been slowly recovering.