Press release.Redmanglar Internacional questions the fact that shrimp farms, fish culture ponds and salt mines are considered by the RAMSAR Convention as artificial wetlands.
These industries must be classified in the listings of activities that generate negative impacts against wetlands and other associated ecosystems, as well as against the communities and people that inhabit them.
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Climate justice advocates and community and movements’ representatives met in Maputo, Mozambique from 21-23 April 2015 to reflect on the roots, manifestations and impacts of climate change on Africa and on the responses needed in the face of the crises. The conference agreed, among others, to reject false solutions to the climate crisis, like REDD, industrial tree plantations, genetic engineering, agrofuels and geoengineering,
The new issue of the “World Rivers Review”, a magazine from the NGO International Rivers, includes reports about worldwide violations against indigenous peoples for defending rivers and rights; a reflection on the created challenges by framing dams as “solutions to climate change”; and asks what a healthy river means from different perspectives. Currently, no less than 3,700 hydropower projects are under construction or in the pipeline worldwide.
People may be exposed to excessive levels of agrotoxics at work and through food, soil, water or air. Through the pollution of groundwater, lakes, rivers and other bodies of water, agrotoxics can pollute drinking water supplies, fish and other vital sources to human welfare. The “Alert about the impacts of agro toxics on health” is a huge contribution to the fight against silence.
Water justice movements in Asia gathered in Daegu, Korea, for the Alternative Forum “Water for all” on April 13-14 in a common struggle to defend and realize our human right to water and keep water as part of the commons. The Forum challenged “the water privatization and corporatization model that is being imposed on Korea’s public water system and those of many other Asian countries.
The Africa Social Forum that took place in Dakar in October 2014 released the Declaration against Water and Land grabbing, which affirms that “land grabbing is always accompanied by water grabbing”. During the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2015, the dialogue among African groups continued with movements and organizations from all over the world in order to broaden this convergence.
Communities of the middle and lower basins of Madre Vieja River on the Pacific side of Guatemala are being deprived of water because of dams built by companies planting African palm and sugar cane. Neighbors and organized communities - some of them belonging to the International Redmanglar Network - have repeatedly claimed that these companies are using, retaining and diverting water for their large-scale plantations.
Peasants in northern Mozambique are struggling to keep their lands and water sources, as governments and foreign companies move aggressively to set up large-scale agribusiness projects. The long-awaited ProSavana Plan for agribusiness development in the Nacala Corridor, inspired by the so-called “successful” agribusiness development in the Brazilian Savannah (cerrado) region, is out.
Forest fires in the south of Chile have been very aggressive this year, affecting thousands of hectares of forests from three protected areas in the Araucanía region, south of Chile. On April 14th, a march was organized to denounce the root of the problem: the expansion of the forestry industry.