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.
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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.
The radio program Growing Voices, from Radio Mundo Real, discusses the impacts of the highly criticized Wilmar International, one of the largest palm oil corporations in the world. The program looks closer at the case of Kalangala in Uganda, where over one-hundred Ugandan small-scale farmers were evicted, and their lands grabbed by Oil Palm Uganda Limited, a subsidiary of Bidco Uganda Ltd - which in turn is a venture co-owned by Wilmar International.
Peasant farmers deprived of their lands launch a series of occupations on Socfin’s plantations in Cameroon, Liberia, Cambodia and Côte d’Ivoire between the end of April 2015 and the annual shareholder meetings of the Socfin group (27 May) and the Bolloré group (4 June). The Bolloré group is the biggest shareholder (39%) of Socfin, which has industrial oil palm and rubber plantations, among others in the countries where the protests are taking place.
In a country with growing socioeconomic inequality and human rights violations, Berta Cáceres played a key role in the struggle of the indigenous lenca peoples of Honduras against the construction of a mega-dam that would destroy the Rio Blanco. She undertook a grassroots campaign with the local communities and led a protest where people peacefully demanded their rightful say in the project.