A global study carried out by the Poverty and Environment Network has helped in understanding the role forests play in enhancing people’s livelihoods, confirming that forests do provide an important source of rural income, but challenging some of the long-held assumptions about how these resources are used.
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The Ecuadorian environmental defence organization YASunidos has joined with Acción Ecológica and the indigenous pastorate of Chimborazo to file a legal action to protect the rights of nature of the Tangabana páramo – rights that are enshrined in the Constitution of Ecuador – in relation to a vast plantation of pine trees established in 2013 in the fragile evergreen forest and parámo grassland ecosystems of Pallo-Tangabana, in the Andes high mountains.
During the UN climate negotiations in Lima, the World March of Women expressed its active solidarity with Máxima Acuña, who is facing legal proceedings for her resistance to the transnational mining company Yanacocha in Cajamarca, northern Peru.
The non-profit organization GRAIN has released an educational pamphlet that clearly demonstrates the fundamental role of the industrial food system in emissions of carbon dioxide and other toxic gases that contribute to the climate crisis. It notes, for example, that industrial agriculture accounts for between 15% and 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions through the deforestation that it causes.
The Critical Information Collective is launching a new annual environmental and social justice photography competition, which will be open for entries between 1 January 2015 and 28 February 2015. Acceptances and winning entries will be notified by 31 March 2015. The 24 winning images will be printed and exhibited in Paris during the UNFCCC climate change summit in November 2015. All competition ‘acceptances’ will also be exhibited online until 31 December 2015.
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This publication summarizes the problems identified in 14 REDD projects based on published field reports. All of the cases reveal a series of structural characteristics that undermine the rights of forests peoples and fail to address the crises of deforestation and climate change.
Our Bulletin Issue nº 208 of November 2014 is focused on the COP20 of the Convention of Climate Change.
Read the full bulletin here
A new report by the Oakland Institute introduces the term ‘carbon violence’ to describe the impact of Green Resources’ plantation operations in Uganda on local communities and their environment. Green Resources is a Norwegian-registered plantation company with 41,000 hectares of plantations in Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. The company’s plantations, certified under FSC, are used for timber products and generate carbon credits.
A Friends of the Earth report looks at specific case studies which demonstrate that REDD projects can facilitate rather than prevent the continued use of fossil fuels; exacerbate tensions over land and resource rights; have significant negative impacts on forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples and local communities; threaten food security; and even endanger forests. Some REDD projects have also faced significant financial difficulties, wasting considerable amounts of public funding.
An article by Brazilian organizations FASE Amazonía, Grupo Carta de Belém and Fórum de la Amazonía Oriental, published by the newspaper “Aldeia”, challenges the myth – rooted in the carbon market – that the energy produced by hydroelectric plants is ‘clean’ energy, that is, an energy source that does not create polluting emissions.
Through a series of articles, this report, from the organization Focus on the Global South, denounces how land, forests and water are being captured and enclosed for a range of purposes: industrial agriculture, tree plantations, hydropower, extractive industry, tourism, physical infrastructure, real estate development, Special Economic Zones and, quite simply, for financial profit through the construction of new markets.