“‘Quick-fix’ development gives away more than it gets back.” Samuel Nguiffo, from the Center for the Environment and Development (CED) in Yaounde, Cameroon, gives an overview of land grabbing in Africa from a grassroots perspective. Athttp://www.palmwatchafrica.org/land-giveaways-quick-fix-development/
Other information
“Special Focus: REDD+”, a blog site devoted to academic articles on REDD, with a critical focus put together by Tracey Osbourne, a professor of Political Ecology at the University of Arizona. At ppel.arizona.edu
“EJOLT Environmental Justice Project updates”, April 2013. At http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=19d3da1852472c315fcece5dd&id=1853241149&e=e8c7b5f4d4
“Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe,” a new report by European Coordination Via Campesina and Hands off the Land network which shows that land grabbing and access to land are a critical issues today in Europe, and also reveals that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidy scheme and other policies is implicated in a variety of ways. At http://www.eurovia.org/IMG/pdf/Land_in_Europe.pdf
“EU ETS myth busting: why it cannot be reformed and should not be replicated,” a report released by a group of 45 organisations busting the myths that are holding up the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). At http://scrap-the-euets.makenoise.org/eu-ets-myth-busting/
Since last March 18, workers of the pulp mill Veracel, a company equally the Swedish-Finnish Stora Enso and Fibria of Brazil, started an unlimited strike due a deadlock in the salary negotiations for the period 2012-2013.
The strike also unveiled a facet cruel Finnish transnational: the company does not recognize most of the occupational health related diseases, mainly in the field of mechanical harvesting.
Veracel entered, on March 20, a lawsuit against the union, trying to criminalize the strike and that the Justice declare the strike illegal.
A group of eleven Finnish and international NGOs has filed a complaint to the UN Human Rights Council about human rights violations in connection to Stora Enso's eucalyptus plantations and planned cardboard factory in Guangxi that led to land conflicts with two reported deaths and multiple episodes of violence
The UN's Global Compact (an initiative for increasing social responsibility of corporations which Stora Enso has signed) requires Stora Enso to respond to allegations by 11 April.
ALDAW has just launched a massive campaign against oil palm expansion. A petition launched through care.org is addressed to the National Government. A second petition, launched through Change.org, is focused on Palawan and it is addressed mainly to the Provincial Government, to the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) and to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).
The Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), one of the world’s biggest investors in the palm oil industry, has found that the activities of Wilmar International Ltd, Astra International Tbk PT and 21 other oil palm companies are incompatible with the Fund’s policy on risk related to climate change and tropical deforestation. As a consequence all stakes in the 23 oil palm companies were sold in 2012.
The native customary land of Penan villagers in Sungai Patah, Baram is now confronted by a double threat coming from the attempt of a logging company to encroach into their communal forest reserve which has been successfully protected since the people’s last blockade in the area in 2008-2009, and the proposed construction of the Baram Dam.
On 27 February 2013, Panama’s Indigenous Peoples Coordinating Body, COONAPIP, withdrew from the UN-REDD process in Panama. In a letter announcing the withdrawal, COONAPIP explains that UN-REDD “does not currently offer guarantees for respecting indigenous rights” or “the full and effective participation of the Indigenous Peoples of Panama”.
On 14 March 2013, the Colombian organization Movimiento Ríos Vivos marked the International Day of Action Against Dams and For Rivers, Water and Life by calling on communities to mobilize in different ways and take part in the activities scheduled for the day, in solidarity with the peaceful march being held by people displaced by the Hidroituango mega dam project.