Action Alert and Video: Amador Hernandez, Chiapas – Starved of Medical Services for REDD +

 Stop REDD-related Indigenous Rights Abuses (view video below)

In March, 2011, Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP), with support from Global Forest Coalition, traveled to the village of Amador Hernández, inside the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico. GJEP had been invited there by the villagers who explained that their right to remain on their land was under threat from REDD+ (the UN and World Bank’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation scheme). The state’s efforts to implement a climate change policy to “protect” the forest was putting them and other communities at risk of being forcibly moved off of their lands.

In Amador Hernandez, GJEP documented and interviewed residents about the ways in which Indigenous communities are threatened by forest carbon offset policies like REDD+. We investigated the way REDD+ projects in the Global South are being driven by legislation in the Global North—such as California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB32), which promotes forest carbon offsets.  We assembled a photo essay from the trip, as well as numerous articles and the video below.

In this video, Indigenous villagers clearly explain the insidious link between such policies and their current health emergency. A year before our visit, the government had withdrawn all medical services from their community, which had led to the deaths of several elderly people and children.

“The fact that they cut off our medical services after we refused to enter into any of their plans makes us believe that it has to do with our lands.  They’re attacking our health as a way of getting access to our land.”  — Santiago Martinez, Amador Hernandez

(double click on video image to get full screen mode)

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Thanks.

- The GJEP team