Tag Archives: forests

by | 2011-09-05 · 11:11

Communique from the communities of the Amador Hernandez region, Montes Azules, Lacandon Jungle

A view of the Lacandon jungle from Amador Hernandez. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC

Note: GJEP received this communique from COMPITCH (Consejo de Médicos y Parteras Indígenas Tradicionales de Chiapas –Council of Traditional Indigenous Doctors and Midwives from Chiapas).  The communique was translated into English by Trisha Novak.  In March of 2011, GJEP’s Jeff Conant and Orin Langelle went to Amador Hernandez in Chiapas, Mexico to investigate the threatened forced relocation of the community and it’s relation to REDD+ and the California-Chiapas, Mexico-Acre, Brazil climate deal.

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The indigenous communities of the Amador Hernandez region, Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, in the Lacandon Jungle communicate the following:

To the people of Mexico, to the people of the world, to the organizations and groups that do not serve the power interests but those of their own people, the lower classes.

On 20 and 21 August, the communities of the region had a forum in the Amador Hernandez common area entitled:  Regional Forum Against the Lacandona Brecha (the official border that would delimit the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve) and the Capitalist Looting of the Lacandon Jungle, and we approved the following:

D E C L A R A T I O N

  1. We reject and will not tire of confirming our rejection of the passing through the Lacandona Brecha next to our lands because it has as its purpose to make available the lands in the [Biosphere Reserve] to the service of the capitalist powers.
  1. The REDD+ project in the Montes Azules Reserve is the new mask, a climate mask, with which the federal government of Felipe Calderon and the Chiapas government of Juan Sabines attempt to cover up the dispossession of the biodiversity of the peoples.
  1. Speaking of climate change, it is clear to us that those who are most responsible are the capitalist enterprises and their governments, just like the federal government of Felipe Calderon and the Chiapas government of Juan Sabines, who have made a pact with the wealthy countries to allow that their greenhouse gas emissions be mitigated by the forests of our people.
  1. We reject all the ways in which the federal and the Chiapas governments and directors of organizations in service to the capitalists, want to dispossess us of our lands and our resources, through programs such as:  REDD+ (in the Montes Azules Reserve), Reconversion Productiva (Productive Restructuring), Pago de Servicios Ambientales (Payment for Environmental Services) and FANAR (Fund for Agricultural Entities without Regularization).

We point out the dual purpose of these programs: to dispossess us, but also to change our culture in order to disorganize us and neutralize our resistance.

  1. We denounce the control that the federal government exercises over the   people which, by decree (1972), it called the Lacandon, and which it has been using to legitimize all the plans for taking the lands and displacement of our peoples.
  1. We reject the projects for tourism by the capitalists or of the federal or Chiapas governments, such as the one that has divided the common lands of Emiliano Zapata in Laguna de Miramar.
  1. We reject monocultures, especially for biofuels and the new peonage that the peasant undergoes on his own land, just as the big landowners imposed in times of the Porfirio dictatorship.
  1. We reject the policy of land seizures promoted by the World Bank, conservationist organizations and their neo-liberal governments like that of Chiapas.
  1. Likewise, we reject the other face of “development:”  mining projects approved for regions that are not important for conservation and transnational exploitation of diversity, as happens in the Municipality of Chicomuselo where the people are resisting.
  1.  We demand agrarian regularization of the communities of Galilea, Benito Juarez Miramar and Chumcerro, located within the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve.

W E   P R O P O S E

To reorganize ourselves and expand at every level our relationships with other peoples and with independent organizations that are not at the service of the powerful in order to build a network of resistance among the peoples.

To develop internal plans in our communities to strengthen the production of our own foods.

To strengthen ourselves in the word of God and the community memory of our grandparents.

Agreement made in Ejido Amador Hernandez, Reserva de Biosfera Montes Azules, Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico, 21 August 2011

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Comunicado de las comunidades de la región Amador Hernández, Montes Azules, Selva Lacandona

Las Comunidades Indígenas de la región Amador Hernández, Reserva de Biosfera Montes Azules, en la Selva Lacandona, comunican lo siguiente:

Al Pueblo de México, a los Pueblos del Mundo, a las Organizaciones y grupos que no sirven a los intereses del poder sino a los de su propia gente, la gente de abajo.

Los días 20 y 21 de agosto, las comunidades de la región celebramos un Foro en el ejido Amador Hernández, denominado: Foro Regional en Contra de la Brecha Lacandona y el Despojo Capitalista de la Selva Lacandona, y aprobamos la siguiente:

 D  E  C  L  A  R  A  C  I  O  N

1. Rechazamos, y no nos cansaremos de ratificarlo, el paso de la brecha Lacandona al lado de nuestras tierras porque tiene como propósito disponer las tierras medidas del lado Lacandón en servicio de las potencias capitalistas.

2. El proyecto REDD+ en la Reserva de Montes Azules es la nueva máscara, máscara climática, con la que el gobierno Federal de Felipe Calderón y el de Chiapas de Juan Sabines pretenden encubrir el despojo de la biodiversidad de los pueblos.

3. Hablando del cambio del clima, para nosotros está claro que los responsables mayores son las empresas capitalistas y sus gobiernos, como el Federal de Felipe Calderón y el de Chiapas de Juan Sabines, que han pactado con los países ricos que sus emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero se mitiguen en los bosques de nuestros pueblos.

4. Rechazamos todas las formas con las que los gobiernos, federal y de Chiapas, y dirigentes de organizaciones, en servicio de los capitalistas, quieren despojarnos de nuestras tierras y de nuestros recursos. Como los programas: REDD+ (en la Reserva de Montes Azules), Reconversión Productiva, Pago de Servicios Ambientales y FANAR. Llamamos a estar pendientes de la doble intención de esos programas: despojarnos pero también cambiar nuestra cultura para desorganizarnos y neutralizar nuestra resistencia.

5. Denunciamos el control que el gobierno federal ejerce sobre el pueblo que por decreto (1972) llamó Lacandón, que ha venido utilizando para legitimar todos los planes de despojo de tierras y desalojos de nuestros pueblos.

6. Rechazamos los proyectos turísticos de los capitalistas o de los gobiernos federal y de Chiapas, como el que ha dividido al ejido Emiliano Zapata en la Laguna de Miramar.

7. Rechazamos los monocultivos, en especial los de agrocombustibles y el nuevo peonaje al que es sometido el campesino en su propia tierra, como los hacendados hacían en tiempos de la dictadura porfirista.

8. Rechazamos la política de acaparamiento de tierras impulsada por el banco mundial, las organizaciones conservacionistas y sus gobiernos neoliberales como el de Chiapas.

9. Rechazamos igualmente la otra cara del despojo: los proyectos de Minería, aprobados para regiones no importantes para la conservación y explotación trasnacional de la biodiversidad, como sucede en el municipio de Chicomuselo donde resisten los pueblos.

10. Exijimos la regularización agraria de las comunidades Galilea, Benito Juárez Miramar y Chumcerro, ubicadas dentro de la Reserva de Biosfera Montes Azules.

P  R  O  P  O  N  E  M  O  S

Reorganizarnos y ampliar a todos los niveles nuestras relaciones con otros pueblos y con organizaciones independientes que no sirvan al poder, para constituir una red de resistencia de los pueblos.

Elaborar planes internos en nuestras comunidades para fortalecer la producción de nuestros propios alimentos.

Fortalecernos en la palabra de Dios y en la memoria comunitaria de nuestros abuelos.

Acordado en el Ejido Amador Hernández, Reserva de Biosfera Montes Azules, Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, México, a 21 de agosto del 2011

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by | 2011-09-01 · 12:40

Climate Challenge Media With GJEP’s Anne Petermann on GE Trees

A half hour interview on the dangers of genetically engineered trees and their relation to climate mitigation schemes.  With Climate Challenge host, Karen Strickler:

http://www.vimeo.com/28334491

(click on the link above–we were not able to embed the video in this blog post)

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by | 2011-08-23 · 12:53

Environmental, Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights Groups Reject International Offsets in California’s Global Warming Solutions Act

Oakland, CA – The California Air Resources Board meets tomorrow in Sacramento, CA to announce the findings of its evaluation of alternatives to Cap and Trade in AB32, the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act.  Environmental, indigenous peoples’ and human rights groups warn that outsourcing the state’s emissions reductions through carbon offsets will shift the responsibility for the climate crisis from industry to under-resourced communities, both in California and abroad.

“Any Cap and Trade Provision in AB32 will not only leave California communities continuing to bear the brunt of industrial pollution, they are no solution to climate change,” said Jeff Conant from the Oakland, CA office of Global Justice Ecology Project. “If the offsets are enacted in-state it will undermine forest conservation in California.  If California’s offsets are enacted at the international level, they will exacerbate land and resource conflicts in places like Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil – especially because these offsets are based on the controversial policy of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).”

The Cap and Trade provision in AB32 has clear links to REDD-type forest carbon offsets, as demonstrated by the Memoranda of Understanding signed by former Governor Schwarzenegger last year with the state governments of Chiapas and Acre.  While the mechanism for such an offsets program is not expected to be enacted until 2015, the effects of the policy are already showing impacts in these states. Commentators see this MoU as the world’s most advanced sub-national carbon offsets agreement, which could serve as a model for similar agreements worldwide.

Traditional healers prepare medicines in Amador Hernandez after the Mexican government cut off all medical services. The local residents believe this was done in an attempt to force them out of the Lacandon Jungle. Photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC

In comments submitted to the California Air Resources Board, Francisco Hernández Maldonado, an indigenous Tzeltal from the village of Amador Hernández in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico wrote: “The promotion of REDD+ in Chiapas, which the government is doing without consulting us, is causing conflict between our peoples, because it benefits some and tries to criminalize those who truly dedicate ourselves to coexist with the earth and are not in favor of REDD + as a solution to climate change. By failing to consult us, our human rights are violated as well as international agreements such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

The Air Resources Board says that REDD as part of a Cap and Trade program will be developed under a separate process with public participation and environmental review. But critics of REDD recognize that the mere suggestion that California will engage in international offsets sends “price signals” to developing world governments – signals that have already led to forced evictions in the name of forest protection.

“These REDD forest offset initiatives in Mexico and the global South have no guarantees for safeguarding against land grabs and violating the rights of indigenous communities,” said Tom Goldtooth, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.  “Putting trust in carbon market regimes based upon the privatization and commodification of air, trees and biodiversity could be devastating to indigenous peoples and their cultures. Not only abroad, but right here at home. Many of the dirtiest industries in the U.S. and Canada are located on Indigenous and First Nations lands that would benefit from domestic and international offsets, buying carbon credits to greenwash the pollution and toxic hotspots they create in local communities. Our people lose out on all sides of the border. There is no justice in carbon offsets – only more suffering.”

A coalition of California environmental justice groups is expected to turn out in Sacramento to demand that the Air Resources Board give real attention to concerns of ongoing pollution in the state’s heavily impacted industrial zones.

“Cap and Trade is no solution to climate change,” said Nile Malloy of Communities for a Better Environment in Oakland, CA. “It allows industry to continue polluting our communities, while the emissions continue to worsen climate change. It is a lose-lose scenario, benefiting only corporations like Chevron.”

For more information, contact:

Jeff Conant, Global Justice Ecology Project, Oakland, CA, +1.575.770.2829

Orin Langelle, Global Justice Ecology Project, Hinesburg, VT, +1.802.578.6980

Diana Pei Wu, Professor, Antioch University, Los Angeles, CA, +1.323.448.0566

Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network Bemidji, MN, +1.218.760.0442

 Low resolution photographs from the Chiapas jungle: http://www.flickr.com/photos/langelle/sets/72157627501175098/

Higher resolutions of those photographs from the Chiapas jungle are available to media by contacting Orin Langelle +1.802.578.6980 mobile or by email <orinl@globaljusticeecology.org>.

###

Background Information:

Key Arguments Against REDD fact sheet

 Why REDD is Wrong

 Turning the Lacandon Jungle Over to the Carbon Market

 Interview with Santiago Martinez of Amador Hernandez, Chiapas

Photo Essay from Amador Hernandez, Chiapas, Mexico: Chiapas, Mexico: From Living in the jungle to ‘existing’ in “little houses made of ticky-tacky…”

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by | 2011-08-19 · 13:30

Report Released on Dangers of Biofuels and Synthetic Biology

From the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) | www.field.org.uk

FIELD has prepared a new briefing paper on next generation biofuels and synthetic biology.

The paper explores how synthetic biology is being used to create next generation biofuels, their potential risks and harms, and the need for clear thinking on domestic and international regulationFIELD has prepared a new briefing paper on next generation biofuels and synthetic biology.

To download the 5 page paper, click here

Note: while the paper is quite clear on the devastating impacts that have been documented from so-called “first generation” crop-based agrofuels, they do not adequately explain the threats from second generation “ligno-cellulosic” agrofuels–many of which are the same as those associated with first generation agrofuels: competition with food crops for land, deforestation to make room for agrofuel feedstocks (and all the emissions that result from this land use change), and of course the threats from trees genetically engineered to make better fuel.

For more on these threats from second generation agrofuels, download our booklet “From Meals to Wheels,” or our report “Wood-based Energy: The Green Lie

–The GJEP Team

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by | 2011-08-11 · 11:41

Forest Cover: The Official Newsletter of Global Forest Coalition

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE (Download the 10 Page PDF by clicking here)

From standing trees to boiled, bleached pulp in one day. Photo: Petermann/GJEP-GFC

Rio+20 must Recognize the Role of Civil Society

by Fiu Mataese Elisara/ Chair of the Board, Global Forest Coalition

REDD and the Feeling of Standing Barefoot in a Peatswamp By Simone Lovera, Sobrevivencia, Paraguay

San Mariano Biofuel Project Should be Rejected as CDM Project By Feny Cosico, Advocates of Science and Technology for the People (AGHAM), the Philippines

Genetically Engineered Tree Developments: GE Cold Tolerant Eucalyptus in the US By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project; North American Focal Point, Global Forest Coalition

African Faith Leaders get Organized for Durban COP17 By Nigel Crawhall, Director of the Secretariat of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) and member of the Western Cape Provincial Religious Leaders Forum

Calendar of Forest-related meetings

About Forest Cover

Welcome to the thirty-eighth issue of Forest Cover, newsletter of the Global Forest Coalition (GFC). GFC is a world- wide coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Indigenous Peoples Organizations (IPOs). GFC promotes rights-based, socially just and effective forest policies at international and national level, including through building the capacity of NGOs and IPOs in all regions to influence global forest policy.

Forest Cover is published four times a year. It features reports on important intergovernmental meetings by different NGOs and IPOs and a calendar of future meetings. The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views of

the Global Forest Coalition, its donors or the editors.

For free subscriptions, please contact Yolanda Sikking at: Yolanda.sikking@globalforestcoalition.org

Global Justice Ecology Project is the North American Focal Point of the Global Forest Coalition

 

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by | 2011-08-02 · 10:30

Mother Nature has rights, say speakers

Note: I just returned from a strategy meeting in San Francisco on ways to use the “Rights of Mother Earth” as a tool for advancing justice and opposing false and market-based solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises.  Natalia Greene, of Fundación Pachamama, quoted below, was one of the participants.  While there are a lot of divergent opinions on the best ways to utilize this tool, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, has been using it to marked success in stopping fracking in Pennsylvania.  CELDF assisted the Congress of Ecuador in creating their new constitution, which recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples and Nature, and strips corporations of the rights of personhood.

–Anne Petermann, for the GJEP Team

Cross-Posted from The Saint Albert Gazette, Alberta, Canada, July 30, 2011

Local youth hear about Earth’s legal rights

By Kevin Ma |

In Ecuador, Mother Nature can take you to court.

It’s right in the country’s constitution, says Natalia Greene, who spoke to about 200 local youth at the University of Alberta this week, and it’s one of the many ways that indigenous knowledge can help us protect water.

“Nature is a slave right now,” she says.

While there are laws that ban pollution, those laws all treat nature as an object to be used by people. In 2008, her country became the first in the world to explicitly recognize the rights of nature in its constitution — an idea that came from Ecuador’s indigenous population.

Nature is like a plane, she says, and if we keep taking parts out of it, eventually it will crash.

“We are a part of nature,” she says. “If we don’t respect nature, we’re not respecting our rights.”

Aboriginal lessons

Greene is an environmentalist with the Fundación Pachamama in Ecuador, a group that helped rewrite the country’s constitution in 2008. She was one of many speakers in Edmonton this week to take part in the Global Youth Assembly, a youth conference meant to promote justice and human rights.

Ecuador is home to the Amazon rainforest and the Galapagos Islands, Greene says, and puts great value on its biodiversity. Recent deforestation and oil spills have caused the nation to rethink the nature of development.

Ecuador has about 14 different nationalities, many of which have close relations with nature. When Greene and other negotiators spoke to indigenous groups during constitutional talks, they realized that these people viewed nature as a person — a concept foreign to Western law.

“The judicial system we had developed with had forgotten nature,” she says.

Canada’s aboriginals have a similar view of nature, notes Danika Littlechild, a lawyer from the Ermineskin Cree Nation near Hobbema who specializes in water governance. The Cree word for “water” is “nipiy,” which is short for a phrase that means “I am life.”

“When you say ‘water’ in [Cree], you know it is alive,” said Littlechild, who also recalled one meeting where the elders actually brought water from a local water body to act as a representative of nature at the negotiations.

Nature goes to court

Ecuador decided to give nature the highest legal protection possible by putting it in its constitution, Greene says. The constitution makes specific reference to Pachamama, or Mother Earth, and says that nature is subject to all the rights outlined in it. It also allows any resident to take the government to court on behalf of nature if he or she feels its rights have not been defended.

The first big test of this law came in the case of the Vilcabamba River last March, Greene says. A company had been building an illegal road by the river for three years, and had dumped so much rock into it that it had actually changed its course, causing floods. When a local group took the government to court over its inaction, the judge ordered the company to get the permits needed for the development and to repair the harm it had done.

The law hasn’t chased investors out of Ecuador, Greene says, as all it does is ask them to develop responsibly. But the government has been backsliding on it lately, as it was seeking mines and oil development for money to fund social programs.

About 100 American communities have now recognized the rights of nature, she notes, including Pittsburgh. She encouraged delegates to lobby their own governments and get the conversation about nature’s rights started.

“We need to have people understand that we are part of nature,” she says.

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by | 2011-07-29 · 14:04

KPFK Radio Earth Segment This Week on the EPA’s Ruling on Biomass Burning

Global Justice Ecology Project partners with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles each week for an Earth Segment on Thursdays.  This week, Sojourner Truth host Margaret Prescod interviews Dogwood Alliance’s Scot Quaranda about the recent decision of the EPA not to regulate emissions from the burning of wood to make electricity.

Listen to the segment by clicking here and going to minute 21:10.

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by | 2011-07-25 · 11:02

Radio Interview: The Myth of the Industrial Forest

Listen to Daphne Wysham’s Interview with Global Justice Ecology Project Executive Director Anne Petermann on the threat of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees, for the EarthBeat Radio Segment, The Myth of the Industrial Forest which played on EcoShock Radio.

Go to: http://209.217.209.33/~esnet/downloads/ES_110713_Show_LoFi.mp3

and forward to minute 26:45.

Also on that episode is an interview with Dr. Rachel Smolker of Biofuelwatch on the myth of biochar; and an interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott about the nuclear power threat.

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