On February 20th, a Brazilian court ordered transnational corporation Vale SA to grant every person affected by the Brumadinho environmental massacre a minimum wage for 12 months, and in addition, each family will receive 400 reals, which is the value of a basic food basket in that South American country. The Movement of People Affected by Dams in Brazil (MAB)…
On February 14, the Norwegian government gave the green light to a new copper mining project that will cause two million tons of heavy metal waste to be dumped in Repparfjord, in Finnmark province (above the polar Arctic Circle), a fjord protected to preserve its salmon population. The decision has been met with utmost rejection and will be appealed. The…
On January 24, Brazil suffered once again an environmental crime. In Brumadinho, a town in Minas Gerais state, a toxic waste reservoir of the mining company Vale burst and the mud covered the ground and people. We have seen the pictures on social networks of how the mud swept Brumadinho. Two weeks later, the figures of this massacre are: 150…
EPM, the public utility service company of Medellin in charge of the construction of Hidroituango, the hydroelectric project in Ituango, municipality of Antioquia, on February 5 closed some gates of the dam, disrupting the bed of the Cauca river and affecting its flow for four days, killing thousands of fish. The Cauca River runs through about 180 municipalities in the…
The publication “Manejo comunitario del territorio y soberanía alimentaria” (Community management of territory and food sovereignty) of Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) is a “hopeful contribution against the model of death that is being imposed in our territories,” said Mexican environmentalist Claudia Ramos. The report, released on Wednesday by ATALC, contains several experiences in various…
The Council of Wuxhtaj Peoples and the Council of the Mayan People (CPO), which are part of the Movement of People Affected by Dams in Latin America (MAR), denounced the murder on December 16th of the brothers Nery Esteban Pedro and Domingo Esteban Pedro, from the Bella Linda community, a microregion of Ixquisis (municipality of San Mateo Ixtatán, Huehuetenango, Guatemala).…
On December 3rd, 2017, a year and a week ago, Marivic Danyan, a young indigenous woman less than 30 years of age saw how the Philippine Army murdered her father, her two brothers, her husband, an uncle and cousins. It was a massacre. Today, Marivic spoke with Real World Radio, because the peaceful struggle for their lands continues. It all…
December 2nd marked 33 months of the murder of the Lenca people defender, Berta Cáceres, at her home in La Esperanza, Intibucá department (Honduras) and the attempted murder of environmental activist Gustavo Castro, member of Otros Mundos Chiapas – Friends of the Earth Mexico. The case went to trial after many irregularities in the investigation carried out by the Public…
With certain advances in the recognition of the role of indigenous people and local communities in terms of the conservation of biological diversity, the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP 14) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity came to an end in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Nevertheless, some environmental organizations are worried about the role of corporations in the official…
24 hours after the historical decision by the Third Committee (on cultural, social and humanitarian aspects) of the United Nations General Assembly in favor of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, the representative of Vía Campesina, Diego Montón, assessed from New York the process and its final outcome. The draft…
