ENVIRONMENT These are articles previously published by Toward Freedom related to this category.
Oil is what most of us think of as a strategic resource, yet in the long run it is soil which is the more important. Even so, people's eyes tend to glaze over when talk turns to soil conservation, maybe because it's so much easier to see the immediate relevance of rising gas prices and climate change in these days of peak oil.Photo: Andrew Kokotka
Currently the UN considers industrial tree plantations as forests. This is, simply put, an egregious error. Plantations are not forests. Forests are diverse ecosystems and plantations are void of biodiversity. The UN definition endangers Indigenous Peoples, forest dependent people, peasants, small farmers, biodiversity and exacerbates climate change.
The combination of increasing temperatures and dry conditions predicted for some areas suggest that there will be more wildfires and they will be of longer duration. This will require increasing expense both to control the fires and to repair the damage they do. There's convincing evidence that this trend, increases in both frequency and duration of wildfires, is well underway.California Fire
On November 26, Mapuche Pewenche authorities of the Bío Bío River in Chile met with the Environmental Minister, Ana Lya Uriarte, explaining their opposition to the construction of a new dam on the Bío Bío River and requesting for more time to allow for civic participation in the "Environmental Impact Study" of the Angostura Project of the Colbún-Matte, the company that is again threatening their territories.
Today's food and energy crises are demonstrating what small-scale family farmers and rural peoples around the world have been saying for years: without support for local agriculture everywhere, hunger can grow anywhere. Rodrigo Lopes of the Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) and Stephen Bartlett of Agricultural Missions (based in Kentucky) are touring the US this month, aiming to clarify why this is so. Both groups are part of La Via Campesina, an autonomist, multicultural international movement of peasants, small farmers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth, and agricultural workers. Brazil's MST
Canadian resource companies are under fire in Peru. On October 21, Cesar Zuniga, the president of the Achuar indigenous group FENAP, told a local radio: "We, as indigenous people, reject the Canadian company Talisman. We do not want them working in our territory. We want the Peruvian state to respect us, and the armed forces to stop helping the company." The indigenous communities believe oil development causes ecological harm and leads to social conflict.At a recent strike in Lima
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019