23/12/2014 19:15
This month's hearing before Canada's Supreme Court was Chevron's last appeal to try to stop a full enforcement trial. Chevron audaciously asked the court to ignore all precedent, and to change the law just for them.
Amazon Watch
This month's hearing before Canada's Supreme Court was Chevron's last appeal to try to stop a full enforcement trial. Chevron audaciously asked the court to ignore all precedent, and to change the law just for them.
After years of waiting for the Brazilian government to sort out their land rights, the 13,000 Munduruku Indians, who live beside the Tapajós river in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, have decided to take action. Besides temporarily occupying an office belonging to Funai, the Brazilian government's Indian agency, they have started to demarcate the boundaries of the land they claim.
By the Great Bend of the Xingu river in the depths of Amazonia, the Juruna tribe is being drowned by what seems at first sight to be a flood of TV game-show prizes.
On the morning of December 5th, a dark piece of news began circulating at the U.N. climate talks in Lima: The body of José Isidro Tendetza Antún, a leading Ecuadorian indigenous-rights and anti-mining campaigner, had been found in a riverside grave near his village, his remains bound in rope, showing signs of beating and torture.
I walk a small path, surrounded by an infinite number of trees, plants and the scent of flowers. My lungs fill with pure, fresh air when I take a deep breath. My bare feet touch the ground, damp from yesterday's rain. This is my home. This is where I grew up. This is what I want to share with my children one day.
From the Amazon to the Andes, thousands of activists marched through the streets of Lima on Wednesday to demand a just solution to climate change. The march through the traffic-choked streets put a human face on the United Nations climate negotiations, a process largely confined to suited bureaucrats working behind the high walls of a military compound in a leafy neighbourhood of Lima.
Amazon Watch and indigenous allies joined thousands of marchers yesterday in defense of the rainforest and territorial rights and to demand that voices from the Amazon be heard at the United Nations COP20 climate negotiations.
Ottawa, Canada – Trying to make good on its promise of a "lifetime of litigation" to avoid paying for a clean-up of Ecuador's rainforest, Chevron will ask the Supreme Court of Canada this week to create a new jurisdictional hurdle that likely would close off the country's courts to indigenous communities seeking to enforce their $9.5 billion environmental judgment against the company.
"[REDD gives] permits to pollute," Smithie told the Tribunal. "[It means] forests of the world acting as a sponge for northern industrial countries' pollution. They can pollute if they grab forests in the global south."
Yesterday hundreds of indigenous peoples from communities across the Amazon joined together on a beach in Lima, Peru to create a massive "human banner" image to promote awareness about territorial rights for indigenous peoples in the global climate conversation. Beneath the heat of the sun and to the sound of beating drums, indigenous peoples and allies danced and rallied around a united message.
The body of an indigenous leader who was opposed to a major mining project in Ecuador has been found bound and buried, days before he planned to take his campaign to climate talks in Lima.
Lima, Peru – Indigenous territorial rights must be guaranteed as an effective strategy to address climate change was the message of an enormous "human banner" image created on Agua Dulce beach today outside the UN COP20 climate summit.
"Brazil has been on a path of trying to bring down deforestation a lot," said Maira Irigaray, Brazil program coordinator for Amazon Watch. "But when it comes to the Amazon, those numbers are still huge." Amazon Watch and other groups say Brazil's decision to roll back laws limiting the clear cutting of forests been behind the rise in deforestation.
Hundreds of indigenous people and supporters will form a gigantic "human banner" art work on the beach, creating an image symbolizing the important role of indigenous protection of the rainforest and natural resources.
Santarém, Brazil – Tensions are building over the Brazilian government's polemic plans to circumvent the law in order to dam the Tapajós River. On November 27th, representatives of a diverse coalition of threatened indigenous peoples and other traditional communities assembled with religious leaders and activists to challenge a new Amazon mega-dam complex.
This week's "Caravan to Resist Dams in the Amazon" marked the largest political action ever staged in opposition to the Brazilian government's authoritarian march to dam the Tapajós River. Assembled on the banks of the majestic river, members the region's indigenous and traditional communities joined religious leaders and activists to stand as one in defense of the Tapajós, its peoples, and all the life that this vital waterway sustains.
Greenpeace activists joined the Munduruku deep in the Amazon rainforest to protest the construction of a major hydroelectric project. The group gathered at a beach on the banks of the Tapajos River and displayed a message in the sand that read "Free Tapajós". The beach is located near the waterfall of the "São Luiz do Tapajós" project, the first of five hydroelectric dams planned for the region.
The Brazilian government's decision to dam the Amazon's Tapajós River demonstrates a shocking disregard for the rights of the region's indigenous and traditional peoples. Tensions continue to escalate, with the Mundurukú people carrying out an "auto-demarcation" process of their land in defiance of the government's intentional deferral of the official demarcation process.
While some dams in the United States and Europe are being decommissioned, a dam-building boom is underway in developing countries. It is a shift from the 1990s, when amid concerns about environmental impacts and displaced people, multilateral lenders like the World Bank backed away from large hydroelectric power projects.
At least 57 environmental activists have been murdered in Peru since 2002, a rights group said Monday, criticizing the killings as the country prepares to host major UN climate talks.
"Today we are living through a key moment in history when we need to take action, and we need to take action now. The drought in São Paulo, for example, is not happening by chance. Even if no one is talking about it, this problem is directly connected to the destruction of the Amazon, where I live, because the standing forest regulates the cycle of rainfall. This is a clear example of how the destruction of the Amazon can affect the lives of you here in the big city."
When the advances made towards curbing global warming are analysed in the first 12 days of December in Lima, during the 20th climate conference, Latin America will present some achievements, as well as the many challenges it faces in "decarbonising development".
On Tuesday night the world's two biggest polluters – the US and China – announced a surprisingly ambitious climate deal. We should take a moment to celebrate this interim victory while realizing that it does not go nearly far enough in addressing climate change. Now it is our collective, global responsibility to ensure that both countries are serious about such a deal.
"I worry for my children, for all our children and the future generations. Despite our fight to keep the earth in balance, to protect our territory and our tradition, the Amazon is in danger." Mayalú Kokometi Waura Txucarramãe addressed a diverse group of climate leaders, international experts, government officials and media at the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In a struggle between a Brazilian indigenous tribe and the federal government over two dams that would flood lands claimed by the tribe, a federal judge has ruled that the government must immediately publish its report delineating the tribe's territory that has been withheld for more than a year.
A report from Brazil's Earth System Science Centre that draws on over 200 climate studies on the Amazon warns that the world's most important ecosystem is degrading to the point where it will not be able to draw enough moisture in to create the rain necessary to sustain it, the Guardian reported.
Rio de Janeiro – In response to the Dilma Rousseff government's failure to recognize indigenous rights to lands scheduled for flooding by two mega-dam projects, the Munduruku people have taken the extraordinary measure to demarcate their own territory.
Felipe Jacome's set of photos Amazon: Guardians of Life documents the struggles of indigenous women defending the Ecuadoran Amazon through portraits combined with the powerful written testimonies.
Brazil still faces a number of obstacles to scaling a decentralized model for solar, most notably taxes and the lack of incentives for residential solar users to sell electricity back to the grid. But the country's history of innovation in the energy market proves these obstacles can be overcome.
"It fills me with rage to see what the oil companies have done to my people," says ClearWater coordinator Nemonte Nenquimo. "We are not supposed to be controlled by an oil company. Waorani are meant to lively freely."