Thirty years after diamonds were first discovered in Botswana's Kalahari desert, the Bushmen have been evicted, and the first diamonds have gone on sale. Happy Valentines!
A month-long blockade of the Rio Tigre deep in the Peruvian Amazon has secured promises of compensation and cleanup for Peru's Kichwa communities who have suffered 40 years of contaminated waters from oil drilling operations in their remote Amazon region. But until the funds materialize, they are holding firm in their resolve.
'Conservation' is destroying those who've nurtured their surroundings for timeless generations, writes Stephen Corry - the Indigenous Peoples who have actually fashioned those precious places that we now mistake as 'natural'. It's time for a new conservation ethic that recognizes them as senior partners - not as 'squatters'' and 'poachers' to be evicted and criminalized.
While the world gears up for Jungle Book fever, something sinister is afoot in the forests of India, writes Tom Linton. No, not Shere Khan, but zealous officials illegally evicting indigenous communities from their ancestral forests in the name of 'conservation' - and to make way for tiger tourism. And it's happening across India putting millions of people under threat.
In his search for alternatives to consumerism and industrialism, Jules Pretty travelled around the world to find surviving nature-based cultures. In this extract from his book 'The Edge of Extinction', he tells of the Tuva people of the Siberian steppe - proud of their traditions and closeness to the land, but very much part of the modern world - strictly on their own terms.
Stories told by Australia's Aboriginal peoples tell of the time, over 10,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age came to an end, and sea levels rose by 120 metres, write Nick Reid & Patrick Nunn. The narratives tally with the findings of contemporary science, raising the question: what is it about Aborigines and their culture than so accurately transmitted their oral traditions across thousands of generations?
For 16 years the Thai government has ignored the plight of a community where toxic lead mine waste is causing severe chronic poisoning - defying both a 2013 court order, and its international obligations. It's just one of many toxic sites across Thailand that need to be cleaned up - but the government's main concern is to encourage further industrialisation.
Indigenous forest dwellers in India's iconic Kanha Tiger Reserve have suffered another round of illegal forced evictions at the hands of the country's Tiger Conservation Authority - a move that is threatening the future of the tigers themselves.
Alana Husby has sawdust in her blood. A fifth generation log and lumber person from Canada, she was ‘flipping wood' as a teenager, and now she's in Panama running the region's biggest underwater logging company, employing local Kuna Indians to fish tree trunks out of flooded forests. Kate Monson met Alana in Oxford while negotiating a 'green' timber deal ...
Australia must acknowledge the horrors lurking in its own history, writes Fiona Broom, and admit to its continuing Aboriginal genocide. It's made harder by the deliberate ignorance of Australia's mainstream culture, politics and media. But with John Pilger's outstanding film, 'Utopia', the excuses are fast running out.
A salmon fishing cooperative in the Pacific Northwest draws on indigenous practices and state of the art technology to be among the world's most sustainable and selective fisheries, writes Kevin Bailey. With its clean harvesting techniques, minmimal bycatch, 99% survival rates for released fish, renewable energy supply and efficient supply chain, it sets a standard for all to follow.
This day 20 years ago one of Britain's most committed and effective environmental campaigners died trying to save a coastal forest in southern Madagascar from mining, writes Yvonne Orengo. The world has been a poorer place without Andrew Lees - and his fears for the Petriky forest and local indigenous communities have been proved all too close to the mark.
A new wave of ruthless conquistadors has arrived in Peru, write Aldo Orellana Lopez and Philippa de Boissière - global corporations after minerals, oil, gas, timber, land ... And instead of brandishing the Bible and the sword, they proclaim high sounding policies on environment and human rights, while co-opting police and politicians in their pillage of resources.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's definition of 'forest' includes commercial plantations of fast growing trees - often replacing biodiverse native forests relied on by local communities. FAO must stop using this mis-definition to claim that forests are expanding, when the reverse is the case.
Peru, notorious for its brutal exploitation of forests, oil and minerals, theft of indigenous lands and murder of eco-defenders, is an unlikely host for the COP20 climate talks, writes Alexander Reid Ross. Except that Peru's actions reflect the corporate land-grabbing agenda manifest in the false solutions on offer in Lima this week. It's a time for resistance, not compromise!
