The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations is accepting applications for financial assistance for any representatives of indigenous communities who wish to participate in the 2007 deliberations of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the Working Group on Indigenous Populations, or the Working Group on the Draft United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Applications must be submitted by October 1, and must be in English, French, or Spanish. The U.N.

Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its partners in a billion Russian natural-gas venture are being confronted by environmentalists over the project's ecological consequences in a series of public hearings.

We received sad news from South Korea this week. The Supreme Court ruled that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry may complete construction of a sea wall that will destroy the Saemangeum tidal flats – one of Korea’s most valuable wetlands and habitat for migratory birds.

For the last 2 years, Global Response letters have urged the World Bank to halt its program of industrial logging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's vast tropical rainforests. The campaign's first success was the decision by the Bank’s official Inspection Panel to investigate the complaints brought by 'Pygmy' residents of the rainforest. This week the Inspection Panel issued its preliminary report which sharply criticizes the Bank for not fulfilling its own environmental 'safeguard policie' and for not consulting with affected “Pygmy” populations.

Navajo and Hopi families residing on Big Mountain and the surrounding area of the Black Mesa in northern Arizona may be forced to relocate as a new senate bill, S1003 "The Navajo Hopi Land Settlement Act Amendments of 2005," goes before Congress.

For the past three years we have been supporting the efforts of environmental organizations in South Korea to stop a project that would destroy the country’s most important wetland ecosystem, also a critical stopover for migratory birds.

The campaign has reached a critical moment as the Supreme Court begins hearings on the issue.

An agreement signed yesterday in Jakarta requires Newmont Mining Company to pay 30 million to settle a civil court case that charges the Denver-based company with polluting Buyat Bay on North Sulawesi island. The out-of-court settlement in the civil case has no bearing on the ongoing criminal trial of Newmont executives in Indonesia who are charged with not taking action to prevent pollution.

Empresa Colombiana de la Coca, a Nasa Indian cooperative in southwestern Colombia, has begun producing and selling a soft drink that uses the coca leaf as its main ingredient, Reuters reports. The drink, called Coca Sek, is being produced in the high altitude town of Calderas in the Cauca Province. This new product is intended to help build the alternative coca leaf market, thus creating a viable economic alternative to the drug trade for small local indigenous coca famers.

Our letters to United Nations officials in Kosovo are having the desired effect! After six years of inaction, the U.N. mission in Kosovo just now opened a camp where 125 Roma families can live while awaiting construction of permanent housing. The Roma families are being relocated from three U.N.- administered camps for displaced persons, where they have been exposed to constant and severe lead contamination since 1999.

MITROVICA, Serbia and Montenegro, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Kosovo Roma living in lead-contaminated camps since their homes were razed by Albanian mobs six years ago rejected an offer of temporary housing in a former French barracks on Monday.

Vancouver-based Ascendant Copper (TSX: ACX) plans to submit the EIS for its Junán copper-molybdenum project in Ecuador to the government and local communities in mid-January, the company reported in a statement.

The study outlines Ascendant's proposed exploration program and how the company plans to adhere to environmental regulations. The EIS will be subject to a 30-day public comment period, after which it will go to Ecuador's mining ministry for consideration.

San Francisco, CA - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is concealing a crucial report that it commissioned on the Sakhalin II oil and gas project’s damage to wild salmon runs.The so-called ‘Birmingham Group’report^[1] critically examines the Royal Dutch/Shell Group’s failed strategy for crossing hundreds of Sakhalin Island’s wild salmon rivers, streams and tributaries with eight hundred kilometers of Sakhalin II oil and gas pipelines.