In a groundbreaking decision, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala ruled last week that community consultations against mining projects should be considered as binding legal decisions. The government is now obligated to respect the results of consultas populares or community referendums regarding mining projects.
Press release by Greenpeace Africa and Oakland Institute:
Greenpeace Africa and the Oakland Institute are alarmed by the decision of the Cameroonian government to award US agribusiness company Herakles Farms a three-year provisional land lease to develop a palm oil plantation in the South West region of the country. The move disproves Herakles Farms’ claim that it had all the necessary permits from the start, and confirms that the company has in fact been operating illegally for more than three years.
Protests were held outside the Annual General Meeting of British mining company GCM Resources on December 4th over the company’s Phulbari coal mine in Bangladesh. The protests were held by UK solidarity groups the London Mining Network, Phulbari Solidarity Group, and the UK Committee to Protect Oil-Gas and Mineral Resources in Bangladesh.
On October 31, 2013, Canada’s Federal Environmental Review Panel submitted an extensive report with their major findings regarding Taseko’s plan to mitigate adverse impacts of the “New Prosperity” gold-copper mine, a project proposed on the lands of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation. Weeks earlier, the Panel heard considerable testimony from members of the Tsilhqot’in community. The Panel was required to review information presented by Indigenous groups in British Columbia.
On November 7, the Tsilhqot’in community members appeared in Canada’s Supreme Court to assert their title to traditional lands. This comes more than 20 years after a lawsuit was filed against the government of British Columbia over commercial logging on land the Tsilhqot’in claim as traditionally theirs.
By Jess Cherofsky (CS STAFF) “Food sovereignty is knowing the species we have on our lands, knowing what kind of seeds to plant in each territory,” said Clemencia Herrera from the Colombian Amazon in the working group on food sovereignty and the World Conference of Indigenous Women, which took place in Lima, Peru, October 28-30, 2013.
By María del Rosario Sul González
Carol Gonzalez Aguilar is the coordinator of Women and Family from Organización de los Pueblos Indígenas de la Amazonía Colombiana (OPIAC) located in the village of Sano in the department of Vaupéz in Colombia. She was a participant observer at the World Conference on Indigenous Women held in Lima, Peru, from 27 to 30 October 2013.
Food assistance and distribution programs, foster-care programs, school bus routes, elderly care programs, and college scholarship funds are just some of the services on Native American reservations that are threatened by the recent government shutdown.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
