Protect Forests and Indigenous Peoples / Kenya

Forests remain on less than two percent of Kenya’s land, under protected status as a national resource.  In a country plagued by drought, the forests are critical for water conservation. They are also home to indigenous peoples that live by hunting game and gathering food plants, herbs, and honey within the forests.

In a bid for votes, the Kenyan government has rescinded protected status from 4 percent of the remaining forests, claiming that the territory is needed to open settlements for the country’s many landless people.  Ironically and tragically, the indigenous Ogiek people will lose much of their traditional forest territory if this scheme goes forward.  The major beneficiaries will be politically connected people and loggers as well as settlers from other regions of the country.  

The survival of the Ogiek people depends on their continued access to the mountainous Mau Forests, where they have lived as hunters and gatherers from time immemorial. Governments since colonial times have tried to evict them from the forest, purportedly to protect the forest from negative impacts of Ogiek daily life. In fact, Ogiek have always managed the forest sustainably. Now the government itself is destroying the forest so that people of other ethnicities may settle there. Traditional Ogiek culture will not survive colonization. 

Click here for requested action: Please write letters to Kenya’s president and minister of the environment, urging them to revoke the forest excisions announced on October 19, 2001.

India: Oppose increase in height of Sardar Sarovar dam

This is to bring to your notice the very serious situation faced once again by the people in the Narmada valley, India.

According to reports in the Indian media, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a meeting with the Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, intervened to support for a further increase in the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam from its present height of 90 meters to 100 meters. http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1847504298 

As the things stand, oustees even below the present dam height have not been resettled. The Narmada Control Authority (NCA), the interstate monitoring body for the dam, has refused permission to an increase beyond 90 meters, as the land for further resettlement is not available. The Chief Minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh has repeatedly clarified that there is no land available for resettlement. The state government of Maharashtra is still revising its assessment of number of oustees, land availability and resettlement through its æTask ForceÆ. The state government has already conveyed to the NCA in a letter on January 11, 2002 that there should be no further construction on the dam if it is found that the rehabilitation of the oustees below 90 meters has still to be completed.

As you are aware, the people of the Narmada valley have been involved in a struggle to save their lands and homes and livelihoods from destruction by the Sardar Sarovar dam for the last 16 years.

Your involvement and support can make a difference. Click here to read a sample letter.

Please send faxes to

1) Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, The Prime Minister of India, 
7 Race Course Road, New Delhi 110 001, India. 
Fax number - + 91 11 3019545

2) Mr. C. Gopal Reddy, Chairman R&R Subgroup, Narmada Control Authority,
Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, 
Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi 110 001, India. 
Fax number + 91 11 338 4918
 

India: Road brings death for isolated tribe

The Jarawa are one of four surviving tribes living in the Andamans, a cluster of islands in the Bay of Bengal, India. Two of these tribes were settled by the colonial British and Indian authorities with catastrophic consequences: one, the Great Andamanese, of whom there were 5000 in 1948, now number only 41 individuals.

Survival International has launched a campaign to ensure the survival of this recently-contacted Jarawa tribe and now circumstances appear favourable. Firstly, the High Court has temporarily halted local government plans to settle the Jarawa by force, which if enacted would prove fatal. This creates a chance to pressure the government to abandon these plans for good and instead ensure the Jarawa's right to live as they choose. Secondly, the Andaman authorities have been considering a plan to close the road which cuts through Jarawa territory for improvements. If they can be persuaded to close it permanently, it will remove one of the biggest threats to Jarawa survival.

Action must be taken soon if the Jarawa are not to meet the same fate as the other Andaman tribes, who have been wiped out by a combination of colonisation and disease. The Indian and Andamanese authorities have it in their power to prevent the same thing happening to the Jarawa – if they fail to do so it will be tantamount to genocide.

Click here for further information 

Please write a brief and polite letter or fax (in English or your own language) including these points:

• The illegally built 'Andaman trunk road' through the Jarawa reserve must be closed, and all settlers removed from Jarawa territory.

• The temporary court order banning the forcible settlement of the Jarawa should be made permanent. The Jarawa must be allowed to make their own decisions about their future.

• The government must recognise the rights of the Jarawa to the communal ownership of their land and resources, as guaranteed by international law.

Please send your letter to:

Mr L. K. Advani
Home Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs
Government of India
North Block
Central Secretariat
New Delhi 110 001
India
Fax: +91 11 301 5750
(Begin 'Dear Mr Advani')

Mr Jual Oram
Ministrer of Welfare
Shastri Bhavan
New Delhi 110 001
India
Fax: + 91 113384918
(Begin 'Dear Mr Oram')

Mr N. N. Jha
Lieutenant Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Raj Niwas
Port Blair 744 101
Andaman Islands
India
Fax: + 91 3192 30372
(Begin 'Dear Mr Jha')
 

Amazon Rainforest Threatened by Massive Road & Infrastructure Development

Brazil's "Avanca Brasil" Project May Ensure Final Loss of the World's Largest Rainforest.

A massive infrastructure project known as "Avanca Brasil" (Advance Brazil) threatens the very existence of the Amazon rainforest. The proposed project will upgrade and construct new roads into the interior of the Amazon basin; facilitating increased logging, mining and settlement. The project will likely ensure final loss of the World's largest rainforest. Deforestation and fragmentation of the Amazon rainforest threatens Brazilian and Global ecological sustainability. Click here for further information.

Please click here to send the email, urging the Brazilian government to cancel environmentally destructive elements of this project, and recommit itself to environmentally sustainable development and establishment of protected areas in the Amazon.

Please take the time to politely encourage the President of Brazil and relevant ministers to modify Avanca Brasil to ensure that environmentally threatening projects are eliminated from the program. Additionally, respectfully request that the Brazilian government give more attention to pursuit of environmentally sustainable development, such as certified forestry and carbon-offset payments; and to establishment of additional large protected areas in the Amazon. Please edit the letter to include some thoughts of your own. The list of recipients follows the model letter.
  

Argentina: The end of the Green Corridor?

In December 1999, Provincial Law No. 3,631 was sanctioned in Argentina, creating the Overall Conservation and Sustainable Development Area, known as the "Green Corridor of the Province of Misiones." It involves 22 municipalities and covers an area of 1.108,000 hectares of Parana forest, located in the province of Misiones, spanning a mosaic of landscapes including protected areas, private property put to various uses, agricultural settlements, indigenous communities and varied socio-economic situations and even areas having land use and land tenure conflicts. The idea is to integrate them into a territorial unit with objectives defined on the basis of bio-regional planning, guaranteeing the connectivity of the three main blocks of Protected Natural Areas of the Parana forest.

However, a dangerous initiative that would demolish all the efforts to preserve the natural heritage of Misiones has now arisen. Apparently the Argentine Ministry of Ecology is to authorise the slashing and burning of 30 hectares bordering the Yaguaroundi Reserve, thus cutting off the natural flow of fauna from and to the rest of the forest mass. Following slashing and burning, tobacco will be planted, using agro-chemical weed-killers, immediately followed by the plantation of pine trees as a monoculture. According to the specialists this is the best way of destroying all the prevailing biodiversity for ever.

Furthermore, the scenario for this development is a sector of central hills, where the land is very sloping and where logging would rapidly lead to soil erosion, making it unsuitable for cultivation, the reason why large extensions of forest have survived until today.

This possible threat places at risk the Yaguaroundi project, a dream come true. A few years ago, Martín González decided to contribute to the preservation of the area by purchasing 400 hectares of forest in the vecinity of Fracrán, and together with his wife they decided to turn it into a Natural Reserve.

The reserve includes settlers and local people in the task of defending and getting to know the forest as a profitable and feasible economic activity. This implies banishing forest logging to make way for the plantation of tobacco and tea, that are of scant profitability, exhaust the soil and are extremely dangerous to human health. These unsustainable forms of production usually omit statistics on persons who have died from diseases linked to fertilisers and chemical substances used in tobacco plantations, which attack kidneys, lungs, the heart and other vital organs. Children are born with congenital malformations and their life expectation is very low.

According to Martin González, while this happens, beyond the fantastic sound of the waterfalls or the roar of the bay lion, "the vegetation holds thousands of medicinal secrets that we must discover to save our sick children, men and women. Only as an example we can mention the Káa Kée, a forest herb, which is 300 times sweeter than sugar. But these secrets have been lost with the Guarani tribes and the logging of the forest. Only a few wise people from the last tribes of the Guarani Mbya could reconstruct a part of this glorious past, but they are sunk in poverty."

Today the need to defend the Parana Forest is on the agenda; that same forest "that during the past century disappeared from the southern states of Brazil and from Paraguayan territory, that forest that saw Guarani culture die, that forest that can give us so much more without falling and that nevertheless sees its children in the deepest poverty, that every evening breathes its last days in a sad rain or in a red sunset like the Apocalypses, that forest that is the last home of butterflies and tigers." For this reason, the Yaguaroundi Reserve has launched a campaign requesting that messages of protest be sent to the Ministry of Ecology: ecologia@misiones.gov.ar , corredorverde@misiones.gov.ar .

For further information please visit: http://www.jaguares.com.ar/misiones/yaguaroundi/yaguaroundi.html