The other articles I wrote for EntreMundos

Here's the article about Armando and Chico Mendes that I wrote. He is in desperate need of donations right now, so if any of you feel compelled by his story, just ask me how to donate:

Up in the corn fields of Pachaj, in Cantel (6km outside Xela), Armando Lopez has created an inspiring environmental project to combat the degradation of the environment and stand up against government manipulation and unjust land exploitation.

Armando created The Chico Mendes Reforestation Project in 1998 to contribute to the reforestation of the 75% deforested Guatemalan Western Highland Mountains. He started his project right after Bill 40-39 began to be discussed within the Guatemalan government. This law is a result of the Meso-American Barrier Reef System (MBRS) project, implemented in 1997 upon request by the Central-American Commission for the Environment and Development (CCAD) to the World Bank. It is designed amongst other things to strengthen and reform local and national capacity and institutions to maintain water quality and prevent contamination. “With the law 40-39, a tax on water and public service utilities, the government would be able to finance a ten year reforestation project: this is a seemingly beneficial program, however it will lead to the privatization of our forests and Guatemala’s white gold” says Armando. Through such a program, Armando fears the government will claim not only the forests they plant, but the land and water sources as well. What is more, Armando explains, the government could sell the forest and water sources to Gallo or Coca-Cola to make bottled water, forcing the inhabitants of the mountains to pay for the water they have always used on top of increased taxes. According to Armando, the government could also put these forests up for sale on the carbon market. Indeed, engineers can evaluate how much oxygen trees emit and countries that need to compensate for their excessive carbon dioxide production and maintain the levels of their oxygen production quota can do so by buying other countries’ forests. In addition to masking the damage they are really costing the planet, these countries would be ignoring the land and natural resource rights of the people who have lived there for centuries.

Chico Mendes was an environmental activist in Brazil that has greatly inspired Armando. Mendes worked to keep tropical rainforests intact and for sustainable harvests, creating forest reserves and fighting against the cutting down and transformation of forestland into cattle pastures. Armando hopes to plant 100,000 trees in the next 3 years to compensate for the transformation of forests into agricultural fields, and protect Xela’s mountains’ white gold from the profit-seeking foreign investors and mining companies. He has received threats, and suspects that a recent forest fire that burned 5000 trees was done on purpose against his political activity.

Through his ecological project, Armando seeks to protect the indigenous population from further discrimination and rights abuses and attain justice in land use. “They may cut our branches, they may cut our trunks, but they will never cut our roots” he repeats, alluding to the ancestral right to land indigenous people have. It is with such community initiatives that people can finally have a voice and stand up for themselves against governmental abuse, and it is with people like Armando that change can begin.

He grows cypress, laurel, and pine tree seeds using organic fertilizer within a seedbed while waiting for the planting season to refill the highlands. He is always looking for volunteers to help out and donations to maintain and advance the project.

And here is the one about ecology. Unfortunately, the news is kinda dated by now, I'm not sure how Valeria thought that would work with the magazine being published in May but hey, I did the work and handed it in before the deadline and she's the editor. 

The movie Crude is about the Chevron-Ecuador issue, and the situation in Japan has significantly worsened.

After the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on March 10^th, a whole new batch of conspiracy theories about Project HAARP as the cause of natural disasters is being discussed. In the last year, a dozen environmental disasters have occurred, from the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile to Hurricane Agatha in Central America devastating the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The elevated frequency of these types of phenomena in recent years is proved to be due to climate change. While it is hard to control or be prepared for such damaging natural occurrences, we can decide to change the way we live today and take fast and sweeping action to mitigate global warming and its subsequent destructive consequences. It is in our power to prevent man-made disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; and it’s up to us to decide when to stop violating the planet and its inhabitants to divert our energy and capacities to building a sustainable world. Environmental activists all around the world have been suffering from tremendous increased targeted violence, as foreign investors and free trade promoting governments clash with communities and organizations vouching for the respect of human rights and environmental protection. Here is a selection of environmental news, laws, and disasters from around the world that demonstrates the importance of fighting for the development of new energies and improving our currently flawed system.

On March 10^th 2011, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan caused the worst nuclear accident since the 1986 explosion of the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine. Electricity and back-up power were knocked out because of the quake and inundation, preventing the cooling system of the reactors to function properly and causing partial meltdowns and explosions in two reactors. Radioactive steam was being released and radiation levels outside the plant have been recorded at 800 times the allowed hourly limit; over 200,000 people have been evacuated from the area near the affected plants. Although the government and Japanese nuclear experts are saying the levels of radiation pose no health risks, released radioactive material such as cesium 137 can be accumulated by moss and mushrooms and remain in the environment for decades before its radioactivity disappears, negatively affecting the ecosystem and food chain. This disaster is causing the world to reevaluate not only the safety and solidity of its nuclear plants, but also the view that nuclear energy might be a solution to climate change. It is interesting to note that significant disasters involving today’s three main sources of energy - coal, oil, and nuclear - have happened in the past year.

Source: lemonde.fr and nytimes.com

On February 15^th 2011, a judge’s decision in Ecuador marked the first time a US Company faced judgment in a foreign court over environmental crimes. In one of the largest judgments ever handed down on an environmental case, the Chevron Corporation was ordered to pay $9 billion to clear-up oil pollution and cover health care costs for the affected communities in Ecuador, with a further $8.6 billion if Chevron did not issue an apology to the plaintiffs in the next 15 days. The lawsuit began in 1993 when Ecuadorian communities affected by oil pollution sued Texaco in New York. Texaco, bought by Chevron in 2001, produced oil in Ecuador from 1964 to 1990 and caused one of the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe in the world, including dumping oil-drilling waste, contaminating forests, and causing illnesses (cancer and birth defects especially) and deaths. Although a decision has been reached, the legal battle is far from over as Chevron has announced its intent to appeal the judgment.

Source: ciel.org

Gold mining is becoming the new financial means for Colombian rebel groups. Because of the increasing eradication of coca plantations, insurgent and paramilitary groups have started using gold as their financial lifeblood. The result is a gold rush, where people leave their homes, coca and other agricultural fields to tear up forests and create a mine. The price of gold is very high so a worker can make $1000 a month, three times the Colombian minimum wage. However, in addition to causing destructive deforestation, the opening of new mines has made the Antioquia department one of Colombia’s most environmentally devastated regions. Miners use liquid mercury to separate gold from river sediments, giving the region one of the highest mercury pollution rates anywhere, where 67 tons of the chemicals are released into the air each year. The workers are subject to the risks of mercury exposure, which damages the brain and central nervous system, and have to pay a protection price to work at the mine.

Source: nytimes.com

An Agip oil spill and fire occurred in the community Emago-Kugbo Nigeria on January 22^nd 2011 , and was only partly successfully extinguished 5 days later. This is not the first spill/fire, but has had particularly devastating effects, namely on the water source of the community. Oil slicks have appeared in the community river, people’s only source of water for drinking, bathing, washing, and making it difficult to navigate and ruining fishermen livelihoods. The air is also polluted due to the use of toxic chemicals to extract oil and burn it. Illnesses and deaths have spread throughout the impacted communities, but neither Agip nor the government have made significant efforts to clean up and remediate the affected areas. Shell and other oil companies have exploited oil since 1957 in a total area the size of Denmark in Nigeria, negatively affecting 1500 communities, and causing the pollution of the Niger Delta.

Source: eraction.org