Land defenders caravan to Mexico City to defend Chimalapas
Editor’s note: Last year we featured a two-part series by award-winning Zapotec journalist Diana Manzo about Indigenous community forestry initiatives to defend the biodiversity hotspot that is the Chimalapas forest reserve against illegal logging, mining, territorial invasion and other threats. The situation has continued to deteriorate and the government has failed to respond to community […]
Grief and Gratitude in a New Mexico Fire
Shortly before midnight on May 3, we directly and personally entered the growing multitudes of climate evacuees. Such an event was not unexpected. Our forests had become drier than kiln-finished lumber. If you struck 100 matches and dropped them to the ground, 90 to 94 of them would ignite a fire. Precipitation had become a long-lost friend. The link of a warming climate to such a cataclysmic event was evident throughout the region long before the fire drew its first breath.
Community Foresters Unite to Save Biodiversity Hotspot
As part of Mexico’s world-renowned community forestry model for sustainability, the example of the Chimalapas shines. It has produced important results in conservation of a natural biosphere considered one of the most important lungs of Mexico.
Chimalapas: Building community to save a forest
Their footprints mark the trails beneath the pines, oaks and oyamels. Once a week, 10 men walk through here with machetes on their shoulders, flashlights and jute bags of food, to defend a piece of the 594,000-hectare communal forest that makes up the Chimalapas. They are young people who inherited the management of this woodland, […]
Bathing in the Wisdom of Forests
In ancient India, so the story goes, a king facing acute depression stopped his carriage for a breather in a forest full of tall tropical trees. While walking among their giant roots the king noticed the trees’ silence, their quiet steadfastness, and their offer of refuge from the harsh world of human affairs. He felt […]
Ecocide in the Bolivian Chiquitanía
As a new round of forest fires gained momentum in the tropical Bolivian forests of Chiquitanía, the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature placed the blame for last year’s 5 million-hectare “ecocide” on the Bolivian government and the agribusiness industry. And now, as the government gears up for another election season, it has declared a state of emergency in the Chiquitanía.
The Devastation of the Chiquitanía in the decline of Evo Morales
The year that is coming to an end will be remembered in Bolivia not only for the hurricane winds that drove the fall of Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president; but also because of the fires those winds brought with them. They burned forests, ecological reserves, indigenous territories and national parks in eight of […]
Lyla June on the Forest as Farm
Science reveals that ancient foodscapes were cutting-edge regenerative agriculture
Amazon Uprising: Defunding the Destruction
The media coverage may have subsided, but the fires haven’t stopped. In fact, when the global outrage about the fires burning in the Amazon began, there had been 43,500 fires recorded in the Brazilian Amazon in 2019. It’s now at more than 67,000 and the dry season will continue until at least the end of November. Some of this is part of the natural cycle, but many more are fires deliberately set and most of those are to clear land for beef and soy production.
Bolivia is on Fire, Too — And You’re Part of the Problem
Esperanza Project collaborator Kayla Mi-kyung Vandervort has been working with indigenous leaders in Bolivia to create a campaign to support their work. These tribal peoples on the front lines of the devastation have not been getting the support they need and are desperate need of supplies and help for the communities that are being displaced, […]
Saving the Amazon: 10 Things You Can Do Now
1. Fund Forest Protection Let’s start with the most direct route. One of the most effective organizations to contribute to is the Rainforest Trust. Their project in the Peruvian Amazon supports the local indigenous communities to getting recognised as having land rights and is seeking to give the title for more than 6 million acres to […]
She Started a Movement that Speaks for the Forests
It’s not every day that one bumps into a visionary – but it seems to be happening more often these days. On the “dance floor” of a very special beach party, on the wild Pacific Coast of Oaxaca, we found ourselves face to face with the founder of a movement to protect those rare and […]
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