Populist autocrats threaten human rights in 2017 – “We forget at our peril the demagogues of the past: the fascists, communists, and their ilk”

Washington, DC, 12 January 2017 (Human Rights Watch) – The rise of populist leaders in the United States and Europe poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world, Human Rights Watch said today in launching its World Report 2017 [pdf]. Donald Trump’s election as US president after […]

Failed economic development policies drive deforestation in Andean Amazon

By Mike Gaworecki20 October 2016 (mongabay.com) – Cultivation of coca, the plant from which the drug cocaine is extracted, has long been considered a “deforestation multiplier” in the Andean Amazon rainforests of Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. For instance, a 2001 report by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy stated: “Coca cultivation and processing […]

Increasing cases of enforced disappearances ‘just the tip of the iceberg,’ UN warns

16 September 2016 (UN) – In its latest report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances expressed deep concern and frustration at the rising number of cases, and underlined the need to prevent such acts and hold the perpetrators to account. “We are seriously concerned that […]

Illegal gold mining threatens tropical forest in Peruvian Amazon

[Translation by Bing Translator.] By Francesca Garcia Delgado3 September 2016 (El Comercio) – Between October 2015 and July 2016, illegal gold mining deforested 238 hectares of forest (equivalent to 326 soccer fields) in the buffer of the Bahuaja Sonene National Park (USD35) zone, located between Madre de Dios and Puno regions. This protected area is […]

More than 48 children and 61,000 farm animals die in anomalous cold wave in Peruvian Andes – Cold to extend into northern forest

[Translation by Bing Translator.] 4 August 2016 (El Búho) – The situation is worrying in high altitude areas, due to enduring low temperatures. There are 300,000 hectares of natural pastures that have been damaged, which were intended to feed Alpaca livestock in these areas, and 18,735 head of cattle have died as a result of […]

China’s trans-Amazon railway stokes forest fears

By Jan Rocha29 August 2016 SÃO PAULO (Climate News Network) – China’s fast-rising population and its burgeoning economy make steep demands on natural resources, so steep that Beijing is searching constantly for supplies from overseas. And it wants to obtain them, naturally, as cheaply as it can. Now in prospect is China’s trans-Amazon railway – […]

In Latin America, environmentalists are an endangered species – ‘There is an increase in pressure to exploit resources that have not been exploited yet’

By Lindsay Fendt11 August 2016 (mongabay.com) – On a Tuesday in March, indigenous activist Nelson García was shot in the face in northwest Honduras. The next day, in Guatemala, unknown attackers found environmentalist Walter Méndez outside his home and filled his chest with bullets. Two weeks earlier gunmen killed Berta Cáceres, an internationally renowned environmental […]

Another Amazon oil spill puts Peruvian communities at risk – ‘We don’t drink river water any more. It gives us diarrhea and stomachaches’

By Barbara Fraser and Milton López Tarabochia26 June 2016 (mongabay.com) – A new oil spill from the pipeline that carries crude oil from the northern Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to the Pacific coast has raised fears of yet more pollution of the water and fish on which indigenous villages and riverside communities depend. […]

2015 was the worst year on record for murders of land and environmental defenders – ‘We get threatened, vilified, and killed for standing up to the mining companies on our land and the paramilitaries that protect them’

20 June 2016 (Global Witness) – Para la versión española, clique aquí. More than three people were killed a week in 2015 defending their land, forests and rivers against destructive industries. For our new report On Dangerous Ground we documented 185 killings across 16 countries – by far the highest annual death toll on record […]

Gold mining ramps up, pushes deeper into Peruvian Amazon rainforest

By Morgan Erickson-Davis22 April 2016 (mongabay.com) – The quest for gold has been stripping rainforest from around rivers in the Amazon Basin, with not even protected areas immune from mining. The situation has gotten so out of hand that the Peruvian government launched an intervention in January, destroying a slew of mining equipment and more […]

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