Indigenous Rights

US Flails in GM Corn Dispute with Mexico

By Timothy A. Wise
Closing arguments are in in the U.S. trade complaint against Mexico’s restrictions on genetically modified (GM) corn, with the three-arbitrator tribunal set to rule on the matter in November. The legitimacy of the trade agreement itself hangs in the balance.

Indigenous Peoples — An Antidote in a World of Crisis

By Jamison Ervin and Anna Giulia Medri
This year’s Equator Prize winners are the antidote we need in a world of crisis. Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum released its annual Risk Report. The key findings highlighted the inescapable trend over the past decade that we are facing a global polycrisis, in which problems of biodiversity loss, climate change, inequality, water scarcity and conflict are increasingly indivisible, simultaneous, and systemic.

ECUADOR: ‘We demand that the violation of the rights of nature be recognised and reversed’

By CIVICUS
CIVICUS speaks with Darío Iza Pilaquinga, president of the Kitu Kara People of the Kichwa nationality of Ecuador, about a historic court ruling that applied a constitutional provision recognising the rights of nature.

Cambodia’s Young Environmental Activists Pay a Heavy Price

By Andrew Firmin
It’s risky to try to protect the environment in authoritarian Cambodia. Ten young activists from the Mother Nature environmental group have recently been given long jail sentences. Two were sentenced to eight years on charges of plotting and insulting the king. Another seven were sentenced to six years for plotting, while one, a Spanish national banned from entering Cambodia, was sentenced in absentia.

Life or Energy: The Hydroelectric Dilemma in Amazonian Brazil

By Mario Osava
The decade-and-a-half-long battle for life in the so-called Volta Grande (Big Bend) of the Xingu river, a stretch of the river dewatered by the Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant in the Brazilian Amazon, has a possible solution, albeit a partial one.

Government Indifferent to Invasion of Drug Traffickers in the Peruvian Amazon

By Mariela Jara
The invasion of lands inhabited by Amazon indigenous communities is growing in Peru, due to drug trafficking mafias that are expanding coca crops to produce and export cocaine, while deforestation and insecurity for the native populations and their advocates are increasing

Kanak Ambition for Independence Is Defiant Following Political Turmoil in New Caledonia

By Catherine Wilson
It's been 26 years since a peace agreement, the Noumea Accord, was signed following an outbreak of conflict in the 1980s between Kanak islanders and French armed forces in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

How Climate-Smart Strategies Revitalized Tanzania’s Livestock Sector

By Kizito Makoye
As the sun sets, its golden hues piece through the dusty haze, creating a dazzling display when a herd of livestock lazily roams on the arid landscape as they return home from grazing. Dressed in shiny red robes, the youthful Maasai pastoralists routinely whistle as they steer cattle, goats and sheep to maintain a unified path.

Justice, not Impunity, for Sexually Assaulted Indigenous Girls in Peru

By Mariela Jara
The main fear facing women leaders who have denounced the systematic rape of girls from the Awajún indigenous people in the northeastern Peruvian department of Amazonas is that, despite the media coverage and sanctions announced by the authorities, it will all come to nothing.

New Caledonia: Time to Talk about Decolonisation

By Andrew Firmin
The violence that rocked New Caledonia last month has subsided. French President Emmanuel Macron has recently announced the suspension of changes to voting rights in the Pacific island nation, annexed by his country in 1853. His attempt to introduce these changes sparked weeks of violence.

Land Grabs Squeeze Rural Poor Worldwide

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.

Democracy, Civic Space and Fundamental Freedoms Are under Attack, but Civil Society Is Here to Stay

By Sarah Strack
During the Forus network’s General Assembly which took place in Gaborone, Botswana, civil society organisations from across 65 countries highlighted the challenges facing them globally in an increasingly polarised and crisis-hit world.

Ocean Action on Global Agenda as Negotiations to Save Biodiversity Deepen

By Joyce Chimbi
The oceans are as fascinating as they are mysterious. Home to the largest animals to ever live on Earth and billions of the tiniest, the top 100 meters of the open oceans host the majority of sea life, such as fish, turtles, and marine mammals. But there is another world far below the surface. In the belly of the ocean, there are seamounts—underwater mountains that rise 1,000 meters or more from the seafloor.

Biodiversity Masterplan: Negotiations on Crucial Science, Technology for Implementation Underway

By Joyce Chimbi
The triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and waste are escalating. At the current pace, the world is on track to lose one quarter of all plant and animal species by 2030, with one species already dying out every 10 minutes. One million species face extinction. Human activity has already altered three-quarters of the land on Earth and two-thirds of the ocean.

Working to Keep Náhuat, the Language of the Pipil People, from Vanishing in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
A group of children participating in an immersion program in Náhuat, the language of the Pipil people and the only remaining pre-Hispanic language in El Salvador, are the last hope that the language will not die out.

Harnessing Science-Policy Collaboration: The Vital Role of IPBES Stakeholders in Achieving Global Nature Targets

By Anne Larigauderie
In December 2022, the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) saw governments worldwide unite behind a set of ambitious targets aimed at addressing biodiversity loss and restoring natural ecosystems, through the Global Biodiversity Framework – known now as the Biodiversity Plan.

Indigenous Women Fight for Their Future, Their Land, Rights & Self-Determination

By Romeo Jara
Throughout history, Indigenous Women have made remarkable contributions to forwarding the aspirations of their communities for self-determination. Amid the compounded burdens they face as Indigenous Peoples, as women and an oppressed class, let us recognize and celebrate the bravery of Indigenous Women as they strive and inspire with their courage, heritage, leadership and knowledge.

Illegal Artisanal Mining Threatens Amazon Jungle and Indigenous Peoples in Brazil

By Mario Osava
Artisanal mining, or "garimpo" as it is known in Brazil, has returned to the headlines as a factor in the deaths of Yanomami indigenous people, whose territory in the extreme north of Brazil suffers constant encroachment by miners, which has intensified in recent years.

The Ghost of Oil Haunts Mexico’s Lacandona Jungle

By Emilio Godoy
The Lacandona jungle in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas is home to 769 species of butterflies, 573 species of trees, 464 species of birds, 114 species of mammals, 119 species of amphibians and reptiles, and several abandoned oil wells.

Guatemala’s Chance for a New Beginning

By Inés M. Pousadela
Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo, was expected to be sworn in on 14 January at 2pm –the 14th at 14:00, as people repeated in anticipation for months. It was a momentous event – but it wasn’t guaranteed to happen.

Centuries-Old Rituals Are Slowly Fading Away in Cambodia

By Kris Janssens
“What on earth are you going to do in Tropeang Krohom?” The driver of the minivan turns his head and gives me a puzzled look. Few passengers want to be dropped off in a settlement between two provincial towns.
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