ecominded_poc

Furious emerging farmers in the Kareeberg municipality in South Africa’s Northern Cape Province have decided to stop paying rent for the municipal owned land they are farming on. These farmers have been robbed and excluded from land ownership and access by colonial conquest, segregation and apartheid. Now South Africa’s protection of capitalist property and its neo-liberal state policies are keeping them landless still.

‘Our members cannot be held back anymore,’ says Basil ‘Die Hond’ Eksteen of the Kareeberg Emerging Farmers Association. ‘They are just too angry. We talked, we wrote letters, we marched - now we are ready to take the land. The municipality gives us no support and now they want to charge us these impossible rents. They know we can’t pay. They just want to get rid of us and put white, commercial farmers on the land. We are in contact with a group in the Kimberley district that has occupied a farm of one of the richest land owners there. A man that owns 15 farms while people sit with nothing. Neither the police nor the army has been able to remove these members from the land. If they can do it, so can we!’

Since 1996 the South African government has followed a strict neo-liberal policy path that includes cutting state expenditure on ‘unprofitable’ social services. A key strategy has been to cut transfers of funds from the national treasury to local governments by more than 90 per cent over a ten year period, while at the same time transferring responsibility for delivering social services such as housing, water, electricity, health and policing from the national to local governments. The national treasury could thus balance its books and even generate a surplus, but municipalities had to deliver far more services to many more people with less resources. They therefore became trapped in a well-known cycle of poor service delivery, desperate cost recovery and community protests. As far as municipal land is concerned the pressure became overwhelming on municipal executives to charge the highest possible rents. Emerging farmers find it unaffordable, which leaves them effectively landless, as the national land reform process is a complete failure that managed to transfer less than five per cent of agricultural land from white to black ownership.MORE

Both Palma and Miller can't say for certain why fresh vegetables in Belize have been relegated to the backburner, but they have their theories.

One theory for this shift is a transition to a cash-based economy. Miller says families now need cash to participate in the economy, and to, for instance, send their children to school.

"Public schools require that you have pens and paper and books and uniforms, which requires cash," Miller said. "So now the person who used to grow the vegetables goes out, leaves their village, and does construction work to go make cash money. They can leave their corn, their beans, their rice, and their staples and come back and harvest, but that's not true with a vegetable garden. So there went the vegetables."

It isn't just keeping their kids in school that has farmers traveling to town for work. Because of many disastrous trade agreements forged by the U.S., farmers can no longer make wages that allow them to work solely on the farm, where they could cultivate supplemental gardens. ( Read more... )

Food security at the household level is not only a factor of quantity, but also whether members of the household eat on time and/or have a greater selection of foods for meal preparation (Palacio, 1982). Cultural belief systems about food and health, rather than the nutritive value of food, contribute to dietary practices in Belize. Cultural practices place constraints on the type (quality) and the amount (quantity) of food items selected for consumption. It is the significance of lard or oil as mentioned above, to add “richness” to the diet. In some cases the timing of the arrival of foods, affects quantity and quality of foods consumed. In Barranco, the untimely arrival of the fisherman makes daily food supply uncertain at the household level. Similar examples are prevalent in both northern and southern communities, where production is limited despite proximity to the sea and available, arable land. I will outline three areas of cultural influences. One is the need to combine solids and liquids in the folk belief system (Palacio, 1982), the second is the deliberate refusal of certain foods to children and pregnant women (Brady, 1990); the third is the obligation to share foods in indigenous religious belief systems of the Garifuna people. ( Read more... )

BRUSSELS, Jun 2, 2011 (IPS) - For years, European governments and corporations have made use of a loophole in the Kyoto protocol on climate change to make exorbitant profits. According to some sources, this lucrative scheme has caused more pollution than ever before.

The Kyoto protocol allows European companies to ‘offset’ their excess emissions of greenhouse gases by buying emissions reductions in developing nations. This provision is called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The eligibility of the overseas projects and the issuance of emission credits - which in this case are called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) - are controlled by a council at the U.N., the CDM Executive Board.

In June 2010, two environmental NGOs - CDM Watch, based in Bonn, and Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), with offices in Washington, DC and London - discovered that European governments and corporations were grossly misusing the CDM. Fifty-nine percent of all CERs originated from the same 19 projects, though a total of 2,800 projects were registered. These 19 projects all produced HCFC-22, a refrigerant gas that is banned in the U.S. and Europe under the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer because of its ozone-depleting properties. In developing countries the gas must be phased out by 2030.

HCFC-22 is also a ‘super green house gas’ that is 1,810 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Furthermore, HFC-23, the unwanted by-product of the manufacture of HCFC-22, is 11,700 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.

When the producers of the refrigerant choose to burn the by-product HFC-23 instead of venting it into the air, they are eligible for heaps of credits under the CDM. Burning one tonne of HFC-23 would bring in 11,700 CERs or emission credits for the plant burning the gas.

It turned out this was a very lucrative business. Burning the equivalent of one tonne of carbon dioxide only cost 25 U.S. cents while the credits could be sold on the European market for not less than 19 dollars.

These projects soon attracted Western investment banks that wanted to share in the profits: JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Rabobank and Fortis. Next to these banks, the Italian, Dutch and British governments appear several times on the list of investors. Large energy companies including E.ON (Germany), Nuon (Netherlands), RWE (Germany), Enel (Italy) and Electrabel (Belgium) are also involved as project participants. MORE

Just weeks before the 2010 U.N. COP16 climate talks in Cancún, Europe’s climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard proposed a ban on all HFC-credits in the European system of emissions trading (ETS) to take effect Jan. 1, 2013. On that date, the second phase of the ETS is due to end, after which new rules could apply.

Industry lobby groups and business organisations resisted the ban. Brussels-based NGOCorporate Europe Observatory made use of Freedom of Information Regulations here to obtain documents and reconstructed the full story.

BusinessEurope is the most influential lobby group in Brussels, representing 40 industrial and employers’ federations from 34 European countries. In October 2010, BusinessEurope’s Director- General Philippe de Buck sent a letter to Hedegaard and Commissioner of Industry and Entrepreneurship Antonio Tajani in which he spells out his opposition to limiting the use of credits from the CDM.

BusinessEurope also made use of a new employee, who had just finished three years of work at the European Commission of Enterprise and Industry. In an email to his former colleagues at the Commission, this employee refers to a recent goodbye drink and expresses his wish to keep on working together in his new lobbying function. In an attachment, he forwarded the position paper of BusinessEurope - which opposes the ban.
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Throughout the world, opposition is building to fake marine "protected" areas designed to fulfill the agenda of corporate globalization and the privatization of public trust resources.

The rights of indigenous people and fishing families are rarely considered in the creation of these unjust no fishing and gathering zones, whether they are installed in the Chagros Islands by the United Kingdom, the Sea of Cortez by the Mexican government, or along the California coast under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.

The African Union recently backed Mauritius against the United Kingdom in the dispute over the Chagros Islands in the Indian Ocean. Secret cables between US and British governments released to the UK Guardian by Wikileaks disclosed how the so-called marine protected area supported by Greenpeace and other corporate environmental groups were installed to deny the native Chagossians the right of return and to allow alleged CIA renditioning of "terror" suspects on the US military base at Diego Garcia.MORE

LA OROYA, Peru, Dec 12, 2006 (IPS) - A grey blanket of smog hangs over the mining town of La Oroya high up in the Andes in Peru, where several generations have suffered the effects of the lead dust and toxic fumes spewed out by a giant smelting complex.

A look around, and a few deep breaths, are all that is needed to understand that something is wrong in this town of 35,000 people in the central Peruvian region of Junín, where humble adobe and brick houses are surrounded by bleak hills in shades of grey - the vegetation has been destroyed by acid rain - and the dense air stings the eyes and throat.

The cause of the smog stands out like a sore thumb in the middle of the town: the smokestack of the multimetal smelter and refinery complex that spits out clouds of black smoke, and has been doing so for over 80 years.

Luis Saldarriaga, the head of oversight of the mining industry in the Ministry of Energy and Mines, tells IPS that 1.5 tons of lead and 810 tons of sulphur dioxide are emitted daily by the smelting complex administered since 1997 by the U.S. company Doe Run.

The factory's emissions of sulphur dioxide - which can cause respiratory problems like bronchitis and are the main cause of acid rain - are four times the acceptable limit of 175 metric tons a day, as set by Peruvian law. MORE

LIMA, Jan 15, 2011 (IPS) - The U.S. mining and metallurgical company Doe Run has once again challenged the Peruvian government. The Renco Group, of which it is a subsidiary, notified the government of its plans to start an international arbitration process, invoking the free trade agreement between this South American country and the United States.

The U.S.-based holding company said the arbitration will be filed in 90 days if no agreement is reached. What is behind this ultimatum?

In ads published Jan. 5 in newspapers in Lima, the Renco Group said it was turning to the mechanisms provided for by the trade promotion agreement because it had received "unfair treatment" at the hands of the Peruvian government and had not been given "protection and security" as an investor, as required by the treaty.

Doe Run began to run the large multi-metal smelter in the central Peruvian highlands city of La Oroya, known as one of the most polluted places on earth, after the plant was privatised and acquired by the Missouri-based firm in 1997.MORE

First-world journalists interpret the absence of trees on the Haitian side to the predations of the poor, disregarding the fact that Western religion and American capitalism were mainly responsible.

Why is it that nowhere else in the Caribbean is there similar deforestation?

Haiti's Dessalines constitution offered sanctuary to every escaped slave of any colour. All such people of whatever colour were deemed 'black' and entitled to citizenship. Only officially certified 'blacks' could own land in Haiti.

The American occupation, anticipating Hayek, Freedman and Greenspan, decided that such a rule was a hindrance to development. The assistant secretary of the US Navy, one Franklin D Roosevelt, was given the job of writing a new, modern constitution for Haiti.

This constitution meant foreigners could own land. Within a very short time the lumberjacks were busy, felling old growth Mahogany and Caribbean Pine for carved doors for the rich and mahogany speedboats, boardroom tables seating 40, etc. The devastated land was put to produce rubber, sisal for ropes and all sorts of pie in the sky plantations.

When President Paul Magloire came to Jamaica 50 years ago Haitians were still speaking of an Artibonite dam for electricity and irrigation. But the ravages of the recent past were too much to recover.

As Marguerite Laurent (EziliDanto) writes: Don't expect to learn how a people with a Vodun culture that reveres nature and especially the Mapou (oak-like or ceiba pendantra/bombax) trees, and other such big trees as the abode of living entities and therefore as sacred things, were forced to watch the Catholic Church, during Rejete - the violent anti-Vodun crusade - gather whole communities at gunpoint into public squares, and forced them to watch their agents burn Haitian trees in order to teach Haitians their Vodun Gods were not in nature, that the trees were the "houses of Satan".

In partnership with the US, the mulatto President Elie Lescot (1941-45) summarily expelled peasants from more than 100,000 hectares of land, razing their homes and destroying more than a million fruit trees in the vain effort to cultivate rubber on a large plantation scale. Also, under the pretext of the Rejete campaign, thousands of acres of peasant lands were cleared of sacred trees so that the US could take their lands for agribusiness. MORE