A Kichwa Indigenous leader who had received multiple death threats was murdered on Nov. 29 as he returned to his home in Peru’s San Martín region from a gathering of leaders working to defend their territories. The killing highlights the danger facing people who fight illegal activities such as logging, mining, land grabbing and drug trafficking, as well as the poor protection provided by Peruvian law enforcement. Quinto Inuma Alvarado, the apu, or president, of Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu, was shot as he was traveling to his community by boat. His sister was seriously injured, and other people in the boat, including his wife and other relatives, were traumatized, says Marisol García Apagüeño, president of Fepikecha, the Indigenous organization to which Santa Rosillo belongs. Inuma and his brother had been denouncing illegal logging, land grabbing and drug trafficking in the community’s territory and working for communal land titling, García says...
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Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES) announced this month that it will disburse an initial R$1 billion (US$200 million) in seed funding to begin reforesting 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 sq. miles) of degraded or destroyed Brazilian Amazon rainforest by 2030. Bank officials announced the so-called Arc of Restoration program on Dec. 2 at the 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) in Dubai. They said the initial funding will be distributed in the form of non-refundable grants for public-sector reforestation projects and below-market-rate financing for private woodland restoration. A further R$51 billion (US$10 billion) in BNDES and international financing will then be made available with the aim of completing reforestation by 2030 of the 60,000 square kilometers, which comprise non-contiguous parcels in seven Brazilian Amazon states. In a follow-on phase from 2030 to...
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In a historic ruling, an Ecuadorian provincial court recently ordered that a 42,360-hectare (14,670-acre) portion of a sprawling national wildlife reserve be turned over to the Indigenous Siekopai people in Sucumbíos, one of six provinces in Ecuador’s Amazon region. The Siekopai people’s total population of about 2,000 straddles the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border, with an estimated 800 Ecuadorian members living in five rural communities, all in Sucumbíos. The three-judge tribunal’s unanimous ruling redresses the displacement of Ecuadorian Siekopai from their traditional lands since the war between Ecuador and Peru in 1941. The territory that the court ordered the Ecuadorian government to return to them has been part of the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve since 1979. Encompassing some 600,000 hectares (1.5 million acres), the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve is considered among the most biodiverse areas of Ecuador. Its network of 14 lakes forms the most extensive wetland in the country’s Amazon...
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As the international mining industry presses for authorization to engage in deep-sea mineral extraction on a commercial scale, environmental advocates in Mexico are stepping up their warnings about the danger such activity could pose to the health of the oceans. Mining companies and allied nations are lobbying the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to greenlight commercial mining in international waters on grounds it will generate copper and other metals crucial for the world’s energy transition. (See "Pressure builds for and against ocean mining" —EcoAméricas, September 2023.) In November, a Canadian-owned mining company sent a vessel out to finalize exploration of an area of sea-bottom between Hawaii and Mexico that it says will be the focus of its first application for commercial mining in international waters. The Metals Company, which aims to develop concession areas in a...
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