2015 Equator Prize recognizes Munduruku efforts to defend the Tapajós River from new wave of Amazon mega-dams
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Christian Poirier: +33 770 381849, email: Christian Poirier
Brent Millikan: +55 (61) 8153-7009, email: Brent Millikan
New York, United States – Last Monday, the Munduruku indigenous people’s resistance movement Ipereg Ayu was awarded the 2015 United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Equator Prize. The announcement recognizes the Munduruku’s tireless and innovative struggle to preserve the Amazon’s Tapajós River and its vast forests from destruction. Continue reading Brazilian Indigenous Resistance Movement Wins Prominent UN Environmental Prize→
Zimbabweans have learned to live with power outages
Zimbabwe is to ban the use of electric water heaters and require all newly built properties to use solar power, as it tries to tackle big power shortages.
Energy officials say existing electric heaters – or geysers – will be phased out over the next five years.
They hope to save up to 400 megawatts of electricity – equivalent to the output of an electrical power plant.
Blackouts have dogged Zimbabwe, despite the fact that 60% of the population have no access to electricity.
A migrant woman waits at the transit camp near Gevgelija, Macedonia, Sept. 29. (CNS photo/Georgi Licovski, EPA)
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Indifference to the crises and tragedies today’s migrants and refugees are facing lead to complicity when people remain silent or refuse to act, Pope Francis said.
Jesus’ call to welcome the stranger and show mercy is clear, the pope said in a message released at the Vatican Oct. 1.
“Yet there continue to be debates about the conditions and limits to be set for the reception of migrants, not only on the level of national policies, but also in some parish communities, whose traditional tranquility seems to be threatened,” he said.
Independent Catholic News The following is a talk given by Fr Seán McDonagh, SSC, on 22 September at a Rome Seminar, ‘Laudato Si’: Then Greening of the Church’.
Fr Seán McDonagh, SSC,
Criticism of the extraordinary economic and political power of multinational corporations runs right through Laudato Si’. Towards the end of No.34, Pope Francis tells us that the impact of commercial business if often making the world less rich and less beautiful. Further on, in No.37 he decries “proposals to internationalize the Amazon which only serves the economic interest of transnational corporations.” Pope Francis is particularly critical of the way transnational mining corporations operate in poor countries. “There is also the damage caused by the export of solid waste and toxic liquids to developing countries in ways they could never do at home in the country in which they raise their capital. We note that often the businesses which operate this way are multinationals” (No. 51). He returns to this theme in No. 173 where he gives the example of “powerful companies dump(ing) contaminated waste or offshore, polluting industries in other countries.” Continue reading Laudato Si’ and Multinational Corporations→
Grasslands replaced the Amazon rainforest in Brasil Novo, a municipality in the Xingú River basin, where the giant Belo Monte hydroelectric dam is being built. Low-productivity stock-raising, with just one or two animals per hectare, is the big factor in deforestation and soil degradation in the region, and the government’s goal is to recover just one-fourth of the area degraded by this activity. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 2 2015 (IPS) – Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction program, hailed as bold, has nevertheless left environmentalists frustrated at its lack of ambition in key aspects.
“The decision to present absolute reduction targets is praiseworthy, but they could be better and more ambitious, to the benefit of the country itself and of the global climate change talks,” said André Ferretti, general coordinator of the Climate Observatory, a Brazilian network of 37 environmental groups.
On Sep. 27, President Dilma Rousseff announced at the Sep. 25-27 U.N. Sustainable Development Summit in New York that Brazil’s goal is to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 37 percent by 2025 and 43 percent by 2030, with a base year of 2005. “The weakest point in Brazil’s commitment is with respect to the forest question. It is demeaning to promise to end illegal deforestation by 2030, admitting that illegal practices will be tolerated for a decade and a half.” — André Ferretti
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation 