During Global Exchanges week, Ali Hines spoke Wednesday afternoon. Her subject, ‘Defending the Defenders of the Earth’. Between 2002 and 2013, 908 people were killed for environmental activism. In 2017 alone, 207 people were killed, a year deadlier than any on record.
She spoke about illegal logging in Cambodia where environmental defenders are under threat of blackmail, violent attacks, death threats, sexual harassment and are being killed for defending their land and campaigning against the logging projects.The police and military are involved in these killings and the companies involved have government complicity. 24 Cambodian defenders were killed in 2017.
Berta Cáceres, a political activist who campaigned to protect the land rights of indigenous people, was murdered in 2016, almost a year after she’d won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize for her work campaigning. She’d been protesting the building of the Agua Zarca dam, being built by a Honduran company DESA with funding from the Dutch development bank FMO.
Cáceres and the defenders in Cambodia are not the only people who have lost their lives. In 2017, 57 defenders were killed in Brazil, 48 in the Philippines and of the 17 killed in Africa, 12 were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Global Witness are campaigning in defence of these environmental defenders, recording all loss of life in defence of the environment and pushing for the voices and stories of these environmental defenders to be heard.
For more information visit Global Witness.
Amelie Rowlands
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Greening festivals
With the festival sector becoming one of the most talked about topics in recent years, it was fitting that De Montfort University's Cultural eXchanges Festival was host to a talk on the sustainability of such events.
With the economy at fault for many smaller festivals lacking the resources to keep running, a large amount are forced to close down. Paradoxically, the larger festivals such as Glastonbury and Reading/Leeds are booming, with a price rise of roughly 15% each year, yet selling out all the same.
The focus of this talk was Green and environmental issues with regards to outdoor festivals, and whether or not such problems could be putting these events at risk.
Included on the panel of speakers was Ben Challis, a founding member of the Greener Festival Awards. His scheme to recognise the efforts of festivals around Europe towards the goal of increasing efficiency has proved very successful so far, with much improvement by the majority of festivals that have joined in with the campaign. Still, Challis conceded that the uphill battle has only just begun.
He also claimed that the most recent objective has been to work with festival attendees as much as organisers through schemes such as Love Your Tent. A common misconception is that tents left on festival sites at the end of a weekend are recycled or given to charities. The truth is that it is often impossible to do either, especially when the tents in question are damaged.
Chris Johnson of Shambala Festival chose to focus on power and CO2. He claimed that the cost of power is one of the main reasons that smaller festivals are struggling.
A question and answers session brought up more issues of efficiency. One audience member asked whether we can really be efficient at festivals, as they are a time of celebration and having a good time rather than cutting back. Challis answered that whereas there is a minority of festival goers who are almost anti-environmental in their actions, most people at festivals are either conscious of such matters or open to persuasion.
In a debate way too expansive for so short a space of time, the panel could be forgiven for only scratching the surface of the topic, yet their knowledge was more than enough to make for an intriguing hour.
Jack Arkell
With the economy at fault for many smaller festivals lacking the resources to keep running, a large amount are forced to close down. Paradoxically, the larger festivals such as Glastonbury and Reading/Leeds are booming, with a price rise of roughly 15% each year, yet selling out all the same.
The focus of this talk was Green and environmental issues with regards to outdoor festivals, and whether or not such problems could be putting these events at risk.
Included on the panel of speakers was Ben Challis, a founding member of the Greener Festival Awards. His scheme to recognise the efforts of festivals around Europe towards the goal of increasing efficiency has proved very successful so far, with much improvement by the majority of festivals that have joined in with the campaign. Still, Challis conceded that the uphill battle has only just begun.
He also claimed that the most recent objective has been to work with festival attendees as much as organisers through schemes such as Love Your Tent. A common misconception is that tents left on festival sites at the end of a weekend are recycled or given to charities. The truth is that it is often impossible to do either, especially when the tents in question are damaged.
Chris Johnson of Shambala Festival chose to focus on power and CO2. He claimed that the cost of power is one of the main reasons that smaller festivals are struggling.
A question and answers session brought up more issues of efficiency. One audience member asked whether we can really be efficient at festivals, as they are a time of celebration and having a good time rather than cutting back. Challis answered that whereas there is a minority of festival goers who are almost anti-environmental in their actions, most people at festivals are either conscious of such matters or open to persuasion.
In a debate way too expansive for so short a space of time, the panel could be forgiven for only scratching the surface of the topic, yet their knowledge was more than enough to make for an intriguing hour.
Jack Arkell
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