Photo credit: Atossa Soltani/ Amazon Watch/ Spectral Q Mayalú Txucarramãe and Patricia Gualinga engaged an audience of civil society members, including BIC, in their discussion on Wednesday of women’s role in the struggles of indigenous communities to protect their lands, their rights, and their way of life from destructive infrastructure and extractive projects in the …
On August 2, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) opened the first phase of public consultations on its Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (ICIM), aiming to revise and update the ICIM policy that has been in effect since September 2010. The ICIM (commonly known by its Spanish acronym, MICI) is an IDB policy that establishes an independent body …
In July 2013, the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Forest (AIDESEP) and the Federation of Native Communities of the Madre Dios River and its Tributaries (FENAMAD) recorded a video of members of the indigenous community “Mashco Piro,” an indigenous group that lives in voluntary isolation in Peru. The video constitutes definitive proof …
The Community Forestry Pre-Congress, an initiative by the Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests, will take place on September 24th and 25th in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. BIC and more than twenty other organizations from eight different countries will participate in the Community Forestry Pre-Congress: “Community Forestry as the Basis of Governance and the Starting …
The Mesoamerican Alliance of People and Forests (Alianza Mesoamericana de Pueblos y Bosques), an umbrella organization of indigenous and community forest organizations, recently published an announcement highlighting the failure of the REDD-CCAD/GIZ Program to invite indigenous authorities to a regional conference on forest governance. The event, held in Panama on July 9, 2013, is the second …
Mexican civil society and indigenous representatives convened on June 24th and 25th in Mexico City for a workshop entitled “Towards the Construction and Articulation of Knowledge in the Process of Shaping REDD+”. With the goal of creating a new space for dialogue and shared learning around REDD, regional representatives from the Yucatan Peninsula, Central Mexico, and Northern …
During the Safeguards Regional Consultations held in Lima (February), Buenos Aires (March) and Ciudad de Guatemala (April) several Latin American CSOs including indigenous organizations submitted a letter to their World Bank Executive Directors: Cesar Guido Forcieri, Executive Director for: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Roberto Tan, Executive Director for: Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Juan Jose Bravo Moises, Executive Director for: Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Spain, Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela with their position statement regarding the review process of the Bank’s policies.
From January 28 to February 1, 2013, BIC and DAR, a Peruvian nonprofit, co-organized a Training Seminar on the Implementation of Social and Environmental Safeguards held in Washington, DC. Fourteen colleagues from eight countries in Central and South America (Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama) participated in the seminar. The seminar was designed as a three-day …
U.S. Capital Energy’s Environmental Impact Assessment “consultation” in Sunday Wood, Belize was neither free nor fair. SATIIM, an indigenous organization in the country, has received World Bank grants investing in the management of Sarstoon Temash National Park, the proposed drilling site.
An IDB audit confirms that the Bank approved the loan to co-finance two dams in Pamama despite knowledge that the project fails to meet Bank safeguards. The Pando y Monte Lirio dams will divert 90 percent of the River’s water, together with 25 other similar dams in construction or planned for the Chiriquí Viejo River, will transform it into a series of isolated pools with obvious harm to the region’s biodiversity and people that depend on the river.