Equalogy

Archive for the ‘Green house gasses’ Category

I won’t be posting for about a week or so because I’m taking a vacation in Sri Lanka…so today I will leave you with a few wonderful links to make up for it

The first I’m a little late in posting..but if you live in a time zone where it is not yet December 10th then please check out this awesome auction supporting the  Women Action and Media conference.  Among the prizes are a chance to meet with the talented Canadian sister band Tegan and Sara, have the wonderfully poignant Sarah Haskins record your voicemail and have lunch with Jessica from Feministing.  All the bids go towards promoting gender justice in the media.  I went last year to the conference in Boston and it was a seriously inspiring event with some great discussions taking place.

And now on to some news from Copenhagen:

From Yes! Magazine, a 3 step plan on how to ensure climate justice and end the stalemate between the Global North and Global South

Bill McKibben writes about why Copenhagen may be a disaster

Naomi Klein, an activist and writer for The Nation rejects Hopenhagen

The horrible Danish Text Leak that would take power away from the UN, double the allowance of emissions for rich countries, and put the funds allocated for poor countries in need of clean technology and adaptation to climate change in the hands of the World Bank and IMF

Al Gore in an interview with Slate asks this question to climate change skeptics: “What in the hell do they think is causing it?”

And of course, Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen’s quote heard around the world to turn Copenhagen into Hopenhagen.

Native forests in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay are being destroyed to plant new crops of “profitable” trees.  Non-indigenous, but fast growing trees like eucalyptus and pine are being planted to produce large-scale wood, pulp and paper production.  Along with destroying the forest, these trees also use more water and degrade the soil of these South American countries.

Rural women’s organizations and environmental groups have drafted letters to the forestry companies in protest but have been ignored and pushed out of the way by claims that these “tree plantations” will act as carbon sinks, helping to offset green house gasses and carbon emissions.

Among the many negative aspects of the “unsustainable” development model followed by the forestry industry, [the women] denounced that companies pressure families into selling their farmland, that the industry creates few jobs for women, that tree plantations are depleting water resources, and that these changes have significant social impacts, such as a breakdown in the social fabric, leading to domestic violence and sexual harassment among the affected communities.

Promoting plantations as forests is “misleading,” said the rural women’s organisations and environmental groups, which pointed to the “countless negative impacts” that these projects have on the lives of rural families, and particularly on women, who are “disempowered” by the expansion of these single-crop plantations.

The document the women put forth was signed by the March of Women, The Peasant Women’s Movement of Brazil and the Centre for Environment Studies.  It was also backed by GRAIN, Friends of the Earth, The Rural Women’s Movement and the World Rainforest Movement.

These tree plantations are more than just a minor headache.  Along with pushing rural families off their land in Brazil, the plantations have ruined the livelihoods of the families as the land suffered severe droughts, abrupt temperature changes, severe loss of biodiversity, food crop reduction, drying up of water sources and degradation of soil fertility.

Two books have resulted from this ordeal, Brazil: Women and Eucalyptus: Stories of Life and Resistance, and The European Union’s Role in the Disempowerment of Women of the South through the Conversion of Local Ecosystems into Tree Plantations.
To understand more about this ongoing struggle, read the full article on Common Dreams