88 percent of murders of environmental defenders in the world, in 2022, were perpetrated in Latin America and the Caribbean and, within this region, the countries with the most cases were Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Honduras, according to data from the Forum of the Earth LAC 2024 released this Monday.
According to data from Land Matrix Latin America and the Caribbean, released in a statement from the forum, there are currently 1,405 cases of large land transactions involving 51.5 million hectares, the highest level in its entire history.
The information specified that the high number of persecutions and murders of environmental defenders and the increase in concessioned territories, without prior consultation with the communities, “responds to the advance of extractive industries”, which, on the one hand, seek clean energy, but also “ “undermines” the territorial rights of peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.
The coordinator of Land Matrix, Focal Point LAC / Fundapaz (Argentina), Martín Simón, quoted in the statement, pointed out that it is “very important to achieve the link between peasant communities and the land to preserve the forests” because in his opinion “in “In almost all extractivism, nature is destroyed.”
emblematic cases
On the other hand, the Forum presented three emblematic cases of extractivism in the region, the first of which is that of lithium in Jujuy (Argentina), which the Colla, Quechua, Aymara, Atacama and Chicha peoples oppose.
Nicolás Avellaneda, member of the Plurales Foundation and facilitator of the National Coalition for the Land (CNT) of Argentina, reported that Argentina, together with Bolivia and Chile, produced 29.5 percent of the entire world supply of this mineral in 2020. “key to the energy transition” from salt flats.
Between 2015 and 2020, lithium production rose by more than 72 percent and in 2024 and 2025, the amount demanded by the market is expected to double again, reaching around 200,000 tons per year, he noted.
In the second case, gold mining in Nicaragua has caused an increase of almost 75 percent of concessions and more than 500 percent of the volume of gold exported, in the last 15 years.
Researcher Carmen Corea revealed that currently 7 percent of Nicaraguan territory “is available for mining-metal extraction,” with more than 850,000 hectares concessioned in buffer zones in the Bosawás biological corridor.
“The expansion of gold mining in Nicaragua is the result of complex interactions in a context of power relations that go beyond the regulatory framework,” said Corea, after mentioning that the two large groups that concentrate gold activity are Hemco ( 158,590 hectares in 26 concessions) and Caliber Mining (57,600 hectares).
The third case analyzed in the forum was the struggle of the Mapuche-Wiliche peoples of the Puyehue, Río Bueno, San Pablo and La Unión territories, settled around the Pilmaiquén River, in front of the Osorno and Los Lagos del Sur hydroelectric plants in Chile. .
The installation of the two hydroelectric plants, by the Norwegian transnational Statkraft, would flood 191 hectares of the territory, in a process approved by the Chilean State without prior, free and informed consultation, among other requirements, according to the coordinator of the Rights of the People Program. Indigenous Peoples in Citizen Observatory (Chile), Karina Vargas.
“To exploit these resources it is necessary to multiply the control of the territory and change the territoriality,” declared the member of Land Matrix LAC, Bernardo Mancano.
He added that in these three cases it has been seen that corporations come to “dispossess” the communities, generating the “deterritorialization of people.” Source: news
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2024-06-06 03:58:23