European Development Bank Funding of Feronia-PHC Oil Palm Plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Jutta Kill
Campaigners from across Europe and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have published a new report chronicling one of the most scandalous failures of development bank investment in agriculture. The report details how Europe's largest development banks poured upwards of US$150 million into an oil palm plantation company in the DRC despite the company's land conflicts with communities and allegations of serious human rights violations and opaque financing made against it.
A California Crime Caper
Larry Lohmann
The bestselling Los Angeles crime novelist James Ellroy is known for his entertaining re-imaginings of US history between 1940-1970. His novels reflect his dark vision of what police, politicians, bureaucrats, criminals, movie stars and intellectuals were really thinking and doing behind the scenes, but never appeared in the official record. Ellroy calls it the news that was “unfit to print.”
The Corner House, SinksWatch and Carbon Trade Watch
International carbon trading systems are failing. They are both climatically ineffective and politically infeasible. The UK Parliament's Environment Audit Committee conducted an Inquiry into the International Challenge of Climate Change: UK Leadership in the G8 and EU in October-December 2004. This Memorandum was submitted as written evidence to the Inquiry by The Corner House, SinksWatch and Carbon Trade Watch.
Ethnic Discrimination and Conservation in Thailand
Larry Lohmann
The intersections between international nature conservation and ethnic politics are of serious and growing concern to many social movements in Southeast Asia. This paper offers evidence that international environmentalist practices interact with local and national conditions to advance the structural work of ethnic discrimination and racism in Southeast Asia. The racist outcomes of these practices do not flow exclusively from unprofessionalism, faulty science, irrationality, immorality or incorrect beliefs -- and anti-racist strategy has to accommodate this insight.
Larry Lohmann
Violence over and against forests cannot be explained by population increase nor by other linear, office-bound models of change which pit abstracted “humans” against an abstracted “nature”. This book chapter uses examples from England hundreds of years ago and from Viet Nam during the US war there to show that local people’s struggle for their rights to use the forests were continually threatened and partly defined by interests operating outside the forests.
Racial Oppression in Scientific Nature Conservation
Larry Lohmann
13. Some strains of environmentalism treat “cultures” as fixed, closed systems with impermeable boundaries. Racism is neither a theory nor a collection of beliefs, sentiments or intentions, but rather a process of social control which functions to block inquiry and attempts to live with difference. Illustrated with a case study from Northern Thailand.
Pluralism, Participation and Power
Nicholas Hildyard, Pandurang Hegde, Paul Wolvekamp and Somasekhare Reddy
Participation, forests and environment all mean different things to different people and different interest groups. This presentation analyses the discourse on participation, as reflected in conflicts over forest resources and more widely. It highlights examples where participation is being used to soften resistance to projects or to engineer consent.
Indonesia and Thailand in a Globalizing Pulp and Paper Industry
Larry Lohmann
This essay sketches some of the pressures behind -- and some of the dangers of -- the expansion of the pulp and paper industry in Southeast Asia over the last decade. It describes some of the mechanisms by which the industry has enclosed land and water in two of the countries most affected, Indonesia and Thailand, and outlines the various forms of opposition the industry is meeting. It concludes by indicating some of the strategies the industry is using to manage this resistance.
How an Industry Reshapes its Social Environment
Larry Lohmann
Social structures sensitive to the needs of elites in the pulp and paper industry are built, expanded and improved upon through the political efforts of a multitude of agents with different interests and motivations. Close attention to this dynamic is crucial to the success of environmentalists’ efforts to reduce the damage done by the industry.
Larry Lohmann
This opinion piece shows how environmental activists, ecological economists, development experts and deep green theorists tell self-serving and one-sided stories about Noble Savages, Eastern religions, “traditional communities” and ordinary householders. This "Green Orientalism" both arises from and perpetuates power imbalances. It must be constantly challenged by stories told from other points of view.
Villagers, NGOs and the Thai Forestry Sector Master Plan
Larry Lohmann
Disputes over a forestry master plan formulated for Thailand by Finnish consultants and others illustrate how environmental conflicts are often settled by translating concerns and suggestions in procedures acceptable to the more powerful.
