natives

UN timber deal would OK “a new form of colonialism," critics charge

Dec. 17, 2009
in

 By Alexander Kelly

COPENHAGEN – Clayton Thomas-Muller hails from Ontario, Canada -- a First World nation that’s loaded with timber. Ana Filippini comes from nearly the opposite end of the Western Hemisphere, Uruguay, a developing country with vast grasslands known as pampas.

Despite the differences in their homelands, both made their way here to deliver a message to a United Nations conference on climate change:

Your plans to save the Earth could kill our people.

Specifically, they fear for indigenous people who depend on natural forests and grasslands.

A United Nations proposal being negotiated here this week to govern cutting of forests – which accounts for an estimated one-fifth of the human-caused global warming – fails to distinguish between natural and manufactured forests. It’s an omission that would enable timber corporations to log virtually any intact forest on the planet, replacing it with immense swaths of industrial farmland containing only one type of tree, critics charge.

[caption id="attachment_7465" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="An indigenous Brazilian man addresses a forum on deforestation and native peoples at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen that ends Friday. InvestigateWest photo by Mark Malijan. "]An indigenous Brazilian man addresses a forum on deforestation and native peoples at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen that ends Friday. InvestigateWest photo by Mark Malijan.</p /> </p> </div> <ul class=

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    • Alaskan village moving, a victim of global warming

    Aug. 31, 2009
    in

    The Anchorage Daily News has a fascinating account of how Newtok, a native Alaskan village, is being forced to move miles upriver to escape coastal erosion that's thought to be exacerbated by climate change.

    Newtok is just the first of at least four villages that will have to move in coming years, the others being Kivalina, Shishmaref and Unalakleet.

    Newtok itself is something of a modern invention. Until the last century, the ancestors of the natives had lived a semi-nomadic existence, moving according to the seasons to where they could subsist.

    Kyle Hopkins' story outlines how difficult it is likely to be to get the $80 million to $130 million it's estimated the move will cost. (Also check out the audio slideshow) The town's dock has been underwater since 2005, and with sea ice not around to block incoming swells, some interesting challenges already are a part of daily life:

    Normally, a village would have a community sewage lagoon to contain the waste -- a pond set off from where people live. But there's little chance of that, or anything else new, being built in Newtok these days. The relocation effort has frozen the community in a kind of public-funding purgatory because no one wants to spend money on a place that's about to be abandoned.

    The river used to wash the waste out to sea. But the erosion has turned the Newtok into a shallow slough, and lately, residents say, it doesn't wash out like it used to. Sometimes floods sweep it back into town.

    On a recent afternoon, the riverbank reeked of sewage.

    Construction of the new village won't start before 2011.

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