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Preserving the legacy of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Heart of the World
Rising abruptly from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta reaches 5,775 meters (18,946 ft.) at its highest points, the peaks of Bolívar and Colón. It is the highest coastal mountain system in the world, a place where indigenous knowledge and nature’s own wisdom converge.
The sheer changes in elevation create a wide variety of ecosystems within a small area, where the diversity of plant and animal life creates a unique exuberant region. The melting snows of the highest peaks form rivers and lakes, whose freshwater flows down steep slopes to the tropical sea at the base of the mountains.
The indigenous Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo people protect and care for this natural treasure with an authority they have inherited from their ancestors. According to their worldview the land is sacred and shared in divine communion between humans, animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and the spirts of their ancestors.
Despite this ancestral inheritance, development projects proposed for the region have failed to take the opinions of these indigenous groups into consideration. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is currently threatened by 251 mineral concessions, hydroelectric projects, agriculture, urban sprawl, and infrastructure projects.
Many of these concessions were granted without the prior consultation of the indigenous communities, which represents a persistent and systematic violation of their rights.
Mining, which implies the contamination and erosion of watersheds, threatens the health of more than 30 rivers that flow out of the Sierra; these are the water sources of the departments of Magdalena, César, and La Guajira.
These threats have brought this natural paradise to the brink of no return. With it, would go the traditional lives of its indigenous inhabitants, who are dependent on the health of their land and the sacred sites it contains.
The Sierra hosts the archaeological site of la Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City, known as Teyuna, the cradle of Tayrona civilization. According to tradition, it is the source from which all nature was born—the living heart of the world.
The four guardian cultures of the Sierra are uninterested in allowing this natural and cultural legacy to disappear.
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Brazil’s National Indian Foundation claims lack of internet connection and completion of vaccination of Indigenous people, however, 77% of the Indigenous people received the first vaccine jab in the region, and only 34% the second dose. About 994 indigenous Brazilians have died since the COVID-19 pandemic began last March. Brazil (Altamira, Pará) – In a white paper published on February 10, 2021, the Brazilian National Indian Foundation (Fundação Nacional do Índio–FUNAI) gave details on "health protocols" so that Canadian mining company Belo Sun can hold meetings to present and validate its studies on environmental impact to Indigenous residents from the Indigenous Lands (ILs) located in Pará state - Arara da Volta Grande do Xingu and Paquiçamba - in a mixed format—in-person and virtually. The decision is taken at a time when the country faces the bleakest moment of the coronavirus pandemic, with Indigenous peoples being one of the most impacted and vulnerable groups. Brazil has recorded more than 266,000 deaths and 11 million cases since the pandemic began. About 994 indigenous Brazilians have died since the COVID-19 pandemic began last March, according to a tally by APIB, Brazil’s largest indigenous association. Altamira, a reference city for both ILs, has recorded 19,100 cases so far. Moreover, the regional hospital occupancy rate has exceeded 90%. It is expected that, after validation of the indigenous component of the Environmental Impact Study (EIA), the Installation License, suspended by the courts since 2017, will be re-issued by the Pará State Environment Secretariat (Secretaria de Meio Ambiente–SEMA). The Federal Public Defender's Office (DPU) addressed FUNAI on Wednesday (10) recommending that the agency do not authorize or participate in in-person meetings while the Covid-19 pandemic poses a threat to the Indigenous peoples of the region. According to the document, the proposal presented by the company "does not guarantee health security and the preservation of the lives of participants, and is based on information that is not compatible with the situation of the pandemic in the Altamira region." According to FUNAI, “different meetings are being planned for each IL, on consecutive dates (...), and the talks, at least partially in-person, are desirable, maintaining the format adopted throughout the process and which ensured a very fruitful consultation and dialogue process.” The company is intent on becoming the largest open pit gold miner in Brazil, and intends to operate out of Volta Grande do Xingu, one of the most biodiverse sites in the world that already experiences the impacts of the diversion of the Xingu River by the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant. In addition to the Juruna (Yudjá) and Arara ethnicities, the region is home to other non-villagers and several riverside communities. Contrary to what the company claims, the Indigenous peoples of Volta Grande have not yet been properly consulted. “Volta Grande do Xingu has already been dealing with the impacts of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant. At this time, the Brazilian authorities should guarantee the protection of Indigenous peoples and address the serious technical shortcomings in the project. Authorizing in-person meetings makes it clear which side both FUNAI and the Brazilian government are on: that of the big mining companies,” notes Rosana Miranda of Amazon Watch, the organization is part of the group of institutions that have been denouncing the socio-environmental unfeasibility of Belo Sun’s project. FUNAI's decision is based on the assumption that the indigenous population would have been vaccinated by the end of January 2021. By early March, however, 77% of the Indigenous people served by the Altamira Special Indigenous Health District (Distrito Sanitário Especial Indígena–DSEI) received the first vaccine jab, and only 34% the second dose. According to data from the federal government surveyed by G1, on February 17, 71% of Indigenous people living in the Amazon had not been vaccinated against Covid. At the time, Brazil should have immunized 431,983 Indigenous people against the virus, however, only 164,592 had been vaccinated. The low vaccination coverage of Indigenous peoples is yet another chapter in the neglect of the federal government’s management of the pandemic. This is made clear by the increase in the number of deaths by Covid-19 among Indigenous populations by more than 108%, according to data from the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB). Nearly 50,000 Indigenous people were infected and 988 died, according to APIB. The mining company expects to extract 74 tons of gold in 20 years of operation, one of the largest in Latin America. It has been striving to deny the potential impacts on Indigenous peoples, traditional communities and the environment since the project’s announcement in 2012. Three recent expert opinions attest that the project is not viable from a socio-environmental perspective and raise several technical issues regarding the impact studies on the Indigenous component [Access the documents]. Neither FUNAI nor SEMAS have responded to the technical inquiries made by the specialists. [See here the studies: 1,2,3] The expert opinions add up to examinations conducted by the Federal Public Prosecutor and the Pará State Public Defender's Office within the scope of at least six legal challenges against the project. The studies, carried out by independent researchers, are part of the efforts of several civil society organizations that have been denouncing the socio-environmental unfeasibility of the project, such as Rede Xingu +, Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre, Amazon Watch, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), International Rivers, Above Ground and Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA). Mining companies and the Brazilian government take part in meeting in Canada This Thursday, March 11, marks the end of the convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), an annual gathering where major investors and mining companies from Canada present “new business opportunities in the sector for the next decades.” With a busy schedule, the Brazilian government has among its main sponsors for the event Belo Sun Mining. In a pre-recorded presentation for the event, the Minister of Mines and Energy, Bento Albuquerque, stated that the Brazilian government is determined to expand access to mineral resources currently restricted to mining—such as Indigenous Lands and border areas. Belo Sun's CEO Peter Tagliamonte is listed as a speaker on the March 11 session entitled The Brazilian Mineral Exploration & Mining Industry Projects & Opportunities, organized by the Brazilian government. press contacts Camila Rossi, Amazon Watch, [email protected] Anna Miller, AIDA, [email protected]
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Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) are the mechanism through which the countries that signed the Paris Agreement contribute to the fulfillment of the global pact's objective: to keep the increase in the planet's average temperature below 2°C. Each country's NDC outlines its national mitigation and adaptation commitments in the face of the climate crisis, including emission reduction efforts. The Paris Agreement stipulates that these commitments must be communicated to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) every five years and that each successive NDC must represent a progression from the previous one, reflecting the highest possible ambition (Article 3). In addition, NDCs must contain sufficient information on clear, transparent and understandable targets (Article 8, paragraph 8). And, in the case of Mexico, the General Law on Climate Change (LGCC) considers the NDC as one of the planning instruments of the National Climate Change Policy (Article 58) and establishes that it must observe, among others, the principle of progressivity, which implies that the established goals must be progressive and gradual over time (Article 26, section XIII). In its most recent update, Mexico's NDC does not comply with the level of ambition required by the Paris Agreement and the LGCC. Ambition in the spotlight The Mexican State presented its first NDC in 2015. In it, the government made an unconditional commitment—through its own resources—to a 22 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and a 51 percent reduction in black carbon emissions, by 2030. Last December, Mexico presented its updated NDC, which should be more ambitious than the previous one. However, the new instrument merely reiterates the mitigation commitments made in 2015. Moreover, the Business As Usual (BAU) scenario—a tentative scenario in which there are no mitigation policies and which serves as a baseline for climate actions—was adjusted upwards with a higher total level of emissions by 2030 than indicated in the first NDC. This, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific analysis that tracks governments’ climate action and compares it to what was agreed globally in the Paris Agreement. The CAT analysis states, "Because the NDC is based on a percentage reduction below BAU projections, a higher level of emissions in 2030 effectively reduces the country's mitigation ambition, even if the reduction targets remain unchanged." Due to its lack of ambition, Mexico's updated NDC was rated as "highly insufficient" in the CAT ranking. This means that the commitments adopted by the country "are not at all consistent with keeping [global] warming below 2°C [...]," being instead "consistent with warming levels of between 3°C and 4°C.” International agencies such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European Commission have emphasized the need for Mexico to increase its mitigation ambition, especially in the energy sector, which contributes most to the climate crisis and where the greatest emissions reduction opportunities exist in the short and long term. But Mexico's recent NDC does not set out specific actions in key economic sectors to achieve the endorsed targets, although it does state that these will be developed in an NDC implementation roadmap to be presented in the next Biennial Update Report. In this sense, the instrument lacks sufficient information to have clear, transparent and understandable targets. Regarding the adaptation component, Mexico's updated NDC includes nature-based climate solutions. However, the inclusion of such actions is not sufficient to have the level of ambition required to address the climate crisis and meet the objective of the Paris Agreement. A violation of the principle of progressivity In light of the facts, the updating of Mexico's climate commitments fails to meet the level of ambition required by the Paris Agreement and with this the Mexican State also disregards the principle of progressivity established in the LGCC since the targets set do not represent a progression and gradualness with respect to the first NDC. Other countries in the region—including Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile—have updated their NDCs, demonstrating increased climate ambition. Although they include measures that could be improved, their actions demonstrate a willingness to make further progress in terms of their contribution to global climate action. In this context, the Mexican State is leaving behind the progress and leadership it had years ago on climate issues. Its lack of ambition demonstrates indifference to the climate crisis and its impacts on the human rights of the most vulnerable populations. Mexico must assume its responsibility, one that comes from being on the list of the 20 largest emitters in the world. It must adopt mitigation and adaptation commitments compatible with the global goal of preventing global warming from reaching a point of catastrophic consequences.
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AIDA filed a legal brief before the Supreme Court of Mendoza arguing the unconstitutionality of a decree allowing for unconventional oil and gas drilling through hydraulic fracturing in the Argentine province. Mendoza, Argentina. In support of a lawsuit filed by Argentine ally OIKOS, the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) filed a “friend of the court” brief claiming the unconstitutionality of local regulations allowing for the exploration and exploitation of unconventional hydrocarbons, known as fracking. Using arguments based on international law, the brief outlines how Mendoza’s Decree 248 violates Argentina’s climate commitments and disregards the precautionary principle. "As a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and a signatory of the Paris Agreement, the Argentine State has assumed international obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the climate crisis," explained AIDA attorney Claudia Velarde. "Betting on fracking implies an increase in those emissions and non-compliance with the nation’s climate commitments.” Several studies of fracking in the United States have posited that leakage and flaring during fracking operations are associated with a significant increase of methane in the atmosphere. Though less notorious than carbon dioxide, methane emissions are responsible for around 25 percent of global warming. Decree 248 fails to contemplate any provision to control greenhouse gas emissions generated by fracking or limit their climate impacts. “There are not sufficient grounds for the government of Mendoza to claim they can effectively regulate fracking,” Velarde said. "It’s clear that this regulation is insufficient, and that it ignores the precautionary principle.” The precautionary principle establishes that, when there is danger of serious or irreversible damage, the lack of absolute scientific certainty should not prevent the adoption of effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. In fracking, being an unconventional technique with a high degree of technical and scientific difficulty, there is no certainty about its impacts, which merits the application of the precautionary principle. The brief also documents the applicability of this argument based on similar cases in other countries of Latin America. Colombia currently has a moratorium on fracking based on this legal principle. "In recent decades, the development of fracking has raised alarms worldwide due to evidence of serious and irreversible damages to the environment and public health, both of which are aggravated by the climate crisis," Velarde added. AIDA’s brief joins others filed by national and international organizations against the decree regulating fracking in Mendoza, including Xumek, FARN (Environment and Natural Resource Foundation) and Earthjustice. Press contact: Victor Quintanilla (Mexico), [email protected], +5215570522107.
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