The McCormick logging project is located near the Bell Smith Springs
National Natural Landmark in Pope County. The project site is adjacent to
Hunting Branch, a high-quality stream that flows directly into the Bell
Smith Springs Canyon. Touted as an “oak-hickory restoration project” by the
FS, Plaintiffs challenged these claims, pointing to the impacts from heavy
logging machinery operating on highly erodible soils and steep slopes at
the site. The project calls for commercial timber extraction on almost 70
acres. Approximately 40 acres at the site have already been logged.
Ironically, the majority of the trees that have been logged and those that
remain standing on site are mature oaks and hickories.

Forest Service staff also discovered that federally endangered Indiana bats
have used the site and were likely to be adversely affected by the logging
project. According to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), when such a
determination is made by agency staff, the agency is required to consult
with US Fish and Wildlife Service (USF&WS). Consultation involves USF&WS
issuing a biological opinion (BiOp) on the endangered animals, in this
case, Indiana bats. The ESA requires that the Forest Service consider the
BiOp prior to making a final action on a project like this one. Defendant
District Ranger Dennis Wilson, however, issued his final decision six weeks
*before* F&WS issued their BiOp.

US District Judge Nancy J. Rosenstengel for the Southern District of
Illinois disagreed with the FS contention that they had properly consulted
with USF&WS regarding the rare bats.

“In sum, the (Endangered Species Act) requires agencies to complete their
consultation obligations before taking final agency action,” wrote the
Hon. Judge Rosenstegel. “Because the Forest Service did not do so, it
violated the ESA.”

In her memorandum and order granting summary judgement for Plaintiffs,
Judge Rosenstengel also vacated or “set aside” Defendant Dennis Wilson’s
Decision Memo approving the logging project, as it was “otherwise not in
accordance with law.”

"We are grateful that the judge took it upon herself to dig into
environmental law and issue this ruling,” said Sam Stearns, founder and
president of Friends of Bell Smith Springs. “She was clearly unpersuaded by
Forest Service arguments which torture logic and defy law."

Tom Buchele, attorney and professor with Earthrise Law Center of Lewis and
Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon represented the Plaintiffs, Friends of
Bell Smith Springs and RACE in this litigation.

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People fighting for their land. Their sovereignty. Their right to exist.

Woman and machetes, Nicaragua (1997)

A woman stands in the open kitchen of a wooden thatched-roof hut; two machetes hang within the frame as ordinary tools of daily life in the rainforest. North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN), Nicaragua (Now the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region) — circa 1997 Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP

Archive Photo of the Week
One photograph. Five decades of struggle, resistance and memory.

Each week, as hundreds of photographs are digitized from Orin Langelle’s five-decade archive, one image is selected, newly edited, and brought back into public view. Archive Photo of the Week revisits moments of social, ecological and economic struggle that might otherwise disappear from collective memory—along with the people, places and stories behind them.

From the archive, back into history

To see more of Orin Langelle’s 54 years of photos, visit LangellePhoto.org

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New York–Global Justice Ecology Project released the following statement regarding the announcement by the USDA of the decision to deregulate the genetically engineered (GE) Darling 54 American chestnut tree.

“Given the current trend toward the disregard of science and concern for the environment by US environmental agencies, the USDA decision to deregulate the GE American chestnut is not a surprise. But it is disappointing to those who care about forest health and the return of the wild American chestnut.

“This decision was made despite the fact that three years after the submission of the deregulation petition, the GE chestnut was revealed to be rife with problems including a deleted gene, high rates of mortality and loss of blight resistance. It was also subsequently discovered that researchers had been testing the wrong tree for seven years.

“These findings led the major partner in the research, the American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) to drop their support for the deregulation of the GE chestnut in late-2023. TACF details these problems on their website concluding:

” ‘…the disappointing performance of the D54 trees in the field and the observed lethal homozygosity, have led TACF to conclude that this product should not be distributed or propagated beyond permitted sites. TACF believes these genetic issues should not be proliferated into current or future restoration or commercial chestnut populations.’

“The USDA decision to ignore these problems and concerns and allow the release of the D54 into the wild is both reckless and dangerous.

“The USDA is bending to the interests of companies like SilvaBio seeking to profit from the tragic loss of American chestnut trees, despite the fact that releasing these GE trees into our forests will directly threaten the ability of the wild American chestnut to return.

“Wild American chestnuts that survived the blight have disease resistance that they pass on to their offspring. In some regions, wild American chestnuts are already making a return. Yet SilvaBio is willing to risk the future of these wild trees for short-sighted profits from the mass-sale of cloned versions of the defective D54 chestnuts.

“Decades of work to bring back the wild American chestnut by organizations such as the American Chestnut Cooperators’ Foundation, renowned biologist Bernd Heinrich and many others is callously disregarded and irreparably damaged by this decision by the USDA that disregards real science surrounding the flaws of the OXO genetic insertion, human error, and abysmal field results of the tree.”

About Global Justice Ecology Project:
Since 2003, Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) has worked to protect forests around the world and defend the rights and territories of forest-dependent communities and Indigenous Peoples on whose territories 80% of the world’s biodiversity is found. The founded the Campaign to STOP GE Trees in 2003.

Notes

See details of the history of the Darling 58/Darling 54 mix up in the Earth Island Journal Article: The Darling 58 Debacle: https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/lessons-from-the-unsuccessful-gm-chestnut-experiment/

Watch the video documenting the return of thousands of wild American chestnuts The Wild American Chestnut: A Giant Returns

From the American Chestnut Foundation website:

Why TACF Withdrew Support for the Darling Line

Throughout 2023, TACF and its partners observed disappointing performance results from broad-scale field and greenhouse tests of advanced generations of Darling trees across several geographic locations. As discussed in the September 15, 2023 episode of TACF’s Chestnut Chat webinar series (Darling 58 Update), analysis indicated striking variability in Darling trees’ blight tolerance, significant losses in growth competitiveness, reduction in overall fitness including stunted growth, leaf browning and curling, and increased mortality. View an outline of the body of evidence concerning Darling’s performance issues on the Darling 58 Performance page.

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People fighting for their land. Their sovereignty. Their right to exist.

Bread & Puppet Theater's Grey Lady

About the Photo:

Bread & Puppet Theater takes to the streets of Vermont against the Iraq War. This figure is from Peter Schumann’s Grey Lady imagery—figures associated with war, grief, and mourning. Artist Peter Schumann is the founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Photo: Orin Langelle/GJEP (circa 2003)

About the Archive Photo of the Week

Each week, as hundreds of photographs from Orin Langelle’s five-decade archive are digitized, one image is rediscovered, selected, and brought back into public view.

These photographs trace land defense, struggles for sovereignty, environmental and economic justice, and resistance by Indigenous peoples, peasant movements, workers, communities, and others confronting dispossession and exploitation. More broadly, they ask how power is used against people, communities, the land, and other living beings.

Across six continents, they capture moments of struggle, courage, and community that history and the mainstream media too often allow to disappear.

From the archive, back into history…

Explore more of Orin Langelle’s work: https://langellephoto.org

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Fortress conservation, Moloo explains, is the model of protecting “pristine wilderness” by removing the people who actually live there — and in Cameroon it has produced a landscape where national parks and trophy-hunting concessions are expanding, while the Baka who once called that land home are pushed to the roadside.

Moloo traces this dispossession back to French colonial policies of forced resettlement and state land seizure, arrangements that independent Cameroonian governments largely preserved. Today most Baka live along roads, cut off from the forest and its resources, watching logging trucks haul away timber from land they can no longer freely enter. A limited 2019 access agreement allows brief, permission-only forest visits with spears rather than firearms — nowhere near what’s needed to sustain traditional life — even as conservation guards, financed in part by trophy-hunting operators charging tens of thousands of dollars per hunt, have been documented committing torture, arson, and killings against the very communities the forests are being protected from.

A particularly striking thread in the conversation is Moloo’s comparison to England’s enclosure movement: while displaced English peasants were absorbed into industrial cities as a new working class, the Baka have been left in a kind of limbo, unable to return to forest life or find real footing in a cash economy, often working Bantu farms for as little as $1–2 a day. Moloo also discusses the fallout from a 2019 BuzzFeed investigation into WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature), which prompted an independent panel to conclude the organization “had not done enough to protect human rights” — a finding she describes as a watered-down way of avoiding direct accountability.

The episode closes on what a genuinely just conservation model could look like: one centered on Baka knowledge and cosmology, in which the forest is understood as a place of abundance and ancestral presence rather than a resource to be fenced off or extracted. With the UN’s 30x30 pledge to protect 30% of the planet by 2030 now underway, Moloo raises the urgent question of whether this new wave of conservation will repeat the same exclusionary violence or finally put indigenous stewardship at its center.

If you enjoyed this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues.

You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forests, defend human rights, and expose false solutions. Make your pledge here.

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In October 2024, Global Justice Ecology Project conducted a documentary delegation to Wallmapu — the traditional territory of the Mapuche people — to document state repression and the struggle to recover ancestral lands.

In 2025, Reuters independently sent a team to cover the same story. Their findings align closely with what GJEP documented on the ground. Learn more about GJEP’s ongoing work in solidarity with the Mapuche people here: https://globaljusticeecology.org/chile/

Reuters video posted Jul 24, 2026 #Reuters #chile #Newsfeed

From their YouTube: “After years of reclaiming ancestral lands through clashes, occupation and sabotage, militant Mapuche groups are on the backfoot as lengthy prison sentences and a crackdown by Chile’s new far-right president Jose Antonio Kast continues to grow. Senior correspondent Alexander Villegas reports from Santiago.”

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Fifty years later, David returned to Chile as a translator for a Global Justice Ecology Project investigative delegation documenting the ongoing repression of the Mapuche people — a repression with deep roots in the same Pinochet era he witnessed firsthand.

Now, Chile’s newly elected far-right President José Antonio Kast — who served as a Pinochet volunteer in his youth and has expressed open nostalgia for the dictatorship — is expected to defund Chile’s Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which documents the thousands killed, disappeared, and tortured under Pinochet’s rule.

For survivors like David, and for the families of those who never came home, the message is clear: in Chile today, the past is not past.

Find more about the history and current status of state and industry repression in Chile, especially against the Mapuche people there, on this substack and by visiting: https://globaljusticeecology.org/chile/

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https://www.energy.senate.gov/2026/7/heinrich-slams-trump-admin-s-massive-logging-proposal-as-latest-attack-on-america-s-public-lands

Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, released the following statement on the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) proposal to authorize an unprecedented emergency salvage logging project spanning more than five million acres across six national forests in Idaho and Montana.

“Time and again, this administration has put the interests of billionaires and powerful industries ahead of America’s public lands and the people who own them.

“Active wildfire management requires targeted, science-based hazardous fuels treatments—not a blank check for sweeping clearcutting, new road construction, and fewer safeguards for the places that Americans hunt, fish, hike, camp, and enjoy with their families.

“If the Forest Service is going to invoke extraordinary emergency authorities, it owes the public transparency and accountability. Instead, it released an eight-page notice with no maps, no meaningful project details, and no explanation for why this massive proposal qualifies as an emergency, while giving Americans just seven days to weigh in.

“This is not part of a broader fire mitigation strategy. If it were, it wouldn’t sweep in areas where nearly 90 percent of the landscape falls outside high-risk firesheds, and it wouldn’t require a 25 percent increase in timber volume that incentivizes cutting larger, more fire-resilient trees instead of the smaller-diameter trees that pose the greatest fire hazard. Clearcutting and building roads won’t help prevent catastrophic wildfires, but they will benefit the timber industry at the expense of the lands that belong to the American people.

“As Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I will continue holding the Forest Service accountable and demanding the transparency and public oversight Americans deserve as this process moves forward.”

Njoki was a major figure in the global economic justice movement. She served as director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a coalition of more than 200 organizations founded to challenge the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

She was also one of the principal organizers of the April 16, 2000 demonstrations in Washington, D.C.—known as A16—against the IMF and World Bank. A16 brought tens of thousands of protesters into the streets surrounding the institutions and was the first major mobilization against unjust economic globalization following the shutdown of the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999.

Njoki served on the executive committee of Jubilee 2000/USA and was co-founder and director of the Daughters of Mumbi Global Resource Center, a Nairobi-based network supporting grassroots women’s activism, land rights, gender justice, community rights, and environmental justice.

Anne Petermann and I (both co-founders of GJEP) first met Njoki in the late 1990s during a Nicaragua Network retreat in Vermont.

Our friendship deepened and I became a steering committee member of 50 Years Is Enough and eventually served on its board.

During the years of mass mobilizations against economic globalization, I spent many nights sleeping on the floor of the Washington, D.C. apartment Njoki shared with her husband, Soren Ambrose. There were many dinners, many conversations, and many bottles of wine.

After Njoki and Soren moved to Kenya, Anne and I once again found ourselves sleeping on their floor—this time during the 2006 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi.

During that visit, Njoki took Anne and me on long, bumpy rides through the Kenyan countryside, showing us the rural communities where she was working with the Daughters of Mumbi. She did not speak about grassroots organizing from a distance. She was part of it.

Our paths crossed many times over the years. I remember Anne and I joining Njoki to celebrate two birthdays of another mutual friend and colleague, the anti-apartheid activist and poet Dennis Brutus, who had been imprisoned on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was also held.

I will always remember Njoki as an outspoken woman who was never afraid to confront injustice. She was powerful, formidable, and uncompromising—but also a generous friend with whom we shared laughter, meals, political work, and years of common struggle.

There is one story about Njoki that I will never forget.

I was in Washington, D.C., during one of the annual World Bank meetings, after the street protests had receded. Njoki had been invited onto Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News program, and Fox sent a cab to pick her up.

During the interview, O’Reilly remarked in his typically snide manner that because there had not been large World Bank mass-protests in several years, no one talked about or remembered them anymore.

Njoki smiled and replied:

“You’re wrong, Bill. I’m on national television with you, and you’re still talking about it.”

Her rapid response left O’Reilly almost speechless.

Njoki was born and raised in Kenya. She credited her mother, Lilian Njehû, a community and church-based activist, with giving her the first lessons in activism and advocacy. Like her mother, Njoki also participated in Kenya’s Green Belt Movement.

She earned a B.A. in Women’s and Third World Studies from William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and later studied development communications at Cornell University in Ithaca.

In a 2004 article, YES! Magazine described an experience that helped shape Njoki’s understanding of international solidarity. While attending the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, she heard Aboriginal Australian activist and artist Lilla Watson say:

“If you have come to help me, I don’t need your help. But if you have come because your liberation is tied to mine, come let us work together.”

Those words stayed with Njoki. They reflected the way she lived and organized: not through charity or paternalism, but through the understanding that our struggles—and our liberation—are bound together.

Njoki was married to our friend and colleague Soren Ambrose, another major figure in the global economic justice movement, who died in December 2020. Both Njoki and Soren were founding Board members of Global Justice Ecology Project. Their lives and work touched people and movements around the world, and they remain an essential part of GJEP’s history, spirit, and culture.

Njoki’s death is an immeasurable loss. But her courage, political clarity, commitment to grassroots movements, and refusal to remain silent in the face of injustice will continue to guide those who knew her and those who carry the struggle forward.

¡Njoki Njoroge Njehû, presente!

Orin Langelle, a co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project, is GJEP’s senior strategist, photographer, and historical and photographic archivist. He also serves on the International Steering Committee of the Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees and is director of Langelle Photography. His latest book, Portraits of Struggle, spans more than five decades of documentary photography on six continents.

In this episode of Breaking Green, we speak with Survival International researcher Paul Renaut about the model of “fortress conservation,” that is driving forced evictions of Maasai people in Tanzania off of their ancestral lands, and how the UNESCO World Heritage status is amplifying that pressure.

“Fortress Conservation is based on the idea that indigenous peoples or local communities are destroying the land that they live on, and that in order to protect nature–this abstract idea of nature that is empty of people–we have to evict them.

“The truth is that these spaces that we consider the most wild places on earth, the most biodiverse, are actually the lands of Indigenous peoples. And if they are in such a good shape, it's because the Indigenous peoples have not only lived in them but also protected them and shaped them.

“So that’s why, from a conservation point of view, it makes no sense to evict the best guardians of these spaces. It's just a model that is based on colonial history, and increasingly the goal is to make profit from them. So once the original inhabitants are evicted, then there is room for all kinds of exploitation.”

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It is tasked with the promotion of global peace and security through international cooperation in education, science, culture, and information.

Yet recent reporting by Survival International focuses on how UNESCO has used its influence to support the forced relocation of the Indigenous Maasai People from their ancestral land in Tanzania.

We trace what these forced relocations look like on the ground, who profits, and why Indigenous land rights are central to real biodiversity protection.

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Transcript:

Welcome to Breaking Green, a podcast by Global Justice Ecology Project. UNESCO is the United Nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization. It is tasked with the promotion of global peace and security through international cooperation in education, science, culture, and information. Yet, recent reporting by Survival International has highlighted how UNESCO has used its influence to support the forced relocation of the Maasai from their land to Tanzania. The Maasai, who are an indigenous people of the Serengeti, are again being brutally repressed and their herding culture intentionally dismantled in favor of a fortress conservation model that promotes trophy hunting and tourism over the rights of the Maasai who have lived on the land from time immemorial. On this episode of Breaking Green, we will speak with Paul Renault. Paul Renault is a researcher with Survival International, where he has worked extensively since 2019 on the campaign to decolonize conservation in Africa. Paul’s efforts have included working extensively in the field with the Maasai. He currently joins us from Paris. Paul Renault, welcome to Breaking Green. Thank you. So,

Steve: Paul, um, tell us a little bit about Survival International. It’s been a while since we’ve done an interview with your organization.

Yes, of course. So Survival is a human rights uh NGO campaigning on the rights of indigenous peoples. Um we do various campaigns on various topics around the world. Um, and today I will speak um more precisely on our campaign to decolonize conservation, um, which is fighting against human rights violations that are committed in the name of nature protection, but most um most accurately um that are um um following um a colonial uh system that leads to the systemic eviction of um of indigenous peoples from their lands and um of um a lot of of of violence.

Steve: Aaron Powell Yes, uh colonial conservation. So I think having interviewed Fiore Longo before, uh a lot of that has to do with the idea that uh uh what a lot of people would associate with uh the conservation movement, that there’s this this idea that there’s these pristine lands that exist or should exist without people. but people have always been part of the land. So what we see with conservation is moving uh rightful landowners, caretakers, indigenous peoples off that land with the idea that we’re gonna have a natural state. So could you address, you know, what’s wrong with that picture?

Yeah, as you were saying, the whole premise is to say that indigenous peoples or local communities are destroying the land um that they live on, and that in order to protect nature, but this abstract idea of nature that would be empty of people, um, we would have to evict them. But the truth is that these spaces that we consider or that the West uh considers um as the most um uh wild places on earth, uh, or even the most biodiverse, um, are actually the lands of indigenous peoples. And if they are in such a good shape, it’s because they have um not only lived in them but also protected them and shaped them. Um so that’s what that’s why, from a conservation point of view, it makes no sense to evict uh the best uh guardians of these spaces. It’s just um a model that um is based on again colonial um colonial history, um and uh increasingly um the goal is to include these spaces in the capitalist system and try to make profit from them. So once um the original inhabitants are evicted, then um there is room for all kinds of uh exploitation, whether it be extractive industries or tourism or that kind of thing.

Aaron Powell The treatment of the indigenous people is quite brutal. And I think people would be surprised to learn that some of these wildlife or conservation organizations that uh everyone thinks of as, or many people think of as preserving nature, uh working for good, actually can support uh or even be part of a brutal um repression.

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, it’s actually very concrete when we say that um these people are evicted or framed uh as a threat to the environment. Actually, what it means for the people who live in these spaces and who face this is um brutality. So the rangers um that are supposed to guard these these spaces, these wild spaces, um, are not only evicting them but also um doing so very violently, and we have documented um over years um countless acts of torture, of beatings, uh, of rape uh of indigenous peoples um when they try to go back to their lands or during the creation or management of these protected areas. And these protected areas um are um often supported or managed or co-managed by um Western conservation organizations, including some of them uh very famous, like WWF, WCS, African parks, and these organizations not only adhere and have promoted this model of um empty nature and the fact that um yeah, that um local communities and indigenous peoples are a threat to their environment, and they have been doing so again uh for decades and since colonial times. Um, but very concretely they are um supporting and funding the very rangers that um commit the violence.

The reason why we have you on the program today is uh we saw several press releases regarding the Maasai people in Tanzania and UNESCO and evictions. So let’s start uh with the Maasai people. What can you tell us about the Maasai people?

So I think the situation that the Maasai um have faced is very emblematic of what we have been saying so far about um conservation, its colonial roots, and its concrete um impact today. So the Maasai are pastoralist indigenous people that live in Tanzania and Kenya. And um since colonial times they have been facing eviction from their lands um to make way for um protected areas. So in the case of Tanzania, um the Massai were evicted uh to make way for the Serengeti National Park uh by the British colonial administration in 1959, and from then on, um everywhere they went and all over Maasai land, um they have faced and are still facing um evictions to make way for conservation, um, but that um also goes with uh hand in hand with tourism and uh trophy hunting, for example. So yeah, basically all the all of the all Maasai land is now under threat, so or has already been um um grabbed for for conservation-related uh purposes, but again, um not with a very accurate uh sense of uh protecting nature. It all goes to to back to that um to that model that evicts people, but to better profit from the from the land.

So the Maasai are the indigenous people uh of the Serengeti.

Yes, that’s correct. Um so it’s the Serengeti is their is their um own um land, but uh they have been evicted from it, um and uh so they now live um in other parts um of their territory. Um and um and even there are still facing evictions.

So what does UNESCO have to do with the current status of the Messiah?

So UNESCO itself has uh since its creation um been instrumental in promoting um that model of um fortress conservation um that is um negatively affecting so many um indigenous peoples. Um and more specifically um linked to world heritage sites. Um so in the case of the Maasai, um for example, the Gorunguro Conservation Area is a World Heritage Site, um and there is a direct link between that status and um the current um threats um that they face. So basically, UNESCO um has been complicit in the Tanzanian government’s long-standing prosecution um of the Maasai um in the area.

Uh we’ve seen uh the survival international press releases regarding the Maasai protest in Tanzania, the protesting UNESCO’s complicity in their eviction for so-called conservation. And they’re also uh talking about how a commission has recently uh released a report saying that they do need to be removed because their activity in in in the protected, the so-called protected areas are degrading, are somehow negatively impacting the land. So the Maasai are historically herders. Uh they they are sheep herders. Well, what does the eviction of the Maasai look like? I I’ve read reports of cattle being taken, actually very brutal things. So could you tell us a little bit what the eviction actually looks like on the ground?

Yes. So it takes various forms um in the various areas of Maasai land. Um some of you may remember uh shocking images from 2022 where the Maasai were um violently evicted from a neighboring area

to the Serengeti um called Lo Liondo. Um and they were protesting this eviction, and that was met with extreme violence from um security forces and government forces who shot live bullets at them. So you can actually see um videos that the Maasai have taken uh documenting this eviction of them fleeing um this um yeah, just these bullets uh flying by them. Um and this land has now been turned into a game reserve uh mostly for the benefit of the Dubai royal family um and for for trophy hunting, basically. Uh so that’s one um one example, and another one um that is um in the area um um that is inscribed on the World Heritage List, the NCA, Goron Goro Conservation Area. In that area, it’s um the evictions are a bit more subtle, um, and actually they are framed by the Tanzanian government as voluntary relocation. But as you will see, this has nothing um voluntary, because in this area, basically, the the government is trying to suffocate the Maasai to force them to leave. So it’s characterized by arbitrary arrests, um, some cases of torture and beatings, um, as you said, unlawful confiscation of their cattle. Um, and um a key aspect is also the deliberate suspension of social services that are vital for the Maasai to be able to continue to live there. So that includes healthcare, um access to medicine, for example, um, funding from hospitals, access to drinking water, and also um access to education. Um and there is a whole narrative pushed by the Tanzanian government around NCA that really frames uh Maasai pastoralism as an environmental threat. Um and um and what’s interesting is that the Tanzanian government has also been using UNESCO as a justification for this and using UNESCO’s recommendations. Um, because the World Heritage Committee, when it assesses all the sites that are inscribed on its list, uh also makes recommendations. And in that in the case of the NCA, uh UNESCO recommended to Tanzania um to be careful of the population pressure in the area to make sure that the um that the population remained within, and I quote, the capacity of the reserve. Um, and it said that um not doing so would jeopardize the um the area’s status um as a UNESCO World Heritage. So basically, um UNESCO has been providing the legitimacy and the arguments to the Tanzanian government um to justify the evictions and including uh in its most recent um recommendations. So the Tanzanian government continues to again frame the Maasai as um destroying the environment and to frame their evictions as voluntary relocation. Um and it’s a vocabulary that has been um taken also um or reused by by UNESCO. So so it really all goes um hand in hand, and that’s what we what uh survival has been trying to point to and what the Maasai also have protested against.

That’s interesting. UNESCO, I believe, stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. They’re ignoring the uh culture of the Maasai, it sounds like, in favor of trophy hunting. How long have the Maasai historically been in that region?

Yeah, so the Maasai have been here for for generations, since uh time immemorial, basically. And it’s true what you say, that um it’s counterintuitive to see UNESCO um pushing that narrative of um yeah, again, uh nature that is threatened by by its by its people, um, but it’s very characteristic of the of the concept of natural world heritage, um this idea that um these areas um have a natural um outstanding value for all humanity. So basically, once um this value is um put under the the care or the trusteeship of all humanity, then the people who actually live there and who under international law have land rights over these areas um are disregarded. So yes, it’s counterintuitive, uh but very yeah, very characteristic, and it’s something that um we have also documented in many other protected areas all across Africa and Asia of uh UNESCO World Heritage Sites that um where the status has been um has been given to areas with shocking levels of violence um and evictions of of indigenous peoples in the name of conservation.

This is your host, Steve Taylor, and we will be back right after this.

If you’re enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. The interviews heard here are often ignored by mainstream media, and without your support, these stories would not be covered. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

Welcome back to Breaking Green. Are the Maasai themselves uh

concerned about the level of hurting? Are they doing anything about this? I think I read that that that the Maasai who are indigenous, and and and it’s really uh they claim and and and you know they’re the indigenous people, they have the the the the the right to be there. Are they are they concerned with herding pressures? Are they doing anything to mitigate any herding pressures at all?

Yeah, I think that’s very um ingrained in in the Maasai way of life, to just care for the environment, make sure that it’s also sustainable for the future generations. Um and that’s the case for all indigenous peoples basically, because they depend um so closely um on the land um and that they it’s in their interest and in the interest of future generations to take care of it as best as possible. And there are a lot of rules and practices that are meant to make sure that um the land remains in good conditions for future generations and for themselves, um, and framing um their practices as um destroying the environment or being uncontrolled or being a pressure actually also disregards this level of knowledge and expertise that the massa have in managing their own land. So and all scientific evidence points towards um the value of pastoralism in again, not only protecting but also shaping these areas. They would look completely different without um pastoralism and wouldn’t be as um um biodiverse or or in as good um shape. Um and again, as you was as you were saying, they also have the right to be there regardless.

So it’s not as if their rights were conditioned on them being good environmentalists, but the f the fact is and the scientific truth is that they are we’ve reported before that uh studies have shown that a vast uh a vast majority, a vast, vast proportion of biodiversity is on indigenous lands. And it seems like there’s this tendency for industrialized nations which are less biodiverse and causing the global warming problems to sort of dictate uh that uh these indigenous cultures now need to do this or that to be better stewards when they’re doing a much better job than in industrialized nations.

Yes, that’s true. I mean, industrialized nations are trying to um yeah, compensate the fact that they destroy or their activities are destroying the environment and trying to compensate that uh on the other side of the world by by yeah forcing other people to change, uh again without really scientific evidence. And we also see that um in um in a more yeah in a even more disconnected way with carbon credits, for example. So now it’s the case with biodiversity, but in the case of um of carbon, um donations that are most um that have the highest uh level of uh greenhouse gases emissions uh are hoping or trying or pretending to compensate compensate them by um by again funding projects or or buying credits from projects that also destroy um indigenous peoples’ lands and most often in the in the global south. So yeah, it’s a dynamic that we really see um in the whole um environment um sector.

So the Maasai are struggling uh for their land rights, their culture, their way of life. Were there not guarantees given to the Maasai to be able to live in certain regions when they gave up portions of the Serengeti in the 50s?

So aren’t weren’t there guarantees given that are now being uh ignored or not honored? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. So for example, the Ngorongoro conservation area that we that we just mentioned um was when it was designed, was designed as a place for uh what they call the multiple land use. So both for biodiversity protection and um with the the Maasai having the right uh to live there. Um and when they were forced out of the serengeti, they were promised that in the NCA and other areas they would never be bothered again. So actually, we talked a lot with uh Maasai elders um in the area um who remember when they were a kid being evicted from the serengeti and promised that they would never be bothered again in the NCA and elsewhere. And now these same people that are now, again, elders are facing what their parents and themselves when they were kids faced. So that’s quite a broken promise and also heartbreaking for the people that live there.

So what does the struggle look like? What have the Maasai been able to accomplish? What are they trying to accomplish? Uh are they finding allies other than Survival International?

Yeah, I think the Maasai are really developing a very strong uh resistance movement. Um they have um lawyers and and their own um organizations um supporting the fight. Um They also are doing a lot of community organizing. So there have been massive protests against these evictions. For example, they um a few years ago over 30,000 Maasai blocked the road between the NCA and the Serengeti. That is the most used by tourists who go from one protected area to another. So that’s really here putting pressure on the government and the whole industry where it hurts basically with the revenue from tourism. So they have been using really all the tools available locally and nationally and internationally to make their voices heard and to resist these evictions. Some leaders also travel to Europe and to the US to speak with the very institutions that are funding projects that evict them, that are designing the policies that are used as arguments for the Tanzanian government. So yes, they are actively resisting and um yeah, it’s not the end.

What kind of abuses are the Maasai uh suffering with this?

Yes, it’s the for example, um the protest I mentioned um in 2022 in L’O Leonondo has led to um uh an extremely violent um repression by security forces um firing live bullets um at the Maasai. And now this um land that they were trying to yeah to keep um has been turned into a game reserve and and the people have lost most of their grazing land, so a lot of their cattle as well. Um and that has uh basically had a devastating impact for the whole community. People have had to flee, uh, some are still injured, um, and that really um destroyed the balance uh within the community of um yeah food security um and um yeah similar issues.

If their land rights ultimately are not recognized, what what happens to the Maasai? What does that look like uh for them culturally? Uh where where where are they to live? What what’s what is there thought given to where the Maasai live? Are they to lose their culture completely?

Well, as we said, the Maasai are pastoralists, so they depend on their land and on being able to graze their cattle on their land um to be able to live. It’s the whole basis of their way of life. So not only of their livelihood, uh um, so being able to to eat um meat or or to drink milk, it also touches to the um to the very core of their identity because it’s also, cows are really central to their identity for all aspects of life. so losing the land means losing the cattle and losing that existential um link with their cattle. so in a way, yes, you’re right, their identity as a as an indigenous people. and that also has um yeah, some spiritual and cultural impacts that can’t be fixed once they lose the land. So, for example, uh, in the case of um of Loliono, we talked a lot with the communities who um are now unable to go into the protected area that was created, um and they say that they lost access to spiritual spiritual sites, and the fact that they um aren’t able to graze their cattle and lost a lot of cattle also means that some um important um cultural rituals can be performed. So, for example, um when a woman gives birth, um she is supposed to um eat or or or drink blood um or or yeah, basically uh rituals that are based on slaughtering um the cattle. Um and now being unable to do that is really weakening uh the women who just give birth and yeah, just detrimental to the whole um to the whole community. So, yes, it’s not only a matter of livelihood and food security, even though that’s a very core um issue as well, but it really impacts the the core of their of their identity and and their whole way of life.

Aaron Ross Powell So again, this speaks to culture, and you would think that UNESCO, which is a cultural organization, would would give more more heed, uh more attention uh to the Maasai’s uh cultural rights and needs, but uh here we are. Um We’ve mentioned the Tanzanian government, uh we’ve uh mentioned we’ve mentioned UNESCO. Uh are there any other players uh in this uh organizationally that uh are behind uh removing the Maasai?

Um I think it can also be interesting to mention the role of uh conservation organizations, um especially in the case of the Maasai, the Frankfurt Zoological Society, who’s based in Germany, and um has for decades uh again pushed um that narrative of the Maasai being um a threat to the environment. And it started with um its um one of its first directors, uh Bernard Gimek, um, who was a member of the Nazi party um and really um was instrumental in um create the creation of the Serengeti National Park and has always framed the Maasai as um yeah as destroying uh the land. Um and it’s been described um Frankfurt Zoologic, the Frankfurt Zoological Society has been described by the Maasai as their enemy number one, um, providing the narrative and support um to the to the government um for these evictions. Um and yeah, an aspect of UNESCO that maybe we didn’t um mention too much is this um um the international prestige and support and publicity that it brings, and in turn um that’s very key for for tourism and the revenues from from tourism. Um and and again that um that prestige is quite precious for the for the Tanzanian government. Um and the fact that UNESCO is um yeah, instead of using this um this uh weight to to

oppose evictions and and and change the narrative that for so long it has uh pushed, uh, is continuing to refer to the evictions as voluntary relocations and um and keeps going with the same um with the same narrative. So yes, a lot of Western um actors um still involved.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you uh about that you would like to discuss?

No, I think we said quite a lot.

Well, Paul Renault, thank you for joining us on Breaking Green. Thank you so much. You have been listening to Breaking Green, the Global Justice Equality Project, the global justice economy project, justice equality, breaking green activity, quality, full quality, quality, free quality, full,

On This Episode

We interview physicist and lawyer Peter Jones of the Samuel Lawrence Foundation. We track how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s push to weaken long-standing radiation safeguards lines up with the rush to license dangerous, unproven so-called “small modular reactors,” marketed as climate solutions. We connect new research on low dose radiation risk to the unresolved nuclear waste crisis and the growing demand for electricity from AI data centers.

Repealing Safety Regulations for SMRs

In the face of new studies showing increased dangers of exposure to radiation from Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing the repeal of a 50 year old safety regulation known “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” or ALARA, to ensure rapid deployment of SMRs.

Nuclear Radiation Dangers of Enriched SMR Fuel

SMRs are a new nuclear technology seen as a possible answer to the energy bottleneck for the expansion of data centers that feed artificial intelligence. SMRs would be smaller but spread out in more communities. They would be less efficient and use nuclear fuel 4x as enriched as that used in current nuclear plants. All of this is being greenwashed by big tech corporations, who claim it is an answer to climate change.

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Civil society organisations call for suspension and independent investigation into first-ever Article 6.4 carbon credits

BONN 11 June, 2026—The first carbon credits issued under the Paris Agreement’s flagship international carbon market mechanism are linked to a project implemented through institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta, according to a new report released today by a number of organisations including the Myanmar Policy Institute, Global Forest Coalition, and South Korean NGO Plan 1.5.

The report, Carbon Credits Under Fire: Myanmar, Crimes Against Humanity, and the Crisis of Credibility Facing the UN’s “High-Integrity Carbon Markets, raises serious concerns about human rights, governance failures, monitoring and verification practices, and the credibility of emissions reductions claimed by the project. The project distributes “improved” cookstoves in Myanmar and is coordinated by the South Korean NGO Climate Change Center (CCC) in partnership with Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MONREC), which has been under the control of the military junta since the February 2021 attempted coup.

“The UN has presented Article 6.4 as a new generation of high-integrity carbon markets. If the very first project approved under the mechanism raises this many questions about human rights, governance, monitoring and emissions accounting, then the credibility of the entire system is at stake.” - Oli Munnion, GFC Climate Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator.

Article 6.4 is the Paris Agreement’s flagship UN-supervised international carbon market mechanism, designed to generate so-called “high-integrity” carbon credits that governments and corporations can use to offset their emissions. In February 2026, the Myanmar cookstove project became the first project anywhere in the world to issue credits under the mechanism.

The report argues that the UN’s first “high-integrity” carbon credits were issued despite a catalogue of red flags. These include the project’s implementation through institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta, its operation in conflict-affected regions where civilians have faced airstrikes, displacement and other grave human rights abuses, evidence that the project may have been substantially over-credited, and verification processes that were unable to conduct site visits because of security concerns.

According to the report’s authors, the case exposes a profound gap between the promises of Article 6.4 and the realities on the ground, raising fundamental questions about the credibility of the UN’s new carbon market mechanism.

Particular concern is raised about the project’s implementation in Myanmar’s central Dry Zone, including Sagaing Region, which has become the epicentre of resistance to military rule and one of the regions most heavily affected by violence since the 2021 coup. According to the report, the townships where the project was implemented experienced thousands of conflict-related incidents during the project’s crediting period, including airstrikes, artillery attacks, attacks on schools and health facilities, and widespread displacement. Sagaing alone now accounts for more than a third of Myanmar’s internally displaced population, while women and girls in the region have faced alarming levels of conflict-related sexual violence. The report argues that these realities are largely absent from project documentation and raise serious questions about how the project could be effectively implemented, monitored and verified under such conditions.

In light of the report’s findings, the organisations behind it are calling on the Supervisory Body of the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) to immediately suspend any further issuance, transfer or use of credits associated with the project and launch an independent investigation into its compliance with human rights, environmental, social and methodological requirements. They are also urging the Supervisory Body to make the findings of any investigation public and, should it conclude that the project has failed to comply with PACM requirements or that the credits do not represent genuine and verifiable emissions reductions, to revoke all credits already issued and disqualify the project from future participation in the mechanism.

“Due to ongoing armed conflict on the ground, the data currently used to justify carbon credit issuance in Sagaing by the Burmese military junta is unverifiable and highly likely fraudulent. This demands an immediate suspension of credit transfers until a neutral, conflict-sensitive audit can be conducted; one that redirects climate finance toward actual humanitarian and locally-led environmental initiatives.” - Zaw Tuseng, foundation director of the Myanmar Policy Institute

Ma Nini Win, also representing the Myanmar Policy Institute, added: “As someone who grew up in Sagaing, I believe that climate accountability and climate justice are critically important. Ahnyar [the Dry Zone] is facing a genuine and growing environmental crisis. Ahnyar communities are increasingly experiencing drought, irregular rainfall, flooding, water insecurity, and environmental degradation, while continuing to endure the impacts of conflict and displacement. The question is not whether climate interventions are needed. The real question is whether these interventions are designed and implemented in ways that are locally accountable, conflict-sensitive, and responsive to community realities.”\

The report is being released as governments gather in Bonn for the UN climate negotiations, where discussions on the future implementation of Article 6 carbon markets are expected to continue. It also comes days after the UN Human Rights Office for Asia and the Pacific called for climate action to be grounded in legal obligations, human rights accountability and meaningful participation by affected communities.

The report documents how the project continued operating after Myanmar’s military seized power in February 2021 and through institutions controlled by the junta, despite widespread documentation of atrocities, attacks on civilians, forced displacement, conflict-related sexual violence and other serious human rights abuses.

MONREC, the project’s principal implementation partner, remained responsible for project activities after the attempted coup. For most of the project’s implementation period, the ministry was headed by Colonel Khin Maung Yi, who was sanctioned by the European Union in June 2021 for actions that contributed to the funding and support of the military regime. The report also notes that the International Criminal Court has sought an arrest warrant for junta leader Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, while proceedings concerning allegations of genocide remain before the International Court of Justice.

The report further raises serious concerns about whether the carbon credits represent genuine emissions reductions relating to monitoring methodologies, assumptions about stove use, verification procedures and the inability of auditors to conduct required site visits in project areas because of security risks, relying instead on remote interviews.

Independent analysis previously undertaken by Plan 1.5, Carbon Market Watch and researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that the project may have been over-credited by more than fourteen times under the previous Clean Development Mechanism. More recent analysis by Carbon Market Watch shows that even with the supposedly more robust emissions calculations applied under Article 6.4, the project will still likely be over-credited by a factor of seven.

The new report also raises concerns about the role of South Korea in supporting and using the project. Credits generated by the cookstove programme have previously been traded through South Korea’s Emissions Trading System (K-ETS), while major Korean corporations have publicly identified the project as part of their climate strategies. The authors argue that concerns about the integrity of the credits therefore extend beyond Myanmar and the UN carbon market, raising broader questions about the standards applied within South Korea’s domestic climate policies and emissions trading system.

“Although the UN reduced credit issuance by 40 percent compared with the previous CDM methodology, the volume of credits issued still appears to be significantly overestimated. The decision to approve this project under Article 6.4 should be fundamentally reconsidered. South Korea must also adopt stronger safeguards to ensure that low-integrity credits are not used through the K-ETS or counted toward the country’s climate commitments.”

More broadly, the project exposes wider questions about climate justice and the role of carbon offsetting in global climate policy. It highlights concerns that women and girls are presented as beneficiaries of the project while continuing to bear the disproportionate impacts of conflict, displacement, food insecurity and gender-based violence.

“This does not bode well for the future of international carbon offset markets. The Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism was supposed to be different from past market failures, and move away from scandal-hit forest offset certification schemes and the Clean Development Mechanism,” said Oli Munnion, GFC Climate Justice and Forests Campaign Coordinator. “But what does “high integrity” actually mean if the very first project to be credited is not only fundamentally flawed from an emissions reduction perspective, but is actually being implemented by a department under the control of a military junta that has been accused of crimes against humanity and is responsible for inflicting untold suffering on civilian populations? These credits must be revoked immediately, and the UN needs to seriously reassess its reliance on offsetting to meet climate goals.”

Carbon Credits Under Fire: Myanmar, Crimes Against Humanity, and the Crisis of Credibility Facing the UN’s “High-Integrity” Carbon Markets was jointly published by the Global Forest Coalition, Myanmar Policy Institute, Plan 1.5, Biofuelwatch and Gibson Climate Justice Lab.

Download the report here: https://globalforestcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/carbon-credits-under-fire_FINAL.pdf

Share From the Front Lines: Struggles for Justice

The vote took place amidst demonstrations in front of the Regional Presidential Delegation, in the heart of Concepción, where environmental organizations, Mapuche communities, and local residents expressed their rejection of the extractive project and denounced its impacts on water, ecosystems, the local economy, and community life in the area.

The meeting was chaired by officials appointed by the government of José Antonio Kast, an administration that had publicly expressed support for the expansion of rare earth mining.

The massive march that preceded the vote

The approval came just two days after a massive march from Penco to Lirquén, where hundreds of people took to the streets chanting slogans against mining, extractivism and the installation of polluting industries in the Bay of Concepción.

The mobilization, organized by territorial and environmental organizations, once again highlighted the persistent public rejection of the project promoted by the transnational corporation Aclara Resources, whose environmental permitting process had already faced scrutiny. Several groups also recalled that in a public consultation held in 2022, the community overwhelmingly expressed its opposition to the initiative.

Communities announce legal and territorial offensive

Camila Arriagada, spokesperson for the “Penco-Lirquén free of mining” campaign —a group made up of territorial and environmental organizations, the Chamber of Commerce, the gastronomic and tourism sector, neighborhood councils and peasant associations— indicated that the communities are already preparing an opposition strategy that will combine legal and administrative actions and sustained social mobilization in the territory.

“The complaint to the executive director of the SEA (Environmental Assessment Service) and also the actions before the Environmental Court are the legal and administrative avenues that continue after this approval, and we are going to move forward with those processes.”

The leader stated that the organizations will also seek to strengthen territorial coordination and increase social pressure against the project. “We are going to exhaust all avenues, not only legal and administrative ones. We are also going to organize ourselves as a movement to exert all the necessary social pressure,” she said.

He announced that the communities will launch new mobilizations and are considering taking broader measures.

“We are going to call for demonstrations and all actions that continue to express our discontent with this approval, including moving towards a community and inter-community strike to build a stronger and more sustained opposition.”

OLCA: “Approval does not guarantee that the project will be built”

For Javier Arroyo Olea, of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), the unanimous approval of the project is part of a government policy aimed at accelerating extractive investments promoted in different territories.

“The current scenario is a response to pressure to accelerate environmentally and socially questionable projects, as part of the government’s agenda and the interests of transnational extractive companies.”

Arroyo highlighted that in Penco-Lirquén there has been a sustained territorial resistance for more than a decade against the mining initiative of Aclara Resources, driven by communities and organizations that have sought to strengthen alternatives linked to local commerce, environmental defense and the productive vocation of the territory.

The OLCA researcher also stated that environmental approval does not guarantee the completion of the project, recalling previous experiences of territorial resistance in Concepción Bay.

“Penco-Lirquén and the Bay of Concepción have historical precedents for territorial defense, as happened with LNG Talcahuano and LNG Penco, projects that, despite having environmental approval, failed to be installed due to the persistence of the communities.”

He also emphasized that the recent mobilization between Penco and Lirquén reflects only one of the many forms of organization that communities have developed to confront the extractive project. “The march demonstrates one of the ways the movement has emerged in defense of the territory, but it is not the only one. In this new phase, the intention is to continue forging paths and strategies that strengthen the community’s role and territorial opposition to the project,” he concluded.

Questions about the environmental assessment

Camila Arriagada stated that, although approval was expected due to the stance of the regional authorities, serious questions remain about the environmental assessment of the project.

“The vote of these Regional Ministerial Secretaries was not a surprise, but there are still many inconsistencies in the environmental assessment. The mitigation and compensation measures are insufficient, and the Environmental Assessment Service (SEA) did not present the most significant risks and impacts of the project, especially regarding critical aspects such as the radioactive elements present in the study,” he warned.

The spokesperson added that the presentation at the COEVA session clearly demonstrated an institutional defense of private investment over the affected communities. “What we saw today is how these state agencies are more concerned with defending the interests of private investment than the interests of the communities,” she asserted.

Similarly, Valeria Sepúlveda, a member of the “Penco-Lirquén free of mining” campaign, criticized the decision made by COEVA and the lack of response to the observations made by the citizens and the municipality during the environmental assessment.

“It is very disappointing that, for example, the Regional Health Authority (Seremi de Salud) describes this project as merely annoying. No response was given to the citizens’ or the municipality’s comments, and yet it was maintained that the project technically complies with environmental regulations,” he stated.

Sepúlveda also indicated that the organizations will continue to deploy institutional and legal actions to prevent the installation of the mining company in the territory.

“We will continue to file claims and use all possible legal and juridical tools. The fact that this project has been approved does not mean we are going to stand idly by,” he stated.

“We will continue fighting until the end”

During the march prior to the vote, María Flores Quilapán, a Mapuche woman and member of the Koñintu Lafken Mapu organization, stated that the communities will remain mobilized despite the institutional approval of the project.

“As citizens who live in the Penco area, we say no to the mining company because we know the pollution and the impact that this mega-company generates. Not only will the municipality of Penco be impacted, but also Tomé, Talcahuano, Santa Juana, Florida, and the neighboring municipalities.”

He also warned that “even if the project is approved, we will continue fighting until the end to prevent this mining company from setting up in this historic and tourist town, a town that still has clean water.”

30 days to file claims

Following the environmental approval, a 30-day period was opened for individuals and organizations that submitted public comments to file appeals. If appeals are filed, the Committee of Ministers will have 60 days to issue a ruling.

Social and environmental organizations announced that they will continue to deploy mobilizations, legal actions and territorial pressure to prevent the execution of the project, insisting that environmental approval does not guarantee social viability in an area marked by socio-environmental conflicts and community resistance against extractivism.

Source: OLCA Communications

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Photos and Narration by

In Paraguay’s northern Gran Chaco, the Indigenous Ayoreo people were hunted.

As white settlers expanded deeper into Indigenous territory, towers like this one were built across the landscape. From these elevated platforms, Ayoreo people could be spotted and shot as “civilization” advanced into the Chaco.

The violence did not begin with bulldozers.

But the bulldozers came.

I first visited and photographed the Ayoreo community of Campo Loro in early 2009. I traveled with Dr. Miguel Lovera and members of Iniciativa Amotocodie, an Ayoreo support organization working to defend the rights of uncontacted Indigenous peoples still living in the Chaco forest.

Campo Loro was among the earliest Ayoreo settlements established near the Mennonite colonies that had expanded across Paraguay’s western frontier.

The photographic project I created there was called Sharing the Eye.

An elder leader of the community walked with me through the village, the surrounding lands, homes, and workplaces. As we traveled together, he shared his vision of the world around him. My role was simply to record what he chose to show me through the lens of my camera.

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The march began at approximately 3:00 p.m., with police units attempting to block the route at the intersection of Maipú and Las Heras streets.

Despite the police presence, local Mapuche organizations pushed through the blockade and continued along the planned route, passing directly in front of the mining company’s offices.

After passing Aclara’s offices, the march proceeded along Infante and Freire streets, accompanied by a police escort throughout the route.

As the march advanced toward Lirquén, additional participants joined the procession while residents along the route expressed their support. Drivers traveling in the opposite direction also signaled solidarity by sounding their horns.

Lirquén: Nearly Five Months After the Disaster

Participants and local residents reflected on the difficult conditions they have endured since the catastrophic mega-fire that struck the area in January. With the arrival of winter, many families continue to face precarious housing conditions and ongoing economic hardship.

Upon arriving in Lirquén’s Barrio Chino neighborhood, the organizing groups held a public information event in the town square.

Speakers highlighted the social and environmental impacts associated with the proposed mining project, as well as concerns that future phases could significantly expand the scale of extraction in the region.

Source Resumen.cl - See videos that accompany the original post in Spanish here: https://resumen.cl/a/173297

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This investigative documentary transcends traditional activism to offer a piece of creative documentary cinema that explores the tension between the technological ‘progress’ of the Global North and the reality of life in the South.

The potential establishment of the rare earth mining company Aclara Resources has placed the city of Penco and Greater Concepción (southern Chile) at the center of a global geopolitical chessboard. Far from being a local conflict, this project is marketed as a link in the critical mineral supply chain that world powers seek to secure.

However, in this race for minerals, the voices of local communities have been marginalized, despite the fact that they are the ones who will experience the deepest impacts.

The film stands out for its narrative approach, challenging the narratives of power. With an aesthetic proposal that captures the misty atmosphere and rich biodiversity of Chile’s Coastal Range, the documentary transforms the territory into a living character. The sound design and musical score accompany a rhythmic yet hard-hitting story, where the poetic beauty of the Biobío landscape is pitted against the cold language of industrial destruction and mega-mining.

It weaves journalistic rigor with the sensitivity of documentary filmmaking to amplify the voice of a community that, in a historic plebiscite, rejected this experimental project by 99%.

It is a journey that invites reflection on the fragility of our land and the true cost of modern technology. Furthermore, the city of Penco was the victim of a massive wildfire in 2026 that destroyed a significant portion of its area. These events have contributed to the advancement of the mining project within a territory affected by catastrophe.

The next installment of the documentary series will explore how the 2026 mega-fire, subsequent land-use changes, and the expansion of rare earth mining have become intertwined in southern Chile and Mapuche territory. Through testimonies, field investigations, and on-the-ground documentation, the film examines how environmental catastrophe can create new opportunities for extractive development, raising urgent questions about climate justice, Indigenous rights, and the future of the region.

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The corporation American Castenea plans to mass-clone and sell genetically engineered (GE) American chestnut trees for planting in U.S. forests–and it should alarm anyone who cares about the future of wild ecosystems.

The science behind their GE trees is facing serious questions.

The “Darling 54” (D54) GE chestnut in question was once promoted as a breakthrough. But it has been widely criticized since 2023 for significant genetic and performance problems.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

The American Chestnut Foundation—once a major supporter—walked away from the project after reporting troubling issues: inconsistent disease resistance, poor growth, higher mortality, and the deletion of a gene linked to drought tolerance.

Independent scientists have raised even deeper concerns. One analysis concluded the trees “do not function as intended,” and warned that it may be impossible to reliably predict the long-term risks of releasing genetically engineered trees into the wild.

Yet these GE trees are designed to spread. Their pollen can travel long distances. Their seeds are carried by wildlife.

This is a globally unprecedented release of a GMO plant into the wild with the intention to contaminate wild populations.

And that’s the crux of the issue.

Trees are not like crops. They live for decades, even centuries. Once released, they cannot be recalled.

So the real question is simple:

What happens when something goes wrong?

How would these trees impact forests over time—and the birds, pollinators, and wildlife and communities that depend on them?

Right now, there are no clear answers.

More than 170,000 people raised concerns about this project during the USDA’s recent public comment period.

Meanwhile, promoters point to studies claiming the trees are safe. But those studies are short-term trials on very young trees, conducted under controlled conditions.

Those short trials cannot tell us how these trees will behave in real forests over time.

And they cannot predict the long-term consequences of releasing them.

This is not just a scientific debate.

This is a decision, based on extremely limited information, that would have irreversible consequences.

👉 Learn more, explore the research, and sign onto our letter:
https://stopgetrees.org/chestnut/

Excerpts from the show:

There's a honestly a bit of trauma involved in all this. Knocking on a door and walking someone through what nitrate can do as you do a rapid test in their house and showing them, hey, your nitrate level looks like it's above 30.

Here are the health consequences of that, and watching the blood drain from their face as they make the connections to the cancer that their loved ones have had or that they have, or the miscarriages that they couldn't explain over the years that prevented them from starting a family. It’s incredibly difficult work.

And and the only solace I can take from that is it's motivating. And we have seen a real upswell of community members who want to stand up to polluting industry and and make meaningful change.

Kaleb Lay is a fifth-generation eastern Oregonian and former journalist who now serves as Director of Policy & Research with Oregon Rural Action, a nonprofit organization that works with frontline communities in rural northeast Oregon. He is a leading expert in pollution issues in Oregon's Lower Umatilla Basin, which is both one of the most polluted places in the Pacific Northwest and one of the fastest-growing data center hubs in the United States. He's also an avid outdoorsman, and gardener

Note: We’re releasing this episode of Field Notes during Earth Week to highlight the critical work of Indigenous land defenders—who face some of the highest levels of violence and repression worldwide.

About the Episode

In southern Chile, the Mapuche people are continuing a centuries-long struggle to defend their land, rights, and way of life. In this episode of Field Notes, photographer Orin Langelle shares images and reflections from Mapuche territory, where seemingly peaceful landscapes conceal ongoing conflict driven by industrial forestry and state repression.

Through powerful photographs from the region, this short documentary offers a glimpse into a living struggle for land, dignity, and self-determination.

The repression facing Mapuche communities is ongoing—and international pressure matters. Sign on in support of the Mapuche struggle

Field Notes — Dispatches from the frontlines of land, justice, and resistance brings together first-hand visual reports from Orin Langelle’s decades documenting environmental justice movements, Indigenous land struggles, and resistance worldwide.

Explore more of Orin Langelle’s work: https://langellephoto.org

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Transcript for Field Notes Season 2 Episode 1

Chile: Land, Power and the Mapuche Struggle

Narration by photographer Orin Langelle

I shot this photograph in 2024 at a Mapuche school overlooking Lake Lleu Lleu in Southern Chile

It looks peaceful. Quiet water surrounded by forests, but landscapes hold deeper histories.

This is a story about Mupuche resistance and the criminalization of community members.

This lake sits within territory Mapuche communities have reclaimed from timber companies and large land owners.

Mapuche, whose name means people of the earth, lived here for centuries.

Much of their land was taken during violent campaigns by the Chilean state.

Today, many communities are taking it back. Across this lake were detention centers and torture sites during the Pinochet dictatorship.

That history still echoes as the Chilean government attempts to suppress the Mupuche land recovery movement.

Before visiting Lake Lleu Lleu, I was here in Temuco at the entrance to the prison.

Inside, Mapuche land defenders are being held, accused of crimes tied to their struggle for the land. Their supporters call them something else. Political prisoners.

At another prison in Concepcion, I met an attorney, Victoria Borquez. She represents Mapuche political prisoner Hector Llaitul a founder of the land recovery movement.

She spoke about prison conditions, legal violations and what families are enduring. This struggle is not only about land, it’s about justice. It’s about dignity.

I visited these communities in 2019 while documenting land recoveries from pine plantations.

During that visit, I photographed two brothers during a ceremony celebrating the Mapuche resistance. When I returned in 2024, their community’s leader, told me both brothers had since been in prison for land recovery actions.

In 2019, I attended the trial of the Mapuche leader Alberto Curamil in Temuco.

Curamil helped stop hydroelectric dams on the Rio Cautin. He spent 18 months in prison before his trial.

During that time, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for defending the river.

When the trial ended, Curamil was found not guilty and released. Public pressure helped secure his freedom.

These photographs are fragments of what I’ve witnessed in Chile since my first visit in 2004.

They are part of the Mapuche people’s ongoing story of land, resistance, and memory.

Field Notes is an ongoing series documenting struggles from the front lines of resistance across five decades and six continents.

I’m Orin Langelle.

Quilombola community surrounded by Suzano eucalyptus as well as sugar cane plantations in Espirito Santo, Brazil. Photo: Langelle/GJEP

By Natalie McClure, Isaac Millians and Amy Guzman. Undergraduate Researchers at Gibson Climate Justice Lab, University of Southern California

Reprinted from Geoengineering Monitor and written in cooperation with Global Justice Ecology Project

Brazil’s Expanding “Green Deserts”

Picture a desert: hot, dry, and teeming with drought-resistant life. Now, think about what color it is – probably yellow, brown, or red. Nothing resembling fields of green.

In Brazil, so-called “green deserts” have been expanding across the country, bringing the same water scarcity and biodiversity loss associated with traditional deserts. Unlike traditional dry deserts defined by the absence of trees, green deserts are defined by their presence – namely, the presence of fast-growing non-native eucalyptus.

Brazil produces more eucalyptus than any other country, primarily for timber and pulp harvest. Suzano sits at the center of this expansion. The self-proclaimed “largest pulp manufacturer in the world” is at the top of the industry and a proud actor in the Brazilian timber market. Its new megaplant in Ribas do Rio Pardo, Mato Grosso do Sul–opened with the blessing of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva–is one of the largest industrial pulp facilities on Earth. As plantations grow, so do reports of depleted national water reserves, increased deforestation of native forests, loss of Indigenous and traditional territories, agrotoxin contamination, and escalating conflicts with indigenous communities.

Now, Suzano is adding genetically engineered (GE) eucalyptus to this already destructive model.

GE Eucalyptus and a New “Carbon Colonialism”

GE eucalyptus is being marketed as the next frontier of “carbon dioxide removal.” These trees are engineered for traits such as accelerated growth or delayed decomposition and are framed as climate solutions despite ecological and scientific uncertainties. They represent land-based geoengineering with consequences for forests, water systems, biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples.

Suzano’s biotech subsidiary FuturaGene is pairing industrial forestry with synthetic biology to market plantations as carbon assets. The result is two extractive agendas: carbon offsetting and biotechnology expansion, which mask the social and ecological harms.

Despite a de facto moratorium under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Brazil has emerged as a major testing ground for genetically engineered trees. Transgenic material in GE eucalyptus refers to genetic sequences artificially inserted to confer traits such as faster growth, herbicide tolerance, insect resistance, and altered wood composition. FuturaGene has developed multiple strains, including:

• H421: engineered for accelerated growth

• DH3229: engineered for glyphosate (herbicide) resistance

Both of these strains pose significant ecological challenges: faster-growing trees demand more water, and herbicide-tolerant trees increase pesticide use and chemical drift, all of which harm workers, local communities, soils, and pollinators. Unlike annual crops, GE trees may reproduce, spread pollen, and persist for decades, making them impossible to recall once introduced into the wild. Failures seen in GE crops could be magnified in long-lived tree species.

Regulatory Gaps and FSC Contradictions

Hundreds of NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations through the Campaign to STOP GE Trees have urged national bodies and international authorities to impose moratoria and close regulatory gaps.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) prohibits the commercial use of GE trees. Although Suzano is certified under the FSC,FuturaGene has moved forward with deploying GE test plots in Brazil.

Four field trials have been installed across Bahia, Maranhão, and São Paulo. Sites have remained under-regulated, with little public-facing data on gene flow, soil health, and impacts on water systems.

Loosely regulated reporting makes the sustainability of these H421 plots appear more favorable at five years post-commercial approval. This procedural narrative of “success” obscures the absence of ecological data and falsely furthers the transition towards commercial readiness. The DH3229 clone, promoted as superior to H421, raises additional concerns for glyphosate exposure and drift, exacerbating the tension between national biosafety procedures and international sustainability projects.

Private biotech patents increasingly dictate what constitutes “permission” on a global scale. The patent system in Brazil allows biotechnology corporate actors to claim ownership of engineered genotypes, blurring the distinction between regulatory approval and proprietary control. Ecosystems are made vulnerable to unilateral technology experiments, such as those of the partnered FuturaGene and Suzano, which become a false idol for climate mitigation.

Carbon Markets are Fueling GE Plantation Expansion

Carbon markets have evolved from the Kyoto Protocol’s offset mechanisms into a patchwork of voluntary and compliance schemes. Under the Paris Agreement, Article 6.4 creates a new global carbon crediting mechanism meant to replace Kyoto’s program. Countries and companies can now generate, trade, and purchase carbon credits under a unified set of rules—though issues of non-additionality, land grabs, and accounting loopholes persist.

Brazil plans to launch a national carbon market by the end of the decade, designed to interface with Article 6.4. This alignment is shaping land policy and corporate behavior, including plantation projects framed as “carbon removal.”

These developments build on the legacy of the UN’s REDD and REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) programs, earlier attempts to channel carbon finance into forest conservation by treating forests as carbon assets. Suzano is already positioning itself to profit from this system. They boast two projects: the Carbon Horizon Project and the Cerrado Carbon Project, both framed as forest protection. Suzano’s claim to “promote reforestation in an integrated landscape” conflicts with eucalyptus’s exotic status and incompatibility with the Cerrado. Suzano’s pulp mill in Mato Grosso do Sul is expanding eucalyptus plantations into cerrado forest, declaring land “degraded” to justify industrial conversion.

Meanwhile, Verra—the non-profit that accredits carbon offset programs for REDD+, including Suzano’s—has been embroiled in a slew of scandals. Verra has been accused of accrediting companies engaged in illegal deforestation and land grabs, leading to the suspension of all Verra projects in Brazil. Although the suspension has ended, the Cerrado Carbon Project is listed on Suzano’s website as “currently inactive due to the developer’s strategic redefinition.” For those familiar with Suzano’s own history with unauthorized activity and violations of indigenous rights, this comes as no surprise.

Suzano Sustainability Messaging and the Tropical Forest Forever Facility

Brazil is set to have its own regulated carbon market, making internal review unlikely as the program finds its footing. Brazil may seek any available sources of carbon credits, bolstered by the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF). TFFF aims to compensate tropical forest companies for each hectare of standing forest maintained. Fire-related forest degradation and deforestation reduce payments. The $125 billion target could be the largest blended finance mechanism of its kind.

The TFFF’s latest Concept Note promises to exclude monoculture plantations in its payments, but how it approaches so-called “integrated landscapes” like Suzano’s Cerrado Carbon Project remains to be seen.

Civil Society is Fighting Against Displacement and Destruction

Brazilian social movements have long challenged the agribusiness model. Groups like La Vía Campesina, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), and the Brazilian Forum to Combat Agrotoxins are pushing back against monoculture plantations for displacing rural communities, driving chemical exposure, and undermining food sovereignty.

Resistance to GE eucalyptus has become a focal point of this struggle. Protests unite Indigenous Peoples, rural women, laborers, academics, and international networks who argue that GE tree plantations perpetuate a form of chemical and carbon colonialism. At universities and public forums, such as the 4th University Conference in Defence of Agrarian Reform (JURA), activists draw attention to pesticide contamination, the loss of traditional territories, and the widening gap between corporate sustainability rhetoric and the lived impacts on communities.

Indigenous communities have acted directly. In 2022, Pataxó groups reclaimed sections of Suzano’s plantations inside the legally recognized Comexatibá Indigenous Territory in Bahia, denouncing efforts to block land demarcation. MST has led some of the most high-profile protests, including the 2015 occupation of FuturaGene’s GE tree greenhouse and demonstrations that shut down CTNBio meetings. During this year’s Red April mobilizations, MST emphasized agrarian reform as essential to confronting food insecurity and the ecological harms of industrial monoculture. Quilombola communities have also secured important victories. The Superior Court of Justice recently overturned a ruling that allowed Suzano to seize Quilombo Itaúna’s territory—a significant moment in ongoing struggles for land rights and cultural survival.

Brazil as the Model for Global Land-Based Geoengineering

Brazil’s GE eucalyptus plantations serve as a warning for global carbon markets amid the high-stakes risks of land-based geoengineering. These plantations reveal the same structural vulnerabilities that could accompany other land-based climate interventions worldwide: regulatory gaps, corporate control over ecosystems, and the masking of ecological harms under the guise of climate solutions. The concern now, and always, is protecting biodiverse ecosystems and the rights of communities that protect and rely on them.

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