Farmers in this area are typically informed that the government has conceded their land to the mine and that there is nothing they can do about it. Joanna knew better. "I know my rights, and I knew the law would take its course," she said.
Manu had attended a training session with Oxfam America's partner WACAM, where she learned that farmers can only be removed from their land if they have been compensated for it. This helped her make a strong argument. "I told the court that I was there before the company came and that it had not compensated me. So the company has no right to push me off this land."
"And I am still farming there," Manu said, smiling just a little. "I learned this in my training, and it is thanks to this new knowledge that I could do this."
WACAM's training not only helped Manu defend her own rights and farmland, but also helped her become one of the key organizers in her community, Dumasi, a small collection of mud and concrete houses piled on the side of a hill on the road between two larger mining towns, Prestea and Tarkwa. Farmers line the road selling tomatoes and yams as trucks and cars blast past in the dust and heat. The forest looms over Dumasi; dark green surrounds the hardwood trees and small fields that farmers hack out of the dense brush.
Open-pit gold mining has had serious negative effects ranging from housing damage caused by the explosives used to blast apart the pit to reveal ore, just over 300 yards from the village, to pollution of the local drinking water source, the Aprepre River, in 2004 and 2006. Again, training from WACAM has helped Manu and her neighbors push the company to respect their rights and its obligations.
After the mine spilled cyanide into the stream in 2004, Manu and her father immediately collected water samples and dead fish, and sent them to WACAM and Ghana's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "WACAM taught us that cyanide is extremely poisonous, but that exposure to the sun reduces its toxicity," Manu explained. "Usually when we complain to the EPA they take 10 days to come here, so that is why we had to get the samples right away." WACAM helped secure medical care for sick villagers and convened a press conference so the villagers could pressure the company to clean up the mess and compensate people affected by the poison. WACAM and another legal aid organization funded by Oxfam America, CEPIL, helped the citizens of Dumasi take the company to court, and they are awaiting a decision.
Efforts like this have helped the people of Dumasi force the company to halt the blasting that hurled rocks into their houses and cracked their foundations. For now the mining has stopped while the company tries to relocate the village—but first it has to negotiate a deal with a group of citizens who will no longer allow the government and mining company to take advantage of them.
The training WACAM provided for the people of Dumasi has helped them defend their rights, but it is also changing the way they think about themselves and others. Manu realized that she can be a leader, someone who can make a difference in her village and the world. "After this training, I can see how important education is, so I am enrolled in school," she said. "I want to be a political leader, maybe a member of parliament."
Manu's motivations and sense of responsibility go well beyond her village. "I see fellow human beings as I see myself, and if they can't defend their rights, then I have to help them," she said. "I am saving humanity."
]]>The Izabal region, which is located in northeastern Guatemala, along the borders of Belize and Honduras, is one of the country's richest in natural resources. It is home to the country's largest lake—Lake Izabal—which has a unique ecosystem that includes hundreds of animal species, some of which are endangered. The people who live around the lake give it a rich cultural mix—they are ladinos, Garifuna and Maya Q'eq'chi indigenous people. Their livelihood is based on fishing, planting corn, beans and cardamom, and ecotourism. The region's unique resources give it great potential for sustainable development.
Among the natural resources in the area are oil, gold, silver and nickel. The government has granted mining concession to foreign companies, including the Guatemalan Nickel Corporation (known as CGN in Spanish), which is a subsidiary of Skye Resources of Canada. CGN received a license to mine nickel in Izabal in 2005 and will begin operations in 2008. CGN has wrongly accused Eloyda Mejia and other members of ASALI of squatting on company property.
Critics of the mining project say it endangers the abundant natural resources in the region and offers little in the way of local development because companies pay only one percent of their profits in royalties and only half of that—0.5 percent—goes to the municipality where the mine is located.
ASALI was created to defend the lake, its surrounding areas, and its indigenous culture. In 2002, ASALI was successful in its bid cancel a license to drill for oil under the lake. Since then it has been educating and informing the local population about the consequences and problems that mining can cause in the region and about the alternatives for sustainable development that existing natural resources can provide. Oxfam America had been helping to fund the work of ASALI since 2006.
The case of Eloyda Mejia and ASALI are not isolated incidents. In recent years, those who have opposed mining in their communities—principally indigenous communities—have received threats and suffered acts of repression. In January of 2007, there were incidents in numerous communities in Izabal in which people were driven from their homes or in which their homes were destroyed by security forces and police.
"Communities and local organizations, which in Guatemala are largely indigenous, should have the right to express whether they are in favor or against mining, based on objective information about its probable impact, without suffering retaliation," said Oxfam America's program officer Andres McKinley. "These opinions should be taken into account by the government and the mining companies."
]]>Lovethom, a small village in Cambodia's northern province of Kratie, is home to a Muslim ethnic group called the Cham. The Cham are descendants of the ancient kingdom of Champa, who migrated to Cambodia from Vietnam after the fall of their kingdom in 17th century.
For centuries, the Cham in Lovethom have benefited from living on the fertile Mekong river flood plains. The seasonal flooding each year provides fish and just enough water for rice cultivation. However, the delicate balance of nature is changing, affecting the livelihoods of the people and altering the structure of this centuries-old Muslim community.
"In the last three years we have experienced unpredictable floods. We plant but we can't harvest; it has never happened like this before," said Mom Mayas, a 47-year-old mother of six. Mom owns a small plot of land where her family has been cultivating rice for over a century.
"The flood plain normally overflows from July until September, then the water starts to recede and that is when we start planting. But in the past three years there has been heavy rain, and after the water level receded in September, it just started to rise again, destroying everything in its path, " she said.
Taking this experience into account, this year Mom did not plant immediately after the flood waters receded. But her efforts were in vain because the water level fluctuated three times in the space of two months.
"I have lost most of my early rice crops because of the unpredictable floods and have only started planting rice seedlings in November—the last month of the wet season," she said.
Because of the recent changes in weather patterns, Mom has sent her two oldest sons to Thailand to work as laborers. She now has no men to help her in the fields—her husband fell victim to the civil war in 1995.
"The boys cannot afford to send money back from Thailand," she said. "At the moment they have only got money to support themselves, while my two girls work on a bean plantation up north. I don't really want everyone to split up like this and be far apart from family and friends as well as the community, but if this is what we have to do, then so be it."
Far from being defeated, Mom says she is doing the best she can to support her two younger sons and 95 year-old mother by pressing palm leaves to sell as thatch walls and roofs as well as selling porridge and banana leaves.
"After being hit three years in a row I have no money left to buy seeds to plant next year, " she said. "I have very little hope now, but I am doing whatever I can so the rest of my children can go to school and maybe have a better life."
Tin Ponlok, National Project Manager for the formulation of Cambodia's National Adaptation Program of Action to Climate Change (NAPA), explained that climate change affects an agrarian country like Cambodia in the form of floods and droughts. "The rural poor with limited resources rely solely on agricultural products," he said, "and climate change is costing them dearly."
Tin explained that people living in lowland areas, such as Lovethom, are the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change because of increased flooding and soil erosion. Research conducted by the Climate Change Office of the Cambodian Ministry of Environment has proven that agricultural productivity has gone down during the past five years because of increased flooding, drought and sea water intrusions.
The eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed that least developed countries are most vulnerable to climate change. A decision was made to allocate money to countries which submitted successful National Adaptation Plans.
Tin explained that Cambodia's NAPA identified 39 projects in water resources, agriculture, human health and coastal zone management as urgent priorities. Examples include introducing integrated farming such as cattle raising and vegetable planting so that rice is not the only dependent source of income, and improving irrigation systems.
"Because least developed countries suffer from problems that are caused by somebody else, we think it's fair that we get funding to support our adaptation projects," he said. "We want better commitments towards adaptation from developed countries."
In the past few years they have no longer been able to predict the seasons, so they don't know when to plant. Traditional signs found in nature—white cranes, flowering avocado plants, silver fish, and flashes of lightning—are no longer heralding the rains.
"The summer now is winter," says Howard Fernández, a farmer in the remote San Andrés de Bocay community in northeastern Nicaragua. "April used to be summer, but it rained the entire month. In May—wintertime—it doesn't rain. We listen to the thunder, we see the lightning that should let us know that the rain is coming, but it is not coming. Because of this climate change we are suffering the decrease of our farm's production."
The changing climate is having a devastating effect on the Miskito people, who live in wooden huts and subsist on crops planted on a few hectares of land and food hunted from the jungle and rivers. Already among the poorest and most marginalized groups in the country, they are now on the front lines of this new threat, which is hitting them practically and psychologically. As well as badly reducing their rice crop, this year's drought meant the river levels were much lower than usual, affecting the communities' vital transport artery. And then, after the drought, Hurricane Felix hit the Miskitos in September.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported decreasing rainfall patterns in Nicaragua. The panel's report also shows how the remote areas where these Native Americans live are becoming increasingly vulnerable from the impact of hurricanes, predicted to increase as a result of climate change. Oxfam is working with communities on a hurricane early warning system, which involves measuring river water levels and predicting possible flooding, to help them cope with these changes in weather.
]]>"In the past, indigenous people, especially those from the lowlands in Bolivia, lived in [conditions of] slavery, without any knowledge of their rights. This was mostly in the era of the rubber boom, when their ancestral lands were taken from them and they were forced to work in the rubber fields. Later on, during the era of the creation of large ranch estates, or haciendas, they also worked 14-plus-hour days, were whipped, and died trying to escape. Some of them were able to escape and hide out in inhospitable lands with little water. But in these places they were able to maintain their culture, like in the case of the Chiquitanos of Lomerio.
"The law in Bolivia, as well as the constitution, didn't recognize their rights. For example: The Agrarian Reform law of 1953 referred to them as forest people living like savages and required them to have a legal guardian in order to gain access to land. The concept of indigenous identity was totally unrecognized. The state, which was motivated by mono-cultural, integrationist, and colonialist ambitions, failed to recognize the indigenous people. To gain access to lands they were required to form a peasant union. Then they could get individual parcels of land of 50 hectares (about 124 acres) per family, which ignored the collective vision of land tenure of the indigenous people. Up until the 1980s, indigenous people were prohibited from walking on the sidewalks. They were referred to by the derogatory term, paicos.
"So they decided to organize themselves as an indigenous community starting in 1985, to demand their rights. Foremost were the right to dignity, and the right to their land. That was fundamental to them—as they said, 'without land there is no life.' They said that their land was the key to life for the indigenous people, and that it would allow them to recuperate and once again value their cultural identity. In 1990 the indigenous movement convened an historic march in Bolivia, called the First Indigenous March for Land and Dignity. This marked the movement's emergence from the underground, to make its demands known. And the Chiquitanos participated in this.
"The Chiquitano people have consolidated their territory, and have gone from being excluded by the state to being recognized by it. Now the local authorities treat them equally. There is still some discrimination, but now indigenous people occupy local positions of power. Never before were there indigenous mayors; now there are. There are senators, representatives in the constitutional assembly, and congressional representatives. It's not enough, but there has been some progress. For example, in the constitutional assembly there are four indigenous members, two of whom are Chiquitanos. There is more work to be done, but now the lowland indigenous people are represented. That, along with the consolidation of their territory, gives them more security; they can access more local power and exercise their rights.
"In 1889, indigenous people from all over the country were taken to work on rubber plantations. The Tacana Indians were taken from north of La Paz to the rubber forests. And here in Santa Cruz the indigenous people were captured and taken. They tell stories of how they'd be invited to big parties, where they'd be given alcohol and told that they should go work the rubber, that there was a boom and that they'd be paid well. Some accepted and went. Others went as indentured workers. On their way to the barracks they weren't given anything to eat, some even died in jaguar attacks.
"Men and women worked there, some as young as 12. They tell stories of how they were forced into couples to have children to satisfy the need for workers. They were given one piece of clothing to use year round and they worked all day long. If they didn't come back with what the boss had ordered they would be whipped by the foreman. Many died trying to escape. There is one place everyone calls 'the tragedy,' because an entire family of indigenous people who attempted to escape was killed there.
"After the rubber boom in the late 19th and early 20th century, the estates, known as haciendas, became the new development model in the country. But they were very traditional, feudal style haciendas, where everyone worked for the owner. They produced sugar cane and yucca, which was taken from the communities and sent to Santa Cruz to be sold on the national market. Indigenous people worked 15-, 16-hour days, they were whipped, and there was forced labor. There was also indentured servitude in which you were hired and your basic needs were provided for. They gave you clothes and you could have dried meat, lard, and salt. They wrote down in a book everything you took and at the end of the year the owner balanced the books. Many couldn't read or write, but they were told, for example, 'your work has earned you 100 pesos, but you spent 200 pesos at the company store and so you owe me 100 pesos.' So they'd have to stay and work another year for free—you'd never work off your debts.
"When the Agrarian Reform Law was passed in 1953, stating that land belonged to the people who worked on it, there was an article of the law that was very important to the indigenous people: It prohibited forced labor and slavery. In the western highlands the indigenous people took over the haciendas and the law was applied quickly. But in the eastern lowlands it was a long time before the law was applied. It wasn't until 1965 that people started leaving the haciendas and some owners refused to let the workers go saying that they were indebted to them. So the government had to intervene and it wasn't until nearly 1970 that they were able to form new communities and assert their identity."
]]>Charupá does not seem particularly worried, as he is used to the uncertainties of raising cattle. Moreover, he is confident about the long-term prospects of his community: in June of 2007, the president of Bolivia announced that the Chiquitano people had successfully completed all legal requirements to attain title to a vast area of Santa Cruz's eastern forest known as Monte Verde.
The indigenous people took advantage of an agrarian reform law passed in 1996 that allowed them to claim "original community territories" known by their Spanish initials as TCOs. The Monte Verde TCO has immense significance for the Chiquitano people. Their ancestors were moved out of Monte Verde in the 1700s by the Spanish and relocated to communities run by Jesuit priests. Chiquitanos were enslaved on haciendas and eventually forced to tap rubber trees in the early 20th century. The area near Charupá's village is part of San Antonio de Lomerío, a place of refuge for escaped slaves. Their descendents organized groups to work on the legal claim for their territory, while illegal logging decimated their forests.
It took more than a decade of hard work and sustained Oxfam support for the Chiquitano people to achieve their goal. Oxfam helped three local organizations, in Lomerío, San Javier, and the village of Monte Verde to coordinate their work and collaborate with the Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (known by its Spanish initials CEJIS) to get the technical training to gather satellite positioning data on the TCO borders and investigate 158 land claims by ranchers and other nonindigenous people trying to grab a piece of the territory. Only a small number of these claims were legitimate, and it was only through the legal support, technical data, and satellite photos gathered by the community members and CEJIS that the Chiquitanos could defend their claim from these interlopers, some of whom were using forged documents.
Violence has been a continuous threat to the Chiquitano people for the last 200 years. Individuals forced into slavery were murdered if they tried to escape, and later when the ancestors of escaped slaves in Lomerío organized to win back their territory, their leaders were intimidated and attacked. "We heard of incidents in other communities where entire families had been pulled out of their houses and hung by their wrists under trees," Juan Soqueré, leader of the indigenous Chiquitano community in San Lorenzo said.
Opposition to the land investigations and the legal process from civic committees, representing nonindigenous business and ranching interests opposed to the indigenous people, became violent. When the land investigations exposed fraudulent claims, there was a strong reaction. One of the worst incidents involved Leonardo Tamburini, now 41 and the director of CEJIS. In 2001 while investigating one fraudulent claim, he was kidnapped.
"They beat me so badly they almost killed me," Tamburini said. "They put me in a pick-up truck, and took me to the Cattlemen's Association headquarters in San Javier—which is next door to the church. They had me there for about an hour. There was a cattlemen's congress going on, and they paraded me around the patio of the restaurant, all beat up and bloody, saying 'This is what we do to the people who want to take our land away from us.'"
Tamburini refused to sign a document recognizing the cattlemen's claim to half the territory of Monte Verde, and after the mayor of San Javier intervened he was released. "They didn't accomplish what they wanted," he said.
Juan Soqueré said that gaining the legal title to Monte Verde has brought peace for the Chiquitano. "There are no more threats. And those that threatened us before have left the territory, and now we are all calm, living in peace."
There are 33 communities, comprising roughly 5,000 people living in or near the Monte Verde TCO. They are now looking to the future and envisioning the best ways to manage and enjoy the roughly 3,830 square-mile territory.
Lorenzo Charupá says such planning will be essential for the future. "We are deciding together what areas are for crops," he says. "We are setting aside areas for grazing, hunting, and to preserve trees. We have a map showing all the different areas and what we will do there. Everything has its place."
José Luis Rivera, president of the indigenous organization of San Javier, says they have several ways of making more money:
With the legal title in hand, the community has the confidence to make proposals to development organizations that might have otherwise been reluctant to support agricultural projects on lands the community did not legally own. "These institutions will have no doubt we can do these projects on our own land," Rivera says. "We have the right to our land and can respect our culture."
Outside Rivera's temporary office, his compañeros are building a new office to replace the one burned down by thugs last December. The walls are up, and the smell of sawdust mixes with the wood smoke and cooking scents from a nearby restaurant. Pablo Solis Chuviru, 57, is looking at the new building and reflecting on the struggle to gain the legal title to Monte Verde and what it means for the future for his small village, Turuxnapez, which means "Heaven's Door" in the local Bésiro language. "I hope we can hunt and fish, and use our trees in an orderly way," he says, resting in a chair in the winter sun. "Now we are using a forest management plan so that our children will benefit from the forest. This is the future for them; they can see the fight we won. For them it is a treasure."
]]>The water running through the northeast highlands of Cambodia was brown and muddy, but she was hot and needed to cool off. Later that night, Ranh woke up scratching at a rash on her hands and legs. Several months pregnant with her second child, she traveled hours by motorbike to find a medical clinic.
Weeks later, her scabs still covered in purple ointment, Ranh said she was worried her skin condition might hurt her baby. But, like so many others living downstream from the Yali Falls dam who reported rashes, stomach illnesses, and diarrhea since the dam's construction, she feels like there's no alternative to using the river to bathe and drink.
"I don't have a well at home," she said. "Even if the water looks dirty, I have to wash."
Built upstream in Vietnam and Laos, hydropower dams are rising up on the Sesan, Sekong, and Srepok Rivers that flow through Cambodia's northeast provinces, Ratanakiri and Stung Treng. Dams, such as the Yali Falls, have changed the water quality, killed whole species of fish, flooded villages, and wiped out large fields of rice.
These problems are compounded by what's happening in the nearby forests. There, armed guards stand in the thicket, threatening to arrest anyone who enters. The guards hack ax-cuts into the tree trunks, marking off ancestral land the government has sold to the highest bidder—usually a foreign company looking to start a lucrative plantation. The forests have traditionally served as a safety net for the indigenous people, providing a source of income during the "lean months" when the fish aren't spawning and the rice is too young to harvest. But when the government sells off the land, the safety net goes with it.
These dangerous circumstances threaten the very existence of the more than 66,000 people who live in these remote hills. What's worse, the indigenous people here lack any real political power. Many feel marginalized by the mainstream Khmer, who dominate the government and still associate the rural minorities with the genocide of the 1970s, which began as an agrarian revolution.
"The people here, they feel very isolated. They feel like no one from the outside will come to help them," said Kim Sangha, coordinator of the 3 S Rivers Protection Network (3SPN), an Oxfam America partner.
As the scorching sun sets on the Sesan River, the people of Taveng Lou village get to work. Men take out their fishing boats and pull in their nets. Women fill their watering cans and irrigate their gardens and rice paddies. Families wade into the shallows, bathing and collecting water for household use.
Vietnam's Yali Falls dam disrupts this daily routine. Since it became operational in 2001, the Cambodians living downstream have noticed dramatic changes. Unexpected water surges have eroded the shoreline, depositing silt, sand, and rocks in the deep pools where fish live. And the fluctuating water levels have either swept away nets or left them high and dry.
All in all, villagers here say they've seen a 70 percent drop-off in their fish catch.
"Before, you used to be able to put a pot on the fire, walk down to the river, and catch some fish—all before the water boiled," said Em Vuthy, deputy governor of Taveng District. "Now you can spend a whole day and get one fish."
Beyond reducing the number of fish, the dam has altered the way people farm along the Sesan River. Traditionally, the villagers depended on the overflow of the river to water their plants and rice during the wet season. During the dry season, they would plant different crops that could handle the heat and scarcity of water. But now people like Mean Trosh, a mother of seven who grows cabbage, watercress, pumpkins, red chilies, eggplants, and rice along the water, can't plan around the seasons; the dam creates unexpected floods. Trosh says she tries to plant on higher ground, but even those gardens and rice paddies have been destroyed.
"When the water level changes, it rises quickly and goes down quickly," she said. "Last year, I tried to grow rice along the river, but it was damaged by the floods."
According to the villagers and Oxfam partners, the Yali Falls dam was built with no formal assessment of the environmental and social impacts downstream in Cambodia. And right now, more than a dozen dam projects like it are already in the works along the "3 S Rivers"—the Sesan, Srepok, and Sekong—that flow from the central highlands of Vietnam and southern Laos downstream to the northeast provinces of Cambodia.
Last August, a huge flood along the Srepok River inundated at least 15 villages in Stung Treng and Ratanakiri. More than 650 families were affected. Months later, sitting on the wooden floor of their village pagoda under a cascade of prayer flags, Dae Low villagers shouted over each other as they recalled what happened.
Villagers reported hearing a bulletin on the radio that one of the dams under construction would be releasing water for a few days. But by the time the bulletin aired, the Srepok was already rising. Many of the villagers didn't have access to radios. Those who did, lost time warning family and friends. When they returned home, their chickens, pigs, and water buffalo had drowned. Their vegetables had been washed away. More than 1,300 rice fields were destroyed—an entire year's harvest.
"We are very worried about the future," said the village chief, Prom Phally. "We don't know how to prepare for these floods."
The people of Cambodia's northeast highlands depend primarily on fishing and farming to make a living. But they have always looked to their forests as sacred places. They supplement their income by collecting local plants there and gather herbs for traditional medicines. During the dry season, when the green grass turns to yellow straw, they let their livestock wander into the woods for food and water.
At 67, Seth Gnal makes the three-mile trek to the woods near the Srepok River every three days. Together with family members, he collects tree resin to repair and maintain his fishing boats. He uses what's left to fuel the torches that illuminate his home in Kbal Romeas village.
Gnal feels threatened by his new neighbors: foreign-funded, Cambodian-fronted land concessionaires. These are the companies that make use of Cambodia's weak land titling laws to buy up what indigenous people consider their land. Even before these companies clear the land to plant single crops like teak—a hardwood requiring at least a decade to mature before it can be logged—they pay armed guards to prevent the local people from coming through.
"Before, the indigenous people in the village always went to the forests to gather vines, resin, rattan, and honey to sell," said Kim Deung, another villager. "Now, if we go into the forest, the guards will catch and arrest us. We're afraid to go in."
According to locals, the plantation owners have promised to give them work. But it's usually people from the larger towns who get hired. And even then, the pay is poor: less than $2 a day.
At the same time, the concessions often encroach on land the indigenous people use to grow rice. This situation forces them to remain on the few parcels of land they already occupy. For farmers and fishers who typically move every 15 years to allow the soil to regenerate, it threatens the farmers' ability to feed their families. Many people end up producing so little that they must sell the rice they grow and borrow the rice they eat.
"The Forest Administration tells us we can't clear some of the forest for more rice fields, yet the concessionaires are permitted to clear the forest and sell the trees," Gnal said.
To make matters worse, the land concession sales slowly strip the local people of their culture. As Estela Estoria, a program officer in Oxfam America's East Asia office explained, the 15-year interval of farming is so engrained in the highlanders' way of life that they use the Khmer word for these farms—chamka—to measure the ages of their friends and family members. A 15-year-old is one chamka. A 30-year-old, two.
"The indigenous people don't know why this is happening to them," Estoria said. Animists and Buddhists, "they feel like God or their ancestors are angry with them."
The work of Oxfam's partners begins here, teaching the local people about the outside forces impinging on their lifestyle and working with them to advocate on their own behalf.
Local o rganizations like 3SPN, the Culture-Environment Preservation Association, and the NGO Forum on Cambodia encourage the highlanders to use their indigenous knowledge to keep written records about the changes in their environment. The records describe which species of fish are dying off, how quickly the water is rising or falling, and which plants have been eliminated by the clearing of the trees. Then the partners train members of the communities to form local networks. Through these networks, the network leaders, called "focal people," teach the villagers to consolidate their research, write petitions to land concession companies, and even speak out at stakeholder meetings of dam developers and governments.
As a result of this work, officials of Electricity of Vietnam, the agency behind the hydropower dams in that country, met to discuss the environmental and social impacts on the Srepok River basin this past January. It was the first time in more than a decade that the Cambodian indigenous people affected by these projects could speak directly with the Vietnamese government, the Cambodian government, and the donors funding the construction.
The indigenous people used the opportunity to ask for compensation for their lost livelihoods, fishing boats, and equipment. They asked for a share of the benefits of the dam, such as electricity transmission lines for their community. And they asked that no new dams be constructed without their consultation.
According to news accounts, the Vietnamese government agreed to "implement dam projects with bilateral agreements, follow international treaties, look to having the citizens of Vietnam and Cambodia gain income," and reduce environmental impact. The Cambodian government said it would work on reducing the impact of the dams on local people and the environment.
Having accomplished this much already, Oxfam's Cambodian partners hope to increase the participation of indigenous people in dam projects and land concession disbursements. It's a slow path to success, but in a country working to overcome so much, the progress is historic.
"It was amazing to realize that the ministries were all raising the same issues as the local authorities and villagers. Everyone was just waiting for a legitimate platform to speak out," said Sangha of 3SPN. "Now we need to follow up with the national governments to make sure they come through on their promises. That's the biggest challenge."
With additional reporting by Brett Eloff.
]]>She was also furious. "This should not happen to us," she said later, referring to the residents of her village of Teberebie, which had been relocated to accommodate a new mining operation in the area. "What did we do wrong?"
Mr. Baidoo had been walking away from a confrontation between farmers and a military force when he was wounded. The protest arose after the military began blocking a road the farmers used to travel to their fields where they grow cocoa and palm trees, yams, cassava, and other fruits and vegetables. Having recently been denied this route through the mine property, and tired of the alternative—a longer, 12-mile round trip on foot—the entire town turned out in February 2006 to demand access to the road. Baidoo and one other man were shot, and several people were beaten.
Amoateng immediately called WACAM, the environmental and human rights organization partly funded by Oxfam that had trained her and others in the community. "I reported that Anthony had been shot, and was lying in his own blood," she said. After WACAM's director Daniel Owusu-Koranteng called the head of the AngloGold Ashanti mine company, Baidoo got the medical care he needed to survive at the company's expense. After recovering for eight months in the hospital he is now disabled.
Teberebie is a farming community in the Wassa West District of Ghana's Western Region. The community was resettled in 1991 to make room for the AngloGold Ashanti, Iduapriem Mine, which is now producing over 300,000 ounces of gold per year. It is just one of many scenes of violence over the last several years, as Ghana has thrown open its doors to foreign companies and relaxed its rules on investment to encourage more mining. The shootings in Teberebie were just two of 15 reported by the BBC in 2005 and 2006.
Amoateng is now a leader of the Concerned Farmers' Association of Teberebie, which consists of 35 farmers who have worked with WACAM to learn about their human rights under Ghana's constitution and Minerals and Mining Act. She is leading this group in a legal case against AngloGold, alleging non-payment of compensation for their lost farms, which are now buried under piles of waste rock.
Amoateng, 30, said she is now more aware of how the government and mining companies in the area are violating the rights of people in her community—and what to do about it. "Because of WACAM, I now know where to go and who to contact in case of any problem in the community," she said. Her recent activities have included leading a march to the nearby town of Tarkwa, where radio, television, and newspaper journalists interviewed her about the situation facing farmers in Teberebie.
In Ghana, as in many other countries in Africa and other parts of the world, women do not usually lead political struggles. Speaking out publicly is simply out of the question for most women in communities affected by mining in Ghana. Men are normally perceived as the voices of the community. But with the right training and personal ambition, women like Amoateng are showing they are strong leaders.
To more effectively represent her community, Amoateng is presently studying to finish high school and prepare for university. She aspires to be a lawyer and an advocate for women and children.
Her concerns center on basic justice for Teberebie. "The 1992 constitution and the Minerals and Mining Act are my closest friends now," Amoateng said. "I don't want the mining company to cheat my community. And I know my rights as a citizen living in a mining community."
Amoateng's work is a good example of how WACAM uses education as a tool to empower mining communities in their struggle to improve their living conditions. Her training with WACAM has strengthened her community as well as her own ability to represent her neighbors. "This has made me very powerful in the sight of both the mining company, and the men in my community," she said. "I am proud of myself."
Jerry Mensah-Pah is a radio and newspaper journalist based in Tarkwa, Ghana, and has been covering human rights violations related to communities affected by mining for four years. He works for WACAM in the Western Region of Ghana as its assistant programs officer.
]]>In 1996 he and about 25,000 others from several villages were informed they were being evicted from their farms in Ghana's western rain forests to make room for a gold mine run by Gold Fields Ghana, Ltd. "I was not happy," Pelpuo said. "But at the end of the day I had to accept it because the government gave the land to the company. They are not treating us fairly, giving the land to the company without informing the community members."
Since the government of Ghana retains the rights to the minerals under his land, there was not much a farmer like Pelpuo could do—or so he thought. He, along with others from several villages being moved to a new town called New Atuabo, attended a training program led by Oxfam America's partner WACAM, where they learned about their basic rights to own property. They realized that they had a right to negotiate compensation for their lost homes and lands. "Initially we had no knowledge, and we had to learn that what the company was doing was not right," Pelpuo said.
Gold Fields and government representatives did negotiate with community representatives, but the talks became difficult. One community representative was intimidated and eventually arrested for allegedly insulting representatives of the military and local chiefs supporting the mine's offer, according to Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, Executive Director of WACAM. After convincing him to publicly apologize to the chief, the company and its allies then got 95 percent of the relocated families to go along with the deal.
However, Pulpuo and about 125 others refused to accept the compensation offer, and took action themselves late in 1996. With the help of WACAM and the legal aid organization CEPIL, they began negotiating with Gold Fields, a company with mining operations in four countries that last year made a $69 million net profit with over 700,000 ounces of gold from their Ghana mine alone.
At the heart of the disagreement between the company and the group of farmers, which became known as the Lawyer's Group, was the so called "value for value" calculation used by the company to determine what size concrete house would replace existing homes, many made of mud with thatch roofs. "I had 12 rooms," said Agnes Ackon, 68, a mother of five and grandmother of 12. "They were going to replace them with six."
"We learned the language of the court, and got paralegal training to understand our rights," Pelpuo said. "When we met with the company we did not entertain any fears, because we knew our rights. And out of this, the company could see what we were saying at first, and we started to get some of the things we need."
While they were negotiating, many of the Lawyer's Group members stayed in their existing homes as the mining activity moved in around them. One group of homes lost all their clean water as mine activity affected nearby streams, and all suffered from loss of income as their fields were converted to mining pits and waste rock dumps. Many were forced to pull their children out of school because they could no longer afford the fees.
The Lawyer's Group and Gold Fields struggled to come to agreement until Agnes Ackon came up with the solution in 2001: "I suggested that the hospital was now too far away since we moved, and we needed a clinic here now," she said. So in exchange for accepting a new house with fewer rooms and some cash, the Lawyer's Group secured a health clinic for New Atuabo.
"We had to sacrifice for it," Pelpuo said. It was particularly generous of the Lawyer's Group members as they had suffered already at the hands of the company and their neighbors, who had treated them as foolish renegades for disputing their compensation. Yet the Lawyer's Group thanked them by negotiating a public benefit the whole town could enjoy. They even got a commitment from the regional health authority to staff and supply the clinic after construction was completed.
Like many real-life stories, there is not yet a happy ending in New Atuabo. Although the town's neat concrete houses with metal roofs are now arranged on straight streets, they mask the problems of unemployment among the displaced farmers, many of whom are illiterate and unable to secure jobs at the mine.
The new housing comes with new costs, as well. As Pelpuo puts it, "Where we used to live we did not have to pay for water, but after resettlement all this cost is now on the community members. We have to pay for water, sanitation, and we have no jobs."
The members of the Lawyer's Group also suffered an insult when the new health clinic was officially commissioned in 2002. At a public ceremony, the health ministry and mine company took full credit for its construction, and failed to recognize that the money used to build it came out of the compensation fund negotiated from the relocated farmers in the Lawyer's Group.
Despite this indignity, the farmers did learn about and stand up for their rights—a real achievement. "There was lots of intimidation" said Owusu-Koranteng of WACAM. "But they persisted, and it led to a better settlement for the entire community."
]]>"We are disappointed that the IFC has decided to fund the second phase of the Camisea project. We believe the board of directors should have requested a delay of the vote in order to more fully assess the environmental and social impact this project will have on local communities," said Ian Gary, Oxfam America's Senior Policy Advisor for Extractive Industries and a member of the World Bank’s Extractive Industries Advisory Group.
The region surrounding the Camisea project is home to indigenous communities, notable biodiversity, national parks, and reserves. Communities in the Lower Urubamba area were particularly neglected by the first phase of the project, with serious compensation agreement problems and little spending of royalties by local governments for increased social services. And these communities have not been fully consulted on the second phase.
"The IFC declined to participate in the first phase of the Camisea gas project, and, with support for Camisea II, runs the risk of being further tarnished for its financing of oil, gas and mining projects, such as the Chad-Cameroon oil project, with dubious development impacts," said Gary.
In April 2006, the IFC instituted new "Performance Standards" to manage social and environmental impacts and enhance development opportunities for all financed countries. The standards require that the company sponsor obtain "broad community support" for high-risk projects within affected communities.
"The IFC has greatly undermined its new environmental and social policies by not fully applying these standards to the gas fields in the Peruvian Amazon, which will supply the export facilities financed by the IFC and other lenders," said Gary. "The narrow parsing of this project, done in order to avoid addressing serious problems, sets a disturbing precedent and will do significant harm to the credibility of the IFC's social and environmental risk management."
"We have yet to see, for example, how the IFC demonstrates compliance with its 'Broad Community Support' requirement, within the narrowly-defined transportation/export portion of the project, let alone for the upstream gas fields that supply the project. 'Broad Community Support' is an important new feature of the 'Performance Standards,' but it is unclear how, or whether, the IFC ensures compliance," said Gary.
Now that the World Bank Group has decided to support the project, it must address serious failures, risks, and concerns still pending from the first phase of the project and from new gas development in the Amazon. These include:
A five-person review panel, which included the former State Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) leader, Qu Geping, selected the winners.
The competition, which had a water conservation theme, awarded $123,457 to 16 organizations and individuals in Beijing. It was the first time since the competition?s start six years ago that a theme was identified.
Twenty-two projects from a field of 200 proposals were chosen as finalists. Awards were made for tertiary students? activities, and the category in which Green Watershed won.
Ford Motor Company "has seen the important link between water resources conservation and China's efforts to achieve sustainable development and build a harmonious society," said Dr. Yu Xiaogang, founder and head of Green Watershed, when accepting the award.
"It's an honor as well as an incentive for us to continue public participation, good river basin management, and environmental equity."
It is the second time this year that Green Watershed has been recognized for its work in China. In March, Green Watershed was one of 10 winners in a contest sponsored by Beijing's Economic Observer and Shell, which recognized groups that designed outstanding sustainable development projects in China.
]]>She was writing her name in Chinese characters, painstakingly shaping each slope and spike, trying to remember what she learned in school.
She'd lived her 30 years in this remote village on a mountain with no official name. She was a picture of dignity in a place facing difficult times.
For generations the people on this mountain had cut and sold timber. Then, just a few years ago, the Chinese government banned logging to conserve trees.
It was an important decision for the environment, one that helped protect the watershed of Lashi Lake. But it eliminated some important interaction for the Yi people who live here. An ethnic minority who only met with the lowland Han people when they sold their timber, they risked being left behind.
To survive the logging ban, the Yi needed a plan.
Green Watershed, an Oxfam America partner, came up with one. After consulting with the villagers, they discovered potatoes could replace timber as a cash crop. And the women who formed the backbone of the community could learn to speak Mandarin and write Chinese characters so they could sell and trade the potatoes to the Han at the base of the mountain.
In May, I went to China, Cambodia, and Thailand to capture stories like these, illustrating Oxfam America's work in Asia. I had never been to the region before. Like so many in the West, I knew about the extreme poverty only from the media.
But suddenly there I was filling notebooks with the results of our work, watching village after village preserve their way of life using their own expertise:
Rice farmers in Cambodia finding a niche in the market, creating the first organic rice mill in the country. Burmese refugees studying law, risking their lives to document human rights abuses back home. Fishers living on the Tonle Sap lake measuring the impact of over-fishing and developments planned for their community.
I marveled at the dignity of these men and women. They just wanted what we all want: to make a decent a living and feed their families.
Some sought to do the work their families had done for generations, only to watch the developed world encroach on their waterways and flood plains. Some needed to diversify and adapt their way of life.
But for others, the plan was even more ambitious. Let's say these communities make enough to get by.
Then what?
Then, it turns out, Oxfam partners help them learn how to participate in development decisions. They diversify their work options and insist on better governance. They put money away and buy farm equipment, fishing boats, tuition for their kids. They build health clinics, schools, and courtyards for meetings, traditional dancing, and singing with family and friends.
In short, when poor people aren't so poor anymore, they can effectively plan for the future.
What I saw during my travels illustrated the vast range of work Oxfam and its partners do in the regions.
And surrounding it all are the many challenges—few resources, limited participation in decision-making, outside interference, droughts, floods.
But somewhere in between, the work gets done.
A woman writes her name. A village survives.
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