#environmental justice

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Armed Forces of the Americas Unite to Support Brazil’s Flood Victims

Service members of the Americas joined the Brazilian Armed Forces to support victims of the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, which left more than 160 people dead and more than 580,000 displaced. “Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are cooperating directly with Joint Operation Taquari 2,” the Social Communication Section of Operation Taquari 2, formed by members of the Brazilian Army, Navy, and Air Force in response to the crisis, told Diálogo.

“The first phase of the operation was an emergency phase to rescue people. Now we’re in a stabilization phase, with people trying to return to their homes,” Army General Tomás Miguel Miné Ribeiro Paiva, commander of the Brazilian Army (EB), said on EB’s YouTube Channel on May 21.

Continue reading.

[transangelic-lizards]

On the Individual

The individual is the creation of enlightenment-era Cartesian thinking and works for the purpose of mass subjugation under capital. The "Being" has much more in common with an ecosystem than with an individual, both composed of constituent parts (sentient and otherwise) and enmeshed in a complex web of social and biological interactions internally and externally.

[fulltimecatwitch]

As someone from Mexico I feel deeply obligated to let the US left know that Claudia Sheinbaum is neither of these things and while having a women rule the country for the first time is a historic achievement it is not the win you think it is

Edit: She condemned the violence of the on going war on Palestine but never pressured the mexican goverment to break ties with Israel and one of her proposals as a president is to give the military here ( that btw is trained by the Isr*eli army) more power

As the mayor of Mexico City she constantly used the riot police against protestors and allowed the use of tear gas ( which she later claimed wasn't true)

She calls herself a feminist but always refused to acknowledge the wave of violence Mexico faces against women ( 11 women dissapear every day in Mexico) She has also knowingly made men accused of SA part of her campaign team

She also supports "Tren Maya", a project that caused massive ecological devastation in the mayan jungle and facilitated military violence against indigenous communities

You don't live here, you don't know shit so please don't push this kind of narrative idolizing these people

this is not a win for us

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the U.S. Senate

Vote yes on Joseph Goffman for the Office of Air and Radiation at the EPA!

546 so far! Help us get to 1,000 signers!

The Senate is preparing to vote on the confirmation of Joseph Goffman as Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation of the Environmental Protection Agency. I urge you to vote YES. The EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation plays a critical role in protecting families and communities across our country from harmful air pollution, stabilizing our climate, and advancing environmental justice. Strong leadership is crucial to ensure the office can continue its vital mission. As a parent, I urge you to confirm Joseph Goffman, who has both the expert knowledge and a proven commitment to public health and the environment, to serve in this important role. Thank you for your time.

▶ Created on January 4 by Jess Craven

📱 Text SIGN PUVPRL to 50409

🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW JESSCRAVEN101 to 50409

[anniekoh]

sacrifice zones

Ryan Juskus (2023, Environmental Humanities)

Sacrifice Zones: A Genealogy and Analysis of an Environmental Justice Concept

I argue that the concept is a better way to theorize the places that disproportionately bear the environmental harms our economies produce than its alternatives, such as “fenceline communities” or “dumping grounds,” because of its potential as simultaneously a critical and a constructive concept with cultural and religious import. Sacrifice language is a site of contestation between competing logics and practices of life and death. As I will argue, so are sacrifice zones: they are sites of conflict between competing conceptions of sacrifice, love, and life. Exploring one entailment of this study, I conclude by offering an amendment to Rob Nixon’s influential theory of “slow violence”: “slow sacrifice,” a process in which the securing of one’s own life and satisfying one’s own desires produces death and harms that are disproportionately borne by other people and places.

[sustainable-solarpunk]

In any form of activism you are like a cell in your body. On its own, it can’t do much, but together, together real change can happen. You can only do so much. As long as you are using your voice and doing what you can, you’re doing enough. It’s our combined voices that make change, it’s community that makes change, it’s our love for other people that makes change. We can make change.

[makethiscoldworldbeautiful]

Hi, my name is Shelby! I wanted to introduce myself for anyone who’s similarly interested. The theme and title for this blog are taken from a Florence and the Machine lyric that took my breath away, and I wanted to write this out to explain why it fits so well with what I created this blog to be about.

“Oh, Patricia, you’ve always been my North Star,

but I have to tell you something:

I’m still afraid of the dark.

But you take my hand in your hand;

from you the flowers grow. And do you understand?

With every seed you sow, you make this cold world

Beautiful.”

Anyways, that song always puts tears in my eyes. I am an amateur artist with a deep love for the great outdoors, environmentalism, and plants in particular. I love to take artsy photos of landscapes and flowers, I’d like to share them here.

By looking with wonder at the tiny details of the world, I have really developed an appreciation for the sheer diversity of life on Earth, and I want to celebrate the littlest of things.

Climate change, corruption and pollution are creating a world that threatens every species, large and small. Even the tiny bugs and insignificant plants that we go through life not caring about have their place in the delicate balance of it all, and if we don’t care about (or don’t even notice) what we are losing, we will be lost too.

I believe there is a lot of hope, and there is a lot that we can still do, but it has to be done. I believe that there’s a lot about this modern world that needs improvement, and I think that starts with caring deeply for exactly where you are. I find the concept of walkable cities fascinating, I have really loved learning more about how invasive species influence areas, and I love hearing stories of success in regard to re-wilding.

I want to use this blog to share my connection with nature, both in my native Northern Californiaand wherever I travel. I think that developing a connection with the natural world is deeply inspiring, and I want to use my artistic hobbies to share that connection with others. I’m going to edit this pinned post as I go along and build this blog further, figure out what I really mean to say. Mostly, I just want to welcome anyone who feels the same.

We can all do a little to help, and I believe that caring deeply is the first step towards real solutions. 💚🌿

Recommendations/things I’ve read that got me on this path:

1. Walkable City by Jeff Speck

2. The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong

3. In Defense of Plants podcast hosted by Matt Candeias.

4. The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Amongst America’s Great White Sharks by Susan Casey

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

In Brazil’s Semi-Arid Region, Small Farmers Work Exhausted Lands, Hoping a New Government Will Revive the War on Desertification

Deforestation, erosion and overgrazing, compounded by government neglect and climate change, created a crisis. But Brazil’s new leaders have made land restoration a priority and are looking to the international community for funding.

Beyond the fence, rows and rows of lifeless coconut tree trunks stand like skeletal sentinels, their leafless forms stark against the horizon. These once-thriving giants, now mere sticks protruding from the earth, line the right side of a narrow gravel road. To the left, in a slightly lower expanse of terrain, hundreds more cling to life, their leaves dry and brittle, signaling an inevitable demise, the land itself in a state of terminal decline.

Manoel Joaquim dos Santos slowly dismounts his old motorbike, its noisy engine sputtering and belching smoke. He approaches a heavy gate, secured with a rudimentary wooden latch, and swings it open with weary familiarity.

In Brazil’s rural heartland, farmers usually welcome visitors with pride, eager to showcase their sprawling fields and flourishing crops. But on this sweltering January afternoon in the agro-village of Icó-Mandantes, Santos, 66, short and stern, with a mustache and bald pate, looks frustrated and discouraged.

Over the years, he has watched as climate change aggravated an historic drought, leaving the soil as dry as the coconut trees. The relentless sun of the semi-arid region in Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco has turned his skin a weathered shade of copper and etched deep lines into his face, each one a testament to the harsh realities of his life. His gaze sweeps over the dying plantation, a poignant reflection of his own fading hopes.

“Before, I’d harvest 35,000 coconuts each season,” Santos, an Indigenous Pipipã, recalls. “Today, my production is zero.”

Santos started planting coconut trees in the 1990s on land granted to him by the Brazilian government to compensate for the loss of his ancestral home, which was submerged by an artificial lake created to power a hydroelectric plant. All of his production was sold to a processing industry established in the region. In the early 2000s, his family’s income was equivalent to 336,000 Brazilian reals (BRL) per year ($67,000).

However, the irrigation system installed by the government, which had enabled him to produce and sell so many coconuts, also contributed to the degradation of his land due to excess salt.

Now, all around this region, the soil is turning into a desert. 

The problem is not new. Three decades ago, the United Nations was so worried about the degradation of fertile lands around the world that it created a permanent forum to discuss how to slow down the process. The forum, called the Convention to Combat Desertification, has held 15 “Conferences of the Parties” (COPs) since 1994. In 1999, the COP took place in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, the state where Santos lives. The city was selected because the region was already the most threatened by land degradation and climate change in the country. 

At that time, surveys by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) indicated that the areas in the process of desertification, in different degrees of intensity, added up to a surface corresponding to 22 percent of the total area of the Brazilian Semiarid Region.

Continue reading.

[wachinyeya]

A large funding campaign aims to address historical inequities in investment into the High Line Canal’s northeast regions, running through Aurora and Green Valley Ranch.

[worldriversday]

Boost biodiversity and empower Indigenous Peoples to defend the lands they’ve relied on for generations.

A river snakes through the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today that it’s permanently protecting some 13 million acres (about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) of wildlands in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) and also finalized a rule that could help safeguard even more of it. Critically, the government intends for the new Special Areas Rule to serve as a pathway for the Indigenous communities who depend on the region’s natural resources to protect their subsistence rights and cultural traditions.

As the impacts of global warming and oil and gas development radically reshape the landscape and lives of the communities and wild denizens of the Far North, these actions offer a chance to slow the pace of change.

“Our lands and waters are a beautiful place on the horizon, and we have the bounty of renewal for every continent for our birds,” says Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, executive director of Grandmothers Growing Goodness, an environmental justice group dedicated to protecting Inupiat culture. Future generations need to rely on these places too, she adds, “as our elders showed us.” 

[str82theheartpls]

heat advisories and record breaking temperatures all over south florida. it's SO HOT and im hoping to help do something about it.

[veronbicellp]

Get Legal Support for Environmental Issues!

Get expert environmental legal support with Veron Bice, LLC. Our seasoned lawyers are dedicated to safeguarding nature's rights and advocating for environmental justice. With our tailored services, you can navigate environmental complexities confidently. Connect with us today!

[aquariumfaguncle]

reading about environmentalism truly makes me understand people who are willing to dedicate their whole life to a cause bc this shit is DIRE. like maybe I read too many dystopian novels but we are going to die if we don't do something I'm losing my shit

[sustainable-solarpunk]

I think people forget in the strive to be carbon neutral, that being carbon negative is possible. Bhutan, Suriname, and Panama are all considered to be carbon negative.

We need to become carbon neutral, but we don’t have to stop there.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Yale Environment 360:

Increasingly, businesses are writing off their carbon emissions by funding the conservation of forests. A new report finds that while such schemes have made “limited” progress in curbing deforestation, they have largely failed to alleviate poverty in forest communities.

“We are too late on in the game to use win-win narratives,” said Daniela Kleinschmit of Freiburg University, a lead author of the report.

Published by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations and presented this week at a U.N. meeting on forest loss, the report looked at both carbon offset programs and programs that certify goods as not contributing to deforestation. It found that such schemes frequently operate at the expense of forest dwellers.

Forest communities often see no income from offset schemes and are sometimes forcibly evicted from their lands in the name of protecting forests, the report said. A recent investigation by Human Rights Watch detailed how Indigenous people in Cambodia’s Cardamon Mountains were violently ejected from their homes for an offset program.

The new report also found that programs aimed at cleaning up supply chains, such as an EU ban on chocolate linked to deforestation, often prove ineffective and can sometimes lead to small farmers being pushed off their lands.

To benefit forest dwellers, authors call for greater investment in community-led projects. Yale E360 recently reported one one such offset project spearheaded by tribes in the Solomon Islands. The scheme has preserved vital rainforest while generating income that villagers are using to build toilets and solar panels, and pay for school fees.