Worker cuts cane in a burned field in western Nicaragua.  Photo: Mike Elliott.

[The Nicaragua Network has received this important alert from the New Haven-Leon Sister City Project. We urge you to take action!]

Urgent: Add Your Voice….Support 700 Workers, Community members
in Chinendega and Leon, Nicaragua

Many workers and community members have been organizing for years to trying to get fair treatment from Nicaragua Sugar Estates (NSEL), a large sugar producer in the states of Chinendega and Leon in northwest Nicaragua, where many of them work or have worked until they became too sick. In March, they filed a complaint with the IFC/World Bank for a $55 million dollar loan made to NSEL in 2006 and are trying to get the IFC/World Bank to apply its own environmental and labor standards to the loan – and to NSEL.

You can support their struggle AND increase IFC/World Bank accountability.
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Tropical storm Alma smashed into Nicaragua on May 28 but caused less damage than feared. The first named storm of the Pacific hurricane season made landfall in the departments of Leon and Chinandega but caused floods and landslides from Costa Rica to Guatemala. For several hours Thursday, Alma was a category one hurricane with winds higher than 80 miles per hour according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Officially two people were killed by fallen electrical wires but media reports indicate a third person may have died and another missing after their car was swept away in a swollen stream.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 1, 2008
CONTACT:
Kris Genovese 202‐742‐5831
Victims of Biofuel: Nicaraguan Communities Affected by IFC‐Funded Ethanol Plant File Complaint

Washington, D.C.—Over 700 community members and ex‐sugarcane workers from the Pacific coast of Nicaragua filed a complaint yesterday with the International Finance Corporation for injuries to their health and environment caused by the operations of Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited (NSEL). NSEL received a $55 million loan from the IFC in 2006 to increase its sugarcane production and to fund the construction of an ethanol plant. The complaint to the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, the mechanism established to hold the IFC accountable to communities for violations of environmental and social standards, presents evidence that NSEL activities violated these standards.

Much of the sugarcane produced by this project, like an increasing percentage of the one hundred fortyfive million tons of sugar produced each year worldwide, will be used for biofuels. Although the benefits of using biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels are touted, the costs to its use are often significant and overlooked. Sugarcane production for biofuel use, for example, can exact a high toll on the environment and the people who work to produce it. The community complaint details these costs in the Nicaragua project.

The towns of Chichigalpa, Goyena, and Abangasca, in Nicaragua, are surrounded by thousands of hectares of sugarcane. Members of the communities are experiencing respiratory problems caused by the clouds of smoke and ash created when the sugarcane fields are burned prior to harvest. Moreover, many community members believe that the chemicals applied by the company to the sugarcane are the cause of the epidemic of chronic renal insufficiency in the region, prevalent among those who work in NSEL’s fields. The communities also worry that use of significant volumes of water to process the sugarcane will dry up their rivers, threatening their water supply.

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Fight climate change! Help Nicaragua recover from floods!

Give a gift of trees, a wood-saving stove, or a cistern for rainwater in Nicaragua’s rural north!

Nicaragua has been devastated by the winds and water of Hurricane Felix and the floods caused by two tropical depressions this season. The damage was aggravated by existing environmental damage to forests and watersheds. Attempting to redress this damage and prevent future disasters, the Federation for the Integral Development of Peasant Farmers (FEDICAMP) continues its “Let the Rivers Run” Campaign, a comprehensive plan for the intelligent management of water and the re-greening of Nicaragua’s watersheds.

You can help Nicaragua recover from the recent floods!

Over one million trees planted!

In 2002-2004, FEDICAMP planted 1.2 million trees in three departments (Nueva Segovia, Madriz, and Esteli) and they are in the process of planting 250,000 more. They have also enabled the natural regeneration of forests on more than 1,500 acres of land.

Click here to read more!

Nicaragua’s environment is of hemispheric and world importance in comparison to Central America’s “green” countries such as Costa Rica and Belize, Nicaragua is known more for its history of political conflict than for its natural riches. Yet the popular images are deceiving. Given its intact expanses of tropical rainforest, diverse coastal and marine habitats, and large mineral and oil deposits, Nicaragua stands out as holding both the greatest share of Central America’s natural resources and excellent potential for sustainable development. (more…)

Links to Environmental Information

Eco-Portal - the EnvironmentalSustainability.Info Source - A web portal dedicated exclusively to global environmental sustainability. The site tracks the latest environmental news stories which are updated several times daily.

Environmental Treaties - Here you can access the environmental treaties that are in force in Nicaragua.

HIID Brings ‘Carbon Markets’ to Mayagna Peoples in Nicaragua Will companies that emit large amounts of carbon (in the form of CO2) into the atmosphere really pay for conservation elsewhere as compensation for their polluting ways?

Miskito Indian (Nicaragua) Links

Languages of Nicaragua

Earth Island Institute: Project Directory - A list of conservation projects from all over.Cafe Campesino Fair Trade Coffee Get your fair trade coffee here.

Sí a la Vida - Serving street kids in Nicaragua.

This new book by geographer Gerald (”Jerry”) Riverstone explores the political ecology of indigenous land rights struggles in Caribbean Nicaragua.

The Rama Indians and Afrocaribbean Creoles inhabit southeastern Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and islands, and one of the largest intact rainforests remaining in all of Central America. Despite the region’s designation as an International Biosphere Reserve, it is currently being affected by colonization and deforestation along Nicaragua’s advancing agricultural frontier, and is further threatened by tourism development and proposed oil pipeline, railway, and road-building projects.

Living in the Land of Our Ancestors covers ample ground, from the prehistory, history, and culture of Caribbean Nicaragua and its indigenous peoples to the present-day struggle by the Rama and Creoles to obtain the legal recognition of their ancestral land rights.
 

The book documents the current threats to Rama Territory, and describes the Rama and Creoles’ efforts to organize, build alliances, and resist these threats. The results of a participatory mapping project are also presented, providing a detailed overview of current land and natural resource use by the Rama and Creoles and zones of conflicts with outsiders. The book includes a chapter on Nicaragua’s new Indigenous Land Demarcation Law, and concludes with recommendations on how to proceed with indigenous land demarcation in Nicaragua.

A central message of the book is that indigenous land rights and tropical forest conservation are inseparable issues in Nicaragua, and that urgent action is needed to safeguard the country’s cultural and biological diversity.

The book is richly illustrated with full-color photographs, maps, and satellite images, and includes many quotes from Rama and Creole community leaders and elders.

The book costs $25 per copy, including shipping. Fifty percent of profits from the book’s sale will be donated to the Rama Territorial Government to assist in their land demarcation efforts.

To order, contact the Nicaragua Network, by emailing Kathy@afgj.org or by calling 202-544-9355. Or send a check for $25 to Nicaragua Network, 1247 “E” Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003, with “Rama Book” in the memo line.

A plan for the intelligent management of water and the re-greening of Nicaragua ’s watersheds

In this action plan, please find:
1) Introduction to the deforestation and water crises in the Global South
2) Outline of the project to address these crises in five departments in Nicaragua
3) What you and your local committee can do to help!

2006-7

1) Introduction to the deforestation and water crises in the Global South

Water is the very fount of all life; forests are its essential counterpart. Yet, all over the planet, rivers are dying, water-tables are falling, lakes are being contaminated, forests torn down. As always, it’s the peoples of the Global South who pay the heaviest price for the northern countries’ unsustainable lifestyle. And no southern country pays more heavily than Nicaragua , much of which is fast becoming a desert, threaded through with dying rivers and wrack-thin cattle. (more…)

“Let the Rivers Run!” Tour Visits Seven States:
A Better World is Possible
By Barbara Larcom

[Barbara Larcom is a member of the Nicaragua Network Executive Committee and coordinator of Casa Baltimore Limay.]

One million two hundred thousand trees. Wow! That’s the number of trees planted in one northern Nicaragua region in two years, by a federation of local farmer groups. In late April, I was privileged to accompany Elvin Castellon on a Nicaragua Network national speaking tour as he described the work of his organization, FEDICAMP (Federation for Integral Development of Peasant Farmers). They’re doing important work that deserves our ongoing solidarity. (more…)

The pillage Peter Tsokos is perpetrating in the Pearl Cays, 18 spectacular islands off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, is devastating to the indigenous communities of the Pearl Lagoon Basin and abhorrent to their supporters in the United States. The ancestors of the local indigenous people have frequented the Pearl Cays for centuries as a source of fresh water, fish, coconuts, and safe haven during storms. However, over the last few years, foreign “owners” have taken over seven of the islands and blocked local people from using them. In addition, the intruders are destroying wildlife and obstructing the protection of the islands’ endangered turtles. (more…)