Bush meat
World Bank true to form in Amazon
This article from The Independent deserves to be reproduced in full. Notwithstanding the lack of an analysis of the World Bank’s agenda with regard to its “green” projects, the article sheds an important (if nauseating!) light on the state of the Amazon and its tragic future.
World Bank pledges to save trees… then helps cut down Amazon forest. A month ago it vowed to fight deforestation. Now research reveals it funds the rainforest’s biggest threat.
By Daniel Howden
Published: 13 January 2008
The World Bank has emerged as one of the key backers behind an explosion of cattle ranching in the Amazon, which new research has identified as the greatest threat to the survival of the rainforest.
Ranching has grown by half in the last three years, driven by new industrial slaughterhouses which are being constructed in the Amazon basin with the help of the World Bank. The revelation flies in the face of claims from the bank that it is funding efforts to halt deforestation and reduce the massive greenhouse gas emissions it causes.
Read the rest of this entry »
Invitation to Expedition in the Napo-Ucayali Corridor: June/July 2008
It is still early days of planning, but a small group of people are planning to travel, for the second time, down the Napo river – doing workshops relevant for indigenous peoples’ struggles, such as shamanic civil rights, and healing sessions in communities along the 1000km long and very exciting route from the beginning of the River Napo in Tena, Ecuador to Iquitos (where it meets the Amazon and the Ucayali rivers). The journey goes through one of the most biodiverse regions in the world – right past the Yasuni National Park, before crossing the border into Peru. After visiting The 4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference: Magic, Myths and Miracles, which will be held in Iquitos, Peru – July 19th – 26th, 2008, we might continue to Pucallpa….
Contemporary developments in the global economy are very significant for the Amazon rain forest. While this might be said to be true for anywhere at any point in time there are nevertheless good reasons for paying special attention to what maybe the last battle for the survival of the largest rain forest in the world, the loss of which it should need no further justification to lament – and that is the basis upon which this invitation is written….
Home Sweet Home: Reflections on the Amazon – Part One of ?
Seeking refuge in Europe, to breathe and to reflect, the long, light evenings and the friendliness of the forest (that is the absence of the eternal threat of creatures out to get you) have besieged our imaginations.
The loved ones, the long-time friendships and the new friends are the medium of reflection – telling stories, observing reactions and thinking about it all at a distance ….we get high on our own anecdotal supply with a little help from our friends.
War and Peace in Las Playas.
One of the first people I met in Tena – that was in July 2005 – is Carita. Carita is in her mid-forties and runs quite a successful stall on the local market. There isn’t much diversity laid out on the piles of boxes and trays that make up her puesto: mountains of plantain, oranges and yucca paint a green-brown-yellow picture, sometimes accentuated by some chilli and ginger, or the odd wild fruit and herb from the forest. There are many stalls offering exactly the same goods, and no one makes anything but cents from hawking these wares. Carita’s secret of success lies hidden in plastic buckets on melting ice, tucked away in a corner beneath some trays. Quartered carcasses of armadillos, legs and heads of guantas (a large rodent), chopped fish, monkey, peccary – a gruesome sight for European eyes unaccustomed to such raw mortality beyond plastic wrapping. Bush meat is semi-legal. Many wild animal species can still legally be hunted and eaten, just not sold. So Carita gets regularly into trouble with the local police, who confiscate her buckets and feast on the delicatessen themselves.
(M)eat the Bush.
I have no idea what is written about bush meat, only that some is, because when I reflected upon my experiences with illegal meat from the forest in the Amazon with my philosophy supervisor back in the also well rained (you may substitute reigned if you like, sorry?!) North West England, he made some references that gave it a name for me: bush meat.
That’s what we have on the plate in this blog entry: meat from the rain forest. The great thing about blogging and independent media in general is that although you have no idea what the canon states about a topic, theme or perennial problem you can just write on – no need to tilt and turn your imagination, persuade your reason and lullaby your critical faculties by reading what the rich, famous and CamOxHarYaMIT educated had to say and thereby wanted us to think about something. Open Mic, init!?!
colonos 