By Chris Lang On 27 July 2020, Savraj Gata-Aura was sentenced to four years in prison for his part in the Bar Works investment scam. More than 800 investors handed over more than US$40 million supposedly as investments in the Bar Works co-working space company. Gata-Aura co-founded Bar Works in 2015 with serial scammer Renwick…
Kenya Forest Service evicts 300 Ogiek families from their homes in the Mau Forest. Despite the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights 2017 ruling that the Ogiek should not be evicted
By Chris Lang In May 2017, the Ogiek Indigenous People won an important land rights victory at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The Court ruled that the Ogiek have the right to live in the Mau Forest and that the government of Kenya was wrong to evict them. At the end of…
Forced evictions in the name of conservation: 28 Sengwer homes burned in Kenya
By Chris Lang On 11 May 2020, Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Fred Matiangi’i, issued a moratorium on forced evictions during the coronavirus pandemic. He made the announcement on national television. On 10 July 2020, Kenya Forest Service guards burned down 28 homes belonging to Sengwer Indigenous People in…
REDD notes: 13 July 2020
By Chris Lang This week’s REDD notes. Follow @reddmonitor on Twitter for more links to news about forests, the climate crisis, natural climate solutions, the oil industry, greenwash, carbon offsetting, etc.
Blood REDD: How Chile’s brutal repression of Indigenous Peoples and the plantation industry’s land grab under the Pinochet dictatorship are to be rewarded by the World Bank
By Chris Lang Two companies, Forestal Mininco SpA and Forestal Arauco S.A., together have almost two million hectares of industrial tree plantations in Chile. The companies grabbed most of the land for the plantations during the dictatorship of Augustus Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.