What is the Small Grants Fund?
Current Projects
WHAT
IS THE SMALL GRANTS FUND?
Over the last 15 years, the RIC Small Grants Fund (RSGF) has disbursed approximately
US$600,000. Funding for this program is raised through proceeds from
John Seed and Ruth Rosenhek's rainforest roadshows
and deep ecology workshops plus grants from private funders and various
foundations.
Much of this money is disbursed as "grantor of last resort", a few
hundred to a few thousand dollars at a time to prime the pump for important,
frontline projects in scores of countries which would have difficulty in finding
funding from conventional sources.
RSGF is also a source for money which can be granted almost immediately for
emergency uses which rule out most other funding bodies because of their lengthy
funding cycles.
The Rainforest Information Centre has been a central link in the radical environmental
movement since 1979 and has built up an incomparable network of contacts and
friendships who feed us information on projects where a small amount of money
may make a big difference or where money is needed urgently or immediately
and can't wait for normal red tape and funding cycles.
DONATIONS TO RSGF ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE IN AUSTRALIA,
USA, and UK
RAINFOREST
INFORMATION CENTRE’S SMALL GRANTS FUND
SOME CURRENT PROJECTS BEING FUNDED - 2016
The Rainforest Information Centre has just received a wonderful offer from Paul and Michelle Gilding: they will match $ for $ (up to A$10,000) whatever funds we can raise for the following 5 projects:
1 Supporting the Sarayaku community in the Ecuadorean Amazon in their struggle against incursion by the oil industry
2 Western Ghats Rainforest Protection, Kerala, India, the crown jewel of India’s biota
3 Goongerah Environment Centre Office (GECO), Victoria, Australia. Keeping up the proud tradition of Aussie forest activism
4 WOLF Forest Protection Movement, Slovakia protecting forests and wildlife
5 Protecting Singharaja rainforest, Sri Lanka , the country's last viable area of primary tropical rainforest
Paul & Michelle wrote: “Have long been a fan of your work, as a great representative of radical grass roots environmentalism, but the particular reason for this donation was knowing how hard it is for grass roots groups to get fast money when needed. So your "small grants fund" which has been funding environmental activists and campaigns around the world for decades was very appealing."
The Rainforest Information Centre is honoured by their generosity, the more so because of our admiration for Paul’s work (35 years of environmental and peace activism, former executive director of Greenpeace International and author of the influential book “The Great Disruption”.)
So … please donate generously. Australian donations are tax deductible. US donations of over $200 wishing to claim tax deductibility may be made via our US partners the Earthways Foundation
PROJECTS WE HAVE FUNDED IN THE PAST
US$1000 Ecuador - Citizens Campaign for Health &
Against the Presence of Arsenic in Drinkable Water of Tumbaco - Report
August 2008
2008-2009
Financial Year July 1 to June 30
(All amounts are in $US)
AUSTRALIA
$5000 Tasmania’s
Southern Forests for protests in the Florentine Valley and to help defray
protesters legal expenses. Tasmania is the last state in Australia where virgin
rainforests are being logged. The Rainforest Information Centre has been involved
in stopping rainforest logging in Tasmania since 1984. http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/tasmania/tasmania.html
$500 to help to stop the
destruction of Alum Mountain near Bulahdelah on the mid NSW coast. The funding
was requested by local aboriginal elders to provide food and equipment for
protesters camped on the mountain blockading the RTA’s attempts to build
a freeway there.
$3000 to IJAN for their
court case to fight the expansion of Barrick Gold’s mine at Lake Cowal
and for ongoing legal expenses associated with court cases to protect Lake
Cowal and to protect the sacred Mountain at Buladelah from a highway bypass.
$1000 to the
Brisbane Aboriginal Rights Coalition (ARC) (a volunteer group made up of aboriginal
and non-aboriginal people) for assistance in hosting prominent Aboriginal
leaders and vocal opponents of the NT Intervention policies - for a March
09 speaking tour in the QLD and Northern NSW area. This is part of a national
campaign to repeal the Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation known
as the intervention and persuade the Rudd Government to instead create policies
that support and empower Aboriginal communities by acknowledging the sovereign
rights for the Traditional Custodians of Australia. http://aboriginalrightscoalition.wordpress.com/
BOLIVIA
$1000 to Amazon
Fund International working on the ground in Bolivia with indigenous peoples
to stop the exploration/exploitation of oil in one of the most biodiverse
areas on earth - Madidi National Park and Pilon Lajas Biosphere Reserve-Communal
Lands. See www.amazonfund.eu/art-oil-madidi.html
COLOMBIA
$2000 to Observatorio
Petrolero Sur (OPS) - Centro de Políticas Públicas para el Socialismo
(CEPPAS). Buenos Aires, Argentina. Recently the oil industry in Argentina
has been expanding at incredible rates. OPS watches over this oil activity,
focusing on Patagonia, and generates tools and materials to educate both civil
society in general as well as indigenous Mapuche communities in rural areas.
$1000 to the U’wa
people. They informed us that the Colombian Army is constructing two “mini-battalions”
on U’wa titled land, which the U’wa strongly oppose. A meeting
was held in April between the U’wa, the army and Ecopetrol and our funding
helped send eight people to help the U’wa prepare for the meeting (including
two lawyers specializing in defense of indigenous rights), collect information,
participate in the meeting with the army and Ecopetrol and strategize the
campaign for the rest of 2009.
CONGO
$2000 to AZUR
Development .This project builds on a previous project funded by The Rainforest
Information Centre on environmental education to protect the rainforest and
alternative income-generating activities for pygmies or indigenous people
in Congo in 2008. The project will continue to support the emergence of a
self help group of 14 indigenous families on the expansion of the making and
selling of traditional soap, and encourage agricultural work to reduce their
dependence on forest and bush-meat hunting in particular. This group will
serve as a model to replicate and scale-up the initiative to other pygmies
settlements. The project will also create the foundation for a program of
environmental education with young people aged 6 to 20 years in four pygmy
camps in the Lékoumou region to prepare the next generation on environmental
issues. http://www.azurdev.org/
ECUADOR
$1000 to CODECONO in Northwestern
Pichincha to prepare materials, train volunteers, and to develop and publicize
public events geared towards raising awareness of the issues and real impact
of large-scale mining in their region as well as funds to support their active
participation in the National Environmental Assembly (ANA) which is working
with the National Constitutional Assembly towards drafting environmental protection
into Ecuador's new Constitution.
$1600 Los Cedros.
The Rainforest Information Centre helped create the Los Cedros Biological
Reserve in the late ‘80’s with a grant from the Australian government
and a gift of 11,000 Ha from the Ecuadorian government. We have been involved
in supporting the reserve ever since. The present grant was to fund police
patrols to stave off invasion by land speculators eager to colonise and develop
Los Cedros. Working in coordination with the provincial environmental authorities
who suggested this tactic. We also raised another $2600 for this from other
partners. http://reservaloscedros.org/about/en/
$500 to Panacocha The
Rainforest Information Centre has been involved in the protection of the Panacocha
Lagoon in the Amazon headwaters for some 10 years. This grant matches the
same amount from the Earthways Foundation needed to put the Panacocha Foundation
onto a strong legal footing.
$3000 to El
Milagro which is a 35 ha. Intag Cloud forest reserve and demonstration model
of permaculture, agroforestry and sustainable lifestyle design. The El Milagro
project began in 2000 as an initiative of the Sloth Club, Japan and the Rainforest
Information Centre, Australia to work with the local community in demonstrating
and supporting sustainable development initiatives in order to protect the
surrounding cloud forest. www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/anja/milagro.htm
$1,000 to Accion
Ecologica to save the Yasuni National Park. The Rainforest Information has
been working with Accion Ecologica for over a decade to protect this area
from oil development www.rainforestinfo.org.au/ocp/welcome.htm This particular
grant is to join Pachamama Foundation and Amazon Watch in funding to bring
a group of children and teachers to Yasuni including inner city kids from
poor neighborhoods in Quito as well as children from Secoya and Huarani indigenous
communities to organize a series of short videos produced by a well known
Ecuadorian filmmaker to promote the need to protect Yasuni for future generations.
With a final decision about drilling in Yasuni versus keeping the oil in the
ground expected in June, Accion would like to be build support for keeping
the park free from oil drilling with a visible ad campaign to influence the
government. http://www.accionecologica.org/
ICELAND
$1000 to Saving Iceland, for an international campaign to defend the Icelandic
Wilderness, the largest remaining wild area of Europe, from heavy industry.
Different transnational companies, particularly the aluminium industry, and
the Icelandic government have begun to implement an immense program that will,
if executed, transform the country from an outstanding area of natural beauty
into another heavily industrialised and polluted wasteland.
INDIA
Nearly half
of the $60,000 which we granted in India went to the reforestation work on
and around the sacred mountain Arunachala where we have been working since
the late ‘80’s. This work is described at www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/india.htm
as well as in the films “Reweaving Shiva’s Robes” and “Arunachala
Greening” which stream from www.rainforestinfo.org.au/video
This money was granted
for the planting of trees, maintenance of the plantations, tree nurseries,
fire fighting and education.
In December/January I
was able to spend over a month in Thiruvannamalai visiting the projects which
we are supporting there. The first trees we planted 20 years ago now shade
the path to Skandashram and the whole mountain has a green hue. Streams which
had disappeared are starting to re-emerge and for the first year in living
memory, no fires got away. What started as a single NGO in 1989, the Annamalai
Reforestation Society , has now been joined by more than a dozen others, eight
of which we granted funding to in the last year.
Arunachala Kadu Shiva
Plantation $5000
Annamalai Reforestation Society $3000
Buddha Outcast Social Society $4335
Rural Development Aforestation Society $3000
Global Orientation Development $3000
Rural Organisation for Social Education $2283
Sri Ram Educational and Rural Development Society $3000
Sri Annamalayar Educational Society SAES $1612
Rural Development Society $1000
Cookoo, for environmental education camps for Tiru kids $500
$10,000 to The Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary (GBS) which is dedicated to the
conservation of native plants of the Western Ghats, an IUCN biodiversity hotspot.
They are restoring the endangered species and habitats in a highly fragmented
landscape, in which only 3% of original forest remains and 50% of the native
flora is extracted for human use and where some 20% of native species are
under threat of extinction within the next 20 years. GBS has successfully
cultivated extensive populations for 30% of the region’s flora (they
grow 2000 indigenous species across 100 families), many of which are rare
and endangered. In contrast, the medicinal plant industry has only managed
to successfully cultivate less than 100 species. http://www.gbsanctuary.org/
$3000 to SOBTI for their campaign to relieve the oppression of the Katkari
tribal group in Maharastra and help restore their traditional lands and culture.
We were able to get this amount matched by the UK-based Onaway Trust. See
our 30-minute documentary about the plight of the Katkari which streams from
www.rainforestinfo.org.au/video/katk_v.html
$1000 Livelihood, Integrity, Forest and Ecology
(LIFE) This is for their work with non-timber forest products (NTFP’s)
in Karnataka including a general inventory of all NTFPs in the Uttara Kannada
district identify crucial limitations with respect to biology, domestication,
socio – economic, marketing and policy issues, suggest mitigation measures
and try for enterprise development in a participatory basis with women self
help groups, Village Forest Committees, research institutions and government
authorities. Donated by a Rainforest Information Centre supporter in Mumbai.
$5000 Tesi Environmental
Awareness Movement for Environmental Education in Tibetan Settlements in North
India. The purpose of this project is to carry out a series of environmental
activities with especial focus on waste management in the Tibetan schools
and settlements in North India in order to promote environmental leadership
and awareness. http://www.ecotibet.org/
$1000 Anitha S for The Drip Tip Conservation Education Program to create a
module for school students in Kerala with curricular linkages and information
about rainforest and its services, geographical positioning and also all major
issues faced by this unique ecosystem.
$1000 to Sadhana Forest – Auroville for the Establishment of Sadhana
Forest Senegal. They have been invited by the Senegal government to apply
the Sadhana Forest Model of forest revival, sustainable community building
and local cooperation to an arid area in North Senegal. http://www.livingroutes.org/programs/e_sadhana_forest.htm
$6000 Dr Sathis Chandran Nair. We have been supporting the work of Dr Sathis
Chandran Nair and his wife S Santhi since 1986. They are the heart and soul
of the Kerala rainforests where they have worked exclusively for 4 decades.
Last year with our help, they were able to successfully have the Silent Valley
National Park increased from 89 sq km to more than 150. The year before we
were able to help them to do the surveying and campaigning to increase the
size of the Periyar Tiger Reserve. In the coming year Sathis will focus on
creating added protection to the Kerala section of the Niligiri Biosphere
Reserve, in particular by securing the rights of elephants to continue to
travel their millennia-old corridors therein.
$2000 to Academy
of Root Development. ARD's program brings underprivileged rural women in Bihar
together at the grass roots level in the formation of women's self help groups.
These groups of women work to improve social and economic conditions that
enable community members to achieve sustainable employment and the opportunity
to remain within their own villages. RIC grants provide funding for various
environmental related projects including kitchen gardens, tree planting, environmental
awareness raising conferences and various alternative revenue schemes.
http://www.ard-guraru.org/
$1000 The Students’ Sea turtle Conservation Network (SSTCN) which has
been working to protect the Olive Ridley sea turtles that comes to nest on
the coast of Tamil Nadu. Sea turtles have been around for more than a hundred
million years, and ancient Tamil literature talks in detail about turtles
nesting on the Tamil Nadu coast. Yet intervention is needed today in order
to make up in some small way for the deaths caused by trawling , poaching
of nests and selling of eggs in the market and dogs and jackals digging up
nests. Baby turtles that emerge from their nests are programmed to move towards
the brighter horizon. But the booming development on the coast and the bright
lights on the beaches attract newborn hatchlings towards the land instead
of the sea, which would normally have been the brighter horizon on a dark
beach. These helpless young ones are picked off by crows or dogs or die due
to dehydration the next morning. These are some of the factors that necessitate
the removal and relocation of the nests in the hatchery so the hatchlings
can be safely released into the sea when they emerge from their eggs 45 to
50 days later. This season they have already collected 65 nests and released
the first 500 hatchlings.
$2000 to the Himalayan Children's Fund. At the very start of 2008, His Holiness
the Gyalwa Karmapa informed Rinpoches and monks to get busy “greening”
monasteries and cultivating compassion for Mother Nature. To green the monastery
grounds of the Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery at Namo Buddha in Nepal for
the consecration, and satisfy Karmapa’s aspiration, this money was granted
to purchase the first big batch of trees, flowers, bushes, soil and labor.
INDONESIA
$2,000 to The Learning
Farm for their new garden project. This is a life skills, organic farming
and entrepreneurial training program for vulnerable youth in Indonesia. Thirty
to thirty five youth live on an organic farm for 4 months learning discipline,
teamwork, planning and analysis. After graduation, preliminary work has begun
with youth and their communities to set up their own organic farming enterprises
and later help them provide training as well. This grant helped to set up
a new organic garden project including funds for farm tools, seeds and manure
as well as a water holding tank and washing station.
$3000 to LifeMosaic .
Developing and disseminating climate literacy tools for indigenous peoples
in the humid tropics to strengthen indigenous peoples' voices on climate change
including a field-trip to the Duku community in West Java to film their traditional
forest and water management systems and hear about the climate change impacts
they are already experiencing. Funds will also cover expenses for the Asian
Summit on Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change.
PERU
$4500 for Institutional
support for Red Ambiental Loretana whose work we have been supporting for
5 years. For their work with the indigenous communities of the Amazon headwaters,
to protect their lands from the oil industry and other massive industrial
intrusion.
$1000 to Amazon Watch
for a video camera for Amazon Watch’s indigenous partners COMARU in
the lower Urubamba
$1000 to Amazon Watch
to help them support indigenous protests taking place in May ’09 . For
a month indigenous peoples have blockaded roads and rivers throughout the
Amazon to protest new decrees which make it easier to transfer Amazon land
and resource rights to oil, mining, logging and agricultural companies to
the detriment of indigenous and campesino inhabitants.
See www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=1796
and
www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/view_news.php?id=1791
RUSSIA
$ 1000 to Danil Mamyev
who is the director of the Tengri School for Spiritual Ecology in the Ongudai
region of the Altai Mountains in Siberian Russia. For the past 15 years he
has been at the forefront of the Siberian movement to reclaim indigenous land
and culture. The sacred Karakol Valley lies at the geographic center of the
Altai Republic and is also at the center of Danil's preservation work. The
Karakol Valley is part of the 60,000 hectare Uch-Enmek Nature Park, full of
endemic biological and cultural diversity.
SLOVAKIA
$3000 Legal help for “WOLF” Forest Protection Movement who are
leading the fight to save the native forests in the Carpathian and Tatra Mountains.
The funding is to analyse activities and decisions of state institutions which
violate Slovak and European legislation and to submit any discovered discrepancies
to administrative bodies or legal institutions . www.solutions-site.org/cat1_sol106.htm
SOUTH AFRICA
$3000 to Water is Life.
Working from one school to the next, the project puts in place boreholes and
pumps and then extends water distribution to the local community as well as
the school. This is followed by washing stations at the schools followed by
greenhouses and planting projects that then provide food to the students'
families.
UGANDA
$3000 to RWDA. Continued
funding for ongoing project to sensitize community members of need to preserve
existing trees and to plant new ones. Funds covered nursery materials and
tools as well as seedlings and workshops.
$2000 to Rimage Classic
School project to sensitize community members about planting young trees,
set up tree nursery beds at every parish level and mobilizing community members
including local leaders and religious leaders on tree planting campaigns and
dangers of cutting trees without planting young ones.
US
$2000 to Hopi Tutskwa
Permaculture to Indigenous Permaculture Certification Course on Hopi traditional
land. in order to build the capacity of that community and youth to host and
train others in various skills of permaculture design.
$500 to Living
Earth to produce a DVD with Ram Dass, on conscious social action. To explore
the challenges, possibilities, and importance of bringing a wide-open heart/mind
to the ways we live and the actions we take on the complex issues facing our
communities and the world.
$1000 Heartwood. Based in Indiana, Heartwood is a low-budget, creative, adaptive,
persistent, dedicated and resourceful network of grassroots groups, individuals,
and local
businesses that, for nearly twenty years, has used a variety of approaches
-- including advocacy, litigation, forest watch monitoring, education and
training -- to successfully protect forests. http://www.heartwood.org/
$1000 to Mangrove
Action Project to complete research in Latin America for a book examining
the plight of the world’s mangrove forests—one of the most rapidly
disappearing ecosystems on the planet to be published by Island Press http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/
$1000 to Climate
Ground Zero to help with legal expenses in their struggle to stop coal mining
companies practicing mountaintop removal in West Virginia. http://climategroundzero.org/
RAINFOREST INFORMATION
CENTRE’S SMALL GRANTS FUND
2006-2007
Financial Year July 1 to June 30
(All amounts are in $US)
AUSTRALIA
$2500 to Huon Valley Environment Centre save the Weld rainforests in Tasmania.
$2000 to IJAN Indigenous Justice Advocacy Network for their legal work to uphold Aboriginal cultural and land rights in Australia.
$4400 to Beyond Zero Emissions
$2000 to the Mineral Policy Institute for Turning the Tide CD Project to educate and raise awareness on the impacts of expansion of the uranium industry on aboriginal lands and to encourage action on climate change.
$1700 to National Parks Association. Investigation of River Red Gum forests on the Murray River gave NPA adequate information about logging compartments to launch a court case proposal against the NSW Government. Funds were also used for the production of a campaign leaflet calling for protection of Red Gum forests.
$1800 to Aboriginal Elder Neville Williams for the ongoing campaign to halt Barrick Gold's open pit cyanide leach gold mine at Lake Cowal, the sacred Heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation and one of Australia's few remaining high conservation value wetlands.
$800 for Lake Cowal hydrologist. (see donation above for explanation)
$1700 Friends of Forest and Free Speech – for the legal defense of those who are being sued by Gunns for their actions to protect the forests of Tasmania.
$400 to Forests Woodford for tree planting at the festival site.
$400 http://www.peaceconvergence.com/
$13,000 The RIC received a grant from Donkey Wheel for our oil palm campaign and we are working on this grant in partnership with Hatchling Productions to produce short palm oil awareness utube videos, a longer feature film and funding for grassroots community resistance efforts.
ARGENTINA
$1000 to the radio programme Horizonte Sur (Southern Horizon) from GRR (Rural Reflection Group) The major theme of the programme is the conflict between rural and urban, mining, the struggle for land rights and resistance plans for huge paper mills just over the border with Uruguay.
BRASIL
$1000 draft to Transnational
Institute for travel expenses for Southern participants in the climate justice
meetings.
$1000 to Ana Paula Fagundes
to continue her work defending the pampas biome in Brasil from monoculture
cellulose plantations.
CAMEROON
$1000 to SEFE (Struggle to Economize Future Environment) to protect mangroves
CONGO
$2500 to Keith Snow -
www.allthingspass.com - to support rainforest defense and environmental protection
in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by raising awareness about government
and corporate interests (mining, banking, timber, military) behind the war
and illegal plunder of natural resources in DRC.
ECUADOR
$2000 to Judith Kimerling for her legal and organizing work with indigenous communities opposing the oil companies in the Amazon headwaters
$5000 to the Los Cedros Biological Reserve for their work protecting rainforests.
$1000 to the Sarayacu community opposing oil mining in their traditional rainforests of the Amazon headwaters. Towards video training so they can document the destruction.
$3300 to the Panacocha Protection Project, continuing our ten years of effort to protect the Panacocha Lagoon and surrounding rainforest from oil, poaching, logging etc.
$1000 to Shinai, an NGO working with the Achuar to protect their rainforest home.
$1000 to Nicola Peel towards a film documenting mycorestoration on oil spills.
$2500 for anti-mining grass roots work in the Intag Region. The Consejo de Desarrollo Comunitario (CDC) is a small grass-roots organization made up by people from the communities most at risk by the Ascendant Copper mining project,
$ 1000 to The Frente de Defensa for mobilizing 600 to 800 people from the
affected communities in Lago on July 3 to send a strong message to the
courts demanding justice in the lawsuit against pollution by Chevron.
$1000 to Amazon Watch to help to produce a 30 second video spot about the Amazon (Sos Amazon) which broadcast to billions of people during the Live Earth concert on July 7 http://www.amazonwatch.org/newsroom/index.php?type=video
$1000 to Accion Ecologica for the Huaorani mobilization in quito on July 5 http://www.amazoniaporlavida.org/en/index.php
INDIA
$32,000 to 9 groups working on the rehabilitation of the sacred mountain Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, India. These groups were:
Annamalai Reforestation Society,
Buddha Outcast Social Society,
Kadu Shiva Plantation,
Mountain of Medicine
Rural Development Aforestation Society,
Rural Organization for Social Education, Global Orientation Development,
Sri Annamalaiyar Educational Society,
Sri Ram Educational and Rural Development Society,
Voice of Nature,
$7,500 to support the superlative work of Dr Sathis Chandran Nair, S. Santhi, and Sandhya Sasidharan in protecting the rainforests and other ecologies of Kerala.
$5000 towards the work of Rajeev Khedkar in protecting the Katkari indigenous tribe in Maharashtra. $400 of this came from a Microsoft employee and was matched by Microsoft. This work is documented in a film on the “Images of India” DVD and also at www.rainforestinfo.org.au/katkari. This $5000 was once again matched by $5000 from www.onaway.org
$3,300 to the work of Australian volunteer Pete Bakos working for the protection of nature and indigenous communities in Orissa – we have been supporting Pete’s work from time to time for about 10 years.
$1000 to the Save Hukharaniya River Movement in W Bengal
$400 Academy of Root Development - formation and development of Self Help Groups among the rural poor in Bihar, India.
INDONESIA
$2,000 to the Alliance for Conservation of Nature to assist NGO efforts to stop plans for road construction through the largest National Park in Sumatra.
$3300 to Forum RTM to visit 13 villages to halt large scale oil-palm expansion). Information was shared and paralegal training carried out. As a result of these meetings, all 13 communities decided to unanimously reject oil palm plantations. A road where heavy machinery was to pass through was blockaded in the middle of the night. The company closed down its offices. Funds were contributed as follows: RIC AUS$1000, Humane Society International AUS$500, Borneo Orangutan Society Australia AUS$2200, Rettet den Regenwald US$500.
$2000 to IPANJAR, a youth fishermen's cooperative in North Sumatera to protect an old growth mangrove forest
$3000 Centre for Orangutan Protection for work in Indonesia to halt the expansion of oil palm plantations.
$14,500 for community strategy sessions Kalimantan using a video to do a grassroots tour to help local communities resist the incursions of a fast expanding palm oil industry. RIC contributed AUS$3000, Humane Society International AUS$3000 and Australian Orangutan Project contributed AUS$12,250
ISRAEL
$1000 TO Lior Vered for “Rebuilding a movement for social change in Israel”
MALAWI
$1000 to Citizens For
Justice-(CFJ) - funded meeting and info materials to build a coalition of
NGOS, local community members and Traditional Authority (Chiefs) towards advocating
for anti-uranium as part of CFJ's ongoing work to stop a uranium mining development
by Australian company Paladin Resources Limited. The uranium deposit mine
is located next to the Tsere stream that runs into a major river which drains
into Lake Malawi, one of the world's largest and most important fresh water
bodies.
PERU
$1500 for an Amazon Watch trip to Peru with the Movie star Q'Orianka Kilcher to raise awareness of and make a documentary about oil pollution in the Aamazon headwaters.
$2000 to Paul McCauley for his work with the indigenous peoples (Achuar) in the Corrientes River addressing the continual contamination caused by Pluspetrol and the wave of new oil extraction licences being granted.
$1000 to an Achuar Peru delegation and Amazon Watch report launch in November representing communities affected by OXY and Conocophillips.
$1000 to support capacity building and training of COMARU (the Machiguenga Council of the Urubamba River) in the Peruvian Amazon.
$1000 for a Field Investigation of OXY’s new oil project in Achuar Territory in the Northern Peruvian Amazon where Occidental Petroleum is attempting to drill in Achuar territory block 64 and 101.
$1000 AIDESEP for their legal campaign to block oil concession 67 by Barrett Resources. It is literally on the other side of the border from Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park and an oil deposit of 125 million barrels was found (largest find in recent years in Peru).
$1000 to Shinai for Participatory monitoring of petroleum exploitation in the Amazon
PHILIPPINES
$2000 to SAVE OUR LIVES, SOS to help oil spill victims in Guimaras,
PNG
$2100 ) to PNG Eco-Forestry Forum to support their ongoing work on illegal logging in Papua New Guinea. Funds were used to assist with the legal challenge over the decision to award two Timber Permits over East Awin and Kamula Doso without following proper procedures. Further funding was used to pay lawyers to bring the cases to trial and ensure the injunctions against logging remain in place.
SLOVAKIA
$3000 to Green Perspective Foundation for several programs/projects that raise awareness about Slovakian forests, their plight, their function and their protection
TIBET
$500 to the Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health & Insight (BODHI) to expand the Revolving Sheep Bank. Funds are used to purchase ewes and nannies from wealthier nomads for loan to poor ones in the Phala area of western Tibet.
UGANDA
$2800 for two
grants to Luwero Community Development Project. 1) to strengthen community
tree planting campaigns in communities and schools, establish tree nurseries
and to construct and popularize the use of energy saving stoves as a way of
reducing demand and destruction of natural forests and improve conservation
and bio diversity. 2) to fund several members’ participation in medicinal
plants workshops .
Environmental Protection
and Food Security Initiative – tree planting, training community members
on energy saving stoves, working with eco-clubs in schools to grow trees and
raise awareness, laptop computer, We were also able to raise $5000 for them
from Rainforest Action Network’s Global Green Grant Fund.
$1000 to Nakatandu for
tree planting, demonstration garden and sensitization through drama in rural
Kampala
$2500 YES-Uganda for tree
planting, tree nurseries and energy saving stoves project in small villages
in Uganda
$1600 NTUNDA of which
$1000 was granted through the Cottonwood Foundation for tree planting programs,
nurseries and energy savings stoves.
UK
1000 pounds to Rising Tide’s “Camp for Climate Action”
USA
$3000 to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to save the whales
$1000 to the World Temperate Rainforest Network for world-wide awareness raising.
$1000 to Global Response www.globalresponse.org for their cyberspace and postal international action alerts campaign.
$1000 towards the Rising Tide North America climate roadshow http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/category/roadshow/
$1000 to Sacred
Earth Network for two Native American activists, Benjamin Jojola and Kelvin
Long for their work with their Siberian counterparts on sacred site protection.
$1000 to Amazon Watch
$1000 to Dine Elders and Youth to halt a 1,500 MW Coal Fired plant in the Four Corners area on the Navajo Reservation. This is an area already polluted by 2 other major coal power plants.
WEST
PAPUA
$800 provided
a stipend for West Papuan activist to organise a non-violent training for
activist skill share provided by The Change Agency (Brisbane). Also funded
translation services for the trainings.
RAINFOREST INFORMATION CENTRE’S SMALL GRANTS
FUND 2006 Calendar Year
** Please note that from fiscal year 2007, we will be reporting here each year
from July to the following June. In the case of July-Dec 2006, this apears
in both 2006 Calendar Year and is repeated in 2006-2007
fiscal year.
INDIA
$34,000 to 9 groups working on
the rehabilitation of the sacred mountain Arunachala in Tamil Nadu, India.
These groups were:
Annamalai Reforestation Society,
Buddha Outcast Social Society,
Kadu Shiva Plantation,
Mountain of Medicine
Rural Development Aforestation Society,
Rural Organization for Social Education, Global Orientation Development,
Sri Annamalaiyar Educational Society,
Sri Ram Educational and Rural Development Society,
Voice of Nature,
$6,500 for the work of Dr Sathis
Chandran Nair protecting the forests of Kerala
$6000 to the Academy
of Development Science in Maharashtra for their work protecting the Katkari
indigenous nation.
$4000 to Pete Bakos for his ongoing
work for the protection of the e3cology and people of Orissa
$1000 to the Save Hukaharaniya
River Movement
COLOMBIA
$500 to the U’Wa campaign
via Amazon Watch. Health emergency for Berito Cobaria, beloved U'wa leader
and winner of the Goldman Prize
PERU
$1500 for an Amazon Watch trip
to Peru with the Movie star Q'Orianka Kilcher to raise awareness of and make
a documentary about oil pollution in the Aamazon headwaters.
$1000 to Paul McCauley for his
work with the indigenous peoples (Achuar) in the Corrientes River addressing
the continual contamination caused by Pluspetrol and the wave of new oil extraction
licences being granted.
$1000 to an Achuar Peru delegation
and Amazon Watch report launch in November representing communities affected
by OXY and Conocophillips.
$1000 to support capacity building
and training of COMARU (the Machiguenga Council of the Urubamba River) in
the Peruvian Amazon.
$1000 for a Field Investigation
of OXY’s new oil project in Achuar Territory in the Northern Peruvian
Amazon where Occidental Petroleum is attempting to drill in Achuar territory
block 64 and 101.
ECUADOR
$2000 to Judith Kimerling for her
legal and organizing work with indigenous communities opposing the oil companies
in the Amazon headwaters
$2000 to the Los Cedros Biological
Reserve for their work protecting rainforests
$1000 to the Sarayacu community
opposing oil mining in their traditional rainforests of the Amazon headwaters.
Towards video training so they can document the destruction.
$2500 to the Panacocha Protection
Project, continuing our ten years of effort to protect the Panacocha Lagoon
and surrounding rainforest from oil, poaching, logging etc.
$1000 to Shinai, an NGO working
with the Achuar to protect their rainforest home.
$1000 TO Nicola {Peel towards a
film documenting mycorestoration on oil spills
BRASIL
$1000 draft to Transnational Institute
for travel expenses for Southern participants in the climate justice meetings.
$1000 to Ana Paula Fagundes to
continue her work defending the pampas biome in Brasil from monoculture cellulose
plantations,
ARGENTINA
$1000 to the radio programme Horizonte
Sur (Southern Horizon) from GRR (Rural Reflection Group) The major theme of
the programme is the conflict between rural and urban, mining, the struggle
for land rights and resistance plans for huge paper mills just over the border
with Uruguay.
SIBERIA
$1000 to the Sacred Earth
Network who brought a group of 5 US indigenous leaders to the Altai
to meet Siberian elders/shamans/environmentalists
CONGO
$5000 to keith snow www.allthingspass.com
to support rainforest defense and environmental protection in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) by raising awareness about government and corporate
intersts (mining, banking, timber, military) behind the war and illegal plunder
of natural resources in DRC.
MALAWI
$1000 TO Citizens For Justice-(CFJ)
funded meeting to build a coalition of NGOS, local community members and Traditional
Authority (Chiefs) towards advocating for anti-uranium as part of CFJ's ongoing
work to stop a uranium mining development by Australian company Paladin Resources
Limited. The uranium deposit mine is located next to the Tsere stream that
runs into a major river which drains into Lake Malawi, one of the world's
largest and most important fresh water bodies.
UGANDA
$1500 to Luwero Community Development
Project to strengthen their community tree planting campaigns in communities
and schools, establish tree nurseries and to construct and popularize the
use of energy saving stoves as a way of reducing demand and destruction of
natural forests and improve conservation and bio diversity.
$2500 Environmental Protection
and Food Security Initiative – tree planting, training community members
on energy saving stoves, working with eco-clubs in schools to grow trees and
raise awareness, laptop computer, We were also able to raise another $5000
for them from the Global Greengrants Fund
$1000 to Nakatandu for tree planting,
demonstration garden and sensitization through drama in rural Kampala
INDONESIA
$2,000 to the Alliance for Conservation
of Nature to assist NGO efforts to stop plans for road construction through
the largest National Park in Sumatra.
$3250 to Forum RTM to visit 13
villages where it was still possible to halt large scale oil-palm expansion
(Rawak, Taman, Mahap). Information was shared about the real threat of of
oil palm expansion in order to balance information which communities receive
from companies. Paralegal training was carried out. Meetings were organised
with community representatives who resist oil-palm investments and expansion.
As a result of these meetings, all 13 communities decided to unanimously reject
oil palm plantations in their area. A road where heavy machinery was to pass
through was blockaded in the middle of the night. The company chose to accept
defeat, closing down its offices to concentrate on PT Sime Indo Agro's many
other expanding plantation areas. Co-funded by Borneo Orangutan Society -
Australia, Humane Society International (Australia) and Rettet den Regenwald
(Germany).
$2000 to IPANJAR, a youth fishermen's
cooperative in North Sumatera to protect an old growth mangrove forest
PHILLIPINES
$2000 to SAVE OUR LIVES, SOS to
help oil spill victims in Guimaras,
PNG
$1000 to PNG Eco-Forestry Forum
to support their ongoing work on illegal logging in Papua New Guinea. Through
legal means, EFF seeks to ensure full compliance with laws and guidelines
governing the management of forest resources. Funds were used to assist with
the legal challenge over the decision to award two Timber Permits over East
Awin and Kamula Doso without following proper procedures.
WEST PAPUA
$1000 provided a stipend for West
Papuan activist to organise a non-violent training for activist skill share
provided by The Change Agency (Brisbane). Also funded translation services
for the trainings.
CAMEROON
$1000 to SEFE (Struggle to Economize
Future Environment) to protect mangroves
SLOVAKIA
$3000 TO THE WOLF Forest Protection
Movement for several programs/projects that protect Slovakian forests.
TIBET
$500 to the Benevolent Organisation
for Development, Health & Insight (BODHI) to expand the Revolving Sheep
Bank. They purchase ewes and nannies from wealthier nomads for loan to poor
ones in the Phala area of western Tibet.
AUSTRALIA
$2500 to save the Weld rainforests
in Tasmania
$1800 to IJAN Indigenous Justice
Advocacy Network
$600 to Beyond Zero Emissions for
a data projector
$2500 to the Mineral Policy Institute
to educate and raise awareness on the impacts of expansion of the uranium
industry on aboriginal lands and to encourage action on climate change.
$1000 to National Parks Associated
funded a forest inspection in Riverina. The investigation of River Red Gum
forests over a week on the Murray River gave NPA adequate information about
logging compartments to launch a court case proposal against the NSW Government.
Funds were also used for the production of a campaign leaflet calling for
protection of Red Gum forests.
$1800 to aboriginal elder Neville
Williams for the ongoing campaign to halt Barrick Gold's open pit cyanide
leach gold mine at Lake Cowal, the sacred Heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation
and one of Australia's few remaining high conservation value wetlands.
$400 to Tugun Cobaki Alliance for
legal fees used in litigation aimed at halting the highway bypass being constructed
on high conservation value land
$400 Cyanide Watch for the use
of a town to town roadshow that highlighted the transporation of cyanide through
local towns via rail and truck. The campaign ties in with the Campaign to
Protect Lake Cowal. (water more precious than gold).
$400 to South East Forests for
direct action forest protection efforts in southeast New South Wales
$400 to Forests Woodford 29/12/06
tree planting
USA
$3000 to the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Society to save the whales
$1000 to Heartwood for networking
and activist support tools. to further focus regional and international attention
on the devastation of Mountaintop removal coal-mining.
$1000 to the World Temperate Rainforest
Network for world-wide awareness raising.
$1000 to Global Response www.globalresponse.org
$1000 towards the Rising Tide North
America climate roadshow http://risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/category/roadshow/
PROJECTS FUNDED IN 2005
INDIA
The Kadu Siva
Project is reforesting the sacred mountain Arunachala in Tamil Nadu,
India. This project is managed by Apeetha Arunagiri who first enlisted the
Rainforest Information Centre's help with reforesting Arunachala in 1988.
There are 12 villagers working full-time on this project which John and Ruth
visited in January 2005 and about US$800 per month has been keeping the show
on the road. See www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/india/Apeetha1.htm
$2000 to The
Voice of Nature, Tiruvanammalai, Tamil Nadu to bolster their ability
to prevent and fight fires on the sacred mountain Arunachala
Dr. Sathis
Chandran Nair whom we first met in 1986 is one of the world's great
ecologists. We were able to find 5000 Euro's funding in The Netherlands for
his present project saving the remaining
rainforests of the Western Ghats mountain range (highest biodiversity
in Peninsular India) plus another US$4000 to replace the ancient 4-wheel drive
required for his field work, surveying and mapping expeditions. We visited
the Periyar Tiger Reserve with him in January 2005 and began working up a
campaign to triple the size of the reserve from its present 800 sq km.
$5500 to the Rural
Development Aforestation Society RDAS, Tiruvannamalai, India - for
large scale tree planting project in 3 villages, creating a tree nursery,
and for 2 village Women's Tailoring Vocational Training Project to create
revenue generating skill base.
$3300 to the Annamalai Reforestation Society to
continue the reforestation of the sacred Mountain Arunachala, Tamil Nadu.
We have been supporting this project each year since its inception in the
late '80's. In December 2005 we will film a sequel to our 1999 film about
this project.
$1200 to the Sri Annmalaiyar Educational Society
for reforestation of Arunachala.
$7,000 to the Academy of Development Science for
their campaign to relieve the oppression of the Katkari tribal group in Maharastra
and help restore their traditional lands and culture. We were once again able
to get this amount matched by the UK-based Onaway Trust see http://rainforestinfo.org.au/katkari/.
We sent another $2000 to ADS for their medicinal plants program - revitalizing
the ancient ayurvedic system of medicine and protecting the plant species
on which it is based www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/india/rajeev%202-05.htm.
$2500 to the Apiko
movement to make a film publicising their work to protect the forests and
rivers of Karnataka.
$1,000 to Tesi
Environmental Awareness Movement, the recently formed first Tibetan
environmental NGO for environmental remediation and education at Tibetan ceremonial
sites in India. .
$750 to help establish
a tree nursery at the Nadukuppam Environment Center, Auroville,
Tamil Nadu.
$700 to the River
Research Centre, Kerala, for their campaign to protect the Chalakudy
River the fifth largest river in Kerala.
$700 to then Rural
Technology Resource Center, Orissa, to build a nursery to raise plants
for re-forestation of their area
$700 to Rural
Organization for Social Education (ROSE) for permaculture training,
reforestation and environmental education near Thiruvanammalai.
ECUADOR
$1,000 to the Los Cedros Biological Reserve. In
1989 we received $70,000 from the Australian Government aid agency AusAID
to set up and demarcate this 25,000 acre reserve and we have been supporting
the work there ever since. This year's grant was to help to prevent a large
copper mine from destroying the rainforest and indigenous communites.
$2,000 to Amazon
Watch to set up radio communications for the Sarayacu community to
help their ability to protect their traditional lands from the oil industry.The
Sarayacu are the front line in the resistence against the oil despoilation
of the Amazon headwaters. We have sent them several grants over the last few
years and wish to send more.
$1,000 towards a Participatory Mapping Project
in coordination with the Pachamama Foundation and the Inter-Tribal Committee
of the Shuar, Achuar, and Kichwa of Saraycu in Southern Ecuador (IC) plan
to produce a geo-referenced map displaying the indigenous communities and
natural and cultural resources in oil Blocks 23 and 24.
$1000
to Nicola Peel to help make a film "Blood of the Amazon"
documenting the resistence to the oil industry by the Sarayacu and other communites
in the Amazon headwaters of Ecuador.
$2000
to the Huaorani tribe to oppose the inroads of the Brasilian
oil company Petrobras into their rainforests in the Amazon headwaters.
$4,000 to Judith Kimerling to help her organise
with Huaorani and Kichwa nations opposing expansion of the oil industry in
the Amazon headwaters
$3,000
to Rainforest Concern to purchase more lands for their strategic
rainforest corridor
$2000
to Instituto de Regeneración Ecológica/ ALLPA
to continue purchasing lands for a strategic corridor for the Paso Alto -
Cambugan
Forest Project.
$1000
to Friends
of the Earth Scotland towards their film documenting the resistence
of the Cofan tribes of Ecuador to the incursions of the oil industry.
$1000
to Playa
d' Oro protecting the rainforest and the Margay Cat population within
their reservation.
PERU
$2000 to the Asociación Ametra Ucayali to
organise a meeting and workshop in Atalaya to decide on a response to incursions
by the Spanish oil company Repsol into the 1.5 million Ha. territory of the
Asháninka, Yine, Mashiguenga, Shipibo-Konibo and Amahuaca natiuons.
$1000
to the Peruvian Amazonian community of Canaan de Cachiyacu (Shipibo
indigenous people) to organize a meeting y with Peruvian authorities and the
US oil company Maple Gas.
$500
to RAL (Red Ambiental Loretano) in Iquitos, to their campaign
stop the Regional Government and the State natural resouces body from selling
off 1,000,000 hectares of rainforest to timber companies.
BRASIL
$1000
to Núcleo
Amigos da Terra/Brasil to oppose the expansion of large scale exotic
monoculture tree plantations in "Rio Grande do Sul" state.
GUATEMALA
$1000
to "Cassa" who are helping women with organic agriculture
and education up in a group of mountain villages.
INDONESIA
$1500
to Samdhana Institute for their environmental education facility
in Bali.
POLAND
$1000
to the Bialowieza International Solidarity Network for their
campaign to protect Europe's last, low-land, old-growth forest and the European
Bison who live therein.
ROMANIA
$500
to Alburnus Major for their campaign to protect Rosia Montana
from a Canadian gold mining company.
RUSSIA
Siberia, $1000 to Galina and Ruslana Toptigina, a mother and daughter
team protecting Chui-Oozy nature reserve where the rivers Katun and Chu meet
one of only 5 official indigenous "Nature Parks" in the
Altai mountains.
UGANDA
$1000 to YES (Young and Elderly in Society) for
awareness raising amongst community and local authorities regarding conservation
or remaining natural rainforests in Nabbale through proper utilization of
forest products, establishment of community tree nurseries, replanting of
deforested areas, and planting of woodlots on local farms. The project also
focuses on saving the indigenous medicinal trees from extinction.
$1000 to EPFASI (Environmental Protection and Food Security
Initiative) for tree planting campaigns in the community and in the
schools with an emphasis on training children in tree planting including the
establishment of nursery beds in the three schools
$2765 to Luwero Community Effort for Development
to address the depletion of local forests by introducing energy saving methods
to replace rudimentary methods of cooking and heating and establishing alternative
sources of wood fuel through woodlot planting.
USA
$3500 in three separate grants to Keith Harmon Snow
htp://www.allthingspass.com to support rainforest defense and environmental
protection in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) by raising awareness
about government and corporate intersts (mining, banking, timber, military)
behind the war and illegal plunder of natural resources in DRC.
$1500 to Mountain Justice Summer to prevent the
destruction of Apalachian mountains by the coal mining industry.
$1000
to Rainforest
Relief to replace their stolen laptop computer.
$1000
to the World Temperate Rainforest Network.
$3000
to the Institute for Deep Ecology for "The Video Project for
the Work That Reconnects" documenting Joanna Macy's work for
a series of training videos.
VIETNAM
$1000 for the Vietnam
Friendship Village. The Village is a recovery and support centre
for victims of Agent Orange. This grant is for an organic gardens project
that includes compost making and fruit orchards.
AUSTRALIA
$1500 to The
Indigenous Justice Advocacy Network (IJAN), an Australian group of
volunteer legal representatives and Indigenous rights activists,representing
Aboriginal Traditional Owners. This grant is for ongoing litigation representing
indigenous people in their ongoing struggle to protect their land from destructive
development projects in New South Wales.
$1000 to support the
work of Wiradjuri Elder Neville Williams in his noble effort
to protect Lake Cowal from Canada's Barrick Gold's open pit cyanide leach
gold mine on the sacred heartland of the Wiradjuri Nation in New South Wales.
$700 to SE
Forest Rescue for their campaign of direct actions to protect the
old growth forests of SE NSW.
$1000 to the Weld
Valley Campaign for their campaign to protect the old growth forests
of Tasmania.
PROJECTS FUNDED IN 2004
ECUADOR
$1,000 to Accion por la Vida for the campaign to stop the Brazilian
oil company Petrobras from pushing a road into the Yasuni National Park. Accion
por la Vida took the lead in the defense of the Mindo cloudforest with a direct
action campaign in 2002 and 2003. Fortunately, they have extended their concerns
to the Amazon rainforest and in particular the 2.5 million acre Yasuni.
$2,500 to the protection of the Panacocha Reserve, which maintains
a wildlife corridor between the Yasuni and Cuyabeno national parks. We have
been supporting the protection of Panacocha for some 15 years, most recently
helping the International University of Ecuador to set up a research station
at the Panacocha Lodge.
$1,000 for the defense of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve. In
1989 we received $70,000 from the Australian Government aid agency AusAID
to set up and demarcate this 25,000 acre reserve and we have been supporting
the work there ever since. In late 2003, there was a corrupt attempt to invalidate
the title of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve by members of Ecuador’s
oligarchy who hope to mine gold in the reserve. As well as granting $1000
for this legal battle we raised another $2500 from other sources.
$2,000 to Anja Light to support her work in Ecuador. Anja has been
a volunteer with the Rainforest Information Centre since the mid-80’s
and has been living and working out of Cotacachi in Ecuador for 5 years. Her
projects there include the Cotacachi Ecology Centre, Mompiche, Cerro Secco,
Tambaco Farm and the Ecological Lifestyle Model project in Intag (providing
ecological examples based on permaculture design principles and ecological
technologies including compost toilets, simple hydro-electric systems, solar
cookers and dryers and biogas digesters.) Descriptions of Anja’s projects
may be found at www.rainforestinfo.org.au/projects/ecuador.htm
$1,000 to Judith Kimerling to help with her expenses traveling to
Ecuador to pursue a lawsuit against Texaco forcing them to clean up the toxic
mess that they left there. She helped the Kichua file a lawsuit in the Superior
Court in Tena, organized many community meetings, as well as delegations of
representatives to Tena and Quito.
$2,000 to Jefferson Mecham of the Paso Alto forest project in the
Choco-Andes corridor. For a new laptop and to nurture a community-based EcoArts
project which combines permaculture/ecological education with music/arts/
cultural revival with children and youth in marginalized/indigenous communities.
We have supported Jefferson’s work from time to time for nearly 15 years.
$1,000 to Madre Selva Permaculture Institute in San Lorenzo for
their schools program teaching propagation of fruit trees at their nursery.
Participants learn propagation techniques and are able to grow and tend fruit
trees that they then take to plant at school and home. This project extends
the work of Madre Selva as a community resource and education centre for sustainable
agriculture that we helped create in the late ‘80’s.
$500 to the Coca Wildlife Rescue Project caring for the orphans
of wild monkeys and other animals by the Rio Payamino soas, maximizing their
chances of survival when reintroduced to the wild.
$4,200 in three separate grants to the struggle of the Sarayacu
nation against the aggressive attempts by the oil companies to make inroads
into their territory in the Southern Ecuadorian Amazon. Included was funding
for a video camera to help them deal with the intimidation of a huge military
presence as well as funding for legals, transportation for indigenous leadership
and their lawyers, and office and communications expenses.
$500 for our colleague Martha Mondragon to lobby various ministries
in Quito in support of the agenda of the indigenous Amazon communities and
the environmental movement.
$1,500 to DECOIN to help organize an anti-mining forum in Intag
with participation from Chile, Perú, Costa rica and Bolivia as well
as Ecuador. Our grant covered transportation costs, food and lodging for 75
participants as well as educational materials distributed there. Separately,
another $1000 was sent to their Emergency Anti-mining Fund.
$1,000 towards the Shuar/Achuar Territorial Defense Conference at
Makuma in Shuar territory to lay out their strategies for defending their
territories and cultures from the imminent threat of the petroleum policies
of the Ecuadorian government. Some 300 representatives of the Shuar, Achuar,
Kichwa, Zapara, Shiwiar attended.
$500 for Guayabillas women for Casa Sede project construction of
women's centre where skill building workshops will be held for women. One
underlying aim is to generate alternative revenue options for the
community to ease pressures to log surrounding forests.
INDIA
$4,000 to Sathis Chandran Nair. (1) Caring for the coast and oceans
of Kerala by collection of available material on the state of the oceans and
coastal ecosystems, publishing pamphlets and booklets and creating a network.
(2) An ecorestoration project with tribals he has worked with for decades
in Attappady along with helping people to rediscover traditional Land Ethics.
$7,000 to the Academy of Development Science for their campaign
to relieve the oppression of the Katkari tribal group in Maharastra and help
restore their traditional lands and culture. We were able to get this amount
matched by the UK-based Onaway Trust and also made a 30-minute documentary
about the plight of the Katkari to be used in future fund-raising.
$1,000 to Pipal Tree for empowerment of women & poor farmers
at Uthari village on the Bangalore Kanakapura Road in the Kagalipura panchayat,
Karnataka.
$4,000 to Apeetha Arunagiri for the reforestation of the sacred
mountain Arunachala in Tamil Nadu. Apeetha initiated this project in 1987
with the help of $100,000 grant that we were able to provide from the Australian
government.
$5,000 to the Annamalai Reforestation Society for the rehabilitation
of Mt Arunachala.
$2,000 to Pandurang Hegde in Karnataka. This funding is for his
grassroots work protecting the Kali River and to cover travel expenses to
the UK for an Ecological Design course.
$1,000 to Pete Bakos, an Australian engineer working in Orissa helping
impoverished villagers set up self help groups in their respective villages,
exploring what type of group/individual income generation projects they would
like to take up.
$500 to the Delhi Forum’s “Programme for Social Action”
to help them stage the National Conference on Community Ownership of Forests.
$1,000 towards a permaculture training organized by the Tibetan
Government in exile for extension officers in their many refugee settlements.
MEXICO
$400 to Chiapas Media Project who provide video equipment, computers
and training to indigenous and campesino communities in Southern Mexico.
$500 TO UNORCA to cover the cost of campesinos traveling by bus
to Cancun to participate in the anti-WTO protests.
BORNEO
$700 to BOS for rehabilitation of orphaned Orangutans in Kalimantan.
Funds will be used for protection of a island tropical forest refuge for orangutans
in partnership with local Dayak people
ARGENTINA
$1,000 for Renace, providing environmental news and networking several
thousand Argentine NGO’s.
RUSSIA
$1,000 to Danil Mamyev, an indigenous Altai man, for his work protecting
the Karakolsky Nature Park. The park was created to reserve the Karakol valley's
sacred indigenous sites for traditional use only, while allowing the public
to freely experience and enjoy the area's other natural and cultural monuments.
$500 for VIOLA for The Novozybkov Project to provide radiation monitors
and education to the people of Novozybkov, which was heavily drenched with
radioactive fallout when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down in 1986.
PERU
$1,300 to Racimos de Ungurahui, a Peruvian Indigenous Rights organization
for a small portable LCD projector to take to the Amazon communities affected
by logging and oil drilling for video showings and multimedia presentations.
$1,000 to Amazon Watch. Travel for 5 to 7 leaders to Lima during
the IDB annual meeting for meetings and media work, a one-hour flyover of
the areas in the lower Urubamba devastated by the Camisea project, recording
massive erosion of the Camisea pipeline to have evidence to derail the loan
from the IDB.
USA
$500 to the ‘Seed Lady’ in Watts for the Watts Garden
Club. Anna Marie Carter is working in one of the poorest neighborhoods in
LA teaching local children about growing their own food and creating their
own business ventures (the kids are starting their own farmers market, as
well as marketing their own soaps and lotions).
$500 to Big Mountain. There is a gathering being planned on the
land for early May. It will be a chance for HPL families, relocatees and NPL
families to meet together for the first time in a long time. This money is
earmarked for seed money to get the gathering going. i.e. Gas money for folks
to go around the reservation and get the word out, printing costs etc.
SLOVAKIA
$2,800 to the WOLF Forest Protection Movement for a computer to
be used in campaigns to protect Slovakian forests and create more Nature Reserves
that are fully off limits to human activity.
CANADA
$500 to GlobalAware Independent Media Organisation to help them
get a witness/reporter to the Sarayacu community in the Ecuadorian Amazon
when they were suffering repression by police and the oil companies.
POLAND
$1,000 to Towarzystwo Ochrony Krajobrazu (Society for the Protection
of Landscape) for their work protecting the Bialowieza Forest, the wildest
forest remaining in Europe and home to the last European Bison.
UGANDA
$2,800 to YES (Young and Elderly in Society) for their work fighting
environmental degradation and deforestation in Kayunga and Mukono Districts,
preserving medicinal trees, creating employment for young people and imparting
vocation (agriculture-organic farming, carpentry) skills to them.
$750 to the Environmental Protection and Food Security Initiative
for their tree-planting activities in Mukono district.
AUSTRALIA
$350 to GECO – climbing equipment for the ‘Ferntree
Road’ campaign.
$350 to the Western Woodlands campaign in New South Wales.
$3,000 to Neville “Chappy” Williams, elder of the Wirradjeri
tribe to support his work preventing a cyanide gold mine from being established
on his sacred land at Lake Cowal (the biggest freshwater lake in NSW).
$1,000 to IJAN to pay for legal fees and telephone costs incurred
in their Lake Cowal case against Barrick Gold.
$500 Friends of the Earth, Jervis Bay
$200 to the Native Forest Network for their work protecting Tasmanian
forests
PHILIPPINES
$500 in resource funds to support people organizing Oil Palm Forums.
These forums oppose monoculture oilpalm plantations invading Philippine ecology.
$300 to Doctors for the 3rd World.
$3,500 to The Buffer Zone rainforest project. This is an indigenous
initiative of the Higaonon Tribal people to preserve the million acre rainforest
that is their traditional home.
ROMANIA
$500 to Alburnus Major, the lead NGO in the campaign to oppose a
Canadian gold mining company
2003 grants
US$500 to UNORCA to fund busload of campesinos to go to march in
Cancun at the September 8th WTO meeting and to participate in the International
Farmers Forum
AUS$500 to UNAHI Mindanao for Higaonon Tribe buffer
protection project of 500,000 hectares of pristine rainforest
US$500 to World Environment Day commemoration
in Jakarta, 5-8 June 2003. SGP-Indonesia, together with 50 Civil Society
Organizations, Companies, Indigenous Peoples, Women Organizations, environment
urban poor, marginalized and disenfranchised children. At least 450 women,
children, Indigenous Peoples and SGP Indonesia's partners camped, held workshops,
organized public awareness activities and press conferences for three days.
Translating the international theme of this year's WED, we agreed to choose
"Water for Everyone, One Earth for All" as our common theme among
supporters of Community Forum for Earth.
US$1000 to The
Academy of Development Sciences (ADS) to commence their project
to protect the Katkari tribal group who are teetering on the brink of
extinction. The Katkari community, a primitive forest tribe based mostly in
Raigad and Thane Districts of Maharashtra, lives in abject poverty. Even in
2003 they continue to work as bonded labour for their "sheth" (master). Their
exploitation by non-tribals is total and absolute. They have been converted
into a cheap and bonded labour force by their fellow human beings. The police
department harasses them at will and treats them like a "criminal tribe".
While the Indian Government would deny the presence of slavery, the Katkaris
are slaves and much more. All development programmes, Government or Non-Government,
bypass the Katkaris. This grant has triggered a matching grant from a British
funding organisation.
A$500 to National Parks Association for the campaign to protect
Western Woodlands, NSW, Australia.
US$1000 to support the struggle of the Sarayacu
Community (indigenous Kichwa) who are a traditional community in the Amazon
Rainforest of Ecuador. The Sarayacu Community has been so far resisting the
incursion and invasion of an Oil Company Consortium (CGC/BurlingtonResources/ChevronTexaco)
and is in great need of financial assistance to continue to defend our sacred
lands that have never been logged, mined or exploited in any way. This land
is virgin rainforest high in biodiversity in fauna and flora. Within Sarayacu
Territory exist a unique lake zone of approximately 100 lakes that are considered
sacred. Sarayacu Community is primarily an agricultural, fishing and farming
community so funds are desperately needed to be able to be effective. The
community is facing human rights abuses for defending its land, way of self-subsistence
lifestyle and culture. We also successfully applied to the Grassroots Foundation
for another US$2000 for Sarayacu.
US$
500 for Bruno Idioai of Bougainville. Bruno Idioai
has developed, put into practice and promoted, through hands on training and
awareness programs, an indigenous model of environmental restoration and self-reliance
for the people of war torn Bougainville, in the south west Pacific. Hundreds
of families have adopted his model which focuses on sustainable agriculture
through stabilization of shifting cultivation, reforestation using diverse
indigenous species, integrated animal farming systems and a clan based approach.
This has been achieved in a period of civil war under a total humanitarian
and economic blockade. With peace on Bougainville, these experiences of Bruno,
and those he has taught and continues to teach, have the potential to be building
blocks in a new autonomous Bougainville that can be a model for a new form
of development for this increasingly unstable part of the world in the South
West Pacific.
US$500 to Lucy Mulenkei who runs the
Indigenous Information Network (IIN) in Kenya.
US$500 to Damas de Guayabillas (Guayabillas
Ladies' Committee) which exists to promote, support, and sustain the integrated
development of rural Ecuadorian women so that they will be better able to
improve the quality of their own lives and that of their community.
US$2500 to Pipal tree for a project
on ecological agriculture, empowerment of women & poor farmers at
Uthari village on the Bangalore Kanakapura Road in the Kagalipura panchayat.
AUS$250 for Broadwater Action Group for campaign to halt biomass
plant
US$1000 to U'wa People's Organizing / Coalition Building in
Colombia funds for a video camera kit.
AUS$300 for computer support for Ellie Gilbert, indigenous
rights activist (Lake Cowal campaign and Tent Embassy, Canberra
US$2800 for WOLF Forest Protection Movement purchase of computer.
WOLF is creating a network of forest reserves in East Slovakia where any human
interference will be excluded.
2002
GRANTS
US$2000 for Laptop for TAGPUAN, Kowalisyon ng mga Dumagat sa
Aurora, Inc, indigenous Peoples Organisation in the Philippines for cultural
and environmental campaigns including land rights of the Agta-Dumagat tribe
over forests in logging concession area.
Protection of X'cacel
in Quintana Roo, Mexico - The hotel developer Sol Melia plans to destroy one
of the few remaining nesting breeding grounds of the loggerhead and green
turtle. Also the beaches contain many endangered flora including vast tracts
of mangrove. Funds are needed to continue this international campaign which
has become an inernational effort but still to no avail.
Surface
Mining Awareness and Community Empowerment Project in Ghana - This project
was initated by a university environmental centre which trained activists
to do surface mining presentations and meetings in local instiutions as well
as in local communities directly impacted by gold mining which has caused
displacement and loss of economic power in the local regions.
The
Slovak group "Green Perspective Foundation" reported that the World
Bank together with the Slovak Ministry of Agriculture were floating a $200
million dollar scheme euphemistically titled "Ecological Management of
Forests in Slovakia". Most of the money was slated for road building,
purchase of logging machinery and technologies for biomass energy production.
They asked for urgent funding for a public education program to prevent the
scheme. We sent them $1000, helped them raise more. They went on to spearhead
the campaign which forced a radical revision of the scheme.
Ecological Enterprises
works tirelessly for the protection of the rainforests and indigenous cultures
of Papua New Guinea. Their landowner awareness patrols have convinced many
groups of traditional landowners not to sign contracts with logging companies
and we believe that he has done more to protect PNG's forests than any other
single person. $5,500 in grants to EE over the years helped them to produce
6 new pijin anti-logging posters and mail them out to hundreds of groups in
PNG; to publish the PNG Conservation Resource Directory; and to enable them
to conduct landowner awareness patrols through the New Guinea jungles.
$1000 to Southeast
Asia Information Network (SAIN) to investigate human rights abuses and environmental
destruction associated with new oil exploration in Burma.
$1000 towards
travel expenses for the Voices of Forest Tour assisting 3 indigenous (Dayak)
people from Borneo to travel through Australia sharing their perspectives
on the impacts of so-called 'development'. From Melbourne to Far North Queensland,
they shared news of their struggles for land rights, human rights and the
protection of their forests. This project helped to re-energize the Australian
rainforest movement, extending networks and empowering new individuals to
become actively involved in future campaigns.
Sacred Earth Network
- protection of Siberian Tigers $900. Along with another $2400 raised elsewhere,
we supported:
The Far East Leopard
Fund, who received $500 to continue their work on tiger and leopard protection
in the southern part of Primorski Krai, especially in the Kedrovaya Pad nature
reserve.
Dmitri
Pikunov of the Far East Institute of Geography, who received $800 for the
northern part of Primorski Krai (He is involved with the Hornocker Institute
project in the Sikhote Alin nature reserve and has been researching large
animals in the Bikin River basin for decades.);
The
Society for Tiger Protection, who received $2000 for their work in central
Primorski Krai. Our money allowed Dmitri Mezentsev to travel extensively to
gather support, provided him with a modest salary, allowed the society to
begin regular patrols, helped them to publish a newsletter and advertise their
cause in major news media. It gave them the resources to publicize their group
and generate interest that landed them write-ups in the US, Germany, and other
countries; The money was distributed by Eric Seivers. During his winter visit
to Primorski Krai to bolster these various efforts to protect the tiger, while
he was in Terney in the north of the region, he went undercover with the KGB
and local militia to break a tiger poaching ring. Several people were arrested.
In Russia, this is an unprecedented event. Poachers are rarely fined and it
is unbelievable that one will be jailed as happened in this case.
The East Sepik
Women's Council is among the 6 or 7 indigenous regional environment groups
in Papua New Guinea conducting land owner awareness patrols among landowning
communities who are being wooed by industrial logging companies. Along with
development assistance for establishing benign, economic development projects
as an alternative to large-scale resource extraction, landowner awareness
patrols are the most important tool we have for protecting the last relatively
untouched rainforests in the SE Asia/Pacific region. $700 from JSDG attracted
matching funds from WWF-Australia which enabled ESCOW to make a patrol of
the Hunstein Range presenting benign alternatives for economic development
and advising the landowners as to their rights as Customary Land Owners.
In Poland, the
Ministry for the Protection of the Environment and Forestry, in cooperation
with the experts from the World Bank, prepared a forestry development program
as a basis for 100 million dollars of loans to this sector. The program would
extend the logging of Poland's forests far beyond what was planned in current
production programs. The Polish Forest Society claimed that the project would
destroy Poland's remaining forests. $800 purchased a computer and modem for
Tomasz Terlecki, the activist spear-heading resistance to the program.
Hnuti DUHA,
a Czech forest action group, $1,000. Duha are a very active group in the forefront
of attempts to prevent the destruction of remaining Czech forests. They are
also active in creating awareness in the Czech Republic about the world's
rainforests. Their campaigns include lectures to schools and universities,
a traveling exhibition of Amazonia photographs, working with media and legislators
and non-violent direct actions in defense of nature. Part of this grant went
to publish and widely distribute their "Memorandum on the Responsibility
of the Czech Republic for Rainforest Destruction."
Earth Arc's
UK Mahogany Campaign, $1000. The UK anti-rainforest timbers campaign by Oxford
Earth First! and the Earth Action Resource Centre (Earth Arc) highlighted
the illegal harvesting of mahogany from indigenous reserves in the Amazon.
Their demonstrations against Timbmet, the local timber importer and largest
mahogany supplier in the country, were covered by all local TV evening news
as well as Brazilian Globo, which has the largest viewership in the world
(60 million viewers). Part of the grant was used to fund the action in which
200 protesters occupied Timbmet's yard stopping all work for the day. As well
as the usual occupation and lock-on strategies, the action floated a 50 foot
inflatable chainsaw while several people crucified themselves on Mahogany
crosses. Our money also helped them produce and circulate a two colour leaflet
50,000 copies of which were inserted into UK conservation journals.
Food for All
Now, Cameroon, $500. This group is working to prevent the destruction of ebony
and several "cancer-cure" trees in their rainforests; attempting
to domesticate several rainforest vegetables which are being unsustainably
harvested for food; and working tirelessly on the education and consciousness-raising
of local villagers.
Food for Penan
Blockaders, Sarawak $850. The Penan were unable to access traditional food
and medicine supplies when carrying out continuous blockades to try to stop
the logging of their lands. Food supplies, medicines and financial support
were hand-delivered to help the Penan continue their struggle to protect their
land. Due to increased surveillance by the military and government officials
and the remote areas where the Penan live, it is very difficult to send them
financial support so the RIC volunteer crossed illegally into Sarawak on foot
and back out into Kalimantan again.
Youth Environmental
Education project, $650. Teaching school children the value of the environment
and implementing a recycling project in northern Colombia.
MAMA-86 was
created in 1990 by young Kiev mothers concerned with the health of their children
after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster which took place 85km from Kiev. $1000 went
to MAMA-86's independent medical clinic which examines hundreds of children
free of charge, making diagnoses and recommending treatments. They are also
creating a network of environmental groups capable of raising awareness on
environmental issues.
Pandurang Hegde,
Appiko Movement, $1,000. The world famous Chipko movement ("Appiko"
in India's south), protects forests through the use of non violent direct
action. Hugging the trees to stop the logging, the experience of 'ahimsa'
(non violence) has been an inspiration to the wider world movement in the
care of our global ecology. We have known Pandurang Hegde for 8 years as he
works to protect the scant remaining tropical forests in southern India.
Poland, Protection
of Old Growth Forest, $1,000. The group; 'Workshop for All Beings' coordinated
a powerful campaign to preserve the last remaining fragments of the old-growth
forest in Europe - the Bialowieza Forest. Last year their efforts were crowned
with success with the announcement of the Bialowieza national park.
Western Australia
Forest Alliance (WAFA), $1,000. a coalition of environment groups and activists,facilitated
the first ever forest blockade in W.A.'s history.
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