2.6 FORESTS Figure 2.6.2: Large-scale land transfers, 2004-09
washing, and amalgamation with mercury in the case of gold extraction). As processing activities are often carried out in the home, women and their families are at risk of mercury poisoning and silicosis (Hinton eds. et al. 2003). In many locations women’s multiple roles include care-giving and participation in the sex trade. They may be subject to abusive situations and health risks such as HIV/AIDS. Women’s contributions are often invisible because they perform unrecognized and undervalued care and domestic work. Despite heavy involvement of women in ASM, men control and own most of the family’s assets, including land, the income from mining and farming, tools, homes, crops and the benefits yielded.
The dangerous conditions in which many miners work are not surprising, given the informal and often illegal nature of ASM. Women and men miners are endangered through handling and misuse of chemicals such as mercury and cyanide, accidents due to landslides or explosions, and lung diseases due to exposure to silica dust. Contamination by mercury used in gold recovery has significant impacts not only on women, men and children working at ASM sites, but on other people in the vicinity and those living in downstream areas (specifically young children and women who are pregnant and breastfeeding) (AU and AMDC 2015; Cordy et al. 2011; HRW 2010).
Land grabbing of forest land and resources
Demand for sometimes very large tracts of land on which to increase agriculture to meet food and energy needs (as well demand for land for urban and industrial expansion) continue to grow. In many countries, particularly across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, these demands are associated with “land grabbing” (IIED 2016b; Odusola 2014;
4 3
0 1 2
Source: World Bank (2009)
Deininger and Byerlee 2011; ILC 2011) (Figure 2.6.2). Land grabbing is a global phenomenon that has had significant economic, environmental and social impacts during the last decade or so, frequently resulting in conflict between local communities and outsiders (Dhiaulhaq 2014; IIED 2016a; Cotula and Vermeulen 2010; Cotula et al. 2009). Land grabs in forest areas are often followed by the introduction of chemically intensive, industrial-scale monoculture production (i.e. production of single crops or types of livestock). Crops such as oil palm, biofuel feedstock (e.g. sugarcane and jatropha) and animal feed are examples.
Land grabbing in forest areas but also in other types of ecologies such as savanna, pastureland, agricultural land, not only has impacts such as fragmentation (threatening forest biodiversity) and loss of agrobiodiversity. It can also have serious negative effects on people in forest-dependent communities (De Schutter 2009). These include further restricting their already limited access to forest resources and
Box 2.6.3: Poor working conditions on biofuel feedstock plantations
In the Valle del Cauca region of Colombia, known for its extensive sugar cane plantations, 92% of permanent crops are sugar cane monocultures. In this region there has been an increase in reported cases of sick children, deformities and abortion, which people believe are caused by chemicals used to fumigate the plantations that have filtered through to the streams they use, and/or by constant burning of sugar cane. Moreover, intensive water use for agrofuels production has deviated rivers or dried them out. The plantations give jobs only to men, as this is a labour-intensive occupation. There are concerns about their working conditions.
The men do not receive any social benefits and their wages are very low. Many sugar cane cutters suffer from back pain and respiratory illnesses, increasing pressures within the household. They may have to stop working (and be taken care of by the women in the household) and some die as a result of these working conditions. Source: Alvarez (2013)
157
million hectares
Sudan Mozambique Liberia Ethiopia Cambodia Nigeria
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232 |
Page 233 |
Page 234 |
Page 235 |
Page 236 |
Page 237 |
Page 238 |
Page 239 |
Page 240 |
Page 241 |
Page 242
