Petitions and statements

The Global Forest Coalition statement of solidarity with Pablo Solón

August 2017
We, the Global Forest Coalition, an international coalition of 87 NGOs and Indigenous Peoples’ Organisations from 59 different countries, express our concern and call for solidarity with Pablo Solón, a well-known activist fighting for the rights of Mother Earth. Solón is also Executive Director of Fundación Solón, Bolivia, an active member of our coalition.

 

International condemnation of the murder of indigenous leader Bertha Cáceres in Honduras

March 2016
Berta Cáceres, indigenous leader and spokeperson for more than 20 years of the Civic Council of Popular and Inigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras – Copinh), was murdered on March 3, while she was resting in her home in La Esperanza, Intibucá, about 188 km from Tegucigalpa, by “unknown” gunmen.

 

Durban Declaration on REDD

October 2015
We, local communities, peasants movements, Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations from Africa and all over the world, call upon the United Nations, the World Forestry Congress, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank and states to reject top-down forms of development, including false solutions to climate change and forest and biodiversity conservation that only serve the dominant market economy.

We are united to oppose and reject the commodification, privatization and plunder of Nature, which include REDD+[1] and other market-based mechanisms including biodiversity and conservation offsets that put profit above the well being of humanity and the planet.

 

Fight for System Change Now! Why we need to build alternatives and dismantle a process that will lock us into another decade of burning the planet

September 2015
Today, just few months before the 21st Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP21) in Paris in December 2015, we see with great foreboding that a very bad deal is coalescing. The consequences of the problematic UNFCCC process leading towards the Paris deal are incredibly grave. If the world is locked into another decade of burning the planet, there will …

 

Mobilize and Organize to Stop and Prevent Planet Fever!

September 2014
When we, as human beings, get a fever, we immediately get worried and take action. After all, we know that if our body temperature rises to 1.5ºC, let alone 2ºC [3.6 ºF] above the normal average, there can be severe damage, while an increase of 4-6ºC [7.2-10.8 ºF] or more can cause a comatose situation and even death.

So it is when planet Earth gets a fever. For the past 11,000 years, the average temperature of the Earth has been around 14ºC [57.2ºF]. It is now about to reach an increase of 1ºC. And, if we do not take appropriate measures now to stop this fever from spreading, the forecast is that our planet will be well on its way to anywhere between 2ºC to 6ºC rise in temperature before the end of this century. Under such feverish conditions, life as we know it will dramatically change on planet Earth.

We have no other recourse but to take action now…

 

There will be no going back from the climate chaos if we don’t halt polluting corporations and change the system

June 2014
Climate change negotiations are being dominated by irresponsible states, polluters and corporations that only care about current operations and the furtherance of profits through more fossil fuel exploitation and in new carbon markets which are destroying forests, soil, wetlands, rivers, mangroves and oceans, and financializing and privatizing ecosystems and nature itself on which our lives depend.

This was more than evident in the last UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP) in Warsaw, Poland where parallel to the climate negotiations there was …

 

To confront the climate emergency we need to dismantle the WTO and the free trade regime

September 2013
Launched in 1995, the World Trade Organization (WTO) completed the Bretton Woods trio with the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in promoting neoliberalism and corporate globalization. The WTO was particularly special in its power to legally enforce and penalize countries, taking away the policy space of governments, and on several occasions, forcing them to change their national laws in order to implement global free trade rules.

Not long after its launch however, new negotiations …

 

World Social Forum: Climate Space Final Declaration “To Reclaim Our Future, We Must Change the Present. Our Proposal for Changing the System and not the Climate”

April 2013
The capitalist system has exploited and abused nature, pushing the planet to its limits, so much so that the system has accelerated dangerous and fundamental changes in the climate.

Today, the severity and multiplicity of weather changes – characterized by droughts, desertification, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, forest fires and the melting of glaciers and sea ice – indicate that the planet is burning. These extreme changes have direct impacts on humans through the loss lives, livelihoods, crops and homes all of which have led to human displacement in the form of forced migration and climate refugees on a massive an unprecedented scale.

 

Letter of Concern from Forest Groups regarding RWE’s Biomass Investments, False Claims and Greenwashing around Wood-based Bioenergy

December 2012
The Global Forest Coalition is deeply concerned about the impacts and threats of RWE’s growing biomass investments on forests.  In the short term, RWE’s biomass investments will contribute to and accelerate the destruction of forests in the southern US and British Columbia, the two regions from which the company sources most of its pellets.  In the longer term, the indirect and quite possibly the direct impacts of RWE’s rapidly increasing demand for wood will be felt by forest-dependent communities and others affected by industrial tree plantation expansion across the world.

 

Open Letter: Groups Renew Call to UN to Ban GM Trees

October 2012
On the second day of the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety (COP MOP 6) in Hyderabad, India, civil society organizations are renewing the demand for a global ban on the release of genetically modified trees (GM trees) into the environment. [Genetically modified trees are also called genetically engineered trees, GE trees or transgenic trees.]

 

The Republic of Paraguay is in Crisis – To National and International Public Opinion

June 2012
The institutional breakdown caused by the National Congress through a parliamentary coup, broke the democratic process that the people voted and elected in 2008. We believe that this attack against the legitimate government of Paraguay, elected at the polls, besides being a terrible reversal of democracy that affects all citizens Paraguayan democracy seriously threatens the entire region, as it stands as a destabilizing element for all of Latin America.  

 

People’s Summit Final Declaration

June 2012
The social and popular movements, trade unions, people, civil society organizations and environmental organizations from around the world present at the People’s Summit at Rio+20 for Social and Environmental Justice experienced in the camps, mass mobilizations and debates the building of convergences and alternatives, conscious of the fact that we are the subjects of another type of relationship among human beings and between humankind and nature, tackling the urgent challenge of curbing the new phase of capitalist recomposition and building, through our struggles, new paradigms for society.

 

OPEN LETTER: Sustainable Energy for All Initiative- Using Poverty and Climate Change as Excuses to Increase Corporate Profits from Energy Provision

June 2012
The SEFA process and Action Agenda are deeply flawed and threaten to further entrench destructive, polluting and unjust energy policies for corporate profit under the guise of alleviating energy poverty, while undermining community rights to energy sovereignty and self determination.

 

Please reject RTRS-certified soy

February 2012
Multinational food retailer Ahold has received the signatures of 26.000 people across Europe demanding an end to greenwash projects like the Round Table for Responsible Soy (RTRS).

 

Call to UNFCCC for a Moratorium on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+)

December 2011
A Global Alliance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities against REDD call for a moratorium on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+).

 

Declaration of members of the Indigenous Peoples’ Biocultural Climate Change Assessment (IPCCA) Initiative

November 2011
Strong New Indigenous Statement Against REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation scheme)

 

SEVETTIJARVI Declaration

October 2011

 

Communique from the communities of the Amador Hernandez region, Montes Azules, Lacandon Jungle

September 2011

 

Manifesto for the Defense of the Brazilian Forest Code

May 2011
We demand that our natural resources be preserved for all Brazilian people, in order to ensure a future for humankind.

 

Stop the destruction of forests and land for wood-based bio-energy

May 2010

 

Declaration against monoculture tree plantations

Exclude Monoculture Tree Plantations from Financial Support to Forest and Climate Change-related Programs

 

Biofuels: a disaster in the making

November 2006

 

Declaration: The Development Model for Soy in Paraguay: Irresponsible, Unsustainable and Anti-Democratic

August 2006
The role of large scale soy production in the destruction of land, water, communities and ecosystems in Paraguay.