‘Green’ Bishop Receives Alternative Nobel Prize

A leading figure in Brazil’s environment movement, Erwin Kräutler, is one of the four winners of the Right Livelihood Award 2010, known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’. The 71-year-old Catholic Bishop of Xingu in the Amazon region is honoured for “a lifetime of work for the human and environmental rights of indigenous peoples and for his tireless efforts to save the Amazon forest from destruction”, the prize committee in Stockholm said.

Read More

Amazonia under threat

Today, the predation and violence against indigenous and traditional peoples of the Amazonia continues with the outrageous activity of construction of infrastructures and transport facilities, especially with large projects as the IIRSA (Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America).

The IIRSA emerged at a meeting of Latin American Heads of State held in Brasilia in 2000. They agreed to create a process of political, social and economic development of transport infrastructure, energy and communication across the continent, creating new export routes to reduce transport costs and thus achieve greater competitiveness in world markets. The estimated cost in 2009 was US $ 74,500 million, financed by several regional and international institutions as the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank.

Read More