Herbert Sandoval, from the Social Intercultural Movement of the People of Ixcán, Guatemala (Movimiento Social Intercultural del Pueblo de Ixcán, Guatemala), has a piece on the World Rainforest Movement website about the destruction being caused by palm oil monoculture in… Read More ›
Palm oil
Guatemala’s growing palm oil industry fuels Indigenous land fight
Sandra Cuffe writes in Al Jazeera about the ongoing land struggles in Guatemala primarily focusing on palm oil production, its destructive legacies, and Indigenous resistance. Anibal Agurtia blows into the conch shell tied to a red string around his hand,… Read More ›
David vs Goliath in Guatemala: how palm oil companies encroach on indigenous land
A community in northern Guatemala is fighting against the force of nature and against the expansion of palm oil. Jody García writes in Climate Tracker about a community that is increasingly trapped, literally, by the effects of climate change, on… Read More ›
Drugs, mining, monoculture threaten Guatemala’s mangrove ecosystems
On Guatemala’s Caribbean coast, criminal activity is destroying mangroves and the livelihoods of families who depend on them. Yet Guatemala’s mangrove ecosystems are connected to those of Honduras, Belize and Mexico. What happens to one affects the others. Francelia Solano… Read More ›
Guatemalan activist murdered after court suspends palm oil company operations
A palm oil company remains at the heart of conflict in northern Guatemala, months after a mass fish die-off. A day after company operations were suspended pending further investigation into the incident, three community leaders were abducted and threatened by… Read More ›
Indigenous activist murdered after exposing palm oil ‘ecocide’
On 18 September 2015, one day after the Reforestadora Palma de Petén S.A. (REPSA) palm oil factory was ordered closed for its contamination of the Pasíon River, an indigenous activist, Rigoberto Lima Choc, 28, was murdered outside a courthouse in… Read More ›
Palm Oil Industry Tied to Ecocide in Guatemalan River
Jeff Abbott talks about ‘ecocide’ in the Peten, due to palm oil plantations. The Pasión River in northern Guatemala is a disaster area. Beginning on June 6, residents along the river in the municipality of Sayaxché, Peten, began to find… Read More ›