Environment for us means supporting the idea of environmental justice. We put it in place through operations, aimed to affirm the right of indigenous people and traditional communities to exert full control over lands, water, forests and energy sources; to have full access and power of distributing these resources and their revenues; and to obtain compensation for any damages.
Environmental justice embodies the efforts that Mani Tese has always done to raise awareness about environmental effects of human activities.
In addition, in the last few years, many cases of environmental injustice have directly affected some of the countries in which we have been working for years.
In Ecuador, we acted against oil exploitation in the National Park of Yasuní, in the heart of the Ecuadorian rainforest, which is one of the places on earth with the highest biodiversity index. We supported organisation fighting for defence of the area and we made a documentary and a denouncing campaign to keep the spotlight on this matter.
In Kenya, we are working on the protection of the river Molo’s basin. In fact, it represents a strategic area for the country’s food safety, which is suffering from climate and environmental crisis due to the intensive exploitation of forestry resources.
In Mozambique, we are promoting a reforestation project to combat climate change.
In the coming years we want to document and adopt more and more cases of environmental injustice (or apartheid) and integrate the activity of advocacy and campaigning with the cooperation projects.
