President Museveni’s government wants to change the law to allow prospective investors in the mining industry to access private land that contains minerals without negotiating with the land-owners. His argument is that minerals in the soil belong to the government and that the people occupying the land have no say in the matter. The people must resist such tyranny.

The intersectionality of people’s struggles on climate change calls for concerted efforts towards climate justice. Across the world, communities are made vulnerable by intensified exploitation of natural resources and overproduction for profit. There is a need to launch and strengthen grassroots educational and advocacy campaigns to deepen understanding of the relationship between climate change and human rights.

The continuing support across the world for the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process demonstrates that it is still relevant and useful. More work is needed, however, to enhance the support which the process deserves, and especially to deepen its understanding by all key stakeholders.

After many years of running oil palm plantations, the world’s largest food company Unilever sold the lands it had grabbed mostly to foreign companies. The communities living next to and within Unilever’s former plantations are amongst the poorest in Africa. Now they are mobilizing to fight their grabbed land.

Ten years after acquiring the Chergui gas concession in Kerkennah through a corrupt deal, and five years after Tunisia’s uprising for bread, freedom and social justice, the British oil and gas company Petrofac faces growing discontent on the island. In the first two weeks of April, Kerkennah was the scene of violent police repression of protests against the oil company.

President Robert Mugabe is not solely to blame for the economic problems facing Zimbabwe as many in the western world have claimed. 

South African society’s conflict with a mainstay of the country’s corporate economy – resource extraction – is permanently on display in the platinum, gold and coalfields in the north and north-east of the country.

Beyond being inconvenient for knowing too much, Gustavo Castro Soto falls into the repressive government’s category of public enemy. Like Cáceres, Castro has been a vocal opponent of dam construction on indigenous rivers, as well as of the broad powers given transnational corporations and the local elite to plunder democracy and the riches of nature.

The whole point of the freedom struggle was the repossession of land by African people from the hands of Europeans who had grabbed it. But the ruling ANC will never resolve land question in South Africa. Its “Freedom Charter” long renounced the land question in 1955. Its “willing seller and willing buyer” policy is an unmitigated disaster.

Berta was indefatigable. Unflappable. Even as she served her community, Berta rose to become an international people’s diplomat. She was a heroine to many global movements, a critical player in many struggles, a keynote speaker at many venues. Berta was someone consulted by government officials, by international networks, and even, a few months ago, by Pope Francis.

Plans for real estate development, tree planting, and new cash crops for economic up-liftment in the area of Mwireri/Gitugi and its neighbourhood in Laikipia County, have been dealt a severe blow by the illegal siting of a stone crusher and quarry on land earmarked for agricultural and residential development.

There is a plan to develop 25 acres of Sigiria Block in Karura Forest for commercial use. A company by the name Ibis Hospitality Ltd is alleged to have proposed to build a six-star hotel in the forest against public interest.

The regime has killed over 140 students, teachers and farmers since last November. This is part of a crackdown on anti-government protests by farmers who are demanding to stop the implementation of the Addis Ababa Integrated Master Plan, which will displace people from their ancestral land.

Uganda’s oil and gas are at the heart of campaigns for presidential elections taking place this month. But the resources are shrouded in mystery, as no one, except the Museveni regime, knows the details of the contracts the government has signed with multi-national companies. Ugandans need to keep an eye on these resources and demand answers on how they will be used to better their lives.

It has now become a ritual for Iue Tjitemisa, 42, to wake up every morning and look towards this abandoned mining structure in the distance and curse.

Climate politics will go nowhere as long as peoples' movements remain locked into debates over arithmetic. It is time to re-set the start line for climate struggles in a place that transcends the old episteme.

Paris witnessed both explicit terrorism by religious extremists on November 13 and, a month later, implicit terrorism by carbon addicts negotiating a world treaty that guarantees catastrophic climate change. The first incident left more than 130 people dead in just one evening’s mayhem; the second lasted a fortnight but over the next century can be expected to kill hundreds of millions, especially in Africa.

A child born in the U.S.A. will consume more—and cause more greenhouse gas emissions—during his lifetime than several children born in a developing country. It is no longer in doubt that there exists a clear link between population and the climate crisis.

Dear Reader,

In the light of the UN climate conference (COP21) taking place in Paris, France, this week we bring you a special issue of Pambazuka News dedicated to the urgent climate crisis.

The collection of articles in this edition is the work of Carbon Trade Watch, working with several specialist individuals and organisations over the course of several months. The articles have recently been published as a booklet that is available at the website.

Pambazuka News Editors are grateful to the individual contributors to the booklet and to CTW for allowing us to reproduce this stimulating and timely collection.

The central line of the articles is an urgent call to all humanity to do everything they can to end the climate crisis gripping the world at this moment. The authors unanimously reject the false neo-liberal, financialized solutions as being of little use for meaningfully addressing the crisis. They propose alternatives that are based on the simple fact that the Earth is finite; human beings must live responsibly or we will destroy ourselves and the rest of life.

What are you prepared to do personally to avoid this catastrophic eventuality?

PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORS

A world that capital is constantly trying to bifurcate between a monolithic society and a monolithic nature – and partially succeeding – is one of the worlds we occupy. For that very reason it must be one of the targets of popular struggle.