Topics – Environment
From resource extraction to climate chaos and food sovereignty, the environment is a topic that defies human-made borders like no other. Industrial capitalism and its dependency on unhindered, never-ending growth represents a sustained assault on the Earth and its inhabitants. In this context, seekers of environmental justice have their work cut out for them. Here, you’ll find stories on agriculture, food, environmental racism, resource extraction, climate change and more.
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Fractured land
A first-hand account of resistance to fracking on Blood land
The first question asked when the issue of fracking on Kainai territory is presented to new ears is often, “How could this happen?” It is a difficult question to answer, but there are four major players: the gas and oil companies; government, both provincial and federal; the Blood Tribe chief and council; and the Blood Tribe member population.
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Land rush
Speculators stake claim to Prairie farmland
Amid skyrocketing food prices, climate-related instability, and declining soil and water resources, wealthy investors have begun to size up the world’s farmland as both an investment opportunity and a hedge against food crises and political turbulence. Saskatchewan’s farmland has gained a particularly noteworthy reputation, making the province a global hot spot for farmland investment.
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Awaiting justice
The ceaseless struggle of the Lubicon Cree
For three decades, the traditional territory of the Lubicon Cree in northern Alberta has undergone massive oil and gas development without the consent of the Lubicon people and without recognition of our Aboriginal rights.
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Flooded and forgotten
Hydro development makes a battleground of northern Manitoba
Around much of northern Manitoba, “hydro” is a dirty word, and for good reason. These projects have reconfigured the landscape of the entire region, drying whole rivers and engorging lakes.
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Stepping up for future generations
An interview with northern Saskatchewan residents resisting a nuclear waste dump on their land
In summer 2011, several people from communities in northern Saskatchewan walked 820 kilometres from Pinehouse to Regina to raise awareness about the storage and transportation of nuclear waste in the province, and to oppose a proposed nuclear waste dump near Pinehouse. This is an excerpt from their radio interview with Don Kossick following the walk.
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Canadian mining on trial
Murder, impunity and Pacific Rim in El Salvador
As a court battle ensues between the Salvadoran government and Canadian mining company Pacific Rim, the disappearances and murders of anti-mining activists are a tangible manifestation of the lack of respect for individual and collective rights in the face of highly lucrative development projects.
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The next generation of land defenders
5 young people step up against nuclear waste
Meet the youth at the heart of a movement to raise awareness about a proposed nuclear waste dump near their communities. These five young people participated in an 820-kilometre walk from Pinehouse to Regina, Saskatchewan to oppose the storage and transportation of nuclear waste in the province.
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Recipe for disaster
Biotechnology, industrialization and Canadian culpability in rural Vietnam
Monsanto is among a handful of powerful multinationals that, with the support of Western governments, including Canada’s, are priming Vietnam to become a hotbed of biotechnology development, with potentially devastating consequences for its land and people.
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Peak oil for preteens
Book review
Claudia Dávila’s debut graphic novel, Luz Sees the Light, sets Luz and her friends on a path to transform their fossil-fueled world.
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From the ground up
Meet the women at the forefront of their communities’ transition from forestry to farming
On the West Coast, agriculture has always taken a back seat to logging, which has generated a lot of money for folks in these company towns. Now, as the export-the-trees-and-import-everything-else economy seems to be running out of steam, there’s renewed interest in small-scale farming as both a way to make a living and as a community resource. And in contrast to the decades of focus on the male-dominated forest industry, this movement is in many cases being led by women.
