Category: Indigenous People
Stop Flushing Down Fertility! The Case for Recycling Human “Waste”
By Sonja Muriel Plüss
A nutritious breakfast, the morning coffee, and soon follows the call to the toilet. If you are like me and live in a place with a sewage system, all it takes is a flush for the discharge to be gone from our worlds and we can move on with our morning rhythms.
Mining, Protests and Political Participation in Peru
Source of the Picture: Swissinfo.ch. See the multimedia story on the recent environmental protests in the Tintaya mine developed by Swissinfo.
On November 12, 2019, 13 rural communities in the province of Espinar started a strike.… Read More
Yarsagumba Extraction: Issues in Conflict, Sustainability, & Resource Sovereignty
Yarsagumba is a caterpillar-fungus fusion. It forms when parasitic mushroom spores infect and mummify moth larvae under the soil. Twig-shaped fungus sprouts from the head of dead caterpillars, emerging just centimeters above the earth for harvesters to find.… Read More
Gold Extraction in Gyama Valley, Tibetan Plateau – When Narratives Clash
While the predominant view of the natural world and global environmental discourse stems from a western neoliberal legacy, the indigenous views of nature is set in a polemic opposition of this mainstream narrative.… Read More
Guano Extraction and Indigeneity
Bird poop – the original fertilizer
For thousands of years, indigenous populations have used different forms of fertilizer to grow crops. In Latin America and Oceania, the use of excrement, eggshells, and carcasses of seabirds, bats, and seals has helped crops flourish even in poor soil.… Read More
Reshaping society: amber extraction in Chiapas.
Amber, the fossilized resin of extinct trees has been present in Chiapas, in southeastern Mexico for more than 20 million years. the native people of Chiapas used it as an ornament and, according to folk medicine, it had healing properties.… Read More
The Winters Doctrine and the case of the Oahe Dam
The perception of nature within Indigenous tribes in the United States (US) is unique. For most Indigenous peoples, the relationship with all beings and places begins at birth and continues until death.… Read More
Corporate Social Responsibility, a General Overview
Development
The term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) appeared more than 50 years ago in Howard Bowen’s publication: Social Responsibilities of the Businessmen (1953). The term has evolved for years, but there is an overall understanding among scholars that CSR is the result of the moral obligation that companies have within the society in which they operate.… Read More
Transnational Corporations, Indigenous Peoples and the Ambiguity of the Law: Some Thoughts on Current Developments in the Area of Business and Indigenous Rights
A Judgment in South Africa
Sometimes, one’s studies and the developments of the “real world” come together in surprising ways. As I make the very last adjustments to my paper on the engagement of mining corporations with the indigenous right to “free, prior and informed consent”, a South African court ruling makes headlines around the world.… Read More