By Edgardo Ayala, Tierramerica via IPS. El Salvador’s Jiquilisco Bay, a tiny hidden corner of the Pacific Ocean and home to the country’s longest stretch of mangrove forests, is becoming a haven for endangered sea turtles. (English | Spanish)
Continue reading →By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The Caracol Bay area was slated to be a World Heritage Site and Marine Park because of its breathtaking barrier reef, mangroves, and migratory birds. The area is also the site of archaeological finds including Guacanagaric, one of the largest and most complete Taino Indian villages. The area has been converted into the massive Caracol Industrial Park (or Free-Trade zone, FTZ) that is expected to pollute the Trou du Nord River and the bay and get served by a deep-water port.
Continue reading →By Roberson Alphonse, Le Nouvelliste | Commentary and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. According to Dieuseul Anglade, director of Haiti’s Office of Mines and Energy in Haiti, during the negotiations for mineral exploitation, the Haitian State will keep a close watch to ensure that Haitian citizens benefit from the country’s wealth. Meanwhile, the mayors have been dismissed, and land prices have skyrocketed. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Plans are under way for Canadian and US corporations to mine Haiti’s northeast area near Caracol, which has been discovered to contain a wealth of silver and gold, in addition to copper. As in the Dominican Republic’s Pueblo Viejo project, construction of the mines will involve dynamiting of mountains, and the ore will be extracted by an opencast (or open-pit) mining process that contaminates large volumes of water with cyanide. UPDATES: Attempts to issue mining permits to the US’ VCS Mining LLC and Canada’s SOMINE SA, without any environmental impact assessment (EIA) were thwarted by Haiti’s Senate in January 2013. Plans to dredge a deep-sea port in the pristine Bay of Fort Liberte were scrapped in April 2014.
Continue reading →By Staff, SPX via Terra Daily | Staff, Wildlife Conservation Society. The Government of Bangladesh recently declared three new wildlife sanctuaries for endangered freshwater dolphins in the world’s largest mangrove ecosystem – the Sundarbans. In 2009 these areas were discovered to harbor thousands of freshwater dolphins, when only a few hundreds were thought to remain in the entire world.
Continue reading →By Rachelle Charlier Doucet, AlterPresse | Commentary and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A massive industrial park is scheduled to open in the Caracol Bay area of Haiti, although no plan is in place to mitigate the park’s impact on a region that has been proposed as a World Heritage Site for its ecological, historical, and archaeological importance. (English | French)
Continue reading →By Staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch. Part 6 of 7. The same week over 300 agricultural plots in Caracol, Haiti, were unexpectedly destroyed, the Haitian government signed an agreement with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, IDB, and Korean textile giant Sae-A Trading to convert the lands into an industrial park. This park will dump its wastes into a bay with extensive coraf reefs and one of the country’s last mangrove forests. (English | French)
By Staff, Terra Daily. Tahir Qureshi’s life is under threat for helping to rehabilitate 30,000 hectares (74,132 acres) of mangrove along the southern coast on the Arabian Sea. “The cause is worth living such a life,” he says.
Continue reading →
