I'm not sure if it's some sort of cognitive dissonance or denial, but a lot of people believe for some unknown reason that various animals or other organisms don't feel pain... even though they react like they obviously do. Lobsters are a good example.
The reporters found 1,482 areas in the Apurinã Indigenous land registered as NFTs, which are digital certificates of ownership of unique (non-fungible) assets such as works of art, collectibles or properties. In this case, buyers make virtual purchases of plots in the territory, which they can sell to others anytime. It works like a stock exchange. NFT prices vary according to the prices of encrypted virtual money — cryptocurrencies — and the value of the environmental asset that is supposed to be contributing to preserve the forest. At least 665 clients purchased forest land plots and continue trading them as NFTs on specialized platforms.
According to Nemus, NFT holders can navigate the area they acquired and detect wildlife or environmental threats, monitoring and auditing the conservation of the area.
Nemus’ businesses are associated with European investors and ASF BRAZIL LTD, a London-based holding company founded by Italian businessman Maurizio Totta. In Brazil, Totta is a partner of Pedro Ruhs da Silva and Flávio Meira Penna, who appear as owners of Nemus and other companies in partnership with ASF. The group’s main investments in the Amazon are focused on timber extraction, with the recovery of bankrupt or indebted companies.
In an interview on American TV in the Break It Down Show, Nemus’ founder Meira Penna said the Indigenous people “are sort of like squatters” in the areas acquired by Nemus, but he stated that “they’ll live there forever” and “they will jump to the digital world very quickly.”
In the video, which can be seen in full on YouTube, the businessman details his NFT project in the area claimed by the Indigenous people. The deal is meant to raise up to $5 million, with NFTs selling for $150-$51,000. With that money, Nemus would buy more areas in the region to launch more NFTs, as explained in the video.
In addition to Manasa, Meira Penna also acquired a timber company, Laminados Triunfo, in Acre state and exported the product to the U.S. In April, the company was the target of a “timber laundering” investigation by the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA).
ILO Convention 169 provides for the right to consultation on any project that interferes with Indigenous lands. Regardless of whether or not the territory has already been officially recognized, the entire recognized Indigenous community must be aware of what is being proposed and has the right to approve the project or not. The matter must be discussed internally by the Indigenous people, with the adoption of a consultation protocol that allows everyone in the territory to have access to information about the projects.
To the Prosecution Service, Nemus said the property was not on “actually demarcated Indigenous land,” and therefore the company’s understanding was that “no article of ILO 169 convention on consultation applies.”
In the same document from August 2022, Nemus said it was not yet developing economic activities in the area. However, at the time, the company had already launched its NFTs on the market, for which sales began in March 2022.
What a dumb way to spend money. Meanwhile there are a lot of nonprofits who desperately need money. Like food banks, homeless shelters or even doctors without borders.
The problem is not to do with safety in a human health sense, but rather genetic safety, ie, is it safe and wise to allow these modified plants to breed with other natural crops? I would prefer not, it’s something we cannot estimate the effect of. Also as the article rightly says, they have no need for this stuff from a large multinational corp, they can just grow other vegetables like tomatoes, squash, taro, etc. According to the article to get the right amount of Vitamin A, you’d have to eat 8 kg of rice in a day, whereas squash has significantly high concentrations of beta carotene (vit. A precursor). Don’t let the corporations control your food supply. Even though Syngenta has apparently donated this rice, they may pull other shady stuff. Letting a corp have a licence to the food you are growing is insanity.
Its a little strange to think about, but there’s nothing ‘natural’ about modern crops.
For millenia selective breeding was used to get desired traits, with who knows how many other mutations along the way.
More recently radiation has been used to induce mutations in crops to wider diversity.
GMOs are just the next step in more precisely editing a plants genome with only the changes we want.
Now the corpations making them like Monsanto can get fucked, they should still be treated like every other plant. If you have seeds you should be able to plant them.
Yeah, for me the issue with GMOs is less with the concepts of genetic engineering and more with the legal rights. Should be impossible to copyright or patent a fucking plant, and if that means that big corporations don’t want to do it anymore then that’s absolutely fine.
I probably shouldn’t have used the word natural, it’s too broad. I just feel there is a risk with allowing an artificial gene (for example the bacterial beta carotene gene) to spread through a population it never would have been in. Now I can’t think of any particular reason this might actually be bad, but we are still introducing a variable into a system we do not understand fully. When that system is what feeds us, I’d rather not mess with it without complete understanding.
Generally I agree with you, but in the case of Golden Rice the corporation has zero control over it. Now I’m not saying that the government of the Philippines should mandate it being grown, just that if a farmer wants to grow it, they should be free to do it, and there shouldn’t be any reason to protest against it. If you want to grow it, go ahead, if your neighbor wants to grow it, no one should care.
We have the right roam in Sweden, I have never even considered that I couldn’t just enter a wood and pick berries/mushrooms or pitch a tent. It is a foreign concept to me.
Neither of them have finished the prior consultation process legally required to begin operating, according to the Mining Administrative Jurisdictional Authority (AJAM).
In my book, these guys should have a rocket launcher for this exact situation. Give them a Gundam.
The authors of the paper, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, say the data provide evidence that climate change impacts on Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are tangible, widespread and affect multiple elements of their ecosystems.
“There is the idea existing in the scientific community that local knowledge is not a valid source of knowledge, and the study aims to bridge this gap,” says Victoria Reyes-García, research professor at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and lead author of the study.
The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in 48 sites inhabited by Indigenous peoples and local communities, covering all climate zones and nature-dependent livelihoods across all inhabited continents. The research is the largest global effort to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts by IPLCs.
Based on the information collected, Indigenous peoples and local communities across all continents are facing nuanced impacts of climate change that are hyperlocal.
Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people understand and experience these environmental impacts, according to the study. This limits researchers in their risk analysis and adaptation planning, the researchers say.
For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change sensitivity and vulnerability. This underscores the significance of incorporating local knowledge and experience in climate research and policy for better climate adaption strategies, they say.
By gathering IPLC reports, they documented 369 local indicators of climate change impacts: 94 indicators of climate change (referring to changes in elements of the atmospheric system) and 275 indicators of climate change impacts (referring to changes in elements of the physical and the life systems).
The authors note that the study’s method isn’t able to discern whether the reported impacts can be fully attributed to climate change. Other intermingling environmental factors, such as land use change and overextraction of resources, make it difficult. Rather, climate change is understood as one driver, among multiple others, that exacerbate the environmental changes experienced by communities.
About 20% of reports showed changes in precipitation, especially in areas where agriculture prevailed. However, changes in air masses and impacts on marine ecosystems were more frequently observed in sites where fishing rivaled other livelihoods. Indicators referring to changes in freshwater were higher in tropical climates than in polar climates. But, the average number of indicators referring to impacts in pastures and grasslands was significantly higher in arid and polar climates than in tropical climates. And impacts on pastures, grasslands and land cover were more frequent where pastoralism dominated.
According to the report, these finding provide a basis to the previously untested hypothesis that the way local people interact with the environment through livelihood activities is an important predictor of the changes they observe.
The next part of the article discusses specific examples.
One of my favorite videos is of two juvenile gorillas walking behind a silverback going into an enclosure. One of them gooses the silverback and then turns and runs, and the adult turns around and smacks the other.
Lack of transparency in Madagascar’s fisheries sector has long raised concerns, with reports of foreign vessels abusively exhausting fish stocks in the country’s waters, and secretive fishing deals with shadowy foreign companies.
The report, drafted by consultant Eric Beantanana for Madagascar’s multistakeholder group (MSG), a committee that oversees the country’s participation in the FiTI process, provides information about traditional, artisanal and industrial fisheries, a list of the laws and regulations governing the sector, tenure arrangements, and access agreements. It also assesses the country’s transparency according to the availability and accessibility of data from six thematic areas as outlined by the FiTI Standard.
Most important, details on large vessels, both foreign and domestic, operating in Madagascar’s waters were made public for the first time: their manner of operation, license delivery process, duration of the agreements under which they operate, quotas, catches, taxes paid, and the fisheries ministry’s use of the money earned from the agreements.
The report also lists recommendations for the Madagascar government to continue improving transparency. For example, to digitize any documents relating to fisheries laws, regulations and policies so they are publicly available, and to progressively eliminate confidentiality clauses in fishing agreements it signs with foreign entities, among other recommendations.
Madagascar embarked on the FiTI process three years ago. Tsimanaoraty Paubert Mahatante, Madagascar’s minister of fisheries and blue economy and a fisheries scientist himself, told Mongabay that as soon as he was appointed minister in August 2021, he wrote to the FiTI board indicating the country’s willingness to join. “They are astonished at the beginning,” he said. “It was the first time to see a minister writing to them and sharing his will to join this organization.”
Madagascar and five other countries — Cabo Verde, Ecuador, Mauritania, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Seychelles — are currently FiTI “candidate countries.” Each has an MSG comprising representatives of government, civil society and the private sector to guide and report annually on its progress toward meeting the 12 transparency requirements of the FiTI Standard. By demonstrating consistent progress toward that standard, they can eventually become “FiTI Compliant” countries, a status that requires regular reporting and validation by FiTI to maintain.
Tragic, but change now seems inevitable, although they didn’t cause it ( should be compensated by the big soybean/cattle-ranchers who driver deforestation, inter alia ). Maybe similar situation to Sundarbans in Bengal ( although they don’t have açaí ) .
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