Food First & Transnational Institute

In the face of violent dispossession and incorporation into an exploitative labor regime, indigenous peasant families in northern Guatemala are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity as Q'eqchi' peoples or R'al Ch'och ("sons and daughters of the earth"). This brief is the first in the Land & Sovereignty in the Americas series, co-published by Food First and the Transnational Institute.

The International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2006. A summary Final Report on the conference can be found Here. Attached are the resources, presentations, and papers from the conference.

European Coordination Via Campesina and Hands Off the Land Network

Please find links below to a recent Human Rights Watch report and video on the human rights impacts of coal mining in Mozambique. Our report shows that almost 60% of Tete province, site of large coal reserves, has been allocated for approved or proposed mining licenses. The report examines how serious shortcomings in government policy and mining companies’ (Vale, Riversdale, Rio Tinto) implementation uprooted largely self-sufficient farming communities and resettled them to arid land far from rivers and markets. 

Happy to be in touch to provide any additional information.

ETC Group has been monitoring the power and global reach of agro-industrial corporations for several decades – including the increasingly consolidated control of agricultural inputs for the industrial food chain: proprietary seeds and livestock genetics, chemical pesticides and fertilizers and animal pharmaceuticals. Collectively, these inputs are the chemical and biological engines that drive industrial agriculture.

The purpose of the Mekong Land Research Forum online site is to provide structured access to published and unpublished research on land issues in the Mekong Region. It is based on the premise that debates and decisions around land governance can be enhanced by drawing on the considerable volume of research, documented experience and action-based reflection that is available.

Formerly East Asia Gold Corp. Nothing much on the site (Sept 2001) though they are mentioned as active in the 2001 Mining Annual Report.

Carries a copy of "Grave Diggers" (no search engine so go to publications and browse). Good links page.

Interesting to compare the Burmese 1994 Mining Law with those of other Asian countries (see analysis of the 1994 Mining Law in "Grave Diggers" by Roger Moody, which is on the OBL shelves).

Click down to Burma

Click on Myanmar for a map and description of MMAJ's earlier interest in the Monywa mine, now being exploited by Ivanhoe. In 1998 MMAJ organised a Workshop in Rangoon for "Investment Promotion & Environemntal Protection in the Mining Sector in ASEAN

Active in promoting mining in Burma. "The Metal Mining Agency of Japan (MMAJ) is a semigovernmental
organization under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of International
Trade and Industry and the main organization that executes the
Japanese Government's policies related to the mining industry. Since
its establishment in 1963, the Agency has been conducting various
exploration operations for mineral resources both within and outside
Japan, and other worldwide activities, such as technical cooperation in