Project Censored: Four Of the Year's Most Important Environment Stories That You Probably Haven't Read

Every year, Project Censored compiles the 25 most important but under-reported stories of the year. This year, some urgent environmental issues are included, and if you're concerned about the environment, you really should know about them.

Treehugger has already covered some of Project Censored's stories: in Somalia, toxic waste is at least part of the fuel behind the increasing piracy of the last few years, and the EU has stepped up its stance against toxic chemicals.

Here are four others that deserve more attention, and action, than they've been getting.

Amazon in Peril: New Wave of Oil and Gas Exploration

The Amazon, perhaps the most biodiverse rainforest in the world, may soon be the oil industry's next victim. The race to explore and develop oil and gas in the Amazon has been picking up in just the last few years, with little, if any, environmental impact assessments conducted and no overseeing power to evaluate the cumulative effect of such major exploration projects taking place simultaneously.

AP Photo/Eraldo Peres

The stakes are not small: 72 percent of the Peruvian Amazon is divided into 64 oil and gas blocks, 56 of which were approved in or after 2003—with 16 signed in 2008 alone. Bolivia and western Brazil are expected to see similarly rapid growth, a pattern that worries environmentalists.

The locations of the oil and gas blocks "overlap perfectly on top of the peak biodiversity spots, almost as if by design, and this is in one of the most, if not the most, biodiverse place on Earth," said Matt Finer of Save America's Forests. In total, at least 35 multinational companies now operate more than 180 oil and gas development zones throughout some of the most remote and untouched parts of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil. At risk are not only the precious ecosystems and biodiversity contained in some of these still-pristine areas, but also indigenous cultures and preserved ways of life.

Isolated communities live on at least 58 of Peru's 64 blocks, and though they are "consulted" when a project begins, they have no actual say in whether it gets approved or how it proceeds.

World Water Forum = Corporate Fraud

AP Photo/Murad Sezer

Rather than working to increase people's access to clean water around the world, the World Water Forum, held in Turkey in March 2009, was criticized for instead acting on behalf of corporate interests and promoting the privatization of water.

The forum was organized primarily by the World Water Council, which happens to be dominated by Suez and Veolia, two of the largest players in today's booming private water industry. Critics (some of whom support the forum's antidote, the People's Water Forum) say their influence compromises the forum's legitimacy, pointing to price hikes—as well as decreased pollution control—in Argentina, Bolivia, Ghana, Tanzania, the U.S. and other countries in which so-called Public-Private Partnerships have put water services under private control. This, of course, means that the poorest people, who need improved access to clean water the most, are least able to get it.

Amy Goodman gave Maude Barlow, a world-renowned water activist, a chance to speak about this issue, but unless you turn into Democracy Now! regularly, you probably missed it, and it's not because you weren't paying attention. It's just not a story that got much coverage.

The World Bank's Carbon Trading System = Also Fraud

Stephen Jaffe/IMF via Getty Images

The World Bank's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) program is designed to help companies and governments reach greenhouse emissions reduction targets by providing a marketplace in which to buy carbon offsets. Project Censored, however, points to an overlooked part of the story:

CDM is an

"integral part of the Bank's mission to reduce poverty through its environment and energy strategies." However, in Latin America as in other parts of the developing world, the global carbon market is proving to be largely detrimental to the indigenous and the poor. With little or no input on how a project is conducted, local communities have virtually no control over how their land, water, and resources will be affected.

The Daily Mail reported in June that a UN-funded chemical plant in Gujarat, India was contaminating the local water. According to Eva Filzmoser of CDM Watch, Project Censored reports, large hydro and gas projects "rarely save additional emissions and in fact provide perverse incentives to expand environmentally degrading industries."

In a Carbon Trade Watch documentary, villagers in Latin America gave an account of what these projects look like on the ground: the plantations, which take up about 100,000 acres of land, divert water from local streams. For the people living there, that means fishing is in trouble, as well as medicinal plants in the region.

Yet despite intense criticism, the rate of CDM projects is picking up: 132 new applications were submitted in May 2009 alone—the highest number yet.

Ecuador's Constitutional Rights of Nature

AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa/em>

Meanwhile, even the positive stories haven't made big news. Last year, Ecuador became the first nation to declare nature has constitutional rights. By officially, legally recognizing that "nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law," writes Project Censored, the country took a landmark step that would make E.O. Wilson proud.

The fact that this unprecedented move has not been taken seriously is perhaps even more telling. Project Censored:

the Los Angeles Times, one of the few mainstream outlets to cover the story, the newspaper's editorial board trivialized the development ("Putting Nature in Ecuador's Constitution," September 2, 2008) by suggesting it sounded "like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council" and that it seemed "crazy."

The constitution is not without opponents, of course: the heavily vested interests in the Ecuador mining industry are not likely to take kindly to limiting their prospects. And a new Mining Law, introduced by the current president, would open the Amazon rainforest and largely untouched Andean highlands to large-scale metal mining.

Mari Margil, who helped to draft the constitution, has suggested that Ecuador may serve as an example that other countries may wish to follow. She is already receiving calls from countries, including Nepal, interested in following Ecuador's lead. Maybe in this case, even San Francisco is behind perhaps the most important green trend of the year.

What to do?
Diversify, diversify, diversify. Vary where you get news, and try writing in to your favorite media outlet to question the lack of coverage of these important stories. And teachers always have extra-ripe opportunities for outreach: if you're in education at all, Project Censored offers a handy censorship guide for teachers.

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