Peaceful Societies

Last Thursday, the Marine Stewardship Council announced that the rock lobster fishery operation of Tristan da Cunha has been certified as sustainable and well-managed. During a ceremony in the Shoreline Café, at Cape Town’s popular Two Oceans Aquarium, the MSC gave its award to the Ovenstone Agency, the local firm that manages the Tristan fishery.

At the same ceremony, the MSC also recognized the café itself for its commitment to ascertaining that all the fish it serves is traceable to certified fisheries operations. It is the first restaurant in Africa to be so recognized, with the right to use the blue MSC certified label in its messages.

Martin Purves, Southern Africa Programme Manager for MSC, hailed both the Tristan fishery operation and the popular restaurant for their commitments to sustainable fishing practices.

The Ovenstone Agencies is the sole holder of a concession with rights to operate the lobster fishery in the waters of Tristan da Cunha and its neighboring islands. Islanders employed by the company conduct the fishing operations from dories in the inshore waters of the islands. Islanders also work in the processing factory on Tristan. The M.V. Edinburgh, the freezer factory ship operated by Ovenstone, also provides passenger and freight transportation service to and from Cape Town.

The Ovenstone fishery started investigating MSC certification early in 2010, and has had to satisfy a rigorous investigation over the intervening months. The company had to demonstrate that the fishery does not over-harvest the resource, that it is effectively managed, and that it maintains, in the words of the MSC news release, “the health and productivity of the wider marine ecosystem.”

James Glass, the Tristan Director of Fisheries, explained how important the new certification would be to the island economy. He said that the “careful management of the lobster fishery is the foundation of the continued economic independence of the Tristan community.” He expressed the hope that the MSC certification would help them find new markets. The MSC ecolabel should help Tristan lobsters compete with comparable fisheries products on world markets.

Dr. Andrew James, Managing Director of Ovenstone Agencies expressed his delight that his company’s careful stewardship of the natural environment has been recognized by the MSC. The annual harvest of rock lobsters, about 440 tons of crustaceans, is sold primarily to high end restaurants in the United States, and to Japan for bento boxes.

Fernanda Pirie, in her penetrating book Peace and Conflict in Ladakh, describes the way the Ladakhi effectively resolve their disputes. The question is whether their peacemaking skills can survive propaganda from the Indian Army that the way to solve problems is through military might.

The Indian Army is again promoting itself to the Ladakhi people, this time with a fair to showcase their latest security equipment and weaponry. Because Ladakh is near the Pakistan and China borders, with both of which India has fought wars in the past 65 years, India maintains a very large military presence there.

The Indian army hosted a light and sound show at an old fort in Leh a few years ago to promote the idea that Ladakh has a glorious military heritage. More recently, a journal article described the army’s good works, its Operation Sadbhavana, in the remote Ladakhi villages. And earlier this year, the huge numbers of army personnel in the district skewed the decennial census figures, causing a furor in the Indian press.

The “Know Your Army” exhibition last week, opened by Rigzin Spalbar, Chief Executive Councilor of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh, gave visitors the chance to see weapons which army personnel had captured from militants during their various raids in the region.

General Ravi Dastana, the commanding army officer, said, “we want to reach out to the people and tell them that we love the people of Ladakh and we really want to salute them.” He went on to say that the army presence is for the people of Ladakh, and he invited the Ladakhi people to join the army.

The army admitted that the twin purposes of the fair were to foster an awareness of the role of defense forces in the region, and to promote career opportunities in the armed forces. Visitors not only got to see armored vehicles, but some were even allowed to take rides on them.

Mr. Spalbar expressed enthusiasm for what he had seen at the fair. “Whatever we have seen today, we really feel proud that the soldiers of the Indian Army work so hard to ensure the security of the people. Women and children of all age groups have come here to visit this fair and learn about the Indian army. There is so much enthusiasm among the people,” he said.

Neither General Dastana nor Chief Executive Councilor Spalbar was quoted as expressing any concern about the traditional peacefulness of the Ladakhi villages. The news reports did not indicate if such issues were even mentioned by the army at the exhibition.

Last week, the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, removed Jairam Ramesh, India’s Minister of Environment and Forests, from his position. Recent news reports had celebrated the decision of Mr. Ramesh to preserve the last remaining stretches of the free-flowing Chalakudy River in India’s Kerala State from a dam project. His decision had appeared to save a Kadar village and a critically important natural ecosystem from destruction.

The cautious optimism may have been premature. The MOEF administrator had made his decision to preserve the endangered riverine ecosystem, and the village of tribal people, despite the wishes of bureaucracy and pro-development forces in Kerala.

On Tuesday, the Prime Minister moved Ramesh up to a cabinet level position to head the rural development ministry with senior minister rank. He appointed Ms. Jayanti Natarajan, a lawyer, member of parliament, and spokesperson for the Congress Party to replace Ramesh. Neither individual was available to the press for interviews during the week.

People representing environmental and human rights agendas are upset, though the qualities that Ms. Natarajan will bring to the MOEF are of course unknown at this point. Business interests are celebrating the removal of a bureaucrat who, at times, took his job—of preserving the natural environment—seriously. He was a controversial figure for standing up, on more than one occasion, for more than just the needs of business.

Ramesh graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When he was appointed to head MOEF in 2009, he proceeded to transform an obscure ministry that most people had never heard of, a virtual rubber stamp for industry, into a force that tried to balance development interests with environmental and basic human needs. He was often criticized from all sides—the fate of a conscientious official, perhaps.

The controversy over the Chalakudy River and the Athirappilly Falls project in Kerala was minor in the greater scheme of Indian politics. Ramesh had the temerity to question huge industrial projects, such as the permit for a 12 billion dollar steel works which had been awarded to a South Korean firm. He also questioned the development of a huge bauxite mining works and a mega-nuclear power plant—the world’s largest—because they violated existing Indian laws. He approved many large projects, over the protests of Greens, but he persisted in also trying to represent the interests of India’s bio-diverse ecosystems and forest tribal communities.

Ramesh commented, during a debate in May this year, that “ India needs to be liberated both from the ‘high GDP growth hedgehogs’ and the ‘conservation at all costs hedgehogs.’” He said that what the country needs is to balance high growth with conservation.

But he had an outspoken manner that irritated his government colleagues. He didn’t mind telling things as he saw them. At an April meeting, he told an audience, which included his boss, that adding 100,000 megawatts of power to India’s electrical grid over the next five years was ecologically impossible. Confronting the growth-at-any-cost mentality was not popular.

Why was he so outspoken in favor of the environment? Perhaps he believed he should follow India’s laws. It’s hard to know. On one occasion, he told a meeting, “If there is a Nobel prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt.” But he did compromise. He ultimately yielded and permitted coal and nuclear power plants, a new airport for Mumbai, and so on.

His undoing may have been his opposition to major coal mining projects in central and eastern India. Apparently some 660 million tons of coal that could be mined fell into areas he had decided should be preserved for their forest and human values. A huge, proposed mine in a forested section of central India, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, which he vetoed, prompted industrialists to appeal to the Prime Minister. That may have been the issue that led to his downfall.

Reactions from environmentalists range from muted—no one knows what the new minister will do—to outraged. Valmik Thapar, a prominent tiger conservationists, said that Mr. Ramesh had worked hard, learned a lot, and raised the profile of the ministry. Koshor Rithe, a member of the National Board for Wild Life, said that he had done the best he could do, considering the pro-growth at all costs mentality of India. Other environmental leaders expressed caution since no one knows what the next minister will do.

The Wall Street Journal was ecstatic, predictably. “A potentially positive sign for businesses frustrated by regulatory obstacles,” the WSJ commented Wednesday about the change in India. Mr. Ramesh had “held up several major industrial projects that many viewed as vital to India’s economic development,” the paper opined. Development at any cost.

The Journal referred to the removal of Ramesh as a good sign for business in India, since he had become an impediment to major projects. B. G. Verghese, a political analyst, told the paper that “he had come to symbolize an attitude of ‘no’” in the government. The paper said that while Ramesh may have been “a hero among environmentalists,” he was “reviled in corporate circles where he was viewed as arbitrary and unfair.” His fault: he questioned some projects that had previously been approved, the paper charged, quite correctly.

The paper may have been referring to the Athirappilly project and the deposed minister’s having taken a personal concern for the Kadar village and the rich, forested, mountainous environment of Kerala. Ramesh recently set up a panel to further consider the evidence relating to a range of proposed projects, including the Chalakudy Dam, and their impacts on critical forest and indigenous communities in the Western Ghats region of southwestern India. That area is widely recognized as one of the world’s major biodiversity hotspots.

It is not clear whether the new minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, will be interested in the upcoming report from the panel. Will she continue her predecessor’s concern for the human and natural impacts of development projects? Will she, on occasion, buck industrial interests in order to preserve human and natural values? Mr. Ramesh has set a high standard for anyone to follow.

Sitaram Shikari, an 18-year old from a village in West Bengal State of India, may be the first young Birhor person to be accepted into college as an undergraduate student. Raised in the village of Bhupatinagar, in Bagmundi town, the Purulia District of West Bengal, the young man has completed his schooling and has found a mentor in the college who has secured funding so he can continue with his higher education.

Bagmundi is well known in eastern India as a center for what are called Chhau dances. Performing dancers wear masks that signify characters in the major Indian epics, so they can only express their thoughts and emotions through their movements. The elaborate masks are made by artisans in a village in Bagmundi. The rich artistic tradition contrasts with the nearby Birhor settlement.

Sitaram comes from the much poorer village, a place with 25 Birhor families, 278 people. There are many Naxalite guerillas in the area. This Birhor band used to hunt monkeys, snakes, and wild boars for food in Jharkhand State, plus make ropes out of forest vines for sale. Since their forests were mostly destroyed, however, they were no longer able to subsist there. They migrated to the Purulia District where they are able to sell some forest products, primarily wood, in town.

Sitaram has been admitted to Ramananda Centenary College, a small institution in the town of Purulia. The college is affiliated with the University of Burdwan, also located in West Bengal. Prof. Chandidas Mukhopadhyay, a scholar at the college who has written books on India’s primitive tribal groups, or PTGs, is mentoring the young man. The professor told the press that he has arranged for all of Sitaram’s expenses to be covered, including his room and board in a college hostel.

Sitaram told the press that he grew up “seeing our family members hunt animals in the forest, roast them and eat them.” But, he adds, he has a dream of getting an education, which he wants to use to further help the children of his village to also become educated. He said that no government agency and no NGO has ever taken an interest in his village.

Prof. Mukhopadhyay confirmed that the village had received no attention from government agencies, since the Birhor would not be likely to vote. He added that the “Birhor is the most marginal and endangered tribe of all the PTGs.” He said that development projects had been announced for their community but the funds had never reached the people.

Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, visited Oaxaca State in Mexico last week to assess the situation of the indigenous peoples. In the course of her visit, she spoke with Zapotec leaders and encouraged them, particularly the women, to continue to seek their rights.

She suggested, according to a Fox News report, that the government of Oaxaca should “acknowledge, explicitly and legally, the rights of the indigenous peoples, to undertake consultations and (achieve) a free and informed consensus.” She told her hosts that when women gain an education, an entire society advances. She, herself, grew up as part of a persecuted, minority group. She was raised in the Indian Tamil community in South Africa, where she suffered discrimination due to her race. She has gotten ahead because of her education and ability.

She argued that indigenous women suffer in many countries due to two circumstances—the fact that they’re part of a minority group, and the fact that they are women. She said that indigenous people should “fight against the resistance that exists against them.”

During her visit to Oaxaca, Ms. Pillay met with Eufrosina Cruz, the Zapotec woman who ran for mayor of her village, Santa Maria Quigolani, in November 2007. The men of the community on the town board prevented her from being elected that fall by tearing up ballots cast for her. She was a woman, after all, so she was not a citizen. Therefore, they reasoned, she could not be mayor. She tried to challenge the system a few months later. Subsequently, she ran successfully for the state legislature where she is now the Speaker of the State Assembly.

Ms. Pillay concluded her visit with a news conference on Friday in Mexico City, at which she issued a lengthy statement about the human rights situation in Oaxaca. She spoke diplomatically about her reception by President Felipe Calderón and other officials, and enthusiastically about her meetings with ordinary Mexican people. She spoke eloquently about the need for Mexico to fight crime at all levels.

She discussed the rights of minority peoples in Oaxaca. “I would like to draw special attention to the situation of indigenous women, who suffer a triple form of discrimination—for being indigenous, women and poor. Just as non-indigenous societies have a long way to go before they achieve gender equality, indigenous peoples also need to give women a more prominent role, on an equal footing with men.”

Ms. Pillay commented during her press conference on her meeting with Ms. Cruz. “The current President of Oaxaca’s State Congress is an indigenous woman. An exceptional woman, she told me how she had to fight discrimination and resistance to her running for office, even from within her own community. I salute her strength and her achievement.”

Such contrasts. According to news reports last week, aggressive vandals have been attacking an Amish community in Troupsburg, N.Y., while local residents in Fort Fairfield, Maine have been enthusiastically welcoming recent Amish immigrants.

Sheriff Joel Ordway of Steuben County, N.Y., indicates that the crime spree, which began last month, has included an attempted arson. So far, no suspects have been identified. Troupsburg is about 25 miles west of Corning in New York’s Southern Tier counties.

On two occasion, unknown individuals threw rocks at the windows of Victor Green, who lives on Prutsman Road a few miles north of Troupsburg village. The first time, the vandals did not damage anything, but the second time they attacked, they succeeded in breaking his windows. Green said that the Amish house at the top of the hill has been targeted three or four times.

For more than three weeks, vandals have stolen items out of homes, thrown rocks at people, and on one occasion attempted to burn down a barn. While most of the attacks have been against the Amish, they have not been the exclusive targets.

The Sheriff’s office is using night vision goggles and thermal imaging technology to help catch the criminals and put an end to the vandalism. Sheriff Ordway, however, does not think the attacks represent a series of hate crimes, and he indicates that the leader of the Amish community is helping all he can to stop the crime spree.

Hate crimes or not, it is heartening to read from the northern part of the State of Maine that local people in Aroostook County really like the Amish who have been moving into their midst recently. Some 50 miles north of where Interstate 95 ends at the New Brunswick border, a number of Amish families have bought farmland and settled into potato (and snow) country. They are drawn by the remoteness and the lower prices of land, and they are not at all put off by the long winters.

Over the past four years, a dozen Amish families have settled in the area. “They bring out the best in people,” Dan Foster, the Fort Fairfield Town Manager, reports. “They bring out people’s desire to help. I love having them here. They are wonderful people.”

Foster expresses his appreciation for the economic boost the Amish families have brought to their section of the county, but even more important, in his view, is the moral example they set for their neighbors. “They know how to do community, among themselves and the English—how to resolve issues and work together for the common good. There are a lot of lessons to be learned,” he says.

Long-term residents of Aroostook County observe the gentle, collaborative ways of the Amish and are inspired, Foster says. “People are seeing that and it can’t help rub off and make you feel better about your community.”

Steve Ulman, who runs a horse riding stable in Fort Fairfield, has similar things to say about the new Amish neighbors. He feels they have increased the value of land in their area. They are industriously restoring small farms to productivity, and are now raising wonderful crops. He also observes that they are successful in doing what the local people have not been able to do: encourage most of their young people to remain in the area to live their lives. “Their children stay here. They become Amish. That speaks volumes.”

Carla Hayes spoke of how excited she became in August 2007 when she heard the news that three Amish families were moving into her neighborhood. One would be just three houses down from hers. Since Noah and Lovina Yoder moved in with their 11 children, she and her husband have become close friends with them. “Our ways of living are years apart; however, their examples of family, neighbors and community are very ‘today,’ or should I say, the way it should be in our state now,” Ms. Hayes told the paper.

The reporter interviewed Mr. Yoder, who immediately recalled the warmth of his greeting by the Mainers. “We couldn’t have hoped for a better community,” he indicated. “For a whole month, [after they moved in] not a day went by when people didn’t stop by with food or offers of help. We had to improve our way of living. People up here were better at it than we were.” Asked if he was affected by the deep snows, famous in that part of Maine, he replied that their first winter was the best one he had ever had.

They found that northern Maine is really not much colder than New York state where they had come from, and Aroostook County is a perfect place to raise children.

“The earlier you learn to take responsibility the better you are,” Yoder said, speaking about the way his younger children help out by taking care of animals. “There is no manual for raising children,” he added. “What is often missing is real love for children.”

Ms. Hayes added her own bit of philosophy. “There is joy in being able to help. They [the Amish] are the greatest example of what community should be—to help and care for one another.”

Schools in the Nyae Nyae Conservancy are having a variety of troubles, according to an article last week in the New Era, a newspaper published in Namibia. The Ju/’hoansi founded schools in Tsumkwe, the major town in their territory, to provide an education in their own language for children grades one through three.

Cwisa Cwi, principal of the Nyae Nyae school system, told the newspaper that Ju/’hoansi parents support the schools in principle but they expect the teachers to handle all disciplinary matters themselves. He said that parents often do not insist that their children attend school, so there is a high drop out rate. He also complained that many parents do not become involved with school activities such as the school feeding programs or story-telling activities.

“San learners are progressing from grade to grade without sufficient skills, knowledge or conceptual understanding resulting in ever-increasing backlogs and an inability to achieve the grade level objective,” he told the press.

There are other problems in the Tsumkwe schools. Children are learning their own San language inadequately. Furthermore, the schools lack enough books, the children do not attend school consistently, and many enroll who are unready for basic instruction.

Some of the teachers are trying to improve their teaching skills, but many are transferring out to other jobs because they are discouraged with the situation in Tsumkwe. The teachers have to make do with very difficult living conditions. Some have to live in tents due to a lack of housing. It is difficult for some teachers to find transportation to and from their school buildings. Many of the teachers are young people who are otherwise unqualified to teach. They are employed with the understanding that they will enroll in in-service training programs in order to become fully qualified teachers.

The teachers are demoralized because many parents lack interest in the schooling of their children. Due to all the problems, schools in Tsumkwe were closed 46 days out of the school year 2010. A third of all the students dropped out that year, two-thirds of whom were in the first grade.

The six schools in Tsumkwe were established in 1993, but they were subsequently taken over by the national Ministry of Education. Mr. Cwi, as of 2004, was one of the few San young people to achieve 12 grades of education and perhaps the first to then get a teaching certificate from the Windhoek Teachers College.

Obviously an achiever, Mr. Cwi was quoted at the time as saying, “I always wanted to reach some heights. I wanted to drive a vehicle of my own, and I wanted to live a decent life, to be self-dependent like other educated people. And I knew education was the way.” It appears from the news story last week as if his ideal is not widely shared by the Ju/’hoansi.

Summer vacation in the United States is a good time to reflect on the ways schools help strengthen and perpetuate the languages, cultures, and values of a society—as well as teach children necessary skills. News about this topic last week was troubling. The leaders of Nunavut want their school children to learn both English and their own Inuit languages, but there are problems with finding enough qualified teachers to handle the instruction.

The territory established a goal in 2009 to provide bilingual instruction for all children from kindergarten through grade three. However, schools in some communities have not reached that level. Eva Aariak, the Premier of Nunavut who also serves as education minister, told CBC news last week that the government is encountering problems recruiting teachers who are able to handle both languages.

The difficulty evidently occurs in the High Arctic and Kitikmeot regions, where the Inuinnaqtun dialect of Inuktitut is spoken. The number of speakers of the dialect has diminished, making it hard to find teachers who are fluent in that language.

The Canadian national government recognized Inuinnaqtun as an official language in Nunavut, along with Inuktitut, on June 11, 2009. Inuinnaqtun is spoken in the communities of Cambridge Bay and Kugluktut, in the Kitikmeot Region, the western section of Nunavut.

Aariak is hopeful that, as the territory is able to teach more young people to speak their native languages, the problem of having enough bilingual teachers will diminish. But more resources, as well as more teachers, are needed, she insists.

“In order to fully comply with the Education Act today, we would need many more teachers and many more resources,” Aariak told the CBC. The territory has developed a program that, the official hopes, will provide more bilingual teachers for 10 Nunavut communities starting this year.

An article published in the Wildlife Trust of India website on Wednesday last week indicated that the Paliyan have become caregivers of grizzled giant squirrel babies which fall out of their nests in trees or become orphaned. They are called grizzled because of their whitish fur.

According to the story, the Paliyan in Shenbagathoppu, a community in Tamil Nadu state of southern India, use a paladai to feed milk to the baby animals until they are able to take care of themselves. The Paliyan involved in this project, formerly dwellers in the mountains, now subsist on bee keeping, cultivating crops, and gathering forest products for sale.

A paladai, a small oil lamp used in Hindu temples, is also sometimes employed as a baby bottle for human infants. It is basically a sippy cup that looks a bit like an Aladdin lamp without a lid. They are also being used to some extent for babies in the West.

The Wildlife Trust article indicates that there are only about 500 grizzled giant squirrels left in India, plus a small population in Sri Lanka, due to the loss of their forest habitat. They are the size of small cats, weighing 1 to 1.8 kg (2.2 to 4 pounds) each. The Paliyan efforts for the animals are evidently part of the protection and recovery program of the Shenbagathoppu Grizzled Squirrel Wildlife Sanctuary, an important refuge for the large squirrels. It is also called the Srivilliputhur Grizzled Squirrel Wildlife Sanctuary.

The reason the highly endangered squirrels are doing better is that farmers in the area are shifting from tapioca cultivation to tree crops such as mangos, coconuts, tamarinds, and gooseberries. Those fruits are more profitable, and provide more food and habitat for the squirrels.

The Grizzled Squirrel Wildlife Sanctuary consists of about 480 square kilometers (190 square miles) of hills and valleys next to the main range of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu. It is adjacent to other important nature preserves, such as the world-famous Periyar Tiger Reserve to its southwest. Elevations range from 100 meters up to 2010 meters. Numerous other mammal species, as well as over 200 bird species, may be seen in the sanctuary. There are no roads into the forest, so local guides must be hired for visitors who want to trek into the area.

It is not clear if tourists take any interest in the relatively uncharismatic grizzled squirrels—or the Paliyan, for that matter.

The Gem Diamonds Company announced last week that it will be helping finance and drill four boreholes to provide water for the G/wi and the other San communities in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. This latest development appears to be closing a nasty chapter in the history of San conflicts with the dominant societies of southern Africa.

The San peoples, of whom the G/wi are one, were forcibly evicted from their homes in the CKGR a decade ago in order to expedite the search for, and mining of, diamonds in the Kalahari Desert. The Botswana government claimed that it removed the people only for their own good, and that they had willingly moved to the government’s resettlement camps. Some of the G/wi and the other “Bushmen” (San) agreed that life in the resettlement camps was better, since the government was providing more services. Many others strongly opposed the enforced move and wanted to return to their homes.

With the support of the militant British NGO Survival International (SI), the San societies filed a law suit with the High Court of Botswana which ruled, in late 2006, that the claimants did have the right to return to their desert homes. The government accepted the decision, but decided to harass the people by not allowing them to reopen the borehole that it had capped when it moved them to the resettlement communities.

Survival International consistently supported the San in their efforts to win justice for their cause. The organization did not miss many opportunities to issue angry press releases containing a lot of denunciations of the human rights practices of Botswana.

SI also condemned the two companies involved—first De Beers, followed by Gem Diamonds—for cooperating with the government campaigns to deprive the G/wi of their land and their rights. The NGO also tried to shame some prominent personalities for wearing diamonds that may have come from Botswana. SI ratcheted up its campaign against the country last fall by launching an international boycott of all travel there.

Meanwhile, in order to gain water for their communities, the San people filed another court suit, seeking to override the government and allow them to have a source of water near their homes. It was turned down by a single judge from the High Court in July 2010. A further appeal to the Court of Appeals was finally decided in January 2011. That court ruled, unanimously, that the government did not have the right to prevent the people from drilling for water, or from reopening old boreholes. It was up to the G/wi, and the other San, to move forward from there.

The AFP reported on Thursday that a non-profit group, VOX United, will be working in partnership with Gem to drill four boreholes for drinking water in the CKGR. Local communities have been discussing their needs, and Gem Diamonds will provide the technical and financial means to do the drilling.

The company press release, issued on Monday, indicated, predictably, that the new initiative is part of the company’s “corporate social responsibility and sustainability programme aimed at the development of a lasting positive legacy …” The first borehole will be drilled starting in early July 2011, and the other three will follow shortly. The company says that it suggested four dispersed sources of water in order to help prevent too many people from concentrating near a single borehole.

The press release quotes Mr. Clifford Elphick, CEO of Gem Diamonds. He said, in part, “Gem Diamonds remains committed to implementing sustainable solutions to the environmental and community-related issues in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and embraces the opportunity to continue our work with the local communities and other interested parties to ensure that the benefits of the Gope Diamond mine are [realized] for the community as a whole.”

SI has been strangely silent, for once, about a major development regarding the San situation. There is nothing on their website about this latest news.

Peaceful Societies

Peaceful Societies

Tristan Fishery Earns Certification

Indian Army Displays its Might in Ladakh

Environment Minister in India Removed

Birhor Youth Will Attend College

Zapotec Woman Saluted

Amish Attacked in New York and Welcomed in Maine

Ju/’hoansi Need Qualified Teachers

Inuit Need Qualified Teachers

Paliyan Protect Endangered Squirrels

G/wi Will Soon Get Water

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