Sydney Rainforest Action Group and the Rainforest Information Centre present

HELP SAVE THE RAINFORESTS OF ECUADOR & NSW

Wednesday 14/11, 7pm,

Addison Rd Community Centre, Hut 1, 142 Addison Rd, Marrickville

Entry by donation - $20 to  $2 according to your means – all proceeds to protect forests

If you plan to join us, please indicate this on our Facebook event page  and invite your friends.

1. ECUADOR

Stop press!   Australian mining companies, hungry for copper and rare earth metals to feed the growing renewable industry and electric cars industry, are now as we speak wrangling for bids on some of the most biodiverse tropical forests in the world in Ecuador.  Concessions have been awarded, in nearly all cases, with zero consent from communities and indigenous peoples for whom these areas are home. Furthermore, these forests contain huge numbers of rare, endangered and endemic species that will not survive the exploration and construction of mines and infrastructure.  All these concessions are in direct violation of Ecuador’s constitutional laws protecting the rights of nature. 

Australia’s Rainforest Information Centre has long supported forest protectors on the ground in Ecuador.  RIC helped establish the Los Cedros Reserve in the Andes cloud forest, and has supported the locals over the years to fight logging, poaching, and now mega-mining threats.  RIC has also worked extensively with the Waorani and Awá Indigenous people to establish territorial borders and fight intrusive industries.  Right now, we are spearheading an international campaign to rescind this swathe of illegal mining concessions and help bring some measure of accountability to the companies involved. 

Liz Downes, forest campaigner and RIC volunteer, has spent 13 months in Ecuador over the past 3 years. She will present a short, enlivening  show of slides and videos of some of what she has witnessed there, the positives and the challenges. She will include some of the voices of Indigenous and local people fighting to keep their land free of industry and contamination.  Plus she’ll touch on some of the recent exciting developments in the rights of nature movement, in Ecuador, Australia and globally. Finally she will talk about some of the action and solidarity happening in Australia around these issues, including footage of recent actions done by the freshly reinvigorated Melbourne Rainforest Action Group (MRAG).

1. NSW

From now till the state elections in March, our attention must  turn to our home forests in NSW where the Berejiklian Government's proposes  to open up over 100,000 hectares of currently protected oldgrowth forest and rainforest on public lands for logging.

These forests were hard-won 15 to 20 years ago in the  Regional Forest Agreement process but now the government prepares to roll back this protection.

RIC founder John Seed will speak about past campaigns that have saved millions of hectares of rainforests and will  launch RIC’s “Vote for the Forests” campaign in the runup to NSW state elections in March.  John will show his  30 minute film about NSW threatened forests and the endangered species that call them home. “On The Brink” starts David Attenborough, David Suzuki, Olivia Newton John and Jack Thompson. John  will speak of the incredible work done by the Rainforest Action Groups in the 1980’s now being revived in Melbourne and Sydney.