Live Wood Institute – IMV (Rondônia)
Collective effort - Communication in defense of the socio-environmental rights of those affected by the hydroeletric complex on the Rio Madeira river
Rondônia
The Puxirun (collective effort, or Kawahib in Tupi) project will lend continuity to the production of the radio program that reports socio-environmental rights violations as a function of the implantation of the Hydroelectric Complex on the Rio Madeira in the state of Rondônia. The populations victimized are those along the riverside, the indigenous, fishermen, subsistence farmers, project workers and city dwellers in the region.
The program is Voices of Amazônia – Observatory of Socio-environmental Rights in the Rio Madeira Basin. It is produced by IMV, together with the Network of Entities in Defense of Life, and has been transmitted over Radio Caiari AM, Sundays from 9 to 10:30 AM, since August of 2009. Audio recordings will be made available on the IMV site.
Context
Access to information is a challenge in the Amazon, especially for communities outside the urban axes. Radio is still the only media that reaches villages, rubber plantations, riverside communities, quilombos, rural settlements and outlying urban areas.
In the basins of the Madeira, Xingú, Teles Pires, Tapajós and Juruena rivers, a set of projects by the federal government has provoked irreparable consequences for the rights of the peoples and populations that inhabit those territories. On the construction sites of the PAC — Program for Accelerated Growth — there are also rights violations affecting workers.
About the institute
The IMV was created in 2006 by educators and popular communicators, researchers and socio-environmental activists. Together with other partners, the group develops a project to generate electricity from babassu oil, with a popular center of production; and a sustainable fishing project. They also promote meetings among the peoples, communities and traditional populations of the region, including Bolivians and Peruvians.
The institute is connected to the Network of Entities in Defense of Life (CIMI, CIP, CPT, IMV, Youth Collective, MAB), initiator of the program Voices of Amazônia; the Citizen Education Network (Recid-RO), through which is participates in the training of popular educators and communicators; the Municipal and State Forum on Economic Solidarity; and the Western Amazon Forum, specifically in the preparation for the Fourth Panamazonian Social Forum, from December 1-4, in Cobija, Bolivia.
In Porto Velho, in the beginning of 2012, the Banzeiro Movement is participating, along with the Not Dead Triangle, in defense of the rights of those affected by the demolition of houses in the region of the Santo Antonio dam.
At the national level, the group participates in the Civil Society Organizations’ Platform for a new Regulatory Framework together with the federal government and the Brazilian Forum of Organizations and Social Movements for sustainable development (FBOMS).
Funding Line
Annual Call for Proposals
Year
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Total Granted
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Duration
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Main Themes
Social and environmental rights within mega-projects