Just so it’s clear. Savimbo doesn’t facilitate extraction, but we do negotiate where it stops. Thank you to Google DeepMind for providing the lines! Thanks to Never Split the Difference for providing the method!
I’m really pleased that Google did this “natural forest” map. Primary forest is kind of a misnomer as forests are alive, constantly evolving and modified by Indigenous communities for millenia. But this map shows where forests are still relatively intact.
It’s such a great negotiating tool for where extraction stops. For us, basically not in natural forests, ever, case closed. Intact biota is a global treasure, and has immense value to the human species in the form of medicinal plants for diseases, ecological knowledge, and reforesting and rewilding fountains of natural propagation.
We’ve worked really hard to value natural forests at deforestation borders, with the biodiversity credit which any forest community can do, and yeilds up to $30/unit in intact ecosystems.
We understand that other people are going to choose to mine or drill. And that there is a negotiation here, and the negotiation is when people are mining OUTSIDE of natural forests. How to do it cleaner, more ethically, and with less impact. Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) and GIST Impact and Dunya Analytics are all working really hard to get that under control. But for us, natural forests are a complete no-go zone.
The planet is like a cell, and like a cell, it has organelles and organs, and what keeps the planet alive is creating a semi-permeable membrane to keep disparate use zones safely separate so they don’t encroach on planetary support systems. I’ll write a bit more about this in another post because I know it needs to be explained better. But I really love the work by the PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and territories of life on where the no-go zones are, and how to protect them.
Mining causes, but isn’t the same as timber deforestation; it mostly contaminates water supplies, and the effects of poisoning them are distributed and take years to fully develop. I included some research on human health from copper mining below. Lithium has even more impact. Gold is completely unnecessary to mine at all and I’m a huge fan of Rod Holden for his work on how to keep it in the ground and mine with financial modeling instead.
Short story, that’s the rules for Savimbo and we work really hard to enforce them via whatever mechanisms we can. Including economic support for standing forests, Rights of Nature NOW law, and safe mechanisms for Indigenous leaders.
Here’s material that we use all the time.
If you guys want more material, stuff we use all the time:
Here is a great book about hostage negotiating, Never Split the Difference. It teaches how to take a stand and win when you really can't give ground in a negotiation. It’s actually quite different negotiating tactics, and I highly recommend it for Indigenous activists and advocates.
Here is a Rights of Nature case Indigenous women won in Peru to halt extraction on a river.
Here is a landmark Canadian Supreme Court case where Eritrea communities got DAMAGES from Canadian mining companies from within Canada.
Here is a report on deaths of 146 environmental defenders in our zone last year, which is why a good negotiator can make it safer for leaders to defend territory.
Here is a clear report on the risks of copper mining to human health and ecosystems. Here is a press release on the Nature paper about 5k Indigenous children dying from an open-pit mine in Peru with clearly documented poisoned waters and downstream effects.
If you have any questions, you can check out Ask Savimbo. Been working on delivering training material in a more structured way.