By Tracy L. Barnett

SAN MIGUEL IXTAHUACAN – Friday, June 24, was a day of celebration in this small mountain town in Guatemala’s Western Highlands. President Alvaro Colom had just sent a shock wave through the country whose reverberations were felt in faraway Toronto: the Marlin Mine, owned by Canada-based transnational Goldcorp, was ordered to suspend operations. The celebration, however, was short-lived.

Indigenous clans on Papua New Guinea’s Rai Coast and along the Ramu River ask us to support their struggle by sending letters to PNG’s Prime Minister.  In your letter, please: 

Express your support for the customary landowners who live on the Rai Coast and along the Ramu River, whose lands and waters could be disastrously contaminated by toxic waste from CMCC’s Ramu mine and refinery under the current license agreement. 

Papua New Guinea
Don’t Dump Poisons into the Sea! 

DATE 

H.E. Rt. Hon. Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare
The Prime Minister
Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council
Morauta House
Po Box 639
Waigani National Capital District
Papua New Guinea
Fax: +675-323-3943
betha_somare@pm.gov.pg

Your Excellency, 

June 9, 2010 

Ms. Kathy Cloninger, CEO
Girl Scouts of the United States
420 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10018-2798 

Dear Ms. Cloninger: 

The palm oil industry is aggressively expanding palm oil production for both cooking oil and biofuel. That means destroying millions of acres of forests and small farms and converting them into vast plantations of oil palm. In many countries, and especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, oil palm plantations are forcing forest-dwelling peoples to abandon the forests just ahead of the advancing bulldozers.