Environment, Development and Human Rights at the Crossroads: The Challenge of Environmental and Human Rights Advocacy

Date: Monday, March 2, 2009 - 6:15pm - 6:15 pm
Contact: cah33@duke.edu
Sponsor: Working Group on the Environment in Latin America
Where: Room A156, The Levine Science Research Center (LSRC)
Why: The Working Group on the Environment presents:

Ruben Gonzalez: Environment, Development and Human Rights at the Crossroads: The
challenge of environmental and human rights advocacy in a globalized world

Monday, March 2nd at 6:15 PM
Room A156, The Levine Science Research Center
There will be milk and cookies!

As the pressure on traditional cultures and natural resources grows,
environmental and human rights advocates find it difficult to articulate a
common agenda. In North Western Panama, the Alliance for Conservation and
Development (ACD) is currently facing these challenges.  While successful in
human rights advocacy strategies, capacity building though legal training
projects, legal actions and aggressive diplomacy, ACD has found it difficult to
generate a common front with environmental organizations that consider the
indigenous rights agenda as too political. The dilemma continues and the
question remains: is it possible to articulate the human rights and
conservation agendas to cope with the challenge of an unsustainable development
model?

Ruben Gonzalez is a founding member of the Alliance for Conservation and
Development, a Panamanian NGO. Ruben and ACD have been involved in fighting
proposed dams in the "Bocas del Toro" region of Panama (on the border with
Costa Rica).  Currently, Ruben is a Rotary World Peace Fellow in the Program
for International Policy at Duke University.