CALL FOR EMERGENCY SUPPORT – Tropical Storm “Agatha” Ravages Guatemala
OVER 100 PEOPLE KILLED, OVER 100,000 DISPLACED IN GUATEMALA BY TORRENTIAL RAINS, OVERFLOWING RIVERS & MUDSLIDES
123 people dead, 90 missing persons, 115,185 people evacuated from places of risk, 50,200 people in shelters, 19 principal bridges collapsed ... as a result of tropical storm Agatha's fury on Guatemala (Prensa Libre newspaper, June 1, 2010)
PLEASE TAX CHARITABLE DONATIONS in Canada and the USA for:

Over the past three days, Tropical Storm Agatha has killed over 100 people in Guatemala, while over 90 have disappeared, over 100,000 have been evacuated, and hundreds of thousands have lost their crops and as a result may face hunger this year.  The storm wreaked havoc mostly on Guatemala, but also impacted Honduras and El Salvador.
A tragic irony: The same day in which news of the disaster emerged, May 31, 2010, the Bonn Climate Change Talks got under way.  The Bonn Talks is the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP), constituted by the 192 nations that have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), since their failed December 2009 meeting in Copenhagen.
Though the desperation felt by hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers in Central America - as they see their loved ones die or face possible starvation conditions for their families - may seem removed from a meeting of diplomats from every nation of the world, it is not.
The fate of these farmers, and millions more in Central America, is inextricably linked to the inability of the world to force massive global polluters to stop provoking climate change.
RIGHTS ACTION CALLS FOR SUPPORT FOR EMERGENCY RELIEF FOR THE VICTIMS OF AGATHA, AND FOR REBUILDING WORK THAT ADDRESSES THE ROOT CAUSES OF THE DISASTER.
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AGATHA
Massive amounts of water unleashed by Tropical Storm Agatha provoked overflowing of riverbeds and massive flooding, as well as loosening topsoil resulting in landslides, mostly beginning Saturday night.
On Monday afternoon rains continued.  Dozens of bridges were washed away, along with thousands of homes. Over 100,000 are in temporary shelters and have lost all of their food and clothing.  Flood related sickness is already rampant, ranging from respiratory illnesses to fungal infections.
Over the past decade both campesinos and scientists have noticed that disastrous rains have increased in Central America.  (In 2005, Rights Action coordinated significant relief efforts after Hurricane Stan)  Though erratic, there appears to be a pattern of brief periods of extremely intense rainfall, and then an increase in periods of drought.
The destruction wreaked by tropical storm Agatha is consistent with the emerging pattern.  It is not the hurricane force winds that causes the damage, it is the massive amounts of water dumped quickly over land; water that is sucked from the surrounding oceans through accelerated evaporation provoked by the increased ocean temperatures.  In this scenario, a hurricane, tropical storm or even tropical depression can cause massive destruction.
EMERGENCY SUPPORT
Through Rights Action’s longstanding partnership with community based organizations, Rights Action is distributing emergency aid to communities affected by the rains.  We are supporting many of the same organizations that we supported in response to the devastating Hurricane Stan of 2005.
Many of these traumatized and impoverished communities are in disaster zones because their environment has been altered by mega-development projects, such as hydro electric dams, mines and bio-fuel plantations that redirect rivers for irrigation in dangerous channels prone to massive flooding.  The companies and the governments that control these projects are responsible for the massive rights violations they provoke.  A tragic irony is that public funds administered by the World Bank, the Inter American Development Band and other transnational funding agencies are being used to promote these mega-projects that not only put communities at risk but contribute to global warming, while benefiting private corporations.  Some of these projects even benefit from the carbon credit market based mechanism established by the Kyoto accords.  Thus corporations that benefit from carbon credits are now not only allowed to continue massive pollution, but gain carbon credits with cash value for activities that contribute to global warming.
Our global “development” model is upside down.  Instead of investing in development alternatives, such as massive reforestation and protection of water-shed regions, that can both relieve extreme poverty and combat global warming, international bodies charged with combating climate change, far from sanctioning corporate polluters are funding them to engage in projects that generate global warming.
It is urgent that citizens of the nations that are home to these global corporations demand today an end to corporate impunity for massive environmental destruction, and an end to the subsidies for environmental destruction.  Global accountability is the only way to stop climate change.  The human rights framework provides a critical accountability framework in which environmental violators can be held responsible, … but there must be binding mechanisms to enforce human, not corporate rights.
GLOBAL WARMING IN CENTRAL AMERICA
Climate change is here, it is killing people today, and there is no doubt that its impacts will only grow.  Rights Action supports information access and sharing of experiences between community based organizations fighting both the impacts and the causes of global warming, and communities that are building alternative development models that reduce vulnerability to disasters provoked by global warming and mega development projects.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN sponsored panel that monitors the impacts of climate change, in its latest report released in November of 2007, noted that drought conditions provoked by climate change will greatly impact the scarcity of water, particularly in areas of Latin America where scarce water resources are already planned to be diverted to power hydro electric dams.  Control of water is a topic of massive social protest in Central America today, and the impacts of global warming will only make control of water resources more critical to communities. The IPCC report also noted that climate change will disproportionately hurt the poor.
Rights Action’s experience has shown this to be true, but that with access to information and funds, poor communities are able to not only demand measures to prevent the disasters, but create development proposals that can combat both global warming and extreme poverty.
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TO MAKE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS for “Agatha Relief”
for community based organizations doing emergency relief work, make check payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
*  UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
*  CANADA:  552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm
WHAT TO DO
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RECOMMENDED DAILY NEWS:  www.democracynow.org / www.upsidedownworld.org / www.dominionpaper.ca
RECOMMENDED BOOKS:  Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America”;  Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”;  Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”;  Paolo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”; Dr Seuss’s “Horton Hears A Who”
EDUCATIONAL DELEGATIONS TO CENTRAL AMERICA:  Form your own group or join one of our delegations to learn first hand about community development, human rights and environmental struggles (info@rightsaction.org)
EDUCATION IN YOUR HOME COMMUNITY:  Contact us to plan educational presentations in your own community, school, place of worship, home (info@rightsaction.org)
www.rightsaction.org / info@rightsaction.org:  Rights Action (with tax-deductible status in Canada and USA) funds and works with community development, environmental justice, human rights and disaster relief organizations in Guatemala and Honduras, and also in El Salvador, Haiti, Oaxaca and Chiapas.  Rights Action educates about and is involved in activism related to the underlying local, national and global causes of poverty and exploitation, environmental destruction, human rights violations and disasters.
MORE INFORMATION:  Annie Bird ( Annie@rightsaction.org, 202-680-3002) & Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448)

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