Nicaragua has spent the last several years shuttering over a thousand civil society organizations, universities, media outlets and other organizations, often for criticizing President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo. Their government has been sanctioned for acts of repression and human rights abuses, and the state-run mining company has been blocked from global trade by many major importers. Some of the worst abuses are happening along the country’s Caribbean coast, where Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities continue to fend off land grabbing in ancestral rainforests ripe for mining, logging and agriculture. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has held numerous hearings accusing the regime of exacerbating the issue. Yet at the same time, the government continues to pursue “green financing” through the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA) as well as international backers like the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Global Environment Facility (GEF), among others. Environmentalists in the country are concerned about how that money is used given the government’s track record. They want to make sense of a regime they believe has exploited the country’s natural resources while continuing to accept funding for conservation projects. “On the one hand, we have a commitment from the international community, from financial organizations, for the conservation of those territories. On the other hand, we have an internal policy of destruction,” said Amaru Ruiz Alemán, head of Fundación Del Río, an organization that monitors land invasions and environmental issues in Nicaragua. A home in Bosawás, Nicaragua.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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