The CDCA – Documentation Centre on Environmental Conflicts, now an autonomous non profit organisation, was founded in October 2007 by the Italian Association “A Sud”. Its mission is to research and provide information about both the causes of the environmental conflicts produced by the exploitation of natural resources, and its consequences. These often include a disregard for local communities rights – particularly in the world’s Southern hemisphere.
CDCA has seen a steady growth of its database of conflicts and has provided an online mapping tool to track conflicts and get a visual overview of what is happening where. This interesting precursor to the interactive maps EJOLT is making, provides for searches on both the geographic as the resource level. EJOLT will integrate CDCAs database in what will become the largest database in the world on environmental conflicts.
The CDCA also makes video-interviews with activists from all over the world, united by their courage in confronting environmental conflicts. Recent interviews include one with Godwin Ojo from E.R.A Nigeria and Deepak Malghan from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.
From now on, the reflections made by the CDCA – which are often covered in national newspapers in Italy – are also available in english. This, for example, is their take on what happened in Rio+20.
