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Photo: Orin Langelle / Global Justice Ecology Project

UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It is tasked with the promotion of global peace and security through international cooperation in education, science, culture, and information.

Yet recent reporting by Survival International focuses on how UNESCO has used its influence to support the forced relocation of the Indigenous Maasai People from their ancestral land in Tanzania.

We talk with Survival International researcher Paul Renaut about the model of “fortress conservation,” that is driving forced evictions of Maasai people in Tanzania and how the UNESCO World Heritage status is amplifying that pressure.

We trace what these forced relocations look like on the ground, who profits, and why Indigenous land rights are central to real biodiversity protection.

In the episode we discuss:
• Survival International’s campaign to decolonize conservation and expose human rights abuses committed in the name of nature protection
• How the “empty nature” myth frames Indigenous people as threats despite long-term stewardship
• Violence linked to protected areas including beatings, torture, rape, and armed repression by ranger forces funded by major conservation groups
• Maasai displacement history from Serengeti and the ongoing threat across Maasai land tied to tourism and trophy hunting
• UNESCO’s role through World Heritage designations, “population pressure” language, and legitimizing forced relocation narratives
• What “voluntary relocation” can mean in practice including cattle confiscation, arrests, and suspension of vital services
• Scientific and cultural arguments for pastoralism as a biodiversity-positive land management system
• How carbon credits and offset thinking can shift environmental burdens onto Indigenous communities
• Maasai-led resistance through legal work, organizing, mass protests, and direct engagement with international institutions

If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues.

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To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org.

Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187.

link to the Maasai International Solidarity Alliance’s website : https://www.misasolidarity.org/

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In the face of new studies showing increased dangers of exposure to radiation, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing the repeal of a 50 year old safety regulation known "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" or ALARA. This is being done to fast track small modular reactors (SMRs). A proposed new nuclear technology, SMRs are seen as a possible answer to the energy bottleneck for the expansion of data centers that feed artificial intelligence.

SMRs would be smaller but spread out in more communities. They would be less efficient and use a more dangerous nuclear fuel. All of this is being greenwash under the banner of a so-called nuclear renaissance by big tech corporations and some supporters, who claim that it is an answer to climate change. On this episode of Breaking Green, we will speak with Peter Jones.

Peter Jones is trained as a physicist and as a lawyer, and he is director of nuclear waste policy at the Samuel Lawrence Foundation.

We track how the NRC’s push to weaken long-standing radiation safeguards lines up with the rush to license small modular reactors marketed as climate solutions. We connect new research on low dose radiation risk to the unresolved nuclear waste crisis and the growing demand for electricity from AI data centers.
• Why a “nuclear renaissance” narrative is gaining traction
• How San Onofre illustrates the problem of stranded nuclear waste
• The missing federal repository problem and the Yucca Mountain dead end
• How NRC staffing pressure and rushed rulemaking change the regulatory landscape
• Why data centers and AI are reshaping energy investment and political incentives
• What recent studies suggest about low dose ionizing radiation and cancer risk
• Why repealing Alara shifts risk onto workers and nearby communities
• How SMRs can be less efficient and generate more waste per unit of energy
• Liability limits, the Price Anderson Act, and gaps for newer reactor categories
• HALEU fuel, higher enrichment, and increased non-proliferation concerns
• The danger of reducing security requirements while using hotter fuel
• Why nuclear contamination is difficult to contain, clean up, and reverse

If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187. That's 1 716 257 4187.

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We talk with Kaleb Lay from Oregon Rural Action about how people living in a rural Oregon “sacrifice zone” end up with poisoned well water, and a widening wealth gap. We explore environmentalist claims that industrial farming, combined with a rapid build-out of Amazon data centers is compounding deadly nitrate contamination while communities fight for testing, transparency, and accountability.

• what Oregon Rural Action does across immigration justice and pollution work in Northeast Oregon
• why the Lower Umatilla Basin is described as a sacrifice zone
• how industrial scale agriculture drives nitrate groundwater contamination
• what nitrate does in the body, from blue baby syndrome to links with cancers and thyroid dysfunction
• how door to door well testing exposed widespread unsafe drinking water after decades of state inaction
• what retaliation can look like when organizers challenge powerful industries
• what Amazon says about liability and what a $20.5M settlement does and does not change
• why exascale projects raise alarms on water use, electricity demand, and rate impacts
• how transparency gaps and inflated job numbers shape local decision making
• why PFAS testing and disclosure matter for data center waste streams

Kaleb Lay is a fifth-generation eastern Oregonian and former journalist who now serves as Director of Policy & Research with Oregon Rural Action, a nonprofit organization that works with frontline communities in rural northeast Oregon. He is a leading expert in pollution issues in Oregon’s Lower Umatilla Basin, which is both one of the most polluted places in the Pacific Northwest and one of the fastest-growing data center hubs in the United States. He’s also an avid outdoorsman, and gardener

If you're enjoying this episode of Breaking Green, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts. Consider leaving a review and sharing it with friends and colleagues. You can find the full catalog of previous episodes and sign up to have future episodes delivered straight to your inbox at breakinggreen.org.

To learn more about Global Justice Ecology Project, visit GlobalJusticeEcology.org. Breaking Green is made possible by tax-deductible donations by people like you. Please help us lift up the voices of those working to protect forest, defend human rights, and expose all solutions. Simply text GIVE to 716 257 4187. That's 1 716 257 4187.

Support the show