Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Monday his decision to suspend the South American country’s electricity rationing plan amid the arrival of the rainy season.
Venezuela’s Supreme Court announced that it would hear a lawsuit filed by former high ranking cabinet members against a government plan to open 12 percent of the South American nation’s territory to open-pit mining.
Grassroots activists and ex-government officials submitted a lawsuit demanding that the high court halt a contentious mega-mining project on constitutional grounds.
Venezuela implemented new electricity saving measures on Monday in response to a severe drought that has sharply limited the generating capacity of the country’s hydroelectric dams.
The national government is now driving a significant geo-economic reorganization of territories around extractivism, with “Orinoco’s Mining Arch“ and “Orinoco’s Petroleum Belt“ as central projects. The appropriation of the last “virgin” areas of the country paves the way for new “accumulation by dispossession” processes, attempting to address the crisis of governability and accumulation model.
Venezuela concluded a week of meetings with representatives of the Kimberley Process on Friday in what has been hailed as the final steps towards the South American country’s recertification as an international producer of non-conflict diamonds.
Western media deploy double standards in their coverage of water and electricity shortages in Venezuela, blaming the country's leftist government for problems common across the global South.
