Radio Mundo Real

Environmental activist Ricardo Carrere died on Tuesday early morning in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. He was a renowned leader of the ecologist movement in Uruguay, Latin America and the World. His ample knowledge especially on forests and his contribution to the subject in many countries, earned him great respect in his country and abroad.

Carrere (68) was a forest expert. He was passionate about the indigenous forest, to which study he devoted his life.

He was the international coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM) from 1996 to 2010, when he retired. WRM is an international organization founded in 1986 that works on forest-related issues, on the struggle in defense of community rights over forests and their territories. WRM is part of several networks of social movements and organizations.

In 2003 a group of non-governmental organizations of Latin America created the Latin American Network Against Monoculture Tree Plantations in Porto Alegre, Brazil. WRM was elected as its Secretariat and Carrere had always been one of the most visible persons and one of the most emphatic voices of the network.

He was also member and co-founder of the Guayubira Group in Uruguay, created in 1997 to gather people and organizations that wanted to defend the indigenous forest and to resist the forestry model promoted and developed by the government.

Carrere was a key figure in the Uruguayan ecologist movement and he will continue to be so also at a regional and international level. Hours after the news of his death, WRM continues to receive the solidarity greetings of organizations and social movements of many countries all over the world. Carrere’s struggle in so many countries and his personal support to local communities’ initiatives in those places, are dearly remembered.

This article neither aims to be a faithful account of Carrere’s struggle for a sustainable world, nor a comprehensive account of his life dedicated to the environmental cause. It barely seeks to be Real World Radio’s tribute to our colleague and a message of solidarity with his family and the people who worked with him. We hereby send our condolences to Carrere’s life partner Maria Isabel Carcamo, representative of the Pesticide Action Network and its Alternatives in Latin America (RAPAL-Uruguay).

Real World Radio interviewed Ricardo Carrere several times and we did not want to miss the opportunity to pay tribute to him in a time of grief for the environmental movement in Uruguay, Latin America and the world. We prefer to remember Carrere in his struggle, remembering his words and thoughts is our humble tribute to him and a way to send our condolences to his loved ones.

Photo: http://marcospaz.com.ar