[This is Part II of a multi-part series – for Part I, click here.]

There was a time when the idea of biofuel -- energy produced by simply growing plants, instead of digging it up from the ground -- seemed like it would solve many environmental and even social problems. Of course, this was something that maybe we wanted to all believe -- simply by changing the pump at the gas station, eventually we would be able use our planes, trains and automobiles guilt-free. Then the doubts started to emerge, and like a poorly built dam, the water eventually burst.

The Amazon, it is often said, functions like the lungs of Mother Earth. The dense forest and undergrowth absorb much of the carbon dioxide that we manage to pump into the skies –- an ever more important and taxing effort in light of the threats to our climate.

Rio Wawas, Amazonas, Peru

So by now you've probably heard about the protests on Parliament Hill on Monday, that were focused around climate justice, Indigenous rights, and getting Canada to sign Bill C-311 and the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights (even though most media, besides APTN, decided this was too much to report). CBC showed the live feed as well.

I arrived into Lima's Jorge Chavez International Airport on Friday June 5th, after a personal trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. I had come to Peru for a 5-day Indigenous summit in the southern Peruvian Andes and decided to take a few days off at the end to see these world-renowned sights, thinking I may not have the chance again. At the summit, we had been informed there of the situation on the ground in the Amazon. Alberto Pizango, president of the organization AIDESEP, the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon, which represents 400,000 Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon, had even come to the summit to speak.

The rhetoric was sharp enough to cut down Amazonian hardwoods. Yesterday, Sunday June 7th, after a number of ministers had been paraded out Saturday and the day before, Peru's el Señor Presidente, Alan Garcia decided to make it personal. After a joint police-military operation aimed at stopping an Indigenous protest had gone awry, leaving many dead on both sides, Garcia declared the Indigenous elements to be standing in the way of progress, in the path of national development, wrenches in the gears of modernity, and part of an international conspiracy to keep Peru down.

I'm writing this right now from Peru after having taken part in a 5 day Indigenous Peoples Summit held in Puno, Peru in the high Andes. At that gathering we heard from representatives, including Alberto Pizango, elected representative of the Peruvian Amazonian peoples, about the ongoing protests they were waging, and the repression faced as a result, from their opposition to some of the plans the Peruvian government has for 'developing' the Amazon region and opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation, on the homelands of many Indigenous communities. In response, there have been over 50 days of continuous protest, shutting down parts of the Amazon and the Andes.

I've just arrived at the head offices of AIDESEP, the Interethnic Association of Peruvian Rainforest Development, the representative body of Amazonian peoples of Peru, now at the centre of a developing emergency here in Peru. I'm here at the center of a fight over who controls the Amazon and the lives of those who live there.

Where I last left off (here), day one of the World Social Forum had just concluded to some confusion, and the beginning of some promising talks. The second day I arrived a good bit late, after ditching the bus snarled in traffic and walking the last kilometre in the morning heat. I arrived at the session I had initially thought I wanted to attend on carbon trading, a topic I was familiar with, but found it woefully under attended for it to really advance the issue. I instead decided to check out another session across the campus, along the way running into Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, the organization I was representing at the forum.

It was a day that represented so much for so many, and seemed to come alive with those expectations. The opening of the World Social Forum yesterday was a day replete with all the energy of one of the Amazon's famous storms combined with the energy of tens of thousands of activists from across Brazil and the rest of the world who descended on the port city of Belem, where the Amazon meets the Atlantic. It's a hot and sweaty city of over a million, bulging with many impoverished areas and many warnings by citizens about the rampant violence and other crime. Seemingly unequipped to handle an event that drew over 100,000 people to this fairly remote part of the world, many of the city's services have suffered in response to a sudden surge in people - from accommodation to transportation.