Blue Planet Project campaigner Meera Karunananthan is currently on a fact-finding mission on mining and water in El Salvador. She is participating in an international delegation that includes people from 12 countries and 22 organizations.

On Friday, she was in the capital city of San Salvador. At the media conference that began that day, she spoke about international solidarity for the struggle to protect water in El Salvador and the leadership social movements in that country have provided to the world. That afternoon, she spoke on a panel along side Manuel Perez Rocha, who is with the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, and Vidalina Morales, a Salvadoran activist who has been leading the struggle against a Canadian-based mining company in her community.

While in Tunisia (just across the Mediterranean Sea from Greece), the Blue Planet Project met with Greek activists Maria Kanelopoulo and Theo Karyotis. They are concerned about Vancouver-based Eldorado Gold pursuing its Skouries project -- a processing plant and open pit gold mine -- near the town of Ierissos in the Halkidiki peninsula of Greece, which is set to open by 2015.

Backlash on new EI rules grows

Criticism of the Harper government's restrictive new rules for employment insurance recipients grew this week. The Quebec government expressed serious concerns about possible impacts on its province's economy, following a protest against the changes by an estimated 4,000 people on Îles-de-la-Madeleine on January 13.

The Blue Planet Project participated in a ‘Misión Civil de Observación’ in San Jose del Progreso, Mexico last week. The group of about 25 observers looked into the Canadian-owned Fortuna Silver mine (operating through its Mexican subsidiary Compañía Minera Cuzcatlan) near this community (ejido) of Indigenous Zapotec farmers near the city of Oaxaca.

Pieced together from various articles and reports, the following is a chronology of the situation in San Jose del Progreso:

2006

- November - The federal government of Mexico grants Fortuna Silver/ Compañía Minera Cuzcatlan a concession of about 360 square kilometres of land to mine.

2009