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Bolivia: Guarani People’s Assembly denounces REPSOL-YPF for violating its rights During the present month of November, the Guarani People of Itika Guasu, who inhabit the Province of O’Connor in the Department of Tarija, the location of the Margarita mega gas field, gathered in Assembly. The reason was to denounce before national and international public opinion the REPSOL-YPF company’s arbitrary treatment of the Guarani communities that inhabit the TCO (Original Community Territories ) Itika Guasu territory, in violation of the economic, social, cultural and environmental rights established in the State Political Constitution, ILO Convention 169 (Law 1257) and the Hydrocarbon Law (3058). The following communiqué was issued by the Assembly: “The Itika Guasu Assembly of the Guarani People [APG] denounces before national and international public opinion that the REPSOL-YPF company in Bolivia is violating the rights we have as indigenous people. It also denounces the fact that the REPSOL-YPF company, on launching new works in our TCO without prior and informed consultation, is violating Hydrocarbon Law No. 3058 of 17 May 2005 and its articles concerning indigenous peoples’ rights. We wish to make known that REPSOL YPF, showing no respect for the Guarani culture, has entered the territory of Itika Guasu located in the Province of O’Connor, Department of Tarija, causing damages to our environment, destroying our forests, driving away the wild animals that are the source of our subsistence and violating our form of community life. That is to say, REPSOL YPF is killing our culture. We denounce that the Spanish company REPSOL YPF has entered our TCO Itika Guasu territory to carry out prospecting, exploration and exploitation operations and it has done so systematically violating our right to prior and informed consultation, established in ILO Convention 169, a Law of the Republic since 1991, Law 1257. Since 1997 REPSOL YPF has been violating our rights because instead of respecting our organizational structure in communal, zonal and regional authority, it promotes the division of our communities using for this purpose its community relations officer, its social relations officer and the manager himself of Communication and Foreign Affairs. For this purpose REPSOL YPF uses misleading propaganda that seeks to make people believe that the Guarani people are satisfied with the oil company’s action, when in fact there is rejection in the TCO of the company continuing to operate in this manner. In March 2003, after much pressure on our part, REPSOL YPF established an agreement with the Guarani People of Itika Guasu, an agreement that has not been kept by the company, because in spite of the commitment to respect our TCO, the oil company has continued damaging our territory, dividing our communities, thus violating its commitments, not only with the Guarani People but also with the Bolivian State, as established in the environmental impact assessments and in national laws. Today, although the indigenous monitors of TCO Itika Guasu have prepared a dozen reports requesting the company to comply with environmental protection, modify its behaviour of arbitrary treatment of our communities, and stop violating national laws and international agreements, the arbitrary treatment of our territory continues and increases, with the company taking advantage of the permissive attitude of the Bolivian State which --although aware of our complaints-- has done nothing to protect the indigenous rights that REPSOL YPF is violating. A new Hydrocarbon Law (Law 3058) entered into force in our country on 17 May 2005, which clearly establishes in its articles VII and VIII the way in which oil activities should be carried out in indigenous territories. In spite of this, REPSOL YPF continues to operate against the provisions of the Law in the TCO of Itaka Guasu and therefore, it is violating our rights. For all the above, we bring to the knowledge of national and international public opinion that REPSOL YPF is an oil company which, in the territory of Itika Guasu, has practices that are contrary to those it publicises in the newspapers, radio and television. It is not true that REPSOL-YPF has brought benefits to the Guarani people, on the contrary, it is destroying our territory and it is doing so openly, violating national laws and international agreements. For the above, we are appealing
for solidarity with the Guarani people to demand that the company
changes its actions in our TCO and withdraws from all the mass media
the misleading propaganda it publicises that says very little for
its commitment with the ethics and transparency established in its
company mission and vision. Assembly of the Guarani People
of Itika Guasu.. Article based on: “Bolivia:
la empresa REPSOL YPF viola los derechos indígenas y la Ley
de Hidrocarburos”, Biodiversidad en América Latina,
http://www.biodiversidadla.org/content/view/full/20273
Brazil: Worked to death by Aracruz Wherever the pulp and paper industry operates, it brings with it the promise of jobs. Unfortunately, for the people living in the area that the industry takes over, these promises rarely bring work. In a recent report for World Rainforest Movement, Alacri De'Nadai, Winfridus Overbeek and Luiz Alberto Soares, record how Aracruz Celulose, the world's largest producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp, has failed to provide work for local people. The report, titled "Promises of Jobs and Destruction of Work: The case of Aracruz Celulose in Brazil" documents that since the 1980s when 9,000 people worked for Aracruz, employment at the company has fallen steadily. Increased mechanisation had led to large numbers of layoffs. Aracruz has outsourced many of its jobs, leading to less job security and lower salaries for those workers who managed to keep their jobs. Today, Aracruz directly employs only about 2,000 workers. In 2002, Aracruz opened a new pulp line which increased the company's pulp production from 1.2 million tons to 2 million tons a year. The US$600 million investment created 173 new jobs. That's about US$3.5 million per job. The jobs that the company and its subcontractors do provide are often dangerous and have serious impacts on the health of workers. In 2003, during an Open Trial in the Commission for Human Rights of the Federal Parliament in Brasilia, an Aracruz worker called the company a "murderer". He had seen several colleagues die as a result of health problems caused by working at Aracruz. Last year, dozens of former Aracruz workers with serious health problems formed a new movement: the Movement of Injured Workers of Aracruz Celulose. The Movement also includes the widows of former Aracruz workers. None of these people have received any sort of compensation from Aracruz for their injuries. The Movement has documented in detail the cases of 33 former Aracruz workers. Workers suffered spinal injuries caused by carrying heavy boxes of seedlings or chemicals. In the 1980s, workers were transported in trucks with wooden boards as seats. Many workers sustained spinal injuries as the trucks drove along roads full of potholes. Accidents with chain saws were common and included loss of toes, feet and cuts on the body and face. Some workers were crushed by falling trees. Other workers suffered spinal injuries while removing eucalyptus trunks. Workers responsible for maintaining and refuelling chainsaws and machines suffered from eye irritation and a disease called leucopenia, a reduction of the number of white blood cells in the blood. Particularly at risk were workers in Aracruz's plantations who apply pesticides and herbicides to ensure that the monoculture plantations remain just that: monocultures. Among the symptoms observed in these workers were headaches, vomiting, pain in the mouth and stomach, spongy nails and impaired vision (including the risk of blindness). Injured workers reported few accidents and illnesses to officials at Aracruz. Aracruz's medical services refuse to accept outside doctors' reports of illnesses as genuine proof of illnesses. Aracruz sacked all of the 33 people injured while working for the company. Today, many of the manual jobs at Aracruz, particularly those of chainsaw operators, have been replaced by machines. But illnesses among workers handling dangerous chemicals such as pesticides and herbicides are still common. The report "Promises of Jobs and Destruction of Work" includes an interview with a 59 year old man who used to work for Plantar, one of Aracruz's outsourced companies. He worked for fourteen months applying pesticides in 2000 and 2001. After four months of working, he fainted while he was working: "My friend pulled me into the shade, grabbed a hat, and fanned me for about ten minutes until I recovered again," he told the researchers. "Then I worked all afternoon long. Another two or three months went by and I fainted again." He became ill, but when he complained to his supervisor rather than receiving treatment, he was fired. Another man who had worked in Aracruz's plantations described the death of a co-worker, Junio. Junio had complained of feeling sick during the day. When the workers finished work they noticed that Junio wasn't there. They went to look for him: "When they got back he was lying down, with the pump on his back." In 2003, two people became ill while mixing three pesticides on one of Aracruz's plantations. They were employed by Emflora, another of Aracruz's outsourced companies. After a few days of working without boots, overalls or protective clothing they started to suffer headaches, dizziness, shivering fits and stomach aches. They were diagnosed with leucopenia. One of them is suing Emflora for bodily injury. Aracruz claims to be "improving the quality of life of its employees". In fact, by using subcontractors like Plantar and Emflora it is attempting to evade its responsibilities. The report "Promises of Jobs and Destruction of Work" concludes that "Aracruz Celulose manages to find a way around proceedings and liability, and while the workers continue to risk their health and very lives without having their rights guaranteed, the eucalyptus plantations are growing." The report "Promises of Jobs and Destruction of Work: The case of Aracruz Celulose in Brazil" is available here: http://www.wrm.org.uy/countries/Brazil/fase.html By Chris Lang, E-mail: http://chrislang.org
Colombia: Oil palm plantations on usurped communal lands The forests of the Colombian Pacific, the Pacific Region Territory, one of the areas of greatest biodiversity in the world, have been inhabited for many years now by Afro-descendent riparian communities. Their members were the last Colombian citizens to gain recognition of their right to the ownership of the territories that they possessed and used for centuries. The 1991 Constitution recognized their collective rights over the traditionally occupied territories but was accompanied from the start by a ferocious and systematic process of forced internal displacement that still continues in many places in the region and that has become even more serious with the increasing number of communities that are prevented from mobilizing and that have their entry of food, medication and fuel monitored. As stated by Carlos Rosero, Candidate to the Chamber of Representatives of the Afro Communities “forced internal displacement is functional, not only to the war but also to the progress of mega-projects and monoculture tree plantations, such as the oil palm, that advance with the support of the national government in the north and the south of the Pacific Region Territory and other settlements of Afro-descendant communities in the country. Initial recognition by INCODER (the Colombian Institute for Rural Development) in March this year of the illegal advance of monoculture oil palm plantations in the collective territories of the Afro communities of Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó and the recent reversion depriving these communities of part of the lands that had been granted by deed to them collectively --unseizably, indefeasibly and inalienably-- is a clear example of the model of inclusion and insertion in the region, in their territories and their peoples of the predominant economic rationale; of the serious incoherence of the State in defining the protection and conservation of biological diversity versus simple and vulgar developmentism. What is even more serious, it is a further demonstration that the Colombian State has been unable to protect the rights of Afro-Colombians, bowing to those responsible for violations of rights. Not only does it leave them unpunished, but on top of it all, rewards them.” In the year 2000, three years after having been displaced, the communities of the Jiguamiandú and Curvaradó river basins (the Choco region), received the deeds on 101,000 hectares that they had ancestrally occupied before their displacement. However, on their return these communities found that their territory had been invaded by industrial oil palm plantations. Attempts made by the real owners to recover
their farms were answered by death threats from the para-military
personnel and the staff linked to the oil palm growing companies
(URAPALMA, Palmas De Curvaradó, Palmas S.A., and Palmadó)
in the midst of military operations that have endeavoured to get
them to give up working the lands that the Government has allocated
to the plantation of oil palms. The Inter-Ecclesiastical Commission for Justice and Peace considered that “it is alarming to observe that following more than 13 displacements suffered by the Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó Communities, following over 110 murders and disappearances, and having verified the illegality of oil palm plantations in the collective territories of the Afro communities, today the National Government contradicts its own conclusions to favour the economic interests of the oil palm growers.” From a diametrically opposing standpoint, the communities’ social movement in the whole area of the Pacific rainforest conceives their territory as a “region-territory of ethnic groups,” that is to say an ecological and cultural unit amalgamated by the communities’ daily practices. The region-territory is conceived in terms of “corridors of life” that unite the communities, their activities and their natural environment. The corridors of life can connect mangrove ecosystems or extend from the middle of a river to the interior of a forest. Some are built around specific activities, such as traditional gold mining or the gathering of shells by women in the mangrove zones. Furthermore, the territory-region is conceived as a political construction for the defence of the territories and their sustainability. Sustainability cannot be conceived in terms of scraps or of individual activities or only in economic terms: it must respond to the multidimensional nature of the ecosystem’s effective appropriation practices. Thus, it may be said that the region-territory hinges the life-project of the communities with the political project of the social movement. In the same way, the definition of biodiversity includes local principles of autonomy, knowledge, identity and economy. Nature is not “something which is out there” but is deeply rooted in the collective practice of human beings who feel connected to it in a comprehensive way. The Afro communities have the conviction that the earth, as a living entity, must be collective. And they express it thus: “for us, the earth is mother and a crime is being committed against her giving rise to all the ills and miseries. Our mother, the mother of all living beings, is subjected, according to the law imposed, she has owners, she is private property. On subjecting her as property to be exploited, they took away her freedom to engender life and to protect and teach the place, the relationships and the time of every living thing… All we people are slaves together with animals and the beings of life, while we do not achieve our mother’s recovery of freedom.” Article based on information from: “Decisión
de INCODER, reversa y violación de los derechos de los afrocolombianos
y la Constitución”, Carlos Rosero, sent by Tatiana
Roa Avendaño, Iniciativa Ambiental Colombia, e-mail: bosques@censat.org;
“Comunidades negras de Colombia: en defensa de biodiversidad,
territorio y cultura”, Arturo Escobar, GRAIN, http://www.grain.org/biodiversidad/?id=87;
Comisión Intereclesial De Justicia Y Paz, Bogota, October
2005, http://www.pasc.ca/dever/dever211.pdf
Uruguay: World Bank Ombudsman confirms pulp mill risks The project for the installation
of two pulp-mills in Uruguay on the river of the same name, has
given rise to firm opposition, both in the country and among civil
society in the neighbouring Argentine province of Entre Rios, across
the river a few kilometres from the location where the pulp mills
are to be installed by the Spanish company Ence and the Finnish
company, Botnia. As the Botnia and Ence companies requested credits from the World Bank to carry out their projects, the Uruguayan Guayubira Group, in the framework of a campaign to resist the installation of these mills, promoted the dispatch of a letter to this entity. The International Financial Corporation, the branch of the Bank responsible for granting credit to private projects, received the letter that had circulated and been signed by hundreds of organizations in Uruguay, Argentina and throughout the world, appealing to the World Bank to avoid getting involved in the Metsa Botnia and Ence projects and not to grant them credit because the installation of the pulp mills will generate serious environmental and social impacts that will not solve, but only worsen the problems of the country and its people. In reply, the World Bank sent an assessment team from the Office of the Ombudsman and Compliance Advisor of the International Financial Corporation – responding directly to the president of the World Bank – to gather information on the conflict as set out. Recently, the Office of the Ombudsman of the World Bank confirmed many of the concerns brought up by the Guayubira Group. In a communiqué dated 16 November 2005, the group announced: “The World Bank’s Ombudsman’s Office has just confirmed the relevance of many of the concerns that the Guayubira Group has been bringing up for some time now. In the meanwhile the previous government and the present one affirm that all is well, that all the studies have been done, that all is under control, but now it is this Office of Compliance Advisor (OCA) to the World Bank that says that it is not so. At the time, Guayubira seriously questioned the Environmental Impact Assessments made by the Ence and Botnia companies. However, DINAMA (National Environmental Office) ended up by rapidly approving them. What does the report by the World Bank’s Office of Compliance Adviser say? It textually says that “based on its own revisions, OCA has found that the EIAs for the pulp mills do not adequately address the concerns of the potentially affected persons. In particular: - The EIAs do not provide sufficient
evidence that the concerns related with potential impacts on tourism
and agriculture have been addressed; It is sad to see that OCA is able to perceive the social and environmental impacts of large scale tree plantations and to link its expansion with the pulp mill projects but that these major issues have never been assessed or recognized by our governments. What is more, the OCA report adds the need to study the “potential impacts of eucalyptus plantations…on water availability,” thus joining the concerns voiced by Guayubira on the impacts of plantations. On the basis of all the omissions
observed by OCA, the report sets out the need to: i. Potential impacts of water emission on the water quality and on the local communities as well as on the tourist fishing communities; ii. Potential impacts on agricultural productivity of emissions into the air; iii. Potential impacts of eucalyptus plantations on land tenure equity and on water availability; c. Definitively address the issue of whether tourism and the pulp mills are compatible, given the on-going proposals; d. Assess whether it is possible or not to design appropriate mitigation measures, taking into account adaptation of existing regulatory processes to manage possible trans-boundary impacts”. Summing up, what the World Bank’s Office of Compliance Advisor is saying is that the Environmental Impact Assessments were totally insufficient and that therefore the State’s controlling mechanisms have failed even before the pulp mills have entered into operation. At the same time, the report also points out a series of social and environmental impacts that will occur, both due to the expansion of monoculture tree plantations and to the industrial process involved in pulp production. These points coincide with the position of the Guayubira Group on both issues. Will it still be insisted that these pulp mills will not contaminate? Article based on information
from: “Comunicado de prensa – 16 de noviembre de 2005,
Banco Mundial y plantas de celulosa: se confirman impactos”,
Grupo Guayubira, e-mail:
info@guayubira.org.uy, http://www.guayubira.org.uy
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