OUR
VIEWPOINT
-
Struggles for water and for the climate:
everybody’s business
In
this increasingly privatized world, to talk about water is almost
synonymous with talking about its appropriation by some company
to turn it into merchandise and source of profit. The seriousness
of the situation has been understood by many people and has led
to major struggles – sometimes pacific, sometimes violent – to
avoid it passing into the hands of transnational corporations.
However,
the role of transnational corporations goes far beyond the drinking
water business and extends from pollution to the destruction of
ecosystems that ensure the functioning of the water cycle.
Water
does not become polluted on its own and the origin of its pollution
is, in most cases, linked to large transnational corporations
that either directly pollute or produce and sell contaminating
substances that end up by poisoning the water.
In
the first place, oil and mining companies stand out, dumping enormous
quantities of contaminating substances in the areas where they
settle. Secondly, come the companies that
produce and sell toxic substances which have water as their final
destination. Of course these are not the only companies
involved, but they undoubtedly occupy an outstanding place on
the long list of contaminating companies.
A
different but equally serious case is that of the companies involved
in the construction of major hydroelectric dams that destroy entire
ecosystems – both aquatic and forest – affecting the innumerable
species – including humans – that depend on them.
Shrimp
farming companies are in a similar situation. Not only do they
pollute water resources but also destroy mangrove ecosystems that
are so important for the defence of coastal systems and related
life.
Another
case is that of companies involved in pulp production that install
enormous fast-growing monoculture tree plantations to supply their
factories with raw material. These trees consume – at no
expense to the company – vast amounts of water, drying out wetlands,
lagoons and water courses. Meanwhile, their enormous factories
use water for their industrial processing for free, and return
it polluted to the same water course they took it from.
The
list is too long to compress it in an article, but it may generally
be said that in all this process of destruction of water and of
the ecosystems necessary to ensure the functioning of the water
cycle, there is always at least one, and in most cases several,
transnational corporations that have actually appropriated the
resource.
In
all cases, those most adversely affected are the local inhabitants,
whose lives depend on the ecosystems and on the water resources
polluted or degraded by these companies. Among urban inhabitants,
the poorest are the most adversely affected as they find themselves
obliged to buy bottled water because tap water is polluted. In
turn, among the local inhabitants, those most adversely affected
are usually women who are differentially hit by the changes on
a local level.
On
a more macro level, the greatest danger to water is related to
climate change. On the one hand because one of its main causes
– deforestation – has a negative impact on the water cycle. In
fact the destruction of vast areas of forests affects the occurrence
of rain and groundwater infiltration. On the other hand because
climate change in itself entirely changes the hydrological regime,
with the outcome of extreme phenomena such as droughts and floods.
Needless
to say, behind the climate change phenomenon it is possible to
identify major transnational corporations that are profiting either
from deforestation processes or from exploitation and sale of
fossil fuels and, more recently from carbon trading which they
invented to obtain even greater profits from climate change, converted
into a business.
For
the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the planet, water
cannot be equated to a business and even less can climate change
be thus considered. Water contamination
and scarcity, as
well as, climate change are disasters to be avoided and
not goods to be negotiated. Struggles – local, national and international
– against the different processes and actors affecting water and
the climate are not struggles of “opposition” but of affirmation:
for the lives of this generation and future ones.
index
WATER: A VITAL SOURCE
OF LIFE
-
Water: For some a sacred element, for others a common property,
and yet for others a mere
commodity
“The
surface of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm
sea and the great expanse of the sky. There was nothing brought
together, nothing which could make a noise, nor anything which
might move, or tremble, or could make noise in the sky. There
was nothing standing; only the calm water, the placid sea, alone
and tranquil. … Only the Creator, the Maker, Tepeu, Gucumatz,
the Forefathers, existed in the water surrounded by clarity.”
(Fragments from Popol Vuh, the
sacred book of the Maya, explaining the origin of the world).
In
chemistry water, with the formula H2O, is explained
as a substance that comes from the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen.
It has a molecular weight of 18 gr/mol and serves as a basis to
measure the density of substances. Heat transforms it from a liquid
to a gaseous state and cold changes it from liquid to solid. Water
is vapour, cloud, ice, hailstone, snow, liquid, rain, brook, river,
sea. It is also an acid, a hydroxide, a salt, and an oxide.
Only a small 2.5%
of the total amount of water existing on the planet is fresh and
therefore fit for human consumption. For the western and modern
urban concept, water is a renewable resource and the growing trend
is to consider it as yet another consumer element, a good that
can be purchased and sold, appropriated, wasted and polluted.
But for ancient cultures
and even for those that have not yet lost all links with nature,
water is a sacred element, inspiring myths and legends. In some
cases, because it was so hard to obtain and conserve it, it was
given an almost divine value. The fluidity of water is birth and
in sprouting is eternity (1). For this reason it appears as an
element of origin, associated with what is sacred in most religions:
in the texts of the Jewish Torah, in the Christian Old Testament,
in the Muslim Koran, in the codex of Pre-Colonial religions, in
Hindu practices with the River Ganges as their centre, in Egyptian
mythology marked by the annual floods of the River Nile, in Greek,
Roman and Chinese traditions.
In
the present, the Indigenous Peoples at the 3rd World
Forum on Water, held in Kyoto, Japan in March 2003, declared that
they commit themselves
to “... honour and respect water as a sacred being which sustains
all life. Our knowledge, laws and traditional ways of life have
taught us to be responsible, caring for this sacred gift that
connects all life.” When water is conceived of as something
sacred, it is priceless and its value transcends the human species.
Beyond
the belief in the sacredness of water, another line of thought
holds access to drinking water as a basic human right. The first
United Nations Conference on Water, held in 1977 in Mar del Plata,
Argentina marked the starting point for a world reflection on
a global water policy. There, for the first time, the international
community agreed that all people have an equal right of access
to drinking water in sufficient quantity and quality to cover
their needs.
Today,
1,400 million people -1 out of 4 of the planet’s inhabitants-
lack access to drinking
water. Differences and tensions increase unceasingly. While the
inhabitants of California, USA have an average consumption of
500 litres per day, in Sudan this figure drops to 19 litres.
In
1992, Agenda XXI of the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
took up this idea once again. In 2000, the Special meeting of
the United Nations General Assembly established the goal of reducing
by half the number of people who do not have access to drinking
water by 2015. The First World Alternative Forum on Water (2),
held in Florence (Italy) in 2003, inspired by the Water Manifest
(3) and by the reflections of the World Social Forum held in Porto
Alegre (Brazil), made a proclamation in favour of «another world
and local water policy» seeking to ensure «the right to water
for all the 8 billion people who will be living on the Planet
in 2020 ».
But
all these are proclamations have not been upheld for lack of political
will on the part those entrusted to enforce them. On the contrary,
all over the world pressure is increasing to privatize water services,
like many other items and services. The transnational water companies,
such as Bechtel, Veolia, Suez, Saur Bouygues, Nestlé, Vivendi
Environnement, Danone, RWE, Thames Water, Southern Water, Coca-Cola,
Aguas de Barcelona, just to name a few—rely on multilateral funding
bodies that impose privatizing recipes on the countries of the
South to achieve this.
Appropriation
of water and generally its pollution by the industrial sector,
also occurs through the – generally unpaid - use and abuse by
enterprises such as pulp mills (which require vast amounts of
water), mining, shrimp farming. Some of these activities also
involve forest deterioration and destruction which in turn also
has a direct and negative impact on the water cycle insofar as
the forest is one of its key elements.
Large
scale monoculture tree plantations are also a way of appropriating
water, as fast-growing species act as siphons on the groundwater
level, to the detriment of other activities in the surroundings
of the plantation.
At
the First People’s Workshop in Defence of Water held in Mexico
in 2005, “some of the modalities of water privatization” were
identified (4). Among them:
*
Privatization of territories and bioregions. The companies that
trade and/or need bulk water for their activities seek the privatization
of territories and entire bioregions to guarantee monopoly control
over the resource, protected by changes in law.
*
Privatization through diverting existing sources. Abundant water
is provided to industrial users and agribusinesses through canals
that divert whole rivers from their natural courses, and through
the construction of infrastructure megaprojects like waterways
and dams.
*
Privatization by contamination. When major corporate users pollute
the resource through use and abuse (for example mining, oil drilling,
paper pulp, electricity companies, and agrochemical-intensive
industrial monocultures) as a “collateral effect” they in fact
appropriate a resource belonging to all and make it impossible
for less-privileged sectors to use it.
Nigerian
communities affected by oil companies, such as Shell, can testify
to this. These companies pollute the waters of the Niger Delta
which, according to a European Community study, contains hazardous
oil levels both for aquatic and human life.
Industrial
oil palm plantations, in addition to altering the water cycle
through the deforestation they usually cause, additionally involve
the scourge of agrochemicals used for pest, weed or plant disease
control. These agrochemicals end up in surface and groundwater.
In places where there is abundant rainfall, weed-killers such
as glyphosate or paraquat are swept by the rain into streams and
rivers, the only source of water for entire communities around
the plantations, with the consequent effects on their health.
Finally
it is all a question of politics. As appropriately explained by
the Swiss ecologist, Rosmarie Bär, “when talking about water you
have to talk about politics. Water policy goes hand in hand with
soil policy and agricultural policy, with trade and economic policies,
with environmental, social and sanitary policies and with equality
policy.”
Policies
currently imposed all over the world are far from taking into
account that we are part of a greater system that in turn belongs
to other systems and others and others: from atoms to galaxies.
What is done in one part of the system has repercussions on the
others. As humanity, the urgent and enormous task before us is
to reverse this deviation in order to recover the future and,
with it, the marvel of life flowing, like water.
(1)
“El agua”, Comfama,
http://www.comfama.com/contenidos/bdd/6358/AGUA.pdf;
(2)
“Florence Declaration for another Water Policy. Alternative World
Water Forum Declaration” (21-22 March,2003),
http://paginadigital.org/articulos/2003/2003terc/noticias5/agua25-4.asp;
(3)
“El manifiesto del agua”, Ricardo Petrella,
Barcelona, Meeting Icaria Editorial-Intermón Oxfam, 2002
;
(4)
“Las caras de la privatización del agua”, Silvia Ribeiro, La Jornada,
April 2005,
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/04/30/027a1eco.php
index
-
Forests
and water
The relationship
between forests and water has long pre-existed the appearance
of humans on the planet. Wherever water comes down from the skies
with certain frequency, there is a forest. For scientists,
forests are ecosystems hosting much biological diversity, both
regarding different species and also regarding genes within the
same species. They are places dominated by trees, but nevertheless
composed also of plants of different species, sizes, ages and
forms of life. We find lianas, creepers, ferns, shrubs, young
trees and old trees that could tell us of history one thousand
years before Christ. This gives rise to the great biodiversity
these ecosystems host, as so many different plants provide food
to many different animals.
And wherever there
is a forest there is water. To start off with this is due to the
fact that water is an essential requisite for plants as the process
of photosynthesis needs three things: light, carbon dioxide and
water. Additionally, forests develop and evolve in equilibrium
with the quantity of water available to them –it is perhaps for
this reason that once they have developed, they protect it.
Forests provide various
factors that generate conditions to conserve water. Firstly: they
lower the temperature by providing shade, preventing water from
evaporating and migrating to the sky. Secondly: forests capture
the clouds making them pass slower over them, leaving more humidity
behind them. Thirdly: they improve the soil by making it more
absorbent through the incorporation of organic matter, enabling
water to filter through and not runoff over the soil. Fourthly:
they make water reach the soil more slowly, trapping it in the
tree canopy and letting it fall along the trunk, thus giving the
soil more time to absorb it, preventing the water from eroding
the soil by falling rapidly.
Indigenous cultures
are well aware of the relationship between water and the forest.
The Mapuche people, who inhabit southern Chile, find spirits-forces
that protect water in the native forest. The Gñen-ko, inhabit
a sacred place within the forest, the meno-ko, the site where
water is born. The Gñen-ko punish those who enter the meno-ko
without asking permission, or those who enter without a valid
reason, like for instance to extract medicinal plants to cure
a sick person.
Lucinda Pichicona,
a Mapuche woman, tells us that: “sometimes, out of need, they
have taken plants, trees to sell for firewood, for heating, to
make fences, they have taken out and destroyed their small forests.
...and many people have cleared, for example there are institutions
that come and (say) that the water must be cleaned, that everything
has to be very clean and many Mapuche have cleared the springs
where they got their water, clearing and cutting down the trees
so the leaves don’t fall into the water because previously the
leaves fell into the water but they used to push them away and
take out the water. Because they were told that the water was
dirty the people cut the trees to prevent the leaves from falling
in. And what happened, the water dried up. And then they understood
that by taking away the plants the water is no longer there and
they do not have any Gñen that produce water”
(1).
When a forest that
had developed in equilibrium with local environmental conditions
disappears, this equilibrium is seriously altered. The soils
and slopes are exposed to erosion agents, of which water is the
strongest. It is precisely what best demonstrates the relationship
between these three factors. Without the forest, water and soil
almost mutually repel each other in lands where the topography
is not flat. However with the presence of the forest a natural
web is generated, enabling water and soil to maintain a closer
relationship, coming nearer and staying together much longer.
When the native forest
is replaced by plantations of foreign trees, the water-soil relationship
is destroyed, this is so because the only trees able to establish
a balance between them are those developed according to the characteristics
that both factors exhibit in a given location.
A Mapuche man from
the Lumaco region, explained:” Now there is not much menoko
because the forestation companies entered everywhere, they surrounded
the community; the water decreased...very specially the menoko,
the springs. And now as they have planted pine trees and the pine
trees are now growing this water has dried up. And the community
is rather sad. It is not like the life we had before” (1).
We know that three-quarters
of the planet are cover by water, but for this water to be available
to humans there must be sufficient forests to place it at our
disposal. If not, we will only see it passing by.
By Alejandra Parra, RADA (Network for
Environmental Rights Action - Red de Acción por los Derechos Ambientales),
e-mail: sinurgirse@yahoo.es
(1) Excerpt from
interviews carried out with Kimche (“people with wisdom”)
from the Pantano community, Lumaco commune, Province of Malleco,
Araucania Region, Chile, for the thesis on “Strategies for restoration
of degraded native forest communities in an inter-cultural context.”
Parra, A. 2004.
index
-
The water-forest-climate connection
In
the symbiosis between water and forest referred to in the previous
article, another component should also
be considered: climate change. Climate is a determining
factor of the forest, of its flora and fauna. Climate makes a
forest boreal or humid-tropical and consequently its diversity
will be of one type or another. In turn, forests have been
crucial in the development of the world climate because of their
role in trapping carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen.
This
water-forest-climate connection has implications that go beyond
local and directly verifiable facts. An Oxford University study
(1) throws light on the relationship between rainfall and the
atmospheric movement of the Congo Basin and the Amazon Basin,
quoting satellite studies that show a natural see-saw oscillation
across the whole Atlantic Ocean: floods in the Amazon basin tend
to coincide with droughts over the Congo Basin and vice-versa.
In turn, the major variations in rain patterns in the Amazon and
the Congo have repercussions on the hydrology and climate of other
regions.
The
study, giving figures and scenarios, provides data on a legacy
of apparently forgotten ancient knowledge: that life is inter-dependent
so what is done in one part of the world invariably has
effects on other parts. For example, deforestation in the Congo
Basin – with an approximate rate of destruction of a million and
a half hectares of forest per year – has caused decreased rainfall
in the United States Great Lake region by approximately 5-15 %
and also affects Ukraine and Russia (north of the Black Sea). For
its part, the changes in land cover in the major basins in Africa
and Asia have effects on the Asian monsoon.
The
industrial and extractive activities --including converting forests
over to farming, logging, highway construction, oil exploitation
and mining-- that sustain the globalized economy based on the
brutal assault on nature, continue to advance. But not without
consequences.
The
delicate balances that have been upset, such as the forest-water-climate
connection, make the planet face the threat of Climate Change.
We now learn that mass industrialization so voraciously swallowing
up nature, has a very poor digestion. Excessive emanation of the
so-called “greenhouse effect gases” (carbon dioxide among them),
is not related to natural emission mechanisms but to the above-mentioned
industrial activities.
According
to United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of experts on Climate
Change (IPCC) eleven of the last twelve years (1995 – 2006) are
among the warmest years in the record of global surface temperature
since 1850. Increase in temperature during the twentieth century
has probably been the highest in any century over the past thousand
years and more extreme phenomena, such as heavy rainfall, dry
summer weather and subsequent droughts in some areas, are foreseen.
IPCC
forecasts that for the twenty-first century there will be an increase
in both the concentrations
of carbon dioxide and of the mean temperature of the planet’s
surface (2). Deforestation is one of the processes responsible
for increased greenhouse effect gases – contributing 18% as acknowledged
by a former World Bank senior economist, Nicholas Stern, in a
report on the impact of climate change and global warming on world
economy – and for altering the local, regional and global climate
Climate
change will particularly affect tropical forests
where precipitation declines, and also mangroves subject
to pressure from changes in temperature. In turn, ecosystem resilience
(the capacity to recover and adapt) may be vastly exceeded during
this century because of an unprecedented combination of climate
change, its associated alterations, (for example, floods, droughts,
fires, spread of insects, ocean acidification) and other factors
such as changes in land use, contamination, fragmentation of natural
systems, over-exploitation of resources. This implies, among other
things, irreversible effects on biological diversity.
Furthermore,
climate change also affects water, not only because its
impact on forests has a bearing on the water cycle, but also because
of the alterations caused by increased melting of snow and ice.
Additionally, higher temperatures can also compromise water quality
(for example, due to a proliferation of algae). According to data
gathered by IPCC (3), during the twentieth century, a generalized
withdrawal of non-polar glaciers took place. This has a two-sided
effect: in the long run it implies less water availability and
it also implies the entry of a great mass of water into the sea
that will directly affect coastal areas. This effect of climate
change also generates more climate change as flooding of land,
both grasslands and forests causes release of methane gas, one
of the most potent greenhouse gases, with negative impacts on
global warming and therefore, on climate change.
The
impacts of climate change in turn have direct effects on humankind,
and not just on the local communities more immediately affected
by forest disappearance, shortage or loss of water courses and
numerous derivations on their sustenance and health, but also
on urban centres.
In
the long run, the taps that forgot the origin of water, the sky-scrapers
that lost the memory of the role played by forests, the governments
that distractedly toy with atmospheric contamination, will also
feel the effects.
(1)
“Ecosystem services of the Congo Basin forests”, Danae S. M. Maniatis,
Oxford University, 2007,
http://globalcanopy.org/themedia/Ecosystem%20Services%20CB.pdf;
(2)
Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report,
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/climate-changes-2001/synthesis-spm/synthesis-spm-es.pdf;
(3)
Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report,
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-syr.htm
index
DIFFERENT FORMS OF
WATER APPROPRIATION
Bottled
Tears
Or
Water Poem
Yesterday
I could cry and shed watery tears
I
could labour and freely shoot watery sweat
But
today
Not
so, not so
Riverbeds
turned dustbowls
Rivers
diverted into private throats
Creeks
turned into rivers of salt
I
sweat blood
And
weep dry-eyed
Our
fathers and forefathers and mothers and grandmothers say waters
from
Streams
and rivers, creeks and lagoons
In
their days
Were
clear, odourless, tasteless, healthy
In
their days
When
we talked of process none guessed we
Were
in the process of privatising our throats
Choking
our taste buds on caustic soda as
Process
waters from drill pits and fluid effluents
From
eucalyptus paper mills attempt to paper
Over
the pains and deceits of reckless tycoons
Draped
in dark cocoons of international finance plans
To
subjugate and to squeeze and commodify
Our
sweat and tear drops
Our
fathers and forefathers and mothers and grandmothers say waters
from
Streams
and rivers, creeks and lagoons
In
their days
Were
clear, odourless, tasteless, healthy
In
their days
Dreams
of sparkling streams evoke surrealistic brushes
Fishes
dancing past steel hooks and reedy traps
Pebbles
and sand dragging divers’ plunge for hidden treasure
Throve
centuries saved from prying eyes
I
look deep into your heart and see
Fossils
of forgotten dreams
Calcified
Histories
like far removed tales
Crabs
long eaten, turtles hurtled
Into
distant lands
Our
fathers and forefathers and mothers and grandmothers say waters
from
Streams
and rivers, creeks and lagoons
In
their days
Were
clear, odourless, tasteless, healthy
In
their days
Last
night kids danced in acid rain
Doubly
warmed by infernal dragon tongues
From
gas flares
Empty
shells, lifeless sockets, death everywhere
Forlorn
men, backs broken, homes long gone
Sit
on benches of plastic bamboos
Whistling
for fishes from acid lakes
Craving
for mudskippers from tar ponds
Our
fathers and forefathers and mothers and grandmothers say waters
from
Streams
and rivers, creeks and lagoons
In
their days
Were
clear, odourless, tasteless, healthy
In
their days
Once
I could cup you in my palms
Now
captive in plastics
These
logos are they your makers?
Spring
waters spring from ubiquitous boreholes
Polluted
waters marketed as life giving fluids
You
spring surprises don’t you?
Who
made the robots that rob?
We
demand
Free
our waters
Jail
the water crooks
Polluters
and thieves!
Our
fathers and forefathers and mothers and grandmothers say waters
from
Streams
and rivers, creeks and lagoons
In
their days
Were
clear, odourless, tasteless, healthy
In
their days
By
Nnimmo Bassey, Environmental Rights Action, e-mail:
nnimmo@eraction.org
index
-
Bangladesh: Phulbari coal mine - "losses
beyond compensation"
The
proposed Phulbari open pit coal mine in Bangladesh would divert
a river, suck an aquifer dry for 30 years and evict thousands
of people from their homes. Vast machines would dig a series of
holes 300 metres deep over a total area of 59 square kilometres.
The coal would be largely exported via a railway and port in the
Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest.
The
company behind the US$1.4 billion scheme, Asia Energy Corporation
(Bangladesh), is a wholly owned subsidiary of a UK company, Global
Coal Management Resources. The largest shareholder in GCM Resources
is RAB Capital, a London-based hedge fund manager. Other shareholders
include UBS, Credit Suisse and Barclays. In June 2008, the ADB's
board is scheduled to decide whether or not to provide a US$100
million loan and US$200 million political risk guarantee for the
project.
During
an ADB mission to Bangladesh in October 2007, mission leader Kunio
Senga told journalists that "coal mining is going to give
huge potential benefit for power generation." Senga added,
"Coal mining is very effective."
The
mine would displace 40,000 people according to Asia Energy. Activists
state that the number of people affected could be more than ten
times this figure. "No matter wherever we are put, if we
get evicted from our homes, we will lose our traditions, social
organisation and businesses. These losses are beyond compensation,"
Nima Banik, a lecturer at Phulbari Women's Degree College told
the Bangladesh NGO, Society for Environment and Human Development
(SEHD).
The
mine would cause noise and dust pollution through dynamite explosion.
More noise and dust will come from the trucks and trains that
would haul the coal away from the mine. Coal dust will pollute
the air. Water will be polluted from washing the coal, risking
pollution of surrounding water bodies. Bangladesh has networks
of hundreds of small rivers, meaning that water pollution in one
area can spread over a large area.
To
prevent the mine from flooding, huge pumps would run 24 hours
a day for the 30 years of the mining project, pumping up to 800
million litres of water a day out of the mine. Groundwater in
an area covering about 500 square kilometres would be lowered.
Wells would no longer provide enough water for farmers. Asia Energy's
solution is to distribute the water pumped out to farmers. "It
is an open question if the water distribution would be even-handed,"
notes SEHD's Philip Gain. Once the mining is finished, Asia Energy
plans to create a huge lake, providing fresh water, fisheries
and recreation, according to the company. But after 30 years of
digging, the water will be toxic.
Local
opposition against the project is strong. In August 2006, about
80,000 people took part in protests against the mine. The paramilitary
Bangladesh Rifles opened fire on the demonstration, killing five
people and injuring hundreds. On 30 August 2006, the Rajshahi
mayor, Mizanur Rahman, signed an agreement with the protesters
on behalf of the government to kick Asia Energy out of the country
and to ban open-pit mining in Bangladesh. Well over a year later,
the government has yet to scrap the deal with Asia Energy. Meanwhile
the government is working on a coal policy which in its current
draft form would allow open pit mining.
Under
the military government which declared emergency rule in January
2007, public protest is banned. Nevertheless, in December 2007,
representatives of the sub-districts of Phulbari and neighbouring
Birampur, Nababganj and Parbatipur wrote to the president and
executive directors of the ADB. The project will "increase
the poverty of the local population as well as cause environmental
disaster," they wrote.
The
Bangladesh government's Department of the Environment has set
up a Climate Change Cell. "Rapid global warming has caused
fundamental changes to our climate. No country and people know
this better than Bangladesh, where millions of people are already
suffering," states the one of the Climate Change Cell's documents.
"Development must ensure reducing the risks posed by climate
change to people's lives and livelihoods," it adds.
The
Climate Change Cell gets more than 90 per cent of its funding
from the UK's Department for International Development (DfID).
Nowhere in any of the documents on its website does Climate Change
Cell mention Phulbari. Yet the coal from the Phulbari coal mine,
if it is extracted and burnt, will add a total of more than 1.2
billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Gordon
Brown, the UK prime minister, claims to be concerned about climate
change. At a recent meeting with Bangladesh's interim head of
government, Fakhruddin Ahmed, Brown promised that "Britain
would continue to work closely with Bangladesh bilaterally and
internationally to secure an effective response to combat climate
change." The Phulbari coal mine makes a mockery of this statement.
By
Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
index
-
Burma: Dams in the Irrawaddy River Basin to
displace thousands of people in rural areas
In
a country already suffering severe economic hardship and repression
under its military rulers, thousands of people mainly in rural
areas face losing their homes and lands to seven large dam projects
planned for the Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwaddy) River Basin in Northern
Burma’s Kachin State.
The
dam projects are being built under a joint agreement between the
Burma’s military regime and the China Power Investment Corporation
(CPI).
The
electricity generated from the dams would be sent via China’s
Yunnan power network to feed the western region and eastern coastal
areas of China. The electricity revenue to the Burmese junta from
China is estimated at about US$500 million per year.
The
Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy River – Burma’s largest river (about 1350
miles or 2,170 km long) and its most important commercial waterway,
with a drainage area of about 158,700 square miles (411,000 km²)
– flows through Burma starting in Kachin state, at the confluence
of the Mali Hka and N’Mai Hka rivers. The headwaters of these
two rivers originate in the southeastern Himalayas.
After
coming together as the Irrawaddy, the river flows south through
Burma’s central heartlands and the country’s second largest city
of Mandalay, down to the delta – comprising a fertile plain as
well as an intricate system of mangroves that is 290 km long and
240 km wide. The Irrawaddy delta supports a population of more
than 3 million people and provides nearly 60% of Burma’s rice
production.
At
the confluence where the Irrawaddy begins, inspection work and
dynamiting of the riverbeds is underway for the largest of the
7 dam projects – the Myitsone dam. Located 26 miles north of Myitkyina,
the capital of Kachin state, the Myitsone project will generate
3,600 megawatts of electricity.
In
addition to the Myitsone on the mainstream of the Irrawaddy River,
another six dams are planned on the N’Mai
and Mali Rivers north of the confluence, including:
2,000 MW project in Chibwe, 1,600 MW project in Phizaw, 1,700
MW project in Khaunglanphu, and 1,560 MW project in Laiza in Kachin
state. Upon completion, the Irrawaddy dam projects would generate
about 13,360 MW making it the biggest hydropower venture in Burma,
far more than the controversial 7,100 MW Tasang dam in Shan state
planned with Thailand.
Work
has also started on the Chibwe hydropower project on the N’Mai
Hka River near Chibwe town. The villages in Washapa and upper
Nyawngmawpa valley near the Chibwe project site are being pressured
by the military and the project contractor, Asia World Company,
to relocate their homes near the project site. So far villagers
have held out from moving – a grim standoff that may not last
long under the fierce armed might of the Burmese military.
True
to the highly secretive nature of Burma’s military regime, little
information is known about these dam projects or their potential
impacts on people, livelihoods and ecosystems. No economic assessment
or environmental study has been done; the people of Kachin state
have no idea of the scale of these project reservoirs and inundation
areas.
Eyewitness
reports from the area say that currently Chinese engineers and
the Asia World Company have begun geological inspection activities
at three different places along the N’Mai
Hka watercourse between Chibwe and Sawlaw towns; Asia World is
also constructing roads using several bulldozers and excavators
and has hired local villagers in the construction site. A worker
is paid Kyat 5,000 (US$4) per day as the minimum wage.
Meanwhile
downstream at the Myitsone project, over 1,000 Asia World construction
workers are settled at the project site, according to local villagers
near Myitsone, and dynamite explosions occur regularly underneath
the riverbed at the project site since the last two months. Soldiers
from the Burmese Army’s No. 121 Infantry Battalion are stationed
to provide security for the company work camps near Myitsone.
The
scale of the displacement from the dams is not fully known, but
estimated at more than 10,000 people presently living in the Washapa
and Nyawngmawpa valleys situated west of the N'Mai
Hka River. At least 47 villages would be fully submerged under
the dam waters. Apart from people in Kachin State, another 3 million
in the Irrawaddy delta – Burma’s rice bowl – could also feel the
impacts of the dams due to changes in seasonal water flows and
flood levels in the delta.
The
ecological impacts though even less understood promise to be severe
as the large-scale dams will inundate huge areas of forests and
affect plant and riverine biodiversity. The Irrawaddy River Basin
is located between two of the most biodiverse and threatened ecological
regions – the Indo-Burma and South Central China regions – which
contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants as endemic species.
The confluence of the Mali and N’Mai Rivers
falls within the Mizoram-Manipur-Kachin rainforests. Logging is
already going on in areas between the Irrawaddy River and Mogaung
Town with hardwood species called Tarmalan and teak felled and
sent to China.
Endemic
bird areas follow the Irrawaddy’s watercourse; there are at least
4 known endemic bird areas in the basin. The central Irrawaddy
is an important wintering and staging area for waterfowl from
Tibet and other areas north of the Himalayas. Changes to water
quality and fish species will impact bird life.
The
Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris), one of the 4
species of river dolphins in the world and listed as critically
endangered species by the World Conservation Union (IUCN), is
also under threat by loss of prey from disturbances in fish migration
patterns, degraded water quality and changes to river hydrology
by the dams.
The
Irrawaddy dolphins are found to range around 300 km south of the
dam site from Myitkina. Local people venerate the dolphins and
fishermen have a cooperative fishing method with them. The dolphins
respond to signals from the fishers by swimming in ever-tightening
semi-circles to help herd fish schools. But the dolphin’s habitat
in the Irrawaddy has already declined nearly 60% in the last century
and the best estimate of the current population is just 59 individuals.
By
Amraapali N. who is a writer in the Mekong region,
email: amraapali@gmail.com
A
full version of this article will appear in the upcoming issue
of Watershed magazine. More information on the Irrawaddy dams
is available from “Damming the Irrawaddy,” published by the Kachin
Development Networking Group (available at www.salweenwatch.org).
index
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Argentina: Scientists confirm that plantations
dry up streams and salinise groundwater
The
Pampas of Argentina and Uruguay is one of the largest uncultivated
grasslands in the world. Grasses have dominated the Pampas for
at least three thousand years. Starting in the 19th Century eucalyptus
trees were planted on small areas, for shade on cattle ranches
and for construction materials. Today, the pulp and paper industry
and the carbon offsets industry are expanding their operations
in South America. Increasingly, they are targeting grasslands
for conversion to large-scale industrial tree plantations.
Robert
Jackson, Professor of biology at Duke University, has spent many
years researching the impacts of plantations on water. "Extensive
tree establishment could compromise groundwater replenishment
at the landscape scale, making its use transient and producing
a widespread depression of groundwater", he wrote in a 2004
paper published in Global Change Biology. Written with his colleague
Esteban Jobbágy the paper is based on a comparison of grassland
and adjacent plantations in the Pampas in Argentina. As well as
lowering ground water, they found that "The conversion of
grasslands to plantations in the Pampas triggered intense soil
and groundwater salinization in areas with intermediate texture
sediments, the most common soil type in the region."
In
the Pampas, shallow freshwater lenses are used to provide drinking
water, but below these lenses is brackish groundwater below plantations.
Tree plantations suck up the deeper groundwater bringing salts
to the surface. Plantations also affect soil nutrients, depleting
calcium, magnesium and potassium but enriching sodium, leading
to more salty soil.
"A
landscape with deep and salty groundwater would be a likely outcome
of a massive tree establishment in the Pampas," Jackson and
Jobbágy warn.
In
December 2005, Jackson was the lead author of a report published
in Science magazine, titled "Trading Water for Carbon with
Biological Carbon Sequestration". Jackson and his colleagues
looked at data comparing the chemistry of soils in grasslands
or shrublands with those in adjacent plantations in 16 countries.
They studied stream flow data from 26 long-term catchment studies
(with more than 500 annual observations) comparing grassland,
shrubland or agricultural catchments with plantations. They also
conducted their own research in Argentina.
"Carbon
sequestration strategies highlight tree plantations without considering
their full environmental consequences," Jackson and his co-authors
wrote. Their report documents that replacing grassland and shrubland
with plantations results in "substantial losses in stream
flow, increased soil salinization and acidification".
"Within
a decade," Jackson said in a 2005 interview with National
Public Radio, "tree plantations reduce stream flow by about
one-half compared to the shrublands or grasslands they replaced
and about one out of every eight streams dried up completely for
a full year or more." More than one-fifth of the catchments
experienced reductions in runoff of 75 per cent or more for at
least one year.
"Plantations
not only have greater water demands than grasslands, shrublands,
or croplands," note Jackson and the international team of
scientists in Science, "they typically have increased nutrient
demands as well. These demands change soil chemistry in ways that
affect fertility and sustainability."
In
another report published in 2005, Jackson and his colleagues found
that "Eucalypts had a larger impact than other tree species
in afforested grasslands, reducing runoff by 75 per cent, compared
with a 40 per cent average decrease with pines."
Particularly
important is the impact of tree plantation on dry season water
flows: "Changes in low flow may be even more important than
changes in annual flow, as the dry season is when reduced water
supply will have the most severe effects for users, particularly
in arid and semiarid regions."
In
a report published last year, Jobbágy and Jackson looked at the
impact of eucalyptus plantations on soil chemistry in the Argentinian
Pampas. Their findings upheld what they'd previously found. Tree
plantations "showed a widespread and homogeneous salinization
of groundwater and soils at all study sites". Jobbágy and
Jackson report that "Compared to their surrounding grasslands,
tree plantations . . . had shallow ground waters that were 15
to 30 times saltier."
To
farmers and villagers living near industrial tree plantations,
all these statements from peer reviewed scientific journals are
statements of the obvious. But farmers and villagers tend not
to dig boreholes and collect samples of soil and ground water
to be send off for analysis in laboratories. Neither do they produce
reports for publication in scientific journals. Instead, they
notice when their crops won't grow or when their wells dry up.
The best way of preventing these problems is to stop the further
expansion of the industrial tree plantations - before Jackson
and Jobbágy's warning of "A landscape with deep and salty
groundwater" becomes a reality in the Pampas.
By
Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
index
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Water contamination with pesticides in
oil palm plantations
Lake
Chini is dying. The beautiful lake in the state of Pahang is one
of the only two large natural freshwater bodies in Malaysia --and
is dying. It used to teem with fish and other aquatic animals
and plants and has been the home of indigenous communities, the
Jakuns. Various human activities have contributed to the
pollution of Lake Chini especially the establishment of a dam.
However one contributing factor has been the pesticides and fertilisers
used in the oil palm plantations fringing the lake and in many
places next to the water.
The
pesticides used in plantations are known to cause a litany of
health problems both chronic and acute and some of them are known
to be harmful to soil and aquatic organisms and are environmental
pollutants. This water contamination affects the health
and well being of the Jakuns who depend on the water for drinking
and other purposes.
Increased
demand for agrofuels and vegetable oil means rapid expansion of
palm oil plantations and demand is expected to double by 2020.
To meet this demand thousands of square kilometers of mainly rainforest
and agricultural lands will be cleared to plant new oil palm plantations
in Indonesia, Malaysia, PNG and many other countries in Asia and
Africa and Latin America.
The
use of pesticides will increase tremendously as the plantations
expand. The invasion of these oil palm plantations into rainforest
have and continue to destroy livelihoods and lives of indigenous
communities, erode biodiversity, destroy rainforest habitat and
wild life, and pollute the soil and water with pesticides and
untreated palm-oil effluent causing environmental contamination
of air, soil and water, soil erosion, and sedimentation of rivers.
Pesticides
continue to negatively impact the health and lives of millions
of agricultural pesticide users, their communities and consumers
worldwide, also causing great damage to biodiversity and the environment.
The pesticides used in oil plantations have adverse impacts on
human health – and particularly on oil palm workers- and the environment.
Innumerous
pesticides are used on oil palm plantations, and many of them
are posing great threats to water reservoirs, which in turn spread
contamination to other life forms. For example, Paraquat poses
a risk to non-target terrestrial and aquatic plants. Diuron
and Metsulfuron are potential groundwater contaminants and diuron
also has adverse effects in aquatic environments. In addition,
insecticides such as monocrotophos, methamidophos, carbofuran
and fungicides such as chlorothalonil and maneb are groundwater
contaminants. Glyphosate,
cypermethrin,
carbofuran,
and maneb are possible
endocrine disrupting pesticides. Glufosinate
ammonium another pesticide used in oil palm plantations is also
a groundwater contaminant.
The
use of highly hazardous pesticides combined with the uncontrolled
application, the methods of application as well as the conditions
of use in these countries suggest that the likelihood of pesticides
entering waterways and groundwater is high. Also many of
the pesticides used are inherently poisonous to the aquatic ecosystems.
Groundwater, wells and water drinking would be impacted.
Pesticide
production is a multinational industry exerting undue influence
on international standard setting bodies, national governments
and local communities. The enormous influence these chemical corporations
wield, because of their economic power, is a major factor in the
persistence of pesticides in agriculture despite the mounting
evidence of environmental contamination, human poisonings, and
greater yields achieved when the chemical is replaced by agroecological
practices.
Community
groups, people’s organizations and NGOs have been organizing into
networks and movements to confront the industry and challenge
the expansion of oil palm plantations because of all the adverse
effects to the health, environment and to the livelihoods and
lives of indigenous communities, peasants, agricultural workers
and women. Many of these groups are also promoting biodiversity
based ecological agriculture that builds on indigenous and local
knowledge, based on appropriate technology, biodiversity conservation
and respecting ecological integrity as well as advocating farmer’s including
rural women’s control over land, water, seeds and forests, protection
of workers’ rights and of rural communities.
By
Sarojeni V. Rengam, PAN Asia and the Pacific, E- mail:
sarojeni.rengam@panap.net and
panap@panap.net, www.panap.net
index
WOMEN AND WATER
-
Women speak out
about the water taken away from them
Together
with the arrival of large-scale monoculture tree plantations is
the departure of water. This affects the whole village community,
but for women, the effects are particularly differentiated. They
tell us about with their own words.
In
Brazil the Mata Atlântica - an ecosystem which contained some
of the planet’s greatest biological diversity - has given way
to a uniform and sad landscape of large-scale monoculture eucalyptus
plantations. (1) “… it seems as if the
climate changed, inside the village. It changed because even the
rain… these are the changes that the eucalyptus brought. The rivers
used to have a strong current, and now there’s just a trickle
of water left. How are we going to be able to plant? There are
times when you have to be watering the garden all the time, because
the soil is dry and cracked. The problem today is that to have
healthy food you have to plant and spread manure. …” (Cláudia,
Tupinikim and Guaraní Indigenous Women’s Commission, Tupinikim
village of Pau-Brasil)
“I
always tell about what my mother told me: that there used to be
lots of hunting, lots of fish. Now the São Domingos river has
no more water, and there are no more animals to hunt. Just armadillos
and capybaras… The fish are gone forever, too. If you want fish,
you have to buy it in the city, because it’s all gone. My kids
don’t even know what it is.” (Domingas, Quilombola community of
São Domingos)
In
the municipality of Aracruz alone, 430 km² of native tropical
rainforest were deforested to make way for eucalyptus plantations.
Rivers that played an essential part in the lives of indigenous
peoples like the Guaxindiba and Sahy and flowed past the village
of Pau-Brasil practically disappeared. “It was so wonderful
to have the river open to us. We washed clothes, we collected
water for drinking, for cooking… You could catch fish, you could
scoop them up with a sieve. All those women… there would be so
many there together! It was the place to wash clothes. You would
finish washing clothes, then take a swim and leave, you know?”
(Maridéia, Tupinikim village of Pau- Brasil)
This
drama has also affected the region where the Quilombola communities
live. “Today the river is polluted. We don’t use the water to
drink, we don’t use the water to bathe, we don’t use the water
to wash clothes, we don’t use it for anything, you know? That
means that the difference is a big difference, because we used
to have our good river, our river was clean, the water was like
glass, you could look into it and see your own shadow, you could
see the little fish swimming along the bottom, and today, you
can’t see anything ...” (Nilza, Indigenous Women’s Commission,
Tupinikim village of Comboios)
“[...]
Our concern was the lack of river water, and now it’s much worse.
It’s just like you said, bathing, washing clothes, having water
in the house. … And when there was a river here, the women would
grab their bundles of clothes… and it was like a party on the
riverbank, all of them washing clothes. It was mostly on Saturdays,
and for those who had time, during the week. It was one less chore,
because there was all of that water in the river, and everything
was easier. [...] When we had to get water from the well, and
go down the slope to where the well is today… So this isn’t really
something men worry about, it’s more of a women’s concern, and
when there’s no water in the tanks or there’s a problem with the
pump, then men aren’t going to pick up a pail… there are very
few men who will pick up a pail and go down the slope, right?
And when there was only a little bit of water, people started
changing. But it’s really a woman’s concern, right? To go down
and get water from the well to have water in the house. Until…
what I mean is, when there was a river, it was less of a concern,
because at least for washing clothes, you had a way to solve the
problem. The problems got worse when this whole process started,
when the eucalyptus came and started sucking all the water from
the river until it reached the point that it’s reached today.”
(Maria Helena, Tupinikim village of Pau-Brasil)
“We
washed a lot of clothes together. That was the place. When the
women laid the clothes out in the sun to dry, they would all get
to talking. People leave clothes to soak in powdered detergent,
right? But not them. The bleach they used there was papaya leaves,
right? (laughter) And they would lay out… on those big grass fields
on the riverbank, they grew those plants and they got the sheets
so white, the clothes so white, it really bleached them. Sometimes
some of that bit of water would splash onto something and it would
bleach it, it really would.” (ENI, Quilombola community of São
Domingos)
In
Ecuador, in the mangrove area, the typical “Concheras”* traditionally
obtained their livelihood and that of their families from the
artisanal gathering of shrimps that nest in the wetlands among
the roots of mangroves. Now both the mangroves and the “Concheras”
have suffered a ferocious devastation in the hands of industrial
shrimp farming.
“Our
lives have been completely destroyed with the arrival of the shrimp
farms. They have even taken our dignity away. We can no longer
fish; we can no longer gather cockles because they prevent us
from entering the places where we always worked. They have even
taken over the water, sometimes they give us a little to cook,
but that is when they have some left over.” (An inhabitant of
Puerto Hondo, in Puna Island, Province of Guayas) (2)
In
the Ecuadorian sierra – the Paramos – the planting of pine-trees
started in the eighties, promoted by institutions such as the
Ecuadorian Populorum Progressio Fund, telling the communities
how and where to plant the trees. The negative impacts make themselves
felt, particularly among the women, as can been seen from the
following testimonials: (3)
“Now
we have no water and the rivers are dry, we have no vegetable
plot, we don’t plant onions or anything. Summer is very hard,
the plants, the animals die; the fresh water holes have dried
up. The land is no longer fertile, it no longer produces anything.”
(A woman from
Bolivar Simiátug)
“Before
we used to use this water to wash with, now we can no longer do
so and have to use drinking water.” (A
woman from Tungurahua)
“For
example, we are obliged to prepare food, to bath the children.
The sacrifice is to carry water for two or three hours in bottles,
that is the way it is done. We women have to give the animals
water at mid-day and also in the evening. We have to take the
cow looking for water because there is none in the watering hole
and the big river is sometimes 40 – 50 minutes away. We women
call in the cows. When we prepare food we have to carry the water.
There we go, taking the kids. Looking for water we find it where
native plants grew or if not we dig deeply with the hoe where
there are no pines growing.”
“In
the pine plantations, all the native plants died off and as nothing
will grow everything dried up in there and fires started.” (A
woman from Guaranda)
The
lack of water caused by the pine plantations has also spread to
agricultural areas.
“Before
we used to plant short cycle crops, blackberries and other types
of plants, but we have had to change our crops. We have also had
to change our animals, and now we only have guinea-pigs.” (A
woman from Tungurahua)
“This
mainly affects our economy: we no longer produce; now we have
to buy everything. Many women have left to work in the city, as
maids or seamstresses. Before our grandmothers used to stay at
home, the children stayed with the older people.” (A woman from
Tungurahua)
These
women are persevering and flow like the water that has been taken
away from them. Their voices must be listened to and validated
because they are speaking of truths that have the weight and simplicity
of life itself.
(1)
Excerpted from “Women and Eucalyptus”
– Stories of life and resistance, Gilsa Helena Barcillos
and Simone Batista Ferreira
(2)
Testimonial provided by Marianeli Torres, C-CONDEM, e-mail:
marianeli@ccondem.org.ec
(3)
Testimonials gathered during on-going research entrusted by WRM.
*Translator’s
note: “Concheras” women cockle-gatherers in Ecuador
index
