OUR VIEWPOINT
- Climate change:
A gross violation of human rights
What is elegantly termed
as “climate change” is in reality one of the
most gross violations of human rights ever committed in
history. It is a crime to Humanity as a whole.
People are already dying,
or becoming homeless, or suffering from hunger and malnutrition
as a result of changes in weather patterns. Entire countries
–particularly small island states- are witnessing
the impacts of rising sea levels that may make them disappear
underwater in few years’ time. People living in lowland
areas close to the oceans are facing the same threat. Communities
living in mountain areas are witnessing the melting of the
ice and snow that ensures their water supply and productive
activities throughout the year.
Climate change is not
just “happening”; it is the result of a socially
unjust and environmentally destructive economic model imposed
by a corporate-led minority on the entire planet. Climate
change is a crime being committed by an extremely powerful
group of corporations in alliance with also very powerful
governments that provide them with impunity.
What makes the issue
more dramatic is that even if those responsible would agree
to immediately adopt the necessary measures to avoid further
climate change, the basic human rights of millions of people
will continue being violated as a result of the already
changed weather patterns. To name but a few:
- The right to food
and water: the increased occurrence of catastrophic droughts,
floods and extreme temperatures will destroy people’s
agricultural production and limit access to sufficient and
clean drinking water.
- The right to health:
malnourishment, heat waves, extreme cold, new illnesses
related to environmental change, will impact on people’s
health, in many cases leading to death.
- The right to live
in your own homeland: millions of people will be pushed
away from their homelands by climate-related impacts, and
will become environmental refugees.
- The right to life:
the increasing occurrence of catastrophic climate events
such as cyclones, hurricanes, tornados and floods will result
in millions of deaths.
- The right to peace:
desperate situations resulting from climate change will
result in civil strife, repression and even war.
Within the many millions
of people whose rights will be violated as a result of climate
change, most of the suffering will be borne by those who
lack the resources to protect themselves against climate-related
events. Although the majority of these live in the South,
the impacts will disproportionally affect vulnerable groups
in every single country of the world.
Instead of changing
course to avoid further increasing climate change and its
related human suffering, the climate criminals are promoting
“solutions” that will violate the rights of
many more people while at the same time enabling them to
continue business –and climate destruction- as usual.
The following examples can illustrate this:
- Promotion of agrofuels
as a substitute to fossil fuels. This “solution”
implies the appropriation of vast areas of forest and agricultural
lands to dedicate them to sugar cane, soya, oil palm, jatropha,
eucalyptus and other crops for producing agrodiesel and
ethanol to be used as fuels. As a result, a number of human
rights are violated, such as the right to food, water, health,
medicines, biodiversity, territory, culture.
- Promotion of hydropower
as a substitute to fossil fuels. This approach results in
the building of large hydroelectric dams that flood extensive
areas of forests and agricultural lands and that impact
heavily on fish populations. Local people not only loose
their means of livelihoods but are also forced to migrate
as their lands become submerged under the dams’ reservoirs.
Thus those rights -to livelihoods and to live in their territories-
are violated, together with a larger number of basic human
rights.
- Promotion of carbon
reservoirs and carbon sinks for trapping carbon dioxide
emitted from fossil fuels. This means either the takeover
of peoples’ forests –defined as carbon reservoirs
that need to be preserved- or the appropriation of their
lands for planting trees to act as so-called carbon sinks.
Needless to say that the result is the violation of a large
number of human rights.
Everything expressed
above gives only a very partial picture of climate-related
violation of human rights. The full picture is far worse
and can become even more dramatic if climate criminals are
allowed to continue to destroy the Earth’s climate.
This is not a matter that can be left in the hands of “experts”,
many of which have been and continue being accomplices of
those responsible for the crime.
In this context, women
have an important role to play. Although it is true that
women are the most affected by climate change, it is equally
true that they are also key catalysts for positive change.
Their knowledge and experience is fundamental for a successful
mitigation of climate change, as well as for climate change
adaptation.
What is at stake is
nothing less than the right of this and future generations
to a livable planet. This very basic human right –on
which many other rights depend on- needs to be imposed by
organized peoples –women and men- worldwide.
Climate needs to be
taken back into peoples’ hands before it is too late.
index
CLIMATE
CHANGE AND HUMAN RIGHTS
- Colombia: oil-palm
plantations, violation of human rights and Afro-descendent
communities’ quest for true dignity
When you talk about
the violation of human rights, you must talk about Colombia.
When you talk about the huge expansion of oil-palm plantations,
you must talk about Colombia. Both issues go hand in hand
in that country
One of the solutions
put forward to face the climate change crisis is the promotion
of agrofuels, including oil-palm. This proposal not only
does not address the unsustainable production, marketing
and consumption models that have landed us in this critical
situation but also conceals the fact that the oil palm,
far from being a “green” fuel, is a “red”
one, tainted with blood.
In 1959 the Curvaradó
and Jiguamiandó basins in the Colombian Choco biogeographical
region were designated as Natural Reserves. However, in
1996 the army and paramilitary forces launched an attack
in the area and enabled oil palm growers, cattle ranchers
and loggers to expand their agribusiness.
Oil palm plantations
and cattle ranching took over 23 thousand hectares of collective
territory belonging to Afro-descendent communities. Either
through direct actions of the regular army or indirectly
through paramilitary strategies, hundreds of crimes were
committed: the massacre or forced disappearance of over
140 people, in addition to the ransacking and destruction
of property, community members being persecuted, threatened
and forced to abandon their land.
Human Rights organizations
and families of forcibly disappeared people have provided
figures for the whole of Colombia, amounting to more than
4 million people displaced from their lands by armed operations
over the past 15 years together with over 15 thousand forced
disappearances. Close on 7 million hectares of land have
been illegally appropriated by paramilitary forces or drug
traffickers over the same period, in most cases after forcing
displacement of the inhabitants.
These State and paramilitary
terrorist actions are all part of a strategy seeking not
only to seize territories, but also to use them to establish
destructive commercial processes. In the Curvaradó
and Jiguamiandó basins, dispossession of land was
accompanied by vigorous felling of primary forests in an
area covering over 10 thousand hectares, the drying up of
five rivers, pollution of water courses from agrochemicals
used in the oil palm plantations that also caused severe
health problems, particularly in the case of women and children.
Over 120 years ago,
the abolition of slavery led to a diaspora to what is known
as the Bio Pacific Choco. People settled in tropical forests,
places of great beauty hosting an enormous variety of species,
plants, birds, butterflies, flowers, wild animals, primary
tree vegetation and insects. These places became truly free
spaces where the settlers mingled with the indigenous peoples
and later with Mestizos. Finally they became a tribal people,
recognized as such because their “social, cultural
and economic conditions distinguish them from other sections
of the national community and whose status is regulated
wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or
by special laws or regulations.” (1) They are
acknowledged as members of a “Black community”
and “Afro-Colombians” or “Afro-descendents.”
This identity embraces
issues related with a sense of belonging to the community,
which is linked by the river and rooted in an ancestral
territory with which they have an almost umbilical relationship:
the territory is their mother and father because it nourishes
them. They understand it as a comprehensive web, not only
involving the land but also the human beings, the social
network, the community organization, ways of subsistence,
of internal conflict solving, of mobility when facing events
that threaten their lives, and their own relationship with
biodiversity. Their territory guarantees their customs and
ways of living, communal property and environmental protection.
Enforced displacement
is therefore a violation of the integrity of these communities’
existence and has caused injury in personal, family and
collective terms. It has damaged social and cultural practices,
ways of living and of territorial occupation, ways of relating
with the earth, animals, water, cooking, organization and
their interaction with the outside world.
Though facing innumerable
violations of their human rights, even in the midst of an
internal armed conflict and the implementation of illegal
major works and agribusiness, in the Humanitarian and Biodiversity
Zones Afro-descendent communities have developed innovative
civil resistance processes.
Humanitarian Zones are
places inhabited by a human group affirming their rights
as part of the civilian population. These places, specifically
intended for the protection of human and collective life
as well as of ecosystems, are a means of returning to the
territory and of confronting the criminal structure’s
claims. Humanitarian Zones’ members freely share a
Life Project to defend themselves from institutional militarization
and from becoming victims of potential armed conflicts.
Biodiversity Zones are
areas for the protection and rehabilitation of collective
or private territory ecosystems and for the assertion of
family groups’ right to food when their lands have
been devastated or are at risk of being destroyed by the
agribusiness, major works or exploitation of natural resources.
In these places, the
communities practice freedom of expression, democratic discussion
involving women and children, and production methods that
ensure food sovereignty. They repossess and heal their territories.
While at the Climate
Summit all kinds of devices are being contrived –
REDD, agrofuels, geo-engineering and others – to put
off the real measure that sooner or later will have to be
taken: that of halting the extraction of fossil fuels, with
the recovery of their territories from the hands of agribusiness
and mega-enterprises, these communities are truly contributing
to curbing climate change.
At a time of large scale
violations of human rights, of ecocide, starting by climate
change itself, these criminalized, outcast, stigmatized
Colombian communities bear witness to their rights in an
autonomous and liberating practice of true dignity.
1. Article 1.1 of ILO
Convention 169 and Convention Number 169 on indigenous and
tribal peoples: a manual, Project to promote ILO policy
on indigenous and tribal peoples. Geneva 2003, page 7.
Extracted and adapted
from the reports: “Resiliencias colectivas. Se mata
con hambre, se mata con balas, y se quiere matar el alma”,
(Collective resiliences. They kill by hunger, they kill
with bullets and they want to kill the soul.” Danilo
Rueda, Comisión de Justicia y Paz, http://tiny.cc/rbqAT;
and “Derechos Humanos y Palma Aceitera Curvaradó
y Jiguamiandó” (Human Rights and the Oil Palm
Curvaradó and Jiguamiandó). From Ver 236,
http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/37083.php
index
- Congo: Tar sands
and palm oil projects threaten local communities and undermine
efforts to tackle climate change
The Italian oil company
Eni is one of the top ten energy companies in the world
and now the biggest in Africa. The company is also currently
ranked as the world’s most “sustainable”
oil and gas company. In September, at the UN Leadership
Forum on Climate Change in New York, the head of Eni, Paolo
Scaroni announced: “Gone are the days when we could
afford to think about oil as a cheap input to economic and
social growth, discounting the impact on the environment
and on generations to come” .
However, Eni’s
keeness to promote its new sustainability credentials at
international meetings sits uneasily alongside the company’s
plans to spend billions of dollars developing tar sands
and oil palm for food and bio-diesel in the central African
country of Republic of Congo (also called Congo Brazzaville).
Local civil society groups and their partner organizations
believe that Eni’s investments in tar sands and oil
palm are intrinsically high-risk, in terms of their potential
to cause social and environmental damage in Congo and globally,
given the context in Congo and the experience of such projects
elsewhere.
This would be the first
tar sands project in Africa and the agro-fuels project,
on 70,000 hectares of “unfarmed” land, would
also be one of the largest in the continent.
Tar sands have been
called the “dirtiest” form of oil. Extraction
of tar or bitumen and its processing into synthetic crude
is a costly process and extremely intensive in water and
energy use. Production of a barrel of oil from bitumen is
around 3-5 times more intensive in terms of greenhouse gas
emissions than production of a barrel of conventional oil.
In Alberta, Canada, the only place where tar sands are currently
being developed, it has led to deforestation of Canada’s
Boreal forest, to water depletion and pollution, and concerns
about health impacts on indigenous communities living near
the developments, such as increased cancer rates. Canada
now has the highest emissions per capita of any G8 country
and is being increasingly criticized for blocking action
on climate change. Many civil society groups, local residents
and scientists are now calling for a moratorium on new tar
sands investment in Canada.
Investment in monoculture
plantations of oil palm and other crops to produce agro-fuels
are another major source of the deforestation that accounts
for around 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Targets
introduced by national governments and by the European Union
have encouraged their expansion. By replacing tropical forests
and other ecosystems, monoculture plantations lead to serious
deforestation and loss of biodiversity. The land-use changes
they entail are also linked to increased food insecurity,
and to land conflicts, human rights abuses and threats to
indigenous populations.
Congo’s ecological
sensitivity and its very poor governance heighten the risks
of Eni’s investments. Forests cover two thirds of
the country, which is part of the Congo Basin, and are both
a key resource for local people, and a giant carbon sink
that plays a vital role in protecting our climate. Yet Congo’s
own record on environmental and human rights protection
and on transparent management of the country’s natural
resources is also extremely poor. Despite decades of oil
wealth, the country still has very low levels of human development,
and high levels of repression and corruption. There is no
functioning environmental law and local communities affected
by conventional oil production have long complained about
inaction by companies and the Government to address its
impacts on them and their livelihoods, such as extremely
high levels of gas flaring.
Eni has said publicly
that none of the investments will take place on rainforest
or other areas of high biodiversity, and will not involve
resettlement of people. Yet a leaked internal report by
Eni shows that the company estimates the tar sands exploration
zone as comprising 50-70% primary forest and other highly
sensitive areas of the bio-sphere. There is also no clarity
as to what technologies Eni would use to extract and process
the bitumen, and so it is impossible to predict the project’s
full impacts on the country’s water and energy resources.
Similar uncertainties apply to the oil palm project, whose
exact location is unknown.
None of the agreements
signed between Eni and the Congolese government are publicly
available, while research by Congolese human rights organizations
has revealed an almost total lack of public awareness of
the investments. There has been no meaningful engagement
by Eni or by the government with local communities about
the projects’ potential social and environmental impacts.
This contradicts the company’s own environmental and
human rights policies, and violates the government’s
duty to protect its citizens.
This investment puts
into question both Eni and the Congolese governments’
claims to be promoting Congo’s sustainable development.
The Italian government is Eni’s key shareholder and
thus also has a responsibility to ensure that any investment
by the company takes into account the potential developmental,
human rights and environmental impacts. Congolese and international
civil society groups are now calling for a halt to the tar
sands and palm oil projects and for Eni to overhaul its
environmental management processes and its community engagement
in Congo.
This project also raises
the wider issue of the real costs of pursuing high-carbon
energy projects in Southern countries with minimal transparency
and environmental and human rights protection. This question
becomes even more important given the need to tackle run-away
climate change. As oil runs out, there will be increasing
interest in developing unconventional oil resources –
many of which are located in the South - and in so-called
“renewables” such as monoculture agro-fuels.
As in the case of Eni’s Congo project, such investments
should be challenged because of their potential to cause
irreversible harm to the local environment and communities,
and to our climate.
This article is a summary
from Energy Futures? Eni’s investments in tar sands
and palm oil in the Congo Basin, a report produced by Congolese
and international civil society organisations in November
2009, available in English at http://www.boell.de/ecology/climate-energy-7775.html
or www.foeeurope.org/corporates/Extractives/Energy_Futures_eng.pdf
index
- Food Sovereignty:
A positive approach to climate change
While the planet is
already suffering the effects of climate change, civil society
groups try to raise the alarm on the fact that the present
system of production, trade and consumption is at the root
of the problem.
In order to contribute
to the process, the international peasant movement La Via
Campesina attended the Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen,
coming “from all five corners of the world, leaving
our farmland, our animals, our forest, and also our families
in the hamlets and villages to join you all.” (1)
They stress that the
industrial and agribusiness model of agriculture has caused
deforestation and conversion of natural forests into monoculture
plantations. They state that the current globalised agricultural
system contributes to more than half of the total global
greenhouse gas emissions, providing the following figures:
o
(i) Agricultural activities are responsible for 11 to 15%,
o
(ii) Land clearing and deforestation cause an additional
15 to 18%,
o
(iii) Food processing, packing and transportation cause
15 to 20%, and
o
(iv) Decomposition of organic waste causes another 3 to
4%.
However, governments
present at Copenhagen are not talking about changing such
system. On the contrary, agribusiness corporations have
a privileged seat at climate meetings and their proposals
have been going into the negotiations as carbon trade mechanisms,
like large scale tree plantations in afforestation programs.
“Carbon trade
mechanisms will only serve polluting countries and companies,
and bring disaster to small farmers and indigenous peoples
in developing countries. The REDD initiative (Reducing Emissions
from Deforestation and Degradation) has already kicked off
their land many indigenous peoples and small farmers in
developing countries. And more and more agricultural land
is being converted into tree plantations in order to attract
carbon credits”, warns La Via Campesina.
They also denounce that
“the large emissions of methane by industrial agriculture
are also due to the use of urea as a petrochemical fertilizer
through the green revolution, very much supported by the
World Bank. At the same time, agricultural trade liberalization
promoted by free trade agreements (FTA) and by the World
Trade Organization (WTO) is contributing to the greenhouse
gases emissions due to food processing and food transportation
around the world.” In spite of that, FAO continues
“selling” the green revolution without being
challenged by the UNFCCC.
Industrial agriculture
is not only a major contributor to climate change but also
violates human rights: “Millions of [farmers] suffer
violence every year because of land conflicts in Africa,
Asia and Latin America. Small farmers and landless farmers
make up the majority of the more than 1 billion hungry people
in the world. And because of free trade, many small farmers
commit suicide in South Asia. So putting an end to industrial
agriculture is the only way we can go”, says La Via
Campesina.
Governments which are
not being able or willing to really tackle the necessary
measures to stop climate change are confronted by landless
and small farmers who do have a proposal to climate change
which they put forward at COP 13 in Bali 2007, and brought
up again at COP 15 in Copenhagen: “small scale sustainable
farmers are cooling down the earth". The proposal is
backed by figures that prove that “it could reduce
more than half of the global greenhouse gas emissions. This
figure comes from:
(I)
Recuperating organic matter in the soil would reduce emissions
by 20 to 35%.
(II) Reversing the concentration
of meat production in factory farms and reintegrating joint
animal and crop production would reduce them by 5 to 9%
(III) Putting local markets
and fresh food back at the center of the food system would
reduce a further 10 to 12%.
(IV) Halting land clearing and deforestation
would stop 15 to 18% of emissions. In short, by taking agriculture
away from the big agribusiness corporations and putting
it back into the hands of small farmers, we can reduce half
of the global emissions of greenhouse gases.
This is what we propose,
and we call it Food Sovereignty.”
Such proposal would
not only help to “cool down the earth”, but
would also contribute strongly to the well-being of millions
of human beings whose rights are being violated on a daily
basis by corporate industrial agriculture worldwide. And
even more importantly, it would also contribute to the right
of the present and future generations to live in a liveable
planet.
(1) “Why we left
our farms to come to Copenhagen”, Speech of Henry
Saragih, general coordinator of Via Campesina at the opening
session of Klimaforum, December 2009, http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=
com_content&task=view&id=833&Itemid=1
index
- Indonesia: Plantations,
human rights and REDD
Before the plantations
came, villagers in Teluk Kabung in Riau province in Sumatra,
grew coconuts. A few years ago, thousands of hectares of
forest surrounding the village were clearcut and replaced
by acacia monocultures to supply Asia Pulp and Paper's massive
operations. “As soon as they cut down the trees in
the forest, the pests swarmed in, and ate our coconut trees,”
a villager told Mitra Taj, a radio journalist from Living
on Earth. Dozens of dead coconut trees lie on the ground
near the village. Many of those still standing are just
trunks, with no palm fronds and no coconuts.
Industrial deforestation
has destroyed the habitat of the Sumatran tiger to the point
where there are only about 250 remaining. And these have
so little forest left that they stray into plantations,
villages and logging camps. Tigers that used to live in
the forest now come into the village. At least ten people
have been killed this year.
“It makes me want
to cry,” one of the villagers told Living on Earth.
“The only reason I'm not crying is because I'm holding
back. We have nothing else. Sometimes I can't even look
at this land, because I have no hope.”
Villagers are trying
to find a solution and have sent letters to parliament,
the regent and the governor, but have received no reply.
First, villagers want compensation. Then they want money
to buy pesticides. But there's another problem. The plantations
have left the villagers with no land for the next generation.
Villagers are now considering
growing oil palm, which they hope will be resistant to the
pests. They asked Living on Earth's reporter to contact
APP and ask them to help them. In Jakarta, Living on Earth
met Aida Greenbury, APP's director of sustainability and
stakeholder engagement. “Yes of course, we are always
interested to help the community,” she said. Greenbury
talked about the importance of leaving forest corridors,
to provide habitat and to stop pest and disease outbreaks.
And that, apparently, was that.
APRIL is the other pulp
and paper giant operating in Riau province. Between them,
APP and APRIL own about a quarter of the remaining forest
in the province. APRIL's activities on the Kampar Peninsular
reveal another impact of industrial tree plantations. APRIL's
wood is shipped in vast barges to the company's pulp mill,
PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper (RAPP).
“Before the RAPP
pulp and paper company entered our land, our group of fishermen
worked peacefully, nothing disturbed us while we were fishing,”
Pak Akiat a fisherman from Penyengat told film makers from
LifeMosaic. “Now fishing with nets is very hard. Many
of our nets are torn away by ships. Many in our group have
stopped fishing, because we are afraid.”
Pak Akiat's fishing
net was destroyed about one year ago. “I still want
compensation from RAPP, my fishing net is broken,”
he said. “I want to fish again. This is my livelihood,
my only hope.”
The Kampar Peninsula
is home to the Akit and Melayu indigenous peoples. They
now have to rely on government food aid. “With so
many companies left, right and centre, why are 95 per cent
of our people poor?” asks Anjianoro, a community leader
in Penyengat, in LifeMosiac's film. “Companies like
RAPP recruit thousands of workers. If we benefited from
any of this there wouldn't be poverty here.”
A new solution to all
these problems is being touted in international meetings
such as the recent UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen:
Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
“We have been looking for an opportunity like this
for decades,” Joe Leitmann at the World Bank in Jakarta
told Living on Earth. “We think that with REDD it's
a potential game changer.” Of course, Leitmann says
nothing about the role the World Bank has played in financing
forest destruction in Indonesia.
Certainly, the problems
are serious. In Riau province alone, an area of 1.6 million
hectares of peat and forests are likely to burn this year.
But how, exactly, will REDD, this “game changer”,
actually change anything? APP and APRIL hope to get REDD
payments for not cutting forest in areas where they already
have permission to cut. No doubt APP will want payment for
its “forest corridors”. APRIL plans to plant
a ring of 150,000 hectares of acacia plantations around
the Kampar Peninsular and put in place a moratorium on clearing
the 300,000 hectare “core” on the peninsular.
APRIL anticipates large sums of carbon money. But APRIL
is silent on local people's livelihoods. The company did
not even bother telling local communities on the Kampar
Peninsular about its plans.
The people who have
lost their livelihoods to industrial tree plantations have
some of the smallest carbon footprints in the world. APP
and APRIL are responsible for huge greenhouse gas emissions
from forest destruction and draining of peat swamps. Yet
REDD would reward APP and APRIL and do nothing to stop the
trampling of villagers' basic human rights.
By Chris Lang, http://chrislang.org
Living on Earth's radio
programme “Where the Forest Ends”, is available
here: http://bit.ly/7hLN0j
LifeMosaic's film “Eyes on the Kampar Peninsular”,
is available here: http://bit.ly/5BWH01
index
- Kenya: Ogiek’s
rights violated by climate change and by measures to stop
it
The Mau Complex –
the largest forest of Kenya – has been the ancestral
home of the Ogiek Community. Although extremely important
in terms of water catchment, micro-climate regulation and
biological diversity, the Mau forest has been regularly
cleared for settlement and private agriculture supported
by official policies. Destruction of the forest has undermined
Ogiek’s rights to livelihood, culture and even
a future.
But they still had to
suffer more. Some years ago, cancellation by the government
of all title deeds issued in the Mau forest aimed at the
eviction of more than 100,000 Ogiek people living in the
forest (see WRM Bulletins Nº 94, 113) under the argument
that of all people it was them who destroyed the forest.
The grabbing trend continues.
A recent Survival International report (1), exposes how
“the world’s indigenous people, who have done
the least to cause climate change and are most affected
by it are now having their rights violated and land devastated
in the name of attempts to stop it.”
The report denounces
the case of Kenya, a country that this year has suffered
severe droughts. While the government tries to evict Ogiek
hunter-gatherers, who have lived sustainably in the
Mau forest for hundreds of years, it appeals to the international
community for funding to save the Mau forest citing climate
change as “a key motivation”.
Prime Minister Raila
Odinga blamed ‘rampant excess in the global and local
mismanagement of our environment” for the melting
of ice caps on Mt Kenya and the destruction of forests.
He also announced that they were willing to ‘reverse
the ravages’ of global warming, for example, with
the government’s effort to save the Mau Forest –evicting
its ancestral inhabitants and guardians, the Ogiek, who
will be left homeless!
The report quotes Kiplangat
Cheruyot, of the Ogiek People’s Development Program
saying: “Everyone has been living in fear for the
last month... People are crying about the eviction. The
government said it would spare no one.”
Eventually, the Ogiek,
who have proved to live in harmony with the forest for thousands
of years, who are the most affected by their forest homeland’s
destruction and who have not been responsible at all for
climate change, will be the one who will suffer most from
measures that are allegedly undertaken to stop climate change.
The case of the Ogiek
in Kenya is a clear showcase of how climate change and even
the measures to stop it are a matter of human rights. Along
those lines the demand of Climate Justice stands out as
a necessary ingredient of any true measure that deals with
climate change.
(1) “The Most
Inconvenient Truth of All. Climate change and indigenous
people”, 2009, Survival International, http://tiny.cc/4HL7Y
index
- Hydropower on the
Mekong: Where dams may block the future of millions
Hydropower is often
portrayed as “clean” or “green”
energy and as part of the solution for preventing fossil
fuel-related climate change. However, government-sponsored
and corporate-promoted hydropower implies building huge
dams that result in environmental destruction and widespread
violation of human rights, ranging from loss of livelihoods
to forced evictions and related cases of repression.
The hydropower business
is particularly active in the Mekong river basin. Since
March 2006, hydropower companies from Thailand, China, Vietnam,
Laos, Malaysia and Russia have proposed eleven big hydropower
dams for the Mekong River’s lower mainstream. Seven
of the dam sites are in Laos, two are in Cambodia, and two
are on the Thai-Lao border.
There is already wide-spread
concern amongst riverbank communities and the general public
about the severe consequences these dams will have.
The Mekong River is
host to the world’s largest inland fishery. The commercial
fish catch is currently worth US$3 billion annually. Not
only are these fisheries an important source of income for
local fishers, which include many of the region’s
poorest people, but they are also vital in ensuring regional
food security. Between half and four fifths of the animal
protein consumed by the 60 million people in the lower Mekong
basin come from the river’s fisheries.
This situation will
dramatically change if these dams are implemented, because
building dams on the river’s mainstream will block
the major fish migrations that accounts for up to 70% of
the commercial catch. Scientific opinion is agreed on the
importance of the Mekong’s migratory fisheries, the
impact of the dams on them, and that there is no way to
mitigate these impacts.
In response to the growing
public concern about the impacts of these dams, the Save
the Mekong coalition was formed. As part of its activities,
the coalition collected signatures and personal messages
from concerned citizens, which express the people’s
feelings very clearly:
- “Don’t
let hydropower dams block our children's future!”
Wang Dezhi, Yunnan, China
- “Don’t build the Mekong dams. The existing
dams in Thailand already make brothers and sisters fight
against each other!” Mak Vangdokmai, Roi et, Thailand
- “I love my country. I don’t want to see some
people destroy my home country for greed. So I would like
to do my best to protect our Mekong!” Sneampay, Vientiane,
Laos
- “If the dams happen, where will all of us go to
live?” Villager, Stung Treng province, Cambodia.
- “Saving us, saving our resources! Electricity is
not everything!” Nguyen Thanh Hang, Hanoi, Vietnam
Given the strong government
backing for dam building on the Mekong River, over 23,000
people from within the Mekong region and around the world
signed a petition addressed to the Prime Ministers of Cambodia,
Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, urging them to keep the river
flowing freely and to pursue less damaging electricity options.
The petition was signed by fishers and farmers living along
the river’s mainstream and tributaries, as well as
by monks, students, city-folk and even some of the region’s
well-known celebrities.
Within the climate change
process, it is important to note that in spite of their
well-documented social and environmental impacts, hydropower
projects are still eligible for receiving funding from the
Climate Change Convention’s so-called Clean Development
Mechanism (CDM). Although none of the Mekong mainstream
dams have yet applied for CDM funding, it is possible that
they might do so in the near future, following the path
of similar projects in the region and globally.
For instance, the Kamchay
dam in Cambodia has applied for CDM funding, in spite of
the fact that it is located wholly within the Bokor National
Park and will flood 2,000 hectares of protected forest.
A similar case is that of the Buon Kuop dam in Vietnam,
that has impacted on the livelihoods of 11,000 downstream
communities in Cambodia who rely on the Srepok River for
their fishing and subsistence agriculture.
It is obvious that none
or these dams –or those now planned for the Mekong’s
lower mainstream- can be considered neither “Clean”
nor as a means for “Development”. This means
that they should not be eligible for receiving “Clean
Development Mechanism” funding.
The millions of people
that would be dramatically affected by the planned hydropower
projects –who already have the Mekong River as their
clean mechanism for development- are more important than
electricity. Dams must not be allowed to block the future
of millions!
Article based on information
from Save the Mekong Coalition http://www.savethemekong.org/
and from Carl Middleton (International Rivers), carl@internationalrivers.org
index
- Mexico: Opposition
to Blackfire mining operations ends in murder
A full 41% of the Sierra
Madre region in the Mexican state of Chiapas – 227,000
square kilometres of land, equivalent to one half of the
whole of Central America – has been turned over to
Mexican and foreign corporations through mining concessions.
Mining companies from Canada, the United States and Australia
extract gold and silver from this mineral-rich region with
the consent and protection of governments and the backing
of free trade agreements.
Mining companies have
expanded their operations throughout the country, invading
cooperatively and communally owned lands, subjugating local
and state authorities, and violating the rights of indigenous
and peasant communities on a daily basis, as well as regulations
governing public land, protected natural areas and areas
with deep significance in terms of religious traditions
and cultural heritage. The environmental, social and cultural
consequences of open-pit mining are drastic. The destruction
of mountains permanently scars the once majestic landscape,
while the basins of the region’s most important rivers
are severely contaminated.
The high toxicity of
metal mining derives not only from the metals themselves,
but also the methods used to extract them (see WRM Bulletin
Nº 71). In the first place, the thousands of kilograms
of dynamite used daily to demolish the mountains result
in large amounts of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel dust
being spewed into the atmosphere. In the meantime, sodium
cyanide, used to “leach” or dissolve metals
from the rock containing them, washes into rivers and aquifers,
causing fatal diseases like leukaemia and other forms of
cancer.
The escalation in mining
operations and the resulting environmental impacts has also
brought about an escalation in opposition to these activities.
In June of 2008, hundreds of individuals representing social,
indigenous, peasant, community-based, human rights, education,
communications, students’ and academic organizations
from 12 states throughout the country joined together to
form the Mexican Anti-Mining Network (REMA).
REMA works to expose
and denounce the consequences of mining: the displacement
of millions of tons of soil and rock with heavy machinery;
the contamination of springs, rivers and basins with toxic
chemicals; and the destruction of farmland and displacement
of local communities. Wherever the mining industry goes,
it leaves in its wake a devastating legacy of mountains
of waste, barren land, contaminated water, disease and desolation.
The militarization of
the region, stepped up in the framework of the so-called
“Merida Plan” – technically, a security
initiative for which the United States released millions
of dollars in equipment, computer technology and training
in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to fight drug
trafficking and organized crime – has proven highly
beneficial to mining companies. Large contingents of hooded
and heavily armed soldiers and federal and state police
officers who set up roadblocks and force people out of their
vehicles for interrogation provide the mining companies
with greater freedom to seize land and keep protestors at
bay. Ongoing surveillance and control of local communities
serve to uncover members of any type of opposition organization.
Against this backdrop,
the Canadian mining company Blackfire Exploration, which
holds 10 concessions for open-pit barite, gold and antimony
mining in the region, has been the target of fierce protests
by the inhabitants of the Grecia farming cooperative, who
accuse it of polluting the area and illegally seizing land.
Numerous members of REMA, including Mariano Abarca Roblero,
staged a sit-in at the company’s local headquarters,
followed by another in front of the Canadian embassy in
Mexico City, to demand the transnational’s withdrawal
from the state of Chiapas. Following these protests, Mariano
Abarca began receiving threats, until finally, this past
27 November, he was murdered, presumably by a hired killer.
REMA blames this crime
on the governor of Chiapas, for failing to take the necessary
measures to prevent Abarca’s murder. It also places
responsibility on “Blackfire, its general director
Artemio Ávila Cervera, its public relations manager
Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro, and the government of the
state for the acts of violence against those involved in
the struggle to defend the water, land, territory and environment.”
REMA further demands,
in addition to immediate justice and punishment for those
who ordered and carried out Abarca’s murder, the immediate
withdrawal of Blackfire and its mining concessions from
Chiapas, under the slogan:
“Canada and Canadian
transnationals out of Chiapas and Mexico!”
Based on the following
sources: Nace la Red Mexicana de Afectados por la Minería
(REMA) http://www.otrosmundoschiapas.org/analisis/REMAI.pdf;
Asesinaron a Mariano Abarca Roblero, líder opositor
contra la minera canadiense Blackfire en Chiapas, http://rema.codigosur.net
index
- Nigeria: Oil-in-soil
and much more
In November 2009, 117
Nigerian organisations signed on to a statement to the government
with a challenging message: leave oil in the ground. They
expressed they were “united in our opposition to new
oil blocs and call on all progressive-minded peoples and
organizations to support our call that new oil finds be
left in the ground and bitumen left in the soil.”
In the last fifty years
Nigeria became the largest producer of crude oil. It has
based its economy on oil extraction mainly by foreign big
corporations in the Niger Delta. However, the crucial question
is: has the country seen any positive impacts from it?
Environmental Rights
Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) in collaboration
with the Federal Ministry of Environment organised in Rivers
State the Second National Consultation on the Environment
under the theme “Envisioning a post-Petroleum Nigeria”.
The aim of the event
was to stimulate broad-based national discourse on the state
of the environment. The urgency of “a wakeup call
to all stakeholders in the Nigerian project, to address
the devastating effects of crude oil on the economy and
environment as well as the central need of planning for
a post-oil economy” is quite timely in the current
era of climate change.
Civil leaders, community-based
organizations, civil society organizations, development
experts, members of the academia, legal practitioners, the
media and representatives of government agencies gathered
to discuss and examine “the growing impact of fossil
fuel extraction on the climate and issues around oil as
a sustainable economic backbone for Nigeria”.
The conclusions agreed
on the fact that the many years of oil extraction in Nigeria
“have not impacted positively on the citizenry and
particularly the people of the Niger Delta, whose livelihoods
have been eroded because of regular pollution of farmlands
and rivers.”
An appalling low life
expectancy in the Niger Delta – 41 years – is
the result of environmental pollution, matched with severe
human rights abuse of women, children and other persons
who have been made vulnerable due to resource conflicts.
The event concluded that “massive land grabs promoted
by agribusinesses and oil corporations erode traditional
farming practices on the African continent”, thus
underming Nigerian’s Food Sovereignty.
Death, abuse, hunger:
that is what you find when you follow the oil’s trail
in Nigeria. And more. Corruption goes hand in hand with
the oil industry’s operations leading to violent conflicts
and criminality. “Nigeria’s oil industry is
still rife with oil theft and inaccuracy in volumes of oil
extracted and what is actually made public, and makes a
nonsense of governments touted policy on transparency and
accountability”, says the declaration.
The report “Building
a Post Petroleum Nigeria” by ERA stresses that “Throughout
50 years of oil production, this ecologically productive
region has suffered extensive habitat degradation, forest
clearing, toxic discharges, dredging and filling, and significant
alteration by extensive road and pipeline construction from
the petroleum industry. Of particular concern in the Niger
Delta are the frequent and extensive oil spills that have
occurred. Spills are under-reported, but independent estimates
are that at least 115,000 barrels (15,000 tons) of oil are
spilled into the Delta each year, making the Niger Delta
one of the most oil-impacted 2 ecosystems in the world.”
At the top of all of
it stands global warming as a result of oil extraction.
Continuing gas flaring in the Niger Delta – an illegal
activity with a deadly aftermath of leukaemia, bronchitis,
asthma, cancers and other diseases – demonstrates
“lack of preparedness to committing to reduce the
effects of climate change”, denounced the participants.
As a conclusion of the
meeting, participants address the Nigerian Federal government
strongly recommending that:
“* All new oil
finds must be left in the ground. The planned exploitation
of bitumen should be halted as the extraction will inflict
unmitigated disaster on communities and raise new levels
of conflicts.
* The Leave Oil in the
Ground message should be popularized.
* Gas flaring is a violation
of the rights of Nigerians to life as is enshrined in the
constitution and must end today
* The Federal Government
must take steps to ascertain and publish the volumes of
oil extracted daily in the nation. As a follow up to this,
it must take immediate steps to stop all forms of oil theft.
* A need exists for
mass awareness and mobilization of local communities to
resist gas flaring and other unfriendly environmental practices
in the Niger Delta and other parts of Nigeria where resource
conflicts are a growing reality.
* The authentic Petroleum
Industry Bill must address genuine concerns of the oil-bearing
communities by seeking their endorsement on environmental
management plans. It must also proffer sufficient penalties
for infringement of the provisions.
* Any provision in the
Petroleum Industry Bill that is aimed at expropriating land
and resources from the people must be abrogated.
* Political leadership
of the Niger Delta must judiciously use the resources of
the region for development.
* The amnesty programme
of the Federal Government should address the real issues
of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta and open channels
for genuine reconciliation of all aggrieved people of the
region.
* The Nigerian state
must fund qualitative education and indigenous research
to address challenges of development.
* Women and the vulnerable
in the society must be protected from the fallouts of resource
conflicts while identified cases of violation of their rights
must be adequately redressed.
* All stakeholders-communities,
civil society groups, government agencies, the media, among
others, must work collaboratively to expose unsound environmental
practices and mobilize for laws that will reverse the trend.”
Oil has become the main
source of energy of the present globalised world -at the
expense of climate and human rights. It’s high time
for the world to look for new paths of energy, development
and ways of living together. The Nigerian demand goes in
that direction and we feel it should be strongly backed
and replicated all over the world as a true basis for a
real solution to climate change. No more tricks, no more
delays, no more future cuts. Stop extracting oil or else
we won’t have any future.
Article based on information
from: Communiqué issued at the end of the Second
National Consultation on the Environment held in Port Harcourt,
Rivers State, 25 - 26 November 2009m, disseminated by Climate
Justice Now!
index
- Paraguay: Deforestation
violates human rights of indigenous peoples living in voluntary
isolation
The situation of the
Ayoreo people of the Chaco region of Paraguay serves as
an excellent illustration of the fact that forest conservation
is a human rights issue. It also very clearly demonstrates
that the protection of forests should be placed in the hands
of those who have the greatest stake in their preservation:
the indigenous peoples who depend on them for their survival.
Just like back in the
days of the Spanish Conquest, it was missionaries who paved
the way for the theft and destruction of the forests that
had been used sustainably for centuries by the Ayoreo people.
In the words of Mateo Sobode Chiquenoi, president of the
Union of Ayoreo Natives of Paraguay (UNAP):
“It was the missionaries
who made it impossible for us to continue living in our
territory. Beginning in the late 1950s, Mennonite missionaries,
evangelical missionaries from the United States and Catholic
missionaries moved all of the Ayoreo out of the lands where
we used to live. It was as if the missionaries used their
evangelization to clear the territory that belonged to the
Ayoreo people. That made it easy for the cattle ranchers
to buy up almost all of our land, and a few powerful white
men took over our territory just like that.”
For the Ayoreo, like
their indigenous sisters and brothers throughout the Americas,
contact with “civilization” resulted in death
from diseases to which they had never before been exposed,
which meant they had developed no immune defences against
them. Mateo Sobode recalls that “when my father went
to where the white people were, that was the end of him.
Another 85 Ayoreo died of measles along with my father just
after the first contact.”
But in addition to “dropping
like flies” from contagious diseases after contact,
those who managed to survive were faced with the fate of
“living without freedom and without respect, living
like paupers.”
Perhaps for this reason,
a number of groups of Ayoreo people refused to be “civilized”
by the missionaries and chose to continue their centuries-old
way of life in voluntary isolation.
“There are still
Ayoreo who shun all contact with the outside world. They
live in the territories where all of us used to live. You
white people call them ‘forest dwellers’ or
‘Indians in voluntary isolation’. They have
maintained the same way of life that they have always followed,
which is our traditional culture. We know that there are
at least six uncontacted groups of Ayoreo living in Paraguay,”
stated Mateo Sobode.
However, “civilization”
continues to advance relentlessly, destroying the forests
that lie in its path, whether to clear the land for cattle
ranching or to explore for the highly coveted resource of
oil.
Viewed from a purely
climate change-related perspective, this is an environmental
crime. Deforestation implies releasing into the atmosphere
all of the carbon dioxide stored in the forest biomass.
The introduction of cattle farming means the emission of
huge amounts of another greenhouse gas: methane. And of
course, if oil is discovered, it will signify a new source
of fossil fuel to be burned, further increasing the total
amount of carbon dioxide in the biosphere.
But viewed from the
wider perspective of human rights, the advance of deforestation
implies the violation of the right to life of the last uncontacted
members of the Ayoreo ethnic group – who depend entirely
on the forest for their physical and cultural survival –
and the violation of the land rights of this whole region’s
aboriginal peoples.
“These groups
are in great danger. Ever larger areas of forest are being
cleared for cattle ranching throughout the northern Chaco,”
warned Mateo Sobode. Those responsible for this destruction,
he said, are “Brazilians, Dutch, Uruguayans, Mennonites
and also Paraguayans who are buying up all of our territory,
with no consideration whatsoever for our sisters and brothers
in the forests.”
Added to this is the
destruction caused by oil prospecting. The forests have
already been divided into grids for seismic testing, causing
drastic alterations for the Ayoreo living in voluntary isolation.
Even worse, after completing the first phase of exploration
in the region, the UK company CDS Energy announced in May
of this year that it had discovered oil and gas reserves
in the Paraguayan Chaco. Unless immediate and effective
measures are taken, this could result in the total extermination
of the remaining uncontacted groups.
As Mateo Sobode rightly
maintains, “These groups have the right to legal ownership
of the territories where they are living. The right to self-determination
of our people in the forests should also be respected. The
laws must be enforced as well. For example, it should be
prohibited to enter or work in these areas, and to sell
the land where they are living, to ensure that they are
left in peace. They are not interested in living with any
missionaries or white people. All they want is to live in
their own habitat, with the gods who are known only to the
Ayoreo, and they have the right to decide how they want
to live. If they want to come out they will come out, but
in the meantime they must not be pressured. They have their
way of life in harmony with the forest. The forest, Eami,
gives them what they need and protects them, and they take
care of the forest. Before the white men came, we Ayoreo
lived in our territory without changing the face of our
mother, the forest, Eami.”
The measures needed
to ensure both the conservation of the forest and the survival
of the last Ayoreo who use it sustainably are simple: the
enforcement of the laws, regulations and international agreements
that protect indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation.
We hope that the Paraguayan
government will heed the call of the Ayoreo, who are “calling
on the competent authorities to stop allowing the continuation
of the human slaughter of our uncontacted sisters and brothers
who are living in their own territory and their own culture.
We do not want their culture, our culture, to die.”
At the same time, we
hope that the governments of Paraguay, the Netherlands,
Uruguay, Germany, Brazil and the United Kingdom will take
action to stop the criminal activities committed by their
corporations – against the indigenous people and against
the climate of the entire planet – in the Paraguayan
Chaco.
And finally, we also
hope that the international community will join in the struggle
to demand the respect of the right of these indigenous people
in voluntary isolation to “decide how they want to
live” and to be able to do so in the forests that
belong to them.
Information extracted
from: “Paraguay: el caso Ayoreo”. Unión
de Nativos Ayoreo de Paraguay, Iniciativa Amotocodie. Informe
IWGIA 4 (soon to be translated into English)
http://www.wrm.org.uy/pueblos/El_caso_Ayoreo.pdf
index
PEPPER SPRAYING DEMOCRACY IN COPENHAGEN
- Human rights violated
by climate change … and by the UN Climate Change
Convention in Copenhagen!
The UN Climate Change
Convention in Copenhagen presents itself to the world as
if it were truly tackling the major global crisis of climate
change, with thousands of government delegates and even
a hundred or so presidents and heads of state joining the
meeting.
However, the most powerful
countries – which are those most responsible for climate
change – have been twisting negotiations in order
to derail any binding agreement and to impose a top-down
agreement with very low carbon reduction targets –
more based on carbon offsets than on real carbon cuts. The
trend of northern countries has been to wriggle out of their
emission reduction commitments, to marginalise southern
countries and to silence criticism or alternative voices.
At the same time, civil
society groups demanding real solutions to the global problem
of climate change have been excluded from their already
marginal participation.
In response, thousands
of people from all over the world took to the streets of
Copenhagen demanding real and just solutions to climate
change, with banners and placards around the idea: “Climate
Justice means System Change not Climate Change”.
The huge and peaceful
demonstration that took place on December 12, ended with
more than 918 people arrested.
On Monday 14, hundreds
more were arrested following a public meeting addressed
by Canadian journalist Naomi Klein.
On Tuesday 15, Tadzio
Mueller, a spokesperson for the group Climate Justice Action,
was arrested by undercover police officers following a press
conference at the Bella Centre (petition to release Tadzio
Mueller: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/Tadzio/petition.html).
On Wednesday 16, the
NGO Friends of the Earth had their accreditation revoked
in a so called "surgical removal”.
On that same date, thousands
of protesters marched toward the UN climate summit with
the stated goal of transforming the talks into a People’s
Assembly and to call for climate justice. Police made over
200 arrests. Meanwhile, inside the Bella Center, hundreds
of people staged a walkout to try and meet the marchers
outside but were met with a heavy police response (reported
by Democracy Now! at http://tiny.cc/IDlfq
).
On Thursday 17, hundreds
more protesters were arrested and there have been numerous
reports –including video-taped evidence- of police
brutality and the extensive use of batons, pepper spray
and tear gas.
Not only people’s
rights are being swept. As Bolivian President Evo Morales
said in his speech at the climate summit: “Our Mother
Earth is treated as if she were a thing without life, as
if she didn’t have rights.”
See videos in English
at:
Democracy Now!: http://www.democracynow.org/
The Guardian: http://tiny.cc/7cJB2
The Independent: http://tiny.cc/du48A
More information on
Copenhagen available at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/COP15/cop15.htm
