- Argentina: Mbya Guarani communities threatened by a logging company

The Yaboti forest, 300 km to the east of Posadas in the Province of Misiones, was designated as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1995. In addition to its importance for biodiversity, it is the only refuge and means of subsistence of two communities of the Mbya Guarani ethnic group (Tekoa Yma and Tekoa Kapi’I Yvate), peoples who only recently got in touch with the outside world and who are now threatened by the interests of the Mocona Forestal S.A. company.

The Mbya Guarani have had their abode in the Misiones forest for over 1,500 years. Both communities threatened by the logging company live and obtain their food, medicines and materials from a territory covering 6,500 hectares, coinciding with plots 7 and 8 of the Reserve, in private hands. The company offered the communities 30 hectares to be satisfied with, but the Guarani communities rejected the idea that this land had an owner and that they were being offered 30 hectares of communal lands where their ancestors had lived and where they now live, on loan from their children. Later the offer was increased to cover 200 hectares. The company continues not wanting to understand the essence of Guarani culture.

The Foundation for Environmental Defence (Fundación para la Defensa del Ambiente – FUNAM) which works with these communities complained that the Mocona Forestal S.A. company is destroying part of the Yaboti Reserve and has recently cut down over one hundred very large trees.

The President of FUNAM, the biologist Raul Montenegro, denounced that the company “has the authorizations given by the Misiones Ministry of Environment on the basis of obsolete standards,” adding that these standards “in addition to being obsolete, ignore the way the forest functions. Thus they benefit logging companies and damage the health of indigenous communities. It is unacceptable that the Yaboti Biosphere Reserve is being so mismanaged and that the Government of Misiones should ignore the ancestral needs of the Guarani culture.”

“If Resolution 020/94 – the Forest Management Plan, applied by the Misiones Ministry of Environment – is not abolished and the Ministry continues to authorize the logging of trees, essential for the survival of the Mbya and the forest, the category given to the Yaboti Biosphere Reserve is at a risk. We cannot allow this silent genocide to continue with impunity,” stated Mr. Montenegro in a formal complaint lodged with UNESCO in Paris.

Presently the two communities together with ENDEPA (the National Aboriginal Pastoral Team), have filed a suit at the Misiones Courts to have the Mocona Forestal S.A. company give back the lands corresponding to plot 8 to the Mbya. So far the courts have ruled in favour of the powerful company and the communities’ lawyers have appealed against the ruling.

“While the court case continues, the trees are being felled and the health of the Mbya is deteriorating from lack of natural medicines and from lack of prey that no longer fall into the traps. The noise made by the chainsaws and of the trees brutally falling has driven away the native fauna,” stated Raul Montenegro.

Artemio Benítez, the chief of the Tekoa Yma community added “They do not need to threaten us to make us leave this place. They know that if they take away the forest, we will go, and that is what they are doing.”

Natalino Benitez, another member of the same community pointed out that “The white people have already entered our forest and have taken all our medicines, medicines that should cure us. If they take every thing away, we now have no medicines and we do not know how we are going to live any more. Where are we going to find the medicines that should be used by our sons and our daughters and that are now lacking?” he asked.

According to information provided by the National Aboriginal Pastoral Team, this ethnic group uses over 150 species of medicinal plants, many of which are trees that the company remorselessly logs in front of children and adults, who see with horror how their world is collapsing.

For this reason, FUNAM is demanding that the ethnic groups be given back plots 7 and 8 of the Reserve. “Until this is done, the Misiones Ministry of Environment must prohibit the Mocona Forestal S.A. company from continuing to log trees in Plot 8,” urged Raul Montenegro.

Montenegro stated that this dispossession is “a silent genocide,” and added that traditional genocide “smells of powder and massacre, but in Misiones it is being achieved without bloodshed. Guns have been replaced by chainsaws. The logging companies fell trees and on doing so, leave the Mbya without their roof and without their medicines, exposing them to more diseases and more death.”

Article based on information from: “Reserva de la Biosfera de Yabotí en Misiones”, FUNAM, e-mail: funam@funam.org.ar , http://www.funam.org.ar ; “Argentina: Misiones: peligra la subsistencia de una etnia aborigen desconocida”, FUNAM, http://www.biodiversidadla.org/article/articleview/5278/1/15/ ; “La empresa Moconá Forestal S.A. arrincona a varias comunidades indígenas para explotar sus bosques”, http://www.setemextremadura.pangea.org/campana4.htm

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- Brazil: The feat and failure of Carajá copper

At the beginning of the year 2003, a ton of copper cost 1,800 dollars. At the beginning of this year the price rose to approximately US$ 3,600, double its value twelve months before. The deficit in supply was over 500 thousand tons. The scenario, completely different from that predominating over the past few years, could not have been more auspicious for the launching of operations in the largest copper mine ever to exist in Brazil. Even before the official opening, scheduled to take place at the end of the month in the presence of President Lula, the Sossego mine in Canaã dos Carajas in the State of Para, is already selling copper.

The Vale do Rio Doce Company (CVRD) the owner of the copper deposits (one of the five it owns in Serra dos Carajas), made its first shipment of beneficiated copper at the beginning of the month from the Port of Itaqui in the State of Maranhão. Sixteen thousand five hundred tons of beneficiated copper were shipped for the German Norddeutsche company. In this way, although it has not stopped importing, Brazil has become an exporter of copper. Although it was a historic feat, it went by very discretely. Within three years, with the launching of the other projects in Carajas, Brazil will have become one of the main producers and exporters of copper worldwide.

The feat of producing and selling copper accomplished by CVRD, even before the launching of the enterprise, was tarnished by another fact: the verification that the company had committed the first environmental crime in the area. On 26 May, IBAMA (the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) verified that a great quantity of waste, produced during ore dressing, had been dumped in the area of the Carajas Natural Forest. The waste, untreated to reduce its aggressive composition, will contaminate the soil, which in turn has not had any treatment to make it impermeable.

Once the ecological aggression had been characterized, the company was fined two million reales (US$ 700,000) a sanction made more serious by the fact that CVRD had not complied with the conditions established by IBAMA when it granted authorization for the deforestation of the area to be used by mining. To start off with, CVRD representatives even attempted to contest the sanction, but the company ended up by recognizing its error and decided not to appeal against the IBAMA decision.

The company admitted that it had underestimated the volume of waste from dressing the mineral, which was in excess of the limit foreseen. However, it alleged that the area of contaminated forest was included in the area for deforestation IBAMA had authorized in 2002, but that had not been completely felled (leaving it to be felled this year as the first authorization had expired).

This allegation does not reduce the degree of aggression: less impact was caused by an error in estimating the area of deforestation effectively necessary for the project’s activities; but CVRD caused much more damage when it made an error in its waste forecast. Furthermore, it did not comply with the commitments established in the first authorization for deforestation (which will probably require a second authorization, at another instance).

This double error, with positive (involuntary) effects or negative (voluntary) effects reveals a worrying degree of imprecision and lack of expertise in the company’s operation, caused perhaps by their haste in starting the undertaking to benefit from the excellent market conditions, which will result in earlier returns on the US$423 investments made in Sossego.

Whether the accident was a misfortune or an unforeseen event, or whether CVRD decided to take the risk on the basis of its trade commitments, that perhaps compensate the fine several times over, is something that requires clarification. Furthermore, the fine can be transformed by means of a document adjusting behaviour, in an agreement for investing the money in works and services of interest to IBAMA or Government action in the sector. In addition to sanctioning the company, IBAMA must carry out a meticulous reconstruction of the episode to make sure it is not repeated. Lack of action, connivance or a limited examination may be interpreted as complicity with the most aggressive mining activity to have been implanted so far in the Amazon, the beneficiation of copper, as serious or more serious as gold mining.

The gravity of this situation is not expressed in the “note of clarification” that CVRD disseminated four days after the fine was announced. Concealing more that it revealed, the note was limited to stating that the waste had reached an area, which although not yet deforested, is “part of the dam’s useful area,” and that “therefore, no environmental damage was done to the region.” It added that the company was “carrying out a new topographic survey that will serve as a basis for renewal of the deforestation permit.”

The evaluation of whether there was environmental damage or not is the next step regarding a fact that has already been characterized – that of an environmental offence. It may so happen that the inspections will reach the same conclusion as CVRD, that the area contaminated by the waste has to be deforested because it is needed for mining. But until then, the unquestionable fact is that the company mistook the volume of waste and dumped it in a site that was not legally authorized for this purpose.

Perhaps in the future another finding will be reached: that the National Forest of Carajas is irreconcilable with the economic use that was given to it. The forest was created as an emergency (and opportunity) belt to protect Carajas against invaders, who deforested nearly all the areas surrounding the mineral province – the largest one in the world. Now the invention may turn against the inventor: will the national forest as a conservation unit always be threatened by copper mining, by an originating lack of suitability? This is the question that needs answering and preferably as urgently as possible.

By: Lúcio Flavio Pinto, June 2004, e-mail: jornal@amazon.com.br

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- Colombia: The U’wa demand Ecopetrol to retreat immediately from their sacred territory

There seems to be no truce for the U’wa people in their long resistance in defence of their ancestral rights to life and to their land and in rejection of the oil exploitation projects on their traditional territory (see WRM Bulletins 10, 22, 29 and 38). The Colombia Plan, Ecopetrol and its associated oil companies, the neglectful government, are all threats to the U’wa territory, who believe that it is “the heart of the world. The veins feeding the universe run through this territory. If it is destroyed, the world will bleed to death.”

Faced by the continuation of seismic exploration by Ecopetrol, the U’wa people have issued the following communiqué:

“We wish to communicate to national and international public opinion”
U’wa United Refuge, Cubara, 25 August, 2004

If Ecopetrol continues to implement the Siriri project in U’wa territory, our culture will disappear.

With this statement we wish to remind and inform people that Ecopetrol and its associated companies such as Oxy (Occidental Petroleum Corporation) have destroyed indigenous cultures and the environment. We have clear examples: Guahibos in Arauca, the Motilones Bari in the North of Santander, the indigenous brothers from Putumayo, and now us. In these locations, violence, hunger, displacement, state neglect and absolute poverty predominate.

The Colombia Plan has facilitated the invasion of our lands by transnational oil companies such as Oxy. Because of the strong militarization of our lands, oil operations, such as exploration, exploitation and transportation of black gold from the Department of Arauca to Coveñas and the Gibraltar 1 project, are guaranteed. As a response to this need for oil security in Colombia, two rehabilitation zones have been set up, one of them in the Department of Arauca, which is directly affecting our territory.

Roberto Afanador Cobaria –Berito Kubaruwa– the President of the Upper Council appeared on 11 February before the mayor of the Municipality of Cubara. This U’wa leader has received the official order from our highest authorities to continue with the national and international campaign against the project for oil exploration that Ecopetrol is undertaking in the ancestral U’wa territory.

“We U’wa do not negotiate oil exploration in our sacred territory” - Official decision of the Sixth U’wa Association Congress, 19-26 January 2003.

Because Ecopetrol continues its seismic exploration in U’wa territory, we feel the need to reactivate the judicial complaint against the Colombian Government filed in May 1997 before the OAS Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. We also denounce and reject the offers of projects that Ecopetrol is giving to some communities as mechanisms and strategies to divide and weaken U’wa resistance.

Now, as before, the U’wa are asking Colombians and the whole World to appeal to the President of the Republic of Colombia, Dr Alvaro Uribe Velez and his ministers and demand respect for the right to life, culture and the environment of our territories, because Ecopetrol is causing irreparable human and environmental damage to the U’wa people, Colombia and the World.

Through its Upper Council, the U’wa people also denounce:

* That since last February, Ecopetrol has been carrying out a process of burning gas and extracting crude oil on a small scale in the Siriri block, without agreements having been signed with the U’wa Upper Council.

* That the contamination generated by burning gas causes serious health problems to the U’wa indigenous community, generating serious environmental problems with an impact on climatic change and also causing major landslides.”

The U’wa people are appealing to the national and international community, to environmental movements and to human rights organizations asking them to “demand from the Colombian Government respect for the human and environmental rights of the U’wa indigenous people, and to order the Ecopetrol company the immediate suspension of burning gas and extracting crude oil.”

They also categorically deny the rumours that the Upper Council has come to any agreement for oil exploitation in U’wa territory.

Article based on information from the U’wa Upper Council Press Communiqués of 25 August and 6 September 2004, e-mail: mozambique84@hotmail.com

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- Ecuador: Yasuni National Park threatened by Petrobras oil activities

The integrity of the Yasuni National Park (PNY), located in the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon is in serious danger from the imminent launching of oil activities by the Brazilian State oil company Petrobras (Petrobras Energia Ecuador).

The PNY is the largest park in continental Ecuador and is located in one of the World's most biodiversity-rich areas. The Environmental Impact Assessment carried out by the Walsh Company for Petrobras, recorded 95 different species of plants in a 0.25 hectare plot. As this is Amazon flood forest, its soil characteristics make PNY an extremely fragile site from an ecological stand-point.

However its importance is not only due to its biodiversity. PNY is the home of the Indigenous Huaorani People, already endangered due to the activities of seven oil companies that are operating in their territory and that have caused severe alterations to their environment and to their culture.

Crude oil spills have contaminated the waters of rivers and wells where the Huaorani people bathe, drink and wash their clothes. The forest has been felled to build roads and oil pipe-lines, frightening off the fauna and placing at risk and in a vulnerable situation the communities that live on the borders of the road and around the oil pipe-lines. As a consequence of this contamination, the Huaorani have suffered a loss in their quality of life (they now have to walk for 12 hours to hunt or to fish) and have become dependent (the company gives them cooked food, as part of the agreements with the community in order to compensate for the impact on their hunting and fishing activities). The presence of the oil companies has brought diseases so far unknown to the Huaorani (hepatitis, syphilis, etc.), in addition to increasing dermatological, gastro-intestinal and respiratory diseases because of the environmental contamination.

The international fact-finding mission that visited the Yasuni National Park (PNY) concluded that the type of relationship established by oil companies Repsol and Encana with the Huaorani communities is one of control, domination and dependence and implies a violation of their right to self-determination, affecting their culture, values and the knowledge that goes to determine their life-style. This implies a lack of protection of this right, a protection that should be exercised by the State. The mission believes that, on the basis of what they saw, the entry of Petrobras into the area will represent a further threat to the preservation and integrity of its inhabitants (see the mission report in Portuguese at: http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Ecuador/Yasuni.html ).

For its part, Petrobras made an environmental impact assessment for its oil operations in Block 31. The Ecuadorian organization, Acción Ecológica in the comments made to this study, concludes that:

“In spite of the shortfalls of these studies, it is revealed that the impacts of the activity will by high and that the company does not have any plans for environmental management or adequate risk assessment, neither does it have any contingency plans to ensure the conservation of this zone which is of such ecological and cultural value.

The operational practices proposed in the study reflect that poor technology will be used, that toxic waste will be dumped into the environment and that cheap facilities will be put into place.

However, what is even more serious is the fact that the project will violate the collective rights of the Indigenous Peoples and the environmental rights of all Ecuadorians as the area belongs to the country’s national heritage.”

Acción Ecológica identified a series of aspects that reveal that the environmental studies of the Petrobras Energia Ecuador oil project do not represent a guarantee to the conservation of the PNY, nor will they enable the Huaorani people to freely exercise their collective rights as recognized in the Constitution. Some of these aspects are:

*The direct deforestation of 139.7 hectares is foreseen if the management plan is strictly followed, but the indirect impacts of the operation may compromise hundreds of hectares more, most of them within the Yasuni National Park.

* The route chosen for the oil pipeline, flow lines and road cross a mature forest over hills, alluvial plains, crossing 8 rivers, 110 swamps and is –among all the possible proposed routes- the area where biodiversity is highest.

* The technology proposed for the oil pipeline does not comply with international standards established for the construction of oil pipelines and in various parts of its route, the oil pipeline will be above the surface.

* There has been no analysis of the impact of the workers on the PNY ecosystem. In most cases, the impact of the environment on the workers is analysed; this is not part of an EIA but rather of an Industrial Security Plan.

* the waste from drilling will be left in situ, in spite of the fact that it is very contaminating, generating serious impacts on aquatic ecosystems and on the water table due to infiltration.

* There is no indication of whether or not gas will be burnt, or about how much or the impacts involved.

* Constant contradictions are evident with relation to the risk of erosion and sedimentation. In any case, no measures are proposed to address those problems.

* A good system for storing toxic chemicals is not proposed, nor is there an adequate contingency plan in the event of accidents.

* The collective rights of the Indigenous Peoples are ignored. The right of the Huaorani people to their territory is not even recognized.

* The study makes incorrect anthropological statements regarding the Huaorani communities that settled along the Maxus highway, stating that they live better than most Ecuadorians, ignoring the fact that they are unable to practice their traditional ways of life and that they are living at the expense of the oil company. This is an indication of the poor way Petrobras Energia Ecuador will manage its community relationships.

* The social study was incomplete and ignored the fora for traditional leadership of the Huaorani people.

* The impacts of Petrobras' operations on the fauna and flora have not been adequately analyzed, and on the contrary, an attempt has been made to minimize potential risks. This is also an important aspect due to the fact that Petrobras will operate in a zone which is highly vulnerable from an ecological stand-point.

* The impacts on water have not been properly analyzed, nor has the interference with water bodies (emissions or removal of water for industrial operations). It is stated that an alteration of up to 10 per cent of the flow is allowed.

* The company will use other resources from the zone that are not being assessed, such as water, timber from the trees, gravel and sand.

*Neither the contingency measures nor the risk assessment address different scenarios, their recommendations are extremely general and do not represent a guarantee to conservation.

* Typical oil activity risks in the tropics are ignored: fires, spills, floods, earthquakes and others.

* Monitoring proposals are too general and in some cases, inapplicable.”

On the basis of these considerations, Acción Ecológica concludes that:

“The foregoing explanation reveals that neither the Environmental Impact Assessment nor the operational practices proposed by Petrobras Energia Ecuador guarantee the conservation of the Yasuni National Park. Worse still, they do not offer any guarantee enabling the Indigenous communities affected by the project to freely exercise their collective rights, as recognized by the Political Constitution of Ecuador and ILO Convention 169.

The project is also a violation of the constitutional right of all Ecuadorians to live in a healthy, contamination-free environment.

With this background we recommend that the Ministry of the Environment does not grant an environmental license to the Petrobras Energia Ecuador oil company.”

Article based on information from: “Petrobrás en el Yasuni. Comentarios al estudio de impacto ambiental del bloque 31”, Acción Ecológica-Oilwatch, May 2004, sent by Elizabeth Bravo, e-mail: ebravo@hoy.net ; “Petrobrás promoverá injustita ambiental ao ameaçar a integridade do Parque Nacional Yasuni e da populaçao indígena Huaorani”, distributed by Julianna Maleaba, e-mail: brsust@fase.org.br , and Jeffer Castelo Branco, e-mail: jeffer@acpo.org.br

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- Peru: The population of Cajamarca opposes mining

In the city of Cajamarca in northern Peru, thousands of peasants, students and social organizations are struggling against the plans of the Yanococha mining company (its main shareholder is Newmont, a US mining company, together with the Peruvian Buenaventura company and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation) to carry out exploration in Cerro Quilish, whose streams feed the Grande and Porcon rivers.

The population demands that the Peruvian Government annul the resolution taken authorizing the Yanacocha Company to launch its activities (see communities' arguments, in Spanish, at http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Peru/Quilish.html ).

They are asking us for urgent support and request we send letters to the Peruvian authorities in rejection of this decision. We are attaching a model of a letter to be sent.

Thanking you in anticipation for your support!

MODEL LETTER

Dear Sir,

We would like to express our concern over the cases that have arisen in Cajamarca, a city located in the north of Peru that have been widely disseminated on an international level due to the controversy between the population of the city and the Yanacocha mining company.

According to the Peruvian and international mass media, and in the opinion of local organizations and various technical reports, the controversy has arisen because of the insistence of the Yanacocha mining company (whose main stakeholder is the Newmont company together with the Buenaventura mining company and the World Bank) and the Ministry of Energy and Mines in carrying out mining exploration works in Cerro Quilish, in spite of local peasant opposition. The local peasants and population, in knowledge of the damage caused by the company in other areas of the region – such as the mercury spill in Choropampa and other complaints made since 1993 against the Yanococha company – are fearful that mining in this location will severely affect water resources, essential for the life of the population and its sources of sustenance – agriculture and stock-raising.

We are requesting you to take all necessary measures to achieve the annulment of Director Resolution 361-2004-MEM/AAM authorizing the Yanacocha mining company to reinitiate exploration in Cerro Quilish. With this administrative measure, the Ministry of Energy and Mines ignored a local decision declaring Cerro Quilish a Municipally Protected Area, through Provincial Municipality of Cajamarca ordinance No. 012-2000. Furthermore this resolution violates a sentence by the Plenary of the Cajamarca Provincial Council, issued on 3 September 2004, making the Ministry and the company responsible for the authorization and demanding activities to be stopped and machinery to be withdrawn from Cerro Quilish.

We are also requesting that repression and violence against the peasants and population be avoided as they have already suffered severe arbitrary treatment affecting their physical integrity. We expect that respect for life, freedom and personal security – rights recognized both by the Universal Human Rights Declaration and by national legislation – be placed before the economic interest of the Yanacocha Company.

Both the Ministry of Energy and Mines that you preside and the company itself must respect the peasants’ rights to defend their lands, to enjoy protected areas in their Province, and their right to a healthy environment and water. Finally we would like to stress the importance of the peoples’ right of self-determination to decide what type of development they want in Cajamarca, as was upheld years ago by the internationally known people of Tambogrande in Piura.

Yours sincerely,

These letters should be sent to:

Mr. Alejandro Toledo, President of the Republic of Peru
webmaster@presidencia.gob.pe
Fax No. (511) 311 4700

Newmont Mining Corporation
Denver - Colorado
Fax No. (303) 837-5837
corprelations@corp.newmont.com
USA

Mr Carlos Santa Cruz
President of Yanacocha
Fax No. (511) 215 2610
Peru

Mr Jaime Quijandría
Ministry of Energy and Mines
hzagazeta@minem.gob.pe
webmaster@minem.gob.pe
Fax No. (511) 224 4490

Please send copies to:
Frente Único de Defensa de Cajamarca
info@grufides.org