• Death and disease: The oil curse
• Indonesia: The health impacts of living near Indah Kiat's pulp and paper mills
• Glyphosate herbicide, the poison from the skies

 

Death and disease: The oil curse

Thousands of indigenous peoples are displaced from their land, which is militarized and expropriated in an unending genocide. Oil exploitation is carried out – causing damages that go uncompensated – without consulting the communities and with the connivance of the government of the time. Transnational companies such as Shell, Repsol, and Maxus appropriate territorial spaces under the pretext that they are of “public utility”, they contaminate bodies of water and river beds, they deforest virgin forests and generate impacts destroying the future.

In Colombia, the Guahibo indigenous peoples who inhabited the Arauca savannahs were decimated by the activities of the Occidental Petroleum Company. The Yariguis and Aripis were exterminated by the Standard Oil Company in 1915; in 1931 the Bari-Motilon people were violently attacked by the Gula, Mobil and Texas Petroleum Companies that indiscriminately murdered, set up electrified fences or gave out poisoned salt which they threw from planes as presents. In 1960, the Inga, Siona and Cofan peoples were scattered and their rivers turned into sewers by the oil industry. In 1980, Occidental and Shell subdued the Saliva and Sicuani, Betoye, Hitnu or Macaguane, Hitanu or Iguanito and Dome Jiwi, expropriating 70-95% of their territories and leaving them in utter poverty. In 1991 243 indigenous leaders of the Zenu, Koreguajes, Pastops and Pijao peoples were murdered. In 1992, the exploration company Fronteras launched the genocide of the Nukak people and at the end of the nineties Occidental frontally attacked the U’wa people.

These are not isolated cases. In Ecuador, companies such as Texaco wiped out the Tetete people and attacked the Signa, Secoya, Cofan and Huaorani people, almost exterminating them. In Peru, Shell pushed the Nahua people to the brink of extinction.

In Nigeria, the United States oil company Chevron Texaco continues to be accused of committing atrocious violations of Human Rights against the Niger Delta communities, in three incidents perpetrated between 1998 and 1999 against the Ilaje, Opia and Ikenyan communities. The attacks included assaults on unarmed people with firearms, summary executions, torture, maltreatment, unjustified destruction of properties and razing of their environment and way of life.

Environmental degradation included the loss of fresh water sources while the company opened up numerous channels from the sea towards the coast to install their equipment. According to Bola Oyibo, leader of a group of one hundred and twenty-one young people from 42 communities advancing on the Chevron Parabe platform to protest against the continuous destruction of their environment “For years Chevron has systematically undertaken a war against our lands, forests and waters. Come to the Awoye Community and see for yourselves what they have done. All is dead, mangroves, tropical forests, fish, fresh water, wildlife. All has been killed by Chevron…”

For its part, also in Nigeria, Shell started drilling oil wells in Owukubu without consulting the Odioma community. This led to a community crisis that snowballed into a series of fatal events, leading to the death of over 1,500 people, hundreds of injured, 3,000 people arrested as hostages and a considerable part of the population fleeing to the mangrove forest and other villages (see WRM bulletin No. 92).

In Indonesia, the Province of Riau, on the Sumatran coast has long been classified as a rich zone because there are oil fields, in addition to mining, gas and thousands of hectares of oil palm plantations. However the income from these activities has not enriched the lives of the Riau community. On the contrary, the poverty rates have reached 40.2 per cent of its population of 4.5 million inhabitants. The main actor in the exploitation of oil is PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia (CFI), owned by Chevron Texaco.

Within this picture of poverty in Riau, the Sakai tribe is the direct and indirect victim of oil action. They live on the forest edge and along the Siak River, using its waters to bathe, eat and drink. However the waters are polluted and they continue to use them as they have no other option. Their staple food is a kind of tuber, the ubi manglo, which grows around their houses. Although it is considered to be toxic, the Sakai people continue to eat it because they have become used to its secondary effects, but more because now they have almost no other food options left in the forest.

To the genocide of entire peoples are added isolated, concealed deaths caused by oil accidents and by the terrible contamination they generate.

The contact of pollution with the organism comes by way of personal hygiene, consumption and breathing, thus generating skin diseases, diseases of the respiratory system, the digestive apparatus, eyes, nose and throat and gynaecological troubles. However, it also contributes to increase malnutrition, anaemia, tuberculosis and miscarriages. The cancer prevalence rate has increased enormously in the peoples close to the sources of contamination, and most affects children under 14 years of age.

The wells close to the crude oil ponds are polluted by the chemical products that infiltrate them, also killing domestic animals which for many members of the communities, fulfil the functions of consumption, trade and economic reserves in times of emergency. For these families, their disappearance leaves them in poverty and deprives them of their food sovereignty.

Once it starts depending on oil, the State finds it hard to diversify its economy and promote other sectors that contribute more direct benefits to underprivileged sectors. The dependence on oil becomes an obstacle to types of economic activities that favour low-income sectors of the population.

Far from being the so-called “black gold” bringing prosperity and welfare to the peoples, oil ends up creating a cursed circle of impoverishment, contamination, disease and death.

Article based on information from: “América se escribe con sangre” (America is written in blood), Adolfo Maldonado Campos, May 2005, Acción Ecológica, http://www.accionecologica.org/webae/index.php ; “Chevron, mano derecha del imperio”, 2005, Oilwatch report, http://www.oilwatch.org.ec/; “Ecuador ni es ni será ya país amazónico. Inventario de impactos petroleros”, 2001, Acción Ecológica, http://www.accionecologica.org/webae/index.php

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Indonesia: The health impacts of living near Indah Kiat's pulp and paper mills

In 1999, the World Bank's Economics of Industrial Pollution Control research team published a report titled "Greening Industry". The report, which was the result of "six years of research, policy experiments, and firsthand observation", described Asia Pulp and Paper's PT Indah Kiat Pulp and Paper as a "success story".

Indah Kiat's operations at Perawang, Sumatra tell a different story, at least for local people. Indah Kiat started its first pulp mill at Perawang in 1984 with an outdated factory imported from Taiwan. The 100,000 tonnes a year pulp mill used elemental chlorine and wastes were discharged into the Siak River.

According to the World Bank, protests from local villagers about pollution from Indah Kiat's Perawang mill, led to "round one of the mill's cleanup". In 1992, Indonesia's Environmental Impact Management Agency, BAPEDAL, mediated an agreement in which, the World Bank tells us, Indah Kiat agreed to meet the villagers' demands.

Indah Kiat's factory at Perawang now covers an area of 400 hectares and has a capacity of two million tons a year of pulp and 700,000 tons a year of paper. Indah Kiat’s new pulp mills use technology that is “largely chlorine free” according to the World Bank. Indah Kiat, the Bank would have us believe, is "an environmental paragon".

Unfortunately, as is often the case, the World Bank's enthusiasm about the environmental benefits of a massive industrial project bears little relation to reality. In 2004, Mats Valentin and Kristina Bjurling, researchers with Swedish NGO SwedWatch, reported that Indah Kiat uses a mixture of chlorine bleaching and elemental chlorine free (ECF) bleaching. Indah Kiat’s management told SwedWatch that the company planned to change fully to ECF technology in the future, but added that “such an investment would be too large to bear right now”.

In 2001, John Aglionby of the UK Guardian newspaper visited Indah Kiat's mill in Perawang. He described what he saw as "a monster blot on the landscape". The company's track record "has been a catalogue of environmental devastation, blatant disrespect for the local community and ignoring Indonesia's laws through a mixture of bullying and pay-offs to officials," Aglionby wrote. The journalist uncovered a list of payments made by Indah Kiat to government officials, police and army officers.

Six years research, it seems, did not help the World Bank's ace research team to uncover any pay-offs to government officials. The Bank's "Greening Industry" states simply that Indah Kiat's operation in Perawang "is fully compliant with national pollution regulations".

A year after the "Greening Industry" report came out, Inge Altemeier, a German film-maker, visited Sumatra to investigate the impact of pollution from pulp mills on local people and their environment.

She found and filmed an illegal outlet from Indah Kiat's mill, which the company used at night. During the day the output was not in use, but the air stank and dead fish floated in the river.

In a village near Indah Kiat's mill, people complained about the bad smell and told the film-maker that they were suffering from itching, headaches and vomiting. A villager called Tasjudin showed Altemeier his garden. Since Indah Kiat arrived, there are no more coconuts on his trees. The fruit on his trees is covered in black spots and it rots before it ripens. "Indah Kiat is ruining our lives. But what am I to do? This is my home, I have to live here," Tasjudin said.

Before Indah Kiat built its pulp mill, people could fish in the Siak River. They used the river for drinking water and for bathing in. Since villagers can no longer drink from the river, they demanded that Indah Kiat provide them with clean water. The company gave them a water pump. But villagers found that the ground water was also polluted and smelled bad. Villagers are forced to buy bottled water to drink. Many still wash in the river because there is not enough pumped water especially in the dry season.

Trabani Rab is a medical professor who has been monitoring the impacts of Indah Kiat's mill on villagers' health for several years. Altemeier travelled with him as he visited villages on the River Siak. In two days, he diagnosed more than 500 cases of serious skin diseases.

Earlier this year, two Indonesian NGO researchers, Rully Syumanda, Forest Campaigner with WALHI, and Rivani Noor, from the Community Alliance for Pulp Paper Advocacy, interviewed people in villages near to Indah Kiat's mill in Perawang. They also spoke to people living in Perawang. Villagers told them their vegetables, chillies and flowers did not grow normally, especially in the dry season. During the rainy season, a many of the villagers' hens and ducks die. They told the researchers they were sure that the cause was the smoke containing harmful chemicals from Indah Kiat's mill.

From 1987 to 1996, the air smelled very bad, villagers said. It has improved since Indah Kiat installed a filtering system on factory chimneys. But the air is still polluted and still causes respiratory problems, especially for visitors.

Villagers told Syumanda and Noor that before the mill started operations, fishers could catch 40 to 50 kilogrammes of fish a day in the Siak River. Today, they are lucky to catch four or five kilogrammes. Sometimes, they said, the river smells really bad and they cannot catch anything. Every month, the river gives off a bad smell for a week.

While consultants and financiers of Indah Kiat defend the company by pointing to company records of emissions from its factories, the smell, the pollution, the poisoned river and the dead fish remain. Local people continue to suffer from headaches, itching and incurable skin diseases. Far from being an "environmental paragon", Indah Kiat is destroying lives and livelihoods.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

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Glyphosate herbicide, the poison from the skies

The herbicide glyphosate was identified in 1974 by John Franz, a scientist working for US-based agro-industrial multinational Monsanto. Today Monsanto boasts that its glyphosate products, which include the herbicide Roundup, are "among the world's most widely used herbicides".

Glyphosate works by interfering with the metabolism of the plant and a few days after spraying, plants wilt, turn yellow and die. Glyphosate herbicides also contain chemicals which make the herbicide to stick to leaves so that the glyphosate can move from the surface of the plant into the plant's cells.

After spraying, glyphosate herbicides can remain in soils for long periods. The herbicide can drift onto neighbouring fields, streams or hedges. Roundup kills beneficial insects. It wipes out habitat for birds and animals. Glyphosate causes genetic damage to fish. It is "extremely lethal to amphibians", according to assistant professor of biology Rick Relyea at the University of Pittsburgh. It is hazardous to earthworms. Glyphosate reduces nitrogen fixation. Roundup reduces the growth of mycorrhizal fungi. Roundup can increase the spread and severity of plant diseases (see WRM Bulletin no. 18).

Glyphosate herbicides can have a range of impacts on human health, including genetic damage, skin tumours, thyroid damage, anaemia, headaches, nose bleeds, dizziness, tiredness, nausea, eye and skin irritation, asthma and breathing difficulties. Several studies have indicated a link between glyphosate herbicides and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer.

Not surprisingly, considering the amount of money that Monsanto makes from sales of glyphosate products, the company plays down the health risks of glyphosate. Monsanto claims that glyphosate herbicides pose only a "low risk to human health" as long as glyphosate is used "according to label directions".

Glyphosate herbicides are widely used in agriculture. Monsanto has developed a series of genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops which are not damaged by Roundup, no matter how much is sprayed on the crops. Those who are certainly damaged are local people and local environments.

Glyphosate herbicides are also used in industrial tree plantations, to kill off any plants which might compete with the trees for soil nutrients and water. This is particularly important for plantation managers when the plantations are established on land that was forested, to prevent the forest growing back. Glyphosate herbicide is often used to kill the trees themselves after the trees are harvested, especially in the case of eucalyptus trees, which re-grow after they are cut down. After two or three rotations, however, the growth is not as fast as from new seedlings. In addition, plantation managers often want to plant seedlings which are the results of the latest company breeding programme, rather than allowing the old trees to re-grow. As a result, vast areas of tree plantations are routinely sprayed with glyphosate herbicides.

But perhaps the most controversial use of glyphosate herbicides is in the US government's "war on drugs". For several years, the US has paid for aerial spraying of coca crops and opium poppies in Colombia.

In 2000, the Clinton administration approved a US$1.3 billion aid package called Plan Colombia, aimed in part at eliminating drug production in Colombia. Five years and US$4.5 billion of US "aid" later, Plan Colombia has failed to stop coca production in Columbia. The availability, price and purity of cocaine in the US, 90 per cent of which comes from Colombia, have remained stable.

A US military contractor, DynCorp International, carries out the spraying using a spiced-up version of Monsanto's Roundup. DynCorp employs more than 300 people and has 88 aircraft in Colombia to fulfil its contract under Plan Colombia. In 2004, aerial spraying reached record levels with more than 330,000 hectares of coca and poppy crops sprayed, according to the US Department of State. Yet the area of coca grown in 2005 was almost identical to that in 2003.

Aerial spraying is having a terrible impact on people living in rural areas of Colombia. The herbicide doesn't just kill coca crops, it kills food crops, livestock and fish as well. Spraying has also polluted villagers' water supplies. Areas of forest have been destroyed in operations reminiscent of Agent Orange (another Monsanto product) spraying during the US war in Vietnam. Yet more forest is destroyed when coca farmers whose crops have been sprayed move further into the forest to clear land for a new coca crop.

Medical records from hospitals in areas where the aerial spraying has taken place show significant increases in skin and eye irritations, fever, stomach aches and breathing problems among the local people.

Since Plan Colombia started, the US embassy in Bogotá has received more than 12,000 complaints about herbicide spraying from rural people in Colombia. As a result of these complaints, however, only 12 people have received any compensation. The total compensation paid out amounts to US$30,000.

In May 2005, the US Department of State awarded a new contract to DynCorp to continue spraying in Colombia. Under the contract, DynCorp will receive US$174 million a year.

The fact that Plan Colombia is not reducing drug production seems not to matter. People’s health, livelihoods and the environment will continue to be destroyed as long as Monsanto’s poison rains from the skies.

By Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de