Among the controversial projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the development and testing of a biofortified GMO banana developed to boost its iron, Vitamin E and pro-Vitamin A content.

To this end the Foundation, via its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, has so far given $15 million to Queensland University of Technology for the program run by Professor Dr James Dale, with a latest tranche of $10 million handed over this year.

The declared purpose is to roll out nutritional benefits across the tropics, but initially to India, Ugana, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda – all countries that sufer from widespread nutritional deficiencies.

And Dr Dale is certainly enthusiastic, telling the Independent that “This project has the potential to have a huge positive impact on staple food products across much of Africa and in doing so lift the health and wellbeing of countless millions of people over generations.”

So what’s so controversial about that?

What Dr Dale has done is to take the high beta-carotene banana gene for his GMO ‘super-bananas’ from an existing Fe’i banana variety from Papua New Guinea, following a study that compared ten cultivars with yellow to orange fruit.

The ‘winner’ was the Asupina cultivar, which had the highest level of trans beta-carotene – the most important pro-vitamin A carotenoid, with 1,412 μg/100 g of fresh weight, more than 25 times more than the level in the Cavendish cultivars that dominate the international banana trade.

The trouble is, this makes Dr Dales’ GMO ‘super-banana’ a clear case of biopiracy. The original Asupina, collected 25 years earlier from Papua New Guinea and held by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (Q-DPI), is the rightful property of the nation and the communities that developed it.

For this as much as any reason the humanitarian credentials of the GMO ‘super-banana’ are questionable. Most importantly, ‘red bananas‘ rich in pre-Vitamin A are already grown around the world with no need for any genetic modification.

They are popular across south Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Central and South America, and many varieties are prized for their soft flesh, sweet flavour and aroma of stawberries.

What’s the real motivation?

Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the tune of $15 million, and currently in Iowa undergoing human feeding studies, the GMO banana human feeding trials appears have been designed for marketing purposes. Certainly Scientific American calls them simply “market trials”.

They are certainly not trials for establishing the safety of GM bananas for human consumption, nor are they the thorough clinical studies that would be expected for a novel GMO food intended for daily consumption for vulnerable malnourished African infants.

Dr Dale himself has said he sees the GMO bananas are a door-opener to help facilitate the uptake of many more GMO crops in Africa and globally.

Both Dr Dale and Gates Foundation must surely be aware that previous human feeding trials of so-called ‘Golden Rice’ in the US and in China have been plagued with violations of research ethics and are currently mired in international scandal.

In Boston, Tufts University’s Institutional Review Board has suspended the lead Chinese researcher from the Tufts human trials of ‘Golden Rice’ from her permission to conduct human subject researcher after admitting there were serious irregularities and violations of ethics in the human feeding trials of ‘Golden Rice’ carried out in Hunan.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which published the Tufts study is reportedly retracting the article due to these violations of ethics. Nevertheless the Tufts study is positively referred to in the Australian government’s OGTR risk assessment for the GMO ‘super-bananas’.

Known to ‘science’ since 1788

Back to the biopiracy issue: Fe’i bananas (Musa troglodytarum L.) are a traditional food across the Asia-Pacific, found in an area ranging from Maluku in Indonesia to Tahiti and Hawaii in the Pacific.

In 1788, Daniel Solander, accompanying botanist Joseph Banks and James Cook on the voyage of the Endeavour, noted several varieties of Fe’i bananas used in Tahiti.

Artist Paul Gauguin painted the red Tahitian Fe’i banana in 1891. His paintings Le Repas (The Meal – see photo)), La Orana Maria (The Virgin Mary) and Tahitian Landscape all depict these red / orange bananas. In Indonesia they are known as pisang tongkat langit (sky cane bananas) because of the distinctive upright fruiting stem.

In the early 2000s the late biodiversity researcher and local foods promoter Lois Englberger – whose PhD at the University of Queensland was a “multiple methodology ethnographic study assessing the natural food sources of vitamin A” in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) – did the groundbreaking scientific work on rediscovering these high-beta carotene containing red indigenous bananas.

As she brought the existence of these red Fe’i bananas to the attention of the world scientific community, she reported on multiple varieties that are deliciou s when eaten raw, and others when baked or boiled.

She also helped to found the ‘Let’s Go Local!’ program with the NGO Island Food Community of Pohnpei, to promote the cultivation and consumption of nutritious local foods including indigenous banana cultivars – the use of which had been displaced by imported food cultures.

Its ‘Pohnpei Bananas’ Poster (see photo) shows photographs of 15 yellow-fleshed carotenoid-rich banana varieties, together with their carotenoid content, and a message explaining the health benefits of growing and eating carotenoid-rich bananas.

Thanks to the campaign the use of these varieties has increased sharply. Indeed it has been so successful that the ‘Karat’ banana – so called for its orange flesh and high beta-carotene content – has been adopted as the state emblem of Pohnpei and stamps have been issued featuring the Karat banana.

GMOs are the solution! (But what was the problem?)

All told, Dr Dale’s globe-trotting GMO bananas are a globe-trotting case of biopiracy. The PNG Asupina variety is not “wild” as Dr Dale has claimed, but a domesticated Fe’i cultivar developed over the centuries by indigenous farmers.

The traditional knowledge they have used comes directly from Micronesia and is the heritage of communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The Q-DPI collection from which Dr Dale and his colleagues sourced the Asupina variety should have been a collection held in public trust.

Meanwhile, Dr Dale has lectured in Indonesia, supported by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, claiming GMOs are a necessity to save bananas from extinction, in particular, he stresses, GMOs are necessary for insuring continued global production of commercial banana varieties.

Underplaying the very biodiversity on which he has have based his GMO bananas, Dale’s more immediate purposes appear to be in bio-prospecting local banana varieties for potentially commercially valuable genetic traits.

Tellingly, another gene for disease resistance which holds vast economic potential for commercial banana production they have taken from banana varieites from Maluku in Indonesia.

Mr Gates, why not just promote the existing ‘red banana’ cultivars?

An in-depth 2011 article in the New Yorker on the GMO bananas, in which the much touted vitamin A ‘super-bananas’ barely rate a mention, suggests that the GMO banana project’s larger ambition is to enter the international banana trade, setting itself up as the United Fruit of the 21st Century.

Perhaps that is why the GMO banana project is focused on India and Uganda – the first and second biggest producers of bananas (See: ‘We Have No Bananas‘ in The New Yorker by Mike Peed, 10th January 2011).

The New Yorker article suggests the real intended market for the GMO banana is the rich western consumer for whom bananas remain one of the most popular fruits, and notes that Dale “seemed pleased that neither Chiquita nor Dole would own his creation.”

And this is surely correct. As already noted, red bananas are grown around the tropics and subtropics. So why bother making a GMO banana merely to reproduce what already exists and is both popular and widely available? The answer must lie in the fact that Dale’s project is to produce a GMO version of the Cavendish banana, the main variety in international trade.

Could his real intention be to capture a commercial market in selling a premium, novelty ‘high nutrient’ banana to northern consumers? And in the process pave the way for other GMO bananas with commercially desirable qualities?

Certainly the GMO ‘super-bananas’ are an expensive distraction away from real solutions for vitamin A deficiency, despite Bill Gates’s obvious personal enthusiasm.

If he is so worried about Vitamin A deficiency in Uganda, as he claims, all he needs to do is to promote suitable ‘red banana’ cultivars for cultivation in areas where they have not traditionally been used.

Cultivars rich in pre-Vitamin A caroteinoids are already grown around the world – and are moreover delicious, known to be safe and nutritious, available for immediate cultivation – and free of patent restrictions, royalty fees and other incumbrances of the global intellectual property regime.

But then, perhaps that is the problem.

Adam Breasley works in Sydney, Australia for Mantasa, and Indonesian NGo working for food sovereignty and farmers rights.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Shell has been forced to reveal documents as part of an ongoing legal case against them in the UK High Court brought by 15,000 community members in Bodo in the Niger Delta.

The documents expose the fact that Shell has repeatedly made false claims about the size and impact of two major oil spills at Bodo in an attempt to minimize its compensation payments.

The documents also show that Shell has known for years that its pipelines in the Niger Delta were old and faulty.

It emerged that Shell did not tell the truth to the court in The Hague in the legal action brought by Milieudefensie / Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers in 2013.

The action was taken against Shell due to major oil spills in three Nigerian villages. The documents show that Shell lied about the situation in the village of Goi.

100,000 barrels spilt, says AI – but Shell only admitted to 1,640

Shell’s joint investigation report for the first oil spill in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total.

However, based on an independent assessment published by US firm Accufacts Inc., Amnesty International calculated the total amount of oil spilt exceeded 100,000 barrels.

Shell initially denied this and repeatedly defended its far lower figure. In the court documents Shell admits its figure is wrong in both this case, and that of a second spill, also in 2008, in the same area.

The admission throws Shell’s assessment of hundreds of other Nigeria spills into doubt, as all spill investigations are conducted in the same manner.

The potential repercussions are that hundreds of thousands of people may have been denied or underpaid compensation based on similar underestimates of other spills.

Pipelines in very poor condition – and Shell knew it

The court documents also show for the first time that Shell knew for years that its oil pipelines were in very poor condition and likely to leak. The court papers include an internal memo by Shell based on a 2002 study that states:

“the remaining life of most of the [Shell] Oil Trunklines is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard”. 

In another internal document dated 10 December 2009 a Shell employee warns:

“[the company] is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years”.

In the Dutch case, Shell argued in court that spills from its pipeline in Goi could not be blamed on the company’s negligence. Shell’s lawyer pointed to the precautionary measures that Shell had taken, such as the installation of a Leak Detection System.

In part because of its reference to this system, in 2013 Shell was not held responsible for the spills in Goi. But the documents that Shell have been forced to divulge to a British court now, reveal that no Leak Detection System was in place.

Milieudefensie’s lawyer has submitted to the court in The Hague a portion of the documents that came to light via the British court. On 12 March of next year, this court will hold its first session in the appeal that Milieudefensie and the Nigerian farmers have brought against the 2013 verdict by the court in The Hague.

Shell’s toxic legacy

Shell is responsible for a toxic legacy in the Niger Delta. People are dying, sick, can’t feed themselves and have no clean water because Shell destroyed their environment by drilling for oil.

UNEP researched the destruction, publishing a report in 2011. The report concluded that Shell had not taken sufficient action to clean up and set out initial steps to rectify the damage.

Platform’s research in Ogoniland shows that Shell has still not cleaned up, almost 3 years after the UNEP report was published. Platform witnessed creeks and soil reeking of oil, in areas that Shell claims to have remediated.

Environment Advocacy Video from Media for Justice Project on Vimeo.

Communities report oil crusts on their land, rotten crops and poisoned fish. Emergency water supplies have not been delivered, forcing local residents to drink oil-polluted water.

A No Progress report by Platform and Friends of Earth Europe, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Action and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) in August 2014 charted the systemic failure of the Nigerian Government and Shell to clean up horrendous oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

Action: Sign the petition to Shell’s CEO telling them to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

This article was originally published by Platform London.

Wander around Thrupp lake, a disused gravel pit near Abingdon and you’ll be mesmerised by the golden hues of autumn leaves, and the tranquility punctuated by the calls of terns, geese and ducks. Look a bit harder and you’ll see egrets, fieldfares, kingfishers and a host of other birds.

The place is swarming with wildlife. Otters have reportedly been seen here, a sure sign of a well established ecosystem. It’s also people friendly, with boarded out walkways, wooden bird hides, and information signs. It’s a beautiful, well cared for place.

But just seven years ago, in 2007, all of this was to be destroyed. The energy company NPower, operator of the now-closed Didcot A coal-fired power station, wanted somewhere to dump their fly ash – half a million tonnes of it.

And since they owned the land at Thrupp lakes – where they and the former CEGB had been filling lake after lake for decades – dumping their coal ash there was, they claimed, their cheapest option.

All the surrounding trees would be cut down, the water drained out and the toxic ash poured in. The site would be capped off and fenced with ‘Danger’ signs, as with other lakes nearby.

A lake too far!

For the locals who regularly walked around Thrupp lake its impending destruction was the last straw. Objections were strong but polite. Why couldn’t NPower use other means of disposal for the fly ash – increasingly sought after for making Portland cement, pour-on screeds, lightweight ‘thermalite’ blocks and other building materials?

And they were up against a surprisingly heavy-handed security operation for what was basically a local protest. NPower’s balaclava-clad security guards – many of them ex-military as I found out later – filmed every movement of the protestors.

My own involvement was as a freelance journalist and photographer and National Union of Journalists (NUJ) member.

One day I received a phone call from a local who told me to get down to the lake as quick as I could as NPower contractors were cutting down trees in an area long used by kingfishers for breeding and feeding – and kingfishers are protected under the EC Habitats Directive, and our own Wildlife & Countryside Act. Destroying their habitat is a criminal offence.

Within minutes of arrival I found the scene and was filming the felling of trees in the very place where, a few weeks earlier, I had photographed the iridescent jewel of a Kingsfisher.

Hit by a legal sledgehammer

Minutes later I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a team of balaclava’d security guards in hi-vis jackets and two men in pinstripe suits approaching me carrying a pile of papers.

The suits were lawyers who served on me an injunction that NPower had obtained from the High Court the day before, which applied to anyone who even knew of its existence it, no matter who they were or what their business.

The injunction – granted in a secret hearing based on the anonymous and unchallenged evidence of security guards – created a seclusion zone around the lake, and forbade filming or photographing NPower employees and contractors. Breaking the injunction would result in a five year jail sentence.

Fortunately I was already filming while they came up to me, and I showed them my NUJ press card. Although the fact that my video camera was running as the injunction was served on me potentially put me in breach of the injunction.

But NPower’s heavy-handed action achieved precisely what the company, part of Germany’s RWE power giant, did not want: it got the story into the national news.

As Jon Snow observed in his report on Channel 4 News (see video, above), “it is a cautionary tale of how some large corporations are able to suspend some basic human freedoms we thought we enjoyed.” And as the C4 reporter Alex Thompson said, “In effect covering the story of the destruction of the lake is now a criminal offence.”

The injunction was later successfully challenged by the NUJ and the wording altered to allow reporting by the press. The embarrassment also caused to Npower to abandon their plans to fill the lake with ash. Ultimately the lake and surrounding land was handed over to a local wildlife charity, the Earth Trust. It is now a nature reserve and well visited by locals.

‘Hello Mr Arbib, we know all about you … ‘

Years later in 2013 I had been covering a news story near Hastings on the building of the A259 Bexhill bypass, widely derided as a ‘road to nowhere‘. Protestors from the Combe Haven Defenders had set up camps along the route and climbed trees that were due to be felled.

I understood that the tree evictions were imminent so I climbed up a rope to get a good vantage point for photographs from a tree platform.

After a day and a night on the platform I decided to get down. within minutes I was surrounded by security who attempted to pin me to the ground. I explained I was a member of the press. Their team leader said: “OK we know who you are. Escort him off site lads.”

The next day I met him and other members of his team at the perimeter fence. They addressed me by my name though I had never divulged my identity … so how was that?

Domestic extremism?

Last year the NUJ notified their members that for £10 anyone could ask the police for any records that they might hold on the Domestic Extremist register. The incident at Hastings sprung to mind, I applied.

What came back was short but it did hold some interesting observations: “Arbib is a known environmental protester”; “Arbib appears to be a professional photographer with an interest in the environment”.

There was more. An incident was also logged where I had been identified undertaking the highly subversive action of photographing apple orchards close to Heathrow airport for a feature on apples for the Guardian.

However It was the first statement which bothered me. The word ‘known’ had an Orwellian ring to it. It indicated another layer to this that wasn’t being shared. Where was the evidence for ‘known’.

I had photographed a lot of the protests in the 1990’s including road protests at Twyford Down, Newbury, Solsbury Hill and other sites, covering it extensively for the Guardian newspaper and other news outlets. I eventually ended up publishing a book on it.

You could say that I specialised in photographing protest but I did a lot of other kinds of photography too. I travelled to India, Sudan and Zimbabwe for the likes of Christian Aid, I worked for the BBC and Channel 4 as a stills photographer and completed lots of features and portraits for a variety of magazines.

A good photographer knows his subjects

While studying photography in the 1980’s l learned that every good social documentary photographer achieved their best works because they were close to their subject matter.

Eugene Smith, one of the most famous, put his heart and soul into photographing the Minamata chemical leak in Japan. He got beaten up for his efforts by the company that were trying to keep the story silent.

So I stand by rule that if your pictures aren’t good enough you’re not close enough. You need to know your material. All the best work that I’ve done has been due to research, a passion for the subject and time spent on the ground. 

And while no Eugene Smith myself I’ve got close to my subjects to get the story. I’m often sympathetic to them, but not always. But whether I am or not, it’s essential to know them and understand them. When Leo Regan photographed his book Public Enemies about neo-Nazis in the UK it didn’t mean he was a neo-Nazi.

None of my activities have ever taken me into the realms of illegality. For me to feature on the Domestic Extremist Database seems at best absurd and at worst deeply sinister.

It should be of huge concern to everyone that this data is being held on journalists. It is the journalists who get silenced first in a totalitarian regime.

Five other journalists in the same boat

And it’s not just me. Six NUJ journalists (myself included) find ourselves in this position and backed by the NUJ we are taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Home Secretary to challenge this ongoing police surveillance.

Amongst other things, our aims are to have the data they hold on us destroyed – and to find out, if possible, where this information is being shared and by what criteria it is gathered.

My colleagues – all of whom have similarly covered protests and have done stories on the police or held corporations to account – have thicker files on them than I do. Jules Mattson, for example, has information on his records delving into the medical history of one of his family members – amongst many other things, and much of it is patently wrong.

I was delighted with the statement by our lawyer Shamik Dutta, from Bhatt Murphy solicitors, that “Journalists who seek to expose corporate and state misconduct are entitled to legal protection which enables them to do their job.”

Shamik also questioned “how it could possibly be reasonable, proportionate or necessary for the police to monitor and retain information about journalists for any purpose, let alone for the purposes of policing ‘domestic extremism’.”

Now: ‘extreme disruption orders’

But the story does not end here. I’m deeply concerned that the Home Secreary, Theresa May, is now proposing a further clampdown on civil liberties by creating a legal mechanism that would further impact so-called ‘domestic extremists’.

Under her proposals, even people whose activities are entirely within the law could be subject to so-called ‘extreme disruption orders’ if they “undertake harmful activities”. The orders would be issued by a High Court judge on an application from the police based on a legal test of ‘balance of probabilities’

The orders could ban individuals from broadcasting or speaking at public events, or from being with other named people, or from being in specified locations, and force them to get police permission to attend any public event, protest or meeting, and before publishing anything – even on social media.

Theresa May says the measures are aimed at those who would “spread, incite or justify hatred against people on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or disability” – but this could be a slippery slope.

We already know how police and prosecutors have used anti-terrorism legislation against peaceful protestors – in many cases against people who were not even breaking any law, like the case against Juliet McBride, an anti-nuclear weapons protestor at Aldermarston.

I and my fellow appellants also know how the wrong people can end up being labelled ‘domestic extremists’ – and that’s not just journalists but also people who have done no more than organise environmental meetings.

While no one wants to empower the small minority of people in this country who represent real danger to the peace and security of the realm, the state already has enormous powers and resources at its disposal.

And to judge by its shabby record, the British state is all too ready to abuse its powers by turning them against people in ways that were never envisaged or intended by legislators, including legitimate and peaceful campaigners, protestors, dissidents of various stripes – and the media.

The last thing we should allow is for the state to take on yet greater powers, only for them to turn against us when it suits them, and further restrict the freedom of the media that holds an essential role in any free and democratic nation.

Adrian Arbib is a freelance journalist and photographer.

Petition: Stop the UK Government from Introducing ‘Extreme Disruption Orders’!

Among the controversial projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the development and testing of a biofortified GMO banana developed to boost its iron, Vitamin E and pro-Vitamin A content.

To this end the Foundation, via its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, has so far given $15 million to Queensland University of Technology for the program run by Professor Dr James Dale, with a latest tranche of $10 million handed over this year.

The declared purpose is to roll out nutritional benefits across the tropics, but initially to India, Ugana, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda – all countries that sufer from widespread nutritional deficiencies.

And Dr Dale is certainly enthusiastic, telling the Independent that “This project has the potential to have a huge positive impact on staple food products across much of Africa and in doing so lift the health and wellbeing of countless millions of people over generations.”

So what’s so controversial about that?

What Dr Dale has done is to take the high beta-carotene banana gene for his GMO ‘super-bananas’ from an existing Fe’i banana variety from Papua New Guinea, following a study that compared ten cultivars with yellow to orange fruit.

The ‘winner’ was the Asupina cultivar, which had the highest level of trans beta-carotene – the most important pro-vitamin A carotenoid, with 1,412 μg/100 g of fresh weight, more than 25 times more than the level in the Cavendish cultivars that dominate the international banana trade.

The trouble is, this makes Dr Dales’ GMO ‘super-banana’ a clear case of biopiracy. The original Asupina, collected 25 years earlier from Papua New Guinea and held by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (Q-DPI), is the rightful property of the nation and the communities that developed it.

For this as much as any reason the humanitarian credentials of the GMO ‘super-banana’ are questionable. Most importantly, ‘red bananas‘ rich in pre-Vitamin A are already grown around the world with no need for any genetic modification.

They are popular across south Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Central and South America, and many varieties are prized for their soft flesh, sweet flavour and aroma of stawberries.

What’s the real motivation?

Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the tune of $15 million, and currently in Iowa undergoing human feeding studies, the GMO banana human feeding trials appears have been designed for marketing purposes. Certainly Scientific American calls them simply “market trials”.

They are certainly not trials for establishing the safety of GM bananas for human consumption, nor are they the thorough clinical studies that would be expected for a novel GMO food intended for daily consumption for vulnerable malnourished African infants.

Dr Dale himself has said he sees the GMO bananas are a door-opener to help facilitate the uptake of many more GMO crops in Africa and globally.

Both Dr Dale and Gates Foundation must surely be aware that previous human feeding trials of so-called ‘Golden Rice’ in the US and in China have been plagued with violations of research ethics and are currently mired in international scandal.

In Boston, Tufts University’s Institutional Review Board has suspended the lead Chinese researcher from the Tufts human trials of ‘Golden Rice’ from her permission to conduct human subject researcher after admitting there were serious irregularities and violations of ethics in the human feeding trials of ‘Golden Rice’ carried out in Hunan.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which published the Tufts study is reportedly retracting the article due to these violations of ethics. Nevertheless the Tufts study is positively referred to in the Australian government’s OGTR risk assessment for the GMO ‘super-bananas’.

Known to ‘science’ since 1788

Back to the biopiracy issue: Fe’i bananas (Musa troglodytarum L.) are a traditional food across the Asia-Pacific, found in an area ranging from Maluku in Indonesia to Tahiti and Hawaii in the Pacific.

In 1788, Daniel Solander, accompanying botanist Joseph Banks and James Cook on the voyage of the Endeavour, noted several varieties of Fe’i bananas used in Tahiti.

Artist Paul Gauguin painted the red Tahitian Fe’i banana in 1891. His paintings Le Repas (The Meal – see photo)), La Orana Maria (The Virgin Mary) and Tahitian Landscape all depict these red / orange bananas. In Indonesia they are known as pisang tongkat langit (sky cane bananas) because of the distinctive upright fruiting stem.

In the early 2000s the late biodiversity researcher and local foods promoter Lois Englberger – whose PhD at the University of Queensland was a “multiple methodology ethnographic study assessing the natural food sources of vitamin A” in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) – did the groundbreaking scientific work on rediscovering these high-beta carotene containing red indigenous bananas.

As she brought the existence of these red Fe’i bananas to the attention of the world scientific community, she reported on multiple varieties that are deliciou s when eaten raw, and others when baked or boiled.

She also helped to found the ‘Let’s Go Local!’ program with the NGO Island Food Community of Pohnpei, to promote the cultivation and consumption of nutritious local foods including indigenous banana cultivars – the use of which had been displaced by imported food cultures.

Its ‘Pohnpei Bananas’ Poster (see photo) shows photographs of 15 yellow-fleshed carotenoid-rich banana varieties, together with their carotenoid content, and a message explaining the health benefits of growing and eating carotenoid-rich bananas.

Thanks to the campaign the use of these varieties has increased sharply. Indeed it has been so successful that the ‘Karat’ banana – so called for its orange flesh and high beta-carotene content – has been adopted as the state emblem of Pohnpei and stamps have been issued featuring the Karat banana.

GMOs are the solution! (But what was the problem?)

All told, Dr Dale’s globe-trotting GMO bananas are a globe-trotting case of biopiracy. The PNG Asupina variety is not “wild” as Dr Dale has claimed, but a domesticated Fe’i cultivar developed over the centuries by indigenous farmers.

The traditional knowledge they have used comes directly from Micronesia and is the heritage of communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The Q-DPI collection from which Dr Dale and his colleagues sourced the Asupina variety should have been a collection held in public trust.

Meanwhile, Dr Dale has lectured in Indonesia, supported by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, claiming GMOs are a necessity to save bananas from extinction, in particular, he stresses, GMOs are necessary for insuring continued global production of commercial banana varieties.

Underplaying the very biodiversity on which he has have based his GMO bananas, Dale’s more immediate purposes appear to be in bio-prospecting local banana varieties for potentially commercially valuable genetic traits.

Tellingly, another gene for disease resistance which holds vast economic potential for commercial banana production they have taken from banana varieites from Maluku in Indonesia.

Mr Gates, why not just promote the existing ‘red banana’ cultivars?

An in-depth 2011 article in the New Yorker on the GMO bananas, in which the much touted vitamin A ‘super-bananas’ barely rate a mention, suggests that the GMO banana project’s larger ambition is to enter the international banana trade, setting itself up as the United Fruit of the 21st Century.

Perhaps that is why the GMO banana project is focused on India and Uganda – the first and second biggest producers of bananas (See: ‘We Have No Bananas‘ in The New Yorker by Mike Peed, 10th January 2011).

The New Yorker article suggests the real intended market for the GMO banana is the rich western consumer for whom bananas remain one of the most popular fruits, and notes that Dale “seemed pleased that neither Chiquita nor Dole would own his creation.”

And this is surely correct. As already noted, red bananas are grown around the tropics and subtropics. So why bother making a GMO banana merely to reproduce what already exists and is both popular and widely available? The answer must lie in the fact that Dale’s project is to produce a GMO version of the Cavendish banana, the main variety in international trade.

Could his real intention be to capture a commercial market in selling a premium, novelty ‘high nutrient’ banana to northern consumers? And in the process pave the way for other GMO bananas with commercially desirable qualities?

Certainly the GMO ‘super-bananas’ are an expensive distraction away from real solutions for vitamin A deficiency, despite Bill Gates’s obvious personal enthusiasm.

If he is so worried about Vitamin A deficiency in Uganda, as he claims, all he needs to do is to promote suitable ‘red banana’ cultivars for cultivation in areas where they have not traditionally been used.

Cultivars rich in pre-Vitamin A caroteinoids are already grown around the world – and are moreover delicious, known to be safe and nutritious, available for immediate cultivation – and free of patent restrictions, royalty fees and other incumbrances of the global intellectual property regime.

But then, perhaps that is the problem.

Adam Breasley works in Sydney, Australia for Mantasa, and Indonesian NGo working for food sovereignty and farmers rights.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Shell has been forced to reveal documents as part of an ongoing legal case against them in the UK High Court brought by 15,000 community members in Bodo in the Niger Delta.

The documents expose the fact that Shell has repeatedly made false claims about the size and impact of two major oil spills at Bodo in an attempt to minimize its compensation payments.

The documents also show that Shell has known for years that its pipelines in the Niger Delta were old and faulty.

It emerged that Shell did not tell the truth to the court in The Hague in the legal action brought by Milieudefensie / Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers in 2013.

The action was taken against Shell due to major oil spills in three Nigerian villages. The documents show that Shell lied about the situation in the village of Goi.

100,000 barrels spilt, says AI – but Shell only admitted to 1,640

Shell’s joint investigation report for the first oil spill in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total.

However, based on an independent assessment published by US firm Accufacts Inc., Amnesty International calculated the total amount of oil spilt exceeded 100,000 barrels.

Shell initially denied this and repeatedly defended its far lower figure. In the court documents Shell admits its figure is wrong in both this case, and that of a second spill, also in 2008, in the same area.

The admission throws Shell’s assessment of hundreds of other Nigeria spills into doubt, as all spill investigations are conducted in the same manner.

The potential repercussions are that hundreds of thousands of people may have been denied or underpaid compensation based on similar underestimates of other spills.

Pipelines in very poor condition – and Shell knew it

The court documents also show for the first time that Shell knew for years that its oil pipelines were in very poor condition and likely to leak. The court papers include an internal memo by Shell based on a 2002 study that states:

“the remaining life of most of the [Shell] Oil Trunklines is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard”. 

In another internal document dated 10 December 2009 a Shell employee warns:

“[the company] is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years”.

In the Dutch case, Shell argued in court that spills from its pipeline in Goi could not be blamed on the company’s negligence. Shell’s lawyer pointed to the precautionary measures that Shell had taken, such as the installation of a Leak Detection System.

In part because of its reference to this system, in 2013 Shell was not held responsible for the spills in Goi. But the documents that Shell have been forced to divulge to a British court now, reveal that no Leak Detection System was in place.

Milieudefensie’s lawyer has submitted to the court in The Hague a portion of the documents that came to light via the British court. On 12 March of next year, this court will hold its first session in the appeal that Milieudefensie and the Nigerian farmers have brought against the 2013 verdict by the court in The Hague.

Shell’s toxic legacy

Shell is responsible for a toxic legacy in the Niger Delta. People are dying, sick, can’t feed themselves and have no clean water because Shell destroyed their environment by drilling for oil.

UNEP researched the destruction, publishing a report in 2011. The report concluded that Shell had not taken sufficient action to clean up and set out initial steps to rectify the damage.

Platform’s research in Ogoniland shows that Shell has still not cleaned up, almost 3 years after the UNEP report was published. Platform witnessed creeks and soil reeking of oil, in areas that Shell claims to have remediated.

Environment Advocacy Video from Media for Justice Project on Vimeo.

Communities report oil crusts on their land, rotten crops and poisoned fish. Emergency water supplies have not been delivered, forcing local residents to drink oil-polluted water.

A No Progress report by Platform and Friends of Earth Europe, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Action and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) in August 2014 charted the systemic failure of the Nigerian Government and Shell to clean up horrendous oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

Action: Sign the petition to Shell’s CEO telling them to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

This article was originally published by Platform London.

Wander around Thrupp lake, a disused gravel pit near Abingdon and you’ll be mesmerised by the golden hues of autumn leaves, and the tranquility punctuated by the calls of terns, geese and ducks. Look a bit harder and you’ll see egrets, fieldfares, kingfishers and a host of other birds.

The place is swarming with wildlife. Otters have reportedly been seen here, a sure sign of a well established ecosystem. It’s also people friendly, with boarded out walkways, wooden bird hides, and information signs. It’s a beautiful, well cared for place.

But just seven years ago, in 2007, all of this was to be destroyed. The energy company NPower, operator of the now-closed Didcot A coal-fired power station, wanted somewhere to dump their fly ash – half a million tonnes of it.

And since they owned the land at Thrupp lakes – where they and the former CEGB had been filling lake after lake for decades – dumping their coal ash there was, they claimed, their cheapest option.

All the surrounding trees would be cut down, the water drained out and the toxic ash poured in. The site would be capped off and fenced with ‘Danger’ signs, as with other lakes nearby.

A lake too far!

For the locals who regularly walked around Thrupp lake its impending destruction was the last straw. Objections were strong but polite. Why couldn’t NPower use other means of disposal for the fly ash – increasingly sought after for making Portland cement, pour-on screeds, lightweight ‘thermalite’ blocks and other building materials?

And they were up against a surprisingly heavy-handed security operation for what was basically a local protest. NPower’s balaclava-clad security guards – many of them ex-military as I found out later – filmed every movement of the protestors.

My own involvement was as a freelance journalist and photographer and National Union of Journalists (NUJ) member.

One day I received a phone call from a local who told me to get down to the lake as quick as I could as NPower contractors were cutting down trees in an area long used by kingfishers for breeding and feeding – and kingfishers are protected under the EC Habitats Directive, and our own Wildlife & Countryside Act. Destroying their habitat is a criminal offence.

Within minutes of arrival I found the scene and was filming the felling of trees in the very place where, a few weeks earlier, I had photographed the iridescent jewel of a Kingsfisher.

Hit by a legal sledgehammer

Minutes later I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a team of balaclava’d security guards in hi-vis jackets and two men in pinstripe suits approaching me carrying a pile of papers.

The suits were lawyers who served on me an injunction that NPower had obtained from the High Court the day before, which applied to anyone who even knew of its existence it, no matter who they were or what their business.

The injunction – granted in a secret hearing based on the anonymous and unchallenged evidence of security guards – created a seclusion zone around the lake, and forbade filming or photographing NPower employees and contractors. Breaking the injunction would result in a five year jail sentence.

Fortunately I was already filming while they came up to me, and I showed them my NUJ press card. Although the fact that my video camera was running as the injunction was served on me potentially put me in breach of the injunction.

But NPower’s heavy-handed action achieved precisely what the company, part of Germany’s RWE power giant, did not want: it got the story into the national news.

As Jon Snow observed in his report on Channel 4 News (see video, above), “it is a cautionary tale of how some large corporations are able to suspend some basic human freedoms we thought we enjoyed.” And as the C4 reporter Alex Thompson said, “In effect covering the story of the destruction of the lake is now a criminal offence.”

The injunction was later successfully challenged by the NUJ and the wording altered to allow reporting by the press. The embarrassment also caused to Npower to abandon their plans to fill the lake with ash. Ultimately the lake and surrounding land was handed over to a local wildlife charity, the Earth Trust. It is now a nature reserve and well visited by locals.

‘Hello Mr Arbib, we know all about you … ‘

Years later in 2013 I had been covering a news story near Hastings on the building of the A259 Bexhill bypass, widely derided as a ‘road to nowhere‘. Protestors from the Combe Haven Defenders had set up camps along the route and climbed trees that were due to be felled.

I understood that the tree evictions were imminent so I climbed up a rope to get a good vantage point for photographs from a tree platform.

After a day and a night on the platform I decided to get down. within minutes I was surrounded by security who attempted to pin me to the ground. I explained I was a member of the press. Their team leader said: “OK we know who you are. Escort him off site lads.”

The next day I met him and other members of his team at the perimeter fence. They addressed me by my name though I had never divulged my identity … so how was that?

Domestic extremism?

Last year the NUJ notified their members that for £10 anyone could ask the police for any records that they might hold on the Domestic Extremist register. The incident at Hastings sprung to mind, I applied.

What came back was short but it did hold some interesting observations: “Arbib is a known environmental protester”; “Arbib appears to be a professional photographer with an interest in the environment”.

There was more. An incident was also logged where I had been identified undertaking the highly subversive action of photographing apple orchards close to Heathrow airport for a feature on apples for the Guardian.

However It was the first statement which bothered me. The word ‘known’ had an Orwellian ring to it. It indicated another layer to this that wasn’t being shared. Where was the evidence for ‘known’.

I had photographed a lot of the protests in the 1990’s including road protests at Twyford Down, Newbury, Solsbury Hill and other sites, covering it extensively for the Guardian newspaper and other news outlets. I eventually ended up publishing a book on it.

You could say that I specialised in photographing protest but I did a lot of other kinds of photography too. I travelled to India, Sudan and Zimbabwe for the likes of Christian Aid, I worked for the BBC and Channel 4 as a stills photographer and completed lots of features and portraits for a variety of magazines.

A good photographer knows his subjects

While studying photography in the 1980’s l learned that every good social documentary photographer achieved their best works because they were close to their subject matter.

Eugene Smith, one of the most famous, put his heart and soul into photographing the Minamata chemical leak in Japan. He got beaten up for his efforts by the company that were trying to keep the story silent.

So I stand by rule that if your pictures aren’t good enough you’re not close enough. You need to know your material. All the best work that I’ve done has been due to research, a passion for the subject and time spent on the ground. 

And while no Eugene Smith myself I’ve got close to my subjects to get the story. I’m often sympathetic to them, but not always. But whether I am or not, it’s essential to know them and understand them. When Leo Regan photographed his book Public Enemies about neo-Nazis in the UK it didn’t mean he was a neo-Nazi.

None of my activities have ever taken me into the realms of illegality. For me to feature on the Domestic Extremist Database seems at best absurd and at worst deeply sinister.

It should be of huge concern to everyone that this data is being held on journalists. It is the journalists who get silenced first in a totalitarian regime.

Five other journalists in the same boat

And it’s not just me. Six NUJ journalists (myself included) find ourselves in this position and backed by the NUJ we are taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Home Secretary to challenge this ongoing police surveillance.

Amongst other things, our aims are to have the data they hold on us destroyed – and to find out, if possible, where this information is being shared and by what criteria it is gathered.

My colleagues – all of whom have similarly covered protests and have done stories on the police or held corporations to account – have thicker files on them than I do. Jules Mattson, for example, has information on his records delving into the medical history of one of his family members – amongst many other things, and much of it is patently wrong.

I was delighted with the statement by our lawyer Shamik Dutta, from Bhatt Murphy solicitors, that “Journalists who seek to expose corporate and state misconduct are entitled to legal protection which enables them to do their job.”

Shamik also questioned “how it could possibly be reasonable, proportionate or necessary for the police to monitor and retain information about journalists for any purpose, let alone for the purposes of policing ‘domestic extremism’.”

Now: ‘extreme disruption orders’

But the story does not end here. I’m deeply concerned that the Home Secreary, Theresa May, is now proposing a further clampdown on civil liberties by creating a legal mechanism that would further impact so-called ‘domestic extremists’.

Under her proposals, even people whose activities are entirely within the law could be subject to so-called ‘extreme disruption orders’ if they “undertake harmful activities”. The orders would be issued by a High Court judge on an application from the police based on a legal test of ‘balance of probabilities’

The orders could ban individuals from broadcasting or speaking at public events, or from being with other named people, or from being in specified locations, and force them to get police permission to attend any public event, protest or meeting, and before publishing anything – even on social media.

Theresa May says the measures are aimed at those who would “spread, incite or justify hatred against people on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or disability” – but this could be a slippery slope.

We already know how police and prosecutors have used anti-terrorism legislation against peaceful protestors – in many cases against people who were not even breaking any law, like the case against Juliet McBride, an anti-nuclear weapons protestor at Aldermarston.

I and my fellow appellants also know how the wrong people can end up being labelled ‘domestic extremists’ – and that’s not just journalists but also people who have done no more than organise environmental meetings.

While no one wants to empower the small minority of people in this country who represent real danger to the peace and security of the realm, the state already has enormous powers and resources at its disposal.

And to judge by its shabby record, the British state is all too ready to abuse its powers by turning them against people in ways that were never envisaged or intended by legislators, including legitimate and peaceful campaigners, protestors, dissidents of various stripes – and the media.

The last thing we should allow is for the state to take on yet greater powers, only for them to turn against us when it suits them, and further restrict the freedom of the media that holds an essential role in any free and democratic nation.

Adrian Arbib is a freelance journalist and photographer.

Petition: Stop the UK Government from Introducing ‘Extreme Disruption Orders’!

Among the controversial projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the development and testing of a biofortified GMO banana developed to boost its iron, Vitamin E and pro-Vitamin A content.

To this end the Foundation, via its Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative, has so far given $15 million to Queensland University of Technology for the program run by Professor Dr James Dale, with a latest tranche of $10 million handed over this year.

The declared purpose is to roll out nutritional benefits across the tropics, but initially to India, Ugana, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda – all countries that sufer from widespread nutritional deficiencies.

And Dr Dale is certainly enthusiastic, telling the Independent that “This project has the potential to have a huge positive impact on staple food products across much of Africa and in doing so lift the health and wellbeing of countless millions of people over generations.”

So what’s so controversial about that?

What Dr Dale has done is to take the high beta-carotene banana gene for his GMO ‘super-bananas’ from an existing Fe’i banana variety from Papua New Guinea, following a study that compared ten cultivars with yellow to orange fruit.

The ‘winner’ was the Asupina cultivar, which had the highest level of trans beta-carotene – the most important pro-vitamin A carotenoid, with 1,412 μg/100 g of fresh weight, more than 25 times more than the level in the Cavendish cultivars that dominate the international banana trade.

The trouble is, this makes Dr Dales’ GMO ‘super-banana’ a clear case of biopiracy. The original Asupina, collected 25 years earlier from Papua New Guinea and held by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (Q-DPI), is the rightful property of the nation and the communities that developed it.

For this as much as any reason the humanitarian credentials of the GMO ‘super-banana’ are questionable. Most importantly, ‘red bananas‘ rich in pre-Vitamin A are already grown around the world with no need for any genetic modification.

They are popular across south Asia, the Pacific, Africa and Central and South America, and many varieties are prized for their soft flesh, sweet flavour and aroma of stawberries.

What’s the real motivation?

Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the tune of $15 million, and currently in Iowa undergoing human feeding studies, the GMO banana human feeding trials appears have been designed for marketing purposes. Certainly Scientific American calls them simply “market trials”.

They are certainly not trials for establishing the safety of GM bananas for human consumption, nor are they the thorough clinical studies that would be expected for a novel GMO food intended for daily consumption for vulnerable malnourished African infants.

Dr Dale himself has said he sees the GMO bananas are a door-opener to help facilitate the uptake of many more GMO crops in Africa and globally.

Both Dr Dale and Gates Foundation must surely be aware that previous human feeding trials of so-called ‘Golden Rice’ in the US and in China have been plagued with violations of research ethics and are currently mired in international scandal.

In Boston, Tufts University’s Institutional Review Board has suspended the lead Chinese researcher from the Tufts human trials of ‘Golden Rice’ from her permission to conduct human subject researcher after admitting there were serious irregularities and violations of ethics in the human feeding trials of ‘Golden Rice’ carried out in Hunan.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition which published the Tufts study is reportedly retracting the article due to these violations of ethics. Nevertheless the Tufts study is positively referred to in the Australian government’s OGTR risk assessment for the GMO ‘super-bananas’.

Known to ‘science’ since 1788

Back to the biopiracy issue: Fe’i bananas (Musa troglodytarum L.) are a traditional food across the Asia-Pacific, found in an area ranging from Maluku in Indonesia to Tahiti and Hawaii in the Pacific.

In 1788, Daniel Solander, accompanying botanist Joseph Banks and James Cook on the voyage of the Endeavour, noted several varieties of Fe’i bananas used in Tahiti.

Artist Paul Gauguin painted the red Tahitian Fe’i banana in 1891. His paintings Le Repas (The Meal – see photo)), La Orana Maria (The Virgin Mary) and Tahitian Landscape all depict these red / orange bananas. In Indonesia they are known as pisang tongkat langit (sky cane bananas) because of the distinctive upright fruiting stem.

In the early 2000s the late biodiversity researcher and local foods promoter Lois Englberger – whose PhD at the University of Queensland was a “multiple methodology ethnographic study assessing the natural food sources of vitamin A” in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) – did the groundbreaking scientific work on rediscovering these high-beta carotene containing red indigenous bananas.

As she brought the existence of these red Fe’i bananas to the attention of the world scientific community, she reported on multiple varieties that are deliciou s when eaten raw, and others when baked or boiled.

She also helped to found the ‘Let’s Go Local!’ program with the NGO Island Food Community of Pohnpei, to promote the cultivation and consumption of nutritious local foods including indigenous banana cultivars – the use of which had been displaced by imported food cultures.

Its ‘Pohnpei Bananas’ Poster (see photo) shows photographs of 15 yellow-fleshed carotenoid-rich banana varieties, together with their carotenoid content, and a message explaining the health benefits of growing and eating carotenoid-rich bananas.

Thanks to the campaign the use of these varieties has increased sharply. Indeed it has been so successful that the ‘Karat’ banana – so called for its orange flesh and high beta-carotene content – has been adopted as the state emblem of Pohnpei and stamps have been issued featuring the Karat banana.

GMOs are the solution! (But what was the problem?)

All told, Dr Dale’s globe-trotting GMO bananas are a globe-trotting case of biopiracy. The PNG Asupina variety is not “wild” as Dr Dale has claimed, but a domesticated Fe’i cultivar developed over the centuries by indigenous farmers.

The traditional knowledge they have used comes directly from Micronesia and is the heritage of communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The Q-DPI collection from which Dr Dale and his colleagues sourced the Asupina variety should have been a collection held in public trust.

Meanwhile, Dr Dale has lectured in Indonesia, supported by the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, claiming GMOs are a necessity to save bananas from extinction, in particular, he stresses, GMOs are necessary for insuring continued global production of commercial banana varieties.

Underplaying the very biodiversity on which he has have based his GMO bananas, Dale’s more immediate purposes appear to be in bio-prospecting local banana varieties for potentially commercially valuable genetic traits.

Tellingly, another gene for disease resistance which holds vast economic potential for commercial banana production they have taken from banana varieites from Maluku in Indonesia.

Mr Gates, why not just promote the existing ‘red banana’ cultivars?

An in-depth 2011 article in the New Yorker on the GMO bananas, in which the much touted vitamin A ‘super-bananas’ barely rate a mention, suggests that the GMO banana project’s larger ambition is to enter the international banana trade, setting itself up as the United Fruit of the 21st Century.

Perhaps that is why the GMO banana project is focused on India and Uganda – the first and second biggest producers of bananas (See: ‘We Have No Bananas‘ in The New Yorker by Mike Peed, 10th January 2011).

The New Yorker article suggests the real intended market for the GMO banana is the rich western consumer for whom bananas remain one of the most popular fruits, and notes that Dale “seemed pleased that neither Chiquita nor Dole would own his creation.”

And this is surely correct. As already noted, red bananas are grown around the tropics and subtropics. So why bother making a GMO banana merely to reproduce what already exists and is both popular and widely available? The answer must lie in the fact that Dale’s project is to produce a GMO version of the Cavendish banana, the main variety in international trade.

Could his real intention be to capture a commercial market in selling a premium, novelty ‘high nutrient’ banana to northern consumers? And in the process pave the way for other GMO bananas with commercially desirable qualities?

Certainly the GMO ‘super-bananas’ are an expensive distraction away from real solutions for vitamin A deficiency, despite Bill Gates’s obvious personal enthusiasm.

If he is so worried about Vitamin A deficiency in Uganda, as he claims, all he needs to do is to promote suitable ‘red banana’ cultivars for cultivation in areas where they have not traditionally been used.

Cultivars rich in pre-Vitamin A caroteinoids are already grown around the world – and are moreover delicious, known to be safe and nutritious, available for immediate cultivation – and free of patent restrictions, royalty fees and other incumbrances of the global intellectual property regime.

But then, perhaps that is the problem.

Adam Breasley works in Sydney, Australia for Mantasa, and Indonesian NGo working for food sovereignty and farmers rights.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Shell has been forced to reveal documents as part of an ongoing legal case against them in the UK High Court brought by 15,000 community members in Bodo in the Niger Delta.

The documents expose the fact that Shell has repeatedly made false claims about the size and impact of two major oil spills at Bodo in an attempt to minimize its compensation payments.

The documents also show that Shell has known for years that its pipelines in the Niger Delta were old and faulty.

It emerged that Shell did not tell the truth to the court in The Hague in the legal action brought by Milieudefensie / Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers in 2013.

The action was taken against Shell due to major oil spills in three Nigerian villages. The documents show that Shell lied about the situation in the village of Goi.

100,000 barrels spilt, says AI – but Shell only admitted to 1,640

Shell’s joint investigation report for the first oil spill in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total.

However, based on an independent assessment published by US firm Accufacts Inc., Amnesty International calculated the total amount of oil spilt exceeded 100,000 barrels.

Shell initially denied this and repeatedly defended its far lower figure. In the court documents Shell admits its figure is wrong in both this case, and that of a second spill, also in 2008, in the same area.

The admission throws Shell’s assessment of hundreds of other Nigeria spills into doubt, as all spill investigations are conducted in the same manner.

The potential repercussions are that hundreds of thousands of people may have been denied or underpaid compensation based on similar underestimates of other spills.

Pipelines in very poor condition – and Shell knew it

The court documents also show for the first time that Shell knew for years that its oil pipelines were in very poor condition and likely to leak. The court papers include an internal memo by Shell based on a 2002 study that states:

“the remaining life of most of the [Shell] Oil Trunklines is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard”. 

In another internal document dated 10 December 2009 a Shell employee warns:

“[the company] is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years”.

In the Dutch case, Shell argued in court that spills from its pipeline in Goi could not be blamed on the company’s negligence. Shell’s lawyer pointed to the precautionary measures that Shell had taken, such as the installation of a Leak Detection System.

In part because of its reference to this system, in 2013 Shell was not held responsible for the spills in Goi. But the documents that Shell have been forced to divulge to a British court now, reveal that no Leak Detection System was in place.

Milieudefensie’s lawyer has submitted to the court in The Hague a portion of the documents that came to light via the British court. On 12 March of next year, this court will hold its first session in the appeal that Milieudefensie and the Nigerian farmers have brought against the 2013 verdict by the court in The Hague.

Shell’s toxic legacy

Shell is responsible for a toxic legacy in the Niger Delta. People are dying, sick, can’t feed themselves and have no clean water because Shell destroyed their environment by drilling for oil.

UNEP researched the destruction, publishing a report in 2011. The report concluded that Shell had not taken sufficient action to clean up and set out initial steps to rectify the damage.

Platform’s research in Ogoniland shows that Shell has still not cleaned up, almost 3 years after the UNEP report was published. Platform witnessed creeks and soil reeking of oil, in areas that Shell claims to have remediated.

Environment Advocacy Video from Media for Justice Project on Vimeo.

Communities report oil crusts on their land, rotten crops and poisoned fish. Emergency water supplies have not been delivered, forcing local residents to drink oil-polluted water.

A No Progress report by Platform and Friends of Earth Europe, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Action and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) in August 2014 charted the systemic failure of the Nigerian Government and Shell to clean up horrendous oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

Action: Sign the petition to Shell’s CEO telling them to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

This article was originally published by Platform London.

Wander around Thrupp lake, a disused gravel pit near Abingdon and you’ll be mesmerised by the golden hues of autumn leaves, and the tranquility punctuated by the calls of terns, geese and ducks. Look a bit harder and you’ll see egrets, fieldfares, kingfishers and a host of other birds.

The place is swarming with wildlife. Otters have reportedly been seen here, a sure sign of a well established ecosystem. It’s also people friendly, with boarded out walkways, wooden bird hides, and information signs. It’s a beautiful, well cared for place.

But just seven years ago, in 2007, all of this was to be destroyed. The energy company NPower, operator of the now-closed Didcot A coal-fired power station, wanted somewhere to dump their fly ash – half a million tonnes of it.

And since they owned the land at Thrupp lakes – where they and the former CEGB had been filling lake after lake for decades – dumping their coal ash there was, they claimed, their cheapest option.

All the surrounding trees would be cut down, the water drained out and the toxic ash poured in. The site would be capped off and fenced with ‘Danger’ signs, as with other lakes nearby.

A lake too far!

For the locals who regularly walked around Thrupp lake its impending destruction was the last straw. Objections were strong but polite. Why couldn’t NPower use other means of disposal for the fly ash – increasingly sought after for making Portland cement, pour-on screeds, lightweight ‘thermalite’ blocks and other building materials?

And they were up against a surprisingly heavy-handed security operation for what was basically a local protest. NPower’s balaclava-clad security guards – many of them ex-military as I found out later – filmed every movement of the protestors.

My own involvement was as a freelance journalist and photographer and National Union of Journalists (NUJ) member.

One day I received a phone call from a local who told me to get down to the lake as quick as I could as NPower contractors were cutting down trees in an area long used by kingfishers for breeding and feeding – and kingfishers are protected under the EC Habitats Directive, and our own Wildlife & Countryside Act. Destroying their habitat is a criminal offence.

Within minutes of arrival I found the scene and was filming the felling of trees in the very place where, a few weeks earlier, I had photographed the iridescent jewel of a Kingsfisher.

Hit by a legal sledgehammer

Minutes later I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a team of balaclava’d security guards in hi-vis jackets and two men in pinstripe suits approaching me carrying a pile of papers.

The suits were lawyers who served on me an injunction that NPower had obtained from the High Court the day before, which applied to anyone who even knew of its existence it, no matter who they were or what their business.

The injunction – granted in a secret hearing based on the anonymous and unchallenged evidence of security guards – created a seclusion zone around the lake, and forbade filming or photographing NPower employees and contractors. Breaking the injunction would result in a five year jail sentence.

Fortunately I was already filming while they came up to me, and I showed them my NUJ press card. Although the fact that my video camera was running as the injunction was served on me potentially put me in breach of the injunction.

But NPower’s heavy-handed action achieved precisely what the company, part of Germany’s RWE power giant, did not want: it got the story into the national news.

As Jon Snow observed in his report on Channel 4 News (see video, above), “it is a cautionary tale of how some large corporations are able to suspend some basic human freedoms we thought we enjoyed.” And as the C4 reporter Alex Thompson said, “In effect covering the story of the destruction of the lake is now a criminal offence.”

The injunction was later successfully challenged by the NUJ and the wording altered to allow reporting by the press. The embarrassment also caused to Npower to abandon their plans to fill the lake with ash. Ultimately the lake and surrounding land was handed over to a local wildlife charity, the Earth Trust. It is now a nature reserve and well visited by locals.

‘Hello Mr Arbib, we know all about you … ‘

Years later in 2013 I had been covering a news story near Hastings on the building of the A259 Bexhill bypass, widely derided as a ‘road to nowhere‘. Protestors from the Combe Haven Defenders had set up camps along the route and climbed trees that were due to be felled.

I understood that the tree evictions were imminent so I climbed up a rope to get a good vantage point for photographs from a tree platform.

After a day and a night on the platform I decided to get down. within minutes I was surrounded by security who attempted to pin me to the ground. I explained I was a member of the press. Their team leader said: “OK we know who you are. Escort him off site lads.”

The next day I met him and other members of his team at the perimeter fence. They addressed me by my name though I had never divulged my identity … so how was that?

Domestic extremism?

Last year the NUJ notified their members that for £10 anyone could ask the police for any records that they might hold on the Domestic Extremist register. The incident at Hastings sprung to mind, I applied.

What came back was short but it did hold some interesting observations: “Arbib is a known environmental protester”; “Arbib appears to be a professional photographer with an interest in the environment”.

There was more. An incident was also logged where I had been identified undertaking the highly subversive action of photographing apple orchards close to Heathrow airport for a feature on apples for the Guardian.

However It was the first statement which bothered me. The word ‘known’ had an Orwellian ring to it. It indicated another layer to this that wasn’t being shared. Where was the evidence for ‘known’.

I had photographed a lot of the protests in the 1990’s including road protests at Twyford Down, Newbury, Solsbury Hill and other sites, covering it extensively for the Guardian newspaper and other news outlets. I eventually ended up publishing a book on it.

You could say that I specialised in photographing protest but I did a lot of other kinds of photography too. I travelled to India, Sudan and Zimbabwe for the likes of Christian Aid, I worked for the BBC and Channel 4 as a stills photographer and completed lots of features and portraits for a variety of magazines.

A good photographer knows his subjects

While studying photography in the 1980’s l learned that every good social documentary photographer achieved their best works because they were close to their subject matter.

Eugene Smith, one of the most famous, put his heart and soul into photographing the Minamata chemical leak in Japan. He got beaten up for his efforts by the company that were trying to keep the story silent.

So I stand by rule that if your pictures aren’t good enough you’re not close enough. You need to know your material. All the best work that I’ve done has been due to research, a passion for the subject and time spent on the ground. 

And while no Eugene Smith myself I’ve got close to my subjects to get the story. I’m often sympathetic to them, but not always. But whether I am or not, it’s essential to know them and understand them. When Leo Regan photographed his book Public Enemies about neo-Nazis in the UK it didn’t mean he was a neo-Nazi.

None of my activities have ever taken me into the realms of illegality. For me to feature on the Domestic Extremist Database seems at best absurd and at worst deeply sinister.

It should be of huge concern to everyone that this data is being held on journalists. It is the journalists who get silenced first in a totalitarian regime.

Five other journalists in the same boat

And it’s not just me. Six NUJ journalists (myself included) find ourselves in this position and backed by the NUJ we are taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Home Secretary to challenge this ongoing police surveillance.

Amongst other things, our aims are to have the data they hold on us destroyed – and to find out, if possible, where this information is being shared and by what criteria it is gathered.

My colleagues – all of whom have similarly covered protests and have done stories on the police or held corporations to account – have thicker files on them than I do. Jules Mattson, for example, has information on his records delving into the medical history of one of his family members – amongst many other things, and much of it is patently wrong.

I was delighted with the statement by our lawyer Shamik Dutta, from Bhatt Murphy solicitors, that “Journalists who seek to expose corporate and state misconduct are entitled to legal protection which enables them to do their job.”

Shamik also questioned “how it could possibly be reasonable, proportionate or necessary for the police to monitor and retain information about journalists for any purpose, let alone for the purposes of policing ‘domestic extremism’.”

Now: ‘extreme disruption orders’

But the story does not end here. I’m deeply concerned that the Home Secreary, Theresa May, is now proposing a further clampdown on civil liberties by creating a legal mechanism that would further impact so-called ‘domestic extremists’.

Under her proposals, even people whose activities are entirely within the law could be subject to so-called ‘extreme disruption orders’ if they “undertake harmful activities”. The orders would be issued by a High Court judge on an application from the police based on a legal test of ‘balance of probabilities’

The orders could ban individuals from broadcasting or speaking at public events, or from being with other named people, or from being in specified locations, and force them to get police permission to attend any public event, protest or meeting, and before publishing anything – even on social media.

Theresa May says the measures are aimed at those who would “spread, incite or justify hatred against people on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation or disability” – but this could be a slippery slope.

We already know how police and prosecutors have used anti-terrorism legislation against peaceful protestors – in many cases against people who were not even breaking any law, like the case against Juliet McBride, an anti-nuclear weapons protestor at Aldermarston.

I and my fellow appellants also know how the wrong people can end up being labelled ‘domestic extremists’ – and that’s not just journalists but also people who have done no more than organise environmental meetings.

While no one wants to empower the small minority of people in this country who represent real danger to the peace and security of the realm, the state already has enormous powers and resources at its disposal.

And to judge by its shabby record, the British state is all too ready to abuse its powers by turning them against people in ways that were never envisaged or intended by legislators, including legitimate and peaceful campaigners, protestors, dissidents of various stripes – and the media.

The last thing we should allow is for the state to take on yet greater powers, only for them to turn against us when it suits them, and further restrict the freedom of the media that holds an essential role in any free and democratic nation.

Adrian Arbib is a freelance journalist and photographer.

Petition: Stop the UK Government from Introducing ‘Extreme Disruption Orders’!

Shell has been forced to reveal documents as part of an ongoing legal case against them in the UK High Court brought by 15,000 community members in Bodo in the Niger Delta.

The documents expose the fact that Shell has repeatedly made false claims about the size and impact of two major oil spills at Bodo in an attempt to minimize its compensation payments.

The documents also show that Shell has known for years that its pipelines in the Niger Delta were old and faulty.

It emerged that Shell did not tell the truth to the court in The Hague in the legal action brought by Milieudefensie / Friends of the Earth Netherlands and four Nigerian farmers in 2013.

The action was taken against Shell due to major oil spills in three Nigerian villages. The documents show that Shell lied about the situation in the village of Goi.

100,000 barrels spilt, says AI – but Shell only admitted to 1,640

Shell’s joint investigation report for the first oil spill in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta claims only 1,640 barrels of oil were spilt in total.

However, based on an independent assessment published by US firm Accufacts Inc., Amnesty International calculated the total amount of oil spilt exceeded 100,000 barrels.

Shell initially denied this and repeatedly defended its far lower figure. In the court documents Shell admits its figure is wrong in both this case, and that of a second spill, also in 2008, in the same area.

The admission throws Shell’s assessment of hundreds of other Nigeria spills into doubt, as all spill investigations are conducted in the same manner.

The potential repercussions are that hundreds of thousands of people may have been denied or underpaid compensation based on similar underestimates of other spills.

Pipelines in very poor condition – and Shell knew it

The court documents also show for the first time that Shell knew for years that its oil pipelines were in very poor condition and likely to leak. The court papers include an internal memo by Shell based on a 2002 study that states:

“the remaining life of most of the [Shell] Oil Trunklines is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard”. 

In another internal document dated 10 December 2009 a Shell employee warns:

“[the company] is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years”.

In the Dutch case, Shell argued in court that spills from its pipeline in Goi could not be blamed on the company’s negligence. Shell’s lawyer pointed to the precautionary measures that Shell had taken, such as the installation of a Leak Detection System.

In part because of its reference to this system, in 2013 Shell was not held responsible for the spills in Goi. But the documents that Shell have been forced to divulge to a British court now, reveal that no Leak Detection System was in place.

Milieudefensie’s lawyer has submitted to the court in The Hague a portion of the documents that came to light via the British court. On 12 March of next year, this court will hold its first session in the appeal that Milieudefensie and the Nigerian farmers have brought against the 2013 verdict by the court in The Hague.

Shell’s toxic legacy

Shell is responsible for a toxic legacy in the Niger Delta. People are dying, sick, can’t feed themselves and have no clean water because Shell destroyed their environment by drilling for oil.

UNEP researched the destruction, publishing a report in 2011. The report concluded that Shell had not taken sufficient action to clean up and set out initial steps to rectify the damage.

Platform’s research in Ogoniland shows that Shell has still not cleaned up, almost 3 years after the UNEP report was published. Platform witnessed creeks and soil reeking of oil, in areas that Shell claims to have remediated.

Environment Advocacy Video from Media for Justice Project on Vimeo.

Communities report oil crusts on their land, rotten crops and poisoned fish. Emergency water supplies have not been delivered, forcing local residents to drink oil-polluted water.

A No Progress report by Platform and Friends of Earth Europe, Amnesty International, Environmental Rights Action and the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD) in August 2014 charted the systemic failure of the Nigerian Government and Shell to clean up horrendous oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

Action: Sign the petition to Shell’s CEO telling them to clean up oil pollution in the Niger Delta.

This article was originally published by Platform London.