The Democratic Republic of Congo’s prime minister has said that his government wants to find a way to explore for oil in the Virunga national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and will engage in negotiations with the UN body to “explore judiciously”.

Virunga, Africa’s oldest and most biodiverse park, has been on the list of ‘World Heritage in danger’ since 1994, as two decades of armed conflict and intense poaching by militias has taken its toll on the park’s ecosystem.

In 2007, the Congolese ministry of hydrocarbons awarded two oil concessions straddling Virunga’s boundaries to the French major Total, as well as Soco International, a British oil company registered on the London Stock Exchange.

While Total quickly agreed to never explore within the current limits of the park – even in the event of a boundaries change – Soco has carried out exploratory activities in Virunga, concluding a seismic study in July 2014.

The company said it will hand over the results of the seismic survey to the Congolese government in coming months. It is based on these results that the DRC will decide whether to explore further.

Oil exploration ‘incompatible’ with World Heritage designation

Famous for its mountain gorillas, among the last ones on the planet, Virunga is home to dozens of endangered species, mainly found in and around Lake Edward, the area where Soco has been exploring.

According to the UNESCO convention, the exploration and exploitation of oil is incompatible with the World Heritage Site status. To allow drilling for oil wells legally, the government will have to declassify parts of the park, or Virunga as a whole.

“It would not be a minor modification of the park limits. It would be a major modification that would impair the universal value of the park”, said Leila Maziz, the coordinator for the Congo Basin projects at UNESCO. She added that UNESCO has not received an official request from the Congolese government at this stage.

In its annual report issued last week, Soco stated that it will not be part of the discussions between the UN body and the government. However, prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo told the BBC that “Soco had brought the issue of the boundary to the government’s attention.”

Under international pressure following a global campaign by WWF and the documentary Virunga, Soco issued a statement that it would not seek to explore further in the park “unless Unesco and the DRC government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its world heritage status.”

Following that statement in June 2014, Soco’s deputy chief executive Roger Cagle told the Times that, nevertheless, DRC could apply for a boundary change.

An ‘alarming’ development

In an official letter seen by the Guardian, Matata Ponyo wrote that his government has been considering boundary change since July 2014, following the UNESCO summit.

“It is alarming that the Congolese prime minister says that Soco has raised the issue of Virunga’s boundary with the government and that the government appears to be moving towards declassifying some of the park”, Dyer said.

A spokeswoman for Soco said: “Soco has publicly stated that it has not and will not lobby the DRC government to redraw the boundaries of the Virunga national park.”

As part of its report, Soco also announced that it has hired the legal firm Clifford Chance to carry out an independent investigation into the allegations brought forward by the documentary ‘Virunga’, as well as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness.

In February, the Church of England threatened to sell its £3m share in Soco, over concerns relating to the company’s behaviour in DRC.

This article was originally published by the Guardian and is republished here by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s prime minister has said that his government wants to find a way to explore for oil in the Virunga national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and will engage in negotiations with the UN body to “explore judiciously”.

Virunga, Africa’s oldest and most biodiverse park, has been on the list of ‘World Heritage in danger’ since 1994, as two decades of armed conflict and intense poaching by militias has taken its toll on the park’s ecosystem.

In 2007, the Congolese ministry of hydrocarbons awarded two oil concessions straddling Virunga’s boundaries to the French major Total, as well as Soco International, a British oil company registered on the London Stock Exchange.

While Total quickly agreed to never explore within the current limits of the park – even in the event of a boundaries change – Soco has carried out exploratory activities in Virunga, concluding a seismic study in July 2014.

The company said it will hand over the results of the seismic survey to the Congolese government in coming months. It is based on these results that the DRC will decide whether to explore further.

Oil exploration ‘incompatible’ with World Heritage designation

Famous for its mountain gorillas, among the last ones on the planet, Virunga is home to dozens of endangered species, mainly found in and around Lake Edward, the area where Soco has been exploring.

According to the UNESCO convention, the exploration and exploitation of oil is incompatible with the World Heritage Site status. To allow drilling for oil wells legally, the government will have to declassify parts of the park, or Virunga as a whole.

“It would not be a minor modification of the park limits. It would be a major modification that would impair the universal value of the park”, said Leila Maziz, the coordinator for the Congo Basin projects at UNESCO. She added that UNESCO has not received an official request from the Congolese government at this stage.

In its annual report issued last week, Soco stated that it will not be part of the discussions between the UN body and the government. However, prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo told the BBC that “Soco had brought the issue of the boundary to the government’s attention.”

Under international pressure following a global campaign by WWF and the documentary Virunga, Soco issued a statement that it would not seek to explore further in the park “unless Unesco and the DRC government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its world heritage status.”

Following that statement in June 2014, Soco’s deputy chief executive Roger Cagle told the Times that, nevertheless, DRC could apply for a boundary change.

An ‘alarming’ development

In an official letter seen by the Guardian, Matata Ponyo wrote that his government has been considering boundary change since July 2014, following the UNESCO summit.

“It is alarming that the Congolese prime minister says that Soco has raised the issue of Virunga’s boundary with the government and that the government appears to be moving towards declassifying some of the park”, Dyer said.

A spokeswoman for Soco said: “Soco has publicly stated that it has not and will not lobby the DRC government to redraw the boundaries of the Virunga national park.”

As part of its report, Soco also announced that it has hired the legal firm Clifford Chance to carry out an independent investigation into the allegations brought forward by the documentary ‘Virunga’, as well as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness.

In February, the Church of England threatened to sell its £3m share in Soco, over concerns relating to the company’s behaviour in DRC.

This article was originally published by the Guardian and is republished here by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s prime minister has said that his government wants to find a way to explore for oil in the Virunga national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and will engage in negotiations with the UN body to “explore judiciously”.

Virunga, Africa’s oldest and most biodiverse park, has been on the list of ‘World Heritage in danger’ since 1994, as two decades of armed conflict and intense poaching by militias has taken its toll on the park’s ecosystem.

In 2007, the Congolese ministry of hydrocarbons awarded two oil concessions straddling Virunga’s boundaries to the French major Total, as well as Soco International, a British oil company registered on the London Stock Exchange.

While Total quickly agreed to never explore within the current limits of the park – even in the event of a boundaries change – Soco has carried out exploratory activities in Virunga, concluding a seismic study in July 2014.

The company said it will hand over the results of the seismic survey to the Congolese government in coming months. It is based on these results that the DRC will decide whether to explore further.

Oil exploration ‘incompatible’ with World Heritage designation

Famous for its mountain gorillas, among the last ones on the planet, Virunga is home to dozens of endangered species, mainly found in and around Lake Edward, the area where Soco has been exploring.

According to the UNESCO convention, the exploration and exploitation of oil is incompatible with the World Heritage Site status. To allow drilling for oil wells legally, the government will have to declassify parts of the park, or Virunga as a whole.

“It would not be a minor modification of the park limits. It would be a major modification that would impair the universal value of the park”, said Leila Maziz, the coordinator for the Congo Basin projects at UNESCO. She added that UNESCO has not received an official request from the Congolese government at this stage.

In its annual report issued last week, Soco stated that it will not be part of the discussions between the UN body and the government. However, prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo told the BBC that “Soco had brought the issue of the boundary to the government’s attention.”

Under international pressure following a global campaign by WWF and the documentary Virunga, Soco issued a statement that it would not seek to explore further in the park “unless Unesco and the DRC government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its world heritage status.”

Following that statement in June 2014, Soco’s deputy chief executive Roger Cagle told the Times that, nevertheless, DRC could apply for a boundary change.

An ‘alarming’ development

In an official letter seen by the Guardian, Matata Ponyo wrote that his government has been considering boundary change since July 2014, following the UNESCO summit.

“It is alarming that the Congolese prime minister says that Soco has raised the issue of Virunga’s boundary with the government and that the government appears to be moving towards declassifying some of the park”, Dyer said.

A spokeswoman for Soco said: “Soco has publicly stated that it has not and will not lobby the DRC government to redraw the boundaries of the Virunga national park.”

As part of its report, Soco also announced that it has hired the legal firm Clifford Chance to carry out an independent investigation into the allegations brought forward by the documentary ‘Virunga’, as well as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness.

In February, the Church of England threatened to sell its £3m share in Soco, over concerns relating to the company’s behaviour in DRC.

This article was originally published by the Guardian and is republished here by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s prime minister has said that his government wants to find a way to explore for oil in the Virunga national park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and will engage in negotiations with the UN body to “explore judiciously”.

Virunga, Africa’s oldest and most biodiverse park, has been on the list of ‘World Heritage in danger’ since 1994, as two decades of armed conflict and intense poaching by militias has taken its toll on the park’s ecosystem.

In 2007, the Congolese ministry of hydrocarbons awarded two oil concessions straddling Virunga’s boundaries to the French major Total, as well as Soco International, a British oil company registered on the London Stock Exchange.

While Total quickly agreed to never explore within the current limits of the park – even in the event of a boundaries change – Soco has carried out exploratory activities in Virunga, concluding a seismic study in July 2014.

The company said it will hand over the results of the seismic survey to the Congolese government in coming months. It is based on these results that the DRC will decide whether to explore further.

Oil exploration ‘incompatible’ with World Heritage designation

Famous for its mountain gorillas, among the last ones on the planet, Virunga is home to dozens of endangered species, mainly found in and around Lake Edward, the area where Soco has been exploring.

According to the UNESCO convention, the exploration and exploitation of oil is incompatible with the World Heritage Site status. To allow drilling for oil wells legally, the government will have to declassify parts of the park, or Virunga as a whole.

“It would not be a minor modification of the park limits. It would be a major modification that would impair the universal value of the park”, said Leila Maziz, the coordinator for the Congo Basin projects at UNESCO. She added that UNESCO has not received an official request from the Congolese government at this stage.

In its annual report issued last week, Soco stated that it will not be part of the discussions between the UN body and the government. However, prime minister Augustin Matata Ponyo told the BBC that “Soco had brought the issue of the boundary to the government’s attention.”

Under international pressure following a global campaign by WWF and the documentary Virunga, Soco issued a statement that it would not seek to explore further in the park “unless Unesco and the DRC government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its world heritage status.”

Following that statement in June 2014, Soco’s deputy chief executive Roger Cagle told the Times that, nevertheless, DRC could apply for a boundary change.

An ‘alarming’ development

In an official letter seen by the Guardian, Matata Ponyo wrote that his government has been considering boundary change since July 2014, following the UNESCO summit.

“It is alarming that the Congolese prime minister says that Soco has raised the issue of Virunga’s boundary with the government and that the government appears to be moving towards declassifying some of the park”, Dyer said.

A spokeswoman for Soco said: “Soco has publicly stated that it has not and will not lobby the DRC government to redraw the boundaries of the Virunga national park.”

As part of its report, Soco also announced that it has hired the legal firm Clifford Chance to carry out an independent investigation into the allegations brought forward by the documentary ‘Virunga’, as well as Human Rights Watch and Global Witness.

In February, the Church of England threatened to sell its £3m share in Soco, over concerns relating to the company’s behaviour in DRC.

This article was originally published by the Guardian and is republished here by kind permission via the Guardian Environment Network.

If you have ever wondered about what is blocking action against climate change, consider this.

There’s an estimated £19 trillion GBP ($28 trillion) worth of fossil fuel reserves in the world. Only 20% of these can be extracted and burned if the world is to stay below a 2°C temperature rise from pre-industrial levels and avoid catastrophic climate change.

The sensible solution to tackling global warming is thus clear and simple: keep these fossil fuels underground. This means that £15 trillion ($22 trillion) worth of carbon must remain untouched. To burn it would be tantamount to committing global suicide!

So, why is no real action being taken to tackle global warming? Because it’s all about capital: profit, not people and planet. It’s about the insatiable appetite for financial accumulation by fossil fuel companies, their shareholders and their agents.

To avoid a catastrophic temperature rise, industrial economies must urgently decarbonise the way they travel, power and move things. Even a 2°C rise in global temperature would have huge impacts. In Africa, this ‘safe’ 2° will in effect translate to a 3°C increase. The current ‘business as usual’ fossil fuel path we are on is set to burn up and fossilise the African continent.

And yet, though the stakes could not be higher, rather than halting the exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, corporations are digging deeper and using ever more extreme means of extraction. In this effort they are aided by their unprecedented political connections.

Papering over Africa’s scars

Chatham House’s Extractive Industries in Africa conference, which concludes today, has brought together miners and politicians to discuss strategies for exploiting Africa’s mineral resources. It is a clear indicator that the quest for profit does not consider the great harm inflicted on the continent and our shared climate.

Indeed, the damage done by the extractives sector goes beyond climate impacts and includes a wholesale disregard for human rights, the displacement of communities and unthinkable levels of pollution of land, water and the air.

The scars of mining in Africa are visible in the coal mines of South Africa, the gold mines of Ghana and Mali, as well as in the devastation caused by oil companies in the once verdant ecosystems of the Niger Delta. It is also well known that mining causes many of the persistent violent conflicts in Africa.

Sadly, however, ecological destruction for the purpose of appropriating ounces of minerals is often not seen as outright violence as it lays waste to the life support system that is our environment.

Designed to exclude civil society? That’s how it looks

By hosting this conference in London, not Africa, and charging exorbitant fees – £580 is the cheapest fee for non-member NGOs – Chatham House has effectively prevented the participation of African civil society and community members.

In doing so, the think tank has, intentionally or unintentionally, attempted to silence the people best able to describe the true costs of the extractive industries and to contest Chatham House’s conservative development narrative of ‘resource extraction = growth’.

Fearing that this may well be another Berlin Conference (1880) aimed at carving up and appropriating the African continent’s resources, we delivered an open letter from African Civil Society to conference organisers and participants on the afternoon of Monday 16th March.

In it we raise the voices of African communities and civil society and call upon Chatham House to show genuine leadership of thought. They must recognise that now is the time to think of the future of people and planet, not the health of the extractive industries.

Not a land grab – a continent grab!

Mining companies have learned new strategies for pulling the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting members of the public who invest in their stocks and thus back up the atrocious actions of these companies.

Through public-private partnerships with mining and fossil fuel companies, governments and other public bodies are sucked into unequal partnerships.

For the companies these partnerships offer legitimacy, a better image and a social license to operate as supposed agents of development. For public bodies and governments the equality of these relationships is merely illusory. A few will benefit, most will not.

Chatham House’s conference directly promotes such joint initiatives to give the extractive industries further access to Africa’s wealth. Yet it is clear that tactics such as public-private partnerships, so-called corporate social responsibility, good governance and transparency are too often mere green washing initiatives.

Despite these token efforts, Africa is experiencing new levels of ecosystem destruction and the intensification of poverty in impacted communities as part of what the No REDD Africa Network have described as a “continent grab“.

The time has come to challenge out-dated gatherings like that at Chatham House that exclude the voices of the people. We must move into the present by envisioning a fossil free future, reimagining our systems of design, consumption and use.

This cannot happen whilst we continue to sugar-coat destructive, unsustainable mining. The level of destruction already inflicted on Africa is nothing short of ecocide.

Rather than finding underhand ways to exploit new mineral and fossil fuel reserves in Africa, extractive companies should be challenged to invest in clean-up and environmental restoration activities.

These companies must not be allowed to position themselves as saviours when they have been the abusers of the African continent. They must be held accountable.

Read the letter to Chatham House from African Civil Society groups and their supporters here.

Nnimmo Bassey is a published poet, head of Home of Mother Earth Foundation, Nigeria and former Chair of Friends of the Earth International. He also runs Oilwatch International. Bassey’s poetry collections include ‘We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood’ (2002) and ‘I will Not Dance to Your Beat’ (Kraft Books, 2011). His latest book, ‘To Cook a Continent’ (Pambazuka Press, 2012) deals with destructive fossil fuel industries and the climate crisis in Africa. He was listed as one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2009 and won the 2010-Right Livelihood Award also known as the ‘Alternative Noble Prize.’

Sheila Berry is a psychologist and long time environmental justice activist from South Africa. She is currently fighting alongside South African communities in KwaZulu Natal to protect the iMfolozi Wilderness Area from Ibutho Coal’s plans to build Fuleni open-cast coal mine just 40m from the park’s edge.

Both Nnimmo and Sheila are members of Yes to life, No to Mining, a global solidarity movement of and for communities who wish to say no to mining out of a shared commitment to protect Earth for future generations.

The native peoples of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon basin, have just ended a month long occupation of 14 oil wells belonging to the Argentine company Pluspetrol.

Negotiations are still underway between the oil company and various other communities, represented by the indigenous association Feconaco.

This is not the first time Feconaco has occupied Pluspetrol’s operations. Such actions on the part of indigenous groups are relatively common.

Amazonian people don’t appear to have learned direct action from the Occupy Movement or from Euro-American protest traditions, despite the similar tactics. In the absence of functioning state protection, native people have always had to stand up for themselves.

Last September, for instance, Ka’apor people of northeastern Maranhão in Brazil published photographs of illegal loggers whom they had captured and tied up. They had taken matters into their own hands because the state was not protecting their territory.

The pioneers of indigenous direct action were the Kayapó of southern Pará in Brazil, who began monitoring goldmining and later logging in their territory, which senior leaders tolerated and indeed profited from.

In the early 1990s, environmental destruction and mercury poisoning led many Kayapó people to support a younger generation of leaders who expelled the miners and loggers from their territory. Images of the Kayapó have since become synonymous with indigenous environmentalism.

A history of exploitation

The relative success of direct action in recent decades contrasts with the often bloody encounters that went before, from which poorly-armed Indians invariably emerged badly.

Indigenous people in the Amazon have been the victims of the mining and energy industries for hundreds of years. The earliest colonists were motivated by greed for gold, and successive waves of exploitation have followed. The violent and coercive labour relations of the rubber boom (which ended a century ago) continue to affect how local people view trade and outsiders.

Fur hunters would shoot native people on sight throughout much of the 20th century. A good friend of mine, one of my principal informants in the field, fled Brazil as a child after his family were killed by fur hunters, and came to live with another tribe in the border area between French Guiana and Suriname.

Here, and across the Guiana region (the vast area of northeastern Amazonia bordered by the rivers Negro, Orinoco and the lower Amazon), mining for gold, diamonds and other minerals has led to significant social conflicts.

The region’s small communities are held together by personal ties of kinship and are highly dependent upon local ecosystems for their livelihoods. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the side-effects of extractive industries such as environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and lakes. But there are also social and medical effects: prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and the introduction of new diseases such as HIV.

Mining and oil companies generally earn a bad reputation for their Amazon activities, but projects devised in the name of ‘sustainability’ can have a negative impact too. Think in particular of the programme of hydroelectric dams being rolled out across Brazil.

Belo Monte, the world’s fourth largest hydroelectric dam, is being built across a southern tributary of the Amazon, for instance. It has already caused the influx of tens of thousands of workers, with severe strain on local social relations. Its impact on a vast ecosystem – a major hydrological basin – will be monumental.

Protests against the Belo Monte dam have failed, as a Brazilian government focused on development ploughed on with its project which is, after all, consistent with the political rhetoric of the ‘green economy’. Indigenous people are a small section of the electorate, and their voice cuts little sway in the national political scene.

Companies in the crosshairs

Protests against international private companies can arguably be more effective, in so far as the directors of these companies consider a poor public image to significantly affect their profits.

A legal battle raging for nearly two decades between indigenous peoples in Ecuador and the energy giant Chevron, contributed to the corporation earning the title of a Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behaviour by grassroots satirists in Davos earlier this year. Yet the corporate social responsibility activities which result from such pressures all too often seem to be largely cosmetic.

Where direct action has succeeded it is largely thanks to the construction of new kinds of alliances between indigenous leaders, progressive and socially oriented NGOs, and independent activists, including some academics.

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin have gradually, over the centuries, become more adept at getting organised and speaking the language of power. They’re now a key part of a global indigenous peoples’ movement which can call on an increasing number of activists with training in international law, documentary film making, or indeed anthropology, to assist campaigning efforts.

On a smaller scale, communities regularly engage with different projects brought by outsiders, including the ‘partnerships’ proposed by extractive industries. However, they just as often come to regret their entrance into the relationship.

Indigenous people come to realise that their understandings of fair exchanges are not the same, and sometimes not even compatible with those of their interlocutors, whether they be loggers, miners, or people looking for more intangible wealth such as traditional designs, music or ecological knowledge.

These experiences show that the conflicts that sometimes arise between native people and outsiders seeking to extract natural resources are not merely conflicts of material interests, and are not structured merely by an imbalance of power. They are on a more fundamental level conflicts of worldviews, of cosmovisiones, as Afro-Colombians sometimes call them.

Indigenous people have made vast efforts to speak across the gap between themselves and others who live and move in the capitalist world. The onus is now on outsiders, including postcolonial states and transnational organisations, to make a corresponding effort.

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Together with Jerome Lewis, he is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The native peoples of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon basin, have just ended a month long occupation of 14 oil wells belonging to the Argentine company Pluspetrol.

Negotiations are still underway between the oil company and various other communities, represented by the indigenous association Feconaco.

This is not the first time Feconaco has occupied Pluspetrol’s operations. Such actions on the part of indigenous groups are relatively common.

Amazonian people don’t appear to have learned direct action from the Occupy Movement or from Euro-American protest traditions, despite the similar tactics. In the absence of functioning state protection, native people have always had to stand up for themselves.

Last September, for instance, Ka’apor people of northeastern Maranhão in Brazil published photographs of illegal loggers whom they had captured and tied up. They had taken matters into their own hands because the state was not protecting their territory.

The pioneers of indigenous direct action were the Kayapó of southern Pará in Brazil, who began monitoring goldmining and later logging in their territory, which senior leaders tolerated and indeed profited from.

In the early 1990s, environmental destruction and mercury poisoning led many Kayapó people to support a younger generation of leaders who expelled the miners and loggers from their territory. Images of the Kayapó have since become synonymous with indigenous environmentalism.

A history of exploitation

The relative success of direct action in recent decades contrasts with the often bloody encounters that went before, from which poorly-armed Indians invariably emerged badly.

Indigenous people in the Amazon have been the victims of the mining and energy industries for hundreds of years. The earliest colonists were motivated by greed for gold, and successive waves of exploitation have followed. The violent and coercive labour relations of the rubber boom (which ended a century ago) continue to affect how local people view trade and outsiders.

Fur hunters would shoot native people on sight throughout much of the 20th century. A good friend of mine, one of my principal informants in the field, fled Brazil as a child after his family were killed by fur hunters, and came to live with another tribe in the border area between French Guiana and Suriname.

Here, and across the Guiana region (the vast area of northeastern Amazonia bordered by the rivers Negro, Orinoco and the lower Amazon), mining for gold, diamonds and other minerals has led to significant social conflicts.

The region’s small communities are held together by personal ties of kinship and are highly dependent upon local ecosystems for their livelihoods. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the side-effects of extractive industries such as environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and lakes. But there are also social and medical effects: prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and the introduction of new diseases such as HIV.

Mining and oil companies generally earn a bad reputation for their Amazon activities, but projects devised in the name of ‘sustainability’ can have a negative impact too. Think in particular of the programme of hydroelectric dams being rolled out across Brazil.

Belo Monte, the world’s fourth largest hydroelectric dam, is being built across a southern tributary of the Amazon, for instance. It has already caused the influx of tens of thousands of workers, with severe strain on local social relations. Its impact on a vast ecosystem – a major hydrological basin – will be monumental.

Protests against the Belo Monte dam have failed, as a Brazilian government focused on development ploughed on with its project which is, after all, consistent with the political rhetoric of the ‘green economy’. Indigenous people are a small section of the electorate, and their voice cuts little sway in the national political scene.

Companies in the crosshairs

Protests against international private companies can arguably be more effective, in so far as the directors of these companies consider a poor public image to significantly affect their profits.

A legal battle raging for nearly two decades between indigenous peoples in Ecuador and the energy giant Chevron, contributed to the corporation earning the title of a Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behaviour by grassroots satirists in Davos earlier this year. Yet the corporate social responsibility activities which result from such pressures all too often seem to be largely cosmetic.

Where direct action has succeeded it is largely thanks to the construction of new kinds of alliances between indigenous leaders, progressive and socially oriented NGOs, and independent activists, including some academics.

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin have gradually, over the centuries, become more adept at getting organised and speaking the language of power. They’re now a key part of a global indigenous peoples’ movement which can call on an increasing number of activists with training in international law, documentary film making, or indeed anthropology, to assist campaigning efforts.

On a smaller scale, communities regularly engage with different projects brought by outsiders, including the ‘partnerships’ proposed by extractive industries. However, they just as often come to regret their entrance into the relationship.

Indigenous people come to realise that their understandings of fair exchanges are not the same, and sometimes not even compatible with those of their interlocutors, whether they be loggers, miners, or people looking for more intangible wealth such as traditional designs, music or ecological knowledge.

These experiences show that the conflicts that sometimes arise between native people and outsiders seeking to extract natural resources are not merely conflicts of material interests, and are not structured merely by an imbalance of power. They are on a more fundamental level conflicts of worldviews, of cosmovisiones, as Afro-Colombians sometimes call them.

Indigenous people have made vast efforts to speak across the gap between themselves and others who live and move in the capitalist world. The onus is now on outsiders, including postcolonial states and transnational organisations, to make a corresponding effort.

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Together with Jerome Lewis, he is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The native peoples of Loreto, in Peru’s Amazon basin, have just ended a month long occupation of 14 oil wells belonging to the Argentine company Pluspetrol.

Negotiations are still underway between the oil company and various other communities, represented by the indigenous association Feconaco.

This is not the first time Feconaco has occupied Pluspetrol’s operations. Such actions on the part of indigenous groups are relatively common.

Amazonian people don’t appear to have learned direct action from the Occupy Movement or from Euro-American protest traditions, despite the similar tactics. In the absence of functioning state protection, native people have always had to stand up for themselves.

Last September, for instance, Ka’apor people of northeastern Maranhão in Brazil published photographs of illegal loggers whom they had captured and tied up. They had taken matters into their own hands because the state was not protecting their territory.

The pioneers of indigenous direct action were the Kayapó of southern Pará in Brazil, who began monitoring goldmining and later logging in their territory, which senior leaders tolerated and indeed profited from.

In the early 1990s, environmental destruction and mercury poisoning led many Kayapó people to support a younger generation of leaders who expelled the miners and loggers from their territory. Images of the Kayapó have since become synonymous with indigenous environmentalism.

A history of exploitation

The relative success of direct action in recent decades contrasts with the often bloody encounters that went before, from which poorly-armed Indians invariably emerged badly.

Indigenous people in the Amazon have been the victims of the mining and energy industries for hundreds of years. The earliest colonists were motivated by greed for gold, and successive waves of exploitation have followed. The violent and coercive labour relations of the rubber boom (which ended a century ago) continue to affect how local people view trade and outsiders.

Fur hunters would shoot native people on sight throughout much of the 20th century. A good friend of mine, one of my principal informants in the field, fled Brazil as a child after his family were killed by fur hunters, and came to live with another tribe in the border area between French Guiana and Suriname.

Here, and across the Guiana region (the vast area of northeastern Amazonia bordered by the rivers Negro, Orinoco and the lower Amazon), mining for gold, diamonds and other minerals has led to significant social conflicts.

The region’s small communities are held together by personal ties of kinship and are highly dependent upon local ecosystems for their livelihoods. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the side-effects of extractive industries such as environmental destruction and pollution of rivers and lakes. But there are also social and medical effects: prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction and the introduction of new diseases such as HIV.

Mining and oil companies generally earn a bad reputation for their Amazon activities, but projects devised in the name of ‘sustainability’ can have a negative impact too. Think in particular of the programme of hydroelectric dams being rolled out across Brazil.

Belo Monte, the world’s fourth largest hydroelectric dam, is being built across a southern tributary of the Amazon, for instance. It has already caused the influx of tens of thousands of workers, with severe strain on local social relations. Its impact on a vast ecosystem – a major hydrological basin – will be monumental.

Protests against the Belo Monte dam have failed, as a Brazilian government focused on development ploughed on with its project which is, after all, consistent with the political rhetoric of the ‘green economy’. Indigenous people are a small section of the electorate, and their voice cuts little sway in the national political scene.

Companies in the crosshairs

Protests against international private companies can arguably be more effective, in so far as the directors of these companies consider a poor public image to significantly affect their profits.

A legal battle raging for nearly two decades between indigenous peoples in Ecuador and the energy giant Chevron, contributed to the corporation earning the title of a Lifetime Award for Shameful Corporate Behaviour by grassroots satirists in Davos earlier this year. Yet the corporate social responsibility activities which result from such pressures all too often seem to be largely cosmetic.

Where direct action has succeeded it is largely thanks to the construction of new kinds of alliances between indigenous leaders, progressive and socially oriented NGOs, and independent activists, including some academics.

Indigenous people in the Amazon basin have gradually, over the centuries, become more adept at getting organised and speaking the language of power. They’re now a key part of a global indigenous peoples’ movement which can call on an increasing number of activists with training in international law, documentary film making, or indeed anthropology, to assist campaigning efforts.

On a smaller scale, communities regularly engage with different projects brought by outsiders, including the ‘partnerships’ proposed by extractive industries. However, they just as often come to regret their entrance into the relationship.

Indigenous people come to realise that their understandings of fair exchanges are not the same, and sometimes not even compatible with those of their interlocutors, whether they be loggers, miners, or people looking for more intangible wealth such as traditional designs, music or ecological knowledge.

These experiences show that the conflicts that sometimes arise between native people and outsiders seeking to extract natural resources are not merely conflicts of material interests, and are not structured merely by an imbalance of power. They are on a more fundamental level conflicts of worldviews, of cosmovisiones, as Afro-Colombians sometimes call them.

Indigenous people have made vast efforts to speak across the gap between themselves and others who live and move in the capitalist world. The onus is now on outsiders, including postcolonial states and transnational organisations, to make a corresponding effort.

Marc Brightman is Lecturer in Social and Environmental Sustainability in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. Together with Jerome Lewis, he is co-founder and co-director of the Centre for the Anthropology of Sustainability.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The newly elected Labor government of Queensland last week allowed the expansion of the Abbot Point port that’s an integral part of Indian coal importer Adani’s AUS $16.5 billion Carmichael mine in the Galilee basin.

The go-ahead looks like good news for Adani, all the more so after the Labor party emphasised environmental impacts on the Great Barrier Reef as a major concern during the election campaign.

But there’s a downside: the new administration won’t provide any funding for the project. By contrast, the state’s former National Liberal government had promised to pay upfront for all the dredging and invest $100s of millions in the 500-mile railway linking the coal mine to the port.

And while the permit includes permission to excavate a channel through the Great Barrier Reef to Abbott Point, all the dredged material would have to be deposited on land, reducing damage to the marine environment but hugely increasing costs.

Now one of the major investors in Adani’s Carmichael mine – State Bank of India – is preparing to go back on a loan deal for US$1 billion initially agreed last year, according to sources speaking to Reuters. The bank is under pressure to reduce its bad debts.

The low coal price, lack of profitability of Queensland coal mines, and long timeline of the project were factors in the decision, the wire reports. And as a commodities analyst told the FT: “Right now with thermal coal at $60 a tonne and the Galilee coal 500-odd kilometres from port, funding these projects doesn’t seem viable.”

This follows a massive blow to the project last year when a host of US and European banks – including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, as well as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs – all refused to fund Adani’s plans to expand the port, which risks doing damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

The Adani mine, if it’s built, will be the largest thermal coal mine in Australia, producing 60 million tonnes a year over its proposed 60 year lifespan. The projects involve building ports and railroads, as well as the mines, adding up to tens of billions of dollars.

India and China clamp down on coal imports

India intends to reduce its dependence on coal imports, and its minister for power has openly admitted that it will be challenging to find a use for all of India’s domestic coal production – potentially contracting the market for Adani’s coal.

If India follows China’s lead in tackling air pollution from burning coal – which as reported by Greenpeace, is worse in Delhi than Beijing – this could be further limited.

Adani, which is India’s the biggest coal importer, has also scaled up its investment into renewables – possibly a symbolic move amid the political turning of the tide against imported coal.

A senior executive for the company says that the project may find alternative buyers in China and South Korea, with steelmakers Posco and electronics firm LG reportedly signing letters of intent to buy a total of $9 million of coal – while Chinese energy firms have earmarked another four million tonnes.

This unexpected news has raised questions from the Indian Stock Exchange. Adani’s announcement is surprising because seaborne thermal coal prices have been at an all time low in an oversupplied market, removing the need for companies to be signing off-take agreements with a greenfield project that is struggling to come to financial close.

Also, the Chinese government is currently significantly reducing its dependence on imported coal as part of its strategy to rid itself of heavy air pollution.

Apart from the five-year low price of coal, continued opposition by green groups add uncertainty to whether Adani will be able to get all the finance it needs.

Risk to the Great Barrier Reef

One of the main environmental concerns has been the dredging of the seabed and dumping of around 2 million cubic metres of material near the Great Barrier Reef as part of the expansion of the port overseen by Adani – which would directly affected the health of the coral reef.

The Australian government banned all dredge dumping in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in January amid worries that UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee may label the reef “in danger” this year – and the new rules agreed with the new Labor Queensland government mean material from dredging would now be dumped on land.

But the dredging to expand the coal port would still take place in Great Barrier Reef waters.

Another threat to the reef is the burning of the coal from the mines in the Galilee Basin. When burnt, the coal from the Carmichael project will add 128.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to the atmosphere, which will accelerate climate change and lead to increased ocean acidification. This is one of the greatest threats to the long term health of the global and national treasure.

The burning of the Galilee coal also does not fit into any energy scenario if we are to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – the internationally agreed threshold beyond which catastrophic consequences are expected.

The transportation of the coal on ships and trains is also likely increase urban and industrial pollution into the coastal environment and risks degrading its delicate ecosystem.

But if the Carmichael project is unable to secure financing and stalls, then the benefits will be huge – several other major coal projects planned for the 250,000 square mile Galilee Basin could also find themselves stranded with no way to get their coal to market – or as an Australian might put it, ‘up the creek without a paddle’.

We are now just under 50 days from a general election and the badger cull issue has taken centre stage in a wider debate about wildlife protection and animal welfare, which could help decide the outcome.

The Labour Party have even put the badger on the front of their wildlife protection and animal welfare manifesto, as they make a clear election commitment to stop both the pilot culls and a wider national roll out of the policy should they form a Government.

With a recent MORI poll showing that badger culling was the 5th most common issue of complaint to MPs in 2014, both MP’s and prospective candidates know the disastrous policy is political poison on the door step during the election campaign. However, David Cameron is now stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to killing badgers.

Despite recently telling first time voters on Sky News that the badger cull is “probably the most unpopular policy for which I am responsible”, he cannot afford to lose the votes – and money – of landowners and farmers by dumping the policy this side of the election.

The answer? Easy! Let Liz Truss take the flak

So he’s playing for time by letting his Environment Secretary Liz Truss hold out the possibility of an extension of the policy should the Tories form another Government after 7th May, without making any concrete commitment on how this will be achieved.

On 3rd March after almost six months of avoidance and delay and a personal intervention from the Prime Minister, Liz Truss finally sat down with members of the Badger Trust Board to have a frank and open discussion on the badger cull policy.

Just how sensitive the badger cull issue has become was clear from the start, when Liz Truss suggested our discussions should remain private and off the record. This request was ludicrous in view of the level of public interest in our meeting and the fact that both the BBC and ITV News were waiting on the steps of DEFRA’s offices, to interview me the minute I left the building.

The meeting did not deliver any surprise U-turn on killing badgers, but it was noticeable how lacking in confidence and isolated the Secretary of State appeared when it came to defending the disastrous cull policy.

Despite trotting out the now familiar statements about following the advice of her Chief Vet Nigel Gibbens, on the need to control the spread of TB in wildlife as well as cattle, it was clear her heart was not really in it.

Nigel Gibbens, the UK’s Chief Veterinary Officer, was also very noticeable by his absence from the meeting, which sent a clear message that he is unwilling to enter into any further political controversy on the failed culling policy, this side of the General Election.

Policy in paralysis

And despite statements made at the NFU annual conference a few weeks week before, the Secretary of State was unable to give any clear commitment on a national roll out of the policy should the Conservatives form a Government after 7th May.

Bold statements from her predecessor about a 25-year cull rolled out to 40 new areas of England by 2020 were not repeated. With over £15 million being spent on just 2 years of culling in Somerset and Gloucestershire alone, this came as no great surprise.

The fact that Natural England are also considering revoking the Gloucestershire cull licence due to major failures in meeting cull targets, is also no doubt causing a major political headache for the Secretary of State.

The NFU sense the Government is losing its appetite for badger culling and this explains why their President Meurig Raymond, was willing to risk the reputation of the NFU by backing claims by livestock vet Roger Blowey that culling badgers in Gloucestershire has significantly lowered TB in cattle, without any supporting independent scientific evidence.

These claims also fly in the face of public statements from Nigel Gibbens, that any lowering of TB rates in cattle is down to tightening of cattle TB testing and movement controls, not badger culling or vaccination.

Owen Paterson might have been willing to throw caution to the wind to back the NFU’s claims on social media. But Truss knows she would be risking what little is left of DEFRA’s reputation for science based policy making, if she followed his example.

Badger cull has failed tax payers, farmers and wildlife

The level of incompetence, negligence and deceit surrounding the badger cull policy is staggering. The policy has cost huge amounts of public money, free shooting the killing method being tested has proved a disastrous failure, none of the badgers killed have been tested for TB, cull targets have been missed and many badgers have died long painful deaths.

What makes all this worse is that the Government together with the NFU developed a risk register for the badger cull policy in secret in 2010, which accurately foresaw all these failures. However this document was hidden from public view and was only released after a two year fight in the High Court, with the Badger Trust and the Information Commissioner joining forces against the Government on freedom of information grounds.

The badger cull policy has driven a wedge between the public and farming industry, led to a significant increase in the illegal persecution of badgers and proved a dangerous distraction from the need for more effective TB cattle testing systems and the introduction of a TB cattle vaccine.

Playing politics with wildlife has proved a dangerous game with no clear winners. The badger cull policy has failed tax payers, farmers and our wildlife and the vast majority of the public, MPs and scientists with expertise in animal health and disease control, now believe it should come to an end.

However the badger cull was a political policy agreed by David Cameron prior to the 2010 election to help win votes from the farming and landowning community.

Despite its catastrophic failure the Prime Minister is holding on to the wreckage for his political life and he will keep playing the badger blame game, as he needs every vote to remain in office after 7th May.

Dominic Dyer is CEO of the Badger Trust & Policy Advisor for Care for the Wild.