Sometimes you just fall right into a story.

In late 2005, I returned to Tibet intent on updating my guidebook to the troubled region, and to check out the completion of the new railway linking China with Tibet for the first time.

The new Golmud-Lhasa line was completed at a cost of over US$4 billion, more than the entire budget spent in Tibet on education and healthcare since the Chinese invasion in 1950. This railway was not built for philanthropic purposes.

My railway investigation got derailed when, out of curiosity, I decided to take a one-day rafting trip from Lhasa. This was a pure adrenaline rush: riding the wildest whitewater I’d ever been on. But the rafting guides lamented the fact that the rivers were being compromised by the building of massive dams by Chinese engineers.

I’d never heard of major dam-building in Tibet. And yet it made perfect sense: the biggest drops of any river in the world are in Tibet, so there’s huge hydro potential. The more I delved into this hydro development, the scarier it became.

It soon became evident that China had its hand on the tap for the water that feeds most of Asia through Tibet’s mighty rivers-the Mekohng, Salween and Yarlung Tsangp (Brahmaputra) in particular.

I took as much undercover video footage as I could on this trip not knowing what I would do with it, but shooting anyway. I figured, as a guidebook writer, if I didn’t know anything about these new megadams, few Westerners would know about them either.

Video: Plundering Tibet TRAILER from ThunderHorse Media on Vimeo.

China’s reign of terror over Tibet

China severely restricts access to foreign journalists entering Tibet, and imposes a reign of terror to silence Tibetans within Tibet. Despite this, Tibetans have bravely protested against dams and mining at great risk, with a number killed, injured or locked away for long prison terms.

Under the highly repressive Chinese regime, Tibetans have been given sentences of five years or more for simply writing an email, making a phone-call or singing a song critical of Chinese policy.

Back in 1986, when I cycled from Lhasa to Kathmandu, I had been dazzled by Tibet’s incredible wide-open spaces, drinking in the towering snowcaps, the ethereal lakes, and huge grasslands. When you are on a mountain bike, you feel rather insignificant next to the highest peaks on earth.

Our small group of mountain-bikers had skirted Lake Yamdrok Tso, a turquoise beauty that is highly revered by Tibetans. But ten years later, the lake had been defiled by a highly controversial pumped-storage hydro system, supplying energy to Lhasa. Tibetan protest to save the sacred lake fell on deaf ears.

I assumed that Tibet’s incredible natural beauty would always be there for future travellers to enjoy. But instead, I found it changing right before my eyes. What struck me was the incredible speed of change accelerated by the arrival of the new railway in Lhasa.

The building of that railway was facilitated by the involvement of Montreal-based Bombardier and Power Corporation (building special high-altitude rail-cars), Nortel (communication network for the Lhasa railway), and other corporations from Canada.

That railway makes it possible to exploit Tibet’s resources on a large scale, by bringing Chinese migrants workers in by the train-load, and by shipping minerals out economically. The migrant workers build dams or work at mining sites. Up to 20,000 Chinese migrant workers might descend on a remote valley in Tibet to build a megadam.

The documentary I had to make

Returning to Vancouver in 2006, I could find very little about damming Tibet’s rivers in Western media, so I set out to make a short documentary about it-a film called Meltdown in Tibet. I didn’t know how to put a film together, but in the digital age, you can basically do it all on a laptop.

There is a steep learning curve involved in mastering the software. One skill transferable from years of writing was the ability to edit video to forge a storyline. Cutting and pasting of video, stills and music came naturally to me. The documentary was finally completed in 2009.

It screened on the fringes of the UN Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen, in December that year, and at dozens of other venues worldwide. It didn’t screen as a great visual experience. It screened because few people had heard of the environmental issues portrayed.

In 2010, I went back to Tibet to shoot video for another short documentary about the sad demise of Tibetan nomads who have been forcibly shifted off their traditional grassland habitat and moved into concrete ghettoes.

Paper ‘national parks’ to expel nomads, make way for development

On an earlier trip, my guide Dorje told me that Chinese officials created massive national parks in Tibet, but these were ‘paper parks’ – made as an excuse to get rid of nomads.

Tibetan nomads are the stewards of the vast grasslands of Tibet. Over the course of 4,000 years, they have developed an ingenious culture that depends on their herds of yaks, sheep and goats.

The yak provides everything from milk, cheese and curd to shelter (yak-hair tents), clothing (yak-skin boots) and ropes. The comical yak resembles a cow with dreadlocks. They derive from wild yak stock.

Wild yaks are double the size of domesticated yaks, and your chances of spotting one are rare: there are thought to be fewer than a thousand wild yaks remaining on the Tibetan plateau.

Their numbers were annihilated by Chinese settlers and military, who machine-gunned them for food and for sport. The wild yak has gone the way of the bison in 19th-century America. Similar to native American peoples like the Blackfoot Indians, Tibetan nomads have become beggars in their own land, with their culture decimated by the Chinese policy of resettlement.

The great Tibetan mining disaster

As an excuse to settle Tibetan nomads, Chinese propagandists blame deteriorating grassland quality on overgrazing by nomads, but the fact is that extensive Chinese mining is the main culprit. Tibet has huge reserves of lithium, copper, gold and other precious metals.

And here, Canadian mining corporations have been at the forefront. These mining companies are exploiting mineral, oil and gas resources in a region occupied by an invading force (China), without regard for the environment, and without consulting the Tibetans – who vigorously oppose mining because it poisons their rivers, their livestock and their crops.

The poisoning of rivers due to extensive mining in Tibet now has the potential to go all the way downstream into Asia, threatening the lives of millions of people stretching from Vietnam to Pakistan.

A handful of Canadian mining corporations, mostly based in Vancouver, set up operations in Tibet: they were needed for their advanced technology and know-how. These included Continental Minerals, Sterling Group; and Inter-Citic, El Dorado Gold Corp and Tri-River Ventures.

But as the mines moved closer to production, Chinese officials stonewalled on permits, and most of those companies were forced to sell out to state-run mining ventures.

This has not happened to China Gold International Resources, based in Vancouver because it is essentially owned by the Chinese Communist Party, which is using the Canadian stock market to raise revenue to exploit Tibet’s valuable resources.

In 2010, China Gold acquired the extensive copper-gold mining site of Gyama, east of Lhasa. The venture was touted as a model mine, using the best mining practices. But on March 29, 2013, a massive mud-rock avalanche buried 83 miners at a mountain location near Gyama. Critics of the operation claim this tragedy occurred due to hasty mining done without concern for safety.

The story of Tibet’s destruction must be told!

Security is very tight at remote mining locations. I couldn’t go to Tibet to get video footage of mines. Instead I dropped in on mining sites from 400 kilometres overhead, virtually riding a satellite relaying Google Earth satellite imagery.

After obtaining permission from Google Earth to use flyovers, I put together a short documentary about mineral exploitation in Tibet, called ‘Plundering Tibet‘, released for film festival screenings in conjunction with the new book.

With the mountain of research accumulated from making these three short documentaries, I starting thinking about a book. I approached a literary agent who shopped it around and landed a major publisher in New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Nine years after that rafting trip in 2005, the book version of ‘Meltdown in Tibet‘ has finally been published. It took the legwork of three documentaries to pull all the research together. The challenge was to take the mass of information and distill it and make the situation clear to the average reader. That’s a skill I learned from writing guidebooks.

The story of the devastation of Tibet’s environment, and the tremendous impact this will soon have on the nations downstream in Asia, simply must be told.

This environmental horror story has been under-reported by Western media or not reported at all, hence the necessity of an unusually long subtitle for the book: China’s reckless destruction of ecosystems from the highlands of Tibet to the deltas of Asia.

The story chose me. I fell into it. It has been a wilder and scarier ride than any rafting trip.

Michael Buckley is an adventure travel writer, environmental investigator, author of ‘Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia‘, and the maker of the documentary film ‘Plundering Tibet’.

The book: ‘Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia‘ by Michael Buckley is published by Palgrave MacMillan.

The film: ‘Plundering Tibet‘ is a documentary about damming Tibet. See also the Facebook page: facebook.com/MeltdowninTibet/.

This article was originally published on BC Booklook.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is facing mounting criticism after it was revealed that she met with pro-fracking Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe on the same day that Scotland announced a moratorium on fracking.

The January 28 meeting between Sturgeon and Ratcliffe coincided with a U-turn from Ineos.  Just 48 hours prior, the firm had spoken out against a moratorium, saying delays would risk the collapse of UK manufacturing, according to the Herald Scotland.

Yet, following the moratorium announcement from Fergus Ewing, SNP energy minister, Ineos welcomed the moratorium. Industry body UK Onshore Oil and Gas performed a similar U-turn when the moratorium was announced.

Secret meeting

The Scottish Government was widely praised in January for halting all planning consents for unconventional oil and gas extraction until further research on its impact is conducted.

However, environmentalists are now sceptical as to what was said during the secret meeting between Sturgeon and Ratcliffe to allow for Ineos’ U-turn.

“What promises were made in exchange for their public support for the moratorium? I fear that local communities are being stitched up by backroom deals”, said Ed Pybus, spokesman for Frack Off Scotland.

This was echoed by Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, who told the Herald that communities across Scotland would be “alarmed to learn that the First Minister was meeting Ineos on the very day of the announcement of the moratorium.”

He added: “Ineos plan 1,400 wells across Scotland and seem to be carrying on as if there was no moratorium.”

Many questions

Questions on whether testing and drilling is covered by the moratorium raised in February by Lewis Macdonald, Labour shadow energy minister, continue to go unanswered.

Macdonald said: “People are bound to wonder what Nicola Sturgeon had to say to Ineos while her energy minister was on his feet in the Scottish Parliament claiming that he was imposing a moratorium on fracking.

“Was she apologising to them for doing it? Was she telling them to forget about fracking in Scotland? Or did Nicola Sturgeon meet Ineos to tell them not to worry about the moratorium, it would only apply until after the next Holyrood election, and in the meantime they could explore for fracking opportunities anywhere in Scotland that took their fancy?”

The date of the meeting between Sturgeon and Ineos was revealed under a freedom of information request. According to a spokeswoman for the Scottish Government, the meeting was scheduled in December, long before Ewing’s parliamentary statement.

Kyla Mandel is Deputy Editor of DeSmog UK and tweets @kylamandel.

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK.

So far much of the criticism of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty between the US and EU has centred on the Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).

This would potentially allow corporations to protect their investments by preventing democratic decisions that might reduce their profits.

It is therefore encouraging that MEPs in the Employment and Social Affairs Committee recently voted to exclude ISDS and public services from TTIP, something Greens have worked hard to see.

However, it is vital that we do not lose sight of the many other threats posed by this dangerous treaty, particularly the risks to our food and farming system.

In my position on the Agriculture Committee in the European Parliament, I am preparing the Green amendments and contribution to the agriculture ‘opinion’ to forward to the trade committee, which is taking the lead on the Parliament’s position on TTIP.

The Committee will vote on our amendments tomorrow, on 14th April. But despite expressions of support from other parties’ MEPs for our demands to preserve European standards on food and farming, we have compelling reasons to fear a last-minute betrayal.

‘Harmonisation’ puts Europe’s agriculture at risk

Agriculture is the most vulnerable sector of the European economy to greater trade liberalisation and particularly to what is euphemistically referred to as the harmonisation of standards.

This is because, in general, European politicians have worked to improve and defend animal welfare standards over many decades and stand up to the corporations pushing risky and unnecessary technologies, particularly GM crops but also damaging pesticides.

In our opinion we explicitly defend the precautionary principle: the onus should be upon any new technology to prove its safety rather than on regulators to prove that it is unsafe. This is the process we have traditionally followed in the EU but the reverse is the case in the US, which is why the drive to harmonise is so potentially damaging.

As Europeans we have refused to sacrifice higher standards for the sake of a competitive ‘race to the bottom’ on animal welfare and food quality for the sake of price.

Another serious threat from TTIP comes in the form of the process known as ‘cross bargaining’. This is where it is accepted that rule changes that have detrimental impacts for certain sectors will be compensated for by ensuring other sectors are protected or boosted.

So there is a danger we may see our land-based enterprises being sacrificed in order to protect jobs in other sectors, such as finance. Having been allowed to undermine the small business sector by starving them of investment, bankers may undermine farmers and rural enterprises as well.

The attack is already under way

Lobbying from the agribusiness and food industry over TTIP has been intensive; far outnumbering all other sectors.

Corporations are seeking to use TTIP to attack and force down EU standards under the false pretext that these standards should be based on ‘sound science’ – a corporate public relations euphemism for ‘industry-friendly science’ and a direct attack on the precautionary principle.

There are also a host of threats around the harmonisation of meat production and animal welfare standards between the US and EU. For example,

• the US meat industry wants the EU to begin treating its meat with chemicals, such as chlorine in poultry, to eliminate harmful bacteria;
• they want the EU to remove the ban on the use of antibiotics as growth promoters;
• they would like to see faster approvals of new GMO animal feeds and weaken EU animal welfare provisions such as pig housing regulations.

And when it comes to animal slaughter in the US, there is very little oversight surrounding the way animals are treated.

There is just one humane slaughter inspector for every one million animals. Regulations on the slaughter of poultry are particularly lax as birds are not covered by humane slaughter law and undercover investigations have even revealed intentional animal cruelty.

This is an area where few European citizens would even deem to countenance ‘harmonisation’.

A Con-Lab Euro-stitch-up in the making

After taking on the brief to follow the Agriculture Committee’s response to TTIP for the Greens I was cautiously pleased by the warm words spoken by politicians from other political groups in the initial meeting on this topic. However my optimism was misplaced.

In an unprecedented rejection of protocol, the two co-rapporteurs, from the two groups where Labour and the Tories sit, actually drew up compromise amendments without consulting several of the other groups, including the Greens.

This is the strongest clue yet that the ‘grand coalition’ of central political groups, currently running the European Parliament, is preparing to sell out our small and medium sized farmers and avoid scrutiny and criticism of the deal.

In response we have submitted alternative compromises with the ‘5-star Movement’ from Italy and are now working on finding support for these.

We will also introduce strong green amendments, directly to the trade committee, chief amongst which are the defence of the precautionary principle and a requirement that each party to the Treaty adopt the standards of whichever authority sets these highest.

These may be lost but nonetheless represent principles that must be defended. Of course, as Greens, we would like to see the ultimate amendment: the scrapping of the whole treaty.

The vote on our amendments will take place in the Agriculture Committee tomorrow, 14th April. Extensive coverage and reporting will help ensure MEPs feel the pressure to do what is right, not just for the farming community, but to all those who eat their produce.

We must heed the risks TTIP poses to our food and farming system, or it could end up sacrificing Europe’s land-based economy on the altar of banking and finance.

Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP for South-West England. Formerly Professor of Economics at Roehampton University, she speaks for the Green Party of England and Wales on finance issues, and is the author of ‘Green Economics’ (2009), ‘Environment and Economy’ (2011) and ‘The Bioregional Economy’ (2012) as well as numerous academic papers.

Links

• theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2741624/ttip_is_a_lethal_attack_on_food_safety_and_animal_welfare.html
• corporateeurope.org/international-trade/2014/07/ttip-lose-lose-deal-food-and-farming
• iatp.org/files/2014_05_16_10ReasonsTTIP_SS.pdf
• foodsafetynews.com/2015/04/poultry-industry-misleads-the-public-about-the-humaneness-of-slaughter/

Sometimes you just fall right into a story.

In late 2005, I returned to Tibet intent on updating my guidebook to the troubled region, and to check out the completion of the new railway linking China with Tibet for the first time.

The new Golmud-Lhasa line was completed at a cost of over US$4 billion, more than the entire budget spent in Tibet on education and healthcare since the Chinese invasion in 1950. This railway was not built for philanthropic purposes.

My railway investigation got derailed when, out of curiosity, I decided to take a one-day rafting trip from Lhasa. This was a pure adrenaline rush: riding the wildest whitewater I’d ever been on. But the rafting guides lamented the fact that the rivers were being compromised by the building of massive dams by Chinese engineers.

I’d never heard of major dam-building in Tibet. And yet it made perfect sense: the biggest drops of any river in the world are in Tibet, so there’s huge hydro potential. The more I delved into this hydro development, the scarier it became.

It soon became evident that China had its hand on the tap for the water that feeds most of Asia through Tibet’s mighty rivers-the Mekohng, Salween and Yarlung Tsangp (Brahmaputra) in particular.

I took as much undercover video footage as I could on this trip not knowing what I would do with it, but shooting anyway. I figured, as a guidebook writer, if I didn’t know anything about these new megadams, few Westerners would know about them either.

Video: Plundering Tibet TRAILER from ThunderHorse Media on Vimeo.

China’s reign of terror over Tibet

China severely restricts access to foreign journalists entering Tibet, and imposes a reign of terror to silence Tibetans within Tibet. Despite this, Tibetans have bravely protested against dams and mining at great risk, with a number killed, injured or locked away for long prison terms.

Under the highly repressive Chinese regime, Tibetans have been given sentences of five years or more for simply writing an email, making a phone-call or singing a song critical of Chinese policy.

Back in 1986, when I cycled from Lhasa to Kathmandu, I had been dazzled by Tibet’s incredible wide-open spaces, drinking in the towering snowcaps, the ethereal lakes, and huge grasslands. When you are on a mountain bike, you feel rather insignificant next to the highest peaks on earth.

Our small group of mountain-bikers had skirted Lake Yamdrok Tso, a turquoise beauty that is highly revered by Tibetans. But ten years later, the lake had been defiled by a highly controversial pumped-storage hydro system, supplying energy to Lhasa. Tibetan protest to save the sacred lake fell on deaf ears.

I assumed that Tibet’s incredible natural beauty would always be there for future travellers to enjoy. But instead, I found it changing right before my eyes. What struck me was the incredible speed of change accelerated by the arrival of the new railway in Lhasa.

The building of that railway was facilitated by the involvement of Montreal-based Bombardier and Power Corporation (building special high-altitude rail-cars), Nortel (communication network for the Lhasa railway), and other corporations from Canada.

That railway makes it possible to exploit Tibet’s resources on a large scale, by bringing Chinese migrants workers in by the train-load, and by shipping minerals out economically. The migrant workers build dams or work at mining sites. Up to 20,000 Chinese migrant workers might descend on a remote valley in Tibet to build a megadam.

The documentary I had to make

Returning to Vancouver in 2006, I could find very little about damming Tibet’s rivers in Western media, so I set out to make a short documentary about it-a film called Meltdown in Tibet. I didn’t know how to put a film together, but in the digital age, you can basically do it all on a laptop.

There is a steep learning curve involved in mastering the software. One skill transferable from years of writing was the ability to edit video to forge a storyline. Cutting and pasting of video, stills and music came naturally to me. The documentary was finally completed in 2009.

It screened on the fringes of the UN Climate Change Conference, in Copenhagen, in December that year, and at dozens of other venues worldwide. It didn’t screen as a great visual experience. It screened because few people had heard of the environmental issues portrayed.

In 2010, I went back to Tibet to shoot video for another short documentary about the sad demise of Tibetan nomads who have been forcibly shifted off their traditional grassland habitat and moved into concrete ghettoes.

Paper ‘national parks’ to expel nomads, make way for development

On an earlier trip, my guide Dorje told me that Chinese officials created massive national parks in Tibet, but these were ‘paper parks’ – made as an excuse to get rid of nomads.

Tibetan nomads are the stewards of the vast grasslands of Tibet. Over the course of 4,000 years, they have developed an ingenious culture that depends on their herds of yaks, sheep and goats.

The yak provides everything from milk, cheese and curd to shelter (yak-hair tents), clothing (yak-skin boots) and ropes. The comical yak resembles a cow with dreadlocks. They derive from wild yak stock.

Wild yaks are double the size of domesticated yaks, and your chances of spotting one are rare: there are thought to be fewer than a thousand wild yaks remaining on the Tibetan plateau.

Their numbers were annihilated by Chinese settlers and military, who machine-gunned them for food and for sport. The wild yak has gone the way of the bison in 19th-century America. Similar to native American peoples like the Blackfoot Indians, Tibetan nomads have become beggars in their own land, with their culture decimated by the Chinese policy of resettlement.

The great Tibetan mining disaster

As an excuse to settle Tibetan nomads, Chinese propagandists blame deteriorating grassland quality on overgrazing by nomads, but the fact is that extensive Chinese mining is the main culprit. Tibet has huge reserves of lithium, copper, gold and other precious metals.

And here, Canadian mining corporations have been at the forefront. These mining companies are exploiting mineral, oil and gas resources in a region occupied by an invading force (China), without regard for the environment, and without consulting the Tibetans – who vigorously oppose mining because it poisons their rivers, their livestock and their crops.

The poisoning of rivers due to extensive mining in Tibet now has the potential to go all the way downstream into Asia, threatening the lives of millions of people stretching from Vietnam to Pakistan.

A handful of Canadian mining corporations, mostly based in Vancouver, set up operations in Tibet: they were needed for their advanced technology and know-how. These included Continental Minerals, Sterling Group; and Inter-Citic, El Dorado Gold Corp and Tri-River Ventures.

But as the mines moved closer to production, Chinese officials stonewalled on permits, and most of those companies were forced to sell out to state-run mining ventures.

This has not happened to China Gold International Resources, based in Vancouver because it is essentially owned by the Chinese Communist Party, which is using the Canadian stock market to raise revenue to exploit Tibet’s valuable resources.

In 2010, China Gold acquired the extensive copper-gold mining site of Gyama, east of Lhasa. The venture was touted as a model mine, using the best mining practices. But on March 29, 2013, a massive mud-rock avalanche buried 83 miners at a mountain location near Gyama. Critics of the operation claim this tragedy occurred due to hasty mining done without concern for safety.

The story of Tibet’s destruction must be told!

Security is very tight at remote mining locations. I couldn’t go to Tibet to get video footage of mines. Instead I dropped in on mining sites from 400 kilometres overhead, virtually riding a satellite relaying Google Earth satellite imagery.

After obtaining permission from Google Earth to use flyovers, I put together a short documentary about mineral exploitation in Tibet, called ‘Plundering Tibet‘, released for film festival screenings in conjunction with the new book.

With the mountain of research accumulated from making these three short documentaries, I starting thinking about a book. I approached a literary agent who shopped it around and landed a major publisher in New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Nine years after that rafting trip in 2005, the book version of ‘Meltdown in Tibet‘ has finally been published. It took the legwork of three documentaries to pull all the research together. The challenge was to take the mass of information and distill it and make the situation clear to the average reader. That’s a skill I learned from writing guidebooks.

The story of the devastation of Tibet’s environment, and the tremendous impact this will soon have on the nations downstream in Asia, simply must be told.

This environmental horror story has been under-reported by Western media or not reported at all, hence the necessity of an unusually long subtitle for the book: China’s reckless destruction of ecosystems from the highlands of Tibet to the deltas of Asia.

The story chose me. I fell into it. It has been a wilder and scarier ride than any rafting trip.

Michael Buckley is an adventure travel writer, environmental investigator, author of ‘Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia‘, and the maker of the documentary film ‘Plundering Tibet’.

The book: ‘Meltdown in Tibet: China’s Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia‘ by Michael Buckley is published by Palgrave MacMillan.

The film: ‘Plundering Tibet‘ is a documentary about damming Tibet. See also the Facebook page: facebook.com/MeltdowninTibet/.

This article was originally published on BC Booklook.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is facing mounting criticism after it was revealed that she met with pro-fracking Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe on the same day that Scotland announced a moratorium on fracking.

The January 28 meeting between Sturgeon and Ratcliffe coincided with a U-turn from Ineos.  Just 48 hours prior, the firm had spoken out against a moratorium, saying delays would risk the collapse of UK manufacturing, according to the Herald Scotland.

Yet, following the moratorium announcement from Fergus Ewing, SNP energy minister, Ineos welcomed the moratorium. Industry body UK Onshore Oil and Gas performed a similar U-turn when the moratorium was announced.

Secret meeting

The Scottish Government was widely praised in January for halting all planning consents for unconventional oil and gas extraction until further research on its impact is conducted.

However, environmentalists are now sceptical as to what was said during the secret meeting between Sturgeon and Ratcliffe to allow for Ineos’ U-turn.

“What promises were made in exchange for their public support for the moratorium? I fear that local communities are being stitched up by backroom deals”, said Ed Pybus, spokesman for Frack Off Scotland.

This was echoed by Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, who told the Herald that communities across Scotland would be “alarmed to learn that the First Minister was meeting Ineos on the very day of the announcement of the moratorium.”

He added: “Ineos plan 1,400 wells across Scotland and seem to be carrying on as if there was no moratorium.”

Many questions

Questions on whether testing and drilling is covered by the moratorium raised in February by Lewis Macdonald, Labour shadow energy minister, continue to go unanswered.

Macdonald said: “People are bound to wonder what Nicola Sturgeon had to say to Ineos while her energy minister was on his feet in the Scottish Parliament claiming that he was imposing a moratorium on fracking.

“Was she apologising to them for doing it? Was she telling them to forget about fracking in Scotland? Or did Nicola Sturgeon meet Ineos to tell them not to worry about the moratorium, it would only apply until after the next Holyrood election, and in the meantime they could explore for fracking opportunities anywhere in Scotland that took their fancy?”

The date of the meeting between Sturgeon and Ineos was revealed under a freedom of information request. According to a spokeswoman for the Scottish Government, the meeting was scheduled in December, long before Ewing’s parliamentary statement.

Kyla Mandel is Deputy Editor of DeSmog UK and tweets @kylamandel.

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK.

At 8pm on Tuesday 7 April, prominent indigenous human rights defender Fernando Salazar Calvo was gunned down brutally outside his home.

A community member of the Resguardo Indígena Cañamomo Lomaprieta (Caldas) in Colombia, 52-year-old Salazar was a long time member of the Resguardo’s Ancestral Miners’ Association (ASOMICARS).

He was also a key spokesperson for implementing the Traditional Authorities’ rules and regulations for ancestral mining taking place within the Resguardo Territory.

Community leaders believe that the murder was committed by one of the illegal armed groups operating in the area in connection with gold mining.

The Resguardo Territory encompasses rich gold resources which the indigenous communities are trying to secure for their own use, however it is frequently invaded by gold miners seeking to establish claims on their own behalf or for other outside interests.

The position is complicated because the government has illegally granbted numerous gold concessions that overlap the indigenous territory. Criminals connected to the drug trade are also turning to gold mining as a means to launder their money and to diversify their activities.

Death threats dismissed as ‘rumours’

Several members of ASOMICARS and the Cabildo, the highest authority of the Resguardo, have received death threats in the past in response to their exercise of their authority within the Resguardo.

In November 2014 a Risk Report, issued by Colombia’s Early Warning System (SAT), determined that the Resguardo and surrounding areas are affected by the activities of illegal armed groups.

The Cabildo (Community Council) is calling urgently for a speedy and exhaustive investigation into Fernando Salazar Calvo’s murder.

“We don’t want a shoddily run, local investigation of the case,” says Hector Jaime Vinasco, Coordinator of Mining Issues for the Resguardo Indígena Cañamomo Lomaprieta, and former Governor of the Resguardo. “We’ve had too many awful, local investigations. We need pressure for a top-level investigation, now.” 

“What is under attack are our rights to self-determination and autonomy,” says Vinasco, “Our rights to regulate our own ancestral mining, under our own jurisdiction.“

This is not the first time that community leaders from the Resguardo have been killed. Previous incidents include the 2003 La Herradura massacre, when the then governor and three other leaders were killed.

These and other incidents have led the Constitutional Court to issue precautionary measures for the communities and their leaders.

Despite these measures and the ongoing serious security threat facing Resguardo members (as confirmed in a risk assessment carried out by the ombudsman’s office in 2014), the Resguardo’s latest concerns about security were dismissed as “rumours” in a recent letter from the local prosecutor’s office in Caldas.

Strict rules for sustainable gold mining

Under the Special Jurisdiction recognised under Colombia’s Constitution, the Cabildo of the Resguardo Indígena Cañamomo Lomaprieta has established a series of rules and regulations for mining within its territory.

These include implementing environmental and labour management plans, prohibiting the use of harmful substances such as mercury and cyanide, and prohibiting foreign miners and investors.

The Cabildo has declared the Resguardo a no-go zone for large-scale mining, and has also developed its own community protocols around consultation and consent. These measures are particularly important in light of the small size of territory the Resguardo has for its steadily growing population: some 23,000- people reside within the 37.6 sq.km area.

“While the Cabildo has managed to stave off incursions by outside miners with interest in its territories, the entire Resguardo is criss-crossed with concessions issued without the Cabildo’s consultation or consent”, reads a statement issued by the Cabildo.

“The State has also issued a Special Interest Mining Reserve that overlaps with Resguardo Territory, and that could go out for company bidding shortly.

“The Cabildo calls for a national-level investigation of the murder of human rights defender Fernando Salazar Calvo, and the punishment of both the perpetrators of and co-conspirators involved in this heinous crime.”

Source: Forest Peoples Programme.

On an early spring evening, Lyme Regis was deserted. The promenade was all muffled up in a foggy muteness. It was mid-week: on Monmouth Beach, a solitary angler and his torch.

On the nearby quay, by contrast, newspapermen in black coats had gathered outside a range of old buildings.

They scribbled furiously into little notepads as fishermen and parliamentary candidates held forth. Indoors, it was already standing-room only.

The public meeting, organised by Greenpeace and NUTFA (New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association), aimed to concentrate minds on fishing policy and the marine environment in the run-up to the election in May.

The ‘Coastal Champion Boat Tour’ will see a small dual-keel catamaran, Rising Tide, circumnavigate the British Isles. Meetings will remind voters in more than 50 constituencies just how flagrantly current fishing policy is owned by big business.

One boat alone, Dutch-owned as it happens, the Cornelis Vrolijk, controls 18% of English quota. That’s more than what is available to the entire Cornish fishing fleet combined. And it is three times as much as is controlled by all the Under Ten Metre boats in the country.

So election candidates are being asked to sign up as ‘coastal champions’, to champion the marine environment and allocate more quota to small, lower-impact, local boats.

Lyme Bay – the UK’s first major Marine Protected Area

But the meeting mattered in ways that went well beyond the forthcoming election. Because it was here in Lyme that the first Marine Protected Area of significant size in English waters was established, in 2008, amid much acrimony between fishermen and environmentalists.

That the Greenpeace event was attended by so many fishermen was in itself a triumph. The changes in the bay, too, since it was closed to the dredgers, are now well established. Recreational divers, anglers and potters have all noticed the recovery.

And the evidence isn’t only anecdotal. Because this was the first, it is being studied meticulously and methodically. Lyme Bay will serve as the template for that ‘ecologically coherent network’ of other Marine Conservation Zones being established around the coast.

Fishermen, for example, have participated in all stages of a study to measure how different fishing regimes affect both the target species and associated sea-bed communities. This includes some areas in which no potting is carried out, so-called ‘lobster refuges’. The project is run jointly by the local fishing community, Plymouth University and the Blue Marine Foundation.

What exactly is the MPA trying to protect?

It has done much to break down the barriers of seven years ago. A voluntary code of conduct has been entered into by fishermen, which will, it is hoped, both protect fish stocks and allow for the development of ‘branded’ Lyme Bay products. The higher prices these will command, so the theory goes, should further undermine any need to over-fish.

Callum Roberts, a biologist affiliated to Blue Marine, has argued that this experiment should be on a more ambitious scale, but all are agreed that it represents a major advance. It is actually far from being the only research into the bay’s recovery. More than £1 million has been spent on surveying Lyme Bay, both establishing base-line data and measuring change since 2008.

Such expenditure obviously cannot be replicated at all of the more recently designated sites. But at each site it will be essentially the same question which must be asked: what are we trying to protect?

Lin Baldock is a diver who has worked on surveys of the bay both before and since the closure. She lives nearby and dives the bay recreationally, too.

For her the purpose of the Lyme Bay closure was to protect “bedrock and stony reefs supporting a diversity of sponges, hydroids and bryozoan which in turn establish a stable protective turf for hundreds of other organisms.”

She agrees that the Protected Area has been a success, that watching its recovery shows that “conservation can work”.