Evo Morales will mark the solstice by sailing across Lake Titicaca in one of the largest reed ships built in modern times
The looming end of the Mayan long-count calendar has prompted fervid doomsday predictions on the internet, mass arrests in China, and a small tourism boom in southern Mexico. But whereas some believe Friday’s solstice will mark a fiery endpoint to the world as we know it, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, says the date is the beginning of a new era of peace and love.
Morales will mark the day by boarding one of the largest reed ships built in modern times and join thousands of people for celebrations on the Island of the Sun on Lake Titicaca.
“According to the Mayan calendar, the 21 of December is the end of the non-time and the beginning of time,” he told the UN in September. “It is the end of hatred and the beginning of love, the end of lies and beginning of truth.”
The Bolivian government has hailed the solstice as the start of an age in which community and collectivity will prevail over capitalism and individuality. Those themes have long been present in Morales’s discourse, especially in the idea of vivir bien, or living well. He has stressed the importance of a harmonious balance between human life and the planet, though some people question its application in Bolivia, where the economy depends heavily on mining, oil and gas industries.
Morales has attempted to shake off European cultural denomination, creating a vice ministry of decolonisation and celebrating Native American beliefs and customs.
The 15-metre totora reed boat is a replica of those that plied Titicaca’s waters for thousands of years. The Thunupa is the creation of Demetrio Limachi, 67, a renowned Aymara boat builder who worked with the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl.
Titicaca is the largest lake in South America and situated more than 12,000ft above sea level. All along the shoreline the flexible, sweet-smelling totora reeds ripple in the wind, sheltering water birds, serving as food for livestock, and providing raw material for boats. Limachi learned to dry the reed and bind it into cylinders as a child, creating the tiny craft that local people used for fishing and transport before the rise of more durable wooden or fibreglass boats. But when the Limachi family crossed paths with Heyerdahl, they became wrapped up in international adventures of epic proportions.
Heyerdahl, who had already sailed a balsa wood raft from Peru to Polynesia and attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a papyrus boat, was fascinated by early sea travel. That’s how a young Limachi found himself travelling to Morocco to spend three months building the Ra II, which set out in 1970 and successfully travelled from Morocco to Barbados, more than 3,700 miles (6,000km) away. The Aymara boat builders were at first shocked by the size of the boat Heyerdahl wanted them to construct, because until their boats had been just three to four metres long. But effort showed they could build bigger, and the Thunupa, now ready to sail across Lake Titicaca, is the child of those experiments.
“As our parents taught us – that’s how I am teaching our children,” Limachi said. It’s a skill his son Porfirio has taken to heart. “Building this boat united the community,” said Porfirio, as he watched young men on the island of Suriqui bind the reeds of the Thunupa tight with yellow cords under a bright blue sky. “It’s preserving the values and the knowledge of the Aymara of Lake Titicaca.”
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Evo Morales will mark the solstice by sailing across Lake Titicaca in one of the largest reed ships built in modern times
The looming end of the Mayan long-count calendar has prompted fervid doomsday predictions on the internet, mass arrests in China, and a small tourism boom in southern Mexico. But whereas some believe Friday’s solstice will mark a fiery endpoint to the world as we know it, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, says the date is the beginning of a new era of peace and love.
Morales will mark the day by boarding one of the largest reed ships built in modern times and join thousands of people for celebrations on the Island of the Sun on Lake Titicaca.
“According to the Mayan calendar, the 21 of December is the end of the non-time and the beginning of time,” he told the UN in September. “It is the end of hatred and the beginning of love, the end of lies and beginning of truth.”
The Bolivian government has hailed the solstice as the start of an age in which community and collectivity will prevail over capitalism and individuality. Those themes have long been present in Morales’s discourse, especially in the idea of vivir bien, or living well. He has stressed the importance of a harmonious balance between human life and the planet, though some people question its application in Bolivia, where the economy depends heavily on mining, oil and gas industries.
Morales has attempted to shake off European cultural denomination, creating a vice ministry of decolonisation and celebrating Native American beliefs and customs.
The 15-metre totora reed boat is a replica of those that plied Titicaca’s waters for thousands of years. The Thunupa is the creation of Demetrio Limachi, 67, a renowned Aymara boat builder who worked with the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl.
Titicaca is the largest lake in South America and situated more than 12,000ft above sea level. All along the shoreline the flexible, sweet-smelling totora reeds ripple in the wind, sheltering water birds, serving as food for livestock, and providing raw material for boats. Limachi learned to dry the reed and bind it into cylinders as a child, creating the tiny craft that local people used for fishing and transport before the rise of more durable wooden or fibreglass boats. But when the Limachi family crossed paths with Heyerdahl, they became wrapped up in international adventures of epic proportions.
Heyerdahl, who had already sailed a balsa wood raft from Peru to Polynesia and attempted to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a papyrus boat, was fascinated by early sea travel. That’s how a young Limachi found himself travelling to Morocco to spend three months building the Ra II, which set out in 1970 and successfully travelled from Morocco to Barbados, more than 3,700 miles (6,000km) away. The Aymara boat builders were at first shocked by the size of the boat Heyerdahl wanted them to construct, because until their boats had been just three to four metres long. But effort showed they could build bigger, and the Thunupa, now ready to sail across Lake Titicaca, is the child of those experiments.
“As our parents taught us – that’s how I am teaching our children,” Limachi said. It’s a skill his son Porfirio has taken to heart. “Building this boat united the community,” said Porfirio, as he watched young men on the island of Suriqui bind the reeds of the Thunupa tight with yellow cords under a bright blue sky. “It’s preserving the values and the knowledge of the Aymara of Lake Titicaca.”
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
BREAKING: Kahnawake takes to Mercier bridge in Idle No More rally
Filed under Actions / Protest, BREAKING NEWS, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Tar Sands
BREAKING: Kahnawake takes to Mercier bridge in Idle No More rally
Filed under Actions / Protest, BREAKING NEWS, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Tar Sands
Q&A: Fighting to save Africa’s richest rainforest
Note: Palm oil plantations have caused land grabs and displacement of rural people across the world. While industrial palm oil plantations-and their associated displacements, political repression, and violence-must be stopped, there is great risk in the “alternatives,” like REDD+, offered by some NGOs, industrialized nations and corporations, . Some countries have even pushed for palm plantations to be included in REDD+ programs. GJEP has documented the impacts that REDD+ and other “payment for ecosystem services” projects have on local communities in Chiapas, Mexico and beyond. Watch GJEP and Global Forest Coalition’s short film, A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests, and read more here: http://bit.ly/12Ccnml.
-The GJEP Team
By Monde Kingsley Nfor, December 20, 2012. Source: Inter Press Service
Photo: Frank Bieleu/Oakland Institute
Protests against a controversial palm oil plantation in the Korup National Park, Africa’s oldest and richest rainforest in terms of floral and faunal diversity, in Mundemba, southwest Cameroon will continue despite the arrests and intimidation of local environmental campaigners.
Nasako Besingi, the director of the local NGO Struggle to Economize the Future, told IPS “we won’t stop until environmental justice is done.”
The New York-based agricultural company, Herakles Farms, has been accused of grabbing a piece of this central African nation’s national forest as it goes ahead with a 73,000-hectare palm oil plantation despite a lack of government authorisation – there are claims that the 99-year lease agreement with the government is illegal – and two court injunctions, and in the face of significant community opposition.
The contested land is a “biodiversity hotspot”, a critical area that connects five protected areas in the park, and the project will disrupt the protection and growth of important wildlife, the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) said in an environmental and social impact assessment in August.
A report issued in September by two Cameroonian NGOs, the Centre for Environment and Development and Réseau de Lutte contre la Faim, said “there are over 20 villages with ancestral lands inside the concession, and 31 villages within a distance of the periphery, and over 25,000 people will be affected by this. They depend on that land for small-scale food production, hunting, and non-timber forest products.”
About 46 percent of Cameroon’s 20 million people live in rural areas, but according to a USAID country profile on property rights here “only approximately three percent of rural land is registered, mostly in the names of owners of large commercial farms.” The country is ranked 131st of 169 countries on the 2010 United Nations Human Development Index, partially due to persistent poverty.
Besingi said that he and his colleagues have endured police suppression, arrests and intimidation. His latest arrest was on Nov. 14, when the country’s national military police stormed his office.
“We were told we were required for questioning at the police post, and were detained for a day without charge. But it was only following international and local pressure that we were released (on bail) under the condition that we must appear before the authorities whenever we are (asked),” he said.
Besingi explained that the palm oil plantation project was going ahead despite the lack of a formal government agreement, because Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SGSOC), a subsidiary of Herakles Farms, had the support of those in power.
“SGSOC enjoys support from some elites, the chief of Fabe village (which is on the project site) and some government representatives, including the police. They have been bought over with money and material things. These groups of people, including the government, are misleading the people,” he said.
Excerpts of the interview with IPS follow:
Q: What is your interest in this campaign against SGSOC/Herakles Farms?
A: We cannot just sit and allow a few individuals to ruin the lives of thousands. So we have to make our voices and those of the voiceless heard.
Giving so much forestland to a company that has no real development plan for the people is injustice against a people who cannot have access to one-third of the forestland. Many locals feel there are already too many protected zones in the (forest). This massive plantation will further restrict their access to land.
Q: Bruce Wrobel, CEO of Herakles Farms, said in September that the organisation was already employing more than 500 people, and has committed to hiring among the local villages. He said that once the plantation was fully operational, it would require approximately 8,000 employees. Is this not an opportunity for the people?
A: There is little evidence that large-scale plantations will effectively bring economic development to this area. Past experiences in the country show such promises … to be false. Instead, large plantations have resulted in massive environmental degradation, the destruction of livelihoods, and the transformation of small-scale farmers and indigenous populations into low-paid plantation workers.
The company claims that it will create 8,000 jobs. However, the plantation will economically displace approximately 25,000 people who depend on that land for small-scale food production, hunting, and non-timber forest products. Thus, the net impact on employment will actually be negative.
Q: What is the problem with land management issues in Cameroon?
A: There are two fundamental problems in my opinion. Firstly, communities do not have legally-recognised land rights that secure their access to the vital natural resources that they depend on; and secondly, Cameroon is still to develop a national land-use plan which would, in principal, evaluate the needs of local communities before granting foreign investors access to land.
Q: What would you want SGSOC/Herakles Farms to do before operating?
A: We demand that SGSOC respect Cameroonian law and the rights of communities.
Unfortunately, SGSOC has repeatedly violated Cameroonian law. They have signed an illegal contract with the government, and have shown no respect to local communities who, on the majority, oppose the project.
Following the 1976 law governing the allocation of concessions on state lands in Cameroon, subsequent to signing the lease agreement, SGSOC was supposed to be given a presidential approval to start cultivation activities. But this was not given, so the project has been in violation of the law since 2010. Moreover, prior to its operations, an environmental and social impact assessment was not conducted.
Q: What is the opportunity cost for the SGSOC/Herakles project?
A: The opportunity cost for this project is the loss of forest revenue through the payment of environmental services, ecotourism and REDD+ activities.
All these activities can generate more revenue for the state than SGSOC can. For example, the Cameroonian Food Sovereignty Coalition estimates that if the government were to require bread makers to use 20 percent of locally-produced flour, 96,000 farming jobs would be created using just 15,000 hectares of land.
This would generate 13 times more employment and significantly larger government revenue than the SGSOC project and would leave land for peasant agriculture, conservation, and the use of non-timber forest products.
Q: What next with your campaign against SGSOC/Herakles farms?
A: We won’t stop until environmental justice is done. We want a new agreement that takes into consideration the sustainable management of that forest and that gives the locals better access to land and alternative livelihoods. We are currently working with more than 20 community groups and international and local NGOs and using every possible channel, like IPS, to reach the international community.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Q&A: Fighting to save Africa’s richest rainforest
Note: Palm oil plantations have caused land grabs and displacement of rural people across the world. While industrial palm oil plantations-and their associated displacements, political repression, and violence-must be stopped, there is great risk in the “alternatives,” like REDD+, offered by some NGOs, industrialized nations and corporations, . Some countries have even pushed for palm plantations to be included in REDD+ programs. GJEP has documented the impacts that REDD+ and other “payment for ecosystem services” projects have on local communities in Chiapas, Mexico and beyond. Watch GJEP and Global Forest Coalition’s short film, A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests, and read more here: http://bit.ly/12Ccnml.
-The GJEP Team
By Monde Kingsley Nfor, December 20, 2012. Source: Inter Press Service
Photo: Frank Bieleu/Oakland Institute
Protests against a controversial palm oil plantation in the Korup National Park, Africa’s oldest and richest rainforest in terms of floral and faunal diversity, in Mundemba, southwest Cameroon will continue despite the arrests and intimidation of local environmental campaigners.
Nasako Besingi, the director of the local NGO Struggle to Economize the Future, told IPS “we won’t stop until environmental justice is done.”
The New York-based agricultural company, Herakles Farms, has been accused of grabbing a piece of this central African nation’s national forest as it goes ahead with a 73,000-hectare palm oil plantation despite a lack of government authorisation – there are claims that the 99-year lease agreement with the government is illegal – and two court injunctions, and in the face of significant community opposition.
The contested land is a “biodiversity hotspot”, a critical area that connects five protected areas in the park, and the project will disrupt the protection and growth of important wildlife, the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) said in an environmental and social impact assessment in August.
A report issued in September by two Cameroonian NGOs, the Centre for Environment and Development and Réseau de Lutte contre la Faim, said “there are over 20 villages with ancestral lands inside the concession, and 31 villages within a distance of the periphery, and over 25,000 people will be affected by this. They depend on that land for small-scale food production, hunting, and non-timber forest products.”
About 46 percent of Cameroon’s 20 million people live in rural areas, but according to a USAID country profile on property rights here “only approximately three percent of rural land is registered, mostly in the names of owners of large commercial farms.” The country is ranked 131st of 169 countries on the 2010 United Nations Human Development Index, partially due to persistent poverty.
Besingi said that he and his colleagues have endured police suppression, arrests and intimidation. His latest arrest was on Nov. 14, when the country’s national military police stormed his office.
“We were told we were required for questioning at the police post, and were detained for a day without charge. But it was only following international and local pressure that we were released (on bail) under the condition that we must appear before the authorities whenever we are (asked),” he said.
Besingi explained that the palm oil plantation project was going ahead despite the lack of a formal government agreement, because Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SGSOC), a subsidiary of Herakles Farms, had the support of those in power.
“SGSOC enjoys support from some elites, the chief of Fabe village (which is on the project site) and some government representatives, including the police. They have been bought over with money and material things. These groups of people, including the government, are misleading the people,” he said.
Excerpts of the interview with IPS follow:
Q: What is your interest in this campaign against SGSOC/Herakles Farms?
A: We cannot just sit and allow a few individuals to ruin the lives of thousands. So we have to make our voices and those of the voiceless heard.
Giving so much forestland to a company that has no real development plan for the people is injustice against a people who cannot have access to one-third of the forestland. Many locals feel there are already too many protected zones in the (forest). This massive plantation will further restrict their access to land.
Q: Bruce Wrobel, CEO of Herakles Farms, said in September that the organisation was already employing more than 500 people, and has committed to hiring among the local villages. He said that once the plantation was fully operational, it would require approximately 8,000 employees. Is this not an opportunity for the people?
A: There is little evidence that large-scale plantations will effectively bring economic development to this area. Past experiences in the country show such promises … to be false. Instead, large plantations have resulted in massive environmental degradation, the destruction of livelihoods, and the transformation of small-scale farmers and indigenous populations into low-paid plantation workers.
The company claims that it will create 8,000 jobs. However, the plantation will economically displace approximately 25,000 people who depend on that land for small-scale food production, hunting, and non-timber forest products. Thus, the net impact on employment will actually be negative.
Q: What is the problem with land management issues in Cameroon?
A: There are two fundamental problems in my opinion. Firstly, communities do not have legally-recognised land rights that secure their access to the vital natural resources that they depend on; and secondly, Cameroon is still to develop a national land-use plan which would, in principal, evaluate the needs of local communities before granting foreign investors access to land.
Q: What would you want SGSOC/Herakles Farms to do before operating?
A: We demand that SGSOC respect Cameroonian law and the rights of communities.
Unfortunately, SGSOC has repeatedly violated Cameroonian law. They have signed an illegal contract with the government, and have shown no respect to local communities who, on the majority, oppose the project.
Following the 1976 law governing the allocation of concessions on state lands in Cameroon, subsequent to signing the lease agreement, SGSOC was supposed to be given a presidential approval to start cultivation activities. But this was not given, so the project has been in violation of the law since 2010. Moreover, prior to its operations, an environmental and social impact assessment was not conducted.
Q: What is the opportunity cost for the SGSOC/Herakles project?
A: The opportunity cost for this project is the loss of forest revenue through the payment of environmental services, ecotourism and REDD+ activities.
All these activities can generate more revenue for the state than SGSOC can. For example, the Cameroonian Food Sovereignty Coalition estimates that if the government were to require bread makers to use 20 percent of locally-produced flour, 96,000 farming jobs would be created using just 15,000 hectares of land.
This would generate 13 times more employment and significantly larger government revenue than the SGSOC project and would leave land for peasant agriculture, conservation, and the use of non-timber forest products.
Q: What next with your campaign against SGSOC/Herakles farms?
A: We won’t stop until environmental justice is done. We want a new agreement that takes into consideration the sustainable management of that forest and that gives the locals better access to land and alternative livelihoods. We are currently working with more than 20 community groups and international and local NGOs and using every possible channel, like IPS, to reach the international community.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Guatemala-Canada: Clashing world views at a cross roads
By Grahame Russell, December 19, 2012. Source: Upside Down World
“Avatar” overlaps with a “John Grisham” novel in the Mayan Qeqchi plaintiffs versus Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
Recently, I had a front row seat to the colliding of world visions and realities in the heart and center of Canada’s financial district in downtown Toronto.
From November 23-30, five Mayan Qeqchi [Kek’Chi] people came to Toronto to pursue justice and remedy for violations and harms they suffered due to the nickel mining interests of Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals. They were here to respond to questions during cross-examinations by lawyers from Hudbay Minerals’ law firm Fasken Martineau.
WHO ARE THE FIVE?
Lawsuit #1 – Angelica Choc, wife of Adolfo Ich, a community leader, teacher and father who was the victim of a targeted killing in September 2009 carried out by private security guards hired by Hudbay’s subsidiary CGN (Guatemalan Nickel Company).
Lawsuit #2 – Rosa Elbira and Margarita Caal, representing eleven women from the remote village of Lote 8 who were gang-raped by company security guards, soldiers and police, during an illegal, violent eviction of their community in January 2007, that included the whole-scale burning and destruction of 100 small homes.
Lawsuit # 3 – German Chub, a young man and father who was shot by mining company security guards and left paralyzed on the same say as the killing of Adolfo Ich.
Accompanying them was Maria Cuc, sister of Angelica Choc and their brother Ramiro Choc, a political prisoner jailed unjustly in Guatemala on trumped up charges since 2008.
“AVATAR” CROSSED WITH A JOHN GRISHAM NOVEL
Since 2004, I have been involved (with Rights Action) in funding and supporting community development, environmental protection, human rights and justice projects of mining harmed Qeqchi communities in eastern Guatemala. I had the honor of accompanying and supporting them in Canada from the moment they got off the plane in Toronto.
In certain ways, these are typical civil lawsuits: Plaintiffs X sue defendant Y for acting negligently and causing harms to X. But in most ways, these are anything but typical cases.
These lawsuits represent perhaps the intersection of the “Avatar” blockbuster movie with a “John Grisham” novel.
AVATAR: Like many resource extraction conflicts around the world, both historically and on-going today, this story of Canadian nickel companies trying to operate a mine in the Qeqchi territories of eastern Guatemala (starting with INCO in the 1960s and 70s, continuing with Skye Resources and Hudbay after 2004) is like the documentary version of the Avatar movie.
In Avatar, a powerful mining company brings a battalion of heavily armed men to a remote, far off place, uses extreme violence to forcibly remove the local indigenous people from their ancestral and sacred homelands, so as to get at a mineral that – once mined and processed – will sell for gargantuan profits, somewhere far away.
In general terms, this is the story of nickel companies in Guatemala. Indeed, it is the story of many resource extraction struggles around the world, today and going back centuries.
JOHN GRISHAM: Then, Avatar crosses with a John Grisham novel. In many Grisham novels, powerless victims of corporate abuses and crimes are represented by pro bono lawyers, with few economic resources, to try and hold a ga-zillion dollar corporation accountable, said corporation being represented by well-paid lawyers from a politically well-connected law firm.
Represented by the Klippensteins law firm, who are doing much of the legal work for little or no pay, the Qeqchi victims have stuck a legal toe in the side door of the very political and legal structures and systems that so often empower and ‘legitimize’ the expansion of corporate and investor interests across the globe (like Hudbay’s interests in Guatemala), while providing little to no real legal or political oversight and accountability.
The Klippensteins lawyers are well trained and experienced, and utterly committed to the principle that victims of crimes and harms ought to get justice and remedy for the harms and losses they have suffered; that wrong-doers – including wealthy, powerful and influential corporations and investors – can and ought to be held accountable when they directly or indirectly cause serious human rights harms.
CONFRONTING VAST GLOBAL INEQUALITY
On their clients’ behalf, Klippensteins agreed to file these cases and take them as far as they can, knowing full well the enormity of the legal-political challenge.
On this planet, our human community, separated off into hundreds of countries, is characterized by vast inequality of wealth and power, both inside and between nations. Many global corporations and investors (a majority based in Europe and North America) control more wealth than the GNPs (gross national product) of many countries around the world.
These companies scour the earth looking for resources to exploit and profit from. They are heavily invested in by private funds and public pension funds (like the Canada Pension Plan that was invested in Hudbay during the years of these violations in Guatemala). These companies are also supported in many ways by their home governments. They often hire their own armed security forces and are usually supported by the armies and police of the countries where they operate.
This is essentially the history of Canadian nickel companies in Guatemala, from INCO in the 1970s and 80s, to Skye Resources and Hudbay from 2004 forward.
CONFRONTING IMPUNITY AND IMMUNITY FROM ACCOUNTABILITY
These corporations and investors operate this way, around the planet, with close to complete impunity and immunity from legal or political accountability. In the year 2012, it is still next to impossible to hold global companies and investors accountable in any court in the countries where they operate, like Guatemala; in international human rights reporting bodies (like the United Nations or Organization of American States); or in the courts of their home countries, like Canada.
Despite the fact that countries, like Canada, espouse democratic values, a belief in and adherence to the rule of law and good governance, we intentionally do not have the criminal and civil legislation on the books, let alone the political will, to hold our own companies accountable if/when they commit crimes or human rights violations and health and environmental harms in other counties.
These three lawsuits represent, in this regard, an exception to the rule of impunity and immunity from legal accountability. There is no way whatsoever (that I know of) to hold our companies criminally accountable in our courts if/when they commit crimes in other countries.
In terms of civil law accountability, there is, once again, an effort to pass comprehensive legislation (Bill C-323, The International Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Act) so as to start to fill the legal accountability void, … but this is an uphill struggle and is likely to meet strong opposition from the mining industry itself, let alone from politicians in the dominant political parties. (Information about this law and campaign: http://www.facebook.com/PassBillC323; www.peterjulian.ca; http://www.facebook.com/MPPeterJulian)
Our lack of laws and legal accountability is a hypocritical double standard and it is this very impunity and immunity from accountability that directly enables and empowers companies and investors to continue to act as they do.
A LONG TRIP ACROSS A FURTHER DISTANCE
It is in this daunting global context, that these 3 lawsuits are taking place. Of the five who came north, all are Qeqchi speakers. Sisters Maria and Angelica are bi-lingual, speaking fluent Spanish as well. German speaks quite good Spanish, as a second language. Rosa and Margarita speak only Qeqchi.
Four of them had never traveled internationally before. Rosa and Margarita had rarely been to Guatemala City. They all live in poor and materially simple rural communities, with no electricity, running water or access to basic health and educational services.
Lote 8, the village of Rosa and Margarita, is high on the mountain range the runs east-west along the north shore of Lake Izabal. There are no roads into Lote 8, a 2-3 hour hike to and from the main road below on the lowlands.
It took this group over 2 days of travel to get to Toronto. Before dawn on Thursday, November 22, Rosa and Margarita hiked down mountain paths to the main gravel road. Then, a 45 minute drive to the town of El Estor. There, Maria, Angelica and German joined them in the van, and they drove 7 hours to Guatemala City. The next morning, up at 3, they drove 5 hours to the San Salvador airport, to catch a 5 hour direct flight to Toronto.
At 10pm, Friday, November 23rd, they emerged with their suitcases, into the cold of a late November Toronto. Their home region of El Estor lies at sea level, one hour from the Caribbean Sea. It is one of the hottest regions of Guatemala. The cold of Toronto will take some getting used to. On day 1, the cold particularly affected German, due to the bullet still lodged in his back, too close to his already damaged spinal column for removal, without further risk of harm and deepening paralysis.
From the Toronto airport, they walked – German rolling in his wheelchair – into one of the centers of global power and wealth, to do legal battle with a wealthy and influential company, represented by a powerful and influential law firm, to demand justice and remedy in Canadian courts.
That is a very long trip, and even greater distance to cross. And this story is far from over. The 3 lawsuits are a small but crucial part of it.
The Qeqchi people of eastern Guatemalan have been suffering harms and violations by Canadian companies, dating back to when INCO partnered with the US-backed military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, and carried out similar illegal and violence forced evictions, shooting and killings.
The 1999 United Nations Truth Commission concluded that INCO – via its Guatemalan subsidiary EXMIBAL – colluded with the Guatemalan military in at least 5 documented cases of serious human rights violations – including killings and disappearances.
No justice was ever done for what INCO did, neither in Guatemala nor in Canada. The victims were never remedied for their loss and suffering. In 1981, INCO closed the mining operation, but hung onto its (ill-gotten) mining concession.
By 2004, former directors of INCO had incorporated a new company – Skye Resources -, and in 2004, Skye (with support from INCO) started again to try and mine for nickel in the El Estor region; soon after that, repression began all over again.
For more background, please view: 10-minute film “El Estor Evictions”, by Steven Schnoor: http://rightsaction.org/video/elestor/index.htm; 5-minute trailer to forth-coming feature length film “Defensora”, by Rachel Schmidt: www.defensorathefilm.com.
THE LEGAL CASES
These lawsuits – filed in 2011 – may well go on for years. The Qeqchi plaintiffs and their lawyers at Klippensteins are very aware of the lopsided, up-hill nature of the legal struggle they are involved in. As a ‘legal tactic’, Hudbay could easily try to financially overwhelm the plaintiffs, using legal motions and petitions, appeals and counter-appeals, etc., spending seemingly endless amounts of Hudbay’s money to do so.
Hudbay is already arguing that -1- the cases should be brought in the jurisdiction of Guatemala, not Canada; and that -2- Hudbay should not be held to account for what its subsidiary – CGN (Guatemalan Nickel Company) – did in Guatemala.
JURISDICTION: Moving the cases to Guatemala would virtually guarantee complete impunity for Hudbay and its former subsidiary CGN. Notwithstanding a few cases of serious human rights violations and political repression that are finally moving very slowly through the Guatemalan courts, 20 to 30 years after the crimes (including genocide, massacres, disappearances, gang-rapes) were committed, it is widely recognized that legal and political impunity is the norm in Guatemala.
It is not that Guatemala does not have laws to address illegal forced evictions, killings, shootings, gang rapes, etc. It is that the legal system does not work – due to corruption fear, threats and influences – to hold the powerful sectors accountable, even when the powerful are foreign companies or individuals.
‘PIERCING THE CORPORATE VEIL’: Individuals, ultimately responsible for wrong-doing, have long hidden behind the legal artifice of the ‘corporate veil’. Ie, company and investor decision makers (who are also direct financial beneficiaries) hide behind the legal status of corporation ‘A’ (ex. Hudbay Minerals, in Canada) that they incorporated or purchased, and operate, arguing that they cannot be held responsible for the criminal or wrongful activities committed by corporation ‘B’ (ex. CGN, in Guatemala), that was incorporated or purchased by, and is operated by corporation A, that ultimately is controlled by them, the company directors and major shareholders. Nice!
Whether addressing wrongs within our national borders, or around the world, it is long overdue that our courts can and should ‘pierce the corporate veil’ and hold the real controllers and decision-makers (and, lest we forget, the financial beneficiaries) to account.
COSMOLOGICAL CHASM
On one level, these lawsuits are normal and even mundane: filing statements of claim; paying attention to procedural law; filing and contesting motions, and counter-motions; negotiating and fighting about when and where to hold pre-trial hearings; etc. But these are not lawsuits about how one neighbor’s tree fell on another’s fence, shed and property and caused damage … even as many of the same procedural, evidentiary and substantive laws and legal principles apply.
These 3 cases, that operate in many ways as one lawsuit, are bringing together a hugely wealthy company and some of the wealthiest investors on the planet (and their deep pockets, powerful law firm and connections to the Canadian political, economic and media establishments), on the one hand, with some of the poorest people on the planet, from ‘far-off’ places, speaking wildly different languages – the languages of the first nations of the Americas.
Forced together, through the courageous filing of these lawsuits, the two sides sat across from one another in a board room, in a sky-scraper in downtown Toronto, to face off in this initial round of pre-trial cross-examinations.
Four days in a row (German on Monday, Rosa on Tuesday, Margarita on Wednesday, Angelica on Thursday), the Qeqchi and Spanish speaking plaintiffs responded to up to 8 hours of questioning by Hudbay’s lawyers. Four days in a row, the other members of the group walked every morning to the door of the room where the hearings took place, to provide strength and moral support to the person going in that day; waited to have lunch with them; and then welcomed them in the evening when their day of questioning was done.
“WE WON” (Ganamos)
On Wednesday afternoon, Margarita – after 8 hours of questioning – rejoined her Qeqchi friends and community members, raised both arms in the air, and said, with a huge smile of relief, “Ganamos” (we won), as they crowded around her and hugged her. She cried.
Two points. Firstly, nothing has been won. These trials – barring unforeseen circumstances – are still in the initial stages. In Toronto, these are only pre-trial hearings. What did Margarita mean – “we won”? Two nights later, she responded to that question put to her by the media, saying: ‘We know that Hudbay has said that what we say is not true. I know Hudbay said that we [the women of Lote 8] were not gang-raped. But, we were gang-raped; Adolfo is dead, and buried under the ground; German was shot, and is here with us, in a wheelchair. So today, I answered every one of their questions. I did not cry. I told the truth, I did not lie.’
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Margarita said “we” – she did not say “I” won, referring to herself, though she had just been through 8 hours of cross-examination alone.
This “we” versus “I” goes to a larger point about what this struggle is for the Qeqchi people of Guatemala. For all of them, “they” are being harmed by the selfish interests of “outsiders” – Guatemalan and foreign wealthy interests always using violence against them, the original inhabitants of those lands, to get them off their lands so as to produce bananas, coffee, cows (for meat exports), sugar cane, African palm, or to mine for nickel.
The harms, violations and repression always have been and remain a collective harm against a people. Margarita is here, responding individually to Hudbay’s questions, but she is involved in a community struggle, both for justice and remedy in these cases, and ultimately for their community well-being, in their homes, on their lands, in their forests, by their water sources.
The gang-rapes that the eleven women of Lote 8 suffered were both individual and collective harms at the same time. Margarita, who has come from her world in Lote 8 to the heart and center of Canada’s financial capital, is proudly and with extraordinary dignity struggling for justice and remedy for herself and her Mayan Qeqchi people.
It is hard to fully describe the chasm between different world visions and life experiences in which space these lawsuits are playing themselves out.
ENDING 500 YEARS OF IMPUNITY
The scenario of the lawsuits is already hard enough to believe, let alone to consider that this is a precedent setting case. This has rarely if ever happened in Canadian courts.
If the global human community had been actually governed by the rule of law and principles of good governance and democratic accountability for, say, the last 500 years, then countless numbers of these cases would have been filed and addressed since the European (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) invasion of the Americas beginning in 1492 … (when ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue’). An entire body of law and precedents would have been established and put in place. These types of abuses would no longer occur, and when they did, real justice would be swift.
This obviously never happened – not then, and still not now. We don’t live in that world. 500 years have passed since European expansionism across the globe and the birth of the modern (and very unequal) Nation State system, and still the global human community is still deeply characterized by the impunity with which powerful states, companies and investors can and do act.
In just about every way thinkable, Canada and our courts are not doing the Qeqchi people of Guatemala the favor of hearing and possibly – just possibly – deciding upon the merits of their claims. It is the Qeqchi people of Guatemala who are doing us the favor of ensuring that our courts and legal system operate the way they should have been operating, going back generations, if not hundreds of years.
In their region of Guatemala alone, INCO never should have been able to operate as it did, in partnership with a brutal US-backed military regime, directly and indirectly causing serious violations and repression, acting with impunity.
IT IS THE ECONOMY, STUPID
And even with all this, which is a lot, this struggle is about much more than that of ensuring that the Canadian legal system operates as it should, and ensure everyone’s right to justice and remedy.
Underlying all this, is that the Qeqchi people of Guatemala – like poor indigenous and non-indigenous communities across the world – are working and struggling to be the owners, controllers and beneficiaries of their own economic development, of their own lives and well-being.
‘It is about the economy, stupid!’ … it is about the global “development” model. Not only do the Qeqchi people want and deserve justice and remedy for the repression they have suffered, they want and deserve to be the owners and controllers of their own lands, territories, rivers and forests. They don’t want large-scale “development” projects (mining, large-scale dams, for-export mono-agricultural production, oil and gas extraction, etc.) imposed on them by foreign owners, companies and investors – often backed up by repressive security forces, soldiers and police.
They want and deserve to be responsible for their own well-being, providing for their families and future generations, in balance and harmony with Mother Earth.
THEY WILL BE BACK, IF NECESSARY
As each one of them said, when asked many times over the week, they did not come to Canada for happy reasons, on a tourist trip. It was a very long and hard trip, and not something they enjoyed.
They came here to tell the truth about what happened to them, and to demand justice and remedy in Canadian courts. If necessary, they will come back to Canada as many times as it takes to participate in these lawsuits.
Hudbay purchased its mining interests in Guatemala in 2008, and sold them for a loss of $290,000,000 in 2011, but not before engaging – like companies before them – in serious human rights violations. Other nickel companies are now operating near by. Some of the same threats loom over the lives and well being of the Qeqchi people of El Estor, and beyond.
Thus, their work and struggle in defense of their land and community well-being goes back generations, and continues on now. These lawsuits are a small, but now hugely important part of their work and struggle. It long has been a hard struggle for that the Qeqchi people have carried out with truth and dignity. It continues.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Guatemala-Canada: Clashing world views at a cross roads
By Grahame Russell, December 19, 2012. Source: Upside Down World
“Avatar” overlaps with a “John Grisham” novel in the Mayan Qeqchi plaintiffs versus Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
Recently, I had a front row seat to the colliding of world visions and realities in the heart and center of Canada’s financial district in downtown Toronto.
From November 23-30, five Mayan Qeqchi [Kek’Chi] people came to Toronto to pursue justice and remedy for violations and harms they suffered due to the nickel mining interests of Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals. They were here to respond to questions during cross-examinations by lawyers from Hudbay Minerals’ law firm Fasken Martineau.
WHO ARE THE FIVE?
Lawsuit #1 – Angelica Choc, wife of Adolfo Ich, a community leader, teacher and father who was the victim of a targeted killing in September 2009 carried out by private security guards hired by Hudbay’s subsidiary CGN (Guatemalan Nickel Company).
Lawsuit #2 – Rosa Elbira and Margarita Caal, representing eleven women from the remote village of Lote 8 who were gang-raped by company security guards, soldiers and police, during an illegal, violent eviction of their community in January 2007, that included the whole-scale burning and destruction of 100 small homes.
Lawsuit # 3 – German Chub, a young man and father who was shot by mining company security guards and left paralyzed on the same say as the killing of Adolfo Ich.
Accompanying them was Maria Cuc, sister of Angelica Choc and their brother Ramiro Choc, a political prisoner jailed unjustly in Guatemala on trumped up charges since 2008.
“AVATAR” CROSSED WITH A JOHN GRISHAM NOVEL
Since 2004, I have been involved (with Rights Action) in funding and supporting community development, environmental protection, human rights and justice projects of mining harmed Qeqchi communities in eastern Guatemala. I had the honor of accompanying and supporting them in Canada from the moment they got off the plane in Toronto.
In certain ways, these are typical civil lawsuits: Plaintiffs X sue defendant Y for acting negligently and causing harms to X. But in most ways, these are anything but typical cases.
These lawsuits represent perhaps the intersection of the “Avatar” blockbuster movie with a “John Grisham” novel.
AVATAR: Like many resource extraction conflicts around the world, both historically and on-going today, this story of Canadian nickel companies trying to operate a mine in the Qeqchi territories of eastern Guatemala (starting with INCO in the 1960s and 70s, continuing with Skye Resources and Hudbay after 2004) is like the documentary version of the Avatar movie.
In Avatar, a powerful mining company brings a battalion of heavily armed men to a remote, far off place, uses extreme violence to forcibly remove the local indigenous people from their ancestral and sacred homelands, so as to get at a mineral that – once mined and processed – will sell for gargantuan profits, somewhere far away.
In general terms, this is the story of nickel companies in Guatemala. Indeed, it is the story of many resource extraction struggles around the world, today and going back centuries.
JOHN GRISHAM: Then, Avatar crosses with a John Grisham novel. In many Grisham novels, powerless victims of corporate abuses and crimes are represented by pro bono lawyers, with few economic resources, to try and hold a ga-zillion dollar corporation accountable, said corporation being represented by well-paid lawyers from a politically well-connected law firm.
Represented by the Klippensteins law firm, who are doing much of the legal work for little or no pay, the Qeqchi victims have stuck a legal toe in the side door of the very political and legal structures and systems that so often empower and ‘legitimize’ the expansion of corporate and investor interests across the globe (like Hudbay’s interests in Guatemala), while providing little to no real legal or political oversight and accountability.
The Klippensteins lawyers are well trained and experienced, and utterly committed to the principle that victims of crimes and harms ought to get justice and remedy for the harms and losses they have suffered; that wrong-doers – including wealthy, powerful and influential corporations and investors – can and ought to be held accountable when they directly or indirectly cause serious human rights harms.
CONFRONTING VAST GLOBAL INEQUALITY
On their clients’ behalf, Klippensteins agreed to file these cases and take them as far as they can, knowing full well the enormity of the legal-political challenge.
On this planet, our human community, separated off into hundreds of countries, is characterized by vast inequality of wealth and power, both inside and between nations. Many global corporations and investors (a majority based in Europe and North America) control more wealth than the GNPs (gross national product) of many countries around the world.
These companies scour the earth looking for resources to exploit and profit from. They are heavily invested in by private funds and public pension funds (like the Canada Pension Plan that was invested in Hudbay during the years of these violations in Guatemala). These companies are also supported in many ways by their home governments. They often hire their own armed security forces and are usually supported by the armies and police of the countries where they operate.
This is essentially the history of Canadian nickel companies in Guatemala, from INCO in the 1970s and 80s, to Skye Resources and Hudbay from 2004 forward.
CONFRONTING IMPUNITY AND IMMUNITY FROM ACCOUNTABILITY
These corporations and investors operate this way, around the planet, with close to complete impunity and immunity from legal or political accountability. In the year 2012, it is still next to impossible to hold global companies and investors accountable in any court in the countries where they operate, like Guatemala; in international human rights reporting bodies (like the United Nations or Organization of American States); or in the courts of their home countries, like Canada.
Despite the fact that countries, like Canada, espouse democratic values, a belief in and adherence to the rule of law and good governance, we intentionally do not have the criminal and civil legislation on the books, let alone the political will, to hold our own companies accountable if/when they commit crimes or human rights violations and health and environmental harms in other counties.
These three lawsuits represent, in this regard, an exception to the rule of impunity and immunity from legal accountability. There is no way whatsoever (that I know of) to hold our companies criminally accountable in our courts if/when they commit crimes in other countries.
In terms of civil law accountability, there is, once again, an effort to pass comprehensive legislation (Bill C-323, The International Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Act) so as to start to fill the legal accountability void, … but this is an uphill struggle and is likely to meet strong opposition from the mining industry itself, let alone from politicians in the dominant political parties. (Information about this law and campaign: http://www.facebook.com/PassBillC323; www.peterjulian.ca; http://www.facebook.com/MPPeterJulian)
Our lack of laws and legal accountability is a hypocritical double standard and it is this very impunity and immunity from accountability that directly enables and empowers companies and investors to continue to act as they do.
A LONG TRIP ACROSS A FURTHER DISTANCE
It is in this daunting global context, that these 3 lawsuits are taking place. Of the five who came north, all are Qeqchi speakers. Sisters Maria and Angelica are bi-lingual, speaking fluent Spanish as well. German speaks quite good Spanish, as a second language. Rosa and Margarita speak only Qeqchi.
Four of them had never traveled internationally before. Rosa and Margarita had rarely been to Guatemala City. They all live in poor and materially simple rural communities, with no electricity, running water or access to basic health and educational services.
Lote 8, the village of Rosa and Margarita, is high on the mountain range the runs east-west along the north shore of Lake Izabal. There are no roads into Lote 8, a 2-3 hour hike to and from the main road below on the lowlands.
It took this group over 2 days of travel to get to Toronto. Before dawn on Thursday, November 22, Rosa and Margarita hiked down mountain paths to the main gravel road. Then, a 45 minute drive to the town of El Estor. There, Maria, Angelica and German joined them in the van, and they drove 7 hours to Guatemala City. The next morning, up at 3, they drove 5 hours to the San Salvador airport, to catch a 5 hour direct flight to Toronto.
At 10pm, Friday, November 23rd, they emerged with their suitcases, into the cold of a late November Toronto. Their home region of El Estor lies at sea level, one hour from the Caribbean Sea. It is one of the hottest regions of Guatemala. The cold of Toronto will take some getting used to. On day 1, the cold particularly affected German, due to the bullet still lodged in his back, too close to his already damaged spinal column for removal, without further risk of harm and deepening paralysis.
From the Toronto airport, they walked – German rolling in his wheelchair – into one of the centers of global power and wealth, to do legal battle with a wealthy and influential company, represented by a powerful and influential law firm, to demand justice and remedy in Canadian courts.
That is a very long trip, and even greater distance to cross. And this story is far from over. The 3 lawsuits are a small but crucial part of it.
The Qeqchi people of eastern Guatemalan have been suffering harms and violations by Canadian companies, dating back to when INCO partnered with the US-backed military regimes of the 1970s and 1980s, and carried out similar illegal and violence forced evictions, shooting and killings.
The 1999 United Nations Truth Commission concluded that INCO – via its Guatemalan subsidiary EXMIBAL – colluded with the Guatemalan military in at least 5 documented cases of serious human rights violations – including killings and disappearances.
No justice was ever done for what INCO did, neither in Guatemala nor in Canada. The victims were never remedied for their loss and suffering. In 1981, INCO closed the mining operation, but hung onto its (ill-gotten) mining concession.
By 2004, former directors of INCO had incorporated a new company – Skye Resources -, and in 2004, Skye (with support from INCO) started again to try and mine for nickel in the El Estor region; soon after that, repression began all over again.
For more background, please view: 10-minute film “El Estor Evictions”, by Steven Schnoor: http://rightsaction.org/video/elestor/index.htm; 5-minute trailer to forth-coming feature length film “Defensora”, by Rachel Schmidt: www.defensorathefilm.com.
THE LEGAL CASES
These lawsuits – filed in 2011 – may well go on for years. The Qeqchi plaintiffs and their lawyers at Klippensteins are very aware of the lopsided, up-hill nature of the legal struggle they are involved in. As a ‘legal tactic’, Hudbay could easily try to financially overwhelm the plaintiffs, using legal motions and petitions, appeals and counter-appeals, etc., spending seemingly endless amounts of Hudbay’s money to do so.
Hudbay is already arguing that -1- the cases should be brought in the jurisdiction of Guatemala, not Canada; and that -2- Hudbay should not be held to account for what its subsidiary – CGN (Guatemalan Nickel Company) – did in Guatemala.
JURISDICTION: Moving the cases to Guatemala would virtually guarantee complete impunity for Hudbay and its former subsidiary CGN. Notwithstanding a few cases of serious human rights violations and political repression that are finally moving very slowly through the Guatemalan courts, 20 to 30 years after the crimes (including genocide, massacres, disappearances, gang-rapes) were committed, it is widely recognized that legal and political impunity is the norm in Guatemala.
It is not that Guatemala does not have laws to address illegal forced evictions, killings, shootings, gang rapes, etc. It is that the legal system does not work – due to corruption fear, threats and influences – to hold the powerful sectors accountable, even when the powerful are foreign companies or individuals.
‘PIERCING THE CORPORATE VEIL’: Individuals, ultimately responsible for wrong-doing, have long hidden behind the legal artifice of the ‘corporate veil’. Ie, company and investor decision makers (who are also direct financial beneficiaries) hide behind the legal status of corporation ‘A’ (ex. Hudbay Minerals, in Canada) that they incorporated or purchased, and operate, arguing that they cannot be held responsible for the criminal or wrongful activities committed by corporation ‘B’ (ex. CGN, in Guatemala), that was incorporated or purchased by, and is operated by corporation A, that ultimately is controlled by them, the company directors and major shareholders. Nice!
Whether addressing wrongs within our national borders, or around the world, it is long overdue that our courts can and should ‘pierce the corporate veil’ and hold the real controllers and decision-makers (and, lest we forget, the financial beneficiaries) to account.
COSMOLOGICAL CHASM
On one level, these lawsuits are normal and even mundane: filing statements of claim; paying attention to procedural law; filing and contesting motions, and counter-motions; negotiating and fighting about when and where to hold pre-trial hearings; etc. But these are not lawsuits about how one neighbor’s tree fell on another’s fence, shed and property and caused damage … even as many of the same procedural, evidentiary and substantive laws and legal principles apply.
These 3 cases, that operate in many ways as one lawsuit, are bringing together a hugely wealthy company and some of the wealthiest investors on the planet (and their deep pockets, powerful law firm and connections to the Canadian political, economic and media establishments), on the one hand, with some of the poorest people on the planet, from ‘far-off’ places, speaking wildly different languages – the languages of the first nations of the Americas.
Forced together, through the courageous filing of these lawsuits, the two sides sat across from one another in a board room, in a sky-scraper in downtown Toronto, to face off in this initial round of pre-trial cross-examinations.
Four days in a row (German on Monday, Rosa on Tuesday, Margarita on Wednesday, Angelica on Thursday), the Qeqchi and Spanish speaking plaintiffs responded to up to 8 hours of questioning by Hudbay’s lawyers. Four days in a row, the other members of the group walked every morning to the door of the room where the hearings took place, to provide strength and moral support to the person going in that day; waited to have lunch with them; and then welcomed them in the evening when their day of questioning was done.
“WE WON” (Ganamos)
On Wednesday afternoon, Margarita – after 8 hours of questioning – rejoined her Qeqchi friends and community members, raised both arms in the air, and said, with a huge smile of relief, “Ganamos” (we won), as they crowded around her and hugged her. She cried.
Two points. Firstly, nothing has been won. These trials – barring unforeseen circumstances – are still in the initial stages. In Toronto, these are only pre-trial hearings. What did Margarita mean – “we won”? Two nights later, she responded to that question put to her by the media, saying: ‘We know that Hudbay has said that what we say is not true. I know Hudbay said that we [the women of Lote 8] were not gang-raped. But, we were gang-raped; Adolfo is dead, and buried under the ground; German was shot, and is here with us, in a wheelchair. So today, I answered every one of their questions. I did not cry. I told the truth, I did not lie.’
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Margarita said “we” – she did not say “I” won, referring to herself, though she had just been through 8 hours of cross-examination alone.
This “we” versus “I” goes to a larger point about what this struggle is for the Qeqchi people of Guatemala. For all of them, “they” are being harmed by the selfish interests of “outsiders” – Guatemalan and foreign wealthy interests always using violence against them, the original inhabitants of those lands, to get them off their lands so as to produce bananas, coffee, cows (for meat exports), sugar cane, African palm, or to mine for nickel.
The harms, violations and repression always have been and remain a collective harm against a people. Margarita is here, responding individually to Hudbay’s questions, but she is involved in a community struggle, both for justice and remedy in these cases, and ultimately for their community well-being, in their homes, on their lands, in their forests, by their water sources.
The gang-rapes that the eleven women of Lote 8 suffered were both individual and collective harms at the same time. Margarita, who has come from her world in Lote 8 to the heart and center of Canada’s financial capital, is proudly and with extraordinary dignity struggling for justice and remedy for herself and her Mayan Qeqchi people.
It is hard to fully describe the chasm between different world visions and life experiences in which space these lawsuits are playing themselves out.
ENDING 500 YEARS OF IMPUNITY
The scenario of the lawsuits is already hard enough to believe, let alone to consider that this is a precedent setting case. This has rarely if ever happened in Canadian courts.
If the global human community had been actually governed by the rule of law and principles of good governance and democratic accountability for, say, the last 500 years, then countless numbers of these cases would have been filed and addressed since the European (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) invasion of the Americas beginning in 1492 … (when ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue’). An entire body of law and precedents would have been established and put in place. These types of abuses would no longer occur, and when they did, real justice would be swift.
This obviously never happened – not then, and still not now. We don’t live in that world. 500 years have passed since European expansionism across the globe and the birth of the modern (and very unequal) Nation State system, and still the global human community is still deeply characterized by the impunity with which powerful states, companies and investors can and do act.
In just about every way thinkable, Canada and our courts are not doing the Qeqchi people of Guatemala the favor of hearing and possibly – just possibly – deciding upon the merits of their claims. It is the Qeqchi people of Guatemala who are doing us the favor of ensuring that our courts and legal system operate the way they should have been operating, going back generations, if not hundreds of years.
In their region of Guatemala alone, INCO never should have been able to operate as it did, in partnership with a brutal US-backed military regime, directly and indirectly causing serious violations and repression, acting with impunity.
IT IS THE ECONOMY, STUPID
And even with all this, which is a lot, this struggle is about much more than that of ensuring that the Canadian legal system operates as it should, and ensure everyone’s right to justice and remedy.
Underlying all this, is that the Qeqchi people of Guatemala – like poor indigenous and non-indigenous communities across the world – are working and struggling to be the owners, controllers and beneficiaries of their own economic development, of their own lives and well-being.
‘It is about the economy, stupid!’ … it is about the global “development” model. Not only do the Qeqchi people want and deserve justice and remedy for the repression they have suffered, they want and deserve to be the owners and controllers of their own lands, territories, rivers and forests. They don’t want large-scale “development” projects (mining, large-scale dams, for-export mono-agricultural production, oil and gas extraction, etc.) imposed on them by foreign owners, companies and investors – often backed up by repressive security forces, soldiers and police.
They want and deserve to be responsible for their own well-being, providing for their families and future generations, in balance and harmony with Mother Earth.
THEY WILL BE BACK, IF NECESSARY
As each one of them said, when asked many times over the week, they did not come to Canada for happy reasons, on a tourist trip. It was a very long and hard trip, and not something they enjoyed.
They came here to tell the truth about what happened to them, and to demand justice and remedy in Canadian courts. If necessary, they will come back to Canada as many times as it takes to participate in these lawsuits.
Hudbay purchased its mining interests in Guatemala in 2008, and sold them for a loss of $290,000,000 in 2011, but not before engaging – like companies before them – in serious human rights violations. Other nickel companies are now operating near by. Some of the same threats loom over the lives and well being of the Qeqchi people of El Estor, and beyond.
Thus, their work and struggle in defense of their land and community well-being goes back generations, and continues on now. These lawsuits are a small, but now hugely important part of their work and struggle. It long has been a hard struggle for that the Qeqchi people have carried out with truth and dignity. It continues.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Power company loses some of its appetite for coal
Note: Shutting down coal plants: Good. Replacing coal with natural gas instead of working toward drastically reducing consumption: not so good.
-The GJEP Team
By Eric Lipton, December 19, 2012. Source: NY Times
Photo: Shawn Poynter/New York Times
Coal took another serious hit Wednesday — in the heart of coal country.
American Electric Power, or A.E.P., the nation’s biggest consumer of coal,announced that it would shut its coal-burning boilers at the Big Sandy electric power plant near Louisa, Ky., a 1,100-megawatt facility that since the early 1960s has been burning coal that was mined locally.
Big Sandy this year became a symbolof the plight of the coal industry nationwide. Strict new environmental regulations are forcing large utilities to spend billions of dollars to retrofit old coal-burning plants or shut them down, replacing them in most cases with equipment that uses cleaner-burning natural gas.
A.E.P., which is based in Ohio, has repeatedly changed its mind over what to do with Big Sandy, a big employer in eastern Kentucky, both at the 120-employee plant itself and in the Appalachian-area coal mines that feed it 2.5 million tons of coal each year.
In May, the power company withdrew a plan to spent $1 billion to retrofit Big Sandy so that it could continue to operate. But that would have required a 31 percent increase in electricity rates for eastern Kentucky residents.
On Wednesday, A.E.P. announced that it would close both of the coal-burning furnaces at Big Sandy in 2015, but left open the possibility that one of the units would be retrofitted to use natural gas. Area residents, if the Kentucky Public Service Commission approves the plan, would see an 8 percent increase in their electricity rates — to replace Big Sandy’s production with electricity from West Virginia — much less than the earlier plan.
But the decision still hurts, said State Representative Rocky Adkins, a Democrat who represents the area.
“It’s kind of like we have had our heart and soul taken from us,” said Mr. Adkins, who also is the majority floor leader of the Kentucky House. “The impact on the economy here is just going to be devastating.”
This has been a bad year for the coal industry.
A total of 55 plants, including Big Sandy, have closed or have announced plans to shut down, according to a count by the Sierra Club. That will leave 395 coal-burning plants in the United States, compared with 522 in 2010, according to the Sierra Club.
Last week, Dynergy of Houston announced that its Danskammer coal-burning power plant near Newburgh, N.Y., which was damaged during Hurricane Sandy, would alsoclose permanently. Last month, Patriot Coal, based in St. Louis, which filed for bankruptcythis year, announced it would be shutting down its Bluegrass Mine Complex near Henderson, Ky., one of dozens of mines that are reducing production or closing operations as electric utilities shift at a record rate from coal to natural gas.
Nationwide, coal production dropped this year by an estimated 7 percent even as exports grew to Asia and Europe, according to the Energy Department.
Politically, this has been a disappointing year for the coal industry as well. Industry executives contributed heavily to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, while also sending large donations to important Congressional races, like Senate contests in Ohio, Virginia and Montana, in which their preferred candidates lost.
“Anyway you count it, this is the worst year ever for coal,” said Bruce Nilles, one of the managers of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “And to see Big Sandy added to the list — it underscores how the economics of coal have turned so fast. This is eastern Kentucky, a place where the state was willing to do a lot to save it.”
Mr. Adkins said the repercussions in eastern Kentucky will last for decades, adding that local hotels, trucking companies, and even schools, would be adversely affected by the shutdown.
“We will get up, dust ourselves off and we will try our best to move forward,” Mr. Adkins said.
Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said that there remained hope that the price of natural gas would rise in the coming year, making coal more competitive. He said surging demand in India and China could help replace declining domestic sales.
“We have the most of the fuel — coal — that the rest of world wants the most of,” he said.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Like this:
Power company loses some of its appetite for coal
Note: Shutting down coal plants: Good. Replacing coal with natural gas instead of working toward drastically reducing consumption: not so good.
-The GJEP Team
By Eric Lipton, December 19, 2012. Source: NY Times
Photo: Shawn Poynter/New York Times
Coal took another serious hit Wednesday — in the heart of coal country.
American Electric Power, or A.E.P., the nation’s biggest consumer of coal,announced that it would shut its coal-burning boilers at the Big Sandy electric power plant near Louisa, Ky., a 1,100-megawatt facility that since the early 1960s has been burning coal that was mined locally.
Big Sandy this year became a symbolof the plight of the coal industry nationwide. Strict new environmental regulations are forcing large utilities to spend billions of dollars to retrofit old coal-burning plants or shut them down, replacing them in most cases with equipment that uses cleaner-burning natural gas.
A.E.P., which is based in Ohio, has repeatedly changed its mind over what to do with Big Sandy, a big employer in eastern Kentucky, both at the 120-employee plant itself and in the Appalachian-area coal mines that feed it 2.5 million tons of coal each year.
In May, the power company withdrew a plan to spent $1 billion to retrofit Big Sandy so that it could continue to operate. But that would have required a 31 percent increase in electricity rates for eastern Kentucky residents.
On Wednesday, A.E.P. announced that it would close both of the coal-burning furnaces at Big Sandy in 2015, but left open the possibility that one of the units would be retrofitted to use natural gas. Area residents, if the Kentucky Public Service Commission approves the plan, would see an 8 percent increase in their electricity rates — to replace Big Sandy’s production with electricity from West Virginia — much less than the earlier plan.
But the decision still hurts, said State Representative Rocky Adkins, a Democrat who represents the area.
“It’s kind of like we have had our heart and soul taken from us,” said Mr. Adkins, who also is the majority floor leader of the Kentucky House. “The impact on the economy here is just going to be devastating.”
This has been a bad year for the coal industry.
A total of 55 plants, including Big Sandy, have closed or have announced plans to shut down, according to a count by the Sierra Club. That will leave 395 coal-burning plants in the United States, compared with 522 in 2010, according to the Sierra Club.
Last week, Dynergy of Houston announced that its Danskammer coal-burning power plant near Newburgh, N.Y., which was damaged during Hurricane Sandy, would alsoclose permanently. Last month, Patriot Coal, based in St. Louis, which filed for bankruptcythis year, announced it would be shutting down its Bluegrass Mine Complex near Henderson, Ky., one of dozens of mines that are reducing production or closing operations as electric utilities shift at a record rate from coal to natural gas.
Nationwide, coal production dropped this year by an estimated 7 percent even as exports grew to Asia and Europe, according to the Energy Department.
Politically, this has been a disappointing year for the coal industry as well. Industry executives contributed heavily to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, while also sending large donations to important Congressional races, like Senate contests in Ohio, Virginia and Montana, in which their preferred candidates lost.
“Anyway you count it, this is the worst year ever for coal,” said Bruce Nilles, one of the managers of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. “And to see Big Sandy added to the list — it underscores how the economics of coal have turned so fast. This is eastern Kentucky, a place where the state was willing to do a lot to save it.”
Mr. Adkins said the repercussions in eastern Kentucky will last for decades, adding that local hotels, trucking companies, and even schools, would be adversely affected by the shutdown.
“We will get up, dust ourselves off and we will try our best to move forward,” Mr. Adkins said.
Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, said that there remained hope that the price of natural gas would rise in the coming year, making coal more competitive. He said surging demand in India and China could help replace declining domestic sales.
“We have the most of the fuel — coal — that the rest of world wants the most of,” he said.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Like this:
Climate change already playing out in West, report says
By Amy Joi O’Donoghue, December 18 2012. Source: Deseret News
Photo: Jeffrey Allred, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY — A new report says the effects of climate change are already being felt in bug-infested forests of the Intermountain West, in reduced flows of the Colorado River basin and in the amount of snow that falls in the Rocky Mountains.
What is key, the report stresses, is how state and federal governments are responding and what land and natural resource conservation strategies can be embraced or expanded to counter the impacts.
“I think the bottom line is that these impacts are not going to happen 50 or 100 years from now,” said Bruce Stein, director of climate change adaption with the National Wildlife Federation. “Many of them are already here, and we are going to have to be rethinking what we do to protect our wildlife and how we build and protect our communities.”
In addition to climate changes causing heat waves in the summer, the report highlights a surprise revelation that its biggest effect occurs in the winter months. Those warmer winters are enhancing pest outbreaks and accelerating the melting of snowpack each year, reducing the amount of water that’s available later when needed.
The report, Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecoystems and Ecosystem Services, was peer-reviewed by the U.S. Geological Survey and drew on the expertise of 60 contributors from government agencies, universities and private, non-profit organizations such as The Nature Conservancy.
The report foreshadows the National Climate Assessment, a report done every four years for the U.S. president and Congress charting projections in global change for the next 25 to 100 years. Done by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, that report is anticipated to be released in draft form in January and available for public comment.
In a teleconference Tuesday highlighting key findings of the biodiversity report, moderator Mary Grimm said U.S. ecosystems are already undergoing “massive” transformations as the result of climate change.
“Ecological systems are already more stressed than at any comparable period in human history, said Grimm, a senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability.
The report notes that forests are already responding to climate change, with longer growing seasons and warmer winters that enhance pest outbreaks such as rampant bark beetle infestations. Such attacks are leading to widespread die-offs of trees in forests, sparking increased risks for more severe and extensive fires.
“If trends continue,” the report warned, “baseline tree mortality rates in western forests are projected to double every 17 to 29 years.”
Peter Groffman, a microbial ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millibrook, N.Y., said their research turned up a significant surprise — that climate change’s impacts are playing out more dramatically in the winter than in other seasons.
While assumptions and most research bemoans climate change with its potential for arid heat waves in the summer, those increasing temperatures during the winter months have substantial consequences as well, Groffman said.
“Climate change is more dramatic in the winter than we thought,” he said. “Those changes have effects on biodiversity and ecoystems in the growing season,” and accelerate snowmelt and even changes in peak runoff, which can come earlier.
“In the Colorado River basin, water shortages are expected as a consequence of changes in snowmelt timing,” the report notes. “Acceleration of the annual melting of snowpack may reduce water availability later in the summer when it is most needed, particularly in the more arid regions such as the western United States.”
By 2050, climate change will triple the fraction of counties in the United States that are at high or extremely high risk of outstripping their water supplies, from 10 percent to 32 percent, the report notes, adding that the most at-risk areas in the United States are the West, Southwest and Great Plains regions.
Stein said water managers, particularly those in the Colorado River basin that includes Utah, are already responding to the threat of such shortages.
“‘Water managers are planning their operations with climate in context, taking into account what is known as the ‘new normal,’” he said. “Much of our water management was developed at a time when there was good supply of precipitation. Over the last 10 to 15 years, we can see that has changed. Along the Colorado, they are beginning to recalibrate their assumptions and accordingly recalibrate how they are managing the river and their allocations.”
The study points to strides and real progress on the ground that demonstrates that government can be responsive and smart in the threat of climate change, and the public-private partnerships out there to curtail its range of potential consequences.
An example is a tree-thinning program instituted in Arizona, which experienced its largest wildfire on record in 2011. Still, the fire did not burn ridges where the thinning had happened. Such strategy invoked in advance of catastrophic wildfires can help reduce other threats, such as flash flooding that can imperil drinking water supplies, the report notes.
“The nexus of climate and forest fires is a flashpoint for several other degraded ecosystems such as water supply and water quality,” the report said.
The report said that the federal government is beginning to take action by managing programs with climate change as a component.
Several states, too, have formal climate change adaptation programs on the books, and even those that don’t are approaching the management of fish and wildlife with strategies that incorporate conservation in a broad sense, including habitat restoration and landscape connectivity.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
For Indigenous Peoples, land rights are only half the battle
By Barbara Fraser, December 17 2012. Source: Intercontinental Cry
Photo: Intercontinental Cry
LIMA, Peru - While indigenous people in Latin America are increasingly gaining rights to their traditional homelands, obstacles ranging from unclear legislation to entrenched power brokers have prevented them from having any real say over governance or their natural resources, a new analysis says.
Anne Larson, a scientist with the Center for International Forestry Research and winner of this year’s Ostrom Memorial Award for most innovative paper of the year, has spent the last six years studying cases in northeastern Nicaragua.
The North Atlantic Autonomous Region, an area that includes 19 indigenous territories with elected leaders, was created in the late 1980s to give local people a role in decision-making. That added a new layer of control to a system that already included national and municipal governments.
However, that did not necessarily make decision-making more effective or democratic.
Effectively, the national government maintained de facto control.
A turning point came when Awas Tingni, a Sumo-Mayangna indigenous community, filed a petition with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights over a forest concession that the national government had granted to a foreign company on its lands, without its consent. In a landmark case in 2001, the court mandated that the government recognise indigenous land rights. Not long after, Nicaragua passed the Communal Lands Law, officially recognizing this and calling for demarcation and titling of lands.
The law, however, did not automatically resolve key issues facing the communities, particularly those related to the colonisation of the land by outsiders, the formation of territories, election of representatives and authority over natural resources.
“Indigenous land rights are being recognised in part because of important national and international movements that have fought for them, but also in part because those who want access to the resources on those lands are finding other ways to get them,” Larson says.
In Nicaragua and other countries, indigenous territories often overlap the boundaries of municipalities. That can lead to conflicts in cases in which both local indigenous authorities and municipal officials claim jurisdiction. Further complicating matters, the national government may be reluctant to give local people the power to make decisions about natural resources, even if the law requires their free prior and informed consent.
As a result, they still lack the real ability to make decisions, Larson says. Instead, other players with more power take advantage of legal ambiguities and sideline them from decision-making.
Her paper, Decentralisation and devolution in Nicaragua’s North Atlantic autonomous region: Natural resources and indigenous peoples’ rights, published in the International Journal of the Commons, shows that laws establishing multi-level government alone will not enable indigenous communities to better manage their natural resources.
“The only practical solution is to tip the power balance through the empowerment of local actors – through specific interventions to educate, organize and facilitate their ability to bring about change in the way decisions are made,” Larson writes. [emphasis added]
“People need to understand and fight for their rights and demand accountability and representation not only from authorities but also from their own leaders,” she says.
“We need to rethink ways of managing community development, emphasising identity and intercultural relationships,” says co-author, Jadder Mendoza-Lewis, former director of the Natural Resources, Environment and Sustainable Development Institute at the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua (URACCAN), who is a native of that region.
“It is important to engage in deeper dialogue and design mechanisms that ensure communal and territorial governments that are democratic, transparent and inclusive,” Mendoza-Lewis says.
Legal reforms can also help by creating a process for communities to give their free, prior and informed consent about concessions or other use of resources on their lands, specifying how communities will exercise their rights and clarifying the relationship between municipalities and territories.
Such steps could “help level the playing field,” according to Larson, encouraging dialogue with communities and empowering local leaders by helping them understand their territories and training them in negotiating skills.
“The dynamics are partly about natural resources, because they are a main source of employment and development, but governance structures and the reasons people come together have to do with what they want for their future, not just natural resources,” she says.
Larson hopes to compare Nicaragua’s experience with the autonomous region with systems for governing indigenous territories in other parts of Latin America.
The Ostrom Memorial Award is named for the late Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009 and was known for her studies of the management of common resources.
Michael Schoon, an editor at the International Journal of the Commons, said the paper by Larson and Mendoza-Lewis was noted for the interesting and innovative approach it took in grappling with the problem of how to embed power relations in a theory of decentralisation.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
California issues first-ever fracking regulations
Note: Looks like the Golden Age of Gas is coming to the Sunshine State. Good thing California doesn’t have to worry about water scarcity. On second thought…
-The GJEP Team
By Paul Rogers, December 18, 2012. Source: Mercury News
Elizabeth Allen, of Boulder, wears a “No Friggin’ Frackin’” sign while waiting for the meeting to begin, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012, at the Boulder County Courthouse in Boulder, Colo.
Photo: Jeremy Papasso/AP Photo
Wading into one of the hottest environmental debates in the nation, California on Tuesday released its first-ever regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the increasingly common — and controversial — practice of freeing oil and gas from rock formations by injecting chemicals under high pressure into the ground.
The rules proposed by the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown would require energy companies to disclose their fracking plans to the state 10 days before starting operations. The companies also would be required to post to an online database with the locations of their work and the chemicals used, and they would face new rules for testing and monitoring their wells.
“There is a high degree of public interest in this, a high degree of legislative interest, and interest in the Brown Administration in having rules that are clear,” said Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the California Department of Conservation.
Environmental groups immediately blasted the rules as weak and riddled with loopholes.
“These draft regulations would keep California’s fracking shrouded in secrecy and do little to contain the many threats posed by fracking,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The rules are going to have to be completely rewritten if the goal is to provide real protection for our air, water and communities.”
In recent years, fracking has made headlines in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and
other states, as energy companies have used new technologies to produce huge amounts of natural gas, creating jobs and lowering natural gas prices considerably. The practice even has an environmental benefit: By making natural gas cheaper, it has led utilities to use less coal, reducing global warming and soot emissions.
But critics have raised concerns about fracking chemicals polluting groundwater, along with widespread disruption to rural property owners from huge rigs and loud industrial equipment. A documentary film, “Gasland,” further increased concerns when it showed tap water so polluted near one fracking area that it caught fire.
The oil industry on Tuesday said the California draft rules were a good start.
“We certainly appreciate the effort that the Department of Conservation is making on these,” said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. “We are encouraged that they continue to recognize the important role that hydraulic fracturing can play in the state’s economy.”
Monterey Shale
Companies in California have used fracking at least since the 1960s. But most of it has been done to produce oil, and largely in Kern County and other Southern California areas. But now the oil industry is looking at a dramatic expansion into the Monterey Shale, a huge geologic formation that extends through much of the Central Valley into San Benito and Monterey counties.
The formation is believed to hold as much as 15.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which would make it the nation’s largest shale oil formation. Last week, the federal Bureau of Land Management leased 18,000 acres in southern Monterey County for fracking.
Fearing an oil rush that could increase pollution, several lawmakers in Sacramento this year unsuccessfully tried to limit the practice. One bill, by state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, for example, would have required 30 days notice to any property owner within 300 feet of a fracking operation. Pavley also wanted the energy companies to test groundwater before and after fracking to ensure that the thousands of gallons of chemicals injected into the ground do not pollute potential drinking water sources.
The state Senate rejected the measure amid opposition from the oil industry and Republicans, who said it would cost jobs.
On Tuesday, Pavley said that some parts of the draft rules are promising, but the notification and disclosure requirements fall short.
“There is still much work to be done,” she said.
Brown administration officials contended that California has some of the strictest rules about well safety in the nation and that fracking has not caused environmental damage in the Golden State.
“There is no evidence of harm from fracking in groundwater in California at this point in time. And it has been going on for many years,” said Tim Kustic, state oil and gas supervisor with the California Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.
‘Discussion draft’
The draft rules released Tuesday came after the agency held public discussions around the state. The “discussion draft” begins a process that will play out next year with more public hearings and could take a year to finalize.
Although state regulators said the rules would protect public safety, they raised many new questions. Among them:
The rules require companies to give 10 days notice to the department, but they require only three days public notice of the fracking site before work begins and do not require notification of adjacent property owners.
The rules do not include an appeals process for property owners who oppose the fracking work.
The rules require for the first time that energy companies disclose the chemicals they are injecting into the ground. But the database for that information is not be subject to public records laws.
Instead, rules would require companies to post the information to a privately owned and difficult-to-navigate Web database called FracFocus, which critics link to the oil and gas industry.
Companies could claim “trade secrets” exemptions to withhold the names of the chemicals they inject.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>
Like this:
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
California issues first-ever fracking regulations
Note: Looks like the Golden Age of Gas is coming to the Sunshine State. Good thing California doesn’t have to worry about water scarcity. On second thought…
-The GJEP Team
By Paul Rogers, December 18, 2012. Source: Mercury News
Elizabeth Allen, of Boulder, wears a “No Friggin’ Frackin’” sign while waiting for the meeting to begin, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012, at the Boulder County Courthouse in Boulder, Colo.
Photo: Jeremy Papasso/AP Photo
Wading into one of the hottest environmental debates in the nation, California on Tuesday released its first-ever regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the increasingly common — and controversial — practice of freeing oil and gas from rock formations by injecting chemicals under high pressure into the ground.
The rules proposed by the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown would require energy companies to disclose their fracking plans to the state 10 days before starting operations. The companies also would be required to post to an online database with the locations of their work and the chemicals used, and they would face new rules for testing and monitoring their wells.
“There is a high degree of public interest in this, a high degree of legislative interest, and interest in the Brown Administration in having rules that are clear,” said Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the California Department of Conservation.
Environmental groups immediately blasted the rules as weak and riddled with loopholes.
“These draft regulations would keep California’s fracking shrouded in secrecy and do little to contain the many threats posed by fracking,” said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The rules are going to have to be completely rewritten if the goal is to provide real protection for our air, water and communities.”
In recent years, fracking has made headlines in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and
other states, as energy companies have used new technologies to produce huge amounts of natural gas, creating jobs and lowering natural gas prices considerably. The practice even has an environmental benefit: By making natural gas cheaper, it has led utilities to use less coal, reducing global warming and soot emissions.
But critics have raised concerns about fracking chemicals polluting groundwater, along with widespread disruption to rural property owners from huge rigs and loud industrial equipment. A documentary film, “Gasland,” further increased concerns when it showed tap water so polluted near one fracking area that it caught fire.
The oil industry on Tuesday said the California draft rules were a good start.
“We certainly appreciate the effort that the Department of Conservation is making on these,” said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association. “We are encouraged that they continue to recognize the important role that hydraulic fracturing can play in the state’s economy.”
Monterey Shale
Companies in California have used fracking at least since the 1960s. But most of it has been done to produce oil, and largely in Kern County and other Southern California areas. But now the oil industry is looking at a dramatic expansion into the Monterey Shale, a huge geologic formation that extends through much of the Central Valley into San Benito and Monterey counties.
The formation is believed to hold as much as 15.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which would make it the nation’s largest shale oil formation. Last week, the federal Bureau of Land Management leased 18,000 acres in southern Monterey County for fracking.
Fearing an oil rush that could increase pollution, several lawmakers in Sacramento this year unsuccessfully tried to limit the practice. One bill, by state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, for example, would have required 30 days notice to any property owner within 300 feet of a fracking operation. Pavley also wanted the energy companies to test groundwater before and after fracking to ensure that the thousands of gallons of chemicals injected into the ground do not pollute potential drinking water sources.
The state Senate rejected the measure amid opposition from the oil industry and Republicans, who said it would cost jobs.
On Tuesday, Pavley said that some parts of the draft rules are promising, but the notification and disclosure requirements fall short.
“There is still much work to be done,” she said.
Brown administration officials contended that California has some of the strictest rules about well safety in the nation and that fracking has not caused environmental damage in the Golden State.
“There is no evidence of harm from fracking in groundwater in California at this point in time. And it has been going on for many years,” said Tim Kustic, state oil and gas supervisor with the California Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources.
‘Discussion draft’
The draft rules released Tuesday came after the agency held public discussions around the state. The “discussion draft” begins a process that will play out next year with more public hearings and could take a year to finalize.
Although state regulators said the rules would protect public safety, they raised many new questions. Among them:
The rules require companies to give 10 days notice to the department, but they require only three days public notice of the fracking site before work begins and do not require notification of adjacent property owners.
The rules do not include an appeals process for property owners who oppose the fracking work.
The rules require for the first time that energy companies disclose the chemicals they are injecting into the ground. But the database for that information is not be subject to public records laws.
Instead, rules would require companies to post the information to a privately owned and difficult-to-navigate Web database called FracFocus, which critics link to the oil and gas industry.
Companies could claim “trade secrets” exemptions to withhold the names of the chemicals they inject.
div { margin-top: 1em; }
]]>