indigenous ppl

NO MERRI

new cat 1/16 for non-north america

primary 719, front lines, KIA

bak 1219

see corp ctr-insurgency

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Jeremy-Walker-CCS-27-Sept-2023

Silencing the voice of Indigenous Australia: The fossil-funded Atlas Network and the Vote No disinformation campaign against the referendum on constitutional recognition Jeremy Walker Climate, Society & Environment Research Centre (C-SERC), University of Technology Sydney, Australia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0789-3457

Abstract: On the 14th of October 2023, Australians will vote in a referendum on a minimalist constitutional amendment to finally recognise the First Nations of Australia in its 1901 Constitution and to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. A year ago, polls suggested the referendum proposal of the Uluru Statement enjoyed over 60% support. Since the Vote No campaign was launched, polling suggests the Yes vote has declined to around 40%. This article argues that the Vote No operation is being organised on behalf of self-interested fossil fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back more than half a century. They don’t want Indigenous Australians to gain this long overdue constitutional recognition because they believe it will contribute to reining in the polluting industries that are driving us toward climate and ecological collapse.

Led by pop-up campaign unit Advance Australia, the No campaign is coordinated across the the Australian branch of the little-known, highly influential global infrastructure of the Atlas Network of ‘free-market thinktanks’– which includes the Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs and Liberty Works.

Based on publicly available evidence, I examine the role of oil companies and key actors in this highly integrated network of organisations, demonstrating that the No campaign shares the same aims and methods as the longstanding disinformation campaign against climate policy operated by the Atlas Network: to immunise transnational business profits from democratic parliaments.

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https://www.democracynow.org/2022/2/7/headlines/ecuador_high_court_sides_with_indigenous_groups_in_dispute_over_drilling_and_mining

Ecuador’s Constitutional Court has ruled that Indigenous communities should have much more control over whether to allow extractive projects on their lands. In a decision handed down Friday, judges ruled that Indigenous groups can halt proposed mining and oil drilling projects if they’re found to require “excessive sacrifices to the collective rights of communities and nature.”It’s a blow to President Guillermo Lasso, who has promised to double Ecuador’s oil production, and a major victory for the A’i Cofán communityand other Indigenous groups who’ve suffered the effects of environmental destruction for decades.

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/28/brazil-amazon-indigenous-protest/

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Nemonte Nenquimo filed a lawsuit against the Ecuadoran government and successfully safeguarded 202,000 hectares of Indigenous territories and Amazon rainforest from oil exploration and extraction.

Nenquimo, 33, is an Indigenous Waorani woman from the Amazon Rainforest in Ecuador. In 2015, she co-founded an Indigenous-led coalition called the Ceibo Alliance and was elected president of an organization that represents the Waorani of Ecuador's Pastaza province.

Ecuador is among the most biodiverse places in the world, but its forests and people have been increasingly threatened by logging, road construction, oil exploration and other extractive industries. In 2018, in an effort to bring oil company investments into the nation,Ecuador's minister of hydrocarbons announced 2.8 million hectares (7 million acres) of land constituting primary rainforest would be auctioned off for oil concessions.

In 2019, Nenquimo and other Waorani leaders filed a lawsuit against three government ministries in Ecuador for falsely claiming they had consent from the Waorani to sell their lands at auction. She also bolstered Indigenous community independence by installing solar and rainwater catchment systems in villages and supporting cottage industries such as chocolate production. Nenquimo helped secure funds for Indigenous filmmakers to tell their stories and played a lead role in a community mapping project charting the Waoroni territory around 16 communities.

In April 2019, Nenquimo and the Waorani won the court case against the Ecuadoran ministries, and the ruling was upheld in the court of appeals, safeguarding 202,000 hectares of Indigenous territories and Amazon rainforest from oil exploration and extraction. This case set an important legal precedent for Indigenous rights in Ecuador.

Nenquimo was named one of TIME magazine's list of 100 most influential people of 2020, and continues to work as a leader of her people and the environmental movement in Ecuador.

Julia Watson

D:{esign by Radical Indigenism:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{

on Tuesday September 15, 02020 at 5:00pm PT

watch this talk on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Long Now Live}:

Long Now Talks explore compelling ideas on long-term thinking from speakers around the world.

Watch and share the live streams of our talks on YouTube, Facebook, Twitterand Long Now Live.

Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable.

There is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems. Watson's work reconnects with this sophisticated global body of knowledge.

Julia Watson teaches Urban Design at Harvard and Columbia University and is author of Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism (02019). Her work focuses on experiential, landscape, and urban design, with an ethos towards global ecological change.

4/20

1 :{in 10 Children Affected by Bushfires Is Indigenous. We’ve Been Ignoring Them for Too Long:(style="color:#000000;"):}:

https://www.ecowatch.com/nature-destruction-violence-women-2644975232.html

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Where Humans Destroy Nature, Women Also Suffer More Violence

Common Dreams Jan 30 CLIMATE

The Diwalwal Gold Mine in Mindanao, Philippines on Feb. 1, 1988. Destruction of the environment by extractive industries is linked to significant threats to women's safety, a new study has found. Patrick AVENTURIER / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

By Julia Conley

Climate action leaders have warned for years that marginalized frontline communities in poor countries are already facing the most destructive impacts of the climate crisis, and a new study confirms those fears, detailing how women in those regions are at greater risk for violence and abuse as the environment is degraded.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released its study on Wednesday after conducting more than 80 case studies and speaking to more than 300 sources over the course of a two-year project.

"This study adds to the urgency of halting environmental degradation alongside action to stop gender-based violence in all its forms, and demonstrates that the two issues often need to be addressed together," said Dr. Grethel Aguilar, IUCN's acting director-general.

The study is the largest and most comprehensive to ever examine the gender-specific effects of the climate crisis, IUCN says.

Of the more than 300 responses IUCN compiled from international organizations working in developing countries, six in 10 respondents said they had observed gender-based violence directed at female environmental defenders, climate refugees and migrants, and an increase in such violence in areas where the climate crisis and global heating has put a strain on resources.

Abuses the organizations uncovered include child marriage and forced marriage, forced prostitution, sexual violence and assault, and human trafficking.

"As environmental degradation and stress on ecosystems increases, that in turn creates scarcity and stress for people, and the evidence shows that, where environmental pressures increase, gender-based violence increases," said Cate Owren, lead author of the report.

The publication was praised by women's rights advocates on social media.

"The fight against the climate crisis will have far more of an impact if represented by those most affected," tweeted the British Women's Equality Party.

The study found that both human trafficking and forced child marriage are becoming increasingly common in places where chronic drought, flooding and heatwaves have caused crop yields to suffer and brought on a scarcity of resources.

"When families struggle to meet basic needs, marrying off young daughters is seen as a way to lighten financial burdens," the report reads. "There is growing concern around reports of an increase in child marriage associated with conflict and natural disasters and environmental shocks."

According to The Guardian, about 12 million more young girls are believed to have been married off after extreme weather events increased, while human trafficking increases by 20 to 30% after weather disasters.

"In most parts of the world, women are already disadvantaged and lack land rights and legal rights, so are vulnerable to exploitation," wrote Fiona Harvey in The Guardian. "When the additional stresses caused by the climate crises bite, they are the first to be targeted."

The destruction of the environment by extractive industries has significant effects on women's safety, as an influx of male miners, construction workers and security guards is linked to an increase in gender-based and sexual violence, often with Indigenous women as targets.

"Mining areas, many of which are in Indigenous territories, have seen heavy military presence, resulting in various human rights violations, such as torture, psychological disturbance, destruction and divestment of properties (livestock and crops), as well as violence against women, including rape," reads the study in a section about the Mindanao region of the Philippines.

Sexual violence is also used to suppress women who attempt to defend their homes and environments from extractive industries, and to intimidate others who may come forward in protest.

"Environmental crimes degrade ecosystems, and also often bring new, worsening patterns of violence against women, minorities, and marginalized communities," said Jenny Springer, director of IUCN's global program on governance and rights. "Many Indigenous women in particular face gender-based and other violence as their communities act to defend their territories, resources and rights from such illegal activities."

Since women in many parts of the world are responsible for gathering water and provisions for their families, they are often at an increasingly greater risk for gender-based violence as they have to travel farther from home, as resources shrink.

IUCN surveyed the Danish Refugee Council, which conducted a study at Doro Refugee Camp in South Sudan regarding dangers faced by residents there. Women in the study identified collecting firewood outside the camp as the biggest risk they regularly took.

"Food insecurity and the lack of firewood forces women and girls to go outside of the camps to collect firewood despite the risks of suffering violence by militias, private forest owners, rangers or other unknown perpetrators," the report reads. "Many ... survey respondents also raised these concerns as one of the major threats in refugee camps as related to emergency responses and protracted crises."

IUCN's study was released a day after CARE International published its report "Suffering in Silence," showing how the climate crisis has exacerbated conflicts and economic and political instability across Africa, making the continent home to nine of the 10 most-overlooked humanitarian crises in the world.

"Environmental degradation now affects our lives in ways that are becoming impossible to ignore, from food to jobs to security," said Aguilar. "This study shows that the damage humanity is inflicting on nature is also fueling violence against women around the world — a link that has so far been largely overlooked."

Reposted with permission from Common Dreams.

How the Women of Standing Rock Are Building Sovereign Economies ›

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Climate Destruction as Gender Violence ›

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We have been holding back industrial development and resource extraction in the Amazon all decade: from stopping the Tapajos mega-dam on the last free-flowing Amazon River tributary in Brazil, to backing Sarayaku's precedent-setting legal victory when the Inter-American Court ruled that Ecuador had violated their rights by allowing oil drilling on their land, to winning the historic $9.5 billion judgement against Chevron for deliberately polluting the Ecuadorian Amazon, to standing with the U’wa people of Colombia who successfully dismantled the Magallanes gas project on their sacred lands.

guk1219

The polluters

Argentina How fracking is taking its toll on indigenous people

In collaboration with Forensic Architecture, this video looks at the Mapuche community’s claim the oil and gas industry has irreversibly damaged their ancestral homeland

5:03

'Greed is killing the world'Indigenous Mapuche pay high price for fracking dream

Fossil fuelsTop asset managers oversee $300bn investments

State StreetFossil fuel bosses 'must change or be voted out'

Five Indigenous Leaders Massacred in Colombia; New Wave of Violence Feared as 2,500 Troops Deployed

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/4/paulo_paulino_guajajara_amazon_indigenous_killings

indigenous forest protector named Paulo Paulino Guajajara was shot dead in the Amazon by illegal loggers on Saturday. It is the latest incident in a wave of violence targeting indigenous land protectors since the election of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro last year. Guajajara was killed when he and another forest protector were ambushed by a group of illegal loggers inside the Araribóia reservation in the northeastern state of Maranhão. We speak with João Coimbra Sousa, a field coordinator and legal adviser for Amazon Watch, in São Luís in the northeastern state of Maranhão. And in San Francisco, we speak with Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch.

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/23/indigenous-climate-green-new-deal/

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Indigenous People Are Already Working “Green Jobs” — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid

Nick Estes

September 23 2019, 4:46 a.m.

[pix Catcher Cuts The Road, an Iraq War veteran, leads a protest march to a sacred burial ground at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, Sept. 9, 2016. A federal judge on Friday denied the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's efforts to halt the construction of a pipeline skirting the northern edge of the reservation on Friday; on the same day, the government ordered a the pipeline company to pause its work. ]

A GROWING CLIMATE consciousness has spurred popular support for a Green New Deal complete with calls for “green jobs” to aid in the transition away from fossil fuels. It’s a welcome development, but it’s also important to recognize the old labor of ecological stewardship — particularly that being carried out by Indigenous land defenders and Water Protectors.

“There’s an idea that we’re out there as paid activists. Wouldn’t that be great?” Anne Spice, a Tlingit researcher and land defender who has been living at Unist’ot’en Camp for several years while finishing her doctoral degree, said with a chuckle.

“There’s an idea that we’re out there as paid activists. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Founded in 2010 on unceded Wet’suwet’en land, Unist’ot’en Camp, some 750 miles north of Vancouver, Canada, aims to block the Coastal Gas Link pipeline, known as CGL, which is being constructed by TC Energy, the firm formerly known as TransCanada. But that’s not the camp’s only purpose: It was also founded to help bring the land and the community back to health after a period of intense logging that threatened moose hunts and salmon runs, elements of a land-based economy threatened by the oil pipeline.

“We are consistently doing the very thing CGL and RCMP” — the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — “are failing to do, which is ask for permission to enter territories and to gather and harvest,” Spice told me. It’s hard, meticulous work grounded in Indigenous culture and maintaining good relations, and not the quick techno-fixes some people are calling for in climate action.

The sort of land defense undertaken in the camp opens up a larger discussion about what “green jobs” are already being performed by Indigenous peoples to save our Earth — and the kind of value we assign to them.

[Climate Crimes

Read Our Complete Coverage]

Similar to how women and non-men have been historically tasked with doing the unpaid labor of housework and child-rearing, the relationship Indigenous caretakers have with the land, water, air, and nonhuman world is typically not viewed as productive. The financial, service, industrial, or technology sectors usually define what counts as a “job” — and it’s frequently bound up with polluting. Rarely is Indigenous caretaking defined as work. Yet, like unwaged caregiving work, land defense and water protection are undervalued but necessary for the continuation of life on a planet teetering on collapse.

Despite preserving the very elements needed to sustain life — such as clean air, water, and land — from settler states, repression against Indigenous peoples protecting their territories runs rampant.

[Related

On the Front Lines of Bolsonaro’s War on the Amazon,Brazil’s Forest Communities Fight Against Climate Catastrophe

...

Meet Brazil’s Indigenous Leader Attacked by Bolsonaro at U.N. over Efforts to Preserve the Amazon

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/24/un_climate_summit_indigenous_leader_barred

https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/17/brazil-criminal-networks-target-rainforest-defenders

São Paulo) – Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is driven largely by criminal networks that use violence and intimidation against those who try to stop them, and the government is failing to protect both the defenders and the rainforest itself, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 165-page report, “Rainforest Mafias: How Violence and Impunity Fuel Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon,” documents how illegal logging by criminal networks and resulting forest fires are connected to acts of violence and intimidation against forest defenders and the state’s failure to investigate and prosecute these crimes.

“Brazilians who defend the Amazon are facing threats and attacks from criminal networks engaged in illegal logging,” said Daniel Wilkinson, acting environment and human rights director at Human Right Watch. “The situation is only getting worse under President Bolsonaro, whose assault on the country’s environmental agencies is putting the rainforest and the people who live there at much greater risk.”

The criminal networks have the logistical capacity to coordinate large-scale extraction, processing, and sale of timber, while deploying armed men to intimidate and, in some cases, kill those who seek to defend the forest, Human Rights Watch found.

On September 23, 2019 the United Nations will hold a summit meeting to discuss global efforts to mitigate climate change. As its contribution to those efforts, Brazil committed in 2016 to eliminate illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030.

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 170 people, including 60 members of Indigenous communities, and other local residents in the states of Maranhão, Pará, and Rondônia. Researchers also interviewed dozens of government officials in Brasília and throughout the Amazon region, including many who provided inside accounts of how President Jair Bolsonaro’s policies are undermining enforcement efforts.

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Why Indigenous Hunting Is Essential to Forest Sustainability

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https://www.ecowatch.com/leaked-documents-bolsonaro-amazon-rainforest-2639991444.html

no lnx vid?

Leaked Documents Show Brazil’s Bolsonaro Has Grave Plans for Amazon Rainforest

openDemocracy Aug. 23, 2019 02:01PM EST POLITICS

Wildfires have raging through the Amazon rainforest for weeks.

Pixabay

By Manuella Libardi

Leaked documents show that Jair Bolsonaro's government intends to use the Brazilian president's hate speech to isolate minorities living in the Amazon region. The PowerPoint slides, which democraciaAbierta has seen, also reveal plans to implement predatory projects that could have a devastating environmental impact.

The Bolsonaro government has as one of its priorities to strategically occupy the Amazon region to prevent the implementation of multilateral conservation projects for the rainforest, specifically the so-called "Triple A" project.

"Development projects must be implemented on the Amazon basin to integrate it into the rest of the national territory in order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of the so-called 'Triple A' project. To do this, it is necessary to build the Trombetas River hydroelectric plant, the Óbidos bridge over the Amazon River, and the implementation of the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname," one of slides read.

One of the slides from the presentation.

democraciaAbierta

In February, ministers Gustavo Bebianno (Secretary General of the Presidency), Ricardo Salles (Environment) and Damares Alves (Women, Family and Human Rights) had planned travel to Tiriós (Pará) to speak with local leaders about the construction of a bridge over the Amazon River in the city of Óbidos, a hydroelectric plant in Oriximiná, and the expansion of the BR-163 highway to the Suriname border. But this meeting was canceled.

A second meeting among government officials, also in February, used a PowerPoint presentation that details the projects announced by the Bolsonaro government for the region. The presentation, which was leaked to democraciaAbierta, argues that a strong government presence in the Amazon region is important to prevent any conservation projects from taking roots.

The slides are clear. Before any predatory plan is implemented, the strategy begins with rhetoric. Bolsonaro's hate speech already shows that the plan is working. The Amazon is on fire. It's been burning for weeks and not even those who live in Brazil were fully aware. Thanks to the efforts of local communities with the help of social networks, the reality is finally going viral.

The online reaction is far from being sensationalist. This year alone, Brazil had 72,000 fire outbreaks, half of which are in the Amazon. The National Institute for Space Research reported that its satellite data showed an 84% increase on the same period in 2018.

Attacking non-governmental organizations is part of the Bolsonaro government's strategy. According to another of the PowerPoint's slide, the country is currently facing a globalist campaign that "relativizes the National Sovereignty in the Amazon Basin," using a combination of international pressure and also what the government called "psychological oppression" both externally and internally.

This campaign mobilizes environmental and Indigenous rights organizations, as well as the media, to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on Brazilian institutions. The conspiracy also encourages minorities — mainly Indigenous and Quilombola (residents of settlements founded by people of African origin who escaped slavery) — to act with the support of public institutions at the federal, state and municipal levels. The result of this movement, they say in the presentation, restricts "the government's freedom of action."

So it is unsurprising that Bolsonaro's response to the fires comes in the form of an attack on NGOs. On Wednesday, August 21, Bolsonaro said he believed non-governmental organizations could be behind the fires as a tactic "to draw attention against me, against the government of Brazil."

Bolsonaro did not cite names of NGOs and, when asked if he has evidence to support the allegations, he said there were no written records of the suspicions. According to the president, NGOs may be retaliating against his government's budget cuts. His government cut 40 percent of international transfers to NGOs, he added.

Part of the government's strategy of circumventing this globalist campaign is to depreciate the relevance and voices of minorities that live in the region, transforming them into enemies. One of the tactics cited in the document is to redefine the paradigms of indigenism, quilombolism and environmentalism through the lenses of liberalism and conservatism, based on realist theories. Those are, according to a slide, "the new hopes for the Homeland: Brazil above everything!"

https://www.ecowatch.com/gold-miners-murder-indigenous-leader-amazon-2639458840.html

Gold Miners Murder Indigenous Leader, Force Villagers in Brazil’s Amazon to Flee

Olivia Rosane Jul. 29, 2019 01:57PM EST POLITICS

[A Waiapi man looks at a boy picking fruits from a Geninapo tree at the Waiapi indigenous reserve in Amapa state in Brazil on Oct. 13, 2017. APU GOMES / AFP / Getty Images]

Gold miners invaded indigenous territory in Brazil's Amazon, killing one leader and prompting villagers to flee for safety, The New York Times reported Saturday.

The violence confirms fears that right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's promises to open protected lands to mining and other extractive industries will have devastating consequences for indigenous communities.

"The president is responsible for this death," opposition Sen. Rodolfe Rodrigues told The New York Times.

Rodrigues received an urgent voice message from leaders of the Wajãpi tribe, who live in the state of Amapá in Northern Brazil.

"They are armed with rifles and other weapons," community leader Jawaruwa Waiãpi said in the message. "We are in danger. You need to send the army to stop them."

Federal police arrived in the area Sunday, and both police and the federal prosecutors' office said they would investigate the incident, BBC News reported.

The murdered leader was identified as 68-year-old Emyra Wajãpi. His body was found with stab wounds in a river Wednesday, according to Brazil's indigenous rights agency Funai.

Reports of what happened next are mixed. Armed miners entered the village of Yvytotõ Friday, occupying a home and prompting the villagers to flee 40 minutes on foot to Mariry village, according to accounts from BBC News and Survival International. The Guardian reported that villagers fled Mariry to the larger village of Aramirã, where shots were fired on Saturday. BBC News reported that 10 to 15 miners invaded, while The Guardian and The New York Times put the number at dozens.

"The garimpeiros [miners] invaded the indigenous village and are there until today. They are heavily armed, they have machine guns. That is why we asking for help from the federal police," 26-year-old tribe member Kureni Waiãpi, who lives in Pedra Branca do Amapari, said, as The Guardian reported. "If nothing is done they will start to fight."

As the villagers sent their message pleading for help Saturday, Bolsonaro once again expressed his desire to open indigenous reserves to mining, speaking of the resources located in the Raposa Serra do Sol and Yanomami reserves, where mining invasions are common.

"I'm looking for the 'first world' to explore these areas in partnership and add value. That's the reason for my approximation with the United States. That's why I want a person of trust in the embassy in the USA," Bolsonaro said, according to the O Globo newspaper, as The Guardian reported. Bolsonaro has come under fire for his plan to appoint his son Eduardo as the U.S. ambassador.

Rodrigues said the weekend's incident was the first invasion of Waiãpi land in 30 years, according to BBC News.

Invasions like this one are "encouraged by the irresponsible, authoritarian and prejudiced stance of the current government — especially President Bolsonaro — and its attack on the rights of this country's first peoples," the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon said in a statement reported by Survival International.

The Waiãpi were first contacted in 1973 when Brazil's military dictatorship built a highway through part of their land, bringing miners and deadly diseases. Their territory was officially recognized in 1996. Today, around 1,500 Waiãpi live in the protected area, according to Survival International.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping ... ›

aha: dereg (damages protection of forest, thus buffer and resilience) and corruption is lack of info on effects so we can avert disaster --> AGW:

ref

https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point

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Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping point'

Data confirms fears that Jair Bolsonaro’s policy encourages illegal logging in Brazil

Jonathan Watts in Altamira

@jonathanwatts

Thu 25 Jul 2019 17.40 BST Last modified on Thu 25 Jul 2019 21.37 BST

Amazon rainforest turned into farmland. An area the size of Greater London has been lost this month. Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover.

The sharp rise – following year-on-year increases in May and June – confirms fears that president Jair Bolsonaro has given a green light to illegal land invasion, logging and burning.

Clearance so far in July has hit 1,345 sq km, a third higher than the previous monthly record under the current monitoring system by the Deter B satellite system, which started in 2015.

With five days remaining, this is on course to be the first month for several years in which Brazil loses an area of forest bigger than Greater London.

The steady erosion of tree cover weakens the role of the rainforest in stabilising the global climate. Scientists warn that the forest is in growing danger of degrading into a savannah, after which its capacity to absorb carbon will be severely diminished, with consequences for the rest of the planet.

“It’s very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away,” said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research. “We can’t see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem.”

It may also complicate ratification of Brazil’s biggest ever trade deal with the European Union if EU legislators decide the South American nation is not keeping its side of the bargain, which includes a commitment to slow deforestation in line with the Paris climate agreement.

The official numbers from the National Institute for Space Research are a growing embarrassment to Bolsonaro, who has tried to fob them off as lies and criticised the head of the institute.Earlier this week, the president insisted the numbers should be screened by the ministry of science and technology and shown to him before being made public so that he did not get “caught with his pants down”.

This has raised fears that the data could be vetted in future rather than automatically updated online each day as is currently the case.

In his first seven months in power, Bolsonaro, who was elected with strong support from agribusiness and mining interests, has moved rapidly to erode government agencies responsible for forest protection.

He has weakened the environment agency and effectively put it under the supervision of the agricultural ministry, which is headed by the leader of the farming lobby. His foreign minister has dismissed climate science as part of a global Marxist plot. The president and other ministers have criticised the forest monitoring agency, Ibama, for imposing fines on illegal land grabbers and loggers. The government has also moved to weaken protections for nature reserves, indigenous territories and zones of sustainable production by forest peoples and invited businesspeople to register land counter-claims within those areas.

This has emboldened those who want to invade the forest, clear it and claim it for commercial purposes, mostly in the speculative expectation it will rise in value, but also partly for cattle pastures, soya fields and mines.

Earlier this month, it was reported that thousands of gold miners illegally invaded Yanomami indigenous territory near the border with Venezuela. Elsewhere, illegal loggers have mounted at least two attacks in response to Ibama enforcement operations,according to the Folha newspaper. On 4 July, they reportedly burned an Ibama truck in Espigão d’Oeste, Rondônia state and last week they were said to have burned bridges in Placas, Pará state.

Rather than defend his officials, the environment minister Ricardo Salles appeared to side with the loggers when he gave a speech to a group of them in Rondônia soon afterwards, in which he reportedly told them: “The timber industry deserves to be respected … What happens today in Brazil, unfortunately, is the result of years and years and years of a public policy of producing laws, rules, regulations that are not always related to the real world. What we are doing now is precisely bringing the legal part of the real world that happens in every country from north to south.”

During a recent G20 meeting, Bolsonaro told the German chancellor Angela Merkel that she had no right to criticise because Brazil’s conservation record was superior to that of Europe’s. This is a dubious claim, according to Climate Observatory, which cites World Bank data that shows Germany has given protected status to a bigger share of its land than Brazil.

Brazil is also going backwards fast. After an 80% reduction in the rate of deforestation between 2006 and 2012, successive governments have relaxed protections. Clearance has been creeping up. Last year, deforestation rose 13% to the highest level in a decade. This year is on course to be far worse and the trend is back towards the dark days of the early 2000s.

“Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone by surprise. President Jair Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental policies,” said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups.

He said Salles had eradicated the department responsible for policies to combat deforestation, that no leaders have been appointed in eight of the nine Ibama regional offices, and that operations to combat environmental crimes declined 70% between January and April 2019 compared with the same period last year.

The Deter satellite data is considered preliminary, but it is usually a guide to the longer-term trends. More detailed annual figures are usually released towards the end of the year, after the National Institute for Space Research has calculated data from the more powerful Prodes satellite system.

Trees are considered essential to climate stability. Earlier this month, a study indicated that planting a trillion trees could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. But scientists say maintaining existing forests, particularly in the tropics, is far more important.

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/23/guatemala-land-defender-san-rafael-mine/

no lnx many

[vid]

SHE DEFENDED HER LAND AGAINST A MINE IN GUATEMALA. THEN SHE FLED IN FEAR FOR HER LIFE.

Alleen Brown

June 23 2019, 7:30 a.m.

Video by Martyna Starosta

TERESA MUÑOZ WAS riding her motorbike along her regular delivery route on a winding Guatemala road, carrying the homemade cheese she sold for a living, when she saw in her rearview mirror one of the white sedans that employees of the Escobal silver mine drove. Mining company cars had followed her before, but this time, the vehicle swerved. The driver rammed her motorbike, pitching her into the street, and then sped off. Muñoz was left bruised and scraped, convinced they’d meant to kill her.

For years, she had been a leader in the fight against the silver mine, the project of Tahoe Resources, a U.S.-headquartered Canadian company. Located in the southeastern Guatemala city of San Rafael las Flores, Escobal was on its way to becoming one of the largest silver mines in the world. Muñoz and her family helped organize community votes on the mine, participated in rallies to stop production, and educated people about the mine’s potential harms.

Rainfall in the mountains that contain the Escobal mine feeds the Los Esclavos River and a multitude of natural springs, whose waters fuel the production of coffee and onions in the region, grown for export. For sustenance, families grow beans, corn, and squash in the forested hillsides. More than half the surrounding population lives below the poverty line, making them particularly vulnerable to changes in the local hydrology. Mines like Escobal use massive quantities of water and divert flows in ways that can disrupt communities’ access. Such projects have also been known to leach heavy metals into drinking water sources.

The mountains are part of the territory of the Xinca people, an Indigenous group whose language and culture were nearly wiped out by Spanish colonizers and the Catholic Church. For years, Tahoe Resources argued that there were no Xinca people left in the communities surrounding the mine who would require any consultation. They were wrong. In fact, the mine’s denial of the Xincas’ existence fueled a regional reclamation of the identity. “Soy Xinca” — “I am Xinca” — has become the rallying cry under which Muñoz and others fight.

[GettyImages-866773202-tahoe-guatemala-mining-1561145616RTS2014K-guatemala-tahoe-mining-1561145629

Left: The mining complex in San Rafael Las Flores, Guatemala, on Oct. 26, 2017. Right: Workers at the Escobal silver mine in Guatemala on Aug. 14, 2017.Photos: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images; and Luis Echeverria/Reuters]

In response to the anti-mining movement in San Rafael, Tahoe hired firms run by U.S. and Israeli ex-special forces veterans to protect the project and lobbied the Guatemalan government to quash the resistance. Over the course of the 12-year conflict, mine opponents have been shot, imprisoned, and even killed.

For Muñoz, the fight meant exile. “I’m sure, as is my family, that if I had continued there, I wouldn’t be alive anymore,” she told The Intercept. In 2016, she abandoned the land for which she’d risked everything and sought asylum in the United States, a process that has stalled since Donald Trump’s crackdown on asylum-seekers began.

A name for people like Muñoz has emerged over the last decade: land defender. The term encompasses not only environmental activists defending their communities from contamination and lawyers fighting to enforce environmental regulations, but also peasant farmers attempting to hold on to their livelihoods and Indigenous people organizing to protect spaces that represent an extension of their identity.

The most famous land defender was Berta Cáceres, a member of the Lenca Indigenous group in Honduraswho organized opposition to the Agua Zarca Dam. Cáceres’s murder by the dam’s hired hitmen was preceded by a U.S.-backed coup in Honduras in 2009 that paved the way for a wave of mega-project approvals. Now, a global shift toward autocracy is precipitating new threats against land defenders, and Guatemala is a case in point.

Last year was one of the most dangerous for land defenders in Guatemala since the end of the country’s brutal civil war in 1996.According to the Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala, 18 land defenders and campesino organizers were assassinated in 2018, including Indigenous people fighting to protect their territory from agribusiness and hydroelectric projects, and the leaders of peasant organizations fighting to maintain access to land they use to sustain their livelihoods. Ronal David Barillas Díaz, a Xinca leader who organized against the sugar industry as well as the San Rafael mine, was among those killed. Of 392 aggressions against human rights defenders documented by the unit, including threats, assaults, arrests, and unfounded judicial complaints, 184 were aimed at Indigenous people defending their land.

Jorge Santos, the organization’s general coordinator, credits the increase in violence to outgoing President Jimmy Morales’s abandonment of the nation’s lauded anti-corruption efforts. But he finds it hard to be optimistic that the looming runoff presidential election in August holds hope for change. “Guatemala is at an important crossroads,” Santos told The Intercept. “One road is uphill, with many large rocks, but it allows us to build democracy, consolidate mechanisms of equity, aspirations for peace, for social justice, probably very slowly. The other is a road of regression, and it’s a regression that’s taking place at a very fast and accelerated rate. It’s a scenario that is going to put us in a state where it is understood that the only mechanism of exercising power is through violence.”

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Maya Ixil men carry the coffins of their loved ones, victims of the Guatemalan army massacre of April 16, 1981, for burial in Nebaj, northwest of Guatemala City, on June 9, 2008. Photo: Eitan Abramovich/AFP/Getty Images]

A Precarious Peace

The roots of the mining industry in Guatemala are soaked in the blood of its 36-year civil war. Beginning in 1960, Guatemala’s military government mercilessly repressed Indigenous-led, leftist opposition movements, killing or disappearing 200,000 people. Although the rebels were called terrorists, the state and its paramilitary groups carried out 93 percent of the killings, and around 80 percent of the victims were Mayan. The communism-obsessed U.S. government provided political and financial support to the murderous regime.

The first large metal mine, owned by theCanadian International Nickel Company, arrived in Guatemala in the early years of the conflict, to an area known to be a center of guerrilla resistance. The mining company’s presence fueled a crackdown that cost 3,000 to 6,000 lives, according to some estimates.

Finally, the 1996 Peace Accords brokered a truce between the government and the opposition movements. The heart of the accords was a demilitarization agreement meant to eliminate the paramilitary forces. For the first time in the nation’s history, the accords also recognized the rights of Indigenous people to preserve their languages, practice their religions, and live free from discrimination. Guatemala signed on to the International Labor Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention the same year.

Beyond humanitarian goals, the accords had another purpose: to signal that Guatemala was open for business. Only months after they were signed, Guatemala enacted a new mining law that allowed foreign companies to wholly own mining enterprises operating in the country, exempted those companies from a variety of taxes, and reduced government royalties on mined minerals. Guatemala became one of the cheapest places in the world to mine.

Meanwhile, members of the old military regime were finding their way into the private sector. In response, the United Nations’ International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, the CICIG, was founded in 2006 “to investigate illegal security groups and clandestine security organizations in Guatemala — criminal groups believed to have infiltrated state institutions.” The U.S. would provide $44.5 million in funding over the next decade.

Quelvin Jiménez, a Xinca lawyer, spent the 2000s developing grammatical standards for the Xinca language and working with a federal anti-racism commission to address ongoing discrimination. In 2010, he learned that the Escobal silver mine would be coming to his people’s homeland. He alerted members of the Xinca community. Among the articles of the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention was a requirement that Indigenous people be consulted before minerals are extracted from the territory they occupy.

“As we are in this period of reclaiming our rights, the mine arrives,” said Jiménez. “All those processes are stalled by the presence of the San Rafael mine.”

To its shareholders, Tahoe Resources suggested that it had no responsibility to consult with Indigenous people.“According to our understanding, although Indigenous people may have inhabited the site at one time, there are no Indigenous populations that currently live in the immediate area of the Escobal project site,” the company wrote in a 2012 filing.

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Teresa Muñoz at her home in the U.S., where she is applying for asylum, in October 2018. Still: Martyna Starosta for The Intercept]

Land Defenders Under Siege

Muñoz’s home in Mataquescuintla, Guatemala, located a few miles from the mine, was built by her father using adobe that she and her 12 siblings helped mix. Growing up, they spent the mornings making tortillas for the family and the rest of the day playing in the woods and planting or harvesting corn, beans, and coffee.

After her father died, Muñoz took charge of caring for her sister Engracia, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a teenager, and cultivated her family’s land, making cheese out of her cows’ milk to sell.

Muñoz had never been involved in any activism until she heard about the mine at church. “When I learned of the tremendous harms that such a project causes to the environment in these territories, I got worried,” Muñoz said.

She and others began holding referenda on the mine in various communities. The tactic could not legally bar the mine from operating, but it created a public record of the lack of local support. In the eight participating municipalities, more than 90 percent of community members voted against the mine. Meanwhile, protesters began rallying at construction sites where infrastructure was being installed.

In response, Tahoe hired International Security and Defense Management, a private security firm run by a U.S. Special Forces veteran, to assemble a security plan. The company hired Golan Group, founded by former Israeli special forces officers, to carry it out.

Muñoz was one of few women who stood front and center at the anti-mine actions. “They realized I was one of the leaders,” she said.

Advocates for land defenders have observed a pattern in the cases of violence they’ve investigated in San Rafael and across Guatemala. “They start to portray human rights defenders as terrorists,” said Maria Reyes, who worked closely with Escobal opponents as an official with Protection International. Extractive industries push the narrative that “thisisn’t a peaceful protest, but rather a blockade that is violating the rights of others.” [THEREFORE VIOLENT?!]

“There’s an escalation that begins with the act of defamation,” Santos explained. “It can reach such a level that it ends in the ‘civil death’ of the human rights defender — when they are captured and brought to prison — or with their physical death, when they are assassinated.”

By the end of 2012, events around the mine were escalating. Protests erupted as Tahoe installed high-voltage lines to power the project.A cement plant and a storage facility were set on fire. Then, in January, two security guards were killed in a confrontation with armed men. The resistance movement denied responsibility for the violence and property damage, suggesting that agents provocateur might have been responsible. The mine’s head of security claimed that surveillance cameras weren’t working at the time, and the identity of the perpetrators never emerged. Two months later, four Xinca leaders, including the president of the Xinca parliament, were kidnapped after participating in a referendum on the mine. One of them was killed.

Meanwhile, Tahoe’s pressure campaign on the Guatemalan government was paying off. The National Security Commission decided that unrest against any mine should be considered a matter ofnational security, according to a report by Plaza Pública, and an opaque interagency group made up of environment, energy, and national security officials was formed to monitor such projects.

Things came to a head in April 2013, when a group of protesters gathered in front of the mine’s entrance. Security guards opened fire, injuring six mine opponents. Protests and road blockades followed, as the Xinca leaders demanded dialogue. The escalating conflict culminated in a midnight standoff near the mine between police and men with covered faces. An officer was shot and killed.

Two days later, Guatemala’s then-president, Otto Pérez Molina, approved a state of siege in four municipalities including San Rafael, deploying thousands of military personnelandsuspending constitutional rights. Arrest warrants were issued for more than a dozen mine opponents, including Muñoz, who was accused of being an organized crime leader.

GettyImages-167936856-siege-guatemala-1561145608 A soldier inspects a car at a checkpoint in Guatemala on May 2, 2013, after then-President Otto Pérez Molina ordered a state of siege. Photo: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images

Muñoz was in the middle of taking a shower the following morning when she was alerted that military officials were approaching her home. Other women arrested for mine resistance had reported physical and verbal abuse by police. Muñoz made a split-second decision, putting on her clothes backward in her haste to escape into the forest behind her house. She walked all day through the mountains toward Guatemala City, rushing to avoid ending up alone in the dark. She made it the roughly 40 miles before nightfall.

In the months that followed, Muñoz stayed indoors and adopted a new identity. Her brother Santiago had fled too, claiming asylum in Costa Rica, but she was unable to have any contact with him, Engracia, or the rest of her family. It was difficult to bear. Finally, after seven months, a judge withdrew all allegations against her.

Although returning home was a relief, “Another difficult phase of my life began,” Muñoz said. Her dairy business was destroyed, and she felt emotionally frayed and ill-equipped to manage her mounting debt after months in hiding.

Yet to the surprise of her family, she kept participating in the anti-Escobal movement, even as the mine began production.

By then, its impacts were revealing themselves.Residents of the tiny, intensely poor town of Cuchilla, which sits directly above the mine, were experiencing small earthquakes they said always occurred at the same time of day. Cracks appeared in the foundations of their homes, and the state agency that manages disasters eventually declared the community to be uninhabitable. Although the mine agreed to buy the homes of many displaced residents, it denied responsibility for the seismic activity, calling the purchases humanitarian assistance.

Meanwhile, Tahoe continued to claim that there were no Indigenous people in the region. The law was clear enough: If the Xinca existed, then the mine had to consult with them in order to operate. But the company’s argument was based on data from Guatemala’s 2002 census, the results of which have been questioned by anthropologists as well as Xinca leaders.

Muñoz’s story offers insight into why the census data is wrong. When asked by The Intercept if she identified as Indigenous, Muñoz said no. But when asked if she was Xinca, she said yes. Jiménez, the Xinca lawyer, explained that community elders see the designation “Indigenous” as a Western imposition and that few identify as such. A report published by Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and Sports noted that census takers might have asked ineffective questions or assumed subjects’ ethnic identities based on their clothing or language.

The violence continued.In one of the most tragic incidents in the fight against the mine, a 16-year-old artist, musician, and vocal mining opponent named Topacio Reynoso was shot and killed in 2014 as she left a local festival with her father. Reynoso’s case remains unsolved.

Muñoz was run off the road the next year. At first, she tried to hide her injuries, even from her siblings. But she knew that after defamation, criminalization, and assassination comes impunity. “When one wants to access justice, the fact is it’s not on the side of those who defend human rights,” Reyes explained.

Rather than hoping that her attackers would be deterred by Guatemala’s feeble criminal justice system, Muñoz fled to the United States in 2016. At the time, Tahoe was the second-highest producing silver mine in the world.

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Former Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, center, attends a court hearing to face corruption charges on Sept. 3, 2015. Photo: Saul Martinez/Bloomberg via Getty Images

At a Crossroads

There was a moment, around the time Muñoz left the country, when it seemed to Santos that the cycle of attacks on land defenders might break.

In 2015, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand the resignation of Pérez Molina. CICIG investigators had uncovered a multimillion-dollar customs fraud scheme involving the president, and it appeared that people were finally fed up with impunity and corruption. Pérez Molina stepped down and was jailed.

It was a time of intense relief and hope for the nation. Aggressions against land and human rights defenders dropped. But it didn’t last long.

By August 2017, the anti-corruption commission was seeking to investigate the new president, Jimmy Morales, for possible campaign finance violations. Although Morales had run on an anti-corruption platform, he refused to become the CICIG’s next target and announced that he would eject its commissioner, Iván Velásquez, from the country. It was the beginning of the president’s war against the commission — and what many would come to call a slow-motion coup.

In turn, 2018 became one of the most violent years Santos had observed. Relative to its population, Guatemala was second only to Colombia in the number of land and human rights defenders assassinated, according to Front Line Defenders. The most intense period of violence began on May 9, when two men gunned down Luis Arturo Marroquín in broad daylight in the town of San Luis Jilotepeque before driving away in a pickup truck. Marroquín was a leader of the Campesino Development Committee, or CODECA, which had applied to launch a political party the same day. In a speech that spring, Morales had railed against the group.

By the time the month was over, threeMaya Q’eqchi’ members of another prominent campesino organization had been murderedin a region to the north, where palm oil plantations have claimed vast tracts of land. In June, three more CODECA members were murdered, all by machete. And at the end of July, the body of Juana Raymundo, a 25-year-old Maya Ixil woman and rising CODECA leader, was discovered with signs of asphyxiation by some kind of rope or belt.

In the midst of it all, the Escobal opponents obtained an appointment with the head of the anti-corruption commission. They explained to investigators that in addition to police repression and the potential for contamination, they were disturbed by the mining money that was coursing through the community.

Some of the money may have been the kind of legal bribery that every boom town sees. In San Rafael, 36 percent of the $16 million in royalties provided to the town has gone toward local government administration. But Leonel López Díaz, who worked as a driver and security guard for the mine and is now involved in the resistance, said he witnessed checks being passed to local officials that he believed to be separate from the royalties. A spokesperson for Pan American Silver, which purchased Tahoe Resources in 2019, did not respond to a question from The Intercept about the allegation. When he worked for another mine, López Díaz said, he used to go to church and record the priest’s Masses, listening for anti-mining rhetoric.

The concerns were enough to pique the investigators’ interest. It was bad timing. In August, Morales officially announced that he would end the CICIG’s mandate.

[GettyImages-1025598396-morales-1561145621 President Jimmy Morales announces that he will not renew the mandate of a U.N. anti-corruption mission in a press conference in Guatemala City on Aug. 31, 2018. Photo: Orlando Estrada/AFP/Getty Images]

When Pérez Molina threatened to shut down the commission in 2015, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden threatened to withhold aid, and Pérez Molina backed off. But this time, Donald Trump’s administration remained silent, perhaps encouraged by hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of lobbying from anti-CICIG politicians and businesspeople, or Morales’s attempts to curry favor by opening a Guatemalan embassy in Jerusalem days after the U.S. did the same.

“What is happening in terms of the democratic regression of the United States since the arrival of Donald Trump has also played a fundamental role in the aspirations of the fight against corruption and impunity in [Guatemala],” said Santos.

It’s a problem that goes beyond Central America. “There is also a global expression leaning more and more toward the extreme right,” he said. “We feel this more in the countries that historically have shortfalls in democracy and human rights.” In many such places — such as Brazil, the Philippines, and Colombia — the shift is expressed in violence against land defenders.

Even in the U.S., as Indigenous people and environmental activists gear up to stand in the way of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, many wonder how a law enforcement response under Trump might be even worse than Standing Rock, an oil pipeline fight that was violently repressed under President Barack Obama.

And in the background, the effects of climate change are putting new pressure on land disputes across the globe, including in Guatemala.

Morales will be out as president following a runoff election on August 11. But on the question of uprooting corruption, the two candidates that survived the first round of elections in June are unpromising. Both have already found themselves in the crosshairs of the CICIG. After former first lady Sandra Torres announced her candidacy, she was granted immunity from prosecution for alleged campaign finance violations in the 2015 election. The anti-corruption commission sought to lift her immunity, a request that remains stranded in legal proceedings. And former prisons director Alejandro Giammattei was jailed in 2010 in the wake of a CICIG investigation into the murder of seven prisoners by security officials. Charges against him were eventually dropped. Neither candidate has committed to support the commission.

In 2019, the assassinations of land defenders and campesinos have only continued.The Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala has documented six so far. Four of those killed worked with CODECA. Two more were conservationists for the Foundation for Ecodevelopment and Conservation. They worked in protected areas in eastern Guatemala, including a reserve home to a dozen threatened species of frogs and salamanders whose habitat has steadily been deforested by agribusiness and the timber industry.

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Xinca residents of San Rafael Las Flores outside of the Constitutional Court of Guatemala after a news conference on Tahoe Resources’ Escobal mine on Sept. 6, 2018. Photo: Luis Echeverria/Reuters]

The Checkpoint

Teresa’s brother Miguel Ángel Muñoz begins his 24-hour shift in the community of Casillas at 5 p.m. once a week. As he sits on the side of the highway, he sips coffee and chats with the other dozen or so people keeping watch. Every so often a large truck rolls by, and that’s when the action begins. The men rush to the road and place cones around the vehicle. Most drivers agree to allow them to inspect what is being carried.

“Our job is to stop the trucks and check them to see if they carry mining products or if they’re bringing fuel or cement to the mine. We stop them here, and we register them,” Miguel Ángel said during an October shift. “If they’re not carrying anything, we let them pass.”

The checkpoint in Casillas was set up in 2017, shortly before a court ordered the mine to suspend production, pending litigation over the Xincas’ existence in the area. Law enforcement attempted to evict them that first year, shooting tear gas that billowed near a school and a health center, but they failed. A similar checkpoint has since been set up in the family’s home community of Mataquescuintla.

Despite centuries of efforts by the church, the state, and a private corporation, the Xincas have refused to die. In September, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled against Tahoe Resources, affirming that the Xinca people exist in the area impacted by the mine and must be consulted. Unanswered is whether Xinca consent is required before the project can recommence. “The only proposal we have is that they leave,” Miguel Ángel said.

Tahoe’s share prices tumbled in the wake of the movement’s success in sparking delays. In January, the massive Vancouver-based mining company Pan American Silver moved in to purchase the company for $1.07 billion. “We are working towards building enduring, positive relationships with all stakeholders in the region, and to establishing a reputation as an honest, credible partner. At this stage, we are focused on actively listening in order to create a space for dialogue and to gain a deeper understanding of people’s expectations and concerns about the mine,” Siren Fisekci, Pan American Silver’s vice president for investor relations and corporate communications, told The Intercept in an emailed statement. She said the company is not setting any timeline for the mine’s potential restart.

On the ground, the change in ownership meant little. The in-country staff remain the same, according to the nonprofit Earthworks, and aggression toward the resistance has continued.

Jiménez, the lawyer representing the Xinca people, received death threats over the phone in February. He’s noticed people following him in cars and watching his house. Amnesty International has urged Guatemala’s attorney general to investigate and provide protection.

Asked for comment, Fisekci wrote, “We adhere to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. We do not tolerate threats or any forms of violence.”

In March, Guatemala’s University of San Carlos, along with the local anti-Escobal organization CODIDENA and Virginia Tech researchers from the same lab that exposed lead contamination in Flint, Michigan, published a study on the impacts of the mine so far.

In San Rafael, arsenic has been detected in tap water. Its origins are complicated, according to Guadalupe García Prado, the study’s coordinator. Demand for water after the mine began operations required the city to drill a new water well. The San Carlos researchers traced the arsenic to the new well and found that a water treatment plant is making little difference.

The study found that at least 12 springs have dried up since the mine arrived. Possibly to blame, the researchers argue, is a process called dewatering, where the mine perpetually pumps water out of its tunnels — approximately 255 million gallons per minute — into treatment ponds, before releasing it into the Los Esclavos River. The process is necessary even when the mine is out of production to keep the tunnels from flooding.

The expected productive life of the mine is 18 years, and much of the risk of contamination will arise after it is closed. Newly exposed sulfide minerals in mining areas often react with water and air to form acid mine drainage, which can dissolve other metals, like arsenic, from the surrounding rock, contaminating water. It will fall to the Guatemalan government to manage the risk — a task the researchers argue it lacks the capacity to carry out. In fact, the researchers confirmed that an old artisanal mine in the area that ceased operation 40 years ago was still leaching into water systems, contaminating natural springs with cadmium and lead.

In the end, the mining executives will move on, and the hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in royalties that Tahoe used as bait to hook Guatemala’s government will disappear.

“Guatemala has built a model of such a nature that it exploits, excludes, or exiles,” as Santos put it. “What’s installed is a spurious private investment in which the guarantees of labor rights and social welfare are not exercised.” He added, “What this is going to produce are large contingents of migration.”

ss-checkpoint-guatemala-1561145634 Miguel Ángel Muñoz, Teresa’s brother, at the checkpoint in Casillas, Guatemala, in September 2018. Still: Martyna Starosta for The Intercept

If the conflict against the mine heats up again, Miguel Ángel says he’s willing to die if he has to — migrating to the U.S. is not on the table. He tried that already.

In 1995, Miguel Ángel joined his brother Santiago in the U.S. and got a job at a doughnut bakery in Virginia. He hated almost everything about it. He hated being trapped indoors and the way people looked at him like he was a burden. Remembering riding his bike on a path near the mountains is the only thing that lights up his face when he talks about Virginia. He came home to stay.

Teresa’s sister Salomé Muñoz returned too, after eight years of working long night shifts and selling tamales in the U.S. to get by. Her three children are U.S. citizens, but given the opportunity to go home to the mountains, she opted out of the United States. “Here, I walk barefoot in the mountains. Here, you go along singing; there’s no penalty for making noise. My life was very confined there,” she said. She’s caring for Engracia in their father’s home in Teresa’s absence.

Teresa Muñoz packages bacon on a frigid, fast-moving assembly line 10 hours a day. Her lawyer says hers is a textbook asylum case, yet proceedings have been stalled for months. Still, she’s building a life for herself. Although she has few friends, she attends church on Sundays and goes to the gym. Her studio apartment is surrounded by large trees.

Muñoz can’t imagine a scenario in which she’ll be able to return to Guatemala. But she’s found small ways to continue to defend her land, even from thousands of miles away. “I’ve managed to form a little group of people here in the United States,” she said. Over the phone, she’s coordinating friends of the Escobal resistance now living across the U.S. to raise money for meals for mining opponents during their 24-hour shifts. “We’ll send it to the mountains, to my town.”

Reporting for this story was supported with a grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Defending Land and Environmental Rights Has Become an Increasingly Deadly EndeavorSAN PEDRO, PERU – JULY 19, 2017: A dead fish floats in a film of oil residue. A recent pipeline leak leaves the fishing grounds for five communities contaminated. 1,600 barrels of oil skimmed were off of this stream. San Pedro, on the Marañón River in the State of Loreto, Puru on July 19, 2017. (Photo by Ben Depp)“This Is Not A Symbolic Action” — Indigenous Protesters Occupy Oil Platforms in Radicalized Fight Against Pollution in the AmazonA woman holds a picture of Honduran Human Rights activist, Coordinator of the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) Berta Caceres Flores, reading "Justice for Berta", during a march for the International Women Day in Managua on March 8, 2016. The march was to demand an international commission to investigate Caceres' murder, which took place on March 3 in La Esperanza, Honduras. AFP PHOTO/ Inti OCON / AFP / Inti Ocon (Photo credit should read INTI OCON/AFP/Getty Images)Drugs, Dams, and Power: The Murder of Honduran Activist Berta CáceresHow a Movement That Never Killed Anyone Became the FBI’s No. 1 Domestic Terrorism Threat

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Alleen Brown

alleen.brown@?theintercept.com

:{ Indigenous Resistance to Big Oil Heats Up in Ecuador:(style="box-sizing:border-box;font-weight:700"):}:

Reynard Loki - June 28, 2019 - Earth | Food | Life

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/social-movements-in-latin-america-are-under-attack-despite-colombia-peace-plan/

Social movements in Latin America are under attack despite Colombia ‘peace plan’

With Venezuela occupying the small bandwidth our media has for news about Latin America, there is virtually no information about Colombia, where a horrible wave of violence in the past two years has taken the lives of hundreds of social movement leaders and activists around the country, especially in places such as Cauca, Antioquia, Santander and Arauca. That’s why Colombia’s social movements organized the Humanitarian Refugee Convergence, which took place April 28-May 2 in Bogota, Colombia. It brought together over 1,000 activists from indigenous, black, women and campesino (farmer) organizations, as well as groups representing victims of Colombia’s long armed conflict, to speak out against the violence and call on the government to protect their lives.

During the Convergence, we had a chance to talk to Wilmer Castillo, a spokesperson for the National Agrarian Coordination, a group that brought campesinos from around the country to Bogota.

For people in the United States, the only issue we hear about regarding Latin America is the conflict in Venezuela. Americans, if they know anything about Colombia, might know that a peace agreement was signed with the armed groups in 2016 and they probably think that the situation in Colombia is now calm. Can you tell us what is actually happening here?

It has been falsely reported in the international press that the armed conflict in Colombia has ended. The armed conflict ended with only one guerrilla organization, the FARC. There are still two others, the EPL, the Popular Liberation Army; and the ELN, the National Liberation Army. The present right-wing government of Ivan Duque has canceled the negotiations that were going on with the ELN, which has worsened the armed conflict. Even though the FARC was demobilized and has moved into the arena of nonviolent, political struggle, creating a political party, the armed struggle continues in the places where these two other groups remain active.

Another reason to tell the world that there is no peace in Colombia is because the causes that led to the armed rebellions have not been addressed. On the contrary. There are still multinational companies that invade our lands and displace our rural communities. There are still paramilitary groups that terrorize our organizations. There is still a military strategy to consolidate the land and hand it over to the multinationals. So one of the primary reasons that the armed conflict still exists is because of the economic model that is so destructive.

To make matters worse, the government’s armed forces not only fight against the armed insurgents, but against our communities and social movements as well. Their bullets are not just killing insurgents; they are also killing the organized communities that defend their lands and try to build an alternative movement in this country. This alternative goes against the interests of the neoliberal model that has given, and continues to give, all the riches of our territory to the multinational corporations and to national private businesses. When we fight against this model, we are murdered and jailed, which is why we are organizing this Humanitarian Refugee Convergence.

What connection does the U.S. government or U.S. companies have to the conflict?

Unfortunately, foreign companies have invaded our territory and robbed our resources—oil, gold, water and now a series of minerals that they have discovered as the mining technology has advanced. There is also agribusiness. Many of these companies come from the United States. In addition to the companies that extract our resources, there is transnational private capital that sets the economic rules.

As for the U.S. government, it has interfered in our internal affairs from the time of our founding as a nation in 1810. Together, the U.S. government and companies have directly interfered in our way of life by imposing an economic model to benefit foreign interests and reinforcing that model with military agreements. I’m sorry to say that our armed forces have been shaped and trained by the U.S. military. The U.S. military has taught them how to terrorize and attack the people who rise up, how to destroy the organizations we have created to defend ourselves from the multinationals.

What is your message to U.S. activists?

We have always had support from U.S. groups and we appreciate that support. We need to build on those links and find ways to educate more people about the horrible wave of violence our people are suffering. We also have to find more ways to support your struggles. We feel an affinity for the struggles you are waging in the United States and we have always believed in the unity of peoples’ struggles around the world for emancipation, autonomy and sovereignty.

We need an alternative model globally that would allow the construction of another civilization, one that would save our planet and life itself. We, the great majority of people in the world, are victims of only one system: capitalism. So together we have to build another world, one in which all worlds fit, one in which all our rights are respected and our planet is protected. That’s the world we are dreaming about.

This article was produced by :{:{Local Peace Economy:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}::(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

World's Alarming Rate of Forest Loss Threatens a Crucial Climate Solution

BY: GEORGINA GUSTIN

More corporations and countries are committing to preserve forests, yet new global data show tree loss rates are still dangerously high — with severe climate consequences.

The world's forests continue to disappear at an alarming rate, threatening a resource that scientists say is a crucial "natural solution" for controlling climate change on an urgently short timescale.

Last year, the planet saw its fourth-highest level of tropical tree loss since the early 2000s—about 30 million acres, according to a new analysis published Thursday.

Those losses have continued even as more corporations and countries made commitments to preserve forests, and as scientists emphasized that maintaining forests must be a global priority—as crucial to staving off the worst risks of climate change as cutting fossil fuel use.

Forests absorb roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity each year. Destroying all of the world's forests would release the same amount of stored carbon as burning all the planet's readily extractable fossil fuel deposits, a group of prominent scientists wrote.

"Continued tropical forest loss pulls the rug out from under efforts to stabilize the global climate," said Frances Seymour, a senior fellow with the World Resources Institute (WRI), which publishes the annual forest assessment. "For every hectare of forest lost, we're one step closer to the scary scenario of runaway climate change, because forests not only store carbon, they continue to absorb it as they grow."

....

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/we-do-not-want-to-disappear-indigenous-peoples-go-to-court-to-save-the-amazon-from-oil-company-greed/

On February 27, hundreds of Indigenous Waorani elders, youth and leaders arrived in the city of Puyo, Ecuador. They left their homes deep in the Amazon rainforest to peacefully march through the streets, hold banners, sing songs and, most importantly, submit documents to the provincial Judicial Council to launch a lawsuit seeking to stop the government from auctioning off their ancestral lands in the Pastaza region to oil companies. An eastern jungle province whose eponymous river is one of the more than 1,000 tributaries that feed the mighty Amazon, Pastaza encompasses some of the world’s most biodiverse regions.

Co-filed with the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador–Pastaza (Pastaza CONCONAWEP), a political organization of the Waorani, and the Ecuadorian Human Rights Ombudsman against the Ecuadorian Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources, the Secretary of Hydrocarbons and the Ministry of Environment, the lawsuit alleges that the Waorani’s rights granted to them under the Ecuadorian constitution “were violated due to an improper consultation process prior to an oil auction which would offer up the Waorani’s lands in the Pastaza region to the highest bidding oil company,” according to Amazon Frontlines, a nonprofit advocacy group supporting the Indigenous peoples living in the Amazon rainforest. The government’s auction, announced in February of last year, included 16 new oil concessions covering nearly seven million acres of roadless, primary Amazonian forest across southeast Ecuador.

A hearing to argue the lawsuit was held in Puyo on March 13, but according to Amazon Frontlines, the group of assembled Waorani women “broke into song in court and did not stop” until the judge, “unable to be heard over the songs of the Waorani women … called the parties’ lawyers to the bench and declared the suspension of the hearing until a translator was found.” The Waorani said that, in keeping with Waorani tradition, they would only accept a translator approved by their elder leaders. “The Waorani have their own authorities and their own systems, which must be respected by the Western systems,” Lina Maria Espinosa, attorney for the Waorani petitioners and a member of Amazon Frontlines’ legal team, told the Independent Media Institute. “This case is an example of the country’s obligation to apply intercultural justice.”

Concessions vs. Constitutional Rights

The concessions overlap with the titled territories of the Shuar, Achuar, Kichwa, Waorani, Shiwiar, Andoa and Sápara nations, with one block located almost entirely within Waorani territory. If taken over by the fossil fuel industry, the Indigenous coalition warns, the health and livelihoods of the communities living in the area—as well as the region’s unique biodiversity and sensitive ecosystem—will be threatened. But regardless of the environmental and sociocultural threat, the plaintiffs argue that the concessions trample on their constitutional rights.

In November 2018, following pressure from Ecuador’s Amazonian Indigenous nationalities, Carlos Pérez, the nation’s hydrocarbon minister, reduced the auction from 16 blocks to two. But it may end up being a pyrrhic victory, as the government said that the land may still be put on the auction block in the future. In addition, Pérez asserted that there should be no issue with the remaining two blocks, claiming that “there aren’t any Indigenous [people] there.” However, according to Amazon Watch, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California, the two blocks overlap with the titled territory of the Sápara, Shiwiar and Kichwa nations, and sightings of Tagaeri-Taromenane have been reported in the area, which is located along Ecuador’s border with Peru.

Adding insult to injury was the emergence in November 2018 of a leaked draft of a presidential decree that revealed the government’s plans to permit oil drilling in a protected area established for the Tagaeri-Taromenane that had previously been off-limits to fossil fuel development.

Industrial Development vs. Indigenous People

Ecuador is one of the smallest oil producers in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)—only the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon pump less. But that has not hindered it from making big deals with oil-hungry nations. In 2009, a year after Ecuador defaulted on around $3 billion worth of debt, then-President Rafael Correa made an oil-for-cash agreement with China. In exchange for selling his nation’s crude oil to Petrochina, China provided Ecuador with a $1 billion loan.

Now the country seeks to attract investments totaling around $800 million to boost the production of oil, which the government maintains is critical to improving the nation’s economy. “It’s time for the private sector to invest,” said President Lenín Moreno in the 2018 televised address, arguing that public-private partnerships in the infrastructure, oil, energy, mining and telecoms sectors could generate $7 billion of investment by 2021.

The government, as it has for decades, is yet again facing stiff opposition against untrammeled industrial development from its Indigenous population. “We are demanding that the Ecuadorian state respect our territory and self-determination,” saidNemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani leader and CONCONAWEP representative. “This fight didn’t grow overnight; it’s been the fight of the Waorani for years.”

Indeed, the latest legal action launched in Puyo stems from the state’s broken promise. In December 2017, following a two-week, 200-mile march by Indigenous activists from the Amazon jungle to Quito, the nation’s capital, demanding an end to extractive industry development on their territories, the Moreno administration made a commitment to the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Ecuador’s largest Indigenous organization, to end new oil and mining concessions in regions where local Indigenous nationalities had not been consulted. However, as the current suit alleges, the Waorani were not properly consulted.

Specifically, Article 57, section 7 of the constitution guarantees “free prior informed consultation, within a reasonable period of time, on plans and programs for prospecting, producing and marketing nonrenewable resources located on their lands which could have an environmental or cultural impact on them.” The suit claims these rights were violated as the Waorani were not properly consulted prior to the announcement of the new oil concessions. In addition, the Ecuadorian government is also bound by two international agreements to consult with its Indigenous populations: Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), ratified by the nation in 1998, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007.

However, many activists and Indigenous leaders ultimately don’t want consultation at this point; they want oil development to end entirely. “We took the president at his word regarding the end of oil and mining concessions in our territories,” said Jaime Vargas, CONAIE’s president. “We don’t need more consultation, however. Given the destruction in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon and in other areas of the world at the hands of the oil industry, we already have enough information to say ‘No’ to all oil activity.”

Mitch Anderson, executive director and founder of Amazon Frontlines, which created a petition on behalf of the Waorani urging the Ecuadorian government to halt oil development on Indigenous land, told the Independent Media Institute:

“There are two different courses for the Ecuadorian government here. The first is an all-in bet on oil, and the last half-century has already shown us what that road leads to: environmental degradation, institutional corruption and further indebtedness to foreign interests, in this case China. Or they can take an urgently needed, forward-thinking path which supports forest protection, respects Indigenous rights and promotes investment in green economic alternatives that will ultimately contribute to the building of a sustainable future for the country and planet.”

“Oil has not brought development for the Waorani,” Alicia Cahuiya of the Waorani group told President Lenín Moreno at a meeting at the presidential palace in Quito in March 2018. “It has only left us with oil spills and sickness.”

A History of Pollution

The current lawsuit is the latest salvo in a protracted battle between Indigenous people across Ecuador and fossil fuel interests that has been going on since 1993, when local tribes turned to the legal system to compel Texaco—and now Chevron, its parent company since 2000—to clean up the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest and care for the people who have been sickened by the oil operations that began in 1967, when Texaco struck oil in the country’s northeastern province of Sucumbíos.

In a 2008 Los Angeles Times op-ed about that legal battle, author and former public defender David Feige wrote that Texaco’s environmental legacy in the region “includes as many as 16 million gallons of spilled crude—50 percent more than the Exxon Valdezdumped in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1989; hundreds of toxic waste pits, many containing the chemical-laden byproducts of drilling; and an estimated 18 billion gallons of waste, or ‘produced,’ water, which some tests have shown to contain possibly cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons at levels many times higher than those permitted in the U.S. All these pollutants were discharged in one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world—the Amazon rainforest.”

This troubling history makes the current administration’s push to auction off land to oil drilling all the more ill-advised. “When we extract oil, it has a very high price for the environment, and sometimes, it’s not paid by those who use the oil,” said Antoni Rosell-Melé, an environmental chemist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, who co-authored a 2017 study that found that the Amazon rainforest in neighboring Peru is suffering from extensive contamination from decades of fossil fuel development.

In that study, the researchers analyzed nearly 3,000 water samples from four Amazon rivers gathered between 1987 and 2013 and found an “extremely elevated presence of chloride, chromium, barium, lead and hexavalent chromium,” industrial chemicals involved in oil drilling that are toxic to humans, wildlife and the environment. The researchers also estimate that oil extraction activities in the region have changed the overall chemical composition of the Amazon’s waters, including 30 percent more salt than is naturally present.

Destroy the Rainforests, Destroy Ourselves

The Indigenous fight in Ecuador is a fight that anyone who cares about biodiversity and the global climate should join. After all, the Ecuadorian Amazon isn’t just one of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world—it’s key for the environmental health of the entire planet. Known as the “lungs of the planet,” the Amazon rainforest “inhales” carbon dioxide and “exhales” oxygen, helping to stabilize the global climate by safely storing up to 140 billion metric tons of carbon. Deforestation by extractive and agricultural industries releases this carbon into the atmosphere, further accelerating global warming, the effects of which are felt across the world, from rising seas along U.S. coasts and melting Arctic glaciers, to wildfires in Europe and droughts in Africa.

Ecuador is also home to an astounding number of species. The nation is the eighth most biodiverse on Earth and the most biodiverse when considering the number of species by unit area. It is home to the highest number of species by area worldwide, including more than 1,500 species of birds, more than 840 species of reptiles and amphibians, and more than 300 species of mammals. Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park boasts nearly 20,000 plant species, more flora than anywhere on Earth.

But despite its high level of biodiversity, Ecuador also has a low representation of speciesliving within its protected areas. According to a 2014 study conducted by a team of researchers from the Technological University Indoamerica in Quito, there are more than 100 vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered species in the Ecuadorian Amazon for which conservation goals have been missed. Lawyers for the Indigenous communities fighting oil development can also refer courts to the nation’s constitution, which provides “protection of ecosystems, biodiversity and the integrity of the country’s genetic assets, [as well as] the prevention of environmental damage.”

Unfortunately, the pro-drilling camp “doesn’t see the forest,” said Waorani leader Nenquimo in her keynote address at last year’s Bioneers conference in Marin, California, which gathered leaders and activists involved in environmental protection and the rights of nature around the globe. “They see oil wells where we see gardens. They see money where we see life.” Sharing her fight to protect her ancestral lands from exploitation by industrial development, Nenquimo warned that if given “a foothold in our lands,” the oil industry “will bring money, sickness and contamination. They will try to divide our families and change our way of thinking.”

“Our fight is not just a fight about oil,” she said. “This is a fight about different ways of living. One that protects life and one that destroys life.”

Penti Baihua, a leader of the Waorani village of Bameno, has seen firsthand the destruction of life that the outside world has brought to his idyllic slice of the jungle—from the oil spills that drive out local species his people rely on for sustenance to the destruction of ancient rainforest to make room for new cocoa and coffee plantations. What will happen to him, his family, and his community if extractive and agricultural industries continue the destruction of his ancestral home? Baihua said simply, “We do not want to disappear.”

Reynard Loki is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent for Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He previously served as the environment, food and animal rights editor at AlterNet and as a reporter for Justmeans/3BL Media covering sustainability and corporate social responsibility. He was named one of FilterBuy’s “Top 50 Health & Environmental Journalists to Follow” in 2016. His work has been published by Truthout, Salon, BillMoyers.com, EcoWatch and Truthdig, among others.

This article was produced by :{Earth | Food | Life:(style="box-sizing:border-box;outline:none;margin:0px;padding:0px"):}:, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

https://www.ecowatch.com/argentina-fracking-indigenous-lawsuit-2623742584.html

A major indigenous group in the Argentine Patagonia is suing some of world's biggest oil and gas companies over illegal fracking waste dumps that put the "sensitive Patagonian environment," local wildlife and communities at risk, according to Greenpeace.

The Mapuche Confederation of Neuquén filed a lawsuit against Exxon, French company Total and the Argentina-based Pan American Energy (which is partially owned by BP), AFP reported. Provincial authorities and a local fracking waste treatment company called Treater Neuquén S.A. were also named in the suit.

The Mapuche accused the companies of contaminating the environment with "dangerous waste" due to "deficient treatment" close to the town of Añelo, according to AFP.

The waste comes from operations in the Vaca Muerta field, one of the largest deposits of shale oil and gas in the world that lies in the Neuquén province.

...

https://www.alternet.org/environment/rainforest-action-network-why-defending-indigenous-rights-integral-fighting-climate

Even as the Trump administration rolls back regulations meant to protect Americans from pollution, the EPA recently released a report that finds that people of color are much more likely to breathe toxic air than their white counterparts. The study’s basic findings—that non-whites bear a higher burden in terms of pollution that leads to a range of poor health outcomes—is supported by other similar studies, and underpins the issue of environmental injustice that impacts many politically marginalized communities.

It’s these communities that are hardest hit by the climate crisis––even though they are the least responsible for causing it. In addition, these communities, by design, are most imperiled by environmentally devastating extractive industries like coal mining, tar sands, fracked gas, and more. Let’s be clear: Climate change isn’t just a scientific issue—it’s an issue of racial inequity, economic inequity and cultural genocide.

Indigenous peoples around the world are quickly becoming the generation that can no longer swim in their own waters, fish in their rivers, hunt their traditional foods or pick their traditional medicines. The climate isn’t just changing the landscape—it’s hurting the culture, sovereignty, health, economies and lifeways of Indigenous peoples around the world. Yet despite the immense impacts climate change and fossil fuel industries have on Indigenous cultures and ways of life, Indigenous communities are tremendously resilient.

This was strikingly clear at the 17th Protecting Mother Earth conference, where tribal leadership and environmental activists called for a unified front to help find solutions. Hosted by the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Nisqually Indian Tribe and Indigenous Climate Action, the conference provided a space for hundreds to come together to share lessons, celebrate victories, and build stronger alliances to defend and protect land, water, the climate, and Indigenous rights. "

"We Native people will always be here, standing up to protect the land and water,” said Nisqually Tribal Councilman Hanford McCloud during the conference’s opening ceremony. “We will always be the voice of those on the frontlines who continue to fight against the violation of Indigenous treaty rights, self-determination, environmental justice, and climate change.”

It’s essential to note that Indigenous vulnerability and resilience to climate change cannot be detached from the context of colonialism, which created both the economic conditions for climate change and the social conditions that continue to limit the capacity for Indigenous resistance and resilience. Both historically and in the present, climate change itself is thoroughly tied to colonial practices. Greenhouse gas production over the last two centuries hinged on the dispossession of Indigenous lands and resources.

Since the fracking industry began on Casey Camp-Horinek’s reservation in Ponca, Oklahoma, tribal members have experienced a spike in cancer. She says that since fracking began there, her small community averages a death per week. The water wells on her reservation are now too toxic to drink. “They need to understand that what they call resources, we call life sources. We all know that water is life. The years of fish kills related to the fracking and injection wells amount to environmental genocide.”

...

kpfa bayou bridge

idle no more; indig women of the americas defense mother earth

declaration of rights of indig ppl

Indigenous Australians Take Fight Against Giant Coal Mine to the United Nations

Mexico, new data shows violence rose sharply in 2017, making last year the deadliest year since record-keeping began more than two decades ago. The escalating violence comes in the lead-up to Mexico’s presidential election in July. Meanwhile, Mexico’s National Indigenous Congress says armed men attacked the caravan of presidential candidate María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, better known as Marichuy, on Sunday night in the state of Michoacán. The gunmen reportedly attacked the final vehicle in the caravan, which contained three journalists covering the campaign.

http://www.ecowatch.com/guatemala-textile-design-1975198164.html

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/26/headlines/philippines_duterte_threatens_to_bomb_indigenous_filipino_school

http://www.alternet.org/environment/indigenous-communities-are-teaching-their-methods-scientists

indigenous

http://grist.org/grist-50/profile/murrawah-johnson/

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/the-amungme-kamoro-freeport-how-indigenous-papuans-have-resisted-worlds-

The Amungme, Kamoro & Freeport:How Indigenous Papuans Have Resisted the World's Largest Gold and Copper Mine

The story of the Amungme and Kamoro peoples and U.S. mining corporation Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold(1) ("Freeport") offers one of the best-documented examples of how local communities have experienced and resisted the seizure of their traditional lands by government-backed multinational mining enterprises.

The Amungme and Kamoro are the original indigenous landowners of the areas that now comprise Freeport's copper and gold mining operations and infrastructure in the Timika area of Papua (Irian Jaya/West Papua), Indonesia. At the time of Freeport's arrival in 1967, the two communities numbered several thousand people, organized in clan-based village social and governance structures. With lands encompassing the area's tropical rainforest, coastal lowlands, and glacial mountains and river valleys, the Kamoro (lowlanders) and Amungme (highlanders) practiced a subsistence economy based on sustainable agriculture and forest products, fishing, and hunting; their cultures intimately entwined with the surrounding landscape.

Westerners and other outsiders had visited Kamoro and Amungme lands prior to Freeport's arrival. These included, during the 20(th) century, British naturalist expeditions, mountaineering teams, Japanese troops, Catholic and Protestant missionaries, and officials of the Dutch colonial administration. Unlike previous visitors to the area, however, Freeport's presence caused a massive, permanent, and escalating disruption to the lives of the Amungme and Kamoro.

Alien Invasion

Freeport's seizure, control, and despoliation of Kamoro and Amungme lands and natural resources has circumscribed or destroyed local communities' economies and livelihoods, andcaused the internal displacement -- often forcibly -- of entire villages. The Amungme and Kamoro have been further displaced and marginalized -- economically, politically, socially, and culturally -- by the outsiders who swarmed to the economic "boom" town created by the mine and its infrastructure. The new arrivals include thousands of primarily Javanese settlers sponsored by the Indonesian government's discredited transmigration program, "spontaneous" migrants such as traders from Sulawesi, thousands of Papuans from other parts of the territory, and North American and Australian employees of Freeport. By the 1990s, the area's population had exploded to more than 60,000 people, making Timika the fastest-growing "economic zone" in the entire Indonesian archipelago.

In defense of their lands, lives, and livelihoods, community members have protested Freeport's uninvited invasion and occupation -- and the overwhelming influx of migrants and often-brutal Indonesian military force accompanying it -- using a variety of nonviolent strategies and tactics grounded in strong community organizing.

The fact that their struggle continues, now in its fourth decade, underscores the urgent need for more successful mechanisms for safeguarding the rights of indigenous communities who face assaults by large-scal mining operations in Indonesia and worldwide.

Historical Political Context

The historical-political context in which U.S.-based Freeport established mining operations in Papua helps to explain the conflict between the company and indigenous Papuans.

During the 1960s, the United Natiors -- in an effort strongly backed by the U.S. government -- brokered the transfer of control over Papua from the Dutch colonial administration to Indonesia. Indigenous Papuans had no say in the Dutch-Indonesian negotiations, which culminated in 1962 in a bilateral agreement providing for the transfer. Indonesia took control of Papua in May 1963 and, in 1969, carried out an "Act of Free Choice" (AFC), meant to serve as a formal act of self-determination.....

The Amungme, Kamoro & Freeport: How Indigenous ...

www.culturalsurvival.org/.../the-amungme-kamoro-free...

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:{The story of the Amungme and Kamoro peoples and U.S. mining corporation Freeport ... that now comprise Freeport's copper and gold mining operations and infrastructure in the Timika area of Papua (Irian Jaya/West Papua), Indonesia. ..... annual revenues for development programs, has been one of the most controversial ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

IPEIE--Irian Jaya/Papua New Guinea, by Bruce E. Johansen

www.ratical.org/ratville/IPEIE/IJ_PNG.html

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:{Irian Jaya (Papua New Guinea), a province of Indonesia on the west; formerly ... InWest Papua, one of the world's largest gold and copper mines continues to ..... of its 52 per cent equity interest to the P.N.G. Sustainable Development Program.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

REPRESSIVE MINING IN WEST PAPUA

wpik.org/Src/eng_moving_mountains.html

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by A Abrash - ‎Related articles

"Indonesia held West Papua since 1963: the people of West Papua have ... (Irian Jaya/West Papua) and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold's mining operations there. .... of the company's annual revenues for regional development programs.

West Papua: A history of exploitation - Al Jazeera English

www.aljazeera.com/indepth/.../201182814172453998.html

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:{Oct 19, 2011 - West Papua was taken over by Indonesia in 1969, and a legacy of oppression and ... Companies based in developed countries often operate in ... The Dutch began a ten-year Papuanisation programme in 1957 that would see West .... "Every other mining company wants to get into Irian Jaya [West Papua].:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

Irian Jaya Under the Gun: Indonesian Economic Development ...

https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0824826353

Jim Elmslie - 2002 - ‎Business & Economics

Indonesian Economic Development Versus West Papuan Nationalism Jim Elmslie ...Irian Jaya), xiii, 254, 259-60 Fournier, Henri, 198-202 Freeport copper mine, 16, ... new finds, 242- 43 economic development program, 159 mine description, ...

1/1/2016 1/6 West Papua: A history of exploitation

West Papua was taken over by Indonesia in 1969, and a legacy of oppression and environmental devastation has followed. 19 Oct 2011 13:37 GMT | Environment, US & Canada, Australia, Guinea, Indonesia NAJ Taylor N.A.J. Taylor is an honorary research fellow at La Trobe University's Centre for Dialogue, and a doctoral researcher in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. @najtaylor

These pieces focus on one specific AngloAustralian company and their American partner that jointly operate a mine in West Papua, one of the poorest provinces of Indonesia. The risks for the company include the potential to contribute to environmental and social damage in a foreign market. The risks for investors include financing a company that does not get its risk management right. This is the second chapter of a fourpart essay that examines how the Norwegian Pension Fund came to blacklist the mining giant Rio Tinto. Catch up with the first part here: 1. The blacklisting of Rio Tinto. Part 2: A history of exploitation

While Australia and New Guinea both have enviable mineral stores, economic and political exploitation has left the latter as home to many of the Investing in conflictaffected and highrisk areas is a growing concern for responsible businesses and investors. Companies based in developed countries often operate in lesserdeveloped foreign markets, where governance standards are lax, corruption is high 1/1/2016 2/6 and business practices are poor. These pieces focus on one specific AngloAustralian company and their American partner that jointly operate a mine inWest Papua, one of the poorest provinces of Indonesia.

The risks for the company include the potential to contribute to environmental and social damage in a foreign market. The risks for investors include financing a company that does not get its risk management right. This is the second chapter of a fourpart essay that examines how the Norwegian Pension Fund came to blacklist the mining giantRio Tinto. Catch up with the first part here: 1. The blacklisting of Rio Tinto. Part 2: A history of exploitation New Guinea, geographically as well as historically, is Australia's closest relative. Separated from the mainland during the last glacial period, the waters filled in what now separates them: about 152km of the Torres Strait. While Australia and New Guinea both have enviable mineral stores, economic and political exploitation has left the latter as home to many of the poorest people on Earth. New Guinea is also an island of two histories.

The eastern half forms the independent state of Papua New Guinea a status it has enjoyed since breaking from Australia in 1975. With its natural resources of oil and industrial metals, Papua New Guinea has long been exploited for its minerals at places like Ok Tedi and Bougainville.Both projects ended in social and environmental disaster. The environmental impact of Ok Tedi was so great that, in 1999, Paul Anderson, then chief executive of Australian mining company BHP, conceded that the mine was "not compatible with our environmental values". But it did serve the company's pursuit of profit. It was not until the Ok Tedi environmental disaster three years later that the true impact of BHP's mining practices came to the attention of the global public. BHP subsequently sold its interest, established a fund to restore the sustainable development of the affected people, and received immunity from further prosecution.

The western half of New Guinea has had a lesserknown but equally tragic history centred around the Jayawijaya Mountain, home to the Amungme, and farther downstream, the Kamoro people. As with much of East Asia, the indigenes were under Dutch rule when a geological expedition in 1936 located a significant ertsberg (ore mountain) deep in the southwestern highlands. World War II intervened, and the Japanese claimed Indonesia and some of the western parts of New Guinea. Following defeat in the war, the Japanese were marshalled back to their home territory, and Dutch colonialism resumed. Importantly, when Indonesian independence was obtained from the Dutch in 1949, few knew of the ertsberg (mineral ore) hidden deep in West Papua's wilderness. The Dutch began a tenyear Papuanisation programme in 1957 that would see West Papua handed back to the indigenes, and would create the independent state of West Papua around 1972. 1/1/2016 3/6 Despite multiple territorial claims, the ore mountain lay dormant for over 20 years. On March 6, 1959, the New York Times reported the presence of alluvial gold in the Arafura Sea just off the coast of West Papua. Reminded of their earlier discovery, Dutch geologists were said to be returning to the ore mountain, now simply known as Ertsberg. Independence denied The indigenes, meanwhile, as part of their programme toward independence, established a Papuan National Council and provisional government as well as their own military, police force, currency, national anthem, and flag. At the time, West Papua's independence was due before the United Nations Decolonisation Commission, and representatives took part in various cultural and political activities throughout the region.

By December 1, 1961, the West Papuan "Morning Star" flag had been raised alongside the Dutch for the first time. Many assumed that independence was imminent.Unbeknown to both the indigenes and the Dutch, US mining company FreeportMcMoRan Copper and Gold was negotiating directly with Suharto at the time an Indonesian army general for a small group of its experts to prospect this ore mountain. The path into West Papua through Suharto promised to be fruitful for Freeport, since its board was stacked with the Rockefeller's Indonesian oil interests who already were versed in the general's way of doing business. An exploration agreement was reached, and soon after a geologist from Freeport was forging his way through the wilderness toward Ertsberg. West Papua was about to change hands again.Armed with Chinese and Soviet weapons, as well as an increasingly public friendship with the communists, Indonesia declared war on the Netherlands. To protect Western interests from the threat of communism, on August 15, 1962, the United Nations and the United States orchestrated a meeting between Dutch and Indonesian officials during which interim control of West Papua was signed over to Indonesia.

Six years of UN interregnum followed, after which a plebiscite would decide whether to form a separate nation or integrate into Indonesia. All 815,000 West Papuans were to vote in an Act of Free Choice. To ensure a favourable outcome, the Indonesians worked to suppress Papuan identity. Raising the West Papuan flag and singing of the national anthem were banned, and all political activities were deemed subversive. Indonesia ruled through force, for selfinterest. Alarmed by ongoing media reports, on April 5, 1967, in the British House of Lords, Lord Ogmore called for a UN investigation. By early 1968, with Suharto having assumed the presidency of Indonesia, a US consular visit almost unanimously agreed that "Indonesia could not win an open election" in West Papua. West Papua still wanted its independence. In a desperate attempt to secure West Papua's right to selfdetermination, two junior politicians crossed the border into Australian-administered Papua and New Guinea on May 29, 1969. They carried damning evidence of Indonesian repression; the hopes of a yet unformed nation rested on the politicians reaching the UN. As Australia and its allies were amenable to Indonesian control of West Papua, the two were imprisoned upon crossing the border until after the referendum. Their brave plea was silenced. 1/1/2016 4/6 Between July andAugust 1969, less than a quarter of one per cent of the population some 1,026 West Papuans signed the country's freedom over to Indonesia.

The election, held under the aegis of the UN, was far from an act of free choice. The following day West Papua was declared a military operation zone, the local people's movement was restricted, and expression of their national identity banned under Indonesian law. Poor, neglected West Papua. Selling West Papua Control of West Papua proved a lucrative business deal for the Indonesians. Two years prior to the Act of Free Choice coincidentally on the same day the plight of Papua was raised in the House of Lords Freeport signed a contract of work with the Suharto government entitling a jointly owned company, PT Freeport Indonesia (FreeportIndonesia), full rights to the Ertsberg mine. In return, Indonesia would derive significant tax revenues and fees as well as a minority 9.36 per cent shareholding. Without the authority to do so, Indonesia nevertheless cut itself into a deal that sold large tracts of West Papua to the US company, intent on sifting it for copper and gold.

Although Ertsberg fulfilled its promise, as production slowed in the mid1980s, FreeportIndonesia began to explore surrounding mountains and ridges for other reserves. As is often the case, the best place to establish a new mine is next to another. Sure enough, significant copper and gold reserves were located at Grasberg only a couple of miles southwest of Ertsberg. Grasberg has the largest recoverable reserves of copper and gold in the world. It's also Indonesia's economic beachhead. Observing the Grasberg mine via Google Earth, one sees a scar like no other: Located about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres) above sea level, openpit (above ground) mining has bored a hole through the top of the mountain more than half a mile (1 km) wide. What they're digging for is more than $40bn worth of copper and gold. Every day the operation discharges 230,000 tons of tailings (waste rock) into the Aghawagon River. This process is expected to continue for up to six more years, at which point exploration will go underground until there's no value left. Freeport estimates that will occur by 2041. The operation is so large that it has shifted the borders of the adjacent Lorenz National Park. Listed as a World Heritage site by the UN's Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1999, the park is "the only protected area in the world to incorporate a continuous, intact transect from snowcap to tropical marine environment, including extensive lowland wetlands".

For the Amungme and Kamoro indigenes, corporate imperialism had replaced European colonialism. The ramifications are both environmental and social. 'Slowmotion genocide' The social and economic condition of the indigenous Amungme and Kamoro poses fundamental human rights concerns. Although FreeportIndonesia directly or indirectly employs a large number of West Papuans and is regularly Indonesia's biggest taxpayer, in 2005, the World Bank found that Papua remained the poorest province in Indonesia. With a marked rise in military personnel and foreign staff has come a number of social issues, 1/1/2016 5/6 including alcohol abuse and prostitution such that Papua now has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in Indonesia. Indonesian control of West Papua has been characterised by the ongoing and disproportionate repression of largely peaceful opposition. Few sustained violent interactions have occurred;however, in one major conflict in 1977, more than 1,000 civilian men, women, and children were killed by the Indonesian military in Operasi Tumpas ("Operation Annihilation") after a slurry pipe was severed and partially closed the Ertsberg mine.

More recently, in 1995, the Australian Council for Overseas Aid reported that the Indonesian army and security forces killed 37 people involved in protests over the mine in the preceding sevenmonth period. While the level of violence is difficult to establish, academics at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney maintain that up to 100,000 West Papuans may have been killed since Indonesian occupation. They call what's happening to West Papua "slowmotion genocide". There are also two primary environmental concerns over Grasberg. The first is that the mine discharges 230,000 tons of waste rock a day into surrounding waterways; given the escalating rate of processing, this rate is arguably above that allowed by national law. Secondly, acid rock drainage the outflow of acidic water has resulted from the disposal of a further360,000 to 510,000 tons a day of overburden and waste rock in two adjacent valleys covering 4 miles (6.5 km), up to 975 feet (300 metres) deep. The mine operators dispute both claims.Riverine methods of waste disposal are banned in every developed country on Earth. The World Bank no longer funds projects that operate this way, due to the irreversible ecological devastation, and the International Finance Corporation requires that rock be treated prior to disposal, which is not a practice carried out at Grasberg.

Since the mid 1990s, a number of independent environmental assessments have found unacceptably high levels of toxicity and sediment as far as 140 miles away. Freeport and Rio Tinto maintain that riverine tailings disposal is the best solution, given the difficult terrain, the threat of earthquakes, and heavy rainfall. Grasberg's reserves are so vast that extracting them is expected to create 6 billion tons of industrial waste. President Suharto, who is now recognised as one of the most corrupt and tyrannical leaders in history, renewed FreeportIndonesia's exclusive mining rights in 1991 for a further 30 years with an option of two 10year extensions. The license included an option to prospect another 6.5 million acres (2.6 million hectares), as far as the Papua New Guinea border. "The potential is only limited by the imagination," Freeport's chairman, James Moffett, remarked to shareholders in March 1995. "Every other mining company wants to get into Irian Jaya [West Papua]. Bougainville and Ok Tedi don't hold a candle to Grasberg." Read chapter three: Mining companies funded Indonesian abuses.

This is an extract of a chapter from the book, Evolutions in Sustainable Investing: Strategies, Funds and Thought Leadership, to be published by Wiley in December 1/1/2016 6/6 2011. NAJ Taylor is a PhD candidate in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, and lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Management at La Trobe University. Follow him on Twitter: @najtaylor The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. Source: Al Jazeera