[Debate] (Fwd) Rio-related reports: Bassey on bay eco-social struggles; Martinez-Alier on enviro justice; Temper on jatropha; Warlenius on eco-debt owed the South (Africa Report)

[Patrick Bond]

<http://theafricareport.com/index.php/joan-martinez-alier-501814310.html>

*http://theafricareport.com/index.php/20120704501814792/columns/after-rio-20-brazil-s-cemetery-of-mangroves-and-fisherfolks-501814792.html
*

*4 July 2012 19:44
*

*After Rio+20, Brazil's Cemetery of Mangroves and Fisherfolks
*

*Nnimmo Bassey
*

*Two visits outside the heart of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, marked the 
highpoints of my visit to that city for the infamous Rio+20 summit.*
**

*The first was on 14 June with colleagues from the Oilwatch 
International network and that visit took us to Caxias. This is a 
community that has had to bear fifty years of toxic assault by 
petrochemical installations including the Refineria Duque de Caxias (REDUC).

This refinery is the heart of petrochemical factories that dot the 
Caxias landscape and is the fourth largest supplier of refined petroleum 
products to the country. Potable water is a problem in this municipality 
and some folks reportedly rely on untreated water from the refinery.

The locals see the petrochemicals, including a proposed new refinery set 
to become the largest in Latin America, as developments that excludes 
the participation of the citizens. They bemoan a dearth of health 
facilities even as they bear the assault of multiple pollutions from the 
petrochemicals complex.

Men and Women of the Sea

The second visit was on 17 June as part of the Rio +Toxic tour to Mage. 
It doubled as a solidarity visit to the struggling community people at 
the Guanabara Bay area.

During the visit we met with members of [I]Homens e Mulheres do Mar 
Association[/I] (AHOMAR) -- Association of Men and Women of the Sea in 
the Guanabara Bay. That name did not include women initially, but after 
years of gender struggles the role of the women had to be duly 
recognized and acknowledged in the name.

This last visit commenced from a point between the head offices of 
Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company, and the offices of the 
Brazilian National Development Bank known to be a major financier of 
toxic projects in the country. The bank has a budget larger than that of 
the World Bank and extends its tentacles all over Latin America and deep 
into Africa. The bank turned 60 years on 20 June and fittingly holds 
itself up as the flag bearer for green capitalism.

Life turned unpredictable for the fisherfolks in the Guanabara Bay when 
Petrobras constructed its pipelines through the Bay. When an oil spill 
occurred in 2000 it increased the challenges faced by the fisherfolks. 
The footprint of that oil spill is still visible in the Ipiringa area 
and the destroyed mangrove is yet to recover. Indeed, the locals call 
the area the "cemetery of mangroves."

As much as Petrobras has tried to restore the mangrove, the best result 
is seen only in photos where mangroves planted in pots are photographed 
before they wilt, according to local sources.

Our team went through various locations in Mage in the company of 
members of AHOMAR. A rather uncomfortable aspect was that the leader of 
AHOMAR, Alexandre Anderson de Sousa, had to travel in a police car as it 
was considered unsafe for him to travel with us in our bus or by any 
other means. Since 2009, Alexandre and his family have been under 24/7 
police protection under the Human Rights Defenders Program of the 
government. The officers go with him everywhere, everytime.

Perhaps this level of protection is necessary for Alexandre's safety. It 
could also be a way of ensuring that his activism is curtailed. I found 
the presence of the cops rather unnerving. But, as Alexandre said, they 
are living in difficult times and terrain and their struggle is one of 
survival. Their struggle has been one of ensuring minimal impacts from 
petroleum installations as well as resisting expansion of the facilities.

Already some communities have been displaced by pipeline construction 
and their overall fishing grounds has been reduced to about 12 per cent 
of the area over the past few years. According to the fisherfolks, about 
9000 families are involved in the struggle.

According to research done by the department of Geography of the 
University of Rio de Janeiro, since the oil spill occurred the fishing 
stock has depleted by 80-90 per cent of what it was in the 1990s. Twelve 
years after the incident, the stock is yet to return to normal contrary 
to assurances they had received from Petrobras. They regret that the 
best fishing grounds are no longer accessible to them but are taken up 
by oil installations, pipelines and related mega-projects.

In addition, commercial fishing companies use big vessels that 
destabilize the smaller boats used by the locals. In addition they 
complain that they get shot at with automatic weapons at times by 
private security outfit. The objective of the harassment is to stop them 
from fishing, according to the locals.

"When Petrobras is accused you can be sure there would be no 
investigations," one of the local leaders told us. "We are being 
squeezed out of business because we cannot go to the deep seas in our 
small boats."

Death and Dignity

The bay has literally become a platform for Petrobras and sections are 
fenced off and cannot be accessed by locals. One leader told us: "we are 
resisting because we have no options. We might live or die. Our death 
may not result from gun shots, but because our livelihoods have been 
destroyed." He added, "We are not seeking to be rich, we just want to 
live our lives in dignity."

The reality of the precarious situation of the AHOMAR activists was 
underscored by the murder of two of their leaders a few days after our 
visit. They are indeed denied dignity in life and in death. The shocking 
news reached the world that:

"Almir Nogueira de Amorim and João Luiz Telles Penetra, artisanal 
fishermen and members of Homens e Mulheres do Mar Association (AHOMAR) 
went missing after going out to fish on Friday, 22 June 2012." Further, 
reports of the brutal murders inform, "Almir's body was found on sunday, 
June 24th, tied to their boat, submerged close to the São Lourenço beach 
in Magé, Rio de Janeiro. The body of João Luiz Telles, Pituca, was found 
on monday, June 25th, with hands and feet tied in fetal position, close 
to the São Gonçalo beach."

Recalling past incidents, reports have it that in "2009, the men and 
women of AHOMAR occupied the construction sites of land and sub-sea gas 
pipelines for transport of Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and Liquefied 
Petroleum Gas (LPG), built by a consortium between two contractors: GDK 
and Oceânica, hired by Petrobras. This construction is directly making 
artisanal fishing impossible in the Mauá-Magé beach, Guanabara Bay, 
where the AHOMAR headquarters is located.

"They anchored their boats close to the pipelines and stayed there for 
38 days. Since then, the fishermen are suffering constant death threats. 
That same year, in May, Paulo Santos Souza, formerly in charge of the 
association's accounting, was brutally beaten in front of his family and 
killed with five shots in the head. In 2010, another AHOMAR founder, 
Márcio Amaro, was also murdered at his home, in front of his mother and 
wife. Both crimes have never been cleared up."

[B]Nigerian Gas imported and Flared[/B]

On the way to "the cemetery of mangroves" we saw gas pipelines that had 
an interesting story behind them. Around 2002 when Brazil had an energy 
crisis due to reduction in levels of water in her hydroelectricity dams, 
the country began to import liquefied natural gas from Nigeria. With an 
improvement in the energy situation the importation continues and the 
excess gas is simply flared. It can be said that Nigeria, the second 
biggest flarer of natural gas after Russia, flares at two ends of the 
pipe: in the Niger Delta and in Brazil.

Another similarity with the messy oil fields of Nigeria is that most of 
the spills are first reported by fisherfolks. The Petrobras spill of 
2000 at Ipiringa is said to have occurred by 1 AM and was discovered by 
fisherfolks six hours later. The massive spill destroyed a huge swath of 
mangrove and with it took the bottom off the livelihoods of at least 300 
families who used to pick crabs, prawns and other seafoods here.

The toxic tour ended with a standing meeting with the environment 
secretary of the Mage Municipality. Before that meeting we visited Surui 
community heavily impacted by an oil pipeline that cuts right through 
it. Stories of buildings cracked by heavy earth moving machinery during 
the laying of the pipeline as well as displacement of several families 
are rife here.

The land acquisition process is quite interesting. According to the 
locals, Petrobras officials would arrive at your door and offer you a 
certain amount of money for your property. If you refuse, they leave. 
But when they come a second time they would inform you that the money 
they offered has been set aside for you in a special account. In other 
words, you have no option but to accept their offer. When the officials 
come a third time, their mission is simple: to evict you from your property.

We are all fisherfolk

The deaths of Almir, João Luiz, Paulo and Márcio must be denounced in 
the strongest terms. We cannot stand apart from this assault simply 
because it is not occurring in our territories. Our realities are not 
different whether in the oil fields of Nigeria and Ecuador, the mines of 
Philippines or the tar sand pits of Alberta Canada. Communities with 
oil, gas and mineral resources are daily being assaulted. The least we 
can do to defend our common humanity is to stand in solidarity with 
challenged peoples all over the world and proclaim that: we are all 
fisherfolk; we are all AHOMAR activists!
*

****
*


  Dying for the environment
  <http://theafricareport.com/index.php/20120627501814350/columns/dying-for-the-environment-501814350.html>


By *Joan Martinez-Alier 
<http://theafricareport.com/index.php/joan-martinez-alier-501814310.html>*
Joan Martinez-Alier 
<http://theafricareport.com/index.php/joan-martinez-alier-501814310.html>


*One of EJOLT's* main tasks - of which I am the coordinator - is to 
collect and map a large global inventory (not less than 2000 cases) of 
environmental conflicts. Some will be success stories of forests saved, 
of dams or mining projects stopped. Others, of recurring and replicated 
unsustainable development models, packaged in the language of 'growth' - 
unquestioned; accepted.*

Often, environmentalists are killed.

Many of us in the EJOLT project were in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. It 
was presented to the world in the usual wrapping paper: hope, change, 
possibilities. Meanwhile, the alternative "people's summit" at the beach 
in Flamengo was entitled "For Social and Environmental Justice". The 
official conference at Rio Center, however, scarcely mentioned 
environmental injustices, crimes and liabilities. The one-eyed kings 
leading so many of the  blind - unknowing, unconscious; into the 'green 
economy'...

However, in Brazil itself since December 1988 when Chico Mendes 
was killed fighting deforestation in Acre, hundreds of 
other socio-environmental activists have been killed. While we were in 
Rio, people fighting for the environment were killed from Peru to 
the Philippines. The civil society organization Global Witness 
published impressive figures on such victims which went unmentioned in 
the bland agreement signed in Rio by governments (many of which are 
involved in such crimes).

After Rio, I read a book on Mexico by Luis Hernández Navarro, 
"Siembra de concreto, cosecha de ira". In Mexico there are 
environmental justice networks such as REMA (against mining projects), 
MAPDER (against dams), "En Defensa del Maiz" (against transgenics and 
in defence of peasant agriculture).

hundreds of other socio-environmental activists have been killed

There is also the Asamblea de Afectados Ambientales. This crisply 
written book gives short accounts of many environmental conflicts 
emphasizing the successes of the poor and the indigenous. The author 
unavoidably mentions names of well-known environmentalists killed since 
2007. The list could be multiplied by three by resorting merely to the 
regional newspaper editions  or to the webpages of EJOs.

In any given country, the number of activists who die is not 
directly related to the number of conflicts. It depends also on the 
general level of violence, which is higher in Mexico, Colombia and Peru 
than in Ecuador or Argentina. This being acknowledged, here are 
names gathered from Hernández Navarro's book. Behind each name there was 
or there still is an environmental justice organization or a 
communal entity.

. Aldo Zamora, 15 May 2007, member of the tlahuica community 
fighting deforestation in San Juan Atzingo, killed by "talamontes" 
(large scale wood robbers) in the vicinity of Santa Lucía, Ocuilan, 
Mexico State.

. Aristeo Flores Rolón and Raul Delgado Benavides, 2007, in 
Cuautitlán de Barragán, Jalisco, for their defence of indigenous rights 
against iron mining in the ejido of Ayotitlán.

. Bernardo Méndez Vásquez and Bernardo Vásquez Sánchez, 18 January 
and 15 March 2012,  Coordinadora de Pueblos Unidos del Valle de 
Ocotlán, in San José del Progreso, Oaxaca, for their opposition to the 
mining project La Trinidad of Fortuna Silver Mining.

. Betty Cariño, 27 Abril 2010, 37 years old, when travelling to San Juan 
Copala in solidarity with the triqui community. An activist in the 
Mixteca and elsewhere, a radio journalist, she had origins in Liberation 
Theology and was involved in conflicts against dams and for peasant 
agriculture.

. Leopoldo Juárez Urbina, 8 May 2010, and five or six other members 
of the purépecha community of Cherán, Michoacán, defending their 
communal forests against "talamontes".

. Mariano Abarca, 27 November 2009, 50 years old, Chicomuselo, Chiapas, 
leader of the resistance to a barite mine owned by the Canadian company 
Backfire.

. Miguel Angel Pérez Cazales, 31 octubre 2009, from Santa 
Catalina, Tepotzlán, defending the protected area of Texcal 
against urbanization.

. Rubén Flores, 28 April 2010, his birthday, 42 years old, 
Coajumulco, Morelos, defending the forest of Ajusco Chihinautzin, killed 
by "talamontes".

*The EJOLT project (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and 
Trade) initiative is a large collaborative project bringing together 
science and society; academics, researchers and environmental justice 
activists, to catalogue conflicts and work towards confronting 
ecological injustice. Work areas include nuclear energy; oil, gas and 
carbon injustice; biomass and land conflicts; mining and ship breaking; 
environmental health and risk assessment; liabilities and valuations; 
law and institutions; and ecological debt, consumption and unjust 
ecological exchanges. For more information, visit www.ejolt.org

***


  The controversial jatropha stumbles in Kenya
  <http://www.theafricareport.com/index.php/20120629501814530/soapbox/the-controversial-jatropha-stumbles-in-kenya-501814530.html>


By *Leah Temper*

*A campaign by Nature Kenya and other Environmental Justice 
Organizations (EJOs) has saved the Dakatcha Woodland Important Bird Area 
(IBA) from destruction from biofuel crops after Kenya's National 
Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) rejected clearance **for a 
pilot project on ** over 10,000 ha of land*.*
*

*A study shows that biofuel from plantations at the Dakatcha Woodland 
would result in up to six times more carbon emissions than fossil 
fuels/Photo/Reuters*The Italian owned company Nuove Iniziative 
Industriali Srl, through a local subsidiary called Kenya Jatropha Energy 
Limited, had proposed converting 50,000 ha of land at the Kenya coast 
into Jatropha curcas plantations. The 32,000 ha Dakatcha Woodland is 
within the proposed plantations.

The Dakatcha Woodland is located 40 kilometers North of the coastal town 
of Malindi and is home to rare and globally threatened birds. It is also 
home to over 20,000 people and is the ancestral land of the indigenous 
minority Watha and Giriama tribes. The plantation would not only have 
evicted the tribes from their land, but would also have uprooted their 
sacred burial sites.

The EJOs further contended that the local council had betrayed the 
trusteeship of the land by agreeing to irregularly allocate the land, 
held in trust for the benefit of the community, to the Italian private 
developer, in disregard of the needs of local people and biodiversity. 
The groups also pointed to Kenya Jatropha Energy LTD's unprofessional 
and irresponsible behavior by starting the project and clearing 
forestlands against the law without the proper clearances.

This move by NEMA is an important step in the fight against the 
widespread implementation of Jatropha Curcas in Africa. Jatropha has 
become a controversial biofuel. While proponents argue that the crop is 
resistant to drought and pest problems, critics contend that the 
biofuel, as with many first generation biofuels, may actually produce 
more greenhouse gas emissions than burning fossil fuels if it is grown 
over natural ecosystems, such as the Dakatcha Woodlands, and that it 
needs more water than maize to produce a good crop of oil seed and is 
subject to many pests and diseases.

A study commissioned by Nature Kenya, the Royal Society for the 
Protection of Birds and Action Aid, reveals that biofuel produced from 
the proposed plantations at Dakatcha will result in up to six times more 
carbon emissions than fossil fuels.

Much of the biofuel produced in Dakatcha is destined for Europe because 
of new European Union targets. The misguided Renewable Energy Directive 
(RED) requires 10 per cent of transport to be renewable by 2020 and most 
member states plan to meet this almost entirely through biofuels. To 
meet this target, millions of hectares of land will need to be turned 
over to biofuel crops. Such land is not available in Europe so the 
alternative is Africa, driving the rampant landgrab that has seen 
hundreds of thousands of hectares acquired by foreign companies and 
governments.

Yet, even as the Dakatcha Woodlands is spared and another British 
Company, G4 industries, has also pulled out of the Coast region in 
Kenya, the Tana Delta wetlands area remains under threat by several 
projects, including one proposed by a Canadian biofuel company, Bedford 
fuels, to grow 10,000 hectares of jatropha.

"It is heartening to see NEMA's decisions being guided by science. We 
now urge NEMA to apply the same criteria to the proposed biofuel 
plantations in other sensitive areas such as the Tana River Delta," said 
Paul Matiku, Executive Director of Nature Kenya (BirdLife's offshoot in 
the region), in a press release.

/*Leah Temper is a doctoral student, and a researcher in Environmental 
History and Ecological Economics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
*/

/****
*/

29 June 2012 17:19


  Rio+20 or Rio-20: Green economy vs Ecological debt
  <http://www.theafricareport.com/index.php/20120629501814528/soapbox/rio-20-or-rio-20-green-economy-vs-ecological-debt-501814528.html>


By *Rikard Warlenius - PhD candidate, Lund University, Sweden, *

*The high-level UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last week was 
called an "epic failure" by Greenpeace and other environmental 
organizations, their disappointments reminiscent of the "epic failure" 
of the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa only half a year 
earlier.*

**Other critics have re-named the summit "Rio--20", since no progress at 
all has been made since the Earth Summit in the same city in 1992, when 
three important conventions were adopted on climate change, biodiversity 
and desertification. Yet, despite their noble ambitions, these 
conventions have failed miserably in reversing the negative global 
environmental trends: since 1990, yearly emissions of carbon dioxide 
have increased 45 % and soon the atmospheric concentration will pass 400 
ppm, to be compared with the 280 ppm pre-industrial rate. The extinction 
rate of species today is alarmingly high with some 30 % of amphibians, 
21 % of birds and 25 % of mammal species at risk. The fight against 
desertification is also being lost, with the percentage of degraded land 
area rising from 15 % in 1991 to 24 % in 2008.

Stated goals to reduce the ecological and carbon footprint and at the 
same time improve life for the billions who still lack basic resources 
cannot be achieved while simultaneously maintaining growth for those who 
already live in prosperity.

But if the 1992 Rio Summit convention was too little too late, at least 
it still remotely mustered some global political ambition for dealing 
with the ecological crises. The same cannot be said of any global 
environmental agreements since. The 2012 Rio declaration, ironically 
called "The future we want", is nothing but a political surrender to the 
forces of ecological destruction that now put human civilization as we 
know it at stake.

 From a geopolitical perspective the negotiation stalemate is 
doubtlessly caused by the inaction of the developed countries in the 
North. Even though their population is only one fifth of the worlds', 
their accumulated carbon emissions amount to 75 % of the total. Similar 
figures for ecological footprints inexorably reveals who has caused -- 
and benefited from -- environmental degradation, and who therefore 
should be obliged to take the lead -- and pay the costs -- towards a 
global green transition. Twenty years ago, this obligation was 
acknowledged through the adoption of the "common but differentiated 
responsibilities" principle 7 in Rio 1992. But since the North has never 
fulfilled its assignment -- definitely not the US, with the EU being 
only slightly better -- it is completely unrealistic that countries such 
as China, India, Brazil or South Africa would put their partly 
successful catch-up development at risk for cleaning up the mess caused 
by others.

Seen from an economic system perspective, the ecological crises reveal a 
crisis for the development model of both North and South. Inherent in 
the notion of "sustainable development" -- launched in the 1987 
Brundtland Report and the foundation for all mainstream environment 
policy since then -- lies the promise of green growth, of constant 
win-win solutions between ecology and economy, that simply has not been 
met in reality. Not in the classic industrialization development 
formula, not in the private profit-maximizing structural adjustment 
neoliberalism, and not in the financial market approach of the so-called 
"green economy" that was the flavor of the month in Rio 2012. While 
never clearly defined, green economy usually refers to attempts at 
"internalizing the environmental externalities" through the 
objectification and commodification of ecosystems (reduced to their 
"environmental services"). These newly minted services can then be 
bought, traded or securitized as any other financial commodities.

Experience so far implies that such market-based solutions have weak 
environmental impacts but strong social impacts. Evaluations of the the 
CDM market, part of the carbon trading scheme of the Kyoto protocol, 
reveal that between one and two third of the projects do not deliver the 
promised emission cuts. In Africa, India and other parts of the world, 
poor rural dwellers are those most dependent on the free "services" -- 
e.g. fresh water, food, firewood, medical plants -- that the natural 
commons provide. Payment schemes may perhaps slow down deforestation at 
a high social price, but the "avoided emissions" are then traded and 
exchanged for continued emissions in a developed country. In this way, 
finanzialisation often means zero gains for the environment but a 
de-facto transfer of rights and properties from the poor to the rich. 
Essentially, it provides a way for those who can afford it to occupy 
double the environmental space, as they can continue emitting, while 
assuaging their guilt through "green consumption". No wonder the "green 
economy" has been enthusiastically hailed by companies and governments 
stuck in the growth discourse while at the same time has beewn 
unequivocally rejected by social and environmental movements throughout 
the global South.

In order to find genuinely sustainable solutions -- in both an 
environmental and social sense -- to the current crises other methods 
and policies will most certainly prove necessary. But even more crucial 
is the insight that these crises cannot be solved only by the win-win 
market-based solutions. The social metabolism -- the economy's material 
and energy throughput from extraction to waste -- tends to increase 
whether economic growth is dubbed green or not, and as it grows, so does 
ecological degradation and an increase of environmental distribution 
conflicts over the use of the resources -- for social or market 
purposes. Stated goals to reduce the ecological and carbon footprint and 
at the same time improve life for the billions who still lack basic 
resources cannot be achieved while simultaneously maintaining growth for 
those who already live in prosperity. Someone will have to make sacrifices.

A truly sustainable agenda would have to start with a recognition of the 
ecological debt. From colonial days until today, raw materials and 
energy from the South and the global commons, as well as their sink 
capacities, have been expropriated for the social metabolism of the 
North without properly compensating material losses, ecological 
degradation, labor and lost development opportunities. This has been 
crucial for the North's ability to secure world dominance as well as 
welfare and prosperity for most of its citizens, while the South's 
efforts to catch up constantly have been undermined.

The ecological debt is hard to measure in full extent, but attempts at 
quantifying one important part of it, the climate debt, show that most 
African countries are creditors rather than a debtors, while all 
Northern countries have a huge debt not only to the South, but also to 
future generations everywhere for emitting greenhouse gases way above 
what is long-term sustainable. This debt should be acknowledged and 
compensated for, for instance through green technology transfer and cash 
payments directly to poor households.

While repayment of the ecological debt could and should enable 
(sustainable) development for those who need it most, it is also clear 
that the capitalist economic growth in both North and South has a very 
high social cost and is environmentally disastrous. In the end, a new 
development model is needed. Such a new model was not at all considered 
in the official 2012 Rio Earth Summit "negotiations". But Rio de Janeiro 
also hosted a parallel People's Summit, which was nothing less than an 
inclusive and democratic laboratory for the elaboration of sustainable 
ways forward. Here, "green economy" was rejected for a localized economy 
in harmony with nature and ideals of consumerism and growth abandoned 
for the adoption of liberated time and basic income as a prerequisite 
for "good life -- buen vivir" for all.

/*Rikard Warlenius - PhD candidate, Lund University, Sweden, who visited 
Rio as partner of the international research project EJOLT 
(Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade), see 
ejolt.org*/

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