The War Against Peasant Farmers Heats Up in Honduras
January 26th, 2012
A Climate Connections Exclusive Report
The Bajo Aguán Region of Honduras competes with the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Colombia for the site with the most egregious violations of human rights, land rights, and ecological justice that often accompany biofuel plantations in the tropics. This article I wrote for Alternet last year documents the relation of these abuses to the UN-backed Clean Development Mechanism. Since that time, the rate of assassinations, disappearances, and outright attacks on peasant farmers has increased dramatically. Climate Connections is pleased to offer the following original article reporting from the ground on the current state of affairs in the Bajo Aguan.
– Jeff Conant, for Global Justice Ecology Project.
Solidarity in the Heart of the Aguán: The War Against Peasant Farmers Heats Up in Honduras
Young girl in Bajo Aguan; Photo credit: Greg McCain
By Aryeh Shell
“There is a war here in the Aguán,” says Juan, surveying the distant fields of African palm from the vantage point of his recently planted field of beans and corn. A young Honduran farmer, wearing a beaten cowboy hat and a bandana bearing the name “National Front for Popular Resistance,” Juan lives in an encampment of 60 families, dedicated to growing basic grains and reclaiming their food sovereignty. “But the war is not against the drug traffickers, other countries or even organized crime,” he says. “It is a war against the campesinos.”
In the Lower Aguán River Valley in northern Honduras, more than 3,000 families have claimed their right to the basic necessities of a dignified life: land, food, health, education. Living in make-shift tarps and temporary thatch-roofed huts, with nothing but machetes to clear the land, they daily face off against the goliath forces of the Honduran oligarchy, their private guards, and 1,000 Honduran military and police forces deployed by the coup regime to militarize the region – the local security apparatus of big business and the State.
The second major military here, “Operation Xatruch II,” was launched in August, 2011 with financing and training by the United States government. Honduran Security Minister, Oscar Alvarez justified the militarization of the region by describing the campesinos as “so-called farmers and possibly drug dealers who are wanting to settle in that area”.
But these “so-called farmers” are not just arriving. They were recruited by the State into this backwater rainforest region in the 60s and 70s through agrarian land reforms that granted collective titles to peasant cooperatives. The reformist program used campesino labor to cultivate the land and grow African Palm for export. The land was inalienable, designated solely for small-holder production.
The aggressive neoliberal policies of the 90s and the country’s Agriculture Modernization Act of 1992 definitively ended land reform in Honduras and opened up collectively-held land to the market. Vulnerable to global economic forces, cheap imports from the North, massive debt, and a campaign of intimidation, many farmers were forced to sell their land for a mere 1,000 lempiras per manzana (about $52 US dollars for 1.7 acres). Forty peasant cooperatives disappeared. The land was rapidly concentrated into the hands of three powerful landowners, Miguel Facussé, Rene Morales and Reynaldo Carnales.
Realizing they had been swindled, the movement began to occupy and reclaim their lands. Before the coup took place on June 28,2009, President Zelaya, affectionately known as Mel by his campesino supporters, sat down with the Aguán farmers to redistribute disputed land and resolve the conflicts. Decree 18-2008 would grant titles for land that had been peacefully occupied for 10 years. The farmers were within days of receiving their titles when the coup took place. But the decree was abolished as one of the first acts undertaken by de facto President Roberto Micheletti and the coup regime. In December 2009, the United Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), decided to reestablish its nonviolent land occupations.
Welcome to Liberated Territory; Photo Credit: Greg McCain
While public officials and the Honduran press have used allegations of armed guerrilla activity or drug trafficking to criminalize the peasant farmers, they have failed to report on the 55 campesino leaders selectively assassinated, or the countless others who have been disappeared, captured, tortured and intimidated since January 2010.
They also have neglected to expose the narco-trafficking activities of the region’s largest landowner, Miguel Facussé, whose cocaine import business is well-known by the US Embassy, as revealed by Wikileaks cables last year.
Facussé and his company, Grupo Dinant, have received millions of dollars in loans by international financial institutions to promote African palm oil biofuel production. While being promoted as a green energy solution, the profits of Grupo Dinant are being used to pay armed paramilitaries and private guards to terrorize peasant farmers in order to drive them from their land, resulting in grave human rights violations – not to mention the severe ecological damage through mono-cultivation, water depletion and contamination from heavy toxic chemical inputs.
According to Dana Frank, a history professor at UC Santa Cruz and a regular contributor to The Nation, “The U.S. is funding and training Honduran military and police that are conducting joint operations with the security guards of a known drug trafficker to violently repress a campesino movement on behalf of Miguel Facussé’s dubious claims to vast swaths of the Aguán Valley, in order to support his African palm biofuels empire.”
Human Rights Delegation
On January 6-15, I joined a dozen other US and Canadian citizens on a delegation to the Aguán organized by Rights Action, Alliance for Global Justice, and Food First, to accompany campesino communities defending their rights to land, and to hear their testimonies.
Our hotel was filled with camouflaged soldiers carrying military rifles, ignoring signs on the restaurant doors prohibiting weapons. Day and night, the streets were patrolled by large green pickup trucks with tinted windows and without license plates – known locally as the kind used by paramilitaries in drive-by shootings and political kidnappings. I did not feel more secure by their presence.
After driving down long dirt roads, through oceans of dust-covered palm trees, and passing several military checkpoints along the way, we arrived in the small village of Rigores, a farming community of 135 families who were violently forced off their land by security forces last June. The police destroyed their crops and set fire to their homes, schools, and church. They are slowly rebuilding their community under the constant threat that the police will evict them again.
Norma, a shy woman cradling a newborn baby in her arms, showed us her newly rebuilt home of dry cracked mud. Norma doesn’t sleep much, she told us, because she is fearful for the day the police will return.
Norma and her rebuilt home, Bajo Aguan, January 2012; Photo credit: Aryeh Shell
She described the day when they attacked the community and burned their homes to the ground: “When they came to capture the men, I begged them to leave us alone. I told them, we are not guerrillas, we don’t have any weapons. We are women. We are farmers. They pointed their guns at me and told me to shut up or they would kill me. My baby was only 40 days old. She was screaming. I ran into the palm trees to escape.”
In a cramped room we gathered to hear other testimonies. Children lined up along the windows, peering in at the strange group of gringos in bright blue International Human Rights Observer T-shirts. At first, people were shy to share the trauma of the police attack. But before long, the stories poured out.
Rodolfo, a leader in the Campesino Movement of the Aguán, began, “Our community has been heavily persecuted. Many people have been kidnapped. Some have been beaten, and injured, including my 16-year-old son who was captured. They doused him with gasoline and threatened to set him on fire.”
A boisterous woman named Maria stood up. “It was a terrifying experience. Everyone had to leave their homes running. They burned our houses and killed our animals. It left us with a psychological trauma. My son is still really scared. Whenever he hears a noise, he says, ‘the police are coming, the police are coming’.
Despite the trauma of the eviction and ongoing repression, most of the families have returned, even more determined to claim their right to plant corn, beans, and yucca.
Rodolfo concluded, “They haven’t succeeded in breaking us. We continue to resist.”
As we walked through the rubble of the village that once was Rigores, small green cornstalks were poking through patches of earth.
Hut, Bajo Aguan, January 2102; Photo credit: Aryeh Shell
True Security
The campesino cooperatives are working to redefine the very notion of security – not through increased militarization, but through integral agrarian reform and food sovereignty. This includes not only land titles, but also technical support, native seeds, favorable credit, dignified permanent housing, schools, healthcare and the autonomy to decide what they will produce. It includes securing the rights and participation of women and youth. The first point on their security agenda, however, is to unite.
When asked what it would take to create true security in the region, Wilfredo Paz, the coordinator of the new Permanent Human Rights Observatory in the Aguán, responded, “There is one fundamental requirement, and that is the solidarity and love that we have for our brothers and sisters. Here in the Aguán, there is no guarantee of life. There is no respect for human rights. Here the only law that is respected is that of the military, of the powerful landowners and their hired assassins. Neoliberalism and the oligarchy want us to be divided. If we don’t create a collective strategy, we won’t survive.”
We attended a Campesino Congress that brought together nearly seventy leaders to discuss their strategy. The meeting started with a full minute of applause – a collective ritual to recognize the martyrs of the movement. During the long minute, my hands burned and my eyes filled with tears for all the blood that has been spilt in the struggle, in defense of our mother earth.
Odelfo, Bajo Aguan, January 2012; Photo credit: Greg McCain
The first agreement of the meeting was to unify the campesino organizations. The peasant farmer movement in the Aguán is striking at the core of capitalism, and solidarity is at the heart of their movement. As Odelfo, a 79-year-old campesino, puts it, “Todos para uno y uno para todos. Para que todos de una tortilla la compartamos, y que comamos de una misma tortilla todos” – All for one and one for all, because we all share the same tortilla.
Aryeh Shell is a cultural activist and a Rotary World Peace Fellow, currently studying International Relations in Argentina. She is researching the vibrant Honduran movement of resistance to neoliberal development projects.
If you are interested in joining an International Gathering for Human Rights in Solidarity with Honduras, February 17-20th, 2012, supportong the Human Rights Observatory with urgently needed resources, or would like to participate in a Solidarity Brigade, please contact: mioaguan2012@gmail.com or brigada.solidaridad.aguan@gmail.com
For further information: http://www.mioaguan.blogspot.com/
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BREAKING NEWS: Protesters Pack Wisconsin State Capitol to Oppose Mining Bill
January 26th, 2012
Protesters, led by a Native American flash mob, are packing the Wisconsin State Capitol right now to oppose a strip mining bill that woul ddestroy pristine watersheds. Watch live here: Live-stream from Indian Country TV. — GJEP
Cross-posted from The Daily Isthmus:
Protesters converge at Wisconsin Capitol over mining bill and State of the State address
by Austin Duerst
Thursday 01/26/2012 12:21 pm – Protesters gathered at the Wisconsin Capitol on Wednesday to voice their opposition the state’s controversial mining bill and the State of the State address by Gov. Scott Walker.
The Assembly is set to take up AB 426, which would streamline Wisconsin’s mining permit process and clear the way for Gogebic Taconite to open an iron mine in north-central Wisconsin.
An evening rally held outside the State Street entrance to the Capitol featured Secretary of State Doug La Follette, former Department of Natural Resources secretary George Meyer, and Ojibwe elder Joe Rose, who explained his people’s spiritual connection to the land where the mining would be conducted. Contamination of the region’s water, he said, would have drastic effects on residents and crops. As he spoke, murmurs of disgust rose from the crowd.
“On this day, we can’t put a price on the wild rice or any of the other resources that a hunter-gathering society would use,” Rose said, “and that’s why this mine is not going to happen.”
Protesters waved signs bearing slogans such as “Leave Mother Earth Alone” and “Bury the Bill: Lake Superior holds 10% of the world’s fresh water.” Drums and chanting followed like the preamble to an epic charge.
Later in the evening, more protesters assembled inside the Capitol for the State of the State by Gov. Walker, clearly hoping it would be his last annual address from that office. Whistles, jeers and cries bounced around the walls in the Rotunda. No doubt used to the protests by now, the police officers seemed eerily calm.
In the minutes before Walker’s speech, which started shortly after 7 p.m. in the packed Assembly chambers, the crowd sang and raised their signs. One showed Earth sitting uncomfortably close to a ball of flames; hovering in a black abyss next to the planet stood a smiley-faced creature with an extended hand bearing a peace sign, with the words “Have Some Respect!” written above it.
The poster’s creator, Girard Gorelick, is an Environmental Studies major at UW-Madison. “The issue of the environment is one that rings deeply within me, because I think it extends beyond politics,” he said. “It’s an issue of being a living part of the community, and I believe what is at stake is something that all people face and need to face together.”
Walking amidst the crowd in neon-colored vests, volunteers with the American Civil Liberties Union served as legal observers and keepers of the peace, seeking to ensure that authorities treated protesters legally. Earlier in the evening, there was a brief altercation outside the Capitol when a protester got into a tussle with a man trying to take a “Recall Walker” sign. No arrests were made, the ACLU members said, and the potentially violent episode was dealt with swiftly.
Stacy Harbaugh, communications director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, noted that police weren’t enforcing many of the rules regarding protests. For example, forbidden balloons and musical instruments abounded. Several people sounded off on retractable plastic horns they’d snuck into the building. One man walked right past a police officer shaking cowbells. Another blew loudly into a kazoo.
Harbaugh pointed to the stadium-sized banners hanging over the second-floor railings. “According to the rules, signs are supposed to be held by people’s hands,” she said, “but those are being held by strings attached to weights.”
As Walker’s speech began, the clamor from the crowd was deafening. It was as if the governor was seeking to impose his own view of Wisconsin’s recent history, and the people in the Rotunda would not bear to hear it.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Genetic Engineering Gets Extreme. Now Comes Synthetic Genetic Modification
January 26th, 2012
The San Francisco Chronicle’s January 23rd article, “UC picks Richmond for Lawrence Berkeley lab campus” praises the possible benefits of the expanded Lawrence Berkeley National Lab may bring to the city of Richmond. But Richmond residents may be surprised to discover that a high-risk facility working with a new set of potentially dangerous, insufficiently regulated technologies has just been invited into their community.
Much of the research to be conducted in the lab will be about an emerging technology — synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is an extreme form of genetic engineering, attempts to create self-replicating organisms with synthesized DNA – organisms not previously found in nature. The risks this research poses to worker safety, public health, and the environment are poorly studied and poorly regulated.
This article, cross-posted from Gaia Health, cites some of the concerns about synthetic biology, and refers back to an article I posted here last week. — Jeff Conant, for GJEP
Genetic Engineering Gets Extreme. Now Comes Synthetic Genetic Modification
You thought genetically modified organisms could be dangerous? Hold on, because synthetic genetic engineering is taking it to a whole new level. It goes beyond inserting genes from one life into another by manufacturing DNA never imagined in nature—by creating synthetic DNA from non-living materials.
SynBio
Synthetic genetic engineering – synthetic biology or SynBio – is, literally, the creation of synthetic life. It’s the manufacture of lifeforms or the modification of living organisms using non-biological materials. It’s a step beyond genetic engineering, in which the DNA from one organism is implanted into another. The DNA itself may be manufactured, literally created in a lab.
SynBio is, in fact, a combination of several technologies and types of science, including biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, nanotechnology, and engineering.
It’s also, in line with computer science, sometimes called bio-hacking, a term that evokes much of what it’s about. The purpose is to decrypt the biological code so that it can be redirected to other uses—a bit like breaking into a computer, taking control of its processor, and giving it directions to do something different from its original purpose.
In Climate Connections, Jeff Conant describes it like this:
Synthetic DNA is used to fabricate biological building blocks – often called “BioBrick” – capable of being combined in many different ways. “Parts” are assembled into “circuits” which are inserted into a “chassis” to create designer microbial factories that can be “booted up” to manufacture proteins or detect molecules that nature herself may never have dreamed up.
SynBio is the act of treating life as if it were simply a form of mechanical object.
Separation from Reality
“The Lie at the Heart of Making Biofuel from Sea Algae” reports on an extreme disconnect from reality. Yasuo Yoshikuni, the CEO of a company that hopes to sell its genetically engineered bacteria to eat brown sea algae and excrete ethanol, makes the nonsensical claim that brown sea algae will absorb the effluent from factory farms. As that article explains, the truth is the opposite: Brown sea algae is killed by agribusiness effluent. To be able to make such a claim requires divorce from reality.
That is the true danger of SynBio. The belief that we humans—or at least those few who are among the chosen or developers of technology—are exempt from the laws of nature. The belief that we can behave as if we have no connection to the planet from which we come is the worst kind of hubris. We’re seeing it already in genetic engineering.
Known Risks of Genetic Engineering
Genetically modified corn is an endocrine disruptor. It’s causing infertility to the point of destroying Agribusiness’ pig factory farms, severely harming cattle reproduction, and is strongly suspected in human fertility problems. Genetically modified crops are failing suddenly. Superweeds, a direct result of genetically modified crops, grow to huge sizes and at accelerated rates. Genetically modified foods are literally changing us by changing our gut biota. Farmers in India are committing suicide in the thousands because they’ve lost their ability to farm after trying genetically modified crops. The toxins from genetically modified foods are showing up in virtually all pregnant women and their fetuses.
These are all unintended effects of genetic engineering. Yet, the promoters of it wear blinders to the damage. They hide behind the profanity of misused science. They make claims like, “No one has ever proven …” In their arrogance, they completely ignore the Precautionary Principle.
The Unknown Risks
What might be the unintended consequences of genetic engineering’s offsping, SynBio?
We.Don’t.Know.
And that, of course, is the problem. We’re just beginning to see the extent of the harms in genetic modification. Warnings were given. Studies were done. But they were ignored in favor of fraudulent industry-controlled fabrications. For the most part, they still are. Those paying attention are not the regulators, who have been bought out by the profiteers.
The Money
There’s serious money behind SynBio. Pouring resources into are primarily the Big Three of Big Pharma, Big Chemistry, and Big Oil. These are, of course, deeply interrelated arenas, as chemistry and pharmaceuticals both are tied to petroleum as the basis of the bulk of their products. So, what they’re doing is taking over and pushing the next big area of Big Business. (It should come as no surprise that the Bill Gates Foundation is right in there with them, by the way.)
It’s being pitched as “cool science”, described by Jeff Conant as:
… an enthralling world of lucrative, cutting edge research spearheaded by outsized young vanguardists sporting an aura of entrepreneurial genius, an element of mad scientist, and a dash of rock star.
All their energy is in service to the profits of multinational corporations. We should have no illusions about it. The entire field of SynBio is being harnessed to serve the interests of profits. Any benefits to humanity will exist only in terms of those profits. Any harms will be ignored and, as we’ve seen with genetic engineering, covered up.
Gaia Health is not against the concept of SynBio. It may be able to provide benefits to humanity. However, as it’s now constituted, that’s not its purpose. Its purpose is to create profits for multinational corporations. As we’ve seen again and again, when profits become the motivating force behind anything, then it’s routinely corrupted. The harms from pollution, distortion of society, alienation of people, loss of the natural world, and so much more are too high a price. As a rule, the benefits are seen only by the relatively wealthy of the world. The poor gain little and suffer greatly.
We all are suffering from the harms of genetic engineering, and virtually the only people benefitting from it are the elite—the one percenters who rake in the ill-gotten winnings. A benefit here and here may trickle down, but at a price that society needs to consider. The future of us all is hanging in the balance of genetic engineering alone. And now, we have SynBio bearing down on us, too.
What travesties might come of rampant SynBio? We don’t know. But we do know that, whatever they are, as long as SynBio is conjoined to profits, they won’t be considered.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Real World Radio: Killings of Colombian Indigenous Peoples Denounced by Colombian National Indigenous Organization
January 26th, 2012
On January 15th, members of the Embera community Herminson and Alexander de Jesus Morales Zamora were murdered in Riosucio, Caldas department.
“We reject this act of violence and demand that our rights and integrity as human beings, as communities, as peoples representing different cultures are ensured”, reads a statement by the Indigenous Government Council of ONIC.
The denunciation by indigenous organizations is addressed to different justice and human rights advocacy groups, NGOs, the civil society and international organizations.
According to the statement, the Embera people is one of the most affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. According to authorities of the Indigenous Council Nuestra Señora Candelaria de la Montaña, Herminson and Alexander de Jesus Morales Zamora (29 and 24 years old respectively) disappeared on January 14th. They were members of the Ubarbá and El Rebaño communities. On January 16th, the families of the victims received a note indicating where they were. Their bodies were found n Cerro El Tigre, La Palma community, in a common burial site. They had been shot several times.
“ONIC and the Council denounce these violent acts against our indigenous population and the presence of armed groups outside the law in the communities, who murder and threaten the indigenous people”, reads the statement. “We ask the national authorities to ensure and protect our rights, our lives and integrity of the indigenous population”, read the statement.
A few days before, on January 12th, Jambalo Milciades Trochez Conda was murdered in Cauca department. “It’s not the first time our ancestral territories are attacked by armed groups operating in the region, and it is not the first time we mourn members of our families”, reads the statement.
Milciades was shot to death on his way to his car in Santander de Quilichao, in company of another community member. The 39-year-old indigenous leader lived in Loma Gruesa, Jambalo. He was married and he was the father of seven children. He was also an active member of the Indigenous Watch. According to people who witnessed the attack, the indigenous leader was attacked by people riding two motorbikes in Caloto municipality. He was shot ten times.
The Jambalo Indigenous Council and ACIN wrote that in 2001, Milciades was persecuted by armed groups of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). Since then, the leader received death threats by that group.
The Cauca Indigenous Regional Council (CRIC) and ACIN consider that it is extremely serious that the Colombian government hasn’t taken the necessary measures to protect the lives and integrity of the indigenous communities of the North of Cauca. There are precautionary measures in force granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHRC) due to the continuous threats and harassment suffered by these communities. The CRIC and ACIN demanded “immediate measures to ensure the right to life, the integrity and security of the indigenous community members of Cauca”.
The end of 2011 and the beginning of this year was as violent in the South of the country, according to information provided by the Indigenous Government Council of ONIC. On December 31st, in Santa Cruz de Guachavez municipality, Nariño, two gunmen murdered Jaime Chazatar, indigenous leader. A few days later, a member of the Awá people was tortured and then murdered, and three women from the same community, among them a 12-year-old, were raped. Other two leaders, Abran Mitis, from De los pastos town, and Hernando Chindoy, from Inga de Aponte, were attacked and “miraculously saved their lives”.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the impacts of the climate crisis on the Indigenous Tarahumara people of Mexico who are suffering from a food crisis brought on by both a record drought and a disastrous freeze.
To listen to this week’s earth minute click the link below and scroll to minute 57:48.
KPFK Sojourner Truth Show Tuesday, Jan 24, 2012
Text from this week’s Earth Minute:
The Indigenous Tarahumara People, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, are some of the latest victims of the climate crisis. Their crops have been destroyed by a combination of the worst drought in 70 years compounded by a record-breaking freeze.
The Tarahumara, known for extreme long-distance running in their mountainous homeland, have been an inspiring symbol of strength and self-reliance in Mexico. The idea that these fierce people are now starving has mobilized a rapid relief effort in Mexico.
While some may think that the impacts of climate change are a problem of the future, more and more people are experiencing the impacts of extreme weather today–droughts, floods, out-of-season tornadoes, record warm spells and freezes, wildfires and severe storms. And these impacts are only projected to get worse.
It is time we get serious about challenging the dependence on fossil fuels, industrial agriculture and over-consumption that are driving the climate crisis. Systemic transformation is essential. We cannot wait until it is too late.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Anonymous Takes Down Monsanto.com–Their Message: We Fight for Farmers
January 25th, 2012
Filed under Biodiversity, Climate Change, False Solutions to Climate Change, Food Sovereignty, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Land Grabs, Pollution
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
DAVOS (SWITZERLAND) / PORTO ALEGRE (BRAZIL), 25 JANUARY 2012 — With more than 21,000 votes, the Brazilian mining giant Vale is highly likely to be crowned the ‘world’s worst corporation of the year’ at the January 27 ‘Public Eye Awards’ in Davos, Switzerland [1]
On the same day as the Awards ceremony, January 27, the world’s largest grassroots environmental organisation will release a case study highlighting how Vale contributes to climate change [2] through its dirty mining activities while profiting from ‘carbon offsetting’ schemes which exacerbate the climate crisis.
The Brazilian corporation Vale is the world’s second largest metals and mining company and one of the largest producers of raw materials globally. In 2010 it reported profits of US$ 17 billion.
The case study released by Friends of the Earth International reveals Vale’s unfulfilled promises and its lobby activities aimed at influencing national and international climate change policies.
Despite setting out in 2008 its intention to cut its carbon dioxide emissions, Vale emitted – according to its own figures – 20 million tons of CO2 in 2010, an increase of a third on 2007 levels (15 million tons).
Vale has representatives on the Brazilian government’s official delegation to the UN and is one among many major corporations that are exerting pressure on government climate policies to undermine global action on the climate crisis.
The South African energy giant Sasol was also exposed by Friends of the Earth International in a separate recent case study on ‘corporate capture’ of UN processes. [3]
BRAZIL
Chief among Vale’s large scale mining projects that have direct impact on peoples and the environment in Brazil is the controversial steel complex of Companhia Siderurgica do Atlantico (TKCSA), a joint venture in Rio de Janeiro.
Vale has faced heavy criticism for high levels of pollution at this plant, which increased Rio de Janeiro’s carbon dioxide emissions by 76 %. Nevertheless, Vale’s project looks set to profit from ‘carbon credits’ under the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other offsetting mechanisms.
“The project severely affected the livelihoods of eight thousand fishing workers living in traditional communities in the Sepetiba bay and the joint venture was denounced for environmental crimes in Brazilian courts,” said Lucia Ortiz for Friends of the Earth International.
“While Vale profits from large-scale mining activities which cause climate change, it also profits from false solutions which are exacerbating the climate crisis, such as carbon offsetting,” she added.
Vale is also constructing the Belo Monte dam in the Amazonian rainforest which is set to displace 40,000 people and have devastating consequences for the region’s unique biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples.
MOZAMBIQUE
The case study released on January 27 also exposes a Vale mining concession in Mozambique, the Moatize coal project, which exploits one of the world’s largest coal reserves since 2011. It is expected to produce 11 million tons of coal per year once it is fully operational.
Vale’s Moatize project attracted considerable criticism in Mozambique, for instance because some 1,300 families were forced to relocate to areas with difficult access to water, energy and arable land, and into houses badly built, with cracks and leaky roofs. Affected communities recently resorted to non-violent demonstrations, including blockading a train transporting coal to the Beira harbour.
Daniel Ribeiro from Friends of the Earth Mozambique said: “Members of local communities have been threatened, persecuted and harassed, according to a Chipanga community member, and these reports are just the tip of the iceberg.
NOTES:
[1] The ‘Public Eye Awards’ are awarded on January 27 at 13:30 local time in Davos, to coincide with the World Economic Forum, which is attended by world leaders. For more information about the ‘Public Eye Awards’ go to: http://www.publiceye.ch/en/news/
For more information about Vale: http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/vale/
[2] The Vale case study released on January 27 is online for press preview in English at
http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs/2012/how-corporations-rule-vale/
And in Portuguese:
http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs/2012/como-as-corporacoes-governam-vale/
[3] The Sasol case study released on 7 December is online at
http://www.foei.org/en/media/archive/2011/climate-agenda-of-south-african-energy-giant-sasol-exposed
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Shale-Shocked—Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement
January 24th, 2012
This is a story about water, the land surrounding it and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.
Far below this rippling wealth there’s a vast, rocky netherworld called the Marcellus Shale. Stretching through southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, the shale contains bubbles of methane, the remains of life that died 400 million years ago. Gas corporations have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus since at least 1967 when one of them plotted with the Atomic Energy Agency to explode a nuclear bomb to unleash it. That idea died, but it’s been reborn in the form of a technology invented by Halliburton Corporation: high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing—“fracking” for short.
Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale.
Up comes the methane—along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the U.S. Surrounded by rumbling machinery, serviced by tens of thousands of diesel trucks, this nightmare technology for energy release has turned rural areas in 34 U.S. states into toxic industrial zones.
Shale gas isn’t the conventional kind that lit your grandmother’s stove. It’s one of those “extreme energy” forms so difficult to produce that merely accessing them poses unprecedented dangers to the planet. In every fracking state but New York, where a moratorium against the process has been in effect since 2010, the gas industry has contaminated ground water, sickened people, poisoned livestock and killed wildlife.
At a time when the International Energy Agency reports that we have five more years of fossil-fuel use at current levels before the planet goes into irreversible climate change, fracking has a greenhouse gas footprint larger than that of coal. And with the greatest water crisisin human history underway, fracking injects mind-numbing quantities of purposely-poisoned fresh water into the Earth. As for the trillions (repeat: trillions) of gallons of wastewater generated by the industry, getting rid of it is its own story. Fracking has also been linked to earthquakes: eleven in Ohio alone (normally not an earthquake zone) over the past year.
But for once, this story isn’t about tragedy. It’s about a resistance movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history. Here you will find no handsomely funded national environmental organizations: some of them in fact have had a cozy relationship with the gas industry, embracing the industry’s line that natural gas is a “bridge” to future alternative energies. (In fact, shale gas suppresses the development of renewable energies.)
New York’s “Little Revolution”
While most anti-fracking activists have been responding to harms already done, New York State’s resistance has been waging a battle to keep harm at bay. Jack Ossont, a former helicopter pilot, has been active all his life in the state’s environmental and social battles. He calls fracking “the tsunami issue of New York. It washes across the entire landscape.”
Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and scholar-in-residence at Ithaca College, terms the movement “the biggest since abolition and women’s rights in New York.” This past November, when the Heinz Foundation awarded Steingraber $100,000 for her environmental activism, she gave it to the anti-fracking community.
Arriving in the state last October, I discovered a sprawl of loosely connected, grassroots groups whose names announce their counties and their long-term vision: Sustainable Otsego, Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes, Chenango Community Action for Renewable Energy, Gas-Free Seneca, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, Catskill Mountainkeeper. Of these few (there are many more), only the last has a paid staff. All the others are run by volunteers.
“There are so many people working quietly behind the scenes. They’re not in the news, they’re not doing it to get their names in the paper. It’s just the right thing to do,” says Kelly Branigan, co-founder of the group Middlefield Neighbors. Her organization helped spearhead one of the movement’s central campaigns: using local zoning ordinances to ban fracking. “In Middlefield, we’re nothing special. We’re just regular people who got together and learned, and reached in our pockets to go to work on this. It’s inspiring, it’s awesome, and it’s America—its own little revolution.”
Consider this, then, an environmental Occupy Wall Street. It knows no divisions of social class or political affiliation. Everyone, after all, needs clean water. Farmers and professors, journalists and teachers, engineers, doctors, biologists, accountants, librarians, innkeepers, brewery owners. Actors and Catskill residents Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger have joined the movement. Josh Fox, also of the Catskills, has brought the fracking industry and its victims to international audiences through his award-winning documentary filmGasland. “Fracking is a pretty scary prospect,” says Wes Gillingham, planning director for Catskill Mountainkeeper. “It’s created a community of people that wouldn’t have existed before.”
Around four years ago, sheltered by Patterson’s stay against fracking, little discussion groups began in people’s kitchens, living rooms and home basements. At that time, only a few activists were advocating outright bans on fracking: the rest of the fledgling movement was more cautiously advocating temporary moratoria.
Since then a veritable ban cascade has washed across the state. And in local elections last November, scores of anti-fracking candidates, many of whom had never before run for office, displaced pro-gas incumbents in positions as town councilors, town supervisors and county legislators. As the movement has grown in strength and influence, gas corporations like ExxonMobil and Conoco Philips and Marcellus Shale corporations like Chesapeake Energy have spent millions of dollars on advertising, lobbying and political campaign contributions to counter it.
Shale Shock
Autumn Stoscheck, a young organic apple farmer from the village of Van Etten just south of New York’s Finger Lakes, had none of this in mind in 2008 when she invited a group of neighbors to her living room to talk about fracking. She’d simply heard enough about the process to be terrified. Like other informal fracking meetings that were being launched that year, this was a “listening group.” Its ground rules: listen, talk, but don’t criticize. “There was a combination of landowners, farmers like us, and young anarchist-activists with experience in other movements,” she told me. Stoscheck’s neighbors knew nothing about fracking, but “they were really mistrustful of the government and large gas corporations and felt they were in collusion.”
Out of such neighborhood groups came the first grassroots anti-fracking organizations. Stoscheck and her colleagues called theirsShaleshock. One of its first achievements was a PowerPoint presentation, “Drilling 101,” which introduces viewers to the Marcellus Shale and what hydraulic fracturing does to it.
When Helen Slottje, a 44-year-old lawyer, saw “Drilling 101” at a Shaleshock forum in 2009, she was “horrified.” She and her husband David had abandoned their corporate law careers to move to Ithaca in 2000. “We traded corporate law practice in Boston for New York State and less stressful work—or so we thought. New York’s beauty seemed worth it.”
When news reports about fracking started appearing, the Slottjes thought about leaving. “I kept saying, ‘What’ll happen if fracking comes to New York? We’ll have to move.’” “Drilling 101” made her reconsider. Then she visited Dimock, Pennsylvania, 70 miles southeast of Ithaca and that sealed the deal.
By 2009, Dimock, a picturesque rural village, had become synonymous with fracking hell. Houston-based Cabot Oil Energy had started drilling there the year before. Shortly after, people started to notice that their drinking water had darkened. Some began experiencing bouts of dizziness and headaches; others developed sores after bathing in what had been their once pure water.
For a while, Cabot trucked water to Dimock’s residents, but stopped in November when a judge declined to order the company to continue deliveries. The Environmental Protection Agency was going to start water service to Dimock in the first week of January, but withdrew the offer, claiming further water tests were needed. Outraged New Yorkers organized water caravans to help their besieged neighbors.
“When I went to Dimock,” says Slottje, “I saw well drilling, huge trucks, muddy crisscrossing pipeline paths cutting through the woods, disposal pits, sites of diesel spills, dusty coatings on plants, noisy compressor stations—you name it. So I decided to put my legal background to work to prevent the same thing from happening where I lived. We’d been corporate lawyers before. We know the sort of resources the energy corporations have. The grassroots people have nothing. And they have this behemoth coming at them.”
In May 2009, the Slottjes became full-time pro bono lawyers for the movement. One of their first services was to reinterpret New York’s constitutional home rule provision, which had allowed local ordinances to trump state laws until 1981. In that year, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation Division of Mineral Resources exempted gas corporations from local restrictions.
“I spent thousands of hours on the research,” says Slottje. “And then last August we were brave enough to go public and say the emperor has no clothes.” The Slottjes’ reinterpretation of the provision was simple enough: the state regulates the gas industry; towns and villages can’t regulate it, but what they can do is keep its operations off their land through the use of zoning ordinances.
Zoning Out Fracking
The town of Ulysses is nestled in the heart of the state’s burgeoning wine country in the Finger Lakes region. In 2010, a grassroots group, Concerned Citizens of Ulysses (CCU), asked the Slottjes to speak with members of the town board, which controls Ulysses’s planning and its zoning laws.
The board members opposed fracking, but couldn’t see how to prevent it. While the board talked with the Slottjes, CCU activists drafted a petition. If enough registered Ulysses voters signed on, the board would have the popular backing it needed for declaring a ban. Ann Furman, a retired schoolteacher who helped found CCU and write the document, recalls, “The petition was pretty specific: ‘We the undersigned want to ban hydrofracking in the town of Ulysses.’” A six-month-long door-to-door campaign followed.
“There was a lot of education going on in Ulysses at the town board and at forums, as we were going house to house. Even people who would sign the petition would say, ‘Tell me a little bit more about it.’ And in that next 15 to 20 minutes you would do a whole lot more education.” In the end, 1,500 out of 3,000 registered voters signed. This past summer the Ulysses town board voted to ban fracking.
Middlefield, 119 miles east of Ulysses and home of the grassroots group Middlefield Neighbors, enacted a similar ban. So did Dryden, 22 miles east of Ulysses. An out-of-state gas corporation that leased land for drilling in Dryden is suing to get the zoning ban declared illegal. A Middlefield landowner is suing that town on the same basis. The cases are pending.
Meanwhile bans proliferate. Six upstate New York counties have zoned out fracking, including Binghamton, which declared a ban in December. An organic brewery in Cooperstown, the Ommegang, mobilized 300 other businesses, including Cooperstown’s Chamber of Commerce, to support more bans in the region.
Chefs for the Marcellus, a group headed by Food Network star Mario Batali, has urged Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking at the state level. “Call it home-rule democracy,” says Adrian Kuzminsky, chair of the Cooperstown-based organization Sustainable Otsego. “If local communities can seize control over their destinies, a giant step will have been taken toward a sustainable future.”
This past October, activists were preparing to take on the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). That agency finds itself caught in a perpetual conflict of interest: on the one hand, protecting the environment; on the other, regulating the industries that exploit it. In fact, the 1981 legislation exempting gas corporations from New York’s home rule had been written by Greg Sovas, then head of DEC’s Division of Mineral Resources.
Guidelines for the hydraulic fracturing industry were first issued by the department in late 2009 and rejected in 2010 under withering public criticism. Then-Governor David Paterson declared a moratorium on fracking in the state pending DEC revisions. Revised guidelines appeared this past September in the form of 1,537 mind-numbing pages bearing the title, “Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement,” aka the “SGEIS.”
A World of Water
In study groups and online tutorials, activists prepared to write letters of commentary and protest to the Department of Environmental Conservation and Governor Cuomo, and to speak out in public hearings the department was organizing around the state. Thousands attended these. Pro-gas speakers predictably stuck to the twin themes of the jobs fracking would produce and the economic renewal it would bring about.
Opponents included an impressive line up of scientists (among them Robert Howarth, co-author of last year’s landmark Cornell University study, which established the staggering greenhouse-gas footprint of fracking), engineers, lawyers, and other professionals. A letter sent to Cuomo by 250 New York State physicians and medical professionals deplored the DEC’s failure to attend to the public health impacts of fracking.
Part-time Cooperstown resident James “Chip” Northrup, a retired manager for Atlantic Richfield (ARCO, America’s seventh largest oil corporation), in one public agency hearing called the performances of pro-gas speakers “disgraceful” and the SGEIS “junk science.” Citing an industry study that shows 25 percent of frack wells leak after five years and 40 percent after eight, he said, “Everybody in the industry knows that gas drilling pollutes groundwater… It’s not… whether they leak. It’s how much.”
As 2012 began, the movement was demanding that the department withdraw the SGEIS. In mid-January, DEC spokesperson Lisa King said that once all the comments are tallied, “We expect the total to be more than 40,000.” Earlier, agency officials had told the New York Times they didn’t know of any other issue that had received even 1,000 comments. (Ten thousand letters were mailed from the Catskills’ Sullivan County alone on Jan. 11, just before the commentary deadline). Gannett’s Albany Bureau has reported that anti-drilling submissions outnumber those of drilling supporters by at least ten to one.
Sustainable Otsego’s website lists 52 serious and fatal flaws in the document. A letter posted at the website of Toxics Targeting, an environmental database service in Ithaca, elaborately details 17 major SGEIS flaws. By Jan. 10, when the Toxics Targeting letter was sent to the DEC and the Governor, it had more than 22,000 signatures representing government officials, professional and civic organizations, and individuals. (The DEC counts this letter with its signatures as only one of the 40,000 comments).
At a Nov. 17 rally in Trenton, New Jersey, to celebrate the postponement of a vote on allowing fracking in the Delaware River Basin, Pennsylvania and New York activists pledged future civil disobedience. “The broad coalition of anti-frackers has been operating on multi-levels all at once,” says Sustainable Otsego’s chair, Adrian Kuzminsky. If the governor approves the SGEIS “there will be massive disillusionment with the state government and Cuomo, and from what I’m hearing there will be ‘direct action’ and civil disobedience in some quarters.”
At the moment, in fact, the anti-fracking movement in the state only seems to be ramping up. Should the government approve the SGEIS in its current form, lawsuits are planned against the Department of Environmental Conservation. And a brief “Occupy DEC” event that took place in the state capital, Albany, on Jan. 12 may have set the tone for the future. Meanwhile some activists, turning their backs on established channels, are already working on legislation that would criminalize fracking.
This past November, Sandra Steingraber told a crowd of hundreds of activists why she was donating her $100,000 Heinz Award to the movement. The money, she said, “enables speech, emboldens activism, and recognizes that true security for our children lies in preserving the… ecology of our planet.”
She raised a jar of water. “This is what my kids are made of. They are made of water. They are made of the food that is grown in the county that I live in. And they are made of air. We inhale a pint of atmosphere with every breath we take… And when you poison these things, you poison us. That is a violation of our human rights, and that is why this is the civil rights issue of our day.”
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Ellen Cantarow’s work on Israel/Palestine has been widely published for over 30 years. Her long-time concern with climate change has led her to explore, at TomDispatch, the global depredations of oil and gas corporations. Many thanks to Robert Boyle, sometimes called “the father of environmentalism on the Hudson,” for sharing his expertise for this article.
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Occupy Wall Street Protester Guilty of Lynching?
January 24th, 2012
This morning I read that an ardent member of the Occupy Los Angeles movement has been arrested and charged with lynching. You might think the protester, Sergio Ballesteros, attacked and hung someone. After all, California’s anti-lynching law was designed to protect minority defendants in police custody from vigilante lynch-mobs. But no, the police have used the law which defines lynching as “taking by means of riot any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer” to charge a non-violent activist with this felony for allegedly trying to keep a fellow demonstrator from being arrested.
I’m drowning in irony. First, given Southern California’s history of troubled race relations, and the long-term institutionalized racism of the Los Angeles Police Department, I suspect that city had its fair share of lynching in the 19th and early 20th century, and that this law provided the victims with virtually no protection because the police did not enforce it. Second, given the heroic pacifism of the Occupy Movement in the face of mounting police violence, I doubt any of the cops holding the demonstrators in their custody could legitimately be called “peace officers.” Finally, as far as I can tell from the videos, it was the police, not the demonstrators, who were rioting.
But then again, is it really that surprising that a law designed to protect the oppressed, should be turned on its head and employed against those who are rebelling against their oppressors? I’m sure this isn’t news to the OWS folks whose principle slogan is “we are the 99%.” Like the lynching law, the 14th Amendment was designed to aid the newly freed slaves. However, today its main purpose has been perverted to protect the “personhood” of the 1%’s corporate creatures.
I wrote here in early November that: “It is not surprising that OWS became intolerable to the authorities the movement refused to recognize. Such public naming of capitalism as Public Enemy Number One could not be countenanced… If the movement persists and grows, as I hope it will, the attacks upon it are sure to intensify.”
This new felony charge is a manifestation of that intensification. Hopefully the community will rally to Ballesteros’ defense. The police have chosen a target they may regret. When Ballesteros is not occupying Los Angeles he’s building homes with Habitat for Humanity, volunteering at a summer camp for children in Appalachia, studying urban education at UCLA, and mentoring Los Angeles-area kids. But convicting Sergio may not be the prosecutor’s primary goal. This felony charge is designed to scare away those who might get involved. However, strong-arm tactics do not appear to be intimidating the OWS folks. I hope this attack will backfire, and attract even more people to “the 99% movement.”
This is an appropriate place to reiterate that I had 250 “99%” buttons made in December; 125 were shipped to me. I have a couple of dozen left which I am distributing for free. The button maker, Donnelly/Colt: progressive promotional resources, is holding the other 125 so they can fulfill direct orders. All have a union label. The maker won’t charge for the buttons, but will charge for postage and padded packaging. The fee to package and mail one button is $1.84, two $2.30, three $2.76, four $3.22, five $4.41 and ten $6.38.
If you want any, you can get buttons from Donnelly/Colt, PO Box 188, Hampton, CT 06247 (phone 860-455-9621 fax 800-553-0006).
[To read Robert's other blog posts about the OCCUPY movement, click here. To comment on any of those older posts, click on "permalink" at the bottom of each entry.]
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
Video: A Darker Shade of Green–New GJEP/ GFC Video on REDD Released
January 24th, 2012
New Video Reveals Global Resistance to Forest-Carbon Projects and Documents Critical Perspectives on REDD
(video y boletín en español debajo)
A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests
(Instructions for requesting a DVD of the new REDD video, which includes two bonus features, can be found here.)
Global Forest Coalition and Global Justice Ecology Project have produced a new video entitled A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests. The twenty-eight minute video, launched today, documents opposition among Indigenous Peoples, forest-dependent communities and environmental justice groups around the globe, to controversial programs that claim to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) by putting forests into the carbon market.
As policies and programs to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) are promoted around the world by corporations and governments, Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities are raising the alarm that these programs will have serious negative impacts – and will not mitigate climate change.
Clayton Thomas-Muller of Indigenous Environmental Network, featured in the video, declares, “We can take care of our own lands, we don’t need agencies … to do this for us. As Indigenous Peoples we want rights, and we don’t want REDD.”
Nnimmo Bassey, of Nigeria, Chair of Friends of the Earth International, also featured in the video, says, “The whole idea of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is not about stopping deforestation. It’s industry driven, it’s driven by speculators who want to grab land in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, and who don’t really want to change the mode of economy we’re living right now.”
REDD has been hotly contested since it was first introduced into the climate mitigation package at the United Nations climate talks in 2007. Every year since, REDD has been pushed by those who wish to use the world’s forests as carbon offsets and protested by Indigenous Peoples and forest dependent communities that face potential forced relocation if their forest homelands are “protected,” under the REDD scheme. A Darker Shade of Green details the ideas behind REDD and the concerns being raised against it.
Following the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa last month, global REDD projects are coming under even greater scrutiny. Simone Lovera, Director of Global Forest Coalition, said, “The outcomes of the Durban Conference in the field of REDD are generally seen as a major step backwards. The already unacceptably weak and non-binding social and environmental safeguards that were adopted previously were further undermined, and the vague guidance for reporting emission reductions allows cheating and exaggerations.”
Subnational REDD programs such as the agreement between California, USA, Chiapas, Mexico, and Acre, Brazil – featured in the new video – are still set to move forward, though with carbon markets collapsing, grassroots resistance growing, and global climate agreements in deep-freeze, legislators may be hard-pressed to provide concrete footings for the complicated agreement.
A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests, produced in English and Spanish, features interviews and testimonies from Mexico, Brazil, Panama, Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Uganda, India, and California. The DVD version of the video contains two additional bonus films on REDD: Amador Hernandez: Starved for Medical Services by Global Justice Ecology Project and REDD: A Greed for Trees by the Chiapas-based NGO Otros Mundos. Information on requesting this DVD can be found here.
A three-minute trailer is also available for viewing in English and Spanish by clicking here
Un Verde Mas Oscuro: REDD y El Futuro de Los Bosques
Mientras las politicas y programas para Reducir las Emisiones de Deforestacion y Degradacion (REDD), y para aumentar almacenaje de carbono en los bosques (REDD+) estan promovidos alrededor del mundo por los elites globales y nacionales, pueblos indigenas y otras comunidades que dependen de los bosques estan sonando alarmas que estas programas tendran serios impactos nagativos — y no reducirán las multiples amenazas de la crisis climatica. Este documental de 28 minutos presenta las varios preocupaciones sobre REDD desde la perspectiva de la gente mas impactada. Con entrevistas y testimonios de México, Brasil, Panama, Filipinas, Indonesia, Nepal, Uganda, India, y California.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
UC picks Richmond for lab biosciences campus
January 23rd, 2012
In this post last week, GJEP voiced concerns over the new synthetic biology lab to be built in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the site for the lab has been announced. As the project moves ahead, a lot of conversations yet need to happen regarding the real implications of the lab. Some see it as a boon for local economies; others express serious reservations about land-use, jobs, worker health and safety, and the broader implications of synthetic biology for the transition to a truly climate-friendly, just, and equitable world. Stay tuned to Climate Connections for news on community responses to the lab, and ongoing issues locally and globally. — GJEP
Cross-posted from SFGate
Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
(01-23) 10:47 PST RICHMOND — The University of California said today it has chosen a site in Richmond for a new biosciences campus of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Richmond Field Station, which UC already owns, “presents the best opportunity to solve the lab’s pressing space problems, while allowing for long-term growth and maintaining the 80-year tradition of close cooperation with the UC Berkeley campus,” lab officials said.
The field station is located near Interstate 580 in the southeastern part of the city. Richmond beat out Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland to win the campus.
UC will now develop environmental impact studies and seek final approval from the U.S. Department of Energy, which contracts with UC to run the lab.
“Each city, community, and their developer partners presented extremely thoughtful and well-formulated proposals for us to consider,” said lab director Paul Alivisatos.
The new lab and its spinoff businesses could transform the surrounding area in Richmond into a thriving scientific hub, with a proliferation of cafes, restaurants and other businesses catering to the hundreds of scientists and researchers expected to work there.
Richmond officials hailed the selection and planned to hold a news conference to discuss the next steps.
“I would like to thank the Richmond City Council for their enthusiastic support for this important economic development project, the many city of Richmond staff members who worked to provide technical support in the decision-making process, and the Richmond community for providing the warm welcome mat that was undoubtedly a major factor in their decision,” said City Manager Bill Lindsay.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/23/BAJE1MT8S9.DTL#ixzz1kJXR4Lti
Richard Brennaman also comments critically on some of the lab site’s environmental concerns at Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.
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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog
US Environmental Protection Agency: Biofuel Research Suffers From Gaps
January 23rd, 2012
Filed under Climate Change, Pollution, Greenwashing, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Biodiversity, Genetic Engineering, Food Sovereignty, False Solutions to Climate Change
Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog