Mobilization for Climate Justice

Note: Global Justice Ecology Project is fortunate enough to call Danilo Lopez a friend, neighbor and ally in the struggle for human rights in Vermont and beyond.  Please support Danilo and his community by signing the petition to prevent his deportation here.  The same forces of economic domination that displace and destroy ecosystems also displace and destroy human communities.  GJEP stands in solidarity with Danilo and all immigrants facing the unjust threat of deportation.  ¡Ya basta! NOT ONE MORE DEPORTATION!

-The GJEP Team

June 19, 2013. Source: Migrant Justice

Daniel Alejandro Lopez Santiago, (A089-088-623) known as ‘Danilo’ by his friends, is a farm worker and leader with the Vermont community group, Migrant Justice. In 2011, just three weeks after leading the first ever migrant farm worker press conference and rally at the Vermont state house, Danilo was placed in deportation proceedings.

Sign the petition demanding that Danilo be allowed to stay in the US.

Danilo was a passenger in a vehicle that was pulled over for speeding, and the police officer questioned him about his immigration status, and proceeded to call Border Patrol and place him in removal proceedings.

He was released after community organizing, and continued to stay involved. Just one month after his detention, Danilo led a successful meeting with Governor Peter Shumlin to create a new state policy that prohibits the use of state resources for immigration enforcement. The VT Human Rights Commission investigated the police stop, and found that Danilo was unlawfully discriminated against in violation of Vermont’s Fair Housing and Public Accommodations Act.

For this, and his continued activism, Danilo was recognized as the “Vermont Human Rights Hero” of 2011 by the Vermont Workers’ Center at a conference of hundreds of community leaders at the University of Vermont.

Throughout his organizing he has continued to fight his deportation case in court, and has continued to fight for immigrant and farm workers rights, including leading the successful campaign for equal access to Vermont Driver’s Licenses.

However, he has lost his immigration case in court, and his request for prosecutorial discretion has been denied. Danilo was told he must leave the country by July 5, 2013.  Please help us tell immigration that Danilo should be able to remain in the country, and continue to be a civil rights leader in Vermont, by signing the petition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement here

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

June 19, 2013. Source: Amnesty International

Photo: Preston Waters

Claims by Shell that sabotage is responsible for most oil spilt in Nigeria have come under fire. A Dutch agency found that the oil giant’s statements were based on disputed evidence and flawed investigations.

The agency – the National Contact Point (NCP) – which is there to assess complaints about companies that abuse human rights and the environment made its statements in response to concerns raised by Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International.

But the two organizations say that the NCP should have gone much further in its criticism of Shell.

The organizations provided evidence of serious flaws in the system used by Shell for investigating oil spills, including video footage of a spill investigation in which several serious problems occurred.

“Sabotage is a problem in Nigeria, but Shell exaggerates this issue to avoid criticism for its failure to prevent oil spills,” said Audrey Gaughran of Amnesty International.

“The oil companies are liable to pay compensation when spills are found to be their fault but not if the cause is attributed to sabotage – but it is effectively the company that investigates itself. This is clearly a system open to abuse and we have evidence that it has been abused.”

Over the last decade, Shell has claimed that most of the oil spilt in the Niger Delta is due to sabotage of its pipelines on the basis of a system that includes publicly contested data and relies almost exclusively on information provided by the company itself.

The alleged sabotage cases have not been verified by any independent bodies. Moreover, some of Shell’s statements on the percentage of oil spilt due to sabotage are contradictory.

Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International contend that by making misleading and incorrect statements, Shell breached the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. The NCP, which is established to promote and implement the OECD Guidelines, agreed to consider the complaint.

The NCP acknowledged that the oil spill investigation process in Nigeria relies heavily on the expertise of the oil companies themselves and that, as the UN Environment Programme found in 2011, “government agencies are at the mercy of the oil companies when it comes to conducting site inspections.”

The NCP stated that “[Royal Dutch Shell] management should have had a more cautious attitude about the percentage of oil spills caused by sabotage” and that “after all JIT (Joint Investigation Team) data are not absolute”. The NCP called on Shell to “be prudent with regard to general communication to stakeholders of very detailed figures on oil spills, when discrepancies exist with regard to the causes or amounts of those oil spills” and also to “share information on relevant spill causes and spill cause determination procedures, also dated before January 2011.”

However, the NCP did not comment on whether Shell’s failures constituted a breach of the Guidelines. It did not make a full assessment of the evidence provided and it failed to investigate whether Shell’s statements were indeed misleading. Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International repeatedly expressed serious concern that this approach effectively left unaddressed all past harm done to the people of the Niger Delta as a result of Shell’s misleading statements.

“Today the NCP failed to speak out against Shell’s abuse in Nigeria. It did not assess key evidence provided and thereby let the company off the hook. For the people of the Niger Delta this is yet another failure of justice. The NCP is not fit for purpose. It has proven unable or unwilling to tell Shell it should accept responsibility for its mistakes. It is time that the Dutch government introduces a corporate accountability supervisory body with strong teeth,” said Paul de Clerck of Friends of the Earth Europe.

From the outset the NCP was unable to prevent Shell from obstructing the OECD process. Although the OECD Guidelines explicitly refer to “multinational enterprises”, Shell’s headquarters initially tried to distance itself from Shell’s Nigeria operations, saying that Royal Dutch Shell “does not have any operations [i.e. extracting, processing or distributing activities] of its own [in Nigeria]”, and referred the NCP to Shell’s local subsidiary. The company did not want to discuss the substance of the complaint with Friends of the Earth Netherlands at the table, and the Dutch NGO agreed to step back to facilitate the process. Finally, Shell made unacceptable demands, including that Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International should not campaign on certain cases to be discussed during the NCP process. The organizations refused to guarantee they would stop campaigning.

The case underlines a serious problem with the NCP process: the company was able to set many of the parameters for the dialogue and the NCP was unable to deal the substance of the complaint.

Because of these serious deficiencies in the Dutch NCP process, Amnesty International and Friends of the Earth International do not believe that the system can produce meaningful resolution of issues with a company like Shell. The two organizations have therefore decided to withdraw a second complaint to the NCP about Shell’s longstanding role in oil pollution of Ogoniland in Nigeria.

“A process where the party that is the subject of the complaint can set the terms of engagement is setting itself up for failure,” said Paul de Clerck.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: The following was sent to us by our good friends with Croatan Earth First!

-The GJEP Team

June 18, 2013. Source: Croatan Earth First!

Announcing the 2013 Round River Rendezvous in North Carolina The Round River Rendezvous is the annual gathering of the Earth First! Movement.

Each Summer, this week-long camp-out attracts several hundred Earth First!ers from around the world. The gathering is coordinated by a volunteer committee and includes workshops, campaign discussions, direct action trainings, campfire music and a rally with performers.

There are planned speakers with activists from around North America fighting fracking, the tar sands, mountain top removal,
biomass, logging, genetic engineering, nuclear energy and more.

We are thrilled to announce that Croatan Earth First! will be hosting this summer’s rendezvous near Boone, NC. The exact location will be announced closer to the week of the event. The spot we are choosing should have swimming holes and beautiful woods to hike in.

This year’s gathering will also include a trans and women’s section that will include camping, climb area and workshop space. If you’d like to schedule a training or workshop in advance for the trans women’s camp, you can contact us in advance at cef (at) riseup.net or talk to organizers when you arrive.

As for content at the gathering as a whole, we’ll be offering more earth skills, plant/mushroom identification, and ecospirituality workshops to this year’s gathering as well as medic trainings. We’re looking for folks to host workshops, and to submit ideas for workshops/panels they’d like to see. If you have access to money please consider donating to our paypal account. If you need to contact us regarding the rendezvous, email cef (at) riseup.net

Go to http://summerrondy2013.wordpress.com for schedule and more information.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: The following was sent to us by our good friends with Croatan Earth First!

-The GJEP Team

June 18, 2013. Source: Croatan Earth First!

Announcing the 2013 Round River Rendezvous in North Carolina The Round River Rendezvous is the annual gathering of the Earth First! Movement.

Each Summer, this week-long camp-out attracts several hundred Earth First!ers from around the world. The gathering is coordinated by a volunteer committee and includes workshops, campaign discussions, direct action trainings, campfire music and a rally with performers.

There are planned speakers with activists from around North America fighting fracking, the tar sands, mountain top removal,
biomass, logging, genetic engineering, nuclear energy and more.

We are thrilled to announce that Croatan Earth First! will be hosting this summer’s rendezvous near Boone, NC. The exact location will be announced closer to the week of the event. The spot we are choosing should have swimming holes and beautiful woods to hike in.

This year’s gathering will also include a trans and women’s section that will include camping, climb area and workshop space. If you’d like to schedule a training or workshop in advance for the trans women’s camp, you can contact us in advance at cef (at) riseup.net or talk to organizers when you arrive.

As for content at the gathering as a whole, we’ll be offering more earth skills, plant/mushroom identification, and ecospirituality workshops to this year’s gathering as well as medic trainings. We’re looking for folks to host workshops, and to submit ideas for workshops/panels they’d like to see. If you have access to money please consider donating to our paypal account. If you need to contact us regarding the rendezvous, email cef (at) riseup.net

Go to http://summerrondy2013.wordpress.com for schedule and more information.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: Jeff Conant is a good friend and former Communications Director for Global Justice Ecology Project.

-The GJEP Team

By Jeff Conant, June 17, 2013. Source: Friends of the Earth

In Sofala province, Mozambique, a group of initiatives collectively known as the N’hambita Pilot Project have been promoted as a flagship program for the protection of forests and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations cites it as a model example; well-known retailers in Europe have purchased credits that claim to offset their carbon footprint through the scheme; the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) — the group that certifies many Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) projects — says it meets their Gold Level standard for project design. The European commission has funded it to the tune of 1.5 million euros. But does the N’hambita project live up to its reputation?

Today a group of NGOs in Europe, including Friends of the Earth France and FERN in the UK, have issued a report called “Carbon Discredited: The offset project that couldn’t count its own trees,” that charges that the N’hambita Forest Carbon Offset Pilot Project, run by the company Envirotrade, and initially funded by European Commission (EC), has failed to deliver most of its climate change, development, and financial objectives.

The findings are particularly relevant to concerns about climate policy as viewed from the US, as the N’hambita project is the flagship example of a case where developing countries — in this case, the EU — seek to offset their industrial emissions by purchasing carbon credits from a tropical forest protection scheme. California is seeking to do much the same through its pending  REDD+ offsets agreements with Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil. Whether the N’hambita project is deemed to be a success or failure is important not merely because of the public money the European Commission poured into the project, or because of the immediate impact on the people and forests of Sofala province, but because it will have a long-lasting influence on developed countries’ approaches to carbon offsetting and international support for forest protection.

In a press release issued today, UK environmental rights group Fern called on the EU and Member States to stop funding carbon offset projects, including REDD+ projects. They also called on the State of California to rethink its plan  to accept forest carbon offsets in the state’s carbon market.

Carbon offsetting is a mechanism to try to balance carbon emissions in the global North against claimed emission reductions in the global South. Forest carbon offsets are particularly problematic because the claimed emissions reductions come from planting or conserving of trees despite scientific concerns that the carbon stored in trees cannot be equated with industrial emissions. The numerous and complex difficulties with trying to measure forest carbon mean that forest offset projects cannot provide verifiable and accurate reductions in emissions.

Such projects also carry significant social risks; according to the new report, the N’hambita project exacerbated hunger in Sofala province as farmers devoted effort to care-taking trees due to the contracts they had signed with Envirotrade, when they could have been tending their fields or generating more income in other ways. Recent research by La Via Campesina Africa confirms the social problems faced by farmers involved with the N’hambita project. Villagers are paid for seven years to plant and conserve trees, but sign a contract to do so for 99 years, which includes the clause that: “It is the farmer’s obligation to continue to care for the plants they own, even after the seven year period covered by this contract”. Via Campesina, the world’s largest federation of peasant farmers, also found that communication between the company and farmers was fraught with problems.

“Carbon discredited” also reveals that N’hambita has been a financial disaster for Envirotrade, as carbon sales were unable to cover costs. Indra van Gisbergen, Forest Governance campaigner from FERN, pointed out that “the European Commission should not be investing taxpayers’ money in schemes to offset emissions. Their focus should always be on improving forest governance and securing tenure rights so that communities have control over their forests and can rely on them for their lives and livelihoods.”

The N’hambita project is just one of innumerable ‘green-grabbing’ projects across the tropics — projects that use forest protection as a pretext for devoting land and labor in poor countries to resolving global climate problems, and in the process effectively marginalize peasant farmers while failing to address the drivers of the climate crisis.

To download the full report, click here.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: Jeff Conant is a good friend and former Communications Director for Global Justice Ecology Project.

-The GJEP Team

By Jeff Conant, June 17, 2013. Source: Friends of the Earth

In Sofala province, Mozambique, a group of initiatives collectively known as the N’hambita Pilot Project have been promoted as a flagship program for the protection of forests and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The United Nations cites it as a model example; well-known retailers in Europe have purchased credits that claim to offset their carbon footprint through the scheme; the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) — the group that certifies many Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) projects — says it meets their Gold Level standard for project design. The European commission has funded it to the tune of 1.5 million euros. But does the N’hambita project live up to its reputation?

Today a group of NGOs in Europe, including Friends of the Earth France and FERN in the UK, have issued a report called “Carbon Discredited: The offset project that couldn’t count its own trees,” that charges that the N’hambita Forest Carbon Offset Pilot Project, run by the company Envirotrade, and initially funded by European Commission (EC), has failed to deliver most of its climate change, development, and financial objectives.

The findings are particularly relevant to concerns about climate policy as viewed from the US, as the N’hambita project is the flagship example of a case where developing countries — in this case, the EU — seek to offset their industrial emissions by purchasing carbon credits from a tropical forest protection scheme. California is seeking to do much the same through its pending  REDD+ offsets agreements with Chiapas, Mexico and Acre, Brazil. Whether the N’hambita project is deemed to be a success or failure is important not merely because of the public money the European Commission poured into the project, or because of the immediate impact on the people and forests of Sofala province, but because it will have a long-lasting influence on developed countries’ approaches to carbon offsetting and international support for forest protection.

In a press release issued today, UK environmental rights group Fern called on the EU and Member States to stop funding carbon offset projects, including REDD+ projects. They also called on the State of California to rethink its plan  to accept forest carbon offsets in the state’s carbon market.

Carbon offsetting is a mechanism to try to balance carbon emissions in the global North against claimed emission reductions in the global South. Forest carbon offsets are particularly problematic because the claimed emissions reductions come from planting or conserving of trees despite scientific concerns that the carbon stored in trees cannot be equated with industrial emissions. The numerous and complex difficulties with trying to measure forest carbon mean that forest offset projects cannot provide verifiable and accurate reductions in emissions.

Such projects also carry significant social risks; according to the new report, the N’hambita project exacerbated hunger in Sofala province as farmers devoted effort to care-taking trees due to the contracts they had signed with Envirotrade, when they could have been tending their fields or generating more income in other ways. Recent research by La Via Campesina Africa confirms the social problems faced by farmers involved with the N’hambita project. Villagers are paid for seven years to plant and conserve trees, but sign a contract to do so for 99 years, which includes the clause that: “It is the farmer’s obligation to continue to care for the plants they own, even after the seven year period covered by this contract”. Via Campesina, the world’s largest federation of peasant farmers, also found that communication between the company and farmers was fraught with problems.

“Carbon discredited” also reveals that N’hambita has been a financial disaster for Envirotrade, as carbon sales were unable to cover costs. Indra van Gisbergen, Forest Governance campaigner from FERN, pointed out that “the European Commission should not be investing taxpayers’ money in schemes to offset emissions. Their focus should always be on improving forest governance and securing tenure rights so that communities have control over their forests and can rely on them for their lives and livelihoods.”

The N’hambita project is just one of innumerable ‘green-grabbing’ projects across the tropics — projects that use forest protection as a pretext for devoting land and labor in poor countries to resolving global climate problems, and in the process effectively marginalize peasant farmers while failing to address the drivers of the climate crisis.

To download the full report, click here.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Mitra Taj, June 17, 2013. Source: Reuters

Andean people march during a protest against Newmont’s proposed $4.8 billion Conga gold mine, near the Cortada lagoon, in the Andean region of Cajamarca November 24, 2011. Photo: REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil

Thousands of opponents of a $5 billion gold project of Newmont Mining circled a lake high in the Andes on Monday, vowing to stop the company from eventually draining it to make way for Peru’s most expensive mine.

Lake Perol is one of several lakes that would eventually be displaced to mine ore from the Conga project. Water from the lakes would be transferred to four reservoirs that the U.S. company and its Peruvian partner, Buenaventura, are building or planning to build.

The companies say the reservoirs would end seasonal shortages and guarantee year-round water supplies to towns and farmers in the area, but many residents fear they would lose control of the water or that the mine would cause pollution.

“Hopefully, the company and the government will see the crowd here today and stop the project,” said Cesar Correa, 28, of the town of Huangashanga in the northern region of Cajamarca.

He was one of many protesters who arrived at Lake Perol on foot or on horseback, some wearing ponchos, as well as traditional broad-brimmed straw hats or baseball caps.

Others carried blankets and bags of potatoes and rice – planning to camp out at the site for weeks to halt the project.

The company said about 1,000 protesters were present, though protesters said their flock swelled to 5,000 or 6,000. A Reuters witness estimated 4,000 people at the protest.

“Why would we want a reservoir controlled by the company when we already have lakes that naturally provide us water?” asked Angel Mendoza, a member of a peasant patrol group from the town of Pampa Verde.

The controversy over Conga – which many in the business sector see as essential for the country’s bustling economy - has posed a major challenge to President Ollanta Humala during his nearly two years in office.

He has twice shuffled his cabinet in the face of violent protests against the project.

The protest on Monday was largely peaceful and there were no clashes with police, though a handful of protesters threw rocks and set fire to a wall near one reservoir.

Newmont and Buenaventura said in a statement: “As stated previously, we will only build the proposed Perol reservoir if we are able to secure all the necessary permits and complete an intensive public involvement process with neighboring communities.”

“We respect everyone’s right to safely and responsibly express their opinion, whether they oppose mining or support economic development,” the statement said.

In May, a minor clash between protesters and police marked an ended nine months of relative calm when Humala’s government said it would stop trying to overcome local opposition to the mine.

The new round of protests came after a top official for the Conga project, Chief Executive Roque Benavides of Buenaventura, told Reuters water from Perol would be transferred to a new reservoir later this year.

He later said the project might be in jeopardy if water from the lakes could not be transferred.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Mitra Taj, June 17, 2013. Source: Reuters

Andean people march during a protest against Newmont’s proposed $4.8 billion Conga gold mine, near the Cortada lagoon, in the Andean region of Cajamarca November 24, 2011. Photo: REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil

Thousands of opponents of a $5 billion gold project of Newmont Mining circled a lake high in the Andes on Monday, vowing to stop the company from eventually draining it to make way for Peru’s most expensive mine.

Lake Perol is one of several lakes that would eventually be displaced to mine ore from the Conga project. Water from the lakes would be transferred to four reservoirs that the U.S. company and its Peruvian partner, Buenaventura, are building or planning to build.

The companies say the reservoirs would end seasonal shortages and guarantee year-round water supplies to towns and farmers in the area, but many residents fear they would lose control of the water or that the mine would cause pollution.

“Hopefully, the company and the government will see the crowd here today and stop the project,” said Cesar Correa, 28, of the town of Huangashanga in the northern region of Cajamarca.

He was one of many protesters who arrived at Lake Perol on foot or on horseback, some wearing ponchos, as well as traditional broad-brimmed straw hats or baseball caps.

Others carried blankets and bags of potatoes and rice – planning to camp out at the site for weeks to halt the project.

The company said about 1,000 protesters were present, though protesters said their flock swelled to 5,000 or 6,000. A Reuters witness estimated 4,000 people at the protest.

“Why would we want a reservoir controlled by the company when we already have lakes that naturally provide us water?” asked Angel Mendoza, a member of a peasant patrol group from the town of Pampa Verde.

The controversy over Conga – which many in the business sector see as essential for the country’s bustling economy - has posed a major challenge to President Ollanta Humala during his nearly two years in office.

He has twice shuffled his cabinet in the face of violent protests against the project.

The protest on Monday was largely peaceful and there were no clashes with police, though a handful of protesters threw rocks and set fire to a wall near one reservoir.

Newmont and Buenaventura said in a statement: “As stated previously, we will only build the proposed Perol reservoir if we are able to secure all the necessary permits and complete an intensive public involvement process with neighboring communities.”

“We respect everyone’s right to safely and responsibly express their opinion, whether they oppose mining or support economic development,” the statement said.

In May, a minor clash between protesters and police marked an ended nine months of relative calm when Humala’s government said it would stop trying to overcome local opposition to the mine.

The new round of protests came after a top official for the Conga project, Chief Executive Roque Benavides of Buenaventura, told Reuters water from Perol would be transferred to a new reservoir later this year.

He later said the project might be in jeopardy if water from the lakes could not be transferred.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Todd Bensen and Asher Levine, June 18, 2013. Source: Reuters

Thousands of people protest in Sao Paulo on June 17, 2013. More than 200,000 people marched in major Brazilian cities to protest the billions of dollars spent on the Confederations Cup and higher public transport costs. Photo: Michael Schincariol/AFP

As many as 200,000 demonstrators marched through the streets of Brazil’s biggest cities on Monday in a swelling wave of protest tapping into widespread anger at poor public services, police violence and government corruption.

The marches, organized mostly through snowballing social media campaigns, blocked streets and halted traffic in more than a half-dozen cities, including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasilia, where demonstrators climbed onto the roof of Brazil’s Congress building and then stormed it.

Monday’s demonstrations were the latest in a flurry of protests in the past two weeks that have added to growing unease over Brazil’s sluggisheconomy, high inflation and a spurt in violent crime.

While most of the protests unfolded as a festive display of dissent, some demonstrators in Rio threw rocks at police, set fire to a parked car and vandalized the state assembly building. Vandals also destroyed property in the southern city of Porto Alegre.

Around the country, protesters waved Brazilian flags, dancing and chanting slogans such as “The people have awakened” and “Pardon the inconvenience, Brazil is changing.”

The epicenter of Monday’s march shifted from Sao Paulo, where some 65,000 people took to the streets late in the afternoon, to Rio. There, as protesters gathered throughout the evening, crowds ballooned to 100,000 people, local police said. At least 20,000 more gathered in Belo Horizonte.

The demonstrations are the first time that Brazilians, since a recent decade of steady economic growth, are collectively questioning the status quo.

BIG EVENTS LOOM

The protests have gathered pace as Brazil is hosting the Confederation’s Cup, a dry run for next year’s World Cup soccer championship. The government hopes these events, along with the 2016 Summer Olympics, will showcase Brazil as an emerging power on the global stage.

Brazil also is gearing up to welcome more than 2 million visitors in July as Pope Francis makes his first foreign trip for a gathering of Catholic youth in Rio.

Contrasting the billions in taxpayer money spent on new stadiums with the shoddy state of Brazil’s public services, protesters are using the Confederation’s Cup as a counterpoint to amplify their concerns. The tournament got off to shaky start this weekend when police clashed with demonstrators outside stadiums at the opening matches in Brasilia and Rio.

“For many years the government has been feeding corruption. People are demonstrating against the system,” said Graciela Caçador, a 28-year-old saleswoman protesting in Sao Paulo. “They spent billions of dollars building stadiums and nothing on education and health.”

More protests are being organized for the coming days. It is unclear what specific response from authorities – such as a reduction in the hike of transport fares – would lead the loose collection of organizers across Brazil to consider stopping them.

For President Dilma Rousseff, the demonstrations come at a delicate time, as price increases and lackluster growth begin to loom over an expected run for re-election next year.

Polls show Rousseff still is widely popular, especially among poor and working-class voters, but her approval ratings began to slip in recent weeks for the first time since taking office in 2011. Rousseff was booed at Saturday’s Confederations Cup opener as protesters gathered outside.

Through a spokeswoman, Rousseff called the protests “legitimate” and said peaceful demonstrations are “part of democracy.” The president, a leftist guerrilla as a young woman, also said that it was “befitting of youth to protest.”

WIDE ARRAY OF GRIEVANCES

Some were baffled by the protests in a country where unemployment remains near record lows, even after more than two years of tepid economic growth.

“What are they going to do – march every day?” asked Cristina, a 43-year-old cashier, who declined to give her surname, peeking out at the demonstration from behind the curtain of a closed Sao Paulo butcher shop. She said corruption and other age-old ills in Brazil are unlikely to change soon.

The marches began this month with an isolated protest in Sao Paulo against a small increase in bus and subway fares. The demonstrations initially drew the scorn of many middle-class Brazilians after protesters vandalized storefronts, subway stations and buses on one of the city’s main avenues.

The movement quickly gained support and spread to other cities as police used heavy-handed tactics to quell the demonstrations. The biggest crackdown happened on Thursday in Sao Paulo when police fired rubber bullets and tear gas in clashes that injured more than 100 people, including 15 journalists, some of whom said they were deliberately targeted.

Other common grievances at Monday’s marches included corruption and the inadequate and overcrowded public transportation networks that Brazilians cope with daily.

POLICE SHOW RESTRAINT

The harsh police reaction to last week’s protests touched a nerve in Brazil, which endured two decades of political repression under a military dictatorship that ended in 1985. It also added to doubts about whether Brazil’s police forces would be ready for next year’s World Cup.

The uproar following last week’s crackdown prompted Sao Paulo state Governor Geraldo Alckmin, who first described the protesters as “troublemakers” and “vandals,” to order police to allow Monday’s march to proceed and not to use rubber bullets.

The protests are shaping up as a major political challenge for Alckmin, a former presidential candidate, and Sao Paulo’s new mayor, Fernando Haddad, a rising star in the left-leaning Workers’ Party that has governed Brazil for the past decade. Haddad invited protest leaders to meet Tuesday morning, but has so far balked at talk of a bus fare reduction.

The resonance of the demonstrations underscores what economists say will be a challenge for Rousseff and other Brazilian leaders in the years ahead: providing public services to meet the demands of the growing middle class.

“Voters are likely to be increasingly disgruntled on a range of public services in a lower growth environment,” Christopher Garman, a political analyst at the Eurasia Group, wrote in a report.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Clare Howard, June 17, 2013: Source: Environmental Health News

To protect profits threatened by a lawsuit over its controversial herbicide atrazine, Syngenta Crop Protection launched an aggressive multi-million dollar campaign that included hiring a detective agency to investigate scientists on a federal advisory panel, looking into the personal life of a judge and commissioning a psychological profile of a leading scientist critical of atrazine.

The Switzerland-based pesticide manufacturer also routinely paid “third-party allies” to appear to be independent supporters, and kept a list of 130 people and groups it could recruit as experts without disclosing ties to the company.

Recently unsealed court documents reveal a corporate strategy to discredit critics and to strip plaintiffs from the class-action case. The company specifically targeted one of atrazine’s fiercest and most outspoken critics, Tyrone Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley, whose research suggests that atrazine feminizes male frogs.

The campaign is spelled out in hundreds of pages of memos, invoices and other documents from Illinois’ Madison County Circuit Court, that were initially sealed as part of a 2004 lawsuit filed by Holiday Shores Sanitary District. The new documents, along with an earlier tranche released in late 2011, open a window on the company’s strategy to defeat a lawsuit that, it maintained, could have effectively ended sales of atrazine in the United States.

The suit originally sought to force Syngenta to pay for the removal of atrazine from drinking water in Edwardsville, Ill., northeast of St. Louis, but ultimately expanded to include more than 1,000 water systems covering six states.

For Syngenta, which had $14.2 billion in total revenues last year, the stakes of the litigation were high. Atrazine has been popular with farmers since the 1950s because it is effective and economical in killing a broad spectrum of weeds. About 80 million pounds are used in the United States each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, most of it applied to corn in the Midwest. Three-quarters of all U.S. corn is treated with atrazine, but atrazine is also used on golf courses, Christmas tree lots and public lands.

The herbicide has long stirred controversy at the EPA, which approved its use as recently as 2003 but plans to launch another registration review this summer.

Research has shown that atrazine is prone to run off fields and contaminate water supplies. It also drifts hundreds of miles by air from sites where it has been sprayed.

Relatively few studies have examined atrazine’s health effects using human subjects. It has been shown to act as an endocrine-disrupting chemical, meaning that it can block or mimic hormones, and some human studies have suggested that it may harm fetuses and reduce men’s sperm quality. An Indiana University study found that women who lived in areas with higher atrazine levels in water had children with higher rates of some genital birth defects (see sidebar).

The Holiday Shores case grew into a class action lawsuit, ultimately settled in 2012, after 8 years of litigation. While not admitting culpability, Syngenta agreed to pay $105 million last year toward filtration costs for more than 1,000 community water systems in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio.

Discovery documents from the lawsuit were unsealed by the Madison County Circuit Court in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative journalism group.

In a prepared statement, Syngenta defended its actions, describing the suit as an attempt to end atrazine sales in the United States. The demands of plaintiffs to receive reimbursement of their cleanup costs, the company wrote in an email, “would have effectively banned the use of this critical product that has been the backbone of safe weed control for more than 50 years.”

The documents show that the company conducted research into the vulnerabilities of a judge, and Hayes’ personal life. Sherry Duvall Ford, Syngenta’s former head of communications, ranked strategies that Syngenta could use against Hayes in order of risk, according to her notes from Syngenta meetings in April 2005. One possibility: offering “to cut him in on unlimited research funds.” Another: Investigate his wife.

In her deposition, Ford read from a memo emailed to her colleagues indicating that Syngenta had hired a detective agency to investigate members of an EPA Scientific Advisory Panel [SAP] examining atrazine.

“I don’t think it would be helpful if it were generally known that we research SAP members,” Ford read. “The real good stuff I have kept for myself . . . It [sic.] protection for Janis on atrazine.” (Janis E. McFarland is a Syngenta employee involved with the public relations campaign.)

Syngenta did not respond to questions about its use of a detective agency to investigate scientists on an EPA advisory panel or why it looked into the personal life of a judge. In response to a question about why it commissioned a psychiatric profile on Hayes, the company issued a statement saying:

“In its defense of atrazine Syngenta focused on the science and the facts. And the scientific facts continue to make it clear that no one ever has been or ever could be exposed to enough atrazine in water to affect their health. Despite eight years of litigation, the plaintiffs were never able to show that atrazine ever caused any adverse health effects at levels to which people could be exposed in the real world. Most water systems involved in the litigation had never detected significant amounts of atrazine in their water.”

Third-Party Allies

The company also secretly paid a stable of seemingly independent academics and other “experts” to extol the economic benefits of atrazine and downplay its environmental and health risks, without disclosing their financial ties to the company, according to memos and emails between Syngenta and the public relations firms it hired. At the same time, the company provided strict parameters for what these experts would say.

Don Coursey, Ameritech Professor of Public Policy at the University of Chicago collected $500 an hour from Syngenta to write economic analyses touting the necessity of atrazine, according to an April 25, 2006, email from Coursey to Ford. Syngenta supplied Coursey with the data he was to cite, edited his work and paid him to speak with newspapers, television and radio broadcasters about his reports, without revealing the nature of his arrangement with the corporation, according to Ford’s deposition. Coursey’s work, presented in 2010 at the National Press Club, was widely picked up as independent analysis by newspapers across the country. Coursey also is affiliated with the Heartland Institute, a libertarian nonprofit focused on environmental regulations.

In one document dated 2005, Ford noted areas of vulnerabilities of a Madison County judge the corporation thought might be assigned to the case: “Not showing up for work. Personal conduct. Skybox from Tillery. Dating websites – pic in robes.”

Stephen Tillery, whose firm, Korein Tillery, represented plaintiffs in the suit, said his firm had never given the judge a skybox. “I was never with the judge in a skybox,” Tillery said, adding, “He was not the judge in the case. They thought he might be, and they were looking for ways to disqualify him.”

The allegation over the skybox was the basis of a formal complaint Syngenta filed against Tillery with the Illinois Attorney Registration Disciplinary Commission. The complaint was dismissed as without merit.

At least four public relations firms were hired to work on the Syngenta campaign, according to the documents. The White House Writers Group, based in Washington, D.C., and Jayne Thompson Associates, based in Chicago, were heavily involved. Invoices show that the White House Writers Group received more than $1.6 million in 2010 and 2011. Thompson is Illinois’ former first lady, wife of former Gov. Jim Thompson.

Tillery said, “They did everything they could with dirty tricks. The extent they went to was unprecedented.” He added that only one firm working on behalf of Syngenta, McDermott, Will Emery of Chicago, did not engage in “dirty tricks.”

Hayes in the Crosshairs

Hayes, a leading atrazine researcher and critic, became a major target. His published research reported that exposure to atrazine chemically castrates male frogs and makes them viable females, able to produce eggs that can be fertilized.

Hayes began his atrazine research in 1997 with a study funded by Novartis Agribusiness, one of two corporations that would later form Syngenta. Hayes said that when he got results Novartis did not expect or want, the corporation refused to allow him to publish them. He secured other funding, replicated his work and released the results: exposure to atrazine creates hermaphroditic frogs. That started an epic feud between the scientist and the corporation.

The new documents show that the company commissioned a psychological profile of Hayes. In her notes taken during a 2005 meeting, Ford refers to Hayes as “paranoid schizo and narcissistic.”

Syngenta tracked Hayes’ speaking engagements and arranged for trained critics to attend each event, sometimes videotaping his remarks, according to a strategy proposed in 2006 memos by Jayne Thompson and later confirmed by Hayes. Syngenta explored the idea of purchasing “Tyrone Hayes” as a search word on the Internet and directing searches to its own marketing materials, but appeared to have ultimately decided against it.

Hayes said he had been unaware that Syngenta had discussed purchasing his name as an Internet search word. “Given some of the things they did, that doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “This clearly shows they went beyond science and academia. It was all PR and tricks.”

Hayes readily admits he has “crossed the line” from dispassionate academic to anti-atrazine warrior. He raps about atrazine and has a website, “atrazinelovers.com,” with information on the dangers of atrazine.

Asked why he has become increasingly vocal, Hayes said, “I went to Harvard on scholarships. I owe you! I did not go to school to let someone pay me off to say things that are not true.”

In heated and sometimes mocking emails to Syngenta, Hayes has rapped, and used profanities and sexual taunts.

The corporation filed an ethics complaint with the University of California, Berkeley, and publicly released the emails in 2010. The ethics complaint was judged to be without merit.

Hayes accused Syngenta of pressuring him through UC-Berkeley officials. He said he now pays as much as 20 times more than other researchers for his lab operations. He added that his federal grant applications have been getting the highest scores in evaluations, but are being turned down. He suspects the company of involvement in the sudden hurdles he is facing.

Hayes said Syngenta employees had threatened him verbally and said they were going after his family, but this was the first time he knew these plans were in writing.

“They impacted my professional and personal life,” he said. “It’s sobering to get substantiation of the verbal attacks they made.”

The company contends that Hayes’ frog studies are flawed, and that its own research has not replicated his findings. Other scientists, however, are showing that atrazine disturbs the sexual development of other amphibians as well.

In one memo, the company denied pressuring Duke University not to hire Hayes, but in her deposition on June 9, 2011, Ford, Syngenta’s former spokeswoman, said that Gary Dickson, a Syngenta employee, contacted a dean at Duke to inform him of the contentious relationship between Hayes and Syngenta.

Ford also said Syngenta gave financial support to the Hudson Institute and had asked Alex Avery, at the institute’s Center for Global Food Issues, to write reports critical of Hayes. She later said that unlike Hayes, Avery has not published in any peer-reviewed journals that she knew of and he did not disclose payments from Syngenta.

The Hudson Institute is a conservative nonprofit focused on shaping public policy on issues ranging from international relations to technology and health care.

In one document, Ford noted that a principal with the White House Writers Group taped a phone call with Hayes and “set him up.” Hayes was baited through emails from Syngenta’s army of allies. The scientist’s emails were posted on the Syngenta web site as part of the campaign to discredit him.

Secret Payments to “Independent” Allies

Court documents include a “Supportive Third Party Stakeholders Database” of 130 people and organizations the company could count on to publicly support atrazine, often for a price. Documents show people on the list were coached, their statements in support of atrazine were edited by the company and payments to them were not publicly disclosed. In some cases, Syngenta or its PR team wrote the Op-Ed pieces and then scanned its stakeholder database for a signer.

Court documents include an email dated Oct. 28, 2009, from a Syngenta employee asking her boss how to pay these third-party allies who write in support of atrazine. There are consistent warnings to be sure supporters appear independent, with no links to the corporation.

In one case, Syngenta paid $100,000 to the nonprofit American Council on Science and Health for support that included an Op-Ed piece criticizing the work of journalist Charles Duhigg of the New York Times, who wrote a story on atrazine as part of its Toxic Waters series in 2009. Without disclosing this financial support from Syngenta, president and founder Elizabeth Whelan derided the New York Times article on atrazine as, “All the news that’s fit to scare.” ACSH is a nonprofit that advocates against what it considers government’s over-regulation of issues related to science and health.

“Dear Syngenta friends,” began a 2009 email from Gilbert Ross, a physician at ACSH, thanking Syngenta for its payments and financial support over the years. “Such general operating support is the lifeblood of a small nonprofit like ours, and is both deeply appreciated and much needed,” wrote Ross.

In response to emailed questions for this article, Ross defended the decision not to publicly disclose the payments, and dismissed Hayes as an “outlier.”

“To ‘disclose’ funding on every topic we cover – and there are many – would give the mistaken impression that the donations came first to encourage or persuade us to cover a topic, and cover it in a manner beneficial to the donor,” Ross wrote.

Atrazine, he said, “has been well-known and widely proven to be highly beneficial for agriculture and crop yields and economics of farming. Those who promote hysteria and baseless (commonly litigation-driven) attacks on it are not coming from a sound-science POV [point of view], and we have no apologies nor explanations needed for accepting support from companies who develop and market crop protection chemicals which are manifestly beneficial and pose either no health risk or merely hypothetical ‘risk.’ ”

Steven Milloy, publisher of junkscience.com and president of Citizens for the Integrity of Science, is also in Syngenta’s Supportive Third Party Stakeholders Database.

In a Dec. 3, 2004, email to Syngenta, Milloy requests a grant of $15,000 for the nonprofit Free Enterprise Education Institute for an atrazine stewardship cost-benefit analysis project.

In a letter dated Aug. 6, 2008, Milloy requests a $25,000 grant for the nonprofit Free Enterprise Project of the National Center for Public Policy Research. In an email on that date, he writes, “send the check to me as usual and I’ll take care of it.”

While Op-Eds aim to shape public opinion, economic and cost-benefit analyses were also important, because EPA rulings on pesticide use are based on health, environmental and economic effects.

In an email to Syngenta’s head of communications, Thompson praises an essay that ran in the Belleville News Democrat, an Illinois newspaper based about 20 miles from Edwardsville, the community that initiated the lawsuit.

The 2006 essay was signed by Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute. The essay claimed the Holiday Shores lawsuit could, if successful, shrink the nation’s food supply.

“These are great clips for us because they get out some of our messages from someone (Lehr) who comes off sounding like an unbiased expert. Another strength is that the messages do not sound like they came from Syngenta,” Thompson wrote.

The Heartland Institute fought a subpoena all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2012 that would have forced it to disclose any financial relationship with Syngenta and the source of its articles supporting atrazine. The Heartland Institute argued disclosure would violate its First Amendment rights. The case settled before a ruling was issued, so the relationship remains undisclosed.

In response to an emailed question, the Heartland Institute did not deny receiving funding from Syngenta. Any money it receives, the institute maintained, is considered a donation to a nonprofit, and Heartland was not obligated to disclose donor information. Its president, Joseph Bast, has said he would go to jail for contempt of court “rather than share a single note he had ever made during a meeting with a donor.”

In addition to working with third-party allies, another Syngenta effort to fight the lawsuit was to go directly to plaintiffs, both actual and potential.

In her deposition, Ford confirmed the company convened focus groups and contacted managers at community water systems to discuss the lawsuit, explain the financial and political implications of participation in the suit and help them evaluate whether they should stay in the class action or opt out.

In her deposition, Ford confirmed a discussion with Syngenta attorneys about how to pressure homeowners and real estate agents in Holiday Shores to drop out of the lawsuit, by telling them the suit would harm property values.

Ford insisted the strategy was not carried out, but was then asked to read from a meeting agenda that stated: “assign who will identify groups and assemble lists of Realtors/Holiday Shores residents/growers” and “determine collateral materials needed for briefing these folks. Determine who will actually be reaching out to these individuals.”

She said that according to her recollection, these contacts did not take place.

Syngenta released a statement about the settlement agreement, saying: “This settlement ends the business uncertainty and expense of protracted litigation surrounding this critical product that has been the backbone of weed control for more than 50 years. It allows farmers to continue to realize the benefits of atrazine to agriculture, the economy, and the environment.”

Following the settlement, Tillery has shifted his strategy. He does not plan on filing another class action lawsuit over atrazine in drinking water. Instead, he said, he plans to start filing individual lawsuits on behalf of children with birth defects.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Laura McCauley, June 17, 2013. Source: Common Dreams

Colorado farmer: “There is a new player for water, which is oil and gas. And certainly they are in a position to pay a whole lot more than we are.”

The fracking industry is putting the squeeze on water-strapped farmers in the central United States according to a new analysis released Monday by the Associated Press.

Through an examination of industry-compiled fracking data and the US Department of Agriculture’s official drought designations, AP reveals that by driving up the price of water and burdening already depleted aquifers and rivers, the high-polluting and water-intensive shale oil and gas removal process is placing an increasing threat on states currently suffering from ongoing drought.

“There is a new player for water, which is oil and gas. And certainly they are in a position to pay a whole lot more than we are,” said fourth-generation farmer Kent Pepper of Mead, Colo., who has been forced to leave a number of his corn fields fallow this year because he cannot afford irrigation.

This news follows a recent study which found that nearly half of the country’s fracking wells are located in water-stressed regions and 92 percent of wells located in extremely high-water-stress regions, leading to the inevitable escalation of what Grist refers to as “the West’s water wars.”

The states highlighted in the study—including Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Wyoming—fall within regions labeled by the most recent US Drought Monitor as suffering from “extreme” and “exceptional” drought conditions.

“The oil industry is doing the big fracks and pumping a substantial amount of water around here,” said Ed Walker, general manager of the Wintergarden Groundwater Conservation District, which manages an aquifer that serves as the main water source for farmers and about 29,000 people in three counties.

“When you have a big problem like the drought and you add other [...] problems to it like all the fracking, then it only makes things worse,” he continued.

AP continues:

In a normal year, Peppler said he would pay anywhere from $9 to $100 for an acre-foot of water in auctions held by cities with excess supplies. But these days, energy companies are paying some cities $1,200 to $2,900 per acre-foot. The Denver suburb of Aurora made a $9.5 million, five-year deal last summer to provide the oil company Anadarko 2.4 billion gallons of excess treated sewer water.

In South Texas, where drought has forced cotton farmers to scale back, local water officials said drillers are contributing to a drop in the water table in several areas.

For example, as much as 15,000 acre-feet of water are drawn each year from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer to frack wells in the southern half of the Eagle Ford Shale, one of the nation’s most profitable oil and gas fields.

That’s equal to about half of the water recharged annually into the southern portion of the aquifer, which spans five counties that are home to about 330,000 people, said Ron Green, a scientist with the nonprofit Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

According to estimates by government and trade associations, the amount of water needed to “frack” a well varies greatly by region. In Texas, for instance, the average well requires up to 6 million gallons of water, while in California each well requires 80,000 to 300,000 gallons.

And depending on state and local water laws, this water is either drawn for free from underground aquifers or rivers, or is bought or leased from water districts, cities and farmers.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: Originating from a partnership which included Monsanto, South Carolina-based ArborGen intends to plant millions of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees across the US Southeast, for which they are currently awaiting approval from the US Department of Agriculture.  Given the ecological and public health nightmare of GMO crops like Monsanto’s RoundUp-Ready line, it’s not hard to imagine the disasters that would ensue if native forests were allowed to be converted into heavily sprayed monoculture tree plantations.

Take action today by signing Global Justice Ecology Project and the Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees’ petition calling for a ban on the release of all genetically engineered trees into the environment here: http://globaljusticeecology.org/petition.php

-The GJEP Team

June 17, 2013. Source: Friends of the Earth International

A farmer sprays the weed killer glyphosate across his cornfield in Auburn, Ill. Photo: Seth Perlman/AP

Friends of the Earth International today urged governments around the world to limit the use of the weed killer glyphosate, after laboratory test results released last week showed that people across 18 European countries have traces of the weed killer in their bodies.

The unprecedented tests carried out by Friends of the Earth Europe revealed that 44% of samples from 182 volunteers in 18 European countries contained traces of the herbicide.

Glyphosate is one of the most widely-used weed killers in the world, used by farmers, local government and gardeners, and is sprayed extensively on genetically modified (GM) crops.

In the United States and Latin America, farmers are using increased amounts of pesticides -including glyphosate- due largely to the heavy adoption of genetically modified crops. 

The biggest producer of glyphosate is US biotech giant Monsanto which sells it under the brand name “Roundup”.

Lisa Archer, Food and Technology Program Director of Friends of the Earth US said:

“Discovering traces of glyphosate in Europeans raises serious questions. How did it get there? Why aren’t governments testing for it? And is it also present in Americans citizens? Unlike Europe, the US grows vast amounts of glyphosate-resistant crops, which have resulted in a massive application of herbicides and superweeds.. Some of them are already out of control. Monsanto’s unauthorised genetically modified wheat recently discovered in US fields is the latest alarm bell and confirms the need for stricter controls on agribusiness.”

In May 2013 a strain of genetically-engineered glyphosate-resistant wheat was found on a farm in Oregon, USA. The wheat was developed by Monsanto which tested it between 1998 and 2005. The wheat has never been approved nor marketed. Trading partners have since introduced restrictions or testing of US wheat imports.

Adrian Bebb, spokesman for Friends of the Earth Europe said:

“Agribusinesses that promote GM crops and pesticides like to pretend they have things under control – but finding this weed killer in peoples’ urine suggests we are being exposed to glyphosate in our everyday lives, yet don’t know where it is coming from, how widespread it is in the environment, or what it is doing to our health.”

“Governments around the world need to limit glyphosate use, step up their investigations, and ensure that people and the environment are put before the interests of a few agribusiness corporations,” he added.

According to 2010 figures, 70% of all the corn that was planted in the United States had been genetically modified to be herbicide resistant; as well as 78% of cotton and 93% of all soybeans.

In Europe there has been widespread opposition to GM crops, with only one GM crop grown commercially, although there are 14 applications currently being considered by the EU to grow glyphosate-resistant crops.

In Argentina, 200 million litres of glyphosate-based pesticides are used yearly on soy plantations alone.

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Jay Taber, June 14, 2013. Source: Intercontinental Cry

Photo: Roy.luck on Flickr

As expansion of oil pipelines is reined in, oil trains are rolling out. Since last fall, the volume of oil shipped by rail from the Alberta Tar Sands and the Bakken Fields of North Dakota has increased dramatically. As Cory Morningstar reported in the April 12 edition of Counterpunch, this strategic shift in the delivery system from pipelines to trains heading for fossil fuel refining and export facilities has already made an end run around campaigns to stop new pipelines. The question now is whether British Columbia, Oregon and Washington State — the refining and export terminals destination for many of these oil trains — are capable of dealing with the consequences of suddenly becoming “crude zones”. All the evidence so far suggests they are woefully unprepared.

In the May 15 edition of Bakken Oil News, it was reported that the Bakken Fields alone could bring upwards of 200 million barrels of crude oil by train to Northwest ports and refineries each year. While the first Bakken oil train arrived last September, all five Washington refineries handle or plan to handle oil trains. Five new terminals are proposed for Washington ports.

In 2008, railroads in the US carried 9,500 carloads of crude; in 2012, that number grew to 200,000. Due to the boom in fracking oil from shale, US oil production is projected by 2020 to exceed that of Saudi Arabia. As reported yesterday at Business Week, several big pipeline projects will be finished in the next couple of years, including the southern leg of Keystone XL. In the meantime, oil trains are on a roll.

While Congress outlawed most exports of US crude in the 1970s, oil industry executives are making a case for changing that. Over the last several years, with refined products exempt from export restrictions, motor fuel exports have nearly tripled.

Last fall, Oregon and Washington received just 50 trainloads of oil. If all the proposed oil terminals are built, that figure could climb to 3,000 oil trains a year for oil terminals alone, excluding trains delivering directly to oil refineries. All of that could come on top of the 7,000 coal trains a year to coal terminals proposed on the Columbia River and the Salish Sea.

As reported in the May 20 blog of the Seattle P-I, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) passed a resolution opposing fossil fuel exports in their territories as a threat to their treaty-protected resources like endangered salmon. As reported in the May 18 edition of The Daily World, ATNI member Quinault Indian Nation — along with Audubon Society and Sierra Club — filed an appeal of Washington Department of Ecology’s approval of the first of three proposed oil terminals at Grays Harbor.

As I reported at Intercontinental Cry on June 1, the 57 ATNI Tribes of Oregon, Idaho, Washington, southeast Alaska, Northern California, Nevada and Western Montana are already targeting investors in fossil fuel exports like Goldman Sachs. Whether the Wall Street/Tea Party/AFL-CIO convergence supporting fossil fuel exports will overwhelm the treaty rights of these tribes remains to be seen. Meanwhile, endangered species like the Orca whale and Chinook salmon persist, oblivious to the looming threat.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

By Nafeez Ahmed, June 14, 2013. Source: The Guardian

US domestic surveillance has targeted anti-fracking activists across the country. Photo: Les Stone/REUTERS

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealandcourt records suggest that data harvested by the NSA’s Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis – or all three.

Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic “emergency” or “civil disturbance”:

“Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.”

Other documents show that the “extraordinary emergencies” the Pentagon is worried about include a range of environmental and related disasters.

In 2006, the US National Security Strategy warned that:

“Environmental destruction, whether caused by human behavior or cataclysmic mega-disasters such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, or tsunamis. Problems of this scope may overwhelm the capacity of local authorities to respond, and may even overtax national militaries, requiring a larger international response.”

Two years later, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Army Modernisation Strategy described the arrival of a new “era of persistent conflict” due to competition for “depleting natural resources and overseas markets” fuelling “future resource wars over water, food and energy.” The report predicted a resurgence of:

“… anti-government and radical ideologies that potentially threaten government stability.”

In the same year, a report by the US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute warned that a series of domestic crises could provoke large-scale civil unrest. The path to “disruptive domestic shock” could include traditional threats such as deployment of WMDs, alongside “catastrophic natural and human disasters” or “pervasive public health emergencies” coinciding with “unforeseen economic collapse.” Such crises could lead to “loss of functioning political and legal order” leading to “purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency…

“DoD might be forced by circumstances to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility. Under the most extreme circumstances, this might include use of military force against hostile groups inside the United States. Further, DoD would be, by necessity, an essential enabling hub for the continuity of political authority in a multi-state or nationwide civil conflict or disturbance.”

That year, the Pentagon had begun developing a 20,000 strong troop force who would be on-hand to respond to “domestic catastrophes” and civil unrest – the programme was reportedly based on a 2005 homeland security strategy which emphasised “preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents.”

The following year, a US Army-funded RAND Corp study called for a US force presence specifically to deal with civil unrest.

Such fears were further solidified in a detailed 2010 study by the US Joint Forces Command – designed to inform “joint concept development and experimentation throughout the Department of Defense” – setting out the US military’s definitive vision for future trends and potential global threats. Climate change, the study said, would lead to increased risk of:

“… tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes… Furthermore, if such a catastrophe occurs within the United States itself – particularly when the nation’s economy is in a fragile state or where US military bases or key civilian infrastructure are broadly affected – the damage to US security could be considerable.”

The study also warned of a possible shortfall in global oil output by 2015:

“A severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity. While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions.”

That year the DoD’s Quadrennial Defense Review seconded such concerns, while recognising that “climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.”

Also in 2010, the Pentagon ran war games to explore the implications of “large scale economic breakdown” in the US impacting on food supplies and other essential services, as well as how to maintain “domestic order amid civil unrest.”

Speaking about the group’s conclusions at giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton’s conference facility in Virginia, Lt Col. Mark Elfendahl – then chief of the Joint and Army Concepts Division – highlighted homeland operations as a way to legitimise the US military budget:

“An increased focus on domestic activities might be a way of justifying whatever Army force structure the country can still afford.”

Two months earlier, Elfendahl explained in a DoD roundtable that future planning was needed:

“Because technology is changing so rapidly, because there’s so much uncertainty in the world, both economically and politically, and because the threats are so adaptive and networked, because they live within the populations in many cases.”

The 2010 exercises were part of the US Army’s annual Unified Questprogramme which more recently, based on expert input from across the Pentagon, has explored the prospect that “ecological disasters and a weak economy” (as the “recovery won’t take root until 2020″) will fuel migration to urban areas, ramping up social tensions in the US homeland as well as within and between “resource-starved nations.”

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was a computer systems administrator for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he directly handled the NSA’s IT systems, including the Prism surveillance system. According toBooz Allen’s 2011 Annual Report, the corporation has overseen Unified Quest “for more than a decade” to help “military and civilian leaders envision the future.”

The latest war games, the report reveals, focused on “detailed, realistic scenarios with hypothetical ‘roads to crisis’”, including “homeland operations” resulting from “a high-magnitude natural disaster” among other scenarios, in the context of:

“… converging global trends [which] may change the current security landscape and future operating environment… At the end of the two-day event, senior leaders were better prepared to understand new required capabilities and force design requirements to make homeland operations more effective.”

It is therefore not surprising that the increasing privatisation of intelligence has coincided with the proliferation of domestic surveillance operations against political activists, particularly those linked to environmental and social justice protest groups.

Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a “systematic effort” by the agency “to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations” linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

Similarly, FBI documents confirmed “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector” designed to produce intelligence on behalf of “the corporate security community.” A PCJF spokesperson remarked that the documents show “federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

In particular, domestic surveillance has systematically targeted peaceful environment activists including anti-fracking activists across the US, such as the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition, Rising Tide North America, the People’s Oil Gas Collaborative, and Greenpeace. Similar trends are at play in the UK, where the case of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy revealed the extent of the state’s involvement in monitoring the environmental direct action movement.

A University of Bath study citing the Kennedy case, and based on confidential sources, found that a whole range of corporations – such as McDonald’s, Nestle and the oil major Shell, “use covert methods to gather intelligence on activist groups, counter criticism of their strategies and practices, and evade accountability.”

Indeed, Kennedy’s case was just the tip of the iceberg – internal police documents obtained by the Guardian in 2009 revealed that environment activists had been routinely categorised as “domestic extremists” targeting “national infrastructure” as part of a wider strategy tracking protest groups and protestors.

Superintendent Steve Pearl, then head of the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Nectu), confirmed at that time how his unit worked with thousands of companies in the private sector. Nectu, according to Pearl, was set up by the Home Office because it was “getting really pressured by big business – pharmaceuticals in particular, and the banks.” He added that environmental protestors were being brought “more on the radar.” The programme continues today, despite police acknowledgements that environmentalists have not been involved in “violent acts.”

The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA’s global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state.

Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog

Note: In Chiapas, Mexico, the “Sustainable Rural Cities” program has facilitated a land and resource grab under the guise of “poverty mitigation”.  It has also served as a counterinsurgency effort to smother potentially rebellious Indigenous and peasant communities.  

China’s new push for urbanizing rural farming communities appears to be the next great land and resource grab.  And it will surely reduce the threat of rebellion against the monolithic Chinese government.  

As Ed Abbey observed in 1968, ”Rural insurrections can then be suppressed only by bombing and burning the villages and countryside so thoroughly that the mass of the population is forced to take refuge in the cities; there the people are then policed and if necessary starved into submission.  The city, which should be the symbol and center of civilization, can also be made to function as a concentration camp.”

-The GJEP Team

By Ian Johnson, June 15, 2013. Source: NY Times

The old buildings under these high-rises in Chongqing have been marked for demolition. Photo: Justin Lin/NY Times

China is pushing ahead with a sweeping plan to move 250 million rural residents into newly constructed towns and cities over the next dozen years — a transformative event that could set off a new wave of growth or saddle the country with problems for generations to come.

The government, often by fiat, is replacing small rural homes with high-rises, paving over vast swaths of farmland and drastically altering the lives of rural dwellers. So large is the scale that the number of brand-new Chinese city dwellers will approach the total urban population of the United States — in a country already bursting with megacities.

This will decisively change the character of China, where the Communist Party insisted for decades that most peasants, even those working in cities, remain tied to their tiny plots of land to ensure political and economic stability. Now, the party has shifted priorities, mainly to find a new source of growth for a slowing economy that depends increasingly on a consuming class of city dwellers.

The shift is occurring so quickly, and the potential costs are so high, that some fear rural China is once again the site of radical social engineering. Over the past decades, the Communist Party has flip-flopped on peasants’ rights to use land: giving small plots to farm during 1950s land reform, collectivizing a few years later, restoring rights at the start of the reform era and now trying to obliterate small landholders.

Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties. Towers now sprout skyward from dusty plains and verdant hillsides. New urban schools and hospitals offer modern services, but often at the expense of the torn-down temples and open-air theaters of the countryside.

“It’s a new world for us in the city,” said Tian Wei, 43, a former wheat farmer in the northern province of Hebei, who now works as a night watchman at a factory. “All my life I’ve worked with my hands in the fields; do I have the educational level to keep up with the city people?”

China has long been home to both some of the world’s tiniest villages and its most congested, polluted examples of urban sprawl. The ultimate goal of the government’s modernization plan is to fully integrate 70 percent of the country’s population, or roughly 900 million people, into city living by 2025. Currently, only half that number are.

The building frenzy is on display in places like Liaocheng, which grew up as an entrepôt for local wheat farmers in the North China Plain. It is now ringed by scores of 20-story towers housing now-landless farmers who have been thrust into city life. Many are giddy at their new lives — they received the apartments free, plus tens of thousands of dollars for their land — but others are uncertain about what they will do when the money runs out.

Aggressive state spending is planned on new roads, hospitals, schools, community centers — which could cost upward of $600 billion a year, according to economists’ estimates. In addition, vast sums will be needed to pay for the education, health care and pensions of the ex-farmers.

While the economic fortunes of many have improved in the mass move to cities, unemployment and other social woes have also followed the enormous dislocation. Some young people feel lucky to have jobs that pay survival wages of about $150 a month; others while away their days in pool halls and video-game arcades.

Top-down efforts to quickly transform entire societies have often come to grief, and urbanization has already proven one of the most wrenching changes in China’s 35 years of economic transition. Land disputes account for thousands of protests each year, including dozens of cases in recent years in which people have set themselves aflame rather than relocate.

The country’s new prime minister, Li Keqiang, indicated at his inaugural news conference in March that urbanization was one of his top priorities. He also cautioned, however, that it would require a series of accompanying legal changes “to overcome various problems in the course of urbanization.”

Some of these problems could include chronic urban unemployment if jobs are not available, and more protests from skeptical farmers unwilling to move. Instead of creating wealth, urbanization could result in a permanent underclass in big Chinese cities and the destruction of a rural culture and religion.

The government has been pledging a comprehensive urbanization plan for more than two years now. It was originally to have been presented at the National People’s Congress in March, but various concerns delayed that, according to people close to the government. Some of them include the challenge of financing the effort, of coordinating among the various ministries and of balancing the rights of farmers, whose land has increasingly been taken forcibly for urban projects.

These worries delayed a high-level conference to formalize the plan this month. The plan has now been delayed until the fall, government advisers say. Central leaders are said to be concerned that spending will lead to inflation and bad debt.

Such concerns may have been behind the call in a recent government report for farmers’ property rights to be protected. Released in March, the report said China must “guarantee farmers’ property rights and interests.” Land would remain owned by the state, though, so farmers would not have ownership rights even under the new blueprint.

On the ground, however, the new wave of urbanization is well under way. Almost every province has large-scale programs to move farmers into housing towers, with the farmers’ plots then given to corporations or municipalities to manage. Efforts have been made to improve the attractiveness of urban life, but the farmers caught up in the programs typically have no choice but to leave their land.

The broad trend began decades ago. In the early 1980s, about 80 percent of Chinese lived in the countryside versus 47 percent today, plus an additional 17 percent that works in cities but is classified as rural. The idea is to speed up this process and achieve an urbanized China much faster than would occur organically.

The primary motivation for the urbanization push is to change China’s economic structure, with growth based on domestic demand for products instead of relying so much on export. In theory, new urbanites mean vast new opportunities for construction companies, public transportation, utilities and appliance makers, and a break from the cycle of farmers consuming only what they produce. “If half of China’s population starts consuming, growth is inevitable,” said Li Xiangyang, vice director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics, part of a government research institute. “Right now they are living in rural areas where they do not consume.”

Skeptics say the government’s headlong rush to urbanize is driven by a vision of modernity that has failed elsewhere. In Brazil and Mexico, urbanization was also seen as a way to bolster economic growth. But among the results were the expansion of slums and of a stubborn unemployed underclass, according to experts.

“There’s this feeling that we have to modernize, we have to urbanize and this is our national-development strategy,” said Gao Yu, China country director for the Landesa Rural Development Institute, based in Seattle. Referring to the disastrous Maoist campaign to industrialize overnight, he added, “It’s almost like another Great Leap Forward.”

The costs of this top-down approach can be steep. In one survey by Landesa in 2011, 43 percent of Chinese villagers said government officials had taken or tried to take their land. That is up from 29 percent in a 2008 survey.

“In a lot of cases in China, urbanization is the process of local government driving farmers into buildings while grabbing their land,” said Li Dun, a professor of public policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Farmers are often unwilling to leave the land because of the lack of job opportunities in the new towns. Working in a factory is sometimes an option, but most jobs are far from the newly built towns. And even if farmers do get jobs in factories, most lose them when they hit age 45 or 50, since employers generally want younger, nimbler workers.

“For old people like us, there’s nothing to do anymore,” said He Shifang, 45, a farmer from the city of Ankang in Shaanxi Province who was relocated from her family’s farm in the mountains. “Up in the mountains we worked all the time. We had pigs and chickens. Here we just sit around and people play mah-jongg.”

Some farmers who have given up their land say that when they come back home for good around this age, they have no farm to tend and thus no income. Most are still excluded from national pension plans, putting pressure on relatives to provide.

The coming urbanization plan would aim to solve this by giving farmers a permanent stream of income from the land they lost. Besides a flat payout when they moved, they would receive a form of shares in their former land that would pay the equivalent of dividends over a period of decades to make sure they did not end up indigent.

This has been tried experimentally, with mixed results. Outside the city of Chengdu, some farmers said they received nothing when their land was taken to build a road, leading to daily confrontations with construction crews and the police since the beginning of this year.

But south of Chengdu in Shuangliu County, farmers who gave up their land for an experimental strawberry farm run by a county-owned company said they receive an annual payment equivalent to the price of 2,000 pounds of grain plus the chance to earn about $8 a day working on the new plantation.

“I think it’s O.K., this deal,” said Huang Zifeng, 62, a farmer in the village of Paomageng who gave up his land to work on the plantation. “It’s more stable than farming your own land.”

Financing the investment needed to start such projects is a central sticking point. Chinese economists say that the cost does not have to be completely borne by the government — because once farmers start working in city jobs, they will start paying taxes and contributing to social welfare programs.

“Urbanization can launch a process of value creation,” said Xiang Songzuo, chief economist with the Agricultural Bank of China and a deputy director of the International Monetary Institute at Renmin University. “It should start a huge flow of revenues.”

Even if this is true, the government will still need significant resources to get the programs started. Currently, local governments have limited revenues and most rely on selling land to pay for expenses — an unsustainable practice in the long run. Banks are also increasingly unwilling to lend money to big infrastructure projects, Mr. Xiang said, because many banks are now listed companies and have to satisfy investors’ requirements.

“Local governments are already struggling to provide benefits to local people, so why would they want to extend this to migrant workers?” said Tom Miller, a Beijing-based author of a new book on urbanization in China, “China’s Urban Billion.” “It is essential for the central government to step in and provide funding for this.”

In theory, local governments could be allowed to issue bonds, but with no reliable system of rating or selling bonds, this is unlikely in the near term. Some localities, however, are already experimenting with programs to pay for at least the infrastructure by involving private investors or large state-owned enterprises that provide seed financing.

Most of the costs are borne by local governments. But they rely mostly on central government transfer payments or land sales, and without their own revenue streams they are unwilling to allow newly arrived rural residents to attend local schools or benefit from health care programs. This is reflected in the fact that China officially has a 53 percent rate of urbanization, but only about 35 percent of the population is in possession of an urban residency permit, or hukou. This is the document that permits a person to register in local schools or qualify for local medical programs.

The new blueprint to be unveiled this year is supposed to break this logjam by guaranteeing some central-government support for such programs, according to economists who advise the government. But the exact formulas are still unclear. Granting full urban benefits to 70 percent of the population by 2025 would mean doubling the rate of those in urban welfare programs.

“Urbanization is in China’s future, but China’s rural population lags behind in enjoying the benefits of economic development,” said Li Shuguang, professor at the China University of Political Science and Law. “The rural population deserves the same benefits and rights city folks enjoy.”

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Article source: GJEP Climate Connections Blog