by DGR Colorado Plateau | Nov 4, 2015 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling
By Apoorva Joshi / Mongabay
This is the first in a two-part series on gold mining in Suriname. Read the second part.
- High gold prices are leading to an increase in mining activity.
- Mining activities threaten Suriname’s primary forests, some of the most-intact in South America.
- Mercury released from the mining process can be toxic, and is showing up in human population centers far downstream.
Record high gold prices over much of the past decade have triggered a massive gold rush across much of the Amazon basin, resulting in the destruction of thousands of hectares of pristine rainforest and the contamination of major rivers with toxic heavy metals. A newly released report published by the Amazon Conservation Team titled “Amazon Gold Rush: Gold Mining in Suriname” explores the rapid expansion and impacts of gold mining in Suriname through cartography and digital storytelling.
It finds that from 2000 to 2014, the extent of gold mining in the South American country increased by 893 percent.
While the Amazon rainforests of Brazil and Peru are well-known, Suriname’s vast and ancient rainforests remain one of the world’s best-kept natural secrets, according to the online report. But demand for the age-old elemental metal threatens to destroy them.
“According to our calculations, deforestation caused by gold mining has been growing steadily since the turn of the century and rapidly in the past five years,” GIS and Web Development Coordinator at the Amazon Conservation Team, Rudo Kemper told mongabay.com. The average rate of deforestation since 2000 is close to 3,000 hectares per year, but in 2014 an estimated 5,712 hectares of forest cover was lost to gold mining, he said. The REDD+ for the Guiana Shield regional collaborative study on gold mining shows similar trends, reporting a near-doubling (97 percent increase) of deforestation from 2008 to 2014 and attributing a total of 53,668 hectares of deforestation to gold mining in 2014.
Compared to many other South American countries, Suriname still holds much of its forest cover. According to Global Forest Watch, Suriname lost 0.7 percent of its tree cover from 2001 through 2014 – a small proportion compared to Brazil’s 6.9 percent. However, Suriname’s intact forest landscapes – large, continuous areas of primary forest – do show degradation since 2000.
The Guiana Shield, as Kemper puts it, is one of three cratons of the South American tectonic plate. “It is a tropical rainforest region covered with unique table-top mountains called tepuis,” he said. “It has the largest expanse of undisturbed tropical rainforest in the world, and one of the highest rates of biodiversity.” Suriname is among the most forested countries in the world, as the report highlights. In 2012, 95 percent of the country’s entire area was classified as forest. Globally surpassed only by its neighbor French Guiana, Suriname’s pristine rainforest harbors numerous unique species of fauna like the Guianan cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola rupicola), the famous blue poison dart frog (Dendrobates tinctorius), the red-faced spider monkey (Ateles paniscus), and the pale-throated sloth (Bradypus tridactylus). Jaguars, tapirs, and giant anteaters also call the region home. The mineral-rich Greenstone Belt region, where most of the gold mining in Suriname takes place, is primarily composed of the forested highlands of the Guiana Shield. Conservationists worry that deforestation caused by rapidly expanding gold mining activities is negatively impacting the habitat of many unique species.
Suriname rainforest. Photo courtesy of the Amazon Conservation Team.
Since the 1960s, development and resource extraction incursions into the country’s interior have become commonplace. These encroachments have taken the form of dam-building, logging, bauxite mining, and as of the turn of the century, small-scale and industrial gold mining, the report says. Given that it is one of the world’s smallest countries, Suriname’s annual rate of gold production might not compare to that of larger countries like South Africa, China, Russia or Peru. But relative to its land area, Suriname actually ranks tenth in global gold production.
Partially republished with permission of Mongabay. Read the full article, Gold mining explodes in Suriname, puts forests and people at risk.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Oct 9, 2015 | Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Hannibal Rhoades / Intercontinental Cry
After five years of legal contests and uncertainty, the Colombian Constitutional Court has confirmed that Yaigojé Apaporis, an indigenous resguardo (a legally recognized, collectively owned territory), also has legitimate status as a national park.
The decision is cause for celebration for Indigenous Peoples who call the region home. But it is less welcome news for Canadian multinational mining corporation Cosigo Resources, the company contesting the area’s national park status. The court’s ruling immediately and indefinitely suspends all mining activities in the park, including Cosigo’s license to mine gold from one of Yaigojé’s most sacred areas.
In the broader context of Colombia’s push to expand mining activities in the name of development, the court’s decision is seen as a significant precedent.
Since the 1980s, Colombia has protected more than 24 million hectares of the Amazon, placing an area the size of Britain back in the hands of its traditional owners. By choosing the rights of Indigenous Peoples and a new national park over multinational mining interests, the court’s decision safeguards Colombia’s achievements rather than undermining them.
THE BATTLE FOR YUISI’S GOLDEN LENS
Straddling Amazonas and Vaupés states, comprising a million hectares of the Northwestern Colombian Amazon, the pristine forest region of Yaigojé Apaporis is rich in both biological and cultural diversity.
The area hosts endangered mammals such as the giant anteater, jaguar, manatee and pink river dolphin. It is also home to the Makuna, Tanimuka, Letuama, Barasano, Cabiyari, Yahuna and Yujup-Maku Indigenous Peoples, who share a common cosmological system and rich shamanistic traditions. Together these populations act as Yaigojé’s guardians, a role that was strengthened in 1988 when, with the assistance of Colombian NGO Gaia Amazonas, they successfully established the Yaigojé Apaporis resguardo over their traditional territory. But this status has recently been tested.
Under Colombian law, a resguardo recognition grants its inhabitants collective ownership of and rights to the soil, but the subsoil remains in the control of the state and vulnerable to prospecting. With companies seeking to exploit this loophole, the Colombian Amazon has seen a tidal wave of mining interest since the mid-2000s, with the government declaring mining an “engine for development.”
Riding at the crest of this wave, in the late 2000s Canadian mining multinational Cosigo Resources made clear to local communities in Yaigojé its intention to mine for gold at a site within the resguardo known as La Libertad or Yuisi.
Local indigenous leaders say Cosigo became known to them when company representatives visited their malocas (traditional riverside houses). The indigenous leaders allege that officials offered them money in return for assurance of support the company to mine in Yuisi. These offers were rejected.
At Yuisi, a wide stretch of the Apaporis river cascades over rocks, forming roaring rapids. To the people of Yaigojé it is a vital sacred site, inextricably tied to their story of origin, identity and ability to care for the territory and the planet as a whole. Elders say “Yuisi is the crib of our way of thinking, of life and power. Everything is born here in thought: nature, the crops, trees, fruits, everything that exists, exists before in thought.”
Local shaman describe the gold and other minerals that form the bedrock of their territory as ‘lenses’ that allow them to see into the Earth, divine or diagnose any problems and correct them through rituals, prayer and thought. If gold were to be removed from Yuisi, they would lose their ability to cure and manage their territory as they have done for millennia. This is because an integral part of the territory itself would be lost. The notion that territory stops at the soil “as deep as the manioc’s root” is alien.
With negotiation with Cosigo out of the question, the traditional authorities in Yaigojé called an urgent congress of the Asociación de Capitanes Indígenas del Yaigojé Apaporis (ACIYA), an indigenous organization formed of groups living along the Apaporis River, in the area of Yaigojé that lies in Amazonas State. Having discussed the dangers posed by Cosigo’s presence and plans, ACIYA agreed that they must seek help from outside sources to further protect their territory.
“The best way to shield the territory was to call upon the state. In other words: Western disease is cured by Western medicine. If all mining licenses are given by the state, it is necessary to call on the state to defend the territory,” says Gerardo Macuna, a representative of ACIYA.
Advised that achieving national park status would extend protection to the subsoil, ACIYA and its supporters formally requested that the Colombian Government create a national park over their resguardo and traditional territory.
The people’s effort to add a third layer of protection for their territory was successful. In October 2009, Yaigojé Apaporis became Colombia’s 55th national protected area, but celebrations were short lived. Just two days after the area was awarded national park status, Cosigo Resources was granted a mining title for the Yuisi area, catalysing an epic struggle between Colombia’s will to protect the Amazon, with the help of indigenous inhabitants, or exploit it at their expense by prioritizing mining.
DEEP IN THE AMAZON, A SMOKING GUN
Despite having been granted a license, Yaigojé’s new status as a national park remained an obstacle to Cosigo. The national park status, and its accompanying legal protections for the subsoil, would need to be revoked before mining could begin.
Facing stiff opposition from both ACIYA and the Colombian National Parks authorities just as Cosigo appeared to be fighting an uphill battle, the company got what seemed an almost impossible stroke of luck. A few months after Yaigojé was declared a national park, members of indigenous organization ACITAVA from the region of Yaigojé lying in Vaupés State launched a legal challenge to Yaigojé’s status at the Colombian Constitutional Court. Led by a local settler named Benigno Perilla, the challengers said that they had not been fully or adequately consulted in the process of creating the national park and it therefore violated their right to Free Prior and Informed Consent.
With an apparently complex conflict unfolding between Yaigojé’s Indigenous Peoples and the area’s national park status–its ecological and social integrity held in the balance–a legal deadlock ensued. This situation persisted for three years, until January 2014, when in an unprecedented move, three judges from Colombia’s Constitutional Court made the decision to travel to the heart of the Colombian Amazon to hold a hearing and consult with communities first hand.
Jorge Iván Palacio, president of the court, explained the court’s decision to make the journey by stating that “there is no justice unless we know what they think in the communities.” The ensuing hearing thoroughly vindicated his observation.
Before 160 indigenous inhabitants from along the Apaporis River and the judges, Benigno Perilla publicly admitted that his and ACITAVA’s legal strategy was encouraged, organized and paid for by Cosigo Resources. In what would prove the critical turning point in the case, the indigenous members of ACITAVA who had supported the challenge made a public apology, said they had been misled and declared their support for the creation of the national park.
A NEW DAWN FOR INDIGENOUS-LED CONSERVATION
Although it has been more than another year coming, the Colombian Constitutional Court has ousted Cosigo and legitimized the declaration of Yaigojé Apaporis as a national park. The decision recognizes the authority of the area’s Indigenous Peoples and protects their fundamental rights to culture, identity and consultation.
The decision is regarded as a significantly positive precedent for future conflicts between mining operations, protected areas and their indigenous inhabitants, at a time when Colombia has declared mining to be in the national interest.
The judges found sufficient evidence of wrongdoing by Cosigo to ask Colombia’s Justice Minister to open an investigation into the company’s consultation processes and interactions with communities in the Yaigojé area. Recently published revisions to Colombia’s projects of national interest have seen Cosigo’s project removed from the list. The company is said to be reviewing its legal options.
Confirming the compatibility of indigenous resguardos and national parks, the court has also opened up the possibility for others to follow Yaigojé’s example and enhance the protection of their territories from destructive or unwanted “development.”
Since Yaigojé was declared a national park, and in spite of the legal wrangle over its future, ACIYA and local indigenous youths have been pioneering a powerful new conservation paradigm that values indigenous knowledge and places it at the root of national park management.
ACIYA’s work to find a method of conservation that both works for them and allows for close collaboration with Colombia’s national park authorities is the subject of a recent film and won the group the prestigious UNDP Equator Prize in 2014. Their approach stands in stark contrast to technocratic, neo-colonialist conservation norms founded on a misplaced belief in pristine, unmanaged wilderness. These have been criticized by Indigenous Peoples and rights groups for excluding and forcibly displacing indigenous communities, fencing them out of their own lands and so obstructing their right to practice their cultures.
As part of their program, 27 young indigenous leaders from nine communities in Yaigojé have engaged in a deep process of cultural research. Advised by their elders, they have documented, mapped and recorded their peoples’ traditional practices for safeguarding and conserving the forest. In the words of one researcher, the aim has been to “transmit traditional knowledge to the younger generations and protect our ancestral territory.” So far, they have succeeded in doing both.
The research produced by ACIYA will now be used to define the management of the Yaigojé Apaporis National Park, further legitimizing local indigenous knowledge systems that have protected the life-support capacities of this rainforest region for generation after generation.
“Indigenous people are the natural allies of the rainforest and the whole environmental movement,” says former director of Gaia Amazonas Martin Von Hildebrand. “They have the traditional knowledge, they are organized. We just need to support them with what they need to run their own territories.”
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Sep 7, 2015 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
By Renata Bessi and Santiago Navarro F., Translated by Miriam Taylor / Truthout
In an effort to make way for new investment projects, the Brazilian government and transnational corporations have been taking over ancestral indigenous lands, triggering a rise in murders of indigenous people in Brazil.
According to the report, “Violence Against Indigenous People in Brazil,” recently published by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI by its Portuguese initials), the number of indigenous people killed in the country grew 42 percent from 2013 to 2014; 138 cases were officially registered. The majority of the murders were carried out by hit men hired by those with economic interests in the territories.
The states of Mato Grosso del Sur, Amazonas and Bahía figure heavily in the statistics. An emblematic case was the brutal killing of the indigenous woman Marinalva Kaiowá, in November of 2014. She lived in recovered territories, land that for over 40 years has been claimed by the Guaraní people as the land of their ancestors. Marinalva was assassinated – stabbed 35 times – two weeks after attending a protest with other indigenous leaders at the Federal Supreme Court in the Federal District of Brasilia. The group was protesting a court ruling that annulled the demarcation process in the indigenous territory of the Guyraroká.
For four days and three nights, more than 1,500 indigenous individuals filled one of the gardens in front of the National Congress with colors, music and rituals. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)
In addition to this, there has been a steady flow of people forced to move to small territories after being displaced by economic development projects, as in the case of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where the majority of the population – over 40,000 people – live concentrated on small reservations. These are communities that are exposed to assassinations by hired hit men, lack education and basic necessities, and endure deplorable health conditions. Infant mortality rates in the community are high and rising: According to official statistics, last year 785 children between the ages of 0 and 5 died.
“We, the Guaraní, principally from Mato Grosso do Sul, have been the greatest victims of massacres and violence,” the Guaraní Kaiowá indigenous leader Araqueraju told Truthout. “They have killed many of our leaders, they have spilled much blood because we are fighting for the respect for and demarcation of what is left of our territories that the government does not want to recognize.”
Indigenous women leaders were also present for the taking of congress to denounce violations of human rights suffered by indigenous people. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)
The rise in the rate of violence is related in large part to the development policies of the Brazilian government – policies that have been denounced by the Indigenous Missionary Council. Another report, titled “Projects that impact indigenous lands,” released by CIMI in 2014, revealed that at least 519 projects have impacted 437 ancestral territories, directly affecting 204 indigenous groups.
The energy sector has most deeply affected indigenous people; of the 519 documented projects, 267 are energy-related. In second place is infrastructure, with 196 projects. Mining is third, with 21 projects, and in fourth place, with 19 expansive projects, is agribusiness. Ecotourism comes next with 9 projects.
“In the Amazon region, the region of the Tapajos River, we are being fenced in,” João Tapajó – a member of the Arimun indigenous group – told Truthout. “The Teles waterway is being constructed and the BR163 highway widened. This is being done to transport the transnational corporations’ grain and minerals,” added Tapajó, who is part of one of the groups that make up the Indigenous Movement of the region Bajo Tapajós, in the state of Pará. “We live under constant threat from agribusinesses and lumber companies. There is a construction project to build five hydroelectric dams on the same river. To top it off, our region is suffering from a process of prospecting for the exploitation of minerals, by the companies Alcoa y Vale do Rio Doce.”
The military police were constantly present, protecting the headquarters of Brazil’s three branches of government from the indigenous protesters. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)
Similarly, a report produced by the Federal Public Ministry, based on its own evaluations and carried out by anthropologists María Fernanda Paranhos and Deborah Stucchi, shows that the processes of social change generated by these projects principally affect those who live in rural contexts. This includes many groups living collectively who are relatively invisible in the sociopolitical context of Brazil.
“The evaluations provide evidence that the intense social changes, the possibility of the breaking up of productive circuits, the disappearance of small-scale agriculture, fishing, and forested areas, a reduction in jobs, and the impoverishment and degradation of material and immaterial conditions of life … have led to strong reactions and an avalanche of social conflict,” according to the ministry’s report.
Indigenous people of ethnic Pataxo struggle to return their lands. In October 2014, they closed the highway to pressure the government. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)
Hydroelectric Dams in the Brazilian Amazon
The government’s Ten-Year Plan for energy expansion – 2023, which projects for the period of 2014 to 2023 an expansion of over 28,000 megawatts of energy generation by way of hydroelectric dams, claims that none of the 30 hydroelectric dams projected for construction in this country during this period will have any direct effect on indigenous lands.
Data from the Institute of Socioeconomic Studies, through an initiative called Investments and Rights in the Amazon, tells a different story. According to research carried out by Ricardo Verdum, a PhD in social anthropology and member of the Center for the Study of Indigenous Populations at the Federal University in the state of Santa Catarina, of the 23 hydroelectric dams that will be built in the Amazon, at least 16 will have negative social and environmental effects on indigenous territories. They will destroy the environmental conditions that these indigenous groups depend on to live and maintain their way of life.
“The difference in results is due to the way the idea of ‘impact’ or ‘interference’ is defined conceptually and materially,” Verdum told Truthout. “According to current legislation, interference in indigenous lands occurs when a parcel of land is directly affected by the dam itself or the reservoir. The territorial and environmental criteria do not consider the human and social aspects of the interference, or influence of the project on the population.”
The atmosphere grew tense as Federal Police came in, although this was no surprise to the Pataxo. They have been long been rejected by cattle farmers, businessmen and people living in cities close to Monte Pascoal – one of the richest areas in terms of flora and fauna in the world. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)
A Militaristic Approach to the Economy
Brazil’s development model – a model adopted by most countries in Latin America within the old international division of labor – leads the country to specialize in the export of raw materials or basic products at a low cost in relation to the import of final products that return to Brazil at elevated prices. This is a logic that is based on the colonial model, according to Clovis Brighenti, a professor of history at the Federal University of Latin American Integration. “It is an entry into the globalized world by way of intense exploitation of the environment with few results,” Brighenti told Truthout. “What’s more, these results are in exchange for high investment costs, made with public resources and subsidized interest rates, concentrated in a tiny group of beneficiaries. It is a dried-up model but in its death throes, it causes irreversible damage to the environment and for the people that depend on these ecosystems.”
The design of this development model, according to Brighenti, is connected to the modern myth that an economy needs to grow rapidly and continuously to satisfy the material necessities of society. “However, behind this myth, is hidden the essence of the capitalist system: the need to guarantee a logic that is based on consumerism, and in this way, guarantee the accumulation and the benefit of the elites and the privileged sectors of society.”
In Brazil, the belief is that material happiness is connected to the search for new spaces for development expansion. “In other words, it is searching for constant advancement into ‘new’ territories, where there is still a natural environment to be explored and appropriated,” Brighenti said. “Thus, capital’s interests revolve around indigenous and traditional territories, as ideal spaces for the execution of these projects.”
He added that in Brazil there is a continuity of a militaristic mentality, due to the fact that the country was shaped by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. During that time, the United States was involved through a program called Operation Brother Sam.
The objective was to remove peasants and indigenous people from their lands to concentrate territories in the hands of businesses that currently produce soy, sugar cane and eucalyptus. These companies include Monsanto, ADM, Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus Commodities, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Ford. In this sense, current governments did not inherit just the military structure but also a business platform that dominates production and the raw materials market. “The principal similarity between the military government and what we are currently living is the development perspective, which means thinking about natural resources as infinite and readily available. In order to make a country grow economically, the amount of territory that is occupied for economic projects must increase,” Brighenti said.
Another similarity is the relationship that they establish with communities. “It could be said that there is no dialogue,” Brighenti said. “The government makes a decision and all that is left for the communities to do is to hand over their territories in the name of these initiatives. Trying to keep indigenous communities quiet is a recurring action in the sense that these populations are seen as barriers to the establishment of these projects … thus, the continuance of a militaristic mentality is explicit – proceed with development and stop the protests of those who are affected.”
An essential point that sets the period of the dictatorship apart from progressive governments is the source of financing for the projects. “Today the works are financed with public resources, through the National Economic and Social Development Bank, which is the principal funder of these megaprojects, while under the military dictatorship they were financed by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank,” he said.
In 2013, the Brazilian government published an order that allowed the intervention of the Armed Forces in protests against development projects. That same year, the military police in southern Brazil killed an indigenous Terena man and wounded others in the fulfillment of an order to re-take the land that the Terena had reclaimed as part of their ancestral territories. This was disputed by Ricardo Bacha, a former congressman from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party, who said that the lands had belonged to his family since 1927.
Similarly, at the request of the ex-governor of Bahia, Jaques Wagner, who is the current defense minister of Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff signed in 2014 an authorization by the federal government to dispatch close to 500 military personnel to the Tupinambá territory, alleging that his objective was the “guarantee of law and order” and to “pacify” the region. To this very day, the Tupinambá region continues to be militarized.
Since 2010, indigenous people have intensified the re-taking of their lands in a process of self-demarcation. (Photo: Santiago Navarro F.)
Institutional Violence Against Indigenous Communities
The assassinations are just the tip of the iceberg. Among the constitutional amendments that are being debated in Brazil’s Congress is PEC-215, which transfers the power to decide the demarcation of indigenous territories to the legislative branch, when it has historically been in the hands of the executive branch. The amendment would leave indigenous people in the hands of Congress and the Senate, which are primarily made up of the family members of large businessmen and the owners of huge extensions of land.
“These proposed constitutional amendments favor a group of 264 parliamentarians of Brazil’s Congress, who have received campaign financing from multinational corporations, such as Monsanto, Cargill, Bunge and Syngenta. PEC-215 favors the expansion of big agriculture, using the discourse of food production, but Brazil’s food is produced by small-scale producers,” Lindomar, of the Terena people, told Truthout.
The principal cause of the conflicts, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council, is the negation on the part of the Brazilian government to recognize and demarcate indigenous territories. In 2014, of the almost 600 indigenous territories currently claimed by different groups, only two were recognized (Xeta Herarekã, in the state of Paraná, and Xakriabá, in the state of Minas Gerais) and one was approved (Paquicamba, in the state of Pará). The current government of the Workers Party, led by Dilma Rousseff, is that which has demarcated the fewest indigenous lands since the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil.
In the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, the state with the highest rates of violence against indigenous people, communities live on the edges of highways, in precarious living conditions. The recognition of indigenous territories was outlined in an agreement that was signed in 2007 by the National Indigenous Foundation, a government agency, which later broke the agreement. Even if the demarcation had gone into effect, indigenous people would only occupy 2 percent of the state, in one of the regions of Brazil where the largest number of indigenous people reside.
Resisting the Old Development Model
According to Brighenti, since the start of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) administration, indigenous people have expressed to the government that they wanted to share their knowledge and practices with the new administration. “But the government ignored them, and what’s worse, Lula declared that Brazil needed to overcome three great obstacles to development, including indigenous groups, environmental laws and the Federal Public Ministry,” he said. “Thus, since the beginning, he made it clear that for the indigenous movement and its allies, the government had chosen a different model and aligned himself with other sectors that are unfortunately at odds with indigenous groups, big agro-industry.”
Indigenous people realized that they needed to come together to avoid losing their rights. “Few social and union movements supported them. Each social movement defined its relationship with the government and indigenous people were many times criticized for their radicalness,” Brighenti added.
Indigenous lands in Brazil, as recognized by the federal government, are property of the government. Indigenous people can possess and use the land, with the exception of the subsoil and water resources. “It is necessary to advance in the sense of constructing autonomous communities, which does not mean independence, but the freedom to decide their own future,” Brighenti said.
Even with the demarcation of indigenous territories, there is no assurance against intervention in indigenous lands, since the law allows for the intervention of the federal government at any time because the lands are considered property of the government.
“All the government projects are threatening to us and the entire Amazon,” María Leus, an indigenous Munduruku woman, told Truthout. “We do not accept any negotiation with the government, because we cannot make negotiations regarding our mother and because we do not accept any of these projects that are going to affect us. We have always been here: These are the lands of our ancestors, and today we continuing fighting for the respect for our way of life, because governments have never respected how we live, and today they are devastating what is left of our lands in order to continue with their projects.”
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission.
by DGR News Service | Aug 13, 2015 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
This interview was conducted by Derrick Jensen for his Resistance Radio series. Find options to listen to this interview, or any in the series, at the Resistance Radio archive.
Dahr Jamail is an award winning journalist and author who is a full-time staff reporter for Truthout.org. His work is currently focusing on Anthropogenic Climate Disruption. We discuss the harm caused by massive military maneuvers off of Alaska.
Derrick Jensen: Something terrible is happening off the coast of Alaska. Can you tell me about that?
Dahr Jamail: The Navy is poised to begin what they call Northern Edge, a huge, joint exercise they’re doing in conjunction with the Air Force, Marines and Army. The Navy’s aspect is going to focus in a huge area – over 8,000 square nautical miles, off the coast of Alaska, between Cordova and Kodiak. In this giant rectangle they’re permitted to conduct active and passive sonar, weapons testing, and live-fire exercises, including bombs, missiles, bullets and torpedoes. It starts June 15th and continues for at least two weeks. They’re permitted to continue doing this year after year. Plans are in the works for them to request permits up to 2030.
What’s really troubling about this, aside from the obvious, is that the area in question is critical habitat for all five Alaska salmon species, as well as almost a dozen whale species, including the highly endangered North Pacific Right Whale, of which there are only about 30 left. It also includes dolphins and sea lions and hundreds of other marine species in the area. There are a dozen native tribes living along coastal Alaska who are going to be directly impacted by their subsistence living being damaged and poisoned: destroyed. Some of those tribes include the Eskimo, the Eyak, the Athabaskans, Tlingit, and the Shungnak and Aleut tribes,
There have been and continue to be uprisings in the communities in coastal Alaska against this. For example, the cities of both Kodiak and Cordova have passed resolutions opposing the Navy’s plans, but the Navy has basically thumbed their noses at these voices of protest and are loading up their bombs.
D.J.: How is this going to harm the creatures who live there?
Dahr J.: The Navy is permitted to release as much as 352,000 pounds of what they call ‘expended material’ every year. That includes the live munitions that I mentioned ― missiles, bombs, torpedoes, etc. ― but also other types of things that will be released into the marine environment. Just by way of example, one of the propellants in one of the missiles and torpedoes they want to use contains cyanide. The EPA’s ‘allowable’ limit of cyanide is one part per billion, and the type of cyanide in the Navy torpedo is going to be introducing cyanide into the waters of Alaska in the range of 140 to 150 parts per billion.
Other impacts include ‘takes’, which are basically a military bureaucratic way of covering over a death. The Navy’s own Environmental Impact Statement estimates that over the five-year period that their war games are going to be conducted, there will be over 182,000 takes.
There are two ways they’ll be killing marine mammals. First is direct impact of them literally being exploded by bombs or shot by bullets or internally hemorrhaged by massive sonar. Secondarily, essential behaviors will be disrupted like surfacing or having babies or nursing.
Over a dozen large ships will be roaming the area, preventing fisherfolks from using it. Natives relying on that area for subsistence fishing and living will not be able to carry that out.
D.J.: You mentioned sonar. Can you talk more about that?
Dahr J.: It’s not your average sonar that a transport vessel or a fisherperson might use to navigate or to track the depth of the water. We’re talking about weapons grade sonar. The Navy regularly conducts underwater sonar weapons testing. They’re developing different types of sonar that they’ve weaponized to use to knock out communications and electronics, and I think they’re aiming towards killing humans in Navy vessels from other countries.
The NRDC won a lawsuit against the Navy down off Southern California for using this type of sonar. They showed the Navy was knowingly, deleteriously impacting over nine million different marine biota ― fish, whales, etc. ― by the use of this sonar. There are well-documented cases around the globe of pods of whales, dolphins, etc., that get hit by this sonar, and then these mammals wash up on the shore. A lot of times you’ll see their ear drums are exploded and it causes internal hemorrhaging. There have been cases of dolphins washing up, literally with blood coming out of their heads because they happened to have been where the Navy is using this type of weapons grade sonar.
To be clear, this sonar is powerful enough to literally explode the eardrums of whales and dolphins. That is how these mammals communicate; that is how they navigate; having that ability destroyed or compromised in any way basically means these mammals are going to die. And when the Navy is using it in a way that literally explodes their internal organs to the point where blood is coming out of their head that gives you an idea of how powerful it is.
D.J.: Here is something I wrote in Endgame about a National Science Foundation ship that was using air guns to fire sonic blasts of up to 260 dB, to use for mapping the ocean floor: “Damage to human hearing begins at 85 dB, a police siren at 30 meters is 100 dB. And decibels are logarithmic, meaning that every 10 dB increase translates to ten times more intensity. And sounds ― because human perception is also logarithmic ― twice as loud.
So what that means is that the blast from those research vessels was ten quadrillion times more intense than a siren at 30 meters, and would sound to humans 16,384 times as loud. The sound of a jet taking off at 600 meters is 110 dB, a rock concert is 120 dB, and whales and other creatures are subjected to sounds 100 trillion times more intense than that. The threshold at which humans die from sound is 160dB.”
Dahr J.: That gives people an idea of what we’re talking about: the military developing sound to use it as a weapon. As though the oceans aren’t already suffering enough, from the extreme amount of plastic pollution you’ve written and talked about for decades that’s now insidious around all the oceans on the planet, to acidification from rising temperatures.
And now on top of that, the military decides to go and use bombs and use sound weapons up in some of the most pristine waters on the planet outside of Antarctica. Bear in mind, these waters are at the end of an undersea current that is an upwelling, and this water is a thousand years old. This is why Alaska salmon are so prized, because they are a clean fish, they’re pure, and the Alaska salmon brand relies on it. Not to commercialize this, but it’s important to think about in regards to the people in Alaska relying so heavily on the salmon for both subsistence and to earn a living up there. All of that is being compromised.
The Navy’s action is creating some interesting collaborations between people across the political spectrum that normally wouldn’t mix.
D.J.: Leaving aside this culture’s death urge, why is the military doing this? What is their rationale?
Dahr J.: I mentioned in my article, Destroying What Remains: How the US Navy Plans to War Game the Arctic, that the Navy is increasingly focused on possible climate change wars up in the melting waters of the Arctic. In that context, it has no intentions of caretaking the environment when conducting its military exercises.
This connection was made amazingly clear to me in the course of writing this piece. I was in Alaska getting the ground data for this story, doing interviews. I went to Cordova, went over to Kodiak, passed through Anchorage, talking to people all along the way, and then I came back home to Washington State to write.
I live on Puget Sound, right on the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I’m writing this story about the impending Naval exercise up in the Gulf of Alaska, the largest of its kind in the more than 30 years the Navy has been doing them in that area. Meanwhile, about two miles from my house, out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Shell is bringing their giant drilling rig over to the port of Seattle where it’s going to tie up. So we have the military exercises at the same time they’re positioning these rigs in Seattle, getting them ready to take up to Alaska to start drilling.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the writing on the wall as to the timings of these. It’s not a coincidence. The Navy is getting ready to protect so-called US interests to go up into the Arctic. They’re racing Russia; they’re racing Scandinavian countries. Basically anyone who has any kind of border with the Arctic is in full preparation to go up there, in a race for what’s left, to try to tap into the oil that’s been inaccessible under the ice.
Over a year ago I wrote about the Navy conducting their own study and estimating we would see ice-free periods in the summer in the Arctic starting by 2016. A couple of weeks ago, the current satellite data mapping Arctic ice, both in extent and volume, showed Arctic ice at its lowest volume on record. So it’s certainly possible that by late summer of 2016, meaning late August, early September, we’ll see ice-free periods.
So that’s the context in which all of this is happening. The military is getting ready. That’s why there’s this massive uptick in war-gaming across the entire country ― not just the Navy, but on land, the Air Force is doing things, the Marines are doing things ― because the military is positioning itself for potential war against Russia and China, but also, the race for the Arctic resources is clearly very high on their agenda.
D.J.: This is a great example of something I’ve long thought: that this culture will not have a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. Instead of being horrified that the Arctic will soon be ice-free, they are looking at it with what can only be deemed ‘lust’ for the resources that will be made available. I find it impossible to express through words the disgust, contempt, and hatred that that makes me feel.
Dahr J.: One reason I wanted to do this article was that I lived up in Anchorage for ten years. That’s where I was living when the Iraq war broke out, and my work as a journalist is ultimately what brought me to move out of Alaska. But I love the state, meaning I love the nature there, and I loved going into the mountains and camping and climbing, and going out on boats with people into the waters. I reveled in the powerful natural beauty of the state. And of course, that includes the oceans and the marine mammals. When I learned of the Navy’s plans, I wanted to go up there and report on it, kind of out of a protective urge for this place that is so close to my heart. And when I was up there working on this story and talking to all these people who were going to be impacted by these Navy exercises, I felt that same kind of anger.
Or maybe first I just felt mystified: not only are we going off the cliff as a species, because of the industrial growth society and what it’s done to the planet and what it’s doing and continues to do, but we’re accelerating! The planet is showing us every distress signal it possibly can; we’re watching huge parts of the ecosystem die, increasingly vast numbers of species go extinct, even more and more public awareness of the possibility of our own species rendering itself extinct; but instead of taking a precautionary approach, slowing down, pausing a minute to think that maybe what we’re doing isn’t the best thing, it’s ‘let’s accelerate as fast as possible’ into this dark, death-giving future of ‘we’re going to war game, we’re going to drop more ordinance, we’re going to get ready to go into one of the most pristine areas left on the planet, pollute it like it’s never been polluted before, all for the sake of drilling it, sucking out more oil that shouldn’t even be burned in the first place, because it’s only going to further accelerate what we’re already doing to the planet!’ It really is stupefying; it’s almost beyond imagination. It’s something out of a really bad sci-fi novel, but, unfortunately, it’s the reality.
D.J.: Can we talk now about some of those surprising alliances you mentioned?
Dahr J.: There have been many. For example, the commercial fishing community in Alaska aren’t known for being ‘lefty/greeny’ environmentalists. They’re there to catch the maximum amount of fish allowed by law every season, and make as much money as they can. But when this news of the Navy’s plans started to spread around coastal Alaska, people from these very, very politically conservative fisherfolk across two different unions in the state started to band together, and literally everyone I spoke with about the Navy exercise ― every fisherperson, every person in the fishermen’s union across the state ― was opposed to the Navy’s plans.
And when the Navy played the national security card, saying they’re doing this to protect the state and the waters, the people in Alaska called B.S. Not just environmentalists, but people from all these other groups from the Alaska Marine Conservation Council to the Alaskans First! Coalition to fishermen’s unions to everyone banding together and saying look, we’re absolutely opposed to this.
It’s hard to find a silver lining to this story, but if there is one, that might be it: we’re starting to witness a coalescing of groups across the political spectrum who are seeing the madness perpetrated by the industrial growth society and who are starting to stand up against it together.
D.J.: Are people making that connection between these destructive activities and the industrial growth society? And were they making the connections that you were making, about how we’re going over a cliff and just accelerating?
Dahr J.: Not so much, unfortunately.. One of the most important voices in the story, however, does. Emily Stolarcyk works for the Eyak Preservation Council out of Cordova. It’s an environmental and social justice non-profit with a primary aim to protect wild salmon habitat, period.
Emily sees the bigger picture. She’s gone out of her way to sound the alarm bell on this and has therefore, of course, been targeted by the government of Alaska and the Navy itself. People are really coming after her now.
Unfortunately, the average person I spoke with tended not to see beyond the immediate economic impact. For a lot of folks, their prime motivation was not losing the Alaska salmon brand, in that they can’t have news come out that the salmon are contaminated in any way, because if that market tanks, they’re in big trouble.
D.J.: How is she being targeted?
Dahr J.: For example, the Navy has tried to discredit her, even though she has gone out of her way to quote directly from the Navy’s own Environmental Impact Statement. It’s online, people can look it up themselves, and she literally is using quotes. The Navy tells people she is not giving accurate information, that she’s inflating figures, and so on. The military is deified by mainstream America and by the corporate media as a benevolent force that is only there to protect us. Of course that’s absolute nonsense, but because of that misperception, most people still tend to believe the military.
Emily has also been targeted by Senator Lisa Murkowski, a hardcore right-wing, anti-environment, pro-corporate profit, pro-fossil fuel industry, pro-military senator up there in Alaska. She sent the state fisheries person down to meet with Emily. The fisheries person called Emily on her personal cell phone at night to cuss her out and threaten her. It was bad enough he later emailed her an apology for it. So there have been bellicose threats, bellicose language used against her from this person, and from the Navy itself.
The Navy has found anyone in these communities who could potentially be on their side and actively worked to turn them against Emily Stolarcyk and the Eyak Preservation Council. They’ve demonized them, putting out false statements, trying to make it seem the Eyak Preservation Council isn’t actually working for their stated purpose of preserving critical salmon habitat. Basically negative propaganda campaigns run against her and the organization she works for.
D.J.: How can people support her?
Dahr J: Other people need to take up the fight against the Navy. They need to get up on the facts of the story, understand what the Navy is planning on doing, and join in the fight. They don’t necessarily need to come work alongside Emily Stolarcyk, but to understand the relevance of her work and the importance of it. These types of Navy war games are happening off the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California, and have been for a long time. So, anyone in proximity to those coasts, this is our fight, too. And all of us need to be talking about this, all of us need to be getting this into the media and getting as many activists involved as possible, people who might have other ideas about how they can help.
D.J.: You mentioned Lisa Murkowski. Is the problem there individual politicians, that if she were replaced these atrocities might not occur? Or is the problem more institutional, and widespread?
Dahr J.: Lisa Murkowski is of course terrible, as is Congressman Don Young. No matter what, those two are always full steam ahead with anything the military and the fossil fuel industry want. They are villains in this story: they are actively working against the interest of nature and the planet in every possible, conceivable way. But the problem really is institutional.
Let’s use Washington state as a case study. Governor Jay Inslee paints himself as the ‘green’ governor, and when I first moved here I thought, ‘yeah, this guy is doing a lot of good stuff. He’s taking the climate change issue head on, he’s saying a lot of the right things and sometimes doing some of the right things.’
But because of how deeply embedded the military is in this state and how much money the state gets from their presence, this is a governor who knowingly accepts what the Navy is doing here. He refuses to take a stance directly against the wargaming that’s already going on here or against future wargame plans for the state of Washington, and is basically in their back pocket. The same for Derek Kilmer, one of the representatives here. And the same is true for numerous other political so-called representatives.
I’m sure the same can be said for California. I think many people hear about these military exercises, and think, “The Democrats are in charge, and they wouldn’t do this.” But political party is irrelevant in this story with the military. The military is so embedded in these states and there’s so much money being brought into the states by their presence that you’d be hard-pressed to find a political so-called representative who is not on the take. That gives you an idea why there isn’t any real political pushback against these exercises.
D.J.: We all know that the military is a form for massive corporate welfare. It’s a giant Keynesian stimulus. And we all know capitalism relies on subsidies. But that always leads to the question: why can’t they just subsidize nice things instead of bad things?
During the 1970s, liberal George McGovern asked somebody at one of the military contractors, “Since all you care about is making money, could we just subsidize your corporation to make school buses instead of bombers? Would you do that?”
The military contractor said, “Sure!” and then they both burst out laughing because they knew that Congress would never allow that in the budget.
Dahr J.: At this point the US military is in the final stage of empire. When we look through history, empires use numerous ways to maintain control and power. There’s the economy, there’s propaganda, there are appeals to people’s morality, etc. The final stage – and the weakest and the shortest – is using military might, pushing the military frontiers out as far as possible and putting all their resources into maintaining and growing the military. Then they collapse relatively shortly thereafter. That’s exactly what the US is doing.
Today, while we do this interview, we have news of them setting up yet another new US base in Iraq and sending more troops over there. Domestic military exercises are pushing new bounds of what’s ever been done before, looking at expanding up into the Arctic, and preparing for war gaming against Russia and China in the future.
Over 50% of all US taxpayer money is going directly to the Pentagon in one way or another. I think that underscores what you just said, Derrick, about the preposterous idea that something could be done differently. I don’t think anyone in the government could really take seriously any attempts to significantly defund the military. At this stage of the game everyone understands the military is the final weapon the US government is using geopolitically at this point. I think anyone who challenges that and thinks they’re going to change how the government and economy function at this stage of the game is not living in reality.
D.J.: Apart from the environmental degradation, do we know the numbers on how much this military exercise is going to cost?
Dahr J.: No. The military is very careful not to release total figures of these types of exercises. You always have to try to puzzle figures out from hints. For example, the Navy is trying to push through electromagnetic warfare training out on the Olympic Peninsula, planning on starting early next year. They want to use these jet aircraft called Growlers, maybe because they’re the loudest aircraft ever built. Extremely loud – ear-splittingly loud.
To fly one of those costs over $12,000 an hour. That’s just one jet. That’s not a war ship. It’s difficult to get the numbers, but I think it’s safe to say that a two-week joint military exercise involving a dozen ships, however many aircraft are going to be on those ships, all the personnel, all the weapons that are going to be used, all the fuel burned, will very easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
D.J.: What can people do if they are in Alaska or elsewhere, to prevent this from happening again?
Dahr J.: People need to recognize this is happening not just in and around Alaska, but all over. There’s a massive domestic military expansion happening everywhere. People need to become aware of this and make others aware of it. They need to get this information out there. And then they need to start raising hell. They need to start fighting it.
We’re starting to see people standing up, and we’re starting to see them work together.
This whole struggle dovetails with what’s happening in the battles against the pipelines and against fracking that we’re seeing down in Texas now, and across the Midwest, where really interesting alliances are being formed between some pretty right-wing political groups as well as some pretty hard-core left-leaning groups of environmentalists and other activists.
Just like those movements draw these alliances, people who are opposed to this military expansion—and that should be all of us—need to work together to stop this. People need to get involved. The sooner the better.
