by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 22, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Elias Cabrera / Inter Press Service & Corpwatch
A thick fog flows over the eastern range of the Colombian Andes. Here and there, the constant wind lifts the clouds to reveal lagoons, cloud forests, and páramo, an Andean alpine ecosystem known as a “mountaintop sponge” for its massive water-holding capacity.
Descending lower into the Upper Magdalena Valley, about 400 kilometres southwest of Bogotá, rural communities farm a wide variety of fruit and vegetable crops, and raise animals that not only sustain families, but help feed Colombia’s major cities.
In the municipal districts of Gigante and Garzón in the department (province) of Huila, the bucolic setting is interrupted by the platforms of several oil wells belonging to Emerald Energy PLC.
Emerald Energy, founded in London in 1996, was awarded its first exploration permit for the Matambo Bloc in Gigante. (Governments typically auction off oil exploration rights on specific parcels of land known as blocks or blocs.)
On Aug. 9, 2011, the Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development issued Environmental License 1609 to Emerald Energy, allowing it to install five new platforms and three oil wells in the VSM 32 Bloc, adjacent and uphill of the Matambo Bloc.
Four months after the permit was authorised, campesinos opposing the project gathered in the farming village of Zuluaga.
“I believe we are all united here because of the Emerald’s crude behaviour within our region,” said Luis Jorge Sanchez Garcia, Huila’s former governor. “It is vital that we unite to protect our natural resources from oil development, (and) in particular protect our water. If some disaster happens, it will not affect just the countryside where the operations are; it will affect our entire region.”
“Emerald Energy is destroying the land and water,” Armando Acuña, a municipal council member from Garzón, told CorpWatch. “Their exploration, with underground explosions is causing landslides and the ground to sink, homes, and crops are being destroyed and we are losing our water.”
Communities defend Matambo
Unique to the Americas, páramo are mostly found in the Andes Mountains, with more than 60 percent occurring in Colombia. The vegetation, a unique mixture of lichens, mosses, algae and grasses, has incredible water retention capacity, birthing major rivers such as the Orinoco, Magdalena and Amazon.
The Matambo Bloc, which sits below the páramo in the Magdalena Valley, gets its name from a mountain in the shape of the face of a giant who, according to local legend, will one day arise from the earth.
Since the Matambo Bloc was opened, the region encompassed by the operations has seen a steady deterioration of its land and water, according to the Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG).
In 2000, two years after the Gigante 1 well was drilled to 4,815 metres, “there was an explosion that resulted in a fire that burned for 25 days with a flame that was about 30 meters high, shutting down operations,” Jorge Enrique Alvarado, a municipal council member, told CorpWatch.
“This whole area had a dense hazy cloud over it during that whole month and the area nearby had all sorts of burnt oil and ash accumulated on their crops, cattle and fish ponds.”
In early January, the communities affected by Emerald Energy attempted to stop Emerald’s expansion.
“As of November 2011 we have been blocking the entrance to all operations in VSM 32 Bloc, and do not intend to allow any machinery to enter,” said Alberto Calderon, a member of Intersectorial Association of Gigante & Garzón (AISEG), at a public roundtable that followed the blockade.
The middle-aged farmer lives with his wife, two children and some cows and chickens on a small, self-sufficient farm that produces coffee, avocados, onions, and cacao. His land borders Emerald’s oil well Iskana 1.
“Nothing they have brought us has helped us,” he said of Emerald. “Our rivers are drying. They foment divisions within the community, and our youth do not want to work the land after they have worked for the company.”
Read more from Inter Press Service: https://web.archive.org/web/20120328214541/http://www.ipsnews.net:80/news.asp?idnews=107155
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 21, 2012 | Climate Change
By Agence France-Presse
Greenhouse gases are likely to result in annual costs of nearly $2 trillion in damage to the oceans by 2100, according to a new Swedish study.
The estimate by the Stockholm Environment Institute is based on the assumption that climate-altering carbon emissions continue their upward spiral without a pause.
Warmer seas will lead to greater acidification and oxygen loss, hitting fisheries and coral reefs, it warns.
Rising sea levels and storms will boost the risk of flood damage, especially around the coastlines of Africa and Asia, it adds.
Projecting forward using a business-as-usual scenario, the Earth’s global temperature will rise by four degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, says the report, “Valuing the Ocean.”
On this basis, the cost in 2050 will be $428 billion annually, or 0.25 percent of global domestic product (GDP).
By 2100, the cost would rise to $1,979 billion, or 0.37 percent of output.
If emissions take a lower track, and warming is limited to 2.2 C (4 F), the cost in 2050 would be $105 billion, or 0.06 percent of worldwide GDP, rising to $612 billion, or 0.11 percent, by 2100.
“This is not a scaremongering forecast,” says the report.
It cautions that these figures do not take into account the bill for small island states swamped by rising seas. Nor do they include the impact of warming on the ocean’s basic processes, such as nutrient recycling, which are essential to life.
“The ocean has always been thought of as the epitome of unconquerable, inexhaustible vastness and variety, but this ‘plenty more fish in the sea’ image may be its worst enemy,” notes the report.
From PhysOrg: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-ocean-climate-trillion.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 15, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Eleven top scientists have slammed a proposed palm oil plantation in a Cameroonian rainforest surrounded by five protected areas. In an open letter, the researchers allege that Herakles Farm, which proposes the 70,000 hectare plantation in southwest Cameroon, has misled the government about the state of the forest to be cleared and has violated rules set by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), of which it’s a member. The scientists, many of whom are considered leaders in their field, argue that the plantation will destroy rich forests, imperil endangered species, and sow conflict with local people.
“You can’t just cut the heart out of this area and then expect everything to be fine,” says signatory Thomas Struhsaker, an expert on African primates and rainforest ecology at Duke University. “If this project proceeds the parks will become islands, surrounded by a hostile sea of oil palm.”
The scientists say they are not against palm oil plantations in principle. While the oilseed is the world’s most productive, it has come with a considerable ecological cost in Southeast Asia due to its link to deforestation in the region. Recently, the expansion has spread to Latin America and West Africa.
“We do not dispute that when oil palm plantations are established on previously deforested or abandoned lands and do not degrade nearby biologically rich areas, their environmental costs can be acceptable,” the letter reads. “The project proponents, however, have located their concession in the midst of a biodiversity hotspot on land that buffers and provides vital support functions to Korup and Bakossi National Parks, Rumpi Hills Forest Reserve, and Banyang Mbo Wildlife Sanctuary.”
Korup National Park alone is home to over 600 species of trees, nearly 200 reptiles and amphibians, around 1,000 butterflies, 400 species of birds, and 160 species of mammals, including one of the richest assemblages of primates in the world. Fourteen primates are found in the single park, including the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti), the most imperiled of the world’s chimpanzee subspecies. Forest elephants, leopards, and forest buffalo also roam the park.
Tropical ecologist and letter signatory, William Laurance of James Cook University says the region represents “some of the world’s most biologically important real estate,” adding that, “There’s no way a project like this would be allowed in most countries, because the price for biodiversity is just too high.”
A spokesperson from Herakles Farm told mongabay.com, “we certainly value the environment and biodiversity in the Southwest Region of Cameroon and laud the establishment of the protected areas around our concession,” pointing to a 28-page sustainability guide. In the guide the company describes its forest concession quite differently than Laurance, stating that it is “heavily exploited” secondary forest and therefore of “low biodiversity value.”
But in the letter, the scientists contend that Herakles Farms has misled Cameroon’s government about the state of the forest they propose to clear.
“[Herakles Farm] claims that the ‘vast majority of the concession is secondary and degraded forest’ and that the concession area was selected because it was located on ‘land that had been previously logged,'” reads the letter. But the scientists say that parts of the region have never seen logging, and, in addition, almost three-fourths of the palm oil concession currently has at least 70 percent natural tree cover, about the same as the world-renowned Korup National Park.
Read more from Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0315-hance_herakles_letter.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 15, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Katy Ashe / Mongabay
On the back of a partially functioning motorcycle I fly down miles of winding footpath at high-speed through the dense Amazon rainforest, the driver never able to see more than several feet ahead. Myriads of bizarre creatures lie camouflaged amongst the dense vines and lush foliage; flocks of parrots fly overhead in rainbows of color; a moss-covered three-toed sloth dangles from an overhanging branch; a troop of red howler monkeys rumble continuously in the background; leafcutter ants form miles of crawling highways across the forest floor. Even the hot, wet air feels alive.
Suddenly, the forest stops. Bone dry, dusty air burns my nostrils. The harsh equatorial sun, no longer filtered through layers of canopy and understory vegetation, beats down with full force. We are in a vast expanse of sandy desert, the tree line barely visible on the other side. The scar of deforestation reaches miles into the horizon.
An apocalyptic scene unfolds. Enormous muddy craters pepper the sandy terrain, filled with makeshift mining rigs. Illegal gold-miners in tattered clothing stand beside deafening rickety motors sucking earthen slurry through large hoses. Their faces are covered in motor oil and dirt, and they slump wearily from eighteen-hour days. Packs of men holler from the pits as I pass, misinterpreting me as a new prostitute for the camp.
This is the scene I pass through each morning on my way into the illegal gold-mining zones of Madre de Dios, Peru. Being a Stanford University graduate student in environmental engineering, I came to this region of the upper Amazon to study the mercury levels in the human population. These illegal mines use mercury to scavenge tiny flecks and pebbles of gold dust out of the slurry.
Mercury is being released in quantities of around 40 tons each year in this region. The detrimental toxin makes its way into the food, water and air that sustains the diverse peoples and animals found here. It is touching all life in this basin; poisoning even those that have no part in the mining industry and live nowhere near a mining zone. I was intent on determining the extent of mercury poisoning caused by the dramatically increasing mining activity.
Located in the western Amazon Basin, this is one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet. Home to some of the most unspoiled tracts of Amazon Rainforest remaining; it is a vibrant sanctuary of species. Unfortunately, it is rapidly disappearing as artisanal gold-mining has become a booming industry in the past several years. The global market price for gold has doubled in the past year alone, with skyrocketing prices fueled by fear during the global economy crisis.
Record high prices for gold have led to a boom in illegal gold mining in Peru; employing 100,000 people nationally and valued at $640 million a year. A poor migrant population, typically from the Peruvian highlands is flocking predominantly to this region of the Amazon Rainforest; there are approximately 300 new arrivals to the region each day, typically looking for work in gold mining. The government verifies that 2,000 square miles (over 500,000 hectares) of rainforest in Madre de Dios have been destroyed to date due to mining, but the environment groups on the ground claim the figure is actually threefold. The exact number is hard to pin down as the rate of deforestation has more than tripled in the last three years.
The mining zones are the Wild West in the worst possible way. The seemingly endless winding avenues of shanty towns sprawl out across the center of the mining zones; filled with makeshift abodes, brothels, restaurants, night clubs all constructed of black and blue tarps. Cities set up nearly overnight, and by morning the residents are hastily destroying one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet.
The immediate devastation is obvious: slash and burned forest, river channels with heaping rubble, sluiceways through which thousands of tons of Amazon soil are blasted with high-pressure water hoses.
Drunkards stumble down the main corridors at all hours of the day. Women sit out front of the brothels in plastic lawn chairs, lazily advertising their respective tents. Infants splash in the mercury-contaminated mining ponds as children throw rusted metal objects at each other. I grab a jagged, rusty, iron hoop from a toddler boy, only to be reprimanded by his mother for stealing his toy.
I come from a world where a broken mercury thermometer in my high school classroom spurred evacuation for the afternoon and extensive cleaning by people in hazmat suits. This child lives in a world where mercury is often viewed as an acceptable laxative–the incredible weight of mercury essentially pushes everything out of your digestive tract.
Mercury has been used in gold mining since the time of the Inca. But the releases that we are seeing now are devastating. Unfortunately, there is little knowledge in the mining camps about how to properly use mercury. They hold mercury in their bare hands and mix the toxic metal into buckets of dirt with their bare feet. Once they’ve recovered the mercury-gold mixture from the dirt, they heat the mercury off of the gold in a frying pan over an open flame, causing it to turn into a vapor form that is incredibly dangerous to breath. Local superstitions have led to rejection of mercury recycling technologies. The fact that mining this way is an illegal activity makes it nearly impossible to intervene with educational programs.
Read more from Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0315-ashe_goldmining_peru.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 12, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change
By Bari Bates
Our oceans face a grim outlook in the coming decades. Ocean acidification, loss of marine biodiversity, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources all point to the urgent need for a new paradigm on caring for the earth’s oceans—”business as usual” is simply not an option anymore, experts say.
The extreme rate of acidification – the term used to describe the decrease in ocean pH levels caused by man-made CO2 emissions – has happened before, Carol Turley of Plymouth Marine Laboratory said, a claim that might have been comforting if she hadn’t been referring to the time when dinosaurs died out.
This is a “huge environmental crisis,” she told attendees at an information session at European Parliament this month, addressing challenges and solutions for the world’s oceans months ahead of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, slated to be held in Brazil in June.
Turley joked that she’s often called the “acid queen” because of her bleak message, though the plight of more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface is not in the least bit humorous.
Each year, the ocean absorbs roughly 26 percent of total CO2 emissions, which have increased by 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1750, according to the International Ocean Acidification Reference User Group.
Ocean acidification affects marine life with calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, making them sensitive to even small changes in acidity. Acidification also reduces the availability of calcium for plankton and shelled species, which constitute the base of the entire marine food chain, creating a disastrous domino affect that could wipe out entire ecosystems.
“[The] earth system is truly under the influence of man,” said Wendy Watson-Wright, assistant director general and executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
The oceans could be 150 percent more acidic by 2100, she added. This means drastic decreases in yields from fisheries, and mass extinction of marine life.
The world is currently losing natural resources at a rate humans haven’t even begun to describe, she said.
Read more from Inter Press Service: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107042
Photo by SGR on Unsplash
