Featured image: On September 7, 2021, Water Protectors erected multiple blockades at a major U.S.-Canadian tar sands terminal in Clearbrook, Minnesota, in direct opposition to Enbridge’s Line 3. Courtesy of the Giniw Collective.
Amid record hurricanes, wildfires and droughts, battles are being waged over the fate of the Earth. Many of those battles are being fought by Indigenous people, and by others whose relationship to life, land and one another compels them to push back against an extractive, death-making economy that renders people and ecosystems disposable. On the front lines of the struggle to halt construction of Enbridge’s new Line 3 pipeline — which would bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wisconsin — Water Protectors have locked themselves to excavators and drills, and overturned cars and barrels of cement, while also deploying aerial blockades, including elaborate tripods and tree-sits. In scattered encampments that run along a 300-mile stretch of pipeline construction, a culture defined by mutual aid, and a spiritual and physical struggle to defend the Earth, has held strong in the face of brutality and an increasingly entrenched alliance between police and the corporate forces fueling climate catastrophe.
I recently spoke with Giniw Collective founder Tara Houska, a citizen of Couchiching First Nation, over a shaky internet connection, as she held space at the collective’s Namewag Camp in Minnesota. The camp, which is led by Indigenous women and two-spirit people, was founded by the Giniw Collective in 2018, as Minnesota’s final permit decision on Line 3 drew near. Houska says she invited Native matriarchs, including LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and Winona LaDuke, among others, to initiate the effort. “We laid out our prayers and our songs to begin this phase,” Houska told me.
Since then, the Namewag Camp, says Houska, has been “a home for many people.” Some people have spent years at the encampment, while others have held space for months, weeks or even a few days. “It really depends on the person or persons that are coming through,” says Houska. The culture of the camp emphasizes direct action, mutual aid and Native traditions. “We’ve trained well over 1000 folks in non-violent direct action, decolonization, traditional knowledge and life in balance,” says Houska. People who call the camp home are committed to stopping the pipeline, but Houska says making a home at Namewag also requires a commitment to mutual aid as a way of life. “I think we’re trying to create a balance, a place that is more reflective of balance, and deep values that are very much needed in the climate movement, and also just generally in the world,” Houska told me, adding that, “the first structure that was built in this camp was actually our sweat lodge.” The encampment also includes a “very large, beautiful garden.”
Houska was not always an activist on the front lines. “I started out as a D.C. lawyer back in 2013, after law school, and worked on a lot of different issues for tribal nations, and saw the treatment of our people on the hill, and through the law,” says Houska. She engaged with legal efforts to thwart the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and efforts to stop the project that would eventually be known as Line 3, but Houska ultimately felt called to fight for the Earth “in a different way.” Houska travelled to Standing Rock in 2016 and “spent six months out there learning and resisting.”
While some Water Protectors involved in the Line 3 protests carry lessons from Standing Rock, the two struggles have manifested differently. The movement in Standing Rock drew an unprecedented assemblage of Natives from over 300 federally recognized tribes, and other Indigenous and non-Indigenous co-strugglers. Thousands of people converged on a cluster of camps, the largest of which was known as Oceti Sakowin. Houska says a variety of nations and groups are also represented in the Line 3 struggle, but rather than being relatively centralized, Line 3 encampments are staggered across 334 miles of pipeline construction. “We also have been fighting this pipeline during a pandemic,” Houska noted, “which means a lot of caution and precaution around COVID-19 and making sure everyone is healthy and safe, and that we’re not putting anyone at risk.”
Line 3 opponents say the pipeline, once fully operational, would be the carbon pollution equivalent of 50 coal-fired power plants. As an editorial that will be published in 200 health journals worldwide this fall, ahead of the UN General Assembly and the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, states, “The greatest threat to global public health is the continued failure of world leaders to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5°C and to restore nature.”
The pipeline would also tunnel under 20 rivers, including the Mississippi, threatening the drinking water supply of millions of people. In 2010, 1.2 million gallons of oil spilled from Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline into the Kalamazoo River, in one of 800 oil spills the company experienced between 1999 and 2010.
While regulatory battles and legal maneuvers are crucial in any fight to stop a pipeline, Houska says that land defense, and the “building of a resistance community on the front lines” is an “under-respected, undervalued, but critical component to a healthy movement.” Houska says the work of building that communal effort, and sustaining it, has been “beautiful, hard, sad, [and] sometimes painful.” Houska explained: “Police have been getting pretty brutal in recent weeks. They’ve been shooting ‘less lethals’ at us, and using pain compliance tactics. So torturing people, really engaging in behaviors that are quite shocking, I think. Which means a lot of care, and community is really important for us on the front lines.”
Houska says sustaining the struggle also means making time to acknowledge “the hurt that we’re experiencing in real time” while also naming and uplifting “the reasons we’re engaging in struggle, [which is for] the littles, and those to come, and the four-legged and the winged, and the rivers, and the wild rice.”
Houska also notes that the violence of fossil fuel extraction embodies the longstanding violence of colonialism, with large influxes of transient workers at so-called “man camps” (temporary housing camps of mostly male pipeline construction workers) destroying the life-giving ecosystems that sustain Native communities, while also inflicting violence on Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. For years, Native leaders have sought to raise awareness about the measurable increase in sexual assaults, murders and disappearances of Native women in areas where “man camps” are established. To highlight this threat, Water Protectors hosted by the Giniw Collective’s camp recently staged a blockade action in front of the Line 3 “man camp,” in which an “all-BIPOC group of mostly Indigenous femmes [and] two-spirits” locked themselves to an overturned vehicle, and other equipment.
“Man camps” are the modern embodiment of colonial raiding parties that have historically seized upon Native land, looted Indigenous resources and inflicted sexual violence on Native women. Today, pipeline workers and police inflict the violence of colonialism on Indigenous people, enacting the true character of capitalism for the world to see, while relying on the public’s lack of concern for Native people and the environment as they commit atrocities in plain sight.
Houska says that land defense, and the “building of a resistance community on the front lines” is an “under-respected, undervalued, but critical component to a healthy movement.”
A war is being waged against land and water defenders in the U.S., just as a war is being waged globally against environmental activists, by corporations and world governments, in order to maintain the repetitions of capitalism: extraction, exploitation, destruction, disposal, and the consolidation of wealth and resources. Globally, violence against environmental activists has hit record highs in recent years, with Indigenous people facing disproportionately high rates of murder and brutality for their organizing. Indigenous people make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but steward over 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. In some parts of the world, such as Colombia and the Philippines, the assassination of Indigenous activists has become increasingly common. Here in the United States, Indigenous activists have faced escalating violence and criminalization while acting in opposition to pipeline construction and other extraction efforts.
While many people recoil from any discussion of the reality of climate change, catastrophes like Hurricane Ida, and the Dixie and Caldor fires in California, are making the subject harder to avoid. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 climate report, environmental catastrophes will continue to accelerate over the coming decades, but human beings still have something to say about the severity of the damage. Coming to terms with the existential threat of climate collapse can easily lead to distress and despair, but with so much at stake, it is imperative that we not only absorb statistics and haunting images of destruction, but also zero in on the front lines of struggles like the fight against Line 3, where Water Protectors are modeling a relationship with the Earth that could help guide us into a new era.
The Theft of Water
The Giniw Collective has been vocal about Enbridge’s overuse of local water supplies during an ongoing drought. Enbridge was initially authorized to pump about 510 million gallons of water out of the trenches it’s digging, but in June, the company claimed it had encountered more groundwater than it had anticipated, and obtained permission to pump up nearly 5 billion gallons of water, in order to complete the project. According to Line 3 opponents, Enbridge paid a fee of $150 to adjust its permit.
Giniw Collective members say it’s unconscionable that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources would allow Enbridge to displace so much water, particularly during a drought. “We’ve been in an extreme drought all summer long,” says Houska. “The rivers have been dry, the waterfalls are empty, and the wildfires have spread into Ontario and up on the north shore of Lake Superior.”
Activists organizing against Line 3 and members of the White Earth Nation argue that Enbridge’s voracious consumption of local groundwater threatens local wetlands, including cherished wild rice beds. “With higher than average temperatures and lower than average precipitation, displacing this amount of water will have a direct detrimental impact on the 2021 wild rice crop,” wrote Michael Fairbanks and Alan Roy, tribal chairman and secretary-treasurer of the White Earth Nation.
For refusing to embrace the death march of capitalism, and resisting the destruction of most life on Earth, two Line 3 opponents are being charged with attempted assisted suicide.
According to the UN, “By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water stressed conditions.” Scientific projections suggest that many regions of the U.S. may see their water supplies reduced by a third, even as they face increased demand for water due to a growing population. As world temperatures rise, and water scarcity continues to escalate, Enbridge is displacing 500 billion gallons of groundwater to build a pipeline that will transport 915,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil per day, threatening more than 200 water ecosystems — including 389 acres of wild rice, which are a source of sacred sustenance for the Anishinaabe.
The White Earth Nation has brought a “rights of nature” lawsuit against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, in an effort to defend wild rice, or manoomin, which means “good berry” in the Ojibwe language, against the destruction being waged by Enbridge. According to Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Ojibwe tribe, for the Ojibwe people, manoomin “is like a member of the family, a relative,” which means “legally designating manoomin as a person … aligns with the Ojibwe world view.” As Pember writes, “According to [the United Nations’ 6th Assessment on Climate Change], recognition of Indigenous rights, governance systems and laws are central to creating effective adaptation and sustainable development strategies that can save humanity from the impacts of climate change.”
The suit is only the second rights of nature case to be filed in the United States and the first to be filed in tribal court. But as Pember notes, “Several tribes, however, have incorporated rights of nature into their laws.”
According to the nonprofit organization Honor the Earth, “The proposed new oil pipelines in northern MN violate the treaty rights of the Anishinaabeg by endangering critical natural resources in the 1854, 1855, and 1867 treaty areas.” In a statement outlining the alleged treaty violations, Honor the Earth explains, “The pipelines threaten the culture, way of life, and physical survival of the Ojibwe people. Where there is wild rice, there are Anishinaabeg, and where there are Anishinaabeg, there is wild rice. It is our sacred food. Without it we will die. It’s that simple.”
Buying the Police
During the movement in Standing Rock, we saw that resistance to pipeline construction can generate significant costs for local governments. In 2018, Morton County Commissioner Cody Schulz claimed that protests that aimed to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) cost the county almost $40 million. But rather than serving as a deterrent to other municipalities considering pipeline permits, the cost of the NoDAPL protests have been leveraged by authorities to more blatantly merge the interests of police and oil companies.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission included a provision in Enbridge’s permit for the project that requires the company to establish an escrow trust that would reimburse local law enforcement for any mileage, wages, protective gear and training related to the construction of Line 3. In order to access the funds, law enforcement agencies submit requests for reimbursement to a state appointed account manager — a former deputy police chief — who approves or denies the requests. In April of 2020, The Minnesota Reformerreported that Enbridge had paid over $500,000 to local law enforcement in support of pipeline construction. That number has since ballooned to $2 million.
“The level of brutality that is experienced by Indigenous people and allies in struggle with us is extreme,” Houska told me. “About a month ago now, I was a part of a group that experienced rubber bullets and mace being fired at us at very, very close range,” said Houska. “I was hit several times, but I also witnessed young people with their heads split open, bleeding down their faces … and sheriffs have been using pain compliance on people, which is essentially torture. They dislocated someone’s jaw a couple weeks ago.”
“Living at Namewag shows us what a post-capitalist world could begin to look like.”
As Ella Fassler recently reported in Truthout, “More than 800 Water Protectors have been arrested or cited in the state since November 2020, when the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) approved the Line 3 permit.” The total number of arrests along Line 3, since November of 2020, has surpassed the total number of arrests during the Standing Rock protests, in which nearly 500 people were arrested. The charges Water Protectors and land defenders face are likewise escalating. According to the Pipeline Legal Action Network, 80 Water Protectors were charged with felonies during July and August of 2021, and as Mollie Wetherall, a legal support organizer with the legal action network told Fassler, “It’s clear that they really are in a moment where they want to intimidate people as the construction of this pipeline winds down.”
Direct actions similar to those that garnered misdemeanor charges two years ago have more recently led to felony charges. According to the Giniw Collective, which has bailed out hundreds of Water Protectors, individual bonds have often run between $10,000 and $25,000, making bail fundraising a crucial point of solidarity work.
Disturbingly, in late July, two Water Protectors were charged with felony assisted suicide for allegedly crawling into the pipeline as part of a lockdown action. Officials claim the pipeline was an estimated 130 degrees and lacked oxygen. The criminal complaint lodged against the two activists claims that they “did intentionally advise, encourage, or assist another who attempted but failed to take the other’s own life.” The charge of felony assisted suicide carries a 7-year prison sentence, $14,000 fine or both. If convicted, the Water Protectors could face up to 13 years behind bars.
For refusing to embrace the death march of capitalism, and resisting the destruction of most life on Earth, two Line 3 opponents are being charged with attempted assisted suicide. “These are 20, 21, 22-year-old people, who are literally chaining themselves to the machines, crawling inside of pipes, doing everything and anything they can to have a future,” says Houska. “And the charges being waged, like felony theft and felony assisted suicide for people who are trying to protect all life, [are] absolutely appalling, and a horrific reality of Water Protectors being imprisoned while the world burns around us.”
Members of Congress, including “the Squad,” signed a letter to President Biden on August 30, 2021, calling on the president to “uphold the rights guaranteed to Indigenous people under federal treaties and fulfill tribal requests for a government-to-government meeting concerning Line 3.” Among other concerns, the letter cited the troubling financial ties between Enbridge and local law enforcement, stating:
Law enforcement entities in the region have received around $2 million from Enbridge to pay for police activity against water protectors, which has included staggering levels of violence, tear gas, and rubber bullets. While Enbridge was required to pay these costs under project permits, leaders have noted they create a conflict of interest as law enforcement are incentivized to increase patrols and arrests surrounding pipeline construction.
Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar also hosted a press conference on September 3 to draw further attention to the struggle to stop Line 3, which included remarks from U.S. Representatives Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and Sen. Mary Kunesh-Podein. During the press conference, Omar declared, “The climate crisis is happening and the last thing we need to do is allow the very criminals who created this crisis to build more fossil fuel infrastructure.” Bush, Presseley, Tlaib and Kunesh-Podein also visited the Giniw Collective’s Namewag Camp to hear from Water Protectors firsthand about the struggle. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that she had planned to join the group as well, but her plans were derailed by the climate impacts of Hurricane Ida in her district.
Finding a Home on the Front Lines
Despite the brutality protectors have faced, people have continued to answer the call to head to the front lines. After years of engaging in solidarity actions at banks and financial institutions that are funding the construction of Line 3, one activist — who asked to be identified by the name Marla, so as not to facilitate state surveillance of her actions — left her job as a nanny in Chicago and headed to the front lines in May of 2021. “I had never seen a pipeline before,” Marla told me. “I had only done solidarity organizing up until this point. Land defense was something new entirely to me, but I knew that bank actions alone were not going to stop this pipeline.” Marla saw heading to the front lines as “a tangible way to show up as an accomplice for Indigenous sovereignty.”
While living at Namewag has meant bearing witness to police violence, deforestation and constant state surveillance, Marla says it has also meant experiencing “a microcosm of the world we all want to build.” Marla says the Giniw Collective’s camp “an incredible place to live in community and resistance.”
“Living at Namewag shows us what a post-capitalist world could begin to look like,” says Marla, “where labor is valued because it keeps our community safe, skilled up and fed from the land.” Marla says the camp is a place “to see accountability in action, to learn and unlearn, and do better.” While police and the surveillance state can be intimidating, Marla says, “We keep each other safe working overnight security shifts by night and supporting folks taking action by day.” Marla also describes the camp as a joyful place, even amid pain and struggle. “Cooking meals from the garden, living outside among the trees, washing the camp’s dishes, [providing] elder and childcare, and making space for joy — all of these things sustain us.”
“People have consistently been showing up for the struggle,” Houska told me. “And that is a beautiful thing to witness and be part of.” Houska says that almost 90 percent of Line 3 construction is now complete. “We are still resisting, in the face of that reality,” says Houska. “So, if you’re planning to show up, please show up with your heart, and your good intentions and do your best to find your way to the place that calls to you.” Houska also encourages supporters to “use whatever platform or voice and agency you have to call on the Biden administration, and also to call on other people around you” to take action to stop the pipeline.
“This fight is not just about looking upwards,” says Houska. “It’s also looking at each other. This is our world, and no one else is going to protect it, but all of us.”
To learn more about other powerful movement work like the struggle against Line 3 and mutual aid efforts across the country, check out our podcast “Movement Memos,” which will release its next episode on Wednesday, September 15.
Kelly Hayes is the host of Truthout’s podcast “Movement Memos” and a contributing writer at Truthout. Kelly’s written work can also be found in Teen Vogue, Bustle, Yes! Magazine, Pacific Standard, NBC Think, her blog Transformative Spaces, The Appeal, the anthology The Solidarity Struggle: How People of Color Succeed and Fail At Showing Up For Each Other In the Fight For Freedom and Truthout’s anthology on movements against state violence, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Kelly is also a direct action trainer and a co-founder of the direct action collective Lifted Voices. Kelly was honored for her organizing and education work in 2014 with the Women to Celebrate award, and in 2018 with the Chicago Freedom School’s Champions of Justice Award. Kelly’s movement photography is featured in “Freedom and Resistance” exhibit of the DuSable Museum of African American History. To keep up with Kelly’s organizing work, you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
World congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) calling for reforms to the International Seabed Authority (ISA). “Deep seabed mining is an avoidable environmental disaster,” said one expert on global ocean policy.
Featured image: A pair of fish swim near the ocean floor off the coast of Mauritius. A motion calling for an end to deep sea mining of minerals was adopted at the world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature this week. (Photo: Roman Furrer/Flickr/cc)
A vote overwhelmingly in favor of placing a moratorium on deep sea mineral mining at a global biodiversity summit this week has put urgent pressure on the International Seabed Authority to strictly regulate the practice.
The vast majority of governments, NGOs, and civil society groups voted in favor of the moratorium at the world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on Wednesday, after several conservation groups lobbied in favor of the measure.
“Member countries of the ISA, including France which hosted this Congress, need to wake up and act on behalf of civil society and the environment now, and take action in support of a moratorium.”
—Matthew Gianni, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition
Eighty-one government and government agencies voted for the moratorium, while 18 opposed it and 28, including the United Kingdom, abstained from voting. Among NGOs and other organizations, 577 supported the motion while fewer than three dozen opposed it or abstained.
Deep sea mining for deposits of copper, nickel, lithium, and other metals can lead to the swift loss of entire species that live only on the ocean floor, as well as disturbing ecosystems and food sources and putting marine life at risk for toxic spills and leaks.
Fauna and Flora International, which sponsored the moratorium along with other groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Synchronicity Earth, called the vote “a momentous outcome for ocean conservation.”
The motion called for a moratorium on mining for minerals and metals near the ocean floor until environmental impact assessments are completed and stakeholders can ensure the protection of marine life, as well as calling for reforms to the International Seabed Authority (ISA)—the regulatory body made up of 167 nations and the European Union, tasked with overseeing “all mineral-related activities in the international seabed area for the benefit of mankind as a whole.”
In June, a two-year deadline was set for the ISA to begin licensing commercial deep sea mining and to finalize regulations for the industry by 2023.
“Member countries of the ISA, including France which hosted this Congress, need to wake up and act on behalf of civil society and the environment now, and take action in support of a moratorium,” said Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, in a statement.
The World Wide Fund for Nature, another cosponsor of the motion, called on the ISA to reject the deep sea mining industry’s claims that mining for metals on the ocean floor is a partial solution to the climate crisis.
“The pro-deep seabed mining lobby is… selling a story that companies need deep seabed minerals in order to produce electric cars, batteries and other items that reduce carbon emissions,” said Jessica Battle, a senior expert on global ocean policy and governance at the organization. “Deep seabed mining is an avoidable environmental disaster. We can decarbonize through innovation, redesigning, reducing, reusing, and recycling.”
Pippa Howard of Fauna and Flora International wrote ahead of the IUCN summit that “we need to shatter the myth that deep seabed mining is the solution to the climate crisis.”
“Far from being the answer to our dreams, deep seabed mining could well turn out to be the stuff of nightmares,” she wrote. “Deep seabed mining—at least as it is currently conceived—would be an utterly irresponsible and short-sighted idea. In the absence of any suitable mitigation techniques… deep-sea mining should be avoided entirely until that situation changes.”
Editor’s note: DGR supports local control of the land over settler colonial imperialism. We believe in Free Informed Prior Constent, consultation is not constent.
Locals celebrate after eleven years of grassroots action
Environmentalists are celebrating a victory over a proposed coal development in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) after 11 years of debate and community protests. The Independent Planning Commission (IPC) for the NSW Southern Highlands blocked the plans for the proposed mine, saying the potential impacts of the project were ‘too great to be reasonably managed, and the social risks to the community are high.’
Korean-owned Hume Coal proposed applied to build the coal mine in Berrima. The company argued that the mine would ‘create 300+ jobs for locals’.
The full IPC determination and background materials are available here. The review followed an earlier rejection by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.
The IPC identified a long list of issues raised by the project’s opponents, including:
…mine design; subsidence; groundwater drawdown; risks to surface water, including to Sydney’s drinking water catchment area; impacts to local biodiversity; greenhouse gas emissions; impacts to Aboriginal and historic heritage; amenity impacts; adverse impacts to existing industries, including tourism and agriculture; social impacts, including ongoing stress and disharmony associated with the Project; and land use compatibility.
According to the Lock the Gate Alliance, a national grassroots organisation concerned with risky coal mining, coal seam gas and fracking, the mine would have emitted a massive amount of greenhouse gasses:
If it had been built, the Hume Coal project would have been responsible for more than 106 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over its lifespan.
There have been local concerns since permission was granted to drill exploration holes in 2010. High profile supporters over the years have included singers Leo Sayer, Cold Chisel’s Jimmy Barnes and actor Nicole Kidman, who owned one of the 424 properties that would have been affected by the mine.
This video has an interview with Sayer, a local resident in 2015:
Sayer also made a statement for the public inquiry in June 2021:
…the mine is a danger to health, clean air, farm produce, and the nature of the Southern Highlands and the peace and quiet of this historically natural area.
Jimmy Barnes, who is another longstanding local, also made a written submission.
There has also been opposition from local small business groups such as the Moss Vale Rural and Chamber of Commerce. Their president, restaurateur and farmer Brigid Kennedy, was very pleased with the result, arguing that it would give businesses hope.
I think I have held my breath for 10 years and I feel I can finally let it out. I am so excited — the community will be doing cartwheels down the Berrima main street. There has been a lot of tears over this, marriage break-ups, divorce — this has caused a great deal of anxiety. Hopefully it will help businesses struggling though COVID hang on and flourish.
Tweets by community members Seamus Byrne and Clare Press showed both the elation and growing frustration of many online:
The IPC found that the greenhouse gas emissions were not justified ‘when weighed against the relatively minor economic benefits’.
However, Nature Conservation Council Chief Executive Chris Gambian was concerned that the overall issue of climate change was not properly addressed by the IPC, arguing that no new mines should be approved in NSW:
Yes, the water impacts of this ill-conceived project were extremely risky. And yes, the mine should have been rejected for these reasons alone.
But the fact the IPC barely touched on climate highlights the deficiencies of the planning system in coming to grips with the greatest environmental hazard we face.
The decision has been hailed as a victory for local community action. Groups such as Battle for Berrima have been active on the ground as well as online. The group celebrated the win on their Facebook page.
We would love to be celebrating with you tonight. Throughout, we engaged with the government planning process respectfully. Thank you everybody for your support, donations, volunteering and commitment. Hopefully, once lockdown is over, we can celebrate together. A massive THANK YOU to everybody
Community activist Jenny Hunter’s Twitter thread details the hard work that many locals put in over the 11 years of campaigning:
After the decision, Peter Martin, president of Coal Free Southern Highlands, posted to their Facebook page :
It’s been a ‘knock down and drag out’ struggle for the local community against the Korean steel maker which has used every weapon in its arsenal to push the project through against the determined opposition.
…Given the serious climate issues that we all face, it would have been a dereliction of duty for the State Government to let a coal mining project like this proceed. Coal is clearly at the end of its useful life.
On June 23, a coalition of Sámi and environmentalist activists erected a protest camp in Nussir, the projected site of a gigantic copper mine in Sápmi, the traditional homeland of the Sámi people, northern Europe’s indigenous inhabitants. Today, Sápmi is divided by the borders of four nation states: Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. None of these countries have censuses for the Sámi population, and reliable numbers are hard to come by. The use of the Sámi language, the electoral roll of the Sámi parliaments (there is one in each country), and self-identification are important criteria. Roughly, we can speak of about 70,000 Sámi in Norway, 20,000 in Sweden, 10,000 in Finland, and about 2,000 in Russia. For historical reasons, the Russian community is the most isolated.
Nussir lies on the “Norwegian side” of Sápmi, as it is called, near the town of Hammerfest. Mining has been a controversial issue in Sápmi for years. In Sweden, a strong protest movement emerged in 2013, objecting to the plans of opening an iron ore mine in Gállok. While the project is not off the table yet, the protests have caused the Swedish government to put a halt on it and promise a new investigation. This was a partial victory. The same can be said about the Nussir protests. Due to the protest camp and activists chaining themselves to machinery, work on the site has so far been impossible. More importantly, the company that was supposed to purchase the mine’s output, Aurubis, the world’s second-largest copper producer, terminated the “memorandum of understanding” with Nussir ASA in August 2020 due to concerns about “social corporate responsibility”. Whether Nussir ASA can find new investors after this prominent withdrawal remains to be seen.
Mining is not the only issue that threatens the Sámi’s control over their traditional lands and their livelihoods, most importantly reindeer herding and fishing. Wind farms are placed in what many still perceive as “uninhabited territory”, with the turbines making reindeer herding impossible for a radius of many miles. Hydropower plants are already scattered around Sápmi. The allegedly “uninhabited territory” is also used for military exercises, automotive testing, and, increasingly, geoengineering trials. In Finland, a proposed “Arctic Railway” would cut through traditional reindeer pastures. Along the Deatnu River, which marks the border between Norway and Finland over a stretch of more than 250 kilometers, fishing legislation favors the interests of non-Sámi cabin owners over those of traditional Sámi salmon fishers. In Sweden, clear cuts by the state-owned lumber company Sveaskog threaten the existence of the Forest Sámi and their reindeer herds. All over Sápmi, the crucial question of land ownership remains unresolved, with the governments of Sweden and Finland still refusing to sign the International Labour Organization’ Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (commonly known as ILO 169), while the Norwegian government does not deliver on the promises of the 2005 Finnmark Act that, formally, transferred land ownership in the province of Finnmark to the majority Sámi population.
It is interesting to note that many of the named development projects are justified by citing “green energy” and “sustainability”. The planned mine in Nussir has been hailed as “the world’s first fully electrified mine with zero CO2 emissions”. Hydropower and wind power are praised as sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. Railways as environmentally friendly means of transport. Even geoengineering shall, according to its proponents, help secure the future of our planet. The irony that, in Sápmi, a culture that has proven sustainable for thousands of years is threatened in the process seems to pass by these advocates of corporate environmentalism.
In Sápmi, people increasingly speak of a “green colonialism”. In a speech protesting mining projects, Marie Persson Njajta declared in April 2019: “We have to stop flirting with polluting industries and look at their consequences and their costs. We don’t want green colonialism. Sámi land shall not be exploited yet again, neither for wind power nor for metals to produce electric cars.”
It is ludicrous that, in 2021, there exists such an enormous gap between material justice for indigenous peoples and their symbolic integration into nation-states, which often implies cultural exploitation. At the same time, it is inspiring to see a generation of Sámi activists unwilling to accept this cynicism. Without recognizing the needs, knowledge, and guidance of indigenous peoples, social and climate justice movements will meet serious limitations.
Every morning, I walk along the waters of the Salish Sea on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington State. Most days I am lucky enough to see the pink of the sunrise over Mount Rainier. This spring, millions of tiny herring eggs covered the beach, bringing with them a riotous cacophony of sound, including sea lions barking into the dead of night.
This place is the very heart of me. This coast is the solace that I seek when I am overwhelmed by the pandemic, by the everlasting wars, and the twisting fear of the climate emergency.
Today, the shores are smoky from fires raging across North America. I can’t see the mountains because of the smoke. The Salish Sea is threatened by the expansion of the single largest industrial project on the planet, the largest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in North America: the Alberta tar sands. The Trans Mountain pipeline is slated to increase tanker traffic carrying 890,000 barrels of crude oil through this region, and the risk of an oil spill is significant.
We are fighting climate disruption that sets our homes on fire and covers us in a blanket of smoke for entire seasons. Smoke is putting my best friends and family members’ lives at risk because of severe asthma, compounding lung damage from COVID, and other health impacts. The herring, sea lions, and all the life I see on my daily walks are at risk too; thousands of sea creatures died in the last heat wave.
Over the better part of the last decade, communities have been giving their all to resist the pipeline that puts this place at risk. Indigenous people resist the pipeline on their territory because it destroys the sacred: grave sites, creation sites and drinking water.
Indigenous Secwepemc Land Defenders known as the Tiny House Warriors are providing solar-powered housing for their community members and asserting sovereignty through living in a tiny house village along the pipeline route on Secwepemc land. Tsleil-Waututh members and Coast Salish relatives, Mountain Protectors and allies continue to assert their laws at the Watch House, kwewkweknewtx, a grassroots coalition of activists who have constructed a traditional Coast Salish structure along a pipeline easement to assert Indigenous rights and keep a watchful eye on the pipeline and storage tanks in Burnaby, Canada.
As a thanks for the stewardship of their own land, these communities are being criminalized with constant state surveillance and increasing violence from police. Every time they try to silence us, our movement to stop this pipeline and all tar sands expansion projects grows. We will not stop fighting.
There is another group beyond governments and corporations that make this destruction possible: insurance companies. You might not think of insurers at first, but everything is insured: vehicles, your health, and even the Trans Mountain pipeline — a toxic, 68-year-old leaking pipeline and its related expansion.
Over the last five years, 26 of the world’s major insurance companies have limited their coverage for coal, and 10 for tar sands. Lloyd’s of London, an insurance giant, has committed to backing out of the tar sands sector at the end of last year. Recently, another insurance company ruled out coverage for Trans Mountain — the 15th in a wave of companies exiting the project.
Now, the pipeline company, Trans Mountain Pipeline LP, is petitioning the Canadian federal government to keep its remaining insurers secret. (The Canadian government stepped in to buy the pipeline company in 2018 from its previous owner, Kinder Morgan Inc., for $3.6 billion.)
The company is desperate to keep those insurers under wraps because they are increasingly responding to growing pressure from youth organizing direct actions at insurance offices and hundreds of thousands calling them out through petitions. During a week of action on Trans Mountain insurance, there were over 25 protests around the world, in countries as far away from the project as Uganda.
Insurers are facing costs for major oil spill as well as the costs associated with climate change; industry losses from natural disasters were $83 billion in 2020.
One of the companies backing Trans Mountain, Chubb, was the first North American insurer to rule out coal. Chubb’s policy ruling out coal reflected their “commitment to do our part as a steward of the Earth,” according to CEO Evan Greenberg. Yet, according to Reuters, Canadian regulatory filings showed Chubb increased the coverage it provides for Trans Mountain for its 2019/2020 certificate to $200 million. The company remains a top oil and gas insurer.
Greenberg and the insurers covering Trans Mountain know better than most the cost of climate chaos on communities by the numbers: Insurers are facing costs for major oil spill as well as the costs associated with climate change; industry losses from natural disasters were $83 billion in 2020. Yet, these insurers are continuing to invest in and underwrite fossil fuels, making multimillion-dollar deals to support the status quo.
As I walk along these shorelines, considering the impacts of this pipeline on all that I hold dear, corporate insurance boardrooms making multimillion-dollar deals are far away from the real impacts on communities, on the land and on these waters. The risks to this pipeline and supertanker project far outweigh its benefits — and CEOs like Greenberg are profiting off of the theft of this land and the destruction of this water while we watch it go up in smoke.
The town of La Merced de Buenos Aires, in Ecuador, gained notoriety when it was invaded by illegal miners in 2017; for almost two years, the area was plagued by violence, prostitution and drug addiction.
Authorities evicted the miners in 2019, but now the land may become home to legal mining operations, which many residents emphatically oppose.
More than 300 people spent over a month blocking the path of the machinery, trucks and employees of Hanrine Ecuadorian Exploration and Mining S.A.
The Ombudsman’s Office warns that confrontations will arise and has called on local, regional and national authorities to take immediate action.
This article originally appeared in Mongabay. Featured image: This mountain in the parish of Buenos Aires was the epicenter of illegal mining between 2017 and 2019. Image by Iván Castaneira/Agencia Tegantai.
In 2017, the name “La Merced de Buenos Aires,” or simply “Buenos Aires,” became famous throughout Ecuador. This small parish located high in the Andean province of Imbabura was invaded by illegal miners who quickly took control of the mountains.
Giant mining camps made up of plastic tents garnered media attention, and the illegal nature of the mining brought violence, fear, and hopelessness to the area. The population that traditionally lived there cried out for help so that their territory would return to the tranquility that had characterized it in the past.
Several residents interviewed by Mongabay Latam say the gold rush attracted people from Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and southern Ecuador who intimidated the community. Former fighters from the now-dissolved FARC guerrilla group in Colombia even began to collect “vaccinations” — protection payments in exchange for not infringing upon them — and started to suppress the community in an attempt to dominate the illegal mining business.
In July 2019, 1,102 police officers, 1,200 soldiers and 20 prosecutors arrived in the area as part of an operation called “Radiant Dawn” (“Amanecer Radiante”). In the first few days of the raid, they managed to remove about 3,000 people from the mining camps. The operation also dismantled 30 gold-processing plants and a complex system of pulleys for transporting the gold. According to María Paula Romo, the minister of government at the time, the illegal gold trade in Buenos Aires was valued at about $500,000 per week.
For almost a year, an apparent sense of peace fell over the community. But in 2020, residents realized their land was being considered as a potential mining site again — this time in search of copper — by a company owned by an Australian firm. Since November 2017, the company has obtained eight mining titles in the area, one of which overlaps with the illegal mining area. The situation became increasingly tense in April, when more than 300 residents of Buenos Aires staged a protest on the outskirts of the parish in an attempt to stop the company’s trucks and machinery from starting mining activity in the territory.
Mining company sues dozens of people
The residents of Buenos Aires have declared their resistance. They say that since 2017, they have been invaded by illegal mining in this area, which has traditionally been dedicated to agriculture and cattle ranching. Now that legal miners want to exploit the land, many residents say they do not want any further involvement with mining.
The problem, according to a resident who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, is that the resistance movement has generated a stigma. “They told us that we are illegal miners and that we do not want legality because we want to return to what is illegal. But this is false,” the resident said.
Natalia Bonilla, from the organization Acción Ecológica, says that when her organization began to work with the residents, they realized that the portrayal of the community members as illegal miners was not truthful. “It is a community of farmers, ranchers and agricultural people that was invaded by illegal miners. They marked them as illegal miners and made them invisible,” Bonilla said.
Favio Ocampo is the head of operations of Hanrine Ecuadorian Exploration and Mining S.A., the company that holds the mining titles and is a subsidiary of Australian company Hancock Prospecting. Ocampo said in an interview with Primicias, an Ecuadoran media outlet, that “there is a group of residents of La Merced de Buenos Aires that is polluting with illegal mining and that is now disguising itself as an anti-mining group. This group has taken the entrance to La Merced de Buenos Aires, claiming that the town is against legal and illegal mining, but they are the same [ones who] have legal proceedings against them for illegal mining.”
This is where the issue becomes more complicated. Using the argument that the opposing residents who are blocking the company’s entry into the land are illegal miners, Hanrine has launched civil and criminal actions against several people from the community, including some local authorities. “We are going through five criminalization proceedings. They are doing this to undermine the resistance of this peaceful protest that we’ve had since April 19,” said another resident of the area who asked not to be named. “The latest thing they have accused us of is unlawful association. They have even accused the president of the decentralized autonomous government [GAD] of the rural parish of Buenos Aires.”
Yuly Tenorio is a lawyer specializing in the environment who says that while some people denounced by the company may be linked to illegal mining, the vast majority are defenders of the territory who are being persecuted. This is why she has decided to defend them. According to Tenorio, Hanrine has denounced about 70 people from the area, including several Awá Indigenous people from the Palmira community who live in the forests of Buenos Aires and oppose mining.
“Not everyone has received notice because they live in very remote areas, and the Awá do not have a stable territory. Many of them do not even have a form of identification,” Tenorio said.
The five legal processes are in the pretrial investigation phase. Three of the proceedings are for alleged damage to property, one is for intimidation, and the last is for alleged unlawful association.
“The company is denouncing them via criminal and civil action to recover the alleged money that it has lost due to citizen resistance,” Tenorio said. “The objective is for the community to exhaust themselves by hiring lawyers for their defense instead of dedicating themselves to protecting their territory, requesting information, or precautionary measures.”
Ocampo said Hanrine has attempted to enter one of its mining concessions, called “Imba 1,” for several months, “but our attempts have been blocked by these people who have taken the entrance of the parish of La Merced de Buenos Aires, within full view of the police.”
“All the people in our favor and who work with us, or who provide any type of service to us, have been injured, intimidated, and threatened,” he added.
The tension between the community and the company has escalated to new levels. On April 21 this year, the Ombudsman’s Office said in a public announcement that the government will be responsible for the criminal proceedings of the Buenos Aires community leaders and those who are defending human rights and the rights of nature.
When contacted by Mongabay Latam, ombudsman Edwin Piedra confirmed that criminal proceedings have been initiated that are in the domain of the Prosecutor’s Office and are under investigation. But he added that “the Ombudsman’s Office hopes that the requests will be considered and that the prosecutor’s office will archive the proceedings, since those who exercise the right to resist cannot be penalized for common crimes like unlawful association and other types of criminal offenses, which can serve to threaten and harass people and therefore hinder their defense work.”
Lack of environmental and prior consultations
While the conflict between the residents and the mining company continues, illegal mining in the area has left damage that has not yet been fully evaluated. The only concrete data so far comes from a report by Ecuador’s Ministry of Environment and Water (MAAE) at the time of the Radiant Dawn operation. The report says 54.38 hectares (about 134 acres) of deforestation was found, along with changes to water flows, inadequate management of solid waste, and changes in water and soil quality.
More than two years since the removal of the thousands of illegal miners, it’s still not clear who will be held responsible for this damage and for rehabilitating the environment. The Ecuadoran government has not conducted an in-depth analysis, and the mining company hasn’t accepted responsibility for these costs within its concession.
Ocampo said Hanrine takes no responsibility for the damage already done.
“The government needs to take action,” he said. “We have not received any report by experts from the government about the calculation of the environmental damage. It is not the responsibility of Hanrine. Once the expert report is done, the government should identify those who are responsible.” They know who they are, he added, and they should prosecute them, because the people who profit from the illegal mining remain free.
The company says it has the right to enter its mining concessions to continue its advanced prospecting for copper. However, the difficult socioenvironmental conflict that exists in Buenos Aires complicates the situation.
The community says the company has never publicized the mining project and that neither they nor the Awá Indigenous people participated in an environmental consultation or a free and informed prior consultation. Piedra says government institutions should have sufficiently informed the community about the consultation processes that would have been conducted, and that they permitted the acquisition of environmental permissions for the concessions. “It is the responsibility of the government to comply with this obligation before granting concessions and permissions,” Piedra said.
Mongabay Latam contacted the MAAE to learn whether there was an environmental consultation but did not receive a response by the time of this article’s publication in Spanish.
No access to information
Access to information has also been an obstacle for the Buenos Aires community. According to several residents interviewed by Mongabay Latam, the company has told them it does not need to show documentation to them, so they have had to make formal requests to government entities. These entities have delayed their responses or not given complete answers, arguing that the information being sought is sensitive in nature.
“We still do not know the environmental management plans or whether environmental impact studies exist that are not a copy of other studies,” Tenorio said. Mongabay Latam also asked the MAAE whether it had granted environmental permits to Hanrine but did not receive a response.
The Ombudsman’s Office said it was “urging the Ministry of Environment and Water, the Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources, and the Agency of Regulation and Control of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources not to grant environmental permits or mining concessions until they proceed with the integral repair of the rights of nature, due to the existence of environmental liabilities, and they must begin the necessary measures for the restoration of nature.”
Buenos Aires community leaders say they hope for a popular consultation to prohibit mining in their territory. On May 10, some residents who want to ban both illegal and legal mining requested precautionary measures before the constitutional judge for the province of Imbabura, Manuel Mesías Sarmiento, to guarantee the removal of the camps that Hanrine has set up in public areas, and the prohibition of the entrance of heavy machinery and any other vehicles owned by the company.
One of the people who signed this action was assembly member Mario Ruiz Jácome. “The idea is to preserve the physical and psychological well-being — and the life — of the community of Buenos Aires and of the employees of the Hanrine company,” he said. “We are at an imminent risk of having confrontations that put their lives and their physical well-being in danger.”
He added that, at the entrance to the parish, there are still about 120 trucks and about 250 company workers. They stay in overcrowded conditions without restrooms, which endangers the health of everyone in the area.
Those defending this territory high in the mountains in Imbabura are awaiting a response to the precautionary measures as they continue to block the entrance of the mining company into their territory, especially given the uncertainty of the potential outcomes of the legal proceedings against them. “We want the new government to create an amnesty process for the defenders because resisting is a constitutional right, not a crime,” said Tenorio, the lawyer.
geoengineering trials. In Finland, a proposed “Arctic Railway” would cut through traditional reindeer pastures. Along the Deatnu River, which marks the border between Norway and Finland over a stretch of more than 250 kilometers, fishing legislation favors the interests of non-Sámi cabin owners over those of traditional Sámi salmon fishers. In Sweden, clear cuts by the state-owned lumber company Sveaskog threaten the existence of the Forest Sámi and their reindeer herds. All over Sápmi, the crucial question of land ownership remains unresolved, with the governments of Sweden and Finland still refusing to sign the International Labour Organization’ Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (commonly known as ILO 169), while the Norwegian government does not deliver on the promises of the 2005 Finnmark Act that, formally, transferred land ownership in the province of Finnmark to the majority Sámi population.
