For over 6 years now, environmental defenders representing the Unist’ot’en, an official faction of the Wet’suwet’en Nation, have been standing guard over their traditional territory from invasion by Transcanada’s Coastal Gaslink pipeline.
On December 14, 2018, a British Columbia Supreme Court Justice levied a temporary injunction, ordering an end to the blockade — bypassing the required consent of tribal leaders.
Prior to this, a gated blockade had prevented pipeline workers from trespassing onto First Nation lands through the Morice River bridge — located on a forest road.
The injunction, which demands environmental defenders vacate their stronghold of resistance to the planned 670 kilometer pipeline, is set to start on Monday, December 17th, allowing pipeline workers free passage until May 2019.
In a show of quasi-generosity, Coastal Gaslink has stated that the camp connected to the blockade may remain in place… as long as they discontinue any obstruction of pre-construction traffic through the gated area.
“Right now, our focus is on respectfully and safely moving forward with project activities, including gaining safe access across the Morice River bridge … We simply ask that their activities do not disrupt or jeopardize the safety of our employees and contractors, surrounding communities or even themselves,” Coastal GasLink said in a statement.
Representatives of Coastal Gaslink have also cited an inability of First Nation communities to provide restitution for any ‘losses’ the company could incur through delays or obstructions to construction plans as support for the injunction and enforcement order.
Yet, enforcement of the project remains dubious given that the territory has never changed hands via treaty, nor have land rights ever been conceded in any manner. In effect, the right of the Unist’ot’en People to determine the fate of their ancestral land remains intact.
This also makes the injunction a clear violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) which requires ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC) when it comes to development, investment or extraction initiatives on Indigenous territories.
The area in question has been occupied by the Unist’ot’en for generations; their current leader, Chief Knedebeas, describes occupying and carrying out tribal traditions there since his childhood.
Now, the territory under threat is being used as a crucial healing center where Wet’suwet’en people are receiving treatment for addiction. Freda Hudson, Unist’ot’en clan, explained:
“The Unist’ot’en Healing Centre was constructed to fulfill their vision of a culturally-safe healing program, centred on the healing properties of the land. It is the embodiment of self-determined wellness and decolonization, with potential to build up culture-based resiliency of Indigenous people who need support, through re-establishing relationships with land, ancestors and the underlying universal teachings that connect distinct Indigenous communities across the world.”
The Unist’ot’en have until January 31, 2019 to respond to Coastal Gaslink’s application.
Oakland, CA—On September 25, 2018, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) awarded a major victory to four Maasai villages fighting for their rights to their land in northern Tanzania. The case revolves around violent government-led evictions of Maasai villagers in Loliondo – which included burning their homes, arbitrary arrest, forced eviction from their villages, and confiscating their livestock – that took place in August 2017, as well as the ongoing harassment and arrest of villagers involved in the case by the Tanzanian police. The four villages named in the case are legally registered owners of their land.
The Court’s ruling grants an injunction that prohibits the Tanzanian government from evicting the Maasai communities from a vital 1,500km2 parcel of land. Furthermore, it prohibits the destruction of Maasai homesteads and the confiscation of livestock on said land, and bans the office of the Inspector General of Police from harassing and intimidating the plaintiffs, pending the full determination of their case. The injunction remains in effect until a ruling on the full case concerning the August 2017 evictions can be heard.
“IN THE RESULT, HAVING HELD AS WE HAVE IN THIS RULING ABOVE, WE DO HEREBY ALLOW THE SUBSISTING APPLICATION WITH THE FOLLOWING ORDERS:
A. AN INTERIM ORDER DOTH ISSUE RESTRAINING THE RESPONDENT, AND ANY PERSONS OR OFFICES ACTING ON HIS BEHALF, FROM EVICTING THE APPLICANTS’ RESIDENTS FROM THE DISPUTED LAND, BEING THE LAND COMPRISED IN THE 1,500 SQ KM OF LAND IN THE WILDLIFE CONSERVATION AREA BORDERING SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK; DESTROYING THEIR HOMESTEADS OR CONFISCATING THEIR LIVESTOCK ON THAT LAND, UNTIL THE DETERMINATION OF REFERENCE NO. 10 OF 2017.
B. AN INTERIM ORDER DOTH ISSUE AGAINST THE RESPONDENT, RESTRAINING THE OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE FROM HARASSING OR INTIMIDATING THE APPLICANTS IN RELATION TO REFERENCE NO. 10 OF 2017 PENDING THE DETERMINATION THEREOF.
C. THE COSTS HEREOF SHALL ABIDE THE OUTCOME OF THE REFERENCE. WE DIRECT THAT IT BE FIXED FOR HEARING FORTHWITH.”
In their ruling, Justices Monica K. Mugenyi, Faustin Ntezilyayo, and Fakihi A. Jundu noted that the interim order and corresponding affidavit filed by the Maasai “paint[ed] a picture of widespread social upheaval in Ololosokwan village and an attempt to stifle village representatives’ and/or the affected persons’ access to justice.” They further ruled that the government’s argument that the evictions were in service of the protection of the local ecosystem “pales in the face of the social disruption and human suffering that would inevitably flow from the continued eviction of the Applicants’ residents.”
The Oakland Institute’s research has exposed internationally the ongoing plight and human rights violations of the Maasai villagers as their land rights are denied in the name of conservation and to the benefit of safari companies, such as Boston-based Thomson Safaris and the UAE-based Ortello Business Corporation, which runs hunting excursions for the Emirati royal family.
“The Court’s decision is a major win for the communities of Ololosokwan, Oloirien, Kirtalo, and Arash, particularly in light of the ongoing harassment and intimidation by the police and the recent wrongful arrests of local secondary school teacher Clinton Kairung and Belgian citizen Ingrid de Draeve, who was mistaken for a Swedish blogger who has written extensively on the issues facing the Maasai in the region,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.
“It is now vital for both the East African Court and the international community to ensure that the Tanzanian government abides by this ruling and immediately halts the harassment, intimidation, and violence it has waged against the villages involved in this case as well as the broader Maasai community in Loliondo. It is time for the Tanzanian government to stop colluding with game parks and safari companies and finally recognize the land rights of its Maasai population as well as their longstanding role as environmental stewards of the land,” she continued.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen had already placed a temporary restraining order on the hunts, which would have started Sept. 1 and allowed for the killing of up to 23 bears, while he considered the larger question of whether Endangered Species Act protections should be restored. The bears’ management will now return to the federal government.
Christensen wrote in his ruling that his decision was “not about the ethics of hunting.” Rather, he agreed with environmental and tribal groups that the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had not considered the genetic health of other lower-48 grizzly populations when it delisted the Yellowstone area bears in 2017.
“By delisting the Greater Yellowstone grizzly without analyzing how delisting would affect the remaining members of the lower-48 grizzly designation, the Service failed to consider how reduced protections in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem would impact the other grizzly populations,” Christensen wrote, according to The Huffington Post. “Thus, the Service ‘entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem.'”
Bear advocates said the Yellowstone population was growing large enough to merge with other populations, which would be a win-win for the genetic diversity of all bears involved.
A grizzly bear and cub in Yellowstone National ParkJohn Good / National Park Service
“The Service appropriately recognized that the population’s genetic health is a significant factor demanding consideration,” Christensen wrote. “However, it misread the scientific studies it relied upon, failing to recognize that all evidence suggests that the long-term viability of the Greater Yellowstone grizzly is far less certain absent new genetic material.”
Native American and environmental groups applauded the decision.
“We have a responsibility to speak for the bears, who cannot speak for themselves,” Northern Cheyenne Nation President Lawrence Killsback said in a statement Monday reported by The Huffington Post. “Today we celebrate this victory and will continue to advocate on behalf of the Yellowstone grizzly bears until the population is recovered, including within the Tribe’s ancestral homeland in Montana and other states.”
“We stand behind our finding that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear is biologically recovered and no longer requires protection. . . . Our determination was based on our rigorous interpretation of the law and is supported by the best available science and a comprehensive conservation strategy developed with our federal, state, and tribal partners,” the FWS told The Washington Post.
The FWS first attempted to delist the bears in 2007, but that move was also blocked in federal court over concerns that one of the bears’ food sources, whitebark pine seeds, were threatened by climate change.
In its 2017 ruling, the FWS said that it had reviewed the case and found the decline of the whitebark pine seeds did not pose a major threat.
Grizzlies in the lower 48 states were first listed as endangered in 1975, when their historic range had been reduced by 98 percent.
The Yellowstone grizzlies numbered fewer than 140 at the time. The population has since rebounded to about 700, according to The Washington Post.
In a lawsuit that will inspire and galvanize many other indigenous communities across the Amazon for years to come, the Kofan of Sinangoe have won a trial against four Ecuadorian ministries and agencies for having granted or attempted to grant more than 30,000 hectares of mining concessions in pristine Amazonian rainforest on the border of their ancestral land without their free, prior and informed consent. The destructive mining operations that were taking place within these concessions threatened not only the Kofan’s lives, culture and health, but also those of the countless communities located downriver.
In a historic decision on Friday July 27th 2018, a regional judge accepted the evidence provided by the community, charged the government with not having consulted the Kofan, and suspended all mining activity in more than 52 concessions in the headwaters of the Aguarico River. The decision was immediately appealed by all the authorities involved, and then by Sinangoe and their ally in the Defensoria del Pueblo, who seek an even tougher verdict recognizing that rights to health, water and a clean environment had also been violated. The case will be brought before a provincial judge in August, 2018.
The free, prior and informed consent loophole
Like in many places around the world, the Ecuadorian government has a mining claim system built to facilitate any interested party in purchasing cheap concessions— maximizing foreign interests and accelerating the approval process. Although both Ecuador’s Mining Act and the Constitution recognize the need for Free, Prior and Informed Consent from stakeholder communities for mining operations, it is still mostly a theoretical concept ignored by Ecuadorian agencies. Hence Sinangoe’s lawsuit. According to the experts heard over the course of the legal process, the Mining ministry leaves the “consultation” to the mining company or the concession owners themselves, which in turn have no legal obligation to consult with local people, and often will perform their “consultation” through a phone call or by handing out a simple information pamphlet. In the case of Sinangoe, it was when machines started tearing up the riverbed of the Aguarico looking for gold that the community learned about the new concessions.
The Environment ministry, on the other end, stipulated in the courtroom that it is not responsible for consulting with communities impacted by mining. Interestingly, according to the Mining Act, the Environment Ministry needs to grant environmental licenses before operations can begin, unless the granting process takes more than 6 months, in which case – as unbelievable as this is – the permits are automatically granted to the operators. So basically, via a very simple bureaucratic process involving nothing more than paperwork, a mining operator can very quickly obtain 20 to 25-year land claims within 6 months, while the impacted communities living downstream haven’t even heard about the concessions. This is a loophole the judge described as a violation of the right to free, prior and informed consent, a verdict that will help many other communities facing the same threats in a country where gold mining is booming.
When rigorous community monitoring pays off
Throughout the lawsuit, the ministries’ lawyers vigorously tried to destroy Sinangoe’s evidence, credibility, ownership of and ancestral claims to the land. They downplayed the environmental damage documented by Sinangoe, claiming that the Kofan aren’t impacted by the mining operations because their land is on the other side of the river and that legal mining has minimal footprint on the environment. However, Sinangoe had done what will likely inspire many other communities: they had documented every step made by the miners through rigorous and systematic monitoring using high tech mapping, filming, archiving all evidence, and then they used legal tactics to pressure every single level of government to act to stop the operations. Systematic recording of all the different types of evidence helped build a solid case against a negligent concession-granting system.
Once in the courtroom, Sinangoe had accrued such a massive body of evidence of environmental damage and inaction on the part of the government that the judge requested a field inspection, a key event that helped him understand the scale of the damage already done, showed the deep connection the Kofan have with the area transformed into mining concessions, discredited the ministries’ arguments, and also allowed him to witness the sheer beauty of the area at risk.
Evidence provided by Sinangoe in court to show the rapidity and expanse of environmental damages on the shores of the Aguarico River
A first legal victory, but the battle for land and rights still rages
To the officials sitting in their offices in Quito, these concessions were nothing more than coordinates and squares on a map, but to the Kofan who live across the riverbank, the area is a place imbued with life, history, sustenance, stories and so much more. To grant concessions without experiencing the place in and of itself, either through field visits or proper consultation with the people who inhabit and use the territory, is a transgression of the inherent value of sites so rich in history and biodiversity.
Sinangoe’s strength has been put to trial, and the community’s perseverance and conviction have provided them a first legal victory and attracted support from various indigenous and human rights organization across the country. With all ministries involved appealing the judgment, the Kofan will need more strength and support to navigate the next wave of legal governmental intimidation.
Alex Lucitante, Kofan human rights defender, engaging with the media after the historic legal victory.
Sign the pledge in support of Sinangoe and stay tuned for more on our work to defend rights, lands and life in the Amazon.
A Canadian court “quashed” approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on Thursday, a major setback for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government agreed to purchase the controversial project from Kinder Morgan for $4.5 billion Canadian dollars (U.S. $3.5 billion) in May.
It’s a stunning victory for Indigenous groups and environmentalists opposed to the project, which is designed to nearly triple the amount of tar sands transported from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia.
The Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the National Energy Board’s review—as explained by the Canadian Press—”was so flawed that the federal government could not rely on it as a basis for its decision to approve the expansion.”
The project has been at the center of widespread protests from environmental groups and First Nations ever since November 2016, when Trudeau approved a $7.4 billion expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline that would increase the transport of Alberta tar sands oil from the current 300,000 barrels per day to 890,000 barrels per day and increase tanker traffic nearly seven-fold through the Burrard Inlet.
Specifically, the court said it was an “unjustifiable failure” that the National Energy Board did not consider the environmental impacts of the increased tanker traffic.
The court additionally concluded that the government “fell well short” with properly consulting with the Indigenous groups involved in the case, including the Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish on British Columbia’s south coast.
The ruling will force the National Energy Board to redo its review of the pipeline and the government to restart consultations with the Indigenous groups. It also means that the construction that has already began in central Alberta must cease.
In effect, the court has halted the 1,150-kilometer project indefinitely and it will remain in “legal limbo until the energy regulator and the government reassess their approvals to satisfy the court’s demands,” CBC wrote about today’s decision.
Notably, the decision was made the same day Kinder Morgan’s shareholders voted to approve the $4.5 billion sale to Canada, which means the country owns a proposed pipeline project that could be subject to years of further review, the publication pointed out.
The court’s judgment could be appealed a final time to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Minister of Finance Bill Morneau said that the government has received the ruling and will review the decision.
