by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 27, 2012 | Mining & Drilling
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
The world’s third largest mining company, Rio Tinto, and a local financial and construction firm, Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS), have cancelled plans for a $2 billion aluminum smelter to be constructed in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. The cancellation calls into question Sarawak’s plan to build a dozen massive dams—known as the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) initiative—that were proposed, in part, to provide power to the massive aluminum smelter. However, the mega-dam proposal has been heavily criticized for its impact on Sarawak’s rivers, rainforest and indigenous people.
Rio Tinto and CMS stated that the project had been dropped because power supply terms could not be agreed on. The smelter would have produced 1.5 million tons of aluminum annually. According to Jacynthe Cote, chief executive of Rio Tinto’s Alcan aluminum division, there were no hard feelings over the cancellation.
“Looking into the future, we remain interested in development opportunities that may arise within the state and the country,” he said.
Beyond the internal decisions, the cancellation immediately puts Sarawak’s dam building plans under new scrutiny. After long delays and cost overruns, one of the dozen dams has already been completed, the 2,400 megawatt Bakun dam. The dam reportedly displaced around 10,000 indigenous people and flooded 70,000 hectares of rainforest (about the size of Singapore). By itself, the Bakun dam produces twice as much power as the entire state of Sarawak. Despite this, a second dam, the 900 megawatt Murum dam, is currently under construction.
Sarawak’s government, under Abdul Taib Mahmud or “Taib”, has been aggressively pushing implementation of the SCORE plan and fending off criticism, stating that the state would need the additional power for the Rio Tinto-CMS smelter.
“Rio Tinto’s decision [to cancel the smelter] proves that the Taib government’s irresponsible economic policies have completely failed. There is no need to build another twelve dams in the state as envisaged by the Taib government,” reads a statement from the Bruno Manser Fund, a group that works with indigenous people in Sarawak. “All these corruption-driven dam plans that would only benefit the Taib family’s construction companies must come tho a halt now.”
Local opposition against the dams has been fierce. Last fall indigenous groups, local people, and domestic NGOs established the Save Sarawak’s Rivers Network in order to fight the dams. In addition, hundreds of land lawsuits have been filed against the proposed dams.
The Bruno Manser Fund is calling on the Sarawak government to stop construction on the Murum dam and cancel all other dam projects.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 23, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Philip Fearnside / National Institute for Research in the Amazon
Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River is now under construction despite its many controversies. The Brazilian government has launched an unprecedented drive to dam the Amazon’s tributaries, and Belo Monte is the spearhead for its efforts. Brazil’s 2011-2020 energy-expansion plan calls for building 48 additional large dams, of which 30 would be in the country’s Legal Amazon region. Building 30 dams in 10 years means an average rate of one dam every four months in Brazilian Amazonia through 2020. Of course, the clock doesn’t stop in 2020, and the total number of planned dams in Brazilian Amazonia exceeds 60.
The Belo Monte Dam itself has substantial impacts. It is unusual in not having its main powerhouse located at the foot of the dam, where it would allow the water emerging from the turbines to continue flowing in the river below the dam. Instead, most of the river’s flow will be detoured from the main reservoir through a series of canals interlinking five dammed tributary streams, leaving the “Big Bend” of the Xingu River below the dam with only a tiny fraction of its normal annual flow.
What is known as the “dry stretch” of 100 km between the dam and the main powerhouse includes two indigenous reserves, plus a population of traditional Amazonian riverside dwellers. Since the impact on these people is not the normal one of being flooded by a reservoir, they were not classified as “directly impacted” in the environmental study and have not had the consultations and compensations to which directly impacted people are entitled. The human rights commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) considered the lack of consultation with the indigenous people a violation of the international accords to which Brazil is a signatory, and Brazil retaliated by cutting off its dues payments to the OAS. The dam will also have more familiar impacts by flooding about one fourth of the city of Altamira, as well as the populated rural areas that will be flooded by the reservoir.What is most extraordinary is the project’s potential impact on vast areas of indigenous land and tropical rainforest upstream of the reservoir, but the environmental impact studies and licensing have been conducted in such a way as to avoid any consideration of these impacts. The original plan for the Xingu River called for five additional dams upstream of Belo Monte. These dams, especially the 6,140 square kilometer Babaquara Dam (now renamed the “Altamira” Dam), would store water that could be released during the Xingu River’s low-flow period to keep the turbines at Belo Monte running.The Xingu has a large annual oscillation in water flow, with as much as 60 times more water in the high-flow as compared to the low-flow period. During the low-flow period the unregulated flow of the river is insufficient to turn even one of the turbines in Belo Monte’s 11,000 MW main powerhouse. Since the Belo Monte Dam itself will be essentially ‘run-of-the-river’, without storing water in its relatively small reservoir, economic analysis suggests that the dam by itself won’t be economically viable.
The official scenario for the Xingu River changed in July 2008 when Brazil’s National Council for Energy Policy (CNPE) declared that Belo Monte would be the only dam on the Xingu River. However, the council is free to reverse this decision at any time. Top electrical officials considered the CNPE decision a political move that is technically irrational. Brazil’s current president blocked creation of an extractive reserve upstream of Belo Monte on the grounds that it would hamper building “dams in addition to Belo Monte”. The fact that the Brazilian government and various companies are willing to invest large sums in Belo Monte may be an indication that they do not expect history to follow the official scenario of only one dam.
In addition to their impacts on tropical forests and indigenous peoples, these dams would make the Xingu a source of greenhouse-gas emissions, especially methane (CH4) which forms when dead plants decay on the bottom of a reservoir where the water contains no oxygen. The Babaquara Dam’s 23m vertical variation in water level, annually exposing and flooding a 3,580 square kilometer drawdown zone would make the complex a virtual ‘methane factory’. The reservoir’s flooding of soft vegetation growing in the drawdown zone converts carbon from CO2 removed from the atmosphere by photosynthesis into CH4, with a much higher impact on global warming.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 12, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Ahni / Intercontinental Cry
Quebec provincial police went on the march last Friday to dismantle a blockade that a group of Innu citizens erected to protest the construction of hydro transmission lines through their traditional territory.
According to available reports, no one was arrested during the court-backed offensive, which the Innu passively tried to resist. However, a total of thirteen people were arrested, including ten women.
The blockade/checkpoint went up went up on March 5 after Innu representatives walked away from negotiations with Hydro-Québec over the proposed La Romaine Hydroelectric Complex.
The $6.5 billion project includes four new hydro dams that would ultimately provide electricity for various industrial projects including mines and aluminum refineries as part of the Plan Nord, “the Quebéc government’s plan to ravage northern Québec, with many ecologically devastating projects slated for development on Innu territory, or Nitassinan, without the consent of the Innu people,” comments Collectif solidaire anti-colonial / Anti-Colonial Solidarity Collective.
The project was approved by Quebec’s environmental assessment board more than two years ago. However, the Innu communities of Uashat and Maliotenam have continuously challenged that decision because, the Innu say that the board failed to consider how the transmission lines for the project would affect their lands.
Speaking from the blockade, Michael MacKenzie, vice-Chef at Innu Takuaikan Uashat mak Mani-Utenam commented, Everything is peaceful. There’s no aggression from our side. What we’re doing today is legitimate and this is what it’s come to. Our rights have been trampled.”
“We had the Arab Spring, I think we’re now seeing an Innu Spring,” added Christopher Scott, a spokesperson from the Alliance Romaine, who has been supporting the Innu.
Read more from Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/tactical-unit-dismantles-innu-blockade-against-controversial-hydro-complex/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 10, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Ahni, Intercontinental Cry
It’s no mere coincidence that Sarawak is one of the most impoverished states in Malaysia. For more than 30 years the governments of Malaysia and Sarawak have been far too busy ransacking the region’s precious rainforest to secure and strengthen what has been there for thousands of years.
That’s because development in Sarawak has always been about making money; and as any real capitalist knows, the more money you have to spread around, the less you have for your self and your friends and family.
Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud knows this well. After all, Minster Taib, whose name is now synonymous with corruption, has made a big part of his fortune at the expense of the land and people of Sarawak.
The decimation of Sarawak continues even as you read these words; and if Minster Taib gets his way, it will only get worse in the months and years ahead.
The government of Sarawak is going all out for a new mass-industrialization project known as the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) initiative. Under SCORE, the government intends to build at least twelve new hydro dams in Sarawak in order to provide 28,000 MW of electricity for a yet-to-be-determined industrial complex in Sarawak.
Describing the risks of SCORE, the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) says,
“The ecological consequences of the new dams would be disastrous. River and forest landscapes which exist nowhere else in the world apart from Borneo would be destroyed for ever, and the animal and plant world would be threatened. Apart from that, dams cause the emission of large quantities of greenhouse gases, which fuel climate change even further.”
A Switzerland-based NGO, the Bruno Manser Fund is leading a campaigning against the SCORE initiative in coordination with a coalition of NGOs from around the world.
The social and cultural consequences of SCORE would be equally disastrous, says BMF. For instance, just one of the proposed dams–the 1000 MW Baram dam–would drown approximately 412 km2 (41200 hectares) of rainforest and 26 indigenous villages along with it. That will result in the displacement of up to 20,000 people.
Speaking to the future, Peter L., a Kenyah whose village would be lost to the Baram dam, compares the Chief Minister’s plan to “A tsunami created by human beings” that will “pick up speed and destroy everything: rivers, forest, harvest, villages, simply everything!”
“It is, however, not only the forest and fields as the lifeblood of Baram culture that are threatened,” reiterates BMF campaigner Annina Aeberli, in the NGO’s 2012 newsletter, Tong Tana. “The indigenous peoples of the Baram region are also lamenting the loss of their history and their social cohesion, which it defined strongly through their ancestors.”
As Maria, another Kenyah from Long Anap said to BMF, “Those of us alive today can at least run away when the water comes, but what are the dead going to do?” Thomas M., retired secondary teacher from the village of Long San, echoes Maria’s concerns. With tears in his eyes, he said, “my father died in 2002. I won’t let it happen that they flood his grave, so that my father dies a second time. I’m going to fight against the dam.”
Read more from Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/indigenous-peoples-say-no-to-disaster-development-in-sarawak/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Mar 6, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Natia Kuprashvili / Environment News Service
The Georgian authorities are promising that 15 new hydroelectric power stations will create thousands of jobs and improve energy provision, but environmentalists and residents of the villages to be flooded have voiced strong objections.
At least 20 villages are expected to be submerged by the reservoirs created by new dams in almost all regions of Georgia. Construction work will begin later this year.
Officials argue that the hydroelectric schemes will make Georgia a leading regional energy exporter as well as meeting its own needs.
President Mikheil Saakashvili has said the projects will also generate 13,000 jobs.
But opponents of the dams say they will take a heavy toll on local communities, and claim the government’s impact assessment for the project was flawed.
For the last two months, television stations have been carrying adverts arguing the case for hydroelectricity with clips of life in the 1990s, when frequent power cuts plunged Georgia into darkness, and people huddled around fires on the streets.
Opponents of the plan, mostly ethnographers and environmentalists, counter that the dams will in fact damage Georgia’s past by flooding ancient buildings, wiping out endangered species and generally harming the environment.
Prime Minister Nikoloz Gilauri has thrown his weight behind the campaign, telling a Turkish-Georgian energy conference on January 20 that the project would benefit Georgia and its neighbors.
“I believe that the construction of all these hydro-stations will bring profit to investors, to our country, to Turkey, and to various countries. You could say that whereas before, we were the least successful country [in energy terms], now we are the most successful,” he said.
Gilauri said around 40 contracts for the construction work had already been signed, mostly with Turkish businesses, he added.
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