Featured image: A girl stands alone in a flooded home in the Palifitas neighborhood of Invasão dos Padres, Altamira. The neighborhood has now been completely destroyed by the Belo Monte dam. The area where the community once stood is being turned into a public park by the Norte Energia consortium which built and operates Belo Monte. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
The future of Brazil’s mega-dam construction program is unclear, with one part of the Temer government declaring it an end, while another says the program should go on. More clear is the ongoing harm being done by the giant hydroelectric projects already completed to the environment, indigenous and traditional communities.
A case in point: the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam and reservoir, located on the Amazon’s Xingu River, and the third largest such project in the world.
Photographer Aaron Vincent Elkaim and I spent three months in the Brazilian Amazon, between November 2016 and January 2017, documenting Belo Monte after it became operational.
We were based in Altamira, a once small Amazonian city that saw explosive growth when the Brazilian government decided to build the controversial six-billion-dollar mega-dam.
The dam was built in a record three years, despite widespread outrage and protests from locals, along with the environmental, indigenous and international community. Major public figures including rock star Sting, filmmaker James Cameron, and politician and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger waged a high-profile media campaign against the project, but even these lobbying efforts weren’t enough to change the direction of the Dilma Rousseff administration, which was ruling Brazil at the time.
Ana De Francisco, an Altamira-based anthropologist and her son Thomas, visit the Belo Monte Dam in 2016. De Fransisco works for the regional office of the Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), an influential Brazilian NGO focusing on environmental and human rights issues. She has been doing research for her PhD on the displacement of ribeirinho (traditional riverine) communities in the Xingu region. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
Ultimately at least 20,000 people were displaced by the dam, according to NGO and environmental watchdog, International Rivers, though the local nonprofit, Xingu Vivo, puts the number at 50,000. Eventually, the project succeeded in staunching the once mighty Xingu, a major tributary to the Amazon and lifeblood to thousands of indigenous and forest-dwelling communities.
Altamira, which lies just downstream from the dam, was transformed overnight becoming a raucous boomtown: the population shot up from 100,000 to 160,000 in just two years. Hotels, restaurants and housing sprang up. So did brothels. According to one widely circulated anecdote, there was so much demand for sex workers in Altamira at the time, that prostitutes asked local representatives of Norte Energia, the consortium building the dam, to stagger monthly pay checks to their employees, so as not to overwhelm escorts on payday.
The boom didn’t last. The end of construction in 2015 signaled an exodus; 50,000 workers left, jobs vanished, violence surged in the city, as did a major health crisis that overwhelmed the local hospital when raw sewage backed up behind the dam.
Boys climb a tree flooded by the Xingu River in 2014. Today, one-third of the city of Altamira has been permanently flooded by the Belo Monte Dam that displaced more than 20,000 people, destroying indigenous and ribeirinho (river-dwelling) traditional communities. The effects were so severe that Norte Energia, the company behind the dam, has been required to carry out a six-year study to measure the environmental and social impacts of Belo Monte and to determine if indigenous and fishing communities can continue to live downriver from the dam. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
When Aaron and I arrived in Altamira in 2016, the city still held some charm. Families strolled a popular boulevard skirting the Xingu River in the evening, and restaurants stayed open until late. But Aaron, having spent two years in the region before me, saw a different Altamira. He described the city I was seeing as “hollow,” and noted the disappearance of vibrant communities of ribeirinhos, “river people,” who had lived for generations by fishing at the riverside, and had been displaced by the dam. Many were relocated by the Norte Energia consortium to cookie-cutter suburban homes on the edge of town, far from the river and their fishing livelihood, and without access to public transportation.
Ana de Francisco, an Altamira-based anthropologist and expert on ribeirinhocommunities, estimates that as many as 5,000 of these families were displaced.
Belo Monte was no Three Gorges Dam – the Chinese project that displaced over a million people in 2009 – but it did wreak havoc; destroying communities and traditional ways of life, while also damaging the Xingu’s aquatic ecosystem, which has unique fish and turtle species.
A map showing the Belo Monte mega-dam and reservoir where it bisects a big bend in the Xingu River hangs on the wall of a home in Ilha da Fazenda, a small fishing village a few kilometers from the dam. According to village leader Otavio Cardoso Juruna, an indigenous Juruna, around 40 families live in Ilha da Fazenda, which was founded in 1940. Ilha da Fazenda is a mixed village of indigenous and non-indigenous residents. Residents complain that although they were negatively affected by the dam like others in the region, they were not compensated because they were not designated as an “indigenous village.” There is no potable water, sanitation or healthcare in Ilha da Fazenda, and locals were forced to stop fishing after the dam reduced the river’s flow by 80 percent and massively depleted fish stocks. Otavia said villagers were forming an organization to negotiate for compensation due to the planned Belo Sun goldmine, the region’s next mega-development project. Photo by Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Alexia Foundation
Featured image: Munduruku warriors gather at the São Manoel hydroelectric dam site. Courtesy Caio Mota/Centro Popular do Audiovisual/Forum Teles Pires via internationalrivers.org
Munduruku await for government to comply with their promises or they will return to halt construction again
Indigenous activists shut down construction of a massive dam project in Brazil for four days in July and received assurances from officials that their demands for halting construction of the dam, prior consultation, land rights and return of sacred funerary urns would be met.
The Munduruku activists had occupied the São Manoel hydroelectric dam site on the Teles Pires River that borders the states of Pará and Mato Grosso in the Brazilian Amazon. The São Manoel project is part of a larger effort to create a complex of five hydroelectric facilities in Brazil.
Lead by women warriors, a group of 200 Munduku men, women and children occupied the site on Sunday, July 16. The Munduruku and their allies stated that the project had already destroyed sites sacred to the Munduruku and other Indigenous Peoples. They chose to occupy the site to halt construction after previous protests and outreach failed to stop the project or cause the officials to return funerary urns which had been stolen during the building process.
The activists agreed to leave after a meeting with representatives from FUNAI, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), and the São Manoel and Teles Pires dam consortiums on July 19. The officials agreed to meet the demands presented by the Munduruku.
On July 21, Munduruku leaders announced that they would leave. “We Munduruku are returning to our villages, with the protection of the spirits of our ancestors. FUNAI [Brazil’s federal agency for Indigenous issues] has heard our demands and the companies made a commitment to our agenda. We will continue our movement. If they do not fulfill the commitment they made, FUNAI and the company can expect our return,” according to the Munduruku press statement titled We Are Made of the Sacred.
The list of demands that the government and corporate officials acceded to include the following:
The completion of land titling for the Munduruku territories of Sawre Muybu, Pontal dos Isolados, Sawre Jaybu and Sawre Apompu.
Independent studies on the socio-environmental and cultural impacts of dams on the Teles Pires River, with active participation of indigenous communities and experts indicated by them.
That any approval of the São Manoel dam be based on the rule of law and independent technical evaluations of impacts on rivers, fish and the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples.
That the mitigation and compensation plans for the Teles Pires and São Manoel hydroelectric dam projects be revised to guarantee transparency and full participation of Indigenous Peoples.
That future projects protect the collective historical and cultural heritage of Indigenous Peoples of the Teles Pires, and that funeral urns be returned to a sacred site, determined by the Munduruku people, for permanent storage and protection.
Guarantee of Free, Prior and Informed Consent, in accordance with the Munduruku consultation protocol, for future proposed projects that directly or indirectly impact upon Indigenous Peoples.
At dawn on Sunday, July 16th, 200 representatives of the indigenous Munduruku nation occupied the main work camp of the São Manoel hydroelectric dam on the Teles Pires River in the Brazilian Amazon, paralyzing the project. Led by Munduruku women warriors, the occupiers presented a series of demands to dam developers and Brazilian government authorities, including the right to consultation, land titling, and respect for their cultural and spiritual sites. They also demanded that developers repair the grave environmental destruction inflicted by dams on the Teles Pires.
In an open letter, the Munduruku state: “Our sacred places [such as the Sete Quedas waterfall and burial grounds] were violated and destroyed. Our ancestors are crying… The Teles Pires and Tapajós Rivers are dying. Our rights, guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, which came to exist after much indigenous blood was spilled, are being violated.”
The letter emphasizes that construction of the São Manoel and Teles Pires hydroelectric dams, both located in close proximity to indigenous territories occupied by the Munduruku, Kayabi and Apiaka tribes, constitute a gross violation of the right of indigenous peoples to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), guaranteed by International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, to which Brazil is a signatory. In an effort to support FPIC implementation, in 2014 the Munduruku published a ‘protocol’ in which they laid out guidelines for an appropriate process of prior consultation and consent for proposed projects that would affect their livelihoods and rights. Though they formally presented it to the Brazilian government in 2015, they have yet to receive a reply.
Together with the destruction of the Sete Quedas waterfalls – a site considered to be the center of cosmology for the region’s three indigenous peoples – dams on the Teles Pires River also led to the removal of funerary urns and archeological artefacts on Munduruku burial grounds. Long a major concern of Munduruku leadership, the return of these items is among the principal demands of the occupation.
“I am deeply saddened to be witnessing the destruction of our sacred sites,” said Maria Leusa Kabá Munduruku, one of the principal leaders of the occupation. “We women need to have great strength to cure the pains we are feeling here.”
Now entering its third day, the occupation of the São Manoel dam was conceived by Munduruku women who identified the need to take bold action to stop the ongoing destruction of indigenous rights and territories in the Tapajós River basin.
“After we heard the Munduruku women, it was decided that we would gather peacefully at the São Manoel work camp, motivated by our pain,” says the Munduruku statement. “We are not here to invade. The only invader is the government and the companies responsible for the dams being built on the Teles Pires…. We know that our struggle is legitimate… We ask that our demands be met and will not leave here until they are.”
In response to the indigenous mobilization and work stoppage at São Manoel, members of the dam’s consortium, EESM – composed of the Brazilian affiliate of the China Three Gorges Corporation (CTG); Portugal’s EDP Energias do Brasil; and Furnas, a state-run energy company – filed suit in federal court to end the occupation. The Munduruku countered with a second statement, attesting to their determination to engage in dialogue and to remain on site, resisting efforts to intimidate them. “We only need for our demands to be attended to. Our protest is peaceful and therefore the intervention of the national guard or federal police is not necessary.”
In its only proactive response to Munduruku demands, the government agreed to send the president of the indigenous agency, FUNAI, to visit the occupation site. The Munduruku are skeptical, however, particularly given that FUNAI’s current president, Franklimberg Ribeiro de Freitas, is a highly controversial appointee of Brazil’s right-wing Social Christian Party, which has proved antagonistic to indigenous rights. “It is not enough for him to come here with false promises,” read a Munduruku statement. “We want concrete responses to our needs.”
“Far from the limelight of high-profile, controversial projects like Belo Monte, the São Manoel and Teles Pires dams have involved a series of human rights violations and environmental illegalities since their inception,” said Brent Millikan of International Rivers – Brazil. “The consequences of this steamrolling of the rule of law have included the destruction of sacred sites and devastating downstream impacts on water quality, freshwater ecosystems and fisheries that are essential for the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.”
“The Munduruku occupation demonstrates the extent to which Brazil’s indigenous and traditional peoples must go to make themselves heard,” said Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch. “This a struggle for cultural survival in opposition to a disastrous pattern of environmental destruction and rights violations endemic to Brazil’s Amazon dam-building program.”
The São Manoel and Teles Pires dams are part of a complex of four large hydroelectric projects simultaneously under construction on the Teles Pires River, a major tributary of the Tapajós River in the Brazilian Amazon. The dams were planned by the state-run energy company Eletrobras and the Energy Planning Institute (EPE), both affiliated with the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy. The socio-environmental risks of this dam cascade in the Amazon, including violation of indigenous rights, were systematically underestimated or simply ignored. Environmental licenses and public funding from Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDES) were approved under intense political pressure.
Investors such as CTG and Iberdrola, a Spanish pension fund, repeatedly ignored warning signs of the projects’ legal, financial and reputational risks. Recently, the CTG-led São Manoel consortium informed indigenous peoples of the Teles Pires River that the closing of floodgates and filling of the dam’s reservoir would begin in August, despite the fact that no such license has been issued by IBAMA, the federal environmental agency. Although dam construction began in 2014, a plan to mitigate and compensate impacts of the São Manoel dam, which should have preceded construction, has yet to receive final approval from FUNAI and indigenous tribes.
Don’t talk to me about sustainability. You want to question my lifestyle, my impact, my ecological footprint? There is a monster standing over us, with a footprint so large it can trample a whole planet underfoot, without noticing or caring. This monster is Industrial Civilization. I refuse to sustain the monster. If the Earth is to live, the monster must die. This is a declaration of war.
What is it we are trying to sustain? A living planet, or industrial civilization? Because we can’t have both.
Somewhere along the way the environmental movement – based on a desire to protect the Earth, was largely eaten by the sustainability movement – based on a desire to maintain our comfortable lifestyles. When did this happen, and why? And how is it possible that no-one noticed? This is a fundamental shift in values, to go from compassion for all living beings and the land, to a selfish wish to feel good about our inherently destructive way of life.
The sustainability movement says that our capacity to endure is the responsibility of individuals, who must make lifestyle choices within the existing structures of civilization. To achieve a truly sustainable culture by this means is impossible. Industrial infrastructure is incompatible with a living planet. If life on Earth is to survive, the global political and economic structures need to be dismantled.
Sustainability advocates tell us that reducing our impact, causing less harm to the Earth, is a good thing to do, and we should feel good about our actions. I disagree. Less harm is not good. Less harm is still a lot of harm. For as long as any harm is caused, by anyone, there can be no sustainability. Feeling good about small acts doesn’t help anyone.
Only one-quarter of all consumption is by individuals. The rest is taken up by industry, agribusiness, the military, governments and corporations. Even if every one of us made every effort to reduce our ecological footprint, it would make little difference to overall consumption.
If the lifestyle actions advocated really do have the effect of keeping our culture around for longer than it would otherwise, then it will cause more harm to the natural world than if no such action had been taken. For the longer a destructive culture is sustained, the more destruction it causes. The title of this article isn’t just attention-grabbing and controversial, it is quite literally what’s going on.
When we frame the sustainability debate around the premise that individual lifestyle choices are the solution, then the enemy becomes other individuals who make different lifestyle choices, and those who don’t have the privilege of choice. Meanwhile the true enemy — the oppressive structures of civilization — are free to continue their destructive and murderous practices without question. This is hardly an effective way to create a meaningful social movement. Divide and be conquered.
Sustainability is popular with corporations, media and government because it fits perfectly with their aims. Maintain power. Grow. Make yourself out to be the good guy. Make people believe that they have power when they don’t. Tell everyone to keep calm and carry on shopping. Control the language that is used to debate the issues. By creating and reinforcing the belief that voting for minor changes and buying more stuff will solve all problems, those in power have a highly effective strategy for maintaining economic growth and corporate-controlled democracy.
Those in power keep people believing that the only way we can change anything is within the structures they’ve created. They build the structures in a way that people can never change anything from within them. Voting, petitions, and rallies all reinforce the power structures, and can never bring about significant change on their own. These tactics give corporations and governments a choice. We’re giving those in power a choice of whether to grant our request for minor reform. Animals suffering in factory farms don’t have a choice. Forests being destroyed in the name of progress don’t have a choice. Millions of people working in majority-world sweatshops don’t have a choice. The 200 species who became extinct today didn’t do so by choice. And yet we give those responsible for all this murder and suffering a choice. We’re granting the desires of a wealthy minority above the needs of life on Earth.
Most of the popular actions that advocates propose to achieve sustainability have no real effect, and some even cause more harm than good. The strategies include reducing electricity consumption, reducing water use, a green economy, recycling, sustainable building, renewables and energy efficiency. Let’s look at the effects of these actions.
Electricity
We’re told to reduce our consumption of electricity, or obtain it from alternative sources. This will make zero difference to the sustainability of our culture as a whole, because the electricity grid is inherently unsustainable. No amount of reduction or so-called renewable energy sources will change this. Mining to make electrical wires, components, electrical devices, solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal plants, biomass furnaces, hydropower dams, and everything else that connects to the electricity grid, are all unsustainable. Manufacturing to make these things, with all the human exploitation, pollution, waste, health and social impacts, and corporate profits. Fossil fuels needed to keep all these processes going. Unsustainable. No amount of individual lifestyle choices about electricity use and generation will change any of this. Off grid electricity is no different – it needs batteries and inverters.
Water conservation
Shorter showers. Low-flow devices. Water restrictions. These are all claimed to Make A Difference. While the whole infrastructure that provides this water – large dams, long distance pipelines, pumps, sewers, drains – is all unsustainable.
Dams destroy the life of a whole watershed. It’s like blocking off an artery, preventing blood from flowing to your limbs. No-one can survive this. Rivers become dead when fish are prevented from travelling up and down the river. The whole of the natural community that these fish belong to is killed, both upstream and downstream of the dam.
Dams cause a lowering of the water table, making it impossible for tree roots to get to water. Floodplain ecologies depend on seasonal flooding, and collapse when a dam upstream prevents this. Downstream and coastal erosion results. Anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in dams releases methane to the atmosphere.
No matter how efficient with water you are, this infrastructure will never be sustainable. It needs to be destroyed, to allow these communities to regenerate.
The green economy
Green jobs. Green products. The sustainable economy. No. There’s no such thing. The whole of the global economy is unsustainable. The economy runs on the destruction of the natural world. The Earth is treated as nothing but fuel for economic growth. They call it natural resources. And a few people choosing to remove themselves from this economy makes no difference. For as long as this economy exists, there will be no sustainability.
For as long as any of these structures exist: electricity, mains water, global economy, industrial agriculture – there can be no sustainability. To achieve true sustainability, these structures need to be dismantled.
What’s more important to you – to sustain a comfortable lifestyle for a little longer, or the continuation of life on Earth, for the natural communities who remain, and for future generations?
Recycling
We’re made to believe that buying a certain product is good because the packaging can be recycled. You can choose to put it in a brightly-coloured bin. Never mind that fragile ecosystems were destroyed, indigenous communities displaced, people in far away places required to work in slave conditions, and rivers polluted, just to make the package in the first place. Never mind that it will be recycled into another useless product which will then go to landfill. Never mind that to recycle it means transporting it far away, using machinery that run on electricity and fossil fuels, causing pollution and waste. Never mind that if you put something else in the coloured bin, the whole load goes to landfill due to the contamination.
Sustainable building
Principles of sustainable building: build more houses, even though there are already enough perfectly good houses for everyone to live in. Clear land for houses, destroying every living thing in the natural communities that live there. Build with timber from plantation forests, which have required native forests to be wiped out so they can be replaced with a monoculture of pines where nothing else can live. Use building products that are slightly less harmful than other products. Convince everyone that all of this is beneficial to the Earth.
Solar power
Solar panels. The very latest in sustainability fashion. And in true sustainability style, incredibly destructive of life on earth. Where do these things come from? You’re supposed to believe that they are made out of nothing, a free, non-polluting source of electricity.
If you dare to ask where solar panels come from, and how they are made, its not hard to uncover the truth. Solar panels are made of metals, plastics, rare earths, electronic components. They require mining, manufacturing, war, waste, pollution. Millions of tons of lead are dumped into rivers and farmland around solar panel factories in China and India, causing health problems for the human and natural communities who live there. Polysilicon is another poisonous and polluting waste product from manufacturing that is dumped in China. The production of solar panels causes nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) to be emitted into the atmosphere. This gas has 17 000 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
Rare earths come from Africa, and wars are raged over the right to mine them. People are being killed so you can have your comfortable Sustainability. The panels are manufactured in China. The factories emit so much pollution that people living nearby become sick. Lakes and rivers become dead from the pollution. These people cannot drink the water, breathe the air or farm the land, as a direct result of solar panel manufacturing. Your sustainability is so popular in China that villagers mobilise in mass protest against the manufacturers. They are banding together to break into the factories and destroy equipment, forcing the factories to shut down. They value their lives more than sustainability for the rich.
Panels last around 30 years, then straight to landfill. More pollution, more waste. Some parts of solar panels can be recycled, but some can’t, and have the bonus of being highly toxic. To be recycled, solar panels are sent to majority-world countries where low-wage workers are exposed to toxic substances while disassembling them. The recycling process itself requires energy and transportation, and creates waste products.
Solar panel industries are owned by Siemens, Samsung, Bosch, Sharp, Mitsubishi, BP, and Sanyo, among others. This is where solar panel rebates and green power bills are going. These corporations thank you for your sustainable dollars.
Wind power
The processing of rare earth metals needed to make the magnets for wind turbines happens in China, where people in the surrounding villages struggle to breathe in the heavily polluted air. A five-mile-wide lake of toxic and radioactive sludge now takes the place of their farmland.
Whole mountain ranges are destroyed to extract the metals. Forests are bulldozed to erect wind turbines. Millions of birds and bats are killed by the blades. The health of people living close to turbines is affected by infrasound.
As wind is an inconsistent and unpredictable source of energy, a back-up gas fired power supply is needed. As the back-up system only runs intermittently, it is less efficient, so produces more CO2 than if it were running constantly, if there were no turbines. Wind power sounds great in theory, but doesn’t work in practice. Another useless product that benefits no-one but the shareholders.
Energy efficiency
How about we improve energy efficiency? Won’t that reduce energy consumption and pollution? Well, no. Quite the opposite. Have you heard of Jevon’s paradox? Or the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate? These state that technological advances to increase efficiency lead to an increase in energy consumption, not a decrease. Efficiency causes more energy to be available for other purposes. The more efficient we become at consuming, the more we consume. The more efficiently we work, the more work gets done. And we’re working at efficiently digging ourselves into a hole.
The economics of supply and demand
Many actions taken in the name of sustainability can have the opposite effect. Here’s something to ponder: one person’s decision not to take flights, out of concern about climate change or sustainability, won’t have any impact. If a few people stop flying, airlines will reduce their prices, and amp up their marketing, and more people will take flights. And because they are doing it at lower prices, the airline needs to make more flights to make the profit it was before. More flights, more carbon emissions. And if the industry hit financial trouble as a result of lowered demand, it would get bailed out by governments. This “opt-out” strategy can’t win.
The decision not to fly isn’t doing anything to reduce the amount of carbon being emitted, it’s just not adding to it in this instance. And any small reduction in the amount of carbon being emitted does nothing to stop climate change.
To really have an impact on global climate, we’ll need to stop every aeroplane and every fossil-fuel burning machine from operating ever again. And stopping every fossil-fuel burning machine is nowhere near the impossible goal it may sound. It won’t be easy, but it’s definitely achievable. And it’s not only desirable, but essential if life on this planet is to survive.
The same goes for any other destructive product we might choose not to buy. Factory-farmed meat, palm oil, rainforest timbers, processed foods. For as long as there is a product to sell, there will be buyers. Attempting to reduce the demand will have little, if any, effect. There will always be more products arriving on the market. Campaigns to reduce the demand of individual products will never be able to keep up. And with every new product, the belief that this one is a need, not a luxury, becomes ever stronger. Can I convince you not to buy a smartphone, a laptop, a coffee? I doubt it.
To stop the devastation, we need to permanently cut off the supply, of everything that production requires. And targeting individual companies or practices won’t have any impact on the global power structures that feed on the destruction of the Earth. The whole of the global economy needs to be brought to a halt.
What do you really want?
What’s more important – sustainable energy for you to watch TV, or the lives of the world’s rivers, forests, animals, and oceans? Would you sooner live without these, without Earth? Even if this was an option, if you weren’t tightly bound in the interconnected in the web of life, would you really prefer to have electricity for your lights, computers and appliances, rather than share the ecstasy of being with all of life on Earth? Is a lifeless world ruled by machines really what you want?
If getting what you want requires destroying everything you need – clean air and water, food, and natural communities – then you’re not going to last long, and neither will anyone else.
I know what I want. I want to live in a world that is becoming ever more alive. A world regenerating from the destruction, where every year there are more fish, birds, trees and diversity than the year before. A world where I can breathe the air, drink from the rivers and eat from the land. A world where humans live in community with all of life.
Industrial technology is not sustainable. The global economy is not sustainable. Valuing the Earth only as a resource for humans to exploit is not sustainable. Civilization is not sustainable. If civilization collapsed today, it would still be 400 years before human existence on the planet becomes truly sustainable. So if it’s genuine sustainability you want, then dismantle civilization today, and keep working at regenerating the Earth for 400 years. This is about how long it’s taken to create the destructive structures we live within today, so of course it will take at least that long to replace these structures with alternatives that benefit all of life on Earth, not just the wealthy minority. It won’t happen instantly, but that’s no reason not to start.
You might say let’s just walk away, build alternatives, and let the whole system just fall apart when no-one pays it any attention any more. I used to like this idea too. But it can’t work. Those in power use the weapons of fear and debt to maintain their control. The majority of the world’s people don’t have the option of walking away. Their fear and debt keeps them locked in the prison of civilization. Your walking away doesn’t help them. Your breaking down the prison structure does.
We don’t have time to wait for civilization to collapse. Ninety per cent of large fish in the oceans are gone. 99 per cent of the old growth forests have been destroyed. Every day 200 more species become extinct, forever. If we wait any longer, there will be no fish, no forests, no life left anywhere on Earth.
So what can you do?
Spread the word. Challenge the dominant beliefs. Share this article with everyone you know.
Listen to the Earth. Get to know your nonhuman neighbours. Look after each other. Act collectively, not individually. Build alternatives, like gift economies, polyculture food systems, alternative education and community governance. Create a culture of resistance.
Rather than attempting to reduce the demand for the products of a destructive system, cut off the supply. The economy is what’s destroying the planet, so stop the economy. The global economy is dependent on a constant supply of electricity, so stopping it is (almost) as easy as flicking a switch.
Governments and industry will never do this for us, no matter how nicely we ask, or how firmly we push. It’s up to us to defend the land that our lives depend on.
We can’t do this as consumers, or workers, or citizens. We need to act as humans, who value life more than consuming, working and complaining about the government.
Learn about and support Deep Green Resistance, a movement with a working strategy to save the planet. Together, we can fight for a world worth living in. Join us.
In the words of Lierre Keith, co-author of the book Deep Green Resistance, “The task of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much personal integrity as possible; it is to dismantle those systems.”
Do you agree with this analysis? If so, we have three steps for you to take:
Cultural Community of Kiad, Panama — Members of the grassroots indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé group known as The April 10 Movement (El Movimiento 10 de Abril, or “M10”), issued a call to the international community on Wednesday. They ask for an intervention to stop Ngäbe-Buglé communities from being flooded by the Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam.
The M10 called the flooding illegal and a violation of their human rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They refer to an environmental impact statement that failed to acknowledge the presence of the three communities that would be flooded by the project. They also say the agreement that Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela signed last August with the now-impeached leader Silvia Carrera was illegal, since it was done without the approval of the Ngäbe-Buglé General Congress, and was rejected by the congress in September.
Government representatives met with members of the group in the Cultural Community of Kiad on March 27. It was part of a series of meetings “to agree on options with respect to spaces and points of cultural veneration by communities impacted by the project and the monitoring of water quality studies,”[1] according to an institutional response from the government. Several days later, the water began to rise in the reservoir and has continued to rise until the time of publication of this communique. Community members have still not received communication from the government regarding the rising water levels or a future meeting date.
Communiqué from the April 10 Movement on the Barro Blanco hydroelectric plant
The community affected by the Hydroelectric Project Barro Blanco, hereby makes public the following facts of the violation of human rights by the Barro Blanco Dam:
1- As has been public knowledge since the beginning of the Barro Blanco project, the environmental impact study denied the existence of the original community that for centuries had lived in the confluence of the Tabasará River, and concessioning this place for the Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam has created a social, economic, cultural, spiritual, and environmental conflict for the community.
2- The government and the Supreme Court of Justice have violated the constitutional and legal precepts of our rights with the implementation of the Barro Blanco hydroelectric plant.
3- We firmly reject the ratification of the Varela-Carrera agreement for the defunct congress presided over by Demecio Case, held between 6 and 9 April 2017 in the northern community in the ñökribo region, in which agreement we played no part. Nor were we consulted about the content of the agreement, and the agreement was not accepted by the population of Llano Tugrí on August 22, 2016 and was rejected in Cerro Algodón on September 15, 2016 by the full General Congress where 148 delegates attended.
4- The highest body of expression and decision, the General Congress, has 255 elected delegates, with full right of decision and for which quorum constitutes 50% plus one; therefore the Norteño decision is illegal, since only 61 delegates attended, in addition to Mr. Demecio Case, who was removed from office on March 7, 2017, in Llano Tugrí, in the ordinary congress.
5- We request the President of the Republic to be a little more respectful of our rights, since any act carried out for the execution of said project has been done violating our legal security, and not only has violated the norms of the Republic, but also violated the Convention and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
6 – We call on the Panamanian population to protect the rights of all before the imposition of the government who makes use of economic and political power and interferes in the decision of the full Congress through the dismissal of Silvia Carrera and Demecio Case.
7- We make an urgent appeal to the national and international solidarity organizations and the United Nations to intervene to protect our rights as peoples most vulnerable to deserved justice in the Republic of Panama.
Gäejet Miranda
President of the M10 movement
Ngäbe-Büglé Comarca
Kiad Cultural Community, April 16, 2017
