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
Featured image: The Barro Blanco Dam in the Province of Chiriqui, western Panama. The dam is complete and will begin operation within weeks, according to the government. The Ngäbe-Bugle have been opposed to the project since its inception. Photo by Camilo Mejia Giraldo by Tracy Barnett / Intercontinental Cry
PANAMA CITY, Panama – The waters were rising again in Weni Bagama’s community when she headed to Panama City to meet with government officials about the flooding from the Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam.
Bagama was one of 10 people scheduled to speak April 4 at the first in a series of meetings on the problem of human rights violations against environmental defenders throughout the country. The meetings were requested by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at a hearing on that subject last month in Washington, D.C. There are currently more than 90 recorded human rights cases related to environmental issues in Panama, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
Meanwhile, Maryknoll Sister Melinda Roper traveled to the meeting from the opposite end of Panama, the province of Darien, heading to the same April 4 meeting. She was another of the 10 people scheduled to speak.
Roper, whose wide-ranging work in Panama includes participation in a local environmental group called Alianza para un Mejor Darien (Alliance for a Better Darien), was there to speak about the government’s lack of response to the repeated threats to journalist Ligia Arreaga, who was forced to flee the country due to her reporting on the destruction of the wetlands of Matusaragatí.
More Flooding in Ngäbe Territory
The nearly two-decade fight to stop Barro Blanco has led to violent conflicts with the Ngäbe-Buglé people and drawn fire from human rights and environmental advocates internationally as an example of the misuse of carbon offset programs. Despite all of this, the dam was constructed anyway and last year the company began a “test flooding” that inundated parts of three villages.
Bagama, a leader of her native Ngäbe people and the resistance movement against the dam, continues to fight to save the villages and the Tabasará River, which is sacred to the Ngäbe. She had traveled to Washington, D.C., for the IACHR hearing on March 17, where she had taken some heart in the fact that the international commission requested the Panamanian government engage in dialogue with protesters. She attended the first follow-up meeting on April 4 with high hopes.
Sr. Melinda Roper, second from right, attended the meeting with government officials on behalf of Alianza para un Mejor Darien on April 3, where she spoke of the case of journalist Ligia Arreaga and the destruction of the Matusaragatí wetlands. Osvaldo Jordán, executive director of Alianza para Conservation y Desarrollo, is pictured fourth from the right. (Courtesy of Feliciano Santos)
Afterwards, though, she expressed frustration at the lack of a response of government officials to her pointed questions. Earlier, on March 27, some of those officials, including Vice Minister Salvador Sánchez, had traveled to her community of Kiad to begin talks with the three affected communities.
They met, but talks seemed to reach a stalemate, because residents wanted two conditions in order to move forward. First, the reservoir levels need to be lowered below the line of the autonomous territory (comarca) to allow a professional archaeological investigation of the petrogylphs that have been submerged. The petroglyphs are the Ngäbe’s most important ceremonial site and represent a crucial connection to their ancestors.
Second, they repeated their request for representatives of the Dutch and German development banks that financed the project to visit the Ngäbe communities affected by the reservoir. Bagama said she hopes that the investment banks’ presence will contribute to a workable solution. But by March 31, with no warning, the waters in the river again began to rise.
“I asked them [at the April 4 meeting], ‘How we can have a guarantee that this conversation, this approach, will have follow-through and respect when they have not even concretized anything and are filling the reservoir again?”
Bagama was told that the subject of Barro Blanco would be dealt with in a separate process. She then asked when the next meeting would take place and has not yet received an answer.
In Kiad, Panama, Weni Bagama makes her way up a hill that was once verdant, now covered in caked mud since the flooding from Barro Banco dam. (Tracy L. Barnett)
Mónica De León, director of communications for the government’s Office of Foreign Affairs, sent an institutional response to this reporter’s questions via email: “The Government of the Republic of Panama is holding talks with the representatives of the communities impacted by the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Project, in order to promote actions that address the incompatibilities identified at the dialogue table.”
She referenced the March 27 meeting in Kiad “to agree on options for spaces and points of cultural veneration of communities impacted by the project and follow up on monitoring of water quality studies. It should be noted that the hydro has not entered operations, the test period is nearing completion and water remains at the lowest level.”
During the months-long “test period” for filling the reservoir, the community lost its generations-old food forest and most of the fish and shrimp in their river, the ancient petroglyphs that are an important ceremonial site, their roads to other communities, and several homes. In recent months the waters have dropped due to it being the dry season; the rainy season has not yet begun, so the rising waters have come as a surprise.
Barro Blanco made headlines late last year when it became the first development project to be deregistered under the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism, making the dam ineligible for issuing carbon offset credits. The Clean Development Mechanism is intended to encourage sustainable development in developing countries, but critics of the dam argued that it was anything but sustainable. Besides the fact that it would potentially displace more than 500 people and a cultural center in the comarca, the project would damage an important river ecosystem and a ceremonial and archaeological site that is vital to Ngäbe culture.
Work had continued apace on the dam despite international pressure and continued mass protests by the Ngäbe people, in which several people died and more were badly injured in confrontations with police. Now that the dam is finished and substantial parts of the communities are flooded, they fear what else will be lost in the imminent rainy season, and if the dam becomes fully operational.
There was no answer from the government regarding the request for a visit from the banks.
Paul Hartogsveld, Dutch Development Bank FMO press officer, wrote to this reporter: “FMO continues to emphasize the need for dialogue and consent between all parties involved. We respect the process and are awaiting the outcome. We do not foresee further action as this would possibly interfere with the negotiations between the government and the indigenous representation.”
A Wetlands Destroyed
Although the government has set aside 26,000 hectares of the approximately 68,000-hectare wetlands — the country’s most important — as protected area, a series of irregularities continue to plague the region, including massive land grabs by growers of industrial rice and oil palm.
Illegal canals have been constructed that are draining the wetlands, and the lagoon at its heart is beginning to run dry; 6,000 hectares belonging to the reserve have illegally been sold to private individuals, according to an ongoing lawsuit by the environmental ministry.
Roper considered the strong representation at the meeting by high officials from many government agencies, as well as the U.N.’s high commissioner on human rights, to be a good sign.
“My impression was that the atmosphere was one of clarity and openness on the part of almost all the people there to continue the process of dialog, creating a space perhaps every month for conversation to continue — realizing that there are many, many problems in Panama in terms of human rights violations, especially in relation to environmental problems,” said Roper.
“Of course it’s the type of meeting where you can make recommendations and you can establish context and dialog. It’s not a problem-solving meeting in the sense they would make a resolution to solve a specific problem, but I think it could work toward that.”
Another case presented at the April 4 meeting that continues to deteriorate, said Osvaldo Jordán, executive director of the Panamanian nonprofit Alianza para Conservación y Desarrollo (Alliance for Conservation and Development), is the development of Pedro González Island, where residents of African descent say law enforcement has arbitrarily detained them for opposing a foreign investor’s tourism project on lands they and their ancestors have inhabited for 300 years.
Despite the disappointment that Barro Blanco wasn’t addressed, attendees agreed that the meeting was a positive beginning to a new forum for addressing human rights violations against environmental defenders.
“I think it was positive in the sense that it allowed for a dialog,” said Jordán. “These are groups that were heavily oppressed, and their cases were ignored. So just making those cases visible and raising them to this level of public awareness is a step ahead. Unfortunately no clear answers were given and the danger is that this becomes catharsis — just a time for people to vent their frustrations without getting to any resolution. So we have to fight hard for that not to happen.”
Farah Urrutia, Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responded to this reporter’s questions in an email, referencing the achievements of the meeting: the presence of high-level officials in various government agencies, as well as the Office of the Ombudsman, and an agreement to follow up with site visits to the problem areas and by organizing monthly meetings with environmental defenders.
“Finally, we believe that the climate of the [working group] is conducive to assess the possible presentation of a bill that can protect these groups,” she added.
Jordán agreed. “I think the meeting represented a positive direction, in particular the proposal of the ombudsman’s office to coordinate with the U.N. in trying to get a policy that will protect environmental defenders in Panama,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bagama is hopeful of receiving a phone call soon so that the conversations with the government can continue. Although she clarified — as she did at the April 4 meeting — that in her view, as of yet there is no formal dialog between the communities and the government, and there will be no dialog until their requests are met.
“If the government wants a conversation with the affected communities, they need to stop filling the reservoir,” she said. “If they do not stop the filling it, there is no conversation. It is regrettable and I don’t want it to happen, but that is what will happen if the government does not order to stop filling. They argue that they cannot do it, but I ask, ‘Who is in charge? The government or the companies? Who defends the rights?’ That is what we are seeing.”
[Tracy L. Barnett is an independent writer, editor and photographer specializing in environmental issues, indigenous rights and sustainable travel.]
For nearly a decade, Panama’s Barro Blanco dam has met with strong opposition from indigenous Ngäbe communities. It has also generated violent suppression from government forces, and attracted criticism from international organizations.
An agreement on the dam’s completion, reached by the government and the community’s now-ousted leader, was voted down by the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress in September 2016. The dam’s surprise deregistration from the UN Clean Development Mechanism in October 2016 did nothing to stop the project.
Now, the General Administrator of Panama’s National Authority for Public Services has declared that the Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress never presented a formal rejection document to the government, meaning dam operations can begin.
Panama’s Supreme Court has ruled against the last two legal actions by indigenous communities impacted by Barro Blanco. The Supreme Court decisions cannot be appealed, so the communities have now exhausted all legal avenues within the country, leaving only international processes.
The contentious Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam is set to begin operations within the next few weeks, defying both the relentless opposition by affected communities and the rejection last September by local indigenous authorities of a government proposed project completion agreement.
According to Roberto Meana, General Administrator of Panama’s National Authority for Public Services (ASEP), the 28-megawatt gravity dam in western Panama could begin operation within days once necessary tests are finalized. The reservoir’s waters have been rising since August of last year, gradually flooding Ngäbe communities and land.
“It can be in five days, or it can be two weeks, but the project is very close to entering its commercial operation,” Meana told Mongabay last Friday.
Controversy from the start
The hydroelectric project, partly funded by two European development banks, has been at the epicenter of a complex environmental and human rights battle that has raged on for nearly a decade between a handful of indigenous Ngäbe communities and successive Panamanian administrations.
In the last few months alone, the project was removed from the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism (UNCDM), a positive result for the indigenous communities; but has also had two pending legal pleas rejected by Panama’s Supreme Court in favor of the government — potentially opening the door for the forceful expulsion of the affected indigenous people from their lands.
The structurally complete dam on the Tabasará River is set to create a 258-hectare (1 square mile) reservoir within the province of Chiriqui. It will flood 6.7 hectares (16.5 acres) belonging to the Ngäbe-Buglé comarca — a semi-autonomous region located a few miles upstream of the dam.
The Barro Blanco Dam in the Province of Chiriqui, western Panama. The dam is complete and will begin operation within weeks, according to the government. The Ngäbe-Bugle have been opposed to the project since its inception. Photo by Camilo Mejia Giraldo
The imminent operational status of the project now raises serious questions over the future of the local riverside Ngäbe communities, which have continuously called for the dam’s cancellation since it was given the go ahead in 2007.
“If the government is going to start generating [electricity], then they are confirming the violation of our rights as an affected community,” Weny Bagama, a Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress delegate and a leader of the outspoken M10 (Movimiento 10 de Abril) group opposing the dam, told Mongabay.
“They are doing this even though [the Ngäbe-Bugle General] Congress rejected the past agreement,” she said referring to a now defunct accord to allow the dam’s full operation which was reached by the government and the Cacica (negotiators) of the Ngäbe-Bugle community in August 2016. That deal was in turn rejected by the community in September when the Cacica negotiators were ousted by the Ngäbe-Buglé General Congress, the comarca’s key decision-making body.
“The [General] Congress’ decision is the internal decision of the comarca, and if they don’t respect that, then evidently the government just does what it likes and does not respect the jurisdiction established by comarca law,” Bagama said.
According to Meana, however, the Ngäbe-Buglé General Congress’ decision to reject the agreement was not followed by submission of the proper paperwork to the government — a formal document outlining the community’s decision and the reasons for the dam’s rejection.
“To date, there is no document in which this agreement is rejected. The [Ngäbe-Bugle] Congress sent it to be revised. If the Congress had rejected it, they wouldn’t have set up a commission to review it,” Meana said referring to a commission created by the indigenous General Congress to formally analyze the conflict.
These conclusions were strongly opposed by Bagama, who stated that although the congress had not filed a legal rejection document, the congress and the special commission had yet to finalize their response.
“The commission was not named to revise the document but to analyze the conflict in its entirety,” she said. “They didn’t give us a time limit or date to present the [legal rejection] document, but the decision of the Congress needs to be free of pressure or conditions, because the comarca has its own procedures and according to our law we have to follow certain procedures.”
The Ngäbe-Bugle General Congress meets on September 15, 2016 to debate the Barro Blanco agreement. Photo Courtesy of Weny Bagama
The vote by the indigenous body last September appeared to place a cloud of uncertainty over the project, as it was thought by both parties that they would renew negotiations to reach a final agreement.
But even before the indigenous Congress’ rejection, the government allowed the dam’s construction company Generadora del Istmo S.A. (GENISA) to begin test flooding the dam’s reservoir in August, 2016 — a move opposed by the Ngäbe communities that have since lost homes and some of their most fertile land to the rising waters.
“As a community we feel that we are prisoners within our own homes, we can’t move around as we used to, the water levels have dropped slightly [due to the dry season], but all the surrounding land has just turned into mud,” Bagama explained.
“We live in a situation of constant threat because of this reservoir, with what the government has been doing and their economic interests, which are above our livelihoods as indigenous people,” she added.
On November 1, 2016, the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica’s Supreme Court provided some good news to a Terraba (Teribe) Indigenous territory when it stopped the state-run Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE by its Spanish acronym) from going forward with the Diquis hydroelectric project for failing to consult Indigenous communities who would see part of their lands flooded.
The permit, issued in 2007 under former President Oscar Arias, had declared the dam to be located at the mouth of the General River Valley in the southern Pacific and part of the country of “national interest.”
The court ruling did not question the “national interest” part of the permit, but said ICE had failed to comply with a previous high court order to adequately consult the Indigenous communities. The project has been stalled since 2011 over the Indigenous consultation issue.
The 650 megawatt hydroelectric project was to be the largest such project in Central America. The project’s reservoir would occupy 7363 hectares of land, 830 hectares of which are Indigenous territories, and displace over 1547 people.
The project would also flood 10 percent of the Terraba (also known as Teribe) China Kichá Indigenous territory (104 hectares) and 8 percent of another Terraba communities of Curré and Boruca (726 hectares). Officials estimate that 200 sacred Indigenous sites would be destroyed by the reservoir.
Some see the development as very positive. The $2.5 billion project would provide employment in the region to 3,500 people. The Diquis project would increase that renewable energy capacity and also allow Costa Rica to sell energy to neighboring Central American countries. Costa Ricans are proud of their electrical energy system which provides energy mostly from renewable resources. In 2016, the country went most of the year without resorting to using oil-fired thermal generators. But sometimes even renewable energy has high cost, especially when it comes to hydro-electric dams.
The high court ruling referred to Article 8 of the Arias Administration decree which would have allowed ICE to gather materials for the dam, power station, and connected works in locales in the areas of El General, Buenos Aires, Changuena and Cabagra, despite the fact that Indigenous people live in the areas.
According to the Constitutional Chamber’s press office, the annulled article was challenged previously in September of 2011, when the court determined that the decree was constitutional just as long as the Indigenous communities were consulted within a period of six months from the notification of the ruling.
However, early the next year, the court ruled that the six months established by the Court had passed and the consultation had not been made. “The Constitutional Chamber has demonstrated that, in fact, in the space of time established in the 2011-12975 ruling, the referred to consultation was not made nor did any party come to this Chamber request an extension of the time limit granted. Therefore, since the condition dictated in ruling 2011-12975 have not been met, the Article 8 of the No. 34312-MP-MINAE executive decree is unconstitutional because the consultation failed to occur,” said the press office.
The Terraba say they are not interested in the offers made so far to relocate their communities to other lands and provide them with well-paid jobs. “We don’t believe in the promises of employment for Indigenous Peoples, as up until today it had been demonstrated that all the qualified and best paid personnel have been brought from outside, Indigenous workers are used only to break rocks,” said community leader Jehry Rivera.
For Indigenous people, ICE offers are only opportunism. Indigenous Peoples want better lands and compensation in order to agree for the project to go forward.
The Court said that the consultation of Indigenous communities under Costa Rican law was necessary since the project is located in areas declared as an Indigenous reserve, “In fact, Costa Rica could be in violation of not complying with international conventions in relation to the autonomy of Indigenous Peoples over their territory. Costa Rica is a signatory of the International Labor Organization’s Convention on Indigenous and Tribal People.”
Indigenous Peoples are not the only ones opposed to the project. Environmentalists say that the dam’s reservoir would dry up the intensely green Térraba River Valley and would destroy irreplaceable habitats such as the Ramsar wetland and the river delta that drains into the Pacific. The wetlands and delta are the nesting grounds for many species including the endangered hump-back whale.
–John McPhaul is a Costa Rican-American freelance writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During his many years in Costa Rica, the land of his birth, he wrote for the Miami Herald, Time Magazine and Costa Rica’s The Tico Times among other publications.
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.
