Editor’s note: We wrote this article to give you a historical and current background of how people of the Philippines work relentlessly against dam constructions. It is a summary of the book Mapping Anti-Dam Movements: The Politics of Water Reservoir Construction and Hydropower Development Projects in the Philippines by Fernan Talamayan of the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.
The Filipinos, of which some of them are DGR allies, bravely try to protect water and land, even though the military persecutes and sometimes kills them for doing this.
A few years ago two DGR members went to the Philippines to exchange training and struggle methods. Since then the connection has developped into an ongoing solidarity, where we are able through donations by readers like you to support the allies’ activism and work together in grassroot projects. DGR Asia Pacific Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/dgrasiapacific/
By Mary Ann Jasper and Benja Weller
The people of the Philippines Archipelago are known as one of the world’s “most vibrant and advanced” multicultural society. They know how to organize in different affinity groups such as youth groups, workers alliances, and indigenous women’s groups, and how to build a culture of community and resistance to engage in important issues that the government fails to address.
There’s been more research done on the anti-mining movement in the Philippines, and less research on the anti-dam movement. But dam building is as relevant, and impacts as many local people, as mining projects do. National organisations such as the Haribon Foundation, Infrawatch PH and the Philippine Movement for Climate Change are also involved in helping the anti-dam movement.
Development means less indigenous land
Most regions affected by dam building are indigenous ancestral lands around the Manila metro area, because the country’s capital suffers chronic water shortages.
The indigenous peoples in the Philippines are the most marginalized people regarding health care, education, and income. This dates back to the late 19th century where the Spanish colonialists, on the basis of a new law, took away the land of indigenous peoples.
The existing Philippine law should protect indigenous peoples with it’s “Freedom, Prior and Informed Consent” policy and “The indigenous peoples rights act of 1997”. Instead research of Fernan Talamayan shows that these rights are being violated across the country. The Philippine government supports hydro power dam projects under the declaration of “development” and “clean energy” in order to purportedly create more jobs and solve the energy crisis.
“Red-tagging” as a method to silence people
In announcing the construction of the New Centennial Water Source Kaliwa Dam 2019, President Duterte pointed out that his government will push infrastructure projects at the cost of indigenous and environmental concerns:
“Let me be very clear to the citizens. You have every right to protest [infrastructure development] if it places your life in jeopardy, but if the safeguards are there between your concerns and the crisis that you’re trying to avoid, I will use the extraordinary powers of presidency.”
In other words, he sees no alternative for the water crisis other than dam building, whereas the indigenous peoples aim for restoring the true source of fresh water: healthy forests and watersheds.
The government uses a method called “red-tagging”, where it willfully accuses the most influential members in the anti-dam movement of being supporters of the New People’s Army (NPA), an armed wing of the Philippine Communist Party. That gives the military a mandate to surveille, harass and even kill these innocent local people.
These extrajudicial killings and other forms of state violence can weaken or strengthen anti-dam movements. While they can intensify the popular call for justice, they are also used to directly intimidate indigenous communities and force them to sell their lands to the government.
Stopping the Laiban dam
The Philippine state, meanwhile, employs divide and conquer tactics to manipulate local people into voting for the dam building by using shady voting methods which can cause division between the community members.
But if the protests stay strong, then the government’s dam-building plans can be stopped, as we see in the case of the Laiban dam project: The pressure of mobilization of the opposition consisting of religious groups, farmers, local environmental justice organizations, fisherfolk, local scientists and professionals stopped the construction of this dam in 2019.
A Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) commented on the halt of the project, saying that “Laiban is out, insofar as this administration is concerned, because of the social engineering nightmare that we’ll encounter in resettling 4800 families”.
Nonetheless the success of the opposing groups was overshadowed by several extrajudicial killings of engaged activists and indigenous peoples who the Philippine military harrassed prior to their murders.
No livelihood nor income when resettling
The same story of state-sponsored violence continues in other anti-dam construction projects.
A local group called Peasant Movement to Free the Agno (TIMMAWA), against the construction of the San Roque Dam, which several national and international environmental justice organizations supported, had a leader called Jose Doton or Apo Jose. He received death threats and was surveilled and “red-tagged” by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as a “communist sympathizer and a terrorist” before he was killed on May 16th 2006 near his home in San Nicholas, Pangasinan in northern Luzon.
Even when such extreme methods aren’t being used, indigenous peoples are paid to leave their ancestral land – but these resettlements under the Philippine law to other locations don’t turn out as successful as promised by the government.
One member of the Ibaloi people, who had to leave their land to make way for the San Roque Multipurpose Project, says in an Interview by Imhof:
“Before we moved, we were far better off. We had smaller houses but we had sources of livelihood. We could eat, grow vegetables, do gold panning. Here we need money to survive, but we have no source of income.”
The consequences of the Kaliwa Dam in 2019, where indigenous peoples lost their sacred burial sites and fishing and hunting grounds, led to the destruction of their culture and source of livelihoods in such a way that future generations may not be able to survive.
Communities mobilize against San Roque dam
The dam in the Pangasinan Province in northern Luzon stopped the natural overflow by the Agno River which was a traditional method used by farmers of San Nicolas to irrigate their fields. When the region is struck by strong typhoons, as happens frequently in the Philippines, the dam needs to release excess water which causes major flooding. In 2009 the release of excess water killed 57 people and destroyed crops and infrastructure worth billions of dollars.
It is no surprise therefore that local communities accompanied the building of the San Roque dam on the same river by huge protests: They filed lawsuits, engaged in judicial activism and media-based activism, sent letters and petitions to government officials, and mobilized public campaigns and street protests.
Philippine’s wildlife needs rivers
The survival of endemic wildlife is also in danger, as the planners want to build the dam within the National Wildlife Sanctuary (NPWS) and would directly impact 96 endemic species. Among those are the endangered Raflessia Manillana corpse flower, the Philippine mahogany and the endangered Philippine eagle. When dams are being constructed, entire ecosystems of rivers collapse and rainforests are destroyed, causing the loss of countless individual animals and species.
Despite all the threats and repression that local people have to endure, their opposition against dam building stays strong. When the solution of the government to energy crises in the Philippines is “development”, environmentalists and indigenous peoples ask, “development for whom?” and do everything in their power to keep protecting the livelihoods and rich ecosystems all of the Philippines depends upon.
The population in the Philippines is among the fastest growing in the world and consequently the Philippine government faces an enormous challenge as to whether it can provide for its human population without obliterating the environment that provides the basis of life.
Here you can find the above mentioned book, it’s worthwhile to read:
Editor’s note: There is no way mining can be done in a “sustainable way and with acceptable consequences,” whether it is on land or in the sea. It is not a question of if we don’t, we will have to continue to use open pit mines and mountaintop removal. These forms of mining will continue regardless. Deep sea mining will only add to it. Norway likes to be perceived as a net-zero hero but the reality is that behind all of those electric cars and heat pumps, Norway is a major exporter of fossil fuels, and uses the income to pay for the new technologies. And now Norway wants to be a leader in deep-sea mining, too. This demonstrates that Norway is a country that cares little for the natural world if it means giving up its extractive economy for the conviences of a modern lifestyle. If mining is involved, there will be no green transition.
Norway’s parliament has voted to allow deep-sea mining to commence in the Norwegian Sea, a move that has garnered criticism from scientists and environmentalists: While the Norwegian government insists that it can conduct deep-sea mining in a sustainable way, critics say these activities will put marine ecosystems and biodiversity at risk.
The Skandinavian country will open a 281,000-square-kilometer (108,500-square-mile) area of the ocean for deep-sea mining, which mostly falls along its continental shelf.
This result was already anticipated in December 2023 after Norway’s minority government negotiated a deal with opposition parties to open up the ocean off Norway’s coast to deep-sea mining.
Companies will now bid for exploration licences
The government previously proposed opening a 329,000-square-kilometer (127,000-square-mile) portion of the Norwegian Sea to deep-sea mining. However, this was later reduced to 281,000 km2 (108,500 mi2), an area nearly the size of Italy. Most of this region falls across Norway’s extended continental shelf, which is technically in international waters, but over which Norway has jurisdiction. Another portion falls within the territorial waters of the Svalbard archipelago, which Norway claims as its own exclusive economic zone, although this is contested by nations such as Russia, Iceland, the U.K. and several EU countries.
Experts say they believe the next step could be the Norwegian Offshore Directorate, the government agency responsible for regulating petroleum resources, inviting companies to bid for exploration licenses, which could happen as early as this year. However, there’s currently no public timeline of forthcoming events.
Norway intends to mine for minerals such as magnesium, cobalt, copper, nickel and rare-earth metals found in manganese crusts on seamounts and sulfide deposits on active, inactive or extinct hydrothermal vents. The government says seabed mining is necessary to ensure that Norway is able to succeed in a “green transition.”
“We need to cut 55% of our emissions by 2030, and we also need to cut the rest of our emissions after 2030,” Astrid Bergmål, Norway’s state secretary for the energy minister, told Mongabay. “So, the reason for us to look into seabed minerals is the large amount of critical minerals that will be needed for many years.”
Critics, however, say that minerals for renewable energy technologies could be obtained from land-based sources and recycling processes.
Doubts about “clean” deep-sea mining
Bergmål said deep-sea mining will be done in a “step-by-step approach” and that it will only be permitted to go forward if the Norwegian government can ensure it will be done in a “sustainable way and with acceptable consequences.”
“If there is one country that can do this in a stepwise manner … that is Norway,” Bergmål said, “because when we say that we are going to put the world’s highest standards with respect to environmental concerns, we do it in practice.”
Norway isn’t the only country with ambitions to mine the deep sea. Other nations, including the Cook Islands, China and Japan, are working on similar plans within their own jurisdictions.
Deep-sea mining explained in 5 minute video
The high seas, which are areas beyond national jurisdiction, have also been earmarked for seabed mining, particularly in a region of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where there are vast expanses dotted with potato-shaped polymetallic nodules containing minerals like manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), a U.N.-mandated mining regulator, has been overseeing negotiations to approve a set of rules that would govern this activity so it could potentially start in the near future.
Protesters ready to stop seabed mining industry
Peter Haugan, a scientist who serves as policy director of Norway’s Institute of Marine Research and director of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen, said Norway’s plans go against scientific advice and could endanger marine biodiversity.
“Destroying very sensitive and vulnerable areas and eliminating biodiversity … is a real risk,” Haugan told Mongabay. “It’s really a sad day for Norway.”
Haugan said Norway’s decision could also be a “violation of the law” due to a lack of scientific evidence needed to assess the environmental impacts of future mining activities, which is legally needed for such decisions to be made.
Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, a campaigner at Greenpeace Norway against deep-sea mining, who participated in a protest outside the Norwegian parliament on Jan. 9, said she’s still hopeful that environmentalists will be able to stop the industry before it goes ahead.
“We will use the tools we have available,” Helle told Mongabay. “We will continue to do activism against this disruptive industry and try to influence Norwegian politicians to stop deep-sea mining.”
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on Twitter@ECAlberts.
Editor’s note: Iran is mostly in the news for its nationwide protests against the Islamic Republic, and for its brutal treatment of women who refuse to cover their hair with a hijab. But there’s another crisis unfolding, not so much covered on the news – the ecological crisis.
In Iran we witness overshoot that leads to the land being uninhabitable in the future: water scarcity, loss of fertile land, overpopulation, government mismanagment, pollution, and poverty.
The oppression of women, gays and lesbians in a country ruled by Shariah – Islamic law based on the Quran – together with the denial of respecting nature, is a recipe for collapse.
Record temperatures, prolonged droughts, and the drying up of rivers and lakes are displacing tens of thousands of Iranians each year, experts say.
Many of the climate migrants are farmers, laborers, and fishermen who are moving with their families from the countryside to major urban areas in Iran in search of alternative livelihoods.
Iranian officials have blamed worsening water scarcity and rising desertification on climate change. But experts say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement and rapid population growth.
While the exact number of climate migrants is unknown, Iranian media estimated that around 42,000 people in 2022 were forced to migrate due to the effects of climate change, including drought, sand and dust storms, floods, and natural disasters. The estimated figure for 2021 was 41,000. Observers say the real figures are likely much higher. Experts say a growing number of Iranians are likely to leave rural areas as more areas of Iran — where most of the land is arid or semiarid — become uninhabitable every year.
“It is visible because Iran is very dry, there is little rainfall, and a significant part of the country is desert,” Tehran-based ecologist Mohammadreza Fatemi told RFE/RL. “As a result, the slightest change in the climate affects the population.”
Fatemi cited the drying up of the wetlands and lakes in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan as an example. The Hamun wetlands were a key source of food and livelihood for thousands of people. But as the wetlands have diminished, many locals have migrated to the cities.
“Many people lived there, [but] they all moved to [the provincial capital] Zahedan and [the city of] Zabol,” said Fatemi. Now, he adds, many are moving from these cities to other provinces.
Environmentalist Mehdi Zarghami from Tabriz University recently estimated that some 10,000 families have left Zabol for other parts of Iran during the past year due to drought and sandstorms.
Fatemi estimates that around 70 percent of migration inside Iran is driven by the effects of climate change. “We’ve entered the phase of crisis. The next level could be a disaster,” he said.
‘Water Bankruptcy’
Some Iranian officials have warned that many parts of the Islamic republic could eventually become uninhabitable, leading to a mass exodus from the Middle Eastern country.
In July, officials warned that more than 1 million hectares of the country’s territory — roughly equivalent to the size of Qom Province or Lebanon — is essentially becoming unlivable every year.
In 2018, then-Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that drought and water scarcity could fuel “massive migration” and eventually lead to a “disaster.”
Iran is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change in the Middle East, which is warming at twice the global average.
Ahad Vazifeh of Iran’s Meteorological Center said in October that average temperatures in Iran had increased by 2 degrees in the past 50 years.
But experts say that climate change only partly explains the environmental crisis that Iran is grappling with.
Tehran’s failed efforts to remedy water scarcity, including dam building and water-intensive irrigation projects, have contributed to the drying up of rivers and underground water reservoirs.
Kaveh Madani, the director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda that Iran’s “water bankruptcy” had been fueled by government mismanagement and the building of dozens of dams.
More on Iran’s water problem
“Iran’s consumption is more than its natural sources of water,” he said. “Therefore, [the authorities are] using underground sources of water. [In response,] the wetlands have dried up, rivers have dried up, and now climate change has added to this equation.”
“Temperatures are rising, there’s more dust, soil erosion will increase, and desertification will increase,” predicted Madani, a former deputy head of Iran’s Environment Department.
In this 2018 photo, a man walks his bicycle under the 400-year-old Si-o-seh Pol bridge, named for its 33 arches, that now spans a dried up Zayandeh Roud river in Isfahan.
The government’s mismanagement of Iran’s scant water resources has triggered angry protests in recent years, especially in drought-stricken areas.
Water scarcity has also led to conflict. Iran and Afghanistan engaged in deadly cross-border clashes in May after Tehran demanded that its neighbor release more upstream water to feed Iran’s endangered southeastern wetlands.
Social Problems
Some experts say rapid population growth in Iran has also contributed to the environmental crisis, although growth has slowed in recent years.
Iran’s population has more than doubled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, rising from about 35 million to almost 88 million, with about 70 percent of the population residing in cities.
Climate migration has put a growing strain on infrastructure and created socioeconomic problems in Iranian cities, including rising poverty, homelessness, and overcrowding, experts say.
A dust storm hits Zabol in October.
Researcher Mohammad Reza Mahbubfar told the Rokna news site in February 2021 that Tehran was a major destination for many of the country’s climate migrants. “Contrary to what officials say — that Tehran has a population of 15 million — the [real] figure has reached 30 million,” he said.
Mahbubfar added that “unbalanced development” had “resulted in Tehran being drowned in social [problems].”
The influx has led some wealthier Tehran residents to move to the country’s northern provinces, a largely fertile region that buttresses the Caspian Sea.
“My mother, who has a heart problem, now spends most of her time in our villa in Nowshahr,” a Tehran resident told Radio Farda, referring to the provincial capital of Mazandaran Province.
“My husband and I are hoping to move there once we retire to escape Tehran’s bad weather and pollution,” the resident said.
Reza Aflatouni, the head of Iran’s Land Affairs Organization, said in August that about 800,000 people had migrated to Mazandaran in the past two years.
Local officials have warned that Mazandaran is struggling to absorb the large influx of people.
Copyright (c)2023 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
Editor’s note: The mining industry is one of the most significant human rights violators in the world. Mines are one of the most dangerous and hazardous places to work. People do not willingly let go of their subsistence economies to work in mines and quarries. They have to be forced to do so. One of the ways mining companies do that is by taking away the means of a subsistence economy. This is the story of many mines across the world. In this piece, we bring to you a story from Tuscany, Italy. It traces out the history of marble quarrying in the Mountains of the Moon (Apuan Alps), and the struggle by local communities against the quarries.
Four of us set out from Florence, with dawn beginning to light up the waters of the Arno, for Carrara, city of marble, sea, quarrymen and anarchists.
Where the global marble business has stolen the ancient commons of the local inhabitants with the complicity of political forces of the right and left, and every year extracts five million tons of irreplaceable limestone: some 80% is scrap used as calcium carbonate CaCo3, a filler in paper, glass, plastics, paint, beauty creams, but above all, toothpaste.
We are going to attend a crowded conference to which every local councillor had been invited, yet not a single one had the courage to show up.
You may not know that in the northwestern corner of Tuscany there is a mountain range, unique in Europe, a mere 55 kilometres long, that has nothing to do with the nearby, smooth Apennines: the range is that of the Mountains of the Moon, known today as the “Apuan Alps“, because of their craggy peaks – from the Pania della Croce I looked over the Tyrrhenian Sea from Elba on the left to Corsica to beyond Genoa on the right, nearly to France.
Picture by Claudio Grande
Those mountains were raised from the bottom of the sea floor, by countless billions of tiny uncelebrated lives of creatures with calcareous shells, corals, molluscs, and fish with their bones. It took them some three hundred million years, till all their seaworld was thrust up into the sky.
“Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.”
Those flickering underwater lives became the world’s most renowned source of marble.Marmo di Carrara…
A world of peaks and caves and underground cavities like the Antro della Corchia, but like many others no one has yet explored, something like what Gimli spoke of in the Lord of the Rings:
“My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns of Helm’s Deep are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be. Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!’
‘And I would give gold to be excused,’ said Legolas; ‘and double to be let out, if I strayed in!’
‘You have not seen, so I forgive your jest,’ said Gimli. ‘But you speak like a fool. Do you think those halls are fair, where your King dwells under the hill in Mirkwood, and Dwarves helped in their making long ago? They are but hovels compared with the caverns I have seen here: immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as fair as Kheled-zâram in the starlight.”
The law that has been cast over the world in the last centuries knows only the faceless stateon the one hand, and privateproperty on the other: where private stems from the Roman idea of someone de-priving everybody else of something.
Both the state and private property were alien to the Commons of those who were bold enough to live in the mountains: shepherds, farmers and quarrymen of the marble that could be used for a pillar in Rome, then for a statue by Donatello or – much more often – for a gravestone to remember the dead: a friend of mine has a house at Minazzana, where Michelangelo, just 22, used to stop over, to select the right marble for the Pietà.
Some ninety years ago, one of the greatest and least remembered poets of the English language, Basil Bunting, came to live under the shadows of the Mountains of the Moon:
White marble stained like a urinal
cleft in Apuan Alps,
always trickling, apt to the saw. Ice and wedge
split it or well-measured cordite shots,
while paraffin pistons rap, saws rip
and clamour is clad in stillness:
clouds echo marble middens, sugar-white,
that cumber the road stones travel
to list the names of the dead.
There is a lot of Italy in churchyards,
sea on the left, the Garfagnana
over the wall, la Cisa flaking
to hillside fiddlers above Parma,
melancholy, swift,
with light bow blanching the dance.
Marble quarrying is by its very nature irreversible destruction. Basil Bunting could already hear the “well-measured cordite shots“, but before that came two thousand years of pickaxes hewing the rock.
The countless thousands of quarrymen who fell to their deaths, who were crushed as they rolled gigantic blocks of marble down the lizze, wheels made of tree trunks, could never regrow what they destroyed.
The first change came in the eighteenth century, when Tuscany’s most beloved ruler, the enlightened Pietro Leopoldo, suppressed the ancient custom of the death penalty.
But while he was at it, he also began to suppress the ancient custom of democracy; and started the privatisation of what had once been Commons, usi civici, domini collettivi, as they are still called today.
This was when a young man from Wakefield in England, William Walton, embodying the whole New World, arrived in the village of Serravezza:
“An active young man well versed in commercial and financial practices, young Walton is also gifted with a remarkable aptitude for solving organisational and technical problems and in this early period of his stay in Italy he looked around
in search of the most profitable industrial or commercial activity.”
“By 1866 Walton headed an industrial and commercial empire which covered all the aspects of marble production, quarrying, transport, sawmills, and sea transport to the customers”
British and French fought each other in a senseless war that led to the death of millions; but found themselves together in exploiting the Apuan Alps.
More on marble quarrying
Jean Baptiste Alexandre Henraux, a Napoleonic soldier charged with the task of stealing works of art out of Italy and bringing them to the Louvre, took the fine title of “Royal Superintendent of the selection and acquisition of white and statuary marble from Carrara for public monuments in France“.
In the very same years when the colonizers of North America were stealing land from the Native Americans, Henraux and his heirs opened 132 quarries, seizing possession of the commons belonging to the Comunità civica della Cappella “Civic Community of the Chapel”, so named for one of those places of worship where mountain people looking at the skies and feeling the icy wind, thank the saints for still being alive.
Today, the Henraux have faded out: in 2014, the company was bought out by CPC Marble & Granite, based in Cyprus,
“the major supplier of all finishing material to Makkah and Madinah Holy Mosques Expansions”
but above all, a member of the Binladen Group Global Holding Company: in 2018, Osama‘s less famous brother, Bakr, while in gaol for corruption, transferred his share to the Saudi government. So today, Anròas the locals quaintly call the Henraux company, is actually a part of the worldwide network of Saudi power.
People from Riomagno, Azzano, Fabiano, Giustagnana, Minazzana, Basati, Cerreta Sant’Antonio and Ruosina, to cite ancient names, dispossessed like the Sioux and Mapuche: it is curious to note how many Italians stand for distant peoples, yet know nothing about their neighbours. And how other Italians, who complain of Islamic invasion when a few immigrants come to pray together, fall silent when the Saudi government takes over slices of Italian land.
Fragments of Italian laws still recognise the basic principle underlying the Commons: that there is not only the bureaucrat versus the individual, but that what existed before both, also has rights: not the ‘it’ of the state versus the ‘I’, but we-our-people.
Today, the Comunità civica della Cappella is claiming back the stolen land.
And it has won cases in court.
So, the centre-right mayor of the municipality of Serravezza invented an agreement with the landrobbers, to give them almost everything, while leaving some woods in the hands of the Civic Community.
This decision required the approval of the representatives of the Civic Community, who of course were not willing to sign.
Then the Regional Government, in the hands of the centre-left party, found a way to prevent the Civic Community from regularly electing a board which could object to the decision of the centre-right mayor.
Corporations, faceless global acronyms, can today exploit not only the lands the commoners once owned, but also public lands, with what are called “grants“. Grants are for a limited period, but as they expire, the Regional Government has devised a creative way of greenwashing.
The commoners’ pickaxes left minimal waste; but the well measured cordite shots turned most of the marble into waste, currently 75% is allowed, in some cases, 95%.
However, if companies, instead of just leaving the waste on the ground in the great ravaneti which mark the territory, turn even that waste into profit for themselves as calcium carbonate for toothpaste and beauty cream, their grants are extended for years.
The rest of the waste becomes marmèttola, a fine white powder which enters the mysterious underground cavities of the Apuan Alps, where rainwater flows in becoming springs and lakes, and renders these waters undrinkable.
As everywhere else, global corporations seek local complicity.
First of all, speaking of employment. The local newspaper, reporting the conference we went to (or rather, “ecologists march on the Apuan Alps“), quoted a marbledealer in its title, “If we close down, we’ll all die here”.
Actually, the global corporations have cut every possible workplace, through technological innovation. With production at a level never seen before, employment is down to a few hundred people, against 20.000 employed some decades ago.
At the same time, marble blocks, instead of being processed locally, are shipped directly to China. However, the first cut is made in Italy, which is enough to make patriotic rightists feel all is well.
The Fondazione Marmo, the Marble Foundation paid for by the global dealers, pays for many local initiatives where a park becomes “green” and “inclusive” through planting some trees, marble statues speak of “peace“, “marble is on the side of women“, “marble for health“. And other Orwellian words which make every left-leaning heart beat happily.
Thousands of local people, in a small community, can be bought over this way, blending the donation of minor hospital equipment, with the mirage of jobs, with the idea of continuing the work of Michelangelo.
While the cancer rate in the area, unsurprisingly, is the highest in the region, as is the unemployment rate.
And of course, there will be no water in a few years, when all the springs have been poisoned, and no jobs when artificial intelligence has taken over even the job of the people who write obedient titles in the local press.
Editor’s Note: The following is an update from Roam Free Nation on the bison “hunt” in Yellowstone National Park. You can find our original story here.
THE “HUNT”
The Montana state bison “hunt” began on November 15. Eight bulls, from the imperiled Central herd, have already been killed by state hunters near West Yellowstone, in the Hebgen Basin. Yellowstone National Park has been warning against killing any buffalo in the Hebgen Basin for many years now, because the Central herd – the truly last wild, migratory buffalo – continues to decline.
The Central herd migrates both into the Hebgen Basin (to the west) and the Gardiner Basin (to the north), so they are doubly impacted by mismanagement actions. In the Gardiner Basin, both the Northern herd and Central herd move into harm’s way. But only the Central herd migrates into the Hebgen Basin, so by refraining from killing there, at least some Central herd buffalo are protected.
These warnings by the Park’s bison biologists continue to fall on the deaf ears of both state and treaty hunters. However, due to the continuing decline of the Central herd, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks are proposing to reduce the number of state licenses for next year from 40 to 25 in the Hebgen Basin. It’s still 25 too many, but it’s something.
Winter has been slow to arrive. West Yellowstone (Hebgen Basin) is just now starting to get some snow. It may be a mild winter this year, and if so, it could ease human-caused hardships on the buffalo. But, just as we need the snow so the rivers will be full in spring, the buffalo need to roam, to express themselves upon the earth and heal the wounded land.
MEDIA TRACTION
There’s been quite a flurry of activity in the past couple of weeks. Roam Free Nation joined with our allies, the Alliance for the Wild Rockies (AWR), Council for Wildlife and Fish, and the Gallatin Wildlife Association in sending a letter to Gallatin National Forest Supervisor Mary Erickson, urging her to close the Gardiner Basin’s Beattie Gulch (“the killing fields”) to buffalo hunting.
We raised concerns about the serious public safety issues, and of course the buffalo suffer at this bottleneck migration corridor on the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park. Ms. Erickson is the perfect bureaucrat who responded with policy jargon that avoided the issue entirely.
Shortly after that, the Montana-based Bozeman Daily Chronicle began a poll asking if Beattie Gulch should be closed to buffalo hunting. We sent out a last-minute alert and so many of you responded! Thank you! As of this writing, the poll is still open to voting – so visit this link and make your voice herd now! The “yes” votes were up to 80.2% in favor of closing Beattie Gulch!
As all of this was taking place, our strong allies at AWR and Council for Wildlife and Fish, like last year, got some billboards in the works! They used Roam Free Nation’s image of a mom and baby buffalo, with the message: “Save Yellowstone Buffalo. Stop Buffalo Genocide.” There is currently a billboard up in Billings, Montana, and soon to be one in Missoula. We give thanks for all the support from AWR and CWF!!
THE HARD TRUTH
Just the other day, our friend and ally, Steve Kelly, of Council for Wildlife and Fish had a really powerful column published, “Stop Buffalo Genocide and a Repeat of History“, representing our billboard and urging folks to contact Gallatin National Forest Supervisor Mary Erickson to close Beattie Gulch to buffalo “hunting”. You can take that action right now by emailing her at mary.erickson@usda.gov.
KEEP RFN IN THE FIELD!
Roam Free Nation will soon be heading into the field to monitor the situation and defend our relatives, the buffalo. We need your support, however you can offer it. We give thanks to you and all of our allies for standing up for the last wild buffalo!
Editor’s note: Exxon Mobil recently discovered more oil and gas fields in the disputed territory of Esequibo in South America. Guyana has already awarded drilling bids to the corporation. But Venezuela claims the region its own. News about the developments changes rapidly: On December 3rd the Venezuelan people voted 96% in favor of the non-binding referendum María Páez Victor writes about. Nobody informed Indigenous leaders in Esequibo about the situation, according to Deutsche Welle.
The question one might ask now is: will Guyana and Venezuela be able to protect Esequibo’s dense rain forest together with its indigenous peoples, or will Exxon Mobile set up yet another “carbon bomb”?
Apart from oil and gas, Exxon Mobil wants a part of the electric vehicle cake, too: As global energy demand grows, the corporation will start producing EV-batteries in 2026 in Arkansas.
Attacks on Venezuela by the USA and its allies include 930 illegal sanctions that shut the country out from international finance blocking it from buying medicines, food or producing or selling its oil.
Also there have been direct and indirect support for coup d’etat attempts, street violence leading to murders and injuries, cyberattacks on its electricity grid, sabotage of oil and infrastructure, financing criminal bands, corruption of officials, assassination attempt against the President and his cabinet, setting up a false presidency, appropriating CITGO oil company and billions of Venezuelan assets in banks, blocking the country from obtaining Covid-19 vaccines during a pandemic, and a brutal attack on the currency. It is estimated that at least 100,000 Venezuelans have lost their lives due to the illegal sanctions.
It seems it has not been enough.
Now, wrapping itself in old-fashioned colonialism, the USA through its creature Exxon Mobil, and hand in hand with its imperial ally Great Britain, are poised to pull the biggest land grab since the US took a quarter of México, by means of sleight-of-hand judicial theft.
Long standing issues – land and gold
All the ancient maps of Venezuela, from the time it was first mapped under Spanish rule, show that its eastern border was the Esequibo River.
On the other side of the river was a territory later claimed by England that became British Guiana. It was a place where explorers thirsty for gold invaded seeking the myth of El Dorado, which they did not find but did find gold and the sweet gold of sugar cane. Using a deliberate misinformation campaign, involving the bogus cartography by R. Schomburgk, as far back as 1835, the British Empire made inroads into Venezuelan territory.
After Britain gave independence to British Guiana and it became Guyana, these inroads did not cease. The territory to the west of the river called Guayana Esequiba, thus claimed by Guyana and which is in dispute, measures 159.542 Km², a territory bigger than Portugal and the Netherlands together.
The long-standing controversy reached a point when in 1899, an Arbitral Tribunal in Paris was convened to settle the matter – with not a single Venezuelan present! The judges were from Britain, the United States and one Russian. The USA, claiming some sort of reason to be there because of their own Monroe Doctrine, presumed to represent Venezuela. The sentence, to no one’s surprise, benefited Great Britain.
Venezuela continued to fight this astonishing judicial theft of the land that had always been part of Venezuela, and after long diplomatic struggles, the Accord of Geneva of 1966 was agreed upon by both parts. It emphatically declared null and void the actions of the Paris Tribunal of 1899, and stipulated that both parts – Venezuela and Guyana- are obligated to negotiate amicably together in good faith to resolve all matters concerning the Esequibo. Furthermore, considering this Accord, in 1980 both parties agreed to the United Nations mechanism of Good Offices, whereby a jointly appointed person would help implement negotiations.
Exxon Mobil and today’s issue – black gold
In 2014/15, the most sinister and predatory oil corporation in the world, Exxon Mobil -an avowed enemy of Venezuela- discovered oil in land and sea of the disputed territory. That ended all the ongoing amicable negotiations between Venezuela and Guyana, as the wealth of Exxon Mobil obtained the upper hand of the government of Guyana.
The present prime minister, for example, has been handed $18 million in exchange for refusing to negotiate further, denouncing the Geneva Accord of 1966 and demanding that the decision of the 1899 Paris Tribunal be enforced through yet another biased team of judges at the International Court of Justice, that actually has no jurisdiction except its own self-enlarged mandate.
But most dangerous of all, the oil corporation urges Guyana to aggressively provoke Venezuela into attacking so that it can present itself to the world as a “victim” of Venezuela. The aim is to provoke a frontier war so that the naval fleet of the US Southern Command – now conveniently posted in the adjacent seas- can then intervene militarily and invade Venezuela. Since 2015 Guyana has been carrying out military manoeuvres with the Southern Command with Venezuela as a target.
There is nothing the USA would want more than “a cause”, real or not, to invade Venezuela and get its hands on the rich oil, gas and precious minerals that are abundant there. It can no longer count on stooge right-wing governments in Colombia and Brazil, so now it is manipulating Guyana to be its surrogate war monger. The fleet of the US Southern Command is already poised in waters off the Esequibo and, in fact, the USA has army presence in Guyana itself.
However, Venezuela clearly understands this ruse. It has repeatedly stated that Venezuela has never gone to war – except when its armies marched to Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador to liberate them from the Spanish Empire. Venezuela seeks a peaceful outcome.
The people of the Esequibo
Guyana is one of the most unequal and poor countries in the region.
Its resource extraction enterprises are in the hands of foreign corporations, and the income they grant the country has not had the corresponding impact on the health and welfare indicators of the population. The first attempt to measure poverty was in 1992-93, later repeated in 2006. An academic scholar has concluded:
“The economic history of Guyana is one of slavery, indenture, colonialism and a social stratification based on skin colour.”
The first free elections occurred just as recently as June 1953, but were followed in October of the same year by a British invasion with troops and ships, abetted by the USA, which overthrew the elected populist government of Cheddi Jagan y Forbes Burnham.
Its society suffers with accusations of corruption, inefficiency, and police brutality It has about 78,500 indigenous peoples, 10% of the population, that have been sadly, and historically neglected by the Guyanese government but are now defending their rights through their own movements as since 1990 multinational resource exploitation has increased and highlighted the failure of the government to recognize and guarantee indigenous rights.
Many indigenous people of the Esequibo consider themselves Venezuelans, or at least of dual nationality. Since the Chávez government, Venezuela has been proposing joint ventures that would benefit both countries, especially the population in the Esequibo, just as it has effective and amicable gas exploitation with Trinidad and Tobago on shared seas.
The referendum
Venezuela’s position on the Esequibo is based on the borders it has always had since it was a General Captaincy of the Spanish Empire as clearly stated in Article 10 of the Venezuelan Constitution. It also emphatically declares that the nation’s sovereignty resides in the people, and that the Republic is democratic, participatory and protagonist, multiethnic and pluricultural.
In Article 70, referenda are indicated as one of the ways in which the people can participate in the exercise of their sovereignty. Furthermore, Article 71 states that matters of special national transcendence can be submitted to a consultative referendum.
Therefore, on 6 December 2023 the Venezuelan people will be asked to answer “yes” or “no” to 5 questions: if they reject the 1899 Paris arbitration, approve of the 1966 Geneva Accord agreement as the only binding mechanism to resolve the issue, agree with not recognizing the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction, oppose Guyana’s unilateral appropriation of the Esequibo’s territorial waters. The 5th key question asks voters if they agree with establishing a new state, called Guayana Esequiba, in the disputed land, granting Venezuelan citizenship to its inhabitants and implementing accelerated social programs.
This last question is of critical political relevance because it, in effect, offers the Esequibo people all the advantages, rights, equality, services and prosperity that today the Venezuelan government and institutions can provide to its citizens. It is so crucial that immediately Guyana and Exxon Mobil demanded of the International Court of Justice be brought into the dispute to do something impossible: to forbid the nation of Venezuela to carry out a referendum for its own citizens! That is, to directly intervene in the domestic affairs of a sovereign country and violate its Constitution. Thus is the fear that they have towards the voice of the people.
However, the ICJ does not actually have jurisdiction over this issue not only because for years it has creepingly and unilaterally expanded its own mandate, but also because any demands of this nature must be made by both parties, and Venezuela has not accepted that court’s involvement or jurisdiction.
Yet Exxon Mobil has paid for Guyana’s substantial legal fees before this court.
Oil corporation “paying” to grab land
Venezuela’s electoral process -considered by former US President Jimmy Carter as the best in the world- always carries out a trial vote just to make sure everything is in working order. This trial vote on November 19th had a surprising result: the turnout was three times larger than in any other election trial, more than 3 million voters turned up! This is a clear indication of the great interest that Venezuelans have in the Esequibo. In fact, the Esequibo is the most important unifying issue in Venezuela today. Government, artists, oppositions, NGOs, unions, private sector, educators, etc; it seems the entire country is standing up in defense of the Esequibo.
But there is one factor, apart from maps, judicial lawfare and referendum, that will impact on this issue: it is Exxon Mobil and the millions it is distributing among politicians, lawyers, and media to get this land grab.
Exxon Mobil is perhaps the most criminal oil company in the world.
For decades its engineers knew well what fossil fuels were doing to the climate, but not only did they supress this information, they paid writers, scientists, and media to deny climate change was happening. It has violated human rights of countless rural and indigenous people; and in Indonesia its collaboration with a brutal government led to it being accused of genocide.
Its seems wherever it operates it commits ecocide, crimes against nature.
One of its worst crimes was the environmental disaster caused by its oil tanker the Exxon Valdez. In 1989 it spilled 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in Alaska, causing the death of between 100,000 and 250,000 marine birds, hundreds of otters, seals, eagles, orcas and innumerable fish.
Exxon Mobil spent years fighting in courts, denying its culpability, and trying to squirm out of paying for damages caused. In the end, after 20 years of litigations, it paid the state of Alaska the pittance of $507 million, that is one tenth of the cost of the damages caused by its oil spill.
If it can do this to Alaska in its own home country, imagine what little environmental protection the people, and pristine flora and fauna of the Esequibo would get from this irresponsible corporation.
This is the monster that has bought Guyana and that is attacking the sovereignty of Venezuela.
What is at stake
This is not merely a territorial dispute between two countries, but more than that, what is at stake is the validity of international law, the integrity of the Geneva Accord of 1966, the integrity of the Good Offices of the United Nations, and the honesty of the International Court of Justice (if it has any).
In the end it is the struggle between democracy and the rapacious interests of a powerful oil corporation in the service of the United States empire.
However, Venezuela has defeated an empire before.
María Páez Victor, Ph.D. is a Venezuelan born sociologist living in Canada.
Graph: Top 10 Carbon Majors (with caption & annotations) by Carbon Visuals is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
