Editor’s note: Campaigning for protecting wildlife and ecosystems is rarely successful if only fought in court. But in this case, a Peruvian court decided to give the river Maranon rights that would ensure its conservation and protection from oil spills. For this decision, the indigenous groups led by Kukama women have been fighting for their river for over three years. As with many people living on the land they depend on clean water and fertile land to feed their families. Now the court victory gives them the necessary legal foundation to keep on fighting for a life free from ecological disasters.
The decision “establishes a groundbreaking legal framework that acknowledges the inherent rights of natural entities,” said one campaigner.
After years of campaigning, an organization of Indigenous women in Peru’s Loreto province celebrated “a landmark decision” on Tuesday by a court in Nauta, which found that the Marañón River has “intrinsic value” and that its “inherent rights” must be recognized by the government.
The Mixed Court of Nauta ruled that specific rights of the river must be codified, including the right to exist, the right to ecological flow, the right of restoration, the right to be free of pollution, the right to exercise its essential functions with the ecosystem, and the right of representation.
Led by Kukama women, the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana Federation in the Parinari district of Loreto began its legal fight on behalf of the Marañón River in 2021, demanding that the state and federal governments protect the waterway from “constant oil spills.”
Petroperu’s Oleoducto Norperuano, or Norperuvian oil pipeline, caused more than 60 oil spills between 1997-2019, and the 28 communities represented by the federation are still recovering from a 2010 oil spill that sent 350 barrels of oil into the river near Saramuro port.
Oil spills not the only threat
Indigenous groups blocked the river in protest in September 2022 after another spill sent 2,500 barrels of crude oil into the Amazon, of which the Marañón is a main tributary.
The Marañón supplies drinking water directly to communities in Loreto, and is a vital habitat for fish that help sustain Indigenous communities.
“We do not live on money. We live from what we grow on our land and our fishing. We cannot live without fish,” Isabel Murayari, a board member of the federation, told the Earth Law Center, when the group filed its lawsuit in 2021.
The Kukama women also aimed to halt infrastructure projects including hydroelectric dams and the Amazon Waterway—recognized as environmental risks by the International Union for Conservation of Nature—and warned that illegal gold mining has left the Marañón with mercury contamination that must be remedied.
Martiza Quispe Mamani, an attorney representing the Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana Federation, said the “historic ruling is an important achievement of the Kukama women.”
“The fact that the judge of the Nauta Court has declared the Marañón River as a subject of rights represents a significant and transcendental milestone for the protection not only of the Marañón River but also of all rivers contaminated by extractive activities,” said Mamani.
In addition to granting the river inherent rights, the court named the Indigenous group and the Peruvian government as “guardians, defenders, and representatives of the Marañón River and its tributaries.”
Precedent for global river conservation
Loreto’s regional government was ordered to take necessary steps with the National Water Authority to establish a water resource basin organization for the river. The court also required Petroperu to present an updated environmental management plan within six months.
Mariluz Canaquiri Murayari, president of the federation, said the group’s fight to protect the environment in the region “will continue.”
“It encourages us to fight to defend our territories and rivers, which is fundamental,” Murayari said of the ruling. “The recognition made in this decision has critical value. It is one more opportunity to keep fighting and claiming our rights. Our work is fundamental for Peru and the world: to protect our rivers, territories, our own lives, and all of humanity, and the living beings of Mother Nature.”
The women who led the legal action noted that courts in recent years have recognized rights for other waterways, including Colombia’s Atrato River, New Zealand’s Whanganui River, and Canada’s Magpie River.
Monti Aguirre, Latin America director of International Rivers, which supported the federation in its lawsuit, said the ruling “underscores the vital impact of community-led advocacy in safeguarding river ecosystems and sets a crucial precedent for river conservation efforts globally.”
“By recognizing the Marañón River as a subject of rights, this decision is significant not only in terms of environmental protection but also in advancing the rights of nature and the rights of rivers,” said Aguirre. “It establishes a groundbreaking legal framework that acknowledges the inherent rights of natural entities, paving the way for similar legal recognition and protection of rivers worldwide.”
Editor’s note: Any compensation from chemical companies cannot make up for the repercussions of mining, in this case, salt mining. The petrochemical company Braskem, the largest plastic producer in the Americas, is responsible for the displacement of people and was well aware of the risk that the city of Maceió could sink. Yet it kept on operating the mine. As long as companies like Braskem put profit above all other needs – social, environmental, health of communities and thriving wild habitats – this ecocrisis in which we live will only get worse. It can’t go on like this anymore.
Decades of salt mining in Maceió, in northeastern Brazil, have led to earthquakes and cracks in several of the city’s neighborhoods, making buildings there unhabitable. As a result, about 60,000 people have been displaced.
Braskem, the chemical giant that acquired the original salt mining company, has agreed with authorities to clean up the affected neighborhoods and compensate locals. But those affected complain that Braskem has offered them meager amounts, with no negotiation; the sums don’t cover the value of their properties, while compensation for moral damage is also extremely low.
Locals indirectly affected do not receive compensation and continue to suffer losses, as properties within a 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) radius around the disaster zone can no longer be insured and lose value; businesses adjacent to the now unhabitable neighborhoods have also lost customers.
Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil
Streets lie deserted. Gardens have overgrown homes. Doors and windows are bricked up. The Bebedouro neighborhood in Maceió, in Brazil’s northeastern coastal state of Alagoas, is a shadow of its former self. And soon not even that.
Every building there is numbered. As soon as a property has been fenced off by iron sheets, the bulldozers will appear to flatten the land. Large parts of the historical area have already been turned into an anonymous plain.
Bebedouro is one of Maceió’s suburbs where officially nobody can live anymore. Following heavy rains in February 2018, large cracks appeared in floors and walls. Then, on March 2, a magnitude 2.5 earthquake hit the city of some 960,000 people, widening cracks and tearing up asphalt.
“Everyone went out on the street in shock, as this had never happened before,” said Neirivane Ferreira, a Bebedouro resident at the time. “Only later we learned on the news it had been an earthquake with its epicenter in the neighboring area of Pinheiro.”
But Maceió didn’t have a history of seismic activity. In 2019, the Brazil Geological Survey concluded that parts of Maceió were subsiding due to nearly 50 years of rock salt extraction, which caused the tremors and cracking. As a result, five neighborhoods were declared unhabitable by the local government; 60,000 people were forcibly displaced.
Salt mining continues
Compensation for residents was left with petrochemical company Braskem, the biggest plastics manufacturer in the Americas. But those affected complain that Braskem’s compensation program has been abusive, lacking enough coverage and often forcing them to choose between low payments or no compensation at all.
Maceió’s salt deposits were discovered during a quest for oil in 1943. Since extraction started in 1976, the city has been pierced by 35 mine shafts, the deepest reaching up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) below the surface.
The salt was first mined by Brazilian company Salgema, which in 1996 became Trikem, which in 2002 merged into Braskem.
One study from 2010 warned that higher underground pressure due to rock salt mining could cause the ground to sink, while subsequent research warned that subsidence caused by rock salt mining could reach up to 1.5 m (4.9 ft) in parts of Maceió. Yet, salt extraction continued as before.
“The extraction of rock salt in Maceió has always been internally and externally monitored, using the best techniques available, supervised by the competent public bodies and with all the necessary permits,” Braskem PR consultant Nicolas Tamasauskas said in an email to Mongabay. “Following the events in 2018, Braskem stopped extracting and presented a permanent closure plan that was accepted by the national mining authorities.”
As a result, since 2018, more than 14,000 premises, including homes, companies, churches and schools, have been declared unfit for habitation in the five suburbs. More than 60,000 inhabitants were forced to leave their homes. More than 4,500 people lost their businesses. Thousands had to look for alternative jobs, schools, sport clubs and health clinics.
Ferreira said the move felt abusive. “It felt like a second act of violence, as we were never consulted. We were left totally vulnerable, while Braskem was free to dominate the negotiations and establish derisory values.”
Victims claim insufficient compensation
In January 2020, Braskem reached a settlement with public prosecutors and in cooperation with the authorities launched the Financial Compensation and Relocation Support Program. Through it, Braskem helps residents search for a new home, pays for relocation and offers a temporary rental allowance of 1,000 reais ($200) per month.
Braskem works with so-called “facilitators,” who appraise properties, assist with paperwork and eventually negotiate with residents the final value of their properties. Compensation covers that value plus 40,000 reais ($7,822) for “moral damages.”
The company has allocated a budget of 14.4 billion reais ($2.8 billion) to deal with the disaster. It already spent 9.2 billion reais ($1.8 billion), some two-thirds of which was paid as compensation for damage to private and public properties. The remainder mainly concerned the process of closing the mines.
“There were no negotiations,” said Alexandre de Moraes Sampaio, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs and Victims of Mining in Maceió. “Braskem prepares a proposal, which you accept or not. If you don’t, as I did, then it turns silent for six months before you hear from them again.”
Sampaio owned a real estate agency and a small marketing company in Pinheiro, while his wife had a psychological practice. Pinheiro was the first Maceió neighborhood to experience cracking and degradation in 2018. Braskem offered them one payment for all three entities.
“I don’t want to go into detail, but it was a ridiculously low amount,” Sampaio told Mongabay. “In the end I received more, but it was still nothing compared to my real losses. However, after three years of negotiating, with hardly any income, I had no choice but to accept.”
Sampaio was on the brink of bankruptcy. Today, he lives some 100 km (62 mi) south of Maceió, where he has managed to revitalize his real estate firm. Most victims found themselves in a weak negotiating position, as they had been forced to leave their properties.
Disaster zone much larger
Ferreira also negotiated for three years to receive compensation for her Bebedouro home. “It was shameful what Braskem offered,” she said. “In most cases, Braskem offered a sum that amounted to not even half the property’s value, which made it very hard to find something similar elsewhere.”
According to Sampaio, damages related to the mining disaster have been reduced to “land and stones,” as Braskem pays the bare minimum for properties, disregarding many other costs.
“The compensation for moral damages is a mere pittance,” he said. “Braskem … should pay a higher amount to every victim, not just owners.”
Sampaio said that the 1.7 billion reais ($332 million) compensation Braskem paid the Maceió municipality was below par, as it did not account for things as lost income from taxes and lost utilities and infrastructure. “Braskem arguably should have paid four times more,” he said.
Damages exist even outside the disaster zone. The difference between what is considered safe and uninhabitable is at times only a street wide. A restaurant or company located safely “across the street” that lost half its market due to the relocation of 60,000 people receives nothing.
“Insurance companies no longer insure properties in a radius of 1 km [0.6 mi] around the designated disaster zone,” Sampoio said. “As a result, some 40,000 dwellings lost 30% of their value. Yet, none of this is compensated.”
Braskem now owns the city
In December 2023, Intercept Brasil unveiled a leaked compensation agreement, containing several special clauses. First, the signatory is not allowed to disclose the amount of compensation, otherwise Braskem can reclaim the payment.
Second, to finalize the compensation agreement, all property deeds must be handed over to Braskem. As a result, the chemical company today owns 99% of the disaster area. People in Maceió fear that Braskem aims to turn the disaster into an opportunity for future development.
According to Tamasauskas, that is not the case. He pointed at an agreement signed by Braskem and the Maceió municipality, which states the former “will not build in uninhabitable areas for housing or commercial purposes. And a change in ownership will not change that.”
Brazilian construction giant Novonor is Braskem’s majority owner, followed by Petrobras. Formerly known as Odebrecht, Novonor is in talks with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to sell its Braskem stake for an estimated $2 billion.
A third clause in the contract states that no one can sue Braskem on the outcome of a current or future investigation. In December 2023, a parliamentary inquiry into Braskem’s handling of the mining disaster was launched.
Finding justice abroad
In 2020, eleven victims sued Braskem in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, where the firm’s European head office and two financial holdings are based. The claimants demand that Braskem will be held liable for the disaster and needs to pay for damages.
“Braskem’s financial compensation program has been criticized for failing to hold Braskem liable for the disaster it caused,” said Bruna Ficklscherer, legal director of Pogust Goodhead, the British law firm representing the eleven victims.
Ficklscherer confirmed that people affected by the disaster, yet located outside the designated disaster zone, have had no opportunity to receive compensation, even though education, employment, health services and transportation have deteriorated in the neighborhoods surrounding the risk area.
Braskem tried to have the case dismissed by arguing the Dutch court lacked jurisdiction, as the case solely concerned Brazil. But the judge rejected the claim, on the grounds that the company has financial entities and its European head office in Rotterdam.
During the first hearing in February, Braskem consistently referred to the mining disaster as “the geological event,” while it presented the compensation program as the most beneficial possible. The eleven claimants argued the exact opposite. The Dutch court is expected to issue a verdict in towards the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Maceió’s worries are all but over. On Nov. 28, 2023, a rupture occurred in Braskem’s mine 18 in the neighborhood of Mutange. A week later, part of the suburb had subsided by almost 2 m (6.6 ft).
Fearing immediate collapse, the authorities declared a state of emergency, even though the area had been vacated. Today, nothing remains of Mutange. Braskem’s bulldozers have razed the neighborhood to the ground.
Many of the walls still standing in Bebedouro, and elsewhere in Maceió’s disaster area, are now covered in graffiti. “Here lived art, happiness, sadness and disaster,” one reads; another simply reads, “justice.”
Editor’s note: Mining poisons the earth, not only right now, but for future generations: even if the mine is closed and all workers have left, the chemicals and metals that they have used and mined will stay hidden in the soil. But it can’t be hidden forever. When the earth moves due to flooding so do the chemicals. They then poison the land and water and damage the ecosystems.
Uganda’s Nyamwamba river, in the Rwenzori Mountains, has begun to flood catastrophically in recent years, partly due to climate change. Along the river are copper tailings pools from an old Canadian mining operation, which are becoming increasingly eroded by the flooding. According to a series of studies, these tailings have been washing into the water supply and soil of the Nyamwamba River Basin, contaminating human tissue, food and water with deadly heavy metals. Cancer rates are higher than normal near the tailings pools, and scientists fear that as the flooding continues to worsen, so will the health crisis.
KASESE, Uganda — Right as the Nyamwamba River emerges from the foothills of western Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains and begins its final descent onto the savanna, it passes by a curious sight. On the far bank from the road, past piles of sun-bleached stones on the now-dry riverbed, the earth has been disturbed. Towering walls stand naked and exposed amid the surrounding hills, as if a mighty hand has taken a scoop from the very landscape itself. Sheer cliffs emerge abruptly from the green scrub above, crashing downward into a flat, brownish pit of sand and rocks.
This is a copper tailings pool. Along with its siblings, it’s poisoning this part of Uganda.
The pools were built to hold waste from a mine once operated by Falconbridge, a Canadian company that ruled over the Rwenzori foothills from the 1950s to late ’70s. In its heyday, Falconbridge’s copper mine, based just up the road in the small town of Kilembe, was the churning engine of Uganda’s economy. The mine once employed more than 6,000 people and accounted for nearly a third of the country’s GDP.
Falconbridge was chased out of Uganda by Idi Amin in 1977, who nationalized the mine in the final years of his rule, convinced that his government could run it as well as the Canadians and keep more of the copper’s value at home. By 1982, it was shuttered.
In Kilembe, Falconbridge’s ghostly remains are ubiquitous. Decaying company housing is still occupied by former employees and their descendants. Rickety mining infrastructure dots the hillside. The tailings pools stand as monuments to what was once taken from here and sent northward to feed the booming engines of Western capitalism’s golden age.
A toxic legacy is now seeping from these pools and into water, soil and bodies in this region, as the Nyamwamba bursts its banks with flooding increasing frequency. Global warming has disturbed the climate above the mountains on high — during the rainy season, floods have become more common. As the Nyamwamba’s floodwaters rage past the tailings pools like this one every year, toxic heavy metals are being washed downriver toward the district capital of Kasese and its 100,000 residents.
In Kilembe, the toll is already evident. Cancer rates have skyrocketed. Spurred along by the burning of fossil fuels in faraway locales, the wounds of extraction in this area have begun to fester and become gangrenous.
“When we were starting our study in the Kilembe mine area, [this] whole tailing dump was not touched by water,” said Abraham Mwesigye, an environmental scientist at Kampala’s Makerere University. “But because of over flooding, we’ve lost tons and tons of tailing waste into River Nyamwamba … and that has only happened in the last four years when the effects of climate change increased in the Rwenzori Mountains.”
Pools of menace
In all, there are 15 million metric tons of copper tailings in the area around Kilembe. A decade ago, Mwesigye and his colleagues began to investigate their impact on health and the environment. In the period since, study after study have shown startling results.
Copper, cobalt, arsenic, nickel, zinc and lead is everywhere. There’s nickel in the cassava and beans grown along the Nyamwamba’s banks. Copper concentrations are several times higher than average in people’s toenails. In more than half of the samples taken of drinking water near Kilembe and downstream in 2017, there were unsafe levels of cobalt. The soil is contaminated, dust found inside of people’s homes is toxic, and even the grasses that livestock and wild animals graze on show elevated traces of heavy metals.
The concentrations are particularly high, often dangerously so, near Kilembe. But they can also be found further downriver, near the more populous town of Kasese.
“Over times these wastes have been eroded into farms and the River Nyamwamba, which is a main water source for locals,” Mwesigye said in a phone interview with Mongabay. “The danger is that they contain heavy metals, including those which are very toxic. We’re looking at copper, cobalt, zinc, arsenic, manganese and iron. We tested and found more than 42 elements in those wastes, and they are ending up in drinking water supplies and agriculture.”
Some of the elements washing into the Nyamwamba are carcinogenic. Cobalt, for example, was recently escalated by the European Commission as a Class 1B risk, meaning excessive exposure to it is almost certain to cause cancer. Samples of yams grown near Kilembe in 2019 showed levels of cobalt that exceeded the safe limit for children in particular.
“Cobalt is the second most abundant contaminant within Kilembe after copper,” Mwesigye said.
These toxins are causing a silent but growing health crisis in Kilembe, he added.
“We surveyed the Kilembe hospitals and health facilities, and we found that there are high rates of cancer and gastrointestinal diseases, both of which are associated with exposure.”
There have been no definitive studies linking the prevalence of heavy metals in Kilembe and Kasese with elevated cancer rates — yet. But media reports suggest these rates are higher than average compared with other parts of Uganda. Municipal officials in Kasese say they suspect the tailing pools are to blame, with toxins showing up in the produce people eat.
“We are afraid that the increase in cancer in the area might partly be caused by the water [used to grow food],” said Chance Kahindo, Kasese’s mayor.
Mwesigye’s findings have been backed up by other researchers. In a 2020 study published in the Octa Journal of Environmental Research, samples taken from the Nyamwamba near Kilembe were shown to have levels of copper and cobalt that exceeded safe limits set by the World Health Organization. Tissue samples taken from the river’s fish, a crucial source of local food, were also recorded as having accumulated unsafe amounts of cobalt, lead and zinc.
Environmental advocates say it’s almost certain that the metals are also affecting wildlife in Queen Elizabeth National Park, a sprawling nature reserve that the Nyamwamba cuts through on its way into Lake George. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the park is home to lions, buffalo, leopards, hippos and African savanna elephants.
“These copper tailings end up journeying into the water,” said Edwin Mumbere, director of a Kasese-based environmental group. “So there’s heavy metal pollution that isn’t only affecting us as a community, it’s affecting animals [in the park].”
As far back as 2003, a study showed higher-than-normal concentrations of copper and zinc in Lake George, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) downstream of Kilembe, including in the fish that feed tens of thousands of people in the region. The levels detected in their flesh were considered safe for human consumption — but that was before the Nyamwamba’s floods started getting worse and more frequent.
In 2022, a researcher with the Uganda Cancer Institute told a journalist that cancer cases from Kasese “seem to be increasing,” but the link between health problems in the region and the prevalence of heavy metals hasn’t been thoroughly studied. According to unpublished data shared with Mongabay by the Kampala-based Uganda Cancer Institute, a recent study did not show higher-than-average rates of cancer in Kasese district as a whole. But the figures covered the district’s full 800,000-strong population, and hadn’t been disaggregated to evaluate rates among those living in the city of Kasese or other settlements between Kilembe and Lake George.
“Foods that are grown in Kilembe are sold all over Kasese town,” Mwesigye said. “So there’s a likelihood that residents of Kasese are consuming contaminated foods … and when there’s flooding, you’ll find the tailings there, because the River Nyamwamba busts its banks and spreads waste all over.”
For people in the region who do contract cancer, wherever it comes from, a painful ordeal often awaits. If they don’t have the money to pay for treatment in one of Kampala’s specialized private wards, there’s little they can do besides wait for the disease to consume them. Media reports speak of stricken patients slowly dying at home without receiving proper care.
Old scars reopened by new wounds
The toxins coursing through the life systems of Kilembe have produced a catastrophe that’s both urgent and, at least for now, part of the fabric of life. There’s no choice: even as the waters rise and the poisons soak deeper into it every year, people who call the Nyamwamba’s banks home must adjust. It isn’t a unique situation. As ecologies change and the bill for the 20th century comes due, people closest to that debt often don’t have any option other than to try and work around it.
Across the African continent, as well as in other places whose forests and mines fed the engine of global growth, there are wounds, infected and seeping even when the hands that opened them are long gone.
“We’re still in the extractive phase in countries in Latin America and Africa, but the problem will be in a century when they will have the legacies,” said Flaviano Bianchini, director of Source International, an NGO that campaigns on behalf of mining-affected communities. “The cost of cleaning the pollution caused by a mine is huge, enormous. Millions and millions and millions [of dollars].”
In Africa, these legacies are already festering. In Uganda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, a copper mine owned by the Swiss multinational Glencore in Lualaba province has rendered farmland unusable and poisoned local waterways. In 2022, the company agreed to pay $180 million to the country after admitting that it spent more than a decade bribing senior officials there.
Further south, in Zambia, children born in the town of Kabwe, which hosted a lead mine operated by the British giant Anglo-American between 1925 and 1974, can have blood lead levels as high as 20 times the safe limit. Kilembe isn’t an outlier — it’s the norm.
Some public interest lawyers are trying to turn the tide and hold companies accountable. But they face an uphill battle. In December, a South African court threw out a case that the U.K.-based firm Leigh Day brought against Anglo-American over the damage it left behind in Kabwe.
The court said that by trying to force Anglo-American to pay for the mess, the plaintiffs wanted to “advance an untenable claim that would set a grave precedent.”
While Leigh Day is currently working towards appealing the ruling, it symbolized the difficulties that communities face in African courts when they take on mining giants or governments. Impunity has taken a toll.
“When it comes to the harm that has been suffered by workers and communities, the lack of access to justice locally has meant a lack of deterrence and an insufficient incentive on companies to behave better,” said Richard Meeran, the lead attorney from Leigh Day on the Kabwe case.
When companies pack up and leave, whether because a mine has been depleted, the operation has become financially unviable, or over a dispute with the government, it’s the people who live nearby — those with the least resources — who are left holding with the bill.
“Legal systems must evolve to hold companies accountable,” Marcos Orellana, the U.N. special rapporteur on toxics and human rights, said in an email to Mongabay. “And courts must be open and willing to hold past polluters accountable for the harm they have caused to communities and the environment.”
It won’t do much good for anyone living in Kilembe or Kasese to knock on Falconbridge’s door. In 2006, it was acquired by the Swiss-Anglo firm Xstrata, in a $22.5 billion deal that was one of the biggest in Canadian history at the time. A few years later, Xstrata was taken over by Glencore, the world’s largest commodities trader. According to company data, in 2022 Glencore posted a record profit of $17.3 billion, paying more than $7 billion to its shareholders.
In an email to Mongabay, Glencore declined to comment on Falconbridge’s legacy in Uganda.
Despite its noxious aftermath, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has spent the better part of a decade trying to restart copper mining in Kilembe. After an embarrassing episode in which a Chinese company took control of the mine only to lose its contract due to inactivity and unpaid fees, the Ugandan government has found new suitors. Late last year, Kilembe hosted a delegation to showcase the infrastructure Falconbridge left behind. Media reports suggest a new deal may be approaching.
If a new owner is found, it’s unclear what, if anything, they will do about the tailings pools and their grim legacy.
In the meantime, the people who live along the Nyamwamba River are caught between two ecological crises at once, separate yet linked. From above, a warming atmosphere robs them of the sacred sites and steals their homes in rushing flooding waters. At the same time, poisons from the scarred earth seep deeper into their food, water and bodies. From both directions the consequences of extraction, and in neither any relief in sight.
That environmental wounds from a fast-approaching future are dovetailing with those of western Uganda’s unresolved past carries an ominous message. The climate crisis is not set to arrive on its own. It will have company.
Editor’s note: Wind farms are not a solution to ecological destruction, especially not when built in protected reserves. Singapore-based company Rizal Wind Energy Corp. (RWEC) is drilling illegally in wildlife sanctuary and ecotourism area Masungi Georeserve.
For this massive construction it is bulldozing forest to make roads. It needs diesel for the trucks and lube oil to run the wind turbines. Local environmentalists have protected the Masungi Georeserve over generations through educating local people and engaging in struggles against land grabbing.
This important work is dangerous: park rangers are shot, the army arrests workers and the government sends their agencies with legal threats.
Despite having considered giving up, conservationists won’t surrender: “If we abandon it, who will look after the wildlife?”
Everyone who is able to get active in these times of ecocide should ask themselves this same question.
Surprise Discovery of Wind Farm Project in Philippine Reserve Prompts Alarm
In late 2023, conservationists monitoring the Philippine’s Masungi Georeserve were surprised to encounter four drilling rigs operating within the ostensibly protected wildlife sanctuary. The construction equipment belongs to a company building a wind farm within the reserve, which claims to have received the necessary permits despite the area’s protected status. Masungi Georeserve Foundation, Inc. (MGFI), the nonprofit organization managing the site, has launched a petition calling for the project to be canceled, saying that renewable energy generation should not be pursued at the expense of the environment.
Drilling for windfarms without permission
Conservationists have expressed alarm over the surprise discovery that a Singapore-based company has started construction of a wind farm inside the Philippines’ Masungi Georeserve.
The Masungi Karst Conservation Area (MKCA), declared a strict nature reserve and wildlife sanctuary since 1993, is home to more than 400 wildlife species. The site is located in Rizal, a province about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the Philippine capital, Manila.
Drone images from late 2023 captured by the Masungi Georeserve Foundation, Inc. (MGFI), the nonprofit organization that manages the site, showed that Rizal Wind Energy Corp. (RWEC) was behind the construction, drilling to build 12 wind turbines as part of a renewable energy project. RWEC is owned by Singapore-based energy developer Vena Energy.
“This development entails widespread road construction and raises significant concerns for local wildlife, particularly threatening birds and bat populations,” the foundation said in a statement on Feb. 12. The group estimates that 500-1,000 hectares (about 1,200-2,500 acres) of the MKCA could be affected by the project, as it would require extensive road networks that may lead to forest clearing, vegetation damage, and visual disruption of the natural landscape.
The MKCA, previously commercially logged and barren, has been undergoing forest restoration since 1996 through a joint-venture agreement between the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Blue Star Construction and Development Corp., owned by the founder of Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. In 2016, when the foundation was formally established, Masungi also opened to the public as an ecotourism site, generating revenue to support ongoing restoration efforts in the area.
Green greed disturbs protected zone
Of the more than 400 flora and fauna species that call Masungi home, around 70 are endemic to the Philippines, including the Luzon tarictic hornbill (Penelopides manillae), which is nationally listed as vulnerable, and the Luzon mottle-winged flying fox (Desmalopex leucoptera), one of the world’s largest bats and internationally categorized as vulnerable.
In an online signature campaign against the construction of the wind farm, the group said this “misguided energy development” is the latest threat to Masungi, which already faces illegal logging, land grabbing, quarrying, and violence against its forest rangers. These challenges exist even though Masungi is part of the 26,000-hectare (64,500-acre) Upper Marikina River Basin that was declared a protected landscape in 2011.
The Masungi management said this venture “marked a disturbing violation” of a 1993 administrative order by the DENR prohibiting industrial or commercial uses of Masungi. The organization added that the wind farm project also shows a “blatant disregard” for the area’s designation as a strict protection zone in its own management plan.
As per the Philippine environmental impact statement system, projects that plan to operate in ecologically sensitive zones like Masungi need to obtain an environmental compliance certificate from the DENR prior to commencing activities.
Wind farm in the Philippines
Over four years of developing the Rizal wind farm, Vena Energy said that, “being mindful of its environmental impact,” it has secured various Philippine government permits, including an environmental compliance certificate, protected area management board clearances, and a certificate precondition, following an environmental impact assessment study and consultations with Indigenous peoples.
“Vena Energy assures the public that it continues to maintain open dialogue with stakeholders and is always willing to work with concerned parties to achieve the common good,” Angela Tan, the company’s corporate communications chief, told Mongabay in an emailed statement. The company has not responded to a request to verify its permits.
Coincidental discovery
MGFI says it was never formally informed of the project, which is reportedly nearing commercialization. Instead, georeserve staff discovered the project during routine monitoring of the site. MGFI advocacy officer Billie Dumaliang and her team periodically fly a drone over the reserve to monitor land changes, whether these are caused by fires, clearings, or new structures. In late 2023, they said, they were shocked to see four drilling rigs.
Zooming in on the photos, they discovered that RWEC was behind the drilling. “We immediately searched for their contact so that we can reach out to them and find out more about the project before reacting,” Dumaliang told Mongabay in an email on Feb. 21. “Nonetheless, we were surprised because as designated caretakers of the area, we were not informed of any wind development underway within the Masungi Karst Conservation Area.”
Hoping to persuade the company to relocate, MGFI did not publicize the issue until Feb. 12. This was after two meetings with company representatives where MGFI told them “they are on the wrong track.” According to MGFI, though, the company remains determined to build the wind farm inside Masungi, claiming it will undertake “‘mitigation measures.”
“However, mitigation is superficial if the site selection is wrong in the first place,” Dumaliang said, further expressing disappointment over what she describes as the company’s failure to adhere to emerging environmental, social and governance principles in the alternative energy industry.
“There are many other places to build colossal wind turbines — why do it inside a sensitive karst ecosystem and wildlife sanctuary which cannot be replaced?”
Touching interviews about the activists protecting Masungi Georeserve.
Wind power push
The Philippine government has promoted wind energy development to help meet its target of increasing the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix from 32.7% in 2022 to 50% by 2040. As of 2022, the country’s wind installed generating capacity stood at 427 megawatts, projected to rise to 442 MW by 2025. Since the enactment of a renewable energy law in 2008 up until November 2023, contracts have been awarded to 239 wind power projects. This includes RWEC’s 603 MW (potential capacity) project spanning Rizal and Quezon provinces, listed by the country’s energy department as in the predevelopment stage.
MGFI said wind energy development shouldn’t be pursued at the expense of the environment. “The transition to renewable energy and nature-based solutions such as reforestation and biodiversity conservation should go together. There should be no conflict between the two if the transition to renewable energy is done in a responsible manner,” Dumaliang said.
“If renewable energy development falls under the usual trappings of greed and capitalism, then we risk doing more damage than good.”
The group, along with 30 other civil society organizations, has demanded the revocation of RWEC and Vena Energy’s permits in the MKCA “on scientific grounds and the lack of public consultation.” It’s also seeking outright rejections for similar applications in this wildlife sanctuary, which is meant to be off-limits to industrial and commercial activities.
Editor’s note: As humanity, we’ve come so far as to consider – after having wreaked havoc on a perfectly functioning ecosystems on a flourishing planet – that producing clouds from seawater is a good idea. It sounds too bizarre to be true and even hilarious – but it’s deeply sad.
There are indeed scientists who get paid for researching not in a laboratory but in real life situations, how millions of aircrafts and ships can bring tons of aerosols into the sky to prevent the sun from doing what she does: shining to provide sunlight.
It seems as if some start-up youngsters with a hangover after pulling an all-nighter came up with that idea. But no, the proponents are adult scholars and they mean it.
With this sci-fi scenario we witness a degenerate humanity completely in denial over what is actually happening. A cut from the living and breathing world around us, inducing the immersion into minds of madness, who try to techno-fix us into oblivion.
It’s like hiring a beautician to put makeup on a person that is bleeding out, while the doctor stands there doing nothing.
It’s like calling a friend when you’re in an emergency situation instead of calling the ambulance.
It’s like breathing in while being under water.
Can we please stop rivaling the sun? Thanks.
Not a Bright Idea: Cooling the Earth by Reflecting Sunlight Back to Space
The United Nations Environment Assembly this week considered a resolution on solar radiation modification, which refers to controversial technologies intended to mask the heating effect of greenhouse gases by reflecting some sunlight back to space.
Proponents argue the technologies will limit the effects of climate change. In reality, this type of “geoengineering” risks further destabilising an already deeply disturbed climate system. What’s more, its full impacts cannot be known until after deployment.
The draft resolution initially called for the convening of an expert group to examine the benefits and risks of solar radiation modification. The motion was withdrawn on Thursday after no consensus could be reached on the controversial topic.
A notable development was a call from some Global South countries for “non-use” of solar radiation modification. We strongly support this position. Human-caused climate change is already one planetary-scale experiment too many – we don’t need another.
A risky business
In some circles, solar geoengineering is gaining prominence as a response to the climate crisis. However, research has consistently identified potential risks posed by the technologies such as:
the infringement of human rights across generations – including, but not limited to, passing on huge risks to generations that will come after us.
Here, we discuss several examples of solar radiation modification which exemplify the threats posed by these technologies. These are also depicted in the graphic below.
A load of hot air
In April 2022, an American startup company released two weather balloons into the air from Mexico. The experiment was conducted without approval from Mexican authorities.
The intent was to cool the atmosphere by deflecting sunlight. The resulting reduction in warming would be sold for profit as “cooling credits” to those wanting to offset greenhouse gas pollution.
Once started, this stratospheric aerosol injection would need to be carried out continually for at least a century to achieve the desired cooling effect. Stopping prematurely would lead to an unprecedented rise in global temperatures far outpacing extreme climate change scenarios.
Heads in the clouds
Another solar geoengineering technology, known as marine cloud brightening, seeks to make low-lying clouds more reflective by spraying microscopic seawater droplets into the air. Since 2017, trials have been underway on the Great Barrier Reef.
The project is tiny in scale, and involves pumping seawater onto a boat and spraying it from nozzles towards the sky. The project leader says the mist-generating machine would need to be scaled up by a factor of ten, to about 3,000 nozzles, to brighten nearby clouds by 30%.
After years of trials, the project has not yet produced peer-reviewed empirical evidence that cloud brightening could reduce sea surface temperatures or protect corals from bleaching.
The Great Barrier Reef is the size of Italy. Scaling up attempts at cloud brightening would require up to 1,000 machines on boats, all pumping and spraying vast amounts of seawater for months during summer. Even if it worked, the operation is hardly, as its proponents claim, “environmentally benign”.
The technology’s effects remain unclear. For the Great Barrier Reef, less sunlight and lower temperatures could alter water movement and mixing, harming marine life. Marine life may also be killed by pumps or negatively affected by the additional noise pollution. And on land, marine cloud brightening may lead to altered rainfall patterns and increased salinity, damaging agriculture.
More broadly, 101 governments last year agreed to a statement describing marine-based geoengineering, including cloud brightening, as having “the potential for deleterious effects that are widespread, long-lasting or severe”.
Balls, bubbles and foams
The Arctic Ice Project involves spreading a layer of tiny glass spheres over large regions of sea ice to brighten its surface and halt ice loss.
Another proposed intervention is spraying the ocean with microbubbles or sea foam to make the surface more reflective. This would introduce large concentrations of chemicals to stabilise bubbles or foam at the sea surface, posing significant risk to marine life, ecosystem function and fisheries.
No more distractions
Some scientists investigating solar geoengineering discuss the need for “exit ramps” – the termination of research once a proposed intervention is deemed to be technically infeasible, too risky or socially unacceptable. We believe this point has already been reached.
Since 2022, more than 500 scientists from 61 countries have signed an open letter calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering. Aside from the types of risks discussed above, the letter said the speculative technologies detract from the urgent need to cut global emissions, and that no global governance system exists to fairly and effectively regulate their deployment.
Calls for outdoor experimentation of the technologies are misguided and detract energy and resources from what we need to do today: phase out fossil fuels and accelerate a just transition worldwide.
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity, and global responses have been woefully inadequate. Humanity must not pursue dangerous distractions that do nothing to tackle the root causes of climate change, come with incalculable risk, and will likely further delay climate action.
James Kerry is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, James Cook University, Australia and Senior Marine and Climate Scientist, OceanCare, Switzerland, James Cook University.
Aarti Gupta is a Professor of Global Environmental Governance, Wageningen University.
Terry Hughes is a Distinguished Professor, James Cook University.
Editor’s Note: Since main stream media gives so much attention to COP28 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a lot of people are familiar with it. Climate change is posed as the main environmental issue that we are facing right now. While DGR believes that climate change is a threat, it is by far not the worst. Other pressing issues, like biodiversity loss, are often sidelined by mainstream media. As a result, many people do know what COP14 UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) is. Biodiversity preservation requires habitat restoration, hardly something that anyone could gain profit from. Climate change, on the other hand, has provided many opportunities for corporations, in the name of “green” energy transition. We believe that climate change is a symptom of industrial civilization. Continuation of the process via “renewable” energy will only worsen all the ecological crisis that we are facing now, including climate change. Ending industrial civilization, protecting species and restoring habitats is the only way to actually address these issues.
Nearly Half of Migratory Species Populations Decline
While some migratory species listed under CMS are improving, nearly half (44 per cent) are showing population declines.
More than one-in-five (22 per cent) of CMS-listed species are threatened with extinction.
Nearly all (97 per cent) of CMS-listed fish are threatened with extinction.
The extinction risk is growing for migratory species globally, including those not listed under CMS.
Half (51 per cent) of Key Biodiversity Areas identified as important for CMS-listed migratory animals do not have protected status, and 58 per cent of the monitored sites recognized as being important for CMS-listed species are experiencing unsustainable levels of human-caused pressure.
The two greatest threats to both CMS-listed and all migratory species are overexploitation and habitat loss due to human activity. Three out of four CMS-listed species are impacted by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation, and seven out of 10 CMS-listed species are impacted by overexploitation (including intentional taking as well as incidental capture).
Climate change, pollution and invasive species are also having profound impacts on migratory species.
Globally, 399 migratory species that are threatened or near threatened with extinction are not currently listed under CMS.
Click to download full report. (PDF 15.0 MB)
Until now, no such comprehensive assessment on migratory species has been carried out. The report provides a global overview of the conservation status and population trends of migratory animals, combined with the latest information on their main threats and successful actions to save them.
Billions of animals make migratory journeys each year on land, in rivers and oceans and in the skies, crossing national boundaries and continents, with some travelling thousands of miles across the globe to feed and breed. Migratory species play an essential role in maintaining the world’s ecosystems, and provide vital benefits, by pollinating plants, transporting key nutrients, preying on pests, and helping to store carbon.
The main focus of the report is the 1,189 animal species that have been recognized by CMS Parties as needing international protection and are listed under CMS, though it also features analysis linked to over 3,000 additional non-CMS migratory species. Species listed under the Convention are those at risk of extinction across all or much of their range, or in need of coordinated international action to boost their conservation status.
Most worryingly, nearly all CMS-listed species of fish – including migratory sharks, rays and sturgeons – are facing a high risk of extinction, with their populations declining by 90 per cent since the 1970s.
Analyzing the threats to species, the report shows the huge extent to which the decline in migratory species is being caused by human activities.
The two greatest threats to both CMS-listed and all migratory species were confirmed as overexploitation – which includes unsustainable hunting, overfishing and the capture of non-target animals such as in fisheries – and habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation – from activities such as agriculture and the expansion of transport and energy infrastructure.
The State of the World’s Migratory Speciesreport will provide scientific grounding and policy recommendations to set the context and provide valuable information to support the deliberations of the UN wildlife conservation conference (CMS COP14) starting today in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
The convention also adopted a resolution urging parties not to engage with or support deep-sea mining until more scientific evidence is acquired. This resolution garnered criticism from the secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-mandated body that governs deep-sea mining in international waters.
While attendees say COP14 had many successes, some experts say that more action and resources are required to keeping species from sliding toward extinction. – Mongabay
