Featured image: The Barro Blanco Dam in the Province of Chiriqui, western Panama. The dam is complete and will begin operation within weeks, according to the government. The Ngäbe-Bugle have been opposed to the project since its inception. Photo by Camilo Mejia Giraldo by Tracy Barnett / Intercontinental Cry
PANAMA CITY, Panama – The waters were rising again in Weni Bagama’s community when she headed to Panama City to meet with government officials about the flooding from the Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam.
Bagama was one of 10 people scheduled to speak April 4 at the first in a series of meetings on the problem of human rights violations against environmental defenders throughout the country. The meetings were requested by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at a hearing on that subject last month in Washington, D.C. There are currently more than 90 recorded human rights cases related to environmental issues in Panama, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
Meanwhile, Maryknoll Sister Melinda Roper traveled to the meeting from the opposite end of Panama, the province of Darien, heading to the same April 4 meeting. She was another of the 10 people scheduled to speak.
Roper, whose wide-ranging work in Panama includes participation in a local environmental group called Alianza para un Mejor Darien (Alliance for a Better Darien), was there to speak about the government’s lack of response to the repeated threats to journalist Ligia Arreaga, who was forced to flee the country due to her reporting on the destruction of the wetlands of Matusaragatí.
More Flooding in Ngäbe Territory
The nearly two-decade fight to stop Barro Blanco has led to violent conflicts with the Ngäbe-Buglé people and drawn fire from human rights and environmental advocates internationally as an example of the misuse of carbon offset programs. Despite all of this, the dam was constructed anyway and last year the company began a “test flooding” that inundated parts of three villages.
Bagama, a leader of her native Ngäbe people and the resistance movement against the dam, continues to fight to save the villages and the Tabasará River, which is sacred to the Ngäbe. She had traveled to Washington, D.C., for the IACHR hearing on March 17, where she had taken some heart in the fact that the international commission requested the Panamanian government engage in dialogue with protesters. She attended the first follow-up meeting on April 4 with high hopes.
Sr. Melinda Roper, second from right, attended the meeting with government officials on behalf of Alianza para un Mejor Darien on April 3, where she spoke of the case of journalist Ligia Arreaga and the destruction of the Matusaragatí wetlands. Osvaldo Jordán, executive director of Alianza para Conservation y Desarrollo, is pictured fourth from the right. (Courtesy of Feliciano Santos)
Afterwards, though, she expressed frustration at the lack of a response of government officials to her pointed questions. Earlier, on March 27, some of those officials, including Vice Minister Salvador Sánchez, had traveled to her community of Kiad to begin talks with the three affected communities.
They met, but talks seemed to reach a stalemate, because residents wanted two conditions in order to move forward. First, the reservoir levels need to be lowered below the line of the autonomous territory (comarca) to allow a professional archaeological investigation of the petrogylphs that have been submerged. The petroglyphs are the Ngäbe’s most important ceremonial site and represent a crucial connection to their ancestors.
Second, they repeated their request for representatives of the Dutch and German development banks that financed the project to visit the Ngäbe communities affected by the reservoir. Bagama said she hopes that the investment banks’ presence will contribute to a workable solution. But by March 31, with no warning, the waters in the river again began to rise.
“I asked them [at the April 4 meeting], ‘How we can have a guarantee that this conversation, this approach, will have follow-through and respect when they have not even concretized anything and are filling the reservoir again?”
Bagama was told that the subject of Barro Blanco would be dealt with in a separate process. She then asked when the next meeting would take place and has not yet received an answer.
In Kiad, Panama, Weni Bagama makes her way up a hill that was once verdant, now covered in caked mud since the flooding from Barro Banco dam. (Tracy L. Barnett)
Mónica De León, director of communications for the government’s Office of Foreign Affairs, sent an institutional response to this reporter’s questions via email: “The Government of the Republic of Panama is holding talks with the representatives of the communities impacted by the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Project, in order to promote actions that address the incompatibilities identified at the dialogue table.”
She referenced the March 27 meeting in Kiad “to agree on options for spaces and points of cultural veneration of communities impacted by the project and follow up on monitoring of water quality studies. It should be noted that the hydro has not entered operations, the test period is nearing completion and water remains at the lowest level.”
During the months-long “test period” for filling the reservoir, the community lost its generations-old food forest and most of the fish and shrimp in their river, the ancient petroglyphs that are an important ceremonial site, their roads to other communities, and several homes. In recent months the waters have dropped due to it being the dry season; the rainy season has not yet begun, so the rising waters have come as a surprise.
Barro Blanco made headlines late last year when it became the first development project to be deregistered under the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism, making the dam ineligible for issuing carbon offset credits. The Clean Development Mechanism is intended to encourage sustainable development in developing countries, but critics of the dam argued that it was anything but sustainable. Besides the fact that it would potentially displace more than 500 people and a cultural center in the comarca, the project would damage an important river ecosystem and a ceremonial and archaeological site that is vital to Ngäbe culture.
Work had continued apace on the dam despite international pressure and continued mass protests by the Ngäbe people, in which several people died and more were badly injured in confrontations with police. Now that the dam is finished and substantial parts of the communities are flooded, they fear what else will be lost in the imminent rainy season, and if the dam becomes fully operational.
There was no answer from the government regarding the request for a visit from the banks.
Paul Hartogsveld, Dutch Development Bank FMO press officer, wrote to this reporter: “FMO continues to emphasize the need for dialogue and consent between all parties involved. We respect the process and are awaiting the outcome. We do not foresee further action as this would possibly interfere with the negotiations between the government and the indigenous representation.”
A Wetlands Destroyed
Although the government has set aside 26,000 hectares of the approximately 68,000-hectare wetlands — the country’s most important — as protected area, a series of irregularities continue to plague the region, including massive land grabs by growers of industrial rice and oil palm.
Illegal canals have been constructed that are draining the wetlands, and the lagoon at its heart is beginning to run dry; 6,000 hectares belonging to the reserve have illegally been sold to private individuals, according to an ongoing lawsuit by the environmental ministry.
Roper considered the strong representation at the meeting by high officials from many government agencies, as well as the U.N.’s high commissioner on human rights, to be a good sign.
“My impression was that the atmosphere was one of clarity and openness on the part of almost all the people there to continue the process of dialog, creating a space perhaps every month for conversation to continue — realizing that there are many, many problems in Panama in terms of human rights violations, especially in relation to environmental problems,” said Roper.
“Of course it’s the type of meeting where you can make recommendations and you can establish context and dialog. It’s not a problem-solving meeting in the sense they would make a resolution to solve a specific problem, but I think it could work toward that.”
Another case presented at the April 4 meeting that continues to deteriorate, said Osvaldo Jordán, executive director of the Panamanian nonprofit Alianza para Conservación y Desarrollo (Alliance for Conservation and Development), is the development of Pedro González Island, where residents of African descent say law enforcement has arbitrarily detained them for opposing a foreign investor’s tourism project on lands they and their ancestors have inhabited for 300 years.
Despite the disappointment that Barro Blanco wasn’t addressed, attendees agreed that the meeting was a positive beginning to a new forum for addressing human rights violations against environmental defenders.
“I think it was positive in the sense that it allowed for a dialog,” said Jordán. “These are groups that were heavily oppressed, and their cases were ignored. So just making those cases visible and raising them to this level of public awareness is a step ahead. Unfortunately no clear answers were given and the danger is that this becomes catharsis — just a time for people to vent their frustrations without getting to any resolution. So we have to fight hard for that not to happen.”
Farah Urrutia, Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, responded to this reporter’s questions in an email, referencing the achievements of the meeting: the presence of high-level officials in various government agencies, as well as the Office of the Ombudsman, and an agreement to follow up with site visits to the problem areas and by organizing monthly meetings with environmental defenders.
“Finally, we believe that the climate of the [working group] is conducive to assess the possible presentation of a bill that can protect these groups,” she added.
Jordán agreed. “I think the meeting represented a positive direction, in particular the proposal of the ombudsman’s office to coordinate with the U.N. in trying to get a policy that will protect environmental defenders in Panama,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bagama is hopeful of receiving a phone call soon so that the conversations with the government can continue. Although she clarified — as she did at the April 4 meeting — that in her view, as of yet there is no formal dialog between the communities and the government, and there will be no dialog until their requests are met.
“If the government wants a conversation with the affected communities, they need to stop filling the reservoir,” she said. “If they do not stop the filling it, there is no conversation. It is regrettable and I don’t want it to happen, but that is what will happen if the government does not order to stop filling. They argue that they cannot do it, but I ask, ‘Who is in charge? The government or the companies? Who defends the rights?’ That is what we are seeing.”
[Tracy L. Barnett is an independent writer, editor and photographer specializing in environmental issues, indigenous rights and sustainable travel.]
A Canadian oil company has told Survival International it will withdraw from the territory of several uncontacted tribes in the Amazon where it had been intending to explore for oil.
The company, Pacific E&P, had previously been awarded the right to explore for oil in a large area of the Amazon Uncontacted Frontier, a region of immense biodiversity which is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else on Earth. It began its first phase of oil exploration in 2012.
The move follows years of campaigning by Survival International and several Peruvian indigenous organizations, including AIDESEP, ORPIO, and ORAU. ORPIO is suing the government over the threat of oil exploration.
Thousands of Survival supporters had protested by sending emails to the company’s CEO, lobbying the Peruvian government, and contacting the company through social media.
Survival also released an open letter, protesting against the threat of oil exploration, which was signed by Rainforest Foundation Norway and ORPIO. Sustained campaigning helped bring attention to the issue within Peru and around the world.
In a letter, Pacific E&P’s Institutional Relations and Sustainability Manager said that: “[The company] has made the decision to relinquish its exploration rights in Block 135… effective immediately… We wish to reiterate the company’s commitment to conduct its operations under the highest sustainability and human rights guidelines.”
At a tribal meeting in late 2016, a man from the Matsés tribe, which was forced into contact in the late 20th century, said: “I don’t want my children to be destroyed by oil and war. That’s why we’re defending ourselves… and why we Matsés have come together. The oil companies … are insulting us and we won’t stay silent as they exploit us on our homeland. If it’s necessary, we’ll die in the war against oil.”
Oil exploration involves sustained land invasion which can dramatically increase the risk of forced contact with uncontacted tribes. It leaves them vulnerable to violence from outsiders who steal their land and resources, and to diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.
The announcement that it was not going ahead was welcomed by campaigners as significant in the fight to protect uncontacted peoples’ lives, lands and human rights.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “This is great news for the global campaign for uncontacted tribes and all those who wish to halt the genocide that has swept across the Americas since the arrival of Columbus. All uncontacted peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected and we believe they are a vitally important part of humankind’s diversity and deserve their right to life to be upheld. We will continue to lead the fight to let them live.”
Background briefing
▪ Oil block 135 is within the proposed Yavarí Tapiche indigenous reserve. Peru’s national Indian organization AIDESEP has been calling for the creation of the reserve for over 14 years.
▪ Part of the oil concession is within the newly created Sierra del Divisor national park. The Peruvian government had awarded Pacific E&P rights to explore within the park.
▪ The Yavarí Tapiche region is part of the Amazon Uncontacted Frontier. This area straddles the borders of Peru and Brazil and is home to more uncontacted tribes than anywhere else in the world.
▪ Peru has ratified ILO 169, the international law for tribal peoples, which requires it to protect tribal land rights.
▪ We know very little about the uncontacted tribes in the area. Some are presumed to be Matsés, but there are other uncontacted nomadic peoples in the region.
Uncontacted tribes are not backward and primitive relics of a remote past. They are our contemporaries and a vitally important part of humankind’s diversity. Where their rights are respected, they continue to thrive.
Their knowledge is irreplaceable and has been developed over thousands of years. They are the best guardians of their environment. And evidence proves that tribal territories are the best barrier to deforestation.
All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Survival International is leading the global fight to secure their land for them, and to give them the chance to determine their own futures.
In an open letter to the Peruvian authorities, Survival International, Rainforest Foundation Norway and Peruvian indigenous organization ORPIO have denounced the Peruvian government’s failure to protect uncontacted tribes.
The organizations are calling for the government to create an indigenous reserve, known as Yavari-Tapiche, for uncontacted tribes along the Peru-Brazil border, and to put a stop to outsiders entering the territory.
In the letter the three organizations state: “Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. They have made the decision to be isolated and this must be respected…
“The Yavarí Tapiche region is home to uncontacted peoples. Despite knowing of their existence and enormous vulnerability, the government has failed to guarantee their protection…
“These tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected. Only by creating the proposed Yavarí Tapiche indigenous reserve and implementing effective protection mechanisms that prevent the entry of outsiders, will the indigenous people be given the chance to determine their own futures…
“We are also concerned about the government’s refusal to exclude oil exploration within the proposed reserve…. No exploration or exploitation of oil should ever be carried out on territories inhabited by uncontacted Indians…
“We believe that the oil company Pacific Stratus is poised to begin operations this year in areas where there are uncontacted tribes…
“By failing to both create the reserve and to rule out oil exploration, Peru is violating both domestic and international law…
“If the government does not act urgently to protect the uncontacted peoples of Yavarí Tapiche, we fear that they will not survive. Another tribe will disappear from the face of the earth, before the eyes of the world.”
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “We’ve repeatedly called for the Yavarí-Tapiche indigenous reserve to be created and for oil exploration to be ruled out, but the government has dragged its feet. The lives of uncontacted Indians are on the line but once again, economic interests take priority.”
Today, Spokane activists, including several who were arrested for blocking fossil fuel trains in Spokane four months ago, filed suit against the federal government in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
The lawsuit, known as Holmquist et. al. v. United States, asserts that the federal law preempting city health and safety laws over fossil fuel rail shipments violates residents’ constitutional right to a healthy climate and local self-government.
This is a first-of-its-kind case directly challenging federal preemption as an infringement of constitutional rights when that preemption operates to prohibit the passage of health and safety laws at the municipal level.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of a recent federal court decision in Oregon which recognized that people possess a fundamental constitutional “right to a liveable climate” pursuant to the due process clause of the United States Constitution.
In that case, Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States, Civ. No. 6:15-cv-01517 (November 10, 2016), Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon wrote, “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society. . . to hold otherwise would be to say that the Constitution affords no protection against a government’s knowing decision to poison the air its citizens breathe or the water its citizens drink.”
Plaintiffs in the Spokane lawsuit include Dr. Gunnar Holmquist, the primary sponsor of a City of Spokane citizen-sponsored initiative to ban coal and oil trains due to climate change. Additional plaintiffs are Rusty Nelson, Nancy Nelson, Margie Heller, Deena Romoff, George Taylor, and G. Maeve Aeolus, each of whom was arrested in August and September 2016 actions for blocking fossil fuel trains. The plaintiffs are being represented by Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, a lawyer with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
Dr. Holmquist, the lead plaintiff in the litigation, declared, “Now is the time to step forward to do everything possible to stem the global crisis of climate change. This lawsuit will inevitably be the first of many which seek to begin to align state and federal laws with the realities of global warming – liberating communities to begin to take the difficult steps necessary for our continued survival on this planet.”
The federal lawsuit coincides with the re-filing of an initiative within the City of Spokane to amend the City’s home rule charter. The initiative would recognize a “right to a healthy climate” and ban fossil fuel trains as a violation of that right. Supporters of that initiative are preparing to collect signatures to qualify the initiative for the November 2017 ballot.
About CELDF — Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit, public interest law firm providing free and affordable legal services to communities facing threats to their local environment, local agriculture, local economy, and quality of life. Its mission is to build sustainable communities by assisting people to assert their right to local self-government and the rights of nature.
Featured image: Steve Tatum, Flickr Creative Commons – Coal Train. View from the footbridge on the Huckleberry Trail crossing the Norfolk Southern tracks.
NEW YORK, NY.: The Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) announced today that it will be partnering with the Christian group Family Policy Alliance (FPA) in submitting a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court challenging President Obama’s Title IX “bathroom mandate.”
The joint brief argues that allowing males who self-identify as women access to female-only spaces threatens the safety of women and girls and results in the effective erasure of women under Title IX – a civil rights law enacted specifically to benefit women, who have been excluded from formal education, or discriminated against within it, for centuries.
What prompted WoLF to forge such an unlikely partnership?
Kara Dansky, Chair of the WoLF Board, says the alliance with FPA just makes sense.
“WoLF fights to protect all women and girls, regardless of political affiliation,” said Dansky. “WoLF is the only feminist organization standing up for the right of women and girls to maintain female-only spaces. We are happy to work with other organizations that agree with us on this point.”
“How wrong does something have to be for a Christian family group, and a radical feminist group, to take their argument together to the Supreme Court?” said Autumn Leva, director of policy for Family Policy Alliance.
The brief will be submitted in the Gloucester School Board v. G.G. case before the high court. A female who identifies as male is seeking the “right” to use the boys’ facilities.
The court will hear the case this spring with a decision likely in the summer.
WoLF board member Kara Dansky sat down with Family Policy Alliance as unlikely allies for privacy and the safety of women and girls. Watch their conversation below.
On November 1, 2016, the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica’s Supreme Court provided some good news to a Terraba (Teribe) Indigenous territory when it stopped the state-run Costa Rica Electricity Institute (ICE by its Spanish acronym) from going forward with the Diquis hydroelectric project for failing to consult Indigenous communities who would see part of their lands flooded.
The permit, issued in 2007 under former President Oscar Arias, had declared the dam to be located at the mouth of the General River Valley in the southern Pacific and part of the country of “national interest.”
The court ruling did not question the “national interest” part of the permit, but said ICE had failed to comply with a previous high court order to adequately consult the Indigenous communities. The project has been stalled since 2011 over the Indigenous consultation issue.
The 650 megawatt hydroelectric project was to be the largest such project in Central America. The project’s reservoir would occupy 7363 hectares of land, 830 hectares of which are Indigenous territories, and displace over 1547 people.
The project would also flood 10 percent of the Terraba (also known as Teribe) China Kichá Indigenous territory (104 hectares) and 8 percent of another Terraba communities of Curré and Boruca (726 hectares). Officials estimate that 200 sacred Indigenous sites would be destroyed by the reservoir.
Some see the development as very positive. The $2.5 billion project would provide employment in the region to 3,500 people. The Diquis project would increase that renewable energy capacity and also allow Costa Rica to sell energy to neighboring Central American countries. Costa Ricans are proud of their electrical energy system which provides energy mostly from renewable resources. In 2016, the country went most of the year without resorting to using oil-fired thermal generators. But sometimes even renewable energy has high cost, especially when it comes to hydro-electric dams.
The high court ruling referred to Article 8 of the Arias Administration decree which would have allowed ICE to gather materials for the dam, power station, and connected works in locales in the areas of El General, Buenos Aires, Changuena and Cabagra, despite the fact that Indigenous people live in the areas.
According to the Constitutional Chamber’s press office, the annulled article was challenged previously in September of 2011, when the court determined that the decree was constitutional just as long as the Indigenous communities were consulted within a period of six months from the notification of the ruling.
However, early the next year, the court ruled that the six months established by the Court had passed and the consultation had not been made. “The Constitutional Chamber has demonstrated that, in fact, in the space of time established in the 2011-12975 ruling, the referred to consultation was not made nor did any party come to this Chamber request an extension of the time limit granted. Therefore, since the condition dictated in ruling 2011-12975 have not been met, the Article 8 of the No. 34312-MP-MINAE executive decree is unconstitutional because the consultation failed to occur,” said the press office.
The Terraba say they are not interested in the offers made so far to relocate their communities to other lands and provide them with well-paid jobs. “We don’t believe in the promises of employment for Indigenous Peoples, as up until today it had been demonstrated that all the qualified and best paid personnel have been brought from outside, Indigenous workers are used only to break rocks,” said community leader Jehry Rivera.
For Indigenous people, ICE offers are only opportunism. Indigenous Peoples want better lands and compensation in order to agree for the project to go forward.
The Court said that the consultation of Indigenous communities under Costa Rican law was necessary since the project is located in areas declared as an Indigenous reserve, “In fact, Costa Rica could be in violation of not complying with international conventions in relation to the autonomy of Indigenous Peoples over their territory. Costa Rica is a signatory of the International Labor Organization’s Convention on Indigenous and Tribal People.”
Indigenous Peoples are not the only ones opposed to the project. Environmentalists say that the dam’s reservoir would dry up the intensely green Térraba River Valley and would destroy irreplaceable habitats such as the Ramsar wetland and the river delta that drains into the Pacific. The wetlands and delta are the nesting grounds for many species including the endangered hump-back whale.
–John McPhaul is a Costa Rican-American freelance writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During his many years in Costa Rica, the land of his birth, he wrote for the Miami Herald, Time Magazine and Costa Rica’s The Tico Times among other publications.
