DGR stands in strong solidarity with indigenous peoples worldwide. We acknowledge that they are victims of the largest genocide in human history, which is ongoing. Wherever indigenous cultures have not been completely destroyed or assimilated, they stand as relentless defenders of the landbases and natural communities which are there ancestral homes. They also provide living proof that not humans as a species are inherently destructive, but the societal structure based on large scale monoculture, endless energy consumption and accumulation of wealth and power for a few elites, human supremacy and patriarchy we call civilization.
Featured Image: The Belo Monte hydroelectric complex is the third-largest in the world in installed capacity, able to produce 11,200 megawatts. Copyright: PAC-Ministry of Planning, Brazil [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0].
The company responsible for Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam claimed in a letter to the New York Times that the company respects Indigenous peoples, the environment and international conventions.
The Arara Indigenous people contest the company’s claims and call attention to a series of broken promises.
The Belo Monte Dam is notorious for having violated international conventions and Brazilian laws regarding consultation of Indigenous peoples, and for its massive environmental and social impacts.
This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Even in this era of “alternative facts,” the letter to the New York Times from Norte Energy (the company responsible for Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam) will surely be remembered as a classic.
The letter opens by claiming that “From the beginning, the deployment of the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Power Plant in the Brazilian state of Pará has been guided by respect for the local Indigenous populations and by laws, ratified protocols and conventions.” News of Norte Energia’s letter reached the local Indigenous populations, and they are rightly enraged. A response from the Arara People (Figure 1) is translated below. For whatever reason, the New York Times declined to publish it.
Letter from the Arara People to the World
We the Arara Indigenous People of the Iriri River are tired of being deceived by Norte Energia. We want respect! Ever since the Belo Monte Dam arrived, our situation has only worsened. Our territory has become the business counter of the world. Our forest is suffering a lot. With each passing day we hear more noise from chainsaws eating our territory. Our river is growing sadder and weaker every day. This is not normal. We are being attacked from all sides. We have never been in such need. We are very concerned about the future of our children and grandchildren. How long will Norte Energia continue to deceive us? Why hasn’t the disintrusion [removal of invaders] of our Cachoeira Seca Indigenous Land been carried out until today? We ask everyone to help us build a great campaign for the defense of our territory.
The Arara People will never abandon our territories. Our warriors will not allow our forest to be destroyed. Together we will protect our Iriri River.
Timbektodem Arara – President of the Arara People’s Association – KOWIT
Mobu Odo Arara – Chief
Norte Energia’s claim of being “guided by… laws and ratified protocols and conventions” is an amazing rewrite of the history of building Belo Monte a dam that managed to be completed despite massive efforts both within Brazil and abroad, to have those conventions respected. Belo Monte violated Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO-169) and the Brazilian law (10.088 of Nov. 5, 2019, formerly 5.051 of April 19, 2004) that implements the convention. These require consultation of affected Indigenous people to obtain their free, prior and informed consent. Note that the operative word is “affected,” not “submerged.” The claim was that the Indigenous people did not need to be consulted because they were not under water.
Downstream of the first of the two dams that compose Belo Monte is a 100-km stretch of the Xingu River from which 80% of the water flow has been diverted. Largely disappeared are the fish that sustained the populations of the two Indigenous lands along this stretch, plus a third located on a tributary. Both the ILO and the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States recognized violation of ILO-169 by not consulting Indigenous peoples impacted by Belo Monte. Over 20 cases against Belo Monte are still pending in Brazilian courts; only one case has been decided, and this was in favor of the Indigenous people. However, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court where it languished while the dam was built and has still not been judged.
Bribes paid by construction companies for the contracts to build Belo Monte were a star feature in Brazil’s “Lava Jato” (“Car Wash”) corruption scandal, with confessions from both the side that paid and the side that received. This scandal helped explain why Belo Monte was built despite the Xingu River’s long low-flow period when no or very few turbines at the main powerhouse can operate (2020 was a dramatic example). Climate change will make this worse still.
The Norte Energia letter asserts: “The plant has a valid operating license and generates energy for millions of Brazilians, grounded in the principles of environmental responsibility and social justice in deference to the culture of the local Indigenous populations.”
Mention of the “valid operating license,” reminds one of the Federal Public Ministry in Belém describing Belo Monte as “totally illegal.” The dam forced its way past multiple legal challenges by means of “security suspensions,” a relict of Brazil’s military dictatorship that allows projects to go forward despite any number of illegalities if they are needed to avoid “damage to the public economy” (originally law 4348 of June 26, 1964, now law 12,016 of August 7, 2009).
With respect to Norte Energia’s boast that Belo Monte “generates energy for millions of Brazilians,” the dam does indeed produce electricity, although industry gets the biggest share: only 29% of Brazil’s electricity is for domestic consumption. Much more electricity would be available if the billions of dollars in subsidies that the country’s taxpayers gave Belo Monte had been used for other options, such as energy conservation, halting export of electricity in the form of aluminum and other electro-intensive products, and tapping the country’s enormous wind and solar potential.
Norte Energia’s letter concludes that Belo Monte is “grounded in the principles of environmental responsibility and social justice.” This is certainly a most memorable “alternative fact.” The implications for environmental justice of Belo Monte and other Amazonian dams are dramatic (see here in English and Portuguese).
Editors note: DGR supports The REAL Green New Deal Project, which is “setting forth a realistic alternative to the commonly accepted narrative about renewable energy and sustainability. That narrative – for which the Green New Deal has become emblematic – leads us to believe that the renewable energy future will look just like the fossil fueled present, but simply electrified and “decarbonized.” We’re pushing back against this dangerous myth. ” realgnd.org Consistent with the biophysical evidence, REALgnd acknowledges the following. . .
the fallacy of human exceptionalism. H. sapiens is an evolved biological species that is part of nature and therefore subject to the same natural laws and limitations as other living things, particularly the laws pertaining to energy use and material conservation.
that, like all other species, H. sapiens has a natural propensity to expand into all accessible habitat and consume all available resources. However, in the case of humans, “available” is constantly being redefined by technology.
that, in the absence of rational controls, humans will use any source of abundant cheap energy to (over)exploit ecosystems.
that the human enterprise (people and their economies) is an embedded subsystem of the ecosphere and that decoupling it from Nature is not even theoretically possible.that modern techno-industrial society is an unsustainable blip in the history of human civilization, made possible only by a one-off inheritance of fossil fuels (FF), which will either run out soon (i.e., they will become too financially and energetically costly to extract and use) or which we must choose to stop using: 1) in preparation for their eventual depletion, 2) to avoid the continued ecological impacts of their extraction, transportation, and processing, and 3) to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Consider that one barrel of oil is the energy equivalent of about 10 years of human labor.
To supply the average American with his/her economic goods and services requires 6,806 kg of petroleum (~50 barrels) per year. Which means that the average American has about 500 “energy slaves” – mostly fossil fuels – working for him/her around the clock (one energy slave = the energy output of one person).
that so-called renewable energy technologies (namely solar, high-tech wind, large-scale hydropower, and nuclear) are not renewable. They rely on 1) techno-industrial processes that are not possible without FFs, 2) a dwindling supply of non-renewable metals and minerals, 3) ecological destruction and pollution, 4) and terrible working conditions in the mining industry, much of which are offshored to the Global South. At the end of their short lives (ranging from 15 to 50 years, depending on the technology), they have to be decommissioned and transported – using FFs – to waste sites, only for the entire process to start all over again.
that calls for “net zero” carbon emissions 1) rely on unproven technologies that can only be manufactured through FF-based, techno-industrial processes, 2) entail significant ecological damage (the injection of toxic substances into the ground), and 3) belie the need to abolish FF use for the above reasons.
that human society is in overshoot, meaning that humanity has exceeded the regenerative capacity of ecosystems and become parasitic on the ecosphere. Any species that maintains itself through the continual depletion of the biophysical basis of its own existence is inherently unsustainable.
Consider that there are only about 12 billion hectares of ecologically productive land and water on Earth. For 7.6 billion people, this is about 1.6 global average hectares (gha) of biocapacity per capita. However, humanity is currently consuming about 2.8 gha per capita – 75% more biocapacity than is available given the size of our current population (5). In other words, humans currently use the equivalent of 1.75 Earth’s worth of resources and assimilative capacity each year. Species can exist in a state of overshoot only temporarily and at a great cost to the ability of ecosystems to provide life support services in perpetuity.
The one-Earth lifestyle of 1.6 gha per capita for 7.6 billion people mentioned above equates to the current lifestyle intensity of countries such as Myanmar, Ecuador, Mali, and Nicaragua. By contrast, in 2017, it took over 8 gha to support the average North American lifestyle – meaning Americans and Canadians have overshot their equal share of global biocapacity by a factor of 400%.
that climate change is only one of many symptoms of overshoot. Thus, carbon is only one indicator or metric to consider.
that a state of ecological overshoot does not resemble, and greatly constrains, what is possible in a steady state at or below the carrying capacity.
that (un)sustainability is a collective problem requiring collective solutions and unprecedented international cooperation.
that if humanity does not plan a controlled descent from its state of overshoot, then chaotic, painful collapse is unavoidable.
that gross income and wealth inequality is a major barrier to sustainability. Socially just, one-Earth living requires mechanisms for fair income redistribution and otherwise sharing the benefits of eco-economic activity.
that life after fossil fuels will look very much like life before fossil fuels.
Consistent with these biophysical and social realities, our goal is to assist the global community to:
accept that short-term, self-interested economic behavior at the individual and national levels has become maladaptive at the long-term, global level.
formally acknowledge the absurdity of perpetual material growth and accumulation (the hallmarks of capitalism) on a finite planet.
commit to devising and implementing policies consistent with a one-Earth civilization, characterized first by a controlled contraction of the human enterprise and a re-configuration of its material infrastructure, with the end goal of an ecologically stable, economically secure steady state society whose citizens live more or less equitably within the biophysical means of Nature.
develop and implement a global fertility strategy to reduce the human population to the billion or so people that a non-fossil energy future can likely support in material comfort on this already much damaged Earth.
identify which types of energy are actually renewable, or largely dependent upon, renewable resources, and what this will mean for the re-design of society’s infrastructure.
begin the planning necessary to eliminate fossil energy by 1) rationing and allocating the remaining carbon budget to essential uses, de-commissioning unsustainable fossil-based infrastructure, and re-building critical renewable-based infrastructure and supply chains, and 2) reducing material consumption consistent with Global Footprint Network estimates of ∼75 % overshoot.
understand that life after the luxury of fossil fuels holds many gems and should not be feared.
An absence of material luxury need not equate to an absence of a good, comfortable lifestyle.
Lacking the energetic slaves of fossil fuels will involve more physically active lives in closer contact with each other and Nature, both of which will improve our overall well-being and restore our shattered sense of connection.
Emphasis can shift from material progress to progress on the mind and spirit, which are unlimited.
News Alert: Land and water defenders are opposing the creation of a dam across the Zambezi River. They are requesting support to highlight concerns. We encourage you to comment on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) before it closes on January 25th. The Zambezi River Authority needs to capture grievances for their Responses Report for the ESIA.
The Environmental Resources Management (ERM) is in receipt of a report from a stakeholder. They have collated feedback from other stakeholders living in the Project Area of Influence in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Reports from community members living in the Project Area of Influence, have noted, that people are nervous to speak out against the BGHES Project, or even raise concerns and ask questions.
There is a strong feeling that in Zambia, largely due to historical context, that people cannot speak out against what the government is saying or doing for fear of retribution. Such retribution may be subtle or non-violent, such as having your livelihood taken away, rather than open threats/ acts of violence.
Batoka Gorge Hydro Electric Scheme (BGHES)
The proposed BGHES Project is seen as government driven and, therefore, people are not willing to question it. There is not a culture of speaking out against government, as such, people who may be opposed to the BGHES might not voice their opinion for fear of the consequences.
It has been reported that there have been threats of violence against people living in the Project Area of Influence who have opposed or questioned the BGHES Project.
There is no written documentation to ‘evidence’ or support this claim, however, it was noted that if people wanted to report threats, they do not know who they can report to. Local police, and even local traditional and government leadership, are not necessarily trusted to act on such information, and are typically seen as part of a government structure seeking to suppress opposition.
It was also noted that the ESIA report states that there are no migratory fish species that would be affected by the construction of the dam. However, stakeholders disagree with this statement, noting that there are in fact migratory fish species that would be impacted detrimentally by the presence of a dam. The stakeholder has, therefore, questioned whether the specialist report was rushed or perhaps written under instruction/coercion. Put simply, it is likely the environmental impacts have not been made clear. We suspect the author was paid to minimize the harm we know to be likely as a result of this project.
“the review and comment period for the draft ESIAs will remain open until such time that the Authority and ERM are able to hold the ESIA disclosure meetings, or until further notice is given by the Authority and ERM. Your input remains key in the updating and finalization of the ESIA studies and stakeholders are encouraged to continue reviewing the draft ESIAs and to submit questions and comments to ERM: batokagorgehes@erm.com”
Stakeholders can access the draft ESIA reports and Non-Technical Summaries (NTSs) through the project website, www.erm.com/BGHES-ESIA and at the public locations previously communicated.”
Featured image: Brian McMorrow, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons
DGR member and lawyer Will Falk explains why the legal and regulatory system is structurally incapable of defending the natural world from threats, because it was never designed to do this. His conclusion is that communities must organize around revolutionary, ecological principles to defend the land themselves. We cannot rely on government to do it for us.
VISIT DEEP GREEN RESISTANCE FOR MORE RESISTANCE UPDATES: http://www.deepgreenresistance.org
San Antonino Castillo Velasco, Oaxaca, Mexico — Twelve years ago in the verdant Ocotlán Valley of Mexico, a group of men and women of Zapotec origin watched as their crops of vegetables and flowers began to wither away. A long drought seemed destined to turn their fertile valley into a desert area. But through a rainwater harvesting technique, they created a series of “absorption wells,” and since then life has re-emerged in this remote region in the South of Mexico.
As he irrigates his onion crops using the “drip technique”, Emiliano remembers those years when his crops languished for the lack of water from either the rain or the irrigation canals. In those days, back in 2005, they knew that in this area there was a 1967 presidential decree, which established a prohibition on agricultural use of water that required the payment of up to 24 thousand pesos (about $1,200 USD) to gain access.
The National Water Commission (Conagua) imposed a heavy fine when they continued to use the water, as well as excessively high electrical fees for use of their water pumps. The desperation of seeing their crops die and the lack of economic solvency caused peasants like Emiliano, Esperanza Alonso Contreras and Juan Justino Martínez González among hundreds of others to organize themselves and seek help from Flor y Canto, a social organization dedicated to the defense of life and territory; and since then the Coordinadora de Pueblos Unidos por la Defensa de Agua or “Copuda” was born.
Juan Justino Martínez González, founder of the Coordinator of United Peoples for the Defense of Water “Copuda”.
Now that they were organized, the Sowers of Water — together with Flor y Canto, headed by the indigenous rights defender Carmen Santiago Alonso — established two strategies for the defense of the aquifers in this area of the valleys of Oaxaca: The first one was to train people in the creation of absorption wells. They went to the Water Museum in the city of Tehuacán, Puebla, and from their training they built “pots” or large ponds where they accumulated rainwater, and also seven wells as a pilot. Currently there are more than 300 such wells that are planted in the fields.
The second route that the peasants took was the legal one. In 2011, they sued Conagua before the Superior Court of Fiscal and Administrative Justice for unfairly high charges without a consultation under ILO Convention 169. Two years later, in 2013, the Court ruled in favor of Copuda and ordered the indigenous consultation in 24 communities throughout the region.
The consultation process is the only one that has been done in Mexico for the defense of water, according to Santiago, a pioneer in the country in water rights. The case is currently in the fourth or “consultative” phase, and according to the farmers, the hope is that the government of Andres Manuel López Obrador will “lift the decree of closure” and to convert this region of the Ocotlán Valley into a “Regulated Area,” because the National Water Law endorsed by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto is in violation of their human and indigenous rights.
Land and water defender Carmen Santiago Alonso, who has seen the rebirth of crops in the Ocotlán Valley, stressed that this process of sowing and cultivation of water is the result of the organization of the people, who have learned to sow water for the simple love of the countryside and community knowledge.
Carmen Santiago Alonso, who has seen the rebirth of crops in the Ocotlán Valley, stressed that all this process of germination and cultivation of water is the result of the organization of the people, who have learned to sow water for the simple love of the countryside and community knowledge.
Now the community waits for the Mexican government to really keep its word at the end of the consultation and thus lift the decree and close and create a set of rules for the “Niza Microregion” of the Ocotlán Valley.
“We hope that at the end of the consultation, the government will respect the voice of the peoples of COPUDA who for many years have fought for water to be free,” she said. “Here we sow water under a community technique, we collect it for our crops, so that there is life; we only want to live freely and be respected.”
Oakland, CA—On September 25, 2018, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) awarded a major victory to four Maasai villages fighting for their rights to their land in northern Tanzania. The case revolves around violent government-led evictions of Maasai villagers in Loliondo – which included burning their homes, arbitrary arrest, forced eviction from their villages, and confiscating their livestock – that took place in August 2017, as well as the ongoing harassment and arrest of villagers involved in the case by the Tanzanian police. The four villages named in the case are legally registered owners of their land.
The Court’s ruling grants an injunction that prohibits the Tanzanian government from evicting the Maasai communities from a vital 1,500km2 parcel of land. Furthermore, it prohibits the destruction of Maasai homesteads and the confiscation of livestock on said land, and bans the office of the Inspector General of Police from harassing and intimidating the plaintiffs, pending the full determination of their case. The injunction remains in effect until a ruling on the full case concerning the August 2017 evictions can be heard.
“IN THE RESULT, HAVING HELD AS WE HAVE IN THIS RULING ABOVE, WE DO HEREBY ALLOW THE SUBSISTING APPLICATION WITH THE FOLLOWING ORDERS:
A. AN INTERIM ORDER DOTH ISSUE RESTRAINING THE RESPONDENT, AND ANY PERSONS OR OFFICES ACTING ON HIS BEHALF, FROM EVICTING THE APPLICANTS’ RESIDENTS FROM THE DISPUTED LAND, BEING THE LAND COMPRISED IN THE 1,500 SQ KM OF LAND IN THE WILDLIFE CONSERVATION AREA BORDERING SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK; DESTROYING THEIR HOMESTEADS OR CONFISCATING THEIR LIVESTOCK ON THAT LAND, UNTIL THE DETERMINATION OF REFERENCE NO. 10 OF 2017.
B. AN INTERIM ORDER DOTH ISSUE AGAINST THE RESPONDENT, RESTRAINING THE OFFICE OF THE INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE FROM HARASSING OR INTIMIDATING THE APPLICANTS IN RELATION TO REFERENCE NO. 10 OF 2017 PENDING THE DETERMINATION THEREOF.
C. THE COSTS HEREOF SHALL ABIDE THE OUTCOME OF THE REFERENCE. WE DIRECT THAT IT BE FIXED FOR HEARING FORTHWITH.”
In their ruling, Justices Monica K. Mugenyi, Faustin Ntezilyayo, and Fakihi A. Jundu noted that the interim order and corresponding affidavit filed by the Maasai “paint[ed] a picture of widespread social upheaval in Ololosokwan village and an attempt to stifle village representatives’ and/or the affected persons’ access to justice.” They further ruled that the government’s argument that the evictions were in service of the protection of the local ecosystem “pales in the face of the social disruption and human suffering that would inevitably flow from the continued eviction of the Applicants’ residents.”
The Oakland Institute’s research has exposed internationally the ongoing plight and human rights violations of the Maasai villagers as their land rights are denied in the name of conservation and to the benefit of safari companies, such as Boston-based Thomson Safaris and the UAE-based Ortello Business Corporation, which runs hunting excursions for the Emirati royal family.
“The Court’s decision is a major win for the communities of Ololosokwan, Oloirien, Kirtalo, and Arash, particularly in light of the ongoing harassment and intimidation by the police and the recent wrongful arrests of local secondary school teacher Clinton Kairung and Belgian citizen Ingrid de Draeve, who was mistaken for a Swedish blogger who has written extensively on the issues facing the Maasai in the region,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.
“It is now vital for both the East African Court and the international community to ensure that the Tanzanian government abides by this ruling and immediately halts the harassment, intimidation, and violence it has waged against the villages involved in this case as well as the broader Maasai community in Loliondo. It is time for the Tanzanian government to stop colluding with game parks and safari companies and finally recognize the land rights of its Maasai population as well as their longstanding role as environmental stewards of the land,” she continued.
