by DGR News Service | Mar 17, 2014 | Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Natalie Bochenski / Sydney Morning Herald
An anti-fracking activist group will “poison” a major work at the Gallery of Modern Art to protest its sponsorship by Santos.
Generation Alpha said Heritage, which features 99 animals gathered around a blue water pond, showed exactly the kind of environment that the natural resources company would ruin.
Spokesman Ben Pennings said it was “beyond ironic” that Santos would sponsor the Falling Back to Earth exhibit.
“Fracking involves dozens of poisonous chemicals that threaten water tables and water-poisoning accidents are a regular part of Santos’ business,” he said.
A Santos GLNG spokesman said Generation Alpha’s claims were incorrect.
“Natural gas from coal seams has been produced safely and sustainably in Queensland for 20 years. Santos GLNG’s activities comply with Queensland legislation, which is some of the toughest in the world, with six pieces of legislation and four government agencies regulating water issues alone,” he said.
Generation Alpha has called on GOMA to cancel the Santos GLNG Family Fun Day this weekend and withdraw from the sponsorship arrangement altogether.
“We will target them ’til they do,” Mr Pennings said.
Hundreds of people are expected to attend the Family Fun Day, which will feature guided tours of the exhibit, lectures, face-painting and other activities.
“We have inside information about how we can symbolically ‘poison’ the water while not damaging the artwork,” Mr Pennings said.
“On top of that, it will look great. The crowds will love it!”
He said Generation Alpha, which has 43,000 fans on Facebook, wrote to Cai Guo-Qiang one month ago describing the sponsorship deal as unethical, and at odds with the message of Cai’s work that the environment be respected.
The Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art issued a statement saying it supported the right for groups like Generation Alpha to peacefully protest in a way that doesn’t interfere with visitors’ experience or artwork safety.
However, QAGOMA has no intention of ending its sponsorship agreement with Santos.
“Santos’ five year partnership with the Gallery is the most significant single corporate investment in the Gallery’s history, and has supported our summer exhibition series and our Children’s Art Centre,” the statement read.
A Santos spokesman said Santos operated its business “safely and responsibility” in accordance with Queensland’s regulatory framework.
“As an Australian company that has been part of the Queensland community for over 50 years, we are pleased to share the benefits of a world-class gas industry with the community through contributions including our five-year support of QAGOMA,” he said.
From Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/activists-threaten-to-poison-major-artwork-20140312-34ml2.html
by DGR News Service | Mar 10, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Male Violence, Obstruction & Occupation
By Canadian Press
Police say three people will be charged after Mohawk protesters calling for an inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women occupied CN Rail tracks in eastern Ontario.
Provincial police say demonstrators moved onto the tracks Saturday morning in Napanee, leading to CN issuing a stop order for all trains.
Police say a man struck the window of an unmarked police cruiser, breaking the glass.
Sgt. Kristine Rae says four people were arrested, and that three of them will face charges that have yet to be determined by investigators.
VIA Rail issued a travel advisory on Saturday saying the blockade affects the movement of VIA Rail trains on the Toronto – Montréal and Toronto – Ottawa routes, in both directions.
The stop order was lifted early in the afternoon, and train service is resuming.
Demonstrators had vowed on Friday to step up their protest in response to a parliamentary report into missing and murdered indigenous women that rejected numerous calls for a full public inquiry.
Spokesman Shawn Brant has said that there will be consequences for a national inquiry not being called.
The activists have been blockading a road east of Belleville since last Sunday night.
The release of the missing women report on Friday set off a firestorm of criticism from opposition critics, First Nation leaders and human rights groups.
Liberal and NDP members who sat on the all-party panel issued their own dissenting reports, accusing the federal Conservatives of sanitizing the final report on an ongoing crisis that has caught the attention of the United Nations.
Among its 16 recommendations, the report calls on the Conservative government to work with the provinces, territories and municipalities to create a public awareness and prevention campaign focusing on violence against aboriginal women and girls.
It’s estimated there are hundreds of cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada dating back to the 1960s – officially as many as 600, and likely hundreds more unreported victims.
Passengers are being told to expect delays. Service recovery measures such as late train travel credits or travel credits for bus substitutions will not be offered for affected trains. Extra charges paid for Business Class tickets will be reimbursed in the case of a bus substitution.
From Global News: http://globalnews.ca/news/1196149/4-in-custody-after-mohawk-protesters-occupy-train-tracks-near-belleville/
by DGR News Service | Mar 4, 2014 | Lobbying, The Solution: Resistance
By Amaranta Herrero / eJolt
On the 14th of February, the regional government of Castilla y León cancelled the plan for Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (MRT) in Laciana Valley (Spain).
During the last twenty years, irreversible changes have been taking place in the Southwestern Cantabrian Mountains, in an area of great ecological value, which is protected by EU environmental legislation.
The extractive technique known as Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining (MTR) has illegally modified during this time the topography and the life of people in Laciana Valley (León). Although it is literally an explosive industrial process, this mining activity developed in relative silence, away from public opinion. In general, MTR operations are remote, located beyond the landscape seen from city centers. At first glance, only a well-trained eye can detect the landscape morphological transformations involved in the amputation of the top of a mountain and its subsequent artificial reconstruction. But for the 10.000 inhabitants directly affected by this activity, mostly connoisseurs of mountain valley profiles, MTR is constantly visible and audible.
In the past two decades, Laciana Valley has fallen into severe socio-economic decline. Coal mining has gradually reduced, partially driven by EU liberalization measures of the energy market that reduce State subsidies for the extraction of coal. Since 1990, coal production has shrunk 67% in Spain. Surface mining in Spain began in the 1970s, but it was not until 1985 that MTR, much less labour-intensive, started replacing underground mining on Laciana’s private land. The number of coal mining jobs were reduced by 85,7% in the last 20 years in Spain. In 2010, the 6,429 jobs in the Spanish coal-mining sector included directives, technicians, administrative stuff and workers from underground mining and MTR.
The local population has been highly polarised with regard to the continued existence of MTR and the future of the valley. Coal mining has been for far too long an economic monoculture in Laciana, maintained by the very close relations between the political and the economic powers in the area. Suspicion of corruption has always surrounded the coal mining sector since the 90s. Victorino Alonso, the owner of Laciana’s MTR company, Coto Minero del Cantábrico, and the main Spanish coal entrepreneur was declared guilty of fraud in 2010. On the 10th of February 2014 all Spanish coal companies have been brought in front of the Court accused of fraud related to Coal Aid.
Laciana MTR mines have been active without the legally required environmental and planning permits. At the same time, these illegal activities have, curiously, been intensively subsidised by the Spanish government and indirectly by the EU. As a result of the illegalities, the biggest private mining company in Spain, Coto Minero del Cantábrico (CMC), was brought before a Spanish court by individuals and local environmental groups. In fact, some of the inhabitants of Laciana Valley together with regional environmental groups, autonomous activists and Members of the European Parliament, have spent twenty years opposing and struggling against this industrial activity. This heterogeneous ecological resistance movement has addressed the destruction of natural resources and environmental services and the residents’ future. They sued the company and the Town Council, appealed to the European Court, wrote articles and documents, tried to reach the media, organised talks, camps, and they have even put in more than one occasion their bodies in the middle to stop the mountain destruction. This movement has fought for a different future, based on economic activities that are truly compatible with the protection of the environment. This local environmental movement in Laciana has also faced an intense process of stigmatisation and scapegoating within the Valley.
In 2006, CMC received the highest environmental fine in the country’s history (approx. €170 million) and was ordered to stop activities by the regional Administrative Court. In November 2011, the European Court of Justice also recognised the environmental crimes in Laciana. Disregarding the legal verdict, the fine remaining unpaid, the company continued MTR activities and planned expansion. This expansion plan had been presented in 2008 by the regional government. It also represented a threat to Laciana’s inhabitants, ecosystems and future, until last 14th of Februrary. With the MTR expansion plan cancelled, Laciana’s people can start a promising transition towards different, diverse and environmentally lower impact economies.
Congratulations to everybody who fought against MTR coal mining in Laciana for their long and intense ecological resistance and their final victory. If we want to promote a new and sustainable energy model, as well as having a chance of avoiding runaway climate change, it is a must to challenge the coal industry, to end fossil fuels subsidies and to leave coal underground.
From eJolt: http://www.ejolt.org/2014/02/victory-no-more-mountaintop-removal-coal-mining-in-laciana-valley-spain/
by DGR News Service | Feb 17, 2014 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Richard Arghiris / Intercontinental Cry
Having fought tirelessly against the unlawful Barro Blanco hydroelectric dam, the indigenous Ngäbe communities on the banks of Panama’s Tabasará river are today threatened with forced eviction at the hands of Panama’s notoriously brutal security forces.
The 29 MW dam, built by a Honduran-owned energy company, Genisa, received funding from three development banks: the Dutch FMO, the German DEG, and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CBIE). The project was approved by the Panamanian government without the free, prior, and informed consent of the affected indigenous communities, who now stand to lose their homes, their livelihoods, and their cultural heritage.
Aside from providing precious sustenance in the form of fish and shrimp staples, and as well as supplying rich silt loam ideal for plantain cultivation, the Tabasará river symbolizes the spiritual lifeblood of the Ngäbe communities on its banks, including the community of Kiadba.
Earlier this year, Kiadba hosted a conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ‘discovery’ of the Ngäbe writing system. Bestowed in dreams and visions to the followers of the prophetess Besiko – a young woman who sparked a Ngäbe religious movement called Mama Tata – the written language of Ngäbere is today disseminated in only a handful of schools, including the educational facility in Kiadba.
Attended by hundreds of followers, the conference culminated in a solemn ritual at the site of ancient petroglyphs on the river, whose abstract carvings describe myths and history of the river, including the story of a Tabasará King, who ruled the region prior to the Spanish conquest. Neither the petroglyphs nor Kiadba’s language school are cited in Genisa’s impact assessment – a deeply flawed document according to a UN study in 2012, which concluded that both would be lost forever under reservoir waters if construction of the dam was completed.
Facing the threat of inundation, the Ngäbe have now established blockades and camps on the river bank to prevent Genisa’s machinery from encroaching on their land. The company recently crossed the water to an 800m wide strip dividing the communities of Kiadba and Quebrada Caña, and commenced felling lumber in the gallery forests. The government has now issued a formal warning demanding that the Ngäbe vacate their lands – today, 17 February 2014, is their deadline.
Sadly, there have been episodic clashes between the police and Panama’s indigenous minorities throughout the four year tenure of President Ricardo Martinelli, who is set to stand down after elections in May. All of those incidents have resulted in injuries to unarmed protesters, and in several shameful instances, permanent injury or death. Despite the disturbing ease with which Panama’s security forces commit acts of violence, the Ngäbe are standing firm. They ask solidarity and vigilance from the international community at this uncertain time.
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/panama-indigenous-communities-face-eviction-22239/
by DGR News Service | Feb 6, 2014 | Building Alternatives, Noncooperation, Strategy & Analysis
By Norris Thomlinson / Deep Green Resistance Hawai’i
The situation in many third world countries could actually improve because of the global economic collapse. First world countries would no longer enforce crushing debt repayment and structural adjustment programs, nor would CIA goons be able to prop up “friendly” dictatorships. The decline of export-based economies would have serious consequences, yes, but it would also allow land now used for cash crops to return to subsistence farms.
–from the Deep Green Resistance Decisive Ecological Warfare strategy
David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, has a long history of thoughtful and thought-provoking publications, including design books from the original Permaculture One to his 2002 Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability. He’s written numerous essays over 35 years, ranging from the specifics of agricultural vs forestry biomass for fuel, to the future of energy decline.
I’ve long admired and respected Holmgren’s thinking, so I was looking forward to reading his new “Crash on Demand” (PDF), an update of his 2007 “Future Scenarios” projections for global developments. I felt especially intrigued that he has arrived at conclusions similar to my own, regarding not just the inevitability, but the desirability of a crash of the financial system as soon as possible. But the article disappointed me; I think Holmgren is soft-selling his realizations to make them palatable to a hoped-for mass movement. Interestingly, even this soft-sell is being rejected by the permaculture blogging community.
Holmgren argues:
“For many decades I have felt that a collapse of the global economic system might save humanity and many of our fellow species great suffering by happening sooner rather than later because the stakes keep rising and scale of the impacts are always worse by being postponed.” (p 9)
“It seems obvious to me that it is easier to convince a minority that they will be better off disengaging from the system than any efforts to build mass movements demanding impossible outcomes or convincing elites to turn off the system that is currently keeping them in power.” (p 14)
“Mass movements to get governments to institute change have been losing efficacy for decades, while a mass movement calling for less seems like a hopeless case. Similarly boycotts of particular governments, companies and products simply change the consumption problems into new forms.” (p 22)
Holmgren proposes a possible solution:
“Given the current fragilities of global finance, I believe a radical change in the behaviour of a relatively small proportion of the global middle class could precipitate such a crash. For example a 50% reduction of consumption and 50% conversion of assets into building household and local community resilience by say 10% of the population in affluent countries would show up as 5% reduction in demand in a system built on perpetual growth and a 5% reduction in savings capital available for banks to lend.” (p 13)
Where I Agree
Holmgren couches his proposal almost rhetorically, apologetically, as if proactively halting the ecocidal system is crazy talk. He need not be so shy about advocating for collapsing the system! It follows very logically if you agree that:
- Industrial civilization is degrading our landbases every day it continues, far faster than we’re healing them
- Industrial civilization will collapse sooner or later regardless of what we do
- Industrial civilization will not divert its resources into healing our landbases before it collapses
The facts back up Holmgren’s assessment of our dire situation, including imminent climate catastrophe if we continue with anything like business as usual. Industrial civilization is driving 200 species extinct each day and threatening humans with extinction or at best a very miserable future on a burning planet. It is deforesting, desertifying, polluting, and acidifying forests, croplands, landbases, and oceans orders of magnitude faster than nature and all the hard-working permaculturists can heal the damage. The industrial economy consists of turning living ecosystems into dead commodities, and it won’t stop voluntarily. It’s headed for an endgame of total planetary destruction before itself collapsing.
So I fully agree with crashing the system as soon as possible, and I fully agree with getting as many people as possible to withdraw their dependence on and allegiance to the systems and structures of industrial civilization. We desperately need people preparing for crash and building resiliency, in human and in broader ecological communities.
Where I Disagree
We also need a viable strategy to stop the dominant culture in its tracks. We are, and will remain, a tiny minority fighting a system of massive power. Individual lifestyle changes do not affect the larger political systems. People “dropping out” is not enough, is not a solution, is not an effective, leveraged way to crash the system.
I worry about Holmgren’s speculative numbers. I assume the elite, who control a hugely disproportionate percentage of income and wealth, will be even harder to convince of voluntary simplicity than the average citizen. The poor generally don’t have the option to cut spending by 50%, and have few or no assets to divest from global corporate investments. My rough calculations (based on data here) suggest that in the US, 15% of earners between the 40th and 80th percentile (more or less the middle class) must adopt this economic boycott to slow consumption by 5%, and nearly 50% of the middle class must divest their savings to reduce nationwide investment in the global financial system by 5%.
Even hoping for just 15% of the US middle class, 18 million people would have to embrace substantial short-term sacrifice. (While decreasing consumption 50% and building gardens and other resiliency infrastructure, people must still work the same hours at their jobs. Otherwise they’ll simply be replaced by those who want to live the consumptive dream.) This lofty goal seems inconsistent with Holmgren’s recognition of the infeasibility of a mass movement.
History throws up more red flags. Again and again, when growth economies have encountered sustainable cultures, people from the growth economies have forced the others off their land, requiring them to integrate into the cash economy. The dominant culture will not gently relinquish access to resources or to consumer markets. It will retaliate with weapons honed over centuries, from taxes and outlawing sustainability to displacement and blatant conquest. On a less dramatic scale, banks can, if divestments sufficiently diminish the cash they’ve been hoarding for years, adjust fractional reserve rates to compensate. (Though precipitating a fast “run” on the banks could work very nicely to crash the financial system and wipe out faith in fiat money.)
Permaculture activists and thousands of other individuals and groups have for years urged people to consume less. Many good people have adopted voluntary simplicity, dropped out of the global economy, and built regenerative local systems. While this has immense value for the adopting individuals, and often ripples out to benefit the wider community, it hasn’t put a dent in the destruction by the larger financial system. New people are born or assimilated into the culture of consumption faster than people are dropping out.
Holmgren advocates more of the same permaculture activism, with little explanation of why it would now convince people in numbers thousands of times greater than in the past. He hopes the ever-more-obvious signs of imminent collapse will prompt a more rapid shift, but given our fleeting window of opportunity to act, we can’t bank on that hope.
Another Approach
Deep Green Resistance is a design book of what makes a good resistance movement, a permaculture analysis of influencing power and political systems. It arrives at the same conclusion as does Holmgren: we need to prepare for crash by building local resiliency, but the sooner industrial civilization comes down, the better. Its crash will leave the majority of humans better off short-term, as their landbases will no longer be plundered by the rich for resources. Crashing the system now will benefit all humans long-term, giving future generations better odds of enjoying liveable landbases on a liveable planet. And crashing the system now will obviously benefit the vast majority of non-humans, currently being poisoned, displaced, and exterminated.
If we truly hold as our goals halting ecocide and slashing greenhouse gas emissions as dramatically as Holmgren suggests, we must devise a realistic plan, based on a realistic assessment of our numbers and strengths, the vulnerabilities of industrial civilization, and how much longer the planet can absorb its blows. Recognizing our tiny numbers and relative weakness compared to the global system, and limited time before our planet is beaten into full ecosystem collapse, we must apply the permaculture principle of making the least change to achieve maximum effect.
The Deep Green Resistance book, as part of its strategy of implementing Decisive Ecological Warfare, examines more than a dozen historic and contemporary militant resistance movements. It concludes that “a small group of intelligent, dedicated, and daring people can be extremely effective, even if they only number one in 1,000, or one in 10,000, or even one in 100,000. But they are effective in large part through an ability to mobilize larger forces, whether those forces are social movements […] or industrial bottlenecks.”
Holmgren notes that it’s easier to convince a minority to disengage from the system than to spark a majority mass movement for true sustainability, but his plan relies on 10% of the population making dramatic change. DGR’s analysis suggests it’s easier yet to convince a tiny minority to take strategic direct action. The rest of the sympathetic population, whether 10% or just 1% of the general public, can provide material support and loyalty with much less immediate sacrifice than in Holmgren’s proposal.
The Movement to Emancipate the Niger Delta (MEND), with small numbers of people and meager resources, has used militant tactics against oil companies to routinely reduce oil output in Nigeria by 10-30%.
In April 2013, saboteurs in San Jose CA shot out transformers in an electrical substation, causing damage that took weeks to repair. The New York Times explains some of the difficulties involved in replacing transformers, especially if many were to fail in a short period of time.
We have more promising strategies available than hoping we can persuade 10% of the population to adopt voluntary simplicity, and hoping that will crash the financial system.
Conclusion
While I wholeheartedly agree with Holmgren’s analysis of our global predicament, and the desirability of crashing the system, his proposal for doing so seems ineffective. Certainly, we should work to disengage ourselves and neighbors from the global system, but we must combine building alternative structures with actively resisting and strategically sabotaging the dominant system.
Many people will disagree with the necessity of crashing the system, because they don’t think conditions are that bad, because they hold vague hopes that God or technology or permaculture will save us, because they fear that fighting back will increase the anger of our abusers, or because they value their own comfort more than the life of the planet. That’s fine; we can agree to disagree, though I encourage those people to further explore these ideas with their minds and with their hearts.
Many people do see the destructiveness of this culture, the inevitability of its crash, and the desirability of it crashing sooner than later; but won’t want to participate directly in bringing it down for any of many perfectly legitimate reasons. That’s fine, too. There’s lots of work to do, and a role for everyone. You can work on restoration of your landbase or crash preparation for your community while providing material and ideological support to those on the front lines. We can join together as “terra-ists”, with our hands not just in the soil as Holmgren defines the term, but also working with wrenches upon the wheels, the levers, and all the apparatus of industrial civilization.
Suggested Resources
- Endgame by Derrick Jensen, two volume analysis of the problems of civilization and the solution. Many excerpts available at the website.
- Deep Green Resistance book, laying out a realistic strategy to save the planet
- Liberal vs Radical video presentation by Lierre Keith, explaining the different approaches of these two different frameworks for perceiving the world
From Permaculture, Perennial Polycultures, and Resistance: Demand Crash! — A response to Holmgren’s “Crash on Demand”
by DGR News Service | Feb 1, 2014 | Lobbying, Obstruction & Occupation
By Inter Press Service
Residents of a town in Argentina have won the first victory in their fight against biotech giant Monsanto, but they are still at battle stations, aware that winning the war is still a long way off.
For four months, activists in Malvinas Argentinas, a town in the central province of Cordoba, have maintained a blockade of the construction site where the U.S. transnational company is building the world’s biggest maize seed treatment plant.
In this previously peaceful town, protestors continue to camp in front of the construction site and to block access to it, even after a provincial court order this month put a halt to the works.
The campaign against the plant, led by Asamblea Malvinas Lucha por la Vida (Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life) and other social organizations, began Sept. 18 in this town 17 kilometers from the capital of Cordoba.
Tense situations ensued, with attempts by the provincial police to disperse the demonstrators and provocations by construction union envoys, but a provincial labor court ruling on Jan. 8 upheld the activists’ cause.
“The ruling shows that the residents’ arguments are just, because they are claiming basic rights that are recognized and established in the constitution and federal legislation,” Federico Macciocchi, the lawyer representing opponents of the plant, told IPS.
The court ruled that the municipal ordinance authorizing construction of the plant in this mostly working class town of 15,000 people was unconstitutional.
It ordered a halt to construction work and banned the Malvinas Argentinas municipality from authorizing the construction until two legal requirements are fulfilled: carrying out an environmental impact assessment and a public hearing.
“This is a big step forward in the struggle, achieved by working together on institutional demands, along with social activism on the streets,” Matías Marizza, a member of the Malvinas Assembly, told IPS.
“This struggle has resulted in guaranteeing respect for the law,” the activist said.
The Malvinas Assembly and other organizations have decided to continue to camp out at the site and block access until the project is abandoned for good.
Monsanto replied to IPS’s request for comment with a statement that describes local activists as “extremists” who are preventing their contractors and employees from “exercising the right to work.”
The court ruling arose from a legal appeal lodged by local residents and the Club de Derecho (Cordoba Law Club), presided by Macciocchi.
The labor court has ordered an environmental impact study and a public hearing, he emphasized.
The views expressed in the public hearing will be “highly relevant,” he said, although under the General Environment Law, participants’ objections and opinions “are not binding.”
However, the law does stipulate that if the opinions of the convening authorities differ from the results of the public hearing, “they must justify them and make them public,” he said.
Now the Malvinas Assembly also wants a public consultation with a secret ballot.
Such a ballot would comply with the environmental law and “guarantee citizens’ full rights to decide on which model of local development and what kind of social and economic activities they want for their daily life, and what environmental risks they are prepared to take,” Víctor Mazzalay, another resident, told IPS.
“It is the people who should have that information and decide whether or not to accept the costs and risks involved,” said Mazzalay, a social researcher funded by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at the University of Cordoba.
“An environmental impact assessment should include a public consultation so that citizens can provide the ‘social license’ necessary for developing any social, economic and productive activity that may affect their environment and health,” he said.
Monsanto’s statement said the company does not agree with the court ruling, but respects judicial decisions and will abide by the verdict.
The company stated that it had already conducted an environmental assessment, which is currently under review by the provincial Secretary of the Environment.
In Macciocchi’s view, the court’s ruling is definitive and “brings the legal conflict to an end.”
“The ruling arose from a legal appeal, so there is no further recourse in ordinary law,” he said.
Monsanto can still appeal to have the decision overturned by the provincial High Court (Tribunal Superior de Justicia, TSJ).
The company has already said that it will appeal. “We consider our right to build legitimate since we have complied with all legal requirements and have obtained authorization to build according to the regulations, as confirmed by the ruling of the Court of First Instance of Oct. 7, 2013,” their statement said.
However, in Macciocchi’s view “this appeal will not overturn the labour court ruling.”
“If we consider how long the TSJ takes to process an appeal, by the time there is a decision, the Malvinas municipality and the Environment Secretariat will have complied with the laws they previously violated,” he said.
According to the lawyer, the high court takes up to two and a half years for appeals lodged by individuals under sentence, and five to seven years in labor or civil cases.
“It would create a real institutional scandal if the TSJ were to deal with this case by leap-frogging all the other cases that have lain dormant in its offices for years,” he said.
The Jan. 8 ruling cannot prevent the definitive installation of the plant, which Monsanto plans should become operational during 2014.
“But if the citizens’ demonstrations against the plant and the environmental impact assessment are unfavorable to the company, Monsanto will not be able to instal the plant in Malvinas Argentinas,” Macciocchi predicted.
Mazzalay emphasized that the “substance” of the arguments of opponents to Monsanto’s plant was “the defense of the people’s right to decide on the kind of productive activities and the type of environmental risks they wish to undertake.”
The company announced it was planning to build more than 200 maize silos, and to use agrochemical products to treat the seeds. Monsanto is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of herbicides and genetically modified seeds, and has operated in Argentina since 1956 when it established a plastics factory.
“It is frequently argued that there is a reasonable doubt that this productive activity is harmless to human health,” Mazzalay said.
In his view, “a multiplicity of scientific studies have shown negative effects on health from both seed transportation and handling of and exposure to different agrochemical products.”
“When there is a health risk related to environmental issues, reasonable doubt should bring the precautionary principle into play, that is, an activity should not be developed until it has definitely been proved to be harmless,” he said.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/4669-argentine-activists-win-first-round-against-monsanto-plant
