Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Boreal Forest Conflicts Far From Over
Mainstream enviros, timber industry shut First Nations out of "historic" deal
By Dawn Paley
Vancouver Media Co-op
Timber companies and environmental organizations came together Tuesday to announce the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which they say could protect a swath of boreal forest twice the size of Germany, and maintain forestry jobs across the country.
"This is an agreement between the two principle combatants over logging," said Steve Kallick, director of the Boreal Conservation campaign of the Pew Environment Group.
But Indigenous peoples have been left out of the agreement, and grassroots environmentalists are concerned that the proposal represents a move towards more corporate control over forests in Canada.
"Name a forest struggle in Canada that hasn't been spearheaded by First Nations from the beginning," said Clayton Thomas-Muller, who is the tar sands campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network.
"A lot of First Nations groups, in Haida Gwaii, in the Boreal forest, and places like Grassy Narrows, Barrier Lake and Temagami, I think they would have a much different analysis and memory then Mr. Kallick."
The three-year agreement is the largest of its kind anywhere on the planet, according to a representative from Greenpeace. Twenty one forestry companies have signed on, as have nine environmental organzations.
But for some, like Thomas-Muller, today's announcement is reminiscent of a another deal, signed in British Columbia in 2006.
"I think we have to remember the previous version of this deal, which was the Great Bear Rainforest, and we have to remember how that deal in the end was signed: it was signed not with all the First Nations partners, it was signed behind closed doors, by Tzeporah Berman and company," he said. "And many First Nations felt extremely burned by that."
"It's a massive tomb, uh, tome that we've put together," misspoke Richard Brooks from Greenpeace at the press conference on Tuesday morning. Only a twelve page abridged version of the agreement has been made public. It is unclear when (if ever) the full agreement will be released. According to Brooks, it will now be presented to various levels of government.
"It will really change the nature of environmental work and the debates around the environment," said Kallick. But whether those changes are for better or for worse is still up for debate.
"The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement is essentially another huge jump away from democracy, towards corporate control of the lands of Canada, as well as the corporatization of what is left of a once defiant environmental movement," said Macdonald Stainsby, co-ordinator of OilSandsTruth.org.
Although the big environmental groups will drop their "do not buy" and divestment campaigns around Canadian timber, Thomas-Muller thinks the conflicts will continue.
"I hardly think that this in any way represents an end to the conflict between the true proponants of the war over the boreal forest, which of course are corporations and First Nations," he said. "What this means is that First Nations no longer have the support of these mainstream environmental groups that have fallen into the strategy of conquer and divide deployed by industry."
For their part, smaller environmental groups are worried the deal will distract from the ongoing devastation of Canada's forests, and could contribute to more false solutions for climate change.
“Ontario has no legal limit on the size of clearcuts which are permitted to flatten an area equivalent to 1,400 football fields each day in our province,” said Amber Ellis, Earthroots Executive Director, in a press release.
"Unless we are to believe that the CBI, David Suzuki Foundation, CPAWS and ForestEthics all under cut their own campaigns, this is only a part and parcel to set up a carbon market, and allow forest offsets to go alongside carbon offsets and further entrench false solutions to the climate crisis," said Stainsby.
"We plan to turn this into a competitive advantage," said Avram Lazer, the CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada. "We think this sets the pattern that everyone should follow."
Greenpeace spearheaded the deal, which was "in some ways" sponsored by the Pew and Ivey Foundations, according to Lazer.
The Pew foundation has already come under close scrutiny by activists because of their ties to large oil companies. The Ivey Foundation has been a prime backer of controversial BC environmentalist Tzeporah Berman's organization Power Up.
For his part, Kallick would like to see other industries at the table on the agreement. "They're not within the four corners of this agreement, but we would love to have similar talks with the oil and gas industry and also with the mining industry as well," he said.
With files from Dru Oja Jay.
By Dawn Paley
Vancouver Media Co-op
Timber companies and environmental organizations came together Tuesday to announce the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, which they say could protect a swath of boreal forest twice the size of Germany, and maintain forestry jobs across the country.
"This is an agreement between the two principle combatants over logging," said Steve Kallick, director of the Boreal Conservation campaign of the Pew Environment Group.
But Indigenous peoples have been left out of the agreement, and grassroots environmentalists are concerned that the proposal represents a move towards more corporate control over forests in Canada.
"Name a forest struggle in Canada that hasn't been spearheaded by First Nations from the beginning," said Clayton Thomas-Muller, who is the tar sands campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network.
"A lot of First Nations groups, in Haida Gwaii, in the Boreal forest, and places like Grassy Narrows, Barrier Lake and Temagami, I think they would have a much different analysis and memory then Mr. Kallick."
The three-year agreement is the largest of its kind anywhere on the planet, according to a representative from Greenpeace. Twenty one forestry companies have signed on, as have nine environmental organzations.
But for some, like Thomas-Muller, today's announcement is reminiscent of a another deal, signed in British Columbia in 2006.
"I think we have to remember the previous version of this deal, which was the Great Bear Rainforest, and we have to remember how that deal in the end was signed: it was signed not with all the First Nations partners, it was signed behind closed doors, by Tzeporah Berman and company," he said. "And many First Nations felt extremely burned by that."
"It's a massive tomb, uh, tome that we've put together," misspoke Richard Brooks from Greenpeace at the press conference on Tuesday morning. Only a twelve page abridged version of the agreement has been made public. It is unclear when (if ever) the full agreement will be released. According to Brooks, it will now be presented to various levels of government.
"It will really change the nature of environmental work and the debates around the environment," said Kallick. But whether those changes are for better or for worse is still up for debate.
"The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement is essentially another huge jump away from democracy, towards corporate control of the lands of Canada, as well as the corporatization of what is left of a once defiant environmental movement," said Macdonald Stainsby, co-ordinator of OilSandsTruth.org.
Although the big environmental groups will drop their "do not buy" and divestment campaigns around Canadian timber, Thomas-Muller thinks the conflicts will continue.
"I hardly think that this in any way represents an end to the conflict between the true proponants of the war over the boreal forest, which of course are corporations and First Nations," he said. "What this means is that First Nations no longer have the support of these mainstream environmental groups that have fallen into the strategy of conquer and divide deployed by industry."
For their part, smaller environmental groups are worried the deal will distract from the ongoing devastation of Canada's forests, and could contribute to more false solutions for climate change.
“Ontario has no legal limit on the size of clearcuts which are permitted to flatten an area equivalent to 1,400 football fields each day in our province,” said Amber Ellis, Earthroots Executive Director, in a press release.
"Unless we are to believe that the CBI, David Suzuki Foundation, CPAWS and ForestEthics all under cut their own campaigns, this is only a part and parcel to set up a carbon market, and allow forest offsets to go alongside carbon offsets and further entrench false solutions to the climate crisis," said Stainsby.
"We plan to turn this into a competitive advantage," said Avram Lazer, the CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada. "We think this sets the pattern that everyone should follow."
Greenpeace spearheaded the deal, which was "in some ways" sponsored by the Pew and Ivey Foundations, according to Lazer.
The Pew foundation has already come under close scrutiny by activists because of their ties to large oil companies. The Ivey Foundation has been a prime backer of controversial BC environmentalist Tzeporah Berman's organization Power Up.
For his part, Kallick would like to see other industries at the table on the agreement. "They're not within the four corners of this agreement, but we would love to have similar talks with the oil and gas industry and also with the mining industry as well," he said.
With files from Dru Oja Jay.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
BP's Moby Dick?
By Nick Spicer
AlJazerra.net
May 17th, 2010
So begins Herman Melville epic seafaring novel, ostensibly about whaling, an American Odyssey recounting Captain Ahab's obsessive pursuit of a great oil-carrying sperm whale, Moby Dick.
It ends in disaster.
I write this in a sand barrier motel in Grand Isle Louisiana, in a hot room overlooking an empty beach, and just a few of the six hundred-plus oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
And it is hard not to ask: is BP another Captain Ahab?
Or, worse, is the United States?
Crude oil is not, of course, sperm whale oil, or "spermicetti". But they have had equally pervasive influences on their societies.
In Melville's 19th century, the oil was used to burn in lamps, make candles, soften leather and even, he writes, to anoint kings:
"Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?"
A whole whale-hunting industry quickly grew on the Northeast Coast of the United States, especially in the town of New Bedford: the Houston of the whaling era.
What Melville's vast exploration of the culture of whaling does not recount, or foresee, is the hunting to near-extinction of those prize whales, and the untold damage to the environment caused by their merciless hunting.
Here in Louisiana, the potential damage is far more evident.
Science has progressed much since Melville's time: we have underwater robots filming the crude spewing into the sea; experts predicting, before it even happens, that giant plumes of oil one kilometre under the ocean will strangle all life forms requiring oxygen there, for a decade or more.
But what Melville did not need modern science, or undersea robots for, was plumbing human nature, and the damage unrelenting greed causes - not just to a man such as Captain Ahab, but to all his crew and to the whole society that supports their round-the-world quest for… oil.
Thus America today?
This Al Jazeera crew has been chasing stories of environmental damage, tantalizingly dramatic in their details, but impossible to confirm.
A fish wholesaler who wanted to remain anonymous provides cell phone numbers of local fisheries men who, he says, have stories of "porpoises spewing orange foam out their blow holes", and sundry dead fish caught far out at sea, which, he reminds me, one does not especially want to handle or take aboard.
Thar she blows?
Nope.
One call is not returned.
Another one gets such a curt and eager denial that I can't help but feel there's something to hide.
And as it turns out, many of the fishermen who can no longer fish, because BP has destroyed their fishing season, if not grounds, have now accepted temporary work for the oil giant in cleaning up its mess.
They have had to sign non-disclosure agreements which prevent the fishermen from saying anything which might hurt BP.
Melville's reading public surely would know the dictum "the truth shall set you free".
But not here. Not for this oil.
Tar balls washed ashore about 10km up the road from this motel.
Producer Tom Szypulski, cameraman Ryan Jackson and I quickly deployed, with visions of a dramatic news report in our heads.
But access was limited to two half-hours each day; limited as well to a 20 metre-wide section of land ("don't go on the beach please") along a 16-km stretch of coastline hit by tar balls.
This TV crew pointed out to the kindly municipal PR man that this was not the stuff of which good television was made, and, frankly, that it looked like BP was covering something up.
He responded:
"What would you do?"
AlJazerra.net
May 17th, 2010
"Call me Ishmael."
It ends in disaster.
I write this in a sand barrier motel in Grand Isle Louisiana, in a hot room overlooking an empty beach, and just a few of the six hundred-plus oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
And it is hard not to ask: is BP another Captain Ahab?
Or, worse, is the United States?
Crude oil is not, of course, sperm whale oil, or "spermicetti". But they have had equally pervasive influences on their societies.
In Melville's 19th century, the oil was used to burn in lamps, make candles, soften leather and even, he writes, to anoint kings:
"Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar oil, nor castor oil, nor bear's oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil. What then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured, unpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?"
A whole whale-hunting industry quickly grew on the Northeast Coast of the United States, especially in the town of New Bedford: the Houston of the whaling era.
What Melville's vast exploration of the culture of whaling does not recount, or foresee, is the hunting to near-extinction of those prize whales, and the untold damage to the environment caused by their merciless hunting.
Here in Louisiana, the potential damage is far more evident.
But what Melville did not need modern science, or undersea robots for, was plumbing human nature, and the damage unrelenting greed causes - not just to a man such as Captain Ahab, but to all his crew and to the whole society that supports their round-the-world quest for… oil.
Thus America today?
This Al Jazeera crew has been chasing stories of environmental damage, tantalizingly dramatic in their details, but impossible to confirm.
A fish wholesaler who wanted to remain anonymous provides cell phone numbers of local fisheries men who, he says, have stories of "porpoises spewing orange foam out their blow holes", and sundry dead fish caught far out at sea, which, he reminds me, one does not especially want to handle or take aboard.
Thar she blows?
Nope.
One call is not returned.
Another one gets such a curt and eager denial that I can't help but feel there's something to hide.
And as it turns out, many of the fishermen who can no longer fish, because BP has destroyed their fishing season, if not grounds, have now accepted temporary work for the oil giant in cleaning up its mess.
They have had to sign non-disclosure agreements which prevent the fishermen from saying anything which might hurt BP.
Melville's reading public surely would know the dictum "the truth shall set you free".
But not here. Not for this oil.
Tar balls washed ashore about 10km up the road from this motel.
Producer Tom Szypulski, cameraman Ryan Jackson and I quickly deployed, with visions of a dramatic news report in our heads.
But access was limited to two half-hours each day; limited as well to a 20 metre-wide section of land ("don't go on the beach please") along a 16-km stretch of coastline hit by tar balls.He responded:
"What would you do?"
Monday, May 17, 2010
Indigenous knowledge vital to understanding climate change
By Anne Minard
NatGeo Newswatch
Global warming is a simple enough concept. But it doesn't explain all the changes the Inuit have noticed.
The Inuit, a group of indigenous people inhabiting a huge band of territory in northern Alaska and Canada and coastal Greenland, are confused by spring these days.
The top layer of snow no longer freezes hard at night in June, which makes nighttime sled runs more difficult.
Sea ice breaks up earlier in spring, and freezes later in the fall.
The animals seem confused too, "turning up in unexpected places or at unexpected times of the year," wrote Shari Gearheard, a Nunavut-based climate researcher, in a 2008 issue of Natural History Magazine.
Gearheard, a full-time arctic resident and research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, teamed up with her Boulder, Colorado-based colleague, CIRES senior research scientist Elizabeth Weatherhead. Together, they've put science to the Inuits' observations, documenting for the first time a subtler effect than global warming.
The researchers have become interested in the persistence, or consistency, of weather.
"Here in Boulder, if I get an inch of rain in July, my lawn is typically okay," said Weatherhead. "But if I get an inch of rain on July 1 and then nothing the rest of the month, my lawn is dead."
A thing like unpredictability in weather patterns can be overlooked by non-human weather stations and computer data sets.
"The Inuit were focusing on something that I think now is extremely important that we scientists hadn't given much attention at all," Weatherhead said.
The scientists set out to explore whether weather is getting more chaotic and less predictable around the world. They found compelling evidence for that phenomenon in Inuit territory--and in an opposite way, around the world.
Gearheard, Weatherhead and their third co-author, Roger Barry, also of CIRES in Boulder, published their new results online last month, in the journal Global Environmental Change.
Knowledge faltering
The Inuit have long been keen observers of the weather, raising their children to go outside in the mornings and return with accurate reports of wind speed and direction, cloud formations and animal behavior, among other sophisticated factors.
"Many elders and hunters who are experienced weather forecasters are finding that they can no longer predict the weather using their traditional skills and knowledge," wrote the authors. "Though they are aware that some traditional skills are being eroded since the move from a nomadic life to sedentary communities, Inuit forecasters argue that it is the weather patterns, more than their skills, which are changing."
The Inuit hunters and elders raised an issue that had not been fully addressed in the scientific literature, they wrote--the increased variability and unpredictability of weather.
Gearheard, a dog team driver herself who lives in the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, was experiencing first-hand the fear that comes with riding on a sled behind dogs whose feet poke through once-solid ice.
The researchers examined 50 years of hourly temperature records from two locations: Baker Lake, an inland site northwest of the Hudson Bay and Clyde River, Gearheard's home, on Baffin Island's northeast shore.
The Baker Lake data revealed significant changes in the persistence of spring temperatures in the past 15 years. The Clyde River did not reveal such changes, but the researchers say that's possibly because Baker Lake is more inland, and therefore less influenced by unrelated changes in the Arctic Ocean.
"The Baker Lake observations show a systematic change that matches with the Inuit observations," Weatherhead said .
But they are also "somewhat at odds with changes in persistence on a more global scale," the authors write--those show a slight but significant increase in persistence.
"Low and high temperatures are hanging around longer," Weatherhead said. "Think, for example, of the persistent cold that the D.C. area got this past February."
Any changes in persistence could bring serious consequences for human and environmental health, Weatherhead says. She cited Harvard-based studies that have explored the longevity of pollution events, for example: "People with asthma can usually tolerate it for a day or two. You get to the third or fourth day, they're going to the emergency room," she said. "How long that weather pattern lasts is incredibly important. It's important to agriculture, it's important to human health. Ecosystems have evolved under a certain style of weather."
Weatherhead said the new results point to two important points about climate research: the importance of indigenous knowledge, and of climate changes more subtle than global temperature.
"The idea that the world is warming doesn't interest me as much as some of the other changes that are taking place," she said.
Weatherhead would like to study persistence on a more global scale.
"If I had some benefactor willing to let me study whatever I wanted, I would want to take the lessons here and ask other Natives, or people who live off the land, what changes they're seeing," she said. And science has something to give back to those people, she added.
"We are making headway understanding when the Arctic will experience times of chaotic weather patterns. If we can predict these episodes, we can give the Inuit an idea of when their traditional forms of forecasting may be strong, allowing for the continuation of traditional ways of life."
Anne Minard is a freelance journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. She recently completed a Ted Scripps Fellowship for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is on the road again, pursuing stories.
NatGeo Newswatch
Global warming is a simple enough concept. But it doesn't explain all the changes the Inuit have noticed. The top layer of snow no longer freezes hard at night in June, which makes nighttime sled runs more difficult.
Sea ice breaks up earlier in spring, and freezes later in the fall.
The animals seem confused too, "turning up in unexpected places or at unexpected times of the year," wrote Shari Gearheard, a Nunavut-based climate researcher, in a 2008 issue of Natural History Magazine.
Gearheard, a full-time arctic resident and research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado at Boulder, teamed up with her Boulder, Colorado-based colleague, CIRES senior research scientist Elizabeth Weatherhead. Together, they've put science to the Inuits' observations, documenting for the first time a subtler effect than global warming.
The researchers have become interested in the persistence, or consistency, of weather.
"Here in Boulder, if I get an inch of rain in July, my lawn is typically okay," said Weatherhead. "But if I get an inch of rain on July 1 and then nothing the rest of the month, my lawn is dead."
A thing like unpredictability in weather patterns can be overlooked by non-human weather stations and computer data sets.
"The Inuit were focusing on something that I think now is extremely important that we scientists hadn't given much attention at all," Weatherhead said.
The scientists set out to explore whether weather is getting more chaotic and less predictable around the world. They found compelling evidence for that phenomenon in Inuit territory--and in an opposite way, around the world.
Gearheard, Weatherhead and their third co-author, Roger Barry, also of CIRES in Boulder, published their new results online last month, in the journal Global Environmental Change.
Knowledge faltering
"Many elders and hunters who are experienced weather forecasters are finding that they can no longer predict the weather using their traditional skills and knowledge," wrote the authors. "Though they are aware that some traditional skills are being eroded since the move from a nomadic life to sedentary communities, Inuit forecasters argue that it is the weather patterns, more than their skills, which are changing."
The Inuit hunters and elders raised an issue that had not been fully addressed in the scientific literature, they wrote--the increased variability and unpredictability of weather.
Gearheard, a dog team driver herself who lives in the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, was experiencing first-hand the fear that comes with riding on a sled behind dogs whose feet poke through once-solid ice.
The researchers examined 50 years of hourly temperature records from two locations: Baker Lake, an inland site northwest of the Hudson Bay and Clyde River, Gearheard's home, on Baffin Island's northeast shore.
The Baker Lake data revealed significant changes in the persistence of spring temperatures in the past 15 years. The Clyde River did not reveal such changes, but the researchers say that's possibly because Baker Lake is more inland, and therefore less influenced by unrelated changes in the Arctic Ocean.
"The Baker Lake observations show a systematic change that matches with the Inuit observations," Weatherhead said .
But they are also "somewhat at odds with changes in persistence on a more global scale," the authors write--those show a slight but significant increase in persistence.
"Low and high temperatures are hanging around longer," Weatherhead said. "Think, for example, of the persistent cold that the D.C. area got this past February."
Any changes in persistence could bring serious consequences for human and environmental health, Weatherhead says. She cited Harvard-based studies that have explored the longevity of pollution events, for example: "People with asthma can usually tolerate it for a day or two. You get to the third or fourth day, they're going to the emergency room," she said. "How long that weather pattern lasts is incredibly important. It's important to agriculture, it's important to human health. Ecosystems have evolved under a certain style of weather."
Weatherhead said the new results point to two important points about climate research: the importance of indigenous knowledge, and of climate changes more subtle than global temperature.
"The idea that the world is warming doesn't interest me as much as some of the other changes that are taking place," she said.
Weatherhead would like to study persistence on a more global scale.
"We are making headway understanding when the Arctic will experience times of chaotic weather patterns. If we can predict these episodes, we can give the Inuit an idea of when their traditional forms of forecasting may be strong, allowing for the continuation of traditional ways of life."
Anne Minard is a freelance journalist based in Boulder, Colorado. She recently completed a Ted Scripps Fellowship for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is on the road again, pursuing stories.
Oil Sands Riskier than Gulf Spill, Say Investor Groups
By Matthew O. Berger
IPS
As the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico destroys habitat and livelihoods, the extraction of oil from Canadian oil sands deposits is having a similar impact on fragile ecosystems and communities deep in the North American interior.
The dramatic impact of oil sands expansion should give the companies involved and their investors pause, cautions a new report commissioned by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, and authored by the financial risk management group RiskMetrics.
Oil sands development is "kind of like the gulf spill but playing out in slow motion", said report co-author Doug Cogan, director of climate risk management at RiskMetrics. He called it a "land-based" version of the gulf disaster.
Read more here.
IPS
The dramatic impact of oil sands expansion should give the companies involved and their investors pause, cautions a new report commissioned by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, and authored by the financial risk management group RiskMetrics.
Oil sands development is "kind of like the gulf spill but playing out in slow motion", said report co-author Doug Cogan, director of climate risk management at RiskMetrics. He called it a "land-based" version of the gulf disaster.
Read more here.
Walkerton’s lessons poorly learned
A national water update revealing the emerging two tier system of safe drinking water access that is emerging in Canada ten years after Walkerton.
Ecojustice and Forum for Leadership on Water (FLOW) have issued Seeking Water Justice: Strengthening Legal Protection for Canada’s Drinking Water, a national brief on the status of drinking water quality in Canada. The paper reveals a two tiered system of drinking water management where urban centres benefit from better standards, technology and personnel while rural and first nations communities remain at risk due to inadequate infrastructure, patchwork provincial laws, and a lack of binding drinking water standards from the federal government.
The report is endorsed by Assembly of First Nations and National Specialty Society for Community Medicine.
“Walkerton and Kashechewan demonstrated the risks involved with poor water management,” said Ecojustice Staff Lawyer Randy Christensen. “That risk remains, especially in rural and First Nations communities.”
Canada remains one of the few industrialized countries without national legally binding drinking water standards. Only four jurisdictions – Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Nova Scotia – boast drinking water that meets the current voluntary federal standards. Other communities do not fare as well:
• Latest available data shows that 1776 drinking water advisories are in place in Canada.
• As of April 30th, 116 First nations communities were under Drinking Water Advisory for risk of waterborne contaminants
• 20%-40% of all rural wells have coliform or nitrate concentrations in excess of drinking water guidelines, threatening citizens with illness or even in severe cases, death.
• Less than half of Canadian provinces and territories require “advanced” treatment of surface water, which is standard practice in the European Union and the United States.
“It’s unacceptable for a wealthy country in the 21st century to have these sorts of problems,” said FLOW Program Coordinator Nancy Goucher. “Canadians deserve and demand better leadership to ensure safe drinking water for their families.”
“Every family in Canada should have access to clean, safe drinking water as a fundamental human right," said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo. "Similar to the findings of the Expert Panel on Safe Drinking Water for First Nations, the Seeking Water Justice report, outlines solid steps that can be taken toward ensuring safe drinking water in First Nation communities. This includes working with First Nations in full partnership to identify solutions, such as developing national water standards and ensuring stable and sustainable funding supports to address gaps in infrastructure and training at the community level."
The Report calls for strong federal water standards that meet or exceed the current best practices in other industrialized countries, to extend those standards to all communities, and to ensure adequate resources for the safety of drinking water on First Nations reserves.
For more information contact:
Randy Christensen, Staff Lawyer, Ecojustice (647) 654-2156
Nancy Goucher, Program Coordinator, Forum for Leadership on Water (647) 891-0338
Karyn Pugliese, Acting Director, Communications, Assembly of First Nations 613-241-6789 ext 210
Ten years after Walkerton, Canadians remain at risk of waterborne disease outbreaks as a growing divide emerges between those who have access to safe drinking water and those that do not.
Ecojustice and Forum for Leadership on Water (FLOW) have issued Seeking Water Justice: Strengthening Legal Protection for Canada’s Drinking Water, a national brief on the status of drinking water quality in Canada. The paper reveals a two tiered system of drinking water management where urban centres benefit from better standards, technology and personnel while rural and first nations communities remain at risk due to inadequate infrastructure, patchwork provincial laws, and a lack of binding drinking water standards from the federal government.
The report is endorsed by Assembly of First Nations and National Specialty Society for Community Medicine.
“Walkerton and Kashechewan demonstrated the risks involved with poor water management,” said Ecojustice Staff Lawyer Randy Christensen. “That risk remains, especially in rural and First Nations communities.”
Canada remains one of the few industrialized countries without national legally binding drinking water standards. Only four jurisdictions – Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Nova Scotia – boast drinking water that meets the current voluntary federal standards. Other communities do not fare as well:
• Latest available data shows that 1776 drinking water advisories are in place in Canada.
• As of April 30th, 116 First nations communities were under Drinking Water Advisory for risk of waterborne contaminants
• 20%-40% of all rural wells have coliform or nitrate concentrations in excess of drinking water guidelines, threatening citizens with illness or even in severe cases, death.
• Less than half of Canadian provinces and territories require “advanced” treatment of surface water, which is standard practice in the European Union and the United States.
“It’s unacceptable for a wealthy country in the 21st century to have these sorts of problems,” said FLOW Program Coordinator Nancy Goucher. “Canadians deserve and demand better leadership to ensure safe drinking water for their families.”
“Every family in Canada should have access to clean, safe drinking water as a fundamental human right," said Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo. "Similar to the findings of the Expert Panel on Safe Drinking Water for First Nations, the Seeking Water Justice report, outlines solid steps that can be taken toward ensuring safe drinking water in First Nation communities. This includes working with First Nations in full partnership to identify solutions, such as developing national water standards and ensuring stable and sustainable funding supports to address gaps in infrastructure and training at the community level."
The Report calls for strong federal water standards that meet or exceed the current best practices in other industrialized countries, to extend those standards to all communities, and to ensure adequate resources for the safety of drinking water on First Nations reserves.
For more information contact:
Randy Christensen, Staff Lawyer, Ecojustice (647) 654-2156
Nancy Goucher, Program Coordinator, Forum for Leadership on Water (647) 891-0338
Karyn Pugliese, Acting Director, Communications, Assembly of First Nations 613-241-6789 ext 210
Sunday, May 16, 2010
If the Gulf Oil Spill was Over Your City: Google map
Here is what the spill looks like over my home city of Regina, Saskatchewan in Canada.
Compare for your city here.
Bolivia: Between development and Mother Earth
By Federico Fuentes, Cochabamba
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Green Left News
Since being elected the country’s first indigenous president in 2005, Morales has continuously denounced the threat posed by the climate crisis and environmental destruction.
Morales has pointed the figure at the real cause of the problem: the consumerist and profit-driven capitalist system.
Morales is leading a powerful indigenous movement pushing change in Bolivia and the region, which raises restoring harmony with nature as one of its key banners.
This revolutionary movement, with indigenous and peasant organisations in the forefront, has pushed the traditional Bolivian elite from power through a combination of electoral battles and mass insurrections.
It has begun the struggle to create a new “plurinational” Bolivia — based on inclusion and equality for Bolivia’s 36 indigenous nations.
There is an immense sense of indigenous pride and empowerment in Bolivia, a country whose original inhabitants were traditionally excluded.
This revitalised indigenous pride was a key feature of the Cochabamba conference, reflecting the important role of the region’s indigenous and peasant movements in environmental struggles.
The conference’s final declaration contained a strong emphasis on “the recovery and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples” as an alternative to the destructive capitalist model.
Bolivian vice-minister Raul Prada said the conference represented the start of a “world revolution of Vivir Bien”.
Vivir Bien is an Aymara indigenous concept that means “living well and not at the cost of others”.
Together with these elements of indigenous “cosmovision”, the declaration included a strong anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist sentiment, again reflecting the mood of the summit.
Having carved up the world among them, imperialist countries such as the United States and Australia have used their domination over Third World countries to keep them underdeveloped.
The economies of underdeveloped countries have been geared towards extracting raw materials for the benefit of the economies of the imperialist nations.
This gearing of Third World nations’ economies to providing cheap raw materials for export, at the mercy of market prices often manipulated by speculators, rather than seeking a rounded internal development, helps keep these countries in a state of permanent dependency and poverty.
Perhaps no country demonstrates this system better than Bolivia.
Four hundred years ago, the Bolivian mining town of Potosi was the third largest city in the world. Millions of tonnes of silver were extracted — helping finance a large part of Europe’s industrial development.
Today, thousands of cooperative miners work Potosi’s hollowed out silver mines in sub-human conditions to eke out a basic living.
Bolivia, whose resources made Europe rich, is South America’s poorest nation — its economy dependent raw minerals and gas exports.
Bolivia’s challenge
Breaking this dependency is a key challenge for the Bolivian government — and brings with it many difficulties.
In the 2005 election campaign, now-Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Lineras summed up this dilemma when he said Bolivia’s choice was “industrialisation or death”.
The Morales government has reclaimed state control over gas and mineral reserves and nationalised 13 companies involved in gas, mining, telecommunications, railways and electricity.
This increased state intervention means the public sector has increased from 12% of gross domestic product in 2005 to 32% today.
With the 2006 nationalisation of gas reserves and signing of contracts with private companies in the sector more favorable to the state, the hydrocarbon sector alone has dramatically increased its contribution to the state budget from US$678 million in royalties in 2005 to $2 billion last year.
This extra revenue has allowed the government to increase social spending, particularly through new benefit payments to pensioners, families with children in school and pregnant women.
An estimated 2.8 million people out of Bolivia’s population of 9 million receive one of these new payments.
All of the macroeconomic indicators show important improvements in Bolivia’s economy. Last year, Bolivia had the highest rate of economic growth in the region.
Having maintained a budget surplus for the past five years, the government has ensured its international reserves have reached a record US$9 billion.
Despite this, the government has largely proven unable to make serious headway with its industrialisation program.
Several of its key mining projects face serious strife (see the article next page) and the country is yet to open a single gas processing plant.
A combination of troublesome relations with multinationals and a lack of technical cadre, among other factors, help explain why.
As a result, Bolivia’s economy — and therefore the social programs — is arguably more dependent on extraction-based activity than five years ago.
Debates and dilemmas
This problem gets to the heart of debates that arose at the climate conference over difficult questions. These include the involvement of progressive governments, such as in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, in oil mining in the Amazon, as well as the deepening of the extraction-based economic model in Latin America.
Alberto Acosta, the former president of Ecuador’s constituent assembly that produced the world’s first constitution that explicitly defends the rights of Mother Earth, said: “It is necessary to question the capitalist logic and construct a post-capitalist society.”
However, he added: “We have to clearly point out those that are responsible [for the climate crisis] and look at our responsibilities.
“While it is true that the rich are the principal culprits, our countries that are tied to the world economy with an extractivist logic guarantee that these processes of accumulation continue reproducing themselves.”
It would be suicidal to argue that Bolivia should simply shut down its gas and mining industry, with the deadly social impacts that would entail.
The dilemma, however, was summarised by former Bolivian hydrocarbon minister Andres Soliz Rada. He described the “trap” Morales finds himself in, between “his industrialist offers with which he achieved his re-election and the indigenist demands to comply with his proclaimed defence of the environment”.
Morales expressed this dilemma when he responded to environmentalist and indigenous groups who oppose oil exploration in the Amazon by saying: “What will Bolivia live off?”
Without oil revenue, there would be no money for government benefits payments, he added.
Morales’s comments might surprise some only familiar with his powerful denunciations of inaction on climate change on the international stage. But the reality is his government’s proposed industrialisation program and redistributive social spending is a big part of why it maintains high popular support.
This contradiction is enforced on Bolivia by the imperialist system. Overcoming it ultimately requires rich nations to pay their climate debt — and help provide the means for poor countries such as Bolivia to develop sustainably.
In the meantime, Third World governments that seek to break the deadly cycle of poverty and underdevelopment will face difficult choices.
In 2007, Garcia Linera explained: “The outlook according to which the indigenous world has its own cosmovision, radically opposed to that of the West, is typical of latecomer indigenists or those closely linked to certain NGOs ...
“Basically, everyone wants to be modern. The Felipe Quispe [indigenous] insurgents, in 2000, were demanding tractors and internet.”
One example of this was the recent tensions between indigenous peasants groups over changes to the government’s land reform law.
Indigenous organisations from the Amazonian region in the east strongly criticised former vice-minister of land, Victor Camacho, and the Unique Confederation of Rural Labourers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) peasant confederation, for trying to “peasantise” indigenous communities via changes that would prioritise individual, and not collective, land titles.
This apparent contradiction between an “Andean cosmovision” (a concept that seemingly leaves out the other 34 indigenous groups based in Bolivia’s non-Andean regions) and indigenous peasants demanding individual rather that collective land titles can be understood if we grasp the dynamic underlining the Morales government.
Indigenous nationalism
Rather than representing a desire to return to ancient indigenous times, this government is the product of a new anti-imperialism whose roots lie in previous nationalist movements.
It surpasses previous nationalist experiments because, for the first time, it is not military officers or the urban middle classes leading the project, but indigenous and peasant sectors.
Its solid core is represented not by indigenous organisations of indigenous peoples (who are also peasants) that have most questioned the apparent divorce between the governments Panchamama (“Mother Earth”) discourse and its action. It is represented by organisations of those peasants (who are also indigenous) that benefited from previous land reforms by nationalist governments — and today own individual plots.
This is not to deny the important role the specific organisational, economic and political models of the country’s indigenous people play in the process. This is what most clearly differentiates it from previous nationalist governments and is a crucial aspect of its revolutionary dynamic.
Nor can it be denied that the Bolivian government is the leading global advocate in defence of the environment and promoter of a global alliance to wage such a struggle, incorporating strong elements of indigenous cosmovision in its discourse.
However, there is the need for a serious debate in Bolivia, which appears to be beginning post-summit, over how to begin a transition from its extraction-based and dependent economy towards a post-capitalist, sustainable society.
This will require going beyond romantic declarations of the birth of a new “civilisatory and cultural perspective”, or a “world revolution of Vivir Bien”, and understanding the complex reality of Bolivian society and the difficult process of change underway.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Green Left News
Bolivia’s silver mines in Potosi helped make Europe rich. The tremendous success of the April 19-22 World Peoples Summit on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights held in Cochabamba, Bolivia, has confirmed the well-deserved role of its initiator — Bolivian President Evo Morales — as one of the world’s leading environmental advocates.
Since being elected the country’s first indigenous president in 2005, Morales has continuously denounced the threat posed by the climate crisis and environmental destruction.
Morales has pointed the figure at the real cause of the problem: the consumerist and profit-driven capitalist system.
Morales is leading a powerful indigenous movement pushing change in Bolivia and the region, which raises restoring harmony with nature as one of its key banners.
This revolutionary movement, with indigenous and peasant organisations in the forefront, has pushed the traditional Bolivian elite from power through a combination of electoral battles and mass insurrections.
It has begun the struggle to create a new “plurinational” Bolivia — based on inclusion and equality for Bolivia’s 36 indigenous nations.
There is an immense sense of indigenous pride and empowerment in Bolivia, a country whose original inhabitants were traditionally excluded.
This revitalised indigenous pride was a key feature of the Cochabamba conference, reflecting the important role of the region’s indigenous and peasant movements in environmental struggles.
The conference’s final declaration contained a strong emphasis on “the recovery and strengthening of the knowledge, wisdom, and ancestral practices of Indigenous Peoples” as an alternative to the destructive capitalist model.
Bolivian vice-minister Raul Prada said the conference represented the start of a “world revolution of Vivir Bien”.
Vivir Bien is an Aymara indigenous concept that means “living well and not at the cost of others”.
Imperialism
Together with these elements of indigenous “cosmovision”, the declaration included a strong anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist sentiment, again reflecting the mood of the summit.It argued that, “for there to be balance with nature, there must first be equity among human beings”. It squarely denounced “developed countries, as the main cause of climate change”, calling on them to assume “their historical responsibility”.
Imperialist capitalism, benefiting First World multinational corporations, has not only intensified divisions between rich and poor within countries and environmental destruction. It has also entrenched divisions between developed and underdeveloped countries.
Having carved up the world among them, imperialist countries such as the United States and Australia have used their domination over Third World countries to keep them underdeveloped.
The economies of underdeveloped countries have been geared towards extracting raw materials for the benefit of the economies of the imperialist nations.
This gearing of Third World nations’ economies to providing cheap raw materials for export, at the mercy of market prices often manipulated by speculators, rather than seeking a rounded internal development, helps keep these countries in a state of permanent dependency and poverty.
Perhaps no country demonstrates this system better than Bolivia.
Four hundred years ago, the Bolivian mining town of Potosi was the third largest city in the world. Millions of tonnes of silver were extracted — helping finance a large part of Europe’s industrial development.
Today, thousands of cooperative miners work Potosi’s hollowed out silver mines in sub-human conditions to eke out a basic living.
Bolivia, whose resources made Europe rich, is South America’s poorest nation — its economy dependent raw minerals and gas exports.
Bolivia’s challenge
Breaking this dependency is a key challenge for the Bolivian government — and brings with it many difficulties.In the 2005 election campaign, now-Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Lineras summed up this dilemma when he said Bolivia’s choice was “industrialisation or death”.
The Morales government has reclaimed state control over gas and mineral reserves and nationalised 13 companies involved in gas, mining, telecommunications, railways and electricity.
This increased state intervention means the public sector has increased from 12% of gross domestic product in 2005 to 32% today.
With the 2006 nationalisation of gas reserves and signing of contracts with private companies in the sector more favorable to the state, the hydrocarbon sector alone has dramatically increased its contribution to the state budget from US$678 million in royalties in 2005 to $2 billion last year.
This extra revenue has allowed the government to increase social spending, particularly through new benefit payments to pensioners, families with children in school and pregnant women.
An estimated 2.8 million people out of Bolivia’s population of 9 million receive one of these new payments.
All of the macroeconomic indicators show important improvements in Bolivia’s economy. Last year, Bolivia had the highest rate of economic growth in the region.
Having maintained a budget surplus for the past five years, the government has ensured its international reserves have reached a record US$9 billion.
Despite this, the government has largely proven unable to make serious headway with its industrialisation program.
Several of its key mining projects face serious strife (see the article next page) and the country is yet to open a single gas processing plant.
A combination of troublesome relations with multinationals and a lack of technical cadre, among other factors, help explain why.
As a result, Bolivia’s economy — and therefore the social programs — is arguably more dependent on extraction-based activity than five years ago.
Debates and dilemmas
Alberto Acosta, the former president of Ecuador’s constituent assembly that produced the world’s first constitution that explicitly defends the rights of Mother Earth, said: “It is necessary to question the capitalist logic and construct a post-capitalist society.”
However, he added: “We have to clearly point out those that are responsible [for the climate crisis] and look at our responsibilities.
“While it is true that the rich are the principal culprits, our countries that are tied to the world economy with an extractivist logic guarantee that these processes of accumulation continue reproducing themselves.”
It would be suicidal to argue that Bolivia should simply shut down its gas and mining industry, with the deadly social impacts that would entail.
The dilemma, however, was summarised by former Bolivian hydrocarbon minister Andres Soliz Rada. He described the “trap” Morales finds himself in, between “his industrialist offers with which he achieved his re-election and the indigenist demands to comply with his proclaimed defence of the environment”.
Morales expressed this dilemma when he responded to environmentalist and indigenous groups who oppose oil exploration in the Amazon by saying: “What will Bolivia live off?”
Without oil revenue, there would be no money for government benefits payments, he added.
Morales’s comments might surprise some only familiar with his powerful denunciations of inaction on climate change on the international stage. But the reality is his government’s proposed industrialisation program and redistributive social spending is a big part of why it maintains high popular support.
This contradiction is enforced on Bolivia by the imperialist system. Overcoming it ultimately requires rich nations to pay their climate debt — and help provide the means for poor countries such as Bolivia to develop sustainably.
In the meantime, Third World governments that seek to break the deadly cycle of poverty and underdevelopment will face difficult choices.
In 2007, Garcia Linera explained: “The outlook according to which the indigenous world has its own cosmovision, radically opposed to that of the West, is typical of latecomer indigenists or those closely linked to certain NGOs ...
“Basically, everyone wants to be modern. The Felipe Quispe [indigenous] insurgents, in 2000, were demanding tractors and internet.”
One example of this was the recent tensions between indigenous peasants groups over changes to the government’s land reform law.
Indigenous organisations from the Amazonian region in the east strongly criticised former vice-minister of land, Victor Camacho, and the Unique Confederation of Rural Labourers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) peasant confederation, for trying to “peasantise” indigenous communities via changes that would prioritise individual, and not collective, land titles.
This apparent contradiction between an “Andean cosmovision” (a concept that seemingly leaves out the other 34 indigenous groups based in Bolivia’s non-Andean regions) and indigenous peasants demanding individual rather that collective land titles can be understood if we grasp the dynamic underlining the Morales government.
Indigenous nationalism
Rather than representing a desire to return to ancient indigenous times, this government is the product of a new anti-imperialism whose roots lie in previous nationalist movements. It surpasses previous nationalist experiments because, for the first time, it is not military officers or the urban middle classes leading the project, but indigenous and peasant sectors.
Its solid core is represented not by indigenous organisations of indigenous peoples (who are also peasants) that have most questioned the apparent divorce between the governments Panchamama (“Mother Earth”) discourse and its action. It is represented by organisations of those peasants (who are also indigenous) that benefited from previous land reforms by nationalist governments — and today own individual plots.
This is not to deny the important role the specific organisational, economic and political models of the country’s indigenous people play in the process. This is what most clearly differentiates it from previous nationalist governments and is a crucial aspect of its revolutionary dynamic.
Nor can it be denied that the Bolivian government is the leading global advocate in defence of the environment and promoter of a global alliance to wage such a struggle, incorporating strong elements of indigenous cosmovision in its discourse.
However, there is the need for a serious debate in Bolivia, which appears to be beginning post-summit, over how to begin a transition from its extraction-based and dependent economy towards a post-capitalist, sustainable society.
This will require going beyond romantic declarations of the birth of a new “civilisatory and cultural perspective”, or a “world revolution of Vivir Bien”, and understanding the complex reality of Bolivian society and the difficult process of change underway.
Back to Marx: How can his work help us to understand modern times?
Translated Saturday 15 May 2010, by Gene Zbikowski and reviewed by Henry Crapo
L'Humanite
The world economic crisis has ended the taboo on referring to Marx. More and more works are being published on the author of Das Kapital, and the press is publishing special sections on him.
A discussion with Edgar Morin, the philosopher and sociologist, emeritus research director at the CNRS who holds honorary doctorates from many universities around the world and with André Tosel, the philosopher and specialist in Karl Marx and Marxism, professor at the University of Nice.
Read this article at L'Humanite in English.
L'Humanite
The world economic crisis has ended the taboo on referring to Marx. More and more works are being published on the author of Das Kapital, and the press is publishing special sections on him.
A discussion with Edgar Morin, the philosopher and sociologist, emeritus research director at the CNRS who holds honorary doctorates from many universities around the world and with André Tosel, the philosopher and specialist in Karl Marx and Marxism, professor at the University of Nice.
Read this article at L'Humanite in English.
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