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Arabica Robusta

The struggle for Maya land, oil, and gold. | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...gle-for-maya-land-oil-and-gold

struggle maya land oil gold guatemala corporate csr exploitation social responsibility movements consulting environmentalism

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Conflicts related to mineral extraction and land use are turning increasingly violent on a global level.  A Global Witness report shows that deaths from conflicts linked to environmental destruction have almost doubled in the last three years, to a rate of over two killings a week in 2011.
  • Guatamala's mining law sets royalties at between 1 and 4 percent, designed to entice a global mineral extraction industry to exploit Guatemala's gold, copper and nickel reserves. Many Canadian companies have responded and are producing profits, but their operations have also become associated with pollution and human rights abuses
  • The legal route has already borne fruit on the other Atlantic side of the Maya world, in Belize, where the courts have proceeded to integrate UN-DRIP into their own jurisprudence.  Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh referred to the declaration in his judgement, together with ILO 169 and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to assert that Mayan rainforest villages had a right to legal recognition of their collective ownership of their lands.
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  • By 2010 a second court case had raised the number of Mayan villages with collective ownership of their land to 24. The Belizean government had been barred from granting exploration or extraction licences to these territories without the 'free, prior, and informed consent' of the villagers. Until the government realized these property rights through providing the official title (which is on hold while the government appeals the ruling), the government is barred from “issuing any concessions for resource exploitation, including concessions, permits or contracts authorizing logging, prospecting or exploration.”
  • The wave of community referenda across Guatemala has involved over 700,000 people, and has occurred in the wake of widespread opposition to Guatemala's controversial Marlin gold mine. The ILO ordered operations at the mine to be suspended, and while Marlin's contamination of the local environment is hotly contested by its Canadian operator Goldcorp, a Tufts University study found a 400 percent increase of arsenic in the area’s groundwater between 2006 and 2009.
  • Goldcorp recently signed an agreement for a very different type of extraction operation with the Wemindji Cree of northern Quebec, to mine gold and silver at the Éléonore site in the James Bay region. According to Goldcorp's Brent Bergeron (in a Forbes.com article), this is a participatory model that the company seeks to export to their other operations: “We’ve actually had the Cree come down and visit our mine in Guatemala and go out and speak to the local communities”.
  • This power is reinforced, Scott says, by “a political history in which they have managed to block major unwanted industrial development projects, at great economic and political cost to their proponents. Hence, the Eleonore project is not a very good test of a ‘new approach’ by industry, at least not one adopted on a voluntary basis. External interests have learned, when working on the territory of the Crees, that it can be less costly to get their consent first.”
  • Umberto Velasquez volunteers in the same committee as Lopez, and critiques what he sees as the manipulations that the company's social investments create: “They come in with their little projects, the company takes photos which they use internationally to boost their image and suggest they have the support of the community.”
  • Bamaca remembered how - before the company admitted to being a mining operation, when “people didn't know what contamination was” - the company would hold “parties and celebrations in the community, giving sweets to children and beer to adults, knowing this is the local community way. They came in smooth.”
  • After peace was restored, former elements of a powerful security apparatus geared to domestic repression through massacres, assassinations and rape continued to operate unofficially, becoming known as the ‘hidden powers’. Mayan Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu rues a missed opportunity for the country: “We should have taken extraordinary measures - as indicated by the peace accords - in the socio-economic sphere to benefit the population, showing that people would have a better life in peace than in war. The conflict had its causes in inequality, in dictatorship. These root causes were not attacked. The root causes are still valid.” 
  • On 5 February this year, two months after the Q'eqchi' exchange, the village of Conejo gathered to discuss their response to the oil company’s incursion into their territory. The meeting was held in their village community centre, into which entered Manuel Choco, a former activist in Belize's 'Maya Movement' and now permitting officer of the oil company. Two activists of the local indigenous organisation SATIIM (Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management) turned on the voice recorders on their mobile phones.
  • This was the subject of the meeting into which Martin Choco entered and produced a letter, telling the villagers to sign it and get their jobs back. The letter gave US Capital Energy unlimited access to operate seismic lines on Conejo's territory, condemned the leadership for exceeding their authority in sending their original letter of objection, and made no mention of company compensation for the cutting of the illegal lines. Acting on legal advice, the leadership suspended the meeting while Choco continued to collect signatures. Choco's superior is US Capital Energy's representative in Belize, Alistair King, and two days later he said that the letter was written by the villagers themselves and “nothing to do” with the company. Although it lacked the signatures of a majority of Conejo's adult population, he maintained that it granted his company sufficient authority to return to operate the lines that week.
  • While Alistair King was announcing the return of the company to Conejo's land, and praising the value of having someone like Choco with the company, “who speaks the language”, Conejo's current chairperson Enriqué Makin was walking between the thatched houses scattered through the rainforest. He held a letter, which read: “We did not give US Capital Energy our free, prior and informed consent to conduct seismic testing on our traditional lands affirmed by the Supreme Court of Justice of Belize on [sic] October 2007.” It was signed by the majority of Conejo’s adult population, prompting a showdown meeting between Belize's Department of Geology and Petroleum, the village elders of Conejo, the chairperson and Alcalde, and Martin Choco. The company was ordered to cease operating on Conejo's land and to remove the tags placed along the seismic lines marking the drilling holes for the burial of explosives.
  • The value of free, prior and informed consent lies in its ability to ensure that the options facing indigenous communities are decided collectively, allowing a degree of meaningful deliberation in lieu of the official, political self-determination that they are generally lacking.
Arabica Robusta

Chevron wins round one against Ecuador « Insomniacs Alarm clock - 0 views

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land consulting social responsibility oil exploitation movements ecuador chevron

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • A recent decision by an international arbitration tribunal, administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, is a setback for Ecuador and for environmentalists that wish to use the international legal system to protect the environment. Ecuador and Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company, have been engaged in a long-standing dispute about environmental impacts from oil extraction. Experts describe this recent decision as a collateral attack on the original underlying issue. Ecuadorian courts are expected to rule soon on the massive $27 billion dollar suit filed by Ecuador against Chevron, and this most recent decision may be an attempt send a signal to the justices, or prevent enforcement of the judgment.
  • Chevron alleged that the domestic Ecuadorian courts were delaying ruling on this issue, violating its rights under the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) between the United States and Ecuador. The arbitration panel found that Ecuador court system did not provide an adequate way to file claims and enforce rights, and it awarded Chevron $700 million.
  • Chevron’s allegations that the Ecuadorian courts are inadequate strike some observers as curious, because Chevron was originally in favor of moving the trial to Ecuador. The suit was originally filed in New York, but Chevron requested that it be moved to Ecuador. The District court that said, “the well-known congestion of American dockets is undoubtedly greater than that of less litigious societies. Indeed, in terms of engendering inordinate delays, the history of mass tort class litigation in the United States is not such as to inspire confidence.” Because the suit was attempting to enforce the laws of Ecuador, the court understandably believed that those courts would to be superior and described its own efforts as “preposterous.”
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  • The end game for Chevron may not be winning the lawsuit in Ecuador, but avoiding paying damages if it does lose.
  • Long ago, U.S. courts decided in Hildton v. Guyot that judgments in foreign courts would not be enforceable if there was “prejudice in the court, or in the system of laws under which it was sitting, or fraud in procuring the judgment.” With the precedence set by the arbitration decision, Ecuador is now in a tough position to prove that its courts meet the highest standards.
Arabica Robusta

IPS - U.S. Opens Investment in Myanmar Oil and Gas, Over Suu Kyi's Advice | Inter Press... - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...l-and-gas-over-suu-kyis-advice

consulting social responsibility oil movements land exploitation burma myanmar

shared by Arabica Robusta on 15 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers are reacting to the announcement with disappointment, saying the administration has ignored recommendations at the behest of U.S. corporate interests. “As it stands now, investment in many of the most attractive sectors of the Burmese economy is likely to worsen the human rights situation while directly benefitting individuals and entities responsible for rights abuses,” warned a statement from several Washington-based advocacy groups, Freedom House, Physicians for Human Rights, United to End Genocide and the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
  • For months, rights groups in and out of Myanmar have been urging the U.S. government to update its so-called specially designated nationals (SDN) list – a black list of alleged human-rights abusers and others with whom entities in the United States are barred from investing with – before taking the final step to allow U.S. companies into Myanmar.
  • Quigley says that a similar dynamic was seen in 1990, when the U.S. petroleum company Unocal – now Chevron – was grandfathered in on its Myanmar investments despite the imposition of new sanctions. Indeed, the Unocal example has remained a stark warning for many longtime Myanmar observers during the debate over how and when to allow U.S. investors back into the country. In recent months, the pro-business lobby in Washington has been arguing that U.S. companies, bound by U.S. law, would have a positive effect if allowed to operate within Burma.
Arabica Robusta

CorpWatch : Bolivia pushes back against Swiss commodities giant Glencore - 0 views

www.corpwatch.org/article.php

land social responsibility consulting oil exploitation movements bolivia glencore cargill cobalt copper

shared by Arabica Robusta on 30 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • On June 22, the Bolivian government seized the company's Colquiri tin and zinc mine, south of the capital city of La Paz.
  • “Massive corporations like Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trading company, and the privately held and secretive Cargill, the world’s biggest trader of agricultural commodities, are moving to further consolidate their control of world grain markets and vertically integrate their global supply chains in a new form of food imperialism designed to profit off global misery,” wrote journalist Christian Parenti in the Nation magazine. “While bread triggered war and revolution in the Middle East, Glencore made windfall profits on the surge in grain prices. And the more expensive our loaf of bread becomes, the more money firms like Glencore and Cargill stand to make.”
  • Glencore is no stranger to controversy and strife. In April a BBC investigation alleged that the company was indirectly buying cobalt and copper from children as young as ten who climb down hand dug shafts into the Tilwezembe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with no protective equipment.
Arabica Robusta

Bolivian government, Indigenous communities resolve to nationalize Canadian mining comp... - 0 views

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land social consulting responsibility oil movements exploitation bolivia morales evo

shared by Arabica Robusta on 16 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Last week, a Bolivian farmer was killed during confrontations with police, in the context of protests against a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company South American Silver Corp. On Tuesday, the Bolivian government led by Evo Morales announced the nationalization of the Canadian company's mining project. 
  • The head of state met with leaders from the ayllus in this region that were demanding the annulment of the concession granted to the Canadian company South American Silver (SAS). The agreement states that the mine will be nationalized via a Supreme Decree. "These natural resources belong to the state, and therefore to the Bolivian people, which is why the national government should carry out the process of exploitation and exploration, with the participation of the Indigenous communities in this zone; that is what we have agreed upon," said the head of state.
  • Morales lamented that confrontations had taken place between different Indigenous community groups, one side in support of the mining activities of the Canadian company, and considered that this confrontation was provoked by the transnational company. "Here there has been a problem, unfortunately the so-called transnational companies are like that, these companies pit brothers, in-laws, cousins, neighbours, brothers from the same ayllu against one another, I also want to recognise that I too am responsible having not seen what was occurring," he said.
Arabica Robusta

UN Human Rights Council Takes on Corporations | Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy - 0 views

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exploitation movements social responsibility oil consulting land intervention ecuador

shared by Arabica Robusta on 28 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Ecuador proposed the idea in September 2013 after years of fighting Chevron who has refused Ecuadorean court judgments requiring the company to pay $18 billion in damages for massive environmental destruction and other harms to communities in the Ecuadorean Amazon. To avoid these payments, the company sued Ecuador for lost profits through “investor to state” dispute settlement provisions the country agreed to when it signed a bilateral investment treaty with the U.S. Such investor state provisions that grant corporations’ right to future profits over governments’ right to regulate are sadly common in free trade and investment treaties pushed by the U.S., including the current negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership (with Pacific Rim countries) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (with Europe). Civil society groups, including IATP, strongly oppose investor state provisions. 
  • Such People’s initiatives are growing in number and strength—aided by the launch of the Stop Corporate Impunity Campaign at Rio Plus 20 summit in 2012. The Campaign had a week of mobilization here in Geneva to strengthen the global effort and has launched a People’s Treaty process that is intended to mobilize social movements and citizens to stand up and demand accountability from their governments and to present an alternative vision of governance. It will be a critical bottom up process while governments begin their own deliberations on a binding treaty. 
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