NEWSHUMAN RIGHTS & THE ENVIRONMENT

By Sasha Kinney and Abubakar El-Amudy

The community of Lamu is fighting to have its voice heard in the development of a massive new infrastructure project, which threatens to destroy their idyllic and historic island off the coast of Kenya.  Corporations and the Kenyan government are pushing forward with plans to develop the large port and a host of related infrastructure.  Despite its dire environmental consequences, the project has gained momentum due to significant profit prospects and vague promises of economic development.

I was teaching my daughter to grind traditional medicines near our sacred Puberty Rock when the boaters intruded upon our ceremony site.

Their beer-infused shouts echoed across the McCloud River canyon, and as they passed they called us “fat Indians”, chugged alcoholic drinks in our sacred space, and even flashed us.

Recreational boaters had been interfering for the full four days of my daughter’s Bałas Chonas, or Coming of Age ceremony, but now Marine was about to complete the ceremony by swimming across the river where her tribe would receive her as a woman.

As the Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu, I was supposed to be laying down blessings. I was supposed to be in a ceremonial state of mind, but instead I was furious at the thought of my daughter having to enter the water with those people on it.  How would you react if a band of motorcyclists barreled through your daughter’s christening?

Since the early 1990s, Radio Victoria has provided a voice for the residents of the northern hills of El Salvador. Founded in the aftermath of the nation's bloody civil war, today Radio Victoria transmits daily local and international news and other programs to communities so poor they often lack telephone and mail services.

The journalists who run the station are mostly 16 to 24 year-olds who grew up in Honduran refugee camps and returned to the area with their families as the civil war raged around them.

And now, someone wants them dead.

Last month, Radio Victoria's workers began receiving a wave of death threats from a shadowy group reminiscent of the macabre rightwing "death squads" active during the civil war.

President Obama visited El Salvador this week to discuss the drug trade, immigration, and security issues in the region with Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes. The murders of Salvadoran anti-mining activists, however, were not on the agenda.

We recently covered the story of Salvadoran anti-mining activists being threatened, robbed, kidnapped and murdered while attempting to halt Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company, from excavating gold in the northern department of Cabañas.

The struggle began in 2004, when Pacific Rim conducted its first gold explorations in Cabañas. Residents that had previously noticed the effects of other mines - dry wells, skin irritations, and dead animals - were skeptical of a new, massive gold project. Local Salvadoran organizations responded by researching the environmental, social and economic impacts of mining.

Since 2009, Salvadoran anti-mining activists have been threatened, robbed, kidnapped and murdered while attempting to halt Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company, from excavating gold in the northern department of Cabañas.

This week, US-El Salvador Sister Cities, an international solidarity organization, reported that a disturbing wave of new death threats has hit activists opposed to Pacific Rim's gold mine. The organization is calling on the Salvadoran government to investigate the threats and the various violent crimes that have been perpetrated against the movement opposed to Pacific Rim's proposed mine.

Over a year ago, the British Natural History Museum and the government of Paraguay started planning a scientific expedition into the largely uncharted territory of the Gran Chaco to study the area's biodiversity.

That all sounds lovely until one realizes that such an expedition would put researchers in direct contact with isolated indigenous tribes, putting their lives and territory at risk.

With the help of Jess Leber over on the Environment Blog and hundreds of readers like you, last month the Paraguayan indigenous rights non-profit Iniciativa Amotocodie was able to get the mission suspended. The overwhelming success of the campaign to protect 'uncontacted' Ayoreo Indians from exploitation and foreign disease won it a place on Change.org's Top 10 Victories of 2010.

But apparently no good deed goes unpunished in Paraguay. As a thank you for their work protecting vulnerable indigenous peoples, Paraguayan authorities broke into the offices of Iniciativa Amotocodie and stole their stuff.

(With the first vote announced by the World Bank Tribunal, the battle wages on between El Salvador and Pacific Rim Mining Corporation.)

In a disappointing turn of events, the government of El Salvador has lost the first round in its battle against Pacific Rim Mining Corporation. This is a painful loss, but not the end for the government and people of El Salvador. This is merely the first round in what is sure to prove to be a long, arduous and expensive fight for this developing nation.

As detailed in my June 25 blog post, “International Corporations and the Developing World,” Pacific Rim Mining Corporation has filed a $77 million lawsuit against the country of El Salvador. Their suit against El Salvador is argued on the basis that as an international corporation they have the right, under CAFTA, to mine within the borders of this developing country. The government and people of El Salvador beg to differ.

On August 3, 2010, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a World Bank Tribunal, ruled against El Salvador’s objections that the suit had no merit. This unanimous vote enables Pacific Rim to move forward with their suit, aiming for a big payout from a developing country already struggling to stay afloat. The next step for the ICSID is to rule on El Salvador’s specific objections involving the jurisdiction of the case.

Carl Wilkens is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

We took off last September with this crazy idea to pedal the USA speaking with school and faith groups along the way. We can end the genocide in Darfur, we've got to challenge the "us and them" thinking plaguing our minds and our communities, that's our message! So far we have pedaled the west coast, and our country is amazing, our people amazing, a new sense of pride and understanding of our home! We're also now hooked on recumbent bikes. I can't describe the bonding with our land that this pedaling over 1600 miles (not bragging, it was spread over 7 months) did for us.

Starting in the wheat fields of eastern Washington, cruising over the Cascade Mountains, gliding through the redwood lined "Avenue of the Giants", we eventually rolled out onto the beaches of California where incredibly, dolphins were showing off in the sunset. Yes there were dolphins in the sunset! Not sure if you caught my point, but having enjoyed only 14 nights in our own bed during the last 200 +/- days we feel like we really can claim this planet as our home! Then there is the generosity and hospitality that families have lavished on us while staying in their homes. We've been wowed, humbled and deeply moved and we have turned into serious experts in finding the silverware drawer first pull in a strange kitchen.

Many of our conversations on this journey are about courageous Rwandans who under the threat of machetes and club stood up 16 years ago for others. These are people who refused to accept the "us and them" lies that so many others were buying into in that tiny country in central Africa! Our stories we're hoping are inspiring and equipping people to give it a try, living like you believe that you are 'your brother's keeper'. Yet this pedaling, this mixing of human rights and bonding with our land, reminds us with each gorgeous passing mile we sail through that we're not only 'our sisters keeper', but we're the keeper of each other's home, our fabulous planet earth.

Doug Struck’s recent Christian Science Monitor article on carbon offsets provides yet another illustration of the limited potential of market-based proposals for addressing climate change. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but apparently a complex, unregulated market is ripe for fraud, deceit, and incompetence. While it’s important to note that there are several legitimate carbon offset programs, the field is predictably littered with unsavory financial speculators posing as environmentalists.

Hopefully we’ve learned by now that market-based solutions to society’s problems offer, at best, an incomplete approach. The comprehensive remediation of climate change will also require innovative mechanisms that directly address its human implications. In this vein, the rights of future generations provide an intriguing approach for the protection of human rights in an environmental context.

Since the 1970s, intergenerational rights have been recognized by several international agreements, including the Stockholm Declaration, the Rio Declaration, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The rights of future generations are further protected by multiple national constitutions. In the United States, there are overtures to intergenerational justice in both state and federal law. But how does a society actually protect the rights of future generations?

With the world’s focus turning to environmental worries, particularly during this Earth Day week, we are rightly concerned about the carbon cost of coal and seeking cleaner forms of energy. However, in our pre-occupation with the environmental harms produced by mining and burning coal, we should not forget the human cost of coal — the miners who suffer daily in bringing this substance to the surface.

The recent disaster in the Upper Big Branch mine, which caused the deaths of twenty-nine West Virginian miners, is but the latest in a long tale of human suffering. In the United States, nearly seventy miners are killed each year, and almost 12,000 injured. Coal mining produces a significant share of that total number.

And the injuries suffered by coal miners are especially horrific. Not only do coal miners bear the risk of working in confined, ill-ventilated spaces deep under the ground (at constant risk to life and limb), but their work exposes them to a disease-prone environment. One common sickness suffered by current and former coal miners is black lung, which seriously reduces life expectancy — 4.5% of all U.S. coal miners suffer from this disease. Former President George W. Bush praised the coal industry to the skies, proclaiming it as the bedrock of American energy independence, and a cheap source of fuel. Cheap, perhaps, in terms of dollars and cents, but not when human life is the measurement.