Iceland is developing its hydro and geothermal resources in the context of an energy master plan, mainly to provide power for expansion of the aluminium industry. This paper tests perceptions of geothermal energy as low-carbon, renewable and environmentally benign, using Icelandic geothermal industry as a case study.
The application of geothermal energy for aluminium smelting is discussed as well as environmental and human rights record of the aluminium industry in general. Despite application of renewable energy technologies, emission of greenhouse gases by aluminium production is set to increase.
Our analysis further shows that carbon emissions of geothermal installations can approximate those of gas-powered plants. In intensely exploited reservoirs, life of boreholes is limited and reservoirs need extensive recovery time after exploitation, making geothermal exploitation at these sites not renewable in the short to medium term. Pollution and landscape impacts are extensive when geothermal technology is applied on a large scale.

Krater and Rose – Development of Iceland’s Geothermal Energy – Download as PDF
The full publication will be available from Jan. 15, 2010. ISBN 9781849350051.

By Michael Smith and Adriana Brasileiro
Bloomberg Markets, September 2009

For four decades, Edimar Bentes and his family have survived by farming tiny clearings in the jungle near their dirt-floor shack in the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon. On this April afternoon, Bentes, 56, squats in the driving rain and dips a glass into what just four years ago was a crystal-clear stream that provided drinking and bathing water. He frowns as the glass fills with brown silt. A thin man with short-cropped dark hair and a tanned, deeply wrinkled forehead, Bentes gazes around his land. There are no signs of the deer, armadillos and pacas he used to hunt to feed his wife and 10 children. For Bentes and thousands of others in the Juruti region of Para whose livelihood depends on wildlife and plants, everything changed in 2006.

That’s when New York-based Alcoa Inc., the world’s second-largest primary aluminum producer, started to bulldoze a 56-kilometer (35-mile) swath of the rain forest across hundreds of families’ properties to build a railway. This cleared corridor, 100 meters (109 yards) wide, will lead to a mine that will chew up 10,500 hectares (25,900 acres) of virgin jungle over three decades. More than half of the mine will lie inside a forest that by Brazilian federal law is supposed to be preserved unharmed forever for local residents. By year’s end, Alcoa says, the railway will transport 7,000 tons a day of bauxite, the dark red ore that’s used to make aluminum, from the mine to a port on the Amazon River.

‘Want to Cry’

“It makes you want to cry when you see this stream,” says Bentes, his bare feet sinking into the mud. He views a wasteland of uprooted trees and brown rivulets seeping into the water. “It reminds me of everything bad that Alcoa did to our land.” A growing array of evidence in court documents puts Alcoa among the multinational corporations that prosecutors accuse of destroying or causing destruction of the world’s largest rain forest.

Brazilian federal and Para state prosecutors sued Alcoa’s Brazilian mining subsidiary in 2005 in an effort to block the Juruti mine, saying the company had circumvented the law by not applying for a federal permit and instead seeking a license from the state of Para. After four years of legal haggling, the suit is still pending. Alcoa, which denies any wrongdoing, has already completed construction of the railway, port and processing plants. It’s now ready to start mining. “The state agency has no power to give anyone full rights to exploit land, especially in the case of a reserve,” state prosecutor Raimundo Moraes says. “Alcoa invaded the area, undeterred. Alcoa has no shame.”

‘All Necessary Licenses’

In written responses to questions from Bloomberg News, Alcoa says it “has all necessary government licenses to implement the Juruti mining project.” The Amazon, which spans nine countries and is roughly the size of Australia, has for centuries been the lungs of the Earth, its plants and trees absorbing pollution from the air. But that strength is fading. The world’s largest inhaler of carbon dioxide is shrinking — thus aggravating, instead of slowing, global warming.

Every week, federal prosecutors say, people acting outside the law use bulldozers, chain saws or fire to wipe out parts of the jungle to make way for crops, cattle and mines. The fires men set to clear land for ranches and farms create 6 percent of the carbon dioxide spewed into the air worldwide, according to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists. That equates to half of all the emissions from cars, trucks, planes, trains and ships in the world.

‘Amazon is the Key’

Brazil has become the planet’s fourth-biggest polluter. The fires that rage across the Amazon could help increase Earth’s average surface temperature by as much as 11.5 degrees this century, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists from 194 countries.

Global warming threatens to melt glaciers, raise sea levels and lead to drinking water shortages, the United Nations- sanctioned panel says. “We are not going to reduce global warming if we don’t do something about deforestation in the Amazon,” says Doug Boucher, director of the Tropical Forest and Climate Initiative at Concerned Scientists. “It’s that simple, and very alarming. The Amazon is a big part — if not the key part — of a solution to deal with global warming.”

Wal-Mart, McDonald’s

To date, companies and individuals have destroyed more than 857,000 square kilometers (331,000 square miles) of the Amazon, an area almost the size of France and England combined, according to the UN Environment Programme. Cattle ranchers have caused 80 percent of the illegal deforestation, according to Brazil’s environment ministry. They sell steers to Brazil’s three biggest beef producers. One of them, Sao Paulo-based JBS SA, is the world’s largest; the others are Santo Andre-based Marfrig Alimentos SA and Bertin SA of Lins.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer; French supermarket chain Carrefour SA; and McDonald’s Corp. have purchased beef from those companies, according to Brazilian internal revenue service sales and export records. Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz have bought leather for car and truck seats from Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Eagle Ottawa LLC, a leather company supplied with materials from illegally deforested ranches, the records show. These multinationals say they’re working to avoid buying products originating in deforested land.

Cargill’s Port

Alcoa is the latest company in a decade-long legacy of global corporations that have thwarted Brazil’s environmental regulations, federal prosecutors say. Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc., the largest privately held company in the U.S., spent $20 million to build a grain port on the Amazon River in 2003 that led to farmers illegally destroying thousands of hectares of rain forest to grow soybeans, says Felicio Pontes, a federal prosecutor who sued to block the project. In early February, soybeans were piled high in a storage area at Cargill’s Amazon port, waiting to be loaded onto a ship bound for Europe. The company ships about 60,000 tons of soybeans a year grown near the town of Santarem. Before Cargill built the port, there was no large-scale soybean production in the area.

‘Completely Obvious’

Cargill hired The Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit group, to confirm that soybean farmers aren’t clearing the Amazon around Santarem. The group says it has certified this year that 155 of 383 farms weren’t deforesting. “It’s completely obvious that Cargill’s port gave an incentive that led to deforestation,” Pontes says.

Both Alcoa and Cargill, prosecutors say, have persuaded local officials to sign off on their plans, flouting federal law. Brazil’s constitution says minerals are national resources that should be overseen by tougher federal agencies, says Daniel Azeredo, a federal prosecutor in the Amazon port of Belem, who specializes in environmental lawsuits. “The problem is that in Brazil we have weak institutions and laws, and companies take advantage of that,” he says. “We have laws, but they are impossible to enforce, which gives companies complete impunity to do whatever they want to profit.” Alcoa says it has abided by the law.

‘Any and All’

“In Brazil, public attorneys tend to challenge in court any and all major industrial and infrastructure projects,” Alcoa wrote in responses to questions from Bloomberg News. Alcoa says it doesn’t need federal approval for its mine in Juruti. Cargill also says it has done the right thing in Brazil. The company won proper state approval to build its river transport center, says Afonso Champi Jr., Cargill’s external affairs director in Brazil. He says the company strives to guarantee the soybeans it buys don’t come from deforested land.

Alcoa, which mines and produces aluminum in 31 countries, champions itself as a responsible steward of global resources. “Operating in a manner that protects and promotes the health and well-being of the environment is a core value to Alcoa,” the company says on its Web site. Cargill, whose products worldwide include animal feed, salt, steel and financial services, says, “Being socially responsible as a corporation means that we care about the environment.”

EPA Settlement

Alcoa has clashed with regulators and environmentalists in other countries. The University of Massachusetts’s Political Economy Research Institute ranks Alcoa as the 15th-most-toxic company in the U.S. In 2003, Alcoa agreed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department to pay about $330 million to clean up air pollution at a power plant within an aluminum factory in Rockdale, Texas — a plant it has since shut down.

Alcoa has received mixed notices in Australia. In 1990, the UN Environment Programme gave the company an award for replanting forests it had destroyed to build a bauxite mine there. Alcoa, which generates electricity to process aluminum, obtained the lowest score in a 2008 review of utilities by the World Wildlife Fund. The WWF said Alcoa had failed to adopt targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by its coal-fired power plant in Victoria state.

Slashed Emissions

Alcoa says it gets rapped by environmentalists because its electrical power plants emit carbon. The company says it should get credit for all of the pollution it’s preventing by supplying the lightweight aluminum that makes cars and trucks more energy- efficient. Alcoa says it has slashed its greenhouse gas emissions by 36 percent since 1990.

In Brazil, Alcoa is doing business in a political climate that regulators say is favorable to polluters. Luciano Evaristo, a director at Ibama, the federal environmental agency, says forces in the government — starting at the very top — promote and finance industries that feed on illegal destruction of the rain forest. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva calls himself an environmentalist. In 2003, he introduced a plan to protect the Amazon, creating task forces to raid areas being deforested.

Copenhagen Conference

In December, Lula will join leaders from almost 200 other countries in Copenhagen at a UN-sponsored conference to discuss a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first major international pact on global warming.“ At Copenhagen, we will have to reach a global agreement that will be both just and ambitious if we want to bequeath a viable planet to future generations,” Lula said in a July 7 speech. Lula set a goal of reducing deforestation by 80 percent by 2020.

At the same time, Lula has authorized the building of new roads and power plants in the Amazon and has increased funding for ranches and factories in deforested areas. In June, he congratulated people for tearing down trees to create farms spurring economic growth. “No one can say that someone is a criminal because he deforested,” Lula told a crowd of cheering ranchers in the Amazon city of Alta Floresta as he announced plans to legalize almost 300,000 ranches and farms built on illegally cleared land that once was rain forest.

‘Schizophrenic Government’

“It’s a completely schizophrenic government,” says Paulo Adario, who directs the Amazon campaign for nonprofit environmental group Greenpeace. “On one hand, they are combating deforestation. On the other, they are financing it.” Foreigners have been cutting down Latin America’s rain forests since the 1600s, when Spanish and Portuguese conquerors cleared jungles from Mexico to Brazil to build ships, farms and cities. In the 1960s and 1970s, Texaco Inc. drilled dozens of oil wells in Ecuador’s Amazon, destroying rain forest and polluting the region with poisonous wastes.

Alcoa, which produced the first commercially available aluminum in 1888, has 63,000 employees around the world. The company produces enough sheeting to make 100 billion cans of beer and soda a year. America’s largest aluminum producer sells ingots, sheets, wheels, fasteners and building materials to customers in the aerospace, packaging and automotive industries.

Stock Recovery

The company reported $26.9 billion in revenue last year. Its share price, which peaked at $47.35 in July 2007, slid as low as $5.22 on March 6 during the global economic meltdown. The stock value has since increased to $11.46, as of July 30, up 1.8 percent in the year-to-date. Brazil has the world’s third-largest reserves of bauxite. In 1979, a group led by Rio de Janeiro-based Vale SA built a bauxite mine in Porto Trombetas, 60 kilometers from Juruti. In 1994, Alcoa joined Vale in the venture, whose other members today include Melbourne-based BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Plc of London.

The scarred land and fouled water around Porto Trombetas bears witness to the impact of the mine. Nearby, a lake called Lago Batata still turns bright red from bauxite wastes workers dumped for a decade. The venture says it stopped polluting the lake in 1989 and now uses sealed holding ponds to contain overflow. The consortium replanted trees on the banks of the lake, but they’re low to the ground and brittle. Ademar Cavalcanti, the mine’s environmental director, says the cleanup will go on indefinitely.

Revived Project

Alcoa inherited its Juruti mining rights from Reynolds Inc., which it bought in 2000. Alcoa revived the project in 2003, as global economic growth increased demand. Simao Jatene, the governor of Para, supported the Alcoa project. BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, provided the company with 1.9 billion reais ($1 billion) of financing for construction.

In January 2005, Alcoa requested state permits to build the $1.7 billion mine. Gabriel Guerreiro, who was then Para’s environment secretary, says the company submitted an impact study done by an independent firm, Sao Paulo-based CNEC Engenharia SA. Guerreiro says his agency analyzed Alcoa’s proposal and concluded the mine would be modern and efficient. Guerreiro says Para’s mineral riches must be explored for the good of the state’s 7.1 million residents, 50 percent of whom live in poverty.

‘Rich Civilization’

“Nobody is going to build a rich civilization without using the natural resources of the tropics,” he says. Guerreiro gave Alcoa a preliminary license in June 2005 and asked for 35 improvements to the impact study. After Alcoa made adjustments, he recommended the project be accepted by the state environmental council, called Coema, which approved it in August 2005.

A month later, federal and state prosecutors sued Omnia Minerios Ltda., the Santarem-based Alcoa subsidiary running the mine; Para’s state government; and Ibama, the federal regulator. The government’s civil suit, filed in federal court in Santarem, says Omnia Minerios was required to seek and obtain a federal environmental permit. Prosecutors say Ibama failed by not taking control of the licensing process. In court filings, Alcoa and the two regulators each say they followed proper procedures.

Court to Court

The case against Alcoa has languished for four years as the participants argue over which level of the Brazilian judicial system — federal or state — should have jurisdiction. Franklin Feder, Alcoa’s Sao Paulo-based president for Latin America and the Caribbean, says Ibama advised Alcoa to get state approval for the mine.

Marcus Luiz Barroso Barros, Ibama’s president from 2003 to 2007, says no one told him about such a decision. He says he didn’t know about Alcoa’s project until after the company had applied for licensing with Para. At that point, he decided it would be too complicated for Ibama to get involved — a position he now regrets. “Now that I know more about Alcoa’s mine, looking at the significant impact it’s having in the area, I’d say it’s a major project that should have been handled by the federal agency,” says Barros, 61, a physician who’s now in private practice in the Amazon city of Manaus.

Licensing Guidelines

A government advisory panel called Conama lays out guidelines for when Ibama should get involved in reviewing a project. “Ibama shall be responsible for the environmental licensing for projects and activities with a significant environmental impact of a national or regional scope,” Conama Resolution 237 says.

State regulators aren’t as reliable as the federal government, Barros says. “The main problem with licensing by state agencies is that they are often too close to projects and fall victim more easily to political and economic pressures than Ibama,” he says. “They may be more easily manipulated.” The state licensing of the Juruti mine was riddled with irregularities, the prosecutors’ suit says. Alcoa’s consultants limited their environmental research to two separate one-month periods during the dry season, in a jungle with some of the highest rainfall levels in the world, prosecutors say.

‘Comprehensive’

The researchers didn’t analyze how the mine, which will consume 505 cubic meters (133,407 gallons) of water per hour from an Amazon River inlet, will affect fishing. They also didn’t study how heavy ship traffic would affect fish populations near the port, prosecutors say. “All environmental studies, conducted by qualified specialists, were comprehensive, as demonstrated by the fact that all necessary licenses were duly granted,” Alcoa said in its responses to questions from Bloomberg News.

Fatima de Sousa Paiva, a nun and community organizer who’s spent almost a decade near the Juruti mine area, says Alcoa approached the rain forest community like Portuguese explorers who grabbed Brazil in the 16th century. “Alcoa offered gifts like plastic sandals, thermoses and bicycles,” says Paiva, 48, who teaches at a local elementary school. “To them, we were just some ignorant Indians in the way of their plans to make billions.” In its written response, Alcoa said, “This is a groundless allegation.”

‘Provide for the People’

In granting Alcoa permission to mine in the Juruti preserve, Para officials clashed with Incra, the federal government’s land reform institute. By law, the reserve can be used only by residents to hunt, fish and gather nuts to sustain their families. “The reserve allows a way to make sure the land is able to provide for the people,” the law says. All decisions about land use must be made by residents of the community, according to the law.

“Maybe the state wanted to play Alcoa’s game by approving an environmental licensing process that was full of holes, but we didn’t,” says Luciano Brunet, who runs Incra’s office in Santarem. Brunet says Alcoa told residents that they didn’t have a right to stop the mine because they didn’t have title to the land.

Public Land

Most of the ground in the Amazon is owned by the government, according to Imazon, a Belem-based nonprofit group. Incra gave descendants of Mundurucu and Muirapinima Indians the right to use the land in 1981 without granting titles to the families. Incra certified the land as a federal reserve in November 2005. Brazil’s laws regarding property deeds in the Amazon have always been lax, Brunet says, because until recently no one has challenged them. “Those people don’t own the land,” says Alcoa’s Tiniti Matsumoto Jr., who has run the mine since 2005 and has worked at Alcoa for 40 years.

“That land issue is Incra’s problem, not Alcoa’s.” Alcoa doesn’t own the property either, prosecutor Moraes says. “Alcoa simply assumed it was authorized to mine an area that is protected, where people live off the land,” Moraes says. Soon after Alcoa received approval from the state to build the mine, Bricio Lima, the company’s community affairs director, went from house to house, asking families to cede part of their land. In the end, Alcoa secured the right of way through land where 81 families live.

No Choice

Bentes, the farmer whose stream is now filled with brown silt, says Lima told his family and their neighbors that residents had no choice but to cooperate because Alcoa had approval from the state. Lima said Alcoa offered the family 23,000 reais, which equals about 17 months of the median income in Brazil, to use 2.5 hectares of their land, Bentes says. He says he agreed to the deal because he had no choice. “He told us the railroad would go through our land whether we accepted the offer or not,” Bentes says, as he prepares to roast half a deer he hunted for two days with a friend.

Alcoa wanted to pay them something, even though it wasn’t required by law, Lima says. “There was nothing forcing us to pay any compensation,” says Lima, who confirms Bentes’s account of their discussions.

‘The Right Thing’

Brunet says his agency plans to grant land titles to local residents, allowing them to request royalty payments from Alcoa’s mine production.

Matsumoto, 59, a Brazilian of Japanese descent, says the company is willing to pay people who live in the reserve part of its royalty payments to the government — 1.5 percent of the mine’s revenue — if that’s what officials want. “We want to be here for at least 70 years, so of course we want to do the right thing,” he says.

Alcoa is paying Conservation International, an Arlington- based nonprofit group, $100,000 a year to create a trust fund to finance the preservation of 10 million hectares of parks and preserves around Juruti. Since 2005, the company has spent 10 million reais to improve roads and build schools, water treatment units, a health-care center and a government building in Juruti, Alcoa says.

Replanting Trees

In 2008, the company commissioned a poll of 600 people in the region, finding that 61 percent said the mine project had improved their lives. Two-thirds of those questioned didn’t live close to the mine, Alcoa says.

Matsumoto says Alcoa will replant every tree it destroys. It will send forestry engineers and biologists ahead of the excavators to catalog plants and animals in all of the jungle Alcoa cuts down. “When we start planting trees at the mine, we want to make it richer than the original forest,” Matsumoto says.

Patricia Elias, a forestry expert for the Union of Concerned Scientists, says Matsumoto’s goal is impossible to achieve. “It would take centuries for trees to grow to their original density and height — and it would never be better than virgin forest,” she says. “It’s of greater value in combating climate change to avoid deforestation in the first place.”

‘Just Doesn’t Work’

Andre Clewell, a botanist in Ellenton, Florida, who is a consultant on restoration of mines, says it’s difficult to quickly restore tropical trees. “You can try to grow 200-year-old trees in 50 years, but it just doesn’t work,” Clewell, 75, says. “And some of it never comes back.”

About 160 kilometers from the Juruti mine, green fields of soybeans stretch to the horizon near Santarem, flanked by narrow stands of the rain forest that once covered all of the area. Scorched trees lie on the ground at the far end of Edno Cortezia’s farm, where workers set fire to the forest to make way for crops. Cortezia says he’s growing soybeans where the jungle once stood because Cargill built a port 30 kilometers away at the confluence of the Amazon and Tapajos rivers. “We came here because of the port,” Cortezia says. Cargill’s Champi says the company will remove Cortezia as a supplier if it can confirm the deforestation.

Pot-Holed Highways

Before Cargill built its port, there were no soybean farms near Santarem, says Marcus Bistene, chief of enforcement at Ibama’s Santarem office. Pontes, the federal prosecutor, says Cargill bypassed federal environmental law to build a port without properly studying how it would affect the Amazon.

In the mid-1990s, Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural company by revenue, was looking for an alternative to trucking grains down pot-holed highways from the fields of Mato Grosso state in western Brazil to the ports of Santos and Paranagua, 2,000 kilometers south.

They set their sights on a highway through the heart of the soybean belt from the Amazon to Santarem, Champi says. At the time, Cortezia farmed land in the state of Mato Grosso, near the southern border of the Amazon. He says Cargill officials came to town, urging farmers to move to Santarem, where it would be less expensive to grow soybeans. This season, he’s harvesting soybeans on his farm near Santarem that he plans to sell to Cargill.

EPA Brushes

Cargill has 160,000 employees in 67 countries and reported $120 billion in revenue in 2008. Founded in 1855 by William Cargill, it’s still primarily family owned. It has been in Brazil since 1965, when it started producing and selling hybrid corn seeds. Within two decades, Cargill grew into Brazil’s top trader and exporter of soybeans and oilseed.

Like Alcoa, Cargill has had brushes with environmental regulators. In the U.S., the EPA has cited the company for polluting rivers and killing fish populations. In 2005, Cargill signed an agreement with the EPA and the Justice Department settling charges that the company had underestimated air pollution at corn and soybean processing plants in 13 states. Cargill agreed to spend $130 million to reduce pollution at 27 plants, pay a fine of $1.6 million and finance $3.5 million in environmental programs.

‘Long History’

Cargill standards for protecting the environment are stricter than the EPA’s in some cases, spokeswoman Lori Johnson says. “Cargill has a long history of voluntarily reducing its emissions and other environmental impacts,” Johnson says. In 2000, Pontes filed suit in federal court to halt construction of Cargill’s port, arguing that the company hadn’t done a proper environmental study. Cargill contested the suit, saying it had approval from Para’s environmental agency.

As the case was pending, Cargill finished the port in 2003. In March 2007, a Brazilian federal judge shut down the port until the company did a comprehensive environmental study. Cargill won a reversal of that decision on appeal. In 2006, Greenpeace reported it had traced soybeans from the port to illegally deforested land. Since then, Cargill has refused to buy soybeans grown on newly deforested land, Champi says. Three days ago, Cargill and other grain exporter in Brazil extended until July 2010 a commitment not to buy soybeans from farms that were cleared from the Amazon since 2006.

74 Million Cows

Ranchers, more than anyone else, have illegally flattened thousands of square kilometers of publicly owned rain forest to create pastures for cattle, Pontes says. More than 74 million cows graze in the Amazon today, covering a combined area larger than Spain. Ranchers are proud of what they have done to improve the local economy. Ataides Gomes de Oliveira, a foreman on the Itacaiunas ranch near Xinguara, walks among a wasteland of scorched logs and splintered stumps. He stops as cattle appear amid the ragged ferns and saplings.

“There are 6,000 cows here, where there used to be unproductive jungle,” he says. Sao Paulo-based Agropecuaria Santa Barbara Xinguara SA, which owns Itacaiunas, says it’s not responsible for managing the ranch and has never illegally cleared jungle. McDonald’s gets some of the beef for its Big Macs from a meatpacker supplied by ranches cleared from the Amazon, cattle sales permits show.

Deforesting Fines

McDonald’s supplier of hamburger patties in Brazil, Braslo Produtos de Carne Ltda. in Sao Paulo, has bought beef from its parent, Marfrig Alimentos. Four ranchers that supply Marfrig have been fined a total of 13.5 million reais for illegally clearing the rain forest, public records show. Marfrig has never bought “regularly” from ranches that don’t follow Brazil’s environmental law, says Ricardo Florence, director of planning and investor relations. The company demands its suppliers follow all laws. It won’t buy from suppliers that Ibama has placed on a list of “embargoed” ranches cited for illegal deforestation, Florence says.

The ranchers who were fined aren’t on that list, so Marfrig has no way of knowing their background on deforestation, he says. “The Marfrig Group does not buy from suppliers that contribute to deforestation of the Amazon,” Florence says.

McDonald’s Policy

Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s, which has had a policy of not buying beef from deforested land since 1989, says it relies on its suppliers to follow the law. “Every McDonald’s beef supplier has signed and affirmed its compliance with this policy,” says Bob Langert, McDonald’s vice president of corporate social responsibility. “They are aware that McDonald’s will immediately cease accepting raw materials from any facility that is found to source cattle for McDonald’s from within the Amazon.” Marfrig complies with McDonald’s policy, Florence says.

JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, has purchased cattle from fined ranchers. JBS owns Swift & Co. and part of Smithfield Foods Inc. in the U.S. and has nine plants in the Amazon. Kraft Foods Inc.’s division in Italy and a unit of H.J. Heinz Co. have bought beef from JBS, according to sales and export records. The number of slaughterhouses in the Amazon has tripled to 87 since 2004, as international meat exporters expanded into the rain forest, prosecutors say.

‘It’s the Meatpackers’

“If you want to know who is financing the deforestation, it’s the meatpackers,” Ibama director Evaristo says.

Angela Garcia, director of environmental affairs at JBS, says the company counts on government enforcement records to ensure cattle come from land that wasn’t illegally deforested. “We’re not in enforcement,” she says. “We don’t have the resources. I hope the ranches are complying with the law, but I cannot say whether they are.”

Evaristo says virtually all Amazon ranchers built pastures on land that was illegally deforested. “These are people who operate with 100 percent illegality,” he says. “They steal public land, destroy the rain forest, plant grass and let the cows graze until they’re fat enough to sell.”

In Sao Felix do Xingu, the municipality in the Amazon with the most cattle, only one ranch out of hundreds has a license. On June 1, Ibama and federal prosecutors filed suit against 21 cattle ranches, accusing them of illegally deforesting 150,000 hectares of rain forest.

Stopped Buying Beef

Prosecutors say that meatpacker Bertin sold beef from cattle that had been raised on illegal ranches to 41 of its customers –including Carrefour and Wal-Mart. Prosecutors sent a letter to all Bertin customers recommending they stop buying meat that comes from deforested land. By June 19, Carrefour, Wal-Mart and 33 other buyers had told Azeredo that they had stopped buying from Bertin and other meatpackers named in the lawsuit.

Bertin says it stopped buying from 14 ranches named in the suit and signed an agreement with prosecutors to develop tighter controls to ensure cattle suppliers follow the law. “We’ve suspended cattle purchases from deforested ranches and will help ranchers stop deforesting the Amazon and replant areas that have been devastated,” Bertin spokeswoman Simone Soares says.

‘A Matter of Cost’

Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart says it wants to buy only beef raised on ranches that follow the law. The company had suspected that ranchers were destroying the Amazon, says Daniela De Fiori, Wal-Mart’s vice president for sustainability in Brazil. “The truth is, Brazil’s retail sectors rely on these companies,” De Fiori says. “And it’s a matter of cost.”

On July 17, Wal-Mart launched a global initiative to urge all of its suppliers to assess and label the environmental impact of all their products, going back to the source of raw materials. Spokespeople for Carrefour, Heinz, Kraft and car companies Ford, GM and Mercedes say they have policies against buying products from deforested land and requiring suppliers to assure them they follow the law. Leather producer Eagle Ottawa, which is a unit of Whitehall, Michigan-based Everett Smith Group Ltd., says it’s satisfied with Bertin’s agreement with prosecutors to stop buying from illegally deforested ranches.

Shrinking Amazon

In Juruti, where Alcoa has its bauxite mine, the jungle is dotted with mahogany, Brazil nut trees and marble-textured angelin-pedra trees. These hardwoods can grow to almost 50 meters. Under the thick canopy of that timber are giant ferns and palms. This Amazonian vegetation, which has long absorbed the world’s carbon dioxide, is now shrinking at a rate of 163 square kilometers a week, exacerbating the global warming that threatens to wreak havoc worldwide. Lima, Alcoa’s community relations manager, a heavyset man with thinning hair, drives a pickup truck on the freshly cleared land for the mine. The rain forest gives way to a 700-meter-wide muddy pit that steams in the sun after a cloudburst.

Jungle topsoil and clay have been stripped away, exposing bauxite 15 meters down. Dump trucks are lined up, waiting for work to begin. Lima points to the pit, saying that beginning in late August, excavators will fill trucks with 90-ton hauls of bauxite once mining starts. Bulldozers will move ahead, clearing the rain forest to make way for heavy machinery to advance in a mining trench 50 meters wide.

Train Sits Empty

In a clearing a few kilometers away, conveyor belts lead to a tower where clay and other waste material will be washed from the ore. Not far from the pit, a train sits empty, ready to be loaded with bauxite. Alcoa has already torn down 900 hectares of rain forest, Lima says. Within 30 years, the mine will consume more than 10 times that much jungle, according to the company.

Bentes and his family show where Alcoa workers strip the rain forest. “We don’t know many things, and we are very simple people,” Bentes says, adding that he does understand the value of economic development in Brazil. “But they should find a way to do that without destroying the rain forest,” he says. “That is not right.”

—

Michael Smith is a senior writer at Bloomberg News in Santiago, Mssmith@bloomberg.net; Adriana Brasileiro is a reporter in Rio de Janeiro,abrasileiro@bloomberg.net.

n solidarity with farmers in Thjorsa, the group Saving Iceland took action to protect a beautiful, fertile region of the country that is threatened by heavy industry plans to place a new dam on a waterfall to power new heavy industry. They built a small “dam” in front of the national energy company office entrance so the workers had to either to step over the dam to get inside or use a different entrance. This action symbolized their resistance to the imminent development of three dams that the company hopes to build.

In India, the public hearing for the proposed 3000 MW Dibang Multipurpose Project, which was supposed to be held on March 12th, could not be conducted due to strong opposition from the local affected people. Hundreds of protestors from various affected villages staged a road blockade along the main road blocking all the vehicular movement towards the venue of the public hearing. Vehicles carrying officials and staff of major involved corporations were prevented from reaching the hearing.
In Guatemala, there were peaceful protests against the construction of dams and in defense of water in Guatemala and throughout the world.

Some groups held conferences and hosted exhibitions to educate and inspire people to take action against dams. An event was held in Mokhotlong district of Lesotho where the first dam of the Phase 2 of the Lesotho Water Project is planned. A group discussion focused on water as a right, the politics of water and other environmental issues. In Portugal, students in a Renewable Energy course at a local high school co-hosted a colloquium titled, “Microgeneration of Energy = Macrogeneration of Jobs”. Next, there was a kayak demonstration at the Tua River next to the city center, followed by a kayak trip up the river and organized meetings with dam-affected peoples.

And of course, there was celebration! In Burma, Ethnic Karen people living along Burma’s Salween River gathered in colorful traditional dress to pray to the spirits of the river and the land around it for protection against the planned construction of the Hut Gyi Dam, which threatens to devastate the area’s fragile ecosystem. In California, the Klamath Riverkeeper and other groups hosted a benefit dinner to raise money and support to bring down the Klamath dams. Guests enjoyed dinner, a multi media-presentation and live funk and reggae music!

It is incredible that so many of us raise our voices and remember the importance of protecting our rivers at the same time! In more than 30 countries, at least 70 actions took place.

Take a moment to browse the Day of Action pages to see what communities around the world did to commemorate the day.
http://internationalrivers.org/en/2008-day-action

Activists Attilah Springer (left) and Lerato Maria
Maregele (center). SI conference July ’07.

Mimi Sheller is a visiting associate professor in the sociology and anthropology department at Swarthmore College. She attended the Saving Iceland conference in 2007.

I grew up in an aluminum-sided suburban house. I carried a colorful aluminum lunchbox to school, with a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil. Like everyone I know, I drink from aluminum cans, travel in cars, planes, and bikes full of aluminum parts, and cook in aluminum pots and pans. This versatile, ubiquitous material is all around us, all the time, but seems almost invisible because it has become, literally, part of the furniture (even the kitchen sink). The surprising story of this mercurial metallic fabric of everyday life – in our homes, skyscrapers, cars, airplanes, utensils, fasteners, cosmetics, space ships, and bombs – encapsulates the making of global modernity, the creation of multinational corporations, the rise of the U.S. as a world power, the modernization of warfare, and the invention of suburbia, science-fiction futurism, and the American Dream.

Aluminum is produced from an ore called bauxite, one of the major exports of three Caribbean countries – Suriname, Guyana, and Jamaica. As a sociologist of the Caribbean, my concerns over the environmental impacts of bauxite mining led me earlier this year to the glacier-encrusted volcanoes of Iceland – a striking island of black lava flows, sparkling ice-caps, and lush green summer pastures full of shaggy horses. In Reykjavik, I attended the conference Saving Iceland: Global Perspectives on Heavy Industry and Large Dams, and observed the direct action protests organized by the group Saving Iceland. With support from a Swarthmore Faculty research grant, I have now begun work on a new book called The Age of Aluminum, which will examine the untold epic story of this magical metal, how it transformed the 20th century, and continues to shape the world today.

In my work and in my courses like “Food, Bodies, and Power” and “Producing and Consuming the Caribbean,” I try to think about the ways in which our way of life is connected to people’s lives in poorer parts of the world and how our material goods depend on other people’s labor and struggles for freedom. The story of aluminum also turns out to be a global story about Third World development and national sovereignty, the unleashing and reining in of corporate power, the pollution of the earth, and the battle to save it. From the steaming tropics of Guinea, Guyana, and Orissa to the frozen highlands of Iceland and hot deserts of Australia, the industry stands accused of polluting air, displacing indigenous communities, flooding wilderness areas, and leaving toxic lakes of red bauxite mud. What price are we paying for the smelting of shining silvery aluminum from the earth’s russet rich ores? What price do we pay for the taken-for-granted conveniences of modern life?

My journey to Iceland was the beginning of a quest to understand pressing global questions concerning the ethics of patents, monopolies, and cartels; the power of big business; and the regulation of transnational corporations. I learned that one of the most compelling conflicts between economic development and wilderness preservation is presently taking place in the remote sub-arctic highlands of Iceland, considered one of the most unspoiled places in the developed world.

In 2004, the American corporation Alcoa broke ground on one of the world’s largest aluminum smelters just outside of the tiny former fishing village of Reydarfjördur (pop. 650) in Iceland’s remote East Fjords regions. Built by Bechtel for $1.25 billion dollars, it is a colossal industrial plant plunked down in an area with a total population of only 5,522 people, in a country of only 300,000 people spread over 39,800 square miles.

Aluminum has been dubbed “solidified electricity” because smelting demands so much power. The Icelandic government undertook construction of a $3 billion hydroelectric power plant in a remote upland region where two of the country’s most awesome rivers flow north from Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull. While largely uninhabitable by humans, this stunning region is the home of wild reindeer, nesting pink-footed geese, gyrfalcons, snowy owls and ptarmigan.

The controversial Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project involved the rerouting of two glacial rivers through 45 miles of tunnels and a series of nine dams, the largest of which has already flooded a dramatic canyon and pristine highland wilderness area with a 22-square mile reservoir. A further 32 miles of overland transmission lines have been built to carry electricity to the mile-long Alcoa smelter, built on the edge of a beautiful fjord.

When I saw the natural beauty of Iceland, it was hard to believe that anyone would think of spoiling it. On the other hand, as I spoke to local people, I saw that the government is trying to create jobs and build a new basis for the economy, which has suffered from the imposition of fishing quotas.

The inspiring speakers at the conference included Icelandic writer Andri Snaer Magnasun, filmmaker and environmentalist Omar Ragnarssen, Trinidadian journalist and activist Attilah Springer, South African activist Lerato Maria Maregele, and Cirineu da Rocha, a Brazilian activist in the Movement of Dam-affected People. The event kicked off the 2007 “Summer of Protest,” which followed previous actions in 2005 and 2006 to try to stop Kárahnjúkar and other planned industrial projects. Direct actions this summer included protest camps, invasions of corporate offices to hang protest banners, “rave against the machine” street parades, and human blockades of the roads leading to smelters. I was a bit out of place amongst the young but seasoned activists, many covered in tattoos, nose-rings, and baggy black and khaki clothing, but they freely shared their vegan meals and their passion. Many of the actions have carnivalesque elements, with costumes, parades, and music, but the intent is always very serious.

“This Smelter Ting is All ‘o Us Bizness”

With dreadlocks running down her back and a winning smile, Attilah Springer is a striking spokesperson for the Rights Action Group in Trinidad. She told the Saving Iceland Conference the story of the small settlement of Union Village in southwestern Trinidad, which awoke one day in 2005 to the rumbling sound of heavy machinery. Seldom seen animals from the surrounding forest started running through yards and streets – fleeing some unseen danger behind the trees. Out of nowhere, dozens of bulldozers had begun leveling the forest, encroaching from every direction. It was the time of year when all of the forest animals were carrying young. As the machines indiscriminately uprooted everything in their path, just one band of monkeys was left in the middle, clinging to their trees with babies and pregnant bellies. Finally the workers started clubbing the defenseless animals to death. The terrified monkeys fled helter-skelter into people’s yards and houses, trying to find shelter anywhere. The people of Union Village were in shock. Even grown men had tears in their eyes. Attilah’s voice broke and her audience, too, had tears in their eyes – especially me, then five months pregnant!

In contrast to Iceland, Trinidad is a 1,864 sq. mile island with 550 people per square mile, one of the world’s highest population densities. I spent time there a few years ago, birdwatching on the Caroni swamp, hiking through the beautiful rainforests of Tobago, marveling at a multitude of hummingbirds, and enjoying the spicy food. But here, too, is a country struggling to improve its economic prospects. The 800 acres cleared near Union Village were part of the government’s “Vision 2020″ plan for Trinidad and Tobago to reach developed status by 2020, including the building of three aluminum smelters in South Western Trinidad, plus other gas-based and chemical industries.

At Trinidad’s 2006 Carnival, five bands had anti-smelter calypsos like “Helter Smelter,” children put on school plays about industrial pollution with names like “Smelly,” and people paraded effigies of Alcoa. Under growing pressure, the Prime Minister finally announced in 2006 that the plans for the Alcoa smelter were cancelled. For Springer, this struggle became an example to the country of how people can stop powerful corporations in their path – “we don’t always have to give way” – and an inspiration to people around the world facing similar debacles.

Today, the aluminum industry is in the midst of a massive global restructuring with a flurry of mergers and acquisitions. With metals prices soaring on the commodity exchanges and predictions of growing demand, especially in China and India, corporate giants are vying to control existing bauxite mines and cheaper power sources across the globe. The latest twists in the plot make aluminum central to new technologies ranging from automobile design and wind turbines to fantastical dreams of an endless energy supply in an aluminum-hydrogen economy.

This year I conducted research in the Alcoa company archives in Pittsburgh and next summer I will tour the bauxite mines of Jamaica. My interests in Caribbean sustainability have led me into a much bigger but little-known global story, and I am excited about writing a book that will publicize it to many more people.

Mimi Sheller, a visiting associate professor in the sociology and anthropology department, came to Swarthmore in 2005 from Lancaster University in England, where she co-founded and remains a senior research fellow in the Centre for Mobilities Research. She is co-editor of the journal Mobilities and the author of Democracy After Slavery (2000), Consuming the Caribbean (2003), and Citizenship from Below, forthcoming from Duke University Press. Write to her at mshelle1[at swarthmore.edu.

The 12th of September was chosen as it marks the first anniversary of a historic action in Trinidad against ALCOA which helped build pressure strong enough to make the Trini Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, drop his ALCOA plans. In 2006 more than 80 locals threw themselves in front of the machinery of engineering company Trintoplan and their machine gun armed police escorts whilst they came to test drill for ALCOA. See the Rights Action Blog of the 13th September, 2006. On this Global Day of Action there was a gathering near San Fernando High Court in remembrance of that action.

“September 12 2006 was the day that activists confronted tractors and police on Foodcrop Road and this day will forever live in the hearts and minds of activists in Trinidad and Tobago as a crucial moment of our fight for environmental and social justice.”
– Attillah Springer, Rights Action Group

Meanwhile, Trinidadian lawyers were regrouping ahead of a legal battle against the Environmental Management Authority [EMA], representing heavy industry, that will be pivotal in the islands path of development. The EMA, whose two main stakeholders are NEC and the aluminium corporation Alutrint, were significantly turned down by the Judge in their plea that three NGO’s – RAG, PURE and Smelta Karavan should not be able to bring action against them. This important ruling recognises that the issue of heavy industrialisation is to Trinidad national, not merely local. The people Vs EMA continues on Thursday 13th September.

South Africa, for the Global Day of Action around 250 people marched on Alcan’s headquarters in Johannesburg to protest against Alcan’s preferential energy treatment ahead of a population of which 30% have no access to electricity. Alcan is to be provided with coal and nuclear powered energy for a new smelter in the Eastern Cape that will consume as much electricity as half of Cape Town, at some of the lowest prices in the world. The protesters blocked the entrance of the Alcan HQ for one and a half hours, allowing no one to come or leave!

The organisation Earthlife Africa Jhb, whose member Lerato Maregele attended the Saving Iceland 2007 Conference and protest camp, are taking part in the demonstration and have the following demands: First, Alcan and Eskom, the national power company, fully disclose all the details of their deal, including the actual price of electricity sold. Second, that Eskom allocate a basic lifeline of 100kwh per month to every South African.

Iceland, despite terrible winds and rain people visited the Minister for Environment at breakfast, protested outside the government offices in Reykjavik and gathered along the river Thjorsa (Þjórsá) in the day. The Icelandic Minister for the Environment, Thórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir, was visited at her home to have a friendly chat with activists and receive a letter asking her to clear up her seemingly contradictory green opinions (read the letter hér.).

The Icelandic government is trying to rush through the construction of numerous new and expanded aluminium smelters to bring the islands total aluminium output up to three million tonnes per year. These hydro and geothermal powered heavy industry projects have been condemned by environmental scientists and lobbying groups. Three dam reservoirs are to be created along the Thjorsa river, where protesters have gathered, to power a new Alcoa smelter near the northern town of Husavik, or an expansion of the Alcan plant in Hafnarfjordur which was vetoed in a local referendum.

“Unemployment in Iceland is 0.9%. So this destruction is only based on the greed of Landsvirkjun [the national power company] and has no economical logic. We are here to show support with the local farmers who are fighting against Landsvirkjun to defend their land and our land.”
– Saving Iceland activist Siggi Hardarson.

Denmark, 50 people marched along the roads of Copenhagen in an act of solidarity. The crowd marched with a banner that read “Global Struggle Against Heavy Industry,” pausing by a surprise en-route confetti and banner drop that proudly read “Queers Against Heavy Industry.” There they heard a talk about the aluminium industry globally. Finally they arrived at the Icelandic embassy and Greenland’s Representation Office, outside of which they heard talks by an Icelander about the situation in the country, and about Saving Iceland and our camps. Also a talk was given on the situation in Greenland, where Alcoa is in the planning stages of a smelter project whilst the Greenlandic prime minister Hans Enoksen is presently in New York seeking loans to finance the hydropower project.

In the UK, a protest was held in the north-east of England at ALCAN’s Pharmaceutical Packaging Facility on Colbourne Avenue, Cramlington. They held in a letter of protest and held placards. Additional protests took place at the coal-fired power station at Lynemouth.

“The population of Iceland is roughly the same as that of Newcastle – we felt we had to come and show some solidarity with this little country that is trying its best to fight its corner against the newly ferocious aluminium corporations. The North East of England is slowly becoming a showcase of new, clean energies – we are well placed to spot it when the language of ‘greenwash’ is used to present terribly destructive and stupid developments as ‘clean’ energy. It has to be stopped, for all our sakes.”
– Mark from Newcastle

In Holland a solidarity message appeared along the traintracks near Arnhem (NL). The phrase “save the last wilderness of Europe” (in dutch) and “savingiceland.org” was spraypainted on a part of the concrete palisade of the ‘betuwelijn.’ The ‘betuwelijn’ is a controversial mega-infrastructural project that connects the Netherlands with Germany.

In New York, a lively and loud bunch gathered outside of Alcoa’s New York headquaters, making trouble of themselves and giving the aluminium industries most greenwashing member a well needed image tarnishing. Whilst eco-warriors attempted to storm the Alcoa offices and do an office occupation and banner drop from the 3rd story terrace roof, Saving Iceland Superhero came to do battle with Super Villain Alcoa.

“There was Aluminum Man, with black cape with alcoa symbol on the back. dr. doom face, shirt with alcoa symbol on front. a sith, and bone gloves and black spandex. And a saving iceland super hero with green cape w/ saving iceland logo on it, saving iceland logo on front of shirt. orange tights and green bandana around head. with a stick. and also a small river that was painted, that the Aluminum Man would block with stones and spray paint silver. They battled in the streets for a few hours.”
– Reported a witness of the dramatic events

Their banners read “ALCOA: Perpetrating Ecocide Across the Planet”, “Alcoa is killing Iceland and Trinidad” and “Dammed Rivers=Damned Planet”. After a while a certain Wade Hughes came from the Alcoa office to have a chat with the group. Wade Hughes has been on our Hall of Shame for a long time, shown shmoozing with Siv Fridleifsdottir, the politician who audaciously decided to overturn Iceland’s National Planning Agency ruling that the Alcoa Reydarfjordur plant was illegal. Mr. Hughes is an ex-Greenpeace activist and he cares so much for whales. One can only assume that he is one of the reasons why Greenpeace (corp.) has maintained an indifferent position to the heavy industrialisation of Iceland. After 30 minutes of chatting in the street, Mr. Hughes offers 3 of the activists to come up into the corporate conference room for a discussion that lasted 2 hours. here was a few of the many things that were discussed that made them look like idiot’s:
1)activist: so, how do you feel about the reindeer, pink footed geese and other bird species that breed here?
Hughes: they will find somewhere else!
2)activist:so, what are your plans for greenland.
Hughes:we will be there within 2 years. we have been well accepted by the people there!
3)activist: so, you have a hard time building these smelters and dams in the USA cause of tight regulations, so you are moving to places where you can?
Hughes: no, thats not true, we are moving to these places for(you ready for this)CHEAP ENERGY!(straight out of his own mouth!)
4)hughes:Karahnjukar is not in the highlands!!
Before the 2 parties parted, wade was told this fight will go on and on and on.

(man in white shirt in pic is Wade.)

In India, a small victory was made when the Supreme Court allowed its Central Empowered Committee (CEC) on forestry issues input into a survey on the impacts of bauxite mining on tribal peoples and the ecology on the Nyamgiri Hills. Three years ago the CEC condemned British mining company Vedanta for plans to mine the Nyamgiri Hills in Orissa for bauxite and for violating numerous forest protection laws in constructing its Lanjigarh smelter, which is now almost complete yet still completely illegal, much like ALCOA’s Reydarfjordur smelter whose failed Environmental Assessment Report and court condemnation were brushed aside by the government. The Ministry of the Environment and Forest (MoEF) had sought to do way with the CEC: can you spot a common theme of all the supposed ‘Ministries for Environment’ involved in the GDOA? More info on the Nyamgiri situation can be found here

In Australia, residents in the West have acquired the support of US Attorney Erin Brockovitch in a legal battle against Alcoa. The corporation intends to double the output of its operations in the region whilst residents of the nearby town Yarloop are demanding that Alcoa relocate them. They claim that they are “living in a toxic bubble” and that their health has dramatically suffered due to ALCOA’s work.

A global movement against heavy industry is becoming! We leave you with the words of Attillah from Trinidad, writing one year ago today after the critical Battle of Foodcrop Road.

“This is only the beginning of the struggle. We stand firm with the communities as they continue to agitate for change in Trinidad and Tobago. Change in how the government treats the people. Change in how we treat with our natural resources. Change in how we relate to the environment.

It’s an uphill struggle but a few of us are committed to it and we continue to believe that we are not putting our asses on the line in vain.

Translations of the above text in Spanish, Italian and German are available in the language sections to the left.

Related Websites:

Iceland – SavingIceland.org
fighting plans for pristine wilderness to be destroyed by mega-hydro and geothermal energy for the aluminium industry (ALCOA, ALCAN, Century, Hydro, Rusal).

Trinidad – Rights Action Group
fighting the islands most rural and wild peninsula from being invaded by two gas powered aluminium smelters (Alcoa, Alutrint)

South Africa – Alcan’t at Coega and Earthlife Africa
fighting away a coal and nuclear powered aluminium smelter (ALCAN) that will consume as much electricity as half of Cape Town, whilst 30% of the countries population have none at all.

India – Alcan’t in India
this campaign has recently managed to fight away Alcan but is now confronted by mining corporation Vedanta taking Alcan’s shoes, destroying the natural habitat of India’s indiginouse population of Orissa

Brasil – Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens – Brasil or Movement of Dam Affected People – Brasil
Huge dams are being built all over Brasil and the Amazon rainforest. Not only is the amount of greenhouse gasses released from these far greater than the equivalent amount of energy produced by a coal fire plant, but massive amounts of people are being displaced. Most of the energy is being used for heavy industry, including ALCOA.

Australia – Community Alliance for Positive Solutions INC.
currently suing Alcoa with US attorney Erin Brockovitch due to the devastating affects on the health of residents around its mega smelter in the east of the country.

The plan for this international day of action was borne the Saving Iceland conference in Olfus, Iceland, on 8 July 2007.

River water contains sediment in suspension and various substances in solution; glacial rivers, especially, carry a large amount of sediment which increases as the atmosphere grows warmer.

Rivers of Life

Glacial rivers carry the sediment out to sea, where it takes on a new and important role in binding the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) with calcium (Ca) and converting it into calcite and other carbonate minerals, immensely important in the ocean ecosystems of the world. Thus glacial rivers reduce pollution on Earth. This effect is greatest in recently formed volcanic territory such as Iceland, and the binding effect increases with rising atmospheric temperature.

Glacial rivers bind this gas which, along with some other gases, causes global warming and threatens the future of life of Earth.

When a glacial river is harnessed to generate electricity, this important function, and the binding of the greenhouse gas CO2, is diminished. What they generate is not GREEN ENERGY, as the advocates of hydro-power plants and heavy industry maintain, but BLACK ENERGY.

Dams and reservoirs hinder the function of glacial sediment in the oceans, and hence hydro-electric power plants that harness glacial rivers are far more harmful than has hitherto been believed.

In addition, it is probable that the reduced volume of sediment and the disruption of the flow of the rivers will affect the population of diatoms and calcareous algae. This could lead to falling catches of fish off Iceland’s coast, fewer jobs in the fishing industry, and lower export revenues.

It would make sense to prohibit the harnessing of any glacial rivers, and other rivers carrying large amounts of sediment, anywhere in the world, for it is in the interests of all Earth dwellers that they should continue to function – just as the preservation of Amazonian rain forest is in all our interests.

When advocates of hydro-electric power and heavy industry boast of the pure power yielded by Icelandic rivers for aluminium production, they are deceiving themselves, and deceiving the people of Iceland. Damage from hydro-power plants in Iceland with their dams and reservoirs has already resulted in destruction of geological diversity as well as the diversity of life, and ecosystems. They are not only destroyers of beautiful life and landscape, they are contributing to the greenhouse effect.

Glacial rivers are the lifeblood of the Earth, and create resources at land and sea in many ways – they are the lifeblood of the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, and of all mankind.

That is how all glacial rivers are already utilised – utilised for life, and for the future.

Gudmundur Páll Ólafsson
Natural scientist
3 January 2006

See also:

The whole article ‘Role of river-suspended material in the global carbon cycle’ is here in pdf

‘Hydropower Disaster for Global Warming’ by Jaap Krater

Hydroelectric Power’s Dirty Secret Revealed – New Scientist

‘Kárahnjúkavirkjun, sýnd veiði en ekki gefin’ eftir Grím Björnsson jarðeðlisfræðing

Virkjanir í jökulám óhagstæðar fyrir loftslagsvernd, eftir Hjörleif Guttormsson
– Enn ein falsrökin fyrir Kárahnjúkavirkjun hrakin

‘Stóra samhengið’ eftir Guðmund Pál Ólafsson náttúrufræðing – Virkjanaæði stjórnvalda stefnir fiskimiðum landsins í voða

Jaap Krater
Earth First Journal
3 August, 2007

Summer of Resistance in Iceland – an overview

This year, Iceland saw its third Summer of direct action against heavy industry and large dams. In a much-disputed master plan, all the glacial rivers and geothermal potential of Europe’s largest wilderness would be harnessed for aluminum production (see EF!J May-June 2006). Activists from around the world have gathered to protect Europe’s largest remaining wilderness and oppose aluminum corporations.

Icelanders were joined by activists from Africa, South and North America, and Europe for an international conference entitled, “Global Consequences of Heavy Industry and Large Dams.” Organized by Saving Iceland, the conference looked at the effects of large dams on ecosystems, climate and communities. It also focused on the role of aluminum in the arms industry and on the green-washing strategies of large corporations. Activists recognized the remarkable similarities in manipulative and ecologically destructive corporate strategies between their different countries and continents. The next activist conference will be in Trinidad and Tobago, where local communities oppose an Alcoa aluminum smelter (see EF!J January-February 2007). Other campaigns that were presented included Brazil’s Movement of Dam-Affected People and India’s Save the Narmada Movement.

Reclaiming Reykjavik

The resistance against heavy industry and large dams in Iceland has heated up—and not just because of global warming. Activists set up camp about 10 miles north of Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, and built a dam in front of the prime minister’s office. Reverend Billy, of the Church of Stop Shopping, held a sermon in Reykjavik’s largest mall, connecting heavy industry to consumerism. A public meeting was held with the people of Thorlakshöfn (the site for two planned aluminum smelters) and activists from anti-heavy-industry struggles in South Africa and Trinidad.

On July 14, Bastille Day, about 100 people danced all over Reykjavik’s ring road in a carnival against heavy industry. Iceland’s first Reclaim the Streets action began cheerfully as a clown army danced to music into the city center. This Rave Against the Machine was organized by Saving Iceland to “reclaim our public areas and make it a space to be free to dance, free from dreary industrial car culture and free to throw a festival in opposition to the grim industrialization plans for Iceland.”

When the rave reached Reykjavik’s town center, police blocked the road and a stand-off ensued. After an hour, police attacked the raving protesters. The filth was all too happy to use all the techniques they learned from training with American SWAT teams, such as foot-cuffing. YouTube removed videos of police brutality without explanation, possibly at the request of the Icelandic government.

Direct Action

On July 18, Saving Iceland closed the supply road to Century Aluminum’s Grundartangi smelter and the Icelandic Alloys steel factory. Two days later, Saving Iceland invaded Reykjavik Energy and raised a huge banner accusing the electricity company of supplying energy to war-mongering corporations Rio Tinto Alcan and Century/RUSAL. Two days after that, another banner was dropped over Reykjavik’s City Council, which owns Reykjavik Energy.

Then, on July 20, the Icelandic consulate in Edinburgh, Scotland, was painted red under the slogan “Iceland Bleeds,” and locks were glued.

Not even a week later, on July 24, Saving Iceland blocked the gates of Rio Tinto Alcan’s Straumsvik smelter in Hafnarfjordur. Previous protests against Alcan have been successful. Recently, in Kashipur, India, Alcan had to give up its participation in a bauxite mine because of protests against its human rights violations and environmental devastation. Alcan has been accused of cultural genocide in Kashipur because mining and dams have already displaced 150,000 mainly tribal people there.

In Iceland, the people of Hafnarfjordur have stopped the expansion of the Straumsvik smelter with a referendum, but the mayor of Hafnarfjordur and representatives from Alcan are hinting at expanding the smelter anyway. They say that the referendum only applied to a certain spot by the existing factory and that it could not stop the smelter expansion being built on a landfill on the other side of the factory. Locals continue to protest these plans and dropped banners stating “No Means No” and “Nietzsche Killed God, Ludvik [the Mayor] Killed Democracy.”

On July 26, Saving Iceland invaded Reykjavik Energy’s construction site for expansion of the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant in Hengill. People locked themselves onto machinery, climbed a giant crane and blockaded the entrance roads. The action must have been successful, since Reykjavik Energy has announced its intention to sue the protesters for losses caused by stopped work on the site.

Finally, the Earth Liberation Front struck Rio Tinto in England, in solidarity. “In the early hours of July 30, saboteurs struck at Smurfit Kappa, a plastics factory owned by Rio Tinto Alcan in Chelmsford, Essex. The gates were locked shut, office doors and loading bays were sabotaged with glue, and a message was painted on the wall. Vehicles belonging to Rio Tinto were also sabotaged,” read the ELF’s statement.

Myths About Geothermal Power

“The goal of enlarging the Hellisheidi power plant is to meet industries’ demands for energy,” states the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). The energy is needed particularly for the Century expansion at Grundartangi and possible new Alcan and Century plants. The current Icelandic government says it opposes more smelters, but the Hellisheidi power plant is still being expanded. Once the expansion is completed, this will force Iceland to build more smelters, because the electricity needs to be sold to get the money from investments back. In the meantime, farmers pay twice as much for electricity as Century does.

Even without the smelters, the Hellesheidi and other geothermal power plants are not as green as Reykjavik Energy suggests. Hot and toxic waste water is disposed of by pumping it back into the borehole, commonly increasing the frequency of earthquakes in this very active fault zone or by pumping it untreated into streams and lakes, wiping out valuable ecosystems because treatment is considered too expensive. The northern end of Lake Thingvallavatn, which is near Hengill, is already biologically dead in parts due to wastewater pumping and must be protected from more damage.

In addition, extraction of underground fluids leads to changes in groundwater movements, commonly including the drying of unique hot springs and geysers and pollution of pure subsurface spring water.
Smelter Expansion

Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan, Norsk Hydro and Century/RUSAL are all scheming for new smelters in Iceland. Century Aluminum wants to build a second smelter, this time in Helguvik, with a projected capacity of at least 276,000 tons per year. The planned site is designed to accommodate further expansion. An EIA for the Helguvik smelter is currently under review by the aluminum industry’s foremost construction engineers.

It is absurd that an engineering company with a vested interest in the smelter’s construction could be considered to produce an objective EIA. The document makes idiotic claims, such as stating that air pollution is really not a problem because Helguvik is such a windy place that the pollution will just blow away.

This smelter will demand four new geothermal power plants on the Reykjanes peninsula (south of Reykjavik), as well as in the Hengill area, which has already been seriously damaged by the Hellisheidi plant. The EIA does not take these places into account, nor does it consider the impact of the huge number of power lines and pylons required. Also, the smelter’s required energy exceeds the natural capacity of the geothermal spots, which will cool down anyway in three or four decades. Century admits it wants the site to expand further in the coming decades. So, it is obvious that this smelter will not just ruin Reykjanes, but also need additional hydropower.

Expansion of Icelandic alloy and aluminum smelters considerably contributes to Iceland’s greenhouse gas emissions. If there are no further expansions of heavy industry beyond Grundartangi and Alcoa’s Fjardaal (a new smelter in the east), Iceland will emit 38 percent more greenhouse gases than in 1990. If other expansion plans continue, levels would rise to an incredible 63 percent above 1990 levels.

“This shows that all the talk about ‘green energy’ from hydro and geothermal sources is, in reality, a lie. Icelanders have to rise up against these transnational corporations,” says Saving Iceland.

Aluminum Equals War

One effect of this year’s actions has been to expose the dubious role of aluminum companies in the arms industry. Much of the aluminum produced goes directly to the war efforts of the US, Russia and elsewhere. Aluminum is the single most important bulk metal for modern warfare: It makes missiles, tanks, fighter planes and nuclear weapons.

“It’s as if Iceland is organizing a competition between Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan and Century/RUSAL—whichever has committed the most human rights and environmental crimes gets Iceland’s energy,” says Saving Iceland.

Alcoa’s links to the US military-industrial complex is well known. But until now, Century and Alcan have managed to stay out of the picture. Century is a subsidiary of Glencore, which is notorious for shady deals with apartheid South Africa, the Soviet Union, Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Glencore has merged with RUSAL, making the largest aluminum company in the world. RUSAL, the main aluminum supplier of the Russian military, contributes directly to the war in Chechnya, where at least 35,000 civilians have been killed with bombs and missiles made of aluminum. Glencore is also known to have recently massacred Wayúu people and local farmers in Colombia for mine expansion.

Rio Tinto Alcan’s aluminum alloys are sold for a whole range of military purposes. Alcan is the main supplier for the European Aeronautic Defense and Space company (EADS), producer of helicopters, jets and satellites. EADS is the world’s leading producer of missiles. Alcan also supplies to international arms manufacturers like Boeing in the US and Dassault in France.

Colonizing Africa

Rio Tinto Alcan recently signed a letter of intent with the government of Cameroon to expand its existing Alucam smelter to 165,000 tons per year and to build a new 165,000-ton-per-year smelter. The Lom Pangar Dam, to be constructed by the government, would provide power for this. Alcan has a large number of projects planned in Africa. Its Greenfield Project Pipeline will run through Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar and South Africa. “Greenfield” means that untouched nature will be destroyed for the planned smelters and the dams that would power them, as well as mines and infrastructure.

Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949 and 1986. Now, it wants to come back and develop a new smelter in the almost tax-free Coega Development Zone near Port Elizabeth. This would be powered by coal and nuclear energy delivered by Eskom, one of the world’s largest electricity companies. “Thirty percent of the poor communities of South Africa don’t have electricity, and now it will all be going straight to Alcan,” says Lerato Maregele, a South African activist.

Eskom is a sister company of Iceland’s national power company Landsvirkjun. Landsvirkjun can be expected to try to sell its expertise to Eskom’s various hydroprojects in Mozambique, Uganda and the Congo. It wants to have a role in damming the Congo River, a project twice the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam. This dam would have a devastating effect on the central African rainforest. In the meantime, Alcoa is planning seven new dams in the Amazon rainforest to power aluminum smelters.

Kick Them Out!

Aluminum corporations are posing a massive threat to wildlife, wilderness and people around the world. In Iceland, people have seen the destruction wrought by the Karahnjukar dam and are increasingly hesitant about bringing more heavy industry into the country. Stopping Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan and Century/RUSAL in Iceland will be a major slap in their faces, and it is definitely possible to win the struggle in Iceland if Icelanders continue to receive international support and solidarity. More and more, a global network against heavy industry is forming. Kicking these companies out of Iceland can be a first step in kicking the evil bastards off the planet.

Jaap Krater is a green anarchist writer and edits the Dutch quarterly Out of Order. He has been involved with Earth First! in the Netherlands and Britain since the mid-’90s, as well as the recent campaign against heavy industry in Iceland.

This article appeared first in Earth First Journal

Dutch translation of the article

See also articles on IndyMedia.org for more about the Icelandic Summer of Dissent 2007 with plenty of useful links:

Summer of Dissent in Iceland

Week of Direct Action in Iceland as Arms-Connections of Aluminium Industry get Exposed

In the 2007 Saving Iceland protest camp, people from five continents explored the similarities between their fights against common enemies, in particular the aluminium industry, and were empowered by the enormous strength of the global movement they were creating. From there, this global day of action was decided upon.

We call on activists from all over the world to join in with creating a locally based yet global movement for planet and people that kicks heavy industrial corporate greed off this earth!

Actions are already being planned in Iceland, Trinidad, USA, UK, South Africa and possibly other countries. Please join us on the 12th and show these companies that we will not tolerate their exploitation of the planet.

We will facilitate you in publicizing your protest and giving advice, if you need it. Lots of European targets can be found here with and update here. Also see Saving Iceland’s Nature Killers section for more ideas. Even one person with a banner outside a relevant embassy will make a difference, though bigger actions will be happening.

Related Websites:

Iceland – SavingIceland.org
fighting plans for pristine wilderness to be destroyed by mega-hydro and geothermal energy for the aluminium industry (ALCOA, ALCAN, Century, Hydro, Rusal).

Trinidad – Rights Action Group
fighting the islands most rural and wild peninsula from being invaded by two gas powered aluminium smelters (Alcoa, Alutrint)

South Africa – Alcan’t at Coega and Earthlife Africa
fighting away a coal and nuclear powered aluminium smelter (ALCAN) that will consume as much electricity as half of Cape Town, whilst 30% of the countries population have none at all.

India – Alcan’t in India
this campaign has recently managed to fight away Alcan but is now confronted by mining corporation Vedanta taking Alcan’s shoes, destroying the natural habitat of India’s indiginouse population of Orissa

Brasil – Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens – Brasil or Movement of Dam Affected People – Brasil
Huge dams are being built all over Brasil and the Amazon rainforest. Not only is the amount of greenhouse gasses released from these far greater than the equivalent amount of energy produced by a coal fire plant, but massive amounts of people are being displaced. Most of the energy is being used for heavy industry, including ALCOA.

Australia – Community Alliance for Positive Solutions INC.
currently suing Alcoa with US attorney Erin Brockovitch due to the devastating affects on the health of residents around its mega smelter in the east of the country.

The concept for this international day of action was borne at this circle: Olfus, Iceland, 8 July 2007

Large dams have dramatic consequences. Ecosystems are destroyed and numerous people are made homeless, often without adequate resettlement. But it is yet little known that large-scale hydro-electricity is a major contributor to global warming. The reservoirs could, despite their clean image, be even more devastating for our climate than fossil fuel plants.

A few years ago, I spent a month in the valley of the Narmada River, to support tribal activists who have been resisting the Sardar Sarovar dam in central India for decades. These indigenous inhabitants, or adivasis, are desperate. In their struggle, inspired by Gandhi, they attempt to drown themselves when their villages are flooded. Death seems preferable to being forced to move from their valley to tin houses on infertile, barren soil. If they’re lucky, they can live on land that nobody else wants, the only available in the densely populated India. This forced resettlement, made necessary by ´progress´, is not unsimilar to what befell American Indians or the Aborigines in Australia. The consequences of mega hydro: cultures die and alcoholism, depression and violence remains.

Another dramatic example is the uprooting of the Chakma in Bangladesh by the Kaptai dam. 40,000 Chakma fled to India, but were not given a legal status. Ensuing violent conflicts around land have led to a brutal end of 10,000 lives.

Mega hydro has an atrocious record. The World Commission on Dams (WCD), consisting of experts, opposition and industry, was installed to produce an independent review of large dams. The WCD estimated in 2000 that 40 to 80 million people have been displaced worldwide. A more recent report by the University of Yale estimates that in India alone, large dams have forced 21 to 40 million people to move. The majority was built for irrigation, but the irrigated agricultural acreage increased by a mere 1%. The World Bank states that more than half of the large hydro projects do not meet their economic targets. Considerable cost overruns are common and have added a considerable burden to the national debt of several developing countries, particularly in South America.

The ecological consequences of large dams are also grim. They include significant and irreversible loss of species, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The massive alteration of major river systems has led to more than a third of the species of sweet water fish to be extinct or endangered.
This can also have economic consequences. Damming the Columbia in the western US resulted in the American government spending 435 million dollar yearly since 1996 on measures to mitigate the impact on fishing in the Colombia basin. Despite the expense, many of the wild salmon species are extinct, or on the brink of extinction.

Despite the social and environmental devastation, large dams can still count on sympathy. After all, they are thought to provide clean energy and thus a weapon in the battle against climate change. But more and more evidence is emerging that suggests something completely different.
When a reservoir fills and land is drowned, the original vegetation starts to rot. The methane that is formed, escapes when the water bursts forth from turbines under pressure. The changing water level due to seasonal variation ensures a continual supply of rotting organic matter. A dam reservoir is, especially in the tropics, like a big engine converting atmospheric carbon into methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.
The emission of this gas from dam heads has not been modelled until recently. The National Institute for Research in the Amazon has surveyed major dams in Brazil and reports that, thanks to this methane engine, mega hydro emits 3 to 54 times more carbon dioxide-equivalent in greenhouse gases per megawatt than modern gas power stations.

Ironically, climate change itself decreases the effectiveness of hydro-electricity. Many hydro-dependent countries, including Tanzania, Albania, Brazil, Ghana, Norway, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Vietnam have suffered serious power shortages due to droughts.

Large dams also affect the climate indirectly. Brazil wants to build three new dams in the Amazon basin to supply electricity to the aluminium industry. Aluminium contributes heavily to climate change, due to emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide and perfluorocarbons: potent, extremely persistent greenhouse agents, released in the electrolytic processing of bauxite. Iceland is building the 190 meter high Karahnukar damn for the American aluminium giant ALCOA: the first in a series, that, when completed, will flood the largest pristine wilderness in Europe.
Iceland has a comfortable amount of yet unspent carbon credits. But Icelandic aluminium smelters will far exceed the 1,600,000 tonnes of emissions permitted under the Kyoto Convention if all of the planned smelter projects materialise.
Like the Sardar Sarovar dam in India, Karahnjukar in Iceland and the industrialisation program are fiercely contested. But the governments of these countries and others still regard mega hydro as a symbol of ingenuity, progress and a matter of national pride. But now that it is becoming evident that hydropower contributes to global warming, it is in all our interest to express to these governments that there are no excuses left for the devastation wrought by large dams.

Published in the newspaper Trouw (Netherlands), 21-1-2007.

Original (in Dutch):

• Trouw (paid access only)
• Or from groenfront.nl

See also:

• ‘Role of river-suspended material in the global carbon cycle’ is here in pdf
• ‘Glacial Rivers Reduce Pollution on Earth’ by Gudmundur Pall Olafsson
• Hydroelectric Power’s Dirty Secret Revealed – New Scientist
• ‘Kárahnjúkavirkjun, sýnd veiði en ekki gefin’ eftir Grím Björnsson jarðeðlisfræðing
  – Skýrsla sem þingheimur mátti ekki sjá
• Virkjanir í jökulám óhagstæðar fyrir loftslagsvernd, eftir Hjörleif Guttormsson
  – Enn ein falsrökin fyrir Kárahnjúkavirkjun hrakin
• ‘Stóra samhengið’ eftir Guðmund Pál Ólafsson náttúrufræðing
  – Virkjanaæði stjórnvalda stefnir fiskimiðum landsins í voða

Click to enlarge

Updated July 5th

After three years of struggling against large dams and heavy industry, the Saving Iceland campaign will connect with struggles around the globe. The Saving Iceland Conference will be featuring speakers from South and North America, Africa, India and Europe, activists and scientists. Saving Iceland’s magazine Voice of the Wilderness (download pdf) introduces all the key issues and speakers, including for example Dr. Eric Duchemin (University of Montreal, consultant for the IPCC), Gudbergur Bergsson (writer), Cirineu da Rocha (Dam-Affected People’s Movement, Brazil) and many others, and the conference program.

Ráðstefna „Saving Iceland“ 2007 – Hnattrænar afleiðingar stóriðju og stórstíflna
Laugardaginn og sunnudaginn 7. og 8. júlí 2007
Hótel Hlíð, Ölfusi

Location of the conference
Hótel Hlíð, Krókur, Ölfus.
(Between Hveragerði and Thorlákshöfn.)

Press Contacts:
conference [at] savingiceland.org
/conference

Introduction
Around the world, heavy industry and large dams have displaced millions of people, mostly without any compensation. They have destroyed terrestrial and acquatic ecosystems, erased wildlife. They have polluted our air and water and are changing our climate beyond repair – in the name of progress.

Former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru put it this way: “If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country”, speaking to villagers who were to be displaced by the Hirakud Dam, 1948. Both the governments of India and Iceland still regard megahydro as a symbol of ingenuity, progress and a matter of national pride.
In Trinidad and Tobago, and in Iceland, the aluminium industry is looking for abundant sources of power, in a time of increasing energy insecurity.

But history has always shown undercurrents who would not conform to the prevailing views of progress. Many people resist being sacrificed for the sake of the country or the economy and many have resisted their land and wilderness being sacrificed.

The Saving Iceland 2007 Conference will broaden your perspective on the struggle against heavy industry.

Presiding the conference is the well known American preacher, humorist and social activist, Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Changeallujah!

“The protection of the Icelandic wilderness is very much connected to global issues such as climate and energy,” says Jaap Krater from the Netherlands, a member of Saving Iceland’s conference organizing collective.

“Our conference will look at the Icelandic struggle in this perspective, and will be a unique possibility for people from over a dozen countries all over the world to exchange experiences. We do not want more heavy industry or large dams, not in Iceland, and not anywhere in the third and first world alike. Together we are aiming to stop overdevelopment. We are promoting social justice and a life in harmony with the earth’s natural systems.”

Admission to the conference will be free, donations welcomed. There will be a creche available and free camping. There will be organic, vegetarian food available at cost price from a new Icelandic mobile action kitchen collective.

CONFERENCE PROGRAM
(provisional and subject to change)

SATURDAY JULY 7TH

Breakfast, coffee and tea will be served in the morning on the Saving Iceland campsite.

1100
Conference opening
Reverend Billy and Savitri (Church of Stop Shopping)

1130
Blue eyes in a pool of sharks
An innocent nation in retreat from responsibility
Gudbergur Bergsson

1200
Iceland under threat
Introduction to how Iceland is threatened by heavy industry.
Ómar Ragnarsson

1230
A Smelter in Trinidad?
People’s struggle against a new ALCAO and AluTrint smelter in Trinidad & Tobago.
Rights Action Group

1310
The history of civil disobedience and direct action
From the past to the future – how direct action can change the course of history.
Helen B (Road Alert, UK)

1340
Narmada Bachao Andolan
Most well-known people’s movement in India, fighting for adivasi (tribal) rights displaced by megadams.
(NBA)

1420
Lunch

1500
Powering Heavy Industry – From Kyoto to Peak Oil
Heavy industry developing strategies for the climate and energy crises.
Jaap Krater (Saving Iceland)

1530
The effects of large dams on climate
A presentation on the output of greenhouse gases of hydroelectric reservoirs.
Dr. Eric Duchemin (University of Québec)

1630
A green or grey future? Differing visions of progress.
Panel discussion featuring activists from Iceland and around the globe

1730
Saving Iceland press conference

1800
Ends

Evening
Organic vegetarian supper

SUNDAY JULY 8TH

Breakfast, coffee and tea will be served in the morning on the Saving Iceland campsite.

1100
The largest wilderness in Europe
Threatened wildlife and geology in Iceland
Einar Thorleifson (Natturuvaktin / Naturewatch; Icelandic Society for Protection of Birds)

1140
Strategies to save Iceland
Discussion from the grassroots for the struggle against heavy industry in Iceland.

1240
Struggle in Kashipur
The fight against UTKAL/ALCAN in East India.
Samarendra Das

1320
Struggle in South Africa
Experiences of the fight against ALCAN in South Africa.
Earthlife South Africa

1400
Lunch

1440
In the Shadow of Power
Abuse of power as a rural fishing community is turned into a corporate heavy industry zone.
Gudmundur Beck (Farmer displaced by the ALCOA project in eastern Iceland)

1520
Damning the Amazon
Aluminium threatening the Amazon basin and it’s people.
Movement of Dam-Affected People

1600
How heavy industry is connected to the big picture of ‘civilization’
What will it take for us to stop the horrors that characterize our way of being?
Video-conference with green anarchist author Derrick Jensen in the US.

1640
Momentum against the megamachine
Sharing experiences of people’s movements against heavy industry, large dams, the anti-roads movement and globalisation.
Discussion of how to bring the global movement for ecolocical harmony and justice and against overdevelopment forward.

International panel featuring members of the 2007 mobilisation against the G8, Road Alert UK, anti-aluminium activists from around the globe, and audience discussion.

1740
Closure and declaration
Reverend Billy and Savitri

1800
Ends

Evening
Organic vegetarian supper
Music by Captain Tobias Hume

Speakers at the Saving Iceland Conference

At the conference, there will be speakers from Icelandic Naturewatch, the Icelandic Society for the Protection of Birds, Futureland, Saving Iceland and local Icelandic grassroots groups. In addition, the following international speakers will be attending the Saving Iceland Conference.

– Cirineu da Rocha for the Dam-Affected People’s Movement from the Amazon basin in Brazil, where ALCOA wants to build a number of dams.

– Dr. Eric Duchemin, adjunct professor at the University of Québec at Montréal Canada and research director of DREXenvironnement, has been a leading author for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and will be talking on the effect of large dams on climate.

– Lerato Maria Maregele is involved in the struggle to stop a new ALCAN smelter in South Africa.

– Kailash Awasya, involved with the Save the Narmada Movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan), the most well known South-Asian social movement, fighting against large dams and for tribal rights in India’s Narmada River Valley and beyond.

– Helen B will join us from the UK. She has been heavily involved with the succesful British anti-roads movement. She will give an overview of the fascinating history of direct action.

– Attilah Springer, Rights Action Group, is fighting a new ALCOA smelter in Trinidad & Tobago.

– Till Seidensticker has been involved and will be talking about the recent mobilization against the the G8 in Germany.

– Jaap Krater, is involved in GroenFront! – Dutch Earth First!, a high-profile direct action movement in the Netherlands. He will be talking on the response of the aluminium industry to peak oil, the looming energy crisis and climate change.

Kringlan Shopping Mall protest, Laugavegur march, Parlaiment lawn speeches and Iceland’s Prime Minister has his office dammed! All in one day!

Kringlan Shopping Mall
Over 50 people from 5 different continents started the day at Kringlan Shopping Mall, Reykjavik, to protest against the consumer culture that demands new aluminium factories. Reverend Billy, from the Church of Stop Shopping, and his new deciple Reverend Snorri, lead a flock of devoted and extreemly noisy earth lovers (also known as Saving Iceland activists) through the consumerist hell that is a the shopping mall.

“The foreign corporations who want to dam Icelands great rivers, and put polluting smelters on our shores – they want us to keep shopping.

“The Aluminium industry makes most of its money from warplanes, tanks and missiles (30%, actually.) They propose the complete damming of Icelands wilderness rivers, this isnald’s famouse beauty buried under industrial reservoirs. Let us stop the war machine and the ruin of Iceland’s wilderness. The same corporations that keep us shopping, mnake war around the world. Isn’t a shopping mall like a ‘human’ dam? We re stopped, hypnotized, put in debt. Our energy is taken from us. Save the country and save ourselves…”

Laugavegur
Next, activists held a spontaneous demonstration through Laugavegur, Iceland’s mai n shopping street.

Alþingi
On the lawn outside the Alþingi, the Icelandic Parlaiment, people gathered together to speak out against the aluminium industry. People from Trinidad, who are winning a fight against Alcoa, from South Africa, who are fighting a nuclear powered Alcan plant, from the East of Iceland, who have been devastated by the recent Alcoa Reydarfjordur factory and Karahnjukar dams, from Brasil, who is fighting the damming of the Amazon for aluminium factory energy, and many more gave inspiring speeches and lead energy filled songs against the aluminium industry.

Prime Minister’s Office
Street theatre activists then set up an aluminium smelter, installed some tomb stones and handed out dirty Icelandic water (Iceland prides itself on its pure water, yet it is polluting and destroying its water for the sake of heavy industry dams).

MBL.is news report:
hér

Visir.is report:
hér

RUV.is report:
hér

Although mining operations are only scheduled to begin in 2008, during public hearings held on May 2nd and 3rd, the community claims that it is already suffering impacts from construction of lodgings for employees of the multinational, a port and a road.

Moraes said, “the impacts are so obvious that Alcoa has not denied any of them. Alcoa said it was correcting the problems and recognized that it does not enjoy good relations with the community”. Moraes, however, stated that the problems run deep and will not be set straight with just repairs.Impacts One of the main complaints raised at the hearings is contamination of the waters in rivers that flow through the town.

Technical studies detected the presence of feces coliforms in Jará Lake, which supplies water to the municipality, and data from the municipal health department show that cases of viral hepatitis, caused by ingesting water contaminated by human feces, jumped from 26 in 2006 to 121 in the first four months of this year. The community accuses Alcoa of not performing proper treatment on sewage from the lodging of its employees. Moreover, Incra representatives present at the meetings presented pictures and other documents that prove that the company is conducting deforestation in areas not authorized inside the Juruti Velho and Socó Agro-extractivist Settlement Projects.

Another complaint is the increased expenses of public agencies, which are faced with increased demands for health, education and infrastructure. “If, after the review is conducted, Alcoa can act correctly, alright, otherwise it would be best for them to leave, as we do not need to bear these costs. It is unfair that they keep the riches produced here and we keep the burdens”, says Moraes.

The prosecutor believes that the population has shown its lack of trust in the company and accuses the multinational of trying to upset the hearings. “They tried to co-opt leaders, offering 10 jobs to each community”.

License

The preliminary license for installation of the Alcoa plant was granted by the State Environmental Council (Coema) in 2005. At the time, the representative of the State Public Prosecutors Office (MPE) voted against the authorization. Soon afterward, the agency, together with the Federal Public Prosecutors Office (MPF), filed a class action suit petitioning for the suspension of the company’s activities in the region.

The hearings this week were attended by the coordinator of the MPE Environmental Center, Prosecutor Raimundo Moraes and Federal Attorney Daniel César Azeredo Avelino, who commands the (Federal Public Prosecutors Office (MPF) in Santarém. Members from both agencies also visited the affected locations.

By Renata Gaspar
Link: http://www.amazonia.org.br

Brazil’s burgeoning energy needs have led its government to construct several large-scale hydroelectric plants, such as the $400 million, 695 megawatt, Barra Grande Dam on the Pelotas River in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. A consortium called Barra Grande Energetica S/A (or BAESA), which includes the US aluminum giant ALCOA, is building the dam. The participation of ALCOA in this project is not surprising given that the aluminum industry is the world’s largest industrial consumer of electrical energy, using about 1% of all the electrical energy generated globally, and about 7% of world industrial consumption. In the case of Brazil, the aluminum industry accounts for roughly 8% of the country’s total electricity use.

Only after 80% of the Barra Grande Dam had been built was it discovered that the original Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was fraudulent. According to this initial EIA, the 92,000 sq km of land that was to be flooded consisted basically of degraded land “without significant environmental value”. However, as a result of pressure put on it by environmental groups, BAESA conducted a second EIA that discovered that roughly 50% of the land to be flooded was actually primary Atlantic Coastal forest (Mata Atlântica) or secondary forest in recovery. Included in this area were swaths of the native pine tree Araucária, which is a protected species in the country. According to experts, only 1% of Brazil’s original Araucária forest survives today. Conservation International lists the Brazilian Atlantic Forest where the Barra Grande dam is located, as one of its 34 global “biodiversity hotspots. Once covering an estimated 1.2 million square kilometers, today less than 10% of the Mata Atlântica remains intact.

Nonetheless, the case was made by BAESA that since the original EIA was done prior to the consortium assuming control of the project, it should not be held accountable for the erroneous report. Furthermore, given the advanced stage of construction of the dam, BAESA argued that the only option that made sense was for the project to go forward.

After numerous legal injunctions, on July 4th, 2005 BAESA was given the go-ahead by the courts to proceed. The decision was based on the fact that most of the work had already been concluded, and that not finishing the project would result in financial losses for the consortium. Shortly thereafter, the buzz of chainsaws signaled that the demise of the forest had begun. “With this act, IBAMA (the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) has blessed the extinction of a large part of the Coastal Forest ecosystem and its Araucárias trees,” lamented Miriam Pronchow, Greengrants Advisor and Director of APREMAVI.

Environmental Response
One organization that has responded to the impacts of Barra Grande is the Movement of Dam-Affected People (MAB). MAB was created in the 1980s, uniting struggles in various regions of Brazil. It is the best organized movement of dam–affected people in the world. MAB is demanding that the government halt subsidies to energy-intensive industries, such as aluminum production, and instead provide electricity to rural communities. At the same time, MAB defends the rights of dam–affected populations; demanding fair compensation for their losses and a role in the resettlement process so that it actually improves the quality of life of those relocated.

The need for MAB is great, as the promises of assistance that the Brazilian government has made to families forced to relocate have not always been honored. According to the International River Network, more than one million people have been displaced by the construction of dams in Brazil and at least 30,000 families affected by dams constructed 20 years ago are still awaiting compensation.

MAB used a $5,000 grant from Global Greengrants to give voice to the 1,200 families being forced to relocate as a result of the Barra Grande dam. Through the organization of numerous community meetings and boisterous protest marches, MAB helped the local communities carve out a role in the decision making process. In addition, MAB funded a public media campaign to denounce the fraudulent EIA that led to the approval of the project.

While the attempt to prevent the completion of the dam itself was not successful, MAB certainly did have a positive impact not only on the families impacted by the project, but also in publicizing the nature of the fraud that took place. Ideally, this will sensitize other environmental groups both in Brazil and abroad about the need to demand a review of EIAs to ensure their integrity prior to projects being started.

As a result of its negotiations with MAB, BAESA set up a fund of six million reais (approximately $2.5 million) for agriculture and credit programs that the displaced families could tap into as they attempt to restart their lives. This fund would also finance a pilot project for one of the affected communities to create a regional development plan as well as provide technical assistance for the all of the communities impacted by the dam. MAB was able to get an additional 214 families included in the relocation process, as well as material for the construction of 400 houses.

In addition to these concessions from BAESA, MAB successfully negotiated additional resources and support from the Brazilian government. The government agreed to provide electricity for 600 resettled families (an ironic concession given that the families were relocated to build a hydro-electric dam), basic foodstuffs for 1,400 families as well as technical assistance for the building of 400 houses. MAB requested and received an audience with the Minister of Mines and Energy and with the Chief of Staff of the President to voice the concerns of the families affected by the dam.

The second grantee active in the fight against the Barra Grande project was APREMAVI (Associação de Preservação do Meio Ambiente do Alto Vale do Itajaí). With the help of a grant of $1,000 from Global Greengrants, APREMAVI was able to publish and distribute a book titled Barra Grande – The Hydroelectric Dam that Ignored the Forest about the environmental impacts of the project. The book was a collaborative effort by 12 authors who approached the problem from a variety of legal, social, environmental and economic viewpoints. APREMAVI also enlisted legal support to stop the deforestation associated with the project and carried out its own campaign to mobilize the public against the completion of the project. APREMAVI was active in organizing additional support for the activities of MAB and indirectly contributed to the successes of this group’s campaign as well.

Recently celebrating its 18th anniversary, APREMAVI is an association of non-governmental organizations, who jointly see their mission as “defending, preserving and restoring the endangered Atlantic Forest and surrounding cultural values as a means to improve the quality of life for those that live in the region.” APREMAVI’s activities cover a wide range of topics from the replanting of trees in previously deforested areas and the management of seed banks for native species, to the production of environmental videos and training materials on a variety of related topics.

Both APREMAVI and MAB are committed to making sure that the agreements reached with both BAESA and the government will be honored. However much remains to be done. In the words of one of MAB’s organizers:

“Unfortunately in our country, social concerns and the environment are pushed aside because of our “development needs”…..However, what kind of development forces families to leave their homes…and which doesn’t take into account the need to protect the environment. … These are questions that aren’t asked in our country and we need to fight to change that. …. It is our challenge… and it isn’t easy….”

Yet, no studies of the cumulative impacts of these and 13 other proposed large dams have been carried out. Indications are that these dams will destroy thousands of square kilometers of natural ecosystems along the river systems, and further spread poverty throughout the eastern Amazon.

Tell Alcoa to scrap plans for Amazon dams! Send a FREE FAX to Alcoa CEO Alain Belda, http://www.corpwatch.org/action/PAA.jsp?…

or first read more about the issue on the International Rivers Network website:
 http://www.irn.org/programs/latamerica/i…

16 March 2007

Last night “Earth First!” closed Alcoa’s headquarters in Drunen, the Netherlands. Alcoa’s largest Dutch factory in Kerkrade was also shut. Entrance gates were locked with chains. The gates’ locks themselves were sabotaged with a liquid.

Alcoa is constructing new aluminum smelters in Iceland. Alcoa also plans to build new smelters in Trinidad and in the Amazon. There is fierce local and international opposition to these plans. Effects on nature and climate are devastating. Various planned smelters would be powered by constructing new megadams that would flood large areas of unique wilderness.

With this action, we are declaring our solidarity with the Saving Iceland campaign. Saving Iceland has called out for an international week of action against heavy industry. This action has been done in response to that call.

Earth First! in Belgium and the Netherlands is also called Groen Front!.
Earth First! is not an organisation but an international banner for direct action.

NO COMPROMISE IN DEFENCE OF MOTHER EARTH!

Websites that contain information relevant to these issues:
 http://www.earthfirst.org.uk
 http://www.groenfront.nl
 http://www.savingiceland.org

Click to enlarge

The design of the Campos Novos Dam is of exactly the same type as the Kárahnjúkar dams. The difference between the two dams is that Campos Novos is built on stable ground whereas the Kárahnjúkar dams are built on top of a cluster of active volcanic fissures. Geological reports warning of this were suppressed by the Icelandic government at the time when the Parliament voted on the Kárahnjúkar dams.

International Rivers Network
June 27, 2006

The controversial 626–foot (202–meter) tall Campos Novos Dam in Southern Brazil suffered an uncontrolled release of water last week, completely emptying the reservoir of the recently completed dam. Aerial photographs released yesterday by Friends of the Earth Brazil show major cracks at the base of the dam, suggesting potentially irreparable damage.

“If this uncontrolled release had happened during the rainy season thousands of people could have been drowned,” charged Glenn Switkes, International Rivers Network (IRN) Latin America Campaigns Director.

Almost as soon as the reservoir started filling up with water in October, it slowly began leaking. Engineers blamed a faulty diversion tunnel. But then last week the reservoir suddenly emptied, falling over 160 feet (53–meters) in a couple of days. That water raced down a parched riverbed and into the reservoir of a dam downstream that was, fortunately, almost empty due to a severe regional drought.

Énio Schneider, president of the consortium operating the dam, was quoted in the Brazilian press on June 22 saying that the dam itself was not threatened because the reservoir draining occurred through a diversion tunnel which “is an isolated structure” from the dam. However, aerial photographs taken on June 24 suggest that the tunnel failure has seriously undermined the dam’s structural integrity (photos available on request).

The Movement of Dam Affected Peoples (MAB), which represent farmers who have lost land or been evicted by dams, had already written a letter in May to the dam’s funders and environmental authorities warning them of continued leakage from the reservoir. They voiced worry about flood dangers for people downstream, but got no response.

Glenn Switkes, IRN’s Latin America Campaigns Director said, “The company has been covering up the extent of the damage, the cost and time of repairing (or rebuilding) the dam, and the potential risks to people and property downstream. The company did not disseminate any information, despite the dangers posed by the weakened structure.”

Campos Novos is the world’s third tallest concrete–faced rockfill dam. This design has become increasingly common in recent years for very high dams. The dam was built by a consortium led by Brazilian construction giant Camargo Corrêa and engineering consultants Engevix. Major funders for the $671 million dam included the Inter–American Development Bank and the Brazilian state–owned National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES).

Controversy has dogged the project with allegations of miserly compensation for dam–evicted residents. Following summary round–ups of community leaders and violent police suppression of protests, Brazil’s MAB registered complaints with international agencies, and the United Nations launched an investigation of human rights violations at Campos Novos.

Contacts

* Sao Paulo: Glenn Switkes, +55–11–3822–4157,  glenns at superig.com.br
* Berkeley: Patrick McCully, +1–510–213–1441 (cell),  patrick at irn.org

Source: IRN

Already beset by the devastating effects of a global warming caused by the heavy industrialisation of the planet, the glacial island of Greenland is now under an even more immediate industrial threat: this time by the aluminium industry. Norsk Hydro recently announced that it is considering plans to build a 300,000 tonne and 500 Megawatt primary aluminium smelter in Greenland, powered by the damming of a yet undisclosed part of the island.

The corporation is working with Greenland Home Rule (the ruling government of Greenland) to write up a “pre-feasability” study that will be released in April 2007, which the almunium giant that mainly sources its Bauxite (aluminium ore) from the Amazon rainforest claims will take into full account “environmental issues.”

In 2005 Norsk Hydro (aka Hydro) gained half of its $26billion income through its aluminium division, the other through its offshore oil and gas division, making it the world’s third largest integrated aluminium corporation. The Norwegian state is the majority shareholder of the corporation.

As we have previously reported Norsk Hydro is reported to be developing plans to build a gigantic 600,000 tonne smelter within the next eight years in Iceland. Hydro’s Communication Officer, Thomas Knutzen, announced that one of the reasons the corporation is so interested in Iceland is because of its strategic location between America and Europe, something Greenland shares the same ominous fate with. Something they might not be so keen to shout too loudly is that both islands are ruled by easily corruptible governments with no regard for their small citizenship and ecosystem, who will easily hand over the planets greatest assets as if they were nothing but rubble.

At Saving Iceland we are extremely interested in working together with groups or individuals who oppose this destruction of Greenland, or any other part of the world being destroyed by the aluminium industry. Please contact us on  savingiceland at riseup.net

Links:

Norsk Hydro’s announcement

On 5 January Icelandic State TV host Kristján Kristjánsson interviewed Damon Albarn in the news programme Kastljos. The following night Kristjánsson interviewed the Minister of Industry Valgerður Sverrisdóttir. Below, for comparison, are the transcripts of both interviews and an analysis of the contents.

Intro: Announcer points out that Damon Albarn “was a pop star in the late 1990s”, and will be playing a concert with Björk on January 7. (A curious introduction, as Damon Albarn’s band Gorillaz was both one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed bands of 2005.)

Kristján Kristjánsson: Are you very much involved in these issues, nature conservatism [sic]?

Damon Albarn: This is actually the first kind of event that I’ve been involved in, but I’m definitely active in quite a few areas.

Kristján Kristjánsson: But not in this particular area or anywhere else?

Damon Albarn: No, I think in Britain we’ve virtually destroyed our countryside anyway. What’s being done here should have been done 50 years ago in Britain and was never even considered, really. I think the interesting thing about this is that Iceland is such a beautifully preserved piece of nature. That is something very tangible that we’re talking about. In Britain it’s just kind of little bits and yeah, we’ve got preservation orders on what’s left of Britain. Compared to Iceland it’s almost irrelevant.

Kristján Kristjánsson: Is this an issue you feel strongly about?

Damon Albarn: Well, yeah, I think amongst friends in Iceland it’s been a discussion point for many years. I remember before the first aluminium factory was built and I’ve sort of really watched it grow. And like most of these things, once they’re there for a while, people just sort of accept that they’re part of the landscape, and I think what people need to do is not accept that in this case. Actually really say, “No, we don’t accept that.”

Kristján Kristjánsson: But you’re a little bit too late, aren’t you, protesting, because the undertakings are so well underway?

Damon Albarn: Yeah they are, but speaking as a frequent visitor, a sort of migratory bird, I think it sends a really bad message to people who want to come here that things like this are happening. I don’t know how much Iceland values its tourist trade, but it’s certainly sold on the fantastic nature, of the people and the place. I think that this will be harmed dramatically if this goes ahead. And you can stop things like this. I was heavily involved with the Stop the War campaign and we managed to get two million people to march in London, but our biggest mistake at the time is that we didn’t do it again. We thought we had achieved our goal but really it has to be a relentless thing. So this concert on Saturday I’m sure will garner a lot of new support and open people’s eyes to what potentially could happen. But it needs to be ongoing because government’s don’t change their policy from one event. It needs to be a relentless thing.

Kristján Kristjánsson: Yeah, of course, but we’ve had this discussion for years now; should we preserve the nature or should we or build a big power plant –

Damon Albarn: I know but it’s just a ridiculous argument, isn’t it?

Kristján Kristjánsson: Try telling that to the people who are getting new jobs, building new houses *–

Damon Albarn: But what’s always struck me about Iceland is the people are very inventive people. Surely you can find another source of development other than destroying the one thing that you’ve got that’s unique?

Kristján Kristjánsson: Which is the nature, you mean?

Damon Albarn: Yeah.

Kristján Kristjánsson: Do you meet many people in London, or Britain let’s say, who know about this at all?

Damon Albarn: I don’t think anyone’s aware of it.

Kristján Kristjánsson: No?

Damon Albarn: No.

Kristján Kristjánsson: It’s not something people discuss?

Damon Albarn: Well, it really wouldn’t be a blip on our kind of radar as far as news is concerned because, you know, it’s all about Iraq and terrorism. But this is another form of destruction, and it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s really depressing. I’ve been coming here since 1997. I’ve built a house here. My daughter’s been coming here since she was a baby. And I hate the idea that any sort of legacy that I’m going to leave her is going to end up somewhat tainted by greed.

Kristján Kristjánsson: But don’t you think that most people would consider this just an argument from sort of a young, rather wealthy man who lives in a big city somewhere else and just doesn’t understand the needs of the people who live on the eastern coast of Iceland?

Damon Albarn: Well, you could say that about anything that I get involved with. I didn’t understand the needs of the Iraqi people, but I felt very passionately about that. I felt it was absolutely the wrong thing for my country. I don’t really like to stand as a representative of my own country; I like to be a representative of people and I don’t think anyone would advocate something like this, really. Our future is dependent on our management of it. This is bad management. You’ll lose something that you’ll never retrieve, and the soul of Iceland will in some way be sort of darkened by it.

*Mr. Kristjánsson suggests, in his tone and language, that locals in the east of Iceland are getting jobs and buying houses. A study of the Icelandic Institute of Statistics indicates that the native-born population of the east and especially northeast of Iceland has fled during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dam. In other words, only a few people are getting houses, and those are not the same people who are getting jobs — the vast majority of the newly employed are foreigners, and those who are Icelandic are rarely from the section of the country in which the dam is being built. Therefore, Kristján’s response to Damon Albarn is extremely misleading.

Interview with Minister of Industry, Valgerður Sverrisdóttir:

Kristján Kristjánsson: Is there a change of heart among the public regarding environmental issues? I get the feeling there is a large group of people who is reaching the ears of MPs with their viewpoint on preserving the environment?

Valgerður Sverrisdóttir: It is good that people generally consider themselves to be environmentalists. I consider myself to be an environmentalist. Even if some people think that I am not, like your guest last night, who seems to believe that all I do is travel around the country and point out where we should dam or build aluminium smelters. That’s not how it is. But there is a lot of interest in the environmental issues, we have a very beautiful country that we should not spoil of course.

Kristján Kristjánsson: But which we are spoiling on grand scale?

Valgerður Sverrisdóttir: But we are, to some extent. In order to harness the water power, the effects of that can be seen on nature. Without question. It is always a question of picking and choosing. As for eastern Iceland, for example, I dare people who are against Kárahnjúkar dam and the aluminium smelter to go to the eastern part of Iceland, to witness the energy within the society there. To see what is happening there. It is a new life for people there.

Kristján Kristjánsson: How do you answer what some people have called sentimental arguments*, and I noticed that Independence Party MP Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson said that it was time to pay more attention to these arguments than we have before. How do you answer when people simply appeal to their love of the country, the untouched nature, that people believe to be our greatest asset?

Valgerður Sverrisdóttir: Like I said before, we have to pick and choose. We are not spoiling nature for the fun of it. If we decide it is right to use hydroelectric power to create jobs, to use this green energy that we have a lot of, then that is also a viewpoint. We are getting attention all over the world for being environmentally friendly. I am talking about how we use reusable energy, we are producing hydrogen, we are binding greenhouse gasses**, we have just been awarded for that in Toronto recently. These viewpoints are all too seldom heard. Keep in mind, if we built an aluminium factory in Iceland that uses green energy, then the amount of greenhouse gasses released is almost ten times more if it is built outside of Iceland and powered by coal***. So if we think globally, which is considered to be a good way to think nowadays, then Iceland is an ideal place to build aluminium smelters****.

Kristján Kristjánsson: Perhaps not for the people who live here?

Valgerður Sverrisdóttir: Why not? I was on a visit today at the aluminium smelter in Straumsvík, I met a lot of people who have worked for 20-30 years. The turnover rate of employees is very good. People are very happy to be working there. It is the same way in Hvalfjörður and it is going to be the same way in Reyðarfjörður. So we should not talk down to these workplaces that are in fact very good workplaces. And we need diversity in our employment market. I think there are all too few people that are thinking about the employment market as whole, including the MPs. We want to live a good life here in Iceland and in order to do that we need strong companies, and the aluminium companies are really strong companies*****.

While Damon Albarn did not intentionally mislead or misstate facts, there are four clear cases, all unchallenged by the interviewer, in which Valgerður Sverrisdóttir misstated facts.

* Kristján employs the celebrated Fox News method, using “some people” instead of citing a source when introducing a biased description. We have always argued that the Kárahnjúkar dam project is an environmental and economic disaster for Iceland — we have never stated that it is a “sentimental” one.

**Iceland, at present, releases minimal greenhouse gasses. This will change as the economy turns to heavy industry — by definition, smelting aluminium produces greenhouse gasses. Specifically, aluminium smelting produces large amounts of carbon dioxide and the PFC CF4. According to the International Aluminium Institute, “On average the smelting process itself is responsible per tonne of aluminium for the production of 1.7 tonnes of CO2 (from the consumption of the carbon anodes) and the equivalent of an additional 2 tonnes of CO2 from PFC emissions. PFCs are potent global warming gases as compared to carbon dioxide and have long atmospheric lifetimes. For example one kg of PFC (CF4) is equivalent to 6500 kg of CO2.” (For more information, view the Aluminium and Climate Change Report from the International Aluminium Institute at www.world-aluminium.com.)

***This assumption depends on two misleading concepts: 1) that only in Iceland will aluminium smelters be powered by hydro-electric power, and that everywhere else in the world only uses coal. The International Aluminium Institute argues that the assumption that this is “an erroneous assumption” and that “the current overall proportion of 55% energy sourced from hydroelectric power” will continue into the distant future. Only 30% of aluminium smelters use coal.

****This does not consider that the destruction of virgin land and fragile habitat should not be considered in a discussion of what is “green.” If untouched and vulnerable ecosystems are to be considered “ideal” places for aluminium smelters, one might suggest the Amazon River as the next logical step. In suggesting Iceland as ideal, Ms. Sverrisdóttir does not consider the transport of the aluminium: aluminium is not mined on this volcanic island, nor are there any facilities that demand its use in production. As Iceland has no aluminium ore, and as it has no use for aluminium—there is not even a cannery in the country. Iceland also has some of the highest costs of labour in the world. The only thing that seems to make Iceland ideal is its lax attitude toward the environment and toward work regulations—Iceland is not a member of the EU.

***** Alcoa’s earnings for this quarter “broadly missed Wall Street projections” according to a 10 January report. The stocks took a tumble, losing 5.5 percent, as, though the company was profitable, it did not do as well as it could. Alcoa does, however, have 129,000 employees and it operates in 42 countries, which means that Alcoa would beat most Icelandic companies in a tug of war, qualifying, therefore as a “strong company”, even if the stocks aren’t doing well.

Duncan Graham-Rowe, New Scientist, 26-2-2005, issue 2488

Contrary to popular belief, hydroelectric power can seriously damage the climate. Proposed changes to the way countries’ climate budgets are calculated aim to take greenhouse gas emissions from hydropower reservoirs into account, but some experts worry that they will not go far enough.

The green image of hydro power as a benign alternative to fossil fuels is false, says Éric Duchemin, a consultant for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “Everyone thinks hydro is very clean, but this is not the case,” he says.

Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels. Carbon emissions vary from dam to dam, says Philip Fearnside from Brazil’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus. “But we do know that there are enough emissions to worry about.”

“Reservoirs convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into methane, which has 21 times the warming effect”

In a study to be published in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Fearnside estimates that in 1990 the greenhouse effect of emissions from the Curuá-Una dam in Pará, Brazil, was more than three-and-a-half times what would have been produced by generating the same amount of electricity from oil.

This is because large amounts of carbon tied up in trees and other plants are released when the reservoir is initially flooded and the plants rot. Then after this first pulse of decay, plant matter settling on the reservoir’s bottom decomposes without oxygen, resulting in a build-up of dissolved methane. This is released into the atmosphere when water passes through the dam’s turbines.

Seasonal changes in water depth mean there is a continuous supply of decaying material. In the dry season plants colonise the banks of the reservoir only to be engulfed when the water level rises. For shallow-shelving reservoirs these “drawdown” regions can account for several thousand square kilometres.

In effect man-made reservoirs convert carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into methane. This is significant because methane’s effect on global warming is 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide’s.

Claiming that hydro projects are net producers of greenhouse gases is not new (New Scientist, 3 June 2000, p 4) but the issue now appears to be climbing up the political agenda. In the next round of IPCC discussions in 2006 the proposed National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Programme, which calculates each country’s carbon budget, will include emissions from artificially flooded regions. But these guidelines will only take account of the first 10 years of a dam’s operation and only include surface emissions. Methane production will go unchecked because climate scientists cannot agree on how significant this is; it will also vary between dams. But if Fearnside gets his way these full emissions would be included.

With the proposed IPCC guidelines, tropical countries that rely heavily on hydroelectricity, such as Brazil, could see their national greenhouse emissions inventories increased by as much as 7 per cent (see Map). Colder countries are less affected, he says, because cold conditions will be less favourable for producing greenhouse gases.

Despite a decade of research documenting the carbon emissions from man-made reservoirs, hydroelectric power still has an undeserved reputation for mitigating global warming. “I think it is important these emissions are counted,” says Fearnside.

See also:

• The whole article ‘Role of river-suspended material in the global carbon cycle’ is here in pdf
• ‘Hydropower Disaster for Global Warming’ by Jaap Krater
• ‘Glacial Rivers Reduce Pollution on Earth’ by Gudmundur Pall Olafsson
• ‘Kárahnjúkavirkjun, sýnd veiði en ekki gefin’ eftir Grím Björnsson jarðeðlisfræðing
• Virkjanir í jökulám óhagstæðar fyrir loftslagsvernd, eftir Hjörleif Guttormsson– Enn ein falsrökin fyrir Kárahnjúkavirkjun hrakin
• ‘Stóra samhengið’ eftir Guðmund Pál Ólafsson náttúrufræðing – Virkjanaæði stjórnvalda stefnir fiskimiðum landsins í voða