In 1969 the first of three aluminium smelters was built in Iceland at Straumsvík, near Hafnafjörður, on the South West side of Reykjavík by Alusuisse (subsequently Rio Tinto-Alcan). In 1998 a second smelter was constructed by Century Aluminum (now a subsidiary of controversial mining giant Glencore), at Hvalfjörður near Reykjavík, and in 2007 the third, run by Alcoa, was completed at Reyðarfjörður in the remotely populated East of the country. The Icelandic Government had been advertising the country’s vast ‘untapped’ hydroelectric and geothermal energy at ‘the lowest prices in Europe’ hoping to attract jobs and industry to boost Iceland’s already very wealthy but somewhat fishing dependent economy. The industry, which would permanently change Iceland’s landscape with mega-dams, heavy industry scale geothermal plants and several kilometer long factories, was promoted by the Icelandic Government and the aluminium companies as ‘good employment for a modern age’. However, ten years after the flagship Alcoa Fjarðaál project was completed, unemployment is higher than it was in 2005, and Iceland’s economy has become dependent on an industry which is vulnerable to commodity cycle slumps and mass job losses. Worse, the price charged for Iceland’s energy is tied to the price of aluminium and analyses of the country’s 2008/9 economic crisis suggest it was exacerbated by the poor terms of Iceland’s late industrialisation. Yet demands for further industrialisation remain, and more than 1000 Icelanders are employed in the aluminium sector.

This article exposes the conditions inside Iceland’s aluminium smelters based on interviews with workers conducted in 2012. The stories from two smelters share correlating accounts of being forced to work in dangerous conditions under extreme pressure, and without adequate safety equipment, leading to serious accidents which are falsely reported by the companies. These shocking allegations require serious attention by the trade unions, Icelandic government and health and safety authorities. This especially in the current context of labour disputes with the aluminium companies, alongside revelations about the same companies’ tax avoidance schemes and profiteering in the country.

Century, Grundartangi:

A former worker from the Century plant at Grundartangi shared his story, though did not want his identity revealed. Steini (not his real name) had worked at the plant for ten years and only quit recently.

“When I went to work there I thought of it as just a job and it was good pay. My experience of it was that they were taking our labour for cheap and making work us like slaves. The only thing we get out of it is our pay.

There were so many accidents that were their fault, not ours. They put so many rules in place, but you have to break the rules to get the work done, which they are pressuring you to do, then if something goes wrong its all your fault.”

Steini described how bonuses are awarded to the shift according to the number of accidents. If you have an accident and are off work you lower your annual bonus. At first the bonuses included smart new bikes, then they were reduced to a restaurant meal, and finally just pizza and beer.

He described the pressure of the job; how workers are pushed to work harder, but as soon as they get quick at the tasks they add more work so they are even more pressured. Akin to Alcoa Fjardaál in the East of Iceland the turnover rate is around 20% with only a handful of people staying for ten years as he had. Similarly, both Alcoa and Century Aluminum have gradually replaced permanent jobs with contract labour. Increasingly the work force was made up of University students on summer jobs which made the work even more risky as this short term labour was less experienced and more prone to accidents.

Shifts were twelve hours long, for 183 hours/month and the working hours were very unsociable, many at night for three days in a row. Steini described how most of the days off in between shifts were used to sleep and recover energy in order to work again. As the plant was expanded and more pots were added the work got harder.

“Everybody who works in Norðurál [Century] hates it. Most of the people are eating anti-depressants and everything. They hate the company, they hate the work but they are afraid to change and be without work.” He said.

He described how many accidents there were at the factory and how the company avoid paying compensation or having to report the severity of the incident;

“I got a broken finger, I burned my feet and once I had a forklift drop on my arm. I never got any compensation from the company and when I went to insurance companies I could get nothing either. The company ask you to come back to work as soon as you can move and just sit at the computer, then they count that as being ‘well’ in their records so it looks like less ‘work days lost’. The insurance companies also see it this way so it it very hard to get compensation.

One guy was doing something very risky and fell into the [molten aluminium] pot up to his knees. He was on morphine for a few weeks. I remember the health and safety guy coming out of a meeting with him smiling. He had admitted that it was all his own fault.”

Industry standards on reporting discriminate between lost time injuries and restricted work injuries, with the former being taken more seriously. Like Alcoa, Glencore claim that the ‘total recordable injury frequency rate’ (TRIFR) is being reduced annually. Nonetheless ten people died at Glencore’s global operations last year according to their 2015 Annual report, and sixteen in 2014.

Scandals over worker’s rights had previously erupted in Iceland during the construction of several mega power projects for the aluminium industry after the conditions of cheap foreign labour were exposed. More than a dozen Chinese and other foreign workers died during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar dam and several Romanian workers suffocated in geothermal pipes on the site of a Reykjavík Energy work camp in Hellisheiði where they worked up to 72 hour weeks.

Steini described the heat of the pot rooms and how restrictive and hot the many types of safety clothing are. As a result most workers chose to use the minimum amount of safety clothing, enabling them to be comfortable and work faster to get bonuses;

“You used as little safety equipment as you could so you could get the job done. When I was in the pot room I just used a paper mask for comfort. I stopped noticing the smell of the gases, then after a period working in the pot lining rooms I went back to the pot room and I really smelt it. It chokes your throat and you know it’s bad.”

‘Pot rooms’ are huge sealed troughs of carbon anodes and aluminium flouride through which up to 320,000 amps of electricity are passed to separate the strongly bonded oxygen from the alumina. Molten aluminium is then ‘tapped’ from the pots and cast into ‘ingots’. The process generates gases including inorganic fluorides, sulphur dioxide, CO2 and perfluorocarbons. Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are extremely potent greenhouse gases lasting up to 50,000 years in the atmosphere. Tetrafluoromethane, the most common PFC is 6,500 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 and its main global source is from aluminium smelters. Sulphur dioxide and fluoride emissions are acidic and can kill or stunt plant growth. Fluoride emissions also build up in the bones and teeth of animals and humans causing Skeletal Fluorosis, which weakens bones and can lead to bone deformation much like arthritis. Farmers living around Centrury’s smelter in Hvalfjörður claim their sheep and horses have got sick and even died from flouride poisoning.

Saga (not her real name) started work in Century Aluminum’s Grundartangi smelter in 2006, before turning twenty. It was her first big job and her introduction to the working world. She was working twelve hour shifts from the outset, and her work began in the pot rooms. Like Steini she described the fallacy of the health and safety training;

“We were told to wear dust-masks because of all the dangerous and unhealthy gases that come out of the pots, also because of the alumina, fluoride and other pollution in the air. You could always smell it all through the mask though. It was emphasized very heavily not to smoke inside because smoking inside the pot-rooms could result in ‘stone-lungs’ in few years time, which is very common amongst smelter-workers. That is because of all the pollution in there. If you would smoke inside, you were inhaling three times more tar and other stuff straight down to your lungs than if you where smoking outside in more normal surroundings. We also learnt that pregnant women are never allowed to enter the pot-rooms because there is a great risk of foetal harm.”

Saga accused Century of extremely low health and safety standards and condemned the company for making workers “repeatedly risk their lives to keep the smelter operational into the next shift”. She described being given second hand protective clothing in poor condition, and claimed that much of the equipment was in need of repair but was still being used as parts were hard to come by. Like Steini she had witnessed and experienced serious injuries, which had been misreported or disguised by asking workers to come in for office days when injured in order to improve the figures on workdays lost due to injury;

“Working for show” you could call it. I have even heard about workers with broken legs being made to show up for hanging out in the office for a few hours just to keep the records clean. It was easy to pressure people with many passive methods, such as bringing down the accident record which means that their shift doesn’t get a reward like the others that went through the year “without” accidents that caused absents.”

She gave a scathing and detailed account of the pressured and dangerous work environment;

“I witnessed others, and found myself, doing dangerous and life threatening things in the smelter. This was not because we had some kind of death wish or thirst for adrenaline but because there was no other way to finish our daily jobs on time. There is no other choice than to climb on that pot, drive that windowless forklift, work on this broken down and not really functioning crane today, not take proper breaks. Be one doing two people’s jobs, drive too fast because you have to hurry and “fixing” things with all possible and impossible ways so they will last just a little bit longer. I have seen people run away, scared for their lives, and then being forced back because somebody has to take care of what went wrong. I have witnessed what happens after a pot explodes.

Far too many people cram themselves into vehicles, because distances are very long and your main transport is your own two legs on the hard concrete floors. These are all labeled as dangerous things to do in there and in theory they are not “really” allowed. For example climbing on pots –which are very often badly closed and have broken lids or holes. Working alone on a crane, which is strictly speaking never allowed, always to be performed by a team of at least two workers. That’s because of the danger of people passing out from the heat, exhaustion, lack of liquid, rest or food, and a crane-operator could very likely be in a critical place when that happens, like over an open pot. Driving vehicles with the lights not working, broken windows or too filthy windows to actually see out is not allowed. Neither is the operation of any vehicles or cranes without proper training, or vehicles and cranes that are broken or not functioning properly. Having your shoes not closed all the way, having an old helmet, old shoes, no dust-mask, standing under an crane in use, not preheating your tools well enough to touch liquid metal or acid. Working in too much loudness, too much darkness or too much pollution. Not getting the breaks that you are entitled to. Teaching yourself how to do things. Working with a person you don’t trust or yourself being in so bad physical state, like suffering illness, fatigue, hunger, pain, that you don’t even trust yourself.

All of these things, I have had to do to finish my duties, just like everybody else in there (at least back then). Of course I could have said no at any given time, but you don’t really want to do that when you know that it is just going to be somebody else, a co-worker who is in the same shoes as you, that will have to take care of it and finish what you left. Everything has to be finished every day no matter what it takes.”

Alcoa Fjarðaál.

The Alcoa plant in the East of Iceland was heralded by the Icelandic Government as the saviour of the waning Eastern economy and a fantastic employment opportunity which would bring young people from Reykjavík to the East. Officials promised up to 1000 permanent jobs, plus another 2.5 jobs created in other sectors for each job in the aluminium industry. Ten years later, however, few of the promised benefits have come to the region, and overall unemployment in Iceland, which was less than 3% in 2005, reached 7.5% in 2009 and remained at 5% 2015.

Alex Smári drove the Alcoa bus from Stöðvarfjörður to Reydarfjörður from 2006 to 2008. He says people in the East believed work in the smelter would be easy, with good pay and plenty of time off, but the reality had turned out to be very different. He described workers returning from their shifts as ‘like corpses’ in the bus, and claims many quit their jobs after a short time. In his opinion the East has not become more thriving as the politicians and company promised, to the contrary “Fjarðabyggd is like a labour camp”.

One worker in the Alcoa Fjarðaál smelter was willing to speak to me though he did not want to be named. Bergur (not his real name) noted the high turnover of workers with many leaving after just a year or two. He claimed around 100 of the 450 employees in the smelter were foreign, suggesting that many in the East simply don’t want to work there. There are only a handful of people who have remained in employment with the company since the smelter opened in 2007.

“Out of twenty people on my shift that started working there five years ago there are only two left. Everyone else quit because they didn’t like working there. The turnover was 20% last year. 20% with all the unemployment in Iceland! It really tells a story.”

Like the Century workers he described how the managers push the workers to work as fast and hard as possible during the shift. However, once they have learnt to work faster the job load simply goes up again.

“The Alcoa building system is devised to suck every bit of what you have. You start with 100 people doing 100 people’s jobs and then you push everyone until 90 people are doing 100 people’s jobs, and then there are 60 and then 50. At Alcoa, everyone gets into the situation where he is working the whole shift doing his absolute best and still walking away with a kick in the butt for not finishing something or other.”

Bergur claimed company people had told them in a meeting that Fjarðaál is the most dangerous of Alcoa’s smelters in Europe. Shifts are twelve hours long and often at night and employees are expected to work 176 hours a month compared with only 142 hours on eight hour shifts at Rio Tinto’s Straumsvík plant near Reykjavík.

There is also a bonus system that rewards the workers for the quantity and quality of aluminium they produce. This means workers effectively get fined when a machine breaks or poor quality alumina is delivered, even though this is out of their control.

“Everything is connected to the bonus. If a crane breaks down and it holds off production it lowers the bonus for everyone. Now we have low quality alumina coming in which means we get through more anodes and that also lowers the bonus. When this situation is going on the workload gets substantially higher, so not only are you working a lot more, but you know you are getting less pay.”

As a result of this pressure Bergur claims the few days off between shifts are usually spent simply sleeping and recovering before work starts again. Contrary to Alcoa’s claims that the workplace is ‘family friendly’ he claims Alcoa Fjarðaál has become known locally as ‘the divorce factory’ since so many couples have separated due to the unsociable hours which affect their relationship.

Bergur also spoke about Alcoa’s use of contract labour, and its effect on worker’s rights and the strength of the unions:

“There are two groups of people working at Alcoa: There are Alcoa employees and there are contractors who are not part of Alcoa. We are doing the same work but they are not members of the unions. By having these two groups they can control the employees more easily and the unity within the factory will be less.”

“We have to live!”

Former Prime Minister of Iceland Halldór Ásgrímsson famously promoted the Alcoa Fjardaál project by proclaiming “we have to live!”. But what kind of livelihood have Icelanders been forced to accept? All of the workers expressed feeling misled by the government and the aluminium companies.

Saga claimed that prospective workers were denied information about the health and safety risks;

“Our government has been been eagerly promoting smelters as very agreeable and good working places for years. Smelters are being promoted in places where people don’t know them, don’t know the dangers, the threats and the health risks, and don’t feel they have a choice. How can a place where you are constantly breathing heavy pollution – alumina, fluoride and dangerous gases – that make you feel like your lungs took a severe beating every time you open up a pot, be a healthy and agreeable working place?”

Bergur analysed the Icelandic government’s claim that the smelter would reverse the East to West migration trend:

“The people who have quit there, who have returned to Reykjavik or whatever…I call those the sensible people. They have moved to the East to work for Alcoa, maybe both man and woman. They come with high hopes and determination to make this work. After working for a year, or a year and a half, the pressure which goes on at the shift becomes too much, and when they realise this is the system and will not change, that they are never going to be in a situation where you are working a relatively easy shift and going home not so tired….this is not going to happen. When they realise that, they quit and get out.”

Steini also questioned the government’s promotion of aluminium smelting as a good employment for Icelanders;

“People in Iceland just wanted jobs, but not necessarily this kind of factory. The question is who put this idea in our minds that the only way to get a job is by having an aluminium smelter?”

Of course, Icelandic smelter workers are not alone in their experience of pollution and dangerous working conditions, and there is much potential to link up with global struggles for workers rights. At Hindalco’s Hirakud aluminium smelter in Odisha, India, workers are taking the company to court asking why they were not told what they were breathing in. They were being moved from the pot-room every four years, told that this was due to the potential health effects of working in such high heats, but the effects of breathing in highly toxic fumes were never mentioned. They believe the company was deliberately concealing the dangers while trying to minimise them.

On top of poor working conditions, employment in the aluminium industry is innately insecure, as it is vulnerable to the peaks and troughs of the commodities supercycle. The recent commodities downturn led to the demise of the UK steel industry, including the likely closure of Port Talbot steel, cutting 11,000 jobs. The workers have already lost part of their pensions, a common phenomenon in the metals industry, as the owners – Tata Steel – claim they cannot afford to pay the full amounts. The rusting skeleton of Century Aluminum’s Helguvík smelter, abandoned midway through construction in 2009, stands as a stark reminder of the false promises and volatility of this industry.

Iceland’s aluminium workers cannot expect their employers, experts in anti-unionising and misleading PR, to protect their rights. Instead, they must properly inform themselves of the risks to their health and security, and contribute to the debate on what constitutes ‘a nice place to work’ in a modern Iceland.

Sources:

Cooke, K. and Gould, M.H. 1991. The health effects of aluminium, a review. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. 111, 163-8.
Aslam M, Khalil K, Rasmussen RA, et al. (October 2003). “Atmospheric perfluorocarbons”. Environ. Sci. Technol. 37 (19): 4358–61.
Dr R. Liteplo and Ms R. Gomes, 2002, ‘Environmental Health Criteria for Fluorides’. International Programme on Chemical Safety, UNEP. http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/…

Indriði H. Þorláksson, economist and former tax director

Frumvinnsla áls – Lýsing á hinni mengandi og orkufreku framleiðslu álbarra

On 16th May after heavy rain, toxic red mud poured from a breach in one of Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refinery red mud ponds, spilling onto the village below. The next day landless people displaced by the project held two blockades demanding adequate compensation; a five day walking protest ended with a meeting of 500 people on the threatened Niyamgiri hills; and the funeral of a tribal movement leader, killed by factory pollution, was held. Two months before Vedanta’s often-subverted AGM this will be bad news for the company. This is a direct report from the scene.

Red Mud Spill

On the evening of 16th May 2011 one of the Lanjigarh alumina refinery’s red mud ponds burst its banks, spilling toxic waste sludge into an adjoining village. Only a month earlier a similar breach had occurred, polluting local streams and ponds.

When we reached the red mud ponds on the morning of 17th May the breach had already been largely patched up by the company. Local people recounted how after a heavy rain the sludge had poured through the earthen pond walls and flooded into the village and factory compound. Fearing bad press (particularly in the wake of the Hungarian disaster) Vedanta employees rushed out with bulldozers and hoses to wash down and patch up the evidence. However, trails of the wet mud could still be seen and a village pond was bright red with the toxic waste. The Wall Street Journal reported the incident, quoting local man Sunendra Nag on the pollution of the Vansadhara river by the red mud ponds:

Now we don’t drink its water because of the waste from the refinery that flows into it, but people still use the river for bathing and washing clothes. We are getting eye, skin and respiratory diseases due to this but we don’t have other options. (1)

Incredibly, Vedanta’s regional vice president responded to the spill by blaming the villagers. He claimed that;

Due to agitation and dharna (sit in) at the site by local people, Vedanta Aluminium is not allowed to operate its second red mud pond. They are raising the dyke height of the first pond. During every rain, exposed red-coloured soil wash run off goes into streams.

In fact Vedanta’s red mud ponds are far from meeting international standards. They are soil lined instead of concrete, contain wet waste-mud instead of ‘dry stacking’, and are poorly located – directly uphill of the factory and villages. Approximately four tonnes of red mud are produced for every one tonne of aluminium. Red mud contains arsenic, heavy metals and radioactive trace elements, which can cause cancer, silicosis and other diseases.

Background

The Niyamgiri hills in the thickly forested tribal lands of central Odisha (formerly Orissa) have been prospected by various mining companies since 1976 for the 73 million tonnes of bauxite under the soil of the mountain’s flat table top. The hills have achieved mythical status all over the world for the iconic fight playing out there. The battle is between tribal inhabitants who worship the mountain which sustains them, and the encroaching mining company, seeking the rich bauxite deposits for aluminium production.

After several contenders failed, the UK registered Vedanta Resources stepped in 2003 (Sterlite a subsidiary of Vedanta had the lease application pending since 1997). They quickly built the Lanjigarh alumina refinery at the base of the mountain before obtaining any permission to mine the hills. Contrary to the arrogant assumption that their money would buy the mountain against the inhabitant’s wishes, years of local and international protest finally led to with-holding of the project by the Environment ministry in August 2010.

Today Lanjigarh is operating on just above break-even profit at 1 million tonnes per year, with bauxite transported by rail from the troubled neighbouring state of Chattisgarh. Though already one of the biggest refineries in India, the aim is to expand the plant to 6 million tonnes, for which the Niyamgiri deposits are crucial. Vedanta cannot afford to lose. They are currently using the state-owned Orissa Mining Corporation, who are applying to carry out the mining on their behalf. Worse, opposing communities are facing increased oppression by the Central Police Reserve Force, who have arrested, attacked and killed local leaders under the guise of their violent anti-Maoist combing operations ‘Operation Green Hunt’.

In many ways the story really begins with the bloody colonisation of Odisha by the British in 1801. The first bauxite surveys carried out by the British geologist T. Walker in 1901 with the help of the King of Kalahandi then became the blueprint for today’s extraction via so-called mining based ‘development’ of the region. Today this is headed by our most neo-colonial of agencies – the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and a hoard of private companies, and NGOs through reports such as ‘Orissa Drivers for Change’ that promote an unregulated mining sector in the resource-rich state.

An Active Resistance

Despite the forces trying to destroy them, Niyamgiri people’s movements are alive and kicking. On May 17th, in the 45 degree heat of summer, landless oustees organised a rail and road blockade demanding adequate compensation. They felled a tree and blocked the only incoming road to the factory, creating a long line of heavy trucks unable to enter the plant to collect alumina. At the same time around 100 women and men sat on the railway that runs into the factory, planning to stay until their demands were met. They heard speeches from movement leaders on the politics of corporations and the importance of making global connections to strengthen their local struggle. They shouted slogans which recalled the 1855 killing of adivasis (tribals) led by Rendo Majhi, who revolted against British imperialism in Orissa:

‘Rendo Majhi dakara deea’ – Rendo Majhi is calling us,
‘Ladhei kari banehi huea!’ – There is a dignity in fighting!

Their actions are justified. Most of the land for the factory was illegally acquired, including some reserved forest which the company still claim was never there. 12 villages were bulldozed, but the company only partially rehabilitated 100 of the families, who now live in Niyamgiri Vedanta Nagar, a shoddy housing colony right beside the belching plant.

The un-housed live in shanty towns around the plant, and many local people are suffering skin diseases, lung problems and other ailments caused by the pollution and dust. We attended the funeral of Dai Singh Majhi, a tribal Kond and movement leader who was president of Niyamgiri Surakshya Samiti (Niyamgiri Protection Committee) in 2002. He lived in Belamba village, just beside the factory, and died in his fifties from illnesses caused by the toxins. During the fight to save the mountain he famously analysed the company’s strategy saying; ‘they are flooding us out with money’, and recounted how the district administration had told him that ‘only one foot of soil is yours, the rest is owned by the government’. He insisted that they would not give up their homeland for money, which would not last anyway.

In the end the blockade was called off on 20th May when Lanjigarh’s Chief Operational Officer, Mukesh Kumar, brought the media to meet the protesters and claimed that all their demands would be met. This is the third time such false promises have been made to them in publicity stunts, but the blockaders usually submit in desperation for a way out of their poverty. It is very unlikely that the company will follow through on their apparent responsiveness, when they can avoid doing so and manipulate the media so easily.

On the same day, a five day Padayatra (walking protest) was culminating in Chhatarpur village on the Niyamgiri hills with a meal and meeting for 500 people from the Niyamgiri communities. During the march 40 people travelled from village to village, sharing stories and strategies on dealing with the state violence being enacted on them in the name of anti-terrorist policy. Operation Green Hunt is presented as a programme to eradicate Maoist extremists. In fact it is being used to divide and destroy tribal and other community opposition to industrial projects in the so-called ‘red corridor’ (Chattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh) by murder in fake-encounters, rape, harassment, and by labelling movement leaders as Maoist in the media.

In Chhatarpur we met Kond leader Lodo Sikaka who was abducted by the police shortly after the mountain was saved, and held for four days until media and international pressure forced his release. He explained:

Niyamgiri is good for us. If we save our land and our forest it is good for us. The government is sending guns to our house. Those who are participating in the resistance are accused as maoists. We are not raising guns or opposing police, how can they say this? We don’t have that business, so why are they targeting us? We don’t understand. Why did they blindfold me and take me to the forest? Naveen Patnaik (Chief Minister)’s government is telling us that there are Maoists in Niyamgiri. After five days journey in these villages I haven’t seen one. Only when the police come to our villages do we assume that there are Maoists.

CSR: Corporate Social Rip-off

Seeing the villages on the mountain gave a sense of what Lanjigarh might have looked and felt like before the refinery. Hazy mountains rose in the background while a line of women snaked back from the forest and fields with fresh produce on their heads. The ancient beauty of the Niyamgiri villages is sharply contrasted by the smoke stacks of Lanjigarh below it, which tower dark grey over the mud-clad village houses scattered on the plains. Beside the road an extensive fly ash dump fills the fields. The ash is piled high and left exposed, blowing dust into farms and homes, some of which back directly on to the dump. International standards state that fly ash ponds should be located a good distance from habitations and sealed from dust-blow as the ash contains significant amount of toxic substances – silicon dioxide, mercury, lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium and with radioactive trace elements.

Further on, the conveyor belt which marches from the factory towards the sought after mountain now stands rusted and unused.

Vedanta logos can be found at every turn, advertising a school, a science college and mid day meal centre. But the company’s claims to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have been exposed as far from the reality. They have vastly over-exaggerated their good works in reports and have even been caught claiming ownership for existing government schemes in the area. Local people have whitewashed Vedanta’s logo from walls on nearby schools which had nothing to do with the company.

The company must have a sarcastic sense of humour since the walls of the factory are covered in slogans for environmental and social welfare. One reads ‘mining happiness for the people of Orissa’, while another explains that ‘a healthy nature will lead to a radiant future’. Vedanta would do well to listen to its own advice.

A 2002 report prepared for BHP Billiton and Oxfam details research, carried out in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, into how to use CSR to deal with local resistance to mining projects. The participation of Oxfam and local NGOs in this project, without informing local communities of the dangerous research is shocking and shameful, and reveals the role of NGOs who are often responsible for destroying people’s movements instead of complimenting them.

Vedanta’s AGM will be held in London in July along with the eighth annual protest outside and inside the building. Along with this year’s scandals and injustices at Niyamgiri, activists will highlight Vedanta’s illegal acquisition of 3000 acres of land for a corporate university near Puri in Odisha, which has recently been found to be in contempt of law on multiple counts by the Lok Pal (an ombudsman appointed by the State legislative body). Once again the company will have a lot to answer for, and will have to face the shame of losing the mountain and the university. If the shareholders are shaken and the media critical, this could be the start of their ultimate demise.

(1) Krishna Pokharel, 18th May 2011, ‘Orissa Locals Fear Red Mud Spill’, Wall Street Journal.

After many years of preparations the Greenlandic government say the final decision on Alcoa’s proposed smelter will be taken at the spring 2012 of the parliament. It is more likely, as the global history of the industry and the evidence in Greenland tells us, that the decision has in fact already been made undemocratically behind closed doors, despite the decreasing support of the Greenlandic people. In fact Alcoa and the Greenland government are so keen on passing the project that they have just hired an eighth employee at their national company Greenland Development- formed to enable the industry to go ahead. Juaaka Lyberth’s explicit remit is to influence public opinion on the smelter through the media. Greenland Development paints a rosy picture of an aluminium future for Greenland, but will their promises of prosperity come true? A comparison to Alcoa’s Fjardaal project in East Iceland suggests that many will not.

Local employment?

“The aluminum project is a major project that will offer a large number of stable and lasting jobs.” says Minister for Industry and Mineral Resources, Ove Karl Berthelsen.[1]

Despite this claim Alcoa recently asked the Greenlandic government’s permission to use Chinese contractors to build the two hydro dams and smelter. Chinese workers would be paid half the salary of members of the Greenland Workers Union. They claim this will be necessary to make the project competitive and that the Greenlandic labour force will not be sufficient[2].

Greenland Development responded immediately to this unpopular news by sending out a press release explaining why competitiveness was so important. The release explained that since the financial crisis China has increasingly dominated the market for aluminium smelting due to their low cost of construction and production. Building a smelter in China costs $3000/ton of production capacity compared to $4500 – £5000/ton in Iceland or Saudi Arabia. Greenland is in direct competition with these prices and will have to provide very good terms for the company if they want the project to go forwards[3]. ‘Good terms’ means cheap labour and foreign workers over Greenlandic contracts.

The labour question has dominated debate on the smelter in Greenland recently. Bjarne Lyberth, Head of the organisation Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland is concerned that other important issues are being sidelined:

“In my view the issue on cheap foreign labour is just one of many problems. There is a risk that this becomes perceived as the main hurdle to the project and other serious cultural, social, health, environmental and, economic impacts just become “minor issues” to deal with later.”

However, the promise of jobs is usually cited as the biggest rationale for building such huge industrial constructions, and it is a very tempting one in economically deprived rural areas where smelters are often built. When the decision on the Fjardaal aluminium smelter and associated Karahnjukar dams was pending, the Iceland government made similar claims. They promised the Confederation of Icelandic Labour that the ratio of Icelanders to foreign workers at the dam construction site would be about 8:20, amounting to 3000-5000 jobs for Icelanders[4]. In reality the construction company Impregilo only employed around 100 Icelandic workers out of 1100 employees at the site. Many of these workers were Chinese, Portuguese and other non EU nationalities. Impregilo claimed that Icelanders didn’t want the work as it was not as highly paid as they had hoped, and there was a high turnover. In contrast the Chinese workers were very stable despite tough conditions[5]. Increasing company profit by using temporary low paid foreign labour is known as ‘social dumping’.

The construction of the dams was plagued with controversy as it was revealed that foreign workers were being paid less than Icelanders and made to work in unsafe conditions without proper equipment[6]. 1700 work related injuries were reported during the dam’s construction, 120 resulting in long term or permanent inability to work. Four workers are known to have died from injuries on the site[7] [8]. There is evidence that when the Icelandic coalition of unions became vocal about the treatment of workers in the press they were silenced by bribes from Impregilo who promised to pay into the union’s pension funds. A few years later it was revealed that the payments had not been made and the union (ASI) raised rights of foreign labourers again. Shortly after the funds were finally paid and ASI’s complaints ceased.

National income from aluminium export?

Greenland Development‘s recent news release explains;

‘The project economy of each individual project is decisive. The competition is as such between countries that it among other issues hinges on the terms a host country will provide for a new project. Countries in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America are all trying to develop smelter projects. Only projects that are competitive on a global scale will have a chance to become real projects and be implemented[9].’

In reality, being ‘competitive on a global scale’ with countries such as China means selling energy and labour as cheaply as possible and providing tax breaks that make the project attractive to the company – minimising benefit to the host country. National unions of workers the Greenland Employers? Association and the Organisation of Greenlandic Employers have warned that the only income from the project in its first few years will be tax paid by its employees, and with much workforce coming from abroad on low wages this is likely to be very little[10]. The government has also said that company tax should not be counted on for the first fifteen years, suggesting that large tax breaks have been given[11].

In Iceland predictions that the smelters could be an economic drain and not a boost are increasingly being proven. Energy prices paid by the smelter operators were kept from the Icelandic public until very recently following a scandal when it was revealed that  Century Aluminium had been paying a fifth of domestic prices – the cheapest energy for aluminium production in Europe[12]. Prices for Alcoa’s Fjardaal smelter were accidentally revealed by then company Chairman Alain Belda when he claimed that Iceland was charging some of the lowest rates in the world, just $15 per MWh (megawatt hour)[13]. The deals they made link energy prices to the cost of aluminium so when the market drops the taxpayer can end up subsidising the companies rather than profiting from them.

In the run up to Iceland’s dramatic financial crash in 2008 the OECD concluded their country report by warning Iceland that ‘large scale public investments are inherently risky’ and strongly advised them not to approve further aluminium developments until it was clear whether they would get a long term profit from existing ones:

‘No major investments in energy-intensive projects, including those already in the planning phase, should proceed without prior evaluation within a transparent and comprehensive cost-benefit framework (including environmental impacts and inter-generational effects).[14]’

Two years earlier a report by Icelandic bank Glitnir warned that any benefit from large scale aluminium developments “is probably outweighed by the developments’ indirect impact on demand, inflation, interest rates and the ISK exchange rate”. Similarly economist Thorsteinn Siglaugsson claimed that “Kárahnjúkar will never make a profit, and the Icelandic taxpayer may well end up subsidising Alcoa”[15]. A 2009 report by Economist Indriði H. Þorláksson concluded that the industry would have negligible benefits on the Icelandic economy, possibly causing long term damage, and should not be considered a way out of the financial crisis[16].

Despite all of this evidence Greenland Development have dedicated another recent news article on their website to trying to disprove that Iceland’s crash had anything to do with the smelters. Though they admit that ‘high investment in construction also played a role which put pressure on the economy’, this was ‘hardly significant‘. Instead they claim that aluminium industry ‘has been crucial in earning foreign currency for Iceland during the crisis‘[17].

In another article Greenland Development’s website enthusiastically claims that the aluminium price is likely to rise in the coming years due to demand for ‘green’ cars and solar panels and economic growth in Asia[18]. Though this would somewhat increase Greenland’s chances of making a profit there is no guarantee of market stability, which has been very volatile in recent years. A critique of the concept of ‘green aluminium’ can be found here[19].

Already there seems to be some degree of caution in Greenland about taking too much of the burden of construction costs and loans which caused so many problems in Iceland. The Greenlandic government is considering bringing in a third party to ownership of the project instead of taking the whole of the 50% stake they were offered by Alcoa.

Public more sceptical now

Despite Greenland Development’s expensive propaganda war, public support for the Alcoa smelter has been steadily decreasing. People’s organisations Avataq and the newly formed Against Aluminium Smelter in Greenland have worked hard to discover the truth about the environmental and social impacts of the smelter and the ethical track record of the company abroad. As a result Greenland Development reported that their own October/November 2010 survey of public opinion revealed rapidly changing attitudes:

‘there is a very low degree of knowledge, as well as a less positive attitude towards the project than in previous years. Of the citizens that have expressed either a positive or negative attitude towards the aluminium project, there is thus now only a small majority (54 percent) who are positive.[20]’

The main reason for the ‘increased scepticism‘ towards the project was ‘concern about the possible environmental consequences‘ with 20% of those interviewed believing that the project ‘can have a markedly negative impact on nature and the environment‘ compared to only 7% the previous year[21]. This was identified to be mainly due to critical media coverage and Greenland Development’s ‘information manager’ was hired shortly afterwards to address this. Environmental protection group, Avataq, says Greenland Development has deliberately tried to distort public opinion about the aluminum industry. Their head Mikkel Myrup explains:

“Greenland Development has assumed a role as an aluminium industry propagandist, and do that rather primitively. But this wouldn’t be possible without strong support from the civil servants in the central administration and the smelter municipality administration. The civil servant’s pro industry influence on the cabinet members and the parliament is a massive democratic problem, because they suppress and/or ignore information that would equip the politicians with a wider, and more realistic knowledge base from which to make enlightened decisions.”

With three operating smelters Icelanders have had a good opportunity to assess the benefits of the industry which has been promoted as their economic saviour. A recent online poll by news outlet Visir revealed that only 13% of participants thought heavy industry was the most important area to focus on. Despite high level promotion of the industry’s benefits by certain sectors of the national leadership evidence shows that tourism and fishing are still the most important and growing industries for the Icelandic people[22].

Miriam Rose

After 13 years of continuous battle, the people’s movements to save the Niyamgiri hills from bauxite mining have won their land and livelihood back from the jaws of extinction. Niyamgiri is one of a series of threatened bauxite capped mountains in Orissa. On August 21st 2010 a review of the Vedanta mining project carried out by the Ministry of the Environment exposed the company’s “total contempt for the law”, having violated a number of environmental regulations, and revealed “an appalling degree of collusion” by local government officials with Vedanta. A few days later Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh called a halt to the project.

Two months later the Environment Ministry also rejected Vedanta’s plans for a six fold increase in capacity at the Lanjigarh alumina refinery, the plant at the foot of the Niyamgiri hills which would have been served by the 8 million tons of bauxite mined above. The company were also warned to follow pollution guidelines closely and were reprimanded for starting expansion work without prior permission (1). One month after that (November 2010) Vedanta Chairman and founder Anil Agarwal’s extravagant plans for a $3.2 billion ‘Vedanta University’ in Orissa were also knocked back when the High Court ordered that 6892 acres of beautiful coastal land, including part of the sacred Jagannath temple, had been illegally acquired and should be returned to the ousted inhabitants (2). An incredible victory! The events sparked celebrations across Orissa, and held the state government’s assembly in limbo for several weeks as ministers furiously argued over what had become an iconic battle of tribal people and people’s movements versus a mega corporation.

The Niyamgiri story has also been hitting headlines in the West in the past two years, focussing on the involvement of celebrities such as Bianca Jagger and Michael Palin, and the glitsy media campaigns of Action Aid and Survival International. Reading the papers you might think these large NGO’s led the fight against Vedanta. You would not hear that Action Aid accepted donations from Vedanta subsidiary Sterlite in 2003, and has signed MoU’s with Vedanta’s investors, ICICI bank (3), or that NGO professionals in their big jeeps have succeeded in splitting people’s movements in the area, paying particular tribal activists to be the face of their campaigns, and encouraging de-politicisation of the struggle. You would also not hear that the big NGO’s only joined the fight in 2007 and 2008, long after the people’s organisation Niyamgiri Surakshya Parishad (later Samiti) was formed in early Jan of 1998 in a gathering of more than 200 people in Asupada, a village at the foot of the lush green mountains. Nor that the Adivasi’s (tribals) are far from the helpless figures the NGO campaigns portrayed, but have fought tooth and nail for decades to successfully preserve their mountains and way of life from various threats, including logging during the British colonial rule. Sadly, the culture of protest orchestrated by the big NGOs was never intended to stimulate long lasting grassroots activism or to make the existing struggles visible. They were selling their product in India and the West, and by doing this they were actually suppressing the politics and the voice of the real people’s movements.

For the grassroots movements in Orissa the fight has been long and hard, with moments of great empowerment and also deep sadness and brutal police repression. After years of chasing away company men who surveyed their land with tools and clipboards, the threat of displacement finally became real for the Khonds when the Orissa government ordered the compulsory acquisition of farmlands around the proposed Lanjigarh refinery in 2003. During the land acquisition process government officials promised that the company would provide jobs to every family who sold their land. In reality very few got jobs or compensation. Instead local people suffer skin lesions, dust pollution, deaths from lorry accidents on the new road, TB and contaminated crops. One family who’s farm is just outside the refinery wall have begged the company to buy them out so they can leave their contaminated land and move somewhere safer, but Vedanta have refused.

Later that year the chimney of a BALCO refinery being built in the neighbouring state of Chhattisgarh collapsed killing 57 workers, a stark reminder of the unsafe conditions for aluminium workers in India. 2003 also saw the illegal arrest and detainment of Lingaraj Azad, state president of the political party Samajvadi Jan Parishad (Socialist People’s Council) and also convenor of Niyamgiri Surakshya Samiti (Council for the Preservation of Niyamgiri) who was jailed for 100 days on two occasions. In 2004 a rally of a thousand tribals protesting forceful evictions was violently broken up by police who ‘lathi-charged’ the crowd, striking them with long thin sticks that break the skin, and injuring women and men alike. Thirteen activists were arrested on invalid charges. On 23rd March 2005 the first state-sponsored murder took place when local activist Sukru Majhi was killed. This would be followed in 2010 by the murder of Arsi Majhi. 2000 had also seen police open fire on a meeting of tribals regarding another Orissa alumina refinery owned by Utkal in Maikanch village, killing three and wounding seven (4). In 2007 the Norwegian Government’s pension fund pulled its $13 million of shares in Vedanta as it believed its involvement could result in “an unacceptable risk of contributing to grossly unethical activities”, and in 2010 the Bank of England similarly dis-invested from the company on human and environmental grounds after UK authorities in India upheld allegations of illegal and unethical activity against tribal people.

Blockades of the Lanjigarh refinery by women and children in particular were a regular occurrence during the long struggle. One of the most symbolic protests took place in January 2009 when 10,000 mostly tribal people encircled the Niyamgiri hills in a 17km long human chain, vowing to protect its sacred ecology and its ancient inhabitants. A week earlier 7000 protesters had marched to the gates of the aluminium refinery saying ‘Vedanta Hatao!’ (Remove Vedanta!), demanding that the company leave the area (5).

Here in the UK, where the company is registered (despite violating a number of British company laws), the campaign came to a head at the 2010 Vedanta AGM, which was dominated by the Niyamgiri issue for the fifth year running. A Guardian article entitled ‘Vedanta’s very embarrassing silence’ reported how during the meeting our friend Orissa activist and film-maker Samarendra Das challenged the Lanjigargh refinery’s manager Mukesh Kumar’s claims that the mountain was not sacred to the affected Dongria Khond tribe. Testing his knowledge he demanded that Mr Kumar give the Dongria’s name for their holy Niyamgiri mountain, which he could not (6). The presence of paid protesters from Survival and Action Aid was minimal at the 2010 AGM, whereas they had dominated the previous years meeting, showing the volatility of NGO support and commitment. They may have believed the fight was over as the company appeared on the brink of bringing in the bulldozers and showed no signs of stopping.

The battle for Niyamgiri was fought on many fronts; through international solidarity, court room action, media campaigns, shareholder activism and in depth research and understanding of the aluminium industry itself (embodying what Gandhi termed ‘satyagraha’- the truth force). But at the root of all of these actions was the energy and determination of the Dongria Kondh, who’s understanding of the fallacies of ‘development’ are often as sharp as any university professor. In an improvised songKucheipadar village Deka musician and elder Salu Majhi is recorded asking how mining can be called ‘development’, and describing the ideological rift between the way they value their environment and societal well being, and the quantified measures of the company and state:

Use all this up in 25 years, very clever my friend
We are kui people
Storing water wont be enough
Our life is in our flowing streams (7)

Evidence agrees with Salu. Out of half a million Indians displaced by mining in the last 10 years in just four states, 92% are much worse off, even if they receive the paltry compensation offered by companies.

So where is Vedanta now? According to the Sunday Times Rich list the company founder and chairman Anil Agarwal is still tenth richest man in UK with wealth growth of a record 583% after the financial crisis. He remains very well connected in London, yet somehow manages to be invisible in the media, despite being an almost despotic character with a rags to riches story and a childish temper when he doesn’t get his way. Using his connections he has managed to rapidly diversify the business of the company, teaming up with the Scottish oil company Cairn Energy to exploit the controversial oil fields around Greenland. Two of Vedanta’s board members also serve on the board of Cairn India and one (Naresh Chandra) is also on the advisory board of BAE, not unusual for aluminium companies due to the direct link between aluminium production and arms manufacture (8).

But we must celebrate our victories before turning to face the next fight. In the three years since Saving Iceland’s 2007 International Conference against Heavy Industry we have seen a series of projects halted by people’s movements, a success we never would have dared to dream of! Trinidad’s La Brea smelter was canceled in 2010 after years of protest by our friends from No Smelter TnT and others. The site is now being reclaimed by local people who have permission to build a bio-digester or a mango plantation there! (9)

In Iceland all smelter construction ground to a halt following the economic crisis, and Alcoa’s plans for a mega smelter in Husavik, North Iceland, may have fallen through all together thanks to the determination of Saving Iceland and others to reveal the true costs of the dams and geothermal plants needed to power the project. In Greenland public opinion in favour of Alcoa’s enormous planned smelter plummeted after activists from Avataq sought international help to educate local people and politicians on the history of the aluminium industry and the clear lessons for communities dependent on an aluminium economy. The Greenland smelter now looks a lot less certain than it has long appeared. On top of the massive turn around of aluminium industrialisation in Orissa these victories are enormous.

Most importantly they all demonstrate the power of people’s movements to stop corporations in their tracks. Though we may sometimes doubt it, our grassroots actions to understand, expose and resist projects which we know will not benefit people or planet, are powerful, and they work. Davids continue to bring down Goliath’s… in fact they are the only thing that ever will.

*

The cancelling of Vedanta’s Niyamgiri project also occurred just after the publishing of Samarendra Das’ and Felix Padel’s seminal book on the fight and the global aluminium industry ‘Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel‘, which was in the Indian best seller list and was read by the Home Secretary of India. For an in depth analysis of the aluminium industry and the struggle in India the book is highly recommended.

Notes:

(1) Govt says no to Vedanta’s $8.5 bn expansion plan, NDTV Correpsondent, October 21, 2010 (New Dehli).

(2) Deborah Mohanty, Indian Express, 16th Nov 2010. ‘Land acquisition procedure for Vedanta University illegal‘

(3) Das, Samarendra and Padel, Felix 2010 ‘Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel‘. Orient Blackswan, Delhi.

(4) Das, S. and Padel, F. 2010,’Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel‘, Orient Blackswan

(5) Saving Iceland, Jan 30th 2009. ‘Ten Thousand People Encircle the Niyamgriji Mountains in Orissa, India‘

(6) Peter Popham. ‘Vedanta’s very embarrassing silence’. The Guardian. Friday, 30 July 2010

(7) An excerpt from Samarendra and Amarendra Das’ 2005 documentary film Wdira Pdika (‘Earth Worm Company Man’

(8) Press Association, 25th April 2010. The Guardian ‘Rich list reveals record rise in wealth: Collective wealth of Britain’s 1,000 richest people rose 30%, the biggest annual increase in list’s 22-year history‘

(9) Richardson Dhalai, September 27th. ‘Rowley slams Govt’s decision to scrap smelter‘, Newsday.

Climate change has made Greenland the next industrial frontier, but at what cost?

Humanity is in denial. We know that our hyperactive extraction of fuels, metals and minerals, and their dirty processing, consuming and dumping for our consumer ‘growth’ society is killing the planet and ourselves. We also know that all of these sugary treats are finite. But like an insolent toddler we continue; more and more, faster and faster – running in denial from the planetary spanking that is undoubtedly coming our way.

I have often hoped that the global emergency of climate change, combined with the inescapable reality of peak oil would wake us up from this selfish resource-gorging, and perhaps it still will before it is too late (too late: I.e tomorrow? 2012? 2020? a few months ago?). But in the meantime,  nature has given western capitalism one last laugh. As the ice drips and cracks from Greenland’s white mass it is exposing a treasure trove of minerals, metals, ores and oil (one of the highest concentrations in the world), and plentiful hydro-power to help us heat, break and alter them into things we ‘need’. Just as the candle wick flares and gutters on our oil-driven consumptive society Greenland’s bounty has given it one more chance. One last bright flame, to hide from us the surrounding darkness.

Queuing up for the best bites

All the big names are queuing up for a ticket to the earth’s last free banquet. Statoil, Chevron and Exxon-Mobil want oil, True North Gems are after diamonds, gold and rubies, and Alcoa is chasing the newly roaring melt-waters of ancient ice, for dams and hydro-power to smelt aluminium.

Greenland Minerals and Energy (who are not a national project, but an Australian mining consortium) have their hearts set on uranium, zinc and the magical sounding ‘rare earth elements’ – essential for the equally magical technology in our apple macs, i-pods and digital cameras. They describe their mission as; “unlocking the mineral riches of Greenland, one of the world’s last natural resource frontiers”. “Unlocking” – as though they are freeing something trapped in the earth and desperate to get out, as though the earth has cruelly kept it from them, but we will suffer no more.. this “frontier” will be conquered, tamed and made to serve our needs.

But what about the Greenlanders? How do they feel about their isolated island being invaded by American, Australian, British and Norwegian suits, helicopters and drilling rigs? They are faced with an impossible conundrum. Having blamed fossil-fuel induced climate change for destroying their land and traditional livelihoods for so long, they are now promised that drilling oil, and adding to climate change, is the only way they can finally become financially independent from Denmark.

Social versus environmental freedom. That is the stark choice. You can’t have both, either the land will prosper or the people. Man versus nature. Simple as that.

Kárahnjúkar: History repeating itself in Greenland

But this choice is not so easy for Greenlanders. British newspaper The Times quotes Greenlandic geologist Minik Rosing speaking about one of the planned projects:

“We know Black Angel (mining project) was really bad for the environment the first time. It ruined the fjord. Is it OK to ruin three or four fjords in order to build the country? I hate to even think this, but we have a lot of fjords…We’re very aware that we’ll cause more climate change by drilling for oil. But should we not when it can buy us our independence?”
My mind is cast back to the debates over Alcoa Fjardaal and Karahnjukar. The stark choices Icelanders faced then too, when the politicians said “we have to live”, “this is the only way we can survive”, “do you want to go back to the turf houses?” etc. And for a while Iceland was bathed in the glory of mega-projects, and the promise of mega-money. Did those promises materialise? The recent revelations about the price aluminium companies are paying for Icelandic power suggests not. In fact the smelters and dams may even have contributed to the financial crisis by so greatly reducing the national coffers in big loans for their construction, and getting little back in return.

But for Alcoa Iceland is already old news. The Greenland smelter will be bigger, ‘greener’ and possibly cheaper than Fjardaal (the negotiated price has not been revealed). In fact it is to be one of the world’s largest smelters ever, starting at 400,000 tons a year, and requiring the damming of two major rivers for 650 MW of energy. The similarities in the project, and the way Alcoa is pushing it are striking.

A top of the line, self-sustainable aluminium smelter?

Greenland’s prime minister Kuupik Kleist has announced that “any aluminium made in Greenland will benefit our global climate if replacing aluminium produced elsewhere in the world where renewable energy sources are not available for the production”. Alcoa calls it “a wonderful opportunity” for themselves and Greenland to build “a world-class, sustainable aluminum smelter, powered by renewable hydroelectric energy”. Sound familiar?

Yet the preliminary EIA carried out by the consultancy Environmental Resource Management (who have passed projects for such clean companies as Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola and Anglo-American), shows that Greenland’s CO2 emissions alone will increase by 75% and will require a Kyoto exemption just like Iceland did for Fjardaal. The smelter will also produce 4,600 tons of SO2, 110 tons of fluorides and 7.1 tons of PFC gases (corresponding to 46,000 tons of CO2 equivalents) per year. The EIA claims that fluorides will have a particularly severe impact in Greenland because of the fragility of their ecosystems. Despite promising the latest in clean and green operations Alcoa have made no guarantee that they will fork out for scrubbing technology which the EIA claims could reduce this mega-impact. They certainly never did at Fjardaal.

The dam reservoirs will flood a large and biodiverse affecting Caribou migrations, populations of Arctic char depended on by fishermen and will affect over 9 towns and villages. One of these effects will be the loss of sources of drinking water, which will have to be imported from elsewhere at greater cost. Though some employment benefit is predicted many of the 600 jobs generated at the finished smelter will have to be filled by foreign workers. The EIA suggests that this is likely to increase crime rates and require extra police to be brought in from Denmark.

Culture at stake

But most striking of all is the potential cultural destruction. According to the EIA the planned reservoir at Tasersiaq will drown ‘a significant amount of newly discovered, still unstudied remains from the Inuit past, and possibly from earlier pre-Inuit cultures…Sites that are inundated by the rising water levels..will be inaccessible to study in the foreseeable future’. In other words this incredible cultural heritage will be gone, wiped, forgotten. Is this the cultural independence and freedom Greenlanders long for? Aqqaluk Lynge, a politician, poet and a leading member of the Inuit community is quoted by The Times; “Of course we want development,” he says. “We want our independence. But we don’t want to lose our souls in the process.”

The discourse promoted by Alcoa and it’s newly wed – the Greenland government – speaks, as it did in Iceland, of the moral obligation of Greenlanders to host ‘green’ aluminium smelters. It seems they should even be proud to sacrifice some of their extensive nature and unusual culture for the good of the world, to make aluminium smelting slightly less bad than it might otherwise be elsewhere. Because we ‘need’ aluminium, there’s no arguing over that.

So Iceland has done it’s bit, Greenland will do it’s bit, Norway is doing it’s bit, the hydro-powered smelters in Canada are doing their bit, Brazil’s new dams will do their bit, the world’s largest bauxite mine planned in Vietnam will do it’s bit. And thanks to all of that sacrifice Alcoa predicts only a 20% increase in it’s climate wrecking emissions by 2020, alongside thousands of acres of forest destruction, indigenous displacement, water poisoning and health effects on local communities. While 150 million tonnes of discarded aluminium lie dumped in our soils, played with and spent. But what does that matter when we have our planes, cars, computers and phones? What do we need ecosystems and a stable climate for anyway?

Meanwhile the smelter marches on. In 2009 Gunnar Jónsson from Fjardabyggd visited Greenland to show them how the eastern municipality had ‘prepared the local community’ for the plant at Fjardaal. But I wonder what advice other Icelanders would give to their neighbouring island. Was it really worth it? I suppose it’s too soon to say how the aluminium mega-powers might have contributed to the political corruption, economic instability and environmental tragedy that has unfolded in Iceland. But perhaps they would at least warn the Greenlanders to be wary of promises of freedom and prosperity. And if they are not worth so much after all, then perhaps a soul is more worth keeping.

An Icelandic translation of this article by Miriam Rose originally appeared in the July issue of the monthly newspaper Róstur

More equality amongst the Adivasis

When I stayed with Adivasis in India several years ago I was struck by the differences between their society and modern Indian culture; there seemed to be greater gender equality, openness and freedom compared with the strict caste system and repressive religious and gender divides which are so evident in much of mainstream India. They were more fortunate and they knew it. They were not wooed by the cities, the promise of money or the discourse of ‘development’ which has repeatedly threatened their ancient existence. If you think this sounds romantic and idealistic, you are right – and it is interesting in itself that we are often so cynical when we are confronted with these qualities in humanity – but the reality of this description has earned them the title of ‘the real Na’vi’ from the blockbuster film Avatar – a nature connected people who have captured public imagination with a sense of something mostly lost in our over-developed (Western) world.

The comparison to Avatar doesn’t end there. Adivasis across Orissa (and all over India) are threatened by a multitude of mining and heavy industrial projects, which plan to exploit the red-rocked hills for the bauxite, steel and iron ore they contain, dam the rivers for electricity to process these metals, and export them to the West. Theoretically this will generate hard cash for India’s modernising economy, but in reality it is exacerbating inequalities and mostly benefiting India’s richest people, and the multi-national mining corporations who profit from India’s cheap power and cheap people. Many of these projects are supported by the World Bank, Western governments and NGO’s under their programmes of ‘development aid’.

Wishes to start mining operations

One such project has recently come under major international scrutiny. In the Niyamgiri mountain range in Western Orissa, a London registered company called Vedanta are after the bauxite capped mountains which are sacred homes to the Khond tribes who live there. They want to take 18 million tonnes of bauxite per year from the Niyamgiri hills over the next 25 years, then leave the hills depleted and move on. The bauxite will be refined in the existing plant at Lanjigarh, at the base of the mountains, where local populations already suffer from dying crops, respiratory problems and birth defects caused by heavily polluted water and falling ash from the plant.

Vedanta claim that they will bring money, education and development to the area, and that their activities will follow the highest codes of environmental and social excellence. But the evidence on the ground does not agree, and the project has been plagued by controversy. In 2007 the Norwegian Government’s pension fund pulled its $13 million of shares in Vedanta as it believed its involvement could result in “an unacceptable risk of contributing to grossly unethical activities”, and just last week the Bank of England similarly dis-invested from the company on human and environmental grounds after UK authorities in India upheld allegations of illegal and unethical activity against tribal people in Orissa.

Under the pretext of development

Despite this criticism the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and World Bank have been instrumental in encouraging such projects through massive ‘development’ loans which are conditional on “program(s) to reform the business and direction of government”. This means privatisation of the water and power sectors and promotion of mining opportunities for foreign companies through low rates of tax, which further diminish any economic benefits to the local government and people. Activists and social commentators have pointed out that resource extraction from India to the West is many times greater today than it was under the East India Company of British colonial rule. The only difference is that the neo-colonialism has a human face and promises ‘development’ and an end to poverty, despite evidence to the contrary.

A recent documentary by respected film-maker Simon Chambers showed the realities of Vedanta’s corporate social responsibility programmes and public consultation in Niyamgiri; an empty village hospital bearing the company logo which had never had doctors or provided healthcare, a new Vedanta community where police patrol the streets and the residents were bribed to praise the company for the camera, and dissenters who were threatened by company security and thugs.

Both Vedanta’s subsidiaries Sterlite and MALCO have been charged in court with the criminal violation of Environmental laws, callous dumping of toxic wastes and illegal construction, yet the Supreme court has overruled other legal proceedings and granted the company permission to mine.

A battle for land

But the Adivasi inhabitants have not given up. They point out that the rich bauxite caps of the mountains are like sponges which guarantee a water supply to rivers in the whole district. Without them the streams will dry and many will suffer. They decry the waste of an ecosystem which has supported their people for hundreds of generations in only 25 years, and ask how we can call this ‘development’. As Adivasi movement leader Bhagaban Mahji has said;

“We cannot eat money, and we know it won’t last long. We have lost our land and livelihood. While they make promises of better life for us, we are left only with problems.”

The Khonds have fought tooth and nail for their right to exist sustainably here. In 2009 10,000 villagers and concerned citizens held hands to form a 17 kilometre human chain around the hills. They have blockaded the roads and lain their children in front of bulldozers saying ‘what future is there for them if you build this mine?’. They have faced police oppression, shootings and continual threats. Recent evidence suggests they are right to be so cynical about the project. Of half a million Indians displaced by mining in the last 10 years in just four states, 92% are much worse off, even if they receive the paltry compensation offered by companies. But tribal people are disposable in India, and the model of western development suggests that indigenous communities and undisturbed nature must go if they are to join the modern world.

Our responsibility

For us in the West this is a harsh wake up call. The metals which make our planes, tower blocks, disposable cans, and most frighteningly our weapons, have a huge cost to the earth and to some of the people who live most sustainably on it. From the forests where the ore is found, the damming of rivers for refining and smelting, the polluted air and water left behind, to the dumped rubbish of yesterdays trendy phone, yesterdays redesigned house and yesterdays bombs; we are all complicit. It is also all of us, and our children and grandchildren who will ultimately suffer the effects of a world polluted and impoverished by resource scarcity. These effects are hidden from us by outsourcing them to desperate countries where human rights and environmental laws are lax, while our economic system keeps the real costs of the pollution and degradation separate from the end product – meaning we can get cheap flights now, but pay for the associated polluted water, displaced people, climate change and health problems later through taxation.

Today our institutions talk a lot about carbon, but they are wrong to dwell only on this by-product of modern civilization. Policies which reduce carbon, but ignore the rest of the damage inflicted on people, places and natural systems which support us, are dodging the issue; our use of almost all of the earth’s resources is unsustainable, wasteful and ultimately harmful to ourselves. Unless we can learn something from the Adivasis who live most sustainably on this earth, or even the mythical Na’vi of Pandora from the film ‘Avatar’ – who’s values run deeper than our mostly consumer based happiness – we have little chance of reaching our full human potential.

This article by Miriam Rose originally appeared in the first issue of the monthly newspaper Róstur

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 Miriam Rose

The economic issues currently causing mass demonstrations in Iceland have a less publicised ecological cousin, and one which the IMF has recently identified as part of the economic collapse. In 1995 the Ministry of Industry and Landsvirkjun, the national power company, began to advertise Iceland’s huge hydropower and geothermal energy potential. In a brochure titled “Lowest energy prices!!” they offered the cheapest, most hard working and healthiest labour force in the world, the cleanest air and purest water – as well as the cheapest energy and “a minimum of environmental red tape” to some of the world’s most well known polluting industries and corporations (such as Rio Tinto and Alcoa). This campaigning has led to the development of an ‘Energy Master Plan’ aimed at damming almost all of the major glacial rivers in Iceland, and exploiting all of the geothermal energy, for the power intensive aluminium industry. The loans taken by the Icelandic state to build large scale energy projects, and the minimal payback they have received from the industry, has been a considerable contributing factor to the economic crisis, while at the same time creating a European ecological crisis that is little heard of.

The Largest Wilderness in Europe
I first visited Iceland in 2006 and spent a week with activists from the environmental campaign Saving Iceland, a network of individuals from around Europe and Iceland who decry the fragmentation of Europe’s largest wilderness in favour of heavy industry. From these informed and passionate folk I learned of the 690 MW Kárahnjúkar dam complex being built in the untouched Eastern Central Highlands to power one Alcoa aluminium smelter in a small fishing village called Reydarfjörður. The dams formed the largest hydro-power complex in Europe, and were set to drown 57 km² of beautiful and virtually unstudied wilderness, the most fertile area in the surrounding highlands. Ultimately it would affect 3% of Iceland’s landmass with soil erosion and river silt deprivation. They also explained how materials in the glacial silt transported to the oceans bonds with atmospheric CO₂, sinking carbon. The damming of Iceland’s glacial rivers not only decreases food supply for fish stocks in the North Atlantic, but also negatively impacts oceanic carbon absorption, a significant climatic effect. After taking part in demonstrations at the construction site of the Alcoa smelter (being built by famous Iraq war profiteers Bechtel), I went to see the area for myself.

Travelling alone on foot in this vast and threatening landscape was one of the most incredible and spiritual experiences of my life. I walked along the deep canyon of the crashing glacial river set to be dammed, as ravens soared above me and a sound like falling rocks echoed from distant mountains. I slept in grassy valleys and bathed in a warm waterfall which ran from a nearby hot spring as reindeer galloped in the distance. The midnight sun showed me the way to Snæfell mountain, from the top of which I could see from the Vatnajokull ice cap all the way to the dam construction site; across wetlands, black sand deserts and shadowy mountains. By the next year the dam’s reservoir would stretch across this whole area. I felt small and vulnerable and had a sense of the immense power of nature, and the even greater power of mankind to choose whether to preserve or to irreversibly destroy it.

Since then critiques of the completed Kárahnjúkar project have made it increasingly unpopular with the Icelandic public, who have become sceptical about the secretive nature of energy deals and the damage to nature. As a result, Landsvírkjun and the heavy industry lobby are now focussing on geothermal power which has a more benign reputation. Ultimately, it is proposed that all of the economically feasible hot spring areas in Iceland will be exploited for industrial use, including a number of sites located in Iceland’s central highlands, the beautiful heart of Iceland’s undisturbed wilderness. Landsvirkjun, without any irony, has termed Iceland ‘the Kuwait of the North’.

The following section challenges some of the myths about ‘green’ geothermal energy.

Renewable
Geothermal energy is created when boreholes are drilled into hot subsurface rock areas or aquifers, and turbines are powered by the emitted steam. They only have a sustainable production level if the surface discharge of heat is balanced by heat and fluid recharge within the reservoir (as occurs at undisturbed hot springs), but this is generally not sufficient for exploiting economically. The Geyser hot springs at Calistoga, USA experienced a 150% decrease in production over ten years, due to rapid exploitation to meet economic requirements, and there have been many similar cases. Geothermal boreholes in Iceland are usually modelled for only 30 years of productionⁱ.

Carbon-neutral
The concentration of carbon dioxide present in geothermal steam is a reflection of the chemical make up of the underground reservoir and is distinct to each area. The 400 MW of boreholes planned for another Alcoa smelter in the north of Iceland will release 1300 tonnes CO₂ per MWⁱⁱ. An average gas powered plant would produce only slightly more, 1595 tonne per MWⁱⁱⁱ. The total of 520,000 tonnes CO₂ for these fields alone is almost as much as what is produced by all of road transport in Iceland^iv.

Minimal environmental impact
Geothermal power accounts for 79% of Iceland’s H₂S and SO₂ emissions^v. In 2008, sulphur pollution from the Hellisheiði power station, 30 km away, was reported to be turning lamposts and jewelry in Reykjavík black, as a record number of objections was filed to two more large geothermal plants in the same area, which would have produced more sulphur and carbon emissions than the planned smelter they were supposed to power, and plans were put on hold.
Geothermal areas such as Hellisheiði are globally rare, very beautiful and scientifically interesting. Icelandic geothermal areas are characterised by colourful striking landscapes, hot springs, lavas and glaciers, and are biologically and geologically endemic to the country. Irreversible disturbance to these wild areas for power plants includes roads, powerlines, heavy lorries and loud drilling equipment.

Wishful green thinking?
In the desperate search for plausible alternatives to our fossil fuel economy, a number of well known British greens have been advocating a ‘European Grid’ energy future, in which Icelandic large scale hydro and geothermal power, and Saharan solar, are transferred by underwater cable to Britain and Europe^vi. It is quite understandable that such schemes look appealing, but it is also essential to have a realistic analysis of the impacts caused by these so-called sustainable technologies before we accept them as a panacea to our fossil fuel sickness.

The technological or pragmatic environmentalism in favour of super grids comes down to a proposal to sacrifice unique ecological areas for the greater good of living a resource-intensive life style ‘sustainably’. In contrast, for anyone who identifies with a natural area, it is easy to understand why it has a value of its own. This value can be seen as far greater than that of any of our possessions; it is in a sense, invaluable.

What can perhaps be concluded from this Icelandic green energy case study is that application of a technology that has been thought of as renewable, climate-friendly and low-impact, on the large scale that is associated with fossil fuels, makes it a lot like the technology it was supposed to replace. It has certainly been argued that technological systems tend to reproduce themselves independent of the specific technologies^{vii viii}. Simply applying a different technology to address issues that are not entirely technological, is not addressing the problem of our consumptive lifestyles. But it can irrevocably end the existence of a place that is not like any other.

References:

i E.g. VGK (2005), Environmental Impact Assesment for Helisheidarvirkjun [online]. URL http://www.vgk.is/hs/Skjol/UES/SH_matsskyrsla.pdf [Accessed August 15, 2007].
ii Sigurðardóttir, R. Unpublished. Energy good and green. In: Bæ bæ Ísland (bye bye Iceland), to be published by the University of Akureyri and Akureyri Art Museum.
The data in this study is arrived at by calculation of the figures in site surveys for the Krafla, Bjarnarflag and Þeistareykir geothermal plants.
Sigurðardóttir has experienced threats and harassment by Landsvirkjun, the national power company, since 2000. In that year, she concluded the formal environmental impact assessment for a proposed large dam, Þjórsárver, a Ramsar treaty area, by stating there were significant, irreversible environmental impacts. The national power company did not pay her and refused to publish the report. Since then Sigurðardóttir has been refused all Icelandic government commissions. Since then, practically all EIAs for geothermal and hydro plants and smelters have been commissioned to the companies HRV and VGK, construction engineers rather than ecological consultancies and “the leading project management and consulting engineering companies within the primary aluminum production sector” (HRV. 2008. Primary aluminium production [online]. URL http://www.hrv.is/hrv/Info/PrimaryAluminumProduction/ [Accessed 13-12-2008]).
iii US Govt. Energy Information Administration. 2008. Voluntary reporting of greenhouse gases program. [online]. URL http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html [Accessed 13-12-2008].
iv Ministry of the Environment, Iceland (2006). Iceland’s Fourth National Communication on Climate Change. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/islnc4.pdf [Accessed August 15, 2007].
v Statistics Iceland. 2007. Emission of sulphur dioxides (SO2) by source 1990-2006 [online]. URL http://www.statice.is/Statistics/Geography-and-environment/Gas-emission [Accessed 12/12/2008]
vi E.g. Monbiot, G. (2008). Build a Europe-wide ‘super grid’ [online]. URL http://e-day.org.uk/solutions/charities/14536/george-monbiot–build-a-europewide-super-grid.thtml [Accessed 13-12-2008].
vii E.g. Mander, J. 1992. In the absence of the sacred. Sierra Club, San Francisco, CA.
viii Krater, J. 2007. Duurzame technologie, een contradictie? Buiten de Orde, zomer 2007.

HELLISHEIDI (ICELAND) – This morning the direct action campaign Saving Iceland has occupied one of the main geothermal drill sites in Hengill where the Hellisheidi power plant is being expanded by Reykjavik Energy. 20 activists have chained themselves to machinery and have climbed the drill to hang up a banner saying “Reykjavik Energy out of Hellisheidi and Yemen”. They have also occupied the power control room of the drill site. The power to the drill was shut off and drilling was stopped for the rest of the day. Seven people got arrested. The protest was aimed at Reykjavik Energy supplying electricity to aluminium smelters in Iceland, destruction and pollution of the Hengill area and RE’s sponsoring of severe human rights abuse in Yemen.

In the last week, Saving Iceland took action at the Glencore and ALCOA headquarters in Switzerland as well as all Swiss Icelandic consulates, the Icelandic embassy in Rome, Icelandic consulate in Milan and also the headquarters of Impregilo. In Iceland Century Aluminum and Landsvirkjun both saw two actions against them and now Reykjavik Energy was targeted.

Click Images to Enlarge

“We have been camping at Hellisheidi for two weeks now and we are witnessing the scale of destruction, most of which is not very visible to the public. People should really come and have a look what is happening here. What used to be a beautiful natural area is now full of tarmac and pollution. It used to be full of tourists. Now the hiker huts are abandoned while mountains are being blown up to power the Century smelters,” says Saving Iceland’s Jaap Krater.

Most of the work is being done by Eastern Europeans who are living in a work camp, in similar conditions to the Karahnjukar construction.

Reykjavik Energy Invest in Yemen
Saving Iceland also criticises Reykjavik Energy for it’s investments in Yemen (1,2), a country with a Shari’a regime, where there is no free press and security services are routinely involved in torture and even extrajudicial executions (3,4).

“RE say that geothermal investments will benefit the poor in the country. The reality is that the energy will not go to the poor. The regime is very corrupt and Yemen is even advertising for aluminium smelters to come there. If someone would have said ten years ago: I’m making a deal with Sadam Hussein to help the poor, would you believe them?”
“RE should not make deals with anyone involved in serious human rights violations, whether it’s a fundamentalist state or heavy industry corporations,” says Krater.

A factsheet on the REI deal with the Yemen regime is attached as a pdf file.

Impact of Hellisheidi extension
The environmental impact asessment for Hellisheidarvrikjun says explicitly that the only purpose is to supply energy for the Century expansion at Grundartangi and possible new ALCAN and Century plants at Straumsvik and Helguvik (5). At the same time, farmers pay twice as much for electricity as these corporations (6).
Saving Iceland has published reports documenting a long list of human rights violations of these companies (7, 8).

Saving Iceland spokespeople Miriam Rose and Jaap Krater have documented the effects of the geothermal power in Hengill in the journal the Ecologist (9):

“Laced with various and sometimes toxic compounds from deep within the bedrock, the [geothermal borehole] water is either pumped back into the borehole – which can lead to geological instability – or is pumped untreated into streams and lakes. This particular technique has already created a huge dead zone in lake Thingvallavatn.”

Pictures of the physical impact of the drilling can be seen on the Saving Iceland website (10 / see below) and in the attached pdf file.

Download MBL.is – Report

About Saving Iceland
In the last two weeks, Saving Iceland stopped work at the construction site of Century Aluminum’s planned new smelter in Helguvík, they blockaded the existing Century smelter on Hvalfjordur, and took a number of actions against Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national power company. This is part of their fourth summer of direct action against heavy industry in Iceland.
Saving Iceland was started by Icelandic environmentalists asking for help to protest the Icelandic wilderness, the largest remaining in Europe, from heavy industry. Aluminium corporations Alcoa, Century Aluminum and Rio Tinto-Alcan want to construct new smelters. This would require exploitation of all the geothermal areas in the country, as well as damming all major glacial rivers (see http://www.savingiceland.org/sos).
This year, the fourth action camp to protect Icelandic nature has been set up near the Hellisheidi geothermal plant.

More information
 http://www.savingiceland.org
 savingiceland at riseup.net

References

1. Yemen News Agency (2008). Yemen, Icelandic REI sign document to invest in generating electricity by geothermal. http://www.sabanews.net/en/news151190.ht… [Accessed July 27th, 2008]
I2. ceNews (208). Electricity agreement signed between Yemen and Iceland. http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2008/04/… [Accessed July 27th, 2008]
3. BBC News (2008). Country Profile: Yemen. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_… [Accessed July 17th, 2008]
4. Embassy of Yemen in the US (2008). http://www.yemenembassy.org/economic/ind…. [Accessed July 17th, 2008]
5. VGK (2006). Environmental Impact Assesment fot Helisheidarvirkjun. VGK, Reykjavik.
6. Iceland Review (2007). Century Smelter to Pay Less for Energy than Farmers. June 7th 2007. Also available at http://www.savingiceland.org/?p=821. [Accessed July 27th, 2008]
7. Saving Iceland (2007). Alcan’s Links to the Arms Industry. http://www.savingiceland.org/?p=882 [Accessed July 27th, 2008]
8. Saving Iceland Press Release (2007). Saving Iceland Blockades Century and ELKEM. http://www.savingiceland.org/?p=841 [Accessed July 27th, 2008]
9. Krater, J., Rose, M., Anslow, M. (2007). Aluminium Tyrants. The Ecologist 2007 (10). Also available at http://www.savingiceland.org/?p=1021 [Accessed July 27th, 2008]
10. Saving Iceland (2008). Destruction of Hengill. http://www.savingiceland.org/?page_id=23… [Accessed July 27th, 2008]

Images of destruction at Hengill

UPDATE: The blockade went on for three hours. Nobody was arrested.

Videos 
• Century & Elkem / Icelandic Alloys blockade July 21st 2008.
• Century Helguvík smelter construction site occupation July 19th 2008
  

Century in West-Congo: opencast bauxite mining
In 2007 Century Aluminum Company signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Republic of the Congo (ROC) for the exclusive right to develop an aluminium smelter, alumina refinery and a bauxite mine (2). It specifies a minimum commitment of 500 megawatts of gas-generated electrical energy. Century is surveying where to mine the bauxite and will start building the smelter as soon as possible (3).

“We believe that the Republic of the Congo has all of the ingredients necessary to sustain a profitable aluminum industry,” said Century CEO Logan W. Kruger (2).

“Kruger is right,” says Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson of Saving Iceland. “Transparency International rated the ROC as one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. Exactly the kind of regimes aluminium corporations like to deal with…” (4)

“It’s very unlikely the poor will have any benefit from this development but they will pay the price of the environmental impact. Oil revenue in the country has never reached them, why would it be different for bauxite?” Úlfhildarson continues.

“Considering the bauxite reserves in West Congo, it is clear that Century is planning large scale open cast mining there, in the same way other corporations are attempting in Orissa and what has also happened in Jamaica, Guyana and Guinea,” says Indian aluminium expert and author Samarendra Das who will be talking on this topic at Reykjavik Academia on Wednesday (see note a.).

“All over the world, where bauxite is mined the environment is being destroyed and people’s livelihoods and health taken away from them. People in Iceland need to know where the bauxite that is refined and then smelted into aluminium comes from,” says Das.

Century in Jamaica: environmental and health hazards
Century-owned St Ann Bauxite, it’s predecessor Kaiser as well as the ALCOA, RioTinto-Alcan and Rusal (which owns 1/3 of Century), are also active in Jamaica, have been held responsible for rainforest being destroyed and toxic pollution of drinking water (5,6,7). Century want to open up a second mine and refinery in a joint venture with Chinese Minmetals. That company is associated with prison labour factories and gross human rights abuses in China and elsewhere (see note b.).

Elkem – Icelandic Alloys: pollution accidents every week
Elkem – Icelandic Alloys wants to expand its facility at Grundartangi on Hvalfjordur for producing ferrosilicon for the steel industry. It is already one of Iceland’s largest contributors to greenhouse gases and other pollutants; expansion of the smelter would lead to a significant increase in Iceland’s carbon emissions (1).

In July 2007 it was reported (8) that Elkem ‘accidentally’ released a huge cloud of pollution from their plant. Apparently the accident was due to human error. Thordur Magnusson, an Elkem spokesman, then said that this human error “recurs several times a week.” Sigurbjorn Hjaltason, chairman of Kjosarhreppur parish, said that Elkem usually produced the emissions at night throughout the year.

About Saving Iceland
Last Friday, Saving Iceland stopped work at the construction site of Century Aluminum’s planned new smelter in Helguvík. This is part of their fourth summer of direct action against heavy industry in Iceland. In July 2007 activists also blockaded the smelter and steel factory.

Saving Iceland was started by Icelandic environmentalists asking for help to protest the Icelandic wilderness, the largest remaining in Europe, from heavy industry. As well as Century, other aluminium corporations ALCOA and Rio Tinto-Alcan want to construct new smelters. This would require exploitation of all the geothermal areas in the country, as well as damming all major glacial rivers (see note c.).

This year, the fourth action camp to protect Icelandic nature has been set up near the Hellisheidi geothermal plant east of Reykjavik, which is currently being expanded to produce electricity for Century Aluminum.

More information
 http://www.savingiceland.org
 savingiceland at riseup.net

Miriam Rose (+354 869 3782)
Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson (+354 857 3521)
Jaap Krater (+354 867 1493)

Notes
A.) On Wednesday July 23, 19.30 h. Saving Iceland and Futureland will hold a conference with the Indian writer, scientist and aluminium expert Samarendra Das and ‘Dreamland’ author Andri Snær Magnusson, on the influence of the aluminium industry in the third world. Also, the concept of aluminium as a ‘green’ product will be examined. It will take place at Reykjavik Academia, Hringbraut 121. Mr Das is available for interviews; please contact one of the Saving Iceland contacts above.

B.) In 2004 Minmetals attempted a takeover of Canadian mining company Noranda but were declined in 2005 due to serious concerns over human rights abuses by the Chinese company. This report details Minmetal’s association to forced labour:

Dhir, Aaron A. (2006). ’Of Takeovers, Foreign Investment and Human Rights: Unpacking the Noranda-Minmetals Conundrum’, Banking and Finance Law Review, 22, 77-104.

C.) For more details and an overview of projects in Iceland, see: http://www.savingiceland.org/sos

References
(1) Icelandic Ministry of the Environment (2006). Iceland’s fourth national communication on climate change, report to the UNFCCC. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/isl… [Accessed 20-6-08]
(2) AZ Materials News (2007). Century Aluminium to Build Aluminium Smelter in Republic of Congo. http://www.azom.com/News.asp?NewsID=7734 [Accessed 20-6-08]
(3) Afrique en Ligne (2008). Congo to build aluminium smelter in Pointe-Noire. http://www.afriquenligne.fr/news/africa-… [Accessed 20-6-08]
(4) Transparency International (2006). Corruption Perceptions Index 2006. Transparency International, Berlin.
(5) Zadie Neufville, April 6, 2001, ’Bauxite Mining Blamed for Deforestation’. See http://forests.org/archive/samerica/baux…. [Accessed 20-6-08]

(6) Mines and Communities report,’Bauxite Mine Fight Looms in Jamaica’s Cockpit Country’, 24th October 2006. http://www.minesandcommunities.org/artic…. [Accessed 20-6-08]

(7) Al Jazeera (2008). Environmental damage from mining in Jamaica, June 11, 2008 News. Available through http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJa2ftQwf…. [Accessed 20-6-08]
(8) MBL.is (2007). Reykur frá járnblendiverksmiðjunni Grundartanga. http://mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2007/07… [Accessed 20-6-08]

Aluminium rose 7.1 per cent on the week to the all-time record of $3,380 a tonne on Friday July 11. Electricity accounts for about 45 per cent of aluminium smelting costs, so prices jumped when it emerged that more Chinese provinces had started to ration power supplies. The latest, Shaanxi, began limiting supplies as power stations ran short of coal. Glitnir Bank has issued a report explaining that the high price of aluminum is caused by, on the one hand, shortage of electricity, especially in China, and on the other, rising oil prices.

So the aluminium price is up due to both an increase in demand and a shortage of supply in the raw materials and energy required for aluminium production. “As aluminium companies struggle to find enough electricity, they circle over Iceland as a group of vultures. Are we going to allow Iceland to be turned into a heavy industry corpse for them to consume?” asks Saving Iceland’s Miriam Rose.

The tightening of the aluminium market has grim effects around the world. ESKOM, a parter of Landvirkjun (1) and largest power company in Africa, are pricing up supply to domestic consumers and confronting them with chronic blackouts, in order to free up energy for smelters.

“The solutions for the short-term to try and bring some peak load on gas, turbines, and oil or diesel will help, but the internal consumption of South Africa continues to go up, so the minimum that Eskom, the national provider is set is a 10% reduction. But it hasn’t guaranteed that and will have ongoing blackouts or reductions, as it goes forward. So it’s imposing that. The second part, which it’s trying to impose, is obviously price on the domestic users particularly, and that of course is not doing too well,” says Logan Kruger, President and CEO of Century Aluminum in a recent phone conference (2).
“It’s not only impacting South Africa […] but it’s impacting Botswana, Zimbabwe, and even to Zambia,” says Kruger.

Rio Tinto Alcan also takes an interest in Africa. Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949-1986 (3). Now they want to come back and develop a new smelter in the near zero-tax ‘Coega Development Zone’ near Port Elizabeth, powered by coal and nuclear delivered by Eskom, one of the worlds largest electricity companies. “Thirty percent of the poor communities of South Africa don’t have electricity, and now that will be going straight to Alcan,” says Lerato Maregele, a S-African activist visiting Iceland (4).
Landsvirkun want to be part of this deal and more generally branch out to Africa (1).
Landsvirkjun can be expected to try and sell their expertise to Eskom’s various hydroprojects in Mozambiqu, Uganda and Congo (5). They will try to be part of damming the Congo river, a project twice the size of China’s Three Gorges, that will have a devastating effect on the central African rainforest.

References
1. RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64…. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan confused.
2. Century Aluminum Company, Transcript of First Quarter 2008 Earnings Conference Call [Accessed July 13].
3. Alcan’t website, http://www.alcant.co.za/history.html [Accessed July 13]
4. Grapevine, Issue 10, July 13, 2007. Interview also online.
5. International Rivers Network & EarthLife Africa, “Eskom’s Expanding Empire
The Social and Ecological Footprint of Africa’s Largest Power Utility,” June 2007.

Other Sources

• Financal Times 1| 2
• http://www.basemetals.com/Aluminium/

On Monday 21st April 2008 Saving Iceland Founder, Olafur Pall Sigurdsson, will appear before the District Court of East Iceland charged with property damage. The charge relates to an incident at Snæfell Mountain protest camp in the end of July 2006.

All the civilian witnesses recount that a police 4×4 was deliberately driven into Sigurdsson at a potentially fatal speed. The driver, officer 8716 Arinbjorn Snorrason, a high ranking officer in charge of operations at Kárahnjúkar, also attempted to run over other protestors on multiple occasions that same summer, at Lindur (now submerged location of a SI action camp) and at an action on Desjarárstífla dam construction site.

In the run up to the incident the police in the vehicle driven by Snorrason had arrived at the camp in order to harass and provoke the protestors. The police were photographing protestors from inside the stationary vehicle as they queued up for lunch outside a kitchen tent. A small group of people, including Sigurdsson, went towards the police car. Suddenly and without warning Snorrason accelerated aggressively towards Sigurdsson who stood in the road, hitting him. All who were present were amazed that he survived the assault relatively unscathed.

Since the incident could realistically have cost him his life Sigurdsson made a formal charge against the police. The State Prosecutor declared half a year later that he saw no reason to allow this charge to go further after talking to the police that were present. Despite several civilian witnesses being willing to give evidence against the police, they were never approached for statement. The State Prosecutor has refused to take any action to investigate what could have lead to Sigurdsson’s death, except of course talking to the perpetrators, who made a counter charge. Now, almost two years later, the case will be heard at the District Court.

The demand is that Sigurdsson should pay a compensation for damage to the vehicle (supposedly resulting from when it was driven into him), and that he be punished according to law. When the incident took place Sigurdsson was still legally bound by a suspended prison sentence for splashing ‘skyr’ (a yogurt like liquid) with two other protestors over delegates of an international aluminium conference that took place in Reykjavik in June 2005. Consequently, if Sigurdsson is convicted of damaging the police car, he could be imprisoned.

The protestors accuse the police of wanting to take revenge on Saving Iceland. “This mix of personal malice and complete lack of respect for the democratic right to protest is typical for the Icelandic police when it comes to SI protestors.” says a spokesperson for Saving Iceland. “Saving Iceland are of the opinion that this actual criminal act of the police, intended to cause physical harm to Sigurdsson, has been allowed by the State Prosecutor to be turned into a farcical political trial disguised as a routine ‘criminal damage’ case. If this court case will result in Sigurdsson having to serve time in prison he will clearly be doing so as a political prisoner of the Icelandic State. Icelandic authorities should not think that they will be allowed to keep such scandalous abuse of justice secret from the international community.”

Additional background information

Earlier this year Thorsteinn Davidsson was appointed District Judge of East Iceland, his father; David Oddsson (Former Prime Minister of long standing and now Chairman of the National Bank) is widely considered to be one of the masterminds behind the government’s heavy industry policy. The appointment of Davidsson as District Judge caused huge waves of indignation in Iceland and a hail of accusations of nepotism, even from high places in the judicial system. “Perhaps sensing that the veneer of respectability covering this blatant fit up is wearing too thin Davidsson has stepped down as judge in Sigurdsson’s case.” said the SI spokesperson.

Most people who were at any of the three different Saving Iceland camps in the summer of 2006 have some anecdote about officer Snorrason. Whether he attempted to run them over, slashed at their belongings with a knife, cable tied them face down in the mud for hours or almost broke their necks with a pair of bolt cutters. “Everyone remembers him as dangerous and erratic.” said the spokesperson.

These are certainly not the first instances of reports about state repression of Saving Iceland activists. Police have consistently entered dwellings without warrants, used excessive force when arresting protestors and on one occasion attacked and hospitalized Johann Axelsson, an elderly professor who was a witness to an illegal arrest. Throughout the summers of 2005 and 2006 marked and unmarked police cars tailed SI vehicles from one side of the island to the other. In Reykjavik in August 2005, as this surveillance continued, the Assistant Head of the State Police categorically denied (in Frettabladid newspaper) that any activists were under surveillance – that is until the police were caught out and filmed (and televised) following Sigurdsson in his car around the same roundabout several rounds by veteran TV reporter Omar Ragnarsson. In 2005 the Directorate of Immigration drew up a ‘blacklist’ of foreign activists that police were to hunt down and deport, first the DoI denied the existence of the list, then when proved not to be telling the truth; admitted finally that the deportations attempts had no legal foundations.

More recently the police attempted to have environmental scientist Miriam Rose deported, shortly after she had been made to serve 8 days imprisonment in the isolation unit of a men’s prison for her involvement in opposing heavy industry projects, on the grounds that she was ‘A serious threat to the fundamental values of society’.

These constant police violations of both international and Icelandic laws regarding the rights of protestors have in this month (April) prompted the Left Green Party to demand that the Minister of Justice write a report about the conduct of the police against SI protestor. The demand was voted in favor of in the Icelandic Parliament by an overwhelming majority. The case against Sigurdsson will commence on Monday at 13.00 hrs in room 101 at the Reykjavik District Court. Here are some articles in the news about this case and the solidarity demonstration that took place before and while the case went on (Only in Icelandic though…):

• Saving Iceland mótmæla ákærunni á hendur Ólafi
• Mótmælendur velta því upp hvort Ísland sé lögregluríki
• Mótmæltu ákæru á hendur stofnanda Saving Iceland

For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Miriam Rose, and I am an activist and environmental scientist from the UK. I have been asked to speak today on my experience of the basic values of Icelandic society, based on an interview I did on Kastljos in October, after I was threatened with deportation from Iceland for my part in actions against the heavy industry policy of your government. The letter of requested deportation which I received explained that I may be expelled from Iceland for a minimum of three years as my behavior constitutes a ‘threat to the fundamental values of society’.

In the interview I noted how telling I thought this choice of words, and raised the question: What are the fundamental values of Icelandic society? It seems that free speech, equal rights and the right to protest are not amongst them, so what does this sentence say? To me it revealed a very simple truth about the nature of the decision. I had questioned the right of market and economic values to dominate society and nature, through the policy of heavy industrialisation. In this accusation it was made painfully clear that these are the ‘fundamental values’ of today’s Icelandic society even at the expense of human freedoms, and those who question such values are not welcome here. I will go on to explore this hypothesis tonight.

Iceland is a country with a proud history and belief in strong democracy and human rights. It is certainly perceived from the outside as a country with a representative and refined democratic system, and peaceful and humanist values. But what are these basic values we are so proud of maintaining in such a developed society? There are two essential building blocks of commonly percieved fundamental values of society- the fundamental human rights and the basic democratic values. I will go on to examine some of these values in detail, in relation to their applications in modern Icelandic society.

Developed democracies claim to value above all the basic human rights; free speech, equal rights, freedom of movement etc. Rights that were defined by hundreds of years of social struggle against repressive regimes, for equality and freedom, and are now enshrined into UN conventions and government constitutions to put our minds at rest.

So let us start with equal rights, perhaps the most fundamental of these values, assumed by all and part of our everyday rhetoric on the advantages of western democracy. But how are our equal rights monitored and enforced? Well, if we feel we have been treated unequally our first stop is the law courts, designed to check the application of such rights and deliver justice. It is well known that our ability to be represented in the courts requires and depends on money; good lawyers, payment of court fees, time off work etc. So this system is fundamentally flawed and unequal.

Secondly it is the duty of governments and companies to practice and ensure equal rights in their policies and actions. But will they really do this at the expense of enormous profit margins? Big corporations and state economies operate by using cheap labour and products from countries with dubious human rights to give their customers cheap ‘value-added’ goods. Value in this sense means only the size of the dent in the purse, not the rights of those whose slave labour creates it.

To confuse the matter of equal rights further, the use of human rights terminology must also be monitored, as its original purpose is misused and mistreated in the court room. The European Court of Human Rights has in several cases awarded corporations the human rights of individuals. The idea is that by acting against a corporation, you are acting against its shareholders and their fundamental human rights. (ie by blockading a MacDonalds truck you restrict the freedom of movement of its shareholders). Even these conventions now serve to protect the rights of big business and capital growth, and do not represent the voiceless majority as they were intended.

In Iceland there is considerable evidence of terrible mistreatment of foreign workers at Karahnjukar dams. Illegal workers brought by construction company Impregilo had almost no rights in Icelandic society, and reports of deaths at the work site are accused of being grossly underestimated. They received no justice or equality here. The Icelandic state ignored this ill-treatment in favour of the profits promised by powerful companies like ALCOA, (and perhaps also in fear of speaking against corporations with such highflying connections).

Personally I have experienced considerable inequality in my treatment here. This summer i was sent directly to prison after being notified of a fine for disobeying the police. In contrast to the norm I was given no time to pay the amount and no right to appeal in the courts, and was sent immediately to prison where I was kept in isolation for 8 days, as there was not space in the womens prison for me. While inside I was told by the prison guards that this was very unusual as most women are pardoned a few times before being imprisoned in Iceland, hence the small number of female prisoners. They were quite surprised that a woman convicted of her first and non-violent crime would be treated this way. It seems that this unfair treatment was intentionally harsh as a warning to other protesters that they were not wanted by the state.

Let us move on to free speech. Unlike the controlled media of dictatorships and communist regimes, we pride ourselves on the free and unbiased press of the Western world. But how impartial is it really? Icelandic media is controlled by a few private groups and a small state run element, which accepts private finance. What are their interests? Can company owned and sponsored media really criticise its own, or associated companies, or report fairly on their economic abuses? In whose interest was it that lies about the payment of Saving Iceland activists were published by RÚV and never revoked despite complaints made through all the official channels?

I will use the pertinent form of questioning taken by tribal rights activists in India, whom I have worked with and ask:
Free speech for whom? At what cost?

Thirdly, and in strong relation to my experience, what of freedom of assembly or the right to demonstrate? When our ability to express ourselves through the democratic system or the free media fails, this is an essential human right to test our democracy and the existence of our perceived fundamental human rights and values. On this subject i will read from an essay by booker prize winning Indian author Arundhati Roy:

“The only way to make democracy real is to begin a process of constant questioning, permanent provocation, and continuous public conversation between citizens and the State. That conversation is quite different from the conversation between political parties. (Representing the views of rival political parties is what the mass media thinks of as ‘balanced’ reporting.)

It is important to remember that our freedoms such as they are, were never given to us by any government, they have been wrested from them by us. If we do not use them, if we do not test them from time to time, they atrophy. If we do not guard them constantly, they will be taken away from us. If we do not demand more and more, we will be left with less and less.” (Roy, 2005)

In several instances the Icelandic State has shown its intolerance to the right of freedom of assembly, and to methods of civil disobedience as a form of protest. (Despite huge admiration for the use of these methods in defining our civil rights and freedoms). In 2002 any person suspected of being a member of the Falun Gong (a strictly pacifist human rights movement), were arrested or denied entry into Iceland at the request of a corrupt and internationally frowned upon government. (China.)

As a personal anecdote, I often use an example from my treatment here last summer. After being arrested and taken to Eskifjorður police station after a protest action, I found myself very thirsty while held in one of the small hot cells. When I knocked on the door to ask for a glass of water (my constitutional right) I was told, “You lost your rights when you broke the law!” and denied the water. This incident highlights to me the mentality of absolute lack of acceptance of the validity of this form of protest, and the lack of respect of human rights by those who�s job it is to protect them. (The police.)

We suffer from an obsession with the ‘sacred’ nature of the law, which denies us the right to challenge laws, ask who they are there to protect, and allow society to change and grow as it has historically by the use of these methods.

Having examined some of the main human rights let us now turn to the fundamental values and building blocks of democracy, the pride of Iceland�s history as the first truly democratic nation. Democracy is based on; participation (of people in the system), representation (of the people by politicians) and accountability (of decisions taken to the people). By examining these elements I will present the idea that real democracy has been replaced by an ‘illusion of democracy’, manufactured by PR experts and spin-doctors who now hold such an important place in the workings of our governments. In fact many western governments (including Iceland) rely on this illusion to maintain a fairly silent and disinterested population, who don’t question a so-called democratic system which benefits big business and capital growth at the expense of all else (the environment, civil liberties etc).The use of rhetoric has confused the ‘free-market’ with the freedom of the people, suggesting that an open economic environment means an open society, and disguising the loss of civil liberties and democracy that march hand in hand with such unchecked and unquestioned capital growth.

First let us examine participation. In this the democratic systems we use are fundamentally flawed. In the 2003 Icelandic elections 33.7% voted Independence party, 31% voted for the Alliance (social democrats), and 17% voted Progressive. In the following coalition, not only did just 34% vote for the winning party, but a party with only 17% support achieved huge shared power in government. This was the coalition who went on to repeatedly deny requests for an open vote on Kárahnjukarvirkjun.

Secondly we may examine representation and accountability. Once elected it seems that ministers have a clean bill to do what they (and their interest groups) want without any accountability to, or representation of the people who put them there. In 2003 Prime Minister David Oddsson and Foreign Secretary Halldor Ásgrimsson, allied Iceland to the war in Iraq without the consultation of the people or even the government. This decision was vastly against public opinion. It was not representative and against the parliamentary rules and the constitution, which state that such issues must go through the foreign affairs commitee (which it did not). The Penal Code states that anyone who challenges the fairness of the Icelandic state as defined in the constitution is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Were they tried on this crime? No. Representation and accountability failed here as in so many cases.

Again, when the legal system and democracy has failed to hold the government accountable, protest is the only avenue for justice. In 2006 fifteen thousand people marched in towns and cities around Iceland in protest of the drowning of Kárahnjukar, to no effect. It is no wonder that people feel powerless with these methods of protest, and turn to direct action and civil disobedience to challenge decisions made in their name.

Some would even say that corporations have more power than people and even politicians in Iceland. Since we have seen the connection between money and power, it is clear that enormous monopolies like ALCOA, Baugur group, RioTinto and the KolKrabbin hold much. And how are they held accountable? DECODE, the owner of almost all Icelandic human DNA are selling off their information to other companies at 60,000 Kr a piece, with no public permission. Meanwhile ALCOA receives energy for many times less than the Icelandic public, an amount so small that Landsvirkjun will not even disclose it.

Again we ask: Representation for whom? At what cost? Democracy for whom? At what cost?

Modern Western democracies (such as Iceland and the UK) rely on a silent and disillusioned population, allowing the passing of controversial policies without check, as we are fooled by the rhetoric of democracy and freedom. Unlike under a harsh dictatorship or tough communism, we are too wealthy and content to question the system that creates our wealth.

On the issue of authority and acceptance, I always find the famous psychological test by Stanley Milgram very interesting. In this experiment a member of the public is asked to participate in a contrived experiment in which they must read out a list of questions to a second participant (actually an actor) sitting in the next room. When the answerer gets the questions wrong, they must give them an electric shock, the dose of which will increase with each wrong answer until it reaches a red (very dangerous) zone on the machine. The participant can hear the screams of the answerer getting louder and more horrific with each dose. In most experiments the participant complied to a very worrying level of electric dosage and did not question the authority of the white-coated, clipboard holding scientist directing the test. Milgram concluded that the perceived authority of the scientist removed the personal values of the participant to some extent.

He went on to examine how compliance changed with variations to certain aspects of the experiment. He found that compliance dropped dramatically when: a) the scientist did not wear a labcoat or hold a clipboard, b) A third party actor playing another member of the public entered and questioned the validity of the experiment. When related to democracy and societal values, the first instance shows the importance of perceived legitimacy in authority figures, and the need for the PR man to ensure the image keeps the people silent and satisfied. The second element I find most interesting as it shows the huge destabilising force of the dissenting public voice to the illusion of democracy. It only takes one other voice of concern to unmask the powers that be and lead to rejection of the system and re-establishment of personal values. No wonder governments try so hard to quash protest against their contentious policies.

Finally, when asking Icelanders what they consider the basic values of their society, the issue of Independence came up time and time again. It seems that if liberty is the fundamental value of the USA, Independence is that of Iceland. Icelanders are respected worldwide for their rejection of a national army, of the EU, of the globalisation of fishing rights. There is a real, and admirable feeling of the need to be self sufficient as an island state here, even at the cost of expensive fat-cat friendships in Europe and beyond.

Despite this, there is great willingness of the Icelandic nation to accept neo-colonisation of the economy by very few Aluminium corporations, who rip off energy at a fraction of the public cost, burdening the taxpayer and creating economic reliance on so few foreign companies. (ALCOA admitted in a meeting in Brazil that they are paying less than half for Icelandic power, as they will pay for big dam electricity there.) Yet, when foreign activists join Icelanders in opposing this sellout they are shunned and told, ‘it is not your business’.

So it seems that the freemarket, the economy and Iceland’s role in corporate globalisation are the key values of today’s Icelandic society. So we ask once more: Globalisation for whom? At what cost?

Does globalisation mean international free movement of people?
No, not in the case of the Falun Gong, or saving iceland activists repeatedly threatened with deportation.

Does it mean equal respect for all human lives?
Not in the case of the secretive treatment of workers at Karahnjukarvirkjun.

Does it mean meaningful international treatise on climate change, racial discrimination or nuclear weapons?
No, again it doesn’t. Geir H. Harde is even currently trying to weedle his way out of Iceland’s already excessive Kyoto allowances.

And, if these are the values of Iceland, are they really the values of the Icelandic people? Or just those of the powerful few at the head of the decision making process? And if they are not the people’s values, how will the people object to them? How will they regain and redefine the real fundamental values of society? That is the question which faces Iceland and most states today. In a climate where the market God has become almost unquestioned as the basis of our life and values, we must decide whether it is really ok to take the blue pill and settle into the cushioned comfort of the illusion, or gulp the red pill, open our eyes, and set ourselves to unmasking the powers that we must once again wrest our values from.

References:

Roy, Arundhati, 2005. ‘An ordinary persons guide to empire’. Penguin Books, India.

Miriam Rose is also co-author of:

Aluminium Tyrants (The Ecologist)
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Relevant stories:

The Directorate of Immigration Refuse to Deport Miriam Rose
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London Protest Against Iceland’s Deportation of Environmental Activists
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Stop Iceland’s Persecution of Environmental Activists – London Demo 2 October
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Saving Iceland Activists Threatened with Deportation
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UK Greens Urge Icelandic Government to Stop Persecution of SI Activists
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UK Greens Back British Environmental Activist Imprisoned in Iceland
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‘Surprise, surprise!’
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The Directorate of Immigration has decided that they will not grant the request of the Icelandic police and deport SI activist Miriam Rose.

The Directorate confirmed this tonight speaking to the Icelandic National TV news program Kastljos.

So far we are not aware of any legal reasoning for the decision. But it was clear already some time ago that the police had lost the propaganda war almost from the beginning. The “…serious threat to the fundamental values of society” claim, in the letter requesting that Miriam Rose was to be deported, was for example something that the Icelandic public was just not going to swallow so easily. Instead the deportation request caused great alarm with the public about the state of civil rights and democracy in Icelandic society, not without reason.

It has not passed unnoticed here in Iceland that even if the police are used to getting away with all sorts of power abuse most of the time, they have frequently got so carried away in the heat of the moment that they have repeatedly shot themselves badly in the foot. This website has reported a considerable number of such instances when it comes to SI protests.

Now that the police have finally exhausted the bogus threat of deporting environmental protesters they should maybe pause for some reflection.

Instead of constantly making fools of themselves with thuggish persecution and illconceived plots, perhaps the time has come that they do something sensible for a change. Like turning their attention to the corruption that is ripe in the Icelandic energy companies and not least the multinational corporate criminals they have tried so hard to protect from legitimate protest.

Miriam Rose is a co-author of ‘Aluminium Tyrants’, an article published this month in The Ecologist. /?p=1021

The decision of the DI finally spurred the Kastljos editors to transmit an interview they recorded three weeks ago with Miriam Rose. This had obviously been kept off the air in order not to further Miriam’s cause:
 http://dagskra.ruv.is/streaming/sjonvarp…

About the deportation case(s) see also:

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Protest Outside Iceland’s London Embassy

Today a protest against Iceland’s current persecution of environmental activists was held outside London’s Icelandic Embassy in Sloane Square. The protestors handed in a letter [below] to Sverrir Haukur Gunnlaugsson, Iceland’s ambassador to the UK, which condemns Iceland’s current attempt to deport Miriam Rose, a British citizen. They held a banner which read: Iceland: Police State.

More information regarding Miriam’s deportation can be found here.

Media Reports:
Morgunblaðdið

Letter Handed in to Sverrir Haukur Gunnlaugsson:
“To the Ambassador for Iceland, London.

Regarding the proposed deportation of Miriam Rose

Mr Ambassador,

We wish to express our shock and indignation that the Icelandic state is undertaking deportation proceedings against Miriam Rose, a UK citizen. While we recognize that the final decision on the matter rests with the Immigration Directorate, we feel that the state’s pursuit of this case is indicative of Iceland’s apparent intolerance towards opposition, to the point of persecution.

Far from being a threat to the fundamental values of Icelandic society, Miriam, in common with other foreign environmentalists who have campaigned to save this great European wilderness, has been protesting to protect Iceland’s natural heritage from self-interested corporate exploitation in the form of the aluminium multinationals. The only crime of which she has been convicted is disobedience: civil disobedience has a long and proud history as a morally justified – if not always strictly legal – form of political expression to resist a greater wrong. It certainly does not represent a “sufficiently serious” offense to warrant her expulsion from the country.

The Icelandic state’s repeated attempts to expel Saving Iceland activists, of which this is only the most recent, is compounded by coercive behavior towards Icelanders who make their opposition known. Geophysicist Grímur Björnsson was forbidden from revealing his findings, which were suppressed and kept from parliament because they showed the Karahnjukar dams to be unsafe, while Dr. Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir’s Environmental Impact Assessment on Thjorsarver was first rejected and then (when she had been forced to do it again) falsified; she was not paid for her work. State employed highland wardens found their jobs under threat when they flew their flags at half-mast in protest against the deal between Alcoa and the Icelandic government. This all signifies a lack of respect for freedom of expression as enshrined in the Icelandic constitution.

As representative of your government, we urge you to recognize the poor light this conduct casts on your nation abroad, and hope you will advocate a retraction of Miriam’s deportation and an end to such repressive tactics against the opponents of heavy industry in Iceland.

Yours sincerely,”

Having taken part in direct actions against the multinational aluminium industry invasion, dam and geothermal plant destruction of the wilderness, Miriam has been labeled by the Icelandic Immigration Authority a threat to ‘public order and security’ and Iceland’s ‘fundamental societal values’. Also, she is charged with violating her tourist status in the island by supposedly getting paid by SI for every blockade she has been part of: complete nonsense as SI has never paid anyone at all to be part of the campaign. This accusation is the product of an elite whose fetishism of capital has taken over so totally that the thought of acting out of love, care and fury is incomprehensible.

SI has found out that Iceland has already written the same deportation letters to all other international activists arrested as part of the campaign and summer protest camps, and is waiting to see how Miriam’s case pans out before trying to send them out. That the Icelandic authorities are going to these measures does prove that they fear direct action on behalf of the earth against the heavy industry policy, that they fear Saving Iceland.

These measures are a violation of ‘fundamental societal values’ in a supposedly democratic country where freedom of expression and the right to protest are a fundamental part of its constitution and laws.

This Demonstration is intended to bring international pressure and attention onto Miriam’s case, Iceland’s persecution of environmental activists, and Iceland’s destruction of its nature. We call on you to attend or organise manifestations in your local area.

More information about Miriams case can be found here

On Friday 21st September, Saving Iceland activist Miriam Rose was presented with a letter from the Icelandic Directorate of Immigration threatening her with possible expulsion from Iceland. The letter claims that due to her participation in two actions at smelter sites she may be considered a threat to ‘public order and security’ and ‘fundamental societal values’. The letter also claims that Saving Iceland pays activists for being arrested, a claim repeatedly denied and proven to be false.(1)

Miriam has already served 8 days in prison for protesting against the destruction of Icelandic wilderness, for which the UK Green Party Principal Speaker Dr Derek Wall accused the Icelandic government of political harassment and demanded her immediate release.(2) In Radio 1 Icelandic news program Spegillinn yesterday, the police admitted that this was to be the first of many attempted deportations of activists.

Protest Response! Tuesday 2nd October, London Click here for more details.

Miriam is now waiting for a decision by the Directorate of Immigration, having submitted her objection to deportation. ‘I am very shocked that the Icelandic government continue to punish me, after already paying so heavily for my actions and ideals. This seems to be an attempt to scare people from protesting here, and I find such treatment surprising in a supposedly developed democracy like Iceland. I am a peaceful and educated person and have never posed a threat to the police or any other person during my time here. I was intending to settle in Iceland, and have been making moves to learn Icelandic and contribute to this society.’

Saving Iceland issued this declaration on the issue:

” Miriam M. Rose, who now dwells in Iceland, has received a letter from Utlendingastofnun saying that she may be expelled from the country because of her protest actions with Saving Iceland. Because of this, the Saving Iceland movement declares:

Miriam Rose is accused of threatening the ‘fundamental values of society’ by taking part in protest actions. That is absurd.

Miriam is a dedicated humanist and pacifist and hates violence. Her experience in India, where she was dwelling among people made homeless by heavy industry, promoted by Alcan and other companies, influenced her deeply and is one of the reasons for her actions against Alcan in Iceland. Miriam is not a criminal, she is a scientist. She is a graduate in Environmental Science from the University of Sussex and her writings on environmental protection have been published, among others, in the Ecologist.

Miriam is engaged to an Icelander. She is learning the Icelandic language and is good at it, she looks at Iceland as her second home and is especially interested in working on geological projects in Iceland and even furthering her studies in the University of Iceland. It is in her interest to be able to continue to stay in Iceland.

Nothing in her views, her past or her manners makes her a threat to the Icelandic community. The autocratic toughness she has faced here says more about institutional fear of protest than her as a person.

We point out that direct actions, both legal and illegal, have been used in all the biggest rights issues in human history. Workers and womens rights in the west, abolishment of slavery in America, and the fight against apartheid in S-Africa to name just a few. The law of the land is not a divine phenomenon but rules set by human beings, either to ensure public safety or to ensure the powers of a small elite of the rich and the powerful, or big companies.

Miriam has protested against heavy industry in Iceland but in no way has she threatened the ‘fundamental values of society’. If she will be deported it will be because of her opinions but not because the Icelandic community is threatened by her staying here. A large group of people has taken part in similar actions as she has without being deported.

The Icelandic constitution upholds the right to protest and to voice your opinions. If this right keeps being violated when it comes to protesters against the heavy industry policy the Icelandic people better wake up to what it happening to their democracy.

The website of the Directorate of Immigration is http://www.utl.is/english

The director’s name is Hildur Dungal:  hildur at utl.is

1.- ‘Rógburður RUV – Serious Slander about S.I. made by the State Broadcaster’ /?p=893

2.- ‘UK Greens Back British Environmental Activist Imprisoned in Iceland’
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See also:

‘Surprise, surprise!’ /?p=144

‘Environment Minister Bjartmarz embroiled in corruption scandal’ /?p=759

ICELANDIC AUTHORITIES CRACKDOWN ON POLITICAL ACTIVISTS

Greens back British woman threatened with deportation

Twenty-three year old ‘Saving Iceland’ activist Miriam Rose was held for 8 days by Icelandic police in July of this year, after protesting against the Icelandic government’s support for heavy industry, in particular Rio Tinto Alcan’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Iceland. She has now been threatened with deportation. (1)

Icelandic Police on Friday presented her with a letter stating that they judge ‘the professed aim of the organization “Saving Iceland” is to disturb public order and threaten fundamental societal values.’ The police are also said to have admitted that this was to be the first of many attempted deportations of activists. (2)

Saving Iceland are a network of people of different nationalities who work to drive away what they describe as the ‘corporate threat’ to Iceland. Currently, 8 new smelters or enlargements of existing smelters planned in Iceland.

Green Party Principal Speaker Dr. Derek Wall today urged the Icelandic authorities to reconsider their actions with regard to Miriam Rose and other environmental activists.

“The Icelandic authorities, not satisfied with arresting and holding Miriam Rose as political prisoner, now seem intent on expelling her from Iceland.

“It’s vital that we protect the right to peaceful protest .

“Non-violent direct action is one of the few weapons we have to affect change, and government’s around the world must be called to account when they try to repress it.”

“I support the Left-Green party in Iceland’s call for an independent investigation into the conduct of the Icelandic police against Saving Iceland protesters in the the years of 2005 and 2006, and am appalled by what looks to be systematic persecution of Miriam Rose as a political and environmental activist.

“I urge the Icelandic authorities, especially the Icelandic government, to reconsider their actions in this case. ”

ENDS

Notes for Editors

(1) & (2) More info on Saving Iceland and the arrest of Miriam Rose can be found at www.savingiceland.org

 http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/3171

The gates of a geothermal power station are not where you would expect to find environmental activists. But the morning of 26th July 2007 saw the access road to Hellisheidi power station in Hengill, South-West Iceland, blockaded by a group of protestors from the campaign group ‘Saving Iceland’. After a brief demonstration, nine activists were arrested and several now face legal action.

Geothermal power in Iceland is big business. Just five plants generate 3 TWh a year – more than the annual output from all the UK’s wind turbines combined (Orkustofnun 2005; BERR 2006). Geothermal power also provides at least 85 per cent of Iceland’s homes with heat and hot water. This abundance of cheap, largely CO2-free energy has attracted energy-hungry industries to the country like sharks to a carcass. Of these, by far the most energy intensive is the aluminium industry (Krater 2007; Saving Iceland 2007).

Renewable energy is particularly attractive to aluminium smelters because the very process of refining aluminium gives off huge amounts of carbon dioxide, as well as a cocktail of other chemicals including inorganic and organic fluorines, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons and sulphur dioxides, many of which are extremely potent greenhouse gases (Das & Padel 2005). By using ‘clean energy’, such as the terawatts available in Iceland’s hot rocks and mountain rivers, the refiners can make the industry appear cleaner.

Such opportunities have led to aluminium giants queuing to get into the country. Alcan opened Iceland’s first plant in 1969 in Hafnarfjörður. Originally slated to produce 33,000 metric tons of aluminium per year (mtpy), it was subsequently uprated to 180,000 mtpy. Alcan are now pushing for a further expansion of the plant to around 460,000 mtpy, despite a public referendum which voted against the proposals. The Mayor of Hafnarfjörður, Ludvik Geirsson, is backing the company, claiming that the referendum only applied to the existing plans and would not prevent the construction of new facilities on top of the city’s landfill site.‘Nietzsche killed God; Ludvik killed democracy,’ read one activist’s banner at a recent protest.

Iceland’s second smelting plant began operations in 1998 in Grundartangi, Western Iceland. Owned by US-based Century Aluminum Company, the plant began with an output of 220,000 mtpy, but will soon add another 260,000 mtpy. Hungry for more capacity, Century’s subsidiary, Norðurál, have announced plans for a new 250,000 mtpy facility at Helguvík near Reykjavik.

Whilst waiting for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) to be considered, Norðurál have gone ahead and signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with two leading geothermal power generators, and raised some $360 million of venture capital in the US (Credit Suisse 2007; European Investment Bank 2007). This suggests that Norðurál knows that the EIA will not raise too many awkward questions. Some of this confidence may stem from the fact that the company which undertook the EIA is the construction firm HRV, which has co-built three of Iceland’s previous smelters.

HRV’s vested interests shine through in its report. In considering the airborne pollution that might result from the plant, HRV advises that any plumes vented from the factory could be expected to ‘blow away’ in the strong winds of Helguvík.

Should the Icelandic Government give the nod to the Helguvík project, then a correspondingly large-scale increase in geothermal power generation will be called for. Whilst geothermal power can be a clean energy source, time, money and the interests of the big industry can make it substantially less so.

The boiling water which comes out of geothermal boreholes is extremely useful while it spins turbines and heats buildings. After that, however, it becomes a waste product. Laced with various and sometimes toxic compounds from deep within the bedrock, the water is either pumped back into the borehole – which can lead to geological instability – or is pumped untreated into streams and lakes (Kristmanssdottir & Armanssdottir 2003; Rybach 2003). This particular technique has already created a huge dead zone in lake Thingvallavatn, leading to a decline in numbers of falcons, greylag geese, harlequin ducks and ravens (VGK 2006; Landvernd 2007).

For the Saving Iceland protestors, the fight goes on. New plans include additional smelters by Alcoa and Norsk Hydro, an anode factory and oil refinery. If these are realised, CO2 emissions could rise to 63 per cent above 1990 levels, ushering in the absurd situation of a country which generates 99 per cent of its electricity through renewable technologies soaring past its generous Kyoto targets (Icelandic Ministry of the Environment 2006).

At a recent conference, the campaign group set out its manifesto (Ley et al 2007):‘Progress is painted by some as huge projects, large scale development. In all our countries, these have become disasters, socially, ecologically and economically,’ it reads. The group’s human-scale definition is more accurate.‘Progress is a plenitude of small solutions.’

References:

• Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) (2006). Digest of UK Energy Statistics. http://www.dtistats.net/energystats/duke… [Accessed September 16, 2007].
• European Investment Bank (2007). News Release. http://www.eib.org/projects/pipeline/200… [Accessed August 15, 2007].?
• VGK (2006), Environmental Impact Assesment for Helisheidarvirkjun. http://www.vgk.is/hs/Skjol/UES/SH_matssk… [Accessed August 15, 2007].
• Credit Suisse (2007). News Release. http://www.newratings.com/analyst_news/a… [Accessed August 15, 2007].
• Das, S. and Padel, F. (2005). Double Death – Aluminium’s Links with Genocide. Economic and Political Weekly, 2005 (12).?
• HRV (2007). Environmental Impact Assesment for Century Norðurál Helguvik. http://www.hrv.is/media/wordpress/wp-con… [Accessed August 15 2007].?
• Krater, J. (2007). Elke stuwdam is een ramp. Trouw (daily) 20-1-2007.?
• Kristmannsdóttir, H. and Armannsson, H (2003). Environmental aspects of geothermal energy utilization. Geothermics 32, 451-461.?
• Landvernd (2007). Letter to national planning agency, 28th June 2007. http://www.landvernd.is/myndir/Umsogn_He… [Accessed August 15 2007].?
• Ley, A. et al. (2007). Global Consequences of Heavy Industry and Large Dams. Conference Declaration. Saving Iceland, Olfus. Full list of author-signatorees available at: http://www.savingiceland.org/declaration… [Accessed August 2007].
• Ministry of the Environment, Iceland (2006). Iceland’s Fourth National Communication on Climate Change. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/isl… [Accessed August 15, 2007].?
• Orkustofnun (2005). Energy Statistics in Iceland. http://www.os.is/Apps/WebObjects/Orkusto… [Accessed August 15, 2007].?
• Rybach, L. (2003). Geothermal energy: sustainability and the environment. Geothermics 32, 463-470.?

Updated July 28 July

The Icelandic Police have stepped up their repression of Saving Iceland activists whilst their 2007 Summer protest camp finishes. [1] One activist has been refused the right to appeal her prison sentence and is currently in solitary confinement. Fifteen have had their passports stolen by the Police, who refuse to give any firm reasons as to why or when they will be returned. Five people were arrested for putting up political street art, including the owner of the building that was to be painted. Nine police vehicles turned up at a party in which many SI activists were attending and entered the building without warrant.

After being arrested in the vicinity of the Rio Tinto-Alcan aluminium smelter in Straumsvik on the 24th of July [2], one activist had her sentence from the 2006 protest camp laid on her. Instead she was given the choice to either immediately pay 100,000 ISK or serve eight days in prison. She was refused her right to appeal, which would have given her a month to choose her options. She chose to go to prison instead of paying her fine. Now she is in Hegningarhusid, an all male prison, and therefore in solitary confinement.

Saving Iceland demands that:
*The activist currently in prison is either moved to a womens prison with a full apology or released immediately for lack of state resources.
*All stolen passports must be released immediately, according to international law.
*An end to the criminalisation and state harassment of environmental activists.

“Why, if there were no spaces in a women’s prison, and if she should have been given her time of appeal, has she been rushed off into a mens prison, leaving her isolated and in solitary confinement? This is illegal and feels like a political decision designed to unfairly treat political activists.” says Saving Iceland’s Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson.

Fifteen utlendigar (foreign) activists have had their passports siezed by the Reykjavik Police Dep. After many contradictory statements, Geir Jon, Head of Police, has stated that all passports will be sent to the Keflavik or Seydisfjordur police departments who will return the passports upon the activists departure. We wonder whether this will be the case, or whether activists are to be kept in the country illegally until the time of their trial.

“Passports are the property of the state that issues them, not the Icelandic states to do with as they please. If someone whose identification has been seized by the police needs urgent medical attention or seeks a residents permit in Iceland, for example, how are they to do this without their id?” says Úlfhildarson

Four political street artists were about to apply paint to a wall in Laugavegur, Reykjavik, at 4am on the 28th of July, when they were surrounded by nine special forces police. Whilst the owner of the wall that was to be painted made it clear that he gave full permission to the artists, the police decided to arrest not only the artists, but the owner of the house too! In total, five were arrested, photographed, imprisoned for up to seven hours and finally released without charge.

How many police does it take to ask for noise to be turned down??????????????
Note that this image has been brightened to make its content visible.?

On the same night a house party in Seltjarnarness which was attended by Saving Iceland activists was surrounded by police. Over twenty policemen in nine cars and vans turned up to tell the partiers to turn their music down. Also, two of the policemen were relatives of the people inside, one having been brought all the way from Hafnarfjordur. The police entered a wing of the house which was unconnected to the party without a warrant.

Saving Iceland demands that:
*The activist currently in prison is either moved to a womens prison with a full apology or released immediately for lack of state resources.
*All stolen passports must be released immediately, according to international law.
*An end to the criminalisation and state harassment of environmental activists.

[1] The 2007 protest camp closed on 27 July, see /?p=891
[2] Around twenty activists blocked the Hafnafjordur plant for one and a half hours on the 24th of July, see /?p=882