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.

They might have thought Karahnjukar was a shame, or even a necessary sacrifice, but that it would be limited to just that.

Two years after the flooding in the east, what is happening now? The Century smelter at Hvalfjordur has just been expanded, without anyone really noticing. A huge part of the Hengill area is being blown up right now with explosives to make the ground level enough for the geothermal boreholes and pipes constructed by low-paid Eastern Europeans working 72 hours a week, living in something that makes the newly opened Akureyri Prison look like Hotel Nordica.

Work has been started to build a smelter in Helguvik for which the same will happen to all the geothermal areas in Reykjanes. Never mind the environmental impact (which hasn’t even been assessed yet).

At Krafla, Alcoa and Landsvirkjun are drilling boreholes right into one of the top 10 tourist attractions of Iceland, the Viti volcano crater. At Theistareykir the deep drilling testing has accidentally created a new arsenic-sulphur lake. Oops.

Apparently most Reykjavik journalists are too bored with the issue to go and take a few pictures up north, no one has written anything about it.

In the mean time, everyone who can calculate that one plus one is two can figure out that there won’t be enough geothermal energy in the north to power a second Alcoa smelter. If the smelter plans aren’t stopped now it is inevitable that Skjalfandafljot and the Skagafjördur rivers or Jökulsá á Fjöllum will be dammed. But apparently most journalists have forgotten their basic maths and choose to ignore the obvious.

Last year, before the Saving Iceland protest camp began, we had a two-day conference where we browsed through every little detail of the aluminium industry. We had people over from Africa, Trinidad and Brazil telling their stories. The whole conference was completely ignored by Icelandic media.

They are mostly not interested in that kind of thing. It’s boring.

When we chain ourselves to something, they always phone up asking for injuries, arrests, whether things are damaged or stolen and if anyone ever uses drugs or has ever flown in an aluminium plane.

The papers don’t show photos of pollution lakes or blown up mountains but what they do print is a giant close-up of our camp toilet. We just hope people have a look at our website or find some other way to inform themselves and then decide to take whatever kind of action they feel is appropriate.

I find it quite amusing to have the weirdest questions being asked, such as “do you use cutlery to eat?” but it also makes me incredibly sad. James, you are right, but tell me, what should we do? Maybe I will start working on my giant pink footed goose costume!

Apparently four years of climbing cranes has not motivated many people to actually do something about making sure there will not be any new dams. Everyone is just bored and apathetic about it.

Write something, make a complaint, get angry at politicians for breaking election promises, phone people up, whatever it is you can do, if you oppose these projects, no one will stop them if no one does anything. Please!

Jaap Krater

Saving Iceland’s Attention

James Weston, Iceland Review – The television is on in the corner of the room showing the evening news bulletin. A young protester is chained to a fence with a few police officers trying to pull her away. A crowd of onlookers is standing with their mouth’s agape, a few still waving their own protest banners.

Now this may seem like exciting television, but for some, it’s quite the opposite. During the piece I found my own attention wandering from the television towards the conversation that has just started between two friends. It doesn’t appear they’re listening either.

This is a piece regarding the latest protest by Saving Iceland, “who do not intend to stand by passively and watch the Icelandic government in league with foreign corporations slowly kill the natural beauty of Iceland.”

Everyone seems to have an opinion on the aluminum smelting issue facing Iceland. I’ve previously presented my outlook on the situation. That’s not to say that all of my friends and new Icelandic family agrees with me. On the contrary, there are quite a few that strongly disagree! The issue is a debate starter, but for both sides, the debate is entered with a sigh. A “here we go again…”

I keep some of my fears hidden just to grease the wheels of friendly, social conversation. Some situations do not welcome the discussion, of course. It’s tantamount to announcing that you were a card-holding communist at dinner with Joe McCarthy! I will say at this point, I am not and never have been a member of Saving Iceland. In fact I don’t know anyone that is.

With the frequent media coverage, “Saving Iceland” seems to have become a by-word for someone who posses a little environmental awareness. The mention of those two words seems to conjure up images of hand holding, banner waving lunatics .The woman from Saving Iceland interviewed after the news piece does much to uphold the viewpoint. A well-spoken Brit, earthen clothing, complete with big red dreadlocks. You really don’t get more new-age hippy than this!

There are many of my friends who are fiercely against the smelting program. When I ask them about Saving Iceland, the responses are all very similar. The overriding issue being that they are simply bored of it all. They have been seeing this for ages and find themselves switching off when any news item is raised about the group. “It’s always in the news and I kind of switch off” is a common reaction. They’re aware of the issue, but seeing it almost every day pushes it into the background for them.

It’s an age-old problem for any issue worldwide. Prolonged attention in the public eye will lead to a stagnation of reaction. Saving Iceland have done a fantastic job in keeping their cause in the public psyche. It’s a grand project and the commitment admirable. As always though, people will be looking for something new. Being told the same thing again and again does become, well, boring.

Maybe the fact that people are bored of the issue is signs of a job truly well done for Saving Iceland. They’ve almost become ubiquitous, part of the news briefings almost as much as Sports & Weather. Not everyone is going to grow dreadlocks and get out the padlocks and chains; but they are constantly aware of the situation whether it bores them or not.

JW

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/

So how will Rio-Tinto owned Alcan respond? In 2007 Iceland’s major power company, Landsvirkjun, announced its will to develop energy for industries other than aluminium smelting in order to not turn the island into a total aluminium republic. Despite this and a local referendum decision rejecting their smelter expansion ideal in Straumsvik, Rio Tinto-Alcan are still continuing to announce that their expansion plans will not be stopped. Most recently they have said that they can expand Straumsvik by 22% without utilising more land: only the land of the geothermal plants, the water of the rivers, the landfill mines and all subsequent infrastructure of course.

Anyway, back to South Africa, below is a statement from our friends at Earthlife Africa.

Press Release: Eskom may Delay Alcan Smelter until 2013
Earthlife Africa Jhc

According to an article in today’s Business Report (“Shelve new projects, Eskom warns”), Eskom financial director is asking the Government to stop marketing South Africa as a low-cost electricity investment centre. This would include delaying, until 2013, the controversial and proposed Alcan aluminium smelter at Coega. The Alcan was the subject of intense civil society, local Port Elizabeth, and international opposition in 2007.

Eskom’s financial director, Mr. Bongani Nqwababa, is reported to have said, in regards to the Alcan smelter, that, “Eskom needs to review supply to Coega”, and that paying penalties for the delaying the project would be cheaper than building a new power station, which is what the proposed smelter would require. Earthlife Africa Jhb welcomes this reasoned and enlightened viewpoint and hopes that this is the beginning of responsible energy supply planning, especially in the current climate of load shedding. Responsible energy planning requires demand management and industrial energy efficiency.

Next Wednesday, Cabinet meets to discuss energy supply problems. Earthlife Africa Jhb urges Cabinet to reject the tariff policy (the Developmental Electricity Pricing Programme (DEPP)) under which the 25-year contract with Alcan was signed. Abandoning the DEPP would help to ensure security of electricity supply for South Africa’s ordinary citizens.

As explained below, the DEPP ensures that contracts between the State and foreign corporations remain secret and not for public review. This is extremely anti-democratic.

The Energy Policy Officer of Earthlife Africa Jhb, Tristen Taylor, states, “The big question that should be asked when Eskom turns off the lights is; why, if Eskom can’t supply electricity to the citizens of this country, is it offering foreign companies large amounts of power at reduced tariffs? Must individuals and small businesses suffer so that large industries can be assured profit? It seems that Mr. Nqwababa understands these questions and has suggested it would be irresponsible to supply the Canadian multinational corporation Alcan before supplying electricity to the citizens and voters of this country.”

Alcan & Electricity Supply Background
Via the Developmental Electricity Pricing Programme, Eskom and the Government have committed themselves to large-scale supply of electricity to foreign companies at reduced tariffs; this at a time when Eskom struggles to supply citizens with electricity. Thirty percent of all South Africans are still not connected to the electricity grid.

The electricity supply deal to the Canadian aluminium-smelting firm Alcan was the first and to date the only deal to be signed under the DEPP.

For the past two years, Earthlife Africa Jhb has consistently called upon the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Department of Public Enterprises, Eskom and Alcan to disclose the details of electricity sales to Alcan for its proposed smelter. Both the South African Government and Alcan have hidden behind a profoundly anti-democratic clause in the Developmental Electricity Pricing Programme (DEPP). Alcan is the first foreign company to benefit from the DEPP, and has signed a 25-year deal for 1350MW supply of electricity. This represents about 4% of the entire country’s usage.

What is the DEPP? Essentially, the DEPP provides for uniquely discounted electricity tariffs for foreign industries that are heavy consumers of electricity (over 50MW) in South Africa. In return for investment in South Africa, the DEPP will ensure that electricity tariffs are internationally competitive (our nearest competitor is Australia, which sells electricity at US$0.053 per kWh and is 30% more expensive) and that the industry in question can achieve an profitable internal rate of return; i.e. if electricity is a major overhead (such as in aluminium smelting), it the tariff will be low enough to ensure profit.

This is a significant incentive for heavy industry to invest in South Africa and is supposed to provide significant jobs. However, what it really does is commit Eskom to tariffs for heavy industry at a rate lower (or, at most, on par with the next cheapest supplier of electricity) than anywhere else. It is, in effective, a subsidy for foreign industries, similar to a tax break or import duty waiver.

The most worrying factor about the DEPP is the “built-in” secrecy clause. Eskom is a public enterprise, ultimately owned by the citizenry at large. However, the DEPP guidelines ensure that any contracts signed under the DEPP are to remain secret.
This is profoundly anti-democratic. The DEPP states (clause 12.1):

All officials, employees or members of the Department, the adjudication committee, NERSA, Eskom and non Eskom distributors shall regard as confidential all technical information, records, particularly any strategic commercial information and all knowledge that pertains to any project that applied for benefits in terms of DEPP, whether such information is recorded on paper or in an electronic manner.

The very next clause (12.2) in the guidelines bounds individuals with knowledge about the contracts to silence for the rest of their lives.

If the DEPP is a method for promoting growth and development in South Africa, why then the secrecy? Why shouldn’t this be in the public domain? This clause gives foreign corporations like Alcan the right to build electricity-intensive industrial plant in South Africa, get electricity on favourable terms in relation to their expected rate of return, and not to have to tell the country at large what rate they purchased electricity from the South African state. Further, this clause seems at odds with the spirit of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, through a pre-emptive strike against the releasing of information.

The DEPP deal with Alcan means that the citizens of this country won’t know the answers to the following questions:

* What is the price of electricity agreed upon by Alcan and Eskom?
* What are the conditions of supply of electricity?
* Will the price paid to Eskom cover the indirect costs of smelter? For example, the environmental group TWIG has calculated that the indirect costs of harm to the environment based on Eskom CO2 emissions to supply the smelter with electricity would be R6.4 billion.

See /?p=827 for more information on the potential effects of the Coega project.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This Smelter Ting is All ‘o Us Bizness”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(man in white shirt in pic is Wade.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Websites:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jaap Krater
Earth First Journal
3 August, 2007

Summer of Resistance in Iceland – an overview

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

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

Reclaiming Reykjavik

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

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

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

Direct Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths About Geothermal Power

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aluminum Equals War

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

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

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

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

Colonizing Africa

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

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

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

Kick Them Out!

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

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

This article appeared first in Earth First Journal

Dutch translation of the article

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

Summer of Dissent in Iceland

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

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

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

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

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

Related Websites:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The SI collective gave a presentation on Thursday 16th at the UK’s Camp for Climate Action. Over 30 people attended to hear about the heavy-industrial destruction of Iceland, Trinidad, South Africa, Brasil and India.

The Climate Camp is situated next to London’s Heathrow Airport and constitutes, “Eight days of low-impact living, debates, learning skills, and high-impact direct action tackling the root causes of climate change.” The central target for the camp is the airline industry, which is the fastest growing contributor towards climate change in the world. Mirroring the 2% to 3% rise in CO2 from the industry, Heathrow Airport is set for an expansion of two to three runways.

Indymedia journalists radio interviewed one SI activist and you can hear him here, he is the second person talking.

Thanks to everyone who came to the talk and from everyone around the world here at Saving Iceland, we wish you our full solidarity and strength in your actions against the aviation industry.

Follow all the Climate Camp events on Indymedia UK

ps. a message to all the CC organisers: Now that we’ve got our own marquees in Iceland we’ve gotten over the fact that you jammily managed to bag all the UK’s good ones last year, leaving us crammed into a leaky and dark army tent in the middle of the extremities of the Icelandic highlands at our camp!!! ;-)

In love, strength and soap-less rage to all of you at Climate Camp,
Saving Iceland collective.

Click to enlarge

Updated July 5th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONFERENCE PROGRAM
(provisional and subject to change)

SATURDAY JULY 7TH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1420
Lunch

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

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

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

1730
Saving Iceland press conference

1800
Ends

Evening
Organic vegetarian supper

SUNDAY JULY 8TH

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

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

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

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

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

1400
Lunch

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

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

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

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

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

1740
Closure and declaration
Reverend Billy and Savitri

1800
Ends

Evening
Organic vegetarian supper
Music by Captain Tobias Hume

Speakers at the Saving Iceland Conference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earthlife South Africa

Alcan’t at Coega

“Protests against Alcan have been successful. Of course the people of Hafnafjordur have stopped the expansion of Straumsvik and recently, in Kaskipur, Northeast India, Alcan had to give up it’s participation in a bauxite mine because of protests against their human rights violations and environmental devestation. Alcan has been accused of cultural genocide in Kashipur, 1 because mining and dams have already displaced 150.000 mainly tribal people there 2. Norsk Hydro left the project when police tortured and opened fire on protestors, and then Alcan moved in,” says Saving Iceland’s Jaap Krater.

• UPDATE: Rio Tinto-ALCAN to Sue Saving Iceland

“This case and similar cases, and Alcan’s involvement in arms production, shows how ruthless they are. The takeover by RioTinto is rather unlikely to make Alcan into a responsible corporate citizen.”

“Rio Tinto-Alcan haven’t blown off their interest in a new smelter in Iceland. Hafnafjordur is still being named by Alcan despite the referendum 3, and a new smelter might be built in Thorlakshöfn or Keilisnes. Saving Iceland rejects this, and we express our solidarity with the people in South Africa opposing RioTinto-Alcan’s coal- and nuclear powered smelter plans there. Landsvirkjun has also gotten involved in this 4, so it is very important that people in Iceland reject these neo-colonial developments that destroy the environment and communities. ” says Krater.

Documentation of Alcan’s links to the arms industry, the South-African deal with Landsvirkjun, and some of the history of Rio Tinto is attached to this press release.

— ENDS —

Alcan’s Links to the Arms Industry

Rio Tinto-Alcan’s aluminium alloys are sold for a whole range of military purposes. Alcan is the main supplier for European Aerospace and Defense and Space, producer of military helicopters, military satellites, the Eurofighter Tycoon, Mirage F1, EF18 Hornet and other jets 5. AEDS is the world’s leading producer of missiles 6. Deals made between the EADS and Alcan are presented as between Airbus and Alcan, to cloud the military involvement 7, 8; it is common for all aluminium companies to hide their ‘defense’ products under the title ‘aerospace’. But at the same time, military products need to be marketed, so images of fighter jets are displayed on Alcan Aerospace’s website 9.

EADS claims to sell to countries that “guarantee a responsible approach to high-tech military air systems. It draws on decades of expertise in military aviation.” But can you trust a company that is sick enough to add video fragments from Nazi Germany, glorifying first world war and Nazi airplanes 10, on the same webpage as this quote?

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: ALUMINIUM TO IRAQ
Alcan further supplies Boeing a “variety of high performance aluminum-products”11. Boeing produces the Apache and Chinook military helicopters used in Iraq and less known products that brighten your day, such as the the ‘Small Diameter Bomb’12 and the ‘Joint Direct Attack Munition.’13 Then there are Alcan’s associations with Dassault 14., a French arms manufacturer, which produces a range of aluminium fighter-jets 15. Alcan has also been promoting itself to Naval services16.

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: PLANS FOR AFRICA
RioTinto-Alcan has signed a letter of intent with the Govt. of Cameroon to expand the existing Alucam smelter with 150.000 Mtpy, and build a new 150.000 Mtpy smelter. The Lom Pangar Dam, to be constructed by the government, would power this 17. Alcan have a large number of projects planned Africa – their “greenfield project pipeline” 18 includes Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar and South Africa. ‘Greenfield’ means that untouched nature will be destroyed for the mines, infrastructure, smelters, and dams that would power them.

APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA, ESKOM AND LANDSVIRKJUN
Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949-1986 19. 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 20.
Elkom is a ‘sister-company’ of Iceland’s Landsvirkjun 21. Landsvirkun want to be part of this deal and more generally branch out to Africa.
Landsvirkjun can be expected to try and sell their expertise to Eskom’s various hydroprojects in Mozambiqu, Uganda and Congo 22. 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.

RIO TINTO’S ABYSMAL RECORD
While we can conclude that Alcan itself heavily supplies the arms industry and is invading Africa as it invades Iceland, it is now part of Rio Tinto, the world’s largest private mining company, “long criticized for gross human rights violations dating back to its support of apartheid in Southern Africa.”23
We will name some of the many cases. Rio Tinto has been know to subject it’s own workers to poisoning in mines, having security guards shooting locals on the spot looking for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and having union-members spied upon or fired in its Brazilian gold mines. 24

Rio Tinto has been involved with mercenary scandals. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) Government, in joint venture with Rio Tinto, hired private mercenary companies Sandline International, a London-based private military company, composed primarily of former British and South African special forces soldiers, which had been involved in the civil wars in Angola and Sierra Leone and were now payed to fight the population of Bougainville, an island near PNG. The mine had been closed by the people of the island because of the disastrous ecological effects 25,26.
Citizens of Bougainville have filed a class action lawsuit in the United States against Rio Tinto arising from the environmental damage caused by the mine and war crimes occurring during the civil war years. In August 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected Rio Tinto’s effort to dismiss the claim 27.

1 S. Das & F. Padel, “Double Death – Aluminium’s Links with Genocide”, Economic and Political Weekly, Dec. 2005, also available at http://www.savingiceland.org/doubledeath
2 Chandra Siddan, “Blood and Bauxite”, Montreal Mirror, Nov 20-26, 2003, Vol. 19 No. 23.
3 “Smelter Expansion on Landfill?”, Iceland Review, June 20th 2007.
4 RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64…. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan confused.
5 EADS website, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defe…
6 EADS promotion film, “A Brief Glance at EADS”, http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF000000…
7 AFX News, June 13, 2007, http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/132007869…
8 Alcan Press Release, “Company To Provide Critical Aluminum Materials For Full Range Of Aircraft Including A380″, June 13, 2007, http://www.decisionplus.com/fr/fintools/…
9 http://www.alcanaerospace.com/Aerospace/…, dd. 22-7-2007.
10 EADS promotion film, “90 years of aircraft history in Augsburg”, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defe… and http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF000000…
11 US Geological Survey, “Minerals Yearbook 2005,” September 2006, p. 5.2.
12 Boeing Website Image Gallery of Small Diameter Bomb: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gal…
13 Boeing Image Gallery: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gal…
14 Alcan Press Release, “Alcan Contributes to Success of Eighth Ariane 5 ECA Launch,” Dec 13th, 2006.
15 http://www.dassault-aviation.com/
16 “Pacific 2004, International Naval and Maritime Exposition for the Southern Pacific,” Aerospace Maritime and Defence Conference, http://www.ideea.com/pacific2004/embassy…
17 US Geological Survey, “Minerals Yearbook 2005,” September 2006, p. 5.5.
18 Alcan Press Release, “Alcan to Explore Development of Bauxite Mine and Alumina Refinery in Madagascar,” September 11th 2006.
19 Alcan’t website, http://www.alcant.co.za/history.html
20 Grapevine, Issue 10, July 13, 2007. Interview also available at http://www.savingiceland.org/node/870
21 RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64…. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan confused.
22 International Rivers Network & EarthLife Africa, “Eskom’s Expanding Empire
The Social and Ecological Footprint of Africa’s Largest Power Utility,” June 2003, http://www.irn.org/programs/safrica/inde…
23 Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Global Compact,” July 13th 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=….
24 SBS Australia’s television program Dateline in a report on Rio Tinto, August 2000.
25 Wikipedia Germany (22-7-2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Af…
26 Contract between PNG Government and Sandline: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG….
27 Sarei v Rio Tinto, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.

• Pictures of ALCAN involvement in the arms industry

Attilah Springer is a journalist and an activist. She is a part of the Rights Action Group in Trinidad and Tobago, which has fought a long battle against Alcoa over aluminium smelters in Trinidad and Tobago. She recently spoke at a conference for Saving Iceland where she documented the progress of the struggle against the aluminium industry in her country. She is currently staying at the International Summer of Dissent protest camp, organised by Saving Iceland. A Grapevine journalist sat down to speak with Atillah at their beautiful campsite in Mosfellsdalur, joined by Lerato Maria Maregele, an activist from South Africa who has been organising protests against Alcan in her own country.

What brought you to Iceland?
Springer: Well for the past two years, several communities in Trinidad and Tobago have been in confrontation with the state and corporations against the introduction of aluminium smelting in Trinidad and I have been working quite closely with those communities, as an activist and as a journalist, and just documenting their struggle. Just because we weren’t given any information about smelting, we had to find it out ourselves and we saw it on the Internet and discovered, “hey the same thing is happening in Iceland, the same thing is going on in South Africa.” From there we started building links, e-mailing, texting, just constant contact, exchanging information about our struggles, and the similarities of what was happening over here and in Trinidad and other parts of the world. When we were approached by Saving Iceland to be a part of this year’s international summer of dissent, we said: yes, absolutely. We had a couple of victories and a couple of losses in the past year, so we thought it was very important to come here and share those things, and re-energise ourselves. Connect in a personal way, not just over the Internet. Just to see the place in 3-dimensions makes what is happening even more resonant.
Maregele: As Attilah has said, this issue of globalisation, I think that is something that has linked us together, and also this monster that is the aluminium smelters and is tearing up our countries and getting so much benefits and cheap electricity. When I heard about this conference I thought it was a good cause, and maybe I should come here and hear what other people have to say and see what is happening here in Iceland. So far, I have found out that things are just the same. What is happening in South Africa is also happening in Trinidad, and that is why we are here.

Tell me a bit about the struggle in Trinidad and Tobago.
Springer: Basically, what happened was that there were plans for two smelters in Trinidad. One of them was in a place called Union Village, on an industrial site that had been cleared two years ago. That land was cleared with the knowledge or consent of the villagers who surrounded it. Around the same time, there was talk about another smelter in Chatham, which is ten miles south of Union Village. The people of Chatham decided that this was not the way that they wanted to go. The struggle was initiated by elder women of the village, mothers and housewives, with the support of the younger men in the village. They started a petition, a call for help to the rest of the country. From there it grew, there were protests, there were demonstrations, marches, carnival bands, calypsos, anything that was possible. Whether it was Labour Day or the Environmental Day, we were there, involved in everything. And having such presence, really just getting people interested in the debate, because Trinidad is so small, we just kept pressuring and pressuring and pressuring. Until in September, when the Prime Minister said they would not go ahead with the smelter in Chatham anymore. The first smelter recently got environmental clearance, but that is being challenged in court. The EIA (environmental impact assessment) was a joke. It was done in such a way that you never get the whole picture of the real impact of the smelter. They are now going to do EIA for the port through which they will have to export the aluminium. In midst of an industrial state, in a peninsula that is sinking because all of the intense heavy industry in that area, there has been no accumulative assessment of the impact of all of those things on that community and its surroundings. For those reasons we continue to fight it.

What do you see as some of the similarities between what is happening here and in Trinidad and Tobago?
Springer: Certainly the lack of consultation with the communities, the absolute dishonesty of the companies carrying out their plans. They come in with a lot of lies, talking about: ‘Yes, we will give you jobs, and we will give you this, and we will give you that,’ and when you really break it down, the benefits that the country, or the benefits that the communities are supposed to be getting, are minute in comparison to what the companies are getting. And the other thing that is going on with companies like Alcoa is that they can’t build smelters in the US anymore because, for one, it takes too long for them to get environmental clearance, because the have done so much damage in their own land, and two, the amount of liberal guilt in these countries does not match the level of consumption. So they feel guilty about smelting, but they do not feel guilty enough to stop consuming all the goods they want to consume. So basically, what Alcoa is doing is that they are moving those plants out of their own backyard and taking them to countries where the environmental laws are lax, where they have cheap natural gas, like in the case of Trinidad, where natural gas is very cheap, on top of which, they are getting it at such sweet deals that the government of Trinidad and Tobago cannot tell the citizens for how much the are getting it.

So all of those things seem to be similar things to what is happening here. Speaking to the farmers, you hear about the same kind of lies, the same kind of deceit, the same kind of massaging of the truth that happened in Trinidad and Tobago and we continue to fight against. All we are saying is ‘just tell us the truth,’ and I think that is what the people of Iceland want to know as well, what is the real story? Stop trying to convince us that it is anything other than profits you are after. You are not after a greener form of energy, you are after profits, so let’s just say that. And of course, the major concern is that the aluminium that is being used as means to, not just to the excessive consumption of states in the so called first world, but also to fuel the American war machine. It does not sit well with me that we will be contributing to that. I have no interest in being a part of that any further, because already our oil and natural gas goes to fuel the American war machine. I don’t want to have more blood on my hands.

Is it different in South Africa?
Maregele: In South Africa, the power for the smelters will be produced from coals, and they will be getting it very cheaply. Thirty percent of the poor communities of South Africa don’t have electricity, and now that will be going straight to Alcan.
Springer: But the differences are the similarities. People in Iceland don’t need extra electricity, people in South Africa need electricity, but in both places the concern is that the source of electricity is renewable and green, and not damaging to the environment. At the bottom of all this struggle is clean sustainable development, that includes communities, that empowers communities, and that does not destroy what is inherently ours. Those are the important things.

You mentioned communities without power in South Africa and the excessive power here in Iceland. Is it not better then, to build smelters here, as opposed to in South Africa?
Maregele: Firstly, why is it that Iceland has to have more power than the people need? Is it to satisfy companies like Alcan at the end of the day? I don’t see the need. That is why I am saying that in Iceland you don’t need the smelter.
Springer: In Iceland, the environmental impact far outweighs the economic value this could have for the country. Just look around here. I can’t imagine how anyone in their right mind could see this beauty and want to put a smelter here. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I guess I am trying to understand that whole evil global capitalistic swine to see how they see this, and I really can’t get my head around it. I guess in the same way, they cannot understand how I cannot see the potential of this. They see every waterfall as wasted energy. But I see every waterfall as a waterfall, as beauty, as something that is there to energise me, but in a different way. I guess this is a kind of a conquistador, testosterone… I don’t mean to bash men, but this is a very masculine way of looking at the world. The world is the dominion of man, and there to do with it what we want. I would rather take my ancestors’ view, that we take from it what we need, and give back in ways that we can. In Trinidad we have a saying: don’t shit where you eat. That is essentially what we are doing. We are shitting where we are eating. All over the planet. I guess in the end, they will take some kind of aluminium space ship, and take them to another planet and leave all the poor people behind here, but at this point I only have one planet. This is the only planet I know.
Maregele: Yes, and good planets are hard to find.
Springer: Exactly, have you people never seen Star Trek?

This camp here is a part of that then? International Summer of Dissent, is this a way of globalising the opposition to the multinational corporations or what?
Springer: Absolutely. I think that is the lesson for the activists, especially when you are coming from a point of disadvantage, to take the tools that are being used to oppress you and turn them on their head. What else are you going to do? That is the lesson of my history. I think at this point, I have no other alternative other than to use these tools to fight back. If globalisation is what is destroying the world, globalisation is what has to save it as well.
Maregele: I think what Atillah is saying is that if globalisation has planned to divide us, eventually, globalisation will unite us.
Springer: Exactly

Fishermen on the Congo at Kisangani. Campaigners fear any dam on the 2,600-mile Congo, aka ‘the river that swallows all rivers’, may harm fishermen such as these at Kisangani. Photograph: Schalk Van Zuydam/AP

By Jeevan Vasagar , The Guardian, February 25, 2005

One of Africa’s biggest electricity companies yesterday unveiled plans to build the world’s biggest hydro-electricity plant on a stretch of the Congo River, harnessing enough power for the whole continent.

The proposed plant at the Inga Rapids, near the river’s mouth in the western Democratic Republic of Congo, would cost $50bn (£26bn) and could generate some 40,000MW, twice the power of China’s Three Gorges dam.

The river is seen as ideal. Known as the “river that swallows all rivers”, it is fed by 10,000 streams that funnel into powerful rapids along its 2,900-mile course.

Rather than damming up the river entirely, the plan by South Africa’s state-owned power company, Eskom – which has already won over independent experts – involves creating a “run-of-river” plant in which water is siphoned off, channelled through turbines and then fed back into the river.

Such plants are common in Canada, Norway and Switzerland, although their output is much less than that from a dam.

Backers of the Eskom plan, which will also involve building a small dam on the river, claim it could even generate surplus power to sell to southern Europe.

At a press conference in Nairobi yesterday, Reuel Khoza, the Eskom chairman, said: “Only between five and 10% of Africa’s population has access to electricity. That we consider lamentable in a continent that is abundant in energy sources.

“The Inga project is one that really excites us because we believe that in one fell swoop we could address the bulk of Africa’s needs and do it in a manner that is clean and environmentally friendly, by harnessing run-of-river hydro-electricity as opposed to damming up a river.”

But critics say even run-of-river plants can damage the environment, by blocking the migratory path of fish and stalling the flow of silt downstream.

There are also fears that electricity from the project, dubbed “Grand Inga”, will simply enrich corporate backers rather than reach Africa’s poorest, many of whom live beyond the electricity grids.

The plan also hinges on attracting private investors, who may be cautious about committing large sums of money to one of Africa’s most unstable countries.

Congo endured civil war between 1998 and 2002, in which seven neighbouring states were sucked in to back rival factions and fight over the vast country’s huge mineral resources.

Despite peace accords and the withdrawal of foreign troops, the conflict has simmered on with minor clashes between militias and rebel groups. Some 3 million people died, mainly from the hunger and disease linked to the conflict.

Though the sums involved are huge, Eskom believes it has enough credibility to secure the $50bn needed from private investors and the World Bank, which has been made aware of the project.

The energy scheme, which is supported by the power utilities of Botswana, Namibia, Angola and Congo, as well as South Africa, will develop two existing plants at the Inga Rapids.

Built in the 1970s and 1980s by the Congo’s then dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Inga 1 and Inga 2 continued to supply power even during the civil war, although they now provide only half their potential due to lack of maintenance.

The plants already provide power to the capital, Kinshasa, and parts of western Congo, and export electricity to Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Inga 1 and 2 will undergo a massive revamp and a third power plant – Inga 3 – will be built on the site, which will supply power to Nigeria and other west African states.

Construction work on Grand Inga will not begin until Inga 3 is complete, which could take more than a decade.

When complete, it is hoped Inga will become the cornerstone of a pan-African power grid, linking existing systems from different countries.

A feasibility study by the French utility Electricité de France has indicated that both the Grand Inga scheme, and a plan to supply power from it to north Africa, were viable.

The project’s backers hope to build an electricity interconnector from Inga through the Central African Republic and Sudan to Egypt, linking the grids of north and southern Africa.

Although Eskom claims its plan is environmentally friendly, campaigners are worried.

“One big unknown is the effect on fisheries and river ecology,” said the World Rainforest Movement, in a report on the project.

“Even run-of-river plants can eliminate fish migrations, and they can badly damage silt flows, which are crucial to river ecology.”

The group’s report added: “Megaprojects like this … often imply social, economic and environmental disruption of people’s livelihoods, lands and life.”

Any environmental damage from the project could have a grave impact on subsistence farmers who depend on the flow of sediment downriver to fertilise fields, and to harvest fish to supplement their diets.

Some 526 million people in Africa do not have access to any electricity. Powercuts are common even in the most developed African countries, and in the more remote parts of the continent the sole power source is the diesel-fuelled generator.

• Audio report from Jeevan Vasagar
• Special report: Congo

REYKJAVIK – Saving Iceland’s clown army has this afternoon entered the head office of Orkuveita Reykjavíkur (OR, Reykjavik Energy) on Baejarhals 1. Simultaneously, protestors climbed onto the roof of the building unfolding a banner stating ‘Vopnaveita Reykjavíkur’ (Reykjavik arms-dealers). Saving Iceland demands that O.R. stop selling energy to the aluminium corporations Century and ALCAN-RioTinto. 30% of aluminium produced goes to the military and arms-industry (1).

Currently, O.R. are expanding the Hellisheidi geothermal plant at Hengill. “The goal of enlarging Hellisheidarvrikjun is to meet industries demands of energy,” states the Environmental Impact Assessment, particularly the Century expansion at Grundartangi and possible new ALCAN and Century plants at Straumsvik and Helguvik (2, 3).

The expansion of the Alcan smelter in Hafnarfjordur has been rejected by referendum, and other smelter projects in the south west are not definite. The current Icelandic government says to oppose more smelters, but Hellisheidi is still being expanded at a cost of 379.06 million dollars (2). The Icelandic people will be blackmailed. Once the expansion is completed, this will force Iceland into more smelters because the electricity needs to be sold to get investments back. In the mean time, farmers pay twice as much for electricity as Century does (4).

“Much of the aluminium produced goes directly to the war efforts of the US, Russia and others. Alumium is the single most important bulk metal for modern warfare (5). It is the most important metal for missiles, tanks, fighter planes, and nuclear weapons. It’s as if Iceland is organizing a competition which company – ALCOA, Alcan – Rio Tinto or Century-RUSAL – has committed the most human rights and environmental crimes to decide who to sell energy. Vopnaveita Reykjavíkur should not supply energy to any of these murderers.” says Saving Iceland’s Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson.

Environmental Impacts of Hellisheidarvirkjun
The expansion of the power plant is itself not as green as O.R. suggests. Hot and toxic waste water is either disposed of by pumping it back into the borehole (as at Nesjavellir), commonly increasing the frequency of earthquakes in this very active fault zone, or it is pumped untreated into streams and lakes, wiping out valuable ecosystems as treatment is considered too expensive. The Northern end of lake Thingvallavatn is already biologically dead in parts due to wastewater pumping and must be protected from more damage.
Tourism will also be negatively affected. Extraction of underground fluids leads to changes in groundwater movements, commonly including drying of unique hot springs and geysers and pollution of pure subsurface spring water (6, 7).
Four endangered bird species are negatively affected: the falcon, greylag goose, harlequin duck and raven (8).

— ENDS —

More information:
 http://www.savingiceland.org
Phone: Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson

Notes:

1. Bauxite and Aluminous Laterite. (2nd edition), London: Technical Press.
R. Graham, 1982, p. 250.
2. European Investment Bank, http://www.eib.org/projects/pipeline/200…
3. VGK, Environmental Impact Assesment fot Helisheidarvirkjun, http://www.vgk.is/hs/Skjol/UES/SH_matssk…, page 2 and other pages.
4. Iceland Review, June 7th, 20007, /?p=821.
5.. S. Das & F. Padel, “Double Death – Aluminium’s Links with Genocide”, Economic and Political Weekly, Dec. 2005, also available at /doubledeath
6. Kristmannsdóttir, H, and Armannsson. H, 2003. ‘Environmental aspects of geothermal energy utilization.’ in Geothermics vol.32, p.451-461.
7. Rybach, L, 2003. ‘Geothermal energy: sustainability and the environment.’ Geothermics. vol.32, p.463-470.
8. Idem 3, p.24.

July 15th Saving Iceland held a public meeting with inhabitants of Thorlakshöfn, accompanied by Lerato Maregele from EarthLife South Africa, struggling against ALCAN, and Attilah Springer from Rights Action, Trinidad, struggling against ALCOA. They talked about similarities in the way these companies operate in their respective countries and Iceland. Concern was expressed about pollution, climate, and the way the aluminium industry abandons towns to waste when they will close smelters in a few decades. Thorlakshöfn is named as a new smelter location by Rio Tinto ALCAN, Norsk Hydro, Arctus/Altech and Down Corning. The mayor of Thorlakshöfn has suggested his town as a location for two new smelters.

Lerato Maregele is speaking

Attillah Springer is speaking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MBL.is news report:
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Visir.is report:
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RUV.is report:
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PRESS RELEASE FROM: protesters against Coega, including: Earthlife Africa, Nimble, The Zwartkops Trust, The Valley Bushveld Affected Parties, The Citrus Farmers, Concerned Members of the Public

COEGA’S TOXIC CLOUDS
While the rest of the world, including thousands of the world’s leading scientists, politicians and economists are scrambling to come up with solutions to what is potentially the biggest crisis we have ever faced in the shape of Global Warming, the Coega Development Corporation seems to know better than everyone else. Faced with increasing public concern and protest, the CDC has gone to great lengths in recent adverts in the local media to try to discredit the opponents of the Coega smelters and some of the other highly polluting and toxic industries the CDC is trying to attract, such as the ferro-manganese smelter, the oil refinery and the chlorine plant, and once again the CDC is doing its utmost to misinform the public (The Herald, 9th May, 2007).

Therefore we would like to take the opportunity to tell a different not quite as rosy side of the story. It will then be up to the public to decide whether they would like to believe the claims of the CDC or rather pay attention to the fact that communities all over the world, including those in Trinidad, India, Iceland and our very own Richard’s Bay are all complaining about the pollution and destruction caused by the aluminium smelters in their vicinity.

The people of Port Elizabeth need to ask themselves whether, in light of global warming, the pollution of our air and water and its effects on people’s health and in consideration of the billions of rand needed for the construction of new power plants, the provision of subsidies for the smelter, the job losses in other industries that can either not expand or exist due to the smelter’s proximity, are worth the 1.000 jobs created by Alcan, of which at least 300 will only be available to highly skilled professionals, no doubt many from overseas and whether there would not have been better, environmentally friendly and sustainable means to create jobs. In light of the fact that the cost of each job created at the smelter is estimated to run to about R5 million and considering the massive impact the smelters will have on our environment and the air we breathe, the answer to this should be easy.

We reject the condescending manner with which Mrs. Vuyelwa Qinga Vika, Head of Marketing and Communications at the CDC and others of the CDC are trying to make protesters appear. Those who have voiced their opposition against the smelters have been denounced as egotistical half-wits, who are more concerned about clean air than the plight of the poor; spewing �doomsday prophecies taken from the internet�; fools that cannot distinguish fact from fiction, silly enough to believe the reports by the world�s leading scientists and politicians on Global Warming.

It is easy to understand Mrs. Vika�s dislike of us and the fact that we are trying to inform the public about the truth � as it is the lack of information to the public thus far, which has enabled the CDC to execute their Environmental Impact Studies and other required processes without enough public awareness and involvement. In fact it is this very lack of information to and awareness of the public which is so startling and worrying.

The whole sorry saga of the Coega development in an environmentally highly sensitive, unsuitable area began with the highly controversial and corrupt R30 billion weapons deal, which brought us, as an offset deal, the Coega Industrial Development Zone. In their desperate effort to secure the ever elusive anchor tenant needed to justify the billions of Rand spent to date on Coega, the CDC and government have bent over backwards and are now giving, in addition to tax incentives, tax holidays and import/export duty exemptions, large subsidies and rock bottom prices for our water and electricity to the world�s most polluting and energy intensive industries. These currently include the Alcan Aluminium Smelter � a double sized smelter with two pot-lines, eight massive chimney stacks and an output of 720.000 tons of Aluminium per year, making it one of the world�s biggest aluminium smelters, which will use three times as much electricity as our entire city. The sheer size of the smelter boggles the mind � the entire area stretches over 120 ha of which 50 ha will be used for the actual plant.

As we all know, the capacity of our existing power stations is already strained to breaking-point, so new power stations will have to be built just to supply Alcan with the power it needs. This will entail either the building of yet another coal powered plant, with massive power grids snaking their way all the way through pristine country, including game farms, or the construction of a nuclear power plant on our doorstep – at additional costs to our environment and to the tax payers pockets. Make no mistake – it will not be Alcan who has to pay for the new infrastructure but the South African taxpayer.

To address SA�s power shortages, Eskom will spend R150 billion over the next five years and South Africans will be the ones footing the bill, according to Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga. A price hike to the tune of 18 per cent has been mooted – all this in a country where a large percentage of our population has either got no excess to electricity or cannot afford it.

Alcan, however, will receive our electricity for a price far below anything that any of us or other industries are paying. Another question that needs to be answered is, who, in times of power shortages will have preference � the smelter or the South African people?

This, of course, is only part of the problem. The Coega IDZ is located in an environmentally highly sensitive and unique area. It has 6 biomes and is situated right next to the Addo National Elephant Park, close to various game and citrus farms, and not only extremely close to the city of Port Elizabeth, but also right next to one of our biggest townships, Motherwell.

The health implications for all are enormous, no matter what the CDC would have us believe. Toxic emissions into air and our water, include fluoride, sulphur dioxide, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nitrogen dioxide, carbon dioxide, other greenhouse gases and others � all of which have severe impacts, such as respiratory diseases, cancers, Alzheimers disease, brittle bone diseases, smog and acid rain.

Despite the latest findings by leading scientists, that establish a clear link between the exposure to fluoride and lung and bladder cancers in smelter workers, and despite health warnings Alcoa sent out to 3000 of its workers worldwide the CDC stoically continues to deny that there could be any problems. Its repeated claims are a clear indication of the way the South African public is being purposefully misled.

�Fluoride occurs naturally in the environment� and �there are no problems in Richard�s Bay, so why should we believe that there will be any here?� are some of their favourite war cries. Whether or not Fluoride or any of the other toxic substances occur naturally in the environment or not is entirely beside the point � exposure to large amounts of any of them can and will have disastrous consequences.

As for the claims that �all is well in Richard�s Bay�: various environmental organisations, including the Richard�s Bay Clean Air Association and Groundwork most certainly differ with this point of view. Richard�s Bay�s residents are exposed to smog and pollution on a daily basis, with aluminium smelters being the prime suspects.

And let�s not forget the issue of global warming � 1,8tons of Carbon dioxide is produced for every ton of Aluminium. That means that Aluminium smelters produce almost double the amount of CO2 as actual Aluminium. This figure alone should be enough to warrant a resounding �No� to the whole issue of aluminium smelters � which would only create 1000 permanent jobs, mostly to skilled and highly-skilled workers.

Another worrying factor is the fact that the issue of what will happen to the waste produced by the smelter has still not been clarified. The spent pot linings (spl) for example is hazardous waste and needs to be stored in sealed water-proof containers. We would like to know where exactly these will be stored and how it will be guaranteed that there will be no leakages and seeping of toxins into our water?There are also serious concerns about the dust of the raw material, which without doubt will be easily spread by the wind. How does Alcan/the CDC plan to protect us form this?

Various community activists and environmentalists have presented suggestions and plans for environmentally friendly alternatives, which include a multifaceted approach that combines agriculture, marine-culture, eco-tourism and the massive expansion of infrastructure � however, these seem to have been ignored and now we are facing an onslaught from some of the world�s most toxic and polluting industries, who are known to target developing nations in their search for cheap labour and electricity.

We would like to remind the CDC, the South African government and the general public that S 24 (1) of our Constitution guarantees that �everyone has the right a) to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being; and b) to have the environment protected�� Future generations need to be considered when making decisions that effect our environment. No one with a child or grandchild should therefore make the mistake to think that environmental issues, especially those pertaining to Coega do not concern them. To borrow a quote from Edmund Burke:”Nobody made a greater mistake, than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

We sincerely hope that the South African government will have a change of heart and reconsider the impact the proposed Coega smelters will have on the South Africa�s environment and therefore its citizens and follow the rest of the world in trying to find an environmentally friendly and sustainable path to job creation. The South African public on the other hand needs to become more informed, involved and concerned, otherwise it will not be �the cloud of poverty making it impossible to think� as Mrs. Vika put it in her article in the Herald, but a cloud of an entirely different – more toxic � nature altogether.

Margaret Munro
CanWest News Service

KEFLAVIK, Iceland – The Earth’s inner heat is so close to the surface on this windswept island that tourists bask in outdoor thermal pools even as the snow flies in late winter.

The heat attracts multinational companies, too, including Canadian-based Alcan. But they’re getting an increasingly chilly reception from the locals as they try to expand their business operations to take advantage of the abundant stores of inexpensive energy here.

“We don’t want to be the town with the biggest aluminum plant in all of Europe,” says Throstur Sverrisson, a longtime resident of the seaside community of Hafnarfjordur, where Alcan has run up against serious opposition.

The company plans to more that double the size of its existing smelter just outside Hafnarfjordur, one of four huge and controversial aluminum smelter projects. But a growing coalition of Icelanders is trying to halt the smelters, saying the government is sacrificing the island’s pristine environment to foreign companies.

They’re gearing up to make the smelters a major issue in the national election in May. And they’re taking aim at Alcan in a referendum March 31.

Alcan needs the community of Hafnarfjordur’s approval to move the highway and rezone land to make way for the expansion, which is expected to cost at least $1 billion.

“I think we can win,” says Sverrisson, pointing to recent polls suggesting more than 60 per cent of the community’s residents opposed Alcan’s expansion plans.

Iceland has huge stores of geothermal energy percolating through the volcanic rocks that blanket most of its treeless landscape. It also has enormous and largely untapped hydroelectric potential in the rivers that spill off Iceland’s glaciers and highlands.

Heat and hydroelectricity aren’t easily exported, so the Iceland government has encouraged companies to come and make use of its cheap power, ports and access to European markets. The aluminum industry took up the offer and four major smelter projects are now in the works.

The most contentious has been a smelter in eastern Iceland, built by U.S-based Alcoa, the world’s largest producer of aluminum.

The Alcoa smelter, called Fjardaal for “aluminum of the fjords,” is due to open later this year. It’s powered by the $3-billion Karahnjukar Hydropower project, a series of dams and tunnels that have flooded and transformed a huge tract of volcanic wilderness north of the massive Vatnajokull Glacier, which covers eight per cent of Iceland.

The protests grew with the power-and-smelter project. There have been angry marches, protest camps and banners hoisted up St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tate Modern in London as part of a campaign to stop what protesters describe as the “destruction of the Icelandic highlands.”

The activists lost the battle over the Alcoa smelter and power project but say they are not about to give up. Plans call for as many as eight new dams and geothermal plants for the other smelter projects, which the environmentalists have vowed to bring to a halt.

“A summer of international dissent against heavy industry” starts in Iceland July 6, sponsored by Saving Iceland, a coalition of groups “who do not intend to stand by passively and watch the Icelandic government in league with foreign corporations slowly kill the natural beauty of Iceland.”

Much attention — and protest — is now focused on the proposed Alcan expansion near Hafnarfjordur, a community of 24,000 about a 15-minute drive southwest of the capital Reykjavik.

“Since we are in the suburbs of Reykjavik, it is much easier to attract the media and discuss and talk about the aluminum industry or other players in the aluminum industry and do it at our doorstep,” says Erik Ryan, an Alcan spokesman at the company headquarters in Montreal.

He notes how protesters have waved placards denouncing other companies outside the smelter. There have also been plenty of placards with Alcan’s name on them.

Ryan stresses Alcan has operated in Iceland for years and has a good and long-standing relationship with the government and Icelanders.

The existing smelter near Hafnarfjordur is the oldest in Iceland, dating back to 1969. It produces 180,000 tonnes of aluminum a year, which is used in Europe to produce everything from Audi and Rover car parts to foil wrap.

Low-cost energy and a deep port makes the Iceland smelter ideal for expansion, says Ryan, noting 30 per cent of the cost of producing aluminum is for energy. Alcan plans to expand its Iceland operation to 460,000 tonnes a year, which would make it the largest smelter in Europe and Alcan’s third biggest. (Alcan’s new $1.4-billion smelter in Quebec produces 554,000 tonnes a year and a smelter planned for South Africa will produce 720,000 tonnes a year.)

Company officials are already musing about closing the existing plant, known as ISAL, if the expansion is not allowed to go ahead.

ISAL employs almost 500 people.

© The Edmonton Journal 2007

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Impoverished Indians fight ALCAN’s bid to open a mine in their backyard. Since this article was written the repression has been stepped up.

The first thing that greeted Angad Bhalla on entering Maikanch, a town in the east coast mineral-rich state Orissa, India, was the painting of an Adivasi tribal man in traditional clothes and the admonition: POLICE NO ENTER.

The sign is a clear indicator of the relationship between the Adivasi tribal people and the state police after what happened here on December 16, 2000. Activists and Adivasi had gathered, as they had many times since 1993, to plan their strategy of resistance to the government takeover of their agricultural lands for mining purposes. When the police moved in to break the meeting up, violence erupted, culminating in the police opening fire, killing three and disabling many more.

It was news of these murders that drew the attention of Angad Bhalla, a Canadian filmmaker who was in India to shoot a film on a Coca-Cola plant in Kerala, a state on the country’s southwest coast. But the Kashipur incident – named after the district in Orissa in which it took place – and the story of the Adivasi movement against the aluminium industry made him embark on the documentary film project UAIL Go Back. The film has been shown on the smaller festival circuit around the country, but it highlights a big problem, with roots in Montreal.

A decade-long fight

The Kashipur incident was a critical point in the eight-year long struggle between the Adivasi and the state government of Orissa, but the government is seen by many as only a front for “the company.” The company in question is the Utkal Alumina International Ltd. (UAIL), one of whose stakeholders is Alcan, the Montreal-based aluminium giant that owns 18 per cent of the global aluminium refinery capacity and is deployed in 41 countries, employing 53,000 people. UAIL, currently a joint venture between Alcan and the Indian Aluminium Company Ltd. (Indal), has been working to set up an aluminium plant in Kashipur since 1993, when the federal government of India made the decision to privatize its hitherto public mining industry. One hundred per cent of the annual one-million tonnes of aluminium that is expected to be produced here will be exported to the Middle East and North America.

And once the government approved the privatization plans, it eschewed its responsibility to the Adivasis and is now in the process of dissolving the constitutional protections that ensure Adivasi control of their own land. Palma, an Adivasi woman, says to Bhalla in his film, “These companies have begun a theatre and our politicians are paid actors in their play.”

Orissa is rich in bauxite, the mineral that contains aluminium’s raw material, as well as coal, limestone, silica, chromite, dolomite and nickel, to mention a few sources of its mineral wealth. Its mining history began in the 1950s. By 1970, it had 155 working mines and by the early 1990s, 281. According to a report by Mines, Minerals and People, a Hyderabad, India-based organization that represents tribal people and groups, mining and major dams have to date displaced 150,000 Adivasis in Kashipur.

By the early ’90s, the state’s mining industry had gone global. The government of India has approved investments from 13 multinational companies from the U.S., Australia, the U.K., South Africa and Canada. Alcan is one of them.

Learning from experience

But half-a-century of development has impoverished the Adivasi. Displaced from their land and discriminated against in the industrial job market, they are now fighting to keep their land, their only remaining resource. In Dhamanjodi, a town four hours away where an aluminium plant has operated since 1986 (run by the state enterprise NALCO with the collaboration of the French multinational Pechiney), the Adivasi have an immediate reference. Those who took government compensations frittered them away. No one got jobs at the plant. Non-Adivasi from neighbouring states are favoured for the jobs. Women have their own problems with settling for the cash compensation – many of the men spent the money in a matter of months, leaving nothing for their families.

Opponents say the UAIL project will cause major displacement, health risks and destruction of the livelihoods of 60,000 people in the area. According to the company and government’s estimate, only 2,452 acres and three villages with a total 148 households will be displaced.

The worst fears are for the environment: the mine would be located in the catchment area of the Khandabinda and other tributaries of the Indravati river. The fear is that the mining sludge will silt up the Indravati and bury the surrounding Kalahandi district’s reservoir, endangering the chronically drought-prone area, not to mention risking human and animal health.

Marginals get radical

India has the second largest concentration of tribal peoples after Africa and they occupy the lowest rung in the Indian economic and social system. Orissa has a remarkably high percentage of Adivasi; while the national Adivasi population is 8.1 per cent of India’s total, they make up 22.21 per cent of Orissa’s population. There is an added demographic of Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, who occupy the bottom rung of the caste system, making up 16.2 per cent of the population. In Kashipur district, 68 per cent are Adivasi and 18 per cent are Dalits. This concentration may have something to do with their radicalization.

What is unique about the anti-mining movement in Kashipur is that it is organized and led entirely by the Adivasi, and that it held out for so long – it has been active for over 10 years. It has encompassed protest meetings, opinion polls (where 96 per cent of the Adivasi said no to the project), rallies of thousands (one, in 1996, involved 20,000 people “gherao”ing – surrounding – the company office) blocking roads, bridge construction and convoys of company staff cars on PR trips. Protesters have been teargassed, beaten and, in Maikanch, killed. It has resulted in many arrests and numerous court cases involving Adivasi men, women, NGO activists and even children.

UAIL was a joint venture promoted initially by Norsk Hydro of Norway, Indal and Tata Industries Ltd. Tata eventually withdrew and Alcan became a joint partner in 1999. After the police firing at Maikanch village in December 2000, Norsk Hydro withdrew. According to Angad Bhalla, the work of Norwegian environmentalists and church groups in creating an anti-mine campaign had an impact on the company’s decision. Alcan, however, has stayed on with its 35 per cent stake in the UAIL project.

Activists in India are hoping for a similar movement in Canada since, according to Achyut Das, an activist involved in the movement, Alcan’s role is crucial in the future of UAIL.

Waiting for answers

Pending the release of the judicial enquiry into the Maikanch killings, UAIL activity is dormant. Though the enquiry is completed, the report has not been released. Meanwhile, Alcan has emerged this year as one of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” on Fortune magazine’s global corporate reputation survey and is rated high by GovernanceMetrics International, a global corporate governance ratings agency, for its social responsibility. It’s also poised to acquire French multi-national Pechiney, following various regulatory bodies’ approval this autumn.

Alcan states that it awaits the release of the report. Joseph Singerman, Alcan’s Montreal-based media representative, says that the results of the judicial enquiry into the deaths of three men have been in the state government’s hands for nine to 10 months but have not been released to Alcan. Nor has there been a briefing to anyone about the results of the enquiry.

When Angad Bhalla first went to Kashipur to do research for his documentary, the Adivasi tribal people were delighted to hear he was Canadian since the Montreal-based Alcan is a big part of what they’re fighting against. Asked if the industrialists and the Adivasi cannot arrive at a negotiating point, Bhalla says, “I don’t think we have the right to determine what that point is. It is for the Adivasi to decide how their land is utilized.”

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