Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the Indigenous Peoples’ protest against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline project that occurred in Washington DC on Sunday, November 6th. To listen to this week’s Earth Minute, click here.
Text from this week’s Earth Minute:
This past Sunday, thousands of people traveled to the White House to protest the massive pipeline that would carry tar sands oil from the devastated boreal forests of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama will decide if the pipeline project can proceed in early 2012.
While the US is obligated to honor the Treaties it made with the Lakota and other indigenous nations, there has been virtually no consultation regarding the environmental impact of this massive pipeline that would endanger their lands.
At the DC rally, Cree/Métis Tantoo Cardinal, stated, “I was raised in the Fort McMurray area, the heart of the current tar sands projects. We are all protectors of the land and water. If you were to see with your own eyes the incredible destruction of our ecosystem, you’d understand that blind greed is destroying our land, water, and way of life.”
If approved, US based Native Nations in solidarity with First Nations from Canada have sworn to stop the pipeline.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
Note: We sent out this press release in response to a court decision to allow the planting of 260,000 genetically engineered eucalyptus trees across seven U.S. states. We are vowing to continue to fight to stop the commercial approval of these disastrous GE trees–and all GE trees. Please support this crucial work to stop this disaster before it is too late. Send a donation today.
For Immediate Release October 26, 2011
Legal Setback Will Not Deter Action to Stop Engineered Eucalyptus Trees
Court Rules Secret Genetically Engineered Tree Test Plots Do Not Need Environmental Oversight
Miami, Florida–On October 7, 2011, the 11th Circuit U.S. District Court for Southern Florida ruled that the planting of more than a quarter of a million genetically engineered (GE) non-native eucalyptus trees can proceed in secret test plots across seven southern states. [1] The ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed against the USDA, which approved the test plots. The suit to stop the dangerous GE tree test plots from moving forward was filed on July 1st, 2010 by six organizations: Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Dogwood Alliance, Global Justice Ecology Project, the International Center for Technology Assessment and Sierra Club.
While the October 7th court ruling approved the test plots, it left the door open for future challenges to the large-scale commercial planting of these trees.
“We are not at all discouraged,” stated Dr. Neil Carman of the Sierra Club. “Although it denied our claims, the court noted that the agency and industry will have to address the potential harmful impacts of GE eucalyptus trees in any proposed commercial approval. We will remain vigilant andfully involved in this process to ensure these issues are addressed and prevented.”
The ruling favors ArborGen, the corporation that designed the GE trees and hopes to sell half a billion per year for planting in the U.S. South. [2] The court’s decision was made despite serious concerns raised, not only by environmental groups, but by government agencies including the Florida Exotic Plant Pest Council, the Georgia Department of Wildlife, and the US Forest Service. These concerns include documented impacts of eucalyptus trees, such as water depletion, displacement of wildlife, invasiveness and firestorms. These concerns are magnified because these GE eucalyptus trees have been engineered to tolerate cold so they can grow and spread outside of their natural geographic boundaries.
Because of these serious concerns, during the USDA comment period on the test plots, nearly 20,000 people demanded the GE eucalyptus trees be rejected.
In their comments to the USDA recommending the GE eucalyptus test plots be rejected, the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division explained the wildfire concerns, “The leaves of eucalyptus trees produce large amounts of volatile oils [allowing] accumulation of highly combustible fuels. Consequently, dense eucalyptus plantations are subject to catastrophic firestorms. Once ignited, these fires would grow vigorously, potentially spreading to other properties.” [3] Georgia, one of the states targeted for these plantations, is currently experiencing exceptional drought.
“ArborGen’s GE eucalyptus trees are an ecological nightmare,” added Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project, which has offices in Vermont and Oakland. “Eucalyptus are so invasive, they’ve been likened to Kudzu, the non-native vine that has devoured parts of the U.S. South. [4] But eucalyptus are worse-they are flammable kudzu. Growing them in plantations across millions of acres from Texas to South Carolina, which ArborGen’s parent companies International Paper and MeadWestvaco hope to do, could lead to horrific wildfires. The last thing drought-prone Texas needs is more fuel for wildfires.”
October 20th was the twenty-year anniversary of the Oakland, California firestorms, which burned 1,520 acres and destroyed more than 3,800 dwellings. The economic loss was estimated at $1.5 billion. The presence of highly combustible eucalyptus trees contributed greatly to this catastrophic firestorm. [5]
The U.S. Forest Service also submitted comments to the USDA noting that GE eucalyptus will require twice as much water as other forests in the South, “whether it is planted or invades native forests.” Stream flow, the Forest Service added, “would be about 20% lower in eucalyptus plantations than pine plantations.” [6] Eucalyptus plantations would worsen the droughts plaguing the U.S. South.
The Georgia Wildlife Resources Division added, “Eucalyptus plantations will be extremely inhospitable environments for native flora and fauna.” “…we have serious concerns about potential impacts on hydrology, soil chemistry, native biodiversity, and ecosystem functions,” the state agency said.
The Florida Exotic Plant Pest Council also recommended rejecting ArborGen’s request for GE eucalyptus test plots based on their potential for invasiveness. “Invasive plants negatively affect our native species…” E. grandis, one of the parent species of this GE hybrid, is a known invasive in Florida, South Africa, New Zealand and Ecuador. The Florida agency further warned that the cold tolerance trait of the GE eucalyptus increases the threat of invasiveness. “If sterility of the [GE eucalyptus] is not permanent and 100% … the [GE eucalyptus] itself may acquire the ability to become invasive across the southeastern U.S.” [7]
“It’s a sad state of affairs that the courts ignored the communities, organizations and landowners of the South who have serious concerns about the impacts of these trees and want to see them stopped,” said Scot Quaranda, Campaign Director at Dogwood Alliance, a plaintiff in the case. “The decision opens the door for ArborGen’s Frankentrees to release seeds into the wild. Neighboring landowners are not even aware of the threat, since there’s no requirement that the company disclose the locations of the GE eucalyptus trees. This is an outrageous failure of oversight.”
Contacts: Scot Quaranda, Dogwood Alliance: +1.828.242.3596
Neil Carman, Sierra Club: +1.512.663.9594
Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project, STOP GE Trees Campaign +1.802.578.0477 Notes:
[1] http://globaljusticeecology.org/files/10-06-11%20GE%20Euc%20Decision.pdf The seven southern states include Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.
[2] Rubicon’s 2009 annual report to shareholders. Email anne@globaljusticeecology.org to receive the PDF of Rubicon’s shareholders report. The reference to ArborGen producing half a billion GE eucalyptus annually for biofuel production in the US South can be found on page 8.
[6] Comments submitted by the U.S. Forest Service expressing concerns about the impacts on water from the GE eucalyptus planting can be found in the Environmental Assessment, Appendix III
Environmentalists are vowing to continue their fight against genetically engineered “frankentrees” after losing a test case in Florida earlier this month.
“We’re not terribly discouraged,” said Anne Petermann, executive director of the Global Justice Ecology Project and the coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign.
“We’ll wait until the next stage of the regulatory process and intervene there,” said Mike Stark, communications director for the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that aimed to block field tests of genetically modified eucalyptus trees across the South.
The trees in question were developed by Arborgen, a joint venture of Memphis-based International Paper, MeadWestvaco Corp. and New Zealand-based Rubicon Ltd.
Industry expects the fight to continue.
Eucalyptus trees are not native to North America. They grow much quicker than native trees, but typically do not survive freezing temperatures. Arborgen has aimed to engineer hybrids that survive freezing weather and are sterile.
International Paper is interested in developing plantations of the fast-growing Australian hardwood throughout the southeastern U.S. to provide pulp for making paper and raw materials for biofuel refiners.
In May 2010, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to allow the planting and flowering of 260,000 genetically engineered hybrids of eucalyptus trees at 28 test sites in seven southeastern states.
The Sierra Club blasted the decision as tantamount to commercial approval. Joining with the Center for Biological Diversity and four other environmental organizations, they challenged the approvals in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleging that they violated federal environmental regulations and decision-making rules.
On Oct. 6, U.S. Dist. Judge K. Michael Moore ruled against the environmentalists on every count. He rejected the argument that the large number of plantings allowed amounted to commercialization, then dismissed several of the environmentalists’ objections as irrelevant to a process for allowing limited scientific tests.
Reports from the Government Accountability Office and the USDA’s Office of Inspector General that criticized the department for poor management of field tests of genetically engineered organisms “have no bearing on this matter,” he ruled, because they did not address the specific field tests proposed for eucalyptus trees, but “only the agency’s handling of genetically engineered organisms generally.”
Stark said the next step would be to wait until the USDA takes up Arborgen’s petition to deregulate the genetically engineered eucalyptus hybrid. Deregulation would allow anyone to plant the hybrids anywhere without regulatory review.
“We would expect them to call for public comment and do an environmental impact statement,” which would give environmentalists more opportunities to intervene, he said.
“This has prepared us for that process,” Petermann added.
Biotech companies expect environmentalists to object when they seek to deregulate a product in order to commercialize it.
This lawsuit, however, troubled the whole biotech industry, said Nancy Hood, director of public affairs and sustainability for Arborgen, “because they were challenging scientific trials, not commercialization or commercial plantings.”
“It was really extreme,” she said. “It was like saying, ‘We aren’t interested in science.'”
While the battle in court was fought over differing interpretations of arcane federal regulations, the real battle is between two very different, but equally speculative, views of the future.
For the timber and forest industries, genetically engineered eucalyptus offers a way for timber-related companies and communities to survive and compete with Brazil and supply the pulp needed to meet demands for paper and the feedstock to produce biofuels to power America’s transportation system.
“Proceeding with the field trial research is critical to determine if these highly productive hardwood trees can become a new sustainable source of wood for pulp and paper, and for renewable energy — including biopower and biofuels — in the southeastern United States, where many communities depend on the timber and emerging renewable energy industries for their livelihoods,” said Tom Ryan, senior manager public relations, International Paper.
That assumes that biofuels will compete effectively with oil sands, natural gas and electricity to power the cars of the future.
For environmentalists, genetically engineered eucalyptus is a 21st century kudzu vine, an environmental disaster waiting to happen.
Petermann said that International Paper has said it wants to plant 42 million acres of eucalyptus forest in the southeastern U.S. Since eucalyptus trees take up twice as much water as do pine trees, that would reduce the water levels of nearby streams by 20 percent while layering the ground with highly flammable leaf litter and depriving native wildlife of food, she said.
If the engineered sterility isn’t 100 percent effective and eucalyptus trees spread into the wild and displace native species, it would be worse. Larger areas would become forested with trees that don’t support native wildlife, and that burn more readily than native species and siphon water out of streams, she said.
Either way, she said, it would be disastrous for the environment and for all the companies and communities that rely on hunting, fishing, bird-watching and other forms of nature tourism for their livelihoods.
Note: Global Justice Ecology Project’s Anne Petermann and I went to Washington, DC last month to meet with friends and colleagues who were in town for the fall meetings of the infamous World Bank. We arrived in Union Station and hopped on the Metro to Dupont Circle where we met Janet Redman, from the Institute for Policy Studies, at a local restaurant.
We were there to meet Scott Wallace who recently sent me a pre-release copy of THE UNCONQUERED–In Search of the Amazon’s last Uncontacted Tribes. It was the first time I had met Wallace and I had just started reading his book. From the beginning I found the book hard to put down. At the restaurant, I learned a good deal about Scott. Prior to his book, he had written articles for National Geographic. But before that, amongst other assignments, he was a journalist in Central America, who reported on the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador. One thing that I didn’t find out until later, towards the end of the book, was that, thanks to Wallace, there were now only two degrees of separation between Osama bin-Laden and myself. (More on that later…)
But before the review—below–is a trailer that sets the stage for the book. The grey bearded gentleman in the trailer is Sydney Possuelo and the writer, of course, is Wallace. Possuello is the main character documented by Wallace in The Unconquered. But in all fairness it could be said that the main characters of this book are the ones not seen. The undocumented indigenous tribes of the Amazon jungle.
I’ve worked full-time for social justice for the past four decades, but the last thing I want to do, after my work day is done, is bring home more reality.
For this reason, over the past ten years I’ve read more fiction than non–just because fiction is an escape from dealing with the harsh political and ecological realities of our world today.
So when author Scott Wallace sent me THE UNCONQUERED –In Search of the Amazon’s last Uncontacted Tribes, I said “shit,” more reality to deal with. After reading a few pages, though, I realized that Wallace had set the hook and was reeling me in to a world that most people will never experience or even think about–and that his way of story telling was something special. This is not just a book of nonfiction, nor is it an adventure novel. Wallace has made it both—and fascinating. Hopefully, THE UNCONQUERED will capture the imagination of anyone who reads it, and encourage him or her, while enjoying a lively narrative, to understand the injustices indigenous peoples’ experience, from the past until this day.
THE UNCONQUERED documents Sydney Possuelo’s effort to protect, from his point of view, uncontacted indigenous tribes in the Amazon from the onslaught of civilization. It is also a story of Scott Wallace, who left his family, relationship and everyday life, to set off on a journey into one of the most isolated spots of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. Through the eyes of Wallace, the book also tells the story of the indigenous people of the region. A people who have chosen to live in their territory, in their ancient culture, and to avoid the death trap of the White Man, that in the Americas can be traced back over 500 years.
Possuelo was the head of Brazil’s FUNAI’s (National Indian Foundation) Department of Isolated Indians. He led thirty-four people in a grueling three month expedition into the depths of Javarí Valley Indigenous Land in a seemingly conflicted effort to consciously not contact or study the isolated inhabitants of The People of the Arrow (flecheiros), but to explore the proximity of their territory—in an effort to document their territory in order to keep intruders out of their territory, to protect their way of life from outside invasion.
The richness of the Amazon brings all types of fortune hunters, from gold diggers to rubber barons to illegal loggers. They set upon the Amazon with a vengeance, pilfering what the Amazon offers. With their invasion come diseases that, along with outright murder, decimate the indigenous populations.
Prior to Possuelo’s involvement in FUNAI, the agency did not have a good reputation when it came to helping indigenous peoples. FUNAI’s idea was to make contact with the natives, pacify and then assimilate them, in order to move them out of the way and open up their lands to development and exploitation.
When Possuelo became the head of the FUNAI’s Department of Isolated Indians, Wallace writes:
“Though not explicitly articulated at the time, Possuelo’s new policy had the immediate effect of sequestering millions of acres of the most species-rich, biodiverse lands on the planet, placing them, at least theoretically, beyond the reach of those looking to exploit their riches. The survival of isolated tribes depended…on intact forests that could provide the Indians with all their necessities: food, water, shelter, security.”
Needless to say all those who sought to make profit from indigenous lands reviled Possuelo—and the missionaries didn’t like him either.
The main purpose of Possuelo’s no contact policy, was to protect the Indians from disease, due to their extreme vulnerability to foreign contagions. One needs only to look at history for proof. Wallace relates that Christopher Columbus’ contact with the Taino people resulted in their extinction within sixty years. Modern demographic studies indicate their population could have been as high as eight million at the time.
More death from disease came to South America with Pizarro (small pox) and subsequent invasions by Europeans. The isolated tribes that still exist are just as vulnerable as ever.
In writing about the details of the expedition, Wallace doesn’t gloss over the tensions between those on the journey and Possuelo—tensions that could have easily led to rebellion–nor does he leave out his own sometimes-painful feelings and actions. It’s quite revealing of who Scott Wallace is.
Wallace’s candid, yet evocative style projects a vivid imagery for the reader and allows a deeper insight into the characters and the situations they encounter. On first view of the expedition participants, Wallace describes them as resembling “a war party returning from a raid: Apocalypse Now meets The Last of the Mohicans.”
On Possuelo:
“He seemed oblivious of the preposterous figure he posed, clad only in his floppy hat and a skimpy Speedo, over which his ample gut spilled.” He then quotes Possuelo arguing that one of the reasons the rainforest was still intact was because, “the Indians formidable reputation had served as a powerful deterrent for decades, perhaps even centuries. ‘Personally I like them like this—violent,’ Posseulo said.”
And on himself, as drops of psychedelic buchité were administered to his eyes:
“I let out a roar. It felt like my eyes were scorched with sulfuric acid. Everyone howled with laughter. It took several minutes for the burning to subside. I opened my eyes and looked around…I beheld a different forest than the one I’ve been marching through for the past four days. It was no longer a two-dimensional, monochromatic screen of dull browns and greens. Everything stood out in sharp, almost psychedelic relief…The colors seemed to vibrate…I wasn’t hallucinating exactly; it was more like looking at the jungle through a 3-D View-Master.”
But Wallace is not merely an adventure junky–far from it. Wallace discusses his fears, his missteps and falls in the jungle, and other personal details that reveal a man who has fortitude but is also frightened in an enormous rainforest, isolated, surrounded by unfriendly creatures from anacondas to jaguars to devouring ants to crocodiles—not to mention the potential contact with The Arrow People and a possible shower of poisonous arrows raining down on the expedition. One small mistake could have been his last.
Critics ask Possuelo if he thought he was depriving indigenous peoples of civilization. Possuelo asserts that if any of them really wanted to make contact, all they had to do was come downriver.
Other critics are sure to say that here is another white man thinking he can save the indigenous peoples because of his feelings of superiority—or guilt. This thought did bother me a bit, but then I recalled a situation where indigenous friends and colleagues asked me to please talk to another white person who said some things they found disrespectful. They impressed upon me that white people should take care of their own when they fuck up. So it could be said that Possuelo was taking care of the whites that were trying to get into the jungle to exploit its riches. But it’s really not my role to judge.
Possuelo had no fondness for the white invaders. Even though law protected the Javarí Valley Indigenous Land he and others fought for, Possuelo knew that laws and land could be over-ruled by a change of government in Brasilia. Maybe he had no right, but he told the contacted indigenous people of the Javarí Valley:
You must say NO to the white man! Tell him: We don’t want loggers, we don’t want fisherman, we don’t want hunters here! The fish are here for us to eat! For us—the Matis, The Marubo, the Kanamari, the Korubu, and yes, the Arrow People, too! The monkeys are for us. The boar, the tapir, the turkeys—they are for us! Tell the white man to stay out! Tell him: We don’t want you here anymore!
In my opinion, if humans are to have a future on this planet and if the Amazon basin is to remain the lungs of the earth and if the indigenous peoples have crucial knowledge most people in the rest of the world don’t, then the capitalist exploiters looking for the last tree to cut down, the last gold to mine to dig, or the last fish to catch, would be well advised to stay out of the Amazon. And just about everywhere else.
So back to the question about Osama bin-Laden’s relation to me. In The Unconquered, Wallace mentions the idea of the six degrees of separation that connect us all in some special way. But what of The Arrow People and other uncontacted—are they somehow connected to the rest of us conquered by civilization? As for the two degrees of separation between bin-Laden and myself, Wallace had a close friend who interviewed bin-Laden in an Afghan cave in 1996, making Wallace one degree separated and now since I’ve met the author only two degrees of separation. Strange things to contemplate in this day and age.
Orin Langelle is the Co-director/Strategist for Global Justice Ecology Project. He is a contributor to many publications, including recent work for Z Magazine, Race, Poverty and the Environment, Earth Island Journal and others. He is currently compiling four decades of his concerned photography for publication and is a member of the National Writers Union and the International Federation of Journalists.
We’re proud to announce that the short documentary video Global Justice Ecology Project produced this past Spring, Amador Hernandez, Chiapas: Starved of Medical Services for REDD+, (watch film below) is being shown this week in London as part of Native Spirit Film Festival. The festival is a season of films, performances and workshops celebrating the cultures of Indigenous Peoples across the Earth, founded and counselled by Indigenous people, as a platform to promote the voices of Indigenous cultures and the protection of their rights.
According to the festival’s program, which you can download here, the themes for this year are “defending culture in the face of modern development, responding to climate change, reconnecting with the land, the power of storytelling, cultural identity, guidance from the Elders and voices of youth, and finding a sense of belonging within the community.”
While our entry in the festival is a humble ten-minute documentary, the process of producing this short video, we think, was exemplary.
Komen Ilel's Fuyumi Labra (left) and Angél Galán (forefront) with GJEP's Communication Director,Jeff Conant (right) relax in Amador Hernandez before they begin a documentary overflight of the Lacandon jungle. photo: Langelle/GJEP-GFC
When Orin Langelle and I traveled to Chiapas this past March to investigate the emerging impacts of REDD+, we met with a small film collective, Komen Ilel. Two members of Komen Ilel, Angél Galán and Fuyumi Labra, excited about our project, volunteered to accompany us on a trek into the jungle. Because of the nature of our visit to the remote community of Amador Hernández, even as we began our two-day trek, there was no certainty that Angél and Fuyumi would be allowed to film. Indeed, due to a long history of outsiders taking disrespectful advantage of the villagers, there was no certainty that our colleagues, or their cameras, would be allowed to even set foot in the village.
After a ten-hour drive from San Cristóbal de las Casas to the military-occupied village of San Quintín, where the road ends at the border of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, our small crew was met by representatives from Amador Hernández. They took us to a nearby village to spend the night before traveling further into the jungle.
There, we spoke, formally at first, and then with more ease. Our goal, we said, was to interview the villagers about any concerns they might have about REDD+ as it was manifesting there in the Lacandon jungle. The young man speaking for the village said that their concern, above all, was to let the world know of a particular injustice they were suffering: a year previous to our visit, the government had cancelled all medical service to the village. Several children and elders had died as a direct consequence.
After some length of discussion, it became clear that the two concerns were one: the negation of medical services appeared to be part of the government’s strategy to pressure Amador Hernández to negotiate for relocation, in large part due to the need to demarcate the borders of the Montes Azules Reserve for a forest-carbon inventory.
With this revelation, we asked the village representative: could we bring our film crew and capture some interviews on film. Our documentary work, we said, might help the village to demand restoration of its right to health, and to its territory. He agreed that this was a good idea, but whether we would be permitted to film was a question for the village assembly.
The next morning we hiked fifteen kilometers, through the Lacandon’s black, boot-sucking mud, and arrived at the village by afternoon. After darkness fell, an assembly was called, and we – Orin, Angel, Fuyumi, and myself – were invited to attend, and to speak. To the forty or fifty Tseltal Mayan campesinos gathered in the dusty half-light of a bare solar-powered bulb we presented ourselves and declared our intentions. Our words, translated into Tseltal, were batted around the assembly, fed into the age-old process of lajan laja, or consensus-building.
Finally, the assembly decided that, yes, we could conduct our interviews, and yes, we could film anything we wanted. The only condition on their part was that, aside from whatever other material we would produce, we make sure that their primary concern – the withdrawal of medical services – be addressed, so the world would know.
It is to Angel and Fuyumi’s credit that the short video they produced for GJEP does precisely what the Amador Hernández community assembly requested – it tells the story of the withdrawal of health services, while making it clear that this concern is directly linked to government efforts to remove the village due to the demands of impending carbon deals.
We are extremely pleased and proud to have had this short video chosen as a selection in this year’s Native Spirit Film Festival.
— Jeff Conant, for GJEP
Amador Hernandez, Chiapas: Starved of Medical Services for REDD+
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.
This week’s Earth Minute discusses the legacy of Christopher Columbus: ongoing wars against Indigenous Peoples to control their resources. To Listen to the Earth Minute, click here
Text from this week’s Earth Minute:
This week marks the 519th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ invasion of the Americas and the brutal genocide he launched, starting with the Arawak People who he quickly wiped out.
With the founding of the United States, the Indian wars continued. Reservations, created to clear the path for the country’s conquest, were later discovered to be rich with coal, uranium, and oil, and a new war was launched to take those resources. Native Americans who resisted were jailed or killed. Communities were left with contaminated air, water and soil.
Today, Indigenous peoples around the globe are still losing their ancestral lands to corporations and investors–modern day versions of Christopher Columbus that want their lands for profit-making schemes like bioenergy plantations, industrial tree farms or tar sands oil.
Yet there are still Indigenous peoples who, against all odds, have protected their lands and maintained their traditional ways of life. We must stand in solidarity with their ongoing struggles for land, rights and dignity.
For the Earth Minute and the Sojourner Truth show, this is Anne Petermann from Global Justice Ecology Project.
GE poplars coming to a forest near you? There is a disturbing new push to transform forests in the Pacific Northwest into GE tree plantations to feed new bioenergy refineries.
Fast-growing poplar trees grown by Portland, OR-based GreenWood Resources, which has formed a partnership with GE tree company ArborGen.
Last week US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced it was making a grant of $136 million–its largest grant ever– to several universities and private companies in the Pacific Northwest to promote development of a Northwest “biofuels” industry.
According to an article titled, “UW, WSU to get $80M to Develop Biofuels” in the Seattle Times, this grant is designed to build a new industry that “would be churning out fuel from trees” in the next five years. They quoted Vilsack, stating, “I’d bet my life on it.”
The grant has several components, including the development of “fast growing poplars” that could mature in just a few years. The University of Washington plans to develop 400,000 acres of these poplars across the Northwest.
Another article titled, “Pacific Northwest Forests Offer Biomass Bounty” in the Western Farm Press, states that the same grant provides over a half million dollars for Oregon State University to investigate use of genetically engineered trees for dedicated energy plantations. Most of the research into GE trees at OSU focuses on poplars.
This suggests that the ultimate goal of the grant is the development of industrial-scale genetically engineered poplar plantations as bioenergy feedstocks. This is highly troubling since this grant was provided by the USDA–which is the same agency that would review any applications requesting permission to grow GE trees commercially. GE trees are not yet legal to grow on a commercial scale in the US.
Also troubling is the fact that in June, David Nothmann, the Vice President of Business and Product Development for GE tree company ArborGen, was named to serve on the Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee which is jointly administered by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the USDA. Prior to ArborGen, Nothmann spent thirteen years at Monsanto.
Because of this obvious conflict of interest of the USDA with regard to genetically engineered trees, any requests for commercial release of GE trees will likely result in years of lawsuits to stop them.
This threat of lawsuits, according to an article in Biomass Power & Thermal Magazine, is “representing a tremendous deterrent to investment in [biotechnology], especially on the biomass side, where a lot of them are start-up companies. It’s making it very hard to get investments [when] you’re going to have to deal with [5-10 years of] litigation. It is creating a huge barrier.”
Other OSU research will study forest health and hazard reduction. This could indicate that researchers are also looking into use of trees killed or damaged by the western pine beetle as sources of woody biomass. This is backed up by another article published on September 29th in the Denver Post, titled “Beetle-Kill Pine, Other Wood Pushed as Power Source and way to Aid Ailing Colorado Forests,” which announced a new consortium that is looking at using beetle-killed trees as wood for fuel.
Global Justice Ecology Project’s position is that there is no sustainable way to replace fossil fuels with plants at the scale at which they are used in the US. An article in Science Magazine “Implications of Limiting CO2 Concentration for Land Use and Energy” from 2009 demonstrates this. The article points out that the predicted rise in global demand for wood-based electricity alone would require the total conversion of native forests and grasslands to biomass plantations by 2065.
Benoit Bosquet, Coordinator of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, defends the bank’s role in “forest conservation” in Indonesia, where forest-based communities have been forcibly evicted at gunpoint, and their homes burned to the ground. Behind him is a photo of one such eviction. Photo: Petermann/GJEP
GJEP’s photos of the month usually feature the work of Orin Langelle, GJEP’s Co-director/Strategist, who is also a professional photographer. This month, with the World Bank annual meetings just passed and the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa coming up soon, we decided to post this photo by GJEP Executive Director Anne Petermann.
Orin Langelle is currently working on a book of four decades of his concerned photography. From mid-June to mid-July Langelle worked on the book as an artist in residence at the Blue Mountain Center in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.
Global Justice Ecology Project explores and exposes the intertwined root causes of social injustice, ecological destruction and economic domination with the aim of building bridges between social justice, environmental justice and ecological justice groups to strengthen their collective efforts. Within this framework, our programs focus on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, protection of native forests and climate justice. We use the issue of climate change to demonstrate these interconnections. Global Justice Ecology Project is the North American Focal Point of the Global Forest Coalition.
Global Justice Ecology Project partners with Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth show on KPFK–Pacifica Los Angeles radio show for a weekly Earth Minute on Tuesdays and a weekly 12 minute Environment Segment every Thursday.
