1. APRIL 2011 | FREE
THE BAY AREA’S MAGAZINE FOR CONSCIOUS COMMUNITY SINCE 1974
SF EARTH DAY
ECOCITIES
GREEN
PARENTING
WIRELESS
RADIATION
CAMPUS
ENVIRONMENTALISM
COMMONGROUNDMAG.COM
The Green
Issue
OUR SACRED
EARTH
Wonder in a
Wounded World
BAY AREA
ACTIVISM
Guarding
the Amazon
YOGA IN
NATURE
Step Outside
3. commongroundmag.com 45
By now we all understand why the
biodiversity-rich Amazon rainforest is critically impor-
tant to life on planet Earth. The Amazon contains more
than half of the world’s forests, provides 20 percent of
the world’s oxygen, and annually stores 2 billion tons of
CO2. The Amazon supports the integrity of the global
hydrological cycle, minimizes the impacts of climate
change, provides cures for previously untreatable dis-
eases with its vast plant resources, and is a region of
great cultural diversity owing to the more than 400 indigenous communi-
ties that have made the Amazon their home for millennia.
We also know that the Amazon is in trouble—wounded by decades of human exploita-
tion, from soy production to mega-dam projects, oil extraction to mining, cattle ranching to
logging. The Amazon continues to yield the riches that lie beneath its living soil but only at
great cost, as the forest’s ancient trees are toppled and nurturing waters are diverted, polluted,
and dammed—all for short-term economic gain. This devastation is nothing new: The great
machine of “development” has been relentlessly plowing up the foundation of this great and
necessary wonder for more than 400 years.
When the 16th
-century Spanish conquistadors set their sights on the Amazon in search of
gold, the great forest was home to an estimated 5 million indigenous forest-dwellers living in
1,000 tribes. With the arrival of the Spaniards, millions of indigenous people would succumb
to disease, enslavement, and outright murder. The next great wave of Europeans headed for
the Amazon in the 1800s, seeking to exploit the milky latex that flowed from the Amazon’s
rubber trees. The rubber trade spawned atrocities darker than our darkest imaginings can
conjure.
In the 20th
century, it was oil companies that posed the greatest threat of intrusion as their
roads carved up the Amazon’s forests, their wells discharged toxic wastes into the local rivers,
and trucks and pipelines dumped poisonous residues into reeking burial pits. The indigenous
peoples were driven from their homes into the “light of civilization” (which often meant entry
into a strange world of poverty and disconnection from their community and culture).
When life-giving water is poisoned, sickness and death become prevalent. For decades,
foreign oil companies like Texaco and Chevron have managed to avoid accountability for their
role in contaminating the Amazon. The latest intrusions on the “Great Forest of the World”
include huge hydropower dams that will flood vast areas of forest and displace native commu-
nities; soy plantations owned by powerful U.S. companies like ADM, Cargill, and Monsanto;
and biofuel operations that are bulldozing the Amazon to grow “Green fuels” to feed North
America’s gas tanks.
As industrial and political forces strive to see the planet’s wild places replaced, drilled,
flooded, pumped, colonized, or otherwise converted into GDP, accelerating climate change
has burdened the Amazon with a crippling drought. A forest in decline is more suscepti-
ble to fires. It absorbs less carbon and emits less oxygen. Worse, the 2005 Amazon drought
drove 5 billion tons of the forest’s stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere (an amount
exceeding the combined annual CO2 emissions of Europe and Japan).
Native populations are dwindling as drought, pollution, and deforestation make it harder
to provide clean water and food for previously self-sustaining forest-dwelling communities.
At the same time, federal laws and social competitiveness are forcing indigenous children to
leave their families and their poorly equipped native schools to pursue primary education in
distant cities. Across the Great Forest, tribes are driven from their ancestral lands to make
way for dams, roads, pipelines, refineries, mines, farms, and oil rigs. Tragically, threats to the
Amazon’s ecosystems and its inhabitants are more numerous—and the consequences more
dire—than ever before.
So what’s being done about it? Plenty. And much of the action is taking place right here
in the Bay Area, where several local groups are working passionately not only to counter the
threats but to go beyond raising awareness to changing behavior. We must act before it is too
late—before the Amazon’s ability to produce oxygen and fix carbon hits that tipping point
which will see it permanently producing less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, and before the
Amazon’s plant, animal, and insect biodiver-
sity; cultural treasures; and medicinal wonders
are gone forever.
Rainforest Beef and
the Rise of RAN
The Amazon’s plight first penetrated my dense
teenage consciousness in 1985, when I learned
that this “huge rainforest” was being sacrificed
for, of all things, cheap hamburgers. The in-
congruous connection between burgers and
rainforest destruction made me sit up and pay
attention. I discovered that rainforests in Costa
Rica were being cleared to make way for beef
cattle that would ultimately be sold to Burger
King, so my friends and I could enjoy a fast-
food snack when we cut school at lunchtime. I
was shocked to learn that rainforest land, once
cleared, could sustain cattle grazing for only a
few years, leaving the soil depleted beyond use.
At this point, the “hoofed locusts” would move
on to a new patch of cleared forest.
These revelations came about thanks to the
work of the Rainforest Action Network. RAN
(one of Earth Island Institute’s first projects)
was founded by a couple of ardent tree-hug-
ging troublemakers, Randy Hayes and Mike
Roselle, in order to stop the conversion of for-
ests into Burger King Whoppers. Cheap beef
made profit margins stronger and sharehold-
ers happy, but the trade-off was a great-and-
growing hole in what had been a dense forest
that supported more than a million species.
It was a simple, first-of-its-kind campaign.
RAN wrote Burger King a letter asking them to
stop serving “rainforest beef,” but Burger King
ignored them. So RAN generated thousands
Photo:Lou Dematteis
Emergildo Criollio, a leader of the Cofan tribe
of Amazonian Ecuador, suffered greatly after oil
companies began drilling. Within months, rivers
were contaminated with toxic sludge, destroying
food sources and medicinal plants. Polluted water
caused the death of Emergilido’s two sons and
led to severe health problems for his people.
4. 46 april 2011
of letters from their supporters, all demanding
that Burger King stop destroying the planet’s
largest forest simply to benefit the company’s
bottom line. No response. It was not until RAN
organized protests at hundreds of Burger King
restaurants (and created a PR nightmare, as
images of angry families chanting outside the
outlets flooded the news media) that Burger
King sat down with RAN and agreed to stop
sourcing their beef from Costa Rica. They real-
ized that being associated with the destruction
of rainforests was neither good for their im-
age nor for their earnings. Hooray for effective
muckraking and rabblerousing!
But cattle grazing was only one of the many
issues to plague the Amazon. The next big
threat that activists brought to the media’s at-
tention was the burning of rainforest land to
make way for colonists from the great urban
centers of Brazil. Hoping to stem the threat
of political instability in Brazil’s teeming cit-
ies, the government encouraged the poor to
move out of the cities and into the “frontier.”
The government resettlement program offered
each participant a one-square-kilometer lot, six months’ salary, and agricultural loans. The gov-
ernment plan also called for cutting highways into the forest to accelerate colonization and farm-
ing. Five million cattle were trucked into the Amazon. Between 1980 and 2000, the number of
colonists in the Amazon nearly tripled, from 4.7 million to 13.7 million.
The Reign of Oil, A Rain of Pollution
And then came the oil companies. According to a joint report by RAN and Amazon Watch, “be-
tween 1964 and 1990, Texaco (which Chevron acquired in 2001) drilled for oil in a remote northern
region of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. Using obsolete technology and substandard environmen-
tal controls, the company deliberately dumped 18.5 billion gallons of highly toxic waste sludge into
the streams and rivers that local people depend on for drinking, bathing, and fishing. The com-
pany dug over 900 open-air, unlined waste pits that continue to seep toxins into the ground. The
sludge contains some of the most dangerous chemicals known—including benzene and polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)—in lethal concentrations. Rupturing oil pipelines and gas flaring
was also a regular occurrence. What’s worse, the dumping was done intentionally to cut corners
and save an estimated $3 per barrel.”
So Texaco frugally poisoned the water and, in the bargain, thousands of men, women, and chil-
dren. When Chevron took over Texaco, it inherited an ongoing legal battle in which 30,000 indig-
enous Ecuadorans are fighting to hold foreign oil companies accountable for the chemical con-
tamination they believe has damaged their health and their lives.
And while Chevron has actively refused to accept responsibility and clean up the pollution
(spending upward of $200 million to avoid prosecution), more than 1,400 Amazon dwellers have
died due to cancers directly attributable to Chevron-Texaco’s toxic legacy. Children under 14 are
the most vulnerable, suffering high rates of birth defects and leukemia. Because of the contami-
nated land and water, parents cannot adequately feed their families. Local economies and com-
munities have collapsed and, for those who remain, their way of life, their culture and traditions,
have been radically altered.
The good news? On February 14, an Ecuadoran judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and or-
dered Chevron to pay $9 billion for damages and remediation. Now getting Chevron to pay is the
challenge. Chevron has recently attempted to overturn the court decision by filing suit against
the Ecuadoran victims’ lawyers under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Chevron is also seeking damages for the cost of defending itself in court. In the meantime, RAN
and Amazon Watch will continue to take the fight to Chevron’s shareholders and consumers in
the U.S.
Meanwhile, oil companies continue to operate throughout the Amazon basin. Groups like Ama-
zon Watch and International Accountability Project (IAP) are fighting them on many fronts, em-
ploying organizing, media, advocacy, and legal strategies to stop the ongoing quest for every last
drop of oil at fatal cost to the peoples and ecosystems of the region. Sadly, the Peruvian govern-
Photos: LouDematteis
Nine-year-old Jairo Yumbo shows his deformed
hand on the road that runs by his home in
Rumipamba in the Ecuadoran Amazon.
Oil waste pit on fire in Shushufindi in
the Ecadoran Amazon in 1993.
5. commongroundmag.com 47
ment is moving as fast as it can to sell off its oil concessions—and the peoples that live in the af-
fected areas are given no quarter and no say in what is to become of them and their homes. There
are around 60 companies operating in Peru and 16 oil companies operating in Ecuador. These oil
companies carry tremendous political momentum created by the investments that support them.
The shareholders become complicit in the destruction—often without their knowledge.
Damned if You Do, Dammed if You Don’t
Dams are the “new” big threat to the Amazon. While they have been built there before, there now
are plans to build 15 hydroelectric mega-dams despite growing evidence that dams are neither ef-
ficient nor even necessary. Because the Amazon thrives on its hydrologic cycle, killing the rivers is
one of the fastest ways to destroy the forest ecosystem. Dams in tropical climates are particularly
destructive because they submerge vast stretches of trees and other flora, which slowly decom-
pose and release tons of methane into the atmosphere. Hydropower dams are thought to be clean
sources of energy, but this burden of methane actually makes them more polluting than coal-fired
power plants.
Building hydropower dams in the Amazon is not very efficient for generating electricity because
the forest is relatively flat—there are no mountains to provide an added gravity benefit to gener-
ate electricity. Some people go so far as to suggest this dam-building craze is really about water
privatization.
At a March 17 demonstration outside the London offices of the Brazilian National Development
Bank, indigenous activist Almir Sarayamoga Surui called attention to the consequences of two
massive dams planned for Brazil’s Madeira River. “These dam projects bring immediate profits to
some politicians and companies, and short-term employment for some workers,” Surui said. “But
what about their larger costs to people and nature? We need a new model of development that
brings benefits to all, that respects indigenous peoples, their knowledge, and their territories.”
The folks at IAP are planning a media project that will fight proposed dams along Peru’s riv-
ers by documenting successful dam-fighting strategies from around the world and alerting local
communities to the tactics employed by the dam builders to neutralize local resistance. Amazon
Watch continues to wage its battles and organize indigenous peoples, and Berkeley-based Interna-
tional Rivers is in the mix, working 24/7 to stop the madness.
Brazil’s $17-billion, 11-gigawatt Belo Monte Dam project will divert nearly the entire flow of
the Xingu River along a 62-mile stretch through the heart of the Amazon. The dam’s reservoirs
will flood more than 100,000 acres of rainforest and local settlements, dis-
place more than 40,000 people, and generate vast quantities of methane—a
greenhouse gas at least 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Inter-
national Rivers campaign director Aviva Imhof describes Belo Monte as a
“foolish investment.” By investing in energy efficiency, Imhof claims, Brazil
could cut demand by 40 percent over the next decade and save $19 billion.
Imhof estimates “the amount of energy saved would be equivalent to 14
Belo Monte dams.”
This project has attracted global criticism and the attention of Oscar-
winning filmmaker James Cameron, who has produced a short film on
this very issue, A Message from Pandora (check it out at MessageFrom
Pandora.org). This dam plan has been on the books since the days of Bra-
zil’s military dictatorship, and it’s only the constant resistance by the tribal peoples who would be
adversely affected and the international support groups like Amazon Watch and International Riv-
ers that this project remains in limbo. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?
In recent months, it began to look like the Belo Monte was finally close to becoming a reality.
Happily, on February 25, a Brazilian judge ordered a halt to construction plans, citing environmen-
tal concerns. One problem with environmental victories—they need to be constantly defended.
The Rights of Nature
The Pachamama Alliance was born in response to a decision by the Achuar, an indigenous people
living deep in the Ecuadoran Amazon, to seek a partnership with people from the industrialized
world to help protect their rainforest home and their traditional way of life. As a result of this unique
partnership, activists in the “overdeveloped” world have learned that indigenous wisdom and insight
offer enormous value in addressing the complex issues that we face in our modern world.
By helping to empower the Amazon’s indigenous peoples and sharing their story with the greater
global community, the forces of darkness that are preying on the land can be driven back only by
the light of a common understanding—that indigenous peoples have rights and that nature itself
has a right to exist. On July 7, 2010, Ecuador’s
President, Rafael Correa, signed a pioneering
law that enshrined the rights of Pachamama
(Mother Nature) in the national constitution.
In October 2010, the Pachamama Alliance and
Fundación Pachamama established the Global
Alliance for Rights of Nature to press every
country on earth to adopt laws recognizing the
rights of nature.
All is not lost.
Not by a long shot. But it’s getting spooky
when you look at where things stand. The
people who live in the Amazon are losing their
lives—children are dying from tainted water,
women are suffering uterine cancers, thou-
sands of people are suffering. Yet it is the Ama-
zon’s endangered indigenous people who best
understand the forests and are the best placed
to help steward our sustainable access to the
global commons that is the Amazon. The cul-
tures that have survived years of oppression
have much to teach us. This native wisdom is
not found in books or taught in universities.
The people inhabiting the forests of South
America are deeply spiritual and believe that
the land is alive, that the plants are individuals,
and that underlying everything are forces that
bind us all.
If we can stand up for the Amazon and those
who depend upon it for their survival, we shall
gain far more than the economic commodities
that are currently undermining the health of
the region and the future of the planet. So read
some books, join the organizations mentioned
below, submit your email address, take action,
make a donation. And give thanks that the
Amazon is still intact enough to ensure some
hope for our common future.
Branden Barber sits on the boards of Ama-
zon Watch and IAP, was development director
at Rainforest Action Network for five years, is
development director at the Hoffman Institute
Foundation, and lives in the East Bay. Friend
him at Facebook.com/branden.barber.
Tucurui dam,
Brazilian Amazon
Rainforest
Defenders
AmazonWatch.org
IAP.org
InternationalRivers.org
Pachamama.org
RAN.org
Photo:internationalrivers.org
