mining rights

Report exposes risk to shareholders when indigenous rights are ignored. Are extractive companies operating on indigenous land overvalued? Indigenous Rights Risk Report.

First Peoples Worldwide released its Indigenous Rights Risk Report at the The SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing. The report analyzed 52 U.S.-based extractive companies listed on the Russell 1000® Index and assessed 370 oil, gas and mining sites located on or near Indigenous Peoples land. The results are eye opening. 92% of the sites posed a medium to high risk to shareholders. This is concerning given that only 5 of the 52 companies had an Indigenous Peoples policy for productively engaging Indigenous communities, leaving shareholders exposed to considerable risk. You can view the full report online at www.firstpeoples.org/indigenous-rights-risk-report.

One of the companies First Peoples assessed was Southwestern Energy, which on October 6, 2013, a stock analysts said: “looks like a great long-term investment” and “it is a low political risk company.” Less than two weeks later, on October 17th, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) arrested about 40 Elsipogtog and Mi’kmaq First Nations tribal members and activists, using rubber bullets and pepper spray. The protestors had been blockading the road to SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of Southwestern Energy, since June. Southwestern Energy had requested "a permanent injunction to prevent protests against its bid to explore for gas," claiming the blockade was costing them $60,000 a day. However, the injunction was denied on October 22nd. There is no timetable for when the blockade and Southwestern Energy's losses will end.

Given this rosy stock forecast in the face of these troubling events, are traditional approaches to assessing the risk of oil, gas, and mining operations located on or near Indigenous Peoples land relevant anymore? First Peoples does not think so and has proposed a new risk assessment tool in its new Indigenous Rights Risk Report.

In the report, First Peoples rated the above-mentioned Southwestern Energy site a "High" risk. "Traditional financial analysis is no longer enough to predict the risk of an oil, gas or mineral site that is on or near Indigenous land," says Nick Pelosi, First Peoples' Corporate Engagement Associate. "The risk of not respecting Indigenous Peoples' rights must be considered for an accurate risk assessment."

Southwestern Energy is not alone. Nearly all of the companies in the study had a medium to high-risk profile. Of the companies that had over ten sites operating on or near Indigenous land (25 percent of our sample), 92 percent had at least one high-risk site and 23 percent had over five high-risk sites. Take into consideration that only 5 of those companies have an Indigenous Peoples policy, the vast majority of companies are flying blind when it comes to operating on Indigenous land, thus exposing their investors and shareholders to incredible risk.

The risk of not respecting Indigenous Peoples' rights is only going to increase. First Peoples president and co-founder Rebecca Adamson forecasts a confluence of events that will make the extraction of oil, gas and minerals from Indigenous land riskier in the future. She says, "First, Indigenous Peoples have more rights enshrined at the international and national level, and are exercising them more effectively than ever before. Second, as extractive industries search the globe for oil, gas and minerals, they are finding them increasingly on or near Indigenous land. And third, digital media is allowing Indigenous Peoples and their allies to access and share information more easily, giving them the ability to tell their story and conduct advocacy campaigns on a global scale that can directly impact the profitability and value of a company."

Therefore, it is more critical than ever for investors and shareholders to be able to access unbiased information about Indigenous Peoples and from Indigenous Peoples so they can make sound investment decisions. First Peoples hope this report will be a risk analysis tool for investors and shareholders as they make investment decisions in the extractive industry. Ideally, it will also act as a platform for Indigenous Peoples and investors to collaborate together on shareholder action campaigns that drive policy changes companies need to make to respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and maximize shareholder returns.

View the full report online at http://www.firstpeoples.org/indigenous-rights-risk-report.

[image from Sheila Newman & wikipedia] ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2009) — "The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has released photos from the first large-scale census of jaguars in the Amazon region of Ecuador—one of the most biologically rich regions on the planet.
The ongoing census, which began in 2007, is working to establish baseline population numbers as oil exploration and subsequent development puts growing pressure on wildlife in Ecuador's Yasuni National Park and adjacent Waorani Ethnic Reserve. Together, these two protected areas make up some 6,500 square miles (16,800 square kilometers) of wilderness."

Mother Nature recognised at law

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection. Original Article source.

Reflecting the beliefs and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador, the constitution declares that nature “has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” This right, the constitution states, “is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people that depend on the natural systems.”

Nature not just an object for economic appropriation

The new constitution redefines people’s relationship with nature by asserting that nature is not just an object to be appropriated and exploited by people, but is rather a rights-bearing entity that should be treated with parity under the law.

Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Environmental Legal Defense Fund, worked closely over the past year with members of Ecuador’s constitutional assembly on drafting legally enforceable Rights of Nature, which mark a watershed in the trajectory of environmental law.

Ecuador’s leadership on this issue may have a global domino effect. Margil says that her organization is busy fielding calls from interested countries, such as Nepal, which is currently writing its first constitution.

Flawed by failure to mandate indigenous community consultation

For all of the hope and tangible progress the Rights of Nature articles in Ecuador’s constitution represent, however, there are shortcomings and contradictions with the laws and the political reality on the ground. A fundamental flaw in the constitution also exists due to Correa’s refusal to include a clause mandating free, prior, and informed consent by communities for development project that would affect their local ecosystems.

“I expect them [the multinational extractive industries] to fight it,” says Margil. “Their bread and butter is based on being able to treat countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels. Multinational corporations are dependent on ravaging the planet in order to increase their bottom line.”

Mining treats countries and ecosystems like cheap hotels

Investigation of Texaco [Caltex in Australia] oil-exploration in the Amazon.

The new Mining Law, introduced by Ecuador’s own President Rafael Correa and backed by Canadian companies, which hold the majority of mining concessions in Ecuador, is a testament to Margil’s forecast. The Mining Law would allow for large-scale, open pit metal mining in pristine Andean highlands and Amazon rainforest. Major nationwide demonstrations are being held in protest, with groups accusing Correa of inviting social and environmental disaster by selling out to mining interests.

Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag, who has been a tireless defender of the environment against transnational mining companies, says that while the new constitution looks good on paper, “in practice governments like Correa’s will argue that funding his political project, which will bring ‘well being and relieve poverty,’ overrules the rights of nature.”

Yet even as Ecuadoran President Correa embraces the extractive economic model of development, the inclusion of the rights of nature in a national constitution sets inspiring and revolutionary precedent. If history is any indicator, Ecuadorians will successfully fight for the Rights of Nature, with or without their president.

U.S. Media: Update by Cyril Mychalejko

When Ecuadorians drafted and passed a new constitution, which gave nature inalienable rights, the US media largely ignored this historic development. In the case of the Los Angeles Times, one of the few mainstream outlets to cover the story, the newspaper’s editorial board trivialized the development (“Putting Nature in Ecuador’s Constitution,” September 2, 2008) by suggesting it sounded “like a stunt by the San Francisco City Council” and that it seemed “crazy.”

“As ecological systems around the world collapse, we need to fundamentally change our relationship with nature. This requires changes in both law and culture, and ultimately our behavior as part of nature,” said Mari Margil, Associate Director of the Defense Fund, who is disappointed in how the US media largely ignored the story.

In Ecuador, at the time of the constitutional vote, the optimism over how the “Rights of Nature” clauses would translate into policy was guarded.
“As exciting as these developments are, it was also inevitable that the people in power would, and will, find ways to circumvent, undermine, and ignore those rights,” said Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of Defensa y Conservación Ecológica de Intag.

Multi-national mining companies dangerously influence national laws

According to Zorrilla, a major disappointment has been President Rafael Correa’s new mining law.

“The law takes rights-to-nature loopholes and widens them so that giant dirt movers could easily drive through them,” said Zorrilla, who has been working with communities of Ecuador’s Intag region to resist mining and promote sustainable development. “To mention a couple of examples, the law does not prohibit large-scale mining in habitats harboring endangered species, nor the dumping of heavy metals in rivers and streams.”
See also,"Ecuador Rising"..

Indigenous leaders file law-suit

Indigenous leaders responded by filing a lawsuit before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court in March 2009, seeking to overturn the mining law, which they believe is unconstitutional. Article 1 of the “Rights of Nature” clauses states: “Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms. The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.”

Regardless of the ongoing struggles to ensure that the true meaning and scope of the constitution is upheld, Dr. Mario Melo, a lawyer specializing in Environmental Law and Human Rights and an advisor to Fundación Pachamama-Ecuador, believes that the nature clauses which reflect the traditions of indigenous peoples could offer a path to an ecologically sustainable future.

Rights to nature = progress

“I consider that the recognition of the ‘Rights to Nature’ as a progress on a global scale and one that deserves to be globally broadcast and commented on as a contribution from Ecuador towards the search of new ways of facing the environmental crisis due to climate change.”

The struggles of Ecuadorian social movements and the Ecuadorian government to uphold the “Rights of Nature” and to create a new development model that places human beings as interdependent parts of nature, rather than dominant exploiters of nature, is something we should continue to monitor and learn from.

Source:
Upside Down World, September 25, 2008
Title: “Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature”
Author: Cyril Mychalejko
and
Project Censored
Student Researcher: Chelsea Davis
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD
Sonoma State University