Environment Archives - Page 104 of 107

Indigenous Struggles to watch in the United States in Canada

Photo taken during Mathias Colomb Cree Nation shut down of access to HudBay Lalor mine.

John Ahni Schertow, Intercontinental Cry

With the constant barrage of news headlines we’re confronted with, it can be very difficult to get a good fix on what exactly is going on these days, especially if you don’t know where to look. Most news providers are only interested in the latest trends (and, of course, whatever’s going to pay the bills). They ignore everything else.

In light of that fact, we wanted to put together a short briefing of important indigenous struggles that are taking place right now in Canada and the United States.

Note: If you know of something that isn’t on this list, please feel free to mention it in the comments below. All additional struggles will be added to the end of this briefing.

Last Updated: March 15, 2013

Mi’kmaq

Citizens from two different Mi’kmaq communities recently carried out an 11-day hunger strike to oppose the Made in Nova Scotia Process and the Made in New Brunswick Process, two framework agreements that follow a nationwide template in Canada that aims to extinguish Aboriginal sovereignty and title. Ultimately, the chiefs taking part in the process did not opt entirely, however, they did agree to halt negotiations until their communities can become better educated as to exactly what is at stake. The Mi’kmaq of Unamaki, meanwhile, are still attempting to deal with a proposed shale gas fracking development project at Lake Ainslie, the largest freshwater lake in Cape Breton.

Pit River Tribe

The Pit River Tribe Of California unanimously affirmed their opposition to geothermal and other industrial developments in the sacred Medicine Lake Highlands, located in Northeastern California . In a recent public statement, the tribe explained that “Geothermal development in such a sensitive hallowed place will despoil the environment and harm the Pit River Tribe.” Pit River has been struggling against geothermal development in the region since the 1980s, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sold geothermal development leases to three corporations without consulting anyone.

Red Lake Anishinaabe

The Red Lake Anishinaabe Nation recently stood up to Enbridge Energy LP, a company that is openly trespassing on Red Lake Ceded lands in Minnesota, operating multiple pipelines without an easement. Through their ongoing protest camp, Nizhawendaamin Indaakiminaan, a group of grassroots Red Lake tribal members and allies, are demanding that the flow of oil through these pipelines be stopped.’

Havasupai

The Havasupai Nation joined forces with three conservation groups to sue the U.S. Forest Service over its decision to allow Energy Fuels Resources, Inc. to begin operating a uranium mine near Grand Canyon National Park without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an outdated 1986 federal environmental review. As stated in a recent joint press release, “The Canyon Mine threatens cultural values, wildlife and endangered species and increases the risk of soil pollution and pollution and depletion of groundwater feeding springs and wells in and near Grand Canyon.” For more on the active threat of uranium mining at the Grand Canyon, please see here.

Mathias Colomb Cree Nation

The Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (MCCN) and The Wilderness Committee are working to oppose Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company’s (Hudbay) new Reed Mine project in Grass River Provincial Park. Pointing to unaddressed environmental concerns and a lack of free, prior and informed consent, MCCN Chief Arlen Dumas recently explained, , “The Reed Lake mine proposed by Hudbay is within the unceded traditional territories of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. This proposed mine raises serious concerns in relation to caribou populations, water quality, and carbon emissions. The province of Manitoba and the proponent, Hudbay, have failed to meet with MCCN, the true owners of these lands and resources, in good faith to obtain our free, informed and prior consent on any proposed activities within our territories.”

Muscogee-Creek

Hickory Ground Tribal Town member, Wayland Gray, Muscogee-Creek, was recently arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat for peacefully entering the construction site of the expansion of the Wind Creek Wetumpka Casino. Wayland, who was arrested with three others, entered the site to pray over the desecration of the grounds because it is where 57 ancestral remains were unceremoniously moved to make room for the casino expansion. Wayland has since been released form jail, however, the charge of uttering a terrorist threat remains. Watch a video of the arrest.

Innu

In Quebec, the Innu are continuing to reject the “North for all” plan, a massive economic, social, and environmental development project that will directly impact Innu tradition, culture, language and history. The Plan Nord is a multi-faceted resource-exploitation project that involves digging mines, expanding forestry, and damming a slew of rivers.

Lummi

The Lummi Nation is continuing to push against the proposed Gateway Pacific coal terminal at Xwe’chi’eXen (Cherry Point), a sacred landscape the Lummi have relied on for over 3,500 years. The proposed terminal and shipping point would be used to export Powder River Basin coal to China. If built, the project will set the stage for the possible destruction of all live in the Salish Sea. As Jay Julius, member of Lummi Nation tribal council recently pointed out, it could also destroy underwater archaeological sites and upland burial grounds. Late last year, a wid spectrum of Native and non-Native Fishers joined the Lummi Nation to oppose the project.

Wolf Lake and Eagle Village

While not a struggle per se, there is a situation with a proposed ‘rare earth’ mine that we should keep an eye on, for obvious reasons. In western Ontario, Wolf Lake and Eagle Village First Nation have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Matamec Explorations Inc., over a proposed yttrium-zirconium mine. Rare earth mines have gained alot of attention over the past couple years for the notorious amount of pollution they produce. The two First Nations are undoubtedly aware of this, however, they have decided to take a facts-based approach concerning Algonquin cultural impacts social economic impacts and specific environmental impacts.

Lake St. Martin First Nation

The entire population of the Lake St. Martin First Nation continues to remain homeless after their reserve was drowned in water by the Manitoba government in 2011. As if the loss of their homes was not enough, the people of Lake St. Martin were left with no choice but to relocate to an old military base that has no infrastructure. For more on this, be sure to look at: Flooding Hope: Displacement Politics by the Province towards Lake St. Martin First Nation.

Dineh, Hopi and Zuni

A coalition of Indigenous and non-indigenous groups are working to stop the development of the Grand Canyon Escalade project at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. The $120 million resort and tramway project is being pushed forward by the Navajo Nation government despite the obvious risks to the environment and the cultural and spiritual well-being of the Dineh, Hopi and Zuni Peoples. Several groups have come together to stop the project, including the Diné Medicine Man Association, Inc., Forgotten People, Next Indigenous Generation, and the Grand Canyon Trust. Hopi leaders have also unanimously agreed to oppose the commercial initiative.

Ohlone, Miwok and Yokut

The Ohlone, Miwok and Yokut peoples are working to protect Brushy Peak, a sacred place near Livermore, California, that is a part of their origin stories. The East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), which maintains and operates a system of regional parks within the San Francisco Bay Area, wants to turn the area into a recreational preserve against the wishes of the concerned Indigenous peoples. Buried Voices, a new documentary film by Michelle Steinberg, provides a great deal of insight into this ongoing struggle. Other recent struggles in the region include the effort to protect Glen Cove (Sogorea Te) and Rattlesnake Island.

Navajo, Hopi, Apache, Acoma, Zuni…

The long-running struggle to defend the San Fransisco Peaks continues in Arizona, despite the fact that the infamous Snowbowl has since become the first ski area in the world to make fake snow from 100% treated sewage waste water. Activists working to defend the Peaks lament that “We have temporally lost this battle with attacks on us from the U.S. Forest Service and the so called U.S. ‘judicial system’”. Nevertheless, they remain committed to stopping the production and use of the disgusting snow.

Anishinaabe

A group of Anishinaabe citizens from seven different communities/reservations in northern Minnesota are struggling to defend the sacred manoomin (wild rice) from the dire impacts of sulfate contamination. the group, known as Protect Our Manoomin is working specifically to oppose mining legislation that endangers manoomin and the ecosystem of northern Minnesota; and to educate and inform Anishinaabe communities of the imperilment of nonferrous mining. Companies that are currently threatening manoomin include PolyMet/Glencore, Twin Metals/Antofagasta, and Kennecott/Rio Tinto.

Ktunaxa

The Ktunaxa, meanwhile, are continuing to resist an impending cultural and environmental disaster in southeastern British Columbia. The Jumbo Glacier resort proposal, located in the heart of Qat’muk (GOT-MOOK), threatens critical grizzly bear habitat, and ignores the cultural and spiritual significance of the area to the Ktunaxa. According to Ktunaxa belief, Qat’muk is home to the Grizzly Bear Spirit, which makes it a culturally pivotal sacred site. The BC government, in order to move forward with the project, recently created the Jumbo Glacier Resort Municipality (JGRM), a municipal body that doesn’t represent any actual people. The undemocratic body is being challenged in court.

Asubpeeschoseewagong

Grassy Narrows is gearing up for yet another court battle in their decade-long struggle against clearcut logging on their territory. In January, the Ontario Government began proceedings to overturn a major legal victory that was eleven years in the making. On August 16, 2011, Ontario Superior Court Justice Saunderson found that the Government of Ontario did not have the power to unilaterally take away rights outlined in Treaty 3. The province preposterously claims that Justice Saunderson’s analysis was the “antithesis of reconciliation.” Grassy Narrows meanwhile, continues to cope with the impacts of mercury pollution on their lands along with White Dog FN and some members of Wabauskang who lived at Quibell. In March 1962 Dryden Chemicals began dumping an estimated 10 metric tonnes of mercury into the Wabigoon River, contaminating the fish which formed the subsistence and economy of all three communities. The mercury was never cleaned up.

Dineh

Returning to Navajo territory, uranium companies are working double time to convince the Navajo nation to let them mine their “uranium-rich” land, despite the overwhelming number of abandon uranium mines that continue to pollute the territory. There are over 1000 abandon mines.

The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute

Elsewhere in the Southwest, the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute are stepping forward to stop a water pipeline that has been proposed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA). According to the Protect Goshute Water website, the pipeline “would draw 150,000 acre feet per year from the Great Salt Lake Watershed Basin lowering the water table, drying up our springs, and fundamentally changing access to water over this vast region for plants, wildlife, and people.. Even a slight reduction in the water table will result in a cascade of wildlife and vegetation impacts directly harming our ability to engage in traditional practices of hunting, gathering, and fishing on ancestral lands.”

Cree

The Grand Council of the Crees just called on the Quebec government to move forward with its plan to convene an independent evaluation of the uranium industry in Quebec. The Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee has consistently stated its opposition to uranium mining in all its forms in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay territory. In August 2012, the Cree Nation enacted a permanent moratorium on uranium exploration, mining, milling and waste emplacement in Eeyou Istchee. The Crees are also intervening in the legal proceedings recently commenced against Environment Quebec by Strateco Resources, the proponent of the Matoush advanced uranium exploration project, the most advanced uranium project proposed to date in the Province.

Dene

The Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) and Lutsel K’e Dene First Nation (LKDFN) announced in February that they will not support the proposed Nechalacho rare earth mine at Thor Lake, about a 100 km southeast of Yellowknife. The project would exploit a total 15 rare earth metals – including radioactive ones like uranium and thorium. The YKDFN explained their opposition stems from a deteriorating relationship with the company behind the project and that the potential environmental impacts resulting from the project far exceed the perceived benefits.

Winnemem

The Winnemem Wintu Tribe and their allies are pushing against the proposed Shasta Dam expansion project, which would flood the Winnemem’s sacred sites for a second time! The proposed expansion also jeorpardizes the site of the Winnemem Coming of Age ceremony. Furthermore, in conjunction with the Bay Delta Conservation Plan it would also hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, steelhead, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish species.

Alutiiq, Cherokee, Chumash, Crow, Dakota, Euchee, Lakota, Mohawk, Navajo, Ojibwe, Salish, Sauk, Squamish Wampanoag…

Amidst these many struggles, there are numerous efforts around the continent dedicated to reclaiming, revitalizing, and securing traditional languages, many of which are on the brink of extinction. In Canada alone, there are over 60 communities working to record/document their languages before they are lost. As highlighted at Our Mother Tongues, language revitalization efforts include the Akwesasne Freedom School, the Chumash “Silent No More” project at the University of California at Berkeley, the Wicoie Nandagikendan: Dakota-Ojibwe Language Immersion Preschools and the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project. Also, The Squamish Language is making a come back; and efforts are underway for language reclamation at Shoal Lake. Then there is the Digital Indigenous Democracy project, described by Christa Couture of RPM.fm as “a remarkable endeavor that will bring interactive digital media to eight remote Baffin Island Inuit communities – communities whose 4,000 year-old oral language will become extinct without digital media to carry it forward into the next generation.” There are many other programs and efforts across the US and Canada; new ones are appearing all the time.

Attawapiskat First Nation

In recent months, the Cree community of Attawapiskat has held a constant presence in the news. Most notably, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence carried out a six week fast as a part of IdleNoMore; and let’s not forget the coordinated media effort to discredit her in order to weaken the IdleNoMore movement. Last month, members of Attawapiskat also set up a blockade on the road leading to the De Beers Victor mine with a second blockade by a different group of Attawapiskat citizens who wanted their own concerns addressed. Meanwhile, the reserve continues to cope with a long-standing housing shortage.

Wet’suwet’en

For more than 15 months, the Grassroots Wet’suwet’en peoples have maintained The Unist’ot’en Camp, a resistance community that was established to protect Wet’suwet’en territory from several proposed pipelines from the Tar Sands Gigaproject and shale gas from Hydraulic Fracturing Projects in the Peace River Region. Most recently, in November, the Wet’suwet’en of the C’ilhts’ekhyu and Likhts’amisyu Clans confronted, and escorted out, employees and drillers of the Pacific Trails Pipeline (PTP) who were attempting to enter Wet’suwet’en lands without consent.

Aamjiwnaang

Aamjiwnaang is an Anishinaabe reserve located just outside of the city of Sarnia in Southwestern Ontario–an read well known as “Chemical Valley.” Home to 40% of Canada’s petrochemical industry, the Chemical Valley region experiences some of the worst air pollution in Canada. The Aamjiwnaang Reserve, boxed in by industry on three sides, bears the brunt of this pollution. Currently, two Aamjiwnaang band members, Ron Plain and Ada Lockridge, are confronting this with a lawsuit against the Ontario Ministry of Environment (MOE) and Suncor Corporation. Their argument is a simple one: they believe it is a basic human right to step outside one’s home and not breathe air harmful to one’s health. Another challenge faced by the community is the lack of legal protection from spills and intentional dumping of toxic chemicals within the reserve, a problem that is known very well by reserves across the country.

Blackfeet

For the past few years, the Blackfeet Nation in what is now northern Montana have been struggling with a problem that has now reached several reserves across the continent: the controversial practice known as fracking. In the case of the Blackfeet, who are one of three members of the Blackfoot Confederacy, fracking has not only harmed the land. It has also divided the Blackfeet People. Since 2009, the Blackfeet Nation Tribal Council has taken it upon itself to lease out 1 million acres or 66% of the reservation to three companies: Newfield, Anschutz Exploration, and Rosetta Resources. Blackfeet citizens have had little say in the actions of the Tribal Council, nor opportunities to learn about what is being done on their land. Fortunately, there are those among the Nation who are demanding accountability, transparency, and who wish to defend their land from the pollution of oil and fracking chemicals.

Kanai (Blood Tribe)

The Kanai, another member of the Blackfoot Confederacy, find themselves in much the same situation as their southern relatives, the Blackfeet. In this case, the Kanai Tribal and Business Councils signed almost half of the reserve over to oil companies, again, without any involvement from the citizenry. The situation gained major headlines in 2011 when three Kainai women carried out a protest on the Blood Reserve, in southern Alberta. Soon after the protest began, all three women were arrested and charged with trespassing and intimidation. Sadly, there have been no other major protests since then.

Athabasca Chipewyan

In northern Alberta, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) is trying to stop an oilsands expansion project on their traditional territory. Industrialization of the Denesuline community’s traditional territory has lead to the cumulative removal of lands, wildlife and fish habitat as well as the destruction of ecological, aesthetic and sensory systems. The expansion of Shell’s Jackpine Project would cause even more damage, specifically at Poplar Point, the heart of the ACFN homelands.

Barriere Lake Algonquins

For more than twenty years, the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have been struggling to get the governments of Canada and the Province of Quebec to honour the landmark 1991 Trilateral Agreement, an alternative to Canada’s preferred negotiation policy, called the “Comprehensive Land Claims.” Canada has tried every trick in the book in order to get out of the 1991 agreement, including placing the community under third party management using Section 74 of the Indian Act. The community has won some important victories over the last couple years – and one or two that were less than ideal – nevertheless, ABL presses on. Most recently, the Algonquins made there position clear on proposed exploration activities of the junior mining company Copper One.

First Nation Leadership Stands United With Tsilhqot’in Nation’s Opposition to Taseko Mines’ Controversial New Prosperity Mine

Source: Intercontinental Cry

Representatives of the First Nations Leadership Council, the BC Assembly of First Nations and the Tsilhqot’in Nation providing public comment in advance of the Federal Review Panel for the proposed New Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine project. The public hearing will begin in Williams Lake, B.C. on July 22, 2013, and will be completed within approximately 30 days.

“We are glad to work in solidarity with the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, First Nations Summit and the BC Assembly of First Nations on these issues of national importance as they affect Aboriginal people across Canada. We will be at the Supreme Court of Canada on November 7, 2013 for our Title Case and yet still we start panel hearings for the proposed Prosperity mine July 22, 2013. This proposed mine is within the Tsilhqot’in claim area and has already been denied once by the Minister of Environment. This is precedent setting and we will not back down,” said Chief Joe Alphonse, Tribal Chairman of the Tsilhqot’in National Government. “Our own experience with this company, Taseko Mines Ltd., should inspire First Nations to stand up for your land, not cave in to industry and to express that development has to be on our terms – we need a meaningful say on our land and bad projects should not proceed in an area as sensitive and culturally important as Teztan Biny.”

“The Tsilhqot’in Nation has demonstrated extreme patience – we have said we are not opposed to economic development, but that this is the wrong project, in the wrong place and it cannot be approved,” stated Chief Roger William of Xeni Gwet’in “We will share with the Panel our unchangeable values and express our deep concerns of the threat to Teztan Biny (Fish Lake) and the contamination of our lakes and streams. We firmly believe that like the last Panel, this review will demonstrate the extremely high risk that such a mine poses in such a sacred place.”

BC Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Jody Wilson-Raybould remarked “Yesterday’s provincial Throne Speech spoke of securing non-treaty economic benefit agreements, finalizing long-term treaties and seeking additional revenue-sharing agreements. We all want opportunities for economic development but not at all costs. Our culture and lands are vitally critical to the health and well-being of our communities.”

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, said “This bad project is one of the first to be forced through the now gutted federal environmental review process borne out of the Harper Government’ omnibus bills C-38 and C-45. If this review fails to come to the same conclusion as the last one, then we’ll know that the changes to the EA process are indeed about approving disastrous and unscrupulous projects over the objections of First Nations and the general public and at the great expense to the environment.”

Robert Phillips, member of the Political Executive of the First Nations Summit, stated “This is also a test case of the federal government’s commitment to First Nations Title, Rights and Treaty Rights. If spending 20 years in court proving our rights means nothing at the end of the day, then we only see conflict on the ground.”

For further comment please contact:
Chief Joe Alphonse, Tribal Chair
Tsilhqot’in National Government 250-392-3918

Chief Roger William
Xeni Gwet’in 250-392-3918

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President
Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs 604-684-0231

Colin Braker, Communications Director
First Nations Summit 604-926-9903

Article Details

Victory! Council of Yukon First Nations declares traditional lands “frack free”

John Ahni Schertow, Intercontinental Cry

On Friday, June 28, 2013, the Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN) passed resolution declaring their traditional lands to be “frack free” and calling on the Yukon government to prohibit all fracking in the territory.

The resolution reads:

Be it resolved that the Council of First Nations calls on the Yukon Govt. to prohibit fracking in the Yukon and declares our traditional territories to be frack-free.

As reported at Rabble.ca, “The resolution was passed by full consensus of the general assembly of those present.”

The Council of Yukon First Nations is a central political organization that represents eleven of the fourteen First Nation governments in the Yukon on a national and International level.

First Nation governments in the Yukon consist of:

Carcross/Tagish First Nation
Champagne and Aishihik First Nations
Ehdiitat Gwich’in Council
First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun
Gwichya Gwich’in Council
Kluane First Nation
Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation
Nihtat Gwich’in Council
Selkirk First Nation
Ta’an Kwach’an Council
Teslin Tlingit Council
Tetlit Gwich’in Council
Tr’ondek Hwech’in
White River First Nation

U.S. not waging ‘war on coal’: Energy Secretary Moniz

U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz gestures during an interview with Reuters in Vienna June 30, 2013.Photo: Reuters/Leonhard Foeger — U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz gestures during an interview with Reuters in Vienna June 30, 2013.
Photo: Reuters/Leonhard Foeger

Fredrik Dahl, Reuters

The U.S. government is not waging a “war on coal” but rather expects it to still play a significant role, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said on Sunday, rejecting criticism of President Barack Obama’s climate change plan.

Obama tried last week to revive his stalled climate change agenda, promising new rules to cut carbon emissions from U.S. power plants and other domestic actions including support for renewable energy.

The long-awaited plan drew criticism from the coal industry, which would be hit hard by carbon limits, and Republicans, who accused the Democratic president of advancing policies that harm the economy and kill jobs. Environmentalists largely cheered the proposals, though some said the moves did not go far enough.

Obama “expects fossil fuels, and coal specifically, to remain a significant contributor for some time,” Moniz told Reuters in Vienna, where he was to attend a nuclear security conference.

The way the U.S. administration is “looking at it is: what does it take for us to do to make coal part of a low carbon future,” he said, adding this would include higher efficiency plants and new ways of utilizing coal.

It is “all about having, in fact, coal as part of that future,” Moniz said. “I don’t believe it is a ‘war on coal’.”

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, the No. 2 U.S. coal mining state after Wyoming, said last week that Obama had “declared a war on coal,” and the industry said the rules threatened its viability.

Moniz acknowledged there could be winners and losers but that economic models belie “the statement that there are huge economic impacts” from controlling greenhouse gases.

“Quite the contrary. We expect that this is going to be positive for the economy,” he said.

Obama said he had directed the Environmental Protection Agency to craft new emissions rules for thousands of power plants, the bulk of which burn coal and which account for roughly one-third of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

With Congress unlikely to pass climate legislation, Obama said his administration would set rules using executive powers.

Moniz said he was optimistic that the United States would meet its goal to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. “We’re pretty close to the track right now. We’re halfway there,” he said.

An $8 billion loan guarantee program for projects to develop new technologies that help cut emissions of fossil fuels would include carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) as “one of a number of options,” he said.

“It will also include some advanced technologies for using coal very different from today’s technologies that will enable much less expensive carbon capture in future,” Moniz said.

CCS is a relatively new, expensive and unproven technology that captures carbon dioxide and buries it.

In win for fish, oil companies allowed to abandon old rigs

John Upton, Grist

For all the harm that the oil and gas industry inflicts on wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, it does offer the marine ecosystem at least one big benefit. Offshore oil-drilling rigs serve as artificial reefs, providing shelter for animals and an anchor for plants, coral, and barnacles. Yet once a well is tapped, the federal government has required the drilling company to uproot its rig to help clear clutter that could obstruct shipping.

Following complaints from fishermen and conservationists, however, the Obama administration is easing those rules. It announced this week that it is making it easier for states to designate abandoned drilling infrastructure as special artificial reef sites.

The move is a win-win. Fish, turtles, and other wildlife get to keep their underwater metropolises — and drilling companies can save on the costs of rig removal. From Fuel Fix:

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has revised the policies to encourage participation in its rigs-to-reefs program, which allows operators to leave non-producing platforms deep in the Gulf as artificial homes for underwater creatures.

So, um, thanks to all the penny-pinching oil companies out there that don’t want to pay to clean up their crap?

Should the “Nobel prize for food” go to a Monsanto exec?

By Anna Lappe, grist.org

In a move that has disturbed many anti-hunger advocates, including 81 global leaders of the World Future Council and laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, the World Food Prize — often known as the Nobel prize for food and agriculture — has given this year’s award to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley.

Fraley shares the prize with two other scientists responsible for launching the “technology” behind the biotech business three decades ago, after developing a method for inserting foreign genes into plants. For an award that claims to honor those who contribute to a “nutritious and sustainable food supply,” genetically modified organisms miss the mark on both counts.

GMOs do not create a more nutritious or sustainable food supply. Twenty years after the commercialization of the first GMO seed, almost all are limited to just two types. Either they’ve been developed to resist a proprietary herbicide or engineered to express a specific insecticide. (No surprise, since the product development is led by chemical companies like Monsanto and Syngenta.) While these crops have proven profitable to the companies producing them, they’ve been costly to farmers. And for the cash-poor farmers, who make up 70 percent of the world’s hungry, this technology worsens dependency on purchased seeds, fertilizer, and chemicals. As GMOs exacerbate farmers’ dependency on these inputs — all at volatile and rising prices — many small-scale farmers are driven to despair.

In terms of sustainability, GMOs also do nothing to reduce the agriculture sector’s reliance on fossil fuels, mined minerals, and water — all natural resources that will only get more costly as they become more scarce.

While the genetic engineers promise that their technology can deliver, experts I’ve interviewed here and around the world are doubtful. Instead, they point to the studies showing the productivity and resilience of organic and agroecological methods, especially in the face of drought and other extreme weather. Organic production methods outperform chemical methods in drought years [PDF] by as much as 31 percent. Other benefits? Organic methods can use 45 percent less energy and produce 40 percent less greenhouse gases [PDF]. Real numbers, real solutions.

Further evidence from some of the world’s most important institutions — from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to the World Bank — is showing how ecological methods outperform GMOs, improve nutritional qualities of crops, and benefit biodiversity and soil health, all without leaving farmers in debt and dependent on companies for ever-more expensive inputs. In India, for example, agriculture systems that have turned away from the synthetic inputs GMOs require are hitting record highs in productivity. Thanks to research from around the world, including a three-year groundbreaking study involving over 900 participants from over 110 countries, a growing consensus exists: We know what’s working to improve crop yields, nutrition, and farmers’ livelihoods. And despite the PR talking points from the industry, it’s not GMOs.

Much of the public relations spin revolves around “feeding the world.” Let’s be clear: Global hunger is not the result of a lack of food, but perhaps more importantly, a lack of democracy, as my mother Frances Moore Lappé and her colleagues at Food First have been arguing for four decades. Today, despite the planet producing more than enough food for every man, woman, and child, 870 million people on the planet suffer from extreme, long-term undernourishment, according to the United Nations.

Biotechnology fails to address the roots of this persistent hunger — which include poverty and inequality, and fundamentally a lack of choice over how food is grown, where it’s grown, and who has access to it. A technology like genetic engineering, which has been developed and is controlled by a handful of companies, does nothing to transform this dynamic. Indeed, the technology serves to further concentrate power over our food system: An estimated 90 percent of U.S.-grown soybeans and 80 percent of corn and cotton crops are grown from Monsanto’s seeds. Crops that don’t nourish the world, but instead end up in the gut of a cow, the tank of a car, or the ingredients list of processed foods.

Finally, Monsanto and Syngenta have a long history of working to silence scientists and farmers who are critical of their products, including one case that hit close to home.

In the late 1990s, my father, the scientist Marc Lappé, decided to investigate Monsanto’s claims that the technology would increase yields. He found that the company vastly overstated the potential of the technology. He wrote up his findings in his book Against the Grain, but just before printing his publisher received a threatening letter from Monsanto lawyers. The message: Print at your own risk. The publisher balked. My father eventually found a small progressive press in Maine who had the courage to publish his book, but he lost the imprimatur of a larger publisher. This is just one anecdote of intimidation among many — including the recent buy-out of a research firm linking Monsanto to the global bee crisis known as “colony collapse disorder.”

In its choice this year, the World Food Prize has placed itself decidedly out of step with the international community’s assessment about agricultural biotechnology and the proven approach to promoting nutrition and sustainability.

Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author, sustainable food advocate, and mom. The founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund, her latest book is Diet for a Hot Planet.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz relies on dubious coal tech for Obama climate strategy

Sharon Kelly, DeSmog Blog

The key takeaway from President Obama’s major climate change announcement this week was his intent to batten down on coal. But if history is any indication, the man Mr. Obama selected to run the Department of Energy may have different plans.

Ernest J. Moniz has a long history of supporting coal-powered electricity, staking his arguments in favor of coal on a technology that remains entirely unproven: carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

Mr. Moniz will be in a uniquely influential position when it comes to confronting these problems. President Obama announced that he would rely on executive agencies instead of Congress, so Mr. Moniz’s Energy Department will play a crucial role in determining precisely how Obama’s strategy is administered.

The day after Obama’s speech, Moniz told Congress “the President advocates an all-of-the-above energy strategy and I am very much in tune with this.”

What’s wrong with an all-of-the-above strategy? It extends reliance on fossil fuels, at a time when scientists warn that we can only burn twenty percent of current reserves before the world tips past the crucial 2 degree Celsius point. Beyond two degrees, some of the most devastating impacts of global warming will be felt. Keep in mind that, if all of the world’s coal is burned, global temperatures could rise by a jaw-dropping 15 degrees Celsius, a study published in the prestigious journal Nature last year concluded.

The stakes, when it comes to controlling American greenhouse gas emissions, are huge.

In May, carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere reached 400 parts per million – the highest level of carbon dioxide ever recorded in human history. Last year, the continental U.S. experienced its hottest year on record, and the NRDC estimates that climate-related disasters like crop loss, wildfires and floods cost the nation roughly $140 billion last year alone, with much of the tab picked up by taxpayers.

Power plants are the single largest source of American carbon dioxide emissions, accounting for a third of the nation’s total greenhouse gasses. So focusing on power plants is key if emissions are to be reduced.

Coal currently supplies about 40 percent of American electricity, according to EIA statistics, down from fifty percent in 2005. Coal’s decline comes as natural gas from fracking (which has its own worrisome climate impacts, measured in methane rather than carbon dioxide), wind and solar, have risen in their share of the U.S. electric portfolio. Since the beginning of 2010, 145 coal-fired power plantsannounced plans to retire.

But the Department of Energy is focused not on retiring more of these plants, pinning its hopes instead on developing new technologies to make coal cleaner. The plan in rough form, involves collecting carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and burying it, forever, underground.

If that sounds like a heck of a challenge, that’s because it is.

There’s not a single large commercially-operating carbon sequestration plantanywhere in the world.

That’s despite over $25 billion in government subsidies worldwide from 2008 to 2012.

Nevertheless, Mr. Moniz told Congress that “the Administration has already committed about $6 billion to [carbon capture and sequestration] demonstrations, and success of the forthcoming projects will be a critical step toward meeting the President’s climate goals.”

The $8 billion in total subsidies adds up to more than the wind and solar industries combined receive – and those are industries that have proven themselves to be commercially viable.

Undaunted, Moniz told The New York Times on Thursday that carbon capture and sequestration was a vital part of the country’s climate change strategy. He called for CCS to be commercialized first for coal-fired power plants. He added that natural gas’ carbon emissions, though half those of coal, are still too high to meet Obama’s long-term goal of slashing emissions 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 — so he called for the same speculative technology to resolve that problem as well.

The transition to an electric industry that captures its greenhouse gasses instead of releasing them into the atmosphere makes the challenges associated with developing renewables like wind and solar look easy in comparison.

Professor Vaclav Smil, author of the “Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate” – See more at: http://www.ecopedia.com/environment/will-carbon-sequestration-solve-clim…

Professor Vaclav Smil, author of “Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate” has calculated that to sequester just a fifth of current carbon dioxide emissions:

“… we would have to create an entirely new worldwide absorption-gathering-compression-transportation- storage industry whose annual throughput would have to be about 70 percent larger than the annual volume now handled by the global crude oil industry whose immense infrastructure of wells, pipelines, compressor stations and storages took generations to build.”

Carbon capture is also grossly inefficient. “By some estimates, 40 percent of the energy generated has to go to the carbon capture and sequestration process,” Josh Galperin, associate director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy,said after the climate strategy was released. DeSmog’s Kevin Grandia describessome further technical hurdles that carbon sequestration has yet to overcome.

In a key indication of how shaky the science is behind carbon sequestration, not even the World Bank will fund it. Concerns about climate change led the Bank to restrict its financial support for coal projects except in “rare circumstances,” a draft strategy leaked to the press earlier this week indicates. In a glaring omission, the strategy says nothing about carbon capture and sequestration as an alternative.

None of this seems to matter to Mr. Moniz, whose support of the coal industry and faith in sequestration has been longstanding.

A 2009 report he helped produce focused on how to reduce CO2 from coal plants, touting the potential for so-called “clean coal.”

“It’s cheap,” he told Scientific American when the report was released, “there’s lots of it and there’s lots of it in places with high demand, namely the U.S., China and India.”

In 2007, Moniz co-authored an MIT report titled “The Future of Coal” that aimed to examine “how the world can continue to use coal, an abundant and inexpensive fuel, in a way that mitigates, instead of worsens, the global warming crisis.”

Moniz’s faith in carbon sequestration has remained unshaken up to the present day.

“It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but I believe in this decade we will have demonstrated the viability of large-scale storage” of carbon-dioxide from industrial operations, he told the Associated Press on Thursday. “The president made clear that we anticipate that coal and other fossil fuels are going to play a significant role for quite some time on the way to a very low carbon economy,” he added.

Meanwhile, broader concerns about the President’s climate plans remain.

“We’re happy to see the president finally addressing climate change” said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, “but the plain truth is that what he’s proposing isn’t big enough, and doesn’t move fast enough, to match the terrifying magnitude of the climate crisis.”

And if the clean coal technology Mr. Moniz is counting on doesn’t pan out, prospects may be even dimmer.

Fracking Troubles Atlantic First Nations After Two Dozen Protesters Arrested

Via APTN NewsAnti-fracking protesters in New Brunswick in early June. — Via APTN News
Anti-fracking protesters in New Brunswick in early June.

David P. Ball, Indian Country Today Media Network

One week after 12 fracking protesters were arrested in New Brunswick, Mi’kmaq critics of the controversial extraction industry relit their sacred fire on the road to a seismic testing site and vowed to continue their opposition.

On June 19, fracking opponents held a sunrise ceremony beside a ceremonial fire they said was extinguished during the arrests, which included seven indigenous protestors, among them a pipe carrier and a ceremonial firekeeper. Another 12 people were arrested on Friday June 21, National Aboriginal Day.

“We’re not going to stop,” Amy Sock, a member of Elsipogtog First Nation, told Indian Country Today Media Network. “We don’t want shale gas to come to New Brunswick. To be honest, we have a big nuclear plant here. Once fracking goes on—once we start getting earthquakes—I’m afraid that thing is going to blow up. That’s one of my fears. Our priority is Mother Earth.”

Sock said that despite some tribal leaders’ support for shale gas exploration by SWN Resources Canada, which is preparing for seismic testing in Kent County, most Mi’kmaq are against the project. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a process in which high-pressure chemicals are injected deep underground to break apart the shale rock layer and pump oil out. Government studies in the U.S. and U.K. have concluded the process can cause earthquakes, but proponents argue that they are not significant or dangerous tremors. (Related: Fracking Suspected in Dallas-Area Earthquakes)

“I can cry, get mad, pray, forgive, and do my pipe ceremony to keep my strength and courage up,” Sock said, “but this is one tough battle. We live by the river… Our regular diet—fish, clams, eels, bass, salmon, and lobster—that’s what we eat. I want to continue eating that without getting sick [from pollution].”

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Chantal Farrah issued a statement following the first spate of arrests, saying that work crews had been blocked from the company’s operations.

“They were attempting to block the heavy equipment from traveling on the road,” she said. “Now the people who were doing so were breaking the law and they were informed that they were breaking the law and that they needed to move. They refused and 12 people were arrested, so of those people there were seven men and five women.”

The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) also issued a statement after the arrests, saying it supported band leaders who were working with government and industry for “responsible and sustainable natural resources development for the benefit of all in the province,” but did not mention the protests or arrests.

“We stand in full support of the New Brunswick First Nations leadership as they are asserting and protecting their rights on natural resource development for the future and betterment of their communities,” said National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo. “As stewards of the land, First Nations have a sacred duty to protect the lands, waters and vital resources bestowed upon them. It is our responsibility to fulfill the vision of our ancestors—a vision of shared prosperity and success for all our peoples. This requires supporting First Nation governments in driving their own economies and engaging meaningful business opportunities and partnerships, through the basic and standard principles of free, prior and informed consent. This is the road to productivity and prosperity for all of us.”

A warrior chief of Elsipogtog First Nation, John Levi, issued a call for support from other Natives.

“We’re fighting with SWN gas company, which is doing seismic testing here in New Brunswick,” he said. “We invite all the reserves to come support our cause, because if it comes to your province, we’ll be there, we’ll support you. We’re asking for your help now.”

Sock said that every day, non-Native supporters have come to the protest site with gifts of food and other supplies, and also brought in portable toilets. She said many residents in the region are farmers as concerned as First Nations about fracking’s impact on the environment.

On June 24, two SWN company shot-hole drillers involved in gas exploration were set ablaze. No charges have been laid in the arson. Several other pieces of SWN equipment were seized by gas opponents.

Millions of krill washing ashore on Oregon, California beaches

This undated photo from NOAA Fisheries Service shows a species of Pacific krill. Millions of the inch-long shrimp-like animals have been washing up on beaches between Eureka, Calif., and Newport, Ore., and scientists don't exactly know why. Strong winds may have pushed them ashore while they were mating near the surface, or they may have run into an area of low oxygen.AP Photo/NOAA, Jaime Gomez Gutierrez — This undated photo from NOAA Fisheries Service shows a species of Pacific krill. Millions of the inch-long shrimp-like animals have been washing up on beaches between Eureka, Calif., and Newport, Ore., and scientists don’t exactly know why. Strong winds may have pushed them ashore while they were mating near the surface, or they may have run into an area of low oxygen.AP Photo/NOAA, Jaime Gomez Gutierrez

By The Associated Press
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on June 28, 2013 at 12:39 PM

GRANTS PASS — Millions of krill— a tiny shrimp-like animal that is a cornerstone of the ocean food web — have been washing up on beaches in southern Oregon and Northern California for the past few weeks.

Scientists are not sure why.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationoceanographer Bill Peterson says they may have been blown into the surf by strong winds while mating near the surface, and then been dashed on the beach.

The species is Thysanoessa spinifera. They are about an inch long and live in shallower water along the Continental Shelf. They have been seen in swaths 5 feet wide, stretching for miles on beaches from Eureka, Calif., to Newport, Ore. Some were still alive.

“There has definitely been something going on,” Peterson said from Newport. “People have sent us specimens. In both cases, the females had just been fertilized. That suggests they were involved, maybe, in a mating swarm. But we’ve had a lot of onshore wind the last two weeks. If they were on the surface for some reason and the wind blows them toward the beach and they are trapped in the surf, that is the end of them.”

Or, they may have fallen victim to low levels of oxygen in the water, said Joe Tyburczy, a scientist with California Sea Grant Extension in Eureka. A recent ocean survey showed lower than normal oxygen levels in some locations. If the krill went to the surface to get oxygen, they could have been blown on shore, he said.

For some reason, people did not see gulls and other sea birds eating them, he added.

Peterson said low oxygen conditions, known as hypoxia, are a less likely explanation because they normally occur later in the summer.

The mass strandings are unusual, but not unheard of, Peterson added. There is no way to tell yet whether this represents a significant threat to a source of food for salmon, rockfish, ling cod and even whales.

— The Associated Press

Choice of Monsanto betrays World Food Prize purpose, say global leaders

By Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé, Huffington Post

“This statement is supported by 81 Councillors of the World Future Council, a network of global luminaries who “form a voice for the rights of future generations,” and/or Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award, often called the Alternative Nobel. Supporters’ names appear below.”

In honoring the seed biotechnology industry, this year’s World Food Prize – to many, the most prestigious prize in food and agriculture — betrays the award’s own mandate to emphasize ”the importance of a nutritious and sustainable food supply for all people.”

The 2013 World Food Prize has gone to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer,Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Yet, GMO seeds have not been designed to meet the Prize’s mandate and function in ways that actually impede progress toward the stated goals of the World Food Prize.

Almost twenty years after commercialization of the first GMO seeds, by far the most widely used are not engineered to enhance nutrient content, but to produce a specific pesticide or to resist a proprietary herbicide, or a combination of these traits. Even in reducing weeds, the technology is failing, for it has led to herbicide-resistant “super weeds” now appearing on nearly half of American farms.

GMO seeds undermine sustainability in other ways as well.

While profitable to the few companies producing them, GMO seeds reinforce a model of farming that undermines sustainability of cash-poor farmers, who make up most of the world’s hungry. GMO seeds continue farmers’ dependency on purchased seed and chemical inputs. The most dramatic impact of such dependency is in India, where 270,000 farmers, many trapped in debt for buying seeds and chemicals, committed suicide between 1995 and 2012.

GMOs also threaten sustainability because they continue agriculture’s dependence on diminishing and damaging fossil fuels and mined minerals, as well as a wasteful use of water.

This award not only communicates a false connection between GMOs and solutions to hunger and agricultural degradation, but it also diverts attention from truly “nutritious and sustainable” agroecological approaches already proving effective, especially in the face of extreme weather. The Rodale Institute, for example, found in its 30-year study, that organic methods used 45 percent less energy and produced 40 percent less greenhouse gases and outperformed chemical farming during drought years by as much as 31 percent.

Further evidence from around the world is showing how ecological methods dramatically enhance productivity, improve nutritional content of crops, and benefit soil health, all without leaving farmers dependent on ever-more expensive inputs. The United Nations, through its Office of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has documented ecological agriculture’s potential in hungry regions to double food production in one decade. Chaired by former World Food Prize awardee Dr. Hans Herren, the 2008International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, developed by 400 experts and endorsed by 59 governments, calls for redirection of agricultural development toward such sustainable practices. Agroecology and food sovereignty are emerging solutions shaped and chosen by scientists and citizens worldwide.

Note that the World Food Prize mandate is also to recognize contributors to food “for all people,” but GMO seeds make this goal harder to reach. Most GM crops are used for feed for livestock, processed food, or fuel — products not accessible to hungry people. Moreover, the planet already produces more than enough food for all, and 40 percent more per person than in 1970; yet today 870 million people, still suffer from extreme, long-term undernourishment because they lack power to access adequate food. Developed and controlled by a handful of companies, genetically engineered seeds further the concentration of power and the extreme inequality at the root of this crisis of food inaccessibility. Monsanto, for example, controls 90 percent of the U.S. soybean crop and 80 percent of the country’s corn and cotton crops.

The choice of the 2013 World Food Prize is an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability. Many governments have rejected GMOs, and as many as two million citizens in 52 countries recently marched in opposition to GMOs and Monsanto. In living democracies, discounting this knowledge and these many voices is not acceptable.

The 81 signatories below are Councillors of the World Future Council and/or
Laureates of the Right Livelihood Award:29 COUNCILLORS OF THE WORLD FUTURE COUNCIL (An asterisk indicates the signer is also a Right Livelihood Award Laureate but listed only once.)

*Vandana Shiva, Founder, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology
*Frances Moore Lappé, Co-founder, Small Planet Institute
*Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians
*Dipal Barua, Founder and Chairman of the Bright Green Energy Foundation
*Hans-Peter Dürr, Nuclear physicist and philosopher
*Sulak Sivaraksa, Co-founder, International Network of Engaged Buddhists
*Ibrahim Abouleish, Founder of SEKEM
*Chico Whitaker, Co-founder, World Social Forum
*Manfred Max-Neef, Prof Dr. h.c. (mult.) Manfred Max-Neef, Director, Economics Institute, Universidad Austral de Chile
*Alyn Ware, Founder and international coordinator of the Network Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND)
David Krieger, President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Rama Mani, Vice Chair, Academic Council on the United Nations System
Alexander Likhotal, President, Green Cross International
Thais Corral, Co-founder, Women’s Environment and Development Organization
Pauline Tangiora, Maori elder, Rongomaiwahine Tribe
Anna Oposa, Co-Founder, Save Philippine Seas
Scilla Elworthy, Founder, Oxford Research Group, Founder, Peace Direct
Katiana Orluc, Director of Development/Strategic Affairs, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Art Contemporary (TBA21)
Riane Eisler, President, Centre for Partnership Studies
Ashok Khosla, Chairman, Centre for Development Alternatives
Hafsat Abiola, Founder and President of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND)
Rafia Ghubash, President, Arab Network for Women, Science and Technology
Daryl Hannah, Actress and advocate for a sustainable world
Vithal Rajan, Founder, Trustee of Agriculture Man Ecology [AME], Foundation of India
Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute
Herbert Girardet, Honorary Councillor, World Future Council
Ana María Cetto, Research professor of the Institute of Physics and lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Nicholas Dunlop, Secretary-General, Climate Parliament
Motoyuki Suzuki, Chairman, Central Environmental Council of Japan

52 ADDITIONAL RIGHT LIVELIHOOD AWARD LAUREATES

Alice Tepper Marlin, President & Founder, Social Accountability International, USA (RLA 1990)
Alla Yaroshinskaya, Russia (RLA 1992)
Andras Biro, Hungarian Foundation for Self-Reliance, Hungary (RLA 1995)
Angie Zelter, Trident Ploughshares, United Kingdom (RLA 2001)
Annelies Allain, International Baby Food Action Network, Malaysia (RLA 1998)
Anwar Fazal, Director, Right Livelihood College, Malaysia (RLA 1982)
Augusto Juncal, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST), Brazil (RLA 1991)
Bianca Jagger, Founder and Chair, Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, Nicaragua/UK (RLA 2004)
Birsel Lemke, Turkey (RLA 2000)
Daniel Ellsberg, USA (RLA 2006)
David Suzuki, Canada (RLA 2009)
Erik Dammann, Future in Our Hands, Norway (RLA 1982)
Bishop Erwin Kräutler, Brazil (RLA 2010)
Evaristo Nugkuag Ikanan, Instituto para el Buen Vivir, Peru (RLA 1986)
Felicia Langer, Israel/Germany (RLA 1990)
Fernando Funes-Aguilar, Grupo de Agricultura Orgánica, Cuba (RLA 1999)
Fernando Rendón, Co-Founder and Director, International Poetry Festival of Medellín, Colombia (RLA 2006)
GRAIN, International (RLA 2011)
Hanumappa Sudarshan, Karuna Trust & VGKK, India (RLA 1994)
Helen Mack Chang, Fundación Myrna Mack, Guatemala (RLA 1992)
Helena Norberg-Hodge, Founder and Director, International Society for Ecology & Culture, UK (RLA 1986)
Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism Solutions, USA (RLA 1983)
Ina May Gaskin, USA (RLA 2011)
Irene Fernandez, Tenaganita, Malaysia (RLA 2005)
Janos Vargha, Hungary (RLA 1985)
Prof. Dr. Johan Galtung, Norway (RLA 1987)
Juan Pablo Orrego, President, Ecosistemas, Chile (RLA 1998)
Katarina Kruhonja, Center for Peace, Nonviolence and Human Rights-Osijek, Croatia (RLA 1998)
Martín von Hildebrand, Founder and Director, Fundación GAIA Amazonas, Colombia (RLA 1999)
Melaku Worede, Ethiopia (RLA 1989)
Prof. Michael Succow, Founder, Michael Succow Foundation for Nature Conservation, Germany, (RLA 1997)
Mike Cooley, UK (RLA 1981)
SM Mohamed Idris, Sahabat Alam Malaysia-Sarawak, Malaysia (RLA 1988)
Monika Hauser, Founder, Medica Mondiale, Germany (RLA 2008)
Nicanor Perlas, Center for Alternative Development Initiatives, Philippines (RLA 2003)
Nnimmo Bassey, Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Nigeria (RLA 2010)
Pat Mooney, ETC Group, Canada (RLA 1985)
Raúl A. Montenegro, President, Fundación para la defensa del ambiente, Argentina (RLA 2004)
Ruchama Marton, Founder and President, Physicians for Human Rights, Israel (RLA 2010)
Shrikrishna Upadhyay, Executive Chairman, Support Activities for Poor Producers of Nepal, Nepal (RLA 2010)
Sima Samar, Chairperson, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Afghanistan (RLA 2012)
Stephen Gaskin, PLENTY International, USA (RLA 1980)
Suciwati, widow of Munir, Indonesia (RLA 2000)
Swami Agnivesh, India (RLA 2004)
Tapio Mattlar, Kylätoiminta / The Finnish Village Action Movement, Finland (RLA 1992)
Tony Clarke, Executive Director, Polaris Institute, Canada (RLA 2005)
Uri Avnery, Founder, Gush Shalom, Israel (RLA 2001)
Wes Jackson, Founder and President, The Land Institute, USA (RLA 2000)
Zafrullah Chowdhury, Gonoshasthaya Kendra, Bangladesh (RLA 1992)
Percy and Louise Schmeiser (RLA 2007)
Jacqueline Moudeina (2011)