Oilwatch solidarity visit to Uganda - Fighting to keep the Oil in the Soil!

Siziwe Khanyile

                 Kaiso Tonya drama group

Six hours after leaving Entebbe and heading North West towards the Western Region of Uganda, we reach the lush, mountainous, green Rift Valley. We head to Kaiso Tonya in Hoima district where we are meeting with community people living a stone’s throw from Lake Albert.

We are welcomed by the Kaiso Tonya drama group who sing and dance as we arrive. The hall, a corrugated iron donation from the oil companies is hot but lively, already packed and abuzz with people from the very young to the elderly coming from Kaiso Tonya Village and some surrounding villages.

We are welcomed, and a discussion about the purpose of our solidarity visit is explained by our hosts the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE)/Oilwatch Uganda. We get to hear about the great work they are doing with their sustainability schools in the villages, and that the drama group is a result of this initiative. Without too much discussion, the drama group, clad in their NAPE/Oilwatch t-shirts and traditional fabric skirts and trousers make their way into the hall.

This group is clear that they are not just entertainers; they are community advocates, fighting for the protection of their communities against the oil companies. This is very clear as they present strong messages through their performances.  They communicate in a way that is both entertaining and educational.

For the next one hour, the drama group sings, dances, recites poetry in the native language and the audience responds with roars of laughter, clapping or murmuring as each scene is played out. After every scene, a discussion is held to allow the audience to participate – “what issues did the scene address and what are your thoughts on the issue?” was the question posed.  The responses demonstrated an understanding of the problems introduced by oil. The drama group did a sterling job of capturing these issues.

In the Buseruka sub-county of Hoima district, an area is earmarked for an oil refinery that is expected to soon begin construction. The area is 29 kmof virgin grazing land for cattle and goats, involves about 13 villages and proposes to displace about 8 000 people with what the community view as unfair compensation determined through an unfair consultation process. It is expected that the refinery will come with added infrastructures like a modern airport, petrochemical industries, waste management plants and houses for the refinery workers. The ministry of environment has made it impossible for the feasibility study of the refinery – charged at an amount of US$30 000 – to be viewed.

In the same Buseruka sub-county area a 9.0 MW mini hydroelectric power station has been built and transmission lines are now part of the landscape. The power station is located across the Wambabya River to supply the oil companies and labour camps with electricity while community remains in darkness. However, NAPE is promoting locally assembled low-cost solar lamps constructed from bamboo shells and wood in this community.

Currently, oil companies, including Irish multinational Tullow, Total and the Chinese National Oil Company have drilled 75 exploration oil wells. Three of these are off shore. 71 wells found oil and four are dry wells. Recently, one of the wells was drilled on a geological fault line and has been abandoned. Article 24 of Uganda’s Wildlife Act prohibits mining in protected areas; yet 90% of drilling is taking place in nature reserves and communities needing access to firewood from the game reserve where the oil wells are located are being denied access by patrolling soldiers.

With exploratory drilling taking place some 20km offshore, fisherfolk in Lake Albert complain that their catch of fish has reduced and that when there is active testing, they are prevented from fishing which directly affects their survival as real fears of future oil spills in the lake are a threat.

Through various scenes, the drama group communicated oil impacts, demonstrating a very good understanding of the issues and the problems with the system that facilitates oil development.

They expressed concerns about land grab and demolishing of houses for the construction of access road oil wells without adequate compensation.

Social issues such as the influx of men into the area leading to prostitutes coming from different parts of the country and beyond, fears of HIV infections, alcohol abuse, increased crime and concern about girls being enticed by money from oil workers have already begun to affect the once almost secluded community living peacefully fishing and stock farming along Lake Albert.

This was our second visit to the Rift Valley in two years. The experience this time around, however, was made far richer by the depth of the conversations with the communities and getting to hear their perspectives and actual experiences.

It will be sad to return in two years time. The pristine environment will be overtaken by the obvious signs of “development” and “growth” – displacement, poverty, lack of access to food and water, and state violence and oppression! Yet these communities must stand strong in resistance as they echo a worldwide call to Keep the Oil in the Soil! 

Toxic waste scandal: Justice delayed is justice denied

Bobby Peek

“This case goes to the heart of the greed, neglect and the failure of accountability that is sparking uprisings across the country” (The Mail and Guardian. Leader. “Choked up.”  24 July 2009, p. 30).

The case in mention is not about housing, the fight for anti-retrovirals or clean water, decent education or affordable energy, all of which are hot topics in the recent politic of South Africa. Rather it is a case of environmental injustices visited upon the community by government failing to take urgent and meaningful action against Thermopower Process Technology (Thermopower), a toxic waste disposal company who imports toxic waste into South Africa, and whose clients are some of the ‘blue chip’ JSE traded companies namely Sasol, Monsanto, BASF and AngloGold Ashanti to name a few.  For good measure also include Eskom.  Interestingly, Thermopower’s website no longer functions so information on their customers and partners is difficult to come by.

While the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) are taking Thermopower to court, the KwaZulu Natal government ironically has agreed to send the historic mercurial toxic waste from Thor Chemicals in Cato Ridge outside Durban to Thermopower for disposal.   Both the Olifantsfontein community and groundWork has appealed this decision in vain.  To compound matters, Thermopower, Buhle Waste and Afrimedicals have all been linked to the shenanigans around the medical waste disposal tender in the Limpopo Province, in which Julius Malema of all people features.  What we are faced with here is a time bomb of epic proportions – a dysfunctional company under legal scrutiny with serious political connections running about expanding its business while its present business is under serious question.

Thermopower has had strong ANC political connection since the scandal broke years ago.  Alan Norman, known as the “ANC’s banker” and Smuts Ngonyama have all been linked to the wheeling and dealing around this toxic waste of saga.  This relationship has led to kowtowing by local ANC leadership when in a letter to the company the leadership responds with ‘greatest humility’ and welcomes the company’s ‘cooperation’ to engage on the local community.  This engagement however, is a distraction from the court case, which is yet to be finalised.

Thermopower been charged by the NPA and DEA for the following contraventions: (1) untreated and treated waste remaining on the site for a period of longer than the permitted (three months); (2) failure to dispose of some of the residue as legally required; (3) burying residue in one of the buildings on site; (4) disposing of residue in storm water drains; (5) storing waste in leaking containers not properly labelled and sealed; (6) treating healthcare risk waste and general waste together; (7) not submitting charge papers to the authorities; (8) not ensuring either that all residue generated in the treatment process was disposed of at a permitted hazardous waste landfill site on a regular basis or reclassified for delisting and disposal at a permissible disposable landfill site; (9) and not taking steps to ensure all floors were cleaned and disinfected.  Subsequent to these, additional charges have been submitted by the NPA, which at the time of writing groundWork has yet to see.

Despite these detailed charges, the case has yet again been postponed in court on 13 November for the sixth time. The magistrate in the case called for expert witnesses to give evidence.  This is bizarre considering that the original charges are uncomplicated charges, of which they are either guilty of or not. One of the reasons why the case has not been heard and finalised is because of the precedent set in the NPA’s case against Zuma, where he contested successfully his right to representation to the NPA before the case went to court.  Using this precedent, Thermopower has successfully bogged down the case outside the realm of the public scrutiny, and thus we may never know what the outcome of the case might be once it is dropped.   While South Africa’s environmental  legislation is advanced comparably, Thermopower is ‘able to hide behind complex legislative’ processes according to The Mail and Guardian, something which is common throughout South Africa when poor people deal with corporations abusing peoples’ rights and their environments.

Finally, in all these postponements, very little information is getting to the people who are affected on the ground.  But this delay and obfuscating of the issues is not new in South Africa.  This is the reality when the poor try and protect themselves from powerful corporate interest.  We are faced with the reality of the powerful nexus between the political elite and corporate wealth making for a beast of an animal that disregards our Bill of Rights and actively undermines it.

This appeared first in the December issue of Noseweek www.noseweek.co.za

What to do with all this fracking gas?

Siziwe Khanyile

Now that the gas fracking moratorium has been lifted, oil and gas companies are ready to dig in and start exploring. Royal Dutch Shell is one of the companies that have applied for shale gas exploration rights in the Karoo in the hopes of exploring the gas reserves. Other big players are Sasol, in partnership with Statoil and Chesapeake Energy.

Sasol being our home-grown energy producer has a fairly long history of converting gas into liquid fuels.  The company has operations in Qatar, Canada and Nigeria, among others. In South Africa, however, they appear to be moving more cautiously by maintaining that they will continue to shelve their plans to explore for shale gas in the Karoo while considering the environmental impacts. With all the pressure from environmentalists, they appear eager to be seen as good corporate citizens. However, it is clear that their own studies have suggested that their block is not viable.

Another big player in the South African gas cabal is PetroSA (Petroleum Agency South Africa), who in 1992 started operating the world´s first gas-to-liquid (GTL) refinery, Mossgas, at Mossel Bay where natural gas found offshore is refined.

PetroSA’s  off shore gas reserves are dwindling and although Project Ikhwezi, which is PetroSA’s project to search for additional gas reserves off the coast of Mossel Bay has been authorized by the Department of Environmental Affairs, they have their sights set on the gas that Shell, Sasol and others will be extracting in the Karoo.

The question is, with all of PetroSA and Sasol’s expertise in GTL, what will happen to the shale gas that is produced in the Karoo? The answer is a no-brainer because as things stand at the moment, the biggest infrastructure that we have related to gas is for GTL.

Currently, PetroSA’s refinery is producing 45 000 b/d until 2020 and in a presentation to Parliament, PetroSA admitted that shale gas could play a key role in the long-term sustainability of the company after 2020. This means, therefore, that they need the Karoo gas to remain viable economically.

PetroSA’s interest in the Karoo is clear, which is why it was unethical that the team of experts on the investigation into hydraulic fracturing in the Karoo commissioned by our Minister of Mineral Resources, Susan Shabangu to advise cabinet on the exploration of the Karoo, was led by M.R. Xiphu who is CEO at PetroSA who no doubt pushed the agenda of Petro SA to benefit from shale gas in the Karoo.

Our view is that the gas is no doubt going to be developed into liquid fuel in the Mossgas refinery in Mossel Bay. Or maybe not …! Another possibility though, is for the development of a GTL facility at the Coega Industrial Development Zone in the Eastern Cape.

For several years, Coega has been on the cards to develop another oil refinery, Project Mthombo. Although PetroSA still holds this as a possible project in the future, there are several problems that the project presents including dwindling worldwide oil reserves and increasing oil prices, lack of a pipeline for transportation of fuel inland and non-feasibility of shipping the refined fuels from Coega to Transnet’s new multiproduct pipeline in Durban. The existing refineries would not benefit from the competition - possibly reducing their capacity to generate higher profits in future.

It appears too that with the possibility of substantial new shale gas from the Karoo and possibly from KwaZulu-Natal and Mozambique, the need would be for a new GTL refinery, rather than an oil refinery in Coega - even more so, considering the fact that our refineries are decrepit and uneconomical.

With the advent of increasingly high emissions and other environmental impacts from oil and oil refining, it would be easy to justify gas as a cleaner alternative source of energy, what with the added “benefits” of new jobs being created.

However, in the bigger scheme of things, whether coal, oil or gas, the environmental and human impacts far outweigh the perceived benefits to the country’s energy security, particularly when there are other more sustainable and renewable means to source our energy.

Having said all of this, we might even have a proposal to develop a GTL plant in Nieu Bethesda in the Eastern Cape, where the gas is close at hand, and we are sure there is a desperate need for “sustainable” jobs!

South Africa does not support the death penalty, or does it?

groundWorkTeam

Almost a  week after the Marikana Massacre and in the midst of a week of mourning for those who were tragically killed at the Lonmin mine, the groundWork team sends their condolences to the families of the deceased and reflects on what this series of events means for South Africa.

The absurd nature of South Africa’s democracy has been exposed by the brutal deaths of the 42 workers and 2 South African Police Service members at Marikana.  May we never forget the painful events that culminated in the Marikana Massacre on 16 August.  These events cannot be seen in isolation as Lonmin’s continual search for greater profits at the expense of workers, and the worker struggles there, but rather in the context of a failed democracy and crumbling state, whose interest is tied up in protecting the wealth of the elite by using the Property Right (Section 25) in our Bill of Rights, rather than supporting the poor and responding to their call for the ANC’s promised ‘better life for all’.

As groundWork has said from 1999, the state together with corporate capital is failing the nation.  We in South Africa are in the middle of the perfect crisis, the elite crisis: the crisis of imperial capitalism, the crisis of energy resource depletion, and the environmental crisis.  This is amplified by the nexus between the political elite and corporate power.  The deaths of those in Marikana, have given us a graphic depiction of the crisis of capital.  Simply put, the workers were demanding more for toiling in the bowels of mother earth, and they were prepared to change alliances for this.  And this, the ruling class could not contend with.

The African National Congress (ANC) had its back against the wall.  It could not allow the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which is one of its strongest Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) partners, to lose workers to a rival union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU).  This could mean that the workers and their families might not vote for the ANC in the next election.  So it had to back NUM to ensure that AMCU was not successfully organising.  AMCU was raising worker issues no doubt because NUM was not serving their needs – better working conditions and remuneration.

Even General Secretary of Cosatu Zwelinzima Vavi admits that there might have been problems.  The Mail and Guardian reports that Vavi: ‘admitted that Cosatu's preoccupation with ANC politics is resulting in a growing distance between union leaders and its membership’.  Generally speaking, this then translates into workers never being allowed to demand too much from capital – if they do the state must manage this demand.  The ANC had to do it in this instance because they also had to protect vested corporate interests in the mining sector that many individuals in the ANC, and even the Chancellor House (the ANC’s investment arm) holds.  The ANC could manage NUM;  NUM managed the workers and ensured that demands never threatened corporate profits.  But when the rival union arrived, workers could not be managed anymore. 

The deaths of the first 10 in Marikana should have brought the nation to a halt – and we should have all asked what was going on.  Critically, President Zuma should have intervened; after all he has been touted as the ‘people’s president’ after the stiff upper lip nature of Mbeki.  But he did not.  He failed us by leaving the country at a critical point in time.  We are waiting for guidance.  We are waiting for our President to address the nation directly. But what is needed is not another commission of enquiry that will hold the truth back for many years, but rather direct action against the Minister of Safety and Security and the Presidency for allowing this process to get to this stage.

For the workers at Lonmin and the hundreds of thousand other miners throughout South Africa, there is no democracy in the long hours they have to work, the poor wages they have to be content with, the work related illnesses they have to endure, the high HIV rates that ravage the community, the shacks they have to live in, the lack of services they have to endure, and the broken social fabric of their families because of migrant labour.  For 18 years they have been asking for a better life for all and for a meaningful democracy promised by the ANC.  But all they have been given is the blood of their fellow workers spilt and the deaths of their comrades.

Whose rights are the state going to deliver on?  Those that own ‘property’ or those that die daily for they do not have ‘property’ and access to the basics of life: fair and safe employment, basic services and nutrition and a clean environment so that our children realise their potential to compete at the Olympics, rather than share their lives  with an asthma pump – if they can afford one.

We cannot continue blaming the victims and the workers for the crumbling democracy that allows people to be shot dead because they seek a better life.  

Throwing precaution to the wind: Section 24G of the National Environmental Management Act, 1998 (NEMA)

Undermining our constitution

Section 24 of the South African Constitution is what underpins the very foundation of the environmental justice movement in our country. Recent controversy has arisen around, in particular, section 24G of NEMA which effectively allows polluters to budget for and pay off their wrong-doings with apparently little legal ramifications or prosecution for their criminal activities.
Staff Attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights, Robyn Hugo, has been working with groundWork and our partner communities and organisations on various issues of environmental justice in order to bring corporations, industry and government to bear the legal responsibility of their actions.
This is Robyn’s analysis of the failings of this legislation as it stands today.
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Robyn Hugo

S24 of our Constitution gives everyone the right to an environment not harmful to their health or well-being, and to have the environment protected.

NEMA gives effect to this right. In order to serve present and future generations, development must be sustainable, integrating social, economic and environmental factors into planning, implementation and decision-making. The environment is held in public trust, and the use of environmental resources must serve the public interest. The precautionary principle requires a risk-averse, cautious approach, which takes into account the limits of current knowledge about actions’ consequences. The preventive principle entails that negative impacts on the environment and on environmental rights, are anticipated and prevented, or where they cannot be prevented, are minimised and remedied.

Integrated environmental management (IEM) requires that activities’ actual and potential impacts on the environment, socio-economic conditions and cultural heritage are evaluated, as are the risks and alternative options to mitigate these. Certain activities require environmental authorisation (and environmental impact assessments) before they can commence. Potential environmental consequences of the activity must be assessed, as well as less harmful alternatives to and modifications of it.  The option of not implementing the activity must be investigated. Interested and affected parties must have a reasonable opportunity to participate in public information and participation procedures. S24F makes it an offence for a listed activity to commence without prior environmental authorisation, punishable by a maximum fine of R5 million and/or ten years’ imprisonment.

But s24G permits ex post facto authorisation of activities that commenced unlawfully. An application can be made to the Minister/ MEC for a directive to compile a report containing at least: an assessment of the nature, extent, duration and significance of the activity’s environmental impacts; mitigation measures undertaken or to be undertaken; the public participation process followed; and an environmental management plan. The applicant then compiles a report and the authority determines an administrative fine – a maximum of R1 million per offence. After the applicant has paid the fine, the authority considers the documents provided, and may then either: direct the applicant to cease the activity – either wholly or in part – and to rehabilitate the environment within a certain period and subject to conditions; or issue an environmental authorisation, which may be subject to conditions. Failure to comply with a directive or a condition is an offence, punishable by an s24F penalty.

This section has resulted in widespread controversy and confusion. Because the fines imposed are so low, they are not a disincentive for non-compliance. Even if the maximum fine were usually imposed (which is not the case), R1 million is a small amount to pay when compared with the benefit of not having to follow the proper environmental authorisation route. In the context of recent amendments proposed to s24G (the most important of which is the increase in the maximum fine from R1 million to R5 million) the Department of Environmental Affairs confirmed that it had observed the trend of companies simply budgeting for the administrative fine and proceeding without authorisation. Other problems include the fact that, when there is an s24G application, the authorities are much less likely to prosecute the criminal contravention. Effectively, s24G becomes an escape route from criminal prosecution. It also permits a much less onerous public participation process.

The effect of s24G is that the authority is presented with a fait accompli. It is too late to consider alternatives - the damage to the environment has already been done, and may be irreversible. Granting retrospective environmental authorisation is inconsistent with the preventive and precautionary principles, and with IEM, which aims to ensure that the environmental impacts of activities (and alternatives), are properly considered before action is taken. By undermining the very purpose of environmental assessment, s24G could undermine s24 of the Constitution.

See the CER’s proposed amendments to s24G here: http://cer.org.za/hot-topics/section-24g/

Rio+20…deleting justice

The world’s governments are gathering in Rio de Janeiro in June for Rio+20 – the 20^th anniversary of the 1992 Earth Summit. They will dedicate a document to the occasion with the inspiring title ‘The Future We Want’. That might sound a bit like ‘the hamburger we want’ or ‘the chewing gum we want’ and indeed Rio+20 comes with strong assurance that everything is for sale. That’s because anything that is not for sale just doesn’t make sense.

So the river, the watershed, the forest, the whole ecosystem must be re-defined as providing ecological services with a price on the services. Otherwise the river is a non-thing – a void in the map – and the people there are nowhere. With a price on it, the ecosystem can be privatised right down to its DNA and then traded. That is what makes it real to the world’s rulers. When they can own it – some hope – maybe they won’t trash it. It might also be hoped that, if they own the people they won’t trash them either. Regrettably, the history of slavery does not confirm this.

This is the ‘green economy’ that suddenly became so fashionable when the banker’s economy went bust in 2008. Even South Africa got in on the act with the Department of Trade and Industry hosting big green economy conferences. It is driven by the desperation to find something more to profit from. The green economy does not mean that renewables will now replace coal. It means that renewables will be added to coal. There must be more, always more.

The first draft of the Rio+20 document, called the zero draft, was 19 pages. The next version, with every nation’s brackets, amendments and deletions, comes in at over 250 incomprehensible pages. Fortunately Paul Quintos of the Ibon Foundation, a Filipino NGO, is there to tell us what’s going on. Any text that says people have rights must be expunged:   “the ‘Right to food and proper nutrition’ – delete says one major power … ‘Right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation’ – delete!”

On the other side of these deletions is the sacred market: “‘promoting open and transparent markets; … promoting secure rights to land and natural resources, …’ -- by secure rights they mean property rights – that is fine for them!” But do not mess with the market: “‘Regulating financial and commodity markets to address price volatility’ – Delete!”

Bracketing text is preparing it for deletion. All the Rio principles, says Quintos, “are being bracketed: the Polluter Pays Principle, Precautionary Principle, Common But Differentiated Responsibility.”

This last principle is the one that means that the North is more powerful than the South – and got rich on causing the destruction – and must therefore contribute more to cleaning up the mess. The US does not like allusions to inequality of power. Such allusions suggest that there is something wrong with the world in which it is top dog, that it owes something.

Indeed they do. For the Southern elites, common but differentiated responsibility means that the North must put cash on the table. It also means that, in the name of equality between nations, it is the South’s turn to destroy. Money, not destruction, will be at the heart of the divisions at Rio+20.

Yet North and South are all agreed that equality between classes may not be discussed. If it was, how could they push down the price of labour? How could they plunder the land?

In June we will see if they arrive at an agreed text. With any luck, the conference will end in mutual recrimination and they will leave Rio in shame and disarray. But however that may be, they will keep coming with the common and undifferentiated agenda to wipe out all rights but the rights of the market.

To moat a dumpsite

Musa Chamane

Middelburg municipality contemplates digging a moat to keep waste pickers off the landfill. The moat was used by French kings during dark ages to keep the enemy off their palaces. It is a trench which is about 15 feet wide and deep. Usually the trench is dug next to the water supply so that it becomes easy to fill the moat with water in order to make it impossible for the intruder to cross. The man-made controlled bridge was used to access the palace or the protected town. This was more practiced in ancient times during times of war in Europe.  This medieval practice is about to re-emerge in South Africa.

The municipality has tried unsuccessfully in the past to keep waste pickers off dumping sites. Fences have been cut, walls have been dismantled by waste pickers in search of the recyclables. Extra security with police dogs, high walls, and heavily armed security has proven futile in trying to prevent waste recovery at various dumpsites of South Africa.  People have even been shot at by municipal security people.

Lack of employment opportunities has lead to extreme poverty in most regions in South Africa. Poverty and hunger has encouraged people to engage their minds in finding a way of putting food on the table. Some people have resorted to street trading in towns, some have urbanized, and some have started recycling at various landfills in the country. I really have respect for such people because instead of resorting to crime, they decided to make an honest living. Their biggest enemy is the government that they are always voting into power with a hope of improving their lives but to their disappointment now and again.

I cannot stop thinking about what a municipal employee in Middleburg landfill said when I visited three weeks ago. He promised them that since they are problematic to their operations at the dumping site therefore a moat will be erected around the landfill. He uttered these words during the meeting between groundWork, SAWPA and Middelburg waste pickers. Here about 400 waste pickers survive by picking recyclable material at the landfill.

Should a moat be erected that means more than 400 people will be on the streets without jobs? Our government needs to rethink their governing tendencies. Otherwise we would witness a poor and working class revolution in South Africa. Waste pickers have vowed that they will try and protect their livelihoods by all means - if it means taking to the streets, let it be, and if it means that the elections have to be boycotted, then let it be. People are “gatvol” of a government who is oppressing them economically and politically. Warning bells have always been ringing in everyone’s ears but for some reason government is not listening.

I have witnessed government spending taxpayer’s money in protecting waste at various landfills. I asked myself if this spending is worth it when people are desperately poor in South Africa? Recycling needs to be formalized and waste pickers needs to be assisted instead of being discriminated against by our government.

This is a job for so many South Africans. The formal recycling industry exists because of the informal industry which is mostly driven by waste pickers. Collect a Can for example is in the Guinness Book of Records for collecting a million recyclable cans, and who did most of the work at various landfills/dumps for these cans to be recovered? 

It is the waste pickers, and there is no recognition or prize for waste pickers because they are at the bottom in our social class system. Our government is talking about mitigation of climate change impacts, green economy, green jobs but waste pickers are not seen as people who are contributing positively towards the above policy issues. Our government needs to rethink the way it does things and allow people to come with solutions on the challenges faced by the country. 

Energy control to the people!

Bobby Peek

Electricity pricing is a contentious issue in South Africa.  Just reflect on the very many demonstrations and arrests of people at the National Energy Regulator of South African (NERSA) hearings in early 2010. Once again NERSA will have to prepare itself for another round of consultations with the public, as it proposes the next multi-year price increase in electricity. Will people be more organised and forceful to demand that the pricing of electricity responds to the needs of people – more than 2.5 million homes do not have electricity – rather than the needs of corporate giants such as BHP Billiton, which we all know probably receives the cheapest electricity in the world at their plants in Richards Bay, South Africa and Maputo, Mozambique?

I hope so.

Is the writing on the wall for BHP Billiton? I am not too sure, and they have a strategy to keep the cheap electricity flowing.  Due to strong local and global resistance by communities and NGOs to Eskom’s proposed Medupi and Kusile plants, it is unlikely that SA will build more coal fired power strations. Thus, the days of cheap electricity are over. BHP is well prepared for this next round of public debates.  There are rumours going around that BHP is planning to withdraw from SA. They have just announced that they are no longer interested in developing the Inga Three dam hydro project – which should be a relief for poor Congolese who would have had to live with the negative externalities of this dam – and they have sold their 37% interest in the South African titanium industry to Rio Tinto. The South African rumour – if indeed it is truthful – might be good for SA society as we would not have an electricity challenge of giving away 11% of all our electricity produced at below cost prices to BHP. The question to ask oneself is will the rumour have traction during the debates on the next multi-year pricing.

If we leave the electricity pricing regime up to Kloppers, Director of BHP, and the government, we as South Africans could be in for a shock.  Noting the very vocal civil society presence at the last NERSA hearings, government is preparing themselves for this already. 

How are they doing it? 

By just nixing the NERSA.  Who needs a process that facilitates public input officially to constitutionally air their grievances?  Certainly not Kloppers and the South African cabinet!  Earthlife Africa, Johannesburg in a recent press statement responding to the amendments to the NERSA Amendment Bill and the Electricity Regulation Second Amendment Bill, warns that these Bills will make NERSA powerless as a institution where the public has some role of engagement. It gives the Minister of Energy all power and decision making on tariff increases, without subjection “to democratic oversight”.  Bloody scary.  Just what Kloppers would want.  Are these Bills written in the way that they are by chance?  Don’t fool yourself.

But resistance is brewing, and not only in the ranks of the known environmental justice sector, but in the union sector as well.  The National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), who is one of the main organising unions at BHP Billiton’s South African plants are taking the issue of the restructuring of the energy sector on with gusto.  In a gathering of NUMSA representatives and international delegates in early February, NUMSA considered the agenda of “Envisioning a Socially-Owned Renewable Energy Sector”.  We cannot have a paradigm of ownership of future energy reflecting the status quo.  But we also need to start, by changing the status quo, as well as changing the control and ownership of the present means of energy production.

We cannot have our new renewable energy processes owned by multi-national organisations such as Shell and BP, or other profit seeking energy companies, for then the social injustices of the Niger Delta, Nigeria and County Mayo, Ireland hyperlink to shelltosea.com] will become common place for people living on lands which have high wind and high degrees of sunshine, which invariably are marginal lands, where people live sustainably. There will be new land grabs and more bloodshed all in the name of ‘energy security’.

I hope ... I hope for a socially-owned renewable energy sector and energy sovereignty that results in a peoples’ energy reality, a system where people take control over their own energy provision.  As in the case of the Nyeleni Declaration on food sovereignty, energy sovereignty should put those “who produce, distribute and consume” energy at the heart of the energy systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations.

We do not need a BHP Billiton energy paradigm.

Ask NUMSA, they will tell you ...

The Waste Tyre Green Levy – boon or doom for the peoples’ or green economy... oops capitalism?

Rico
Euripidou

Unwittingly, South Africans are rolling into a dirty situation. As the brutal war between the South African Tyre Recycling Process Company (SATRP) and the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) unfolds for the control of the waste tyre green levy, it derails the potential implementation of the much needed levy by the end of February 2012.  The question that begs asking is whether the waste tyre green levy is South Africa’s green economy boon or doom? ...or will it be just another capitalist gimmick.

The conflict began when the Minister of Environmental Affairs approved and gazetted the REDISA integrated waste management plan in November 2011, over the SATRP plan which had been gazetted months previously. In doing so, the SATRP was effectively robbed of a potential windfall of approximately R600 million per year from the waste tyre green levy – calculated as an average of between R2.30 to R11 per kg of new tyre sold each year x 11 million tyres per year.  However, following legal action by the SATRP in the high courts the Minister withdrew her support for the REDISA plan because the Ministry had not undertaken mandatory public consultation.

The Waste Act sets out the minimum contents of such plans which includes effecting the waste hierarchy, in a socially and environmental responsible manner, as well as promoting skills training and job development. REDISA’s aim is to establish a network of up to 150 collection depots across the country, which would employ up to 15 000 people, including about 5 000 people in the informal sector within five years).

The SATRP maintains that REDISA “stole” the ideas within the Plan that was  submitted, however, the SATRP is commonly known to be a front for the consolidated cement industry in SA (who were instrumental in its establishment and subsistence) and neglected to incorporate these general principles . Furthermore, the cement industry in  SA  have a vested interest in the SATRP because they want to be a beneficiary of the waste tyre green levy so that they can use the millions  the levy will generate to fund retrofitting their kilns to burn waste tyres. Additionally it will mean they save on fuel costs by replacing up to 30% of coal with waste tyres and, to add insult to injury, to be the recipient of a disposal levy of up to 31c per kg of waste tyre burnt, potentially saving and earning the cement industry in excess of R50 million per year, conveniently paid for by the public, from burning waste from poorly regulated cement kilns. To top this they will claim cleaner development mechanism funding for moving away from coal to waste, something waste pickers globally are fighting against.


This is a fundamentally flawed approach. Waste should not be viewed as a sustainable or renewable resource.  Lafarge, PPC, NPC Cimpor and Afrisam/Holcim are proposing that by burning waste they are saving on the use of coal, a non-renewable source of energy.  While this might be so, they will need an on-going supply of waste in order to fuel their kilns.  Waste is not a renewable source of energy, and the Waste Act compels us to primarily endorse the concept of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Should waste become recognised as a standard source of fuel, it is clear that there will be little incentive for dirty industry to move towards meaningful long term waste recycling and reduction scenarios and will instead continue the consumption of natural resources.

SATREP’S hogwash that only 4 percent of waste tyres can be recycled (the rest have to be burned by cement companies) is farcical considering that we can use all our waste tyres to support road construction which could solve our bitumen crisis forever.


So… we are at the cusp of something that will make a mockery of something the public are being fed to believe, i.e. that the green economy will save the world.  Here we see what the true intention is of the green economy: capitalism re-inventing itself at the expense of you and me, while the cement industry laughs all the way to the bank and poisons our environment externalising its costs at the expense of our environmental and public health.


Read an article on the green economy: http://www.isreview.org/issues/70/feat-greencapitalism.shtml

The COP in Durban: a pit-stop in the fossil fuel journey to global destruction.

OK. We all know what a cop is and we now know what a COP is. And, as the slogan said, we can’t find a good one. It is true that the official delegates did not get into a big circle to follow Todd Stern chanting ‘burn baby, burn’. Todd Stern, for those who don’t know him, is the head honcho of the US delegation. It cannot be said that he or they have acted alone. Pretty much everyone has joined the dance on the embers. But the US sure has the leading role.

They certainly know where this lot is headed. A couple of years back, they sent a White House staffer out to inform us that we are heading for four degrees and the US is cool with that. There are two things to be said about four degrees: first, most of the world will be uninhabitable, including Texas; and second, four degrees is unstoppably on the way to eight degrees which will take care of the rest of us.

Perhaps there is some disappointment that the first version of Mutually Assured Destruction failed. MAD1 was the Dr Strangelove version and had the bronco man from Texas riding a big fat A-bomb to the end of the world over Moscow. That didn’t happen. Instead, the Berlin wall fell, the Soviet Union was dismembered and privatised and great profits were made.It was the end of history. Capitalism was in charge finally and for ever. Until 2008.

MAD2 seems more assured but there’s a twist to it. The alternative to destruction is absolute control. MAD2 presents the opportunity for geo-engineering – such as producing heat shields in space – as the final conquest of nature. Strangelove’s ghost is cheering from the shadows of an underground weapons laboratory.

Corporate America is already licking its lips. This is what you might call Business As Usual Plus Plus (BAU++) and it’s already in rehearsal. First, big oil has stopped all that nonsense about ‘beyond petroleum’. Now it’s ‘drill baby, drill’ and everyone out the way. Next up, profiteering from catastrophe is already under way with carbon trading but the Rio+20 agenda takes a broader view of sustainable development: all of what we once thought was ‘nature’ will be dismembered and privatised and great profits will be made. Geo-engineering – still to be officially announced –is the second plus for monster profits.

All this will, of course, turn to dust. Absolute control fails all the time. Just think of the regularity with which Sasol and the refineries catch fire. In the end, absolute control is not the alternative to destruction but the story line for MAD2.

There were some people at the COP and they talked of the Disaster in Durban. On the other hand, our minister who presided over the COP thought it was wonderful. We got the ‘Durban platform’ and that label will be attached to the negotiations process for at least another two years. It might go all the way to 2020. A triumph of branding. After all, why would anyone care what happens outside the world of image making?
(Images: Latha Ravjee  © )

Disastrous Durban: a post-COP review.

The Durban outcome. COP17 failed the world… as expected.

Ahead of the COP, African Ministers met in Bamako and agreed that, to save the world, we need to limit temperature increase to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels; that the major historical polluters (AKA the rich Northern countries) must reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2017, and that they must make new and additional public finances available to Southern countries to enable the urgent actions needed to save peoples’ lives and the environment.

In Brussels, while the COP was in session, Europe’s leaders patched agreement after agreement in a desperate attempt to avoid the economic depression into which their devotion to ‘the market’ has led them. In Durban, the world’s leaders went into extra time on the climate negotiations but the deal done there merely confirms that severe and prolonged global depression presents the best hope that global carbon emissions will be reduced at the scale required to avoid escalating the already dangerous climate crisis.

It may be recalled that, during the first round of the depression in 2008-2009, the national states made some $13 trillion available to bail ‘the market’ – effectively defined by a core group of just 147 corporations – from the consequences of its insatiable greed. Since the national states assumed the costs of market failure, ‘the market’ now insists that these costs are passed onto the people. The citizens of the weakest countries in the Euro-zone are the first in line for the austerity treatment demanded by ‘the market’.

Throughout the process of climate negotiations, national states have represented their respective interests in the global accumulation of capital. The USA in particular has ensured that there will be no deal that jeopardises corporate power. The Durban session clarified, if clarity was needed, that it will not under any circumstance agree to any binding obligation to reduce carbon. Not now, not ever. Nor will it agree to pay more than a token amount into any climate fund. It will instead use China as a scapegoat for its own refusal to act.

The ‘Durban Platform’ opens a new negotiating track within the climate negotiations. This is to develop some form of new agreement with obligations applicable to all parties. This initiative, proposed by the EU and supported by the South African hosts who wanted a result with brand value, is meaningless. As it has been in the past, the condition for agreement is that it should be ineffective in addressing climate change.

The costs of inaction will be severe. The poor will be hit first, the people of Africa and of the drowning islands will be hit first, but ultimately all will perish. The people of the world must consider whether the short-term interest of the ruling corporate and state elites is worth it and, if not, what they can do about it.

It is of particular concern to groundWork that the South African state enabled and then justified the use of informal violence against legitimate protest. On the first occasion, official Durban City ‘volunteers’ – who were in fact paid to be there – joined the people’s march organised for the Global Day of Action on December 3^rd. They responded with violence to protesters who denounced the record of Jacob Zuma’s presidency. Five days later, at an open meeting with President Zuma in the Durban City Hall, the City volunteers attacked people holding posters which called on South Africa to stand firm with the African Bamako position. President Zuma did nothing to intervene and city officials later justified their volunteers’ actions.

Without a very radical change of policies, more people will suffer growing distress in consequence of both economic depression and climate change. And more people will come onto the streets to denounce policies which protect the rich at their expense. It appears that the state used the COP to rehearse violent responses to even the mildest forms of dissent. Parallel with this rehearsal, the Secrecy Bill and the Weather Bill are respectively designed to close down people’s access to information and their right to free speech on pollution and weather incidents.

We believe that South Africans who are concerned with environmental justice, with climate justice or even with the physical survival of people on earth must defend and expand on these freedoms which are essential to their capacity for action.