Fact Finding Report on the Police firing on CMAS activists in Narayanpatna, Orissa

Democracy’ at its worst !

(Fact Finding of Narayanpatna Firing on CMAS)

As this report gets written Singanna and Andru’s bodies are being cremated at Podapadar village amidst a throng of police platoons waiting to arrest any member of Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangha (CMAS) who exposes herself or himself to the police. Already 20 have been arrested and there is evident fear of many more hundreds being detained or arrested. The total clamp down on participation of the media, activists, leaders and any sympathizer of CMAS is not only condemnable but totally unjustified. The district has been turned into a hunting ground of tribals and there is fear written all over the faces of tribals in this remote block of Koraput district. A small team of three members made a two-day visit to Narayanpatna to ascertain the situation and understand the truth behind the firing incident which killed two tribals.

Blocked roads, long walks up and down winding hill paths and petrified tribals afraid to open their mouths to any unknown persons were the memories etched in the team members’ minds. But what left the members shocked during their visit on 21^st and 22^nd November 2009 was that democracy had fallen to its worst during those three days after the firing and murder of two tribals.

There is much to be asked about the firing but the question foremost on our mind is – who ordered the firing ? did the police take the permission of a magistrate before setting off their guns ? and why was tear gas and other non-fatal measures not used to disperse a crowd which police thought might create a law and order situation ? the time gap between the protest gathering and the firing is just about 30 minutes ? but police say they requested and warned and then opened fire ? all these things happened in 30 minutes ? sounds a little preposterous and forces one to wonder whether it was cold blooded murder or a freak incident or a well-planned strategic elimination of a leader who held sway over a large number of fearless and empowered tribal cadres of CMAS.

As the days pass rising police brutalities destroy brick by brick the euphoric notions of ‘democracy’ so carefully packaged and sold to people of India by a political class sold out to corporate greed. Every night and every dawn brings shivers to the tribals as they await an assault on their hamlet, whether on the hill top or on the plains or deep in the jungles, by the marauding security forces. No one knows from which end and at what time under cover of darkness these cobras and scorpions will attack their village, break open their doors, kick them out of their homes and beat the blues out of them. The CMAS has been persistently branded a frontal organization of the CPI (Maoist) despite their vehement rebuttal and lack of any evidence to show their Maoist connections.

Facts and observations stated in this report are based on information and statements collected during interviews with Narayanpatna residents who were witness to the firing, local mediapersons and villagers of Kumbhari and Narayanpatna Panchayats.

The Facts of 20^th November 2009

o About 200 CMAS members including 100 women came to Narayanpatna Police Station to protest against harassment of tribals in particular women during the previous days’ combing operations by security forces. They reached the police station at around 2 pm and since the two gates of the police station were closed they called on the OIC to come out for a discussion. The police refused to let them in and began verbally abusing tribals who had assembled at the gate.

o When the police did not respond to their repeated requests to let a team of tribals into the police station for discussion on their complaints with the OIC, CMAS leader Kumudini Behera and CMAS President Kendruka Singanna broke open the lock of the small side gate of the police compound with an axe. As the gate opened 5-6 main leaders of CMAS including Singanna and Kumudini went to meet OIC Gouranga Charan Sahu. During a heated exchange between the OIC and Singanna, the OIC began to shout that he was being attacked by CMAS leaders and he ordered the IRB guards on the roof of the police station to open fire on the crowd gathered outside. The police fired three shots in air and then began to indiscriminately fire at the crowd standing outside the police compound. The firing was done by the IRB as well as CRPF and Cobra at 2.45 pm. The firing continued for half an hour and 300 bullets were fired at people.

o Hearing the sound of firing Singanna and others came out of the police station. Singanna was hit in the chest while he was walking out of the police compound. He received ten bullets in his chest and fell in front of the small police gate. Another CMAS member Andru Nachika of Bhaliaput village received bullet injuries and fell face down outside the police compound. Their bodies were left there by CMAS members who ran helter-skelter as the police began firing at them. Around 300 bullets were fired at the people. In this firing, while two have died it is being estimated that around 60 more persons have been injured and some are in a serious condition.

o Singanna is survived by his wife who is also pregnant, three sons and a daughter. Andru is survived by his wife who is also pregnant and two children.

The Reason for CMAS Protest

o During a fact finding visit on 22^nd November 2009, all CMAS members and villagers interviewed stated that they had gone to the Police Station to lodge their protest against police harassment of tribals and in particular women who were being harassed by the security forces.

o One of the main reasons for CMAS members’ protest was that they wanted an answer from the OIC regarding violation of an assurance made to the tribals earlier. The CMAS members stated that about two months back they had held a protest rally regarding harassment of tribals in the name of combing and deployment of security forces in their villages. Following the rally, the OIC had given a written assurance to CMAS leaders that forces would not enter their villages and harass the tribals. They would conduct combing operations without harassing the locals. But the CMAS members stated that the police had violated this assurance and hence they came to ask the police the reason for this gross violation which was a serious breach of trust.

o Of particular importance is people’s statement that the security forces categorically told them during combing operations on 18^th and 19^th November that they should leave their villages immediately or else they would have to face dire consequences. They even told them that the non-tribals whose lands CMAS had ‘grabbed’ (sic!) would come back soon to claim their lands !

o Combing operations and related harassment of 18^th and 29^th November was reported from Odiapentha, Dandabeda, Palaput, Dubaguda and Badhraguda villages.

o Apart from warning them, they did not allow the women and men to continue their harvesting work. Some said that they even took away their harvested paddy and mandia crops. The tribals explained to us that this season is the most important time for them because they are engaged in harvesting, husking and storing of their foodgrains. Hence such combing operations and threats to people would destroy their harvesting operations and affect their food security.

o When the tribals related this to their CMAS leaders, the latter decided to go to the police station to demand an explanation for this warning and also protest the harassment. The CMAS leaders sent cadres to different villages and assembled the members and took a decision to hold a peaceful march to the police station to make their protest and put their demands before police.

o About 50 tribals whom we interviewed and most of who had attended the march to the police station, categorically stated that they did not carry any firearms and that they carried a few axes and thick bamboo sticks. None carried any bow and arrow because they explained to us that on previous occasions their bows and arrows had led the media to brand them as Maoists. So they said that they had consciously not carried any bows and arrows or local swords.

Situation of 22^nd November 2009

o As of today, it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of persons injured as CMAS members have returned to their villages and have not been able to meet or communicate with each other about the actual injuries to their members. Medical aid to these persons is not available as the injured are afraid to come to Narayanpatna Primary Health Centre (PHC) for medical treatment for fear of being arrested. They are taking treatment from their traditional tribal healers (disaris). Doctors are also reluctant to go to the villages for treating any patients for fear of abuse by the police and security forces. Local Anganwadis and ASHA workers are unable to teat the injured as they do not have the necessary medicines, spirit and cotton to clean and dress the wounds.

o Far flung villages and constant combing by the security forces is also making it difficult for the leaders to move to different villages to ascertain how many have been injured and what is their condition. Most leaders are in hiding as there is a reported shoot-at-sight order against them.

o On 22^nd November early morning there was a combing operation by security forces and seven persons were arrested from their homes between 5 to 6 am. Apart from this, forces forcefully broke into homes and searched for ‘red flags’ (whatever that might signify as evidence !?). They abused people, in particular the women, kicked and beat young boys with thick bamboo sticks who did not answer questions. They seized axes, sickles, knives, bows and arrows and bamboo sticks from every house they entered and told the tribals that these are ‘dangerous weapons of murder’ and that they would be arrested if they were found in their homes next time. The tribals asked us, “these are our agricultural implements and daily household needs so how can we not keep them at home ? How will we get fuelwood, cut vegetables, harvest paddy and cut branches to feed our animals ? Where should we hide them and why should we do that when we never use these as weapons of murder as accused by the police ?” We had no answers ….

o Four CMAS members from Narayanpatna and three persons from Palaput, 1 km away from Narayanpatna. The details of persons arrested are :

1. Raju Huika – Narayanpatna Kandha Sahi

2. Dora Nachika – Narayanpatna Kandha Sahi

3. Masi Sirka – Narayanpatna Kandha Sahi

4. Ramesh Khosla – Narayanpatna Ghasi Sahi

5. Kumudini Dora - Palaput Tala Sahi

6. Debendra Behera - Palaput Tala Sahi

7. Satyanarayan Bangu - Palaput Tala Sahi (his commander was seized)

o These seven persons have been taken into police custody on 22^nd November and will have to be produced before Judicial Magistrate at Laxmipur within 24 hours. If this is not done then the police would be violating its own laws.

o Apart from this, the fact finding team also met three persons who have received bullet injuries. A boy of 18 years received two bullet injuries in his leg and in the same village another person has a bullet injury wherein the bullet is still lodged in his hip. Yet another person of that village has a bullet wound which whisked past his left calf and has left a slit which needs immediate stitches. Another older man of another village has received a bullet injury in his left hand. This person was marketing dry fish near the police station when he was hit. He had no idea about the rally and the reasons for it. He is also partially hearing impaired. Apart from this, the people the fact finding team spoke to said that about 60 others have also received bullet injuries and are hiding in the villages. None of these persons are able to get medical help.

o As the fact finding team wanted to give some medicines to the injured patients and went into Narayanpatna town for purchasing these at around 3 pm on 22^nd November they were stopped by DSP Jagannath Rao and Semiliguda IIC Sarat Sahu along with some armed constabulary. After initial questions on where the team had gone and why and checking of vehicle, they asked the team to leave the town immediately or else they would have to detain the members. This warning came despite knowing the fact that two of the fact finding members were journalists.

Impact of Firing on People

o All people whom the fact finding team met in the last two days are under tremendous fear that the police would kill every tribal they set their sight on including all members of CMAS. There is fear in their eyes as they spoke to the fact finding team members. They asked, “what should we do when the police comes to our village ?” When they were told not to run upon seeing the forces, they asked, “if we do not run then how can we save ourselves ? they will definitely kill us”. The women stated that they heard forces warning them in low breath that if the CMAS male members did not hand themselves over to the police then they would rape the all the women to ‘teach them a lesson’. One old woman asked us, “what wrong have we done ? We only asked for lands to cultivate and live a life of dignity and freedom from hunger ?”

o People are afraid to move out of villages due to fear of arrest and are constantly discussing about what will happen to them after this. Every village we went to we found women and men assembled in their village meeting place discussing the impending dangers. They are afraid to stay in the jungles as the forces are patrolling the jungles as well. They say that if they stay in the jungles they will be hunted and killed and if they live in their villages then they will be hunted out into the jungles and then also killed. “So either ways we die”, tell the women.

o The leaders of CMAs have several questions : why did the police not use tear gars to disperse the tribals if they thought there was going to be a law and order situation ? Why were rubber bullets not used ? The firing took place within half and hour of the protest rally so how did the police state that they gave the people adequate opportunities to break the rally and disperse ?

o The CMAS leaders also asked us, “when the police comes attacking us in our villages we do not retaliate and kill them ? In fact we allow them to search us, our homes and even beat us up mercilessly ? So why did police kill us when we came to their home to seek answers to simple questions ?” They told us, “even if we had snatched the weapons we could not have fired because we do not know how to use them ? So how did we become threats to the life of the OIC or the IRB guards standing on the rooftop ?”

o They asked us to reflect on why would they, the tribals, want to attack the police in their own compound ? And why would 200 tribals come to the police station to loot arms when the OIC did not even have a gun on him when they confronted him ? They explained to us that the IRB guards stationed on the roof, who fired at the crowd, were beyond the reach of tribals and hence it is impossible that they were trying to snatch their weapons at the roof.

o A very pertinent question was asked to us by a few tribal youths at a meeting in a village of Kumbhari Panchayat. They told us that the Government wants tribals to keep peace and help the Government and use democratic means to state their complaints. But the CMAS members asked us, “why should we help Government when it has not even given us our basic survival needs like PDS, NREGS, schools and health ? Government forced us to fight for our survival but killed us because we went to ask them a question ? Is that so undemocratic ? And what the police did to us, is that what you call democracy ?”

o The fact finding team also observed that the local mediapersons have not been reporting the truth behind several facts of the firing incident and are tracking movement of other reporters and fact finding teams visiting the area. They are conveying this information to the local police. The team felt very strongly that local mediapersons were doing this with malafide intentions.

Fact Finding Team Members

1. K Sudhakar Patnaik – Senior Journalist

2. Manoranjan Routray – Journalist

3. Sharanya – HumAnE, Koraput

Massive Rally and Convention at Muniguda challenges Vedanta’s plans to mine Niyamgiri

5^th September, 2009

A rally of over 5000 people gathered together at Muniguda, inspite of the heavy rains and an ongoing Bus strike, to protest Vedanta’s proposal to mine Niyamgiri. Thousands of Jharania and Dongaria Kondhs braved the rains to join the rally with their traditional arms. The rally started at 10 am from Rajulguda village near Dahikhal and reached Muniguda petrol pump where tribals and other protesters had converged from four diffrent corners of the region shouting slogans such as “Niyamgiri is ours”; “We will never give up Niyamgiri till we are alive”.

Speaker after speaker spoke out against Vedanta’s genocidal efforts to destroy Niyamgiri and its environs for its greed for profits. In his speech, Prof Bhagwat Prasad Rath wanted to know if there is any example available within the 62 years history of independent India where mining has benefited the locals and conserved the resources for the safety of future generations. Bhagwan Majhi of PSSP , Kashipur, while narrating the repressions and atrocities they have experienced in their fight against Utkal Alumina for the last 15 years also appealed the Niyamgiri fighters to further intensify their struggle. Dongaria leaders Dadi Majhi and Bari Prikaka declared in their addresses that, " Niyamgiri is our mother, it is our father and it is our god. We can't breath without Niyamgiri".

Other prominent speakers included, Lingaraj Azad and Kumuti Majhi of Niyamgiri Surakshya Samiti, Satya Mahar and Giridhari Patra of Kalahandi Sachetan Nagarika Manch, Rajendra Bharati and Sidharth Nayak (advocates) as well as former MLA sarangdhar Kadraka. Sarangdhar Kadraka, himself a Dongaria Kondh, described Niyamgiri Hill as a Kamadhenu which protects and nurtures the local people and compared Vedanta with an Asur (demon) whose efforts to despoil Niyamgiri will destroy everything. Prafulla Samantra, the President of Loka Shakti Abhijan, a key figure in effort to save Niyamgiri, also spoke to the assembled people.

The main support of the programme came from CPI( ML) New Democracy and its leader Bhala Chandra Sadanngi . The president of the Loka Sangram Manch the leading tribal organization of South Orissa, Budha Gamang was also present. The convention was presided over by the local tribal leader Haribandhu Kadraka and president of the local unit of Lok Sangram Manch. Bhalla Sadangi of Loka Sangram Manch pointed out that this was the first local mass event totally organized locally. He also said that “the Mahayudh against Vedanta has started- the people have united against Vedanta to oust it and never to allow mining of Niyamgiri”.

The people handed over a memorandum to Chief Minister through the BDO in which the following demands were raised

• Cancellation of mining lease in Niyamgiri
• Allotment of rights to forest dwellers and tribals in Niyamgiri as per FRA 2006
• Issue of BPL cards to the poor, Widow allowance, old age pension in Niyamgiri and Muniguda area
• Provision of a school in every revenue village in and around Niyamgiri
• One hospital for 10 revenue villages in Niyamgiri
• Minimum 100 days work at Rs 100 wage per day to the poor in the region under NRGES
• Minimum Support price for forest produces in Niyamgiri
• Fair price and good marketing support for produces collected by tribals in Niyamgiri

The programme was highly successful despite rains and bust strike. heavy force deployment had made by the state though it was one of the most peaceful events one witnessed in the area. This event today has visibly demoralized the Vedanta camp who had made relentless efforts to stop it happening by undertaking a propaganda war against the rally and the convention.

(With inputs from Satyabadi Naik; Picture by Satyabadi Naik)

Introduction to global warming

I shouldn't be lifting it from a blog wholesale - but this is a wonderfully informed and data/information rich post on "catastrophic global warming". The original blog, which again is very useful.

Regards

Kundan

http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/22/an-introduction-to-global-warming-impacts-hell-and-high-water/

An introduction to global warming impacts: Hell and High Water

March 22, 2009

This is for readers who wanted one-stop, updatable introductory posts on various key topics.Please do add any key impacts you think I’ve missed — but focus on those with a scientific source.

In this post, I will examine the key impacts we face by 2100 if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. I will focus primarily on:

• Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 10°F over much of the United States
• Sea level rise of 5 feet, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter
• Dust Bowls over the U.S. SW and many other heavily populated regions around the globe
• Massive species loss on land and sea — 50% or more of all life
• Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”
• More severe hurricanes — especially in the Gulf

Equally tragic, as a 2009 NOAA-led study found, these impacts be “largely irreversible for 1000 years.”

The single biggest failure of messaging by climate scientists (until very recently) has been the failure to explain to the public, opinion makers, and the media that business-as-usual warming results in impacts that are beyond catastrophic. For these impacts, terms like “global warming” and “climate change” are essentially euphemisms. That is why I prefer the term “Hell and High Water.”

Business-as-usual typically means continuing at recent growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, which we now know would take us to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide greater than 1000 ppm (see U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm). We are at about 8.5 billion metric tons of carbon a year (GtC/yr) and, until the recent global economic recession, were rising about 3% per year.

What is less well understood is that even a very strong mitigation effort that kept carbon emissions this century to 11 GtC a year on average would still probably take us to 1000 ppm — a little noted conclusion of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (see “Nature publishes my climate analysis and solution“).

The scientific community has spent little time modeling the impacts of a tripling (~830 ppm) or quadrupling (~1100 ppm) carbon dioxide concentrations from preindustrial levels. In part, I think, that’s because they never believed humanity would be so stupid as to ignore the warnings and simply continue on its self-destructive path. In part, they lowballed the difficult-to-model amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle.

So I pieced together those impacts from available studies and from discussions with leading climate scientists for my book, Hell and High Water. But now as climate scientists have sobered up to their painful role as modern-day Cassandra’s, the scientific literature on what we face is much richer. Let me review it here.

TEMPERATURE

Two of the best recent analyses of what we are headed towards can be found here:

• M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C
• Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path

As Dr. Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice for the Met Office’s Hadley Centre explains on their website (here):

Contrast that with a world where no action is taken to curb global warming. Then,temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5 °C and could rise as high as 7 °C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century.

That likely rise corresponds to roughly 9°F globally and typically 40% higher than that over inland mid-latitudes (i.e. much of this country) — or well over 10°F.

[Note: The MIT rise is compared to 1980-1999 levels see study here). So you can add at least 0.5 C and 1.0°F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures.]

Based on two studies in the last few years:

By century’s end, extreme temperatures of up to 122°F would threaten most of the central, southern, and western U.S. Even worse, Houston and Washington, DC could experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year. Much of Arizona would be subjected to temperatures of 105°F or more for 98 days out of the year–14 full weeks.

Yet that conclusion is based on studies of only 700 ppm and 850 ppm, so it could get much hotter than that.

And the Hadley Center adds, “By the 2090s close to one-fifth of the world’s population will be exposed to ozone levels well above the World Health Organization recommended safe-health level.”

The Hadley Center has a huge but useful figure which I will reproduce here:

SEA LEVEL RISE

A 5.5°C warming would likely lead to the mid- to high-range of currently projected sea level rise — 5 feet or more by 2100, followed by 10 to 20 inches a decade for centuries. The best recent study is

• Startling new sea level rise research: “Most likely” 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100

Needless to say, a sea level rise of one meter by 2100 would be an unmitigated catastrophe for the planet, even if sea levels didn’t keep rising several inches a decade for centuries, which they inevitably would. The first meter of SLR would flood 17% of Bangladesh, displacing tens of millions of people, and reducing its rice-farming land by 50 percent. Globally, it would create more than 100 million environmental refugees and inundate over 13,000 square miles of this country. Southern Louisiana and South Florida would inevitably be abandoned. And salt water infiltration will only compound this impact (see “Rising sea salinates India’s Ganges“). As will hurricanes (see below).

The scientific literature has been moving in this direction for a couple of years now — too late for the IPCC to consider in its latest assessment. For instance, an important Science article from 2007 used empirical data from last century to project that sea levels could be up to 5 feet higher in 2100 and rising 6 inches a decade (see Inundated with Information on Sea Level Rise)!

Another 2007 study from Nature Geoscience came to the same conclusion (see “Sea levels may rise 5 feet by 2100“). Leading experts in the field have a similar view (see “Amazing AP article on sea level rise” and “Report from AGU meeting: One meter sea level rise by 2100 “very likely” even if warming stops?“).

Note: Since global warming deniers and delayers like to hide behind the IPCC’s 2007 sea level estimate — even though they really don’t believe most of what the IPCC says or most of the scientific literature on which it bases its conclusion — you’re going to be hearing the IPCC estimate for another several years, until the IPCC does a new report and puts in a more realistic estimate. That said, while the delayers never acknowledge it, even the 2007 IPCC report “was the first to acknowledge that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet from rising temperature [which would raise the oceans 23 feet] could result in sea-level rise over centuries rather than millennia,” as the NYT put it (see “Absolute MUST Read IPCC Report: Debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly“).

Yet even a major report signed off on by the Bush administration itself was forced to concede that the IPCC numbers are simply too out of date to be quoted anymore:

• US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections

DESERTIFICATION

Then we have moderate drought over half the planet, plus the loss of all inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people.

“The unexpectedly rapid expansion of the tropical belt constitutes yet another signal that climate change is occurring sooner than expected,” noted one climate researcher in December 2007. A 2008 study led by NOAA noted, “A poleward expansion of the tropics is likely to bring even drier conditions to” the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, Australia and parts of Africa and South America.”

In 2007, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California. And they were only looking at a 720 ppm case! The Dust Bowl was a sustained decrease in soil moisture of about 15% (”which is calculated by subtracting evaporation from precipitation”).

A NOAA-led study similary found permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe on our current emissions trajectory (and irreversibly so for 1000 years). And as I have discussed, future droughts will be fundamentally different from all previous droughts that humanity has experienced because they will be very hot weather droughts (see Must-have PPT: The “global-change-type drought” and the future of extreme weather).

I should note that even the “moderate drought over half the planet″ scenario from the Hadley Center is only based on 850 ppm (in 2100). Princeton has done an analysis on “Century-scale change in water availability: CO2-quadrupling experiment,” which is to say 1100 ppm. The grim result: Most of the South and Southwest ultimately sees a 20% to 50% (!) decline in soil moisture.

SPECIES LOSS ON LAND AND SEA

In 2007, the IPCC warned that as global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5°C [relative to 1980 to 1999], model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe. That is a temperature rise over pre-industrial levels of a bit more than 4.0°C. So a 5.5°C rise would likely put extinctions beyond the high end of that range.

And, of course, “When CO2 levels in the atmosphere reach about 500 parts per million, you put calcification out of business in the oceans.” There aren’t many studies of what happens to the oceans as we get toward 800 to 1000 ppm, but it appears likely that much of the world’s oceans, especially in the southern hemisphere, become inhospitable to many forms of marine life. A 2005 Nature study concluded these “detrimental” conditions “could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously.”

A 2009 study in Nature Geoscience warned that global warming may create “dead zones” in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia (see Ocean dead zones to expand, “remain for thousands of years”).

UNEXPECTED IMPACTS

If we go to 800 ppm — let alone 1000 ppm or higher — we are far outside the bounds of simple linear projection. Some of the worst impacts may not be obvious — and there may be unexpected negative synergies. The best evidence that will happen is the fact that it is already happened with even a small amount of warming we have seen to date.

“The pine beetle infestation is the first major climate change crisis in Canada” notes Doug McArthur, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The pests are “projected to kill 80 per cent of merchantable and susceptible lodgepole pine” in parts of British Columbia within 10 years — and that’s why the harvest levels in the region have been “increased significantly.”

As quantified in the journal Nature, “Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change,” (subs. req’d), while just looks at the current and future impact from the beetle’s warming-driven devastation in British Columbia:

… the cumulative impact of the beetle outbreak in the affected region during 2000–2020 will be 270 megatonnes (Mt) carbon (or 36 g carbon m^-2 yr^-1 on average over 374,000 km² of forest). This impact converted the forest from a small net carbon sink to a large net carbon source.

No wonder the carbon sinks are saturating faster than we thought (see here) — unmodeled impacts of climate change are destroying them:

Insect outbreaks such as this represent an important mechanism by which climate change may undermine the ability of northern forests to take up and store atmospheric carbon, and such impacts should be accounted for in large-scale modelling analyses.

And the bark beetle is slamming the Western U.S. and Alaska, too (see “Oldest Utah newspaper: Bark-beetle driven wildfires are a vicious climate cycle“).

The key point is this catastrophic climate change impact and its carbon-cycle feedback were not foreseen even a decade ago — which suggests future climate impacts will bring other equally unpleasant surprises, especially as we continue on our path of no resistance.

HURRICANES

Even if we don’t see an increase in the worst hurricanes hurricanes, the rising sea levels alone would put a growing number of coastal cities below sea level. Such cities are particularly hard to protect from major hurricanes as we saw with New Orleans. And that suggests in the second half of this century, we will be increasingly reluctant to rebuild cities devastated by major hurricanes.

That said, the literature suggests we will see an increase in severe hurricanes (see “ Hurricanes ARE getting fiercer — and it’s going to get much worse“). A 2008 Nature studied concluded:

The team calculates that a 1 ºC increase in sea-surface temperatures would result in a 31% increase in the global frequency of category 4 and 5 storms per year: from 13 of those storms to 17. Since 1970, the tropical oceans have warmed on average by around 0.5 ºC. Computer models suggest they may warm by a further 2 ºC by 2100.

Well, actually, those are the old computer models running old scenarios of emissions without much consideration of amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks. On our current emissions path, key parts of the tropical oceans are likely to warm considerably more than 2°C by century’s end.

For a longer discussion of why future hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico are likely to become far more dangerous in the future, see (Why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustav, Part 1 and Part 2).

CONCLUSION

We can’t let this happen. We must pay any price or bear any burden to stop it.

And let me make one final point. I think it is increasinly clear the “middle ground” scenarios are unstable in that once you hit 500 ppm (or possibly lower), the amplifying feedbacks kick in: These feedbacks include:

• The defrosting of the permafrost
• The drying of the Northern peatlands (bogs, moors, and mires).
• The destruction of the tropical wetlands
• Decelerating growth in tropical forest trees — thanks to accelerating carbon dioxide
• Wildfires and Climate-Driven forest destruction by pests
• The desertification-global warming feedback
• The saturation of the ocean carbon sink

As Dr. Pope puts it, “If the climate turns out to be particularly sensitive to increases in greenhouse gases and the Earth’s biological systems cannot absorb very much carbon then temperature rises could be even higher.”

Indeed, some of the best research on this has come from the Hadley Center, since it has one of the few models that incorporates many of the major carbon cycle feedbacks. In a 2003Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) paper, “Strong carbon cycle feedbacks in a climate model with interactive CO2 and sulphate aerosols,” the Hadley Center, the U.K.’s official center for climate change research, finds that the world would hit 1000 ppm in 2100 even in a scenario that, absent those feedbacks, we would only have hit 700 ppm in 2100. I would note that the Hadley Center, though more inclusive of carbon cycle feedbacks than most other models, still does not model most of the feedbacks above or any feedbacks from the melting of the tundra even though it is probably the most serious of those amplifying feedbacks.

So we must stabilize at 450 ppm or below — or risk what can only be called humanity’s self-destruction. Since the cost is maybe 0.11% of GDP per year — or probably a bit higher than that if we shoot for 350 ppm — the choice would seem clear. Now if only the scientific community and environmentalists and progressives could start articulating this reality cogently.

Six degrees to a hotter Planet

Please find this very interesting article. It is again written from a westerner's perspective, but note that our nemesis (i.e. for people from the developing world) is very close if no drastic action is taken.

http://www.marklynas.org/2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-summary-of-six-degrees-as-published-in-the-guardian

'Six steps to hell' - summary of Six Degrees as published in the Guardian 23 April 07

By the end of the century, the Earth could be more than 6C hotter than it is today, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We know that would be bad news - but just how bad? How big a rise will it take for the Alps to melt, the oceans to die and desert to conquer Europe and the Americas? Mark Lynas sifted through thousands of scientific papers for his new book on global warming. This is what the research told him...

The following is an article by Mark Lynas based on his book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. It was published in the Guardian on 23 April 2007. The original version is available here.

1ºC

Nebraska isn’t at the top of most tourists’ to-do lists. However, this dreary expanse of impossibly flat plains sits in the middle of one of the most productive agricultural systems on Earth. Beef and corn dominate the economy, and the Sand Hills region – where low, grassy hillocks rise up from the flatlands – has some of the best cattle ranching in the whole US. But scratch beneath the grass and you will find, as the name suggests, not soil but sand. These innocuous-looking hills were once desert, part of an immense system of sand dunes that spread across the Great Plains from Texas in the south to the Canadian prairies in the north. Six thousand years ago, when temperatures were about 1C warmer than today in the US, these deserts may have looked much as the Sahara does today. As global warming bites, the western US could once again be plagued by perennial drought – devastating agriculture and driving out human inhabitants on a scale far larger than the 1930s “Dustbowl” exodus.

On the other side of the Atlantic, today’s hottest desert could be seeing a wetter future in the one-degree world. At the same time as sand dunes were blowing across the western US, the central Sahara was a veritable Garden of Eden as rock paintings of elephants, giraffes and buffalo, also dating from 6,000 years ago, attest. On the borders of what is today Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon, the prehistoric Lake Mega-Chad spread over an area only slightly smaller than the Caspian Sea does now. Could a resurgent north African monsoon drive rainfall back into the Sahara in a one-degree world? Models suggest it could.

Also in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro will be losing the last of its snow and ice as temperatures rise, leaving the entire continent ice-free for the first time in at least 11,000 years. The Alps, too, will be melting, releasing deadly giant landslides as thawing permafrost removes the “glue” that holds the peaks together. In the Arctic, temperatures will rise far higher than the one-degree global average, continuing the rapid decline in sea ice that scientists have already observed. This spells bad news for polar bears, walruses and ringed seals – species that are effectively pushed off the top of the planet as warming shrinks cold areas closer and closer to the pole.

Indeed, it is the ecological effects of warming that may be most apparent at one degree. Critically, this temperature rise may wipe out the majority of the world’s tropical coral reefs, devastating marine biodiversity. Most of the Great Barrier Reef will be dead.

2ºC

In the highly unlikely event that global warming deniers prove to be right, we will still have to worry about carbon dioxide, because it dissolves in the oceans and makes them more acidic. Even with relatively low emissions, large areas of the southern oceans and parts of the Pacific will within a few decades become toxic to organisms with calcium carbonate shells, for the simple reason that the acidic seawater will dissolve them. Many species of plankton – the basis of the marine food chain and essential for the sustenance of higher creatures, from mackerel to baleen whales – will be wiped out, and the more acidic seawater may be the knockout blow for what remains of the world’s coral reefs. The oceans may become the new deserts as the world’s temperatures reach 2C above today’s.

Two degrees may not sound like much, but it is enough to make every European summer as hot as 2003, when 30,000 people died from heatstroke. That means extreme summers will be much hotter still. As Middle East-style temperatures sweep across Europe, the death toll may reach into the hundreds of thousands. The Mediterranean area can expect six more weeks of heatwave conditions, with wildfire risk also growing. Water worries will be aggravated as the southern Med loses a fifth of its rainfall, and the tourism industry could collapse as people move north outside the zones of extreme heat.

Two degrees is also enough to cause the eventual complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would raise global sea levels by seven metres. Much of the ice-cap disappeared 125,000 years ago, when global temperatures were 1-2C higher than now. Because of the sheer size of the ice sheet, no one expects this full seven metres to come before the end of the century, but a top Nasa climate scientist, James Hansen, is warning that the mainstream projections of sea level rise (of 50cm or so by 2100) could be dangerously conservative. As if to underline Hansen’s warning, the rate of ice loss from Greenland has tripled since 2004.

This melting will also continue to affect the world’s mountain ranges, and in Peru all the glaciers will disappear from the Andean peaks that currently supply Lima with water. In California, the loss of snowpack from the Sierra Nevada – three-quarters of which could disappear in the two-degree world – will leave cities such as Los Angeles increasingly thirsty during the summer. Global food supplies, especially in the tropics, will also be affected but while two degrees of warming will be survivable for most humans, a third of all species alive today may be driven to extinction as climate change wipes out their habitat.

3ºC

Scientists estimate that we have at best 10 years to bring down global carbon emissions if we are to stabilise world temperatures within two degrees of their present levels. The impacts of two degrees warming are bad enough, but far worse is in store if emissions continue to rise. Most importantly, 3C may be the “tipping point” where global warming could run out of control, leaving us powerless to intervene as planetary temperatures soar. The centre of this predicted disaster is the Amazon, where the tropical rainforest, which today extends over millions of square kilometres, would burn down in a firestorm of epic proportions. Computer model projections show worsening droughts making Amazonian trees, which have no evolved resistance to fire, much more susceptible to burning. Once this drying trend passes a critical threshold, any spark could light the firestorm which destroys almost the entire rainforest ecosystem. Once the trees have gone, desert will appear and the carbon released by the forests’ burning will be joined by still more from the world’s soils. This could boost global temperatures by a further 1.5ºC – tippping us straight into the four-degree world.

Three degrees alone would see increasing areas of the planet being rendered essentially uninhabitable by drought and heat. In southern Africa, a huge expanse centred on Botswana could see a remobilisation of old sand dunes, much as is projected to happen earlier in the US west. This would wipe out agriculture and drive tens of millions of climate refugees out of the area. The same situation could also occur in Australia, where most of the continent will now fall outside the belts of regular rainfall.

With extreme weather continuing to bite – hurricanes may increase in power by half a category above today’s top-level Category Five – world food supplies will be critically endangered. This could mean hundreds of millions – or even billions – of refugees moving out from areas of famine and drought in the sub-tropics towards the mid-latitudes. In Pakistan, for example, food supplies will crash as the waters of the Indus decline to a trickle because of the melting of the Karakoram glaciers that form the river’s source. Conflicts may erupt with neighbouring India over water use from dams on Indus tributaries that cross the border.

In northern Europe and the UK, summer drought will alternate with extreme winter flooding as torrential rainstorms sweep in from the Atlantic – perhaps bringing storm surge flooding to vulnerable low-lying coastlines as sea levels continue to rise. Those areas still able to grow crops and feed themselves, however, may become some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, besieged by millions of climate refugees from the south.

4ºC

At four degrees another tipping point is almost certain to be crossed; indeed, it could happen much earlier. (This reinforces the determination of many environmental groups, and indeed the entire EU, to bring us in within the two degrees target.) This moment comes as the hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon locked up in Arctic permafrost – particularly in Siberia – enter the melt zone, releasing globally warming methane and carbon dioxide in immense quantities. No one knows how rapidly this might happen, or what its effect might be on global temperatures, but this scientific uncertainty is surely cause for concern and not complacency. The whole Arctic Ocean ice cap will also disappear, leaving the North Pole as open water for the first time in at least three million years. Extinction for polar bears and other ice-dependent species will now be a certainty.

The south polar ice cap may also be badly affected – the West Antarctic ice sheet could lift loose from its bedrock and collapse as warming ocean waters nibble away at its base, much of which is anchored below current sea levels. This would eventually add another 5m to global sea levels – again, the timescale is uncertain, but as sea level rise accelerates coastlines will be in a constant state of flux. Whole areas, and indeed whole island nations, will be submerged.

In Europe, new deserts will be spreading in Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey: the Sahara will have effectively leapt the Straits of Gibraltar. In Switzerland, summer temperatures may hit 48C, more reminiscent of Baghdad than Basel. The Alps will be so denuded of snow and ice that they resemble the rocky moonscapes of today’s High Atlas – glaciers will only persist on the highest peaks such as Mont Blanc. The sort of climate experienced today in Marrakech will be experienced in southern England, with summer temperatures in the home counties reaching a searing 45C. Europe’s population may be forced into a “great trek” north.

5ºC

To find out what the planet would look like with five degrees of warming, one must largely abandon the models and venture far back into geological time, to the beginning of a period known as the Eocene. Fossils of sub-tropical species such as crocodiles and turtles have all been found in the Canadian high Arctic dating from the early Eocene, 55 million years ago, when the Earth experienced a sudden and dramatic global warming. These fossils even show that breadfruit trees were growing on the coast of Greenland, while the Arctic Ocean saw water temperatures of 20C within 200km of the North Pole itself. There was no ice at either pole; forests were probably growing in central Antarctica.

The Eocene greenhouse event fascinates scientists not just because of its effects, which also saw a major mass extinction in the seas, but also because of its likely cause: methane hydrates. This unlikely substance, a sort of ice-like combination of methane and water that is only stable at low temperatures and high pressure, may have burst into the atmosphere from the seabed in an immense “ocean burp”, sparking a surge in global temperatures (methane is even more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide). Today vast amounts of these same methane hydrates still sit on subsea continental shelves. As the oceans warm, they could be released once more in a terrifying echo of that methane belch of 55 million years ago. In the process, moreover, the seafloor could slump as the gas is released, sparking massive tsunamis that would further devastate the coasts.

Again, no one knows how likely this apocalyptic scenario is to unfold in today’s world. The good news is that it could take centuries for warmer water to penetrate down to the bottom of the oceans and release the stored methane. The bad news is that it could happen much sooner in shallower seas that see a stronger heating effect (and contain lots of methane hydrate) such as in the Arctic. It is also important to realise that the early Eocene greenhouse took at least 10,000 years to come about. Today we could accomplish the same feat in less than a century.

6ºC

If there is one episode in the Earth’s history that we should try above all not to repeat, it is surely the catastrophe that befell the planet at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. By the end of this calamity, up to 95% of species were extinct. The end-Permian wipeout is the nearest this planet has ever come to becoming just another lifeless rock drifting through space. The precise cause remains unclear, but what is undeniable is that the end-Permian mass extinction was associated with a super-greenhouse event. Oxygen isotopes in rocks dating from the time suggest that temperatures rose by six degrees, perhaps because of an even bigger methane belch than happened 200 million years later in the Eocene.

Sedimentary layers show that most of the world’s plant cover was removed in a catastrophic bout of soil erosion. Rocks also show a “fungal spike” as plants and animals rotted in situ. Still more corpses were washed into the oceans, helping to turn them stagnant and anoxic. Deserts invaded central Europe, and may even have reached close to the Arctic Circle.

One scientific paper investigating “kill mechanisms” during the end-Permian suggests that methane hydrate explosions “could destroy terrestrial life almost entirely”. Acting much like today’s fuel-air explosives (or “vacuum bombs”), major oceanic methane eruptions could release energy equivalent to 10,000 times the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Whatever happened back then to wipe out 95% of life on Earth must have been pretty serious. And while it would be wrong to imagine that history will ever straightforwardly repeat itself, we should certainly try and learn the lessons of the distant past. If they tell us one thing above all, it is this: that we mess with the climatic thermostat of this planet at our extreme – and growing – peril.

Zaroori Khwab

A song on Dongarias and Niyamgiri by Milli Bhagat.

Catastrophic Climate Change: What will be Orissa's fate?

Please an article from Guardian on climate change. One of them talks about rise in sea level because of melting glaciers. Predictions of sea level rise of upto 150 cm. by century end have been made by USA's Geological Survey- and some scientists say that this may be an underestimate.

Has someone done a detailed analysis of the impact of sea level rise on coastal Orissa- what will be the zones of submergence with different levels of rise, and which habitations and areas wll get submerged in the next couple of decades.

Kundan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/01/sermilik-fjord-greenland-global-warming

The Sermilik fjord in Greenland: a chilling view of a warming world

'We all live on the Greenland ice sheet now. Its fate is our fate'

• 
• • Patrick Barkham at Sermilik fjord, Greenland
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 1 September 2009
  • Article history

The Sermilik fjord, where hundreds of icebergs are calving from Greenland's vast ice sheets. Photograph: Philippe Roy/Getty

It is calving season in the Arctic. A flotilla of icebergs, some as jagged as fairytale castles and others as smooth as dinosaur eggs, calve from the ice sheet that smothers Greenland and sail down the fjords. The journey of these sculptures of ice from glaciers to ocean is eerily beautiful and utterly terrifying.

The wall of ice that rises behind Sermilik fjord stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400km) from north to south and smothers 80% of this country. It has been frozen for 3m years. Now it is melting, far faster than the climate models predicted and far more decisively than any political action to combat our changing climate. If the Greenland ice sheet disappearedsea levels around the world would rise by seven metres, as 10% of the world's fresh water is currently frozen here.

This is also the season for science in Greenland. Glaciologists, seismologists and climatologists from around the world are landing on the ice sheet in helicopters, taking ice-breakers up its inaccessible coastline and measuring glaciers in a race against time to discover why the ice in Greenland is vanishing so much faster than expected.

Gordon Hamilton, a Scottish-born glaciologist from the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, is packing up equipment at his base camp in Tasiilaq, a tiny, remote east coast settlement only accessible by helicopter and where huskies howl all night.

With his spiky hair and ripped T-shirt, Hamilton could be a rugged glaciologist straight from central casting. Four years ago he hit upon the daring idea of landing on a moving glacier in a helicopter to measure its speed.

The glaciers of Greenland are the fat, restless fingers of its vast ice sheet, constantly moving, stretching down into fjords and pushing ice from the sheet into the ocean, in the form of melt water and icebergs.

Before their first expedition, Hamilton and his colleague Leigh Stearns, from the University of Kansas, used satellite data to plan exactly where they would land on a glacier.

"When we arrived there was no glacier to be seen. It was way up the fjord," he says. "We thought we'd made some stupid goof with the co-ordinates, but we were where we were supposed to be." It was the glacier that was in the wrong place. A vast expanse had melted away.

When Hamilton and Stearns processed their first measurements of the glacier's speed, they thought they had made another mistake. They found it was marching forwards at a greater pace than a glacier had ever been observed to flow before. "We were blown away because we realised that the glaciers had accelerated not just by a little bit but by a lot," he says. The three glaciers they studied had abruptly increased the speed by which they were transmitting ice from the ice sheet into the ocean.

Raw power

Standing before a glacier in Greenland as it calves icebergs into the dark waters of a cavernous fjord is to witness the raw power of a natural process we have accelerated but will now struggle to control.

Greenland's glaciers make those in the Alps look like toys. Grubby white and blue crystal towers, cliffs and crevasses soar up from the water, dispatching millenniums of compacted snow in the shape of seals, water lilies and bishops' mitres.

I take a small boat to see the calving with Dines Mikaelsen, an Inuit guide, who in the winter will cross the ice sheet in his five-metre sled pulled by 16 huskies.

It is not freezing but even in summer the wind is bitingly cold and we can smell the bad breath of a humpback whale as it groans past our bows on Sermilik Fjord. Above its heavy breathing, all you can hear in this wilderness is the drip-drip of melting ice and a crash as icebergs cleave into even smaller lumps, called growlers.

Mikaelsen stops his boat beside Hann glacier and points out how it was twice as wide and stretched 300 metres further into the fjord just 10 years ago. He also shows off a spectacular electric blue iceberg.

Locals have nicknamed it "blue diamond"; its colour comes from being cleaved from centuries-old compressed ice at the ancient heart of the glacier. Bobbing in warming waters, this ancient ice fossil will be gone in a couple of weeks.

The blue diamond is one vivid pointer to the antiquity of the Greenland ice sheet. A relic of the last Ice Age, this is one of three great ice sheets in the world. Up to two miles thick, the other two lie in Antarctica.

While similar melting effects are being measured in the southern hemisphere, the Greenland sheet may be uniquely vulnerable, lying much further from the chill of the pole than Antarctica's sheets. The southern end of the Greenland sheet is almost on the same latitude as the Shetlands and stroked by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.

Driven by the loss of ice, Arctic temperatures are warming more quickly than other parts of the world: last autumn air temperatures in the Arctic stood at a record 5C above normal. For centuries, the ice sheets maintained an equilibrium: glaciers calved off icebergs and sent melt water into the oceans every summer; in winter, the ice sheet was then replenished with more frozen snow. Scientists believe the world's great ice sheets will not completely disappear for many more centuries, but the Greenland ice sheet is now shedding more ice than it is accumulating.

The melting has been recorded since 1979; scientists put the annual net loss of ice and water from the ice sheet at 300-400 gigatonnes (equivalent to a billion elephants being dropped in the ocean), which could hasten a sea level rise of catastrophic proportions.

As Hamilton has found, Greenland's glaciers have increased the speed at which they shift ice from the sheet into the ocean. Helheim, an enormous tower of ice that calves into Sermilik Fjord, used to move at 7km (4.4 miles) a year. In 2005, in less than a year, it speeded up to nearly 12km a year. Kangerdlugssuaq, another glacier that Hamilton measured, tripled its speed between 1988 and 2005. Its movement – an inch every minute – could be seen with the naked eye.

The three glaciers that Hamilton and Stearns measured account for about a fifth of the discharge from the entire Greenland ice sheet. The implications of their acceleration are profound: "If they all start to speed up, you could have quite a large rise in sea level in the near term, much larger than the official estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would project," says Hamilton.

The scientific labours in the chill winds and high seas of the Arctic summer seem wrapped in an unusual sense of urgency this year. The scientists working in Greenland are keen to communicate their new, emerging understanding of the dynamics of the declining ice sheet to the wider world. Several point out that any international agreement forged at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December will be based on the IPCC's fourth assessment report from 2007. Its estimates of climate change and sea-level rise were based on scientific research submitted up to 2005; the scientists say this is already significantly out of date.

The 2007 report predicted a sea level rise of 30cm-60cm by 2100, but did not account for the impact of glaciers breaking into the sea from areas such as the Greenland ice sheet. Most scientists working at the poles predict a one metre rise by 2100. The US Geological Survey has predicted a 1.5 metre rise. As Hamilton points out: "It is only the first metre that matters".

Record temperatures

A one metre rise – with the risk of higher storm surges – would requirenew defences for New York, London, Mumbai and Shanghai, and imperil swaths of low-lying land from Bangladesh to Florida. Vulnerable areas accommodate 10%of the world's population – 600 million.

The Greenland ice sheet is not merely being melted from above by warmer air temperatures. As the oceans of the Arctic waters reach record high temperatures, the role of warmer water lapping against these great glaciers is one of several factors shaping the loss of the ice sheet that has been overlooked until recently.

Fiamma Straneo, an Italian-born oceanographer, is laboriously winding recording equipment the size of a fire extinguisher from the deck of a small Greenpeace icebreaker caught in huge swells at the mouth of Sermilik fjord.

In previous decades the Arctic Sunrise has been used in taking direct action against whalers; now it offers itself as a floating research station for independent scientists to reach remote parts of the ice sheet. It is tough work for the multinational crew of 30 in this rough-and-ready little boat, prettified below deck with posters of orang-utans and sunflowers painted in the toilets.

Before I succumb to vomiting below deck – another journalist is so seasick they are airlifted off the boat – I examine the navigational charts used by the captain, Pete Willcox, a survivor of the sinking of theRainbow Warrior in 1985. He shows how they are dotted with measurements showing the depth of the ocean but here, close to the east coast of Greenland, the map is blank: this part of the North Atlantic was once covered by sea ice for so much of the year that its waters are still uncharted.

Earlier in the expedition, the crew believe, they became the first boat to travel through the Nares Strait west of Greenland to the Arctic Ocean in June, once impassable because of sea ice at that time of year. The predicted year when summers in the Arctic would be free of sea ice has fallen from 2100 to 2050 to 2030 in a couple of years.

Jay Zwally, a Nasa scientist, recently suggested it could be virtually ice-free by late summer 2012. Between 2004 and 2008 the area of "multiyear" Arctic sea ice (ice that has formed over more than one winter and survived the summer melt) shrank by 595,000 sq miles, an area larger than France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined.

Undaunted by the sickening swell of the ocean and wrapped up against the chilly wind, Straneo, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the world's leading oceanographic research centres, continues to take measurements from the waters as the long Arctic dusk falls.

According to Straneo, the rapid changes to the ice sheet have taken glaciologists by surprise. "One of the possible mechanisms which we think may have triggered these changes is melting driven by changing ocean temperatures and currents at the margins of the ice sheet."

She has been surprised by early results measuring sea water close to the melting glaciers: one probe recovered from last year recorded a relatively balmy 2C at 60 metres in the fjord in the middle of winter. Straneo said: "This warm and salty water is of subtropical origin – it's carried by the Gulf Stream. In recent years a lot more of this warm water has been found around the coastal region of Greenland. We think this is one of the mechanisms that has caused these glaciers to accelerate and shed more ice."

Straneo's research is looking at what scientists call the "dynamic effects" of the Greenland ice sheet. It is not simply that the ice sheet is melting steadily as global temperatures rise. Rather, the melting triggers dynamic new effects, which in turn accelerate the melt.

"It's quite likely that these dynamic effects are more important in generating a near-term rapid rise in sea level than the traditional melt," says Hamilton. Another example of these dynamic effects is when the ice sheet melts to expose dirty layers of old snow laced with black carbon from forest fires and even cosmic dust. These dark particles absorb more heat and so further speed up the melt.

After Straneo gathers her final measurements, the Arctic Sunrise heads for the tranquillity of the sole berth at Tasiilaq, which has a population of fewer than 3,000 but is still the largest settlement on Greenland's vast east coast. Here another scientist is gathering her final provisions before taking her team camping on a remote glacier.

Invisible earthquakes

Several years ago Meredith Nettles, a seismologist from Colombia University, and two colleagues made a remarkable discovery: they identified a new kind of earthquake. These quakes were substantial – measuring magnitude five – but had been invisible because they did not show up on seismographs. (While orthodox tremors registered for a couple of seconds, these occurred rather more slowly, over a minute.)

The new earthquakes were traced almost exclusively to Greenland, where they were found to be specifically associated with large, fast-flowing outlet glaciers. There have been 200 of them in the last dozen years; in 2005 there were six times as many as in 1993.

Nettles nimbly explains the science as she heaves bags of equipment on to a helicopter, which will fly her to study Kangerdlugssuaq glacier. "It's quite a dramatic increase, and that increase happened at the same time as we were seeing dramatic retreats in the location of the calving fronts of the glaciers, and an increase in their flow speed," she says. "The earthquakes are very closely associated with large-scale ice loss events."

In other words, the huge chunks of ice breaking off from the glaciers and entering the oceans are large enough to generate a seismic signal that is sent through the Earth. They are happening more regularly and, when they occur, it appears that the glacier speeds up even more.

The scientists rightly wrap their latest observations in caution. Their studies are still in their infancy. Some of the effects they are observing may be short-term.

The Greenland ice sheet has survived natural warmer periods in history, the last about 120,000 years ago, although it was much smaller then than it is now. Those still sceptical of the scientific consensus over climate change should perhaps listen to the voices of those who could not be accused of having anything to gain from talking up climate change.

Inuit warnings

Arne Sorensen, a specialist ice navigator on Arctic Sunrise, began sailing the Arctic in the 1970s. Journeys around Greenland's coast that would take three weeks in the 1970s because of sea ice now take a day. He pays heed to the observations of the Inuit. "If you talk to people who live close to nature and they tell you this is unusual and this is not something they have noticed before, then I really put emphasis on that," he says. Paakkanna Ignatiussen, 52, has been hunting seals since he was 13. His grandparents travelled less than a mile to hunt; he must go more than 60 miles because the sea ice disappears earlier – and with it the seals. "It's hard to see the ice go back. In the old days when we got ice it was only ice. Today it is more like slush," he says. "In 10 years there will be no traditional hunting. The weather is the reason."

The stench of rotting seal flesh wafts from a bag in the porch of his house in Tasiilaq as Ignatiussen's wife, Ane, remarks that, "the seasons are upside down".

Local people are acutely aware of how the weather is changing animal behaviour. Browsing the guns for sale in the supermarket in Tasiilaq (you don't need a licence for a gun here), Axel Hansen says more hungry polar bears prowl around the town these days. Like the hunters, the bears can't find seals when there is so little sea ice. And the fjords are filled with so many icebergs that local people find it hard to hunt whales there.

Westerners may shrug at the decline of traditional hunting but, in a sense, we all live on the Greenland ice sheet now. Its fate is our fate. The scientists swarming over this ancient mass of ice, trying to understand how it will be transformed in a warming world, and how it will transform us, are wary of making political comments about how our leaders should plan for one metre of sea level rise, and what drastic steps must be taken to cut carbon emissions. But some scientists are so astounded by the changes they are recording that they are moved to speak out.

What, I ask Hamilton, would he say to Barack Obama if he could spend10 minutes with the US president standing on Helheim glacier?

"Without knowing anything about what is going on, you just have to look at the glacier to know something huge is happening here," says the glaciologist. "We can't as a scientific community keep up with the pace of changes, let alone explain why they are happening.

"If I was, God forbid, the leader of the free world, I would implement some changes to deal with the maximum risk that we might reasonably expect to encounter, rather than always planning for the minimum. We won't know the consequences of not doing that until it's way too late. Even as a politician on a four-year elected cycle, you can't morally leave someone with that problem."

"Martyr", A Samadrusti Short Film

This is a nice short clip on the sacrifice of those opposing displacement, landgrab and pollution in name of industrialisation.

Coverage of Niyamgiri Issue in International Press

Please find some of the coverage of Niyamgiri Issue in Guardian and the BBC.

Kundan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/26/vedanta-mining-india-bianca-jagger

Activists call on Vedanta investors to oppose mine on holy site in India

Local councils and the Church of England will come under fire for holding shares in the mining group which is opening a new mine in forests on the mountain of Niyam Raja in eastern India

• Terry Macalister
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 26 July 2009 19.57 BST
• Article history

Vedanta's new mine threatens the cultural and economic rights of the Dongria Kondh people who live in the Niyamgiri hills in easten India Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Local councils and the Church of England will come under fire tomorrow for holding shares in a top London-based company alleged to be pursuing an industrial scheme that would damage a sacred site and increase the threat of climate change.

Bianca Jagger, the human rights campaigner, will use the annual general meeting of Vedanta Resources to urge investors to use their influence and prevent the business from opening a massive open-cast bauxite mine in virgin forests on the mountain of Niyam Raja in eastern India – considered a holy site by the local Dongria Kondh people.

"I will be appealing to investors, which include the [UK] government's own staff pension fund, the Church of England and borough councils such as Middlesbrough to stop Vedanta going ahead with a mine that will damage the cultural and economic rights of the Kondh people as well as the fight against climate change," Jagger said last night.

There is plenty of proof that the best protectors of the forests and other vital eco-systems are local people themselves, said Jagger, who is chair of the World Future Council and is working in cooperation with the British charity ActionAid. "All the studies in Latin America show that land suffers when indigenous people are chased out of their ancestral land by gas, oil and logging concessions," she said.

Vedanta was not available for comment but the group, a member of the FTSE 100 group of leading London stock market players, has previously argued that the project in the Orissa region will bring vital jobs and economic development to an impoverished area.

Headed by the billionaire Anil Agarwal, Vedanta has won the support of the Indian government for a project that would exploit more than 670 hectares of land and for which a bauxite refinery has already been built.

Jagger and others from ActionAid plan to be outside the Vedanta meeting at Lincoln's Inn with a yellow mining digger to illustrate the kind of mining assault waiting to be unleashed on the Niyamgiri Hills and the sacred mountain.

They are not the only ones that have been highly critical of Vedanta with Norway's sovereign wealth fund ejecting the mining group from its list of approved investments on the basis of a poor reputation on the environment and human rights.

Critics claim Vedanta promised not to go ahead with the scheme if the local people objected but even though there have been protests, Vedanta is proceeding. Sitaram Kulisika, a Kondh tribal member who will be at the meeting, will tell shareholders – if given the chance to speak – that his people's way of life and even their future is threatened.

Jagger says it is "absolutely scandalous" that local inhabitants have to implore investors and companies to respect their human rights. She believes there needs to be an environmental court of justice set up to protect these interests.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8166937.stm

Anglican Church in India mine row

By Alastair Lawson BBC News Bianca Jagger is supported by UK-based campaign groups Environmental campaigner Bianca Jagger has called on the Church of England to rethink its investment in a company involved in an Indian mining project. Ms Jagger says the operation is taking place on a mountain considered sacred by the tribe that lives there. She has announced plans to hold a protest at the annual meeting of the UK-based company behind the mining project on Monday. The Church said that it was "concerned" about the allegations. A spokesman told the BBC it was reviewing its involvement with the company, Vedanta. Vedanta insists the mining project in the remote and inaccessible Niyamgiri hills in the eastern Indian state of Orissa is ethically and environmentally sound. 'Totally unethical' Ms Jagger is supported by UK-based campaign groups, including ActionAid and Survival International. Church embroiled in mine row Tribe takes on global mining firm "I appeal to the Church of England to realise that this mining project not only endangers the culture and beliefs of the tribal community but is also extremely damaging to the environment," she said. "It will have a severe impact on wildlife in the area - including leopards and tigers - in addition to destroying rivers, streams and plant life." The Church has shares in Vedanta worth £2.5m ($4.1m). Vedanta is about to start mining bauxite in the Niyamgiri hills, to be processed at a refinery that has already been built in the area. Bauxite is used to make aluminium. The company and its Indian partner have been accused of forcing people to move from the land. Many tribal peoples in the area are animists and regard the Niyamgiri hills as sacred. Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group spokesman Edward Mason said that he would meet tribal representatives and officials from Vedanta to discuss the project, which was a cause of concern. "We are keen to use our influence as a shareholder to improve corporate behaviour," he said. "We work to a robust ethical investment policy... in areas where there are concerns we talk with the companies and hear what they have to say and what we expect from them." A statement by Vedanta issued to the BBC said that the company was committed to developing the project "in line with the best international standards for environmental management" and in such a way that it benefited people living in the region. "We are proceeding with the project on the basis agreed with the Indian Supreme Court, and we urge campaigning groups to respect the decision of the legitimate authority in India, the world's largest democracy," the statement said. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News-By-Industry/Indl-Goods-Svs/Vedanta-runs-into-a-London-storm-over-Orissa-mining-plans/articleshow/4825968.cms

LONDON: The Church of England and other shareholders of the mining company Vedanta braced for major protests at their annual meeting with a young Kondh tribal joining celebrities to demand an end to mining plans on the bauxite-rich mountains of Nyamgiri in Orissa.


As major shareholders, who also include local councils in Britain, gathered for the Annual General Meeting, the movement against Vedanta operations in Nyamgiri gathered the celebrity support of human rights campaigners Bianca Jagger and Arundhati Roy.

Owned by Indian-origin billionaire Anil Aggarwal, Vedanta's plans to build an open-pit mine for bauxite threaten the ecologically sensitive mountain, which is a sacred site for the Kondhs, said Sitaram, a representative of the tribe, who travelled all the way from Nyamgiri.

"We cannot live without our god mountain and the forest and we will continue our peaceful struggle. It is a life and death battle and Kondh people are united on this," said Sitaram, whose travel was sponsored by ActionAid, a campaigning nongovernment body.

Jagger and Roy also lent their voices to the mounting protests against Vedanta Resources plc, which is a member of the FTSE 100 group of leading companies in the London Stock Exchange.

"I will be appealing to investors, which include the [British] government's own staff pension fund, the Church of England and borough councils such as Middlesbrough to stop Vedanta going ahead with a mine that will damage the cultural and economic rights of the Kondh people as well as the fight against climate change," Jagger said.

Vedanta, the core of whose assets lies in India, was not immediately available for comment but the group has previously argued that the project will bring vital jobs and economic development to the region.

Writer and activist Arundhati Roy, in a recent letter to protesters, said bauxite mountains are part of a very delicate ecosystem.

"...Today, in the era of climate change, surely it's time to realise that forests, river systems, mountain ranges and people who know to live in ecologically sustainable ways, are worth more than all the bauxite in the world," Roy said.

Vedanta chairman Aggarwal said in the Annual Report published last week: "I am ...pleased to report that the Indian Supreme Court has cleared the bauxite mining project at Niyamgiri. We expect to commence mining our own bauxite from Niyamgiri in the current year."

Protesters, who include large NGOs such as Survival International, Amnesty International, Action Aid, War on Want and many Indian activists, hope to replicate their campaigning success with the Norwegian government.

In 2007, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance excluded Vedanta from further investmentsof the Norwegian government's pension fund after its Council on Ethics warned of "an unacceptable risk of contributing to severe environmental damages and serious or systematic violations of human rights by continuing to invest in the company".

Survival Director Stephen Corry said, "While world leaders talk about stopping climate change, tribal people around the world are literally sitting in front of bulldozers - not just for them, but for all our sakes."

http://www.theecologist.co.uk/News/news_round_up/293023/mining_company_targeted_by_protesters.html

Mining company targeted by protesters

Ecologist

27th July, 2009

Vedanta Resources plc, the company behind a devastating new mine in India, is facing disruption to its London AGM over its actions

The campaign against a British mining company which plans to destroy the mountain homeland of a remote Indian tribe is being brought to the streets of London today.

Activists are marching on the AGM of Vendanta Resources plc, calling on shareholders to vote against proposals to open a massive bauxite mine in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. Mining will destory a large part of the Niyamgiri Mountain, spiritual home of the Kondh tribal people.

The 8,000-strong Kondh tribe is dependent on the mountain for their crops, water and livelihoods.

British investors

Although the majority shareholder in Vedanta is its billionaire owner Anil Agarwal, documents seen by the Ecologist revealed that a host of UK banks, companies and other bodies also held shareholders in the company.

Halifax Pension Fund, Lloyds TSB Group Pension Fund, Norwich Union Life and Pensions Ltd and Unilever Pension Fund, amongst others, are all named as beneficial shareholders in the controversial mining conglomerate.

A number of local and regional authorities - including Suffolk County Council, Havering Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council - appear in the register by virtue of their pension funds.

The Church of England and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust have also indirectly bought shares in Vedanta.

Protests block progress

Repeated protests by the tribal people have blocked the mining plans of one of Britain’s biggest companies, leading to a costly delay.

Vendanta announced in January that the mine would start ‘in a month or two’ but so far protests have prevented any progress.

ActionAid, which is asking shareholders to oppose the mining, pointed out that the destruction of an equivalent iconic cultural site such as Stonehenge would not be tolerated in the UK.

'Last year Vedanta directors promised not to mine without our consent,' said tribal activist Sitaram Kulisika.

'I am here to request all shareholders to honour that promise and save our livelihood and our god. We have been living in harmony with this mountain, these forests, these animals for generations. Vedanta has been here for less than 10 years. They cannot tell us what is best for our future.'

Vedanta runs into a London storm over Orissa mining plans 27 Jul 2009, 1620 hrs IST, IANS

Protests against Vedanta's mining of Niyamgiri

Successful Protest against Vedanta in Lanjigarh, Orissa
Despite company goons tried to stop activists on the way

25 July 2009

See photographs at http://www.epgorissa.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=6620562



Hundreds of tribals from the Niyamgiri mountain and Lanjigarh staged a protest against Vedanta's mining and refinery project that will ruin the sacred Niyamgiri mountain alongwith its water sources, rich cultural values and religious beliefs of thousands of Dongrias and the Dalits living there for millenia. The protestors drew a line on the way where Vedanta is forcefully building the mining road, giving a strong message that the company will not be allowed beyond that line. This protest was part of the Global Campaign against Vedanta carried out all across the country and other parts of the world. The activists demanded immediate closure of the refinery and scrapping up of mining permission given to Vedanta's subsidiary Sterlite Industries India Ltd. This protest comes at a time when the Vedanta Resources plc. is gearing towards its annual shareholders meeting in London next week.

The activists had to face opposition in various forms while going to join the protest today. For instance, the road in Lanjigarh side was blocked by the goons with boulders and stones. This did not mar the spirit of the people as they crossed them. The henious act of intimidating people by a group of motorcycle riders reached a high point when the vehicle carrying senior activists of the camapaign viz., Bhagwat Prasad Rath, Prafulla Samantara and Bhalachandra, was stopped by the goons. They first threatened the driver and charged him to have killed someone in an accident a few days back. As usual, all this was a way to stop the vehicle from going ahead. The goons forced the activists to retreat and as they were going back, a large group of tribals coming for the protest joined the senior activists and chased the goons away. Realising the plans laid out by the goons in the entire area, the protestors took Bhagwat Prasad Rath and Prafulla Samantara to a safe place as the others proceeded for the protest site.

It has come to the knowledge of the protestors that the plot was spread by the supporters of one of Orissa's biggest mafia don Mahima Mishra who has been given the contract to build the mining road to the Niyamgiri hills. It is noteworthy here that the tribals of Niaymgiri and Lanjigarh have been continuously intimidated by the goons with weapons for many months now working with Mahima Mishra to protect that company officials.

When the activists went to the police station to lodge a complaint against those who stopped them on the way in Dahikhal, they were told that the area does not fall in their jurisdiction and that they have to go to Ambadola, another 10-12 kms from there. It was thought unwise to proceed to Ambadola to lodge a complaint in the light of the whole day's proceedings, the activists did not go and instead have written to the SP of the area as well as to the Collector to take immediate action against such intimidation.

It must be noted here that the latest tactics of Vedanta is to refrain people from attending meetings and interacting with people joining the struggle from outside. This was clearly seen during the public hearing in Belamba in April 2009 and again during one of the meetings in the Niaymgiri hills in end of June. The tribals have revolted very strongly and as always, have shown great collective wisdon and energy in dealing with such situation. Today's protest is an example of this determination as thousands of them shouted slogans and resolved to protect the mountain against all odds.

Here are some photos of today's protest.

In solidarity,

Mamata

with inputs from Prafulla Samantara & Satyabadi Naik from Niyamgiri

Vedanta steps in it again

Vedanta, the company who wants 6000 acres for a piddly university (my own institution University of Toronto's main campus is around 200 acres only with a student population of nearly 70,000) shows its real, irresponsible face again. This time- surprise, surprise - it is our Pollution Control Board- which has issued a show cause notice to Vedanta's massive aluminium smelter and power plant in Jharsuguda. I wonder how a company which can't manage its ESP and ETP can claim to propose to run a world class University. Or maybe it is too costly to even meet the paltry standards demanded by the Pollution Control Board.

Its also nice to see one newspaper and a reporter who is willing to report the reality about Vedanta. I hope this will continue.

The link for the news article is

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Pollution+board+slaps+show-cause+on+VAL&artid=OeD86OBvyas=&SectionID=mvKkT3vj5ZA=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=nUFeEOBkuKw=&SEO=

Pollution Control Board slaps notice on VAL

The New Indian Express

First Published : 22 Jul 2009 03:30:00 AM IST

Last Updated : 22 Jul 2009 11:13:30 AM IST

SAMBALPUR: Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL), Jharsuguda, has been issued with show-cause notice by the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) for violating various sections of water and air pollution Acts. The notice has been issued to CEO and whole-time Director of VAL M Siddiqi after VAL failed to rectify anomalies regarding pollution as pointed out by the Regional Officer of SPCB Sitikanta Sahu during his visit to the plant in April. VAL had promised time-bound compliance against each issue by June 30. But during inspection on June 12, substantial emission was observed in Captive Power Plant (CPP) stack.

It was also found that rectification of ESP system toreduce emission levels had not been undertaken nor land for construction of permanent ash pond acquired. Moreover, conventional method of transportation of ash slurry was being followed and a breach in the dyke of ash pond had occurred posing serious threat to both the ash pond and the nearby Kharkhari nullah.

It was also found that Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) of the smelter plant was not commissioned and effluent was released into Kharkhari nullah without any treatment to contain fluoride which was in excess of the prescribed limit. Environmentally sound practice was not followed towards handling and management of fluoride contaminated hazardous waste materials posing threat to surface run-off contamination during monsoon.

Several lapses like bad house-keeping in Coal Handling Plant (CHP) area, absence of proper handling system for bottom ash, existence of bypass water pipeline near recirculation of cooling water of a cast house, non- existence of garland drains in carbon area, no plantation alongside the plant boundary in carbon area, tardy progress towards construction of secured land-fill site, continuance of ash dumping at the bank of Kharkhari Nullah and non-installation of sewage treatment plant for treatment of domestic waste were also observed contributing to the problems of pollution.

The same problems existed when the SPCB officer visited the plant again in the first week of July. Maintaining that VAL has grossly failed to implement the action plan submitted by it to contain pollution, the SPCB has sought a reply in the stipulated period and if not found satisfactory action under appropriate provisions of Water (PCP) Act and Air (PCP) Act will be initiated. VAL has also been offered personal hearing on July 23.

An Open Letter to Chief Minister,Orissa by Chairman, OSSA

It is good to see prominent persons in the civil society voicing their concern over the increasing repression by the state government of Orissa, using the excuse of Maoists. This is an powerful appeal, made by a person very familiar with the tribal areas of Orissa.

I hope that arrest of Dr. Biswajit Roy will focus the attention of the civil society of Orissa on the deliberate and planned strategy of the state to use false cases, arrests and imprisonments to stiffle the voice of dissension, specially when it comes to people opposing the loot of this state's riches. Almost all the activists who have dared to come to forefront are either being arrested or have multitude of false cases filed against them. This includes persons like Abhay Sahu, Prafulla Samantra, Achyut Das, Lingaraj Azad, Lingaraj and so many others. When legitimate and non-violent voices of dissensions are sought to be shut down through threats, violence will come in. It is for the Oriya state and Oriya people to decide what they want.

Please find the video of Abhay Sahoo, the leader of PPSS, chained to his bed in the hospital - is this the dignity our government afford the leadership of a movement, which inspite of many provocations, tried to remain non-violent.

Regards

Kundan

An Open Letter to Chief Minister,Orissa

Dear Chief Minister

Today the entire tribal heartland of the country is in turmoil and rather than addressing the basic socio-economic factors behind this turmoil with utmost dispatch, we are dispatching more para-military personnel with the belief that violence can be quelled with more men equipped with superior fire-power. We should understand that for far too long the tribal people have been robbed of their rights to resources around them both in the name of development and environment. Wily traders, moneylenders, contactors, liquor vendors and leaders often rolled into one, have pushed the tribal people to the brink of a precipice. Govt. servants, with some honorable exceptions, often sent to ameliorate their situation have become additional adjuncts to the exploitative machinery. Now that the tribal people have been dispossessed of everything and there is very little that can be taken away from them, Govt. money meant for their welfare is being siphoned off to fatten the same few who have retained their vice like grip over the tribal people. All Govt. legislations protecting their interest like prevention of alienation of tribal land, banning usury and bonded labour or even ensuring minimum wages have been flouted with impunity. Even the Forest Rights Act that provided some ray of hope got bogged down in litigations. And we have made many promises to them only not to be kept, and whenever some action was initiated that remained half- hearted and never taken to the logical conclusion.

It is in such a situation they only silently suffered from the pangs of hunger, deprivations, and all kinds of humiliations. When the guttural groans became too loud, they silenced them with mango stones, carcasses, and such other inedibles. While the majority of the tribal people chose to stay in their place licking the wounds of poverty and hunger, the venturesome from among them landed in city slums as flotsams and jetsams. Once freedom loving and free roaming now they got cribbed and cabined in extremely unhygienic conditions.

Ahimsa got a chance after Independence to ameliorate this situation. Gandhiji’s and Vinobaji’s men and women tried to solve through Bhoodan. If I remember correctly Koraput became the first district in the country to declare Zilladan. Not much came out of it. Soon the excitement evaporated. The exploitative machinery asserted with vengeance.

Ahimsa got a second chance when a series of radical legislations abolishing bonded labour, usury and alienation of tribal land etc. were passed. Air was filled with a lot of radical rhetoric and that also vanished. Tribal people proved no match to the machinations and manipulations of the crafty exploiters and their venal accomplices in bureaurocracy in thwarting the impact of all the protective legislations.

And today situation has come to such a pass that anybody including avowed Gandhians/ Sarvodaya Workers, NGO Workers who speak for them, and who espouse their cause are picked up as Naxalites/ Maoists and put behind bars. The most recent case in point is the arrest of a sarvoday worker Dr. Biswajit Ray. Police of course is too blunt an instrument to be sensitive, sensible and discerning.

The combined burden of cumulative injustice, deprivations and despair has become too great to bear any longer and the material became highly inflammable/ combustible. And when Gandhiji’s men failed, Mao’s men entered just as when there is a fire, air from neighborhood rushes to fill up the gap. And just as it is foolish to prevent air to come from the neighborhood instead of dousing the fire, similarly it does not carry any sense to imprison/ kill Naxalities/ Maoists instead of addressing the basic issues of exploitation and in justice.

Dear Chief Minister, what has been our response to this? To induct more Cobras, Greyhounds (and may be in future some battalions will be christened as Wild Dogs) with a greater skill to kill. We have never seen even a lanky constable protecting a tribal from a rapacious trader who almost forcibly takes away the produce from the tribal at a price before he / she could reach the weekly market. And we are prepared to induct any number of paramilitary forces at any price to protect his exploiters!

May be we will succeed in quelling the tribal upsurge with superior fire power and the Prime Minister and Home Minister at the Center, and here, the D.G. Police, the Home Secretary and you will congratulate yourselves in silencing the tribal land. But just as our Independence Movement was punctuated by four to five years of silence after a series of repressive measures, but it used to erupt again and again until Independence was achieved, similarly ensuring silence for some time should not be a source of satisfactions for us. (The Viceroy and his men who succeeded in putting down the Independence Movement for sometimes must have congratulated themselves. Isn’t it?

Let us not underestimate the power of the meek and the subdued. Did not that almost totally toothless man, that frail figure disposed of with utter disdain as a half -naked fakir could not only shake hand with the Emperor of the mighty British Empire, also freed the country from their clutches? Did not Lech Waleshaw, a factory foreman free the country from the grip of a regime supported by the mighty Soviet forces? And we always come across lowly grass asserting its presence in the black – topped road. And the tiny seed of a banyan plant can raze a huge building to the ground.

Dear Chief Minister, I humbly and honestly appeal to you to take

a) Measures forthwith to implement the laws already in the statue book whether restoring the tribals land taken away through fraud/fraudulent means, removing the legal hurdles in giving right over the forest land, stopping usury, closing all liquor shops (they have become bottomless holes) or ensuring implementation of PESA in letter spirit and abandon the present strategy of relying on brute force which will further alienate our tribal people and which is antithetical to the basic tenets of democracy and will never succeed to douse the flames of the fire of discontent permanently. Further induction of large number of paramilitary personnel, frequent combing operations may mean violation of dignity of girls and women, other abuses and brutalization of the society and disruption of normal tribal life and encounter deaths, which will be a sure recipe for further alienation.

b) Stop arresting/killing innocent tribal people and people who are working for their welfare. Constitute a committee with members from various segments to review every two months the progress made in stopping exploitation and removing injustice and also to review all cases of imprisonment of people declared as Maoists / Naxalites and fix non-negotiable timelines.

c) Take all possible steps to improve the quality of human resources of the tribal people and ensure employability of the tribal youth-both men women.

d) Reorient the development strategy to make it more participatory making tribal people’s interest paramount.

e) Take care of women and children of the victims of violence committed both by the state extremists.

In nutshell, give “ Ahimsa” one more chance. Should Ahimsa fail again, it would be a tragedy indeed. May be a bloodier battle would follow and at last the deceived and disposed would wrest what is due to them. At least that is the lesson of Mahabharat.

Dear Chief Minister, please ponder over it and act.

Thanking you and with regards

Yours Sincerely

Radhamohan
Chairman OSSA

The Great Indian Bauxite Mining Bust

A series of videos on Niyamgiri Youtube Channel on Vedanta.

Orissa's Industries: Death trap for workers

Thanks Himanshu Patra for bringing this information into public.
______________________________________________

I have bought this information under RTI from department of labourer regarding the death status in various industry ( both operating & operational). The situation is quite serious in state. Here is the summary of the informatoin. I have also attached the data regarding death in industry since year 2000 to 2008.

Himansu

Deaths in factory during 2008

Orissa may boast of having attracted investments in mineral sector more than any other States of India, but it has also lost a substantial number of labourer this year with the construction phase of upcoming industries going on in full swing. As many as 81 workers died in 73 separate accidents in factories since beginning of the year 2008. 48 labourer were killed in already operational steel plants and upcoming steel mills constituting nearly 60 per cent of total casualties. Similarly 11 died in the premises of alumina and aluminum plants while seven workers lost their lives in upcoming power generating units. In the year 2008, 11 labourer died at different points of Bhushan Steel Limited, which is coming up at Kuspanga in Dhenkanal, followed by 6 no at Bhusan steel plant located at Thelkoli, sambalpur followed by 6 labourer at Vedanta smelter plant construction site located at Jharsuguda. Himansu

Latha Jishnu: Killing them ever so softly

A good piece on Vedanta, its Lanjigarh refinery and pollution in Business Standard

Latha Jishnu: Killing them ever so softly

Latha Jishnu / New Delhi July 11, 2009, 0:33 IST

Widespread pollution by the Vedanta refinery in Orissa raises serious questions about environmental monitoring.

At first sight the images are picture perfect. There are gurgling streams, a rushing river, a tree-dotted landscape, all of which are partially covered in snow, the kind of destinations tour operators peddle every summer. Then you see scruffy village children and buffaloes ploughing through the white stretches and kicking up a lot of dust and you realise that something is amiss. As the camera zooms in, reality comes as a shocker: This is Lanjigarh in Orissa’s Kalahandi district where snow is as unlikely as apple blossom in Rajasthan. The thick white crust covering the Vamsadhara River and blanketing the surrounding villages is fly-ash — layers and layers of it, the soft, choking dust settling into heavy deposits that have scarred the topography and made life a living hell for people in the area.

These are shots from a documentary that has caused quite a furore in recent weeks. Sham Public Hearing — The True Face of Vedanta is a narrative of the environmental problems that have ensued after metals and mining behemoth Vedanta Resources (2009 turnover: $6.6 billion) set up an alumina refinery in Lanjigarh block of Kalahandi district three years ago. The one-million-tonne refinery along with a 75-MW power plant comes under Vedanta Aluminium Ltd (VAL) which describes its Lanjigarh facility as one of the world’s premier alumina plants “in terms of its technology, human resources and high quality infrastructure”. It also boasts that the refinery is the only zero-discharge plant of its kind in India.

On June 1, VAL was marking a special triumph. It announced that it had bagged the ‘prestigious’ Golden Peacock Award 2009 instituted by the UK-based World Environment Foundation (WEF) in association with Institute of Directors. The selection had been made by a jury of worthies headed by no less than P N Bhagwati, a former Chief Justice of India and member of the UN Human Rights Commission. The award, the company said, “recognises Vedanta’s efforts in setting high standards” in its environment management.

The celebration turned out to be premature. Barely a week later, The True Face of Vedanta, made by Bhubaneswar-based filmmaker Surya Shankar Dash, ripped apart this image. Apart from the environmental degradation, the documentary records the effects of pollution on the hapless villagers. Some of its sharpest images are of the very young victims of pollution — children with all kinds of skin diseases, from suppurating sores and boils to rash, which is on the rise in the area.

No one is certain why the disease is affecting villages like Bundel, which are on the periphery of the refinery. Local residents say the problem is of recent origin and comes from bathing in the river or drinking its water. The probable cause is the seepage of highly alkaline and caustic water from the waste ponds into the Vamsadhara and its nearby streams. The Orissa State Pollution Control Board (OSPCB) has repeatedly brought this to the notice of VAL but despite several show-cause notices the company appears to have been unable to check the contamination.

VAL is dismissive of such charges. Its standard response is that it has adopted the zero discharge system in which no waste/effluent is released outside the plant or red-mud pond or fly-ash pond. A VAL spokesman is categorical: “There is also no contamination of any natural stream or river due to discharge of fly-ash,” he says. As to the photographic evidence of fly-ash covering the streams and villages around the factory, he insists “it is of the inside disposal system of the fly-ash pond”.

Dash refutes this. “You can clearly see the shots are of the river, not of the inside,” says the filmmaker. “You cannot go anywhere near the refinery because the security guards will follow you and try to snatch your camera.” Corroboration of what the film reveals can be found in official documents if one goes looking for it. The OSPCB’s inspection reports are a damning indictment of the way Lanjigarh refinery has handled its wastes since inception. From November 2007, that is barely three months after the refinery started trial operations, OSPCB inspectors have been cautioning VAL about the seepage of contaminated water into the river. Even a January 2009 directive asks the company to set right the leakage of caustic water from its pipelines and to stop the discharge of contaminated water into the Vamsadhara. The reports also highlight the recurring problems that VAL has had with the maintenance of its ash and red-mud ponds, the latter, a lethal effluent of bauxite.

The litany of lapses/defects in the company’s pollution control systems should have occasioned serious disquiet in official circles. But instead of penalties there has been reward. “OSPCB has given us consent to operate up till March 2011,” claims a company spokesman because of the board’s “satisfaction on our environmental measures”.

The bigger irony is that OSPCB has allowed VAL to expand capacity to six million tonnes which will make it the largest refinery of its kind, globally. This is a clear coup for Anil Agarwal’s London-based FTSE 100-company which has been battling a sustained campaign in India and the UK against the Lanjigarh complex. The problems of such aggressive expansive can be gargantuan. Working at just 70 per cent of its current capacity, that is 700,000 tons, the refinery produces 500 tons of fly-ash daily along with 2,500 tons of red-mud, all of which is supposed to be released into their respective ponds. But there is leakage and seepage into the groundwater, as OSPCB strictures show.

Villagers allege that whenever the pipelines carrying the wastes are choked the pipes are cut and effluents released into the streams. At the Belamba public hearing on April 25, OSPCB officials remained mute when over two dozen villagers, many of them from the Dongria Kondh tribe, gave bitter testimony about the effects of the red-mud pond and fly-ash pollution in the vicinity of the refinery. Kumuti Majhi of Sindhuali village said that he was jailed for several weeks for complaining about the pollution. The brooding anger and despair is widespread among the villagers in Lanjigarh and not a single official responded to the repeated charges of the health hazards posed by the refinery.

The True Face of Vedanta has acted as a rallying point for over a 100 global voluntary agencies and activists who have forced WEF to put the award on hold. VAL appears unfazed. “We are expecting the award very soon,” says the company which is preparing for its biggest challenge — the commencement of mining operations in Niyamgiri Hills in the face of entrenched opposition from the Dongria Kondh.

As the company gears up for confrontation with the outraged tribe which considers the hills sacred and the source of their sustenance, the state is providing a helping hand. Bauxite mining will be carried out by the Orissa Mining Corporation in partnership with Vedanta’s sister concern, Sterlite Industries India, under a Supreme Court order aimed at deflecting international censure of Vedanta. Close to 700 hectares has been leased to the joint venture for the mining. However, environmentalists have made a last-ditch attempt to stall the desecration of Niyamgiri. R Sreedhar, director of the Academy of Mountain Environics, which is a trust promoting sustainable development solutions, has petitioned the National Environmental Appellate Authority to quash the mining clearance in view of the many regulatory violations by the company. The petition is scheduled to be heard on July 21 but there appears to be little hope of a reprieve for the environment.

Mining and Industrialisation update June 2009

Mining and Industrialisation update June 2009

Please find the Mining and Industrialisation update for June 2009 . The editorial talks about the scandalous awarding of the "Golden Peacock Award for Environment" to Vedanta which was averted for the time being because of intervention of activists. See the video of the intervention here.

Mining and Industrialisation update, May 2009

Please find the Mining and Industrialisation Update for May, 2009. The editorial talks about biomedical waste in Orissa, specially Bhubaneswar. There is a special section on mineral revenues for Orissa. The normal information on Approvals and clearances are included.

Gaon Chodab Nahin- A wonderful video on people's struggles

The Video "Gaon Chodab Nahin" is one of the most evocative presentations of the issue of displacement and cultural dislocations in India.The song describes the present day exploitation of nature, land, forests and people in the name of development. Based on the song originally sung in the Kashipur UAIL movement - I have heard Bhagwan Majhi sing that song- the video takes us across the heartlands India as it is ravaged by the phenomenal greed in name of development- to ask the basic question - O God of development, pray tell us, how to save our lives.

This video also won the best Music Video at the Second International Documentary and Short Film Festival, which concluded in Thiruvananthapuram in June 2009.

The link for the video is as below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M5aeMpzOLU

The video itself is below. For those who receive the posts through listserves, please do visit http://epgorissa.blogspot.com/ to have a look at this video.

More on Vedanta's plucked "Golden Peacock Award"

ENVIRONMENT POLLUTION
Awarded in haste, withheld
Over 170 organisations and individuals came together to highlight Vedanta's history of environmental irregularities to the Golden Peacock jury members, prompting a second look. Kanchi Kohli reports.

17 June 2009 - Some things make no sense whatsoever. On 12-13 June 2009, Vedanta Alumina Ltd (VAL), a world metals and mining giant was to receive the 2009 Golden Peacock Environment Management Award at Palampur, Himachal Pradesh (see here for more). The World Environment Foundation (WEF) and Institute of Directors are the two institutions behind the award. There is no way to understand this except as disregard - knowing or otherwise - of Vedanta's reputation.

A little education, then, for the benefit of these two institutions. In 2007, the Norwegian Council of Ethics had assessed its parent company Vedanta Resources and its Indian subsidiaries Sterlite Industries, Madras Aluminium Company (MALCO), Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO), and Vedanta Alumina to judge whether the group was in breach of the council's Ethical Guidelines for investment. Following this, the Council had withdrawn its fundng, citing severe environmental damage and human rights violations linked to the group's operations in India.

While this was happening, a challenge to Vedanta's mining operations in Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa was pending before the Supreme Court of India before the forest bench. A monitoring body set up by this bench - as part of the T N Godavarman Thirumulpad v/s Union of India case - the Central Empowered Committee had recommended against the grant of approvals as the company had a history of irregularities in seeking both forest and environment clearances both for its refinery operations in Lanjigarh and proposed mining in Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa. Also critical was a strong movement against the mining by the Dongaria Kondh tribal community for whom Niyamgiri is a revered hill and deeply connected with their lives and livelihoods (see this earlier article).

The Supreme Court bench relied the Norwegian report even more than that of its own committee, and stated that it could not take the risk in handing over the mining operations to Vedanta. But the court, unexpectedly, had no qualms in allowing Sterlite Industries, Vedanta's subsidiary to work out a Special Purpose Vehicle with the Government of Orissa and Orissa Mining Corporation work out the best formula for mining. This was November 2007. (see here and here). All the modalities were discussed in court, and as an inexplicable formula the court granted its approval to Sterlite to mine in Niyamgiri Hills, subject to some conditions on 8 August 2008. It did not matter perhaps, that just about a month before in July 2008, the Martin Currie Scottish Trust Fund of Scotland also withdrew its 2.37-million-pound investment in Vedanta. This too was on the grounds of environmental and human rights violation by the company (see here).

Violations in other states

But Vedanta's stories don't start and end in the state of Orissa. Moving further to Tamilnadu there are two very stark and clear instances of the violations by Vedanta's subsidiaries. Sterlite's coppert smelter plant in Tuticorin is surrounded by fly ash and gypsum dumps. There are few villagers around who raise their voice against the air and water pollution being caused by the plant operations. There are days, says a local villager who did not want to be named, when they cannot open their windows due to the pollution, and some have chosen to live away due to the health hazards. This was verified around the site during inspection and discussions in May 2008 by Corporate Accountability Desk and Kalpavriksh members.

Official reports of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee (SCMC) on Hazardous Waste Management in the years 2004 and 2005 respectively, also point to the violations by the plant. The SCMC report states amongst other things, "The industry, as reported to the SCMC during the visit, is also emitting sulphur dioxide far in excess of the permissible standards particularly when the sulphuric acid plant is not operating. "

In the Kolli Hills of Tamilnadu, Vedanta's subsidiary MALCO was pushed to suspend its illegal mining operations in November 2008. This was following a petition filed in the Madras High Court by Piyush Sethia of Speak Out Salem presenting evidence that its bauxite mines had no permission under various environmental laws. Kolli Hills are part of the extremely biodiverse Eastern Ghats ecoregion, also dominated by primitive tribal groups. The hills are said to be guarded by Kollipavai, the local deity. (see here).

In Chhatisgarh it is the turn of BALCO. There is photographic evidence of 2007 of the overflow of red mud over the embankment which has spread down the side of a rivulet nar the Balco-Vedanta aluminium complex . In the mines at Kawardha-Daldali (district Kawardha) bauxite mines, there are pictures of 2007 where trucks are running on dirt roads spreading huge amount of dust in and around the area.

There is more. A public hearing for the environmental clearance for the expansion of the Lanjigarh refinery in Orissa took place amidst stiff opposition at Belamba village on 24 April 2009. Locally affected people had highlighted that the existing plant was already polluting the area around and it was causing severe health problems to both humans and animals (See video at this link). The public hearing had to be left incomplete by the concerned authorities, due to strong protests.

Jurors challenged

Today, over 170 organisations and individuals have come together to highlight all of this and much more to the Golden Peacock jury members, what they did not see, or chose to ignore. (See list of Jury members here). A letter embedded with various weblinks or email attachments with research studies, photographs and videos has been sent to the jurors, officials of WEF as well as India's newly elected Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh.

In all, this submission is no less than a comprehensive dossier attempting to highlight various well researched reasons to withdraw the award to the company and at same time initiate strong action. Addressed to the jurors, the letter seeks, "As jurors, you would have to explain how you chose to award a company that in the words of the Norwegian Government's Council of Ethics is clearly involved in "human rights violations." The dossier lays out a torrid controversy of fraud and financial malpractices shrouding this company. We hope, as jurors and persons of eminence, you would have the good sense to preserve your integrity by dissociating yourselves from this company in particular, and the Golden Peacock Awards, in general."

On 12 June, the Himalaya Niti Abhiyan (HNA) and activists from different parts of the country organised a protest outside the awards ceremony at Palampur, in tandem with the submission to the jury member with signatories from across the country. HNA also sent a letter dated 9 June to the Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh requesting him to refrain from participating in the award ceremony. The letter also clearly rejects the sanctity of the award and it being conferred to Vedanta.

Following the furore, the jury has withheld the announcement of the award. Its members now contend that the full facts about the company were not brought to their attention earlier. Pending a second examination of the facts, it was announced that the award would be held back. None of the Himachal State government officials who were to attend the award ceremony did so. ⊕

Kanchi Kohli

Himachal protest against Vedanta: Watch Video

If you remember the strange case of Vedanta Alumina being awarded The "Golden Peacock Environmental Management Award", here is a video of people in Himachal Pradesh protesting the giving of this award.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0o1PhmTjEQ
The protest was in Palampur at the foot of the Dhauladhar, where World Environment Foundation was planning to award Vedanta for its "incredible environmental performance" in Lanjigarh. We had posted an earlier post with all the relevant links and reports which illustrates Vedanta's acheivements in this field, and which has prompted sufferers of Vedanta's environmental doings in Tamilnadu to award them the "Ravaged Peacock Award"

The interesting thing is that the CM of Himachal, after being presented the dossier of Vedanta's environmental record refused to attend the award giving ceremony and so did the rest of HP government. I wish our own Naveen Babu would have shown similar considerations for our Orissa's environment and his Dongaria Kondhs.

Another interesting thing is that Himachal's newspapers all were full of the misdeeds of Vedanta. How unlike our newspapers in Orissa, growing fat on corporate advertisement, who never mention the misdeeds of Vedanta but only sing their praise (see the Statesman's Orissa page for almost a daily slew of press release on Vedanta's CSR - I suppose the CSR also applies to the press and its correspondents). Maybe some shame would be in order.

Activist protest Golden Peacock award by WEF to Vedanta Alumina in Himachal

http://himachal.us/2009/06/12/activist-protest-golden-peacock-award-by-wef-to-vedanta-alumina-in-himachal/13576/news/rsood

Posted by Ravinder Sood on Jun 12th, 2009 in Environment, News.

(The post has been borrowed from the site My Himachal (http://himachal.us/))

PALAMPUR: Twenty activists representing environment and social action groups today barged into the World Environment Foundation’s (WEF) opening ceremony of the ‘Global Convention for Climate Change’ being held at the Palampur Agriculture University grounds with posters and banners screaming “Stop greenwashing corporate crimes” and “Stop selling climate change”. The activists were protesting against the WEF’s Golden Peacock award to the Vedanta Alumina Limited for its refinery in Lanjigarh Orissa. The protestors gathered in front of the stage after a tussle with the organisers managed to seize the stage the microphone, and highlight the various environmental crimes and human rights violations that the company has indulged in not just in its Orissa project but other project sites across the country.

The activists briefed the Tibetan Prime Minister in exile – Samdhung Rinpoche, who was present as a Chief dignitary at the function about the national campaign that has built up against the company and the devastation cause by the company in Orissa. He immediately walked out of the venue at this point. Subsequently, hundreds of children from schools In Palamapur, present at the ceremony, who cheered as the protest gathered momentum, also left the venue. Delegates of the conference at the venue were also given pamphlets as well as the letter written to the jury, endorsed by more than 170 organizations, asking for the withdrawal of the Golden Peacock to Vedanta.

In January 2009, WEF withdrew the Golden Peacock Award given to Satyam Computers, literally days before the company submitted its fraudulent balance sheet to shareholders. “We do not expect any integrity from the organizers of the Golden Peacock Awards. However, many of the jury members are persons of good reputation and integrity. We are concerned that your decision may have been arrived at in the absence of full information. We would also like to give you an opportunity to review some disturbing information regarding the conduct of Vedanta and its subsidiaries, and to dissociate yourselves from the award to Vedanta to avoid a Satyam-style embarrassment,” endorsers to the letter to jurors wrote.

Guman Singh, leader of Himalaya Niti Abhiyan who spoke on behalf of the campaign appreciated that Chief Minister of Himachal who was to be the Chief guest at the function had withdrawn his participation from the event after pressure from the campaign and the controversy around awardee company. Mamata Dash, an activist from Orissa tried to draw the attention of the delegates towards the crimes committed by Vedenta on the Dongria Kondh adivasis in the Niyamgiri hills for its bauxite mines. Just as she began speaking Madhav Mehra, founder of WEF, tried to shove her off the stage. After a scuffle with the activists, Mehra made a statement that he had no interest with Vedanta and that they would review the award and even withdraw just like they had done in the Satyam case if the facts were found to be true. As the tussle continued between the activists and the organizers, the ground echoed with slogans like “WEF down down” and “Vedanta company chor hai!”. As the protestors left the venue, to save his face Madhav Mehra tried to trivialize the issue and only spoke of all the “good work” done by Vedanta.

Letter to the Jurors of Golden Peacock Award given to Vedanta for "Environmental Management"

Hundreds of organisations and individuals have signed on to the protest letter to the Jurors of the Golden Peacock Award for Environmental Management being awarded to Vedanta in Palampur on 13th June, 2009. Please find the letter below

Kundan

8^th June 2009

Dear Jurors of the Golden Peacock Awards:

This is to request you to issue a statement to dissociate yourselves from the organisers of the Golden Peacock Awards for reasons laid out below.

In September 2008, literally days before Satyam Computers presented its cooked up balance sheet, the World Environment Foundation (WEF) presented the company with a “Golden Peacock Award” for corporate governance. It was conveniently withdrawn in January 2009, after the company's senior management, including the founder chairman, were arrested for financial fraud. Satyam's award reflects the lack of due diligence on the part of the awards selection committee, and exposes the Golden Peacock Awards for what they really are – corporate greenwash.

The lapse on the part of the organisers of this award to adequately inform the jurors is evident from the fact that one of the grounds for the award to Vedanta is – zero discharge at its alumina facility in Lanjigarh, Orissa, India. This facility has been at the heart of a massive controversy, involving violation of the rights of indigenous people, desecration of a highly biodiverse forest and watershed, and the highly irregular lenience shown by courts and the Government to blatant violations of the law in setting up and operating the smelter.

According to a company press release "Vedanta Alumina refinery is the first alumina refinery in the country to become a Zero Discharge Refinery. Through the recycling process, utilization of 100 per cent treated or untreated effluents within the plant has reduced the dependency on external source of water to a greater extent."

That there is zero truth in this claim is exposed by the evidence in the dossier accompanying this letter. Zero discharge systems are defined as systems that do not discharge any wastes, that everything is recycled, and that no pollutants are discharged into the environment.

Recent photographs taken as recently as in April 2009 clearly demonstrate the shoddy environmental management at Vedanta's Lanjigarh facility. These photographs are as Annexure 1 with this letter.

The OPSCB (Orissa State Pollution Control Board) has issued at least three notices to VAL so far for violating pollution norms at its Lanjigarh plant. The inspection report documents effluent leakage from storage ponds adjacent to the River Vamsadhara, a lifeline for hundreds of communities downstream (See point 5 below for further details).

We, the undersigned, are persons that are very familiar with the antecedents and the ongoing illegalities committed by Vedanta Resources Plc, and its subsidiary companies like Vedanta Alumina, Sterlite Industries and MALCO. Some of us have personally suffered at the hands of this company. We are writing this letter to you in good faith because we learnt that the jury had decided to award Vedanta Alumina with a Golden Peacock for environmental management. We do not expect any integrity from the organisers of the Golden Peacock Awards. However, many of the jury members are persons of good reputation and integrity. We are concerned that your decision may have been arrived at in the absence of full information. We would also like to give you an opportunity to review some disturbing information regarding the conduct of Vedanta and its subsidiaries, and to dissociate yourselves from the award to Vedanta to avoid a Satyam-style embarrassment.

You should also be aware of the reputation of the President of the World Environment Foundation, Mr. Madhav Mehra, because jurors often do not have the time to review the background of organisations to whom they lend their integrity and credibility. An article about Mr. Madhav Mehra titled “The Contradictions of Madhav Mehra” that appeared in the Guardian group's newspaper The Observer in 2003 can be seen at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/may/11/theobserver.observerbusiness2) is appended below for your reference.

We have put together a dossier including samples of documents that present the real face of the corporation that you have chosen to award with the Golden Peacock for environmental management. The dossier documents Vedanta and its subsidiaries' dubious track record with regard to environmental management, respect for the rule of law, financial integrity and sensitivity to the rights of indigenous communities.

1. Violation of Indigenous Peoples Rights: Vedanta Alumina, which has been chosen by you for the award, is implicated in a massive violation of the rights of indigenous people. The Dongria Kondhs, a primitive tribe, has been forced to relinquish their rights over their homeland, and cultural and livelihood resources to accommodate the company's refinery and mines complex. The company's mines, no matter how benign, will rip through a hill that is the sacred deity of the tribe that has lived in these hills for centuries without leaving a trace on the sensitive ecosystem of the biodiverse watershed forests. The hills that are slotted for mining are home to the Golden Gecko, a species that figures in IUCN's Red List of endangered species. The Niyamgiri Mountains are the primary source of drinking water for the entire area, apart from being the source of two important rivers of Orissa Nagabali and Vamsadhara which are the lifeline of at least 50000 people downstream. . (See pictures at: http://www.epgorissa.org/apps/photos/album?albumid=5847524 and detailed documentation at http://www.freewebs.com/epgorissa/A%20note%20on%20Environmental%20and%20Social%20Costs%20of%20Vedanta%20vis.doc and submissions from activists at: http://www.freewebs.com/epgorissa/vedanta%20-%20media%20(1).pdf ).

2. Blacklisted by Norway: Vedanta has been blacklisted by the Ethics Council of Norwegian Government Pension Fund. On the basis of this report, the Norwegian Government, in 2007, divested its pension funds from stock investments in Vedanta Resources and related companies, citing in their reports “serious malpractices and contraventions of environment norms and ethics by the Vedanta Management in the past wherever they operate.” The report specifically mentions the procedural violations in the procurement of environment and forest clearances for mining in Niyamgiri Hills. The Council also based its decision on the concious lack of compliance of environmental and pollution related conditions by Sterlite's Copper Smelter Plant in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu. (See: http://www.freewebs.com/epgorissa/RecommendationVedanta.pdf for this report).

3. Gross violators of human rights and environmental standards: The ‘War on Want’ report has indicted Vedanta and their various subsidiary concerns worldwide as ‘gross violators of human rights and environmental standards’. Later, in July 2008, the Martin Currie Scottish Trust Fund of Scotland also withdrew their 2.37-million-pound investment in Vedanta again on the grounds of ‘environmental and human rights violation by the company (See news report at: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Scots-firm-pulls-cash-out.4388531.jp)

4. High-level censure: A special monitoring body set up by the Supreme Court of India, the Central Empowered Committee, has submitted several reports highlighting the irregularities and corruption by VAL and recommended that the permission to mine the rich forests of the area should not be granted to the company. This report was also important in the decision of the Norwegian Council of Ethics ( See: http://www.freewebs.com/epgorissa/CENTRAL%20EMPOWERED%20COMMITTEE%20report.doc for this report).

5. Guilty of Pollution: The Orissa State Pollution Control Board has issued at least three notices to VAL so far for violating pollution norms at its Lanjigarh plant. The notice had asked the company to take immediate steps with references to the violations related to the refinery operations. Evidences abound (See: http://www.epgorissa.org/INSPECTION%20REPORT%20OF%20VEDANT%20ALUMINIUM.doc)

6. Illegal Mining: Vedanta's subsidiary The Madras Aluminium Company (MALCO) was forced to suspend its illegal mining operations in Kolli Hills in Tamil Nadu, in November 2008 following a petition filed in the Madras High Court presenting evidence that its bauxite mines had no permission under various environmental laws. Kolli Hills too is a highly biodiverse area dominated by primitive tribes. (See news report at http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Illegal+mining+in+Kolli+Hills+stayed&artid=Zke/kKGPhno=&SectionID=vBlkz7JCFvA=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=EL7znOtxBM3qzgMyXZKtxw==&SEO= )

7. Illegal construction: Sterlite's copper smelter plant in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu has over the years violated several environmental norms in its operations. Till date there is large amounts of ash and gypsum dumps lying around the plant site, causing air and water pollution. The stipulated requirements to adhere to Green Belt to reduce the pollution impacts are not being followed. (See document attached as Annexure 2) Further, the factory complex has no license to be constructed. Highlighting the inordinate influence the company wields over Government, the Tuticorin factory does not have a Consent to Establish under the Water and Air Acts. (See Supreme Court Monitoring Committee report dated September 29, 2004 at

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:Ny0dxhRTQwEJ:www.sipcotcuddalore.com/downloads/scmc_tn_visit.pdf+supreme+court+monitoring+committee+Sterlite+Tuticorin&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&client=firefox-)

8. Pollution in Lanjigarh: Well-researched accounts by different human rights as well as environmental groups reveal that the Vedanta Alumina Refinery at Lanjigarh, which has been operational since 2006, has severely polluted the local environment causing untold misery to the local population. Ever since the refinery has come up there, drinking water sources have become severely contaminated. The refinery has released toxic mud in Vamshadhara river which has had a direct health impact on the local people and animals who use water from the river. People are inflicted with skin infections, gastro-enteritis, asthma, etc. Effluents stored in the red mud ponds have already made their way into drinking water sources, poisoning them. Around 40 villages around the plant have been impacted by fly ash pollution, which descends on their home and agricultural lands and crops bringing down agricultural productivity, hence further pauperizing them.

9. Public Opposition: Villagers around the Lanjigarh facility showed up in large numbers on 24 April, 2009, to protest against the company's proposal to expand during a public hearing held by the Orissa State Pollution Control Board. The public hearing had to be “officially adjourned” because of the protests. The local people, complained about severe environmental and health hazards caused by the refinery and not only objected to its expansion plans but rather urged to close down the existing plant. Shouldn’t the minutes of the recent public hearing for expansion of the refinery be attached to show practically every speaker complaining about the pollution? (See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6-P5SKW8bQ ).

10. Global polluter: Well documented articles and reports also highlight the company's consistent negligence with respect to environmental management across the world. The article Undermining Development: Copper Mining in Zambia documents the company's operations in Zambia.

11. Elsewhere in India: See also Annexure 3 for photographs of Vedanta's impacts in Korba, Chhatisgarh, India.

As jurors, you would have to explain how you chose to award a company that in the words of the Norwegian Government's Council of Ethics is clearly involved in “human rights violations.” The dossier lays out a torrid controversy of fraud and financial malpractices shrouding this company.

We hope, as jurors and persons of eminence, you would have the good sense to preserve your integrity by dissociating yourselves from this company in particular, and the Golden Peacock Awards, in general.

We wish to let you know that as persons interested in setting the record straight, we and other activists will be taking action against the Awards granting organisation and the ceremony.

We do not expect any corrective behaviour from the organisers of the awards. We see very clearly that their intention is not to reward exemplary corporate behaviour. Rather, it is to help beleaguered companies tide over their public relations crisis by roping in eminent people to lend their names for pre-decided awards. However, as jurors, we would like to extend to you the benefit of the doubt, and offer you this information for review. Should you decide to dissociate yourself from this award, kindly let us know.

Look forward to your response and action in this regard.

Sincerely,

CC: 1. S. Z. Qasim, Chairman, World Environment Foundation (WEF).

2.Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of Environment and Forests (MoEF)

Tribals in Koraput protest mining and ask for speedy implementation of Forest Rights Act

New coverage on protests in Koraput

MNCs eye forests for mining

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=9&theme=&usrsess=1&id=256928

Statesman News Service 
KORAPUT,  5 JUNE: Multinational companies are running roughshod over the environment and livelihood of people in the state and their free run allowed by the government because they have invested huge amount, alleged Mr Prafulla Samantara here today. 
Mr Samantara, a environmental activist was addressing a tribal rally here to mark the World Environment Day. 
He apprehended that the multinational companies and moneybags will pressurise the government to stall implementation of the Forest Rights Act. "The pro-tribal Act will never get implemented in its totality," he cautioned while pointing out that multinational companies were eyeing valuable forest land of Koraput, Kalahandi and Bolangir districts for mining activity. 
Mindless and large scale mining in these regions will have a disastrous impact on the ecological balance, he said. 
Looking at these concerns of the people where there is a danger of losing the basic livelihood opportunities, the government should put a ban on any mining activity in Deomali, Maliparvat, Kodingamali, Bafilimali and Sadubohumali mountains in Koraput district. 
Scores of streams flow from these mountains and once mining starts there no water source will be left for the people and even the Kolab river will lose its source of water, he warned.Thousands of tribals representing different anti-displacement unions like Deomali Surakhya Sangram Parishad, Maliparvat Surakhya Samiti, Koraput Zilla Basachyut Mahasangh along with members of Paraja Sangh, Kuvi Sangh,Gadaba Sangh, Koraput Zilla Banavasi Sangh from across the district took out a huge rally in the district headquarters before submitting a memorandum to the district collector in this regard. The tribal leaders demanded expeditious implementation of Forest Rights Act-2006 and issuance of land pattas in favour of the tribals. 
They also urged the district administration to create new forest in the devastated land through the participation and ownership of the community. Rather than promoting mines, efforts were needed to establish more and more small scale food processing units while supporting the cultivation of fruits like pineapple, orange and lemon in the region starting from Niyamgiri to Deomali mountain range, the leaders stated in their memorandum.

 

Environmentalists up in arms against mining

The Hindu

Correspondent

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Environmental activist addresses rally of tribals

State urged to encourage more small-scale food processing units

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KORAPUT: Companies responsible for environmental degradation in the State have invested a large amount of money to help candidates win the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Praful Samantra, environmental activist from Bhubaneswar, said here on Friday. He was addressing a rally of tribals on the occasion of ‘World Environment Day’. Now it was feared that they would pressure governments to prevent the Forest Rights Act from being implemented in its true spirit as the act if gets implemented in its totality would go against the very companies who wish to grab most of the valuable piece of land especially in places like Koraput, Kalahandi, Bolangir and other underdeveloped regions of the State, he said.Looking at these concerns of people who faced the danger of losing basic livelihood opportunities, the Government should put a ban on any mining activities in Deomali, Maliparvat , Kodingamali, Bafilimali and Sadubohumali mountains in Koraput district, he said.Scores of streams flow from these mountains and once these were mined there would not be any water source left for people and even Kolab river would lose its source of water, he said.Thousands of tribals representing different anti-displacement unions like Deomali Surakhya Sangram Parishad, Maliparvat Surakhya Samiti, Koraput Zilla Basachyut Mahasangh along with members of Paraja Sangh , Kuvi Sangh, Gadaba Sangh, Koraput Zilla Banavasi Sangh from all across the district took out a huge rally in the district headquarter before submitting a memorandum to the district Collector in this regard.Tribal leaders demanded speedy implementation of Forest Rights Act-2006 and issue of land pattas for tribals. They urged the district administration to create new forests in the devastated land through participation and ownership of the community. Rather than promoting mining, efforts were needed to establish more small-scale food processing units while supporting the cultivation of fruits in the region starting from Niyamgiri to Deomali mountain range, the leaders said in the memorandum.

 

Stir hits work on alumina project

The Hindu

Staff Reporter

Affected people holding dharna for enhanced compensation

Environmental clearance for the company not renewed since 2003, says Praful Samantra

BERHAMPUR: Agitation by people affected by the project has again stalled the construction work of Utkal Alumina International Limited at Kashipur in Rayagada district.The agitators have been holding dharna since Wednesday and are not allowing company officials to reach the project site. It may be noted that this company of the Aditya Birla group has proposed to build an alumina plant at Kashipur at a cost of around Rs 5,000 crores.This factory would rely on the bauxite mining in nearby areas. The recent agitation is being led by leaders of the Prakrutika Sampad Surakhya Parishad (PSSP), an organization which has spearheaded the anti-alumina project agitation in the area for a decade. Convener of the PSSP Bhagaban Majhi said this time the protestors were demanding that Kumarmangalam Birla himself come over and hold talks with the protestors regarding their demands. The agitators are demanding enhanced compensation.This project continues to face opposition of tribals and dalits of the area. Trouble for the company has multiplied as the already displaced families have now come up with new demands of enhanced compensation, jobs and other benefits. The displaced families are demanding a compensation of Rs. 10 lakhs for each acre of agricultural land acquired by the company and guarantee of job to the members of affected families.Since its conception in 1992 the company has been facing opposition of locals and environmentalists. In 2008 work of the project was stalled for more than 107 days by a similar agitation. In 2007 the project work had to be stopped for 127 days due to agitation of affected families. In 2006 it was for 55 days and in 2005 the number of days when no project work could be taken up due to local opposition was over 60 days.Environmental activist Praful Samantra said now the very families who had helped the company for land acquisition have started to stand up against it. Even the local leaders of political parties were participating in recent agitation, he said.It proves that the company had not been able to satisfy the people to be affected by the project which would affect the environment, life and livelihood in the area, he said.Mr Samantra said the Utkal Alumina had not yet got the environmental clearance for its mining areas renewed since 2003. He criticized the government for providing new mining lease to the company despite this.