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Environmental Rights are Human Rights
For two days in January of 1992, police officials in Nairobi, Kenya, surrounded the home of Professor Wangari Maathai. On the afternoon of the second day, officers ripped the bars off of a bedroom window, forcibly extracted the 51-year-old grassroots organizer and took her into custody. This was not Maathai's first experience with Kenyan authorities. As coordinator of the Green Belt Movement, perhaps the most successful tree-planting program in Africa, Maathai has been arrested repeatedly, teargassed, even beaten unconscious. Such is the official response in Kenya to those who are so bold as to organize women to plant trees, or to protest construction of a skyscraper that would destroy a city park. The Green Belt Movement has not only helped to reforest Kenya and green the planet, it has empowered a community. Maathai's grassroots organizing success and support, however, frightened Kenya's former president, Daniel Arap Moi, who is not a fan of environmentalists or democracies. Environmental Rights and Civil Rights While environmental activists like Wangari Maathai have been arrested and beaten, others, like Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria, have been formally executed and still others, like Chico Mendes of Brazil, have been murdered for their activism. Many basic freedoms that Americans take for granted are, unfortunately, not universal. Environmentally concerned citizens are not only threatened by their own governments; some multinational corporations have pressured nations in desperate need of foreign investment to compete for their business by reducing environmental and labor standards. Indigenous peoples in some countries face extinction because the environment from which they derive their livelihood is being destroyed by activities that result from such investment. And, while foreign investment may help a nation's finances in the short term, companies that take advantage of weak or unenforced environmental laws can severely deplete natural resources and poison the people. Attacks against environmentalists do occasionally grab headlines. But much of the suffering such activists struggle to prevent still goes largely unnoticed. Often, when these citizens speak out to protect the environment, the infringements of environmental rights are compounded by direct violations of internationally recognized civil and political rights. To help defend these human rights, including the right to organize to protect the environment and the right to have access to full and accurate information about the environment, public awareness of oppressive conditions must be raised in the U.S. and throughout the world. International pressure must be applied to the governments that commit such human rights violations, as well as to the multinational companies that operate in these countries. The Sierra Club believes that no country can feign environmental awareness when its citizens are forbidden to assemble or speak freely or when they are persecuted for protecting the environment. Unfortunately, many nations' environmental protection laws are nonexistent or not enforced. Many countries often lack basic community right-to-know laws. The Sierra Club agrees with the statement by the U.S. Information Agency: "Only through unfettered public debate and free elections can human rights be protected; only through a similar process of open debate and citizen involvement can the environment be protected. In the end, the work of environmental protection is the work of democracy." Western governments are beginning to recognize the connections between citizen participation and environmental protection. The World Bank and the United Nations Development Program have recognized in their literature, if not yet in their operations, that their development plans will only succeed in societies where citizens and non-governmental organizations are free to put pressure on governmental institutions. In order to protect the environment worldwide, the public must be involved. The Club's International Program seeks to ensure individuals' rights to speak out on behalf of the environment, and to help environmental advocates organize in an effective manner to petition their government. The Sierra Club's strategy is to focus on nations where human rights abuses are being committed against environmental activists and to inform the public about these abuses in order to expose the guilty parties. Human rights violations are less likely to occur in the broad daylight of international attention. We are leading efforts to encourage international criticism of the offending nations and corporations, and to urge the U.S. State Department to include environmental protection in mainstream American foreign policy. The convergence of human rights and environmental abuse provides the opportunity for two formidable activist coalitions - human rights advocates and environmentalists - to successfully pool their experience for a common purpose: protecting the environmental health of the planet by protecting the civil rights of its inhabitants. Countries with Disturbing Rights Violations MEXICO: Anti-logging activists and farmers Rodolfo Montiel Flores and Teodoro Cabrera García were arrested under questionable circumstances by the Mexican military most likely for their efforts to stop the logging of old-growth forests in the Mexican State of Guerrero. Montiel and Cabrera were beaten and tortured into confessing to trumped up charges by the military.NIGERIA: On Nov. 10, 1995, the Nigerian military government hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other minority rights campaigners. The Sierra Club and others believe that the nine were hanged because of Saro-Wiwa's effective grassroots organizing directed at the environmental devastation caused by Shell's oil exploitation. RUSSIA: Alexander Nikitin, a retired Captain in the Russian Northern Fleet has been charged with espionage,a charge which carries the death penalty. Nikitin's "crime" was coauthoring a report with Norway's Bellona Foundation about nuclear waste disposal in Russia's far north. The embarrassed government has accused Nikitin of exposing state secrets even though Russian newspapers had previously published the information. BURMA: Burma's ruling military regime continues to use slave labor wreak havoc in the country's vast teak forests. Moneys from timber sales and operating fees from Western oil concessions reportedly go to support the military's assassinations of ethnic and religious minorities opposed to the destruction of their land and communities. INDIA: Over the past decade the Indian police have allegedly committed serious human rights violations against villagers and others protesting against the construction of the Narmada Dam. Use of preventive arrest, detention, excessive use of force during arrest, physical abuse, and threats are just some of the documented violations. AUSTRALIA: Kakadu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory is home to the Mirrar Aboriginal people, whose ancestors have lived there for more than 40,000 years. The Australian government, however, has granted rights to the mining company Energy Resources of Australia to open a uranium mine in Kakadu's Jabiluka, one of the world's largest deposits of uranium. The radioactive pollution from this mine will remain active for 300,000 years. CHINA: China's Three Gorges Dam Project is the largest hydroelectric project ever attempted in the world. The plan to dam the Yangtze River would flood six counties and displace 1.2 million people, threaten endangered animal species with extinction and submerge 100,000 hectares of cropland. Chinese opponents of the massive dam, including journalists, scientists and engineers have been silenced through government threats and imprisonment. KENYA: Current human rights and environment concerns in Kenya involve the deforestation of the Karura Forest, north of Nairobi; the human rights violations against individuals protesting government plans to parcel out the land to developer; and the general climate of repression in the country. CHAD and CAMEROON: Oil pipeline project threatens local communities and fragile ecosystems. This multinational oil project led by US-based Exxon threatens thousands of local and indigenous people in Chad and Cameroon. The oil companies involved in the project have a history of serious environmental degradation and blindness to patterns of egregious human right abuses. Join the Sierra Club's Human Rights and the Environment Alert Network. Help environmentalists abroad by putting pressure on the countries and companies violating environmental rights. Contact: Write to Secretary of State Colin Powell Sec. Colin Powell Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use |
