Saving Iceland Camp 2008 has Begun and First Action

The 4th Sav­ing Ice­land action camp has now begun in a beau­ti­ful threat­ened geot­her­mal val­ley beside Hell­isheiðisvirkjun in the Hengill area, where it will tar­get the expan­sion of the geot­her­mal pow­er sta­tion for the Grun­dar­tan­gi plant and oth­er South­west­ern heavy indus­try projects.

The 4th Sav­ing Ice­land action camp has now begun in a beau­ti­ful threat­ened geot­her­mal val­ley beside Hell­isheiðisvirkjun in the Hengill area, where it will tar­get the expan­sion of the geot­her­mal pow­er sta­tion for the Grun­dar­tan­gi plant and oth­er South­west­ern heavy indus­try projects.

This year activists from Ice­land, Aus­tralia, Amer­i­ca, Den­mark, Ger­many, Britain, Hol­land, France, Bel­gium and Italy amongst oth­ers have joined the cam­paign as infor­ma­tion about the destruc­tion of Iceland’s wilder­ness has spread. This year the cam­paign will focus specif­i­cal­ly on the human­i­tar­i­an effects of alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion, from the geno­cides asso­ci­at­ed with min­ing in India, South Amer­i­ca, Jamaica and more, to the use of alu­mini­um for arms man­u­fac­ture and the defence indus­try.

A week of inter­na­tion­al Sav­ing Ice­land sol­i­dar­i­ty actions will take place from July 21st to 27th in dif­fer­ent Euro­pean coun­tries. A spe­cialised con­fer­ence with respect­ed Indi­an writer and alu­mini­um expert Samaren­dra Das and Andri Snær will exam­ine the idea of “green alu­mini­um” and the effects of the Alu­mini­um indus­try in the Third World, (July 23 at Reyk­javikur Akademia).
On Sun­day the 20th July Sav­ing Ice­land and mem­bers of Sól á Suður­lan­di and the Ice­landic Moun­tain Guides will team up to lead a pub­lic tour around areas of Þjórsá threat­ened by three planned dam projects. A coach will leave Reyk­javík at 12:00 noon and return by 18:00, cost­ing 500 kr for the whole tour. Of course, direct action can as well soon be expect­ed.

savingiceland@riseup.net
http://www.savingiceland.org

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Sav­ing Ice­land Stops Work at Cen­tu­ry Alu­mini­um Con­struc­tion Site

19.07.2008
HELGUVIK (ICELAND) – Ear­ly this morn­ing 40 activists from over 10 coun­tries occu­pied the con­struc­tion site where Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum are prepar­ing to build their Hel­gu­vík alu­mini­um smelter, and chained them­selves to machin­ery and cranes. The protest is aimed at dam­age to geot­her­mal areas in south­west Ice­land and Century’s envi­ron­men­tal and human rights abus­es in Jamaica and Africa.

The con­struc­tion of the Cen­tu­ry Hel­gu­vík plant depends on the expan­sion of geot­her­mal ener­gy in Hell­isheiði and Reyk­janes (1). Con­struc­tion began in June, with­out a valid Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment, or a guar­an­tee of suf­fi­cient ener­gy (435 MW) for the smelter. (2)

’Just as with Alcoa Fjar­daal, the gov­ern­ment shows no inter­est in fol­low­ing the the legal process for these huge projects. Instead they act as if the smelter and pow­er projects are inevitable, cre­at­ing mass apa­thy. At the same time, Century’s human rights abuse record has large­ly gone unno­ticed.’, says Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Ulfhildur­son from Sav­ing Ice­land.

Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tion Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum is involved in a num­ber of projects in Africa and the Caribbean which are con­tend­ed by envi­ron­men­tal and human rights cam­paign­ers.

In Jamaica, Cen­tu­ry joint­ly owns a 4.8 mil­lion tonne baux­ite mine which is caus­ing large-scale defor­esta­tion of rain­for­est. (3,4,5) Cen­tu­ry are also involved in a joint ven­ture to open up a sec­ond mine and alu­mi­na refin­ery with Chi­nese com­pa­ny Min­metals, who are asso­ci­at­ed with prison labour fac­to­ries and gross human rights abus­es in Chi­na and else­where (6,7).

In Feb­ru­ary 2007 Cen­tu­ry Alu­mini­um signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing with the Repub­lic of Con­go for the exclu­sive right to devel­op a smelter, an alu­mi­na refin­ery and a baux­ite mine with a min­i­mum com­mit­ment of 500 megawatts of gas-gen­er­at­ed elec­tri­cal ener­gy in Pointe Noire.(8)

’Con­go is renowned for its hor­ren­dous human rights con­di­tions includ­ing ter­ri­ble mass rapes, unlaw­ful killings, tor­ture and cor­rup­tion. Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al has also rat­ed it one of the most cor­rupt regimes in the world. That’s usu­al­ly exact­ly the kind of regimes cor­po­ra­tions like Cen­tu­ry pre­fer to deal with…’, says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri. (9,10)

’The finan­cial scams orches­trat­ed by alu­mini­um com­pa­nies have cre­at­ed eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal ruin in many coun­tries, dra­mat­i­cal­ly affect­ing the lives of thou­sands of their cit­i­zens. In each case, a sus­tained and cost­ly PR cam­paign promis­ing a new age of pros­per­i­ty pre­ced­ed this con­struc­tion.’ Indi­an sci­en­tist, Alu­mini­um expert and writer Samaren­dra Dasexplains.(11) Das will be giv­ing a num­ber of talks in Ice­land in July, includ­ing a con­fer­ence with Andi Snær Mag­nus­son on the 23rd in Reyk­javikur Akademian.(12)

(1) Land­vernd report, Nóvem­ber 2007, ’Athugasemdir veg­na umhver­fisáhri­fa orkuöflu­nar fyrir álver í Hel­gu­vík, sbr. frum­matsskýrslur Orku­veitu Reyk­javíkur fyrir Bitru­virkjun og virkjun við Hver­ahlíð.’

(2) In the table below, the plan­ning agency details that the 435 MW required for the smelter will come from a num­ber of geot­her­mal sites in Reyk­janes and Hell­isheiði. With Bitravirkjun on hold and Reyk­janes not yet guar­an­teed, the ener­gy require­ments are far from filled. Land­vernd states that only 60% of required ener­gy had been found in 2007, before Bitravirkjun was sus­pend­ed. (see ref­er­ence 1)
For more infor­ma­tion on the lack of prop­er Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment see The Ecol­o­gist, Octo­ber 2007,’ Alu­mini­um Tyrants’. Jaap Krater, Miri­am Rose and Mark Anslow.

(3) Cen­tu­ry Alu­mini­um web­site. http://www.centuryca.com/st_ann.html

(4) Zadie Neufville, April 6, 2001, ’Baux­ite Min­ing Blamed for Defor­esta­tion’. See http://forests.org/archive/samerica/baux….

(5) Mines and Com­mu­ni­ties report,’Bauxite Mine Fight Looms in Jamaica’s Cock­pit Coun­try’, 24th Octo­ber 2006 at http://www.minesandcommunities.org/artic….

(6) ’Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum in Jamaica min­ing deal’, Mon­day, May 15, 2006, Sil­i­con Val­ley / San Jose Busi­ness Jour­nal.

(7) In 2004 Min­metals attempt­ed a takeover of Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny Noran­da but were declined in 2005 due to seri­ous con­cerns over human rights abus­es by the Chi­nese com­pa­ny. This report details Minmetal’s asso­ci­a­tion to forced labour.

Aaron A. Dhir, ’Of Takeovers, For­eign Invest­ment and Human Rights: Unpack­ing the Noran­da-Min­metals Conun­drum’, Bank­ing & Finance Law Review, Vol. 22, pp. 77–104, 2006.

(8) http://sec.edgar-online.com/2007/03/01/ … tion11.asp
and http://www.afriquenligne.fr/news/africa … 83302.html

(9) Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al Report 2007, http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/africa/….

(10) Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al (2006). Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions Index 2006. Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, Berlin.

(11) Samaren­dra Das, ’Min­ing sacred moun­tains to fuel the war on ter­ror’. June 2008. See https://savingiceland.puscii.nl/wordpres…

(12) On Wednes­day July 23, 19.30 h. Sav­ing Ice­land will hold a con­fer­ence with the Indi­an writer, sci­en­tist and alu­mini­um expert Samaren­dra Das and ‘Dream­land’ author Andri Snær Mag­nus­son, on the influ­ence of the alu­mini­um indus­try in the third world. Also, the con­cept of alu­mini­um as a ‘green’ prod­uct will be exam­ined. The evening is organ­ised joint­ly with Future­land. It will take place at the Reyk­javiku­rakademi­an house on Hring­braut 121.

More infor­ma­tion and back­ground: www.savingiceland.org