* A 5-year Rainforest Action-Amazon Watch campaign was centered around fabricated claims that Occidental Petroleum planned to drill a well on U’wa Indian lands. The drilling site was not in rainforests and actually belonged to impoverished peasants, who welcomed the prospect of jobs and the clinics, schools, safe water and other amenities Oxy provided. The real threat to the U’wa comes from leftist narco-guerillas – who were never mentioned in the activists’ attack ads.
Oxy ultimately drilled a dry hole – and the radicals were off on new crusades.
* Amnesty International’s 2004 campaign against Oxy operations in Ecuador featured a photo of an oil pit and allegations that the company was “spewing pollution into the environment.” The same photo had previously been used by Amazon Watch, to defame Texaco, a decade after that company had left Ecuador. The actual operator, it turned out, was state-owned PetroEcuador.
The corrupt Ecuador government later expelled Oxy on other charges, which the company insists are equally bogus. Occidental’s departure means millions of dollars in annual corporate contributions disappeared, says the Financial Times, and PetroEcuador officials (who now run the operation) are unlikely to replace them. “They damage the environment and don’t help local communities,” one community leader complained. “Oxy helped us for 20 years,” said another – with roads, scholarships, sports facilities, vehicles, and water and sewage systems – and now the aid is gone.
* In Indonesia, baseless allegations by Friends of the Earth Indonesia, the New York Times and allies landed a Newmont Mining executive in jail. He’s charged with poisoning Buyat Bay and killing a young girl. However, studies by the World Health Organization and other reputable analysts suggest a more likely cause of death: water contaminated by human and animal feces. Meanwhile, mining investment in the country has plummeted by 93% in just a few years, further jeopardizing jobs and living standards.
* After years of attacking Newman Lumber Company for “illegally” cutting timber in Peruvian forests, the Natural Resource Defense Council finally retracted its false claims. Not once during its assault did NRDC even mention that the real culprits were drug lords, who were clear-cutting and polluting thousands of acres annually, to grow coca and process cocaine.
Attacks on Doe Run Peru, Newmont in Ghana, banks and dozens of other companies repeat the pattern. In none of these cases did the “concerned” activists provide financial support to the impoverished towns. Millions for attacks – not one cent for aid, seems to be their motto.
The world’s poor have become little more than involuntary pawns – and collateral damage – in the eco-imperialist war on corporations, resource development and Third World modernization. Indigenous people, activists assert, want to live the way their ancestors did. Some certainly do. But many want to adopt selected modern skills and technologies, to improve and enhance their lives.
“Living like our ancestors is a formula for extinction,” observed Cesar Serasera, leader of a national confederation of Amazon-Peru natives. To survive, indigenous people need jobs, healthcare, education, better nutrition and safe drinking water – while holding onto important elements of their culture. Moreover, most of the people impacted by anti-corporate battles are poor, but not indigenous.
Radical groups – and those who support them – are entitled to promote their ideological agendas. They’re not entitled to invent “facts” or pursue their selfish interests at the expense of the poor and powerless.
They need to start behaving like any other multinational corporation: responsibly, ethically, honestly and with concern for both people and the environment.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and Congress of Racial Equality, a former Sierra Club member, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power · Black death.