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The ICJ heard that children in Palau stand to inherit a country that no longer reflects the stories and values of their ancestors. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
THE HAGUE & NAIROBI, Dec 10 2024 (IPS)

After many decades of colonial rule, Palau was the last country to emerge from the UN Trusteeship. Palau celebrated 30 years of independence in October 2024 “and takes seriously the rights and responsibilities of independence. Independence should mean that Palau is free to build its own future and be responsible for the security, safety, and well-being of its own people,” said Gustav N. Aitaro, the Minister of State of the Republic of Palau at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“Yet, Palau is learning that with freedom of independence must also come with a basic responsibility towards neighbours. Every independent nation must ensure that the activities they allow within their territory do not cause significant harm to other nations. Man-made climate change is now the biggest threat to the Palauan people’s independence and right to self-determination.”

In 2021, a youth group in Vanuatu collaborated with their Prime Minister to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the obligations of UN member states in respect to climate change and the legal consequences of these actions. Nearly 100 states and 12 organisations have been enjoined in the case and public hearings are currently ongoing at The Hague, the seat of the ICJ, in pursuit of the much-needed advisory opinion. Among those making their submissions today were Palau, Panama and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Realization of Independence At Stake—Palau

Aitaro stressed that in order for Palau to fully realize its independence, “it must ask this Court to recognize that states have the legal responsibility to ensure that they do all they can to prevent emissions from their territory from causing significant harm to other states. In order to understand the threat that climate change poses to Palau, I invite you to walk with me through the lived reality of Palau, a reality deeply marked by the relentless impacts of climate change.”

Koror State is the most populous in Palau. The red areas are flood zones from sea level rise. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

In the 1970s, higher-than-normal tides were rare and only one instance was recorded, but between 2010 and 2019, the number rose to five and there were four incidences in 2021 alone, Aitaro said, showing the court how badly affected Palau is.

Ernestine Rengiil, Palau’s Attorney General, emphasised that while climate change poses tremendously complex practical problems for the world, as a matter of international law, the issue of climate change is straightforward. She said common to the principles of law of all civilized nations is the concept that one’s property may not be used to cause harm to another’s.

That if one uses or allows their property to be used in a manner to cause harm to another, that harm must be stopped and reparations paid in full. In common law systems, this is a law of nuisance.

“In civil law systems, this is a servitude established by law—and in most moral systems, this is simply the golden rule. In international law, this principle is better known as the law of transboundary harm and state responsibility. This principle is foundational to every state’s independence,” she said.

Rengiil invited the court to decline to “create new exceptions to the basic rules of the international order for climate change. The minority argue that because climate change is caused by a diffused set of global emissions sources, it will be too difficult in any future contentious cases to prove causation. But such practical problems exist in all cases and are not sufficient grounds to abandon the basic legal rules altogether.”

ICJ Needs to Reinforce International Obligations—Panama

In what is shaping up to be a David vs. Goliath public hearing, Panama’s size on the map was no barrier to making a compelling case.

“Panama, regardless of its small size and contribution of only 0.03 percent of global emissions, is mindful of the challenges that require that it has become among a handful of states a carbon-negative country. Panama is not turning away from facing the adverse conduct of others as to human-induced global warming,” Fernando Gómez Arbeláez, an expert in international legal affairs, said.

Panama invited the court to consider ongoing advisory proceedings as “a critical opportunity to attend to the inadequacies of the current Conference of the Parties, or COP, of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By means of an opinion that in itself carries great legal weight and moral authority, the court can offer much-needed legal clarity to reinforce international obligations and inspire a stronger determination to tackle the global climate crisis.”

Human Rights and Due Diligence Work Together—DRC

In her submissions, the Democratic Republic of the Congo said, although in the minority, certain states are keen to invoke the relationship between different sources of international law to require a compartmentalised reading and a selective utilisation of them. Stressing that the different international obligations of states coexist and that compliance with one obligation in no way relieves them of their responsibility with regard to the others.

Speaking on behalf of the DRC, Sandrine Maljean-Dubois, who is a dedicated teacher and researcher in international environmental law, spoke extensively of the obligation of due diligence and human rights. Stressing that these obligations are not in conflict. That the obligations for the UNFCCC framework and the Paris Agreement are reinforced by other international obligations. Emphasising that the international climate regime, specifically the Paris Agreement alone, will not prevent significant harm to the climate system.

“On the one hand, failure to implement all available means to prevent significant harm to the climate system puts the state in breach of general international law. On the other hand, it is clear that each state has to play its part. The obligation of preventing harm is informed and buttressed, in turn, by treaty obligations,” she said.

Maljean-Dubois said the obligation of due diligence requires a maximum level of vigilance. Informed by the climate regime and enlightened by the IPCC reports, “the due diligence obligation requires states to take fair, urgent and ambitious measures to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to them. Far from lessening over time, this obligation has, to the contrary, become more stringent as scientific evidence has mounted.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Excerpt:

Due diligence obligation requires states to take fair, urgent and ambitious measures to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to them. Far from lessening over time, this obligation has, to the contrary, become more stringent as scientific evidence mounts. — Sandrine Maljean-Dubois for the DRC

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Representatives of a dozen environmental organisations, united in the Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador, speak out against Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele’s goal to reopen this industry, banned by law since 2017. Credit: Roundtable Against Metal Mining in El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Dec 10 2024 (IPS)

Metal mining has a renewed momentum in Central America, encouraged by populist rulers who, in order to soften environmental damage, claim they can develop it in harmony with nature, which is hard to believe

Thus, they seek to win the approval of a majority that seems to follow them blindly, but not environmentalists or other social sectors, activists told IPS.

“The mere popularity of President Bukele is not enough to say that the mine will not contaminate the country,” Rodolfo Calles, an activist with the Association of Salvadoran Community Promoters, told IPS, referring to the interest shown by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in reactivating metal mining, which has been banned for seven years.“The mere popularity of President Bukele is not enough to say that the mine will not contaminate the country”: Rodolfo Calles.

Central America, an isthmus of six nations and 64 million inhabitants, is one of the most environmentally vulnerable regions, where activists and social defenders have been warning for decades about the negative impacts the metal mining industry has had on their ecosystems.

As a result of these struggles, a law banning all forms of metal mining was passed in El Salvador in March 2017, the first measure of its kind in the world and considered a historic milestone.

Costa Rica had done the same in 2010, but only for open-pit mining, and other countries have halted specific projects, such as in Guatemala and Honduras, and Panama last year.

Central America is a region rich in biodiversity and natural resources. It has abundant water and forests as well as mineral resources. With the exception of Belize, the only country without significant mineral deposits, significant quantities of metals such as gold, silver or zinc, as well as nickel, copper and other minerals can be found in all territories.

But several studies indicate that the mining industry’s economic contribution is minimal in the area, and in the case of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, it has not exceeded 1% of their gross domestic product (GDP). GDP per capita in the region is around US$6,000.

Guatemala is the Central American country with the greatest mineral wealth, metallic and non-metallic, while Panama and El Salvador have much lower concentrations of mineral elements of interest, according to a study.

Panama saw its largest protests in three decades, against the largest copper mine in Central America. As a result, in November 2023, a law established an indefinite moratorium on mining. Credit: Luis Mendoza / Mongabay

Going backwards

Now El Salvador and Costa Rica, ruled by leaders labelled as populist, are taking steps backwards.

“Bukele launches the issue because he relies on the credibility he claims to have as president and people’s misinformation,” Calles stressed.

Despite his authoritarian nature, the president continues to enjoy broad popular support, according to all opinion polls.

Meanwhile, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves announced on 27 November that he had submitted a bill to the unicameral National Assembly to reverse the ban on open-pit mining, setting off alarm bells in a country renowned for its efforts to preserve the environment.

The intention is to finally give the green light to a gold mine that had already won a concession but was cancelled when the 2010 ban came into force, based on the constitutional premise that citizens have the right to live in a healthy environment.

The mine is located in the town of Crucitas, in the province of Alajuela, in the north of the country. It is owned by the Canadian consortium Infinito Gold.

But President Chaves wants to reverse the ban.

“Right now we are just seeing how we are going to counteract what is coming,” Erlinda Quesada, a Costa Rican environmentalist with the National Front of Sectors Affected by Pineapple Production, an organisation that, among other things, seeks to protect water sources from intensive monoculture production, told IPS.

In a telephone conversation from the town of Guácimo, in the province of Limón, in the northwest of the country, Quesada added: “It is no secret to anyone that we have a populist government that… is ingratiating itself with these humble sectors, the poorest in the country, and holding them in its hands” when it wants to approve the proposal.

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega intensified his relationship with China by granting, also on 27 November, the fifth concession to Xinjiang Xinxin Mining Industry.

The new 1,500-hectare mining project is located between the municipalities of Santo Domingo and La Libertad, in central Nicaragua. In all, the consortium’s operations cover 43,000 hectares.

These concessions granted by Ortega’s dictatorial regime would appear to be, in addition to the economic benefit, a move to tighten links with China and annoy the United States, which is seeking to curb the Asian power on the world geopolitical stage.

In September 2022, the people of Asunción Mita in eastern Guatemala voted against the Cerro Blanco mining project owned by Elevar Resources, a subsidiary of Canada’s Bluestone Resources. The ‘no’ won. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Bukele’s economic hope

Out of the blue, Bukele posted a message on the social network X on 27 November showing his interest in the country’s return to the extractive industry, arousing concern among social sectors that, after a long struggle, had succeeded in getting the Legislative Assembly to ban mining in March 2017.

“We are the only country in the world with a total ban on metallic mining, something that no other country applies. Absurd!” the president wrote.

He added that this wealth can be harnessed responsibly to bring “unprecedented” economic and social development to the Salvadoran people.

That development is what he has promised to deliver in his second five-year presidential term, beginning in June 2024, after winning the elections in February amid sharp criticism that the constitution did not allow him to participate in a second, consecutive election.

Then, on 1 December, in a public act, the president tried to justify his extractivist project stating that the country’s mining potential is enough for an accumulated wealth of three trillion dollars, equivalent to 8,800 % of the current Salvadoran GDP.

There are around 50 million ounces of gold in the subsoil, equivalent to 132 billion dollars at current value. But it’s not just gold and silver, he said.

“According to our initial studies, we have found metals of the fourth industrial revolution, such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, which are used to make batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage,” he claimed.

Rare earth minerals, used for advanced electronics, wind turbines and electric vehicle motors, as well as platinum, palladium and iridium to produce hydrogen and catalytic converters, among others, have also been detected, he added.

Bukele said there will always be environmental impacts in any development project, but they can be minimised. As his New Ideas party controls the Legislative Assembly, it would be very easy for him to revive mining in El Salvador.

An anti-mining banner at a church in El Salvador. Social mobilisation against mining projects has been key in trying to stop the operations of these consortiums and prevent soil and water contamination in the communities. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Cheerful accounts

“The president is making happy accounts of the supposed economic benefits that would be obtained, but he is not accounting for the real damage that would be done to the ecosystems,” said Calles, a Salvadoran who has been fighting against the mines for years.

He added that when the ban on mining in the country was being discussed, Bukele was already involved in politics, and knew there were studies showing that the industry was unfeasable in El Salvador because of its negative impacts on water, soil and people’s health.

“I don’t know where he gets the idea that the impacts will be less. What we know is that mining extraction techniques have not changed significantly, and cyanide, for example, is still being used,” he said. This is a chemical compound that, if misused or unintentionally leached into bodies of water, can be lethal.

Central America’s experience with the extractive industry is negative and long-standing, as in other regions of the world.

At a forum organised in 2009 in San José, Costa Rica, by the Latin American Water Tribunal, the regional experiences of open-pit mining in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Peru were analysed and testimonies were heard about the adverse effects in these countries.

These included testimonies from representatives of the Honduran Association of Non-Governmental Organisations and the Environmental Committee of the Siria Valley, where the San Martín mining project, run by Minerales Entre Mares de Honduras, was operating at the time. It was shut down in 2008.

In 2022, the international organisation Oxfam stated that the mine left behind “a trail of complaints about human health (…), as well as reports of contamination and destruction of flora, fauna and local ecosystems; economic, social and cultural damage to the communities”.

Meanwhile, in late 2023, Panama ordered the closure of the largest copper mine in Central America, operated by Minera Panama, a subsidiary of Canada’s First Quantum Minerals. This came after the courts ruled that the concession contract was unconstitutional.

The closure was the result of massive social protests, due to allegations of serious environmental contamination, and led the government to promote a law establishing moratorium on mining activity in the country for an indefinite period of time.

In Guatemala, social mobilization led to court rulings that stopped the country’s main mining projects.

“The most emblematic projects have been suspended by the Constitutional Court, whose members, although corrupt, accepted that the companies never complied with two fundamental requirements: providing information to the community and holding citizen consultations,” Julio González, of the Madreselva Collective, told IPS from Guatemala City.

González added that these include the nickel mine owned by the Solway Investment Group, located in the municipality of El Estor, and El Escobal, owned by the Canadian company Pan American Silver, near San Rafael Las Flores, both in the east of the country.

The Progreso VII Derivada mine, known as La Puya, owned by Exploraciones Mineras de Guatemala, in the central-south department of Guatemala, as well as Cerro Blanco, owned by Canadian Bluestone Resources, located in the vicinity of Asunción Mita, in the eastern department of Jutiapa, have also been added to the list.

González questioned the authenticity of the environmental impact studies carried out by the mining consortiums, as they are based on a specific, very restricted geographical area.

“The biggest lie are these environmental impact studies, carried out in the so-called areas of influence, which is the place where the mine is located and the three or four surrounding villages, but the water, which is going to be contaminated, goes far beyond this area of influence,” he said.

On El Salvador’s backtracking on the possible reactivation of mining, he added: “What I see is Bukele’s alignment with the hegemonic economy, which is not exercised by the US government but by US corporations”.

He had argued his first term did not count as he did not serve a full five-year term.

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Written by Naja Bentzen.

In recent decades, the digital information sphere has become the public space for debate: the place where people access information, and form and express opinions. Over the past 10 years, global information ecosystems have also increasingly become geostrategic battlegrounds. Authoritarian state actors are testing and fine-tuning techniques to manipulate public opinion and foment divisions and tension, to undermine democratic societies and open democracy as a system.

At the same time, the geostrategic rivalry overlaps more and more with corporate geopolitics: the digital information sphere has become a contested territory for large corporations competing fiercely to lead the development and roll-out of new technologies – with artificial intelligence (AI) as a game changer in this quest. These innovations come with risks: information manipulation campaigns facilitated by generative AI magnify threats to democratic information ecosystems.

Strategic and systemic pressures on the open information environment are set to increase. This makes efforts to uphold universal values in the digital information environment – values such as human rights and, in particular, freedom of expression – even more essential.

The increased focus on information integrity by multilateral organisations makes room for coordinating actions to boost the resilience of information ecosystems more broadly, safeguarding human rights. This concept ties in with key parts of the work planned under the future ‘European democracy shield’. The broad scope of information integrity covers a number of activities that are already under way in the EU – including measures and legislation launched in recent years – and offers new paths for coalitions and partnerships.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Information integrity online and the European democracy shield‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Source : © European Union, 2024 - EP

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Das SCP ist eine Längsschnittstudie, die vielfältige Aspekte des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts in Deutschland erfasst. Es basiert auf einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsstichprobe aus deutschen Einwohnermelderegistern und wurde 2021 zum ersten Mal durchgeführt. Die jährliche Befragung richtet sich nicht nur an die ausgewählten Personen, sondern auch an alle anderen erwachsenen Haushaltsmitglieder. Das SCP wird vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) gefördert. Es wird in Kooperation vom Forschungsinstitut Gesellschaftlicher Zusammenhalt (FGZ) und dem Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) geleitet und vom Umfrageinstitut infas durchgeführt.

Das SCP 2021/22 W1:

Der Datensatz „German Social Cohesion Panel 2021/22 – Wave 1“ (DOI: 10.60532/scp.2021_22.w1.v1) enthält Befragungsdaten und generierte Indikatoren des ersten und zweiten Teils der ersten Panelwelle. Er enthält Antworten von 13.053 Ankerpersonen aus dem Melderegister und von 3.974 erwachsenen Haushaltsmitgliedern, die von den Ankerpersonen benannt und anschließend befragt wurden.

Zugang zu den Daten:

Der SUF kann von allen Postdocs, die einer wissenschaftlichen Einrichtung angehören, am Forschungsdatenzentrum des FGZ (FDZ-FGZ) bestellt werden. Bitte richten Sie zu diesem Zweck einen Nutzer*innen-Account unter https://fgz-risc-data.de/registrierung/ ein, falls noch nicht geschehen. Mit diesem Konto können Sie in Zukunft alle Scientific Use Files bestellen, die im FDZ-FGZ verfügbar sind.

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Wir möchten darauf hinweisen, dass wir die Daten ausschließlich für wissenschaftliche Zwecke zur Verfügung stellen.