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We are here to stay!
What is environmental justice?
Environmental justice is basically an issue of equal protection
having the right to clean air, clean water, food, that is safe.
Environmental justice is basically a human right.
Governments and industries should not provide quality services
and good clean environments for one group and not providing for another.
It is equality or equity in the reasonable use of the elements of nature.
Nowadays we believe that environmental justice
is one of the main challenges humanity has to face,
because in the global world natural resources are getting exhausted.
We are still consuming more and more
and this results in environmental injustices,
so it is creating impoverishment of people who live in worse and worse conditions
in terms of human rights but also in terms of access to a healthy environment.
We start from recognising that this planet is not only inhabited by humans,
but human beings live thanks to the planet,
from what the Earth produces,
from water,
from the other species.
I believe that we can build up environmental justice.
[Constituents of ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE]
And these issues of environmental justice have four elements.
They are the distribution, recognition, participation and capabilities
for having not only a decent life but also a free life.
There is an unequal DISTRIBUTION that concentrates benefits in a few and disproportionally shifts environmental and social costs to deprived communities
DISTRIBUTION
We are in the southern part of Bogota city, Ciudad Bolívar town.
This is a marginal town.
It was developed in slope areas in the mountains of southern Bogota
and many of these slopes were exploited for quarries.
The corporations that have carried out extraction
were initially Colombian companies,
Diamantex and Central de Mezclas.
Since more or less 1995 these firms sold the rights
to Cemex (Mexico)
and to Holcim (Switzerland).
Another transnational organisation that has always been exploiting the quarries
is the Vatican through the Archdiocese of Bogota.
Another issue is the illegal extraction here was
done by the National Army in properties of the Artillery School.
In the past, the Spaniards arrived to get hold of the wealth of our country.
Now it is the same.
Keep on, keep on, because they are already here.
They keep exploiting, exploiting, advancing, advancing.
Then, what?
If this continues, the wealth is for others and we stay the same,
we do not get anything.
The opinion of the people is divided.
For some, this is due to the employment ...
The company profited from the people's need.
This is simply to sell our work, our manpower,
for a miserable coin.
What is happening in Naples
is the example of an emblematic case of environmental injustice
because the waste management done by the Government
is affecting the local population.
Moreover, this management has links with organised crime in Naples
and in the Campania region.
This means that a lot of money and many businesses
are done with waste management.
This issue should be managed by public administrations
with the aim of protecting the health of the people.
But the landfills, the incinerators,
all the measures taken to manage the increasing amounts of garbage in this region,
are against the people's health,
against local communities
and against the Italian laws.
Lots of the waste that is in Naples does not come from Naples.
It is waste coming from the North of Italy and from Northern Europe.
A great amount is toxic waste of industries from North.
This is a clear example
of the debt that the industries from the North have with the Campania territory.
It is an emblematic example.
People are dying due to cancer,
people cannot eat the products of the region anymore.
The impacts are evident.
I am certain that the polluting companies,
which earn lots of money thanks to pollution...
Because one should think about it in this way:
it is a sort of inverted spiral.
A company pollutes, and with that pollution it gets money.
When it earns money, it can pay for corruption
and corruption brings about impunity.
Impunity guarantees then more pollution and thus the spiral keeps growing.
The only way that I see to stop this,
based on the facts,
is jailing the polluters,
jailing those that make money with the pollution.
Because you need to think this.
An open-pit mining project is not going to be promoted in Switzerland.
And this is not because there are no mountains to exploit there,
but because one does not make money there,
because the pollution standards are very strict.
And they come to do it in Latin America,
where they are received with open arms
and where nobody controls anything, or corruption buys officials.
Therefore I think that the only way to stop this
is by jailing the owners of the corporations.
The reason for injustice is the lack of social and political RECOGNITION of those affected, which manifests itself by disregarding, individually and collectively, certain communities and cultures
RECOGNITION
What happens in Temacapulin occurs in many places in the world.
It is a huge injustice between a company with certain interests,
wanting to extract water from Los Altos de Jalisco,
and to bring it to León,
reportedly to the shoe industry but in general it is for the entire city,
at the cost of flooding a village that has no fault,
of relatively poor people,
where there is even a basilica from the 17th-18th century
and where there are also hot springs.
Then without any mercy,
the water will be exploited in favour of some interests,
sacrificing some other people.
The construction company is Spanish, Esther Koplowitz's FCC.
Then the question is not only if some people win and others lose,
but also if those who lose have a voice,
if they reach public opinion with enough strength,
who can represent them,
if they have public recognition.
I have said to our politicians
that they have power because of us and that their legal
and civic duty is to support us,
in the good times, in the bad time and the worst times.
And not to abuse us and not to step on us like cockroaches.
Because we are not cockroaches,
because we have the same rights as thousands.
Yes, we are only a few people but,
as long as there is one of us,
we have the same rights as the others.
Here, we are defenceless.
With which means does one fight?
If they are rich, rich, rich,...
and us, with which means do we fight?
If we do not count on the government's support,
if the government opened the doors for them to enter freely.
Neither communities were taken into account,
nor the damages that will occur in our region.
The subsidised are the major entrepreneurs,
the government gives them subsidies.
And us, what? Nothing. We cannot work. We cannot get subsidies from anywhere.
Why? Because we are poor?
Now, the land use system of this country,
We have only two land use systems:
one, town planning and two, farming.
Despite the fact that pastoralism holds eighty percent of Kenya's land mass,
pastoralism is not recognised as a land use system.
Now that you are trying to divide a portion of land between two communities
who own land with different tenure arrangements,
definitely you are calling for conflict.
And this has been a cause of conflict for communities that live in the delta.
Not because the people hate each other,
but because the policies foster them.
Just as the sugar project
tends to invite these communities to go against each other.
This is our area and yet the people are living as if this area is not thiers
So the major problem is that we want the title deeds,
we want to own our own land.
So the land belongs to the people.
If any project comes, it comes to the community.
We know. It is guaranteed.
We are giving the land for ourselves but not any other person.
The right distribution and proper recognition depend on the effective right to PARTICIPATION, formalised through transparent democratic political processes.
PARTICIPATION
Tibetan rangelands have historically been inhabited by nomads.
The Tibetan word 'drokpa',
generally used to refer to nomad populations,
literally means 'the pasture in the mountains'.
The Tibetan nomads have based their existence on a tight connexion with the Tibetan grasslands,
their ecological cycles and the animals that they herd, mainly Yaks and sheep.
However, after 1958,
when the Chinese government took direct control of Tibet,
the Tibetan nomads' life has changed drastically.
Since the beginning of its regime in Tibet,
China has implemented policies that have radically changed
the economic activity, the social metabolism, the institutional
and social structure of Tibetan nomads.
In the last fifty years, Tibetan nomads
have been subject to very different policies
that range from collectivisation of their lands and herds,
to replacement of herding with agricultural production.
Moreover, since the early 2000s,
the Chinese government largely has implemented a resettlement plan
with the objective to sedentarise the vast majority of the nomadic population
in the Tibetan areas.
The plan has affected more that 400 000 people until now.
The purpose of the plan is to modernise their lives and modes of production,
with the rationale that the nomadic population is backward
and that the herding activities produce negative ecological outcomes.
The Chinese government blames the nomads for their herding activity,
claiming that it provokes rangeland degradation
and therefore represents the main ecological threat
to the most important watersheds of China.
The nomads generally complain about or don't agree with the resettlement programs,
but the Chinese government gives no consideration to their traditional ecological knowledge.
Not does it give any space for their participation
and representation of their views in the government,
politics and decision making on the governance of the rangelands.
However, the Tibetan nomads are afraid to contest any Chinese government decisions.
The nomads perceive a great deal of insecurity on their future.
They feel that they may be deprived of their lands at any time
and that they do not have the rights or instruments to resist any possible change.
Particularly, in Salama location we have no information at all.
Those that can go [to meetings], go.
But there are elderly people who cannot go
and they are the saddest ones.
Because of their homes, because of so many things that we have here.
Injustice suppresses CAPABILITIES of communities to flourish and continue the life they want to have.They no longer have material bases to live according to their own choices
CAPABILITIES
What are you carrying, brother?
[...] transgenic soy, [...] poison, and the poison that it uses is very powerful.
We are surrounded by chemicals, surrounded by ... Glyphosate.
Because Glyphosate is what is killing us.
In the aboriginal colony La Primavera,
the brothers themselves allowed the sojeros [soybean planters] to enter.
We are leasing the land to them in exchange for diseases.
To get out of this?
I do not think that we can continue to have this life,
because we already are swallowing chemicals all the time.
Chemical work like this,
it not like a person that is points you with a gun.
The children run to another house because they are afraid of the poison.
I don't know why people are so afraid to denounce,
to protest against this plant that contains a product that is very dangerous for our health.
Same form animals, for us and for everything we have.
This we do not want anymore.
The claim must be firm and positive: we do not want it anymore.
I wish that the owners of this soy leave.
I do not know whether they are multinationals or the provincial government,
we don't know.
But we ask them to go,
that they don't kill more indigenous people,
that they don't take our land anymore because of this soy.
They are multinationals and have money.
What if an indigenous person dies?
For them, it is one less Indian.
But we will not allow this,
because we are also human beings, like they are.
We are going to pick a hell of a project here that it very wrong to us.
We reject the project, any project done in Delta, we reject it.
It is very illegal to us.
We are happy all together, we want to stay as a generation of our people.
We don't change our culture, to any project.
And right now the fear about the mining company.
I don't know ... What is going to happen to us?
I was speaking the other day with a priest from Tepatitlan and he told me:
"You are very brave, you are going to stay there ...".
Yes, we are here to stay!
SOCIAL MOBILISATION
I have been chanting a lot, these past few days,
and my chant has been: 'Stop, stop, stop, stop'.
There is a movement.
That is a movement for justice, and peace, and fairness and equality.
I am going to create a song to be able to exist.
To give back the Earth to men and to survive.
To heal the heart, and to let the mind flow.
To raise the spirit and let it reach the end.
I was not born without a cause.
I was not born without faith.
My heart beats strong
to yell to those who do not feel
and thus pursue happiness.
I was not born without a cause
I was not born without faith.
My heart beats strong
My heart beats strong
to yell to those who do not feel
to yell to those who do not feel
and thus pursue happiness.
and thus pursue happiness.
It is a birthright.
None of these actions will be successful unless there is a mobilized community behind them.
The mobilized community demonstrating, coming out in the media,
appearing in the newspapers, with their roadblocks,
is not enough to stop environmental injustice.
We see huge demonstrations on the issue of global warming
and everything continues as before.
We must achieve a real alliance between social and community sectors, NGOs,
and so on, and the prosecutors who can lead actions against environmental crimes.
When we act together we are successful.
We begin to find in the country's social struggles
that the demand for water,
the demand for a healthy environment and for clean air,
the struggles against biopiracy, against mining companies,
the demand of the people to defend their territory in particular,
are beginning to be recognised.
We call them struggles for environmental justice.
AND ARE THERE SUCCESSFUL?
The struggle of the peasants from the Paramo del Almorzadero
has been going on for over twenty years
and it has prevented coal mining in their territory.
There are also the struggles of the paramo de Santurbán,
an emblematic case in this country,
because it mobilised a whole region, a whole department,
and it is event proposing public policies from the local level,
for instance through public consultation.
We were in a fight that required that people were listened to.
Legal initiatives are very important, they are decisive.
For example, it was a legal initiative which allowed to repeat the public audience.
Historically, another very important case was the fight of the U'Wa people
that became not only a national but an international myth,
because it incorporated spiritual elements.
They said that oil is the blood of the Earth
and therefore it should remain in their territory.
SUCCESS STORIES IN THIS DOCUMENTARY
KENYA
In October 2012, the Tana Delta was included in the Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance.
Therefore, it should not be exploited by mega-projects.
In 2011 the company G4 Industries Ld. had already removed its project of Jatropha plantation for biofuels.
MEXICO
In 2013, the Governor of Jalisco announced technical changes in
the Zapotillo dam project that would prevent the flooding of Temacapulin.
Everything true comes back.
The truth always returns.
If there was a time that was good,
if there was a time of joy,
if there was life,
I know that one day it will come back.
Everything true comes back.
The truth always returns.
If there was a time that was good,
if there was a time of joy,
if there was life,
I know that one day it will come back.
Like the tide, that comes and goes,
like the moon, which is and it is not,
like the smile, lives in the soul,
for always there, it will remain.
Everything returns
again...
Everything returns
again...
You have been humiliating the city for twenty days,
we are all praying with our hands up and bowed head.
The older ones are cursing when they hear your name,
because they know you're strong and them too old to fight.
But, I am going to wait for you at the border,
to shout at you and see if you I can keep you outside.
There are sight but at the border I will wait
to throw four stones because I don't have anything.
to throw four stones because I don't have anything.
to throw four stones because I don't have anything.
And I am my father's and my mother I am,
I come from where I've thrown and no longer be or where I go,
And I am my father's and my mother I am,
my family my estate my people and you come your and I miss
Documentary inspired with our recognition in research on environmental justice B.Bullard Robert and David Schlosberg, and the resilience of communities affected by environmental injustices.