http://kwsnet.com/weblog/2003/12/25.html#a1319
The Troubled Marriage of Environmentalists and Oil Companies CorpWatch by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero 22 Dec 03 The American environmental group Conservation International (CI) and other environmental organizations are actively collaborating with oil corporations in hopes of ameliorating the impact of their activities on local ecosystems. But observers fear that the cozy relationship that these groups have with the U.S. government and oil companies raises serious questions regarding their independence and warn that it can undermine the grassroots work of popular movements and native peoples that aim to stop new oil drilling altogether. They also hold that it raises some serious issues regarding national sovereignty in the Global South. Puerto Rican biologist Jorge Fern‡ndez-Porto, who has worked in Guatemala's PetŽn rainforest where CI manages the biosphere reserve, says that the marriage between environmental groups and oil companies "will only give birth to mutant offspring. In the meantime, diversity and natural systems will be devastated, with the latter enriching themselves and the former picking up crumbs." But groups like CI dispute these claims, stating that such alliances allow for leverage that environmentalist groups would otherwise not have. "We believe it is crucial to engage oil and gas companies and work with them to avoid, mitigate and compensate impacts on biodiversity in these areas," CI media relations director Jim Wyss told CorpWatch. "If left to operate in a vacuum, there is little hope to encourage these companies to take the necessary steps to fundamentally change how they operate." CI, the Nature Conservancy, the Smithsonian Institution and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature are partners with oil companies Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco in the Energy and Biodiversity Initiative (EBI). The EBI bills itself as: "a partnership designed to produce practical guidelines, tools and models to improve the environmental performance of energy operations, minimize harm to biodiversity, and maximize opportunities for conservation wherever oil and gas resources are developed." EBI works closely with the Biodiversity Working Group, an entity established by the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association and the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. It was selected by the International Chamber of Commerce and the United Nations Environment Program as one of the winners of the 2002 World Summit Business Awards for Sustainable Development Partnerships in the Johannesburg Earth Summit. To some environmentalists, this collaboration is simply outrageous and unacceptable, especially when considering that one of the companies involved is Chevron Texaco, currently on trial in Ecuador for its environmental crimes. The EBI "will result in enormous impacts regarding biodiversity conservation, paving the way to environmental impunity and weakening the efforts carried out by local and national organizations to make these companies take full responsibility over the impacts they have already caused", said OilWatch, an international environmental network, in an open letter in October 2003. In the letter, addressed to the environmental groups in the EBI, OilWatch states that the measures proposed by the Initiative have already been tried unsuccessfully, have weakened conservation legislation and have also resulted in abuses to the sovereignty of the countries involved. Every time they are proposed they "are then not applied, are not mandatory and have no relation whatsoever with the real environmental behavior of companies. No commitment is made in relation to protected areas or biodiversity." [Also see Conservation at All Costs: How Industry-Backed Environmentalism Creates Violent Conflict Among Indigenous Peoples by Shefa Siegel (CorpWatch, 22 Dec 03).] Biofuels at Journey to Forever http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html List messages are archived at the Info-Archive at NNYTech: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuels-biz/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
