Saving Iceland

Orissa is the most mineral rich state in India. It is green and fertile, a patchwork of tiny fields and thickly forested mountains with waterfalls tumbling over their red rocks. Like many of the world’s remaining areas of natural fertility, these mountains are largely populated by tribal peoples, which in India are called Adivasis – meaning literally ‘the original inhabitants’ – and are thought to be one of the oldest civilisations in the world. One quarter of the Orissan population are tribal, making it also the ‘poorest’ state in India according to the World Bank. But its figures judge well-being only by monetary exchange, and fail to mention that there has never been a famine recorded here, and that many Adivasis rarely use money, living in balance with the mountains, streams and forests which provide everything they need. In thanks for natures’ providence many Adivasi cultures worship the mountains on which they depend as Gods, and vow to protect their bountiful natural systems from damage. Some of the Orissan mountains are among the last ancient forest capped hills in India, thanks to the determination of tribal inhabitants against British colonial efforts to log them.

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Aluminium is a metal that many take for granted in hundreds of artifacts but fewer understand where it comes from and its real costs. Behind the shining image of aluminium is a dark side of environmental catastrophes, political manipulations and cultural genocide.

Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel written by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das is an extraordinary book that explores the aluminium industry over its entire life cycle, from the mining of Bauxite to its various end uses.

With a foreward by Arundathi Roy it focuses on the Adivasis struggle against  mining activities in the state of Odisha (former Orissa). There industrialization is imposed under the guise of development, growth and poverty alleviation, a process that has already displaced thousands of people and destroyed tribal society‘s structures. The book traces a hidden history of how one country after another has swallowed promises of prosperity and plunged into a cycle of exploitation and unrepayable debt. One of the real contributions of Out of This Earth is the commendable effort of the authors to painstakingly trace the forces that actually drive and control the global aluminium industry – how it is driven by a cartel that fuses mining companies, investment bankers, government deals, metals traders and arms manufacturers. Read More

Al Jazeera has obtained the first footage of a massive bauxite mining project in central Vietnam which has created one of the biggest civil protest movements the country has ever seen. Vietnamese media have been banned from reporting on the proposed mine, which critics say will create major environmental damage, for little economic benefit.

Vietnam holds the third largest bauxite reserves worldwide and is increasingly subject to China’s growing desire for natural resources through its controlling diplomatic relationship with Vietnam. The $460 million project, which has already begun, is being carried out by Chinalco, a chinese aluminium company who own 10% shares in Rio Tinto, and Vinacomin, the Vietnamese partner.

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In Guinea, West Africa, people have stopped trains from Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG) that move bauxite from mines to the harbors. Bauxite is the major raw material for aluminium production and Guinea is the world’s biggest bauxite exporter. The protests started yesterday morning, October 31st and have been increasing since than.
Protesters have been seeking out officialdom´s houses, robbed them and put fire to many houses. At least one woman died during riots that resulted from the actions. Today, the protesters have managed to stop many  trains interrupting the transport of bauxite, which is the country’s biggest export product. Read More

INDIA – Unfazed by the global economic slowdown, international mining behemoth Rio Tinto is seeking to develop bauxite mines as a prelude to investing about $2.2 billion for a greenfield alumina refinery and 250.000 tonne smelter plant in India, its top official in the country said.
“We are interested in getting bauxite mines which may enable us to further the process of setting up the alumina refinery and smelter plant,” Rio Tinto’s India Managing Director Nik Senapati said while unfurling his company’s plans in the country. The London-listed company is believed to be the world’s biggest producer of alumina and aluminium. Read More

CONAKRY, GUINEA – At least one person was killed when police in Guinea cleared protesters from a railway carrying bauxite for Russian aluminium company RUSAL, police and industry sources said on Friday the 10th of October. RUSAL, after it’s merger with Glencore, is the largest owner of Century Aluminum, which owns the Grundartangi smelter in Iceland and has been preparing to construct a new smelter at Helguvik, south of Reykjavik. The trains, which have been blocked for five days, had still not restarted, the sources added. Read More

“Do you know that your wheelchair is made out of aluminium?” said a police officer to one of those who stopped work in Helguvík this summer. Thereby he swamped all the arguments of the opposition to aluminium for good, didn’t he? Shortly after the publication of Jakob Björnsson’s (former director of energy affairs) article about the singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir and her usage of aluminium, the editors of Morgunblaðið got ready and wrote an editorial where it says that the opposers of aluminium are probably not self-consistent most of the time. Most of them use aluminium everyday and even Saving Iceland cooks in aluminium pots and uses aluminium polse to hold up their tents. “Hypocrisy” said Morgunblaðið.

This critique is far from being new. It has systematically been used against those who object to the further build-up of heavy industry here in Iceland, the destruction of Iceland’s nature for energy production, the destruction of ecosystems worldwide because of bauxite mining, and energy realization to a company that prides itself of its collaboration with the U.S. millitary. In addition to when aluminium opposers are all said to be wanting to move the Icelandic society back to the turf huts and build the country’s economy on picking mountain grass, this has been the main criticism.

No matter how many times it has been pointed out that at least 30% of all produced aluminium is used for the arms industry; no matter how many times it has been pointed out how much aluminium ends as a land-filling after having functions as single use drinking facilities; no matter that the context between low energy prices and the fact how easy it is for us to produce aluminium, use it once, throw it away and produce more – still we are being told that we are not self-consistent.

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Alcoa is clearing Western Australia’s old growth Jarrah forests at an incredible rate. Vast areas of State Forest within an hour’s drive south east of Perth, Western Australia, are being devastated by bauxite mining. Jarrah forests are unique and under threat from many areas. They need to be preserved, not cleared. Alcoa’s present mineral lease covers 4,898 sq km of State forest. The current lease extends from Wundowie to the Preston River, south of Collie, plus a pocket at Julimar near Bindoon. Alcoa’s lease allows them access to the bauxite from 1961 to 2044. The Darling Range bauxite is the lowest grade ore mined on a commercial scale anywhere in the world. At present the royalty Alcoa is required to pay is just 1.65% on the value of alumina sales. Alcoa’s refineries at Kwinana, Pinjarra and Wagerup produce some 16 percent of world demand for alumina. Read More

An overview of various videos showing the effects of bauxite mining and refining in Jamaica. Note that references to Kaiser and St Ann’s refer to Century Aluminum’s subsidiary activities in Jamaica, while Winalco is a subsidiary of ALCOA. Read More

Last Sunday, an anonymous journalist from Morgunblaðið wrote about Saving Iceland under the title “Action Groups and Cells”. He talked about Saving Iceland’s upcoming action camp in Hellisheiði and brougth forward a list of actions that people could anticipate from those attending the camp this summer, i.e. “try to get the police into a fight, chain themselves to whatever is near to them, do minimum sabotage, disturb companies’ legal operations or public traffic”. According to him, this kind of behaviour has characterized Saving Iceland’s activities for the last years.

We at Saving Iceland, use direct action and civil disobedience in our actions against capitalism in the form of Iceland’s heavy industrialization – and we do not deny that. Although we do not chain ourselves to whatever is around us, but to machinery, machinery which is being used to destroy the nature. Thus we stop the destruction for some limited time. One does not lock lock on to a huge machine “just because” – one does it because of ideals and with a spirit of resistance. Read More