• 42 per cent of Africa’s greenhouse gases are emitted by South Africa. So you would think that South Africa is a fairly developed nation with good employment rates. Not so.
• 41 per cent of South Africa’s potential workforce is employed, according to Advorp Holding’s chief executive Richard Pike.
• 16 per cent is the total amount of energy consumed by South Africa’s residents.
• 44 per cent of South Africa’s energy is used by 36 companies. Industry, mining, agriculture and commerce use more than 70 per cent of all energy produced.
• 11 per cent of South Africa’s energy is used by one company, the Australian multinational BHP Billiton.
• 9.7 billion South African Rand was the loss that Eskom, the South African power utility, made because of the provision of cheap electricity to BHP Billiton, according to Eskom’s annual report, March 2010.
• 50 per cent below cost is what BHP Billiton paid for this electricity, which is around 1.7 US cents per kWh.
• Four million homes cook without electricity, according to the Citizens United for Renewable Energies and Sustainability (CURES).
• 2.5 million homes do not have electricity.
• Ten million people experienced periodic electricity cut-offs between 1994 and 2002, according to Queens University researcher David McDonald.

This is not a story of a democratic state, but rather of a state that has failed to deliver to its people. It is a state that is managed for the benefit of multinational corporations.
Energy sovereignty
It is against this backdrop that people have to take control over their own energy provision. As in the case of the Nyeleni Declaration on food sovereignty, energy sovereignty should put those ‘who produce, distribute and consume’ energy at the heart of the energy systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations.
Viewed in a global context, one realises that the underdevelopment of the greater population of South Africa is not a mere hangover from apartheid. It is an active process of the development choices made by the South African government today. This development trajectory is facilitated by global finance and the ongoing development paradigm of extraction of Africa’s resources for the benefit of consumption in the global North.
It is common knowledge that 80 per cent of the World Bank’s oil extraction investment in Africa is for Northern consumption. In South Africa, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank’s £4 billion investment in Eskom’s coal-fired power stations facilitates the same process.
With the lack of energy access by the majority of people in South Africa, the battle to avoid catastrophic climate change is deeply intertwined with the battle to achieve access to clean, affordable energy. Because people do not have access to energy from Eskom, they are forced to burn coal indoors. Coupling this domestic pollution with heavy industrial pollution is a recipe for disaster.
Consider the fact that from May to August 2010, the South African ambient air pollution standards protecting health were exceeded on 570 occasions in the Highveld. People’s right to an environment that is not harmful to one’s health and wellbeing was therefore broken on 570 occasions. This is not a surprise in this area considering the presence of ten Eskom coal-fired power stations and Sasol’s synfuel plant, which has the dubious distinction of being the highest single source greenhouse gas emitter in the world. So while all this energy production is around people, directly impacting upon their health, they get very little of the energy. Access to energy is a struggle.
It is in this context that South Africans need another energy future. An energy future that ensures decent levels of affordable basic services and infrastructure to be enjoyed by all as a basic human right – not only by ‘consumers’ who can afford them. An energy future where individuals and families are able to access, at minimum, the most basic necessities of human life, starting with nutritious food, clean water, safe and comfortable accommodation, and a clean healthy environment where people live and work. And these necessities must be nurtured by the very way in which people live and work, not undermined by them.
To deliver the above, the people of South Africa, not multinational corporations, must be at the centre of energy delivery. People have to start taking ownership of how energy is produced – not only the physical production but the democratic decisions on how production and distribution is organised.
Hoodwink no more
The South Africa leadership cannot continue to hoodwink its people and the world. Its Copenhagen offer to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a 34 per cent ‘deviation’ below baseline by 2020 and 42 per cent below baseline by 2025 is based upon an assumption of growth without constraint. According to the South African Long-Term Mitigation Strategy (LTMS), this will take South Africa’s greenhouse gas emissions from 440 million tons in 2003 to 1,600 million tons by 2050. This is an inaccurate and politically naive claim of carbon rights it does not have. Based upon present figures, South Africa already reached 500 million tons in 2008. Its commitment to 42 per cent renewables in the future energy development mix only translates to 9 per cent renewables in 2030.
The government also throws figures around about how many millions of people have been connected to the electricity grid. It presents the installation of prepaid meters as a panacea, so that people can ‘better manage’ their consumption. In reality, this means that people can be the agents of their own disconnection when they do not have enough money to pay for the most expensive electricity in the country.
South Africans have to start challenging this political greenwash and start working on systems that give them independence from big power producers such as Eskom. This would mean getting small local municipalities to start thinking of local energy development for their own needs. It would mean calling for better housing so that in winter people do not lose energy through leaking roofs and poorly constructed state homes. It would mean that individual households get access to affordable energy and don’t have to pay up to seven times more for their electricity than industry does. And it would mean ensuring that industry pays the real price of energy and doesn’t continue to get the cheapest electricity in the world at the expense of the people. n
Bobby Peek is director of the South African environmental justice organisation groundWork (Friends of the Earth South Africa)

Like much else under the coalition government, Britain’s nuclear energy programme was set in motion by New Labour and continues unchanged, despite being opposed in the Lib Dem manifesto. Yet the case for nuclear is more overwhelming in its persistence than its attractiveness as a proposition. Nuclear reactors remain prohibitively expensive to build, notoriously subject to delay, expensive to secure, and impossible to clean up with any certainty. So why do they continue to attract the support of politicians once they gain power?

The lights that never go out

Like so much else in energy politics, fear of supply shortages is a crucial part of the explanation. ‘I have no intention of the lights going out on my watch,’ said the coalition’s energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne in August, as he stated his support for a new reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset, scheduled to open in 2018.

Yet this fails to tell the whole story. Huhne’s 2018 estimate is already a year later than the original plan for Hinkley, which is only at the ‘pre-application’ stage of the planning process. Long delays are the norm in nuclear development, and while the most optimistic estimates suggest that a new station could be ready by the end of the decade, the House of Commons trade and industry committee reported in 2006 that: ‘Experience in the UK to date has shown . . . an average construction period for existing nuclear power stations of almost 11 years.’

In 2007, the Department of Trade and Industry reported that a third of the UK’s electricity generation capacity would be retired over the next two decades. This would include two-thirds of the existing nuclear capacity (8GW), and almost a third of currently operating coal plants (another 8GW). Together with the projected growth in energy demand, the 2007 energy white paper estimated that the UK would need to add up to 35GW to the grid, with two-thirds of this already in place by 2020.

The bottom line is simple: a nuclear power programme that is intended to replace existing capacity will come too late to replace that capacity. So why, then, the enthusiasm for new nukes?

Playing the carbon card

In the aftermath of Chernobyl, the abiding image of the nuclear industry was the blue glow of an apocalyptic meltdown. In recent years, however, the nuclear industry has bathed itself in a green glow of climate friendliness. This greenwashing of nuclear power as a ‘solution’ to climate change is widespread.

Nuclear energy is not ‘carbon neutral’, although it is often treated as such. Uranium mining, enrichment and transport, as well as the construction and decommissioning of nuclear facilities, generate significant carbon dioxide emissions that are at least double those of wind power, according to Germany’s Öko-Institut. Yet these emissions are mostly outsourced, which keeps them off the radar of political decision makers whose field of policy vision seems to reach only as far as the UK coastlines where most nuclear reactors will be located.

That said, it is indisputably the case that nuclear power produces far fewer greenhouse gases than coal or gas, its main rivals as far as the large energy companies are concerned. On every other environmental measure, however, nuclear power remains as dirty as it is risky.

As Greenpeace puts it, ‘The UK now has enough radioactive waste to fill the Royal Albert Hall five times over.’ Despite a series of government reviews on decommissioning, there is still no long-term means to deal with radioactive waste safely, ensuring that it won’t contaminate water supplies or leak back into the environment and food chain.

This risk to future generations should be seen against a backdrop of the massive environmental damage that is already being caused. From Kazakhstan to Canada, uranium mining leaves a legacy of polluted land and water supplies. To produce around 25 tonnes of uranium, the amount needed to supply an average sized reactor for a year, entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and more than 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings – which remain polluted for thousands of years.

On top of these environmental concerns, there remain major security risks – most notably from the stockpiling of plutonium, the key element in the creation of nuclear weapons – and significant doubts about the economic viability of nuclear power.

The numbers game

The current construction budget of Britain’s new generation of nuclear power stations is estimated at around £50 billion, but these projected costs conceal as much as they reveal.

The nuclear industry has consistently underestimated the cost of building reactors. The projected costs of 75 nuclear reactors in the US amounted to $45 billion, but the actual costs once built were $145 billion, according to research by Greenpeace International. The high-profile Olkiluoto reactor in Finland, which was intended as the flagship of a ‘new generation’ of reactors, has seen a doubling in its estimated cost from EUR3 billion to EUR6 billion. The most recent reactor in the UK (at Sizewell B) was estimated at £1.7 billion, but ended up costing £3.7 billion.

This initial cost of building nuclear plants is way in excess of their fossil-fuel powered rivals, which poses serious questions about their economic viability. In the UK’s liberalised energy markets, the risk of investing in nuclear is simply too high, since the large upfront costs cannot necessarily be recouped in the current climate of fluctuating energy supply and prices. Studies that claim otherwise tend to manipulate the ‘discount rate’, which is the comparison between how much the plant costs, and how much money could otherwise have been accrued by leaving the money in the bank to gain interest. When proponents of nuclear power are showcasing its viability, this rate is set low. When they argue for subsidies, the rate is set higher.

The hidden hands behind the hidden hand

At present, much of the debate is focused on whether the UK government will provide public subsidies to build nuclear power stations. The coalition has continued the policy of the previous government in announcing that it won’t do so. Yet here, too, the devil lies in the detail.

The coalition agreement includes a commitment to a ‘floor price’ on the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS), which would be a thinly veiled subsidy. (The pledge also contains an implicit recognition, although a far from profound one, that the EU ETS is failing.) The rationale is that shoring up the price of carbon, which has fluctuated wildly since the inception of the EU ETS in 2005, would provide greater certainty in how to calculate the costs of pollution by fossil-fuel power stations.

The EU ETS treats nuclear as carbon-free, so it would stand to benefit from such a move. In practice, though, it looks distinctly unlikely that the government will be able to deliver on this promise in the context of an EU-wide scheme. If it does, the floor price is likely simply to be a carbon tax by another name. This, in turn, would have a far greater effect on the profitability of existing power stations than the likelihood of building new ones.

EDF, which is 85 per cent owned by the French government, is the main operator of nuclear power stations in the UK, having purchased British Energy (which runs eight of the 10 UK nuclear sites) in 2008. It is no surprise, then, that it has lobbied vociferously for a carbon floor price. It stands to gain a windfall of around £400 million per year (assuming a price of £10 per ton of CO2). If the price was set at £50 per ton, a level considered more ‘viable’ to incentivise investment in nuclear power, it would net EDF around £2 billion per year for its existing power stations.

Two even more significant subsidies already exist, moreover. As Peter Roche, of industry monitoring group No 2 Nuclear Power, explained to Red Pepper, ‘In the event of a nuclear accident, the nuclear operating companies don’t have to provide proper insurance. Beyond a certain level, the UK government underwrites the cleanup costs. Without this guarantee, or hidden subsidy, it is doubtful if anyone could afford to build new nuclear power stations.’

The costs of decommissioning existing nuclear waste have also fallen largely onto the state, as Chris Huhne lamented shortly after taking up his post as secretary of state in May. On finding a £4 billion budget hole relating to unavoidable nuclear decommissioning and waste costs, Huhne spoke of an ‘existential problem’ facing his department, which he told the Guardian was ‘not so much the department of energy and climate change, as the department of nuclear legacy and bits of other things.’

Forced choices

Huhne’s conflicted conscience on nuclear power reflects the possibility that it could emerge as a wedge issue dividing opinion within the coalition. In a statement that reads like it was scripted by Private Eye, Huhne claims that he was never anti-nuclear and was simply ‘misunderstood’. Yet as recently as November 2007, he wrote: ‘Nuclear is a tried, tested and failed technology and the government must stop putting time, effort and subsidies into reviving this outdated industry.’

However, Huhne’s recent enthusiasm should not be ‘misunderstood’ either. A quick look at the right-wing press, or the outpourings of the Adam Smith Institute, shows that Huhne remains under fire for damaging the nuclear industry. They accuse the Lib Dems of being behind the cancellation of an £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters to build nuclear power plant components, while the continued inclusion of nuclear power within the climate change levy is criticised as harming the nuclear industry. Changing the rules of this scheme, or cutting off renewable energy incentives such as the current feed-in tariff scheme, could fall within the terms of the coalition agreement without amounting to a new ‘subsidy’.

Ultimately, though, the strongest driver for new nuclear power stations is the perceived paucity of other options. Nuclear benefits from the perception that it is the worst form of energy except for all of the others. The key selling point of nuclear power is that it is a technology that is ideally suited to the provision of ‘baseload’ energy. Put simply, electricity usage fluctuates widely, but grid supply has to remain constant. Baseload is the ‘always on’ electricity production required to meet minimum levels of demand, which is supplemented by sources that are switched on and off as customer use fluctuates.

From the perspective of the energy industry, nuclear power is ideally suited to this purpose, with existing plants typically run at full throttle. Wind power, by contrast, is seen as being as fickle as the wind itself. It is too unreliable, says the industry, so even if the UK builds more turbines, these would need to be backed up by nuclear, coal or gas generation capacity. And in the case of gas, the UK government (like many of its European counterparts) is wary of over-reliance on Russia, a fear that was exacerbated by the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine in 2009.

Yet is energy supply really such a forced choice? For one thing, nuclear power is not quite the ‘always on’ bedrock of reliability that its advocates claim. Aside from routine repairs and refuelling, there have been a series of safety shutdowns in the UK, which sometimes span years.

More generally, though, the concept of always-on baseload energy at the centre of electricity production reproduces the assumption that power must be sourced from large, grid-connected power systems. While it is true that wind power is variable, no one credibly suggests that the UK switch its entire capacity to wind. Variations in one renewable technology, along with enhanced energy storage capacity, can balance out another. A diversity of smaller energy sources – not all of which need electricity grid connections – not only enhances the flexibility of the system, but also reduces the significant losses of power through transmissions networks.

More than half of UK domestic greenhouse gas emissions arise from space heating, with a further fifth coming from heating water, according to the Centre for Alternative Technology’s Zero Carbon Britain report (see Red Pepper Aug/Sep 2010). An emphasis on better building regulations, including incentives for the retrofitting and insulation of old buildings, has been proven by numerous analyses to be both faster and more cost effective than building new power generating capacity. Regulatory weaknesses – compounded by the lobby efforts of the construction industry – play a large part in preventing it from happening.

The structure of the energy industry compounds these problems. In a liberalised electricity market, it is far more difficult than in a publicly owned system to negotiate ‘demand side management’ – a bargain struck with the largest industrial users to restrict their usage at peak hours for domestic consumption. On this point, it is Brussels rather than Westminster where the battle needs to be fought to regain public control (not simply ownership) of electricity as a public good.

Ultimately, though, the UK’s energy dilemma is about far more than the choice between one technology or another. These are not shifts that will be achieved by personal footprint counting. Nor will they be achieved by polite pressure on the coalition government – although some policies, such as ‘emissions performance standards’ on power producers (a far more effective means of limiting fossil-fuel emissions than carbon markets or taxes) are certainly worth pursuing. Rather, we will need to focus on how to achieve systemic changes in how goods are produced, traded and consumed. This may sound utopian, but it merely asks that we consider how the energy transitions of the past – from wood to coal and oil – have affected how goods are valued and produced, and apply those lessons to the creation of a world beyond fossil fuels and nuclear power.

The new laws mean opening more rainforest to private corporations, a move which the government has said is in the ‘national interest’. This was an excuse for its violent military reaction against the indigenous protesters. The government, however, did not count on the strength of the resistance of the indigenous peoples. Despite the deaths of more than 50 people in clashes (according to indigenous leaders), they have stood firm and forced the resignation of the prime minister – and a presidential pledge to repeal the new laws.

Half of Peru

When people think of the Amazon, they think of Brazil, but more than half of Peru’s territory is covered by the Amazon rainforest – home to 65 ethnic groups, 14 linguistic families and diverse ways of living. Sadly, it has also become home to oil, mining and gas companies extracting the rainforest’s natural resources. Excessive water and soil pollution, the resulting local health problems and the overlap of concession lands with natural protected areas are some of the problems Peru’s indigenous peoples confront daily.

The Amazon boasts the greatest biological diversity in the world. It generates an estimated 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water. It is crucial for maintaining the climate as it regulates atmospheric gases and stabilises rainfall; it protects against desertification and serves numerous other ecological functions.

And yet, in the last four years, the area designated for oil and gas concessions has increased from about 15 per cent to 70 per cent. In April 2009, PeruPetro, the country’s national oil-licensing agency, signed contracts with international oil companies for 15 Amazonian ‘blocks’ of land.

According to a report from the Peruvian environmental organisation Derecho Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Gamboa Balbín, 2007) there are also 24 blocks of hydrocarbon extraction that overlap with indigenous land. The Spanish multinational Repsol YPF and the Brazilian company Petrobrás are operating in parts of two Matsiguenga communal reserves; the US companies Hunt Oil and Burlington are extracting fossil fuels in the Amarakaeri communal reserve and the Pucacuro reserved zone, respectively.

Such concentrated and continuous investment in dirty industries in the Amazon basin stands in complete contradiction to what investor countries, and the Peruvian government itself, should be doing to mitigate the climate crisis. They are, without doubt, aware that the oil-extraction process releases toxic by-products into local rivers, and broken pipelines and leakage result in oil spillage. In addition, the construction of roads and oil sites opens lands to land developers.

In many cases, oil and gas extraction also go hand-in-hand with corruption. Last year, a scandal revealed that some of the highest-level officials from PeruPetro and the government were soliciting bribes from a Norwegian oil company in exchange for fossil fuel concessions on indigenous territories.
While a handful of people are making a fortune from oil and gas, it is notable that there is barely any state presence or any significant investment in the areas populated by the indigenous peoples. Yet they’re the ones who bear the real burden of fossil fuel consumption. It was Alberto Fujimori, Peruvian president from the 1990s, who kick-started the neoliberal agenda in the country. Successive leaders, both the former head of state Alejandro Toledo and the current president Alan García have fully embraced it. All three governments have wilfully failed to deal with the complexities of the Amazon. While scientists are emphasising its importance as the front line in the battle against catastrophic climate change, the Peruvian government is selling off the forest for fossil fuel extraction.

Intensified conflicts

Peru is just one of many countries now in conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Different parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America are also experiencing intensified conflicts over land rights and access to natural resources – which may mark the Rubicon for a model of unsustainable extractive capitalism for the benefit of a few.

Ironically, the global climate negotiations are threatening the indigenous peoples’ way of life by seeking to expand the carbon market and to make the rainforest part of this market-based scheme. The fact that many indigenous peoples have no titles to the land they have lived on for centuries makes them an easy target and vulnerable to displacement. This not only threatens their rights and the Amazon itself, but also means that the last vestiges of an ancient way of living in harmony with nature are being destroyed. This is worth defending, not least for helping the world understand what is involved in moving to a non-carbon economy.

The Amazon is at great risk. Oil and gas companies working in the rainforest have to take much more responsibility for climate change than they do now. Their operations contribute to deforestation through the construction of roads, pipelines, and oil platforms; they cause pollution through oil extraction and transportation; and they are very much responsible for the excessive accumulation of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

Companies and governments in the North have accumulated a climate debt with the South. Now, it is payback time. A start would be for the North to stop extracting fossil fuels from the ground – and start investing in clean, community-led and renewable energy.

Joanna Cabello is a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute

Among the broad international network of those pledging solidarity with the people of Ogoniland, the most prominent are to be found more than 3,000 miles away, on a remote stretch of Ireland’s western coast. Here, the community of Erris in County Mayo is engaged in its own long-running struggle with Shell.

If Dutch-British owned Shell and its Norwegian partner Statoil have their way, a high-pressure pipeline will transport gas from the Corrib field 60 miles offshore, through Broadhaven Bay and on-land to a new £545 million refinery at Bellanboy. The issue gained international attention in September when retired school teacher and local resident, Maura Harrington, undertook a ten-day hunger strike to force a pipeline-laying ship, the Solitaire, out of Irish waters. Work had begun on the pipeline despite its on-land route not having been agreed.

Harrington explains: ‘My argument for taking this action was based on the primacy of place, encompassing the health and safety of people here, the environment, the culture. This place had to be defended whatever it took – it is a place worth fighting and dying for.’

And the Solitaire did leave, following ‘technical faults’, with Shell denying that protests in support of Harrington had influenced its decision.

Problems in the pipeline

It was a dramatic chapter in a story that stretches back to October 1996, when the Corrib field was discovered by Enterprise Energy Ireland (EEI). It was not until August 2001 that serious steps were taken towards its exploitation, when Mayo council granted EEI planning permission for a pipeline and onshore refinery. This provoked the first of many appeals to An Bord Pleanála (the Irish government’s planning appeals authority) from residents. The hearings became the second longest in the board’s history, and in April 2003 the decision was overturned.

After EEI’s transformation into Shell E&P Ireland in April 2002, however, a new application was submitted. Opposition from residents was fierce, especially over safety concerns. Because the gas would be processed on-land rather than on an offshore rig, as is usual, the pressure inside the proposed pipeline would be four times greater than that of the largest existing Bord Gais pipelines. Furthermore, the pipeline would cross boggy ground prone to landslides. Locals feel the risk of explosion is intolerably high – and Shell’s safety record worldwide does little to inspire confidence.

With the proposed refinery being the largest of its kind in Europe, there are also many potential environment problems. Emissions from four 140-feet tall chimneys will have an adverse affect on the local environment – a catchment area for the region’s water supply – and make a significant contribution to global warming. Meanwhile, waste products (including lead, arsenic and mercury) will be pumped into Broadhaven Bay, an EU Special Area of Conservation. While the development will create some new jobs for locals, others will be lost in the tourist industry if this beauty spot is blemished.

Despite the high price placed on the area by the project, Shell will likely get excellent value for money. In other parts of Europe, the state’s stake in gas and oil fields can be 50 per cent or above, as indeed it was in Ireland until 1987. Decades of ‘investor-friendly’ reforms, however, mean the Irish public will get very little at all in this case: no stake in the Corrib field and no royalties, despite the provision of 100 per cent tax write-offs on development, exploration and operating costs.

Mayo council again granted planning permission for the scheme in 2005, as did An Bord Pleanála. Shell was also granted compulsory purchase orders to deal with people living in its way – the first time such laws had been used in Ireland for a private company. According to Mike Cunningham, a former director of Statoil Exploration (Ireland), ‘No other country in the world has given such favourable terms as Ireland.’

Other avenues of resistance

Let down by the legal process and faced with a government apparently wedded to the pipeline consortium’s interests, opponents explored other avenues of resistance. Most notably, five local men were jailed in June 2005 for defying compulsory purchase orders. The anger aroused by the case of the ‘Rossport Five’ intensified protest and spread it further afield. Large rallies were held in Dublin, pickets of Shell operations across Ireland and the UK proliferated, and blockades of the construction site itself went on around the clock. With publicity growing and the Rossport Five vowing to remain behind bars until they got justice, Shell dropped the case against them in September 2005.

The protests led to further reviews of the project, which in turn revealed serious breaches of the consents given to Shell. Three kilometres of pipeline were dismantled, and construction deferred yet again. To date, with resistance continuing, work on the pipeline has yet to begin.

The effectiveness of the resistance has come from its multifaceted character. Though principally led by locals, it has drawn support from around the world, brought together through the Shell to Sea campaign. The campaign, as the name suggests, seeks primarily to put the development offshore, but also challenges its environmental and economic shortfalls. Shell to Sea has remained non-aligned with any particular party or group, and in doing so has drawn everyone from the Socialist Workers Party to the Woodland League under its umbrella.

Solidarity campaigners from outside the region have a permanent presence in the community using a donated house and land. One Manchester-based campaigner, Amy Thompson, who spent time there during the period of Maura Harrington’s hunger strike, described ‘an intense level of cooperation between solidarity activists and locals in carrying out actions’.

While ‘tactical differences’ sometimes became apparent, Thompson claims the interaction was extremely fruitful. ‘It’s great to see the diversity of tactics and everyone working so well together. Activists often talk about “networking” their campaigns with “the locals” – but here everyone’s actually physically fighting together to defend the land … it was something I’d never seen before, and very inspiring.’ Maura Harrington echoes this: ‘The relationship is symbiotic. There is a lot to learn by both sides, from both sides, and the people living here totally appreciate it, so there isn’t really a them and us anymore.’

Not giving in

Links have also been made with those struggling against Shell in the Niger Delta. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s brother, Dr Owens Wiwa, attended the Rossport Five’s trial, saying that their courage ‘gives hope to the African people … to see that Shell can be made to back down … it is being watched with interest by many involved in similar situations.’ In February, a delegation from Rossport will be travelling to New York for a case brought against Shell for its complicity in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta. Shell to Sea spokesperson Terence Conway hopes to attend. ‘The lesson we’ve learned from the Ogoni is not to give in no matter how impossible it seems, no matter what the odds.’

The global networks that the Shell to Sea campaign has established are essential, as James Marriot of ecological campaign group Platform stresses: ‘They work in the opposite direction to companies like Shell, which try to compartmentalise everything and separate problems in one part of the world from the company as a whole. To connect things up like this puts into question the entire institution.’ The damage done to the Shell brand – a brand eager to lose its planet trashing, community wrecking reputation – may be more severe than the escalating costs of the delays.

Also called into question by the campaign is the relationship between the state and big business in a country that has gone further than most in making life easy for multinational investors. The government reaction has been predictably heavy handed. Terence Conway describes the police as having been given ‘carte blanche’ to disrupt protests: ‘They have done everything possible to provoke people, including targeted arrests to discredit us in the media. It’s one thing to give Shell all our resources, but when they send in the police, basically as Shell thugs, that tells you of the collusion.’

Nonetheless, with the pipeline route – announced in April this year – said to ‘literally cut through the heart of our community’, Shell to Sea has vowed to continue its campaign. Things are quiet for now as construction work winds down for the winter, but whatever Shell decides to do come the spring, it’s going to face a fight.

n Get involved
www.corribsos.com
(the Shell to Sea campaign website)
www.remembersarowiwa.com
www.platformlondon.org

Concern can now be heard across the political spectrum. But has it resulted in a policy rethink?

In the UK and EU, at least, the answer is a qualified yes. The UK government is now considering a delay to its target of 5 per cent agrofuel use from 2011 to 2014. But the renewable transport fuel obligation – which came into force last April – will still award £550 million per year to agribusiness, according to a recent report from the right-wing Policy Exchange think-tank.

The EU has also made some positive revisions to its proposed agrofuels policy. The European Parliament’s industry committee voted on 11 September to keep a 10 per cent target on renewable fuels for transport by 2020, but no longer insists that this be met by agrofuels alone. Its proposed sustainability criteria are now far tougher than expected, with provisions to calculate the impact of indirect land use changes as a result of agrofuel production and to respect international law on land rights and labour conditions. A major review is now scheduled for 2014, which will include an assessment of how agrofuels are affecting food security.

This compromise falls short of the moratorium on agrofuel targets and incentives that many campaigners had called for. But the furious reaction of the European Biodiesel Board and European Bioethanol Fuel Association, the main industry lobby groups, tells its own story: this is an argument that is being won, and a policy that would have encouraged massive agrofuel expansion has been fundamentally altered.

Elsewhere in the world, though, the outlook remains bleak. Spurred on by ‘energy security’ concerns, the US is now the world’s largest agrofuel producer. In his 2007 state of the union address, George Bush set a 10-year goal for 20 per cent of agrofuels in the transport sector. This is unlikely to change if Barack Obama becomes president, since he has long championed bioethanol production. John McCain, who had opposed the subsidies, now supports them too – with one eye on votes in the US corn belt.

Brazil, the world’s second largest producer, and largest exporter, is also expanding its industry. It continues to lobby aggressively for continued subsidies and reduced tariffs at international trade talks.

China, which had planned a 15 per cent target for ‘renewable’ transport fuels by 2020, has started to express doubts. In June 2007, fearing competition with food supplies, the Chinese government put a freeze on new projects to convert wheat production to fuel use. But the country’s agrofuel production capacity continues to expand – with new refineries now looking to Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil imports.

In India, meanwhile, a new law was passed in September stating that 20 per cent of the country’s liquid fuels should be agrofuels by 2017. The same package proposes to eliminate taxes and duties on biodiesel, and set minimum prices to encourage increased production.

The bottom line is this: although the political backlash has had some effects, global agrofuel production is still expanding. According to the UN Environment Programme, financing for agrofuels production grew by 16 per cent to $16.7 billion in 2007 – although this marks a significant slowdown from the equivalent 200 per cent growth in 2006, largely as a result of concerns about food supplies.

Huge new agrofuel plants continue to be constructed. The world’s largest biodiesel refinery, which will process 800,000 tonnes a year, will be opened by the Finnish company Neste Oil in Singapore in 2010. This will be joined by a similar-sized refinery in Rotterdam by 2011. World production may not double by 2012, as the International Energy Agency predicted in 2007, but it looks a good bet to double by 2030, as the US Energy Information Administration recently said.

Campaigning can force changes, as the EU debate has shown. But we are still a long way from winning the battle against the unsustainable industrial production of fuel from crops.