Industrialisation or environmental colonialism?

times of corporate totalitarianism such as ours, there is an unchallenged consensus, promoted by the media, that India needs economic development, that rapid economic growth is the most reliable way to achieve it (through the infamous ‘trickle-down’ effect), that this in turn is best achieved through breakneck industrialisation and that anyone who stands in the way of such ‘development’ needs to have her patriotic credentials examined. This may include, for instance, those who (following the latest warnings of the IPCC) are pointing to dangerously threatened, rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers.
Nothing is in fact farther from the truth, especially when one keeps reminding oneself that the free press is city-based and is anything but free. People have by now heard of Nandigram and Singur – perhaps because they happen to be in communist-ruled West Bengal, the hypocrisy of the government all too transparent there. However, as a National Convention held in New Delhi recently revealed, there are fires of protest growing in number, frequency and intensity against the large-scale acquisition of land for purposes of industrial/infrastructural/real-estate ‘development’ all across India. The question is whether city-based media outlets are reporting the facts adequately and accurately and whether urban elites have the integrity and courage to face the monstrous injustices that their leaders are busy inflicting on the countryside and its hapless populations.
Orissa: A plain enough case of environmental colonialism
Consider just one of many cases: Orissa. In addition to the massive bauxite mining (which has already disrupted the traditional livelihoods of dozens of local tribal communities), thanks to huge iron ore deposits under the forests, as many as 45 steel plants are on the anvil in this small state alone! Importantly, the people of the state have not asked for them. No democracy there, no plebiscite or referendum.
On the contrary, human rights are being routinely violated under a regime of extractive-colonialist globalisation, whose competitive cost-cutting pressures, led by totalitarian, environmentally destructive China, are creating a lethal race to the bottom, undermining chances of sustainable development and of course, substantive democracy. Constitutional provisions and state tribal and environmental laws are both being routinely violated by the state government to override tribal and community rights to land and resources.
After visiting the joint venture project of Birla and Alcan, Utkal Alumina (UAIL), in Baphlimali (Kashipur), and reviewing the consequences of Sterlite’s aluminium project at Lanjigarh , the Indian People’s Tribunal recommended in October 2006 that the Orissa government “abandon the UAIL project with immediate effect”. Voices of protest from local tribes “are being met by repressive measures in the form of large-scale arrests, disruption of public meetings by force, violent beatings to disperse gatherings, official encouragement to the employment of private goons by UAIL, midnight raids by the police, unmitigated violence on women and children. Deposing before the Tribunal Bhagban Majhi stated “instead of answering our concerns, they are replying with bullets and lathis.” What is even more shocking is that even minors like Pradip Majhi (aged 14) who deposed before the Tribunal spoke of being physically stripped and humiliated by the Police.”
People have expressed their displeasure and dissent in the tens of thousands: places like Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Jagatsinghpur and Gopalpur have been under siege for months (and often, years) by the police and paramilitaries on account of the angry political ferment over the past decade. The war between the corporate state and the people is on. The lands and water sources of farmers and forest-dwellers in these areas are being taken over through the powerful offices of the state government in order to make way for the steel and aluminium plants (and the associated coal, iron ore and bauxite mines) of business interests like Tatas, Jindals, POSCO, Mittal, Birlas, Alcan, Alcoa and Vedanta (Sterlite). Hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land have already been destroyed. Comparable areas of reserve forests have been torn out of the earth. Water sources are being polluted by mining and the industrial sludge. The air around the mines and factories is full of cancerous gases. After all, who has time to think of clean-up measures when Chinese competition is breathing down the necks of global players?
On many occasions peasants and tribals have been killed in police firing while resisting the takeover of their lands, forests and water resources. The defence of Jal, Jungle, Zameen, Zindagi – and not the treacherous hope of compensation, resettlement, rehabilitation, employment and ‘modernisation’ – are the issues as far as local populations are concerned. If ‘development’ implies displacement from their lands and forests, the rural communities of Orissa have declared in no uncertain terms – often through the sacrifice of human lives – that they want none of it.
So if such ‘development’ is not for the people of Orissa, who is the break-neck industrialisation in the state for? (Orissa attracted over 10% of the foreign direct investment in India in 2006.) It is for the many companies who have been gouging the earth to extract the abundant mineral wealth from the region (most of it lying under thick forests or farmed fields) for the price of dirt and make huge profits by selling abroad. (If a company can get away by paying Rs 100-150 per tonne of iron ore to the state and fetch a price of Rs 1,500-3,000 abroad – depending upon the grade of the ore – there is little surprise that there is a growing queue of foreign investors.)
Such profits will make it a lot easier and faster for companies like the Tatas to pay off the astronomical debt (of close to $10 billion: more than Orissa’s entire GDP) that they have taken on recently in order to acquire the Anglo-Dutch steel major, Corus. Importantly, it will enable the rich countries to derive the benefits of cheap steel (for construction, transport and industry) and aluminium (so critical to aeroplanes and soda-cans alike) while keeping ‘dirty’ industries and mining away from their own environmentally sanitised shores (the reason why companies like Corus and Novelis have been selling out so readily – and at exorbitant prices – to Tatas and Birlas: the cleaner the industry the less likely it is to be auctioned off to bidders from countries like India or Brazil. On the other hand, service sector businesses are being taken over by multinationals from rich countries: notice the recent acquisition of the Indian company Hutch-Essar by the British multinational Vodafone – the fact that it is led by an Indian CEO is of little import here.
The morality of such a pattern of industrialisation in Orissa – fitting snugly and conveniently into a socially and ecologically unfair global division of labour and pollution – is that the beneficiaries from it (barring the few netas and babus who get cuts from each business contract) are not from Orissa but are scattered around urban India and the rest of the world. It is a thinly disguised form of environmental colonialism orchestrated by the comprador government of the state, only too happy to sell off both their people and nature to outsiders.
Such a pattern of industrialisation has less to do with development (understood as lasting change and transformation in the quality of people’s lives, reflected but minimally in such measures as life expectancy, literacy rate and growth of real per capita income) than it has to do with the imperative to compete and win at any cost that Indian and global industrial business interests feel at this uncertain juncture of history. “Orissa is not there to enrich the rich and strengthen the economies of America and the West,” one activist from Orissa argues.
However, the Patnaik government of Orissa continues on its merry path, inviting investment recently from NRIs, among many others. The Korean steel giant POSCO has already planned on investing $12 billion in the state (though its tax breaks and other incentives amount, if it is possible to imagine, to an even greater sum). The same is true for Laxmi Mittal’s Mittal-Arcelor group (the world’s largest steel conglomerate) which signed an MoU with the Orissa government in December 2006, agreeing to invest $ 9 billion in Keonjhar district (and deriving tax benefits of comparable magnitude). Mittal has asked for 8,000 acres of land (2,000 acres more than POSCO) for the project. He has also asked that (just like the concession to POSCO) the land be classified as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), with all the attendant privileges, tantamount to a de jure suspension of the Indian Constitution.
Only the ecological future – global and local climate change, to name only one of dozens of environmental ailments brought on by mindless industrialisation – will reveal the ultimately suicidal nature of this putatively ‘free market’ economics – which is in fact a case of active promotion of private corporate profit by the state, even if it means rampant exploitation of the poor citizens (who are citizens for one day and subjects for five years) of a famous democracy, in addition to the rapid accretion to the ecological debt of the region.
The Indian People’s Tribunal reported last year in October “that the bauxite-mining project proposed by UAIL will have adverse environmental and health effects: water sources and agricultural land will be contaminated by toxic wastes, grasslands and forest land will be destroyed, and pollution including the release of cancerous gases that will create a health hazard for those living in proximity of the alumina refinery. Further the location of the mine in the Eastern Ghats will cause irreversible loss of plant genetic material and biodiversity of this region.”
Let us forget any other ideals or values and come together to challenge the brutally flawed corporate vision – itself in accord with the so-called “neo-liberal” economics purveyed by Washington and its multilateral agencies – which imperils today the very basis of human survival in India.
by Aseem Shrivastava

RETScreen Wins REEEP Funding for new MTV Tool *NEW*

The Vienna-based Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP) announced the winners of its 7th project funding cycle. In a highly competitive process, 49 projects in 25 countries were selected for funding out of a total of 694 project concepts received from around the world.
The CanmetENERGY’s RETScreen International has won funding from REEEP in this round to develop a new Monitoring, Targeting, and Verification (MTV) tool for RETScreen. A comprehensive MTV tool will be incorporated into the next major release of RETScreen (Version 5) that will be developed over the next few years. A monitoring, targeting, and verification tool is an important part of energy efficiency analysis, essential to ensuring the most efficient functioning of energy efficiency projects.
The RETScreen Clean Energy Project Analysis Software is a unique decision support tool developed with the contribution of numerous experts from government, industry, and academia. The software, provided free-of-charge, can be used worldwide to evaluate the energy production and savings, costs, emission reductions, financial viability and risk for various types of Renewable-energy and Energy-efficient Technologies (RETs). The software (available in multiple languages) also includes product, project, hydrology and climate databases, a detailed online user manual, and a case study based college/university-level training course, including an engineering e-textbook.
Implementing such capabilities into RETScreen will help a user understand how energy is consumed in an organization; understand the opportunities available to save energy; and achieve cost savings, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and the expansion of markets for energy efficiency projects.

Jesse James successfully sets new hydrogen land-speed record

Earlier this month, we caught wind of Jesse James' plan to set a new land-speed record in a hydrogen-powered vehicle. According to a press release issued by Spike TV, the daredevil motorcycle enthusiast was successful in his quest, hitting a top speed of 199.7 miles per hour on a run in the El Mirage dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert in California.Though ultimately successful, the run didn't go off without a hitch. Apparently, the car needed three passes before the crew was able to keep enough blowing dust out of the cockpit and feed enough air into the monster 740-horsepower hydrogen-fueled 572 cubic-inch Chevrolet V8 engine.The previous mark for a hydrogen-burning car was set by BMW in Germany a few years back with its H2H race car. James seems pleased with his accomplishment, saying, "This, I honestly believe, is world-changing. We can't rely on gasoline forever. I'm paying it forward." Modest, isn't he?Want to see the whole thing go down? Tune in to Spike TV to watch Jesse James is a Dead Man on Sunday, August 9th at 10 pm Eastern. Spoiler Alert: Jesse James does not die in this episode.

Eco Tech: Green Roadway – Converting endless highways into renewable energy generators

Solar and wind generators mounted on highways could be a new way to generate green power.
With the ever increasing demand of green energy, inventors and scientists are working on ways that can by no means be termed conventional. Gene Fein and Ed Merritt are two such inventors who want the endless highways, which we use daily to commute to our places of work, be converted into renewable energy generators, which could one day power our cities with clean energy and can also offer electricity for roadside charging of electric vehicles.
The Green Roadway Project, as the plan has been named, makes use of strings of solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal devices that can convert these natural resources into precious electricity. The technology which would be used in these roads has been patented by the inventors, who hope to capitalize on government economic- stimulus money and tax breaks for clean energy projects by auctioning off rights to use their inventions in each of the 50 states in the U.S.
The proponents believe that a 10-mile stretch of the technology can power more than 2,000 homes with clean energy, for which most people will readily pay more. Talking about the feasibility of the system, the inventors claim that unlike horizontal axis wind turbines, which have been regularly criticized for their unsightly looks, their system would be based on better turbines, which will be no more than 25 feet high and will be placed 500 feet back from the pavement.

Eco Tech: Energy starved New York could soon get powered by jet stream winds

High-flying kites could generate enough wind energy to power New York.
The energy starved world of today is looking for possible ways using which the maximum amount of renewable energy could be generated that could not just power a city block or a small town but the largest cities in the world and probably the entire world as well. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution and California State University have identified New York as one of the prime locations where high-flying kites can be used to convert high-altitude winds into energy.
Unlike winds close to the surface of earth, winds in the upper regions of the atmosphere preferably those which make the jet streams can be harnessed to produce tens of times of output than conventional wind turbines that are used on the surface. Ideally, the turbines, which would be high-altitude flying kites tethered to the surface, would have be placed at a height of around 30,000 feet.
Jet stream winds are generally 10 times faster than winds near the ground and most importantly they’re steady as well. More wind speed means more energy, which made scientists at these universities believe that they can power entire cities by flying these kites, a process which looks simple on paper but might get complicated if actually planned. These scientists predict up to 40MW of electricity can be generated by the current designs and transmitted to the ground via the tether, which is about four times the output of current designs used on the surface.

Mazda Painting its Cars Greener

The Mazda Motor Corporation continues to find ways to be a better global citizen with a car painting system that it says has the lowest environmental impact in the world. The new “Aqua-Tech Paint System” reduces the emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) by 57% and, happily, improves the paint job.“Aqua-Tech” maintains the same world-class low carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as Mazda’s existing “Three Layer Wet Paint” system but further reduces VOC emissions to just 15 grams per square meter of body surface.While water-based paints are naturally lower in VOC emissions than solvent-based paint, drying them uses much more energy and, thus, increases CO2. Mazda have overcome this with a combination of improved paint technology and a more efficient evaporative drying system.Mazda has successfully launched the Aqua-tech Paint System for vehicle body painting at its Ujina Plant No.1 in Japan.

Europe's Solar Power Will Be Competitive From 2010

Photovoltaic solar electricity is poised to become a significant and competitive supplier to the European electricity market, concludes a comprehensive study conducted by the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) with the strategic management consultancy A.T. Kearney.
The SET For 2020 study explores different deployment scenarios: Under business-as-usual conditions, photovoltaic power should supply between 4% and 6% of Europeans’ electricity needs by 2020. However, photovoltaic power could supply as much as 12% of EU electricity demand by 2020 - up from less than 1% at present - if more favourable conditions are established by European policy makers, regulators and the energy sector at large.
"Photovoltaic electricity generation will already be competitive in parts of southern Europe by next year," said Dr. Winfried Hoffmann, EPIA president. "The study shows that under the 12% scenario, photovoltaic electricity will be competitive with other power sources in as much as 75% of the EU electricity market by 2020, without any form of external price support or subsidy."
Providing a unique combination of facts, figures and analysis, the study shows that boosting the share of photovoltaic electricity will yield huge benefits to European society and its economy.
Europe now needs to recognise the important role photovoltaic power can play in meeting its energy sustainability goals," said Adel El Gammal, EPIA secretary general.
"The photovoltaic industry is committed to delivering energy technology that is sustainable and competitive on a large scale. We are calling on political and regulatory decision makers and on the energy sector to support photovoltaic deployment without delay."