Minority and low-income communities would suffer first and worst from a plan to cut the state budget by closing as many as 100 California state parks and beaches, according to a group of nonprofit health organizations and concerned citizens expected to file an administrative complaint with the U.S. Justice Department on Monday.
State officials hope to finalize a list of park closures by Labor Day. But the group led by the City Project, Concerned Citizens of South Los Angeles, Coastwalk California, the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy contends that closing a third of the state's parks would violate laws prohibiting discriminatory impacts on recipients of federal and state funds.
“This issue must be resolved as soon as possible,” said Zoe Rawson, staff attorney for the City Project. “Access to open space is critical to the well-being and health of people who reside in densely populated urban environments such as Los Angeles."
“The values at stake are great," she said, "and include social cohesion, and the psychological and physical health of thousands of people who can’t afford to go to a gym."
The complaint will be submitted against California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California state legislature and the California Resources Agency, the group said.
"With the complaint we are seeking ultimately to prevent or mitigate state park closures," she said. "If we can't resolve this issue through the complaint process, the next step we will be considering is a lawsuit."
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Tie your tubes and save the planet?
Environmentalists tend to avoid the topic of population control. Too touchy. But the politically incorrect issue is becoming unavoidable as the global population lurches toward a predicted 9 billion people by mid-century. Will there be enough food? Enough water? Will planet-heating carbon dioxide gas become ever more uncontrollable?
Now comes a study by statisticians at Oregon State University focusing on the elephant in the room. If you are serious about your carbon footprint, think: birth control.
The greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more significant than the amount any American would save by such practices as driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling or using energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances, according to Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics. Under current U.S. consumption patterns, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to the carbon legacy of an average parent--about 5.7 times a person's lifetime emissions, he calculates.
"Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth," Murtaugh said. "Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."
Given how much less the average developing nation consumes per capita, the impact of a child born in the U.S., along with all his or her descendants, is more than 160 times that of a Bangladeshi child, the OSU research found. And the long-term impact of a Chinese child is less than one fifth the impact of a U.S.-born child. But as China, India and other developing nations hurtle toward prosperity, that is likely to change
Now comes a study by statisticians at Oregon State University focusing on the elephant in the room. If you are serious about your carbon footprint, think: birth control.
The greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more significant than the amount any American would save by such practices as driving a fuel-efficient car, recycling or using energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances, according to Paul Murtaugh, an OSU professor of statistics. Under current U.S. consumption patterns, each child ultimately adds about 9,441 metric tons of CO2 to the carbon legacy of an average parent--about 5.7 times a person's lifetime emissions, he calculates.
"Many people are unaware of the power of exponential population growth," Murtaugh said. "Future growth amplifies the consequences of people's reproductive choices, the same way that compound interest amplifies a bank balance."
Given how much less the average developing nation consumes per capita, the impact of a child born in the U.S., along with all his or her descendants, is more than 160 times that of a Bangladeshi child, the OSU research found. And the long-term impact of a Chinese child is less than one fifth the impact of a U.S.-born child. But as China, India and other developing nations hurtle toward prosperity, that is likely to change
Causes of cancer clusters are hard to find
It has taken health investigators two years of research to designate Clyde, Ohio, a cancer cluster.
Their inquiry started soon after Donna and Dave Hisey's 13-year-old daughter was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia.
While the Hiseys awaited the study results, disaster struck again. Their middle child, Tanner, developed lumps on his neck, and in August, he was diagnosed with a totally different form of leukemia, acute lymphoblastic T-cell leukemia. The cluster confirmation came in May, as Tanner underwent chemotherapy.
Now, says Donna Hisey, she checks her youngest child, Siera, every day for signs of illness. The sense of fear is ever-present. The need to know what caused the cancer is overwhelming. It has taken over their lives.
"Any time anybody gets sick, people freak out. Is it minor?" said Hisey, a line worker at the nearby Whirlpool plant. "We just want to know what caused this so nobody else gets sick."
It is not yet known whether The Acreage is a cancer cluster. The state is studying the possibility.
But as families anxiously await results of the state's study here, they're convinced the cluster exists and are deeply hungry to find out what is behind the illnesses in their community.
Could it have been something that leached into the groundwater from the nearby Pratt & Whitney plant decades ago? Something toxic or radioactive in the soil brought in to raise their houses above the marsh? Some solvent illegally dumped and buried? Or the pesticides used in the nearby orange groves and sugar cane fields?
A look at cancer cluster investigations elsewhere in the United States suggests that definitive answers will be difficult - but not impossible - to come by. In the process of searching though, communities like Clyde, Ohio, and The Acreage are learning truths about themselves and their surroundings that can be deeply unsettling.
According to one Acreage resident's unscientific tally, there have been at least eight cases of a brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme between 2004 and 2009; five cases of a sometimes benign brain tumor called meningioma since 2003; and 17 other assorted brain and nervous system tumors since 1998 - all within the patch of 50,000 rural homes.
The exact case count is hard to say. State health officials are analyzing data from the national cancer registry over 12 years, data that's compiled whenever there is a cancer diagnosis. They will calculate the rate of the cancers they find in the local population, then compare it to national cancer rates. Results may take several weeks.
Meanwhile, state environmental officials are beginning to sample wells, while county leaders analyze soil at two schools.
"It's in the water. I know it's in the water. I really believe it," said Mack Purifoy, 58, who retired to his dream home in The Acreage four years ago with his wife and nephew. The home he paid $400,000 for has a Jacuzzi, an attractive new façade, and well water. And it's sitting empty. He refuses to live there. The former owner, he was told, died of cancer.
A year after moving in, his nephew developed lymphoma. A few months ago, doctors discovered a growth in his brain. They don't know yet if it's a cyst or a tumor, Purifoy said, only that it's growing. He's losing his sense of balance, and having trouble with his vision.
"I drank that water," he says, his voice tinged with anger.
Purifoy is dubious that investigators will ever really identify the source of the illnesses.
Once a cancer cluster is identified, under protocols from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, environmental investigators begin considering possible causes: sources of radiation, pesticides, fungicides, solvents, other chemicals.
Sometimes they find a cause. Often they don't. Frequently, politics trumps science.
In Cameron, Mo., last fall Missouri state officials told residents that the 70 brain cancer cases they identified in a four-county area over 12 years did not represent a cancer cluster.
Several months later, a lawsuit alleged that a leather tannery had been dumping highly dangerous chromium 6, the subject of the film Erin Brockovich, into waste sludge that was spread on farm fields in the region since the 1980s, The Kansas City Star reported. Subsequent sampling of farm fields did find low levels of the hazardous chromium 6, a proven carcinogen.
In eastern Pennsylvania, a single type of rare blood cancer, polycythemia vera, was found in dozens of people. A $5.5 million study is under way, and is considering seven waste coal power plants in the area and seven Superfund sites. At a congressional hearing in March, Democratic lawmakers blasted the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a sister agency to the CDC, for its shoddy review of the cancer cluster.
A report by the congressional committee's staff called the agency's handling of such cases a "clear and present danger" to public health.
"Time and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation," said the report by the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology. "Instead, they deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate concerns and health considerations of local communities and well respected scientists and medical professionals."
In Clyde, Ohio, the investigation is being handled by the state, with input from federal officials, said Robert Indian, chief of comprehensive cancer control for the Ohio Department of Health.
They are broadening their research to study birth defects and miscarriages, he said. There have been 20 children with brain tumors in the area. The nature of the cancers, leukemias and brain tumors, suggests ionizing radiation, Indian said, although everything is being considered.
Not far from Clyde, Waste Management, Inc. operates a deep-well-injection site that has been collecting liquid pesticides and other hazardous chemical waste from throughout the nation. Called Vickery Environmental, the firm injects the waste 3,000 feet into a rock formation deep below farm fields, the company says.
Donna Hisey can't help but wonder if that's the source of the cancers. But she's been told the chemicals have not migrated. She wonders if it's true.
Her best advice to people in The Acreage is to stay involved, ask questions, and keep digging.
Purifoy is asking those questions, but he despairs that he will get an answer in his lifetime.
"We're all going to be dead by the time you all figure out what's going on," he told state environmental leaders at an emotionally charged community meeting on Thursday. "They are going to sweep it under the rug, and a lot of people are going to die, and that's just the way it is."
Hisey said she wants to trust the people who are investigating the Clyde, Ohio, cluster. She needs to be able to trust them. She prays about it often. Ultimately, she said, it's in God's hands.
"I don't know if they are ever going to find out what caused it or not. I would love for them to tell us an answer," Hisey said. "But if they put their best effort into it and they can't find it, then we will have to accept it. But at least we will know they tried."
Their inquiry started soon after Donna and Dave Hisey's 13-year-old daughter was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia.
While the Hiseys awaited the study results, disaster struck again. Their middle child, Tanner, developed lumps on his neck, and in August, he was diagnosed with a totally different form of leukemia, acute lymphoblastic T-cell leukemia. The cluster confirmation came in May, as Tanner underwent chemotherapy.
Now, says Donna Hisey, she checks her youngest child, Siera, every day for signs of illness. The sense of fear is ever-present. The need to know what caused the cancer is overwhelming. It has taken over their lives.
"Any time anybody gets sick, people freak out. Is it minor?" said Hisey, a line worker at the nearby Whirlpool plant. "We just want to know what caused this so nobody else gets sick."
It is not yet known whether The Acreage is a cancer cluster. The state is studying the possibility.
But as families anxiously await results of the state's study here, they're convinced the cluster exists and are deeply hungry to find out what is behind the illnesses in their community.
Could it have been something that leached into the groundwater from the nearby Pratt & Whitney plant decades ago? Something toxic or radioactive in the soil brought in to raise their houses above the marsh? Some solvent illegally dumped and buried? Or the pesticides used in the nearby orange groves and sugar cane fields?
A look at cancer cluster investigations elsewhere in the United States suggests that definitive answers will be difficult - but not impossible - to come by. In the process of searching though, communities like Clyde, Ohio, and The Acreage are learning truths about themselves and their surroundings that can be deeply unsettling.
According to one Acreage resident's unscientific tally, there have been at least eight cases of a brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme between 2004 and 2009; five cases of a sometimes benign brain tumor called meningioma since 2003; and 17 other assorted brain and nervous system tumors since 1998 - all within the patch of 50,000 rural homes.
The exact case count is hard to say. State health officials are analyzing data from the national cancer registry over 12 years, data that's compiled whenever there is a cancer diagnosis. They will calculate the rate of the cancers they find in the local population, then compare it to national cancer rates. Results may take several weeks.
Meanwhile, state environmental officials are beginning to sample wells, while county leaders analyze soil at two schools.
"It's in the water. I know it's in the water. I really believe it," said Mack Purifoy, 58, who retired to his dream home in The Acreage four years ago with his wife and nephew. The home he paid $400,000 for has a Jacuzzi, an attractive new façade, and well water. And it's sitting empty. He refuses to live there. The former owner, he was told, died of cancer.
A year after moving in, his nephew developed lymphoma. A few months ago, doctors discovered a growth in his brain. They don't know yet if it's a cyst or a tumor, Purifoy said, only that it's growing. He's losing his sense of balance, and having trouble with his vision.
"I drank that water," he says, his voice tinged with anger.
Purifoy is dubious that investigators will ever really identify the source of the illnesses.
Once a cancer cluster is identified, under protocols from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, environmental investigators begin considering possible causes: sources of radiation, pesticides, fungicides, solvents, other chemicals.
Sometimes they find a cause. Often they don't. Frequently, politics trumps science.
In Cameron, Mo., last fall Missouri state officials told residents that the 70 brain cancer cases they identified in a four-county area over 12 years did not represent a cancer cluster.
Several months later, a lawsuit alleged that a leather tannery had been dumping highly dangerous chromium 6, the subject of the film Erin Brockovich, into waste sludge that was spread on farm fields in the region since the 1980s, The Kansas City Star reported. Subsequent sampling of farm fields did find low levels of the hazardous chromium 6, a proven carcinogen.
In eastern Pennsylvania, a single type of rare blood cancer, polycythemia vera, was found in dozens of people. A $5.5 million study is under way, and is considering seven waste coal power plants in the area and seven Superfund sites. At a congressional hearing in March, Democratic lawmakers blasted the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a sister agency to the CDC, for its shoddy review of the cancer cluster.
A report by the congressional committee's staff called the agency's handling of such cases a "clear and present danger" to public health.
"Time and time again ATSDR appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation," said the report by the Majority Staff of the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the Committee on Science and Technology. "Instead, they deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate concerns and health considerations of local communities and well respected scientists and medical professionals."
In Clyde, Ohio, the investigation is being handled by the state, with input from federal officials, said Robert Indian, chief of comprehensive cancer control for the Ohio Department of Health.
They are broadening their research to study birth defects and miscarriages, he said. There have been 20 children with brain tumors in the area. The nature of the cancers, leukemias and brain tumors, suggests ionizing radiation, Indian said, although everything is being considered.
Not far from Clyde, Waste Management, Inc. operates a deep-well-injection site that has been collecting liquid pesticides and other hazardous chemical waste from throughout the nation. Called Vickery Environmental, the firm injects the waste 3,000 feet into a rock formation deep below farm fields, the company says.
Donna Hisey can't help but wonder if that's the source of the cancers. But she's been told the chemicals have not migrated. She wonders if it's true.
Her best advice to people in The Acreage is to stay involved, ask questions, and keep digging.
Purifoy is asking those questions, but he despairs that he will get an answer in his lifetime.
"We're all going to be dead by the time you all figure out what's going on," he told state environmental leaders at an emotionally charged community meeting on Thursday. "They are going to sweep it under the rug, and a lot of people are going to die, and that's just the way it is."
Hisey said she wants to trust the people who are investigating the Clyde, Ohio, cluster. She needs to be able to trust them. She prays about it often. Ultimately, she said, it's in God's hands.
"I don't know if they are ever going to find out what caused it or not. I would love for them to tell us an answer," Hisey said. "But if they put their best effort into it and they can't find it, then we will have to accept it. But at least we will know they tried."
Scientists claim planet is heading for 'irreversible' climate change by 2040
CARBON dioxide levels are rising at a faster rate than the worst-case scenario envisaged by United Nations experts, with the planet heading for "catastrophic" and "irreversible" climate change by 2040, a new report claims.
The rise of greenhouse gases will trigger an unprecedented rate of global warming that will result in the loss of the ice-covered polar seas by 2020, much of our coral reefs by 2040 and see a 1.4-metre rise in the sea level by 2100.
The apocalyptic vision has been outlined in a paper by Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, which is likely to influence the views of UN experts gathering in Copenhagen this December to establish a new protocol that will attempt to halt global warming.
Brierley and his co-author, Michael Kingsford of the James Cook University in Australia, examined the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on ocean habitats and marine organisms.
The scientists compared current carbon dioxide emissions with those forecast in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the leading body for the assessment of global warming, which was established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation.
In 2007, the IPCC predicted a "worst-case scenario" that would see rapid industrialisation cause carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase by two parts per million each year. Parts per million (ppm) is a unit of concentration used to measure pollutants.
Brierley said atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration had increased from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm to 385 ppm last year and was now rising at a rate of 2.5 ppm per year.
He described the outlook as "really quite nasty doom-and-gloom situation".
He added: "People have looked at how various economic situations, various developments in India and China might impact on carbon dioxide admissions and in 2007 they made a series of forecasts and if you take the worst-case scenario, carbon dioxide would be going up by two parts per million.
"This really august body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said these are the worst-case scenarios for carbon dioxide increase and we are above that already. That's the thing that really frightens me."
In their paper, Brierley and Kingsford said that a carbon dioxide level of 450 ppm was the critical threshold beyond which catastrophic and irreversible change might occur.
Reaching that level would mean a global mean temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial values. At present rates this threshold will be passed by 2040.
The authors added: "By 2040, some particularly sensitive marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and ice-covered polar seas could already have been lost and other unexpected consequences may arise."
Brierley said: "You can say no Arctic sea ice by 2020 – really, really soon. Certainly no summer sea ice in the Arctic by 2020."
The rise of greenhouse gases will trigger an unprecedented rate of global warming that will result in the loss of the ice-covered polar seas by 2020, much of our coral reefs by 2040 and see a 1.4-metre rise in the sea level by 2100.
The apocalyptic vision has been outlined in a paper by Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, which is likely to influence the views of UN experts gathering in Copenhagen this December to establish a new protocol that will attempt to halt global warming.
Brierley and his co-author, Michael Kingsford of the James Cook University in Australia, examined the effect of carbon dioxide emissions on ocean habitats and marine organisms.
The scientists compared current carbon dioxide emissions with those forecast in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), the leading body for the assessment of global warming, which was established by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation.
In 2007, the IPCC predicted a "worst-case scenario" that would see rapid industrialisation cause carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase by two parts per million each year. Parts per million (ppm) is a unit of concentration used to measure pollutants.
Brierley said atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration had increased from pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm to 385 ppm last year and was now rising at a rate of 2.5 ppm per year.
He described the outlook as "really quite nasty doom-and-gloom situation".
He added: "People have looked at how various economic situations, various developments in India and China might impact on carbon dioxide admissions and in 2007 they made a series of forecasts and if you take the worst-case scenario, carbon dioxide would be going up by two parts per million.
"This really august body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said these are the worst-case scenarios for carbon dioxide increase and we are above that already. That's the thing that really frightens me."
In their paper, Brierley and Kingsford said that a carbon dioxide level of 450 ppm was the critical threshold beyond which catastrophic and irreversible change might occur.
Reaching that level would mean a global mean temperature rise of 2C above pre-industrial values. At present rates this threshold will be passed by 2040.
The authors added: "By 2040, some particularly sensitive marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and ice-covered polar seas could already have been lost and other unexpected consequences may arise."
Brierley said: "You can say no Arctic sea ice by 2020 – really, really soon. Certainly no summer sea ice in the Arctic by 2020."
African dream turns sour for orphan army
Nothing grows here in the shadows. There is only desolation in the tired soil at Paballo Marumo’s cracked and filthy feet. Her shoes, the thin plastic sandals worn by children across the townships of southern Africa, are gone. “Stolen!” she tells me in her language, Sesotho. At eight years old she sits hopelessly at the bottom of the rubbish dump hierarchy.
“Gap! Gap! Gap!” comes the sudden cry from the 12-year-old leader of a destitute army of rag pickers patrolling the vast waste dump before us.
Paballo is the quickest off her feet, darting towards a trailer overflowing with the discarded remnants of Lesotho’s garment industry. In the twilight I can make out her tiny frame as she runs between burning pillars of denim and cotton.
When they reach the trucks, the youngsters plough headlong into the refuse as it pours from heavy loaders. With stern concentration they fight for scraps, sifting through filthy piles of garment industry waste and sweeping it into sacks.
Thousands of Gap and Levi’s labels, buttons and studs for stonewashed jeans and huge quantities of heavily dyed cotton and denim pile down over their heads, burying them up to their waists.
Gap’s decision to develop the production of jeans and T-shirts in Lesotho had heralded an era of opportunity for one of the world’s poorest nations but a Sunday Times investigation has exposed an unforeseen consequence of that commitment - the dumping of tons of waste, much of it dangerous, at unsecured municipal sites.
Over the past 12 months the child rag pickers have been attracted to garment dumps by the denim and plastic thrown away by a Taiwanese supplier whose clients include both Gap and Levi Strauss.
Such is the ubiquity of denim and cotton waste in Lesotho that garment refuse has replaced charcoal as cooking fuel. Alarmingly, for the two San Francisco-based firms, the waste dumped by their suppliers Nien Hsing and Formosa Textile - both part of the Nien Hsing Fashion Group - includes harmful chemicals, needles and razors.
Each day it is painstakingly picked over by children and mothers with ailing infants strapped to their backs in a community ravaged by HIV. Not only that, but Nien Hsing is leaking chemical effluent into a river from which cooking water is drawn.
Lesotho, largely isolated from the rest of the world as a landlocked kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has relied heavily on its garment industry to stave off economic collapse. Fuelled by demand in the West for cheap clothing, more than 50 Taiwanese-owned factories have grown up, shipping £500m of jeans, T-shirts and other items to British and American stores last year alone. In recent years the firms have prompted a wave of migration to Maseru from drought-hit rural areas. Today they provide about 40,000 textile jobs, 80% of them held by women.
Bono, the U2 singer, visited three years ago to boost Gap’s Product Red range, from which profits are ploughed into a fund set up by the star to combat diseases such as Aids. But despite the good intentions, the expansion of the industry has seen a sharp increase in unsecured waste. In trawls through the Ha Tsotsane and Ha Tikoe dumps in Maseru, The Sunday Times uncovered sacks bearing the names of several potentially harmful chemicals. Among these were sodium hydroxide, better known as caustic soda, which is used in the manufacture of textiles and can cause chemical burns; and calcium hypochlorite, a cleaning and bleaching agent which has been linked to lung problems, particularly in children.
The sacks were identified as belonging to Nien Hsing/ Formosa Textile Ltd, a supplier of both Levi’s and Gap denim.
The children of the dumps begin their day by hauling such sacks to “work” and using them to collect scraps of cloth.
Waste spilling from trucks includes countless pumice stones for stonewashed jeans, Gap zips and paperwork showing Gap orders to suppliers.
At regular intervals the workers dumping the refuse set fire to it. The burning is particularly intense when heavily treated and dyed cotton and denim and polyurethane bags are set alight. Many children living and working around the Ha Tsotsane site are evidently suffering from respiratory problems and weeping eyes. Others speak of skin complaints.
Thabiso Liaho, 11, and her sister Motselisi, 8, described a miserable routine that revolves around waiting for the trucks to arrive.
“Our father is gone. He died of Aids,” Thabiso said. “So we collect denim and plastic bags from the factories to sell to our neighbours. They burn the denim instead of firewood but when we use it there is thick black smoke and a horrible smell.”
Thabiso knows the hazards posed by chemicals but presses on regardless. “We itch all day and some of the sacks used to dispose the chemicals have powder that makes our hands and arms burn,” she added.
“One girl rubbed it in her eyes last month and started screaming. Sometimes we get rashes.
“The hardest thing for me is the burning. We work two dumps and they are always on fire because there is so much waste. At night we cough up black mucus and my sister wheezes in her sleep.”
The Sunday Times also found children of five handling tools such as needles, rusted and broken knives, fabric cutters and razors, all of which came in consignments from Nien Hsing.
Environmental campaigners in Lesotho are dismayed. “The world needs to know that some of the poorest people are being exploited and their environment destroyed for western firms,” said Jon Bumasaka of the Lesotho Environmental Justice Advocacy Centre.
“These firms tell the world they are helping Africa but look around you - look at the children picking through dangerous waste in the dumps. Is this Bono’s African dream for Gap? Or is it a hell for the poor people who have to live next to these factories?”
The dumps are not the only environmental problem facing Gap and Levi’s in Maseru. On the other side of a road leading from the Ha Tsotsane tip to the city centre, the rag pickers’ mothers and aunts emerge from hovels to draw foul-smelling cooking water from the Caledon River.
The river, like many tributaries across the city, is stained deep blue by effluent from the garment industry. But after a long day at the dumps the children bathe in it regardless.
Some of the effluent comes from a factory operated by Nien Hsing and Formosa Textile. The waste spills into water used by people every day. The situation is particularly bad around the factories run by Nien Hsing and Chinese Garment Manufacturers, which supplied Gap until 18 months ago when the retailer severed its ties because of “serious concerns”.
The streams around Nien Hsing’s site are known among local children as “Blue River”.
“The water has been this colour for as long as I can remember,” said Thabiso, in the one-room shack she shares with four younger siblings near the Ha Tikoe dump. Strapped to her back was the youngest, Leno-hang. Their mother is in hospital with Aids, a national disaster in a country with an HIV infection rate of 30%.
Around the Nien Hsing factories, sick women say the nearest “untainted” water is more than a mile away, an impossible distance for them to walk.
According to an environmental charter drawn up by Gap Inc, which has 3,149 stores worldwide and turned over $14.5 billion last year, the factories that supply it must have an environmental management system and an environmental emergency plan, including procedures to notify the authorities of an accidental discharge.
Tseliso Tsoeu, an environmental expert from Lesotho’s council of nongovernmental organisations, said the law was being broken by the foreign garment industry: “Our laws state that no person shall discharge any poisonous, toxic or chemical substance into our waters. So why is the government allowing our people to bathe in bright blue water stained with effluent and dyes? “ The Chinese and Taiwanese have come here and have basically done what they wanted. They make enormous profits from employing black Africans on behalf of respectable western companies who advertise the highest standards of production but in reality don’t really know what is going on here.”
In a statement yesterday, Dan Henkle, Gap’s senior vice-president of global responsibility, said the company had ordered an investigation as soon as it learnt of the allegations. It had placed Nien Hsing “on immediate notice until our investigation is complete and all issues are adequately addressed”, he said.
Gap accounted for 5% of Nien Hsing production. While an inspection in May had found no significant violations, its waste water was now deemed “unacceptable”.
Henkle added: “We will continue to act swiftly, decisively and thoughtfully in doing everything possible to protect the workers at the factories that make our products and the communities in which they live and work.”
Levi Strauss, which also sent an investigator to Lesotho, said it was “disturbed to see the local water is polluted”. A spokesman added, “It is clear the municipal landfill has not been secured”, and promised to protect the community and children.
It is a world away from the aims set out by Bono, whose visit to Lesotho in 2006 is still being talked about in the factories. The workers and their families recall how the U2 singer, sporting dark glasses imprinted with the word Red, walked among them, stroking children’s foreheads and cracking jokes.
At that year’s Davos economic forum in the Swiss Alps, he had persuaded some of the world’s most sought-after brands, including Armani, Apple and American Express, to develop special products under the Red umbrella.
The concept was simple: half the profits from Red-branded goods launched by him would go to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He was visiting southern Africa to unveil the next high-profile recruit to the cause: Gap Inc.
For Bono and Gap it was the perfect match. In Lesotho, one of the Aids capitals of the world, Gap had the factories and the local know-how to realise the rock star’s vision - an African factory making branded clothing for Product Red to be marketed from Cape Town to Tokyo.
As Bono toured Precious Garments, the firm slated to make clothes for Gap’s Product Red Range, he declared: “This is the face of transformation.” It was hoped that Product Red, in common with other brands made in Maseru, would help to liberate local people from poverty.
However, while Precious Garments continues to supply Gap, Red T-shirts are no longer made there. A spokesman said he was deeply concerned about the allegations and no Red clothing would be produced in Lesotho until they were resolved.
Although the garment industry has proved an undoubted financial lifeline to many, not all workers are well treated.
At the Nien Hsing factory, where Taiwanese managers oversee production of Gap jeans, a 26-year-old woman named Meluwan said she worked up to 200 hours a month for 30p an hour to support a family of seven.
“I am insulted on a daily basis,” she said. “The Taiwanese call me koko, mentally retarded. They also call me kaffir. It makes me so sad. I don’t know why they call me this.”
Other women accused supervisors of insulting them when they were late with orders.
A spokesman for Nien Hsing said the company was acting on the pollution allegations. “The blue water escaping into local rivers is something we are urgently looking at,” he said. “We are looking into claims that children are picking through our refuse. The first we knew about the child rag pickers was when Gap contacted us this week.” He refused to comment on the claims of abuse.
At the Ha Tikoe dump, Thabiso Liaho offered shelter from a bitter whistling wind in a home propped up by cardboard. “We have to get by looking after each other,” she said.
“The smoke from the dump fills our shack. We all have weeping eyes and running noses and itch after we work there looking for things to sell. The garment trucks come day and night. When we fetch water in the morning it is blue.” As I looked out towards the tip, the call went up again and the children ran towards the trucks.
Gap vows
Gap will conduct a thorough environmental assessment in Lesotho in partnership with an independent environmental organisation.
It will work with factory management to improve training and knowledge around waste handling/disposal.
It will convene a supplier summit in Lesotho to update policies, procedures and expectations.
‘While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made to date, we also understand that conditions are not perfect and that there is still a great deal more to be done to improve both environmental and factory working conditions in developing regions like Lesotho’ - Glenn Murphy, chairman and chief executive, Gap Inc
“Gap! Gap! Gap!” comes the sudden cry from the 12-year-old leader of a destitute army of rag pickers patrolling the vast waste dump before us.
Paballo is the quickest off her feet, darting towards a trailer overflowing with the discarded remnants of Lesotho’s garment industry. In the twilight I can make out her tiny frame as she runs between burning pillars of denim and cotton.
When they reach the trucks, the youngsters plough headlong into the refuse as it pours from heavy loaders. With stern concentration they fight for scraps, sifting through filthy piles of garment industry waste and sweeping it into sacks.
Thousands of Gap and Levi’s labels, buttons and studs for stonewashed jeans and huge quantities of heavily dyed cotton and denim pile down over their heads, burying them up to their waists.
Gap’s decision to develop the production of jeans and T-shirts in Lesotho had heralded an era of opportunity for one of the world’s poorest nations but a Sunday Times investigation has exposed an unforeseen consequence of that commitment - the dumping of tons of waste, much of it dangerous, at unsecured municipal sites.
Over the past 12 months the child rag pickers have been attracted to garment dumps by the denim and plastic thrown away by a Taiwanese supplier whose clients include both Gap and Levi Strauss.
Such is the ubiquity of denim and cotton waste in Lesotho that garment refuse has replaced charcoal as cooking fuel. Alarmingly, for the two San Francisco-based firms, the waste dumped by their suppliers Nien Hsing and Formosa Textile - both part of the Nien Hsing Fashion Group - includes harmful chemicals, needles and razors.
Each day it is painstakingly picked over by children and mothers with ailing infants strapped to their backs in a community ravaged by HIV. Not only that, but Nien Hsing is leaking chemical effluent into a river from which cooking water is drawn.
Lesotho, largely isolated from the rest of the world as a landlocked kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has relied heavily on its garment industry to stave off economic collapse. Fuelled by demand in the West for cheap clothing, more than 50 Taiwanese-owned factories have grown up, shipping £500m of jeans, T-shirts and other items to British and American stores last year alone. In recent years the firms have prompted a wave of migration to Maseru from drought-hit rural areas. Today they provide about 40,000 textile jobs, 80% of them held by women.
Bono, the U2 singer, visited three years ago to boost Gap’s Product Red range, from which profits are ploughed into a fund set up by the star to combat diseases such as Aids. But despite the good intentions, the expansion of the industry has seen a sharp increase in unsecured waste. In trawls through the Ha Tsotsane and Ha Tikoe dumps in Maseru, The Sunday Times uncovered sacks bearing the names of several potentially harmful chemicals. Among these were sodium hydroxide, better known as caustic soda, which is used in the manufacture of textiles and can cause chemical burns; and calcium hypochlorite, a cleaning and bleaching agent which has been linked to lung problems, particularly in children.
The sacks were identified as belonging to Nien Hsing/ Formosa Textile Ltd, a supplier of both Levi’s and Gap denim.
The children of the dumps begin their day by hauling such sacks to “work” and using them to collect scraps of cloth.
Waste spilling from trucks includes countless pumice stones for stonewashed jeans, Gap zips and paperwork showing Gap orders to suppliers.
At regular intervals the workers dumping the refuse set fire to it. The burning is particularly intense when heavily treated and dyed cotton and denim and polyurethane bags are set alight. Many children living and working around the Ha Tsotsane site are evidently suffering from respiratory problems and weeping eyes. Others speak of skin complaints.
Thabiso Liaho, 11, and her sister Motselisi, 8, described a miserable routine that revolves around waiting for the trucks to arrive.
“Our father is gone. He died of Aids,” Thabiso said. “So we collect denim and plastic bags from the factories to sell to our neighbours. They burn the denim instead of firewood but when we use it there is thick black smoke and a horrible smell.”
Thabiso knows the hazards posed by chemicals but presses on regardless. “We itch all day and some of the sacks used to dispose the chemicals have powder that makes our hands and arms burn,” she added.
“One girl rubbed it in her eyes last month and started screaming. Sometimes we get rashes.
“The hardest thing for me is the burning. We work two dumps and they are always on fire because there is so much waste. At night we cough up black mucus and my sister wheezes in her sleep.”
The Sunday Times also found children of five handling tools such as needles, rusted and broken knives, fabric cutters and razors, all of which came in consignments from Nien Hsing.
Environmental campaigners in Lesotho are dismayed. “The world needs to know that some of the poorest people are being exploited and their environment destroyed for western firms,” said Jon Bumasaka of the Lesotho Environmental Justice Advocacy Centre.
“These firms tell the world they are helping Africa but look around you - look at the children picking through dangerous waste in the dumps. Is this Bono’s African dream for Gap? Or is it a hell for the poor people who have to live next to these factories?”
The dumps are not the only environmental problem facing Gap and Levi’s in Maseru. On the other side of a road leading from the Ha Tsotsane tip to the city centre, the rag pickers’ mothers and aunts emerge from hovels to draw foul-smelling cooking water from the Caledon River.
The river, like many tributaries across the city, is stained deep blue by effluent from the garment industry. But after a long day at the dumps the children bathe in it regardless.
Some of the effluent comes from a factory operated by Nien Hsing and Formosa Textile. The waste spills into water used by people every day. The situation is particularly bad around the factories run by Nien Hsing and Chinese Garment Manufacturers, which supplied Gap until 18 months ago when the retailer severed its ties because of “serious concerns”.
The streams around Nien Hsing’s site are known among local children as “Blue River”.
“The water has been this colour for as long as I can remember,” said Thabiso, in the one-room shack she shares with four younger siblings near the Ha Tikoe dump. Strapped to her back was the youngest, Leno-hang. Their mother is in hospital with Aids, a national disaster in a country with an HIV infection rate of 30%.
Around the Nien Hsing factories, sick women say the nearest “untainted” water is more than a mile away, an impossible distance for them to walk.
According to an environmental charter drawn up by Gap Inc, which has 3,149 stores worldwide and turned over $14.5 billion last year, the factories that supply it must have an environmental management system and an environmental emergency plan, including procedures to notify the authorities of an accidental discharge.
Tseliso Tsoeu, an environmental expert from Lesotho’s council of nongovernmental organisations, said the law was being broken by the foreign garment industry: “Our laws state that no person shall discharge any poisonous, toxic or chemical substance into our waters. So why is the government allowing our people to bathe in bright blue water stained with effluent and dyes? “ The Chinese and Taiwanese have come here and have basically done what they wanted. They make enormous profits from employing black Africans on behalf of respectable western companies who advertise the highest standards of production but in reality don’t really know what is going on here.”
In a statement yesterday, Dan Henkle, Gap’s senior vice-president of global responsibility, said the company had ordered an investigation as soon as it learnt of the allegations. It had placed Nien Hsing “on immediate notice until our investigation is complete and all issues are adequately addressed”, he said.
Gap accounted for 5% of Nien Hsing production. While an inspection in May had found no significant violations, its waste water was now deemed “unacceptable”.
Henkle added: “We will continue to act swiftly, decisively and thoughtfully in doing everything possible to protect the workers at the factories that make our products and the communities in which they live and work.”
Levi Strauss, which also sent an investigator to Lesotho, said it was “disturbed to see the local water is polluted”. A spokesman added, “It is clear the municipal landfill has not been secured”, and promised to protect the community and children.
It is a world away from the aims set out by Bono, whose visit to Lesotho in 2006 is still being talked about in the factories. The workers and their families recall how the U2 singer, sporting dark glasses imprinted with the word Red, walked among them, stroking children’s foreheads and cracking jokes.
At that year’s Davos economic forum in the Swiss Alps, he had persuaded some of the world’s most sought-after brands, including Armani, Apple and American Express, to develop special products under the Red umbrella.
The concept was simple: half the profits from Red-branded goods launched by him would go to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He was visiting southern Africa to unveil the next high-profile recruit to the cause: Gap Inc.
For Bono and Gap it was the perfect match. In Lesotho, one of the Aids capitals of the world, Gap had the factories and the local know-how to realise the rock star’s vision - an African factory making branded clothing for Product Red to be marketed from Cape Town to Tokyo.
As Bono toured Precious Garments, the firm slated to make clothes for Gap’s Product Red Range, he declared: “This is the face of transformation.” It was hoped that Product Red, in common with other brands made in Maseru, would help to liberate local people from poverty.
However, while Precious Garments continues to supply Gap, Red T-shirts are no longer made there. A spokesman said he was deeply concerned about the allegations and no Red clothing would be produced in Lesotho until they were resolved.
Although the garment industry has proved an undoubted financial lifeline to many, not all workers are well treated.
At the Nien Hsing factory, where Taiwanese managers oversee production of Gap jeans, a 26-year-old woman named Meluwan said she worked up to 200 hours a month for 30p an hour to support a family of seven.
“I am insulted on a daily basis,” she said. “The Taiwanese call me koko, mentally retarded. They also call me kaffir. It makes me so sad. I don’t know why they call me this.”
Other women accused supervisors of insulting them when they were late with orders.
A spokesman for Nien Hsing said the company was acting on the pollution allegations. “The blue water escaping into local rivers is something we are urgently looking at,” he said. “We are looking into claims that children are picking through our refuse. The first we knew about the child rag pickers was when Gap contacted us this week.” He refused to comment on the claims of abuse.
At the Ha Tikoe dump, Thabiso Liaho offered shelter from a bitter whistling wind in a home propped up by cardboard. “We have to get by looking after each other,” she said.
“The smoke from the dump fills our shack. We all have weeping eyes and running noses and itch after we work there looking for things to sell. The garment trucks come day and night. When we fetch water in the morning it is blue.” As I looked out towards the tip, the call went up again and the children ran towards the trucks.
Gap vows
Gap will conduct a thorough environmental assessment in Lesotho in partnership with an independent environmental organisation.
It will work with factory management to improve training and knowledge around waste handling/disposal.
It will convene a supplier summit in Lesotho to update policies, procedures and expectations.
‘While we’re proud of the progress we’ve made to date, we also understand that conditions are not perfect and that there is still a great deal more to be done to improve both environmental and factory working conditions in developing regions like Lesotho’ - Glenn Murphy, chairman and chief executive, Gap Inc
Half of all the fruit & veg you buy is contaminated
ALMOST HALF of the fresh fruit and veg sold across the UK is contaminated with toxic pesticides, according to the latest scientific surveys for the government.
Nearly every orange, 94% of pineapples and 90% of pears sampled were laced with traces of chemicals used to kill bugs. High proportions of apples, grapes and tomatoes were also tainted, as were parsnips, melons and cucumbers.
Alarmingly, as much as a quarter of the food on sale in 2008 - the date of the latest figures - was found to contain multiple pesticides. In some cases, up to ten different chemicals were detected in a single sample.
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Experts warn that the "cocktail effect" of so many different chemicals endangers health. They also point out that some of the pesticides are not only cancer-causing but also so-called "gender-benders" - chemicals that disrupt human sexuality.
The revelations about the widespread contamination of conventionally-produced food have also prompted renewed attacks on the government's Food Standards Agency.
The FSA published a report last week casting doubt on the health benefits of eating organic food, which is mostly produced without pesticides.
Over 4000 samples of more than 50 kinds of food on sale to the public in 2008 have been tested by scientists for some 240 pesticides.
Detailed reports for the government's Pesticide Residues Committee show that 46% of all the food samples were found to contain detectable levels of pesticides. Just over 25% contained more than one pesticide.
In 57 cases the levels of contamination were so serious that they breached the government's safety limits. They included 13 samples of beans in pods, and 10 yams, as well as potatoes, spinach and chilli peppers.
There were hardly any types of fruit and veg found to be completely free of contamination, although the vast majority of organic food tested was clean. As well as fruit and vegetables, smoothies, whole-grain breakfast cereals, oily fish and wine all contained pesticides (see accompanying table).
Hundreds of pages of tables released by the Pesticide Residues Committee show that many of the contaminated products were bought at well-known supermarkets in Scotland. They include an iceberg lettuce, a courgette and a packet of Cheerios from a Tesco store in Glasgow.
Asda was found to be selling parsnips in Glasgow, Chinese leaves in Edinburgh and apricots in Aberdeen, all with pesticides. Baby food and oranges from Sainsbury's in Glasgow were contaminated, as were white bread and bagels at Morrisons in Aberdeen.
Government scientists say that the residues would be "unlikely" to damage the health of those that eat them. But this is disputed by a growing body of experts concerned about the impact of mixtures of different chemicals.
"Researchers are concerned about the possible adverse health effects of very low-level exposures to mixtures of chemicals," said professor Andrew Watterson, head of the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group at the University of Stirling.
Watterson pointed out that several of the pesticides found on food were thought to be carcinogenic. Others were suspected of being endocrine disruptors, meaning that they could cause sex changes.
He also criticised the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for failing to include the impact of pesticides in last week's report on organic food. "Why did the FSA apparently frame the recent research project to exclude the human and environmental health impacts of so-called food contaminants?" he asked.
The FSA report reviewed previous studies and concluded that there were "no important differences" in the nutrition content of organic food compared to conventionally-farmed food.
But the FSA has since come under fire. The Soil Association's Scottish director, Hugh Raven, said: "Many consumers buy organic food because they're worried about pesticide residues.
"The FSA itself recommends buying organic food if you want to avoid residues. Yet they were specifically excluded from this study."
The FSA accepted that the report only examined the nutritional content of food, and did not deal with pesticides. "It's a fact that conventional production methods permit the use of a wider range of pesticides than organic," said an FSA spokeswoman.
"The FSA is neither for nor against organic food. Our interest is in providing accurate information to support consumer choice."
Nearly every orange, 94% of pineapples and 90% of pears sampled were laced with traces of chemicals used to kill bugs. High proportions of apples, grapes and tomatoes were also tainted, as were parsnips, melons and cucumbers.
Alarmingly, as much as a quarter of the food on sale in 2008 - the date of the latest figures - was found to contain multiple pesticides. In some cases, up to ten different chemicals were detected in a single sample.
advertisement
Experts warn that the "cocktail effect" of so many different chemicals endangers health. They also point out that some of the pesticides are not only cancer-causing but also so-called "gender-benders" - chemicals that disrupt human sexuality.
The revelations about the widespread contamination of conventionally-produced food have also prompted renewed attacks on the government's Food Standards Agency.
The FSA published a report last week casting doubt on the health benefits of eating organic food, which is mostly produced without pesticides.
Over 4000 samples of more than 50 kinds of food on sale to the public in 2008 have been tested by scientists for some 240 pesticides.
Detailed reports for the government's Pesticide Residues Committee show that 46% of all the food samples were found to contain detectable levels of pesticides. Just over 25% contained more than one pesticide.
In 57 cases the levels of contamination were so serious that they breached the government's safety limits. They included 13 samples of beans in pods, and 10 yams, as well as potatoes, spinach and chilli peppers.
There were hardly any types of fruit and veg found to be completely free of contamination, although the vast majority of organic food tested was clean. As well as fruit and vegetables, smoothies, whole-grain breakfast cereals, oily fish and wine all contained pesticides (see accompanying table).
Hundreds of pages of tables released by the Pesticide Residues Committee show that many of the contaminated products were bought at well-known supermarkets in Scotland. They include an iceberg lettuce, a courgette and a packet of Cheerios from a Tesco store in Glasgow.
Asda was found to be selling parsnips in Glasgow, Chinese leaves in Edinburgh and apricots in Aberdeen, all with pesticides. Baby food and oranges from Sainsbury's in Glasgow were contaminated, as were white bread and bagels at Morrisons in Aberdeen.
Government scientists say that the residues would be "unlikely" to damage the health of those that eat them. But this is disputed by a growing body of experts concerned about the impact of mixtures of different chemicals.
"Researchers are concerned about the possible adverse health effects of very low-level exposures to mixtures of chemicals," said professor Andrew Watterson, head of the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group at the University of Stirling.
Watterson pointed out that several of the pesticides found on food were thought to be carcinogenic. Others were suspected of being endocrine disruptors, meaning that they could cause sex changes.
He also criticised the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for failing to include the impact of pesticides in last week's report on organic food. "Why did the FSA apparently frame the recent research project to exclude the human and environmental health impacts of so-called food contaminants?" he asked.
The FSA report reviewed previous studies and concluded that there were "no important differences" in the nutrition content of organic food compared to conventionally-farmed food.
But the FSA has since come under fire. The Soil Association's Scottish director, Hugh Raven, said: "Many consumers buy organic food because they're worried about pesticide residues.
"The FSA itself recommends buying organic food if you want to avoid residues. Yet they were specifically excluded from this study."
The FSA accepted that the report only examined the nutritional content of food, and did not deal with pesticides. "It's a fact that conventional production methods permit the use of a wider range of pesticides than organic," said an FSA spokeswoman.
"The FSA is neither for nor against organic food. Our interest is in providing accurate information to support consumer choice."
Britain's dirty money: How the loose change in our pockets is costing the earth
The flatbed Iveco juggernauts streak relentlessly along the rain-soaked M4 in the late winter darkness. Speeding out across Ail Groesfan Hafren, the second Severn Bridge, the transporters cross the flat estuarial mud of the river in flashing red-light convoy and plough headlong into the Vale of Glamorgan.
Inside the cavernous trailers are giant loops of steel, copper and nickel folded like fragile origami paper into tight manageable bundles. Purchased to order from clients operating on the open market of the London Metal Exchange, the minerals have travelled thousands of miles from mines deep within Africa, South America and Australasia. The final destination for the cargo is a drab 30-acre industrial plot that few people outside South Wales even know exists.
Here, in the early hours of the morning, the metals will be unloaded. The giant coils of steel and copper are unrolled like a carpet and 'blanked', or punched, into tens of thousands of small discs. The blanks are then plated with thick layers of nickel, washed in acid solutions and scanned by sensors. Dye stamps squeeze 'effi gies' - the head and tail images - into the blanks, turning them into coins.
Twenty-four tons of coins a year emerge from the heavily guarded coining press room of the Royal Mint, the world's oldest financial institution.
Here, an entire range of industrial skills are housed on one massive plot, from furnace workers to engravers touching up the Queen's portrait. And at the end of it all is a football-pitch-sized warehouse full of money piled as high as a five-storey house.
The Royal Mint is a multimillion-pound business that produces three billion coins a year for the world; its complex inner workings remain a mystery to most of us. The same can be said for the true origins of the coins they produce in the dead of night.
Live has travelled to opposite corners of the world in search of the copper and nickel that make up the largest part of our coins. What we have discovered is that while as consumers we are obsessed with recycling, ethically sourced products and organic food, the very cash with which we do our trade is itself most likely unethical. Dirty money, in fact.
We went to the world's largest copper mines in a remote part of Chile and to the heart of the rainforest in Madagascar to investigate the development of what is to be the world's largest nickel mine. Both these metals are vital for the production of coins. The devastation we discovered was shocking. Whole swathes of pristine Madagascan rainforest, home to some of the most endangered creatures in the world, have been felled.
And in Chile, a vast amount of water is being drained every day from what is already one of the driest places on Earth. These mines are causing significant damage to the planet and its people, yet the Government-owned Royal Mint continues to buy metal from them.
People still talk about the last day it rained in Quillagua, Chile. It was in 1983. Tiny droplets were glimpsed, falling from a single grey cloud above the foothills in the hazy distance. Water here has become as rare as Moon dust.
We are standing in a narrow gorge, its blasted walls a fresco of grotesque shapes, whittled by searing hot winds. In front of us are dry fields of cracked mud, long abandoned by local farmers. Behind us, back along the highway, is Calama, a small provincial capital in the Atacama desert.
Copper mining is invasive in the extreme. It destroys the water table and pollutes the earthThe air around Calama is choked and hazy. The main culprit is the world's second largest copper mining and milling operation at Chuquicamata, ten miles north of the town. Once run by the Anaconda Mining Company, it is now a state-owned operation. The pillars of smoke that rise from its stacks are now the most noticeable landmark in the bleak desert. Parked cars are covered with plastic to protect them from the pollution.
Further into the Atacama desert, cutting into the mountains 125 miles south, is Escondida, the El Dorado of the Chilean economy, although copper and not gold makes this mine the most famous and largest in the world. The only way to fully comprehend the destruction is to view it from space. It is so isolated that the damage this part-British-owned mine has inflicted is known only to a few.
Part of the reason for the devastation here is that just one per cent of the rock contains metal. As a result a huge amount is mined, creating a hole that is now 1.25 miles across - an impossibly vast chunk of the desert has disappeared in less than a decade. This is the biggest, dirtiest hole in the world and it is owned by two Anglo-Australian mining giants - BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
On the ground, the cracked brown earth around the site crumbles in your hands as you lift it. There is no sign of animal life anywhere. The scarcity of water and natural brush has forced nature to simply move on or, worse, wither and die. The mine sucks the land dry for miles and miles around. In the world's driest plateau, Escondida uses more water each year than the whole of the capital, Santiago.
As Escondida has expanded, Chilean copper output has increased by 24 per cent, or 604,000 tons, to top three million tons last year, about one-third of total Western-world production. The vast majority comes from these two sites. According to UK importing statistics, 20 per cent of the copper in this country comes from Chile. The mines churn out more and more copper to meet a surging demand, but with it has come an unforgiveable legacy of labour exploitation and environmental disregard.
In the neighbouring town of Quillagua, water is so scarce that long trailers now tear up the desert roads, bringing in water from 125 miles away. Quillagua is among many small towns being swallowed up in Chile's intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.
Agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon o ff rivers and tap scarce water supplies.
'Everything is against us,' says Bartolome Vicentelo, 79, who once grew crops and fished for shrimp in the Loa River that fed Quillagua.
The town has become a ghost town after Codelco, the government company that runs Chuquicamata, used the land to dump waste material from the giant open-pit mine. The company was forced by environmental laws to move the population away from the hazardous emissions of arsenic and sulphur dioxide.
In its heyday in the Fifties, Chuquicamata's population numbered 24,000. Today, there are about 7,000 workers at the mine. Only a handful live in the camp nearby. But the smog spreads far afield, even to Santiago, where sometimes it's so bad that children are hospitalised with respiratory ailments.
According to trade union leader Guilen Mo Gonzalez, 'Here in Chile our land and our lives have been destroyed by copper mining. This is the driest region on Earth, where indigenous families struggle to get water from their wells. Water theft by big corporations is common in my country and we have no rights.
'Escondida, the biggest copper mine in the world, uses more water than the whole of Santiago and all of this in an area where you have to squeeze water out of the cracked earth.
'Copper mining, like all open-cast mining, can never be ethical,' says Gonzalez.
If this was somewhere more high-profile, people would be protesting'It's invasive in the extreme, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells. It is destroying one of the most beautiful and unique places on Earth. Look at a photograph of the Atacama before the mines came here and then look at the area now.
'From the air the desert is unrecognisable - the oases are gone, the wildlife is gone, the wells are gone. This is too high a price to pay.'
Water has become such a problem in this part of the world that even Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, with all their money and resources, can no longer squeeze enough from the ground to feed the demands of the mine. They have recently invested £150 million in a desalination plant at Escondida. The aim is to pump seawater from the Pacific Ocean over a distance of 125 miles and up 10,000ft to satisfy the mine's needs.
Miguel Stutzin, president of Code , Chile's oldest environmental group, says: 'This is the apparent solution to our water crisis and what damage will this do to the coast and to the foothills of the Andes where the pipeline will penetrate, and how will it replace all the regional water these mines have used? Will it replenish the desert towns? Of course not.'
The atmosphere inside 56 Leadenhall Street in central London is tense. Around red leather benches, arranged in a ring about 20ft across, market traders stand with phones pressed to their ears. At 11.45am every Monday all hell breaks loose as the London Metal Exchange's archaic trading system gets under way. According to centuries-old tradition, sales take place in five-minute slots.
R
First is aluminium alloy, then tin, primary aluminium, copper, lead, zinc, nickel and finally plastic. Here is where the price of the copper and nickel in our coins is set. A staggering £25 billion changes hands here every day. Much of the copper mined in the Atacama desert is traded on this exchange.
According to the Royal Mint's 2008 report, all its copper and nickel sourcing is carried out on the open market of the LME, where materials from all over the world are brought together in anonymity. The Royal Mint is one of the UK's largest buyers of copper and nickel.
Every year it casts 20,000 tons of copper and nickel alloys, and produces three billion coins. British coins are made from about 75 per cent copper and 25 per cent nickel. With Chile accounting for 24 per cent of the world's supply of copper, at least some of the material in our coins must come from these mines.
We asked the Royal Mint if it had an ethical sourcing policy and if it could tell us from where it sourced materials.
A spokesperson said: 'The Royal Mint takes the sourcing of its raw materials very seriously. As part of our commitment the Royal Mint last year became a member of Sedex, the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange, which is an organisation for businesses committed to continuous improvement of the ethical performance of their supply chain.'
In fact Sedex is little more than a loose affiliation of companies that have expressed an intent to address the issue of ethical sourcing.
Greenpeace Africa Communications Director Fiona Musana says this is meaningless without appropriate action and that the Royal Mint should come clean on how dirty our money really is.
'Copper and nickel open-cast mining tear a horrific and unrecoverable swathe through some of the most pristine wildernesses on Earth. It is one of the most significant pieces of negligence in our society today that the Royal Mint does not ethically source its metals.
'That the very thing we handle every day, the money we use to shop ethically, to buy organically, is in all likelihood unethical, will come as an enormous jolt to consumers, and the Mint should be forced to publish where exactly they get their metals from, if they know at all. One thing is clear, looking at the Mint's performance reviews their main corporate focus seems to be profit.'
The key question is: do we need so many coins? Other nations are cutting down on the cost of loose change. In 2006, in an initiative called Change For The Better, New Zealand eliminated its five-cent coins and dramatically reduced the size and weight of its ten-, 20- and 50-cent coins.
One of the biggest challenges for the Royal Mint is sourcing not only copper but the nickel that gives coins their silvery sheen. Plagued by shortages in The Congo and Russia, the nickel industry is in turmoil, but the discovery of the metal in the rainforests of Madagascar has given hope that the gap can be plugged. But the new push for nickel from Madagascar has brought destruction with it.
R
The hard rain is coming in from the Indian Ocean to the west as low, grey cloud covers the mountainside-in a thick freezing mist. My boots are sinking up to their rims into thick red earth, as congealed and sticky as lumps of dried blood.
There is water and mud everywhere; it's down my neck, along the thorny spines of the lethal-looking shrubs and trees that encircle us, around the axle of our trapped and abandoned Toyota Land Cruiser six miles back on the same ghastly and inhospitable trail we have followed to bypass the security teams prowling the rainforest.
Suddenly, from a distant ridge comes an unearthly sound, somewhere between hysterical laughter and a haunting, whale-like moan.
'The indris are singing,' says our guide. The sound is above us, coming down from the vast rainforest canopy 150ft up.
Once the keening song of the indri, the largest lemur, was heard from every mountain ridge in eastern Madagascar. Now, only about 1,000 indris remain. Our guide is grunting loudly as he walks along the rainforest trail. He is imitating the contact calls of lemurs and in a flash we see one, tail-less, black and white, with large fluffy ears. Lemurs are unique to Madagascar, an island that will be familiar to many from the animated film of the same name. It's remarkable that we saw a lone lemur at all.
We are standing in the Ambatovy rainforest, near the central Madagascan town of Andisabe. Before us an 80ft-wide scar has been carved right through the primary forest like a four-lane motorway. Beyond, long lines of bulldozers are busy establishing a £3 billion nickel mine - the world's largest - owned by the Canadian company Sherritt.
We are the first international journalists to make it through the hours of tortuous travel along dirt tracks to this part of the forest. We have had to hike for more than ten hours to get to see this destruction.
In order to supply water here Sherritt is building a vast and complex pipeline. We follow it and are horrified to see how it rips through the shrivelling natural habitat of the indri. When it reaches Madagascar's western wetlands, it will also devastate the home of rare poisonous frogs.
Madagascar is throwing its all into the mining sector. Its vast unexploited reserves have become attractive to many foreign companies: Rio Tinto and Sherritt are very active here. Modern-day Klondikes are sprouting up across the country, turning a very traditional society upside down and threatening to disfigure an island whose biodiversity earned it the name of the 'Noah's Ark of the Indian Ocean'
Local wildlife campaigner Rainer Dolch, from the Madagascan Environmental Group Mitsinjo, says: 'Let's put the location of this mine into perspective. Around 90 per cent of everything that lives here is endemic - it doesn't live anywhere else.
'Put into context, Britain has between 30 and 40 indigenous trees, none of them endemic; Madagascar has at least 4,200. There are almost 12,000 plant species. It's not just peculiar species, it's whole genera. There are 80 different chameleons, half the species in the world, and most of the planet's orchids.
'This flora in Ambatovy, where the mine is carving an enormous hole, was already among the most endangered in Madagascar's wet forests. The reality is Sherritt has been flying below the radar - in the beginning it was very open, calling in consultants and NGOs, but as soon as it got the permits everything went underground. It can now do anything it wants.'
Sherritt claims it is trying to make the construction of a 125-mile slurry pipeline - through the rainforest and some of Madagascar's prime wetland areas - as painless as possible for wildlife. The company says its goal is to produce 'no net harm' to the country's animal habitat and 'no species loss' to its forests. It is spending millions of dollars on extraordinary environmental measures, including 'lemur bridges' (wooden structures to allow lemurs to cross roads and pipelines safely) and 'replacement forests' to offset those destroyed by the mine.
Martine, 74, with her grandchild, stand near to where their house was destroyed to make way for the 200km long pipeline in central eastern Madagascar
But Dolch shrugs this off as 'green-wash'. He says the mining project has not received enough scrutiny from independent scientists. He claims instead that the government is relying on data from Sherritt itself. There is already evidence of heavy silting in a local river as a result of erosion caused by the new pipeline.
'One has to ask why the government issued the environmental permits,' he says.
But it's not just wildlife in the firing line. Far below us, on a ridge above the Ambatovy rainforest, the villagers of New Andasifahatelo huddle around campfires. Deeper into the valley, a dozen yellow JCBs line up in the gloom of dusk, their engines silent for now. Behind the metal beasts a vast swathe of red earth has been sliced through the rainforest. In their path was the village of Old Andasifahatelo.
'I lived here for 25 years,' says villager Martine in the Betsimisaraka language. 'We were in the way of the mine. They have moved us here, above the river, and built small wooden huts for us. '
The villagers claim that Sherritt promised to compensate them and relocate them but the money didn't materialise and they're still in the same place. The scene around their home is one of devastation. Their traditional hunting grounds are gone, their wells polluted with mud from the bulldozers. On the outskirts of the village the children dig their feet in the thick red earth; the quagmire of mud created by the excavation has become their playground.
'The Madagasay people were a pushover for the mine company, especially the tribals who do everything they can to avoid authority or confrontation,' says Narina Rabarison, president of an association of wildlife guides in nearby Andasibe. 'If this catastrophe was happening somewhere more high profile, people would be protesting and chaining themselves to bulldozers.'
Further north-west, towards the entrance to the mine site, villagers claim their wells have been poisoned by the excavation work. Dozens of locals have suffered from diarrhoea. Locals now walk an extra mile to get their water but are taking water from the same stream as before, the only one in the district.
At the well Marianne scoops water into her mouth and on to the face of her son. In the last month, four of her neighbours' children have been hospitalised for poisoning.
'I have no choice but to get my water here,' she says. As she speaks her youngest daughter slips into the water and scoops a handful into her mouth.
'My daughter is six,' says Marianne. 'Every day since she was born I have brought her here, but the very thing that is giving her life is poisoning her.'
From my wallet I remove a one-pound coin and look at the Latin inscription on the rim of the coin: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit. No one provokes me with impunity. As I look on the devastation meted out in this incredible country I think back to the damage I witnessed in Chile.
Tragically for the people in the way of nickel mining and those in Chile desperately searching for their stolen water, without companies like the Royal Mint taking an ethical approach to their sourcing of materials, their lives will continue to be blighted by these mines.
Inside the cavernous trailers are giant loops of steel, copper and nickel folded like fragile origami paper into tight manageable bundles. Purchased to order from clients operating on the open market of the London Metal Exchange, the minerals have travelled thousands of miles from mines deep within Africa, South America and Australasia. The final destination for the cargo is a drab 30-acre industrial plot that few people outside South Wales even know exists.
Here, in the early hours of the morning, the metals will be unloaded. The giant coils of steel and copper are unrolled like a carpet and 'blanked', or punched, into tens of thousands of small discs. The blanks are then plated with thick layers of nickel, washed in acid solutions and scanned by sensors. Dye stamps squeeze 'effi gies' - the head and tail images - into the blanks, turning them into coins.
Twenty-four tons of coins a year emerge from the heavily guarded coining press room of the Royal Mint, the world's oldest financial institution.
Here, an entire range of industrial skills are housed on one massive plot, from furnace workers to engravers touching up the Queen's portrait. And at the end of it all is a football-pitch-sized warehouse full of money piled as high as a five-storey house.
The Royal Mint is a multimillion-pound business that produces three billion coins a year for the world; its complex inner workings remain a mystery to most of us. The same can be said for the true origins of the coins they produce in the dead of night.
Live has travelled to opposite corners of the world in search of the copper and nickel that make up the largest part of our coins. What we have discovered is that while as consumers we are obsessed with recycling, ethically sourced products and organic food, the very cash with which we do our trade is itself most likely unethical. Dirty money, in fact.
We went to the world's largest copper mines in a remote part of Chile and to the heart of the rainforest in Madagascar to investigate the development of what is to be the world's largest nickel mine. Both these metals are vital for the production of coins. The devastation we discovered was shocking. Whole swathes of pristine Madagascan rainforest, home to some of the most endangered creatures in the world, have been felled.
And in Chile, a vast amount of water is being drained every day from what is already one of the driest places on Earth. These mines are causing significant damage to the planet and its people, yet the Government-owned Royal Mint continues to buy metal from them.
People still talk about the last day it rained in Quillagua, Chile. It was in 1983. Tiny droplets were glimpsed, falling from a single grey cloud above the foothills in the hazy distance. Water here has become as rare as Moon dust.
We are standing in a narrow gorge, its blasted walls a fresco of grotesque shapes, whittled by searing hot winds. In front of us are dry fields of cracked mud, long abandoned by local farmers. Behind us, back along the highway, is Calama, a small provincial capital in the Atacama desert.
Copper mining is invasive in the extreme. It destroys the water table and pollutes the earthThe air around Calama is choked and hazy. The main culprit is the world's second largest copper mining and milling operation at Chuquicamata, ten miles north of the town. Once run by the Anaconda Mining Company, it is now a state-owned operation. The pillars of smoke that rise from its stacks are now the most noticeable landmark in the bleak desert. Parked cars are covered with plastic to protect them from the pollution.
Further into the Atacama desert, cutting into the mountains 125 miles south, is Escondida, the El Dorado of the Chilean economy, although copper and not gold makes this mine the most famous and largest in the world. The only way to fully comprehend the destruction is to view it from space. It is so isolated that the damage this part-British-owned mine has inflicted is known only to a few.
Part of the reason for the devastation here is that just one per cent of the rock contains metal. As a result a huge amount is mined, creating a hole that is now 1.25 miles across - an impossibly vast chunk of the desert has disappeared in less than a decade. This is the biggest, dirtiest hole in the world and it is owned by two Anglo-Australian mining giants - BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
On the ground, the cracked brown earth around the site crumbles in your hands as you lift it. There is no sign of animal life anywhere. The scarcity of water and natural brush has forced nature to simply move on or, worse, wither and die. The mine sucks the land dry for miles and miles around. In the world's driest plateau, Escondida uses more water each year than the whole of the capital, Santiago.
As Escondida has expanded, Chilean copper output has increased by 24 per cent, or 604,000 tons, to top three million tons last year, about one-third of total Western-world production. The vast majority comes from these two sites. According to UK importing statistics, 20 per cent of the copper in this country comes from Chile. The mines churn out more and more copper to meet a surging demand, but with it has come an unforgiveable legacy of labour exploitation and environmental disregard.
In the neighbouring town of Quillagua, water is so scarce that long trailers now tear up the desert roads, bringing in water from 125 miles away. Quillagua is among many small towns being swallowed up in Chile's intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.
Agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon o ff rivers and tap scarce water supplies.
'Everything is against us,' says Bartolome Vicentelo, 79, who once grew crops and fished for shrimp in the Loa River that fed Quillagua.
The town has become a ghost town after Codelco, the government company that runs Chuquicamata, used the land to dump waste material from the giant open-pit mine. The company was forced by environmental laws to move the population away from the hazardous emissions of arsenic and sulphur dioxide.
In its heyday in the Fifties, Chuquicamata's population numbered 24,000. Today, there are about 7,000 workers at the mine. Only a handful live in the camp nearby. But the smog spreads far afield, even to Santiago, where sometimes it's so bad that children are hospitalised with respiratory ailments.
According to trade union leader Guilen Mo Gonzalez, 'Here in Chile our land and our lives have been destroyed by copper mining. This is the driest region on Earth, where indigenous families struggle to get water from their wells. Water theft by big corporations is common in my country and we have no rights.
'Escondida, the biggest copper mine in the world, uses more water than the whole of Santiago and all of this in an area where you have to squeeze water out of the cracked earth.
'Copper mining, like all open-cast mining, can never be ethical,' says Gonzalez.
If this was somewhere more high-profile, people would be protesting'It's invasive in the extreme, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells. It is destroying one of the most beautiful and unique places on Earth. Look at a photograph of the Atacama before the mines came here and then look at the area now.
'From the air the desert is unrecognisable - the oases are gone, the wildlife is gone, the wells are gone. This is too high a price to pay.'
Water has become such a problem in this part of the world that even Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, with all their money and resources, can no longer squeeze enough from the ground to feed the demands of the mine. They have recently invested £150 million in a desalination plant at Escondida. The aim is to pump seawater from the Pacific Ocean over a distance of 125 miles and up 10,000ft to satisfy the mine's needs.
Miguel Stutzin, president of Code , Chile's oldest environmental group, says: 'This is the apparent solution to our water crisis and what damage will this do to the coast and to the foothills of the Andes where the pipeline will penetrate, and how will it replace all the regional water these mines have used? Will it replenish the desert towns? Of course not.'
The atmosphere inside 56 Leadenhall Street in central London is tense. Around red leather benches, arranged in a ring about 20ft across, market traders stand with phones pressed to their ears. At 11.45am every Monday all hell breaks loose as the London Metal Exchange's archaic trading system gets under way. According to centuries-old tradition, sales take place in five-minute slots.
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First is aluminium alloy, then tin, primary aluminium, copper, lead, zinc, nickel and finally plastic. Here is where the price of the copper and nickel in our coins is set. A staggering £25 billion changes hands here every day. Much of the copper mined in the Atacama desert is traded on this exchange.
According to the Royal Mint's 2008 report, all its copper and nickel sourcing is carried out on the open market of the LME, where materials from all over the world are brought together in anonymity. The Royal Mint is one of the UK's largest buyers of copper and nickel.
Every year it casts 20,000 tons of copper and nickel alloys, and produces three billion coins. British coins are made from about 75 per cent copper and 25 per cent nickel. With Chile accounting for 24 per cent of the world's supply of copper, at least some of the material in our coins must come from these mines.
We asked the Royal Mint if it had an ethical sourcing policy and if it could tell us from where it sourced materials.
A spokesperson said: 'The Royal Mint takes the sourcing of its raw materials very seriously. As part of our commitment the Royal Mint last year became a member of Sedex, the Supplier Ethical Data Exchange, which is an organisation for businesses committed to continuous improvement of the ethical performance of their supply chain.'
In fact Sedex is little more than a loose affiliation of companies that have expressed an intent to address the issue of ethical sourcing.
Greenpeace Africa Communications Director Fiona Musana says this is meaningless without appropriate action and that the Royal Mint should come clean on how dirty our money really is.
'Copper and nickel open-cast mining tear a horrific and unrecoverable swathe through some of the most pristine wildernesses on Earth. It is one of the most significant pieces of negligence in our society today that the Royal Mint does not ethically source its metals.
'That the very thing we handle every day, the money we use to shop ethically, to buy organically, is in all likelihood unethical, will come as an enormous jolt to consumers, and the Mint should be forced to publish where exactly they get their metals from, if they know at all. One thing is clear, looking at the Mint's performance reviews their main corporate focus seems to be profit.'
The key question is: do we need so many coins? Other nations are cutting down on the cost of loose change. In 2006, in an initiative called Change For The Better, New Zealand eliminated its five-cent coins and dramatically reduced the size and weight of its ten-, 20- and 50-cent coins.
One of the biggest challenges for the Royal Mint is sourcing not only copper but the nickel that gives coins their silvery sheen. Plagued by shortages in The Congo and Russia, the nickel industry is in turmoil, but the discovery of the metal in the rainforests of Madagascar has given hope that the gap can be plugged. But the new push for nickel from Madagascar has brought destruction with it.
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The hard rain is coming in from the Indian Ocean to the west as low, grey cloud covers the mountainside-in a thick freezing mist. My boots are sinking up to their rims into thick red earth, as congealed and sticky as lumps of dried blood.
There is water and mud everywhere; it's down my neck, along the thorny spines of the lethal-looking shrubs and trees that encircle us, around the axle of our trapped and abandoned Toyota Land Cruiser six miles back on the same ghastly and inhospitable trail we have followed to bypass the security teams prowling the rainforest.
Suddenly, from a distant ridge comes an unearthly sound, somewhere between hysterical laughter and a haunting, whale-like moan.
'The indris are singing,' says our guide. The sound is above us, coming down from the vast rainforest canopy 150ft up.
Once the keening song of the indri, the largest lemur, was heard from every mountain ridge in eastern Madagascar. Now, only about 1,000 indris remain. Our guide is grunting loudly as he walks along the rainforest trail. He is imitating the contact calls of lemurs and in a flash we see one, tail-less, black and white, with large fluffy ears. Lemurs are unique to Madagascar, an island that will be familiar to many from the animated film of the same name. It's remarkable that we saw a lone lemur at all.
We are standing in the Ambatovy rainforest, near the central Madagascan town of Andisabe. Before us an 80ft-wide scar has been carved right through the primary forest like a four-lane motorway. Beyond, long lines of bulldozers are busy establishing a £3 billion nickel mine - the world's largest - owned by the Canadian company Sherritt.
We are the first international journalists to make it through the hours of tortuous travel along dirt tracks to this part of the forest. We have had to hike for more than ten hours to get to see this destruction.
In order to supply water here Sherritt is building a vast and complex pipeline. We follow it and are horrified to see how it rips through the shrivelling natural habitat of the indri. When it reaches Madagascar's western wetlands, it will also devastate the home of rare poisonous frogs.
Madagascar is throwing its all into the mining sector. Its vast unexploited reserves have become attractive to many foreign companies: Rio Tinto and Sherritt are very active here. Modern-day Klondikes are sprouting up across the country, turning a very traditional society upside down and threatening to disfigure an island whose biodiversity earned it the name of the 'Noah's Ark of the Indian Ocean'
Local wildlife campaigner Rainer Dolch, from the Madagascan Environmental Group Mitsinjo, says: 'Let's put the location of this mine into perspective. Around 90 per cent of everything that lives here is endemic - it doesn't live anywhere else.
'Put into context, Britain has between 30 and 40 indigenous trees, none of them endemic; Madagascar has at least 4,200. There are almost 12,000 plant species. It's not just peculiar species, it's whole genera. There are 80 different chameleons, half the species in the world, and most of the planet's orchids.
'This flora in Ambatovy, where the mine is carving an enormous hole, was already among the most endangered in Madagascar's wet forests. The reality is Sherritt has been flying below the radar - in the beginning it was very open, calling in consultants and NGOs, but as soon as it got the permits everything went underground. It can now do anything it wants.'
Sherritt claims it is trying to make the construction of a 125-mile slurry pipeline - through the rainforest and some of Madagascar's prime wetland areas - as painless as possible for wildlife. The company says its goal is to produce 'no net harm' to the country's animal habitat and 'no species loss' to its forests. It is spending millions of dollars on extraordinary environmental measures, including 'lemur bridges' (wooden structures to allow lemurs to cross roads and pipelines safely) and 'replacement forests' to offset those destroyed by the mine.
Martine, 74, with her grandchild, stand near to where their house was destroyed to make way for the 200km long pipeline in central eastern Madagascar
But Dolch shrugs this off as 'green-wash'. He says the mining project has not received enough scrutiny from independent scientists. He claims instead that the government is relying on data from Sherritt itself. There is already evidence of heavy silting in a local river as a result of erosion caused by the new pipeline.
'One has to ask why the government issued the environmental permits,' he says.
But it's not just wildlife in the firing line. Far below us, on a ridge above the Ambatovy rainforest, the villagers of New Andasifahatelo huddle around campfires. Deeper into the valley, a dozen yellow JCBs line up in the gloom of dusk, their engines silent for now. Behind the metal beasts a vast swathe of red earth has been sliced through the rainforest. In their path was the village of Old Andasifahatelo.
'I lived here for 25 years,' says villager Martine in the Betsimisaraka language. 'We were in the way of the mine. They have moved us here, above the river, and built small wooden huts for us. '
The villagers claim that Sherritt promised to compensate them and relocate them but the money didn't materialise and they're still in the same place. The scene around their home is one of devastation. Their traditional hunting grounds are gone, their wells polluted with mud from the bulldozers. On the outskirts of the village the children dig their feet in the thick red earth; the quagmire of mud created by the excavation has become their playground.
'The Madagasay people were a pushover for the mine company, especially the tribals who do everything they can to avoid authority or confrontation,' says Narina Rabarison, president of an association of wildlife guides in nearby Andasibe. 'If this catastrophe was happening somewhere more high profile, people would be protesting and chaining themselves to bulldozers.'
Further north-west, towards the entrance to the mine site, villagers claim their wells have been poisoned by the excavation work. Dozens of locals have suffered from diarrhoea. Locals now walk an extra mile to get their water but are taking water from the same stream as before, the only one in the district.
At the well Marianne scoops water into her mouth and on to the face of her son. In the last month, four of her neighbours' children have been hospitalised for poisoning.
'I have no choice but to get my water here,' she says. As she speaks her youngest daughter slips into the water and scoops a handful into her mouth.
'My daughter is six,' says Marianne. 'Every day since she was born I have brought her here, but the very thing that is giving her life is poisoning her.'
From my wallet I remove a one-pound coin and look at the Latin inscription on the rim of the coin: Nemo Me Impune Lacessit. No one provokes me with impunity. As I look on the devastation meted out in this incredible country I think back to the damage I witnessed in Chile.
Tragically for the people in the way of nickel mining and those in Chile desperately searching for their stolen water, without companies like the Royal Mint taking an ethical approach to their sourcing of materials, their lives will continue to be blighted by these mines.
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