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Paper: Standaarden, certificaten, en monitoringsystemen in de ICT-sector

Standaarden, certificaten, en monitoringsystemen in de ICT-sector: op weg naar een duurzame aankooppraktijk?

De ICT-sector kampt met heel wat uitdagingen op het vlak van duurzaamheid. Het produceren van ICT-producten zoals smartphones, computers en laptops heeft een erg grote impact op mens en milieu. De ontginning van metalen en mineralen nodig voor deze producten gaat vaak gepaard met mensenrechtenschendingen en ecologische destructie. De assemblage van laptops en smartphones gebeurt in fabrieken waar arbeidsrechten met de voeten getreden worden. De gebruikduur is zeer kort en het ontwerp van ICT is niet gericht op hergebruik van de onderdelen, waardoor er een gigantische e-waste afvalberg ontstaat. Daarnaast is bijna vier procent van de wereldwijde uitstoot van broeikasgassen afkomstig van de ICT-sector.

De laatste jaren zien we een toenemend aantal initiatieven die aan de slag gaan met deze uitdagingen. Vele initiatieven vertrekken vanuit de koopkracht van aankopers van ICT. Grote consumenten van ICT producten kunnen via hun aankoopbeleid een belangrijke invloed uitoefenen op ICT bedrijven om hun productieketen op een structurele wijze te verduurzamen.

Standaarden, certificaten en monitoringssystemen worden in verschillende sectoren, omwille van hun gebruiktsvriendelijkheid, veel gebruikt. Ze zijn vrij eenvoudig te verwerken in aankoopdossiers. Toch lijken labels minder gevraagd te worden bij de aankoop van ICT hardware.  Welke certificaten bestaan er voor ICT? Zijn ze betrouwbaar en bruikbaar?

Meer weten? 

Fair ICT Flanders, een project dat getrokken wordt door CATAPA,  en HIVA-KU Leuven publiceren vandaag een gebruiksvriendelijke paper rond standaarden, certificaten en monitoringssystemen voor een duurzamere ICT-sector. Het onderzoekswerk werd uitgevoerd door Dr. Boris Verbrugge (HIVA KU Leuven). Het document is geschreven voor aankopers en andere professionals die aan de slag willen gaan met duurzame ICT binnen hun organisatie. Het biedt handvatten op weg naar een duurzame aankooppraktijk van ICT, gaat dieper in op de voor-en nadelen van certificaten en standaarden en bespreekt mogelijke alternatieven voor certificaten.

De paper is gratis te downloaden op de website van Fair ICT Flanders.

Radio show “Hijack hour” about Bar Circular – Black Friday impact consciousness

Radio show “Hijack hour” about Bar Circular event – Black Friday impact consciousness

Last November 29th CATAPA co-organized Bar Circular, an event meant to raise awareness on the impact of Black Friday. The consumption levels around the idea of ‘Black Friday’ is increasing every year, in more countries and the event is lasting longer and longer, for example, now the duration is actually about a week long. This is pushing more and more people into over-consumption.

As part of this event, we were very happy to be invited to talk about this at a student Radio that same day. The Radio that host us was Urgent FM and we were in the show called ‘Hijack hour’ where one hour of radio time is given to local organisations who want to share and advocate for an important issue.

Here we want to share with you that “Hijack hour” session about the impacts of Black Friday consumerism related to mining and the ICT supply chain, and some actions you can do!

Catapista Louna and Catapista Youssef represented CATAPA in the show for the first part (in English), talking about the problems related to the ICT supply chain in the first half hour.

In the second half hour (in Dutch), members of Gents MilieuFront and Netwerk Bewust Verbruiken, also co-organisers of Bar Circular, talk about the different solutions and alternative ways of consuming ICT, like repairing or buying second hand. They even did interviews with repairers from the Repair Café, one of the activities of the Bar Circular event.

The event had many different activities open to participants and guests in the Krook library! Just before the activities started, local artists transform Miriam Makebaplein square (in front of the Krook) into an e-waste cemetery. Through this public action we tried to create more awareness about the impact of Black Friday and the consequences of our current way of producing and consuming electronic devices.

©Dennis Licht

Then, as mentioned above, we had a Repair Café where you could bring your broken electronic devices and clothing to get them fixed and give them a second life! Throughout the afternoon, three interactive presentation sessions were happening, about the problems related to the production of our electrical appliances and how we can work together towards solutions.

©Dennis Licht
©Dennis Licht

More practically, we had a “Documentary speed-date” corner where visitors could watch in pairs a short documentary from a selection that were about the problems related to the ICT chain and the possible alternatives. Also, there was a Workshop to discover the inside of a smartphone. During this workshop you will discover what raw materials and materials are inside a smartphone, what function they have and what their ecological impact is. Last but not least, there was also an old mobile phones collection point that was after taken to a designated recycling center.

©Dennis Licht

Another initiative we launched to raise awareness of the impacts of Black Friday was an alternative online campaign called “Buy nothing day”, that you can find more about it here.

This event is the result of a collaboration between CATAPA vzw, Gents MilieuFront, Netwerk Bewust Verbruiken, Vormingplus Gent-Eeklo, Curieus, Festival van de Gelijkheid and Bibiliotheek De Krook; with the support of Gent Klimaatstad.

Open MinEd – International Speakers Tour 2020

Open MinEd 2020:

The extraction of life, gold and oil

We again reached a record. The amount of material consumed by humanity has passed 100 billion tonnes every year*. At the same time the percentage of materials recycled is lower than the years before. In short, we are overconsuming. To satisfy our increasing demand of goods companies look for  the lowest production cost, which means bad labor conditions and the generation and accumulation of tons of waste only to get the highest amount of profit. Let’s think together about solutions before there are no resources left!

During the 11th edition of CATAPA’s Open MinEd international speakers tour we focus on the impacts of our constant demand for products and the resources we need to produce them. We will zoom on workers in China, producing our electronic devices in awful labor conditions. We will go to Colombia where everything starts with the extraction of gold, a basic resource in all our ICT products, creates all kinds of problems for communities. And lastly, we put the ecological and social consequences in the spotlight of one of our most important resources: oil. During the diverse events of the speakers tour we will look for answers, search for alternatives to our current way of producing and consuming, highlighting fair initiatives and inspiring movements.

We are glad to host three speakers, witnesses of exploitation and struggle, who are fighting for a just world:

– Lap Hang Au is a member of the Labour Education and Service Network in Hong Kong. He will talk about the workers’ conditions in ICT factories in China and he has specific expertise in the impact of lithium-ion batteries used for electric cars. These are considered fundamental for the Green Transition.  

– Antonella Calle Avilés is an Ecuadorian feminist and ecologist. She is active in our partner organization, Acción Ecológica, an environmental organization engaged in campaigns on the impacts of extraction. For years, Antonella has been an environmental rights defender and, at the moment, she is mainly focused on the oil extraction project in Yasuní national park, one of the most biodiverse places on earth.

– Yefferson Rojas Arango is the co-founder of our partner organization COSAJUCA in Colombia. It’s a youth collective successfully fought against a huge open pit-gold project called ‘La Colosa’. Now the collective and Yefferson are focusing on alternatives to mining in the region, such as organic farming. He is particularly interested in agro ecology and medicinal plants. 

From 8 – 15 March our international guest speakers will participate in events and lectures in different cities and universities of Belgium, telling their stories and sharing their knowledge. 

 

AGENDA

THURSDAY 5th March

Evening tbc | Opening exhibition: Activism and feminism | ES, NL
@Antwerp – Mundana, Paardenmarkt 74

SUNDAY 8th March

9:30 – 11:30h | ANTONELLA | Ontbijt met een Rebel (Belmundo) | NL
@Ghent – Bond Moyson, Vrijdagmarkt 10 (take the entrance through the door in the street ‘Meerseniersstraat’)

MONDAY 9th March

20h | ANTONELLA | GEC Talks (Belmundo) | NL
@Ghent – Lekker GEC, Koningin Maria Hendrikaplein 6

14:30 – 17h | ANTONELLA | Guest lecture | EN
@Ghent – Universiteitstraat 4, auditorium B

16 – 17:30h | AU | Guest lecture | EN
@Heverlee (Leuven) – KU Leuven Celestijnenlaan 200C-01.06 (aula D) (Campus Heverlee)

8:30 – 9:45h |YEFFERSON | Guest lecture | ES
@Gent – UGent, Abdisstraat 1, auditorium A410

13 – 14:30h | YEFFERSON | Guest lecture | NL
@Gent – Campus aula, universiteitsstraat 4, auditorium D (straatkant, vlak aan kalandeberg)

TUESDAY 10th March

11 – 12h |AU | Webinar from Fair ICT Flanders: Labour conditions in Battery factories in China | ES
@Online

14 – 15:30h | AU | Guest lecture | EN
@VIVES Brugge

18 – 19:30h | AU | Guest lecture | EN
@Gent – address + auditorium to be confirmed

20h | ANTONELLA | Cinema Belmundo, movie screening of By the name of Tania | NL
@Gent – Studio Skoop, Sint-Annaplein 63.

WEDNESDAY 11th March

12:30 – 13:50 | YEFFERSON | Spanish Class | ES
@Antwerp – Universiteit Antwerpen Stadscampus – auditorium tbc

THURSDAY 12th March

9 – 10:30 | YEFFERSON | Guest lecture | EN
@Leuven – KULeuven HIVA Parkstraat 47

13 – 17h | AU | Conference: “Green Transition Challenged by the Metal Supply Chain” | EN
@Flemish Parliament, Brussels https://kuleuven.sim2.be/registration-for-green-transition-challenged-by-the-metal-supply-chain/

FRIDAY 13th March

14:30 – 17:15h | ANTONELLA | Guest lecture: Political issues of sustainability: ecology, justice and North-South relations. The case of mining | NL
@Ghent – UGent, Universiteitsstraat 4, auditorium tbc

10:45 – 12:15h | AU | Guest lecture: Car technology & automotive engineering | EN
@Sint-Katelijn-Waver- KU Leuven Technology Campus De Nayer, Jan Pieter de Nayerlaan 5, ROOM A002

Evening tbc | ANTONELLA & YEFFERSON | Fun(d)raising concert |NL, ES, EN
@Gent – to be confirmed

SATURDAY 14th March

17:30 | ANTONELLA & YEFFERSON | Benefit Dinner Ecuador – Colombia | NL
@Gent – Louisaal (Buurtcentrum Macharius), Tarbotstraat 61A.

SUNDAY 15th March

Morning tbc | YEFFERSON | Brunch with Farmers |
@Brussels – address to be confirmed

Facebook event

*The Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative: a global score for circularity

Movement Weekend 2019

How great was the Movement Weekend 2019?

From the 13th till 15th of December there was the annual Movement Weekend which took place in Lokeren. We gathered with a lot of Catapistas to learn, brainstorm, be together, have a good time and eat some delicious food.

The weekend started on Friday with a warm welcome and some soup. Afterwards there was an interactive introduction game in which we discussed the different challenges related to the topics that Catapa is addressing. We also followed an interesting presentation about the extraction of Lithium. Lithium is, i.a. used for our batteries of electric cars. We ended the night with a fun game to get to know each other a bit better!

On Saturday we woke up early to kick off a day filled with interesting activities! We started with a group dynamic exercise and followed the working group meetings. Silke and Alberto, presented their research mission in Bolivia, focusing on several mining cooperatives. After a discussion on the results, we did parallel speed date sessions about the internal functioning of our volunteer organization. Here we sat together to give input and discussed solutions about how to improve our organizational, communication and planning skills.

Laura organized a teambuilding activity in which we learned to trust each other (and almost broke a leg). And then there was dinner, with the best falafel we ever ate. After we all overate, we called our GECO’s (Global Engagement Catapa Officers) in Latin Amerika through Skype to learn more about their experiences. And last but not least, Truike gave a kick-off presentation about OpenMinED, an event that will take place in March 2020. Here we invite guest speakers to give more information about mining and the impact of the ICT supply chain. We ended our Saturday night with the unforgettable Fiesta Catapista, in which we got to see some real dance talents!

On Sunday, the last day, Charlotte gave some information about how to make our way of working more efficient. This meant the end of an amazing weekend.

Already looking forward to the next one!

Flemish buyers go for Fair and Circular ICT

Flemish buyers go for Fair and Circular ICT

On 9 December, the ‘Conference on Fair & Circular ICT’ took place in Ghent, organised by Fair ICT Flanders.  It was the first conference in Flanders to be entirely dedicated to the theme: “How can you, as an ICT buyer, do your bit towards a more sustainable world? With 110 participants, the conference shows that the theme is very much alive among buyers, sustainability employees and ICT professionals from public institutions and private companies.

Speakers from the Panel discussion

The power of responsible purchasing

The production of laptops, smartphones, servers… is accompanied by many human rights violations and has an enormous ecological impact.  With this conference, Fair ICT Flanders wants to provide concrete tools for large buyers of ICT hardware from the public and private sectors in Flanders. Through their purchasing policy, they can put pressure on the ICT companies and contribute to improving the local working and living conditions within the ICT supply chain. After speeches by Ghent Deputy Mayor Sofie Bracke and Chief Logistics Administrator of the University of Ghent Jeroen Vanden Berghe, Kim Claes, coordinator of Fair ICT Flanders opened the day: ‘There is a great potential. Purchasers in Flanders are still insufficiently aware of the power they have. Through their purchasing power, they can work for the protection of environmental and human rights. It is therefore good to look at what is happening in other European countries and to join forces here in Flanders.” Alain Linard, Head of Operations at Digipolis Gent indicated:

“We want to use people’s tax money in a responsible way. We do not want to contribute to human rights violations through our purchases and thus assume our responsibility.”

One of the Discussion Tables session, part of the afternoon part of the Conference.

Need for change

The Vietnamese Ha Kim Thi Thu demonstrated the urgent need for change by highlighting the serious violations of labour rights in Vietnam within the factories of suppliers to, among others, Samsung, Panasonic and Intel. The other speakers discussed the possible solutions to the problems mentioned, ranging from worker-driven monitoring of the chain, certification labels for ICT to an own tracking system (from Fairphone).  In the panel discussion, the speakers discussed with each other and it became clear that the challenges in the ICT chain require more than the standard social audits that are currently taking place. Peter Pawlicki, Director of Outreach and Education, of the NGO Electronics Watch, put it strongly:

“Employees are trained in what to say to auditors. These are the so-called ‘workers’ training courses’. An audit gives a false picture of the daily reality in the factory.”

In the afternoon, frontrunners from the EU and Flanders presented their good examples and the participants were able to enter into a dialogue with the invited experts.  Ideas and possibilities to work on fair and/or circular ICT were discussed at discussion tables. The participants went home with a lot of inspiration and new ideas. 

Fair ICT Flanders will offer 3 years of support to organisations that want to work on a more fair and circular ICT procurement policy. 

Panel Discussion session when the public could ask question to the speakers.

The programme can still be found via this link. More info or questions. 

©Pablo Rojas Madariaga / Danwatch

Lithium exploitation is drying out the world’s driest desert

Lithium exploitation is drying out the world’s driest desert 

*This article is a summary of a longer investigation project from Danwatch, published in collaboration with CATAPA and SETEM. More information at the end of the article.

The Acatama Desert in Chile, the world’s driest desert, is gradually losing its last water resources. Indigenous communities have been sounding the alarm for several years and are now being strengthened by scientific research and environmental organisations. Cause of this dehydration? Lithium mining.

Lithium is essential for the batteries in our phones, our computers and the explosive increase in the number of electric vehicles that are often seen as the key to a green energy transition. Chile, which has half of the world’s lithium reserves, has been declared the ‘Saudi Arabia of Lithium’ and almost all of its exports are currently extracted from the Atacama Desert, the driest place in the world. But extracting Atacama’s lithium means pumping up huge amounts of scarce water resources. Water resources that have enabled indigenous peoples and animals to survive in the desert for thousands of years. 

According to researchers, extraction is already causing lasting damage to the area’s fragile ecosystems. In the Atacama and elsewhere in Chile, indigenous communities are now protesting against current and future plans for lithium extraction. Many communities claim that they were never consulted before the mining projects, although the Chilean authorities are obliged to do so under international treaties ratified by the Chilean state. The Danish research centre Danwatch can document that companies like Samsung, Panasonic, Apple, Tesla and BMW get batteries from companies that use Chilean lithium.

With the country’s incomparable lithium reserves and the increasing importance of the metal for the energy sector, Chile has occasionally been awarded the label ‘Saudi Arabia of Lithium’. Nearly 40 percent of the global supply comes from Chile over the past 20 years and, as Danwatch can reveal, it ends up in some of the most popular electronics and electric cars. The metal is one of the most popular products of the Chilean energy sector. 

However, the Atacama’s indigenous communities were caught up in speed. Chile has signed ILO Convention 169, which obliges governments to consult indigenous people when major projects are carried out in their area. However, according to the people of Pai-Ote, they were not consulted before the lithium projects were presented in the media. “We found out from the press that an agreement had been made that allowed SQM to start lithium mining here. Nobody asked the Colla people if they wanted the mining on their territory,” says Ariel Leon, representative of the Colla community.

Chilean lithium can be extracted at low cost: miners pump lithium brine from a massive reservoir under the Atacama salt plain to huge puddles on the surface of the desert. The highest solar radiation in the world causes the water in the brine to evaporate quickly, causing the lithium to be scooped up together with other salts and minerals.

During this process, 95% of the extracted brine evaporates into the air. This accelerates the water scarcity in the Atacama, says Ingrid Garces, a professor of technology at the Chilean University of Antofagasta, who conducts research into salt pans. “In Chile, lithium mining is considered to be a normal form of mining, as if you were mining a hard rock. But this is not regular mining – it’s water extraction,” she says.

The two companies behind lithium mining in the Atacama, the Chilean Soc. Química & Minera de Chile (SQM) and the American Albemarle Corp. have permits to extract almost 2,000 litres of brine per second. In addition to the brine, lithium miners also extract significant amounts of fresh water along with the nearby copper mines. “The result is an impact on biodiversity in general. And that effect is already visible – the wetlands are drying out,” says Ingrid Garces.

Atacama’s indigenous communities have been sounding the alarm about water scarcity for years. According to the Atacama People’s Council, which represents 18 indigenous communities, rivers, lagoons and meadows have all declined in water over the past decade. However, the Chilean authorities have largely relied on the environmental impact assessments of the mining companies themselves. And, in general, these studies have not found any significant impact on water levels or the surrounding nature.

“For the locals, the change is very clear. They notice that there is less water for their animals, and they see how the rivers dry out. This anecdotal knowledge is not taken seriously by the companies or the state,” says Cristina Dorador, biologist and associate professor at the Chilean University of Antofagasta, who studies the microbial life in the Atacama.

In August 2019, an analysis of satellite images by the satellite analysis company SpaceKnow and the scientific journal Engineering & Technology came to a similar conclusion. Based on satellite images from the period 2015-2019, they saw a strong inverse relationship between the water level in the lithium ponds of SQM and the surrounding lagoons: “As the water level in the SQM ponds increased, the water level in the lagoons would drop”.

Ironically, the Atacama salt plain was once a large lake before it dried up thousands of years ago due to severe climate change. Scientists are studying the desert today as an example of what can happen to ecosystems elsewhere on the planet if global climate change becomes effective. But in an effort to mitigate rising temperatures with electric cars, industries are sucking away the little water left in the world’s driest desert with all the social and ecological impact as a consequence. 

Companies are often greenwashing. This greenwashing narrative is based on the claim that a substantial increase in metal mining is necessary to meet the material needs of renewable energy technologies and associated infrastructure. However, the renewable energy sector will under no circumstances consume the majority of the metals’ annual production. Nevertheless, this narrative let mining companies sacrificing new sites to explore

Danwatch, SETEM and CATAPA  did research to the impact of lithium exploitation in the framework of the European project: Make ICT Fair. This project wants to make the supply chain of electronics more visible and influence public buyers to ask their ICT suppliers, both mining companies and manufactures,  to improve environmental and labour condition. Lithium, as one of the most important metal in the transition to green economies, became the focus of this article.

Danwatch has been to Chile to investigate the country’s growing lithium extraction industry. In the process, they have interviewed numerous scientists, companies, politicians and the people who live closest to the extraction sites. They have reviewed the mining companies’ impact studies as well as the few independent research papers on the topic. They especially base the investigation on a 2019 study on lithium mining in Chile by researchers from Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability.
The investigation is supported by the EU-funded project Make ICT Fair and published in collaboration with SETEM and CATAPA.

DEVICES DRAINING THE DESERT 

Check all the articles from the investigation project below.

ARTICLE 1: Our demand for batteries is drying up the world’s most arid place.
ARTICLE 2: Much of the world’s lithium is being extracted from indigenous peoples’ territories against their will.
ARTICLE 3: Indigenous peoples face charges as they resist future lithium projects across Chile.

ARTICLE 4: There’s probably Chilean lithium behind the screen you’re reading this on.

ARTICLE 5: How much water is used to make the world’s batteries?

ARTICLE 6 / INTERVIEW: The mining companies only see water. But water is life for us.

Interview with 67-year old Clementino López, one of around 20,000 indigenous Likan Antai living in the Atacama Desert

ARTICLE 7 / VIDEO: Watch the surreal lithium extraction landscapes from above.

Watch the surreal lithium extraction landscapes from above

Written by Aäron De Fruyt and Charlotte Christiaens.
Photography: ©Pablo Rojas Madariaga / Danwatch

Art as a Form of Protest – Peru

Art as a Form of Protest – Peru

As all neighboring countries of Peru are stuck or have been stuck in violent protests recently, Peru seems calm. Cajamarca, known for its huge protests to stop the mining project of Conga, seems calm.

Those protests happened only about 7 years ago, in 2011 and 2012, and still have a special taste in everyone’s mouth. Everyone in Cajamarca today has lived them profoundly. Everyone has somehow been part of the cruel protests. But looking at Cajamarca now, it seems like the idea of protesting has died. It seems like people have quietly accepted legal and illegal mining activity in the region. For example, there seems to be no reaction to the new mining project Michiquillay of the company Southern Copper, which they hope to start using in 2022. And there is very little reaction to the contamination of the Valle de Condebamba, where vegetables most Cajamarquinos eat get produced and are severely contaminated with toxic metals.

Why is that? Why do people stay calm? Is it because there are too many protests in Peru? Because they got tired? Because of the number of social conflicts that never get resolved? Because of the 279 people that died defending human rights until 2018 in Peru? Because of the horrible criminalization of protests in Peru in all its forms – both direct attacks as methods like states of emergency? Because of the memory of the horrible protests in 2012?

All very good reasons to not take to the streets anymore. But the truth is – the protests have never really stopped. They have just taken different forms.

Silent protests

Calm, silent protests are happening everywhere. Protesting doesn’t mean aggression. Protesting means showing how things can be different, making people think, for example through art, photo exhibitions, music, whatever you feel like. Protesting can be as silent or as violent as you want it to be. It’s your fight.

So yes, people in Cajamarca – or in Peru – might be tired of protest marches. It’s easy to see that the protest marches for women rights are smaller every year. The three climate change actions we’ve organized this year shrunk every time, and in June, when bull fights came back to Cajamarca after years, we were just a small group screaming outside of the arena holding up cardboards and getting laughed at.

But almost no one came to see the bull fights. The stadium was empty, which made the government cancel the second day of fights. And isn’t that a sign that Cajamarca doesn’t want bull fights anymore? Isn’t just not showing up a form of protest too? Isn’t silent protest, protest too?

Cross boundaries

Protest is what you want it to be. And using art as a form of protest isn’t something new. In fact, it represents the way of protesting in Peru. In the world. And all through history.

It’s said that art as a form of protest or activism was first seen with Dada, an anti-war movement which openly outed critiques to the First World War. Picasso protested with paintings based on for example the Spanish Civil War. The Vietnam War formed a base for many works of art in the sixties, and also gender issues, feminism, immigrant problems, and so on, got addressed through art. And then we haven’t even mentioned Banksy yet with all his work on all kinds of global issues, or the Russian feminist punk-rock band Pussy Riot that dealt with themes as feminism, freedom of speech, LGBT+ rights, etcetera, through their music.

Art is political, and art can be a powerful weapon. Art can make you think about things you hadn’t thought about before. Art can make a political statement, can be some sort of critique on a political or social situation. Art often looks up boundaries, or crosses them.

Art and activism

Also during the awful protests against mining project Conga in 2011 and 2012, art was used. The Plaza de Armas in Cajamarca changed into an art gallery, there were concerts, people were singing and dancing on the street. The Marcha del Agua towards Lima was beautiful with everyone singing together. And that has never stopped. That’s still part of Peru’s – or Cajamarca’s – culture. Art is protest.

As Carlos, founder of an environmental organization in Cajamarca says: “Art has a great impact on people. People get conscious about the environment, and on top of that about the beauty of the art and the people.” Art has an incredibly creative power to move people emotionally, while activism sets a goal, shows us the social or political change we need to see in the world. Art moves a feeling, while activism creates an effect. And in order to make that change, in order to get that effect, we need some sort of stimulation. We need to be moved. Emotionally. Art and activism combined, can lead to many, many things.

On top of that, art used as a form of protest, outside of actual protest marches or political spaces, gets you a surprise effect. It makes people think about serious, maybe political, issues, without them maybe realizing it. It gets in your mind, and slowly, gets you to that effect activism wants to reach.

Changing minds

Murals for example, big paintings on walls, are widely used as a form of protest or activism in Cajamarca and in Peru. In the province of Celendín the streets are full of colourful walls. And also in Cajamarca the city is covered in painted walls, leaving powerful messages. Something we could already see in the beginning of the 20th century in Mexico.

And I have to admit, while painting one of those murals, thinking about the load of work waiting for me on my desk, I did think to myself that I could use my time better. That I could actually do something useful to help the environment, instead of just paint. That I shouldn’t waste my time painting a wall with a message probably no one would read. But was I wrong. All the people passing by that day stopped to check out our message. To see what it was about. And still very often, as I walk passed that wall, I see people talking about the painting. Maybe the mural didn’t gain the change immediately. But it is changing people’s minds, slowly, daily, firmly.

The same happened when we used a beautiful Cajamarcan tradition as a form of activism. On Corpus Christi, the whole Plaza de Armas gets covered in alfombras, or flower carpets. We focused on animal rights and protested against the bull fights with our carpet, whereas some others used it to address gender inequality, for example. And in between the beautiful art works, those pieces of art showing some sort of social or political issue, were the alfombras where most people stood around, discussing what they saw. Not what was actually there, but what they saw, what it meant to them, what they understood the message was. It made people rethink their own actions.

Happiness in protest

And that’s not all. Ecological fairs keep popping out of the ground like mushrooms, focusing on economic alternatives to mining and environmental issues, and that way making passengers-by think about the impact of mining activity without them realizing that’s what it’s about. Wakes are organized to mourn the death of our environment, combined with a beautiful piano concert, to focus on environmental issues in a different way. Theatres are held all through town showing the effects of gender inequality or climate change. Movie nights focusing on social themes are a big thing.

The lyrics to the typical cheerful carnival music of Cajamarca get changed to songs defending human rights and are being sung whenever the opportunity shows.

A few weeks ago a protest action was held at Cerro Quilish. Only about 30 people showed up, hiking to the top of the mountain from where you could look out over Yanacocha. But those 30 people brought up their giant speaker, singing and dancing their way up. And after the talk on top of the mountain, the volume of that same speaker was turned up a bit more.

People opened their bags, uncovering bowls of food, giving everyone a spoonful of whatever they had brought. Sharing. Dancing. Singing. Turning a protest into a beautiful moment together, showing their strength, their traditions, their bond. Showing they are one. Unstoppable. Finding happiness in protest.

Beautiful protests

There’s loads of centers that open their doors for all kind of social movement or activity, for free, supporting artists. There’s a cultural magazine made entirely by volunteers that also hold events every few weeks addressing for example topics as cultural identity, traditions, history. There’s movies or poetry in Quechua to make people rethink their roots and history. There’s dozens of bands in Cajamarca singing about animal rights or human rights or violence against women or any topic you can think of.

Lots of youth organizations take charge and organize fun activities for all ages such as actions on recycling with quiz questions and prices to win. Photo exhibitions focus on what nature should look like and shows the work of different human and environmental right defenders.

Of course, protesting is hard in Peru. And it’s sad that there’s still so much to protest about. But at least we know it will always be here, in its own way. And protesting can be so, so beautiful.

There’s resistance. There’s hope. In all its forms. Don’t underestimate the power of art. And don’t underestimate Cajamarca.

Buy Nothing Day – Europe

Buy Nothing Day – VS – Black Friday

Buy Nothing Day is an international day of protest against consumerism that takes place on November 29th, 2019. It is celebrated on the same day as “Black Friday”, a consumption record every year!

  • 77% of people around the world know what Black Friday is, and 47% is willing to participate in the shopping spree this year.
  • Shoppers around the world will spend on average 167€ during Black Friday sales, with clothes, electronics and shoes on mind.

©black-friday.global

The consumption related to Black Friday is increasing every year and the event is lasting longer and longer (now the duration is actually of about a week long). Companies are pushing more and more people into over-consumption.

Electronics are the second favourite products targeted on Black Friday: smartphones, laptops and other ICT products are bought all over the world. This puts a strong pressure on both the environment and the workers of both assembly factories and metal mines where the elements composing electronic devices are extracted (mostly metals). To extract the elements composing the ICT devices bought on black Friday human rights are violated, people’s health is affected and nature is being polluted by the ICT industry.

The extraction of metals always entails major social and environmental impacts and fuel conflicts. In factories, workers have to assemble the products for long hours and are forced into working nights at peaks of orders such as Black Friday. Some migrants’ workers are even obligated to remain at the factory by employers who confiscate their passports for blackmailing purposes. Once the products are out of use, they become e-waste. According to the World Economic Forum, each year more than 50 million tons of e-waste is produced worldwide and only 20% is properly recycled (35% in the European Union). The situation is predicted to get worse in the coming years if we do not reduce our consumption of electronic devices, learn to repair them, share them and recycled them when their life is really over.

©World Economic forum

The economic system in which we live and the big international companies that rule it created our never-ending urge to consume more and more, especially ICT devices. This way of living is completely unsustainable and puts our planet under serious pressure.

 

What can we do?

Buy Nothing day – Europe is not only about changing our consumption habits for a few hours, we need to become conscious consumers.

Improving our way of life and consumption habits is necessary if we want to maintain life on Earth: consuming less and producing less waste is crucial in this fight.

Instead of consuming, we stand for repairing, refurbishing, reusing, recycling, sharing and reducing our consumption (more info here). And this consumption we try to redirect towards locally owned, community-based businesses to somewhat diminish our impact.

Let’s ask ourselves the right questions: Do we really need that new gadget or the latest version of our favourite smartphone brand? Why would we buy a new product if we still have one that works? If our favourite ICT device is broken, how can we fix it ourselves? Are there companies that sell products that are easily repairable and recyclable? Why not buy second-hand?

Consumers are not the only responsible for the situation, together we can reach out to companies and the industry to oblige them to produce products in a more sustainable and fair way.

Join us on Buy Nothing Day – Europe and help us spread the message, we can be more than passive consumers.

 

From fellow responsible consumers…

The countdown is OVER!!!

 

Today I'm not buying nothing, I am...

The Make ICT Fair Project

This campaign is part of the Make ICT Fair project that wants to improve the lives and livelihoods for workers and communities associated with ICT supply chains, particularly in the Global South. Through research, awareness raising, lobbying towards public institutions for more sustainable and fair public procurement policies on ICT and lobbying for better legislation within the EU, the partners try to reach that goal. More information about the project you can find here.

The partners: CATAPA, CEE Bankwatch, Electronics Watch, ICLEI, Le Monde Diplomatique, People & Planet, SETEM Catalunya, Südwind, Swedwatch, Towards Sustainability Action, University of Edinburgh

This project is organised with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication is the sole responsibility of the Make ICT Fair project and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.

Armenia: Amulsar, the Mountain where Water is more Precious than Gold

On the 2nd of October, CATAPA had the honor of receiving Armenian activist Anna Shahnazaryan, from the Armenian Environmental Front. She is part of the Save Amulsar campaign, which for years has been opposing the Amulsar gold mine by Lydian International. The Amulsar mine is the second largest gold deposit in Armenia. Shahnazaryan travelled to Belgium to have conversations with EU lobby groups and managed to give a short presentation with CATAPA.

During this gathering, we also met Laura Luciani (author of this article), who is a PhD student at the Centre for EU Studies of Ghent University, where she researches human rights and civil society in the South Caucasus.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE in the East Journal in Italian, by Laura Luciani.

Armenia: Amulsar, the Mountain where Water is more Precious than Gold

In 1986, a group of 350 Armenian intellectuals wrote an open letter to Mikhail Gorbačëv to denounce the catastrophic consequences of pollution caused by heavy industries, whose repercussions had long been ignored by the Soviet authorities. Even though for over thirty years environmental protests have been taking place in an almost cyclical way in Armenia, and the damages caused by irresponsible industrial practices are constantly monitored, today citizens still have to take to the streets to prevent yet another ecological disaster.

For seven years, local communities and environmentalist groups have been opposing the construction of a gold mine in Amulsar – a mountainous area in the South of Armenia, located in the centre of the national water supply system. But in the last year, in the wake of the political changes that affected Armenia, this local protest has taken on a transnational dimension: now, the “post-Velvet-Revolution” government led by Nikol Pashinyan finds itself having to handle it with caution.

The project and its impact

Armenia is a country rich in mineral resources including copper, gold, but also lead, silver, zinc and other industrial minerals; these constitute more than half of the country’s exports. With a surface of less than 30,000 km2, Armenia counts today around 27 authorized mineral sites, of which 17 are active. However, the exploitation of these deposits has for decades been at the centre of controversies due to mismanagement and to these extractive projects’ extremely negative environmental effects.

In 2012, a mining company called Lydian Armenia (subsidiary of the offshore company Lydian International) signs a first deal with the Armenian government, at that time led by the Republican Party. In 2016, the company receives the final mine operation permit, even though the project is highly problematic. Amulsar, which is the 2nd largest gold deposit in Armenia, is in fact located only 6 km away from the spa town of Jermuk, famous for its thermal water: the inhabitants (who were not consulted about the project and its impact) fear that the proximity of the mine and the pollution resulting from it may discourage tourist flows to the town, thus affecting the community’s main source of income.

Scientists also indicate that the project could have ecological repercussions on a much larger scale: the Amulsar deposit is located within a seismic area, which increases the risk that acid drainage processes, accelerated by the excavations, leak in and contaminate the surrounding rivers (Arpa, Vorotan and Darb), with negative consequences for agriculture and livestock. Furthermore, contamination threatens to reach Lake Sevan – the largest freshwater reservoir of the country and an almost sacred place in Armenian popular culture. Last but not least, the project would alter the Amulsar ecosystem, which hosts different protected species including the Caucasian leopard (or Persian leopard) – of which only 10 specimen remain in Armenia.

A turning point 

After years of protest, in June 2018 the local communities decided to seize the window of opportunity opened by the “Velvet Revolution” that took place over one month earlier (thanks to an unprecedented wave of mass peaceful protests) to undertake direct action and block the streets leading to the mining site. The #SaveAmulsar campaign was born: for over a year and a half, local people supported by environmental activists have been supervising the entrance to the mine, doing shifts in checkpoints they built for this purpose, and managed to effectively stop the works in the construction site.

However, the citizens’ euphoria suffered a severe blow on 9 September this year: after opening an investigation and commissioning an independent assessment of the project’s environmental impact, prime minister Nikol Pashinyan unexpectedly gave the go-ahead for the digging in the Amulsar gold mine, asking protesters to clear the streets. As Anna Shahnazaryan, Armenian Environmental Front’s activist, explains in an interview for Kiosk (T.N. Italian radio programme), “the independent report, published in August, stated that Lydian’s estimations about the mine’s impact on water resources were incorrect, and that the project contained several evaluation errors – including intentional ones. Therefore, the environmental impact mitigation measures envisaged by Lydian were not adequate”.

Nevertheless, the Investigative Committee and the prime minister himself concluded that the company would be able to manage all the environmental risks. “For this reason, – Shahnazaryan continues – in the last two months the situation has become hectic: the prime minister took the side of Lydian and organized different meetings with the company’s representatives, while we activists took to the streets both in Amulsar and in Yerevan”.

“Post-revolutionary” Armenia and its problems

Experts suggest that Pashinyan is defending the private interests of Lydian Armenia and its investors (among which the USA, the United Kingdom and several international financial institutions) to prevent the company from having recourse to the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). This is an international mechanism which allows a foreign investor to request arbitration by a corporate court if the “host-state” violates its rights: this decision could cost Armenia around two billion dollars, that is two thirds of its state budget.

However, there are also people who believe that Pashinyan’s ambiguous position is symptomatic of some criticalities of Armenia’s post-revolutionary government: first, the lack of an ideology going beyond the mere overthrow of the corrupt political system, which for ten years had been in the hands of former president Serzh Sarghsyan. According to Anna Shahnazaryan, “the current government uses many slogans, but behind the slogans there is little action. And one of these slogans is ‘we will not follow the economic path traced by the previous government, which focused on the mining industry, but we will try to develop new sectors such as tourism and the IT sector’”.

In reality, the “economic revolution” that Pashinyan wants to bring about in Armenia seems to be based on the same neo-liberal approach of the previous government, aimed at “opening up the country” to multinationals and foreign investors (with the 400 million dollars destined for Amulsar, Lydian would be the largest single investor in the history of independent Armenia). An understanding of “development” which disregards ecological considerations, human rights and the citizens’ well-being.

Another problem, Shahnazaryan points out, is that “with the revolution in Armenia people developed a certain idolatry of the current prime minister, who is considered the leader of the revolution. Many former activists who participated in the revolution and were then elected to Parliament have now expressed ‘unconditional support’ to Pashinyan’s position on Amulsar”. According to Shahnazaryan, this raised many doubts, even among those who were not necessarily opposed to the project, “because it is something that undermines the democratic structure of the country: the legislative body should not be ‘unconditionally supporting’ the person that it is in charge of supervising”.

#SaveAmulsar continues 

Last year, the Armenian Environmental Front launched a petition requesting municipal councils in Jermuk and other towns in the region to ban all mining activities and declare Jermuk an ‘ecological area’. Although the petition has collected 12,000 signatures so far, the government has recently appealed against this initiative. Lydian Armenia is also putting pressure on protesters through legal channels.

Meanwhile, activists are trying to internationalize the movement, with the aim of exposing the responsibilities of international financial institutions (in this case, the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development) and other project funders (notably, the Swedish government which channelled money to Amulsar through state export-credit funds) in the global phenomenon of extractivism – namely non-sustainable development practices based on the extraction of mineral resources at the expense of local communities’ interests and the environment on which they depend.

Anna Shahnazaryan is convinced that the government cannot give a definitive authorization to Lydian “because the citizens are firmly opposed to the project, and if Pashinyan decides to use violent methods this will only turn against him”. The stakes in Amulsar seem to be very high: they do not “only” touch upon the protection of the environment and natural resources, but also the legitimacy of Nikol Pashinyan and the future of democracy in Armenia.