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Category: Indigenous Affairs

  • Do salmon have rights?

    Jack Fiander knew he needed to try something different. For months, Fiander, a member of the Yakama Nation and legal counsel for the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe, had been trading lawsuits with Seattle over the city’s hydroelectric dams. “Seattle’s not hearing what we’re saying,” he realized. “Maybe they, and the public, need to understand more about Tribal culture.” 

    For over a century, salmon populations have been declining in the Skagit River in Northwest Washington State and the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe say three hydroelectric dams are responsible. Last year the tribe sued the City twice over the dams, first claiming Seattle is engaged in “greenwashing” by calling the project the “Nation’s greenest utility,” despite strong contradictory evidence. Then again claiming the city violated Federal and state law by refusing to install fish passages. Neither has led to any increased protections for salmon.  

    But with the dams in question in the midst of a relicensing process that could extend their life by another fifty years, Fiander realized he had a fresh opportunity to fight back, and in January, he filed a third lawsuit, this time with a new strategy. In Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Court, he sued Seattle on behalf of salmon, Tsuladxw in the Sauk-Suiattle language, alleging that the city’s hydroelectric dams violate the salmon’s rights. 

    “Tsuladxw, our relatives under on water, are the most important cultural and sacred food of the Sahkuméhu [Sauk-Suiattle people] and have been a part of our traditional stories, teachings, lifeways and spirituality since the earliest times to the present day,” the complaint reads. “For the Sahkuméhu, Tsuladxw is sentient like all living creatures and they are our relations.”

    The lawsuit seeks declaratory relief that salmon have the inherent right to “flourish”, that the Tribe has a right and responsibility to protect salmon, and that the city is engaged in intentional violation of these rights. 

    “Tsuladxw depends on clean, abundant fresh flowing waters and the nutrients they carry and which important and essential natural ecosystem resources have been under constant threat from defendant’s activities,” the complaint continues. 

    The case, which relies on a concept known as Rights of Nature, is an important test of what Indigenous law experts say could become a powerful tool for tribes to defend their sovereignty and the non-human relatives. Rights of Nature laws acknowledge that animals, water, and their ecosystems have inherent rights that must be protected and are equivalent to fundamental human rights like the right to exist freely and safely. They also acknowledge that ecosystems and animals with Rights of Nature are entitled to legal representation by groups with knowledge and investment in their protection. 

    The Sauk-Suiattle believe it is their responsibility to protect salmon. In response, Seattle has sued the Tribe back, arguing that the Sauk-Suiattle Tribal court has no jurisdiction over the city. 

    The growing rights of nature movement codifies beliefs that many Indigenous communities have held for thousands of years. But in the United States, they’re raising bigger questions: Can Indigenous worldviews help protect the environment? And will the American legal system let them?  

    A river, pine trees, and mountains covered in mist
    Mark Stevens / 500px / Getty Images

    For hundreds of years, treaty law – legally binding agreements negotiated between Indigenous nations and the United States – has been the primary law governing relationships between tribal, state and federal governments. In many cases, treaties created property rights, service obligations, and retained crucial rights to land, hunting and fishing. Most treaties were signed under duress, meaning tribes had to accept less than ideal terms, but the Constitution holds that treaties are the “the supreme law of the land”, and for generations, have been one of the only legal options tribes have been able to employ. Experts say Rights of Nature may offer a new legal avenue to Indigenous nations.

    In 2006, Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, became the first known community to pass a rights of nature law after giving legal rights to the local ecosystem in order to ban hazardous waste dumping. Thomas Linzey, senior legal counsel for the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights, helped craft the law, and since then, countries and communities around the world have adopted similar Rights of Nature laws to protect the environment.

    In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to recognize the rights of Pachamama, or Mother Nature, in its constitution. And three years later, the law became the basis of a lawsuit against a company dumping construction waste in a river. Largely led by Indigenous communities, other countries like Colombia and New Zealand have also adopted Rights of Nature laws.

    In 2018, the White Earth Band of Ojibwa recognized the rights of Manoomin, or wild rice, to “exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation.” Rights of Manoomin, which means “good berry,” was the first Tribal law to grant legal rights to a plant or animal. 

    “In our culture, wild rice is the most significant, central part of our culture. It’s the most central part of our spirituality,” said Frank Bibeau, attorney for the White Earth Ojibwe. 

    In 2021, White Earth sued the State of Minnesota on behalf of Manoomin to stop Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, from using billions of gallons of water in its construction of an oil pipeline. Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion has met fierce resistance from the Ojibwe and other Indigenous and non-Indigenous land and water protectors. Over its fifty-four year history, the pipeline has suffered from a series of oil spills, including a 1991 incident that was the worst inland oil spill in US history. The lawsuit was the first attempt by a Tribe to enforce a rights of nature law and is currently awaiting a decision from a Federal Appeals court that will decide if it will be heard in Tribal court. The decision could impact the Sauk-Suiattle case and other tribal Rights of Nature cases, but differences in treaties and state laws mean that each case faces its own unique circumstances and challenges. 

    Bibeau believes that Rights of Nature lawsuits have the potential to shift the balance of power between tribes and state governments when it comes to environmental protection and create a situation where states like Washington and Minnesota opt to negotiate with tribes out of a desire to avoid litigation. “If you want our consent then you’re going to have to start making things better and cleaner and show us that,” he said. “We just can’t let it happen.” 

    In the Sauk-Suiattle case, Bibeau sees a potential turning point for the Rights of Nature movement in the United States. People have a visceral reaction to dying salmon, Bibeau says, that can help them understand a concept like Rights of Nature in a way that something more obscure like wild rice cannot. Because of this, he says the case has the potential to bring even more attention to the legal concept of Rights of Nature. “I suspect that the model that Sauk-Suiattle is using will become the real template for most of the Indian tribes because everybody knows that a fish needs clean water,” he explained. “Everybody knows what a thousand dead fish look like and they immediately jump to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with that water.”

    Matthew Fletcher is Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center at Michigan State University and member of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. “Treaty law is the law of the colonizer. It’s American law. This is what the United States is willing to accept and acknowledge. And on a fundamental level, it’s not enough. So the tribes are adopting a theory that’s rooted in their cultures,” Fletcher said. 

    Large group of Indigenous people protesting a pipeline
    KEREM YUCEL / AFP via Getty Images

    The litigation between the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe and the city comes as Seattle City Light navigates a years-long relicensing process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The current 30-year license expires in April 2025. The new application, if granted, could extend the license as long as 50 years. At a minimum, the Sauk-Suiattle hope that a new license will provide better fish protections, but without a license, the dams could be removed. 

    The Sauk-Suiattle lawsuit claims that three dams – The Diablo, Gorge, and Ross Dams – are harming salmon populations. The dams make up the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project in Northwest Washington State, about 100 miles from Seattle, which provides roughly 20% of the city’s total electricity. Unlike many other hydroelectric dams, these three do not include pathways for fish to move around the massive structures. 

    The dams limit the flow of water, which reduces the flow of nutrients and other vital aspects of the river’s ecosystem, says Fiander, and is especially catastrophic for species like salmon, which rely on those areas to spawn. Tribes and other environmental groups also allege that the dams prevent salmon from reaching upstream parts of the river that they could before the dams were built. However, Seattle City Light claims that those parts of the river were already difficult for salmon to access due to natural impediments. 

    Since the dams’ last relicense in 1995, three fish that call the area home — chinook salmon, steelhead, and bull trout — have been listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. Orcas, which rely on salmon as a food source, are also endangered. Jack Fiander, the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe’s legal counsel, says that these ripple effects are a perfect illustration of why Rights of Nature laws are important. Rights of Nature, he says, are an acknowledgement that everything is connected. Protecting salmon helps protect the river, the orcas, and the people living near them. “It’s not meant to be mystical,” he said.   

    Fiander says that relicensing is an existential crisis for both salmon and the Tribe. “If these three dams get licensed for another 50 years without some consideration or requirement of getting fish past those dams to access habitats, the salmon in that river are probably going to be extinct in ten years,” he said. 

    But Chris Townsend, Director of Natural Resources and Hydro Licensing for Seattle City Light,  disputes claims that City Light is not doing enough to protect salmon. “The Skagit River is one of the healthiest runs of Chinook left in Puget Sound. Particularly the area just below our dam. So we’ve been doing something right with the flows,” he said.

    Fiander maintains that the salmon are clearly suffering from the dams. “The dams provide electricity, but they are blocking all kinds of nutrients and sediments behind them that the river needs for its life,” he said, adding that just one fish passage could make a huge difference for salmon. 

    Townsend, however, said that it is too early in the process to say what measures are required to protect the river and its wildlife. “Those decisions have to be based on science,” he said. 

    Debra Smith, the general manager of City Light, has said that the utility is committed to building fish passage if the regulatory agencies indicate that it is necessary while Townsend says that City Light is open to a conversation about Rights of Nature. “We look forward to the point when we can talk and coordinate with the Tribes more directly when the lawsuits have been resolved and we hope that that will be soon,” he said.

    Fiander says that despite City Light’s public statements, they are not negotiating in good faith and are trying to overwhelm him with corporate legal tactics. 

    After criticism of its initial study plan, City Light’s revised study plan was approved, with some modifications, by FERC in July 2021. The new plan proposed 33 studies related to flood risk, fish population, water quality, and more. City Light will release its initial report findings at the beginning of March. The final application is due April 2023. 

    Overhead view of dam with pine trees on mountains in background
    Giulio Andreini / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    Other Tribes and environmental groups have also pushed back on City Light’s environmental claims. The Upper Skagit, who share treaty rights to Skagit River with the Sauk-Suiattle and the Swinomish Tribe, have also resisted City Light’s plans, asking for a study to consider removing Gorge Dam. 

    Tribal advocates see the city’s efforts to fight the Tribe as evidence that they are not prioritizing the project’s environmental impact. “If Seattle was behaving in an environmentally ethical manner, they would address the Tribe’s claims in a serious manner,” Matthew Fletcher said. 

    The Tribe is currently awaiting Federal court ruling on their litigation, like the White Earth Ojibwe. Win or lose, Frank Bibeau believes the cases are an important step toward getting the U.S. legal system to embrace Rights of Nature. “It’s probably the most powerful tool we’ll ever have. And that may be all the power we need if we can just get it harnessed and use it as a shield and a sword to make the state operate in a better way for everybody,” he said. 

    For Jack Fiander, the case rests on the simple concept that salmon deserve the right to live and be defended. As long as that right is at risk, the Sauk-Suiattle will continue doing everything they can to protect salmon and the river. “Certain animals in nature are connected to us and are sentient beings,” he said. “It’s something I was taught since childhood.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Do salmon have rights? on Mar 1, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Dakota Access Pipeline operator loses legal battle

    On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not hear an appeal to overturn a court-ordered environmental review of the Dakota Access Pipeline. While hailed as a final legal victory for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the pipeline will continue to operate while the review is conducted.

    “The litigation concerning the pipeline is over, but the fight continues,” said EarthJustice attorney Jan Hasselman. Earthjustice has represented the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe since 2016. “We call on the administration to close the pipeline until a full safety and environmental review is complete. DAPL never should have been authorized in the first place, and this administration is failing to address the persistent illegality of this pipeline.” 

    The court’s ruling centers on the construction of the pipeline under Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River and important source of water for Standing Rock and other Indigenous nations. The pipeline has been vigorously opposed by Indigenous nations and activists since 2016, gaining support from environmental groups, members of congress, and state governments. Despite the historic resistance, construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline was completed in 2017. 

    Earlier that year, before construction was finished, the Army Corps of Engineers issued an easement to allow the pipeline to cross Oahe, but in 2020, it was revoked by a Federal judge who said the Army Corps violated environmental laws and mandated an environmental review. Last January, the U.S. court of Appeals upheld that ruling, and in May, a district court denied the tribe’s request for an injunction to shut down the pipeline until the review was completed. 

    “The unacceptable risk of an oil spill, impacts to Tribal sovereignty and harm to drinking water supply must all be examined thoroughly in the months ahead as the U.S. Army Corps conducts its review of this pipeline,” Hasselman said in a statement at the time. 

    But even the most recent environmental review has met with controversy. Last September, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and the Oglala Sioux Tribe called on the Army Corps to restart the Environmental Impact Statement process, calling it “fatally flawed” and pointing to a contractor who is a member of the American Petroleum Institute. The Army Corps’ own regulations prohibit contractors from having any financial or other interest in a project. 

    Standing Rock, other tribes, and environmental groups are hopeful that a fresh, unbiased environmental review will lead to the shutdown of the controversial pipeline. In court documents, Energy Transfer said the pending review makes the pipeline “vulnerable to a shutdown.”

    The Army Corps of Engineers has said the review is due to be completed later this year. While the review is underway, the pipeline continues to carry 750,000 barrels of oil per day from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois. EarthJustice and other groups have called on President Biden to issue an executive order to shut down the pipeline. The Biden administration has not announced any plans to do so. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Dakota Access Pipeline operator loses legal battle on Feb 22, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Who’s in charge of fixing the environment in eastern Oklahoma?

    This story was produced in collaboration with Newsy

    The town of Picher, Oklahoma, on the Quapaw reservation, is home to one of the largest Superfund sites in the United States. Tar Creek, which feeds into the Neosho River then on to Grand Lake, runs gold with zinc. Underground reservoirs seep lead-tainted water and other toxic chemicals when it rains. Trees along the waterway have turned shades of orange near their roots where a steady flow of chemicals have oxidized and crusted over. On the landscape, gray piles of silicone, dolomite, and limestone waste stand two to three stories high. In 1994, the Indian Health Service reported that 34 percent of Native American children in the area had lead concentrations in their bloodstream well above the federal limit — a lasting legacy after more than a century of mining for zinc and lead at multiple sites on the reservation.  

    “It’s everywhere,” said Quapaw Nation Secretary Treasurer Guy Barker. “Trace amounts of lead within drinking water, groundwater —  it’s also in the air. It’s blowing around, it’s in the ground soils in the sandbox that the kids are playing in.”

    Mining ended in the 1970s, and in 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency named the 40 square miles around Picher a Superfund site. Beginning in 2005, the state of Oklahoma offered buyouts of homes to relocate families, including many Quapaw citizens, to safer areas, and by 2010, the EPA also began buyouts while contracting with companies to conduct cleanup.

    In 2012, the Quapaw Nation took over soil remediation efforts and cleanup with a multi-million dollar contract from the EPA, removing large piles of mining waste and rehabilitation of the land. But last year, a decade after the Quapaw took on the cleanup, the Supreme Court ruled that nearly all of Eastern Oklahoma was an Indian reservation, raising absorbing questions about environmental jurisdiction in the region. 

    a cluster of a dozen single-story houses with dead-looking trees and large gray hills surrounding the area
    The town of Picher, Oklahoma, sits nestled among huge lead-laced piles of rock in eastern Oklahoma’s Tar Creek mining district. AP Photo / Charlie Riedel

    In 2018 and 2019, the Supreme Court agreed to hear McGirt v. Oklahoma, which involved Jimcy McGirt, who committed sex crimes and challenged his conviction, saying that Oklahoma never had the right to prosecute because his crimes were committed within the Muscogee Nation. McGirt, a Seminole Nation citizen, said that only the federal government could prosecute his cases since they happened in Indian territory. The question at the heart of the case was whether or not the Muscogee Nation’s reservation still existed. With statehood in 1907, Oklahoma believed that the reservation was disestablished. The Supreme Court disagreed and found that Congress, the only body with the authority to terminate the tribe’s reservation, had never disestablished it — even after Oklahoma became a state. 

    The decision was viewed as a win for tribal sovereignty and subsequently was applied to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole Nations in 2021. And shortly after, a lower court in a subsequent case last fall applied the McGirt ruling and found that the Quapaw Nation reservation was never disestablished either. 

    But while McGirt focused on criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country, there are far-reaching implications, specifically around environmental jurisdiction and whether tribes — and specifically, the six tribes whose reservation lands make up eastern Oklahoma — can now exercise power over environmental policy there, from clean air and water to remediation plans and strip mining. 

    A recent report by the Indigenous Environmental Network, an Indigenous-led nonprofit focused on protecting the environment, estimates that over the past decade, Indigenous people engaged in defense of land and water “stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to at least one-quarter of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions.” The United Nations estimates that Indigenous people live in areas that contain approximately 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity but “still struggle to maintain their legal rights to lands, territories, and resources.” In Oklahoma, the idea that Indigenous people can take the lead on environmental regulation may soon be put to the test.

    “What capacity does our environmental office and the tribe have to take on and enforce regulations?” asked Quapaw Environmental Agency Director Craig Kreman. “I think that’s coming into question with McGirt.”

    The Supreme Court decision was viewed as a win for tribal sovereignty and subsequently was applied to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole Nations in 2021. And shortly after, a lower court in a subsequent case last fall applied the McGirt ruling and found that the Quapaw Nation reservation was never disestablished either. Grist

    In its most narrow interpretation, the McGirt ruling impacts Oklahoma only. But Cherokee citizen Dylan Hedden-Nicely, the University of Idaho’s Native American Law Program Director, says the detail in the McGirt case is in the court’s interpretation of federal Indian law and what it could mean for broader environmental movements led by Indigenous nations.

    “On its face, McGirt is only about Oklahoma,” Hedden-Nicely said. “But what it signaled, at least in my mind, was that the Supreme Court was saying, ‘We’re open for business for tribes.’”

    Historically, the Supreme Court has been hostile to Indigenous nations. According to Joel Williams, a staff attorney with the Native American Rights Fund and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, from 1969 to 1986, when Warren Burger served as chief justice, tribal interests prevailed about 58 percent of the time, but under Burger’s successor, William Rehnquist, tribes saw success only 23 percent of the time. In 2005, when Chief Justice Roberts took the reins, Indigenous peoples saw their interests prevail only 11 percent of the time. 

    But new additions to the court have brought justices with experience in Indian Law and legal minds that appear to be focused on founding principles of Indian law instead of rehashing old court opinions. It’s what experts compare to a “reset” of court values in regards to Indigenous peoples and Indigenous rights, brightly illustrated through McGirt. 

    “Since roughly the mid-’80s, the odds were just greatly stacked against tribes and tribal interests at the Supreme Court, and we’ve seen a shift,” said Williams. “Tribes, in more recent years, have prevailed at the U.S. Supreme Court about 85 percent of the time. Almost a 180-degree turnaround.” 

    One reason, Williams says, has been the appointment of justices with strong voting records on Indian law cases. After Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016, for instance, then-president Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to take his place. While Democrats raised concerns over his judicial record, for tribes, Gorsuch’s upbringing in the West and experience dealing with Indian case law in the 10th Circuit offered potential: Both the Native American Rights Fund and National Congress of American Indians supported the nomination. And where Scalia voted in favor of tribal interests about 16 percent of the time during his tenure, to date, Gorsuch has voted for tribal interests in 89 percent of the cases brought before him and authored the majority decision in McGirt.

    One of the many incongruities in Indian Law is that liberal supreme court judges are not always good for Indigenous communities. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for instance, voted against Indigenous interests in more than half of the cases that came before her, while Justice Breyer, who recently announced his retirement, voted for tribal interests only about 40 percent of the time. “Justice Breyer was no tribal sovereignty warrior à la Sotomayor,” wrote Matthew Fletcher on Turtle Talk, an influential Indian Law blog, “but he was no Indian fighter, either.” Sotomayor, incidentally, has voted for tribal interests 78 percent of the time.

    “Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor have been the two people that have taken up intellectual leadership in the field of federal Indian law within the court,” said Hedden-Nicely. “Which is sort of funny: Indian law makes for strange bedfellows.”

    At the heart of change at the court is the application of the law. Monte Mills, a federal Indian law professor at the University of Montana, said in the past, the court has more or less defaulted toward concerns of disruptions caused by tribes asserting their rights. For instance, in a 2005 case, the Oneida Indian Nation repurchased their traditional lands in upstate New York, but the city of Sherrill, where much of the land was located, tried to make the nation pay taxes. In an earlier case, the Court held that the law was on the side of the Nation and found that the land was illegally taken from them. However, in the Supreme Court’s final 2005 decision, Justice Ginsberg, writing for the majority, sided with the city of Sherrill. Even though the lands had never been legally acquired from the Nation, the majority found that a change in jurisdiction would disrupt the “settled expectations” of non-Indigenous residents. In McGirt, Mills said, the impact of the ruling was not considered, only the law.

    ​​”So in that sense, I think McGirt does mark a shift to recommitting to some of those foundational principles: The tribes had the law on their side all along because Congress never did explicitly disestablish these reservations,” said Mills. “So the law wasn’t ever the question — it was whether or not the Supreme Court would follow the law or defer to these practical consequences.”

    Clouds drift over the U.S. Supreme Court Building
    Clouds drift over the U.S. Supreme Court Building on July 9, 2020 — the day of the McGirt v. Oklahoma ruling. Liu Jie / Xinhua via Getty

    In his most recent State of the State address, Oklahoma Governor and Cherokee Nation citizen Kevin Stitt said the McGirt decision jeopardizes public safety and that it has harmed both Native and non-Native victims. He and Attorney General John O’Connor have  filed more than 40 petitions to the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the decision entirely. Last month, those petitions were denied. However, the U.S. Supreme Court did grant a review of one question: whether the state has concurrent jurisdiction when non-Natives commit crimes on the reservation. That argument will be heard in April. 

    Only Congress has the power to dissolve tribes, end treaties, and legally terminate the existence of Indian Country — a path officials took from 1953 to 1968. There’s also the possibility of legislatively hamstringing Indigenous power: In 2005, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe — an outspoken climate denier — slipped a midnight rider into the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA). At the time, tribes were exploring how to implement environmental programs that were at odds with Oklahoma’s oil and gas industry, and while normally, states have no jurisdiction on tribal lands, the SAFETEA rider allows Oklahoma’s governor to ask the EPA for that exception when it comes to environmental regulation. 

    Within weeks of the McGirt decision, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt asked the EPA to utilize that exception — much to the anger of tribal leaders who were given only 30 days to provide feedback. In December 2021, the EPA decided to slow roll the decision, citing more of a commitment to nation-to-nation consultation under the Biden administration. 

    For the Quapaw Nation, the McGirt ruling means that any company wanting to haul away toxic waste or assist in the cleanup of the Tar Creek Superfund site could be subject to Quapaw’s environmental regulations, not the state’s.

    Quapaw Nation officials say it’s probably going to take decades to finish the cleanup and make more of the land in and around Picher usable and to make sure there are no more piles blowing dolomite and silicone waste across the landscape.

    Recently, the Quapaw Nation’s Secretary Treasurer Guy Barker and Chairman Joseph Byrd invited Governor Kevin Stitt to visit Picher after the court ruled that their reservation was never disestablished. Stitt still hasn’t visited. 

    Quapaw leadership is glad the state isn’t in charge of cleanup and that the tribal nation is able to build capacity to have more authority over environmental activity under McGirt. They look around and say that this is what Oklahoma has done for the tribe. 

    “Come drive around Picher,” said Barker. “See where state stewardship has gotten us.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Who’s in charge of fixing the environment in eastern Oklahoma? on Feb 22, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • A tribe in Maine is using hemp to remove ‘forever chemicals’ from the soil

    The pair was hardly dressed like typical farmers, but this was no typical farm. Sporting white hazmat suits and respirators, Chelli Stanley and Richard Silliboy lugged 5-gallon jugs of water toward bushy plots of hemp, each 30-by-30-foot patch a stark sign of order in the otherwise overgrown field. It was a warm September day in Limestone, a small town on the edge of the Maine-Canada border, and the pair struggled to breathe in the head-to-toe protective gear. Stanley, a founder of the environmental organization Upland Grassroots, recalls telling Silliboy, vice chief of the Aroostook Band of Micmac Nation, “This will be worth it someday.”

    For Stanley and Silliboy, the focus was not so much the hemp they were growing as what it was doing. Their farm, once part of the Loring Air Force Base, is also a Superfund site — an area so polluted it’s marked high-priority for federal cleanup. Later, when the Aroostook Band of Micmacs took over the site’s ownership, they found its soil was rife with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS, cancer-causing compounds that are so difficult to break down they’re commonly known as “forever chemicals.” 

    Because of their ability to bind to proteins, PFAS tend to bioaccumulate — building up in soil, water, and even human bodies. Under typical environmental conditions, they can persist for hundreds, even thousands of years. But there is hope at Loring: In 2020, researchers discovered that the Micmacs’ hemp plants were successfully sucking PFAS out of the contaminated soil. This practice, known as phytoremediation, could guide farmers across the country who have had to shut down after discovering their soil is tainted with the ubiquitous class of chemicals. 

    Sara Nason, one of the project’s lead researchers from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, called their results “conservatively promising.” Other researchers see the potential too. David Huff, a senior scientist at the environmental consulting firm Nutter & Associates Inc., said, “At the end of the day, the data support phytoremediation as a viable approach and definitely established proof of concept.”

    A woman in respirator and hazmat suit waters a bushy plot of hemp.
    Chelli Stanley waters hemp plants on Micmac-owned land in Limestone, Maine. Courtesy of Upland Grassroots

    PFAS were once considered to be human-made miracle compounds. Due to their oil- and water-repelling properties, they were long used in all kinds of products from firefighting foam to stain-resistant carpets to nonstick pans. They’ve been linked to a host of health problems, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and suppressed immunity. 

    Although some companies have voluntarily decided to phase out the use of PFAS in their products and packaging, the chemicals are already ubiquitous, pervading farms and military sites alike. In states like Maine and New Mexico, where PFAS have been detected in soil, milk, and vegetables, they have been traced to “biosolids” — byproducts from sewage treatment plants that are sometimes used as fertilizers. In former military bases like Loring, the main source is thought to be firefighting foam. Indeed, part of the land that the Micmac obtained in 2009 was previously used as a firefighting testing area.

    Loring has undergone years of cleanup since the base closed. In 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency deemed it ready for reuse, albeit with limits due to contamination that persists at the site. According to the EPA, the Air Force has confirmed the presence of PFAS in the groundwater, surface water, and soil, and promised future study.

    The tribe sought the land for economic development, but it is “unhealthy,” Silliboy said. It’s the latest in what he sees as the Micmac’s long history of obtaining poor land. He pointed to reservations on swamps and steep hills, land where no one can garden. “When the tribe is given any property for reservation land, it’s not prime property,” he said. So when Stanley, seeking a site to test hemp’s ability to pull PFAS out of the ground, approached him about a partnership, he was eager to work together. “Protecting the land is part of the Micmac beliefs,” said Chief Edward Peter-Paul of the Aroostook Band in a report on the project. “Anything we can do to contribute to making the environment better, we want to be a part of.”

    In the spring of 2019, the Micmac Nation, Upland Grassroots, and their research partners began their experiment. They collected data on three plots (others didn’t survive a drought). Two years later, they reported early signs of success: The hemp lowered PFAS in the soil. 

    Phytoremediation is an attractive option for cleaning land of certain types of contaminants because it’s relatively affordable and limits disturbances to soil. In addition to PFAS, plants have been used to leach lead from abandoned mines and pesticides from retired orchards. While people have long used plants to help clean soil and water, the term was coined in 1994 by Rutgers University biologist Ilya Raskin. Raskin’s early experiments involved using mustard to extract heavy metal pollutants half a mile from Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which unleashed catastrophic amounts of radioactive material when a reactor melted down in the mid-1980s. 

    Hemp is a good candidate for phytoremediation because it grows fast across much of the United States. Its roots are deep and profuse — the better to uptake pollutants from soil. Stanley believes their success using hemp to remove persistent contaminants like PFAS holds promise for many other farmers. Before hemp’s widespread legalization in 2018, “huge companies could excavate or do these very intrusive processes” to deal with polluted land, she said. “But there was nothing the layperson could really do to clean land.”

    Nason, the researcher with Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, agreed the practice has potential, though she was more cautiously optimistic. “It’s a possibility, but I think we still have a lot to learn,” she said. It’s still unclear how much of the chemicals hemp can remove. Although the Loring project successfully extracted some PFAS, plenty remained in the soil. Also unclear is how many rounds of hemp planting it would take to return levels to a “safe” baseline — something that doesn’t technically exist yet without national standards from the EPA.

    The team lacked good control data to measure their efforts because “pretty much everywhere has some amount of PFAS,” Nason said. 

    A brown building sits in empty grass field.
    A former firefighting training site at the Loring Air Force Base is now home to the hemp phytoremediation project. Courtesy of Upland Grassroots

    Assuming phytoremediation of PFAS breaks out of its experimental phase, it should shine in cost comparisons to other removal techniques, according to David Huff, the environmental consultant. Currently, the standard approach to PFAS cleanup involves excavating the affected soil. The costs can be astronomical: One estimate for the contaminated soil on a 100-acre dairy farm in Maine ran upward of $25 million. Using plants, Huff said, can cost 75 percent less at least. That’s not to say plant-based PFAS removal comes cheap exactly: Soil testing can cost anywhere from $250 to $600 per sample. And for any given field, samples at multiple points across the field are needed to measure progress, especially as PFAS levels can vary from spot to spot within the same parcel of land.

    Huff, who has studied various grasses and trees’ ability to extract PFAS, said plants work best when the contaminant levels are lower and the cleanup area is larger — around two acres or more. By that measure, most farms would be considered large projects. 

    And size isn’t the only limitation — phytoremediation takes more time compared to other approaches. 

    Leah Penniman, co-director and manager of the community farm Soul Fire Farm in New York state, wrote about using plants like geranium or sunflowers to clean lead-contaminated soil in her book Farming While Black. “It takes at least one year and very careful monitoring, so it’s not for everyone,” she wrote. After the first year, if tests still indicate high lead levels, it may take another round of planting (or two or three). Developers might prefer the expensive, quicker route of excavation over a long wait. But faced with steep costs, small farmers may have no choice besides a plant-based approach.

    For farmers hoping to put plants to work, there are other challenges ahead. If a farm’s soil is polluted, odds are the water will be too. That was the case at Loring, so the EPA doesn’t allow the use of the water supply, Stanley said. She and Silliboy had to truck in water each week for their hemp, which limited how much they could grow. Some states are already addressing these needs; the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, for example, installs filters for farm wells that exceed a certain level of contamination.

    Future studies will also need to develop guidelines for how people should dispose of the PFAS-laden plants once their job is done. That could entail drying first to reduce the sheer mass, Huff said. The key is safely discarding waste to avoid creating another mess. 

    Meanwhile, the work at Loring continues. A new water tank will help Stanley and Silliboy plant more hemp this year. The research effort has gained a new partner, a chemical engineer from the University of Virginia interested in using enzymes to break down PFAS. 

    The Aroostook Band of Micmacs is considering plans to build a campground, once the land proves clean. The woods have grown back over the years and run with bears, moose, and deer. Although, Silliboy said, state officials have recently cautioned against consuming wild venison — there’s PFAS in it.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A tribe in Maine is using hemp to remove ‘forever chemicals’ from the soil on Feb 22, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • In Chaco Canyon, a moratorium on oil and gas leases might be too little too late

    In November, under a high sky in northwestern New Mexico, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland stepped proudly to the podium against a backdrop of sandstone bluffs. She was flanked by Pueblo leaders who had gathered that day to commemorate the recently announced protections for Chaco Culture National Historical Park, where ancestral Puebloans created a sprawling center of trade and culture from the tawny-colored rock more than a thousand years ago.

    “It is not difficult to imagine centuries ago children running around the open space, people moving in and out of doorways, bringing in their harvest or preparing food for seasons to come,” Haaland said of the Chaco complex, where multi-story ruins rise from the floor of a wide canyon. “We’re here because President Biden and I heard your voices and are taking important steps to take care of our land, our air, and our water.”

    a woman with a blue necklace in front of a podium and a rock face behind her
    U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland addresses a crowd during a celebration at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico on Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. Susan Montoya Bryan / AP Photo

    Haaland’s speech came days after the Department of Interior announced it was considering a 20-year moratorium on new federal oil and gas leasing within a roughly 10-mile radius around the park, an approximately 950,000-acre area referred to as the buffer zone. Along with shielding the site from fracking facilities that have encroached on the area in recent years, the action was touted as part of the Biden administration’s larger effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions while promoting environmental justice and tribal consultation.

    But a review of federal leasing data by Grist suggests that the protections are a superficial fix, as they will likely do little to impede the recent influx of oil and gas development. Although the federal government plans to prevent new leasing on hundreds of thousands of acres within the Chaco buffer zone, oil and gas companies with existing leases can continue to extract minerals within its boundaries.

    According to data provided by the Bureau of Land Management, there are 310 active wells on 88 active federal leases covering nearly 100,000 acres within the buffer, and federal protections do nothing to stop the companies holding those leases from obtaining permits to drill more. That means that even under the agency’s plan, hundreds of new wells could be drilled in the area at any time in the future. 

    “There’s still going to be development going on in that 10-mile buffer, and there’s nothing to prohibit that,” said Carol Davis, director of Diné CARE, a Navajo-led environmental organization. Davis adds that the Interior’s moratorium could push drilling outside the buffer and into communities, “and that’s going to expose people to the adverse health impacts that are a result of oil and gas fracking.”

    large brown stone structure made of bricks in the middle of a brown-red canyon
    Visitors walk through Chaco Culture National Historical Park. VWPics / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    In fact, BLM is also considering a plan that could allow up to 3,100 new wells to be developed outside the buffer zone, adding to the roughly 21,000 active wells in the region.

    Several miles east of the buffer, the BLM has also approved dozens of drilling permits near a series of mesas considered sacred by the Navajo Nation. Despite conducting an environmental review that projected one well per parcel, BLM has already approved at least 118 drilling permits on eight of those parcels, according to legal documents filed by Diné CARE.

    “There is absolutely zero restraint from the Bureau of Land Management and the Biden administration at this point,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director with WildEarth Guardians. “The mineral withdrawal is good politics — it’s good optics — but it’s not going to turn the tide because there are existing leases within the buffer, and outside the buffer it’s business as usual.”

    A thousand years ago, Chaco Canyon was a bustling, central trade hub. The ancestral Puebloans built monumental “great houses” along the margins of the high-desert valley and conducted trade using an expansive network of roads. The largest of the ancient structures at the UNESCO World Heritage Site likely contained more than 600 rooms and took three centuries to complete. Chaco flourished between 850 and 1250 AD, before being abandoned.

    stone structure with large circles and smaller stone square walls in desert canyon setting
    An aerial view of Chetro Kelt, aancient Anasazi settlement in Chaco Culture National Historical Park. DeAgostini / Getty Images

    Contemporary Pueblos are the descendants of the ancestral Puebloans that built Chaco, and although they no longer inhabit the same area, many Pueblo people retain a cultural and spiritual connection to the sandstone structures and other sites dispersed throughout the region. The outlying areas are now home to Navajo families who reside either on the sparsely populated plateau, or in the tiny towns that dot the landscape, like Nageezi, Counselor, and Ojo Encino.

    In the 1920s, natural gas deposits were discovered in the basin, and by the early 2000s, fossil fuel extraction occurred throughout the region. Then, around 2010, with the advent of new hydraulic fracturing methods, such as horizontal drilling, fracking began in earnest in the southern part of the basin, near the Chaco ruins, where companies tapped into oil and gas deposits that were difficult to access using vertical drilling techniques. 

    Many of those new wells were concentrated on public lands managed by the BLM, which owns a large portion of land surrounding Chaco Canyon, along the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation. Ownership of lands in the area is often referred to as a “checkerboard” of federal, state, private and tribal lands. Some of those tracts are also so-called “Indian allotments,” lands which the federal government distributed to individuals and families as a way to break up reservations and assimilate Indigenous people by making them landowners. Between 2014 and 2019 alone, the BLM approved more than 350 drilling permits in the greater Chaco region.

    big green-gray storage tanks cluster together in a desert landscape with blue sky
    Oil and gas storage tanks and pipelines stand in the desert landscape east of Chaco Culture National Historic Park. milehightraveler via Getty Images

    In the mostly Navajo communities that make up the area, the drilling boom resulted in wells that are in some places a few hundred feet from homes. A cluster of wells releases toxic emissions less than 2,000 feet from the Lybrook Elementary School, where an almost entirely Native American student population is exposed to a rotten-egg odor of hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of the frequent flaring that occurs when excess gas is burned off to avoid methane emissions.

    In 2019, New Mexico legislators, including then-U.S. Representative Haaland, introduced the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, which would have banned oil and gas leasing within a buffer zone permanently. The bill passed the House but died in the Republican-controlled Senate. Once Haaland was appointed Secretary of Interior, she took matters into her own hands, crafting the 20-year withdrawal proposal, which went into effect in January.

    But companies currently operating within the buffer could still obtain permits to drill one, or multiple, wells on a given parcel. Based on the average number of wells on each active, federal lease in northwestern New Mexico, the existing leases inside the buffer could see more than 200 additional wells in the future. And that potential well count excludes the development that could occur on the much smaller portion of land within the buffer consisting of state and private land, as well as Indian allotments. 

    a pink sign says there is al-ready chaco protection act in place around the park
    A sign opposing an oil and gas moratorium lines the road leading to Chaco Culture National Historical Park ahead of a visit by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. Some Navajo allottee owners are concerned about a proposal to prohibit oil and gas development on federal land holdings within 10 miles of the park, saying it would have significant financial consequences for them. AP Photo / Susan Montoya Bryan

    Because Indian allottees can lease their lands to oil and gas companies for royalty payments, the Chaco proposal became a point of contention in the region. Many Navajo allottees were concerned that the leasing ban would affect their royalty payments or eliminate their ability to lease out their lands, leading to opposition that ultimately resulted in the Navajo Nation withdrawing from the proposal after initially signaling support. According to the BLM, the withdrawal will not affect the ability of allottees to lease their land for oil and gas interests.

    “We are not a monolith, and there were dissenting voices among allottees,” said Mario Atencio, a member of Diné CARE whose family owns an allotment just outside the buffer. He added that the most vocal opponents “claimed to represent allottees, but they don’t represent me.”

    In the past year, Diné CARE and WildEarth Guardians have filed multiple legal challenges against the BLM for its approval of hundreds of lease sales and drilling permits in the greater Chaco region, including more than 100 permits issued to EOG Resources, a former Enron affiliate that amassed 40 parcels covering 45,000 acres of public land under the Trump administration.

    “Right now, they’re bulldozing a road in a very sacred place,” Atencio said. He added that the lack of tribal consultation “feels no different than the Trump administration.”

    blue skies and a red-brown stone structure with a window set in the center
    The sky is visible through a window at Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Culture National Historical Park. WPics / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

    Among the groups’ concerns is that BLM’s Farmington Field Office continues to allow drilling based on an outdated resource management plan, a document that forecasts the pace and scale of future oil and gas development. Because the plan was created in 2003 — before the advent of horizontal drilling — the groups argue that BLM has had no way of analyzing the “increased risks and impacts” of the new drilling technologies. 

    A proposed amendment to the plan estimates that between 2,300 and 3,100 new wells could be developed in the area over the next 20 years.

    “That’s not a cap on what [BLM] can approve. That’s just what their best guess is,” said Kyle Tisdel, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “And the problem is that they’re just doing whatever industry says that industry wants to do.”

    When the Interior Department announced the 10-mile buffer around Chaco in November, Haaland emphasized that the withdrawal would coincide with an “honoring Chaco” process that would include formal consultations with tribes and a series of ethnographic studies exploring the area’s cultural history. Pledges to engage in meaningful tribal consultation are often met with distrust in Indigenous communities given the federal government’s horrendous track record when it comes to considering human rights and tribal sovereignty. But the historic appointment of Haaland, who is a member of the Laguna Pueblo, gave many Indigenous people hope that their voices would finally be heard.

    Julia Bernal, director of Pueblo Action Alliance, spent the past five years fighting for federal protections against fracking in the Chaco region. And while Bernal believes more should be done to protect the environment and public health in the area, she said the Interior Department’s stated commitment to incorporating Indigenous knowledge and studies is “unprecedented,” and a credit to Haaland’s investment in the issue.

    “Based on my own conversations with [Haaland], it’s not like she has the ability to implement extreme change even though she’s in this position,” Bernal said. “It’s always hard to convey why land and water and air are culturally and spiritually important, and not just for economic gain.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In Chaco Canyon, a moratorium on oil and gas leases might be too little too late on Feb 17, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • South Africa’s High Court sided with Indigenous communities

    This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    In a court decision reached late last year, Indigenous communities from the Wild Coast of South Africa’s Eastern Cape have attained a landmark legal victory against energy and petroleum giant Shell.

    To win their case, lawyers representing the Umgungundlovu, Dwesa-Cwebe, and Port Saint Johns Indigenous communities, among others, argued that because Shell failed to consult meaningfully with local communities, the company’s efforts to explore shale gas off the country’s eastern coast ignored a crucial aspect of local custom.

    The victory has been hailed as a major breakthrough in the effort to stem the tide of climate change. But it is also a potent example of how Wild Coast communities are using the courts to fight for the right to determine what happens in their territory and strengthening their hand in a country heavily marred by colonialism.

    The application that kicked off the lawsuit was brought to South Africa’s High Court by a collection of NGOs, artisanal fishers, and community representatives after the exploration ship Amazon Warrior arrived in late November 2021 to conduct controversial seismic surveys that had been green-lighted by the South African government in 2013.

    The ship was preparing to study the seafloor using seismic airguns, devices that generate cannon blast–like pulses of compressed air. The plan was heavily criticized by environmental groups and marine activists. The Academy of Science of South Africa called the technology severely outdated and said the surveys are a “real harm to marine life.”

    The vessel’s arrival sparked nationwide protests and boycotts of Shell filling stations, but the company defended their survey approach. They received vociferous support from South Africa’s minister of mineral resources and energy, Gwede Mantashe, a widely unpopular figure among Wild Coast communities. (When reached for comment, neither Shell nor Minister Mantashe’s office provided a response.)

    According to educator and community leader Sinegugu Zukulu, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the NGO Sustaining the Wild Coast, one of the core tenets of their dispute was that Shell failed to give local communities an opportunity to weigh in. “It is not only about giving consent,” Zukulu says. “It is about our right to say no to Shell directly and to be able to give our reasons.”

    Another tipping point for the court’s decision was the significant cultural connection between Wild Coast Indigenous communities and the sea.

    The Wild Coast falls within the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany biodiversity hotspot, and its pristine waters provide habitat for an exceptional array of endemic and endangered marine species, including South Africa’s national fish the galjoen, or black bream, along with red steenbras, black musselcracker, and abalone. Every winter, the region plays host to a mass migration of sardines that is estimated to rival, or even exceed, East African terrestrial migrations by biomass.

    South Africa’s Eastern Cape is one of the country’s poorest provinces, but because of this maritime abundance, Wild Coast communities’ hunger levels are also among the country’s lowest. “We survive because of this ocean, through fishing and catching crayfish,” says Tata Mashona Wetu, a village elder and the second applicant in the case. “If the exploration continues,” he says, “our survival will be destroyed.”

    Beyond sustenance, water plays a central role in the system of knowledge and cultural practices of the amaXhosa of the Eastern Cape, says cultural anthropologist Penny Bernard, who studies the link between water and divinity in southern African Indigenous cultures at Rhodes University in South Africa.

    According to Bernard, many amagqirha, or traditional healers, derive their divining abilities from spirits or ancestors connected to the underwater world. In this worldview, all bodies of water are conduits between the living and ancestral world, with the greatest water body of them all—the ocean—considered the most sacred. The ocean is known, according to Zukulu, as “God’s river.”

    In its decision to back Wild Coast Indigenous communities’ opposition to Shell’s exploration efforts, the court supported the Indigenous worldview, writing that “in terms of the [South African] Constitution, those practices and beliefs must be respected, and where conduct offends those, and impacts negatively on the environment, the court has a duty to step in.”

    Shell is not the first multinational corporation to covet the Wild Coast region’s natural resources—nor is it the first to come up against a similar legal argument.

    Indigenous communities in South Africa suffered mass dispossessions of their customary land under colonialism and apartheid rule. Three decades since the advent of democracy, land ownership and restitution remain highly contentious. Indigenous communities, like those in the Wild Coast, often have to take it upon themselves to enforce their constitutionally protected rights.

    In 2005, Australian mining group MRC and its local subsidiaries announced plans for a beach mine in the northern section of the Wild Coast, again with overwhelming support from Minister Mantashe. After a protracted, violent, and occasionally deadly struggle, the High Court eventually ruled in 2018 that the minister would have to obtain “full and formal consent” for the mine from the local Amadiba community, setting a clear precedent by recognizing communities’ customary rights to their land.

    “Since that judgment,” says Johan Lorenzen, an associate at Richard Spoor Attorneys, which has represented Wild Coast communities since 2006, “we have already seen a modest shift towards more meaningful engagement with similarly affected communities—even though it’s still not enough.”

    In its 2018 ruling on the MRC mine case, the High Court referenced an earlier verdict made by South Africa’s Constitutional Court. In that earlier case, between the Richtersveld Indigenous community and the mining company Alexkor Ltd., the court highlighted the fundamental link between African people and their land—“their most treasured possession.”

    In a separate case, also in 2018, the Constitutional Court, deciding on a case between the Lesetlheng community in South Africa’s North West province and Itereleng Bakgatla Mineral Resources, held that the community’s customary ownership is “ownership in its own right, and not merely akin to ownership.” The decision confirmed that Indigenous communities must provide consent for any proposed mining activity that would affect their land rights.

    Lorenzen adds that this latest ruling helps to clarify what exactly meaningful, accessible, and inclusive engagement should look like. Considering the constellation of favorable judgements that have been obtained by Indigenous communities, he adds, “Surely the message has to break through at some stage that the disrespect of these communities cannot carry on.”

    In response to the High Court’s ruling, Shell terminated the contract of the Amazon Warrior, and the vessel left South African waters in early January. But for Wild Coast communities, the battle to protect their communities and their environment is far from over.

    “When you are fighting for a just cause,” says Zukulu, “getting tired is not an option. We are fighting to give life to our Constitution, but also to make life possible on this planet.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline South Africa’s High Court sided with Indigenous communities on Feb 14, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Wet’suwet’en land defenders call on United Nations to visit proposed pipeline

    On Monday, Gidimt’en land defenders from the Wet’suwet’en First Nation accused Canada of violating international law and requested the United Nations make a field visit to their territory to investigate. Through an official submission to the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP), they say that Canada continues to violate Wet’suwet’en jurisdiction and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) by proceeding with the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. 

    The Coastal Gaslink pipeline will transport fracked natural gas across Wet’suwet’en territory in what is also known as British Columbia, to a proposed LNG Canada plant in Kitimat, BC. Since 2009, the Wet’suwet’en have built a number of occupation sites in the area, including cultural camps, healing lodges, and hunting camps to prevent construction and protect their land. The territory, governed by a traditional government led by Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada.

    Over eight pages, the submission describes years of Indigenous resistance and police violence, calling attention to recent Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raids of land defender camps, and calls on Canada to withdraw both RCMP and construction workers from Wet’suwet’en territory. “The forced industrialization and police militarization of Wet’suwet’en land is a violation of Canada’s international obligations as outlined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,” the document reads.  

    The submission emphasizes that the land was never ceded and the Wet’suwet’en will continue to defend it: “We, the Wet’suwet’en people, have never sold, surrendered, or in any way relinquished our collective title to Wet’suwet’en land. We have continued to exercise our unbroken, unextinguished, and unceded right to govern and occupy our lands.”

    The Expert Mechanism, which is under the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, is composed of seven independent experts on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 2019, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) called on Canada to stop construction on the CGL pipeline and two other projects until they obtained consent from impacted Indigenous nations. The Canadian government has not announced any plans to halt projects. Since 2018, EMRIP has conducted field visits to Mexico, New Zealand, and Finland in response to requests from local Indigenous communities for help implementing UNDRIP. Canada pledged to adopt and implement UNDRIP in 2016.

    Despite the Wet’suwet’en’s historical and legal rights, the Canadian government has allowed TC Energy, the owner of the pipeline project, to continue with construction. The Wet’suwet’en have tried several times to evict the company and its workers from their territory. A November 14, 2021 eviction notice was followed by a violent RCMP raid on November 18 and 21. Thirty-two people were arrested during the raid. 

    The submission was prepared by Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Dinï ze’ Woos (Frank Alec), Gidimt’en Checkpoint Spokesperson and Wing Chief of the Cas Yikh House, Sleydo’ (Molly Wickham), and Gidimt’en Checkpoint Media Coordinator Jen Wickham. It is also formally endorsed by a long list of Indigenous rights activists, environmental groups, and legal organizations including the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Greenpeace Canada, Indigenous Climate Action, Sierra Club BC, and Amnesty International Canada. 

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wet’suwet’en land defenders call on United Nations to visit proposed pipeline on Feb 10, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Historic flooding and a housing crisis left evicted Nooksack members with nowhere to go.

    In 2007, Michelle Roberts took an early retirement from Alaska Airlines and moved to Nooksack Tribal housing in northwest Washington. “My thought was that we are going to have a nice life being surrounded by family members, being close to my parents,” she said. That all changed when Nooksack Tribal police officers served her an eviction notice in December. “Never did I think that Nooksack would try and kick us out after fifteen years.” 

    Roberts’ eviction is the latest step in a bitter nine-year fight over tribal membership in the Nooksack Indian Tribe. The families facing eviction are part of a group of 306 people that the Nooksack Tribal Council has tried to disenroll multiple times since 2013. The group of 306, which represents about 15% of the tribe, are descendants of a woman born in 1875 who the Tribal Council claim was not Nooksack because she did not appear on a 1942 census. Her three daughters married Filipino immigrants and their descendants then enrolled in the 1980s. In 2019, the Council passed a new policy that only members could live in Tribal housing. Since then, eight households have received eviction notices and thirteen have been told they are next because they are on the Tribe’s disenrollment list. 

    Facing eviction, and what she calls persecution from her own tribe, Roberts has nowhere else to go. In the last year alone, Whatcom County has faced a deadly, unprecedented heat wave, record-breaking rainfall, and landslides. Historic flooding in November caused nearly $50 million in disaster costs – the highest ever in Whatcom County – and damaged more than 800 homes displacing hundreds of people in the region. Both temporary and affordable housing is nearly full. 

    Access to housing is especially important in Indigenous communities and communities of color due to higher vulnerability to climate disasters, and affordable, tribal housing can serve as an antidote to housing challenges. A 2017 HUD study of housing issues across Indian Country concluded that 68,000 new homes would need to be built to address overcrowding and inadequate living conditions. A 2021 Housing Matters at Urban Institute Initiative article highlighted the issue saying that tribes needed more flexible and accessible federal resources to address tribal housing challenges and mitigate worsening and future climate threats.

    “All the money they spent on this disenrollment, they could have been building houses,” Roberts said. “But they haven’t built houses in 15 years.” 

    With few options, Roberts and other families facing eviction took the unusual step of turning to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in December, who issued an unprecedented statement last week calling on the Federal government to stop the evictions. The statement, written by two United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights experts, stressed the health and cultural damage eviction would cause. Gabe Galanda, an attorney representing the “Nooksack 306” believes this may be the first time the UN has weighed in on an internal Native American dispute. 

    “It’s hard to imagine a worse time in modern history to attempt these mass evictions. The idea that they would evict 63 people from 21 homes, during a pandemic and amid historic inclement weather caused in great part by climate change is mind boggling,” Galanda said. “It should be unfathomable.” 

    In recent years, the UN and other organizations have called attention to the connection between housing and climate change. According to the Aspen Institute, “As climate change intensifies, housing stability will be increasingly under threat.”

    Without access to Tribal housing, Roberts and the others face an extremely difficult housing market. In Whatcom County, the median home sale price increased by double the amount that median income increased in the past five years while the rental vacancy rate is around 1%. Michelle Roberts’ uncle, who was also targeted by the Tribal Council for disenrollment, lost his home in nearby Sumas to flooding and fire last year. He is now living in a hotel, still searching for a new home to rent. 

    But because the Nooksack are a Federally recognized, sovereign nation, they determine their own membership and housing policies. This means outside groups like the UN or the federal government have little power to influence proceedings. Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Bryan Newland, released a written statement last Thursday: “Although the Interior Department has found that the Nooksack Tribe appears to have followed its internal administrative process, we implore the Tribe’s leaders to stop their planned evictions.”

    The Nooksack Tribal Council maintains that those facing eviction are not Nooksack and housing should go to those who are. “We have homeless people, including elders, who need a place to live and we need those who aren’t Nooksack to move,” Chairman Ross Cline Sr. said in a statement. 

    Cline also disputes the allegation that he is singularly focused on disenrollment, saying “Disenrollment occurred a number of years ago, but the Nooksack Tribe continues on with business and social services.” Cline points to the Tribe’s new marijuana dispensary, housing plans, and environmental work on salmon as evidence of their progress. 

    Nooksack leadership have demanded a retraction from the UN, saying that the UN never contacted the Tribe and their release contained many inaccuracies, such as the number of people being evicted. The Tribe plans to move forward with eviction proceedings but has not set a date. 

    Roberts says she doesn’t know what will happen next, but said that, “All we know is that we are going to stand our ground.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Historic flooding and a housing crisis left evicted Nooksack members with nowhere to go. on Feb 9, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The Biden administration is spending billions to clean up toxic abandoned coal mines

    Abandoned coal mines leave toxic pollution and other hazards in their wake. This year, communities in 22 states and the Navajo Nation will get $725 million to clean up the sites. 

    The funding, announced this week by the Department of the Interior, is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal that Congress passed in November 2021. The law allocates a total of $11.3 billion over the next 15 years for the clean-up efforts. The money will be used to control underground mine fires that have burned for decades, close mine shafts at risk of collapsing, repair unstable slopes left by strip mines, and improve water quality in rivers and streams acidified by runoff from old mines.

    “The Biden-Harris administration is committed to helping working families, often in rural and Tribal communities, who face hazardous pollution, toxic water levels, and land subsidence both during mining and long after coal companies have moved on,” said Secretary Deb Haaland in a press release.

    Closing abandoned mine shafts is also a win for the climate. In their latest inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, EPA estimated that abandoned underground coal mines leaked 237,000 metric tons of methane in 2019 — not far behind abandoned oil and gas wells, which leaked 263,000 metric tons of the potent planet-warming gas.

    This isn’t an entirely new undertaking for the federal government. After coal communities in Appalachia began organizing against strip mining in the mid twentieth century, President Jimmy Carter signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977. That law put in place regulations for active coal mines and created a fund to remediate mines abandoned prior to 1977 by imposing a tax on coal — currently 22.4 cents per ton for surface mines and 9.6 cents per ton for underground mines. Since then, the government has spent $7.9 billion over the past 45 years on clean-up efforts.

    The additional $11.3 billion that the Department of the Interior will distribute is the largest investment in the abandoned mine lands program’s history. Eric Dixon, a senior researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute, called it “a categorical step forward in remediating the polluted water, dangerous mudslides, coal mine fires, piles of waste coal, and other problems from historic mining.” 

    But it will only address about half of what he estimates is approximately $25 billion in remaining damage from mines abandoned before 1977.

    The new funding won’t be applied to mines abandoned after 1977. When coal companies go bankrupt today, state-run, industry-funded bond programs are supposed to foot the bill for cleaning up the mess left behind. But with the coal industry in a steep decline, many of those programs are in crisis. In states like West Virginia, there simply isn’t enough money in the bond fund to reclaim all of the abandoned mine sites.

    Pennsylvania, home to sites like Swoyersville’s 40-foot, 55-acre pile of coal waste and the Old Forge Borehole, which has poured acidic water and iron into the Lackawanna River for more than 60 years, is set to receive the largest share of funds: nearly $245 million. Prior to 1977, more coal was mined in Pennsylvania than any other state, and that legacy lingers.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Biden administration is spending billions to clean up toxic abandoned coal mines on Feb 9, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Want to heal the planet? Stop ignoring Indigenous science.

    In the Mayan Ich Eq community in Hopelchen, Mexico, bees are considered relatives to the people. They also serve as an important part of the economy, cultivated by the Indigenous group for hundreds of years. But the beekeepers of the Mayan Ich Eq are different from what we typically think of as apiarists. Their relationship is reciprocal — the community members feed them and take care of them, and in turn, the bees don’t sting and give them honey. 

    A decade ago, Mexico granted Monsanto, a United States-based agricultural corporation, along with several other major companies, permission to buy land near Hopelchen in the Yucatan peninsula. The move went against Mexico’s constitution, which affirms for Indigenous people the right to be consulted in land use and economic decisions. Monsanto and the other companies first deforested the land, then started growing soybeans using chemicals and pesticides. The chemicals started making the bees sick. In Mayan Ich Eq tradition, beekeepers believe they feel what the bees do. So, when the insects became sick and started dying, the people did as well. 

    The situation is a reminder, says Jessica Hernandez, a Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec environmental scientist, that Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and rights are not respected, even when codified into law. It is also a reminder of what is lost when Indigenous knowledge and science is ignored. 

    Hernandez chronicles the Mayan Ich Eq community’s fight to protect the bees and their people in her new book, Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. In an interview with Grist, she talks about the urgent need to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into modern conservation, as well as respect tribal communities’ long-standing protection of the world’s biodiversity.   

    But the book isn’t just a how-to on fixing the conservation field, or relatedly, the climate crisis. It was also an opportunity for Hernandez to uplift stories that are often silenced or ignored, through translated interviews with her own family members, forced from their lands by conflict, and Indigenous land protectors across Central America. Next up, she hopes to publish the book in Spanish to make it accessible to more people. 

    Q. Why do you think Fresh Banana Leaves is needed now and what inspired you to write it? 

    A. Oftentimes, Indigenous knowledge is just nowhere to be found. There have been scholars who have advocated for the inclusion of Indigenous science [in academia], but oftentimes, when we talk about Indigenous knowledge and how that can help us heal our planet, especially as we undergo climate change, it’s limited. It’s a privilege to be able to write about it so that especially the younger generation can see themselves reflected, and understand that our knowledge also holds power and strength when it comes to healing our planet.

    Q. You describe your family’s struggle with being forced from their ancestral lands, and the impact of that trauma on your environments. Can you talk about that experience?

    A. My father was forced to join the Central American civil wars in the 1970s. It was an Indigenous resistance movement against oppression and oppressive tactics. But the army was using all this violence and technology that was provided by the United States and Canada. In order for him to survive, he had to leave his ancestral lands [in El Salvador]. 

    We can see that parallel today, because a lot of Central Americans are having to flee their lands because of climate change impacts and ongoing violence. 

    Q. Why do you use the phrase “healing landscapes” instead of environmental justice? 

    A. Environmental justice is built on scholarly work in academia. Oftentimes when I talk to my elders, they don’t see their work as environmental justice because they always remind me that they don’t have an option. They don’t have a choice to do certain things. One of the reasons why I use healing is that even in our native languages, there are no words for conservation. We view it more as healing our environments or protecting them. Given the times that we’re living in, in order for us to heal our environments we also have to heal ourselves, especially from the ongoing oppression that we continue to face.

    Q. You say that ecological grief is often overlooked in the climate change discourse. What does that mean, and why do we need to focus on it more? 

    A. Ecological grief ties back to the kinships that we hold as Indigenous peoples with our plants and animal relatives. The example I provide in the book is the milpas. The milpas are a central kind of holistic agricultural system that we have been able to maintain since time immemorial. Everybody takes care of the milpas, even children and elders. There is this kinship that is built around the milpas. And because of climate change impacts – flooding of the milpa or if you have extreme heat – there is a psychological grieving. You’re mourning or grieving the plant and animal relatives that you lost because of those extreme weather conditions. That grief comes from the fact that you are building a relationship with those animals and you consider them your relatives as well. 

    Q. In the book you highlight the community-based forest management happening in part of the Zapotec nation in Oaxaca, Mexico as a success story, compared to other more traditional outsider-run projects. What makes the Zapotec forestry initiative work, and what lessons does it provide scientists and conservation groups? 

    A. When we talk about conservation we forget to include the Indigenous peoples who will be impacted by the denial of gathering those resources. In many marine protected areas, for example, you are not allowed to fish, because they’re trying to conserve the marine ecosystems there. Other protected areas are led by scientists who don’t have a relationship with Indigenous peoples or who are only focused on protecting the animal, without looking at the holistic system.

    It goes back to ecological grief. 

    We have that strong kinship with our forests, with our trees, because they’re part of us. It ties back to our creation stories and our ancestors. With the [Zapotec] forestry initiative, it [worked] because our people were integrated in the process and we were able to use Indigenous knowledge to manage and steward that forest. It’s holistic management, and integrated Indigenous peoples from the start. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Want to heal the planet? Stop ignoring Indigenous science. on Jan 24, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The boreal of Minnesota could look like Kansas if CO2 emissions remain ‘business as usual’

    This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    A sign hanging above the door of a giant open-top glass chamber in a remote part of Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest explains why so many scientists from around the world have worked hard to get a piece of this boreal woodland. “Welcome to the Future” the sign reads, and that is literally what researchers get when they come to do research at Marcell.

    The experiment — a collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory — features 10 open-top glass chambers. Each is 30 feet high, 40 feet in diameter, and designed — by controlling temperature and CO2 levels — to mimic what will happen to boreal peatlands under various global warming scenarios. They range from no change to a very realistic increase of 4 degrees F, to 7 degrees F, and even to a frightening 12 degrees F and higher.

    The Marcell Experimental Forest was established in 1962 to investigate the ecology and hydrology of the boreal forest, which in North America extends from the Lake Superior area of the northern United States to northern Canada and Alaska. Boreal woodlands — the world’s largest forest system, holding vast carbon-rich peatlands — also cover Scandinavia and much of Russia.

    In the past several decades, the research focus at Marcell has shifted to the impacts of global warming on the boreal forest, with more than 50 experiments now underway. The site is just one of numerous long-term study sites where scientists have for decades been researching climatic changes in the boreal. Studies in the Great Lakes area, the permafrost-rich regions of Tanana Flats and the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest in central Alaska, and the Scotty Creek lowlands of Canada’s Northwest Territories are all tracking the transformation of North America’s boreal ecosystem. Across the region, peatlands are drying out, and hotter, drier conditions are leading to a steady increase in wildfires — all of it accelerating permafrost thaw.

    In 2016, scientists first started to pump both heat and carbon dioxide into the chambers at the Marcell forest to see how these and other peatlands would respond to climate warming. Five years on, U.S. Forest Service scientist Randy Kolka; Paul Hanson, an ecosystem scientist at Oak Ridge; and their colleagues are already seeing significant changes, with the warmed plots quickly making the transition from being carbon accumulators to carbon emitters.

    The Marcell Experimental Forest in northern Minnesota. Scientists are simulating different climates in these glass chambers to better understand how boreal forests will respond to rising temperatures. Oak Ridge National Laboratory / U.S. Department of Energy

    The peat at the Marcell forest had stored 15 times more carbon than the recut forests in the eastern United States. But in a recent study, Kolka, Hanson, and other collaborators describe how the chambers are losing carbon 4.5 to 18 times faster than historical rates of accumulation. When dried or degraded, moisture-absorbing peat collapses, losing its ability to store carbon.

    As Kolka guided me through a chambered bog that is being heated up at the fastest rate, he pointed out warming-related changes. The tamarack and spruce trees were browning. Heat- and moisture-loving shrubs were so dense that we could hardly see the sphagnum on the bog floor. These and other mosses that are the building blocks of peat, he said, are not going to last.

    Peat is partially decayed vegetation that accumulates in the cold, water-logged, oxygen-starved bogs and fens of the boreal. As temperatures warm, the peat dries out in the south and thaws in the north, where trees are drowning and rivers and lakes are browning with solid organic carbon that is dissolving in the water. This is leading to the release of massive amounts of carbon into rivers and lakes and the atmosphere.

    Given that peatlands store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests, climate scientists are closely watching these changes. In addition to mitigating floods, filtering water, and slowing or stopping wildfire, the peat-heavy boreal ecosystem provides nesting sites for 1 to 3 billion birds that journey north from as far away as Argentina.

    “The boreal of Minnesota is going to look more like Kansas in the decades ahead if it’s business as usual with carbon emissions,” says Lee Frelich, the director of the Center for Forest Ecology at the University of Minnesota, who has been tracking changes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness in northern Minnesota for more than 30 years. “There’s nothing wrong with Kansas, but we don’t need another one in Minnesota. We only have three biomes here in Minnesota — boreal, temperate, and grassland. Losing the boreal would be a big loss.”

    For Frelich, it’s the trees in his part of the boreal that are showing the most dramatic changes. He is seeing more and more red pines with browning crowns, black spruce and balsam failing to regenerate, and temperate species like maples and oak — as well as grasslands — creeping north. In a recent study, he and other scientists predict that by the end of the century most of the boreal forest in Minnesota will be gone, and that a 180- to 300-mile swath of boreal forest in southern Canada will also be lost.

    Many scientists believe that the transformation of the southern boreal would be offset to some extent by a northward migration of trees, such as black and white spruce, lodgepole pine, and aspen and birch. One recent study suggests that this has been happening. Increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might also speed up tree growth in the far north.

    But with warming in the western Arctic accelerating two to three times faster than the rest of the world, scientists say the destructive impacts of climate change in the boreal are expected to far exceed any benefits.

    Dan Thompson, a Canadian Forest Service research scientist, surveys fire damage in Wood Buffalo National Park. Ellen Whitman / Canadian Forest Service / Natural Resources Canada

    At the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, located near Fairbanks, Alaska, scientists have since 1987 been working to better understand the mechanisms that have made the boreal resilient for thousands of years and now render it so vulnerable to unprecedented warming. One of the key findings is that frequent fires are favoring the regeneration of broad-leafed deciduous trees like aspen and birch over conifers. Summer fires burn the soil’s deep organic layer, which exposes the mineral soils below, aiding the expansion of hardwoods and reducing the insulation of permafrost.

    While aspen and birch do store more carbon than conifers, increased warming could mean that the northern boreal suffers the same fate as vast stands in the south that are dying because of drought.

    “It’s like a card game,” said Jill Johnstone, one of the researchers at Bonanza Creek and now head of the Northern Plant Ecology Lab in the Yukon. “After a fire, there is a shuffling of the deck. In the boreal, where the ecosystem has very few tree and plant species compared to, say, the Amazon, there are only a certain number of ways that the game can be played out. Controlling forces such as soil acidity, precipitation, heat, and permafrost help determine which plants and trees are most successful. So does climate change, now more than ever before.”

    One recent study found that the ability of black spruce — a keystone boreal species — to regenerate declined at 38 percent of the fire study sites and failed completely at 18 percent of the sites.

    The growing number, extent, and severity of boreal wildfires are accelerating the permafrost thawing that is already well underway. This thawing is uprooting and inundating vast stands of forest from Alaska eastwards into the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

    When Torre Jorgenson began his studies in Tanana Flats in the 1990s for the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, climate change was not a major concern. Now, however, Jorgenson and others are astonished by the swift changes, especially the flooding of large areas of “drowned” boreal forest.

    “In November, I was skating on ice through one of these drowned forests just outside Fairbanks,” said Jorgenson, a past president of the U.S. Permafrost Association. “It was weird, to say the least, seeing the trunks of these dead trees still standing frozen in ice. It’s going to get worse. We’re predicting that by the end of century, we will lose another 36 percent of permafrost and there will be very few trees left in the [boreal] lowlands.”

    Disturbance is nothing new to the boreal. It’s what makes it resilient. In the past 12,500 years, flooding from melting glaciers and snowpack transitioned this icy world from aquatic forbs to mosses and shrubs. Then, as water levels decreased and the land drained and dried out, trees such as black spruce and aspen grew on top of thick layers of peat.

    But just as extensive summer sea ice melt in the Arctic Ocean is leading to far less winter sea ice formation, warmer winters in the boreal are no longer allowing the ground to refreeze and stem the loss of permafrost. The watery fens in Tanana Flats are expanding exponentially. According to a recent study by Jorgensen and his colleagues, the size of three large fens in Tanana increased by 26 percent from 1949 to 2018.

    Similar flooding in the Liard and Mackenzie valleys to the southeast in Canada’s Northwest Territories is a big concern for the Indigenous people who rely on fishing, hunting, and trapping to make a living. “Moose and caribou are moving to drier places,” according to Dieter Cazon, manager of Lands and Resources for the Liildii Kue First Nation. “Beavers and muskrats are disappearing, and it’s getting difficult to get to one place from another with so much water on the land. We’re also seeing riverbanks collapsing.”

    William Quinton is a University of Waterloo hydrologist who has been studying permafrost in this region since 1999. Based at the Scotty Creek Research Station in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Quinton and his colleagues work hand-in-hand with the Liildii Kue Got’ine people, whose traditional ecological knowledge is augmenting the science that is being done on the ground. Their long-term memory of the past and their knowledge of how fish and wildlife are responding to climate change animate the data that Quinton and his colleagues are collecting.

    “It’s tough to be a tree in this landscape,” says Quinton whose research station at Scotty Creek sits in the middle of a 59-square-mile swath of the boreal forest that has a high concentration of wetlands. “There has been so much flooding that we have had to move our base camp twice. Some trees are hanging on, sitting on top of hummocks that act like lifeboats. But as the trees grow, the weight of them collapses the hummocks below.”

    Winters at Scotty Creek, according to Quinton, are warming faster than summers. In the 1950s, permafrost covered nearly three quarters of the region. It’s down to a third of that. The edges of local patches of permafrost are receding by about a meter a year, leaving behind depressions that fill up with melting snow and ever-expanding groundwater channels.

    Patches of melted permafrost near the Scotty Creek Research Station in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Bill Quinton

    “What we’re seeing, perhaps more clearly than any other place in the world, is ecosystem change occurring in fast motion,” says Quinton.

    Another concern linked to the swamping is the “brownification” of lakes, rivers, and streams that comes as solid organic carbon in rapidly thawing peat dissolves in the water. When harmless inorganic mercury from the thaw attaches itself to carbon, according to a number of studies, microorganisms can convert it to the highly toxic inorganic form of methylmercury.

    A major question now is whether thawing of permafrost in boreal peatlands ecosystems will be a slow-moving phenomenon that gradually releases greenhouse gases or a “carbon bomb” about to unload huge stores of carbon. Either way, the transformation of the boreal has implications not only for climate change, but for water quality and wildlife habitat and for wildfires that are projected to burn bigger and at shorter intervals — all making boreal regeneration difficult.

    The University of Minnesota’s Frelich isn’t giving up hope for the boreal. Like Torre Jorgenson, he suspects that some parts of the boreal in the cooler, undeveloped highlands and those adjacent to cold lakes will survive, just as patches of boreal forests in the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana and Moose Mountain in Saskatchewan have done. These boreal refugia could be managed to control wildfire, invasive species, and human developments.

    “The challenge,” says Frelich, “is determining where these refugia are most likely to be. Then we can put conservation measures in place to protect them. Outside of reducing carbon emissions, it’s our best hope. Forests die quickly, but trees take a long time to grow.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The boreal of Minnesota could look like Kansas if CO2 emissions remain ‘business as usual’ on Jan 14, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Clean energy goes up against tribal rights and biodiversity in Nevada

    The Biden administration is facing critical questions about how to balance the urgency of transitioning to clean energy with other progressive priorities. On Monday, a U.S. district judge halted construction of two geothermal power plants on public land in Nevada. The decision was in response to a lawsuit filed in December by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit, and the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, against the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, for approving the project. 

    Geothermal power plants pump hot water from deep underground and use it to generate steam to produce clean electricity. The Nevada plants are set to be built on a verdant wetland in the desert called Dixie Meadows. The suit alleges that the project threatens to dry up the hot springs that support the wetland and are of religious and cultural significance to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone. The ecosystem is also home to the Dixie Valley toad, a species that is not known to exist anywhere else on Earth.

    “The United States has repeatedly promised to honor and protect indigenous sacred sites, but then the BLM approved a major construction project nearly on top of our most sacred hot springs,” said Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribal Chair Cathi Tuni in a statement. “It just feels like more empty words.” Tuni went on to say that the tribe has not opposed geothermal projects elsewhere in the Dixie Valley but that it had a duty to protect this site.

    The conflict illustrates the challenges the Biden administration will face in pursuing the rapid energy transition that’s required to stabilize the climate, while also trying to repair relations with Tribal Nations, increase U.S. conservation, and protect biodiversity. Energy development has always involved trade-offs, but the stakes are higher today, with many in the climate movement asserting that the transition to renewables should not repeat historically exploitative practices. 

    Geothermal power plants currently produce a small fraction of U.S. electricity — only about 0.5 percent in 2020. But an analysis by the Department of Energy found that with improvements in technology, that number could go up to 8.5 percent by 2050. Geothermal power plants have several relative advantages, in addition to not directly producing any carbon emissions. They have a small physical footprint compared to wind and solar farms, and they can provide power 24/7. This kind of always-available, dispatchable source of electricity will be critical for grid reliability as intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar increase.

    In its approval for the Dixie Meadows geothermal plants, the BLM wrote that they would help Nevada achieve its goal of getting 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. The agency also cited President Joe Biden’s January 2021 executive order spelling out his government-wide approach to tackling the climate crisis.

    But the Center for Biological Diversity says the agency rushed the approval process and ignored the recommendations of government scientists. The lawsuit cites comments submitted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nevada Department of Wildlife raising concerns about the project’s environmental impacts and the developer’s plan to monitor and address any degradation of the springs. 

    The plaintiffs have reason to be skeptical. The geothermal company behind the Dixie Meadows project, Ormat Technologies, opened a geothermal power plant in 2011 about 40 miles away on another hot springs called Jersey Valley. The springs dried up entirely a few years after the plant began operating.

    The lawsuit also asserts that the project violates the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. “Many of the other springs in the area have been damaged or ruined by development,” the lawsuit says. “Dixie Meadows Hot Springs is therefore the most important and sacred spring to the Tribe, and one of the very last remaining springs in the area.” Members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe use the site for “healing, soaking, camping, and harvesting native plants for weaving and other uses. These practices require quiet for contemplation, and darkness to see the night sky.”

    The dispute mirrors other battles over clean energy development in Nevada and elsewhere in the country. In northeastern Nevada, some members of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe and several other tribes and environmental groups are fighting a proposed lithium mine. Lithium is a key ingredient for many of the technologies that will power a fossil fuel–free world, including batteries for electric vehicles. 

    To date, geothermal power plant development has been limited to areas with known geothermal resources close to the surface of the earth, which are often indicated by natural hot springs. But research underway at the Department of Energy and by private companies to tap into geothermal resources much deeper underground could open up new areas to geothermal development, potentially sparing treasured natural resources like Dixie Meadows.

    The injunction issued on Monday is temporary, halting construction of the Dixie Meadows project for 90 days while the U.S. district judge hears the case. The judge said he is “not yet persuaded there is a strong likelihood” of the lawsuit succeeding, but the plaintiffs will have the option of appealing an unfavorable decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Clean energy goes up against tribal rights and biodiversity in Nevada on Jan 7, 2022.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • An Illustrated guide to 2021’s pipeline battles

    This story is part of Grist’s 2021 Comic Recap — an illustrated look back on some of the year’s biggest climate stories. Read the other installments, click here and here.

    This was a big year for pipeline policy. From the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline to states enacting harsh laws to criminalize and curb pipeline protests, the fight to stop oil and gas infrastructure saw major wins — and major losses — in 2021.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    Joe Biden started his term in January by canceling the Keystone XL pipeline via executive order. That’s after more than a decade of Indigenous-led activism against the project.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr / Getty Images

    But the tough-on-pipelines agenda didn’t last. In May, the Army Corps of Engineers upheld a Trump-era position, allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to continue to operate, despite the fact that a key permit for the pipeline was canceled by a federal judge.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    Over the summer, protesters flocked to Northern Minnesota where the Line 3 pipeline, which carries tar sands oil across more than 200 bodies of water, threatens Anishanaabe treaty rights and could violate U.S. treaty law.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr / Getty Images

    Over 900 hundred people were arrested in protests over the summer. Many are facing felony charges.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    Despite protests, the Biden administration did not cancel the pipeline, which went online on October 1st.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    According to analysis by the Indigenous Environmental Network, Indigenous-led resistance to 21 fossil fuel projects has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to a quarter of annual U.S. and Canadian emissions – or about 400 coal-fired power plants.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    But nationwide, the risks of protesting pipelines like Line 3 and Keystone XL are getting higher, as sixteen states have passed laws since 2017 increasing penalties, including fines and jail time, for protesting pipelines. 

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    And Biden isn’t moving on either Line 3 or DAPL, despite his climate commitments.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    Despite Biden’s refusal to stop pipelines, there’s still hope: young Indigenous land defenders and water protectors, like 17-year-old Autumn Peltier, continue to fight the construction of oil and gas infrastructure on traditional and treaty territories.

    Grist / Alexandria Herr

    There’s no doubt protests and legal battles against major fossil fuel infrastructure projects will continue into 2022.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline An Illustrated guide to 2021’s pipeline battles on Dec 23, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Indigenous and environmental activists say they were illegally spied on

    Tribal members and environmental advocates filed a lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Justice on Tuesday for “illegal domestic spying” through its Oregon TITAN Fusion Center – one of approximately 80 intelligence hubs tasked with surveilling potential domestic terrorists. 

    “It is astonishing and disturbing to become the target of a well-resourced secret police, solely because of my participation in peaceful rallies opposing a harmful fossil fuel pipeline across my ancestral lands,” Ka’ila Farrell-Smith, an environmental and Indigenous rights advocate, said in a press release. 

    Farrell-Smith is a plaintiff in the case and a member of the Klamath Tribe. She has protested against Jordan Cove, a 229-mile long natural gas pipeline that would have run through ancestral lands in Oregon. She has also created protest art and organized against a lithium mine in Nevada. 

    Other plaintiffs include Rowena Jackson, Francis Eatherington, and Sarah Westover. Jackson is also a member of the Klamath Tribe, a water protector, and works at the Klamath Tribes Administrative Office. Eatherington is president of the Oregon Women’s Land Trust, a conservation nonprofit. Westover was an organizer with No LNG Exports Coalition, an alliance of groups opposed to the Jordan Cove pipeline.  

    According to the lawsuit, “fusion centers” have little oversight and less is known about them. At least 3,000 state and federal employees work at fusion centers where they monitor individuals that pose possible domestic terrorist threats. Using tips from the public, social media, public records, and governmental materials, Oregon’s TITAN Fusion Center collects and shares data with “more than 170 local law enforcement agencies, dozens of federal and state intelligence hubs, and an unknown number of public and private partners,” the lawsuit states.  

    Following 9/11, at least 80 fusion centers have been created to prevent future terrorist attacks, but a 2012 Senate investigation found that they are ineffective and come at a cost of $330 million to taxpayers yearly. Originally created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the cost of funding them has largely shifted to states. According to the lawsuit, Oregon’s TITAN facility is run through Oregon’s Department of Justice’s Criminal Intelligence Division.

    The lawsuit, filed by the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law, which partners with communities and police to promote accountability, claims that TITAN is illegally spying on environmental advocates that aren’t breaking the law. The Policing Project has also been involved with a Microsoft case concerning compulsory data sharing with law enforcement, and an audit of Ring, a video doorbell company that works with police departments across the country. 

    “None of the Plaintiffs engage in or support, nor have ever engaged in or supported, criminal activity that would warrant Oregon Department of Justice’s attention or fall within Oregon Department of Justice’s delegated powers,” the lawsuit states.

    Jeff Rosenthal, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in a press release that TITAN “has repeatedly abused its unchecked power over law-abiding Oregon citizens.” The lawsuit states that TITAN also used surveillance software to physically track the location of Black Lives Matter protestors, using the information to create a threat report against Oregon’s own Department of Justice’s director of civil rights, as well as creating reports on the Women’s March. 

    “There is not a single Oregon law or regulation that gives the state Department of Justice the power to run a generalized spy agency,” said Barry Friedman, a law professor and the founding director of the Policing Project, in a press release. “That TITAN exists without any legislative authority flouts the basic principles of democratic governance.” 

    In a statement, the Department of Justice told Portland’s KATU, “We are reviewing the lawsuit, and will respond in court, but on initial review many of the examples cited in the lawsuit occurred several years ago and have been addressed.” 

    Plaintiffs hope the lawsuit will result in an end to TITAN’s surveillance activities.

    “Civil rights and privacy advocates have been sounding the alarm about fusion centers for years,” said Farhang Heydari, executive director of the Policing Project, in a statement. “But TITAN is one of the worst offenders.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous and environmental activists say they were illegally spied on on Dec 17, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.