Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah is taking place right now. Robert Redford, founder of Sundance and a longtime environmental activist, sat down with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman yesterday to discuss this year’s festival and pressing environmental issues, including the Keystone XL pipeline.
The festival always has a solid showing of environmental films and this year is no different. The film, Racing Extinction, which is a call to action amidst massive species loss, had its world premiere at Sundance on Jan. 24. Another must-see film that screened at Sundance is How to Change the World, which won the Candescent Award given to powerful social-issue films that have been supported during production by the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Directed by Jerry Rothwell, the film tells the story of an eclectic group of friends—Canadian hippie journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists and American draft dodgers—who launched Greenpeace. The group formed Greenpeace in 1971 after its protest of Richard Nixon's nuclear tests in Amchitka, Alaska captured the world's imagination.
The group wanted to "bear witness"—a Quaker tradition of silent protest—to U.S. nuclear testing in Amchitka because it was the "last refuge for 3,000 endangered sea otters, and home to bald eagles, peregrine falcons and other wildlife," according to Greenpeace. The U.S. still detonated the bomb, but Greenpeace's campaign helped stop nuclear testing in Amchitka later that year and the island was declared a bird sanctuary. That was just the beginning of many more intense campaigns around the world, in which members of Greenpeace put their bodies on the line to protect the planet.
With real-life footage of the group's journey to Alaska aboard an old boat and other early campaigns, How to Change the World gives viewers an in-depth look at how Greenpeace was formed and how its members came to play such a pivotal role in the modern environmental movement. The movie's website describes it as "an intimate portrait of the group’s original members and of activism itself—idealism vs. pragmatism, principle vs. compromise."
Greenpeace's decades of environmental activism have had lasting impacts. "I think without Greenpeace’s work in the 1970s many species of whale would be extinct," Rothwell told Tom Roston of Moyers & Company. "The moratorium against whaling in 1982 was achieved directly because of the way the early whale campaigns had changed global consciousness about whales."
When asked if the film can be a how-to guide for today's activists, Rothwell cautions, "It’s an exploration of one attempt to effect change by a small group of people and of the impact of their success on the people in that group and their relationships." Still, there are undoubtedly many lessons to be learned in the successes and failures of Greenpeace.
Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd, and a co-founder of Greenpeace, is thrilled about the film and its portrayal of Bob Hunter, the first president of Greenpeace. "This film recognizes his genius, his vision, his incredible imagination and his great courage. He did in fact change the world—and very much for the better," said Watson.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.