Belo Sun's executives have repeatedly and publicly downplayed the social, environmental, and legal risks of the Volta Grande Project, thereby heightening risks for current and potential investors.
December 2022
4,698 views
2 min read
Belo Sun's executives have repeatedly and publicly downplayed the social, environmental, and legal risks of the Volta Grande Project, thereby heightening risks for current and potential investors.
Stanford Social Innovation Review | As the effects of climate change worsen and concern grows, financial regulators are turning their attention to how companies report on climate-related risks. One crucial factor that businesses and investors may overlook is Indigenous and tribal peoples’ rights.
The Yanomami’s Hutukara Association has declared a humanitarian crisis in the wake of the reported rape and killing of a 12-year-old Yanomami girl by miners, the disappearance of a 3-year-old child, and attacks on the Yanomami’s Aracaçá village that have placed the Amazonian community “on the verge of disappearance” because of violence caused by...
The ruling is the result of sustained efforts by civil society and institutional allies to prevent the installation of Belo Sun's massive gold mine and to seek redress for the illegal acts committed in the course of the project's environmental licensing process.
After two weeks in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt for the Climate COP27 (The United Nations Conference of Parties on Climate Change), I’m reflecting on our purpose in attending and the outcomes.
“The problems in our region are not new but the violence has escalated to unprecedented levels because under Bolsonaro, illegal operations have gone unpunished.”
Over the last few decades, the Peruvian Amazon has become a hotspot for coca cultivation. Drug traffickers in the region have shown a willingness to destroy the rainforest and kill anyone in the name of profit. Indigenous leaders working to protect their Amazonian communities from land invasions, deforestation, and violence come into the cross...
The heartbreaking disappearance of Brazilian Indigenous rights advocate Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips has once again revealed that under Bolsonaro the Amazon has been handed over to illicit networks and industries.
The New York Times | At COP26, President Duque of Colombia attempted to convince the world he is an environmental champion. But back in Colombia, armed gangs are threatening and murdering community leaders and environmental activists who have been trying to protect forests from destruction by mining, lumber and oil companies.
A Peruvian delegation of Indigenous leaders and fishing communities is in the United States right now, confronting investors on their rights to live free from the devastation caused by the oil company the investors are bankrolling, Petroperú.
The Achuar and Wampis have good reason to oppose further oil extraction: The Northern Peruvian Oil Pipeline, which runs through their territories, has repeatedly ruptured, causing countless spills and constant threats to the environment and safety of their communities.
Carbon offsets are false solutions to the climate crisis, do not address the root causes of deforestation, and often cause conflict within and harm to Indigenous communities.
Corporate polluters have used offsets as an excuse to keep emitting, but there’s little evidence that offsets are actually slowing climate change. What’s more, offset programs have enabled land-grabbing and violations of Indigenous rights in the Amazon.
Belo Sun's executives have repeatedly and publicly downplayed the social, environmental, and legal risks of the Volta Grande Project, thereby heightening risks for current and potential investors.
The Amazon rainforest, its defenders, and our global climate are in a state of emergency. It is critical that we work together to amplify the boldest calls and most ambitious commitments to protect 80 percent of the Amazon by 2025 and avert further climate chaos. We can do it if we take urgent action now!
This risk assessment describes the political, social, financial, environmental, and legal risks associated with investing in Petroperú. It also compiles the perspective of some communities that could be affected by the threat of oil operations by Petroperú, in particular, the Achuar People of the Pastaza River and the Autonomous Territorial...
We count on the positive energy and mobilization of our supporters so that, together with our partners on the ground in Canada and our allies in the new Brazilian government, we can evaluate and expose the climatic risks of destroying an ecosystem as critical as that of the Volta Grande do Xingu, still threatened by Canadian mining company Belo...
Over the last few weeks, Peru has been going through an unprecedented political and social conflict that has already resulted in more than 40 deaths.
There are several reasons to be optimistic about building momentum to further restrict plans to expand oil extraction in its Amazon and keep fossil fuels permanently in the ground, and Ecuador is a great example.
For the first time, a government has put Indigenous peoples at the center, recognizing their ancestral right to decide over their lives and territories.
Democracy Now! | The landmark agreement seeks to halt the Earth’s sixth major mass extinction event, and Indigenous communities will have an increased role in protecting wildlife as part of the deal.
Indigenous communities are uniquely qualified to speak on the intersections between mining and biodiversity: Indigenous lands make up around 20% of the Earth’s territory, containing 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, requiring Indigenous peoples to be at the forefront of all decision-making regarding any global climate commitments.
Financial Post | “We are putting any institution or company looking to invest in or acquire Belo Sun on notice: this is a bad actor selling a dangerous project. Anyone looking to get involved with it will be shouldering serious risk and will be complicit in the continued threats to the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous and traditional peoples, and the global climate.”
The Siona of Buenavista are a beacon of resistance against incursions of oil companies like GeoPark and narco-mafias into their territories. Solidarity from Colombian and international allies can be crucial to their success.
The activist-led Amazon Defenders Fund (ADF) forges a bond of solidarity between Amazon Watch and our Amazonian partners and allies, and contributes to the woven tapestry of direct actions in their territories.
Defenders of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon, one of the most biologically diverse places on the planet, have two new reasons to hope that oil drilling in the region could be imminently curtailed.
While Brazil's presidential contest forced a runoff vote scheduled for the end of October, the election saw the historic victory of members of Brazil’s Indigenous "headdress" caucus in São Paulo and the state of Minas Gerais, in a momentous advance for Indigenous representation in the lower house of the National Congress of Brazil.
Mongabay | “The situation never improves; all the companies have had spills from OXY, Pluspetrol, and Petroperu. The pipes are decayed; they’ve been installed for years, and for that reason, [the land] is constantly being polluted.”
After years of virtual events, Climate Week 2022 coincided with the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly, bringing thousands to New York City to hold leaders accountable for the escalating climate crisis and making the presence of Indigenous peoples more important than ever.
Several days ago we asked you to take urgent action to tell the government of Ecuador to hold Chevron accountable for its deliberate Amazon pollution, before a legal deadline. Great news: it did!
Gold is used in electrical connections and circuit boards for a multitude of electronic products, including cell phones, laptop and desktop computers, the servers of tech giants, and in electric cars. Research has shown that upwards of 47% of Brazil’s gold exports could be of illegal origin.
The forum strongly condemned the so-called development paradigm, in which governments and large corporations are complicit in destruction with projects that privatize profits and socialize losses over Amazonian peoples and territories.
The Kawsak Sacha proposal aims to sustainably preserve and conserve territorial spaces, the material and spiritual relationship established there by native peoples with the living forest and the beings that inhabit it.
The Amazon is in the midst of a tipping point crisis as deforestation and high degradation combined have already reached 26% of the region. However, preserving 80% of the Amazon by 2025 is still possible.
Since 2019, the Brazilian Amazon has seen record-breaking levels of fires and destruction. Under the Bolsonaro administration, the levels of destruction have skyrocketed and continue to worsen each year as his rhetoric and policies encourage land grabbing, destruction, and violence against Indigenous peoples. This crisis is not only a threat to...
The Wampis and Achuar nations will not permit oil production on Block 64, and they have launched an international campaign to make it clear to anyone who still thinks it might be a good investment to attempt to extract oil from their territories.
Asset manager Vanguard is a major investor in some of the mining and oil companies that are causing irreparable harm to the Amazon rainforest and to Indigenous peoples. Vanguard is not only financing destruction and rights violations in the Amazon, but it is financing climate catastrophe throughout the world.
Visibility as a means towards empowerment. That is one of the goals that the Indigenous LGBTQ+ movement in Brazil strives for as they brought their agenda to the center stage of the Free Land Camp this year.
Indigenous leaders and the Ecuadorian government reached an agreement including a repeal of Executive Decree 95 on oil and gas and reform of decree 151 affecting the mining sector, among other demands. Both decrees had authorized the government to expand the extractive frontier into Indigenous territories and important conservation and forest...
Citi’s financial support to the Ecuadorian government is directly linked to oil drilling on and near Indigenous territories in the Amazon, where community leaders have repeatedly voiced opposition to such projects.
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TO: Assistant Secretary of State Brian A. Nichols and US Ambassador to Peru Lisa Kenna
Over the last few weeks, the Peruvian government under President Diana Boluarte, has committed a countless number of human rights violations leading to the murder of over 40 people. Yet the Biden Administration decided to publicly endorse the new Peruvian government and remain silent on protest killings.
The U.S. government must urgently express its unambiguous rejection of disproportionate and excessive use of force against protestors in Peru and condemn the use of stigmatizing language against them, which creates the enabling environment for security forces to use indiscriminate deadly force.
In solidarity with our partners from Peru’s national Indigenous federation, AIDESEP, we ask for the pronouncement of the U.S. State Department against the massacre and repression directed at mobilized people.
{your name}
(En español abajo)
To: Attorney General Salazar Méndez and President Lasso
CC: U.S. Ambassador Ivonne Baki
I, {your name}, urge you to guarantee justice and the rights of Ecuador’s Indigenous and campesino communities affected by Chevron’s (formerly Texaco) deliberate contamination of the Amazon rainforest they call home. Please file your appeal of the international arbitration panel’s award for Chevron before September 28, 2022 to hold the U.S. corporation accountable for its pollution and environmental crimes.
The Ecuadorian government cannot afford to remedy the destruction and the 9.5 billion in damages owed, and it must not assume responsibility. The arbitration panel decision also directly violates Ecuador’s constitution and the proceedings did not permit any participation from the affected communities or their attorneys.
Sincerely,
{your name}
———————-
A: Fiscal General Salazar Méndez y Presidente Lasso
CC: Embajadora de EE. UU. Ivonne Baki
Yo, {tu nombre}, lo insto a garantizar la justicia y los derechos de las comunidades indígenas y campesinas de Ecuador afectadas por la contaminación provocada de Chevron (anteriormente Texaco) de la selva amazónica, el cual constituye su hogar. Presente su apelación del laudo arbitral que favorece Chevron antes del 28 de septiembre de 2022, y que ejerza su rol como garante de nuestros derechos y se responsabilice a la corporación estadounidense por su contaminación y delitos ambientales.
El Gobierno ecuatoriano no puede darse el lujo de remediar la destrucción y los 9.500 millones en daños adeudados, y no debe asumir la responsabilidad. La decisión del panel de arbitraje también viola directamente la constitución de Ecuador y los procedimientos no permitieron ninguna participación de las comunidades afectadas o sus abogados.
Sinceramente,
{tu nombre}
Vanguard agreed in 2021 that it would release an interim emissions reductions plan to outline how it plans to reduce emissions by 2030. The “plan” that Vanguard released is woefully inadequate, pales in comparison to industry peers, and is by far the least ambitious, bare-minimum participation in the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM).
Vanguard must go back to the drawing board and announce a new and substantive plan to actually reduce emissions as well as coal, oil, and gas exclusion policies!
To this day, Vanguard has not made any moves to address Indigenous rights violations or companies it invests in that contribute to deforestation. Also, it has failed to have the ambition to actually mitigate climate risk and create secure futures for clients; and it has no implementation plan to ensure that it actually meet the already minuscule “expectations” to reduce emissions by 2030.
This non-plan is a failure on every measure, and Vanguard customers, activists, financial experts, and more cannot accept it. It’s time to go back to the drawing board and release a new plan that is more in line with industry peers, NZAM principles, and Race to Zero criteria.
Sincerely,
Your name
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