Latin Americans pay price for corporate environmental destruction

Latin Americans pay price for corporate environmental destruction
Nick Fillmore 11 December 2014


As the COP20 conference comes to a close in Lima, can the corporations whose ‘externalities’ foster climate change ever be brought to book?


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Public asset, private depredation--the global carbon sink that is the Amazon rainforest.
Flickr / Phil. Some rights reserved.
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The UN COP 20 climate negotiations in Peru have been focusing on what nation-states need to do to reach a binding climate agreement a year from now. What is not on the table is how corporations are to be called to account for the climate damage they cause in developing countries—damage for which those countries are, however, held accountable.

A new report details how multinational corporations are destroying the environment and causing serious climate damage in Latin America. The report describes the destruction caused by three European corporations, which it says is typical of the damage caused by multinationals throughout the continent.

“Multinational corporations are relentlessly expanding their operations into ever more vulnerable and remote regions of the world,” says the report, written by three public-interest groups: the Democracy Centre of San Francisco, the Corporate Europe Observatory of Brussels and the Transnational Institute of Amsterdam. The corporations under the spotlight are the Spanish fossil-fuels giant Repsol, the Swiss-based mining and resources conglomerate Glencore-Xstrata and Enel-Endesa, an Italian consortium.

In the case of Repsol, it says that “the relentless pursuit of new gas and oil reserves in Peru takes direct aim at the region’s indigenous territories and forests, leaving social destruction and environmental decimation in its wake”. Of the copper-mining operations of Glencore-Xstrata , it claims: “Scarce water resources, already stretched by climate change, are being contaminated with impunity.” And it says Enel-Endesa is attempting via its Latin American subsidiary Emgesa to portray a massive hydro-electric dam as a “clean energy” project, yet “rather than benefitting local people, the electricity is destined for dirty industry at discount prices”.

More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/nick-fillmore/latin-americans-pay-price-for-corporate-environmental-destruction