The conference also adopted a "Charter of the Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests."
The historic new alliance unites for the first time Indians from Amazonia, Central America and the southern cone of South America, "pygmies" from Africa, tribal peoples from India and Thailand, indigenous peoples from the Philippines, "Orang Asli" and Dayak peoples from Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo, indigenous peoples from Indonesia, as well as Melanesian peoples from New Guinea.
The new alliance is needed, say the forest-dwelling peoples, to confront those who are responsible for destroying their forests and undermining their livelihoods and who are already united and organized. A new unity among the peoples of the tropical forests is needed to ensure that their rights are respected in international policymaking regarding the rainforests.
The Charter, which sets out the alliance's demands, goals and principles, advocates a new approach to development and conservation in the tropical forests based on securing the rights of the forests' original inhabitants.
"There can be no rational or sustainable development of the forests and of our peoples until our fundamental rights as peoples are respected," the Charter declares.
The alliance demands respect for the human rights of forest-dwelling peoples and above all for their rights to determine their own ways of life and ways of organizing. The forest-dwelling peoples' representatives at the conference called for an end to the violence, slavery, debt-peonage and land-grabbing which they endure and for the disbanding of the private armies and militias against them.
In place of large-scale development projects, logging and mining, the Charter advocates an alternative development approach involving small-scale community initiatives under the control of the people who live in the forest. The Charter condemns the damage caused by logging as "a crime against humanity" and calls for the suspension of logging concessions on indigenous territories.
The Charter also sets out in detail the common demand of all those in the alliance to the ownership of their traditional territories. The peoples insist that only once they have secure ownership and control of their territories can they be sure of a future and live in balance with their environment. The development they seek should be based on their traditional knowledge; should first meet their basic needs to ensure self-reliance and independence and only then should be oriented toward generating a surplus for the market, using suitable technologies.
Moreover, recognizing that "landlessness outside the forests puts heavy pressure on their territories and forests," the Charter calls for land reforms to secure the livelihoods of those who live outside the forests.
The new Charter also challenges the Western model of conservation, which entails designating areas as off limits to human beings.
Part of the five-page Charter declares that:
"Conservation programs must respect our rights to the use and ownership of the territories we depend on. No programs to conserve biodiversity should be promoted on our territories without our free and informed consent as expressed through our representative organizations.
"The best guarantee of the conservation of biodiversity is that those who promote it should uphold our rights to the use, administration, management and control of our territories. We assert that guardianship of the different ecosystems should be entrusted to us, indigenous peoples, given that we have inhabited them for thousands of years and our very survival depends on them."
Delegates at the meeting made clear that it is time that conservationists come up with policies that are more sensitive to the needs and rights of local peoples. Many of the indigenous delegates cited examples where national parks had extinguished their rights to resources and denied their right to self-determination. National park laws, they noted, often prohibit activities fundamental to the livelihoods of forest dwellers and thereby generate serious conflicts between indigenous peoples and park authorities.
The new alliance is led by a coordinating committee made up of seven indigenous organizations representing seven tropical forest regions - Central America, Amazonia, South America's southern cone, Africa, Continental Asia, Malaysia-Indonesia and the Pacific. The alliance, which already brings together the legitimate representatives of several million forest dwellers, aims to involve other indigenous and tribal forest-dwelling groups whose representatives were unable to attend the meeting.
One of the first acts of the alliance was to denounce the uncontrolled logging in Sarawak and the continuing arrests and detention of the native people. In January, Ibans from Hachan and Kenyah from Belaga were arrested. Even while the conference was deliberating, news came through of a Kelabit being detained under the security laws and of heavy pressure being put on the Penan of Long Ajeng to halt their blockade of logging company roads.
The conference noted that some of the same logging companies operating in Sarawak are also involved in logging Indian lands in Amazonia. Among these is Samling Timber Sdn Bhd, which has just formed a consortium in Guyana to log 1.6 million hectares - equivalent in size to a quarter of the reserved forests of Sarawak.
Similar resolutions were also issued calling for an end to palm oil and colonization schemes on the island of Siberut in Indonesia, a recognition of indigenous peoples' rights to their territories in Peninsular Malaysia, Panama, Nagaland, West Papua, Argentina, the Philippines and Thailand.
In mid-March, indigenous members from South America, Africa and Asia, representing the alliance, traveled to Holland, New York and Washington to present themselves to the international community. In Holland, they met with the Minister for Overseas Development, as well as members of the Dutch and European parliaments, before traveling on to New York to participate in a preparatory meeting for the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED), to be held this summer.
Ariel Araujo, a Mocovi Indian from Argentina whose organization was appointed by the Alliance to coordinate its interaction with the United Nations, says, "We are hoping that Maurice Strong, the Secretary General [of UNCED], can strengthen the commitment of UNCED to ensure effective indigenous participation both in the UNCED process itself and in its outcome. So far, we have not seen a real commitment by the UNCED to such participation. We are looking for real changes in the UNCED documents, and in particular the Agenda 21 [the environmental declaration of principles being formulated by UNCED], to ensure that indigenous peoples' points of view are taken into account and their rights are respected."
- Marcus Colchester/World Rainforest Movement
Yankee Atomic halted power generation at Yankee Rowe in October 1991, two days before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was planning to shut it down. The NRC had been prompted by a Union of Concerned Scientists' petition which alleged that the reactor's steel containment vessel had become brittle and could potentially rupture, leading to a massive radiation release.
Yankee Atomic said it closed the plant because the costs of undertaking tests to determine the reactor vessel's safety were too great. "Yankee was faced with the prospect of spending more than $23 million in the next six months to complete very sophisticated testing and analysis on the plant's reactor vessel," said Dr. Andrew Kadek, president and chief executive officer of the company. "The technical criteria we must meet and the path we must follow to restart the plant are not sufficiently defined to justify spending that amount of money."
Yankee went to great pains to attribute the shutdown decision to economic, not safety, concerns. "The decision to close the plant was not based on technical or safety issues," said Kadek. "It was based on the cost of restarting the plant and the availability of lower cost power."
But Robert Pollard, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says safety and economic issues cannot be divorced. "Safety costs money," he says, and Yankee decided it could not afford to ensure the plant was safe.
The shutdown may have ramifications for the entire nuclear industry. Yankee Rowe's 40-year operating license was due to expire at the end of the decade, and many in the industry had hoped that the NRC would extend the license, paving the way for the current generation of nuclear power plants to continue operating well into the next century.
Whether the Yankee Rowe closure will herald a wave of shutdowns as nuclear facilities grow older is uncertain, however. Pollard says he does not "know any other plant in as bad shape" as Yankee Rowe, but he notes that other facilities of the same type (pressurized-water reactors) "will have to confront embrittlement."
For local activists, the shutdown was a tremendous victory. Dale Macleod, of the Citizens Awareness Network, a Western Massachusetts anti-nuclear group, says that local organizing efforts against the plant likely contributed to Yankee's decision to close the plant and that area residents are "obviously pleased" with the announcement. He says local activists plan to continue their work, seeking to publicize the damage Yankee Rowe has done to people's health (he blames the plant for an "incredible incidence of birth defects and cancers" in the area) and to the environment.
But the main issue facing local activists and Yankee Atomic alike is what to do with the facility.
In announcing the plant's closure, Yankee Atomic said it was preparing for "an orderly decommissioning of the facility."
Pollard believes there will be "no rapid decommissioning," however. He says it is not known precisely how to decommission a nuclear plant, and that there is no apparent source for the funds to undertake the effort, unless they are provided by taxpayers. Spent fuel and coolant water should be unloaded from the plant, he says, and then the plant should be guarded for 30 to 50 years while the plant's radioactivity decays. Yankee Rowe is going to "be there for some period of time yet," Pollard asserts.
Macleod says he hopes Pollard is correct, but fears Yankee may "push hard on [the decommissioning] issue to set a standard" of immediate decommissioning for the nuclear industry. That would be "a crazy idea," he says, and far more unsafe than letting the plant's radioactive material decay. Macleod promises local activists will strongly oppose any efforts to immediately dismantle Yankee Rowe.
All of the options for dealing with Yankee Rowe are "daunting," says Macleod. Even leaving the facility untouched or encapsulating it while its radioactivity breaks down - the safest option, according to anti-nuclear activists - is not safe, just less unsafe than the alternatives.
Thus the shutdown of Yankee Rowe highlights an unpleasant reality. Even if they are able to steer energy policy in new directions, citizens throughout the United States - and much of the world - will have to live for many years with many of the consequences of the fateful corporate and government decisions to embark on a nuclear energy course.
- Robert Weissman