BRAZIL NUTS

Let’s see some major greenwash in action.  In 2007 and 2008 the Brazilian government gave the go-ahead to the despoiling of large swathes of pristine Amazon ecosystem with a plan to build up to ten hydroelectric dams. This will then pave the way for hundreds of billion’s worth of roads, gas pipelines and infrastructure in order to open up the area for colonisation, logging and exploitation of all the region’s other raw materials (all as we foretold in www.schnews.org.uk/sotw/plan-coca-cola.htm).

As well as vast eco-destruction, the first £15bn phase of the plan - building two dams on the Madeira River, a major Amazon river tributary, at Santo Antonio and Jirau - will displace vast numbers of indigenous peoples including tribes of uncontacted Indians, erasing their homelands and leaving them in poverty – and indeed at threat of extermination from diseases they have not previously been exposed to. Cue a low rising tide of global protests over the following couple of years, bolstered when some of the indigenous leaders travelled to Europe to raise awareness of their plight.

Europe’s largest bank, Santander, was one of the banks targeted for arranging finance for the project. Eager to dam the wave of negative publicity and tap into that all important irate liberal consciousness dollar, the bank apparently finally caved in and stated that it was turning off the cash tap. In May 2011 they claimed it had suspended funding for the Santo Antonio dam (work began last year), citing environmental and social concerns. It was widely reported by a range of news media as being a major blow for the project, and activists - like those good folk at  www.survivalinternational.org - duly reported a minor victory. Perhaps a few naïve sorts’ hopes rose that Western corporate interests could be shamed out of participation of such eco-crimes.

But no such luck. Here we are less than three months later – and Santander has quietly admitted that actually, er, it never actually suspending the funding at all. Despite have been caught out flagrantly telling bare-faced lies, this revelation has made much less of a splash in the media and not even a ripple amongst shareholders and the financial markets.

Meanwhile, the work goes on, although not necessarily all that smoothly. Work on both Santo Antonio and Jirau, has been hit and even halted by workers’ strikes which saw riots, and installations torched by slave-like workers rallying for fairer pay and conditions. The violence was only quashed when the government sent the military in. At present the work is continuing – more or less at gunpoint.   

Why not tell yer local Santander branch all about it?