By Sanjay Suri
BONN, Jun 5 2004 (IPS)

Daniel Salau Rogei, like thousands of others from the Maasai community in Kenya is no more than an observer at a geothermal project in his native area in Kenya. He now protests that he was no more than an observer at the International Conference on Renewable Energies that concluded in Bonn Friday.

“We felt so much neglected at this conference,” he told IPS. “We were not given an opportunity to point out our views.”

Daniel Salau is among a group of representatives of indigenous peoples who arrived at Bonn hoping to participate in the conference on renewables. The representatives were denied delegate status, and allowed to attend only as observers.

Indigenous peoples are those who have lived in a certain land for long periods, usually in close relationship with the environment, and often untouched by modern ways.

“They have not shown proper appreciation for our role in sustainable development and renewable energies,” he said. They had expected otherwise because “at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg two years ago indigenous people were recognised as very important people in the political declaration.”

But at the Bonn conference “decisions were made on our behalf, and this was a retrogressive move,” he said.

“This is eco-colonialism,” he said. “They are using the environment, the resources of indigenous people to further their business and further marginalise us.”

Representatives of indigenous peoples, estimated to number anywhere between 150 million and 350 million, wrote a protest letter to the conference administrators at the start of the conference. They included representatives of indigenous groups in Ecuador, Panama, Colombia and Kenya.

“We are extremely concerned and disappointed by our exclusion from the conference and the denial of full and effective participation as indigenous peoples at all levels,” they said in their protest letter.

“We are following the initiatives by states in promoting renewable energies as an alternative to fossil fuel technologies which are responsible for the violation of our human rights and the deterioration of our environment,” they said. “As such we welcome the initiatives to embrace renewable energies provided that they are also beneficial to the indigenous peoples and that our rights are fully respected.”

Developed countries must ensure that “the promotion of renewable energies does not lead to a wider spread of poverty among indigenous peoples, and a new way of colonisation of their territories,” they said in their protest note. Renewable energy projects in areas where indigenous people live must be carried out only by their “free and prior informed consent.”

Daniel Salau said indigenous people are not against renewable energies. “We know how important they are for the environment, we know they can reduce poverty,” he said. “We are concerned about the level of our participation and the recognition of our rights.”

A geothermal power plant in Olkaria in Kenya is vivid illustration of the way renewable energy projects can bypass poor local people, Salau said. The Olkaria project covers an area of 11 square kilometres and has estimated steam enough for 400 MW years. The plant produces more than 5 percent of Kenya’s electricity consumption.

But a recent study by the African Energy Policy Research Network shows that of about 500 people employed at the plant, only seven are from the local Maasai community. The seven comprise a typist, a clerk, a driver, a messenger and three watchmen, the report says.

Local Maasai people have become observers of the use of renewable energies in their midst without drawing any benefits, Salau said. And as on the ground in their homeland, so at the conference in Bonn.

The indigenous groups in Bonn were at least there to voice their protest. Their petition raised wider questions about the fate of the marginalised in developing countries as European companies move in with patent-protected technology to develop renewable energies in their areas.

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