Yurok lawyer Amy Cordalis (L) explains the impacts of climate change on the Klamath River, such as the drop in the number of salmon, a key species in the traditions and economy of this Native American tribe in the western U.S. state of California. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
KLAMATH, California, USA , Sep 13 2018 (IPS)

Fishermen are scarce in the Klamath River delta, unlike other fishing season, because climate change has driven up water temperatures which kills off the salmon, the flagship species of this region in northern California.

The increase in temperatures favours the proliferation of lethal fish diseases and the absence of fish has devastating effects on the Yurok, the largest group of Native Americans in the state of California, who live in the Klamath River basin.

“The river level is dropping at a time when it shouldn’t. The water warms up in summer and causes diseases in the fish. This changes the rhythm of the community and has social effects,” lawyer Amy Cordalis, a member of the tribe, told IPS during a tour of the watershed.

Cordalis stressed that the community of Klamath, in Del Norte county in northwest California, depends on fishing, which is a fundamental part of their traditions, culture and diet.

The Yurok, a tribe which currently has about 6,000 members, use the river for subsistence, economic, legal, political, religious and commercial purposes.

This tribe, one of more than 560 surviving tribes in the United States, owns and manages 48,526 hectares of land, of which its reserve, established in 1855, covers less than half: 22,743 hectares.

Conserving the forest is vital to the regulation of the temperature and water cycle of the river and to moisture along the Pacific coast.

The Yurok – which means “downriver people” – recall with terror the year 2002, when the water level dropped and at least 50,000 salmon ended up dead from disease, the highest fish mortality in the United States.

The Yurok are working to conserve and restore the Klamath River basin, to which they are spiritually and economically connected. Part of the restoration involves placing logs in the river, such as these ones that have been prepared on its banks, to channel the water and retain sediment and thus recreate the habitat needed by salmon, the species that is key to the Yurok culture. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

And in 2015 no snow fell, which affects the flow of water that feeds the river and is fundamental for the fishery because in March of each year the salmon fry come down from the mountain, Cordalis said. This species needs cold water to breed.

The federal government granted the Yurok a fishing quota of 14,500 salmon for 2018, which is low and excludes commercial catch, but is much higher than the quota granted in 2017 – only 650 – due to the crisis of the river flow that significantly reduced the number of salmon.

The migration of fish downriver has also decreased in recent years due to sedimentation of the basins caused by large-scale timber extraction, road construction, loss of lake wood and loss of diversity in the habitat and fishery production potential.

As a result, the number of chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), green sturgeon (Acipenser medirostris) and Pacific lamprey (Lampetra tridentata) have dropped in the Klamath River, while Coho or silver salmon (O. kisutch) are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The Klamath River in California, the natural and spiritual sustenance of the Yurok people, is facing threats due to climate change, such as reduced flow and increased temperatures, which kill salmon, a species that requires cold water for breeding. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

A reflection of this crisis, in Cordalis’ words, is the ban on commercial fishing for the third consecutive year, with only subsistence fishing allowed.

Faced with this, the Yurok have undertaken efforts for the conservation of the ecosystem and the recovery of damaged areas to encourage the arrival of the salmon.

In 2006, they began placing wood structures in the Terwer Creek watershed as dikes to channel water flow and control sediment.

“We had to convince the lumber company that owned the land, as well as the state and federal authorities. But when they saw that it worked, they didn’t raise any objections. What we are doing is geomorphology, we are planting gardens,” Rocco Fiori, the engineering geologist who is in charge of the restoration, from Fiori Geo Sciences, a consulting firm specialising in this type of work, told IPS.

Tree trunks are placed in the river bed, giving rise to the growth of new trees. They last about 15 years, as they are broken down and begin to rot as a result of contact with the moisture and wind.

But they generate more trees, giving rise to a small ecosystem. They also facilitate the emergence of vegetation on the river ford, explained Fiori, whose consulting firm is working with the Yurok on the restoration.

Salmon is basic to the diet of the Yurok people, who live in northern California. But the catch has fallen drastically due to a lower water flow in the Klamath River and the increase in water temperature. In the picture, a member of the Yurok tribe seasons fish for dinner on the riverbank. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Starting in the fall, this strip is flooded every year, which favours the abundance of organic matter for the salmon to feed on, allowing them to grow and thrive in the new habitat.

In addition, four of the six dams along the Klamath River and its six tributaries, built after 1918 to generate electricity, will be dismantled.

The objective is to restore land that was flooded by the dams and to apply measures to mitigate any damage caused by the demolition of the dams, as required by law.

The Copco 1 and 2, Iron Gate and JC Boyle dams will be demolished in January 2021, at a cost of 397 million dollars. The owner of the dams, the PacifiCorp company, will cover at least 200 million of that cost, and the rest will come from the state government.

“The removal of the dams is vital. It’s a key solution for the survival of salmon,” biologist Michael Belchik, of the Yurok Tribe Fisheries Department, who has worked with the tribe for 23 years, told IPS.

The four reservoirs hold between five million and 20 million cubic metres of sediment, and their removal will provide 600 km of suitable habitat for salmon.

It is estimated that salmon production will increase by 80 percent, with benefits for business, recreational fishing and food security for the Yurok. In addition, the dismantling of dams will mitigate the toxic blue-green algae that proliferate in the reservoirs.

Water conservation projects exemplify the mixture of ancestral knowledge and modern science.

For Cordalis, salmon is irreplaceable. “Our job is not to let (a tragedy) happen again. The tribe does what it can to defend itself from problems and draw attention to the issue. We continue to fight for water and the right decisions. Our goal is to restore the river and get the fish to come back,” the lawyer said.

The Yurok shared their achievements and the challenges they face with indigenous delegates from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, Mexico and Panama in the run-up to the Global Climate Action Summit, convened by the government of California to celebrate in advance the third anniversary of the Paris Agreement, reached in Paris in 2015. The meeting will take place on Sept. 13-14 in San Francisco, CA.

This article was produced with support from the Climate and Land Use Alliance .

Dawn on the border of the Juma Reserve in the Brazilian Amazon. Activists say some new conservation policies are undermining traditional approaches to forest management and alienating forest-dwellers from their traditional activities. Credit: Neil Palmer (CIAT)/cc by 2.0

By Jeff Conant
BERKELEY, California, Dec 18 2014 (IPS)

Dercy Teles de Carvalho Cunha is a rubber-tapper and union organiser from the state of Acre in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, with a lifelong love of the forest from which she earns her livelihood – and she is deeply confounded by what her government and policymakers around the world call “the green economy.”

“The primary impact of green economy projects is the loss of all rights that people have as citizens,” says Teles de Carvalho Cunha in a report released last week by a group of Brazilian NGOs. “They lose all control of their lands, they can no longer practice traditional agriculture, and they can no longer engage in their everyday activities.”The whole concept fails to appreciate that it is industrial polluters in rich countries, not peasant farmers in poor countries, who most need to reduce their climate impacts.

Referring to a state-run programme called the “Bolsa Verde” that pays forest dwellers a small monthly stipend in exchange for a commitment not to damage the forest through subsistence activities, Teles de Carvalho Cunha says, “Now people just receive small grants to watch the forest, unable to do anything. This essentially strips their lives of meaning. ”

Her words are especially chilling because Teles de Carvalho Cunha is not just any rubber tapper – she is the president of the Rural Workers Union of Xapuri – the union made famous in Brazil when its founder, Chico Mendes, was murdered in 1988 for defending the forest against loggers and ranchers.

Mendes’ gains have been consolidated in tens of thousands of hectares of ‘extractive reserves,’ where communities earn a living from harvesting natural rubber from the forest while keeping the trees standing. But new policies and programmes being established to conserve forests in Acre seem to be having perverse results that the iconic leader’s union is none too happy about.

Conflicting views on the green economy

As Brazil has become a leader in fighting deforestation through a mix of  public and private sector actions, Acre has become known for market-based climate policies such as Payment for Environmental Services (PES) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) schemes, that seek to harmonise economic development and environmental preservation.

Over the past decade, Acre has put into place policies favouring sustainable rural production and taxes and credits to support rural livelihoods. In 2010, the state began implementing a system of forest conservation incentives that proponents say have “begun to pay off abundantly”.

Especially as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change continues to fail in its mission of bringing nations together around a binding emissions reduction target – the latest failure being COP20 in Lima earlier this month – REDD proponents highlight the value of “subnational” approaches to REDD based on agreements between states and provinces, rather than nations.

The approach is best represented by an agreement between the states of California, Chiapas (Mexico), and Acre (Brazil).

In 2010, California – the world’s eighth largest economy – signed an agreement with Acre, and Chiapas, whereby REDD and PES projects in the two tropical forest provinces would supply carbon offset credits to California to help the state’s polluters meet emission reduction targets.

California policymakers have been meeting with officials from Acre, and from Chiapas, for several years, with hopes of making a partnership work, but the agreement has yet to attain the status of law.

Attempts by the government of Chiapas to implement a version of REDD in 2011, shortly after the agreement with California was signed, met strong resistance in that famously rebellious Mexican state, leading organisations there to send a series of letters to CARB and California Governor Jerry Brown asking them to cease and desist.

Groups in Acre, too, sent an open letter to California officials in 2013, denouncing the effort as “neocolonial,”:  “Once again,” the letter read, “the former colonial powers are seeking to invest in an activity that represents the ‘theft’ of yet another ‘raw material’ from the territories of the peoples of the South: the ‘carbon reserves’ in their forests.”

This view appears to be backed up now by a  new report on the Green Economy  from the Brazilian Platform for Human, Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights. The 26-page summary of a much larger set of findings to be published in 2015 describes Acre as a state suffering extreme inequality, deepened by a lack of information about green economy projects, which results in communities being coerced to accept “top-down” proposals as substitutes for a lack of public policies to address basic needs.

Numerous testimonies taken in indigenous, peasant farmer and rubber-tapper communities show how private REDD projects and public PES projects have deepened territorial conflicts, affected communities’ ability to sustain their livelihoods, and violated international human rights conventions.

The Earth Innovation Institute, a strong backer of REDD generally and of the Acre-Chiapas-California agreement specifically, has thoroughly documented Brazil’s deforestation success, and argues that existing incentives – farmers’ fear of losing access to markets or public finance or of being punished by green public policies – have been powerful motivators, but need to be accompanied by economic incentives that reward sustainable land-use.

But the testimonies from Acre raise concerns that such economic incentives can deepen existing inequalities. The Bolsa Verde programme is a case in point: according to Teles de Carvalho Cunha, the payments are paltry, the enforcement criminalises already-impoverished peasants, and the whole concept fails to appreciate that it is industrial polluters in rich countries, not peasant farmers in poor countries, who most need to reduce their climate impacts.

A related impact of purely economic incentives is to undermine traditional approaches to forest management and to alienate forest-dwellers from their traditional activities.

“We don’t see land as income,” one anonymous indigenous informant to the Acre report said. “Our bond with the land is sacred because it is where we come from and where we will return.”

Another indigenous leader from Acre, Ninawa Huni Kui of the Huni Kui Federation, appeared at the United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru this month to explain his people’s opposition to REDD for having divided and co-opted indigenous leaders; preventing communities from practicing traditional livelihood activities; and violating the Huni Kui’s right to Free, Prior and Informed Consents as guaranteed by Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.

One of the REDD projects the report documents (also documented here) is the Purus Project, the first private environmental services incentive project registered with Acre’s Institute on Climate Change (Instituto de Mudanças Climáticas, IMC), in June 2012.

The project, designed to conserve 35,000 hectares of forest, is jointly run by the U.S.-based Carbonfund.org Foundation and a Brazilian company called Carbon Securities. The project is certified by the two leading REDD certifiers, the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Climate, Community, Biodiversity Standard (CCBS).

But despite meeting apparently high standards for social and environmental credibility, field research detected “the community’s lack of understanding of the project, as well as divisions in the community and an escalation of conflicts.”

One rubber tapper who makes his living within the project area told researchers, “I want someone to explain to me what carbon is, because all I know is that this carbon isn’t any good to us. It’s no use to us. They’re removing it from here to take it to the U.S… They will sell it there and walk all over us. And us? What are we going to do? They’re going to make money, but we won’t?”

A second project called the Russas/Valparaiso project, seems to suffer similar discrepancies between what proponents describe and what local communities experience, characterised by researchers as “fears regarding land use, uncertainty about the future, suspicion about land ownership issues, and threats of expulsion.”

The company’s apparent failure to leave a copy of the project contract with the community did not help to build trust. Like the Purus Project – and like many REDD projects in other parts of the world whose track record of social engagement is severely lacking – this project is also on the road to certification by VCS and CCB.

Concerns like criminalising subsistence livelihoods and asserting private control over community forest resources, whether these resources be timber or CO2, is more than a misstep of a poorly implemented policy – it violates human rights conventions that Brazil has ratified, as well as national policies such as Brazil’s National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities.

The report’s conclusion sums up its findings: “In the territories they have historically occupied, forest peoples are excluded from decisions about their own future or—of even greater concern – they are considered obstacles to development and progress. As such, green economy policies can also be described as a way of integrating them into the dominant system of production and consumption.

“Yet, perhaps what is needed is the exact opposite – sociocultural diversity and guaranteeing the rights of the peoples are, by far, the best and most sustainable way of slowing down and confronting not only climate change, but also the entire crisis of civilization that is threatening the human life on the planet.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

As a mass hunger strike in the California prison system enters its third week, advocacy groups are warning that prison officials attempting to break the strike are breaching international human rights standards.

New York City protest for prisoner hunger strikers organised by World Can’t Wait. Credit: Debra Sweet/cc by 2.0

As of Monday, 986 inmates in 11 California state prisons were considered to be on hunger strike, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Starting on Jul. 8, some 30,000 inmates in 33 jails began refusing food in protest against what they describe as the inhumane use of long-term solitary confinement.

Although this is the third such hunger strike in the California prisons since 2011, the current situation has involved more inmates and gone on for longer than previous such protests. The five central demands of the current strikers can be found here, foremost among which is ending long-term solitary confinement, which has constituted a key part of the state’s crackdown on prison gangs.

In attempting to stem the current strike, CDCR officials have recently stepped up a disciplinary campaign, including placing striking prisoners in even more restrictive isolation. Amnesty International, a watchdog group, is now warning that the CDCR has “breached international human rights obligations by taking punitive measures against prisoners on hunger strike over conditions”.

“Prisoners seeking an end to inhumane conditions should not be subjected to punitive measures for exercising their right to engage in peaceful protest,” Angela Wright, a U.S. researcher for Amnesty International, which has previously offered extensive reporting on the California prison system, said Monday.

Wright’s colleague Justin Mazzola told IPS, “At this point, further restricting these prisoners violates their right to challenge this treatment, placing them in a situation that is even less accountable than the indefinite isolation they’ve previously experienced. Placing prisoners in even more restrictive settings shouldn’t be the response to what they’re doing: calling attention to the conditions in which they’re being held, as well as to proposed reforms.”

On Jul. 11, CDCR officials released a statement noting that it is a violation of California state law for inmates to participate in any “mass disturbance” or refuse a work assignment. Any participating inmate would thus be disciplined by being placed in an “administrative segregation” unit, the statement warned.

Hunger-strikers have since suggested that prison officials have engaged in “retaliation”, including being put in the more restrictive administrative segregation, which the strikers say includes “more torturous conditions” than their previous isolation. Activists have also previously alleged that strikers are experiencing limits on their correspondence with lawyers and the confiscation of certain personal effects.

“Bear in mind that in prison you don’t have the same right to expression as in the outside world – that’s the point of prison, it’s a sanction for criminal behaviour,” Jeffrey Callison, press secretary for the CDCR, told IPS.

“That being said, the prisoners do have the ability to make known their concerns about conditions. There are formal mechanisms by which to file complaints, which are all read. Whenever a prisoner raises a legitimate issue, it’s fixed.”

Callison says that reports that striking inmates have had their legal access limited are false, stating that only a single lawyer has been temporarily barred from entering the Pelican Bay detention centre, where the current strike began, though the reason for this is confidential. He also notes that another allegation – that prisoners have been “blasted with cold air” at the PelicanBay facility – is impossible given that the centre has no air conditioning.

Indefinite isolation

California has relied on an aggressive programme of “isolated housing” since the 1980s, after experiencing the growth of some of the United States’ first and most notorious prison gangs. In an attempt to neutralise the gangs, inmates thought to be gang members were moved to isolation in so-called Special Housing Units (SHUs).

Yet critics have pointed out problems with a system in which inmates could be put in isolation merely upon being accused of gang affiliation by another inmate. Further, until a pilot project was implemented last year, those accusations could not be challenged and the identity of the accuser was kept secret.

Today, around 12,000 inmates are reportedly being held in isolation at any given time, with hundreds of inmates having been in indefinite isolation for the past decade or more, according to advocates. Inmates in solitary confinement in California receive around an hour of outdoor time per day and no direct human contact.

Multiple groups contend that indefinite isolation constitutes cruel and inhumane treatment, and thus breaches international rights obligations. That view has been corroborated by the United Nations, whose special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, in 2011 stated that solitary confinement of longer than 15 days should be “absolutely prohibited” due to its scientifically proven potential for lasting psychological damage.

Last week, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) reiterated its support for this stance, expressing its “concern” over the causes behind the California hunger strike and the “excessive” use of solitary confinement in the United States more generally.

“The IACHR reiterates that the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment may not be abrogated and is universal,” the said. “Accordingly, the [Organisation of American States] Member States must adopt strong, concrete measures to eliminate the use of prolonged or indefinite isolation under all circumstances.”

The 35-member Organisation of American States, based in Washington, includes the United States.

‘Step-down’ reforms

The years of protest against the SHU system did eventually receive a policy response from the California prison system, including recognition that the gang-affiliation accusation system was dangerously inflexible.

In October, the CDCR instituted a series of initial reforms, including a “step-down” process for inmates who show they’re no longer engaging in gang-related activities. Through late June, the CDCR says it has reviewed some 382 cases, transferring 208 inmates out of SHUs and placing another 115 inmates in the step-down programme.

Still, critics suggest that the programme is too protracted, particularly for inmates who may have been in isolation for a decade or more.

“We of course welcome anything that gives prisoners the right to challenge the indefiniteness of their solitary confinement and the solitary confinement itself, but this is a very prolonged process,” Amnesty International’s Mazzola says.

“As it’s currently set up, it would take almost two years before an individual who starts the programme would even be taken out of the SHU. So that doesn’t really address the basic concerns here.”

Meanwhile, a class action lawsuit, filed in May 2012 on behalf of several SHU inmates, is scheduled to be heard in early August.

The TRUST Act would allow local police to detain individuals for ICE only if they are convicted of a serious crime. Credit: photostock

By Charlotte Silver
SAN FRANCISCO, California, Apr 23 2013 (IPS)

Challenges are mounting to a key U.S. immigration enforcement programme that requires local police to share the fingerprints of individuals they arrest, triggering a federal investigation into the immigration status of the detainee.

Introduced in 2008, the Secure Communities programme (S-Comm) rapidly expanded over the next four years utilising approximately 750 million dollars allotted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for the programme."Immigrant communities are more fearful of going to the police, to report crimes they are victims of." -- ALC's Tim Huey

This month, the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) sued ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for information related to the agencies’ communications with California government officials about the California TRUST Act and S-Comm.

The lawsuit was filed after ICE failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request the San Francisco-based civil rights organisation submitted over three months ago.

The ALC submitted the FOIA request on Dec. 21, 2012 because of suspicions that ICE had attempted to improperly influence the governor’s decision on the TRUST Act, which was reintroduced to the state assembly that month.

“ICE has a history of misrepresenting facts about the Secure Communities program to the public and to state and local officials. ICE also has a history of attempting to influence state and local officials who seek to limit compliance with Secure Communities,” the complaint, filed on Apr. 9 with a San Francisco District Court, states.

According to the complaint, ICE has had two private meetings with Governor Jerry Brown: one before Brown’s veto of the bill last September and one shortly after the TRUST Act was reintroduced by California state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano on Dec. 3, 2012.

California’s revised TRUST Act is slated to be voted on by the State Assembly on May 31.

“There’s a public right to know about issues surrounding pending legislation. The public has a right to know what information was given that may have motivated decisions on the bill,” said Jessica Karp, an adjunct professor at University of California, Irvine who also works with UC Irvine’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, which is representing ALC.

The TRUST Act, which passed the California Senate and State Assembly last summer only to be vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown on Sep. 30, 2012, would prevent the pre-conviction sharing of fingerprints by law enforcement with ICE, allowing local police to detain individuals for ICE only if they are convicted of a serious crime.

The TRUST Act was designed to alter the state’s participation in ICE’s Secure Communities programme, which is responsible for deporting 266,137 immigrants, ostensibly in order to prioritise the deportation of immigrants convicted of serious crimes. However, according to ICE’s statistics, less than 30 percent of those deported were convicted of Level 1 crimes.

“When it was first implemented it was politically untouchable,” Karp told IPS, explaining that it was impossible to publicly oppose a piece of legislation with the stated objective of removing serious criminals.

But two years after it was implemented, the actual impact on the community has been very different from the programme’s alleged goal. The vast majority of those detained or deported under S-Comm had no criminal history or had committed, at most, a small misdemeanor.

Numerous stories of individuals ending up in deportation proceedings because they had committed small infractions, traffic violations – or were themselves the victims of crime – quickly hit the news.

As Karp explained, “Secure Communities has allowed ICE to use local law enforcement agencies to help them meet their deportation quota of 400,000 people each year. S-Comm helps them do that using local resources.”

In addition, S-Comm has proven to be a pricey measure for state and local resources, costing the state of California an estimated 65 million dollars a year to detain immigrants for ICE.

In response to the overwhelming evidence that S-Comm was not focusing on serious criminals, some local communities, law enforcement agencies and state legislatures attempted to opt-out of the programme in which they had initially agreed to participate by voluntarily signing a Memorandum of Agreement.

San Francisco’s sheriff, Michael Hennessey, was one of the first to seek to opt out in 2010.

In an editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle in May 2011, Hennessy wrote, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s controversial Secure Communities program violates… hard-earned trust with immigrant residents.”

Hennessy went on to explain that S-Comm gave local law enforcement no discretion over which arrestees would trigger an ICE deportation proceeding.

Counties throughout California and the nation followed suit in seeking to opt-outof the programme.

However, to the confoundment of many localities and state representatives, ICE responded by asserting that sharing fingerprints was no longer optional and canceling the initial Memorandum of Agreements.

ICE has repeatedly emphasised that S-Comm targets immigrants with criminal histories, but evidence that the programme continues to ensnare individuals with no criminal conduct or background abounds.

In early April, in Bakersfield, California, Ruth Montano – a 14-year resident of the state whose three children were born and raised in the United States – faced deportation proceedings after police came to her apartment in response to neighbours’ complaints over her barking dogs.

Montano’s case caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and immigrants’ advocacy group Cuentame, which orchestrated a successful information campaign to pressure for Montano’s release from deportation. But as ACLU lawyer Jennie Pasquarella pointed out at the time, Montano’s good fortune is the exception.

“Immigrant communities are more fearful of going to the police, to report crimes they are victims of. This is why the TRUST Act is so important, so that Secure Communities can do what it is meant to do while restoring trust between local law enforcement and immigrant communities,” Tim Huey of the ALC told IPS.

While the TRUST Act was originally drafted for California, copycat bills have been proposed in Massachusetts, Florida, Connecticut, Colorado and a number of other localities this year.

ICE does not take an official position on pending legislation and thus has not stated opposition to the TRUST Act. The agency would not comment on pending litigation with the Asian Law Caucus.