Indigenous communities poisoned by pesticides
February 3, 2012 | Global Health,Least Developed Countries | By Maroussia Klep
For centuries, indigenous peoples throughout the world relied on hunting, farming, and fishing for their subsistence. Today, many traditional foods have become life-threatening dangers, contaminated by pollutants and pesticides. Over 355,000 people are poisoned every year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill.
Andrea Carmen comes from a Yaqui Indian community in northern Mexico. Viola Waghiyi is a Yupik Eskimo born in Alaska. Thousands of kilometers apart, the two female activists combat the same injustice: the dramatic health effects of foreign toxics in their indigenous communities.
“We have scientific evidence that the pesticides and toxics exported by foreign countries into ours are causing disproportionate levels of cancers, birth defects, mental retardation, fertility, poisoned breast milk and various reproductive diseases,” Andrea Carmen, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), an organization of indigenous people from North, Central, and South America and the Pacific, tells MediaGlobal.
Industrial activity by foreign companies is the main cause of contamination, in particular the “Big 6” agrochemical giants from the United States, Germany and Switzerland (the Multi-national Corporations Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer, and BASF), the world’s six largest manufacturers of pesticides.
The 2004 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) aims at the elimination of the world’s most dangerous chemicals for the protection of the environment. The Convention specifically refers to the unique vulnerabilities of indigenous people. However, the Convention wasn’t ratified by the United States, a major global polluter, and has also to cope with strong opposition from the chemical industry, valued at over $3 trillion worldwide.
A second major source of contamination comes from former military activity. This is especially the case in Alaska, a territory that served as a US Air Force and Army base during the Cold War, and as a testing ground for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
“Native communities in Alaska are particularly vulnerable because of their severe isolation and reliance on local fishing,” Waghiyi, Environmental Health and Justice Director at ACAT (Alaska Community Action on Toxics), tells MediaGlobal.“When the militaries shut down their basis in the 1970’s, they didn’t clean up their mess, and the 220,000 gallons of spilled fuel or other solvents and heavy metals that are now causing deaths and cancers among us.”
The process is further exacerbated by climate change and rising temperature that provoke more rapid dispersal of contaminants into freshwater and marine environments. Waghiyi has herself suffered three miscarriages, and both her parents died from cancers, with evidential links to the toxins.
Although the causes may differ from one country to another, indigenous people throughout the world are similarly suffering from the intrusion of foreign poisons in their lands. Gathering around a common cause, communities from around the world, including those of Carmen and Waghiyi, are now uniting their efforts.
It’s taken some time for Indigenous people to have their voices heard at the UN level. The first step was in 1982, when the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) established a Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP) as a reaction against systematic discrimination. Eventually, after more than 20 years of work, and the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur in 2001, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous people was adopted in September 2007.
More than their rights to health and self-determination, Article 29 of the Declaration is of particular importance in the present issue; it holds that “no disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous people without their free, prior and informed consent.”
“Our right to free and pre-informed consent has been continuously violated in the last decades; no one ever told us about the presence and harmful effects of pesticides contained in our food,” Carmen tells MediaGlobal. “How could we possibly imagine that toxics banned in the US because of their severe health implications were deliberately sold and spread in poorer countries?”
The recent scandal of flowers’ production in Colombia and Ecuador is bringing attention to the issue. Columbia is one of the biggest producers of flowers for the US, employing more than 100,000 local workers, especially women from Indian communities. “Contrary to food exports, there is no analysis by American companies for chemical residue on flowers’ crops, which are not exported in the US for comestible purposes,” explains Carmen. But recent studies revealed the presence of highly toxic pesticides in the crops, causing cancers and other illnesses among thousands of local workers.
The upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), to be held this June in Brazil, will be an opportunity for Indigenous people to voice their concerns. In a united effort, various indigenous organizations including IITC and ACAT have submitted a long list of recommendations to be considered at Rio.
“We want to see the environmental conventions and standards be assessed from a human rights perspective,” Carmen tells MediaGlobal. “More than a threat to the environment, the deliberate spread of toxics into the nature violates basic human rights of indigenous people, including our right to prior consent.”
While improvements and negotiations are slowly advancing on the international level, people on the ground are every day threatened with contamination, often unaware of the poison present in their food or on their clothes or in the crops. “Our priority is to inform and educate our communities about the risks they occur,” Waghiyi tells MediaGlobal. “We do not want to tell them what to do, but they have the right to take informed choices, and to eventually speak up themselves for their rights.”
Source: MediaGlobal
