25 september 2008 – 23:32

Early
this morning, during one of Rio Tinto Alcan's lectures, the fire alarms in
the building were put on. Later today fire alarms and high volume rape
alarms were put on - again during Rio Tinto Alcan's lecture - as well as
banners were hung up and information leaflets were distributed. The aim
was to call attention to the industry’s singular involvement in ecological
destruction in Iceland, as well as on a global scale.

The ICAA conference is a week long event held at a different international
location every 2 years. This is its first appearance in Germany and as
such is run in parallel to the Aluminium trade fair in Essen, about 80 km
away. This double event is sure to call together all major players of an
industry that still tries to present itself as having a green conscience,
and with some success: Alcoa has been included in the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index, for the 7th year running. [1] Environmentalists
dispute this depiction in the strongest terms.

Global Impacts

“There is no level on which the continued expansion of the aluminium
industry can be pursued sustainably” says Andreas Jager of Saving
Iceland,” In India, for example, the primary material, bauxite, is
open-cast mined and refined into alumina, stripping rainforest covered
mountains, displacing tribal people from their land and polluting the
water supply with “red mud” residue [2, 3]. In Australia and Jamaica,
virgin forests are also destroyed for the same prize - and with the same
toxic consequences [4].

Destruction of Icelandic Wilderness, for weapons

“ In Iceland, the country’s unique natural landscape is being raided for
its energy potential by these multinational invaders: at a time when the
world is finally waking up to climate change, the effect of our high
energy dependence, the process of aluminium production requires colossal
quantities of electricity, for which it plans to block and harness every
glacial river, exploit every geothermal field and transform Iceland’s wild
beauty into a spent and polluted wasteland, dotted with smelters. This
does not equate to green energy, particularly considering that the planned
Icelandic aluminium smelters will far exceed the generous 1,600,000 tonnes
of emissions permitted to that country under the Kyoto Convention [5].

“And the end product? For the most part, military hardware used for
destruction of every imaginable kind, aviation, which is increasingly
being shown to be incompatible with a stable climate, and disposable
packaging, a symptom of our wasteful society. There can be no future for
this industry, above all others, if we are to avoid environmental crisis.”

Rio Tinto Alcan’s Envrionmental and Human Crimes

Saving Iceland protests Rio Tinto’s investments in Iceland and in Africa.
In Iceland the RT-Alcan smelter in Hafnarfjordur, southwest Iceland is
being upgraded to increase production. The Budarhals dam is currently
being constructed to power the smelter expansion.

“The people of Hafnarfjordur voted against expansion of the smelter in a
local referendum, but still production is being increased,” says Jager.
“The smelter discards its toxic spent potlinings in a landfill in the sea
that floods at high tide [6]. We do not want more pollution and we do not
want more dams here in Iceland, which are destroying our beautiful
wilderness. Especially for a company with the most abysmal record in human
rights,” states Jager.

Rio Tinto has been accused of subjecting it’s workers to poisoning in
mines, of having security guards shooting locals looking for small amounts
of gold in one of it’s mines and having union-members spied upon and fired
[7, 8]. It has also hired mercenary forces against local populations
protesting it’s operations in Papua and Bougainville [9, 10, 11].

The Norwegian government has sold its shares in Rio Tinto because it’s
Grasberg mine in West Papua has devastated the land of the Amungme and
Kamoro tribes. Norway sold its almost £500 million shares in Rio Tinto
following recommendations from its Council on Ethics to exclude the
company from its government pension fund [12].

International Solidarity

People all around the world are waking up and becoming aware of the
destruction caused by the aluminium industry, as well as the situation in
Iceland. Last week, big banners were hanged up in Copenhagen saying: “The
Aluminium Industry is Destroying All Major Icelandic Rivers!” [13].

Footnotes and further reference:

[1] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=3182&a…
[2] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=602&am…
[3] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=2607&a…
[4] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=2233&a…
[5] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?page_id=…
[6] Rio Tinto Alcan (2008). Alcan Environment: Potlinings.
http://www.riotintoalcan.is/?PageID=111 [Accessed September 24th, 2009].
[7] SBS Australia (200). Dateline, Report on Rio Tinto, August 2000.
[8] Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Global
Compact,” July 13th 2001.
[9] Wikipedia Germany (22-7-2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Af…
[10] Contract between PNG Government and Sandline:
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG….
[11] Sarei v Rio Tinto, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.
[12] Survival International (2008). Norwegian government – Rio Tinto’s
Papua mine unethical. http://www.survival-international.org/ne… [Accessed
September 24th, 2008]
[13] http://savingiceland.puscii.nl/?p=3226&language=en