TOR147 ― Balancing The Scales For Local Communities With Flaviano Bianchini of Source International

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Let’s say you woke up tomorrow to the sound of someone knocking at your door. And, when you answer, the person standing outside politely explained that they were a representative of an energy company that had recently acquired the rights to extract the natural gas in the area. Oh, and a great deal of that resource happens to be located under your house. Or, what if you were able to track changes in the water your community uses for drinking, cooking, bathing and cleaning physically change over the past few years – from a pure, clean resource, to one that is smelly, polluted or fouled in some other way. And that those changes began when a mining operation started upstream. Now here’s the kicker – you are unable to bring a complaint against thees resource extraction companies simply because you lack the time, money or other resources. Or, an even more likely scenario, if and when you do bring your issues to your local or national authorities, you find that the scales are tipped against you simply because the companies have access to seemingly unlimited amounts of time, money and insider knowledge. My guest for the 147th Terms of Reference Podcast, Flaviano Bianchini, is intimately familiar with stories similar to these from around the world. But rather than just listen, he has helped create a powerful solution that has helped communities to fight back and tip the scales in their favor. Flaviano’s organization, Source International, helps communities that are adversely affected by resource extraction activities, like mining or well drilling, by providing them with scientific and legal resources. As you’ll hear us discuss, the support provided by Source has created profound results – large-scale monetary rewards, injunctions against extraction activities and, in one case, completely rewriting mining laws. You can connect with Flaviano here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/flavianobianchini www.source-international.org/staff/?lang=en Tweets by bianco222

IN TOR 147 YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT

Source International, an initiative to empower communities stricken by negative environmental impacts, through scientific evidence and methods with legal validity against oil and mining companies, or even governments
How technology Sources Uses for sampling and analyzing “almost everything”, from water to hair and food, is parts centuries-old and parts cutting-edge innovation
The fatal perils of fighting oil and mining. As tragic as the case of Berta Cáceres was in Central America, even more tragic is the customary recurrence of this cases in America, Africa, Asia
The few but vital successes, including multi-million compensation to Mexican communities, and even a struck-down law by Honduras Supreme Court
Source International’s process to decide when to intervene, and the inevitable reality of not being able to help everyone
Why the XIX century Gold Rush has the US paying astronomical sums each year to fix acidification of water that cannot even be used in hydroelectric turbines. Researching pollution is also corporate risk management

OUR CONVERSATION FEATURES THE FOLLOWING

Names

Topics

Oil & Mining, mining companies
Intimidation of local leaders
Native Americans, US recognition of rights
Lab work, sampling, analysis
Water pollution and acidity, US river contamination by the US Gold Rush era,
Environmental law, scientific evidence as recourse for legal defense

Places

EPISODE CRIB NOTES

Source International

00:03:23,610

our final goal is to change the way in which minerals natural resources are extracted all over the world
we equip communities with scientific and legal tools that they can use for control their environment and their resources
so that they can have some sort of leveraging that in use to hold buying companies accountable
we basically do two different things
#1 we perform scientific studies for communities
mining companies and governments can access to the best studies, the best scientists, the best lawyers
local communities often cannot
we try to balance this, bringing science legal advice
#2 we train local communities
indigenous leader groups and local farmers to perform some basic monitoring system
we teach them how to use science in order to hold companies accountable
we can sort of transform the community into a sort of watchdog

Intimidation?

00:05:36,759

back in 2006-7 in Guatemala
it happened again in Mexico a few years ago in the state of Guerrero
it still happens today
one year ago they killed Berta Cáceres in Honduras
so yeah it happens sometimes
who is really at risk is more our local partners and local communities
most of our organization is from Europe or the US
it’s sad but it’s a sort of protection
it depends a lot from countries to countries
sometimes is the company, sometimes the government sometimes local armed groups not linked directly to either
in Mexico, some areas are very dangerous and we call them drug cartels
but often those operate in mining rich area
drug is just one of their deal
in the Democratic Republic of Congo where you have those army group that basically finance themselves with smuggling of minerals used for technology
Mongolia, where you have the government that has put into jail one of the biggest activists of the country with an accusation of terrorism
it was just manifestation against a mining process
but generally speaking, local communities are in danger for two different sides
#1 one side is the danger of the impact that those extractive projects can have on their health, on their environment on their life
#2 and if they protest against them they are in danger
on the Dakota Access Pipeline: that’s a sort of typical case
is in a developed country a country that is supposed to have a functional and fair judicial system
but it also does not recognize the indigenous rights and indigenous communities
the protest against the project has been criminalized for quite a while
that was quite famous because it’s in the US, the land of the free, free speech, freedom of protest
but you have hundreds of stories like this in Latin America and Africa in Asia
so it’s just one of those hundreds of cases

Among this many cases, any measure of success?

00:09:53,679

we’ve been able to have 50 million dollar in compensation for an indigenous community in Mexico
for the use of land and the pollution of the water
the community can afford to bring a new pipeline for the water
we also have obtained the declaration of emergency in a city in Peru called Cerro de Pasco
probably our biggest achievement, at the Supreme Court of Honduras
it declared unconstitutional 13 articles of the mining law because it violates human rights to health
after that the Parliament was obliged to issue a new law that is more respectful for health for human rights
it took years and years of work or was that just so obvious
“I mean it affected the entire population of Honduras”

Source us through

00:11:51,880

we never reach a community first
we always ask for the community to call us
I mean if we go to a community and we impose ourselves, wouldn’t it be another way of colonialism
we always need a call from the community
we receive of course a lot more calls than what we can afford
we have to select
we have to do a sort of triage of the projects
these are resource poor communities
in areas of the world that are usually remote
we have at this moment 27 projects, 26 of them just by word of mouth
one community reached through internet
it’s a good indicator for us
we select basically on three four major points:
#1 how big is the problem
#2 the resources that we have
#3 the strength of the local communities, that’s fundamental
if the local community is not strong enough in term of self-organization…
we start to ask to other communities that we know, and because they know us too they are “warmer to us”
we ask for feedback to someone or other organization
we have a strong network with local organizations in all the countries where we work
so we can ask organizations
we can provide them science and legal advice but they must go through the process, deal with the company
we cannot do it for them
the next step is going and start to work
we visit and we stay for a while, normally three weeks
where we do a sort of initial assessment
then we define a strategy, it can be one year long or three years long
we start with collecting and analyzing samples
we teach the methodology of monitoring
then start to report
we can do pretty much everything, from water quality & quantity, soil, dust
we also do biological samples: blood, urine, hair analysis
accumulation of heavy metals or dioxins
we analyze food sometimes

Sample and analyze your next five years

00:17:23,349

that’s a sensitive question because we don’t have real strategies
we go with the flow and try to navigate a little and see what happens
but we need to actually define a strategy
we just started with Ashoka Globalizer
that will help us in define a strategy for the next five years
you have to follow the flow but somehow you have to navigate into this flow too

Source?

00:18:53,559

11 years ago I was in Italy in a conference
she had this fairly emotional speech on the mining pollution in her country
I proposed to help them providing scientific data and she said yes
a couple of months later I was on a one-way ticket to Guatemala
I spent almost one year taking evidence about mining pollution in Central America
from there I started to do other projects
then I moved to Peru and Argentina and so on
six years later I started to develop the idea of having an organization
I’m an Ashoka fellow, that was what enabled me to actually found Source International

Innovation in sampling and analyzing

00:21:14,450

generally speaking, it remains the same
when you work in in your lab at Berkeley University or whatever
you can use the most innovative technology
when you are in the middle of the jungle in Peru it’s not as easy
at the end of the day we use technologies that are 30 years old
simple but pretty effective and officially recognized
taking water and solid samples
the only thing that we have changed a little bit are two:
#1 on biological samples we used to analyze a lot of blood, and now we are switching to hair
because it’s easier from the bureaucratic and legal point of view
especially when you have to move blood across frontiers
#2 work with other smaller NGOs investigation center
to develop rapid screen analysis toolkits of heavy metals in water
the technology is probably a hundred years old
you can have sort of machine with a laser that measure the intensity of blue with Precision
it will take probably a couple of years more but there are already some system

Sources International of funding?

00:24:23,260

we have different revenue streams: grants and donations from foundations
sometimes we have local communities who pay for us
communities are often intermediaries with local NGOs
we cannot take money from a mining or oil company because it would be a conflict of interest
it’s pretty difficult to let them companies understand that the work is really risk prevention, not just something for human rights or environment
with a mining company you can earn money on the short-term but then if they let everything polluted you will lose more money that would you at the beginning
the clear example is the state of Colorado
(Stephen’s Birthplace)
CO is losing 17 million dollar a year just for the pollution that was caused 150 years ago
when they were looking for gold
acid mine drainage
water cannot be used for anything: fishing, drinking, industrial
it’s so acid that you cannot put that water into a turbine to generate electricity for
in the entire US it’s much more
22,000 kilometers of rivers in the US polluted

Have you ever said, ‘actually, you guys don’t have it so bad, it’ll be fine’?

00:29:01,440

when they call us it’s always is when there is really a problem
when we arrive there is usually a damaged situation
we are pretty unique on this use of science and law
the real innovation is the fact that we use the science in order to educate legal processes
in New Mexico, E-Tch are doing something similar
but they’re closer to the companies. We are a hundred percent working only with communities

Flaviano plugs stuff from the Earth

00:31:26,080

Oregon’s Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide
UK’s Global Witness

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