Shell’s Arctic ambitions targeted, cleaner water for Ecuador and expectations beyond Rio+20

Greenpeace fights for the Arctic

The non-profit group, joined by activist organisation Yes Men and Occupy movement members, staged a fake press conference in Seattle’s iconic Space Needle building that was “hosted” by Shell to honour its impending voyage. A fake Shell representative attempted to serve a drink to a female participant via a model oilrig, which (intentionally) went haywire and sprayed her. The video, dubbed #ShellFAIL, was posted online and received 700,000 views within days.

The activist groups followed the stunt with a fake Shell press release threatening to take legal action against the participants, or anyone who published the story.

“Shell spends millions of dollars each year on PR and advertising,” says Greenpeace’s James Turner, who played a Shell official at the “mockference”. “They realise that if people really knew they planned to exploit melting sea ice to drill for more oil there would be an international outcry, which is why they’re desperate to hide it. Our action shows that a few creative people can disrupt the PR operation of a multinational oil company in the week it planned to send rigs to the Arctic.”

Greenpeace is also deploying two research submarines to monitor two of Shell’s planned Arctic drilling sites. “This is fast becoming one of the defining environmental battles of our era, and we are determined to stop Shell exploiting one of the planet’s last great wildernesses – and our climate – for the sake of the next quarterly results,” says Turner.

Clear blue water

A new, locally driven initiative by a group of Amazonian tribes and non-profit groups, is working to bring clean water to oil-ravaged communities in the northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon.

Decades of industrialisation in the Amazon often went hand in hand with environmentally destructive practices that contaminated local water systems. As multinational corporations continue to drag their feet to remediate the environmental damage, and PetroEcuador continues its operations (not to mention the shoddy local sanitation), the ClearWater project was born out of necessity, its backers argue.

The project is led by four tribes and the Amazon Defense Coalition (ADC), along with expertise from humanitarian aid organisation Groundwork Opportunities and support from Saving an Angel, Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch.

According to Jenny O’Connor of Groundwork Opportunities, the project relies on a unique water filtration and rainwater harvesting system designed to filter out heavy metals and the types of hydrocarbons caused by severe oil pollution. Thus far, every water test has shown that water from these systems is cleaner than bottled water sold in the US.

ClearWater will continue installing the systems (70 are already in place) to provide 2,000 indigenous people with clean water. Within five years, O’Connor says the project hopes to expand to reach those living within and around the Ecuadorian Amazon, and has partnered with Engineers Without Borders to scale up.  

Catastrophe required  

More than 70% of sustainability experts think a major catastrophe has to happen for governments to address pressing global sustainability issues, according to a new GlobeScan/SustainAbility survey of 1,603 leaders in business, government, civil society and academia across 117 countries.

This influencer survey is one of several initiatives that make up the Regeneration Project, which seeks to educate and guide the private and public sector towards sustainable development within the next generation, and is analysing both expert and public opinion before and after the Rio+20 Earth summit.

The Regeneration Project’s first public opinion survey, conducted with National Geographic, analysed 17,000 consumers in 17 countries and revealed that most people want their governments to “play a leadership role in making ambitious international commitments to reduce global poverty in ways that improve the environment”.  

Latin America came out on top, with majorities in Mexico (80%), Brazil (74%) and Argentina (67%). Indians took the next spot with 63%, followed by Canadians (58%) and Americans (51%). Germans were least supportive of their government taking a leadership position in Rio, with a score of 43%.

Additionally, 5% of consumers surveyed said they would prefer their leadership to avoid an international agreement altogether, with Americans the most against agreement, on 11%.

“While international treaties are not an expected outcome from Rio+20, the evidence that consumers want national governments to lead is a call to arms,” says Lindsay Clinton, senior manager at SustainAbility. “If governments fail to act, we hope that the private sector will heed the call from consumers and exhibit leadership through their own sustainability commitments at the summit.”