By Alex Grossman, Director of Communications
On June 20, 2019, members of Grassy Narrows First Nation marched through downtown Toronto demanding that the Canadian government uphold their promise to clean up the mercury contaminating the Wabigoon River. Between 1962 and 1970, a paper mill upstream from Grassy Narrows dumped 20,000 pounds of mercury into the river, and it’s estimated that today 90% of the community of Grassy Narrows suffers from some type of mercury poisoning.
With grant funding and support from Global Greengrants Fund, members of the community, led by local activist Judy DaSilva, have called on the Canadian government to protect the community’s rights to a clean and healthy environment. In 2017, the government committed $85 billion to cleaning up the Wabigoon River and to building a Mercury Care Home in the area. Yet today, only 1% of the construction cost for the Home has been delivered.
So what’s the hold up?
South of the Canadian border in Flint, Michigan, residents of a town plagued by unsafe drinking water still find themselves unable to drink water from the tap. While politicians and city officials may claim that after pipe replacements throughout the city the water is safe to drink, tests show that lead levels in Flint’s water still don’t meet federal standards.
Even further South, deep in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, Indigenous communities continue to suffer from skin rashes, lesions, and ailments as a result of riverways contaminated with oil. Oil spilled over three decades ago by the corporate giant, Chevron. Now, after 26 years of legal battles over the spills and needed clean up, the government of Ecuador has committed $10 million to begin addressing the devastation.
Across the world, in Ogoniland, Nigeria, a group of women is taking matters into their own hands. In 1993, the people of Ogoniland successfully expelled Shell from their lands, ending oil spills into their waterways. Yet, like their peers around the world, the wait for the contamination to be cleaned up has been long and arduous.
With $4,000 from Global Greengrants Fund, local women are proactively working to revitalize the ecosystem of Ogoniland. Right now, they are developing a nursery of mangrove seedlings and native fruit trees. Once the oil contamination is cleaned to an appropriate standard, the women will replant the destroyed mangrove forests, which will revitalize devastated fish populations and waterways that locals depend on.
These local women are developing solutions to a problem they aren’t responsible for causing, yet their families and communities have suffered the resulting consequences for decades. From Grassy Narrows, to Flint, to Ecuador, to Nigeria, local people struggle to protect their rights to clean water as corporations contaminate their water sources and governments and companies bicker for decades over who should foot the bill in cleaning up the mess.
This is a broken system.
Our global dependence on oil, gas, and natural resources drives the need for extraction, at the cost of peoples’ lives and the health of our planet. Energy hunger, felt worldwide is driving the need to extract, which is why we need to reduce our energy consumption habits. Without effective regulations and restrictions imposed from the very beginning by companies and governments, we continue to harm the environment and the people who call it home in ways that cannot be reversed, no matter the amount of money, time and effort.
This is why Global Greengrants Fund stands in solidarity with people on the frontlines worldwide. We support their efforts to resist development and extraction projects from happening in the first place, as well as efforts to demand action and clean up after the fact. Stand with us.