REPORT - CONFERENCE @CIEL

VICTIMS OF BIOFUELS: THE IMPACTS OF SUGARCANE IN WESTERN NICARAGUA
By Olivia Gast

In Nicaragua, Central America, there are a lot of sugarcane fields. Male cane workers there suffer from chronic renal insufficiency (or Chronic Kidney Disease, CKD), whose only final cure is an unaffordable kidney transplant. A third of them are in terminal stage and sixty men die every month. A disproportionate number of them is employed by the ingenio (sugarmill) San Antonio (owned by Nicaragua Sugar Estates Limited or NSEL - of the powerful Pellas family group) in Chichigalpa.
The problem is likely to be caused by the pesticides used in the plantations, and the lack of proper protection of the workers, combined with overwork, high temperatures lack of clean drinking water and dehydration. But even if they did get protective suits, they wouldn’t wear them because it’s too hot. Also, they suffer from respiratory problems caused by the clouds of smoke and ash created when the sugarcane fields are burned prior to harvest. On top of that, because of the resistance phenomenon, they have to keep increasing the dosages of nutrient pollutant, so it's getting worse and worse. And this culture is threatening the water supplies.
But it is extremely hard to get information, and therefore proof, such as which chemicals exactly are being used, and in what concentration. The company has control of the publicity so there is no media coverage of the issue (yet). Officially, the company uses only authorized substances. But there is no control from the administration. A team of research students from Yale came and tried to make some analysis, but they were compelled by the company to stay in a very small non-representative area. There are strong reasons to believe that the dangerous DBCP is being used, which has been banned in the USA but not abroad.
NSEL regularly makes workers get tested, and when diagnosed with the disease, they get fired, which is simply not an option for them. So they get subcontracted illegally to keep working, thus loosing social security although still being exposed to the chemicals.
A law had been voted to declare CKD as a working disease; but it got vetoed by President Balaños. Such a law would bankrupt social security, they say. On top of that, Carlos Pellas (head of the Pellas group) threatened to shut down the Ingenio if they were found responsible for the CKD.
In this situation, the workers tried to make a workers’ union, and they got fired. Then they tried to take action against their employer, NSEL. But this went very bad, because the government is so corrupt. People got shot; the Police threw away files in the interest of the company.
What option is now available to them? There is no international environmental Court, which cruelly lacks here. No action against the company is possible, no action against the government either. And anyway, the goal of this action should be to make the company change their chemicals and even more important, make the administration do real controls and have better standards and expectations. Nobody wants the company to leave or go bankrupt and leave the workers unemployed.
To alert the World community about this desperate situation, Catawumpus Films is currently in production of The Affected (http://affectedmovie.com/TheAffected.html). Filmmaker Jason Glaser also created an NGO, La Isla Foundation, to help the sick workers through several non confrontational programs and cooperation with local and regional groups.
Also, here is another important fact: NSEL received a $55 million loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC, part of the World Bank) in 2006 to increase its sugarcane production and to fund the construction of an ethanol plant. Much of the sugarcane produced by this project will be used for biofuels, and so is an increasing percentage of the one hundred forty-five million tons of sugar produced each year worldwide. Although the benefits of using biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels are celebrated, the costs to their use are often significant and overlooked. Sugarcane production for biofuel use, for example, even though it doesn’t make the food prices rise (as an exception among biofuels), can weight heavily on the environment and the people who work to produce it.
Yet, there is a mechanism established to hold the IFC accountable to communities for violations of environmental and social standards, the Office of the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO).
On March, 31st 2008, Kris Genovese, Attorney at CIEL, Center for International Environmental Law www.ciel.org - a nonprofit organization working to use international law and institutions to protect the environment, promote human health, and ensure a just and sustainable society-, helped community members and workers to file a complaint to the CAO, presenting evidence that the standards have been violated by NSEL.
There are three groups of workers in the complaint: the ex-sugarcane workers, the community members and the workers who tried to make a union and got fired. The aim is to make IFC pressure on the companies so that they improve their standards, through shortening the loan payback deadlines.
The IFC compliance violations are air pollution; ground water misuse; toxic waste (for example, lack of environmental impact statement); labor rights, such as the lack of concertation, the violation of complaint filling and lack of redress, the insufficient health and safety standards; indigenous waste and the violation of the indigenous communities rights (despite the company’s denial of their very existence!); and IFC Due Diligence.
This is the first case filed under the new IFC Performance Standards. The question of IFC’s role in financing biofuels is an important one and needs to be more explored. If you feel concerned, get involved and help : http://affectedmovie.com/TheAffected.html.


For more information, please contact Kristen Genovese at kgenovese@ciel.org, Jason Glaser at laislafoundation@gmail.com ; read this article by Jason Glaser: www.thegringo.com/index.php?articleID=15280§ionID=298; here is the complaint link: http://www.ciel.org/Publications/NSEL_Complaint_31Mar08.pdf;